Originally Posted by Observer

According to multiple sources close to the situation, Goldberg does not have a WWE deal right now. But everyone notes the history, that when the video game people reached deals with Brock Lesnar, Ultimate Warrior and Sting in recent years, all three ended up with the person in question later making a deal with WWE. The Goldberg deal took several years to put together, with the holdup on Vince McMahon’s side. McMahon and Goldberg did not leave on good terms in 2004 when Goldberg’s one-year contract with the promotion for $1 million and limited dates expired.

Originally Posted by Observer

Cody Rhodes has announced he will be working with Evolve on their 8/19 iPPV in Joppa, MD. Rhodes' non-compete with WWE ends that day. Interestingly, Evolve has been also working with WWE in recent months in building up competitors for the global cruiserweight classic tournament.

Originally Posted by Observer

WWE announced this morning that Andrade Cien Almas (the former La Sombra and Manny Andrade) will face the "Perfect 10" Tye Dillinger at this Wednesday's TakeOver event. After working NXT house shows for months, this likely means Almas will also debut to a national audience at the next television tapings. They are hoping he transitions into becoming a Hispanic star.

Originally Posted by PWI

The 5/31 edition of Impact was down slightly, doing 346,000 viewers as opposed to last week's 359,000 viewers. It was the second highest initial audience for the series on Pop.

Originally Posted by Observer

The most likely reason that the move was made, was because the USA Network was not happy with the ratings of Smackdown. The hope was that Smackdown on USA would do close to the numbers of Raw, particularly when it opened strong at around 2.7 million viewers ... What shocked everyone is that ratings had fallen below what they were a year ago, even with the move to a much stronger station. While ratings weren’t down from last year as much as Raw, the expectation was that a Thursday night prime time show on USA would do better.

Key to this is that, even though WWE will be adding expenses by going live, USA is not paying more for the increase in costs. It’s the first sign, while hidden from the public, that USA is concerned that the approximately $127 million they pay WWE this year for Raw and Smackdown is not delivering at the level they would like ...

Originally Posted by Observer

As noted before, there has been movement for an alliance with ROH, New Japan and CMLL. New Japan already has strong relations with CMLL. ROH and CMLL have been talking and while it’s not a done deal, they are working on a major CMLL star of the 7/16 show in Philadelphia. Colt Cabana will also have a rematch with Jay Lethal (or whoever the champion is at that point) on that show.

Originally Posted by Smelly Meatball

Originally Posted by Observer
Cody Rhodes has announced he will be working with Evolve on their 8/19 iPPV in Joppa, MD. Rhodes' non-compete with WWE ends that day. Interestingly, Evolve has been also working with WWE in recent months in building up competitors for the global cruiserweight classic tournament.

Originally Posted by Smelly Meatball

According to recent Observer speculation, the WWE might debut the brand new World belt for Smackdown in a similar way it was done for RAW in the sense of just handing it to someone.

Originally Posted by Fragile X (Post 4819369)

Now we'll never get to 100,000

Originally Posted by PWI

The 6/2 episode of Smackdown did 2,169,000 viewers, up from last week's 2,112,000 viewers.

Originally Posted by Observer

New Japan announced earlier Friday that Hiroshi Tanahashi would not be able to return for the Dominion PPV show for his scheduled ladder match with Intercontinental Champion Kenny Omega.

The 6/19 match at Osaka Jo Hall -- the first ladder match ever in New Japan and scheduled for the IC title, was the No. 2 match on what is one of the company's three biggest shows of the year. Omega will now defend his title in a ladder match against Michael Elgin, a rematch of Omega's last title defense.

With a severe shoulder injury, Tanahashi is physically in considerably worse condition than they are letting on ... There is no word on when he will return.

The realization that Tanahashi probably couldn't do the show was only known for perhaps the last 48 hours or so.

Originally Posted by Observer

Scott Garland (Scotty 2 Hotty) was helping train the wrestlers this week at the Performance Center.

Originally Posted by PWI

Lana and Rusev are set to get married on 9/2. Given her inclusion in the new cast of "Total Divas", don't be surprised to see the wedding filmed for the E! reality series.

Originally Posted by PWI

The next hearing in the criminal case against Jimmy Snuka has been set for 12/2 at 10:30 AM in Allentown, PA.

At that hearing, Judge Kelly L. Banach will re-visit her determination that the WWE Hall of Famer is not mentally competent to stand trial in the charges brought against him in the 1983 death of his then-girlfriend Nancy Argentino.

After four separate hearings on the matter, Banach ruled that Snuka was not competent to stand trial against charged of involuntary manslaughter and third-degree murder.

Originally Posted by PWI

As we reported in the Elite section of PWInsider.com, TNA and Bobby Lashley are in the midst of finalizing a new deal.

Originally Posted by PWI

While an official announcement will likely go out next week, PWInsider.con has confirmed that former WWE World champion Rey Mysterio is going back to High School, main eventing a Viva La Lucha event in San Diego, CA on 8/13 at Montgomery High School, his alma matter, an event that will fundraise for the school.

Originally Posted by PWI

WWE Hall of Famer Adam "Edge" Copeland has pushed the idea of portraying Cable in "Deadpool 2." He would actually be pretty awesome in that role.

Originally Posted by Observer

Konnan’s latest charge against AAA on his Spanish language podcast is that referee Copetes Salazar, who also books the AAA talent on independent shows, used his booking power over the women in the promotions. He claimed that Lady Maravilla said that Salazar demanded sex to get her more bookings. The claim is that Maravilla told AAA owner Marisela Pena, who said she would investigate. The claim is that she then asked Salazar, who denied it, and she was satisfied. Konnan claimed there were other circumstances and mentioned names of girlfriends of wrestlers and that Christina Von Eerie left the promotion for that reason. The Mexican wrestling media has been writing about Konnan’s claims although the mainstream media has yet to cover the story. He also claimed that Fabi Apache was rough with the other women, and also claimed the reason Jennifer Blake was in Mexico for so long was because Dorian Roldan liked her. In Mexico, unlike in the U.S., wrestlers still in public almost never admit to wrestling being entertainment and not sport, and he’s been on his shows in Spanish being very open about it.

Originally Posted by Observer

Roderick Strong and Moose’s deals are up in a few weeks but I don’t believe that, officially, they are allowed to negotiate with other companies yet. Of course this is pro wrestling and you know how that goes. WWE had interest in Moose last year and logic would tell you it shouldn’t be different, considering he’s improved a lot, his name is bigger, and WWE needs to be adding talent right now.

Originally Posted by Observer

On Raw they no longer had the graphic listing that there would be a seventh guy in Money in the Bank. On the as of yet unaired episode of Smackdown, the graphic also only listed six people. We were told that as of right now, it’s a six person match, but that it could change. They didn’t want to say anything one way or the other to lock themselves into a corner.

Originally Posted by Observer

Regarding the cruiserweight classic, there is a Mexican wrestler whose name we weren’t given, that has been told he’s in, was told to come up with a new name and get new ring gear, as I guess WWE doesn’t want people to know who he was. The only thing we’re told is he’s smaller than most people WWE would use, and that he’s pretty good and speaks very little English, but has been working a lot in the U.S. of late. Both Garza Jr & Ultimo Ninja of the famous Garza wrestling family were given tryouts but neither has heard a thing from WWE since. At first they had slotted for something like five slots of the 32 for Mexicans, but that was months ago and that was just the first idea.

Originally Posted by Observer

Miami is pushing for WrestleMania in 2018, 2019 or 2020. With WrestleMania in Orlando in 2017, coming back to Florida in 2018 or 2019 sounds early. A negative is that Sun Life Stadium, which would hold the show, is undergoing a renovation project which has cut back 10,000 seats. The 2012 WrestleMania drew 66,400 fans, with 63,000 paid, which was a sellout. It was announced at 78,363, and cutting back to a legit capacity of around 56,000 is small for a Mania show right now, especially after this past year and with all the activities that surround Mania and bring tourists into town. The advantage of Miami is that it’s Johnson’s home city, and if he was going to wrestle one more serious match, or do a retirement from the ring, that would probably be the place he’d choose to do it, so that could get them the date earlier than normal.

Originally Posted by Smelly Meatball

Update to WWE interested in signing Rush & Volador Jr. news as it turns out Sombra/Cien ended up being a big reason why since he's been helping out WWE's scouting effort for Mexican wrestlers.

Originally Posted by Simple Fan (Post 4819567)

What's with the Cien in Andrade Almas name. I can only assume he'll beat Dillinger and be 10X better than the Pefect 10.

Originally Posted by Simple Fan (Post 4819570)

There is another box checked off his list. Kurt Angle check, The Miracle check.

Originally Posted by erickman (Post 4819696)

too bad these matches are not on tv or ppv. the promoter may have to get a bigger hall the way cody did his checklist that is good for northeast wrestling.

Originally Posted by Observer

Last night's Raw did 3.24 million viewers, up slightly from last week's 3.22 million ...

The three hours were:

8 p.m. 3.37 million viewers
9 p.m. 3.49 million viewers
10 p.m. 2.90 million viewers

Originally Posted by Observer

As part of the business relationship with UFC and WWE, the WWE is interested in bringing in Paige VanZant to SummerSlam.

PW Insider and Fox Sports have both reported the news.

Mike Roberts, the manager of VanZant, confirmed to Fox Sports earlier today that WWE has reached out to inquire about VanZant to appear "in some capacity" on the 8/21 SummerSlam show. A WWE source confirmed the news to us that the company was looking for a role for her at the show.

Originally Posted by CageSideSeats.com

Yesterday's rumor that Tommy End was headed to WWE was reported on by multiple outlets, who say - pending physicals - the Dutch star should be in NXT by September.

Ring of Honor (ROH)'s Moose and Roderick Strong are also reportedly on WWE's radar. Both of their ROH contracts are believed up shortly.

Originally Posted by CageSideSeats.com

Vince McMahon soured on the Shining Stars gimmick when Epico & Primo's return didn't get much of a reaction and there are currently no plans for the duo.

Originally Posted by Observer

WWE.com posted an article on former German national soccer team goalkeeper Tim Wiese accepting a deal to start training at the Performance Center ... Wiese, who bulked up big the past few years as he picked up bodybuilding is a charismatic and impressive looking guy at around 6'4" and about 285 lbs. His contract with his former soccer club of TSG 1899 Hoffenheim is set to expire on 6/30, even though he was cut from the team long before that, in January of 2014. Wiese had publically talked about getting into wrestling, as the media had made comparisons of his physique to those of wrestlers.

Originally Posted by Observer

Bray Wyatt has been medically cleared and is expected to debut imminently, as in as soon as tonight, but if not, very shortly. If he is to debut, he's likely to be slotted into Money in the Bank in some form. Wyatt was a babyface and the Wyatt family were being turned to face the League of Nations when he got hurt. Now there are no more League of Nations and WWE is still at the top, weaker on the heel side.

Originally Posted by Observer

Just because of all the questions regarding NXT Takeover and UFC 202 going head-to-head, right now the Barclays Center is still listing the Takeover show on 8/20. As noted last week, the WWE web site had removed the show from the schedule but as they told me, it was put back on and listed for a 7:30 p.m. start time. If they start the network show at 8 p.m., the show would end very shortly into the start of the PPV which starts at 10 p.m.

Originally Posted by Observer

Brandi Runnels (Eden Stiles) at this point is going to be working outside wrestling while Cody will be working indies. The one announced show with Cody vs. Mike Bennett with Brandi Rhodes, as she's being called, is more to do a story of counteracting Maria Kanellis. But it's not going to be a regular thing at this point.

Originally Posted by Observer

Pro Wrestling Sheet is reporting that Adam Rose will use his party boy gimmick on the Indies using the name Aldo Rose and will be taking indie bookings. Right now he can't appear on TV or iPPV until the late summer. He said, "Ain't no more PG in this party."

Originally Posted by PWI

TheWrap.com is reporting that WWE star Luke Harper, currently out of action following ACL surgery, has been cast for a role in the horror film "Mohawk", which is currently shooting in Upstate New York.

