On Saturday night’s episode of AEW Collision, we saw a vignette featuring Josh Barnett, and we subsequently learned that he will make his AEW debut against Claudio Castagnoli tomorrow night on the AEW WrestleDream: ‘Zero Hour’ pre-show.
Barnett is among the notable proteges of the legendary Antonio Inoki, in whose tribute and honor the pay-per-view event will be held.
In other news, Matt Hardy, speaking on the latest episode of his podcast, said that despite Adam Cole’s legitimate injury that he suffered at AEW Dynamite: Grand Slam, Cole and MJF will make the most out of the unfortunate development, despite being the hottest act in wrestling today.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On his thoughts on Adam Cole: “I am a huge, massive proponent of Adam Cole as you know and as most people know. I caught him at a very interesting time, I was going through the second stage of my career and I was really fortunate to be able to work with him, and he made me feel good and confident about what I was doing at the time, as I was kind of changing up the way that I worked. He actually kind of said the same, I was the first big name that he had a legit program with and he said that I was helping as well. I think we were a mutual admiration society, which was great. Huge fan of Adam Cole.”
On his belief that Cole & MJF will take it in the stride: “Just when I saw him after getting injured on TV, it was heartbreaking to see how badly he was injured. Broken bones in his foot, torn ligaments, torn tendons. He’s got a big surgery coming up and he’s going to be down and out for a while. Once of the worst things about it is that he was in one of the hottest angles in wrestling. Him and MJF, they’ve just been television gold and it sucks that he gets hurt at this time. Just knowing the creative process between those two, I’m sure they’ll make the most out of this.”