[Emperor Smeat]

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Originally Posted by PWI A few updates on the Neville-WWE situation: *There have been reports that Neville walked out of Raw. That is incorrect. He was never on the road this past weekend as he did not work any of the live events and was not backstage, at any point, during Raw this past Monday. Mustafa Ali worked the Raw house shows, wrestling Enzo Amore, replacing Neville, who was originally slated for those shows. *The original plan for Raw was Neville vs. Enzo Amore, but that was changed late in the day when it became known Neville would not be at the taping (possibly when everyone was made aware he wasn't going to be there, because there was discussion of making it a non-title match after it was noted Neville technically could "not have" a title shot vs. Enzo), the decision was made to go with Kalisto and put the belt on him as a way to tie him to the legacy of Eddie Guerrero, as it was Guerrero's birthday and he legitimately helped inspire Kalisto to get into professional wrestling. *According to two different sources, Neville has pushed for a release with the idea of leaving the company and building his name outside of it, similar to what Drew McIntyre did prior to his return to NXT. Obviously, New Japan would be thrilled to have him back and he'd make a killing on the independent and international scene. *We have been told there were several factors Neville was unhappy with. One source claimed a souring point was being left off of the Wrestlemania 33 DVD, which meant no royalties from what is traditionally the biggest selling WWE DVD of the year. *Neville is still under contract to the company and has not been released. It is entirely possible the two sides will come to terms and he will return to the company, but as of right now, we are told he is not factored in any of the current plans for the Cruiserweight division or any other WWE brand and is not slated to travel to any house shows.

Originally Posted by Observer FITE TV will be broadcasting 15 different live events this weekend from all over the world this weekend, the most in its history. The two big events Rizin from Fukuoka, Japan which starts at 1 a.m. Eastern and 10 p.m. Pacific on Saturday night, and features Frank Shamrock vs. Kazushi Sakuraba in a grappling match, and ROH Global Wars at 7 p.m. Sunday with Kenny Omega vs. Yoshi-Hashi for the U.S. title in Chicago. Sunday's ROH show in Chicago will be before the second largest crowd in the history of the promotion, in excess of 2,400. Tonight's ROH show is sold out in Buffalo but there will be standing room tickets available.

Originally Posted by PWI An attempt by WWE performer Thaddeus Bullard (professionally known as Titus O'Neil) to have the lawsuit brought against him by a cameraman that alleges he was injured by Bullard thrown out was denied on 10/12 after the plaintiff, Donald Anderson, filed an amended complaint on 10/2. The amended lawsuit, seeking $1.2 million in damages, now lists World Wrestling Entertainment as a defendant. The original lawsuit listed only Bullard and 1-300 "John Does" as the defendants. In the suit, Anderson alleges he was placed into an unsafe environment and was physically attacked by Bullard while filming content for Swerved, WWE Network's Jackass-inspired reality series. The incident in question that Anderson was filming saw WWE talent Paige shocking Bullard with an electric shock stick. The complaint alleges that Bullard became enraged and went after Anderson, kicking his camera out of his hand, leading to injuries on his hand, wrist and fingers to the point he could not work. Anderson also claims in the suit that he was instructed to leave the scene out of fear that O'Neil might go after him again and was "whisked" from the scene.

More details about the situation and lawsuit: https://www.pwinsider.com/article/11...mages.html?p=1

Originally Posted by PWI As of today, WWN still has yet to be served in the lawsuit Flosports Inc has filed against them in Texas. Interesting to note that IPW-UK, the last promotion scheduled to have a live broadcast on that streaming service, announced this week they would no longer work with Flosports, so the future of that service looks to be very dark. In an email to talent today, Gabe Sapolsky noted the company are mulling over different possibilities for how they will stream their events going forward, but made it clear that WWE Network was not one of the current options, noting he wanted to kill any rumors. As we noted earlier, the company would be dark for November, so this weekend's events in Queens, NY and East Haddam, Connecticut will be the final EVOLVE events until December with SHINE as the final WWNLive event overall until December. As we noted previously here on PWInsider.com, WWN will be cutting back on events as they had expended to five events a month as part of their deal with Flosports. Financially, there's no way WWNLive cannot be hurting, especially given they claim they are owed months of payments from Flosports.