Originally Posted by PWI

WWE Hall of Famer Mick Foley got a heck of a birthday gift as he announced that he's lost 68 lbs. with the help of DDP Yoga. He also noted he is the lightest he has been since 1990, which is around the time of his first run with WCW. Congratulations to Mick, who has always been one of the classiest people around pro wrestling:

HELLO 270! With the help of @DDPYoga I have lost 68 pounds in 6 months - and am at my lightest since 1990. #BANG pic.twitter.com/ChGEaZsK8L
— Mick Foley (@RealMickFoley) June 6, 2016

Originally Posted by PWI

Luke Gallows is quickly becoming one of the most popular people in the WWE locker room. In an environment where there's often a feeling of walking on eggshells and where everyone is worried about their jobs, Gallows lightens the mood a little bit and brings a levity to the locker room.

It's not that Gallows is goofing off or not taking his job serious, it was described as a situation where his demeanor and the way he speaks lightens the mood and helps to make being backstage a more enjoyable experience for everyone.

Originally Posted by Smelly Meatball (Post 4819282)

Random Vince story from back in the day regarding his early life from a variety of sources.

Originally Posted by PWI

Ring of Honor star Moose has been spotted in the Orlando area and even popped up on social media for WWE star Apollo Crews today, sparking a lot of speculation given that tonight is WWE NXT Takeover. We are told that Moose is still under contract to ROH and is in town visiting friends.

Originally Posted by Observer

For those curious as to how USADA and UFC will be handling Brock Lesnar and PED testing, we've got a lot more on the story here. Basically, since the USADA drug testing standards were not in place when Brock Lesnar announced his retirement from UFC in 2011, he will not have to fulfill the 4 months of pre fight testing. He is being treated like a newly contracted fighter, who just happens to have a fight in a month. So he has only been eligibile for testing since last Friday. However, since he has been under contract to WWE in the last 5 years, he has theoretically been tested and clean since his 2011 retirement.

Originally Posted by Observer

The WWE's July tour of Japan is coming into shape with the cards officially released on their Japan microsite including Nakamura's first official scheduled WWE action.

Nakamura will face both Bray Wyatt and Kevin Owens on the tour, while WWE Champion Roman Reigns will be involved in two fatal-four way matches for the title. Also, it looks as if the John Cena/AJ Styles feud will last a few months as they are also scheduled for both nights.

Originally Posted by PWI

The 6/7 edition of Impact was down this week, doing 326,000 viewers. That is down from last week's 346,000 viewers.

Originally Posted by PWI

NWA President Bruce Tharpe was also at the WWE Performance Center yesterday and tweeted out a photo of himself meeting with Triple H. We are told Tharpe was there to try and broker a deal with WWE in respect to the Paul Boesch Houston wrestling library. Tharpe has the rights to the library and utilizes it on the NWA's streaming service.

Originally Posted by PWI

Mattel announced they were releasing an exclusive Shockmaster action figure at the San Diego Comic Con. The packaging even features Shockmaster having fallen down to play off of his infamous WCW debut going wrong. You can check that out at this link.

Originally Posted by PWI

NJPW have announced that Jay White will be heading to ROH on excursion after Dominion.

Originally Posted by PWI

Dark match: Ember Moon def. Peyton Royce. Ember Moon (I think that's the name, but it wasn't spelled out to see) is the former Athena/Adrienne Reese. She has new music, but didn't have a tron yet.

Originally Posted by CageSideSeats.com

When asked about Hideo Itami, he mentioned Itami's Tweet about returning soon, and said he wants him 100%. He's still excited about him as a performer. His recovery took longer than some others (he called John Cena a "mutant" here) due to scar tissue and some mobilitiy issues, and Haitch is willing to wait until he's ready for action.

Originally Posted by Smelly Meatball (Post 4821414)

Originally Posted by Observer

Even though HHH made a comment as though he thought it would happen, but didn’t know, among those involved with NXT we’re told “NXT is being raided for the draft big time” and that a lot more will be known shortly. It only makes sense given they need to add to the talent depth to have two strong rosters. The company has been aggressively pursuing talent to start in NXT in September. They’ve also been telling people who they’ve signed not to let anyone know. There have been reports regarding Tommy End being one of those people. He’s scheduled to undergo medical testing and will be offered a contract if he passes.

Originally Posted by Observer

The talk continues involving both Roderick Strong and Moose. Moose wrote, “I will always have a special spot in my heart for ROH,” which read to me like he’s leaving. WWE or TNA would be the obvious choices and all kinds of things that happened at the last minute would indicate WWE as the favorites. In theory, there was interest from both sides in him although even today based on the contract, which is still in existence, any direct negotiations would be considered tampering. As noted, that kind of stuff happens all the time in wrestling no matter the legalese. TNA is offering higher numbers for most at his level, if they want them, than WWE.

WWE is obviously the goal of most wrestlers, and internally in WWE people were talking about him debuting there as part of the September incoming class. Moose himself said that he can’t say anything until his situation is final. Moose was in Orlando for Takeover backstage and tweeted a photo going to the show with Apollo Crews. I do know that even as of last week, ROH thought they had a good chance of keeping him and his winning a multiple person match over the weekend would indicate that even as of the weekend they believed that. He’s still scheduled for the 6/24 PPV even after a Tweet where people look at it and are going to naturally speculate, and it’s not a secret his contract is up in a few weeks.

Originally Posted by Observer

It appears future WWE pay-per-view events will be going past 11pm and not just WrestleMania. WWE has told Sky Italia to start reserving extra time for pay-per-view events as the duration of those shows will vary.

Originally Posted by PWI

Ring of Honor announced the following:

You’ve been watching exclusive Women of Honor matches on the ROH YouTube channel, but now you’ll have the chance to see them LIVE! On July 8th, Baltimore hosts a special WOMEN OF HONOR event! All of your favorite Women of Honor will be in action, in addition to special guests and even some debuting athletes ...

This Women of Honor event is FREE ADMISSION with the purchase of a ticket for ROH‘s AFTERSHOCK event..

Originally Posted by Observer

NXT Takeover Brooklyn tickets for 8/20 at the Barclays Center are available on pre-sale right now using the code WWENXT. The pre-sale ends tomorrow at 10 p.m. and the regular sale goes into effect at Noon on Saturday. The names listed are Finn Balor, Samoa Joe, Shinsuke Nakamura, Asuka, Bayley, American Alpha and The Revival.

Originally Posted by Observer

Six-year-old Max has been diagnosed with stage 4 neuroblastoma for the second time. He's a huge WWE fan and his family is not looking for any monetary donations but if anyone has anything related to WWE that thet would like to donate that he can play with while being treated there will be an event on 6/19 in Dublin, Ireland at the Woolshed Pub collecting donations.

Originally Posted by Observer

A sad part of the Jimmy Snuka story is that the sisters of Nancy Argentino, Louise and Lorraine, were never told about the change in the hearing date (the date was changed more than a week earlier), so they could not be in the court room when Snuka was declared not mentally competent to stand trial. Not that it would have been something they’d have had a good reaction to, if they had seen it live. Essentially the case has been shelved until 12/2 when there will be another hearing to see if Snuka’s mental capacity has improved enough for him to stand trial; it won’t.

Originally Posted by Observer

In an interesting story, Pro Wrestling Torch reported that the ownership of the name TNA was taken over by Aroluxe Media LLC on 5/3. They registered the ownership of the name TNA from May 3, 2016 to 2021. This company still owns the names TNA Wrestling and TNA Entertainment, LLC., as well as names associated with Impact Wrestling. They’ve been pushing the name Impact Wrestling over TNA to a degree for years.

Originally Posted by Observer

TNA will be doing an almost live Impact on 6/14 as well as more tapings after that show and 6/15. When the tapings that take place next week run out, there are plans to do another semi-live taping in July and follow with several more weeks after the fact. The dates are not yet announced, but however many weeks are taped this coming week, that would indicate 7/2, 7/9 or 7/16 as the start of the next tapings, with the middle date most likely. At least some talent has been told ahead of time about a live July taping.

Originally Posted by Observer

Ric Flair and Conrad Thompson will be going back to doing podcasts on right around 6/30 but on a new station, leaving the CBS family.

Originally Posted by Observer

Gawker Media filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection today in New York court, with bankruptcy preceding a sale to Ziff Davis. Davis, who owns IGN and Ask Men has reportedly bid about $100 million for Gawker. Nick Denton, the owner, who is also expected to file for bankruptcy due to the $140 million award to Hulk Hogan, said, "We have been forced by this litigation to give up our long standing independence, but our writers remain committed to telling the true stories that underpin credibility with our millions of readers. With stronger backing and disentangled from litigation, they can perform their vital work on more platforms and in different forms."

Originally Posted by Observer

Maria Kanellis was announced as being pulled from Sunday's Slammiversary show due to a broken hand. She was scheduled against Gail Kim.

Originally Posted by PWI

The 6/9 episode of Smackdown did 1,996,000 viewers, down from last week's 2,169,000 viewers. It is by far the lowest number that the show has done since moving to The USA Network earlier this year.

Originally Posted by PWI

Former WWE World Heavyweight champion Daniel Bryan was backstage at the WWE NXT TV last night, PWInsider.com has confirmed. Bryan was visiting with the roster and watched the majority of the show from the gorilla position backstage.

It was the first time Bryan has been in attendance at a WWE event since retiring live on Raw on 2/8 in Seattle.

Bryan had been advertised since then for appearances at several live events that would have featured a "Daniel Bryan Appreciation Night" theme as well as a signing at Wrestlemania AXXESS, but was pulled from those dates at his request just as they were about to begin. At the time, WWE's comment was that Bryan had been given "requested time off."

Originally Posted by PWI

The Mid-Atlantic Legends Fanfest this August in Charlotte, NC announced yesterday that WWE Hall of Famer Jim Ross would be returning to the gathering to perform his One Man Show and to host a "Roast" of Ole Anderson. The gathering also announced that North Carolina women's promotion Queens of Combat would have a live event over the course of the weekend as part of the convention. Announced as appearing thus far are Tony Schiavone, Magnum TA, Mickie James, Austin Idol, Arn Anderson and more

Originally Posted by PWI

In regard to the "who are you? chant" during NXT Takeover, we've heard from a few readers in the building that night that it was actually directed at The Authors of Pain, not Paul Ellering.

Originally Posted by PWI

Luke Gallows was interviewed in advance of Raw returning to New Orleans this Monday at this link. On the name, The Club being used instead of Bullet Club he noted, "We were being edgy in Japan (with the name), and there’s a bit of a language barrier. The WWE is all about family friendly entertainment. My son and I watch the WWE Network at home all the time. Going with The Club was the way we needed to go to come here and be in this environment, where your kids are watching." Obviously, New Japan owning the name had a little bit to do with it too!

Originally Posted by Observer

The situation with Matt Hardy, is that they were to talk again at TV this week about signing him to an exclusive contract. As noted before, TNA has been attempting to sign talent to contracts where TNA controlled all their bookings. The key people would be The Hardys, Bobby Lashley and Drew Galloway, none of which have signed yet. It will take sizeable money to get either Hardy to give up booking themselves on indies, and Galloway seems to be doing well, particularly in the U.K. market, in handling his own bookings. But it’s the weirdest thing because of the obvious cost cutting, such as only doing two days of Impact tapings (6/13 will be tapings for Xplosion and one not only) to save money now even though it’ll cost more in the long run for having to schedule another set of tapings in just a few weeks. Plus, they are still making aggressive offers for at least some talent whose contracts are coming due.

Originally Posted by Smelly Meatball (Post 4821414)

Newest episode of Botchamania was recently released: http://botchamania.com/2016/06/08/botchamania-310/

Originally Posted by Smelly Meatball (Post 4821661)

Originally Posted by Observer

It finally happened. Thanks, in part, to going head-to-head with Game 5 of the NBA Finals, the June 13th edition of WWE Raw fell below the 3 million viewer mark for the first time outside of football season.

The show did 2.96 million viewers -- the second lowest for a non-holiday episode of the show since 1997, as there was a show in November that did 2.95 million viewers. The prior seasonal record low was 3.12 million viewers, and while the rating isn't out as of this writing, it should equate to a 2.1 or 2.2 rating ...

