Jersey All Pro Wrestling’s Frank Iadevia issued the following statement this evening:
“Due to outside interference from ROH booker Gabe Sapolsky Jersey All Pro Wrestling management has canceled the September 10th match between Homicide & James Gibson in Rahway, NJ. I feel bad for “ALL” the fans that were looking forward to this classic encounter and have been robbed by the actions of another promoter.”
According to both Sapolsky and Iadevia, the issue is over current ROH World Champion, James Gibson. Gibson was scheduled to lose cleanly to Homicide. This was booked prior to Gibson winning the ROH Title from CM Punk several weeks ago.
Sapolsky stated that in the past, the ROH Champion has never done clean jobs when working other indy shows. “So what would be the difference in this case?” he asked. He also noted that when he worked with TNA talent who were holding TNA titles, he would go to TNA management and make sure he could book their champions losing in a ROH ring. The recent Christopher Daniels/Matt Hardy match was used as an example. Sapolsky said that JAPW did not contact him with any ideas on how to fix Gibson losing. His primary concern is that he didn’t want the ROH Champion to lose clean and in the process, have the ROH World Title lose prestige.
When things were clear that there was going to be an issue with the match, JAPW pulled Gibson from the show. Sapolsky stated that he never told Gibson that he couldn’t work the show. JAPW officials were very upset about having to deal with another companies restrictions on a show they were running. Those restrictions led JAPW to pull Gibson from the show. “[Sapolsky] could have asked us to respect his championship, not tell us what we had to do on our show,” stated Iadevia.
JAPW was also upset about past events where ROH had used current JAPW Champions to lose clean on ROH shows without worry about how JAPW officials felt. Sapolsky responded by saying that at no point in the past had JAPW contacted him and asked him to ROH protect any talents that were being used. He also stated that, he does not keep tabs on what ROH regulars hold titles in other Indy companies.
There is no word yet on who Homicide’s opponent will be at the 9/10 show. It is not said yet if the fans will get any type of refund for paying for a certain match and it not being booked.
JAPW’s return to Rahway, New Jersey is headlined by JAPW champion Jay Lethal vs. Charlie Haas and Rhino vs. Samoa Joe in their first in-ring encounter. For ticket information, visit www.JAPW.net.
Shortly after this news broke, Sapolsky wrote the following note on the ROH website’s message board: “If you check PWInsider.com you’ll see a little story about us and JAPW. I might write a response to it later as there are two sides to every story, but if so it is simply to address our side. The bottom line is that there is no war with JAPW and there won’t be one. If they want one on their side it’ll be like masterbation because we won’t be involved.”
Credit: PWInsider.Com
