FREE UPDATE: WWE Departures, TNA news

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• Fightful Select has a lot of contract news coming this week. Among that included EJ Nduka's contract expiring, Harley Hudson signing with TNA, and lots more is coming.

• Joel Pearl interviewed Lil Marz.

• Jimmy Van and SRS' newest video looking at LJN variants is out!

• A reminder, Fightful Podcasts are on Apple, Amazon, Spotify, Podbean, Player FM and all other audio platforms.

• Follow Fightful's Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, and our clips channel Fightful Scraps.

• Fighful now has an Espanol Twitter account.

• The newest FIGHTFUL PRESENTS video from @MikeStrawMedia takes a look at WCW Backstage Assault -- the wrestling game with no ring.

News

• Among the firings from WWE this week was Senior Vice President, Creative Writing Operations for World Wrestling Entertainment Christine Lubrano. She'd been with WWE for over four years. She oversaw strategic operations for creative. NXT, Smackdown and Raw creative teams would report to she and Bruce Prichard, who then reported to Triple H.

• There were also some creative services, photography, social media and digital cuts.

• Among the social media and digital cuts was Andrew Karr. He worked on Evolve as an announcer, and helped produce documentaries for the company. He had been there for nine years.

• Ryan Pappolla, a digital personality who appeared on The Bump, was let go.

• For those asking, we've never heard an update on WWE's The Bump coming back. Once they were put on hiatus, we'd asked a few times, and never got an update on it.

• There are multiple fake Rhyno accounts on Twitter trying to get wrestlers' numbers. He has been off Twitter for quite some time and it is not him.

• Indie wrestlers Emily Hale and Brittany Jade were backstage at this week's AEW Dynamite episode.

• The reason AEW Collision is airing on TBS tonight is because the scheduling was already put in order in the event that the NBA Playoffs went to 7 games. There was a movie marathon put in as a placeholder, but AEW had already scheduled for TBS. This is likely to happen with NHL playoffs as well.

• Fightful reported that EJ Nduka is a free agent. He's already had companies interested in booking him.

• Cody Rhodes is not listed as a "featured superstar" for next week's Smackdown, but is for May 16.

• For those asking, there is no Total Divas reboot in the works. The "AmberLeila" or "ANX" account on Twitter is a complete fraud. Please do not send us their posts as news tips.

• We can confirm the report from PWInsider of Eric Tompkins and Ross Forman being promoted to VPs in TNA. Forman has long been in the PR department for TNA.

Alex Hammerstone

Fightful spoke to MLW's Alex Hammerstone ahead of MLW Azteca Lucha on May 10. The interview releases publicly on May 10, and is available for tier 2 members of Fightful Select now.

He takes on Kojima for the first time at the show, and is excited to face he and other MLW stars for the first time after returning. He says that he and Court Bauer had a close relationship that was almost like a father-son relationship that was falling apart during the last run, and it was important to him to repair it. Although he left MLW, he said that Bauer was constantly checking in on him while injured, while many others didn't. When the opportunity came up to work together again, it was something he wanted to do, but wanted to do things in the ring better than last time, even.

Hammerstone says he feels great physically after his injury. Doing the Chris Bey benefit show was something that was very important to him.

It has been flattering to him that so many fans hope he and Richard Holliday are coming in to AEW along with MJF for the Hurt Syndicate story. There haven't been plans for that, but he does hope he can face Bobby Lashley one day.

He's also excited about the possibilities of working with CMLL and NJPW through MLW or separately.