The three hours were:

8 p.m. 3.04 million viewers
9 p.m. 3.11 million viewers
10 p.m. 2.76 million viewers

Originally Posted by Observer

TNA usually announces the newest member of its Hall of Fame at the Slammiversary show, but there is talk the announcement will be delayed until Tuesday night's Impact and teased tonight.

Originally Posted by Observer

The newest member of the TNA Hall of Fame is

Originally Posted by Observer

A very controversial interview from Rene Dupree and also quotes from the former Rodney Mack regarding Chris Nowinski and his business relationship with WWE which Nowinski has said has no foundation here.

Originally Posted by Observer

Cody Rhodes and Jushin Liger are scheduled to appear for Northeast Wrestling on 8/28 in Bethany, CT.

Cody Rhodes vs. Tommaso Ciampa is scheduled for 9/18 for XWA in Providence, RI at the John Hope Center.

Originally Posted by Observer

The Fight Network announced today a deal to get the AXS version of New Japan World Pro Wrestling with Jim Ross and Josh Barnett as announcers. The shows will air on Thursday nights at 9 p.m. starting on 7/7.

Originally Posted by PWI

As we reported in the Elite section of PWInsider.com, WWE has been reaching out to a number of former talents over the last several days, checking on their interest in coming back to work for the company once the brand split takes place this July. So, as much as there is talk of raiding the NXT brand for new talents, the company is also looking into bringing back tenured veteran talents as well.

Originally Posted by PWI

The 8/20 WWE NXT Takeover event has been appropriately titled "Back to Brooklyn." The event will air the night before Summerslam live on the WWE Network from The Barclays Center.

Originally Posted by PWI

WWE star Neville is expected back from his broken ankle within the next month, PWInsider.com has learned. The hope internally is he will return by the end of June, but he is expected back no later than mid-July.

Originally Posted by PWI

Charges against former WWE star Raymond " Adam Rose" Leppan were dropped by prosecutors in Florida and the case against him is now closed, reported TMZ.com today. The decision was made after Leppan provided proof he was getting assistance for his marital issues.

Originally Posted by PWI

While PWInsider.com has not independently confirmed the report, the belief among sources within WWE at the time the planned July split was announced was that the company would add additional Network specials/PPVs to accomodate the split roster.

Originally Posted by Smelly Meatball (Post 4823137)

Originally Posted by PWI

Mattel will be releasing the first ever action figure of the legendary former NWA United States champion Magnum TA as part of it's WWE Elite Legends action figure line.

Also featured in the line will be Kamala, Shawn Michaels, Undertaker, Ultimate Warrior and Chris Jericho.

Magnum was slated to be featured in a previous Legends of Wrestling toy line produced by Jakks Pacific several years ago but when the initial releases did not sell well, the line was scrapped.

Originally Posted by Observer

ROH made a big announcement today, that they will be returning to the famed Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City for their biggest PPV of the year, Final Battle. This will mark the first time ROH has run the building since 2014. The company has declined to use the Hammerstein due to increasing facility rental costs, but recently decided to head back to the building. The Hammerstein Ballroom will now be the site of all of ROH's future NYC shows.

Originally Posted by Observer

TNA will be rebroadcasting last night's Gold Rush show tonight on Pop TV. Apparently there were some technical difficulties due to weather that prevented the show to be seen in its entirety in certain markets. That show will at 9pm eastern tonight.

Originally Posted by PWI

The 6/14 edition of Impact, which aired at 10:50 PM was understandly down this week, bringing in 210,000 viewers. They were down from 326,000 viewers last week. The episode will air again tonight at 9 PM as the technical issues were on Pop's end.

Originally Posted by PWI

As noted several days ago on PWInsider.com, WWE filed a trademark for the name "Legion of Doom", a moniker used by WWE Hall of Fame tag team The Road Warriors during their careers and used as their primary team name during their initial WWE run in the late 1980s/early 1990s.

With the appearance of Paul Ellering as the mouthpiece for NXT team The Authors of Pain, there was speculation the name might be used by WWE for that team. That speculation is now rendered moot as WWE abandoned the trademark application on 6/13.

Originally Posted by PWI

During his latest episode of the Ross Report podcast, WWE Hall of Famer Jim Ross announced he had signed on board to produce a new film, currently titled " 6:05 On The SuperStation! " The film will be produced in conjunction with the team responsible for the "Mid-Atlantic Memories" documentary that debuted last summer. Ross narrated that film.

The "feel-good film" will cover the 20-year period in time -- late 1960s to late 1980s -- "when folks down south were glued to their TV sets at 6:05 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays",

Originally Posted by PWI

There was a good reason why the TNA Hall of Famer didn't leak in advance: no one knew who it was. TNA didn't tell anyone who the Hall of Famer was beyond a very small group of people. We are told that Gail Kim didn't know she was being announced as the new Hall of Famer until Dixie Carter announced it during last night's taping.

Originally Posted by 411mania

According to pwinsider.com, WWE has applied for a number of trademarks for “Clash of Champions.” One of the trademarks is for a television show. With the news of the brand split, and rumors of more PPVs/WWE Network specials going around, this will likely cause a lot of speculation.

Originally Posted by Observer

The participants in this year’s G-1 Climax tournament will be announced at the 6/27 Korakuen Hall show

Originally Posted by Observer

Stu Bennett, who was Wade Barrett in WWE, on Twitter when talking about Barrett said “the other guy is dead and buried.” He’s been mostly talking soccer. He has interest in getting a job as a soccer analyst

Originally Posted by Observer

SummerSlam as a live event at the Barclays Center is listing a 6 p.m. Eastern start time. Usually they would list a 7 p.m. start time for the pre-show, so it looks like they will start the PPV at 7 p.m. and do a four-hour or longer show. As noted last week, WWE has sent notices to PPV carriers that some shows going forward may go past 11 p.m. Eastern

Originally Posted by Observer

WWE really wanted Will Ospreay for the cruiserweight tournament. He signed a two-year contract with New Japan, so it didn’t happen. There was actually talk in recent weeks of WWE trying to still get him even with knowledge he was under contract, perhaps even trying to work through New Japan

Originally Posted by Smelly Meatball (Post 4823137)

Originally Posted by PWI

TNA star Rockstar Spud had several teeth kicked out by an errant kick during a match at tonight's TNA Impact Wrestling taping.

Spud wrote on Twitter:

Had my teeth kicked in tonight....Great ????
Thanks to the great doctors backstage in Orlando
— Rockstar Spud (@RockstarSpud) June 16, 2016

Originally Posted by Observer

Evolve has announced an 8/20 show in Brooklyn at Saint Finbar's Roman Catholic Church, which will be hours before the NXT show that night at the Barclays Center.

Originally Posted by Observer

The WWE held a press event in Shanghai earlier today with Michelle Wilson, John Cena, Jay Li (Vice President and General Manager of WWE's Shanghai office), Paul Levesque, as well as PPTV's Stephen Zhang and Shanghai Expo's Ding Hao present.

Up to this point, WWE had just a one hour edited version of Raw as its only television available in much of the country. The shows will air in Mandarin, and WWE will also debut a Mandarin language website.

PPTV and PPTV Sports will stream the shows on Smart TVs, set-top boxes, mobile devices, and tablets, as well as their websites. There will also be specialized Chinese programming on those services.

On the in-ring side, Bin Wang is now under a developmental deal, the first wrestler of Chinese ancestry to be with the promotion. Often known as Wang Bin, he has been a regular undercard wrestler for Antonio Inoki's IGF promotion in Japan. The Inoki group first reported on his signing with WWE Wednesday night and wished him well. He starts this weekend with the promotion.

In conjunction with the news, WWE has reached a deal with Expo Group as live promoters, and announced a 9/10 live event at the Mercedes Benz Arena in Shanghai.

Originally Posted by PWI

ROH announced today that ACH would make his debut in Japan for Pro Wrestling NOAH as part of the promotion's Junior Heavyweight tag team tournament, teaming with Taiji Ishimori. The tournament kicks off on 7/10.

Originally Posted by PWI

Gilberto Melendez, known to professional wrestling fans under a multitude of names but most notably as Gypsy Joe passed away at the age of 82 years old last night after a storied career that saw him appear everywhere from the WWWF to Ring of Honor to Japan to CZW and beyond.

Joe had one of the longest careers in the business, breaking into wrestling in the early 1950 and wrestling well into the 2000s, only retiring after a portion of his foot was amputated. He last wrestled in 2010, facing Yoshihiro Tajiri in Japan for Tajiri's SMASH promotio

Originally Posted by Observer

There could be a lot of newsworthy events either on Money in the Bank or in the next few weeks since The Wyatt Family, Neville and Randy Orton are all scheduled to return over the next several weeks. Finn Balor has been talked about as well, but that could also be delayed for the draft, when it’s expected that a lot of the NXT stars will start appearing. The ticket sales have picked up in the last week and they are expecting a sellout with a 13,000-seat configuration at the new T Mobile Arena, the same site as UFC 200 and 202.

Originally Posted by Observer

Lesnar is one of the company’s two biggest stars and his entire aura is based on being legit. To risk him in an unscripted fight is one thing. No doubt UFC is paying millions for it, and maybe the money UFC is paying WWE is worth the risk. But in doing so, WWE is admitting that they are the secondary company, in the sense they’d allow someone to use their top guy to get their own product over. It’s not Ronda Rousey being linked in an angle with The Rock and being put over strong, which only helped her, as Rousey’s next PPV main did 300,000 more buys. That’s not saying it was because of Mania or The Rock, but it surely helped her with a new fan base. This is Rousey being brought in and UFC agreeing to let her lose to Stephanie McMahon.

Originally Posted by 411Mania

According to The Wrestling Observer Newsletter, Big Damo, Noam Dar, Moose and Tommy End are all expected to be part of the September class at the WWE Performance Center if they pass their medicals. WWE is getting aggressive in looking to sign more talent, due to the upcoming brand split and the feeling that so many of the NXT performers are going to be moved up soon. Right now they want experienced wrestlers who they can use on tours as opposed getting athletes and teach them to be pro wrestlers from scratch.

Originally Posted by Observer

The Steiner Brothers’ new Shoney’s restaurant in Acworth, GA, opened in April. Scott Steiner did an interview with Franchise Times and said the goal is to open more restaurants including near the new Atlanta stadium

Originally Posted by Observer

Damien Sandow is going back to his old ring name of Aaron Stevens on the indies. He used the name Aaron Stevens prior to WWE and after WWE, while Sandow is a name that he only used in WWE. He’s also done the stunt double act on the indies

Originally Posted by Observer

David Otunga, who has been working on the Raw pre-show, will be doing commentary with Tom Phillips on Main Event and Superstars going forward

Originally Posted by Observer

Cena appeared on the NBC show “Maya and Marty” on 6/14. He’s been getting a lot of bookings on NBC shows as it appears the network is looking at building him as a mainstream personality. He’s done well with frequent guest hosting segments on The Today Show

Originally Posted by Smelly Meatball (Post 4823729)

Originally Posted by Observer

Raw for May averaged a 2.27 rating and 3.26 million viewers. That’s down from a 2.66 rating and 3.69 million viewers last year, or a 10.9 percent ratings decline and an 11.7 percent viewer decline. The 2014 numbers were 2.81 and 3.91 million and 2013 was a 2.89 rating and 4.04 million viewers.

Originally Posted by PWI

According to WWE.com, the Dolph Ziggler vs. Baron Corbin and Sheamus vs. Apollo Crews matches will now be on the main card of Money in the Bank.

Originally Posted by PWI

Officially added to the WWE Money in the Bank PPV Kickoff Show this Sunday:

*Tyler Breeze & Fandango vs. Goldust & R-Truth.

*The Lucha Dragons vs. The Dudley Boyz.

Originally Posted by PWI

The 6/16 edition of Smackdown did 2,073,000 viewers, up from last week's low of 1,996,000 viewers.

Originally Posted by PWI

TNA announced on their twitter that they have re-signed Abyss, Rosemary, Zema Ion and Al Snow.

