{"id":40773,"date":"2019-03-12T22:48:06","date_gmt":"2019-03-13T02:48:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lwosonprowrestling.ms.lastwordonsports.com\/?p=40773"},"modified":"2019-03-12T22:48:06","modified_gmt":"2019-03-13T02:48:06","slug":"could-kushida-be-mike-kanellis-mystery-opponent-on-205-live-next-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/2019\/03\/12\/could-kushida-be-mike-kanellis-mystery-opponent-on-205-live-next-week\/","title":{"rendered":"Could KUSHIDA Be Mike Kanellis&#8217; Mystery Opponent on 205 Live Next Week?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s been long suspected since former 6x IWGP Junior Heavyweight Champion <a href=\"https:\/\/lwosonprowrestling.ms.lastwordonsports.com\/2019\/01\/06\/kushida-announces-departure-from-njpw\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>KUSHIDA<\/strong> announced he was departing <strong>New Japan Pro Wrestling<\/strong> <\/a>that one of the world&#8217;s best cruiserweight wrestlers in the world was WWE bound, with most suspecting he&#8217;d be headed to NXT. Dave Meltzer stated today that KUSHIDA has indeed signed with the WWE and was apparently expected to debut in a surprise appearance at NXT TakeOver: New York this April over WrestleMania weekend but that &#8220;they could have changed that&#8221; by now.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Yes.  I had been told he would start as a surprise at Takeover Brooklyn, but that was months ago, so they could have changed that 50 times by now.  But sometime soon. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/4NZhTxSuvk\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">https:\/\/t.co\/4NZhTxSuvk<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Dave Meltzer (@davemeltzerWON) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/davemeltzerWON\/status\/1105563926807232512?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">March 12, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>In an interesting development, on Tuesday&#8217;s episode of\u00a0<em><strong>205 Live<\/strong><\/em><em>,\u00a0<\/em>as Mike Kanellis tried to plead his case on\u00a0<em>205 Live\u00a0<\/em>to GM <strong>Drake Maverick<\/strong>, Maverick suggested that Kanellis&#8217; losing ways wasn&#8217;t a way to keep his job. But as one last chance to stay on the brand, he was told that next week he would face &#8220;one of the top cruiserweights in the world&#8221;. Assuming he means someone\u00a0<em>not\u00a0<\/em>currently on the roster, could that new cruiserweight be a debuting KUSHIDA? His name could help drive some viewers to\u00a0<em>205 Live<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/twitter.com\/WWE\/status\/1105657382359568387<\/p>\n<p>And a potential feud between Mike Kanellis and KUSHIDA as KUSHIDA&#8217;s first foray into the WWE Universe may not be as random as it appears. During his days in <strong>Ring of Honor<\/strong> as <strong>Mike Bennett<\/strong>, he and fellow <strong>Kingdom<\/strong> member <strong>Matt Taven<\/strong> appeared in two <em><strong>NJPW World Tag Leagues<\/strong><\/em> (2014 and 2015), and Bennett faced KUSHIDA on multiple occasions. Having a familiar opponent to work with would let KUSHIDA shine in front of some new eyes. Even if it proves to be one of the other top cruiserweights they&#8217;ve signed, <a href=\"https:\/\/lwosonprowrestling.ms.lastwordonsports.com\/2019\/02\/11\/meet-the-new-recruits-for-the-february-class-at-the-wwe-performance-center-videos\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">like <strong>Trevor Lee, ACH<\/strong><\/a> or <a href=\"https:\/\/lwosonprowrestling.ms.lastwordonsports.com\/2019\/03\/10\/shane-strickland-announces-departure-from-indie-scene\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">potentially even <strong>Shane Strickland<\/strong><\/a>, it looks like we&#8217;ll be seeing KUSHIDA by April at least.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s been long suspected since former 6x IWGP Junior Heavyweight Champion KUSHIDA announced he was departing New Japan Pro Wrestling that one of the world&#8217;s best cruiserweight wrestlers in the world was WWE bound, with most suspecting he&#8217;d be headed to NXT. Dave Meltzer stated today that KUSHIDA has indeed signed with the WWE and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":649,"featured_media":40776,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[316,2,3],"tags":[299,190,2632],"class_list":["post-40773","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-205live","category-featured","category-wwe-universe","tag-205-live","tag-kushida","tag-mike-kanellis"],"modified_by":"Jamie Greer","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40773","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/649"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40773"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40773\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}