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If you saw the look on Jonathan Gresham's face at the ROH Death Before Dishonor PPV, you probably guessed he wasn't a happy person heading to the ring this past Saturday. Add in that he came in and out of the ring without his usual costuming and didn't even wait for his new manager, Prince Nana, to walk out with him. As we talked about on our ROH Post-Game Show for Elite subscribers on Saturday night, it was easy to guess something was amiss, and it was.
According to several sources, Gresham was very upset when told the planned outcome of his match, which saw him lose the ROH title to Claudio Castagnoli in under 11 minutes in the opening bout of the PPV. As originally reported by Fightful.com, Gresham had words with AEW & ROH owner Tony Khan, which one person described to PWInsider.com as "ugly and unprofessional."
One version of the story making the rounds is that Gresham "cursed out" Khan. Another story talents are sharing includes that Gresham used his ranking in the Pro Wrestling Illustrated magazine PWI 500 list as an argument as to why he should be presented better.
In the end, Gresham dropped the title as requested. We are told that Gresham left almost immediately after his match. Gresham then deactivated his Twitter account as well as the Twitter account for his Georgia independent promotion TERMINUS, which just held it's third event.
Before the bout, Gresham is said to have asked for a release from his contract. We have not confirmed that release has happened, but the belief is that he won't be back in any form for the promotion unless he and Khan make some sort of amends. Gresham is slated to compete at the Ric Flair's Last Match PPV this Sunday 7/31 in Nashville.
The Gresham-Castagnoli bout was always scheduled to open the ROH PPV, so the Gresham issue did not lead to any change in how the event was formatted.
Neither AEW nor Gresham have publicly commented.
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