British Championship Wrestling promoter Graham McKay announced via the promotion’s Twitter page that Impact Wrestling management helped resolve the booking fee reimbursement issue involving Matt Sydal. “We at BCW would like to thank @IMPACTWRESTLING for stepping in and taking control of the situation and can tell you today we received our deposit back in full,” McKay wrote.
Sydal missed the promotion’s weekend events due to travel issues. Sydal’s booking agent Bill Behrens reached out to Prowrestling.net and provided an image that showed that there was a legitimate traffic issue that caused Sydal to arrive late at the airport. British Air offered no assistance in terms of putting Sydal on a later flight. Behrens attempted to find Sydal a different flight and the cost would have been $1,333 (not more than $3,000 as we mistakenly reported on Sunday). Behrens, who refunded his $300 booking fee to BCW, added that McKay filed a complaint with PayPal against him because of the situation. However, PayPal rejected the complaint after Behrens provided documentation to back up his side of the story.
Powell’s POV: As previously noted, Sydal offered to work a future weekend for BCW and help cover the cost of his flight, but McKay declined and demanded his entire booking fee be returned. While that’s McKay’s right, it is unfortunate that the two sides couldn’t simply work out a deal and avoid turning this into a public situation that may have caused other promoters to think twice about booking Sydal. Given the documentation that Behrens provided, there was a traffic issue near the airport and it even shows the fastest route was an eight mile stretch that would have taken an estimated 68 minutes.
Sydal still looked like a d-bag by refusing to return the money they paid him.