Marty Scurll is an intriguing name in wrestling. The only remaining member of the Elite to not yet be signed to AEW – not counting those that left before AEW became a thing, such as Adam Cole. It’s quite well known that his contract with ROH is up soon. Depending on how one interprets reports, it may well already have expired and we’re just waiting to find out about it. It’s thought to be up this month in some form or another, either way.
Throughout the year, re-upping has seemed unlikely. This isn’t a fact or anything, it’s just how things look to me but it seems like he’s been a bit shunned in New Japan these past several months, being left off of shows out of spite for his relation to the Elite. With New Japan and ROH being closely linked, that’s already a rough go of things. And in Ring of Honor, while he’s theoretically leading the top heel stable going in Villain Enterprises, it’s clearly been more of a vehicle to help out PCO and Flip Gordon rise up the card than the traditional group that’s built entirely around it’s ringleader. It seemed months and months ago like the time was ripe for Marty Scurll to take his place as ROH Champion, but it just didn’t happen.
Obviously you can just take it as a pure booking decision, but looking at the lay of the land, I think the reason is simply because nobody expects him to still be there by the time 2019 has ended.
However, even if he is leaving ROH, he has made clear his intentions to still be there for their marquee show next month; Final Battle.
It’s a bit of an awkward thing, having your contract expire immediately before such a major show. Not really the ideal thing for either party, it seems Scurll is willing to work without a contract for this theoretical send-off.
They’ve seemingly gotten themselves into something of a corner as Scurll is also currently one third of the ROH 6-Man Tag Team Champions. And with one of his partners in PCO challenging for the ROH title at the event itself, they seemingly wouldn’t be able to defend them. So they’ll need some kind of workaround to get them off of Villain Enterprises before this occurs, else they’ll end up vacating them. In a pinch, I suppose Flip Gordon could sub in for PCO to defend the titles at Final Battle.
Either way, it would appear this is largely getting leaked so as to nip speculation of him re-signing in the bud, whenever his match at the show gets announced.
Something interesting to note about Marty Scurll is he owns the rights to the name Villain Club, which means he could easily bring a version of his ROH group with him wherever he goes. It’s thought that Brody King and PCO are also due for renewal right about now, so it’ll be interesting to see who, if any, stick with Marty when he leaves.
