Tully Blanchard Enterprises: A Ring Of Honor Oddity Gone Within 4 Months

Following Tony Khan's purchase of Ring of Honor in March of 2022, it didn’t take long for the new owner of the promotion’s plans to be revealed, with a top heel faction in Tully Blanchard Enterprises headed by the legendary member of the Four Horsemen being established at the first event under the new Khan regime. 

By the next Ring of Honor pay-per-view in Death Before Dishonor four months later, however, Tully Blanchard Enterprises was no more and 40 per cent of the faction would be done with AEW/ROH by the end of the night. 

This is the story of Tully Blanchard Enterprises, a Ring of Honor oddity gone within four months. 

The Formation of Tully Blanchard Enterprises 

Tully Blanchard signed with All Elite Wrestling in July 2019, being introduced in the promotion on ‘The Road to All Out’ YouTube series as Shawn Spears’ exclusive advisor. Blanchard continued to manage Spears during his AEW tenure, but he added FTR to his list of clients in August of 2020, which would ultimately lead to Blanchard ending his in-ring retirement on the March 3, 2021 episode of Dynamite to team with FTR against Jurassic Express. 

One week after that brief end to his in-ring retirement, Blanchard, Spears and FTR joined MJF and Wardlow in the new faction of The Pinnacle, and Blanchard remained alongside the group for their inter-faction feud with The Inner Circle, but Tully continued to primarily focus on managing FTR and Shawn Spears until he was suddenly dropped by Dax Harwood and Cash Wheeler in March 2022 around the same time that FTR possibly being managed by Bret Hart was heavily teased on AEW’s programming. 

There was never a full-scale explanation for Blanchard being ditched by FTR, but Dax Harwood and Cash Wheeler suggested in a July 2022 interview with the Battleground podcast that it may have been related to plans for them to turn babyface, which happened in the weeks and months after the split from Tully. Blanchard did address the situation in December 2023, telling Wrestling Shoot Interviews, "Obviously somebody didn’t like what I was doing, or lack of what I was doing."

Blanchard wasn’t allowed to rest for very long, though. ROH Supercard of Honor XV was the first Ring of Honor show since the announcement of Tony Khan’s purchase of the promotion on March 2, 2022, and Khan’s plans for ROH were immediately apparent.

On the Supercard of Honor pre-show, a reunited Shinobi Shadow Squad made their way to the ring, only for Tully Blanchard to enter the stage and introduce his new clients, and a new tag team, of Bishop Kaun and Toa Liona of The Gates of Agony.

The Gates of Agony went on to pick up a quick win over Eli Isom and Cheeseburger, and Blanchard announced after the match that another member of the faction - named Tully Blanchard Enterprises, reviving the moniker he used during the 1980s - would be revealed later in the show. 

It didn’t take long at all for that member to be revealed as ahead of the second match of the main card, Blanchard announced his newest client would be Brian Cage, who promptly dispatched of Ninja Mack. Brian Cage, Tully Blanchard, and Gates of Agony then stood tall to end their involvement at Supercard of Honor.

Who Was This New Faction? 

As far as factions go, this certainly seemed to be an incredibly random mix of talents. 

Brian Cage looked to be the top singles star of the stable after a mixed bag of a run with All Elite Wrestling so far. The Machine had established himself as a top star in TNA (then IMPACT Wrestling) and Lucha Underground on his way to signing with AEW in January 2020, eventually making his debut at Double or Nothing and winning the Casino Ladder Match in May of that year after suffering an injury in his final TNA match. Cage was immediately positioned with Taz and he would be a featured performer as part of Team Taz with Ricky Starks, HOOK, and Powerhouse Hobbs, feuding with the likes of Jon Moxley over the AEW World Title, Darby Allin & ultimately Sting, and Hangman Page.

A babyface turn was teased for Cage in 2021 as he began to have issues with Ricky Starks and that would come to fruition at night one of that year’s Fyter Fest as Powerhouse Hobbs attacked Cage, allowing Starks to defeat him for the FTW Championship. 

Cage’s usage on Dynamite would dwindle from there, though, as he first lost to Powerhouse Hobbs on September 1, 2021 and then Ricky Starks in October in a rematch for the FTW Title. An element of his reduced usage may have been down to Cage’s wife, who tweeted in September that her husband was “being misused right now”, comments that resulted in Cage having heat in All Elite Wrestling.

