Backstage News On Original Plans For This Week’s AEW TNT Championship Match
Photo Credit: James Musselwhite
Cody Rhodes is set to defend his AEW TNT Championship against Marq Quen of Private Party on this week’s episode of Dynamite but it appears that was not the original plan.
According to Dave Meltzer in this week’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter, Cody was originally supposed to face off with Fenix on the June 10 show but he was held off due to ongoing injury concerns. Fenix has been out of action since injuring himself on the Double Or Nothing go-home episode of Dynamite two weeks ago. There was a spot on that May 20 show where Fenix did a dive off the top rope but landed hard on his hip and back, and was later pulled from the Casino Ladder Match and replaced by Joey Janela.
Cassidy Haynes of Bodyslam.net previously reported Fenix wasn’t in Jacksonville for last week’s Dynamite tapings but the belief is that he’d return once this week’s show aired. Meltzer claims Fenix was still discussed in production plans last week but once they learned he wouldn’t be ready due to injury Quen was subbed in for the title bout.
Meltzer also went on to say Fenix is expected back soon, and speculated that he could have worked the original match but AEW weighed the risk involved with him returning so soon and would rather plan it for later on down the line.
This week’s episode of AEW Dynamite is scheduled to feature the following matches:
Colt Cabana vs. Sammy Guevara
AEW TNT Championship
Marq Quen vs. Cody Rhodes (c)
Inner Circle vs. Best Friends and Orange Cassidy
FTR vs. The Butcher and The Blade
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The Watch List takes a look at what matches you should be watching while you’re at home and they come recommended by your favorite professional wrestling stars.
WrestleZone recently spoke with Sammy Guevara, who said a great match to check from his career would be his first encounter with Cody Rhodes. The “Spanish God” explained that Cody knew he had buzz and made the mistake of thinking Sammy was a babyface, and he quickly showed him how wrong he was at the opening bell.
“I have one that’s on my own YouTube channel that you guys can go watch for free. It’s myself versus Cody Rhodes for the first time in 2016. We wrestled each other in Corpus Christi. A funny story—Cody had heard about me, but at the time he didn’t know much about me. I had pandas on my gear, I wore pink—I probably looked like a super babyface. He thought I was a babyface, and at the beginning of the match he goes to shake my hand. I give him the middle finger, the bird, and his face when he realizes, ‘ahhh, he’s a bad guy!’ It’s priceless, and the camera zooms in perfectly on his face right at that moment.”
It was also noted that Sammy (and the Inner Circle in general) don’t exactly see eye-to-eye with Cody or his brother, Dustin Rhodes. Sammy brought up the fact that Dustin might have won their last match, but they’re due for one more round and he’s going to come out on top this time.
“Dustin beat me in our last encounter but I need the trifecta, I need ‘round 3.’ I beat him in our first, he beat me in the second, so I’ll go ahead and spoil it—when we wrestle again, I’m going to beat Dustin’s ass. That’s what is going to happen. My back is ready to carry another old man to a great match!”
You can check out our full interview with Sammy Guevara where we talk about his matches with Matt Hardy and Alan Angels, the Stadium Stampede, his golf cart incident, how his feud with Darby Allin will be remembered and much more at this link.