Katsuyori Shibata appeared on Wednesday’s episode of AEW Dynamite to make the save for AEW All-Atlantic Champion Orange Cassidy during a post-match attack from PAC after Cassidy retained his title in a triple threat match.
Shibata and Cassidy came face-to-face before the NJPW star signed a contract to face him for the AEW All-Atlantic Championship on Friday’s Rampage episode.
While speaking on today’s episode of Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer noted that Shibata requested a match with Orange Cassidy and Bryan Danielson.
“So Shibata told AEW that he had two matches he wanted in AEW, Orange Cassidy and Bryan Danielson. They are going to work on doing both of them, and obviously, this was the first one. He is free this week, and so they made it this week. As far as how he’s getting cleared to wrestle, he got cleared to wrestle.”
Shibata was previously retired after suffering a subdural hematoma in 2017. He returned to the ring in 2021 and competed in a match at Wrestling Kingdom 16 in January 2022 by defeating Ren Narita.
Shibata previously appeared in AEW by attacking Will Ospreay at Forbidden Door in June.
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