In a recent interview with Comedy Store Wrestling, Josh Barnett discussed the status of Davey Richards for Bloodsport 9 later this month.
Richards was originally set to face Jon Moxley at the event, but now that he has announced his retirement following allegations of domestic abuse against him, it appears that the match might be up in the air.
You can check out some highlights from the interview below:
On how he was able to book Kota Ibushi for Bloodsport: “I just talked to the dude. I go, ‘Hey, what’s up?’ He goes, ‘Nice to see you.’ That’s it. I didn’t know he’d be willing to do Bloodsport until I saw his interview. ‘Oh sh*t, I guess I better follow up with him.’ Glad that he’s coming. I can only expect something electric. No one has ever seen him in an environment like this, but he’s known for being a really dynamic wrestler. I’ve called plenty of his matches. He has a great karate background. There was talk about him fighting Manny Pacquiao in RIZN. To be honest, I didn’t know about New Japan or injuries. I was just like, ‘Hey, if you ever want to do Bloodsport, I’d love to have you. I think it’d be great, you can display a lot of your martial arts prowess and we pride ourselves in putting together a place where athletes can really shine.’ He was favorable to it and I saw an interview online where that’s what he intended to. ‘F**k yeah, I’ll do whatever I can to make that happen.’”
On Ibushi getting booked for two GCW events: “I remember somebody asking me what sort of impression that got. Between only two accounts, it was over a million people looking at that stuff.”
On the status of Davey Richards: “It’s hard to have a guy who is retired, run in your ring, and do a match. That’s kind of the opposite of retired. We’ll sort it out.”