Proud to announce @TherealAbyss @TNA_Rosemary @ZemaTNA @TheRealAlSnow have Re-Signed with IMPACT pic.twitter.com/w7tW9g0Onp
— TNA WRESTLING (@IMPACTWRESTLING) June 17, 2016

Originally Posted by PWI

The 6/15 replay of TNA Impact Wrestling garnered 117,000 viewers after being added to the cable network as a result of the technical issues the night before.

The 6/14 edition of Impact, which ended up airing at 10:50 PM due to weather issues preventing the "live" episode from being sent out via satellite from Pop's master control in Atlanta GA brought in 210,000 viewers.

So, the total viewership was 327,000 viewers, which added up, means Impact was up a tiny amount from 326,000 viewers the previous week.

Originally Posted by PWI

For those of you that could not watch this week’s Impact Wrestling because of broadcast issues with Pop TV this past Tuesday and you missed the replay on Wednesday, Pop TV has posted the episode online for a limited time.

Originally Posted by WWEDVDNetwork.com

Stephanie McMahon - From growing up a McMahon to ultimately becoming chief brand officer in WWE, Stephanie McMahon's story is one of female empowerment in a predominately male oriented business. Stephanie worked through different departments at WWE including the creative team and became one of the most captivating on-screen characters in WWE history.

Hardy Boyz (Match Compilation) - The Hardy Boyz, Matt and Jeff, were born to wrestle, starting in their early days jumping on a trampoline to ultimately rising through the ranks of WWE. Matt and Jeff are the perfect combination of high flying and ground attack that dazzled the WWE Universe. Their matches were legendary, now you get a chance to own them.

The Kevin Owens Experience - Now's your chance to follow Kevin Owens around in his daily routine to find out what makes the "Prizefighter" tick. Listen as he recalls honing his craft on the independents before coming to WWE.

Best of 1997: 20th Anniversary - A look back at the year 1997. It was the rise of Stone Cold Steve Austin, the birth of DX, the summer of the Hart Foundation and the debut of Kane. And who could forget the infamous Montreal Screwjob?

Shane McMahon Biography - Shane McMahon, the fourth generation of the legendary McMahon family, sits down for the first time ever to tell his story.

Roman Reigns - Roman Reigns has burst on the scene to become one of the biggest Superstars to date, but it's no surprise that his historical lineage has set him up for greatness.

Cruiserweight Championship: 20 Years Later - A match compilation looking back at the legacy of the Cruiserweight Championship and its roots in WCW, creating the likes of Chris Jericho, Eddie Guerrero, Rey Mystery and Dean Malenko.

The Rise of NXT / OVW - In recent years NXT has emerged as an incredible box office draw for WWE with sold out live events and Network specials. Watch WWE's "developmental" system churn out future Hall of Fame Superstars like John Cena, Randy Orton, Brock Lesnar, Batista, Kevin Owens, Charlotte and more.

Masters of the Mic - Countdown of the top 25 talkers in WWE history – Stone Cold, Dusty Rhodes, Chris Jericho, The Rock, Mick Foley, Paul Heyman – they're all here!

Goldberg - Who's next? "The Man" sit down with WWE to break his silence. A compilation of all-new interviews and career-spanning matches.

Originally Posted by Smelly Meatball (Post 4825635)

Paige ended up being involved in an incident yesterday that ended up with police being needed and her being sent to a hospital.


http://www.prowrestlingsheet.com/pai...al-evaluation/

Originally Posted by Corkscrewed (Post 4826295)

HHH.


...in bed.

Originally Posted by Observer

The hot Raw show and the match to determine the top contender in the third hour proved that if the show is good and has a strong main event, the audience will largely stick with it.

Raw did its best numbers since April 11, eight days after WrestleMania, doing 3.47 million viewers, up from the seasonal lowest mark since 1997 of 2.96 million the week before, a 17 percent increase over the week.

Among the reasons for the increase was lack of television competition, with no major sports and nothing on network TV that did more than 7.1 million viewers. Raw had been hurt in recent weeks particularly by the NBA playoffs and to a lesser extent the NHL playoffs, and Dancing With the Stars. Raw ended up third for the night on cable behind Rizzoli & Isles and Major Crimes on TNT and second in the 18-49 demo behind Love & Hip Hop Atlanta.

The three hours were:

8 p.m. 3.42 million viewers
9 p.m. 3.56 million viewers
10 p.m. 3.42 million viewer

Originally Posted by Observer

The RAW replay on SyFy Friday night did 413,000 viewers, on par with what it’s been doing. As usual, it was the highest rated show for the night on that network.

Originally Posted by Observer

Jerry Lawler appeared on Cerrito live, a sports talk show in Memphis, and said that because of who he was, he was actually never placed in a jail cell. He said he hung around with the jail staff during his mandatory cooling off period. He said he hung around with the police and it felt like he was watching a live 12 hour police movie. He said he considers what happened late Thursday night/Friday morning a private matter but his fiance called 911 and then hung up, so the police came. He said nobody had any physical marks and reiterated that she was trying to leave and he thought she had too much to drunk and shouldn't be driving. She said it was a shouting match and a lot of what was claimed to have been said actually wasn't said such as him telling her to shoot herself. He claimed she said things that were never said to the police.

Originally Posted by Observer

The 32 competitors in the cruiserweight tournament as well as some alternates are in Orlando right now. They are shooting personality profiles and undergoing complete physicals. The first round will be shot on Thursday and air over a number of weeks in July, with it being a weekly one hour show on the WWE Network, airing on Wednesday nights after NXT.

Originally Posted by Observer

Former WCW & WWE star Marc Mero underwent heart surgery last week in Cleveland to have his aorta replaced and install a heart valve. Best of luck to him in his recovery.

Originally Posted by PWI

Cody Rhodes will get to cross another name off his list as he'll face Jushin Liger for the first time for Northeast Wrestling on 8/28 in Bethany, CT. For ticket information, visit www.NortheastWrestling.com.

Originally Posted by PWI

WWE Chief Strategy & Financial Officer George Barrios gave a presentation on the company earlier today at the Bernstein Global Future of Media & Telecom Summit in Boston, MA. The most newsworthy piece of information passed on was when the company's current major television deals are currently set to expire.

The NBC Universal deal is currently set to expire the third quarter of 2019 while the company's TV deals in Great Britain and India are slated to expire in the fourth quarter of that year.

Originally Posted by PWI

TNA today announced the signing of Chelsea Green, who was trained by Lance Storm and appeared in the 2015 season of WWE Tough Enough.

Originally Posted by Smelly Meatball (Post 4826335)

Originally Posted by Cool King (Post 4823587)

Originally Posted by Observer

WWE has not officially released any information about the Roman Reigns suspension past that there was a violation, the first for Anoa’i, and that he is suspended for a 30 day period from 6/21 to 7/20. The WWE policy is that all violations are made public, but that the substance involved or nature of the violation is kept confidential. Sources with knowledge of the situation noted to us that this was a recent violation. WWE has at times gotten positive test results and waited months at times to announce and suspend the particulars. Sometimes it has to do with investigating and allowing the talent the chance to explain their actions. Sometimes it has to do with certain timing issues. It is not against company policy, and has been done regularly when key talent violates the policy, to tie up storylines before announcing and starting suspensions.

Originally Posted by Observer

There was a schedule floating around the Internet that listed dates for the rest of the year. What we do know is that every date and place listed on that schedule is accurate and confirmed aside from three shows. And those shows make sense given the statement Jerry Lawler made about brand exclusive PPV shows except four times a year ...

For the rest of the year, the schedule lists SummerSlam on 8/21 at the Barclays Center; a Smackdown exclusive Network special called Backlash on 9/11 from Richmond, VA which will not air on any regular PPV carriers ... What gives credence to this list is WWE just took out a trademark for Clash of the Champions, the 9/11 date being network exclusive means they couldn’t lock in the date due to timing with U.S. providers because of the late change (PPV providers want all materials to them at least 90 days before the show); plus the dates and sites for 8/21, 9/25, 10/30, 11/20 and 12/18 are all accurate.

Originally Posted by PWI

Former ROH champion Roderick Strong will be finishing up with ROH this weekend. His final scheduled appearance for the company will be at this Saturday's TV taping in North Carolina. Strong, 32, has held every ROH championship over the course of his run with the company and with the exception of The Briscoes, was the longest tenured talent in the company ... Strong was so loyal to ROH that when he was also working for TNA at the same time and was ordered by TNA to leave a ROH event to avoid a blizzard that was to hit NYC the night before a TNA PPV in Orlando in 2006, Strong still wrestled on the ROH event and arrived late due to the weather - leading to TNA suspending him and eventually playing a role in his departure from the company ...

ROH Tweeted out the following in regard to Strong's departure:

Goodbye for now @roderickstrong makes his final #ROH appearances this weekend in Concord, NC https://t.co/29yYXAINZ3 pic.twitter.com/J8eoQDIePT
— ROH Wrestling (@ringofhonor) June 22, 2016

It also appears that Quinn Ojinnaka aka Moose, 32, will be also finishing up this summer. We have heard from multiple sources that Moose has relayed he is finishing up with the company at the end of August. Moose, who was backstage at WWE NXT Takeover, is believed to be on the WWE radar.

Originally Posted by Observer

Starting Wednesday July 13, the WWE will debut its newest creation, the WWE Cruiserweight Classic. It will be only availalble on the WWE Network and will air every Wednesday at 9 P.M. Eastern. The show will last for 10 weeks, and will basically be a 32 man tournament, culminating on September 15. Daniel Bryan and Mauro Ranallo will be the announcers, so that's already a plus. Add to it some of the world's best high flyers in the business, and it's sure to be excellent.

Originally Posted by Observer

Also announced was a preview special -- CWC Bracketology -- for Wednesday, July 6th at 9 PM EST where we should get the actual tournament brackets and all 16 first round match matchups.

Originally Posted by PWI

The 6/21 edition of Impact did 304,000, down from the 327,000 that it did on the two airings last week.

Originally Posted by PWI

Seth Rollins has a small role in "Sharknado 4", keeping a tradition of using pro wrestlers that has seen Kurt Angle and Chris Jericho appear in previous installments of the film series. The new film will debut on 7/4 on Syfy. Rollins will also be seen in the forthcoming WWE Studios thriller "Temple."

Originally Posted by PWI

MMA writer Ariel Helwani noted today on his Twitter account that the current plan for the debut UFC fight for former WWE champion CM Punk would be this September at UFC 203 in Cleveland, Ohio. That makes sense to me as it will be a PPV event and it doesn't make much sense to me to debut Punk without trying to use his pro wrestling pedigree to sell PPV buys.

Punk is slated to fight Mickey Gall in his debut.

Helwani wrote the fight is, "Far from a done deal but that's the direction as of this AM. "

Originally Posted by PWI

TNA has officially announced that Trevor Lee and Rockstar Spud have re-signed with the company.

Originally Posted by PWI

David Angle, the older brother of former WWE and TNA champion Kurt Angle, plead guilty today to homicide charges in the death of his wife in September 2015. Angle will be sentenced this September, facing up to a decade of imprisonment.

Originally Posted by Observer

Lucha Underground on 6/15 did 89,000 viewers for the one-match show, which is well below the season average, although slightly up from the prior week. The replay at 9 p.m., which went head-to-head with the Impact replay, did 39,000 viewers, a number well below usual. The average viewer was 48 years old and the audience was 91 percent male.

