Ring of Honor veteran Kenny King would have joined up with his former stablemates, MVP and Bobby Lashley in WWE if the requisite dominoes fell and brought him to the company.
Once upon a time, King, Lashley and MVP were members of the Beat Down Clan in IMPACT Wrestling. Often compared to the Hurt Business, this star-studded stable was featured in IMPACT Wrestling between 2014 and 2015; in addition to the aforementioned trio, it featured names like Samoa Joe, Low Ki and Homicide, among others at different points.
Once MVP and Lashley formed The Hurt Business in 2020, it was easy to connect the dots that could have seen King reunite with his two former allies in WWE. In a recent interview with Inside The Ropes’ Liam Alexander-Stewart, King revealed that he regularly got phone calls from MVP in which the mastermind behind the stable would try and bring King aboard. King admitted that he was willing to make the move if Vince McMahon was willing to buy him out of his ROH contract. Though he wasn’t brought into the fold during the peak of The Hurt Business’ success, King teased that you never know what will happen in the future.
“I used get a phone call like that, like once a month with The Hurt Business, ‘What are you doing?’” said King. “‘I’m still under contract.’ You know if Vince wants to come buy me out my contract that I’d be there in a minute.
“…[The three of us] were just sitting there talking about how, you know, just the chemistry was just so natural, and it works so well. And there were just so many places that, you know, we can all cover some of the different areas with three of us and with our characters and with our wrestling, and it just covered everything. So, you know, we talked about it quite often, you know, with with contractual obligations and things, politics and all the bullsh*t. It is what it is. We never rule it out. Because it is one of the I mean, the three of us together would, it’s always going to be money. It will always be money, it was always money. So, you know, you never know what might happen in the future.”
In a similar vein, King noted that WWE and ROH are two of the few promotions who haven’t fully engaged with the opening of the Forbidden Door. He stated that it might be time for ROH to change that mindset because a new era is starting. He even pitched the idea of ROH and WWE joining forces, as this collaboration could set up some dream matches and protect both promotions from falling behind in this time of endless possibilities.
“To be fair, like the only two teams that aren’t participating as much as they should are us and WWE and I feel like maybe it’s about time, right?” said King. “Maybe it’s about time, to bridge over to start working with NXT or so working with some of the guys on SmackDown because, you know, it’s just time, right? It’s just time for all of these things to kind of switch up and I feel it feels like we’re entering into a new era of pro wrestling. So it’s why not just knock down some of the old stigmas and some of them and whatnot.
“I mean, think about like, you know, What what what the buzz would be, you know, what, just what the reciprocation would be, you know, AJ Styles shows up [to] challenge Jay Lethal, if you know what I mean? Like, just our MVP comes, you know to rescue me from getting beat down by Shane Taylor. I mean [think about] Bobby Lashley against SOS, you know? So these are just things that make people go, wow that would be amazing. And realistically it’s possible, there’s nothing that would stop it, other than the regular old pro wrestling BS, which I feel like, the people that want to survive, we’re gonna have to get over [that].”
