Former WWE Star Buddy Murphy (Buddy Matthews) is set to make his NJPW debut in November.
As you can see from the screenshots from Saturday’s NJPW STRONG Showdown taping in Philadelphia, Matthews will be making his debut during the “Battle In the Valley” event in San Jose, California on November 13.
Matthews was released from his WWE contract on June 2, 2021. He had been with the company since signing in March 2013. After a lengthy run in NXT, Matthews joined the 205 Live brand when it was part of WWE's main roster in 2018.
Matthews had a run on SmackDown in 2019, but had his most high-profile run after joining Raw in the 2019 WWE Draft. With Paul Heyman as Executive Director of Raw, Matthews and Aleister Black had a series of matches late in the year and in early 2020 that served to elevate both.
Matthews aligned with Seth Rollins and feuded with Black and the Mysterio family in 2020. Matthews later turned face and began a storyline romance with Mysterio's daughter Aalyah. The romance storyline was later abruptly dropped.
Matthews would make only a couple of more WWE appearances after the Mysterio story was discontinued. His appearance in the 2021 Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal on the April 9, 2021 edition of SmackDown would be his last in WWE.
The NJPW appearance will be the most high-profile for Matthews since leaving WWE, though he wrestled a pair of independent matches in September following his non-compete expiring. An indie match against Black for Battleground Championship Wrestling on December 18 in Philadelphia has also been announced. .
And now he can be the latest wrestler to leave the "WWE Universe" and get achieve greater success than the WWE was capable of giving him.
Nothing like proving the WWE wrong, though the last few years it hasn't really been that hard to do, knowing how 'creatively challenged' their creative is.
Check out the NJPW video of his upcoming debut here. https://twitter.com/i/status/1449555512144633857