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NJPW NEVER Openweight Champion and current WWE Superstar Karl Anderson claims he will not vacate his title.
It came as a shock to most when on the October 10 episode of RAW, The Good Brothers (Karl Anderson and Luke Gallows) returned to WWE, accompanying AJ Styles to fight off The Judgment Day. The trio, called The OC, will take on Finn Balor's faction in a six-man tag match at Crown Jewel.
The return was even more shocking for fans as Anderson is the current NJPW NEVER Openweight Champion. He was announced to defend his title against Hikuleo at the company's Battle Autumn event on November 5, the same day as Crown Jewel.
NJPW recently released a statement that Anderson will have to relinquish the title if he does not defend it at the event. Machine Gun, on the other hand, took to Twitter to claim that he will be defending the belt on "his time."
"I’m not vacating anything. I’m the greatest #NeverOpenweightChampion of all time. I’ll defend it on my time ….. get with my booking agent @The_BigLG I’ll see ya then @Hiku_Leo That’s #TooSweet", he tweeted.
With NJPW President Takami Ohbari claiming that Karl Anderson is expected to appear at Battle Autumn on November 5, his status in the six-man tag at Crown Jewel remains to be seen.
The Good Brothers commented on their WWE return
Anderson and Gallows became the latest in a long line of previously-released WWE Superstars who returned to the company under Triple H.
The duo recently commented on their return to the Stamford-based promotion in a backstage interview with Byron Saxton.
"Two and a half years, Byron," said Gallows. "We went around the world through the pandemic, main-evented everywhere we went. We added more hardware to those big a** mantles we have. But more than that, we knew deep down that this is home. The best competition in the entire world, in all of sports entertainment and professional wrestling, is in WWE, and we have unfinished business." [00:49 - 01:11]
While the OC are among the most popular tag teams and can even challenge The Usos for the Unified Tag Team titles, they are currently looking forward to teaming up with AJ Styles against Finn Balor, Dominik Mysterio, and Damian Priest at Crown Jewel on November 5.
