The WWE United Kingdom Championship tournament was a huge success. It featured two nights of professional wrestling featuring some of the biggest names in the United Kingdom wrestling scene. But they were still missing a few top UK stars in the tournament and one promotion was also mysteriously left out: Revolution Pro Wrestling.
Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter reports that Revolution Pro Wrestling wasn’t a part of the WWE United Kingdom Championship Tournament because they have a close working relationship with New Japan and Ring of Honor. Andy Quildan, who runs Revolution Pro reportedly told WWE that he would listen to any offer that they had for him, although there probably wasn’t a possibility to work anything out.
The thinking going around is that Ring of Honor and/or New Japan would not allow contracted wrestlers to work for WWE in any capacity. To consider a similar instance, Meltzer reports that the belief was that WWE would let Impact Wrestling talent work the WWE UK tournament, but that offer might not have been agreeable for the newly acquired Anthem Sports company.
The news of Revolution Pro’s change of heart is somewhat surprising news as WWE just worked with the UK promotion when they held qualifying matches for the Cruiserweight Classic in May.
If Revolution and WWE could have worked out a deal fans very well might have had names like Marty Scurll and Will Ospreay in the tournament.
WWE has instead decided to focus their attention on promotions like ICW which is arguably the most successful UK promotion at this point. Current ICW champion, Wolfgang participated in the WWE United Kingdom Championship Tournament.
News broke last week that WWE is planning on running ICW shows on the WWE Network and it’s believed that a deal with Progress is also near completion. This deal, which is a three-year-contract is rumored to be costing WWE around $50,000 a year.
