At the October 13th AEW Rampage taping, The Kingdom’s Mike Bennett, Matt Taven and Maria Kanellis made their AEW debut after finishing up with Impact Wrestling earlier this month at the post-Bound For Glory tapings, dropping the Impact World Tag Team Titles to Heath and Rhino.
The debut aired on the October 14 edition of AEW Rampage, but at the time, they were still considered the Impact Tag Team Champions as the title change didn’t air until the October 20 edition of Impact.
Fightful Select reports that Bennett, Taven and Kanellis have all signed full-time, multi-year contracts with AEW. When they debuted, The Kingdom issued a challenge to AAA, IWGP & ROH World Tag Team Champions FTR for a shot at the ROH Titles. The report noted FTR had also pushed to get The Kingdom involved, but no other details are available.
The faction was not signed to AEW contracts when they debuted on Rampage in Toronto, but they have since signed the contracts.
As previously reported, WWE had an interest in signing Taven to a contract, while Bennett and Kanellis also had talks with WWE, but there’s no word yet on any firm offers.
Maria has expressed wanting to help ROH owner Tony Khan book the promotion or the ROH women’s division. For now, she is only contracted as a talent.