Cage would be absent from AEW TV and he wasn’t even backstage at TV tapings following October 2021, but it was reported in February of 2022 that AEW had picked up the option year in his contract, keeping him with the promotion at least through February 2023. Supercard of Honor would ultimately be his first appearance for any of Tony Khan’s promotions since the loss to Starks several months earlier. 

Bishop Kaun, meanwhile, was a part of Ring of Honor under the previous ownership of Sinclair Broadcast Group, joining the promotion in 2018 as part of The Soldiers of Savagery with Moses, with the duo joining Shane Taylor in the appropriately named Shane Taylor Promotions in 2021, which would see the trio hold the ROH World Six-Man Tag Team Titles for much of the year until dropping the belts at Final Battle, the final show before ROH went on hiatus, to The Righteous of Vincent, Dutch, and Bateman. Kaun worked three AEW Dark matches prior to Supercard of Honor 2022. 

Kaun’s new tag team partner Toa Liona was trained to wrestle by Rikishi and had only begun wrestling in 2020, performing on the indies while working for Uber Eats, and he began to be utilised across AEW Dark and Dark: Elevation from October 2021. His tag team with Bishop Kaun would be the first push for Liona by a major pro wrestling promotion. 

Another Member Joins TBE

Despite such a big debut for the faction, they would promptly disappear from the limelight due to Ring of Honor lacking TV coming out of Supercard of Honor as Tony Khan had yet to determine the future of the promotion. 

It would be a couple of months before Ring of Honor began to be fully incorporated into AEW programming, but ROH on AEW TV became more prominent in the summer of 2022 as Tony Khan built to Death Before Dishonor, which was scheduled to air from the Tsongas Center in Lowell, Massachusetts on July 23. ROH wrestlers popped up all over AEW programming following the Forbidden Door pay-per-view, which featured the debut of Claudio Castagnoli, a wrestler who had long been considered one of the best wrestlers in the world to never win a world championship.

A world champion would end up being added to Tully Blanchard Enterprises on the July 8 episode of AEW Rampage. 

On the June 24, 2022 edition of AEW’s Friday night show, Jonathan Gresham and Lee Moriarty were being interviewed backstage by Lexy Nair when they were interrupted by Tully Blanchard, setting up a tag team match for July 8, with Blanchard and the ROH World Champion shaking hands. 

July 8 featured the first AEW match from Tully Blanchard Enterprises since the group’s formation as The Gates of Agony teamed together against Jonathan Gresham and Lee Moriarty. Gresham didn’t enter the match during the contest, though, as he first argued with Tully Blanchard, causing him to miss Moriarty’s hot tag. Gresham then simply pulled his hand away after baiting the fans and Moriarty into thinking they were about to see what they had been begging to witness for several minutes. Gresham then walked out on Moriarty and gave Blanchard an almighty hug, turning heel, and signalling the ROH World Champion was the newest member of Tully Blanchard Enterprises.

The next week at Rampage Fyter Fest, Gresham defended the ROH World Championship with Tully Blanchard in his corner against Lee Moriarty, ultimately winning the match with a clean victory. Gresham cut a post-match promo and threatened to outclass and outwrestle all of the fans’ favourites because he was the best hold-for-hold wrestler in the world. After Blanchard then put over Gresham as maybe the best wrestler ever, Claudio Castagnoli interrupted, setting up the ROH World Title match for Death Before Dishonor.

The build to the ROH World Title match continued on the July 22 episode of AEW Rampage as Castagnoli cut a not-so-great promo on Gresham, saying there was a crack in The Foundation because he had tugged on Superman’s cape, while Tully Blanchard Enterprises watched on from a skybox suite in the arena. While we didn’t know it at the time, this would prove to be the final time the whole of Tully Blanchard Enterprises were seen together on TV. 

Tully Blanchard Enterprises Becomes The Embassy

Just one day later, during the zero hour for ROH Death Before Dishonor, Prince Nana made his return to Ring of Honor after several years away and announced that, due to his family lineage and wealth stemming from the tribes of Ghana, he had purchased Tully Blanchard Enterprises and he would accompany Cage of Agony and Jonathan Gresham to the ring for their matches on the pay-per-view. 

Cage of Agony would make quick work of Tony Deppen, Alex Zayne and Blake Christian on the pre show, but Gresham wouldn’t enjoy the same luck as his ROH World Championship match surprisingly opened the main card of the pay-per-view, as an irritated-looking Gresham headed to the ring without his Octopus headpiece and Prince Nana, who didn’t make his way to ringside until a few minutes into the match. 

