Update On TNA Star Leon Slater Working WWE Saturday Night's Main Event

TNA X Division Champion Leon Slater has the opportunity of a lifetime this Saturday, as he gets the opportunity to face one of his childhood heroes. That doesn't mean the path to getting there was easy, however.

Slater will team with NXT Championship No. 1 contender Je'Von Evans to square off with WWE World Tag Team Champions AJ Styles and Dragon Lee at Saturday Night's Main Event XLII, a show celebrating John Cena's final match.

Styles is regarded by many as perhaps the greatest TNA star of all time, and it will mark his first time mixing it up in the ring with a TNA wrestler since he joined WWE in 2016.

According to a new report from Sean Ross Sapp of Fightful Select, though, Slater getting booked for the event did have a ripple effect throughout the wrestling industry, specifically, on the independents.

The tag match was announced on Monday Night Raw, but wXw and RevPro had announced over the weekend that Slater would be pulled from his advertised bouts next weekend for those promotions. When Fightful inquired, "scheduling issues" were cited, with the WWE announcement coming shortly afterward.

The report indicates that wXw worked with Slater and TNA for months to line him up for the appearance. Sapp noted that after the announcement, he was told that while the promotions expected something of this nature to occur, they would have preferred if WWE had given them a heads-up rather than putting Slater in a tough situation to navigate. Sapp also said Slater was praised for being helpful during his last wXw appearance.

Styles and Slater Reunite

AJ Styles is set to retire from in-ring action in 2026. | WWE

While this will be the first time that the 21-year-old Slater and the 48-year-old Styles will wrestle one another, it is not their first interaction.

MORE: TNA President Carlos Silva Reveals How Long AMC Was In On TNA's Media Rights (Exclusive)

There was a heavy internal push to make Styles a part of the TNA Slammiversary event earlier this summer, with him eventually appearing during the show in a surprise segment with Slater. Slater had just won the X Division Championship from Moose, when Styles' original TNA music hit. He then came down to the ring and endorsed Slater as a part of the future of the company.

Slater was unaware that Styles would be involved in the segment, and it was a legitimate surprise to many within the company to see how Styles was utilized in the moment.

The Saturday Night's Main Event match will be Slater's first WWE main roster match, though he has appeared in NXT. Styles, meanwhile, is expected to retire from in-ring action in 2026.

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