• AEW Wrestler Forfeits Spot In Title Tournament
AEW wrestler Queen Aminata has been officially pulled from the Ring of Honor Women’s Pure Championship Tournament after being deemed not medically cleared to compete.
AEW President Tony Khan announced the news during the Final Battle media call, noting that ROH had to lock in the semifinal bout ahead of tonight’s pay-per-view. With Aminata unable to wrestle in time for the taping deadline, the match could not move forward as planned.
As a result, Aminata forfeited her semifinal match, allowing Deonna Purrazzo to advance directly to the tournament final. Purrazzo will face Billie Starkz for the title tonight.
Aminata has been sidelined since suffering an injury in October. The setback also forced her out of the Women’s Blood & Guts match last month.
In the last update on her injury, Aminata revealed that she was having problems in turning her head and felt tightness in her neck.
• Current Plan For Royal Rumble 2026 In Saudi Arabia
Despite the huge event being less than two months away, WWE is reportedly moving very slowly when planning the card for the Royal Rumble 2026 premium live event in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. This show will be the first time the Royal Rumble has ever been held outside of North America.
According to the Wrestling Observer, WWE currently plans to have only four matches on the entire event. While the two traditional Men’s and Women’s Royal Rumble matches are obvious, the company has not yet internally finalized the other two matches, but these two matches are scheduled to be championship matches.
They also noted that Bron Breakker is still the favorite to win the 30-man Royal Rumble match. This is interesting because Breakker is already scheduled to challenge CM Punk for the World Heavyweight Championship on the January 5th episode of RAW.
• Netflix To Buy Warner Bros. & HBO Max: Puts WWE & AEW Under One Streaming Roof
The biggest media news of the year is set to shake up the professional wrestling world after Netflix won the bidding war to buy the film and television studio assets of Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) in a deal valued at $82.7 billion. This massive acquisition brings the two largest pro-wrestling companies (WWE and AEW), which are fierce competitors, under one media umbrella for the first time.
Notably, WBD’s cable channels, such as CNN, TNT, and TBS, will be spun off into a new company called Discovery Global before the sale is finalized.
This merger creates a very interesting situation for both WWE and AEW, who are direct rivals in the wrestling industry. WWE signed a massive ten-year, $5 billion deal that makes Netflix the exclusive home for its main show, Monday Night RAW, in the United States. SmackDown, NXT, and PLEs air on Netflix as well, but outside the United States.
However, their competitor, AEW, has its main shows, Dynamite and Collision, broadcast on WBD channels TBS and TNT. Crucially, AEW also has its pay-per-views and weekly shows available to stream on HBO Max, the very service Netflix is buying.
While the deal is not expected to close until 2026 and must first clear major hurdles with regulators, the merger means that Netflix – WWE’s biggest streaming partner – will soon own a platform that streams content from All Elite Wrestling – WWE’s biggest wrestling rival.
This is the first time the two companies have shared a streaming owner, raising big questions about the future of AEW’s presence on HBO Max once Netflix takes over.
