Major moves were made on the planet of independent wrestling on May 26 as former WWE Superstars Nikki Cross and Killian Dain, now higher referred to as Nikki Storm and Big Damo, formerly announced that they’d purchased UK indie company PROGRESS, in addition to the Washington based promotion DEFY Wrestling. Each PROGRESS and DEFY merged in early 2024 as a option to expand their respective international footprints, and the brand new owners want to proceed that trend as 2026 goes on.
Nonetheless, the quantity of every company that Storm and Damo actually own was brought by Dave Meltzer on a recent episode of “Wrestling Observer Radio,” who was told that the previous WWE Superstars actually own the entire of 1 company, while only holding a majority stake in one other. “They own a percentage of DEFY but they do not own the corporate. But they own all of PROGRESS though, so that they bought PROGRESS, and so what the deal is PROGRESS owned points in DEFY, do they get the points that PROGRESS own?” Each Storm and Damo are listed as DEFY’s owners on the corporate’s Wikipedia page, though unlike PROGRESS, no statement regarding the changing ownership has been released.
Storm was already announced to be competing at PROGRESS Chapter 196: Scorchio on July 26, which might also act as her first independent appearance after the conclusion of her 90-day non-compete clause following her release from WWE in April. Damo competed for PROGRESS as recently as April of this yr, difficult Paul Walter Hauser for the PROGRESS Proteus Championship in a losing effort at the corporate’s event over WWE WrestleMania 42 weekend. He last competed for DEFY back in April 2024 while Storm has never appeared within the promotion.
Please credit “Wrestling Observer Radio” when using quotes from this text, and provides a H/T to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.