Moxley, Kingston & other AEW talent pulled from indie shows

AEW has always had a fairly liberal policy on their wrestlers working independent shows. Owner Tony Khan had to sign off on the booking, of course, but scheduling wasn’t usually an issue. Most indie shows are on the weekend, and Dynamite’s on Wednesday and the bulk of Rampage & Dark taping usually happens there.

But there are changes coming to TK’s brands in 2023, with Ring of Honor resuming television tapings next weekend, and AEW launching house shows next month. That’s already led to a few conflicts for talent who took indie bookings. Now we’re learning about several more.

The biggest name is Jon Moxley, who had a gig in Ireland on Mar. 18 for OTT Wrestling’s Scrappermania 7. The former WWE & AEW World champ was supposed to do a meet & greet before facing Big Damo (fka WWE’s Killian Dain) that weekend, but will instead headline the AEW’s “House Rules” non-televised show in his home state of Ohio that night.

He’ll be replaced by Eddie Kingston and a wrestler to be named later.

Kingston’s been taken off a booking he had for next weekend. The stated reason is “nagging injuries”, which is certainly possible given the war he had with Jay White for New Japan this past Saturday night. We’ll see if Eddie has any role in the initial ROH TV episodes.

The Workhorseman (Anthony Henry & JD Drake)’s removal from a 4Way Tag title bout at DPW You Already Know! is almost definitely related to the ROH TV tapings.

Without scouring the full wrestling calendar, it’s hard to tell if these will be the shows impacted. Moving forward, we assume Khan & team will have their schedules set in advance to avoid issues like this.