There were high hopes for the contest due to both The Octopus and Castagnoli’s pedigrees inside the squared circle, but the match would completely underwhelm, only lasting 11 minutes before Claudio picked up the win with a Ricola Bomb to become ROH World Champion for the first time. After the match, Gresham shook hands with the victor and walked to the back, before quickly making his way out of the building altogether. 

What had happened, though? Tully Blanchard and Tully Blanchard Enterprises appeared to have been positioned as the top heel faction in Tony Khan’s Ring of Honor, but they were gone even before the first ROH pay-per-view since the faction’s formation properly got underway. 

Reports coming out of Death Before Dishonor noted that Blanchard was “effectively gone from the company, and isn’t figured into plans moving forward” after he no-showed the pay-per-view, with Blanchard’s work with his prison ministry group being cited as the reason for the no-show. Fightful Select also stated “there were mixed messages as to whether or not Blanchard outright missed his travel or there was confusion surrounding the travel.”

Blanchard would never return to All Elite Wrestling or Ring of Honor and the WWE Hall of Famer confirmed in January 2023 that he was no longer with AEW. It was believed the DBD no-show was the reason for his AEW departure, and Blanchard eventually confirmed in October 2024 on Tully Vision why he was fired by AEW:

“I never had to lay anything out. Arn didn’t. Flair didn’t. It was all, ‘Okay, we’re going to play it by ear depending on what the audience does.’ And that’s the way that I always did stuff, and it was like oil and water with the guys in AEW because that’s not the way they were trained and not the way they did stuff. But, it all worked out good, and I got on TV for a little while and was on with some very great talent, and was thrilled to do it. And then you miss a show and you get fired [laughs].”

Brian Cage explained how weird the day of Death Before Dishonor was as he arrived at the building and was handed a Tully Blanchard Enterprises t-shirt - something that would become a rare item in pro wrestling due to the brief, three-day period when the merchandise was actually on sale - but an hour later Cage was informed that Prince Nana was on his way and TBE would instead be switched to The Embassy.

“I walked into the pay-per-view and they handed me the shirt, they handed me the shirt right away… And like an hour later, they came and told us that Tully wasn’t gonna be there…that TBE was no longer gonna be a thing and that Prince Nana was on his way and we would be switching to The Embassy. He was gonna buy it out. I’m like, ‘Oh! What!?’ And then we heard that Gresham was having issues and they decided to part ways to put it politely I guess. So, I thought it was funny that literally an hour after I had gotten this shirt. I don’t even know if they had gone on sale yet or not but they had already lost two members and then it became The Embassy, which obviously turned out pretty well in the long run, in the long scheme of things. Then we became The Mogul Embassy so… I don’t even know if they ever sold these shirts or not,” Cage said on a Whatnot live signing in 2024 (H/T POST Wrestling).

“Tully was great too and, obviously, I’m really good friends with his daughter, and I know Tully’s a big fan of mine and he actually was gonna walk away and he said he’d only stay if he was gonna be brought in with somebody else with a purpose, and they brought up the idea of bringing me back with him and he was onboard with that, so there was that aspect where he was looking forward to working with us. But, I don’t know. I don’t think he was checked out, but I know he had his own thing, business he was doing as well and he still loved performing and I don’t think that he wanted to leave, but I don’t know if he had 100 per cent. Maybe I’m wrong here but I don’t know if he was 100 per cent in and he got stuck too at his other job, and I won’t go into his personal stuff so it doesn’t matter but that’s why he also wasn’t able to make the pay-per-view, and they knew it and then he got stuck in travel and wasn’t gonna be there. So, yeah, it was kind of a long story but, I guess things happen for a reason, and I’m sure he’s doing fine, doing well and then, meanwhile, Prince Nana came in and I’d never met Nana and I know a couple people were like, ‘Uh, uh, uh’ but then he became one of the coolest guys. I love Nana and we get along so great backstage and hang out and talk plenty. But I feel like everybody loves Nana. I used to just laugh at him because he’d get up and shake everybody’s hands. But Nana’s the coolest guy and everybody likes him because he learns everyone’s names from every single production person, backstage person, catering person, every person.”

Prince Nana had his own ordeal getting to Lowell, Massachusetts for Death Before Dishonor. The Embassy leader had been backstage at AEW events in the past due to having friends in the company, but he was working on the independent wrestling scene and beginning to lose his lustre for professional wrestling when he suddenly received a call in the early afternoon of July 23 about travelling to Death Before Dishonor to bring back The Embassy. 

