As noted last week, The Kingdom (Mike Bennett, Maria Kanellis, and Matt Taven) finished up with Impact Wrestling after the TV Tapings following Bound for Glory and they debuted on AEW Rampage just a few days later.
On the latest “Refin’ It Up” podcast, referee Brian Hebner gave his thoughts on AEW debuting them on their TV knowing those three still have appearances on Impact on tape that had not yet aired:
“I am so very happy for them. I really am. I became very close in the short time that I was able to work with Maria and Mike, and they are just wonderful people. I love them and I think they’re the sweetest people in the world. They have beautiful kids. They’re just wonderful people. I’m not as close with Taven, but boy, we became really good friends too in a short period of time. What a great dude he is and I’m just so happy for them.”
“Now the only thing that pisses me off, and it’s not about them, it’s about how it always just seems that Impact bends over backwards and does every fu*ing thing they can with AEW to do the forbidden door gimmick or whatever the fuk it is now, and then they had the audacity to put them on their TV show before it’s even on Impact’s that they’re not there anymore. You can’t just wait or talk about it? You have to introduce them before the storyline comes out on Impact? It’s all about them all the time and it just kind of sucks. If I was Scott D’Amore, which I’m not, thank God, because I couldn’t be as patient and as gentle and nice as Scott, I would just be pissed. It just infuriates me because I just know when I was there, we did things for them as much as we could and did it right, and it just seemed like they just wanted to turn around and do what they wanted to do, how they wanted to do it, and they didn’t give a sht. It is what it is. They think they’re the bigger company, which I guess they are, but that doesn’t mean that you just can do whatever fuck you want, but I guess they can.”