Originally Posted by Observer

Prosecutors in Lehigh County have asked Judge Kelly Banach to force Jimmy Snuka to undergo mental health treatment after Banach ruled that Snuka was incompetent to stand trial in the death of mistress/girlfriend Nancy Argentino in 1983. On 6/1, after the ruling, Chief Deputy District Attorney Charles Gallagher has asked to have Snuka committed to a mental hospital, but Banach denied the request. On 6/20, Gallagher filed a motion asking that Snuka be compelled to be an outpatient and undergo mental health treatment for 60 days and then ascertain whether Snuka could stand trial. The judge will rule shortly on the motion

Originally Posted by Observer

Ray Leppan, the former Adam Rose, not going by the name Aldo Rose, got some bad pub this past week. He was marketing a T-shirt with his mug shot photo from his recent domestic abuse arrest. People began complaining marketing a mug shot photo from that arrest was bad taste, which it was. He ended up pulling the shirts, but then made another mistake of responding to the people criticizing him, saying it was his wife who came up with the idea

Originally Posted by Smelly Meatball (Post 4826614)

Originally Posted by PWI

Interesting to note that we've heard there's been communication over the last few days between WWE and Cody Rhodes, who just departed the company. From what we can ascertain, there's been discussion about the company signing him to some sort of deal similar to their Legends deal, which would allow the company to release merchandise, etc. using his likeness. It may be that they had Stardust, etc. material coming out from a third-party (a Mattel action figure, for example) and offered him a deal so legally, they can move forward with that. There's been no talk of Rhodes returning as a full-time performer as he's seeking to work specific, big matches on the independent level and we've heard he's already being represented in Hollywood for potential acting world.

Originally Posted by Observer

Amid speculation that many former WWE stars have been approached with returning to the company due to the upcoming brand split, the possibility that free agent Kurt Angle could be one of those talents got some fans excited.

Unfortunately for those fans, that will be an unrealized dream as WWE officials confirmed Thursday that Angle is not returning to the company.

The story started when Angle was on Mark Madden's Pittsburgh radio show on Monday and said that Paul Levesque had called him, but that no deal was in place. Although nobody officially said it, the story grew to a point where people said that a deal was done with a start date even listed.

Originally Posted by Observer

Styles is the other example. Two years ago, when TNA wanted to cut his salary significantly and he was looking out, WWE made him a joke of an offer and he ended up going to New Japan, which really made his career. He got enough buzz that WWE was willing to bring him back, and let him use his name, in January. But he was not planned whatsoever to be a main eventer. He was booked to be low on cards and perhaps work to middle. But the reaction at the Royal Rumble, and even more so at the house shows where he was getting either the first or second best reaction even with almost no WWE television, changed the perception of him and now he’s considered one of the company’s five top regular stars.

Originally Posted by Observer

Mustafa Ali is replacing Zumbi in the tournament WWE tournament. So the 32 competitors are Kota Ibushi, Zack Sabre Jr., Gran Metalik (Mascara Dorada), Brian Kendrick, Drew Gulak, Tyson Dux, Tajiri, Noam Dar, Da Mack, Clement Petiot, Fabian Aichner, Harv Sirha, Gurv Sihra, Rich Swann, Cedric Alexander, Mustafa Ali, Akira Tozawa, Johnny Gargano, Tommaso Ciampa, Jack Gallagher, Tony Nese, TJ Perkins, Ho Ho Lun, Anthony Bennett, Lince Dorado, Sean Maluta, Raul Mendoza, Kenneth Johnson, Alejandro Aaez, Damien Salter, Jason Lee and Arya Daiavari.

Originally Posted by Observer

Dwayne Johnson was on the UFC Unfiltered podcast and said that in 2004, he was considering going to UFC as a fighter. "There was a time there where I thought, I achieved everything I wanted to achieve in WWE, my movie career is floundering a little bit, what should I do? I was still relatively young, I think I was 34. I thought, oh well, maybe UFC. Maybe I should do something like that." He said he thought it would take two years to be ready, and he wasn't sure how to approach it so the idea fizzled out. He also said he thinks MMA is the toughest sport in the world. Just for the math, Johnson was 31 and turned 32 in 2004.

Originally Posted by PWI

Candice LaRae will make her ROH debut at the 7/8 Women of Honor taping in Baltimore, which will be free for anyone who has a ticket to that evening's ROH TV taping.

Originally Posted by PWI

It was announced today, obviously timed for the International Licensing Expo in Las Vegas, that WWE has signed a deal with Lootcrate that will see the company create a bi-monthly subscription mystery box service. Loot Crate were the originators in the concept, which sees those enrolled receive a themed mystery box of items that range from exclusive shirts and action figures to smaller paraphanelia, such as pins and patches.

Originally Posted by PWI

The NWA announced the following:

NWAOnDemand.com Releases More Historical Footage!

Quickly becoming the source for vintage historic matches, NWAOnDemand.com has done it again releasing footage of what is believed to be the only DUSTY RHODES - BRUISER BRODY singles match in existence!

The footage from Houston consists of 17-plus minutes of amazing action from August 11, 1978. This is what the independent wrestling experts had to say:

" This is . . . the only singles match between these 2 ever to make tape. 1978 Dusty is loaded with charisma and is in pretty good shape. He even throws an awesome drop kick in this. I enjoyed early in the match Brody's stooging. Dusty's charisma carried this. Their were moments where Brody would turn it on and came across as a force of nature . . . this is a true treasure and a piece of history."

Originally Posted by PWI

Former WWE champion CM Punk announced on the UFC Unfiltered Podcast that he would be finally making his UFC debut on 9/10 in Cleveland, Ohio at the UFC 203 PPV:

BREAKING: @CMPunk announces on #UFCUnfiltered he'll debut vs @MickeyGall at #UFC203!!!! ?? https://t.co/kQZBxHzDcK pic.twitter.com/3jDGUruLVO
— UFC (@ufc) June 23, 2016

In an interesting twist of fate, Punk will be fighting at the Quicken Loans Arena, literally the same Arena he famously told Vince McMahon and Triple H he was leaving WWE, walking out of a Raw taping in January 2014.

Originally Posted by Observer

The announcement of the G-1 participants, blocks and matches will be 6/27, at the Korakuen Hall show which airs live on New Japan World. This will be key, because it’ll show who they are looking at putting in the major arena main events, who the newcomers will be, and also the status of Tanahashi, who is not on the next group of shows through 7/3.

Originally Posted by Observer

The original plan for this year’s Money in the Bank match was for Kalisto to be the seventh person when they were going to do seven. Kalisto ended up legit injured so he was pulled from the match and it was made six. He ended up recovering in time that he actually was back in time to have been promoted to be on the show, and ended up in the pre-show match. But the decision was made by that point they’d already focused everything around the six and decided not to put him in. Plus, the feeling was that he’d cooled off quite a bit of late

Originally Posted by Observer

With the WWE brand split imminent, there has been talk of doing individual Raw and Smackdown Pay Per Views/WWE Network Special Events similar to what they did during the last time they split brands. Until now, that was purely speculation. The PPV schedule that has been going around is legit. So there are apparently nine more PPV/WWE Network Special Events remaining in 2016. Battleground, SummerSlam, and Survivor Series will remain dual branded.

Originally Posted by Observer

Raw is Monday night in Tampa and is the only show of the week with John Cena scheduled.

Smackdown will be taped on Tuesday night in Tampa, with a skeleton crew because a number of wrestlers are laving after Raw for Honolulu.

There will be a tour of Japan and Hawaii that starts Wednesday night in Honolulu (Dean Ambrose, Seth Rollins, Usos, Luke Gallows, Karl Anderson, Shinsuke Nakamura, Asuka, A.J. Styles, Chris Jericho).

Originally Posted by Observer

Shinsuke Nakamura & Finn Balor team up against Samoa Joe & Austin Aries on Sunday's WWE house show in Orlando. This will be Nakamura, Joe & Aries' main roster debuts. Balor has done main roster shows in the past. Nakamura will also be working main roster shows in Honolulu and Tokyo this next week. Asuka's main roster debut will be on Wednesday night in Honolulu.

Originally Posted by Observer

WWE is taping NXT tonight at Full Sail University which includes Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Finn Balor. Lots of last minute changes based on who is and isn't getting called up. If key people lose unexpectedly, that may be a hint.

Originally Posted by Observer

During an appearance with Hannah Storm on ESPN SportsCenter Thursday, UFC strawweight and Dancing With The Stars runner-up Paige VanZant alluded to the fact she's not going to be appearing at WWE SummerSlam this year.

She said that she loves WWE and would love to work with them, but that she's focused on her training for a fight that she announced during the interview. The 22-year-old also said that she declined to be in the Kickboxer reboot because filming would have got in the way of training.

Originally Posted by PWI

The 6/23 edition of Smackdown did 2,145,000 viewers, up from last week's 2,073,000 viewers.

Originally Posted by Observer

The Fight Network in Canada announced another new wrestling show, WrestleCentre, which will air at 2 a.m. on Wednesdays after the Tuesday night block of Impact, TNA’s Greatest Matches, and ROH. There will be a special 90 minute debut show on 7/14 before the 7/19/20 weekly show debut. WrestleCentre is based in Halifax.

Originally Posted by Kurt Angle's Facebook page

In response to some of your questions today regarding the WWE, and all of the media fanfare about it the last few days, I want to, once again, say that our confidential conversation never discussed the brand split. A few wrestling sites seem to have put a spin on this by twisting some words around to fit their agenda, something that I have no control over. What I CAN control is my own life, and my life isn't only wrestling. I do not expect to be in wrestling much longer. I AM excited about my future. Thank you.

Originally Posted by Observer

After last week's current day strong RAW number following the surprising Dean Ambrose WWE title win, ratings came down for the Monday, June 27th edition of the show on a night without strong television competition.

Raw did 3.09 million viewers, the lowest number on a night without major team sports competition since 1997 . That's the second lowest numbers outside of football season or major holidays, beating only the 2.96 million viewers drawn two weeks ago against game five of the NBA playoffs ...

Viewership dropped 11 percent from last week, showing the big gain caused by the post-Money in the Bank buzz didn't sustain ...

The three hours were:

8 p.m. 3.10 million viewers
9 p.m. 3.17 million viewers
10 p.m. 3.01 million viewers

Originally Posted by Observer

As noted before, on Smackdown, they continued to promote the three-way with Dean Ambrose vs. Roman Reigns vs. Seth Rollins for Battleground on 7/24, with no mention being made of Reigns not being on the show or not being around. Shaun Smith noted that on the WWE page on the Sky Sports website where they always report on WWE news, whether it be storyline or real, such as the Adam Rose suspension being reported, there is not a mention at all of the Roman Reigns suspension, and the main news item talks about the three-way match.

Originally Posted by Observer

Shinsuke Nakamura will now face Chris Jericho on Friday’s WWE house show at Sumo Hall in Japan after Bray Wyatt was removed from the tour. Ironically enough, the Japanese commercial for the tour features all sorts of WWE stars except Nakamura or Asuka. Both are on the tour in their home country.

Originally Posted by Observer

ESPN has a story from the Associated Press plugging Brock Lesnar being on the cover of the WWE 2K17 video game. The article also mentions his upcoming UFC fight but notes, “Win or lose inside the octagon, Lesnar will still appear for WWE in August at SummerSlam.”

Originally Posted by Observer

The names announced for the two jobbers on Raw last night that lost to Enzo and Big Cass were apparently a reference to baseball players that are prospects for the Philadelphia Phillies.

Originally Posted by Observer

The RAW replay on Friday did 473,000 viewers, up slightly from previous weeks.

Originally Posted by Observer

Though it had been known for some time, Pro Wrestling Guerilla officially announced Cody Rhodes as the first entrant in their annual Battle of Los Angeles tournament. He is joined by NJPW’s Kamaitachi, Jeff Cobb (Lucha Underground’s Matanza Cueto) and rising European star Mark Haskins as the first announced participants. The tournament will take place on September 2-4.

Originally Posted by Cagesideseats.com

To facilitate that, WWE held a conference call with Heyman recently. He was asked about a wide range of topics, but as it is with most WWE chatter these days, the brand split was front and center.

Given his history as a writer and authority figure on the SmackDown, he was asked about assuming the General Manager role or even rejoining the Creative team.

Doesn’t sound like he’s interested in either role, to say the least:

Oh I certainly hope not. General Manager is a role I had a blast with, but I would prefer to stay in the role that I have had for the past four years, which is to serve as the advocate for Brock Lesnar.

I don't think I'm in the consideration to be even close to the writing staff in today's WWE corporate environment. Nor have I requested to be on the writing staff in today's WWE environment. I have a primo gig: I serve as the advocate for Brock Lesnar and I happen to be able to do that on television as well, and I think WWE is best served with me in that role. The job of a writer in WWE is a very demanding job, I don't think it's for a father of two children who are just getting into their teenage years. It is a young man's job: 24/7, 365 commitment for as long as you can continue to match the work ethic of the chairman and that's a daunting task to begin with.