Nana, however, does not like to drive himself and he ended up saying $650 for an Uber to transport him from Brooklyn, New York to Lowell’s Tsongas Center. 

“I’m in my basement, I’m there with one of my trusted advisors, sipping on some tea, shooting the sh*t, and out of the blue I get a text message. ‘How soon can you make it out to Boston?’ I jumped out of my seat. Everyone in the business knows that I don’t drive. I can drive, but I usually like to get driven. I looked at the schedule, it would have gotten me there at 8 PM. ‘We can’t do that, we need to get you here immediately.’ ‘I can jump in an Uber and be there in two or three hours.’ I’m in New York City, in Brooklyn. Did the pricing for the Uber, it came out to $650. ‘Let’s do it.’ One Uber car came by, he saw where I was going, and said, ‘Sorry, I can’t do it.’ The next one came, ‘Sorry, I can’t do it.’ Third guy came, I begged him, I got on my knees for the first time in my life, got down on my knees and begged the driver, ‘Can you please take me to Boston. I’ll do whatever you want. I have a big tip for you. This is very important.’ He saw it in my eyes, ‘Get in the car,’ and that’s when history was made. I made it to Boston, met Tony Khan, he hired me on the spot, and history was made,” Nana recalled on Talk is Jericho (H/T Fightful).

ROH Releases Jonathan Gresham

The Embassy would be down one of the members purchased from Tully Blanchard Enterprises, however, as Death Before Dishonor would also end up being Jonathan Gresham’s final night in the promotion that he helped carry on his back during ROH’s hiatus in Q1 2022. 

It was reported by Fightful Select coming out of the pay-per-view that Gresham asked for and was granted his release ahead of ROH Death Before Dishonor after a heated meeting with Tony Khan in which he “cussed” at the AEW CEO, with an alleged lack of communication between AEW and Gresham causing the ROH World Champion to feel disrespected.

Also at the meeting it was reported that Gresham expressed he was not happy about his booking and character. It was agreed the contents of the conversation would remain private but much of the locker room and staff could hear everything that was being said, such was the volume of the meeting. 

The AEW side of the situation was they believed Gresham had his mind made up when he entered the meeting. Gresham was said to have had a vision for his creative which differed from Tony Khan, with the ROH World Champion in particular not being in favour of his heel turn, but ROH believed there was a “bigger picture” for that. 

PWInsider, meanwhile, reported that Gresham was “very upset when told the planned outcome of his match” and he “cursed out” Tony Khan during the meeting, with another story being shared amongst talents that claimed Gresham had used his ranking in Pro Wrestling Illustrated’s PWI 500 as an argument for why he should be presented better by ROH. Gresham was ranked #10 in the 2022 PWI 500.

Gresham addressed the heated meeting with Tony Khan while speaking to Haus of Wrestling in April 2023, detailing his side of what happened. 

“I can admit that I was acting very unprofessionally while trying and failing to convey the message to my former employer. After weeks of feeling like I wasn’t being heard or blown off, I was frustrated, to be honest. All I wanted was to be heard and for the communication to be had. If they had agreed and liked my ideas and what I wanted to say, great, if not, I would have appreciated the time and just accepted the outcome,” Gresham stated.

"Now, speaking about the actual meeting, leading up to it, I felt like I was blown off in different ways. I had made contact with my employer and me coming from, like I mentioned before, under the last regime with Ring of Honor, I had a really good relationship where we could talk over the phone. If I texted them, they would get back to me relatively quickly. It was just a really good back-and-forth communication. So, I think, for me, I was expecting the same thing and maybe I shouldn’t have. I know TK is a very busy guy, owning a lot of different businesses, and I am a very small gear in this machine. That just came after so much time thinking about it through therapy and things of that nature. I felt like I was blown off, we made contact, and I was flown into a show,” Gresham continued.

"I showed up, this is a new environment for me. I wasn’t really used to these big shows and so much going on. I arrived, I’m waiting and I never really got a time or anything about when we were going to meet. I just figured, ‘Hey, I know how wrestling is so I’ll just wait until he has time.’ I was there pretty much the entire two days, the fly-in day and then the day of the event where everything is filmed, and then the next day. The gist of this is I never got the chance to see him. Even when I went to Sonjay [Dutt] or QT [Marshall] to ask, ‘Hey, man, I’m supposed to have a meeting with Tony. Can I get it?’ I didn’t get it. So, the first time I felt like, ‘Okay, the dude is busy, whatever.’ I think I messaged him or he messaged me but I remember him saying something along the lines of, ‘I’m sorry we didn’t get together. Let’s meet another time.’ Something like that.’

