The Motor City Machine Guns Are Everywhere and Nowhere All at Once
Since leaving TNA, vague hearsay and rumor mongering has left the tag team’s free agency status up in the air.
On July 12th, 2024, Chris Sabin defeated his tag team partner Alex Shelley in a singles match at a Prestige Wrestling show. The match, a grappling-based affair with no strikes exchanged, was followed by a long-standing ovation from the crowd, and commentary seemed to allude to this being the last time we’d see them at Prestige Wrestling for the foreseeable future.
If we’re reading tea leaves on this, one could infer that it wouldn’t be just Prestige Wrestling that Sabin and Shelley, known as the Motor City Machine Guns (I’ll use MCMG or Machine Guns for short), would be stepping away from, but the indies altogether. Since departing from TNA Wrestling, they’ve traveled the indie circuit, often together but sometimes for solo endeavors as well, while leaving only breadcrumbs laid out for wrestling media and fans to their plans for the future.
Now, both members of MCMG have indie dates scheduled through August at the latest, so it seems they will be working the indies through then. But, as we saw just recently with Stephanie Vaquer’s acrimonious split from CMLL/NJPW to join WWE, future dates can be pulled from if a talent is signed to a major company.
After this, they will likely be wrapping up the indies once and for all—except nobody knows for sure.
Before we go any further, let’s review the information we have on MCMG, from rumors to news updates since leaving TNA in April 2024, and see what we can draw from it.
What We Know So Far
In late March 2024, the Machine Guns wrestled their final contracted date with TNA. By April 1st, they were free agents. The circumstances of their departure are beyond the scope of this article, but the departure seemed amicable. On April 16th, Cassidy Haynes of Bodyslam.net reported that MCMG was headed to AEW and the duo were finalizing a deal to join the company.
Despite this apparent confirmation, the tag team did not appear in AEW afterward, nor have they appeared yet. So far, the only allusions to the team since this report have been the Young Bucks performing their top rope signature move, Made in Detroit, a handful of times.
There are instances in the Fightful Select Discord (available to Fightful Select subscribers) where Sean Ross Sapp has claimed he hadn’t heard anything that MCMG was definitely AEW bound, or was outright sure they were after all. When a user asked if there was an update on MCMG going to AEW, Sapp responded that he didn’t think they were.
This is a guess rather than a journalistic stance, so nothing concrete. For the latest news update before their Prestige singles match, Pro Wrestling Nexus (shortened to PWN for social media), a relative newcomer to wrestling media, stated on X that WWE had entered talks with the team.
Meanwhile, as this speculation has made the rounds in recent months, Shelley and Sabin have spent this time traveling the country for indie dates. Since the end of March, Alex Shelley has worked dates with Wrestling Revolver, Prestige, Deadlock Pro-Wrestling (DPW), Beyond, and Combat 1 wrestling, among others. According to Cagematch, he has wrestled 24 matches since his final TNA taping. Since then, Chris Sabin has wrestled eight matches, working in similar territories like Prestige and DPW.
And to top it off, Alex Shelley has been vague about their status with a major company. In an interview on Saturday Night’s Main Event podcast, Shelley was asked about the AEW reports. He responded:
“No, I wouldn’t share any of that. Loose lips sink ships.”
Analysis & Observations of the Available Information
Let’s start with the initial report. Despite the finality in Haynes’s wording about the deal, Bodyslam has had some unfortunate misses recently, being the site to break the story that WWE had been sold to Saudi Arabia’s private investment fund in January of 2023, which turned out to be completely false. This doesn’t mean the MCMG → AEW report is also untrue, as anything can change on a dime in wrestling, but with how long it’s been since and the lack of verified updates, this report can be called into question.
Secondly, most of the updates in this article have been inferences from secondhand sources and not from the Machine Guns themselves. They appear to be keeping contract talks very close to the chest, and despite the optics with their last match, MCMG themselves still have yet to state what is next for them explicitly. The most reliable sources possible have indicated they are both talking to “major companies,” and that’s about it. (This possibly refutes the initial Bodyslam report as well, but we don’t have enough information to know if the report was inaccurate or if something happened between then and now for things to change.)
Part of this isn’t helped because AEW runs a relatively tight ship regarding contract negotiations. Looking at their recent acquisitions, a clear picture of Mercedes Moné’s free agency status didn’t materialize until a report was released stating that her talks with WWE had stalled, which presumably would come from WWE’s camp. Now, Kazuchika Okada’s signing was less hidden as he was far more likely to join AEW from the outset after leaving NJPW due to longstanding relationships with wrestlers high up the executive ladder there. However, Deonna Purrazzo’s debut was a genuine surprise as nothing had leaked beforehand.
We likely won’t hear anything directly from AEW and MCMG regarding their status, and any solid updates will likely come from the WWE side. There’s reason to believe WWE would potentially leak if talks stall with them or if they were imminent for AEW, evidenced by the reports stating they were expecting this to be the case for recent AEW signings Moné and Adam Copeland.
From the wrestlers’ side of things, Tommaso Ciampa recently posted an Instagram photo of the Machine Guns, which also caused some speculation. Still, MJF has done similar to Kevin Owens, so I don’t believe there’s anything to take stock of here.
The Motor City Machine Guns are wrestling everywhere except on TV, and there’s no serious indication that this will change soon.
Fans and wrestling media are stuck in limbo over one of the most important tag teams in wrestling history. I believe we’ll see MCMG finish out the rest of their indie dates through August (with the ever-present possibility they will pick up more dates along the way) before we get a solid idea about where they’re heading.
The only concrete information we have is that they are talking to companies about a deal. Anything else is rumor and gossip about their current position and plans.
For now, it truly is just wait-and-see for the Machine Guns.
We’ll end with one last message from Alex Shelley himself. He posted this on his Instagram on July 9th, which details his love for the indie circuit with a reminiscent tone in his wording:
Is this another tea leaf to read into? Add it to the pile.