Originally Posted by Observer

The return of an ace and the debut of several key talents were the most notable takeaways from Monday morning’s announcement of the participants in New Japan Pro Wrestling’s 26th annual G1 Climax tournament, made during the promotion's Kizuna Road show ...

Kenny Omega headlines the six participants making their first G1 appearance in this year’s tournament. He is joined by Tama Tonga, Yoshi-Hashi, Seiya Sanada, Evil, and Pro Wrestling NOAH’s Katsuhiko Nakajima. Nakajima and NOAH stalwart Naomichi Marufuji are the only outsiders among the field.

- A Block: Togi Makabe, Satoshi Kojima, Tomohiro Ishii, Hirooki Goto, Bad Luck Fale, Tama Tonga, Seiya Sanada, Naomichi Marufuji, Kazuchika Okada, Hiroshi Tanahashi

- B Block: Katsuyori Shibata, Yuji Nagata, Tomoaki Honma, Michael Elgin, Toru Yano, Tetsuya Naito, Evil, Kenny Omega, Yoshi-Hashi, Katsuhiko Nakajima

Originally Posted by Observer

The reason Zumbi wasn't in the WWE cruiserweight tournament and instead did the Elite tournament is that WWE didn't get his visa issues done in time. Paul Levesque talked that they would like to give him another shot, and also talked of the cruiserweight classic as being an idea they can repeat.

Originally Posted by Observer

A match that seemed improbable a month ago was announced Sunday morning as Revolution Pro Wrestling has booked Vader vs. Will Ospreay for their Friday, Aug. 12 show at York Hall in London, England.

The match became increasingly inevitable as the two built interest for it with a social media feud, based on one of the most famous matches of 2016: Ospreay vs. Ricochet from New Japan Pro Wrestling's Best of the Super Juniors show on May 27th.

Originally Posted by PWI

WWE star Ryback, who's deal is slated to expire in a few weeks, noted on Twitter he was undergoing surgery yesterday:

Ear, nose and throat surgery today. I have put off some serious stuff the last 11 years and it will be nice hearing and breathing normal.
— The Big Guy (@Ryback22) June 27, 2016

WWE sources indicate there has been no communication between WWE and Ryback since the former WWE Intercontinental champion and the company hit a snag in their contract negotiations. It would appear that Ryback will be hitting the independents soon and we have also heard he is working on a supplements line.

Originally Posted by SEScoops.com

During WWE’s recent promotional trip to China, John Cena spoke to Inquirer.net about the company’s bright future and which Superstar he wants to work with in this next phase of his career.

Cena has been the face of WWE for well over a decade, which means he’s seen a lot of talent come and go. Cena feels that WWE’s current roster is stacked with more talent than ever and sees a few performers in particular who have what it takes to make an impact with the audience.

“I look at Enzo Amore and Big Cass only because they are so immediately identifiable as characters,” Cena said. “It kind of reminds me when I was doing hip-hop piece of my persona. I like that because Enzo is not necessarily a typical mold of, ‘Hey, this is going to be awesome.’ But even back in his early days in NXT, he caught my attention.”

... As for which WWE Superstars he wants to work with, Cena named his heir apparent, Roman Reigns.

“I know that I always kind of test myself, whether it’s new superstars or established superstars, and I know Roman Reigns has carved up quite a niche for himself and he has all the attributes to be a successful WWE superstar for some time to come,” he said. “I’ve heard he’s good. I’d like to find out how good he is.”

Originally Posted by Observer

Pro Wrestling Guerrilla announced Dalton Castle, Pete Dunne, Sami Callihan, Tommy End, Trevor Lee, Adam Cole, John Hennigan (Lucha Underground’s Johnny Mundo and the former John Morrison) and Jack Gallagher as the next entrants in their 2016 Battle of Los Angeles tournament.

Originally Posted by Observer

Evolve will hold WWE Cruiserweight Classic Spotlight Matches at their events this summer. Announced matches are: Johnny Gargano vs. Cedric Alexander and Zack Sabre Jr. vs. TJ Perkins at Evolve 64 on July 16th in Queens, NY. Tommaso Ciampa vs. Cedric Alexander at Evolve 65 on July 17th in Melrose, MA. Drew Gulak vs. Tony Nese and TJ Perkins vs. Cedric Alexander at Evolve 66 on August 19th in Joppa, MD. And Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Cedric Alexander at Evolve 67 on August 20th in Brooklyn, NY.

Originally Posted by PWI

The 6/28 edition of Impact did 322,000 viewers, up from last week's 304,000.

Originally Posted by PWI

Brock Lesnar's UFC competition at UFC 200, Mark Hunt, was interviewed by the UFC website about their fight. On being booked against Brock, he commented, "I was trying to get to a title shot, I’m trying to get a top five guy now and make my run for this title. I’m only doing what I’m told, the boss is saying you’ve gotta fight Lesnar I said, “Okay cool, that’s fine.’ It’s not my call then. It’s a fight and his comeback so I’ll send him back to pro wrestling.” He noted one of his nephews is split over who he wants to win because he's a fan of Brock in WWE, to which Hunt told him that it he wants to go to Disneyland, he had better hope Hunt wins.

Originally Posted by PWI

The New York Daily News picked up a story on Jimmy Snuka being booked to sign at Wrestlecon next year over Wrestlemania 33 weekend in Orlando, Florida. Snuka is now staying in Florida, so if that remains the case by then, the show is local to him. I believe he is being brought in by a vendor, not the event itself.

Originally Posted by PWI

Randy Savage will become the first person inducted into the Ilio DiPaolo Legends of the Aud Hall of Fame in Buffalo, NY on 7/23 with his brother, Lanny Poffo on hand to accept the honor. The induction will be part of a 20th anniversary show celebrating the original "Wrestling Legends of the Aud" in 1996, which featured a ton of WCW names of the era and wrestling legends, helping to raise over $100,000 for Children's Hospital and the DiPaolo Scholarship Fund as well as pay tribute to the late Ilio Dipalo.

Originally Posted by PWI

Jeff Jarrett was in Los Angeles earlier this week for TV meetings regarding Global Force Wrestling.

Originally Posted by PWI

The WWE Network has removed the Tribute To the Troops section. Certain Tribute to the Troops episodes have been added to the Raw and Smackdown replay sections with the recent years of the holiday special are nowhere to be found.

Originally Posted by Smelly Meatball (Post 4828680)

In a "WWE Did You Know" type fact, Seth Rollin's 2nd WWE title reign is currently considered the shortest ever in WWE history according to the WWE's official record books. Bryan's WWE reign that lead to Orton's cash-in was the previous record at 4 minutes.

Originally Posted by Cool King (Post 4828744)

Originally Posted by Observer

WWE is aggressively scouting indies right now. The key thing they are looking for is people who they consider coachable. That’s the current key phrase. I guess that means athletic people who are good listeners. They are also going to be very strict when it comes to background checks. Prospective WWE talent should sure to clean out social media accounts of anything that could be embarrassing

They are also specifically targeting talent from Lucha Underground that can contractually leave.

Originally Posted by Observer

The Balor Club idea seems to have been dropped with Balor’s impending move to the main roster. WWE had applied for a Balor Club trademark, which would be a group with Balor, Anderson and Gallows, playing off Bullet Club. Instead, it looks like they are just going to be The Club. The WWE dropped an attempt to register Balor Club for marketing purposes on 6/22. Evidently Baylor University had opposed the name. As noted before, they had also attempted to register Legion of Doom to be the name for an NXT group with Paul Ellering, Gzim Selmani and Sunny Dhinsa. They also dropped that and are staying with Authors of Pain

Originally Posted by Observer

The update on Orton is that he’s about a month or so away from training for a return. The original time line was that he was going to be in Orlando in mid-June, train a few weeks and be ready right about now. His shoulder is still not 100% although it is improving. This was the third operation on the same shoulder and they did an extensive surgery with the hope it will fix the problem so it wasn’t as simple a recovery as in previous operations. There is still a neck issue but the doctors told him a few months ago he doesn’t need the neck surgery right now

Originally Posted by Observer

UFC had a conference call today for UFC 200. Even though both Jon Jones and Daniel Cormier were there, Brock Lesnar was the guy who got asked the most questions. When asked about Stephanie McMahon's comments on WWE not supporting his fight necessarily, he said, "I don't care what she says." When he was asked what affect it would have on his drawing power if he lost, he said, "I really don't give a shit."

"This isn't about my fans. This is about me living my life, being the person I want to be. Granted, without the fans and everything, none of us would be able to do this. I get that. But I don't sit up at night wondering, `Is my drawing power gonna be hurt' or 'Are my WWE fans gonna tune in and watch me do this.' I don't give two shits about that. This is about me. I want to get in there and be an athlete again. That's what this is about."

Originally Posted by Observer

New names announced for Battle of Los Angeles are Ricochet, Matt Riddle, Chris Hero and Mark Andrews.

Originally Posted by Observer

Chris Jericho talks about the Jericho Network, which debuts on 7/7 on PodcastOne. Konnan will have a regular show and the plans are 10-12 shows per month. His goal is to have six strong shows and six shows that will be given a chance to make it. He said it won't affect his show and he's not going to be a guest on the other shows. Konnan will be a regular as noted yesterday.

Originally Posted by PWI

Jim Cornette went absolutely off on Vince Russo revealing that he contacted Pop TV President Brad Schwartz offering his services as a consultant to explain why TNA isn't getting the ratings that Schwartz had been "sold on" as well as having previously contacting Destination America with a similar offer. Cornette's rant closes out his "Jim Cornette Experience" podcast episode at www.MLW.com and is 40 minutes of never-ending bile and venom the likes of which has rarely been seen on Planet Earth, closing with Cornette announcing he has pulled out of a Wrestlecade appearance this November in North Carolina because Russo is also booked on the event, warning Russo that he did so because he never wants to be in the same place as Russo ever again and next time, Russo had better be the one to pull off an event because if not, well, you can imagine what might happen (and if you can't, well, Cornette explicitly lays it out).

Originally Posted by PWI

Ring of Honor announced that CMLL star Struka Jr., who has also worked for New Japan Pro Wrestling in the past, will debut at their 7/16 event at the 2300 Arena in Philadelphia, PA, facing Kaimatachi. They've wrestled in Mexico in the past. ROH has been working to build a relationship with CMLL similar to the one they currently have with NJPW and this is the first step in that direction.

There had also been discussions of bringing in Dragon Lee for the Philadelphia card, but injuries will prevent that.

Originally Posted by PWI

WWE Network News has revealed three collections that will be added to the WWE Network on Friday . One will be The Classic Content Collection for the month which will feature all the recent Nitro episodes. Another is a collection of the "Colorful Characters" in professional wrestling. And there will be a collection "The Cruiserweight Anthology" surrounding The Cruiserweight division.

Originally Posted by Observer

Jimmy Snuka was booked for the WrestleCon convention in conjunction with WrestleMania in Orlando. Don’t know if words have been invented to properly categorize that. What are they thinking booking a guy who has been indicted on a murder charge and isn’t standing trial only because of the belief he is not mentally capable? The Lehigh Valley Prosecution office is looking into this.

Originally Posted by Observer

Jim Myers, 79, better known as George “The Animal” Steele, is scheduled for major kidney surgery on 6/29. He has started this surgery twice and they stopped. On 12/15, he was scheduled for the surgery to clean out his kidneys, but he flatlined while in surgery, so they dropped the operation and were able to bring him back. On 5/26, essentially the same thing happened. He didn’t flatline, but while doing surgery, it became clear if they continued he wouldn’t survive so they stopped and closed him up. He was essentially told if the same thing happened a third time, it would not be good

Originally Posted by Smelly Meatball (Post 4828939)

This was the link I was going by when reading about the possible "WWE Did You Know" type fact: https://www.reddit.com/r/SquaredCirc...n_reigns_seth/

The link the person from SquaredCircle used as the basis for their claim: http://www.wwe.com/classics/titlehis...e-championship

Either the WWE hasn't updated one of their sites or another case of the WWE forgetting their own narrative for a story assuming the idea is Rollins being the new record holder.