“I fly out again and the same thing kinda happens. I’m not sure if I should say this part but this is what made me kinda feel like I was being blown off. I had to, for lack of a better word, hunt him down. When I finally get a chance to have a face-to-face with him, he introduces me to someone he is close with and as I go to shake her hand, I turn around and TK, from the way it looked to me, was walking away from me. So, at this point, I am thinking to myself, ‘This guy must not respect me at all.’ I just started having things roll around in my mind and I think, at the time, I was my own worst enemy with this. There was a lot of stuff going on personally with me. Nobody but the Progress guys know that my Mom had a really bad incident, she was in the hospital for like a week and it was the first time I had ever seen my Mom so vulnerable with tubes going through her face and stuff. A lot of this was just me under a lot of stress, I believe. But, I really felt I was disrespected,” he added.

By the time Death Before Dishonor rolled around, Gresham had “checked out” and decided he was going to ask for his release from Ring of Honor.

“I remember getting a text from Sonjay and I was sitting with one of my buddies in the bleachers and, at that time, I had already checked out. I knew I was going to leave. I knew that I was going to ask for my release. The other thing that really bothered me was - a lot of people were under the impression that I left because I lost the Ring of Honor Title and that’s not true. I’ve been wrestling for a long time and I’ve won championships and had to lose championships, that’s just part of business and life in general. You can’t be the champion forever, so that’s not what it was. It was everything I had mentioned before so, I had already kinda checked out and I had told myself that I was going to ask for my release and leave. I already kinda knew what was going to happen and I was okay with that. Like I said before, I shouldn’t have yelled or cursed in a professional environment. The whole meeting just kind of got away from me. I was really emotional. That’s pretty much the gist of it,” he said, with Gresham noting that he apologised to Claudio Castagnoli after their match and Tony Khan told them there were no bridges burned.

“After my match with Claudio, I was kinda booking it out of there, I couldn’t be there. Claudio did come up to me and say some things, along with Mr Regal, who was there at the time. But, before I did get out of there completely, my wife had my bags and stuff, and TK, he didn’t have to, but he came over to me and said some really nice things. He told me that no bridges were burned, he shook my hand and he said he knows that I am not a bad person. I can only imagine him dealing with athletes for so long. He kinda understands how things are, how people are. He deals with people from all different backgrounds. I’m pretty sure he probably saw where I was coming from and he just granted me my release. That was it.”

The Aftermath

Since the dissolution of Tully Blanchard Enterprises, Tully has continued to work autograph signings and make appearances at conventions and independent wrestling events, but he has never returned to AEW or Ring of Honor. 

Nor has Jonathan Gresham. The former ROH World Champion signed with IMPACT Wrestling in December 2022 and he would have two runs with what quickly switched back to being TNA, until he exited the promotion in January 2025. Gresham suffered multiple strokes in August 2025 but, fortunately, he has been able to resume his pro wrestling career and he is currently a fixture on the indies and for Scott D’Amore’s Maple Leaf Pro Wrestling.

Brian Cage and Gates of Agony were featured in Ring of Honor as a trio, winning the ROH World Six-Man Tag Team Championships at Final Battle 2022. They would hold the belts across two reigns until January 2024. 

In April 2023, Brian Cage and Gates of Agony followed Prince Nana into the Mogul Embassy following a merger with Swerve Strickland’s Mogul Affiliates. After Strickland’s AEW World Title win at Dynasty 2024, however, Cage and Gates of Agony would turn on Strickland and Nana, disbanding the faction in the process. 

Following this, Cage, Bishop Kaun and Toa Liona remained together as Cage of Agony but the trio would come to an end in October 2024 when Brian Cage joined the Don Callis Family. Bishop Kaun and Toa Liona remained together as a tag team and they linked up with Ricochet in the summer of 2025 to form The Demand. 

So concludes the saga of Tully Blanchard Enterprises, a faction that within four months had only made a handful of appearances across Ring of Honor and AEW and saw two of the group’s members exit the promotion before they could make an impact, despite the stable seemingly being set up to be a top faction in Ring of Honor. Tully Blanchard Enterprises was a brief, combustable faction that will continue to have a legacy as a pro wrestling oddity.