AEW’s women’s division has been short one star during the course of his pandemic and that is former AEW Women’s Champion, Riho. The inaugural champion has been stuck in Japan thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, unable to make it back to the company. During that time, Riho had been allowed to keep wrestling as she performed for the Stardom promotion.
There was a caveat to that though.
While we recently reported that Riho has finished her obligations with the promotion, the Wrestling Observer Newsletter has reported AEW had asked she not lose her matches she was booked in. Stardom also wanted to lock down Riho to a contract, but she was not allowed to do that either.
That was Riho’s last show with the promotion. The issues were that AEW was allowing her to work on the shows but not authorizing allowing her to lose. Stardom also wanted her to sign exclusively with them which she couldn’t do because of her AEW contract.
While Riho remained on Stardom shows, they had to take several steps to work around the requests. She had been appearing in early matches on the card since they couldn’t put her in key programs and matches to avoid conflicts with AEW. Her contractual status obviously became a conflict as well.
Though it is unclear when we will see Riho back in AEW, the company made the call to not utilize her in high profile matches or highlight her as much because of the restrictions laid out by AEW.
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