Originally Posted by Smelly Meatball (Post 4828960)

Originally Posted by Smelly Meatball (Post 4828960)

Originally Posted by WrestleZone

Earlier today a report from The Wrestling Observer claimed WWE ordered Roman Reigns to apologize to the WWE locker room following news of his 30 day suspension for violating the company Wellness Policy.

According to two sources within WWE, one of them being a talent on the roster, the apology never took place, and the timeframe for when the apology could have happened doesn’t quite compute.

Both sources noted the WWE locker room was informed of Roman Reigns’ suspension on Tuesday, June 21st, when talents arrived for the Smackdown tapings, and no one was aware of it during or after Raw the previous night. Sources added Reigns simply packed his bags and left following the June 20th Raw taping, and if some type of speech or apology took place, it was not in front of the WWE locker room.

Originally Posted by Observer

Next week’s Raw, on 7/4 from Columbus, OH, due to the holiday, is expected to be the lowest rated Raw in the history of the show. The record low is a 1.8 rating. Shane McMahon is expected to be back and they are locally advertising Cena & Ambrose vs. Rollins & Styles as the main event. Rusev vs. O’Neil in a U.S. title match is scheduled. The last two times July 4th came on a Monday were in 2005 and 2011. In 2005, Raw fell from a 4.4 rating on 6/27 to a 2.6, a 41 percent drop. In 2011, Raw fell from a 3.1 rating to a 2.4, a 23 percent drop. So we’re starting at a 2.21. Given that we’re down to a far more hardcore audience, the drop may be only 20 percent which would be a record low 1.77 rating. But it easily could be the first episode in history to hit a 1.7. A 23 percent drop would be 1.70, so unless today’s audience is die-hards that don’t leave the house on July 4th, that’s the probable range because there are no Cena returns like on Memorial Day to pull out. No matter what the number is, it’s not all that significant in the sense you’d worry about it. Really this week’s number was more significant more because it’s at this level without sports competition so where will it fall to against the NFL

Originally Posted by Observer

Nothing was said to talent in specific about dates, but there was talk among the crew that Lucha Underground will start taping season four in January and wrestlers were given the impression there would be tapings in the winter. That gives them six months to sign needed deals and procure money to film another season. The show’s ratings in season two increased greatly from season one, but started falling off after the Aztec Warfare match. Still, the show makes no economic sense, often drawing less than 100,000 viewers and spending in excess of $400,000 per episode on production. The idea is to build up characters with the idea of making them big enough stars to do a movie and also merchandise it as a franchise, but they will never be strong enough to do that off El Rey. Overall viewership was way down in season two with the loss of UniMas, and they didn’t even have a Spanish language broadcast. The deals that were considered the key, a Spanish language deal with Univision in the U.S. and Televisa in Mexico both never happened.

Originally Posted by Observer

Mark Carrano called Cody Runnels for a legends deal. At this point no agreement has been reached but Runnels wasn’t happy because the conversation was supposed to be confidential, and the next thing you know, there were reports Rhodes had called WWE trying to return

Originally Posted by Observer

Starting on Wednesday, July 6th, wrestling icon Ric Flair will be returning to podcasting as part of the MLW Radio family.

His team reached a deal with the Court Bauer-run MLWRadio.com to launch "The Ric Flair Show", released every Wednesday on their website, iTunes, and Stitcher. In a sense, Flair will replace Konnan on MLW Radio as he had left for a slot on Podcast One's new Chris Jericho programmed 'network'.

Flair's previous show ("WOOOOOO! Nation" on CBS Radio's PlayIt) with host Conrad Thompson went on hiatus after Flair's contract expired and his side decided not to renew.

Originally Posted by Observer

Jerry Lawler's holiday weekend got off to a good start Friday as domestic assault charges against he and his fiancee were dismissed in a Memphis, TN, courtroom. Later on in the day, his suspension from WWE was lifted, effective immediately according to Pro Wrestling Sheet.

Originally Posted by Observer

Luke Fordward, the CMLL wrestler known as Thunder, passed away today.

Daniel Lopez, (Hall of Famer El Satanico), his trainer and the father of Fordward's girlfriend, had reported a few days ago that he was gravely ill and needed a miracle. It is believed that he passed away due to lung cancer.

Originally Posted by Observer

At a court hearing earlier this week, it was ruled that Armando Montalvo was competent to stand trial. Montalvo was the man shot in front of the WWE Performance Center in Orlando who had been harassing people at times and was all messed up in love with Lita at the time. His family stated he suffered from bipolar disorder and other mental illnesses. A pretrial hearing is set for 8/31.

Originally Posted by Observer

Adam Rose talks what went wrong with is character on the main roster on the Pancakes and Powerslam Radio show:

"I did a commercial, and once I did the commercial, I realized that we were going down the wrong path," said Rose. "I think on the main stage, it needed to be introduced as a heel, because it was so quirky and so different. I think if it was introduced as a heel, then people wouldn't have felt forced to love it, and then I felt that they would have naturally fell in love with certain parts of the quirkiness, and it would have naturally evolved to something or someone who people liked. I think that was a big mistake." Rose adds, "I think one of the hardest things to do in this industry is to get over as a babyface. Some people have a natural connection with the audience. [Someone] like Sami Zayn has a natural connection with the audience. I don't think Adam Rose had any with the audience because he was completely quirky and over-the-top and ridiculous. And I think that's why it would have been better introduced as a heel because your automatic reaction to seeing someone like that is not to like it."

At the conclusion of Adam Rose's WWE career, he was placed in a misfit group named the Social Outcasts, along with Curtis Axel, Bo Dallas, and Heath Slater. Rose admits that he had no idea about the group until he was given the idea only a few hours before the show started.

"We had no idea," said Rose. "I think we were told about 5 o'clock on a Monday night that we were now going to be a group. I think we were four guys who the company saw had something, but we were doing nothing. So I think the idea was like, okay, let's put them together collectively in a group, and these are guys who don't know each other really well. I think the awkwardness of it was actually one of the reasons [why it worked]. You get all these well-polished teams, and the idea was for the faction to not be well-polished, and the idea was for us not to get along, to almost be bumping heads and trying to one-up each other the whole time. I think the Social Outcasts has talented individuals in it. I don't think the Social Outcasts is going to be a deal loss; I think it is going to be, given the right structure, could take off. But, it's all a matter of where you put it.

Originally Posted by Observer

Roderick Strong is finishing up with PWG shortly as well as having left ROH, so that’s a WWE future. If he was with TNA, he’s still be working PWG. Plus, the whole Austin Aries story about how he’s changed minds about who can get over in WWE was related to Roderick Strong who people were closed-minded about for years in WWE the same way they had been regarding Aries

Originally Posted by Observer

There is a lot of unhappiness surrounding the 8/11 to 8/14 tapings date that is on the schedule although not announced. Abyss, Jade, Andrew Everett and Drew Galloway were all booked on a tour on the U.K. during that period. I think there may have been another person as well because five TNA talents were pulled from a series of events where they would have earned considerably more than at the tapings. But they all have deals where TNA tapings come first. The promoters were hoping something could be worked out but it didn’t happen

Not every contract signed of late has TNA in control of the talent’s bookings. The attempt has been made with the top guys that have been mentioned for that, but some talents have been given different deals. But that is the stip for the Hardys, Drew Galloway and Ethan Carter III, who have been offered new deals and at this point have not signed them

Originally Posted by Observer

The Raw rating will be in later than normal due to the holiday weekend, but given the poor reception to the food fight and the lackluster booking, it is expected that it will be the lowest rated Raw program of all time.

Originally Posted by PWI

Randy Orton is slated to go to the WWE Performance Center next week to work out in anticipation of being medically cleared for his return to the ring later this summer, PWInsider.com has learned.

Orton has been out of action since following a shoulder surgery in December 2015. He has been advertised for some WWE events in Texas this August.

Originally Posted by Observer

Cody Rhodes will now face Zack Sabre Jr. in his first match since leaving the WWE on August 19th at Evolve 66 in Joppa, MD after Johnny Gargano was removed from the show because of another commitment. Also announced was Rhodes vs. Chris Hero at Evolve 67 in Brooklyn, NY the next night.

Originally Posted by Observer

Cody Rhodes will be the first guest on Ric Flair’s new podcast this Wednesday. The show will be available on http://www.MLWRadio.com, iTunes, Stitcher and at RicFlairShow.com.

Originally Posted by Observer

New Japan announced that Mark & Jay Briscoe vs. Adam Page & Yujiro Takahashi for the IWGP tag title will be on the 8/14 Tokyo Sumo Hall show which is the same night as the G-1 finals. Jay Lethal will also be appearing at the end of the current tour. It's also official that Hiroyoshi Tenzan is replacing Satoshi Kojima in the G-1.

Originally Posted by PWI

*WWE World Heavyweight champion Dean Ambrose vs. Roman Reigns vs. Seth Rollins.

*John Cena & Enzo Amore & Colin Cassady vs. AJ Styles & Luke Gallows & Karl Anderson.

*Natalya vs. Becky Lynch.

Originally Posted by PWI

WWE have applied to trademark "WWE Story Time" as a television series title.

Originally Posted by Observer

While WWE set an all-time record low for Raw on Monday, the rating can't be viewed negatively given the number and the night.

The show averaged 2.66 million viewers, down only 14 percent from the near record low from the prior week. The past two times Raw has aired on July 4th (2011 and 2005), the ratings fell 23 percent and 41 percent respectively from the prior week ...

From the hourly breakdown, it appeared to be the most loyal/hardcore audience since there were no upswings or downswings from start-to-finish:

8 p.m. 2.66 million viewers
9 p.m. 2.67 million viewers
10 p.m. 2.64 million viewers

Originally Posted by PWI

Due to Nielsen being behind due to the Independence Day holiday, the cable ratings for Tuesday evening will not be released until Thursday morning, so we'll have to wait one more day to find out how the overnights were for The Final Deletion.

Originally Posted by Observer

It appears that Moose (real name Quinn Ojinnaka) may be on his way to a new home, but not the one many originally thought.

Major League Wrestling reported on their Twitter account Wednesday morning that the free agent had signed a multi-year agreement with TNA Wrestling -- a report Ojinnaka refuted, telling them he has an offer from the company but hasn't signed as of now ...

At one time it appeared that Ojinnaka was headed to the WWE and would start at the Performance Center in September, but Dave Meltzer reported in last week’s edition of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter that WWE backed off of signing the former football journeyman because of a 2009 domestic violence allegation that led to him being suspended from the NFL for one game ...

MLW also tweeted that Lucha Underground/AAA have not made an offer to Moose, but that TNA and ROH are still in play for his services.

Originally Posted by Observer

Boom! Studios will be releasing a WWE comic book and WWE graphic novels. So, if you can't get enough WWE with all of the new content the impending brand split is giving us, you can collect the comic books too.

Originally Posted by Observer

NEVER Openweight Champion Katsuyori Shibata will make his much-anticipated Ring of Honor debut at the promotion’s August 19th Death Before Dishonor pay-per-view. Also announced for the show were Los Ingobernable de Japon members Tetsuya Naito and Evil, and Bullet Club Members Tama Tonga, Tanga Loa and Yujiro Takahashi.

Originally Posted by ProWrestlingSheet

Mark Henry is NOT planning to leave WWE by the end of next month … Pro Wrestling Sheet has learned his upcoming indie appearance is a company-approved signing.

Henry is set to appear at Harley Race‘s WLW event titled “Night of Champions 2” and since the advertisement didn’t specify what he’d be doing, people were wondering if he’s on the way out.

A rep for WLW tells us “many people are getting the wrong idea” and he won’t be participating in any sort of wrestling capacity — it’s just a meet and greet/signing.

We’re also told WWE approved the appearance, which our sources within the company have verified.

Originally Posted by PWI

WWE have applied for two trademarks for "Intercontinental Champion", one for clothing and merchandise and another for toys and action figures.

WWE's newest hire, Charly Arnolt, will be called Charly Caruso in NXT. WWE.com posted a video of her getting ready for her first NXT Live Event.

Originally Posted by Observer

Impact Wrestling is again changing nights.

TNA president Dixie Carter announced on her Twitter account Thursday afternoon that the company’s flagship television show will move to Thursday nights on Pop TV starting on July 21st. Impact is also moving timeslots and will now air at 8 PM eastern ...

The move comes at a bad time for TNA after this Tuesday's episode, anchored by the spectactle that was the Final Deletion, led to Impact's highest rating in over a year.

Originally Posted by PWI

The move was obviously predicated on WWE and the USA Network moving Smackdown to Tuesdays live starting on Tuesday 7/19, a decision which would have put Impact Wrestling in the direct line of fire. When TNA attempted to place Impact against Raw on Mondays several years ago while on SpikeTV, the results were brutal for the TNA side.

The move is going to be marketed as Impact "returning home" since the series, for most of it's prime-time run, aired on Thursdays during it's SpikeTV era. The series moved to Wednesdays late in that run and was moved to Tuesdays on Pop with that strategy being employed partially so that TNA could benefit from the overall interest in pro wrestling early in the week with Sunday PPVs and WWE Raw on Mondays.

Originally Posted by Observer

The absurdity of "The Final Deletion" ultimately proved to be a success for TNA Wrestling.

According to ShowBuzzDaily, this week’s edition of Impact did 410,000 viewers on television, up from 322,000 viewers the previous week. It was the highest rated episode of Impact on Pop TV and the highest rated episode since May 2015.

Originally Posted by Observer

While the Smackdown show airing tonight in Canada made no mention of Brock Lesnar at all (after Raw had advertised Lesnar's opponent being announced on the show) Randy Orton was finally announced as Lesnar's SummerSlam opponent during the Aftermath show that airs on Canada's Sportsnet channel.

It is not clear if WWE failed to put the Lesnar announcement on the Canadian version of Smackdown show in fear it would break before airing in the U.S., or there was a change in plans.

Originally Posted by Observer

Nick Nemeth, better known as Dolph Ziggler, will be inducted into the Kent State University Varsity K Hall of Fame on 9/17 at 10 a.m. Nemeth was a three-time Mid-American conference champion in wrestling in 2001, 2002 and 2003 at 165 pounds.

Originally Posted by Observer

ROH has announced a return to England with shows on 11/18, 11/19 and 11/20. No other details have been announced.

Originally Posted by PWI

WWE.com announced their plans for the 2016 San Diego Comic Con, which takes place later this month.

On Thursday 7/21 at 1 PM, there will be a panel discussion moderated by Corey Graves with The New Day, AJ Styles and Becky Lynch joining Mattel execs in revealing new action figures and answering questions. The panel will be live streamed.

Mattel will be releasing an exclusive Dean Ambrose Mighty Minis action figure as well as an exclusive Elite Flashback Series action figure of The Shockmaster at the Mattel booth (#3029).

Originally Posted by PWI

Cody Rhodes was the guest on the debut edition of "The Ric Flair Show" on MLW Radio for the first part of a two-part interview.

During the interview, Cody stated that the reported "merchandising deal" between himself and WWE was related to a biography of his father, Rhodes. Cody stated that he was working on rights to be able to still write the book memorializing his father. Rhodes has been working on the project since his father's passing last summer.

Originally Posted by PWI

Brock Lesnar vs. Mark Hunt will now be headlining UFC 200 after UFC Interim Light Heavyweight Champion Jon Jones was been notified by the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) that he has potentially failed a pre-fight drug test and therefore has been pulled from UFC 200.

Lesnar is returning to the UFC Octagon with the blessing of WWE, but now finds himself in the position of being a main event player for UFC in his first fight in years.

Originally Posted by 411Mania

Owner Takaaki Kidani said in Weekly Pro Wrestling magazine that he’s happy with the alliance with ROH but they’d like to do a pure New Japan show in the U.S. in a 3,000 to 4,000 seat arena. They are very serious about this and there are specific plans as well as continuing to work with ROH.

Originally Posted by Observer

Roderick Strong comes in, it’s expected to be along the lines of Austin Aries or Johnny Gargano (he won’t have to train daily at the Performance Center kind of a deal). A funny story about the difference between guys like Aries, Gargano or Tommaso Ciampa is that at least until they officially signed, Gargano & Ciampa were on per-show deals and not contracts (that has changed) but they got to wrestle the way they wanted so did really well at the house shows. The guys who trained in Orlando were mad, not at them, but at the idea they are taught to wrestle a style that doesn’t get over as much as the style they were wrestling, but they are allowed to wrestle a style the Orlando guys are taught is wrong and then it gets over

Originally Posted by Observer

Wednesday is crazy television with a live UFC show, Ultima Lucha Dos, Finn Balor vs. Shinsuke Nakamura on NXT and the first round of the Cruiserweight Classic tournament.

Originally Posted by Observer

WWE promoted that you can watch Brock Lesnar weigh-in for his fight against Mark Hunt on their website. As was noted in yesterday’s update, they have done some promotion for the fight online but are still avoiding talking about it on television.

Originally Posted by PWI

The 7/7 edition of Smackdown did 2,241,000 viewers, up from last week's 2,080,000 viewers.

Originally Posted by Observer

Cody Rhodes is going to write a book about his father. He said WWE has given him permission to do so. I’m really confused in the sense that why would you need to ask anyone for permission to write a book about your father. The only thing I can think of would be if when they released him from his contract, they banned him from doing certain things for the length of the contract and writing a book would be on that list

Originally Posted by Observer

Moose was removed from a NOVA Pro Wrestling show on August 12th due to a “contract obligation.”

Originally Posted by Observer

The slander lawsuit filed by Dr. Christopher Amann against Phil Brooks (C.M. Punk) and Scott Goldman (Colt Cabana) has been given a trial date of May 21, 2018, if the parties can’t reach a settlement beforehand

Originally Posted by Observer

How’s this for a sad story. Joey Ryan noted that three years ago this week, TNA released him. Over July 4th weekend, Ryan outsold the entire TNA company combined when it comes to merchandise through Pro Wrestling Tees.

Originally Posted by Observer

Some names WWE has shown interest in bringing in are Curt Hawkins, James Yun, Volador Jr., and Rush. Rush attended a tryout last year and at the time the WWE picked Sombra. Yun, who was Jimmy Wang Yang, was backstage at Raw and posted a photo of himself there saying he was waiting for his meeting. An idea going around was to bring back older guys who can still go to put over the younger guys after the brand split when they need more bodies for television. He would fit the criteria. Even though he dates back to the glory era of the business, he started young and he’s only 35 now. He was a very good worker but got out of wrestling to start a new business, “Jimmy’s Pest Control,” in Cincinnati

Originally Posted by WrestleInc

This week's first airing of Lucha Underground on the El Rey Network, featuring the first part of Ultima Lucha Dos, drew 104,000 viewers. This is down 10% from last week's 116,000 viewers.

The replay drew 39,000 viewers, bringing the total number of viewers for this week's show to 143,000. This was down a whopping 35% from last week's show, which totaled 219,000 viewers. Last week's replay drew 103,000 viewers.

The show once again did not rank on the Cable Top 150 in the 18-49 demo for the sixth week in a row.

Originally Posted by WrestleInc

It also appears TNA squandered about 500,000 video views by not posting video of the Final Deletion online immediately after it aired on Pop. As of this morning there are still three videos of the match on YouTube from accounts other than TNA's own official account. These have a total of 486,208 views and counting. The most viewed clip of the match on Dailymotion has about 15,400 views. These videos were all posted Tuesday night or Wednesday. TNA's official account only uploaded the video Thursday.

Based on a formula used to estimate YouTube ad revenue, 500,000 views could be worth between $500 and $1000, which may not be huge money, but a company in financial distress like TNA needs all the revenue it can get.

Originally Posted by Observer

Ludxor posted a scathing message on AAA and Dorian Roldan on Facebook on 7/2. He destroyed his ankle on a dive in April and said he was encouraged to keep working on it. He injured it again on 5/27 and then went to Nuevo Laredo for a match. But by that point he couldn’t walk and needed immediately surgery. The company told him they’d pay for the surgery and rehab. He said they never sent him a dime and abandoned him for a month in Nuevo Laredo and nobody from the office called him, nor did anyone return any of his messages. He said he was broke and his friends in the area took him in and helped him as he recovered from the ankle surgery. He said that after more than a month stuck in Nuevo Laredo he was finally able to get enough money to pay to return home. He talked about how happy he was in 2013 when he started working in AAA, but claimed he would have to travel in sub-human conditions, wouldn’t be given any food for days when he’d be traveling and many times wouldn’t be paid anything after because he was a low card guy. AAA has said nothing in response

Originally Posted by WWE

1. Shinsuke Nakamura v Sami Zayn - NXT Takeover Dallas
2. AJ Styles v John Cena - Money In The Bank
3. The Miz v Cesaro v Kevin Owens v Sami Zayn - Extreme Rules
4. Roman Reigns v AJ Styles - Extreme Rules
5. Charlotte v Becky Lynch v Sasha Banks - WrestleMania 32
6. The Revival v American Alpha - NXT Takeover The End...
7. Triple H v Dean Ambrose - Roadblock
8. Dean Ambrose v Alberto Del Rio v Cesaro v Chris Jericho v Kevin Owens v Sami Zayn - Money In The Bank
9. The New Day v AJ Styles/Chris Jericho - RAW 3/7
10. Kevin Owens v Sami Zayn - Payback

Originally Posted by PWI

WWE released a survey via their mailing list to certain fans today seeking feedback on new potential WWE series for the WWE Network. While this is not confirmation that ANY of this will go into production, it gives you some insight into WWE's potential plans for the WWE Network's original programming in the near future.

Listed in the mailing were the following potential projects

*Ask Me Anything Live - Live, interactive Q&A with WWE talents.

*Everyone Has A Price - Reality series scouring the country for the most memorable WWE memorabilia, the origin of the items and determining their price.

*Extreme Eats - Tommy Dreamer and Bubba Ray Dudley tour the United States to show off their favorite food locations, sample odd and strange food combinations and take part in eating challenges.

*50 States, 50 Dates - a "WWE bachelor" goes on 50 dates to find romance. This would be a reality show about finding true love while also living your life on the road as a WWE talent.

*Goldberg's Garage - Reality show about Goldberg, his wife and their mechanics restoring American muscle cars at their North Carolina garage.

*History of WWE - 10 Part documentary series taking fans from the beginning of WWE through the launch of the Network.

*Legends House: Attitude - A sequel to the initial WWE Network series, placing 1990s legends together under one roof.

*Miz & Mrs. - A reality series following Miz and Maryse.

*Talking Summerslam - A Post-PPV Talk Show (think "Talking Dead")

*Tapout Fitness - WWE stars share their training tips.

*The Third Wheel - Two WWE Fans go on a blind date without knowing they are going to be joined by a WWE star.

*Totally NXT - A reality/competition series as six women try to make their way through the developmental system for a chance at a main roster slot and a Total Divas cast membership.

*The Wives of Flair - Documentary series on the love life of Ric Flair and his four ex-wives.

*WWE All Access - Reality series following main eventers as they prepare for Wrestlemania/Summerslam level major matches.

*WWE Game Night - WWE stars face celebrities in games outside the ring (listed were dodge ball, obstacle courses, Pictionary)

*WWE Investigates - Each segment would be a 3-5 episode mini-series going deep into a real subject in the history of pro wrestling. The life & legacy of Eddie Guerrero was suggested as a sample mini-series.

*WWE Goes Viral - Best WWE viral videos including ones submitted by fans.

*WWE Kids! - Kids interview WWE stars, compete against them in games and call the action for in-ring action.

*WWE Promo Battle - WWE Talents go head to head in "improv wars" in a tournament style setting where the audience and social media as well as a panel of judges determine who moves forward until they crown a promo battle champion.

*WWE Roast- John Cena would be roasted in a no holds barred tribute.

*WWE Superstars Search- Hosted by Lita & Trish Stratus, a competition reality series with 10 women competing for a WWE contract.