Originally Posted by PWI UFC's Dana White was on Good Day New York this morning and was asked about rumors that Conor McGregor would appear at WrestleMania 34. White said it was not true and he had just been talking to Vince McMahon about it via text. He showed the text from Vince which said, "news to me". The conversation that went along the lines of maybe some day, but not now.

Link to the interview: http://www.fox5ny.com/news/ufc-presi...mcgregor-rumor

Originally Posted by PWI Jacobs had posted the photo on his personal Instagram account and if that was indeed the only reason for his firing, it can't be seen as anything but petty, especially since Kevin Owens, AJ Styles and Sami Zayn had all appeared, in person, on the actual YouTube series and lots of WWE talents have posed for photos with talents contracted to others companies on social media. The difference is those talents are stars, while Jacobs was "just" a writer and there is a culture behind the scenes where if you are seen as trying to get yourself over, when that isn't your role, it backfires on you, even if that wasn't what you were trying to do. I have had a number of WWE sources swear to me that a major reason Brooklyn Brawler was let go after decades of service to the company was his social media usage and other things that put him in the sights of the wrong people in the company who didn't like it, because "that wasn't his role ... However, there was also a feeling from WWE sources that by going outside during an active TV taping when he was supposed to be working as a writer,Jacobs was seen as "ignoring his job" to get himself and his friends over. One WWE source believed that the while the photo was being used as the reason to fire Jacobs, it wasn't the only issue, noting that he had taken some time off to deal with a personal issue before returning to work this past summer, and that may have put a target on his back.

Some more details about the situation: https://www.pwinsider.com/article/11...tive-.html?p=1

Originally Posted by WrestleInc Above is video of former WWE talent and Mae Young Classic competitor Serena Deeb talking about the WWE NXT locker room and the WWE Performance Center, where she's been working as a guest trainer for the past week. The wrestling veteran says the ambience & energy at the Performance Center is incredible and unlike anything else in wrestling. Deeb also says teaching feels natural to her as she comes from a lineage of teachers. Deeb says she's been around the business for more than a decade but she's never seen a locker room this powerful & talented. The former Straight Edge Society says the future is in good hands and there's something really special going on in WWE developmental.

Link to the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uo8Cj_KH6zM

Originally Posted by WrestleInc Stephanie McMahon spoke at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit in Washington D.C. on Wednesday, and she revealed some details about just how much the WWE Universe impacts the company's strategy. McMahon, the Chief Brand Officer for the WWE, described how audience feedback can force the company to adjust its plans. She said that plans for WrestleMania are set a year in advance, and then they can be changed based on how the WWE Universe reacts to the storylines. "Our audience tells us what they love, what they don't like and worse, what they don't care about. And you have to be listening, and in WWE, yes, we do, we pivot on the fly," McMahon said. "It's an advantage that we're live. We do set our storylines out a year in advance, WrestleMania being our Super Bowl and then we program backwards, but things happen. The audience might not be invested in a character that we think they will be invested in for whatever reason. There could be an injury that happens, because we really are an incredible athletic event as well. Anything can happen, so that ability to pivot and twist is really important."

Link with her talking about NXT and interview itself: http://www.wrestlinginc.com/wi/news/...lemania-plans/

Originally Posted by WrestleInc In an interesting twist on the situation between WWE and The Young Bucks, the brothers were contacted to do WWE 2K19 work just one day after they received their cease & desist letter from WWE following the recent "invasion" outside of a RAW TV event in California. The Wrestling Observer Newsletter reports that the company in charge of the WWE 2K franchise contacted The Bucks to ask them about doing motion capture work for next year's video game. The game creators felt like they needed all of the signature YB moves in the game because so many people playing last year's edition were using the Create-A-Wrestler mode to play as the brothers.

Originally Posted by Observer The latest on the future is this. The owners are trying now to make a television deal away from El Rey. Essentially they are shopping the show around hoping that another station will pick it up and pay enough to produce the show at nearly the previous levels. The people who put the money in for the last two seasons are not putting anymore in because the show drove almost no revenue. As noted, El Rey will pay something for programming, but not nearly enough to produce the show at close to the level it as been done at. El Rey and Robert Rodriguez would maintain having an ownership stake if it moves to a new station. The obvious issue is what television station would want a show with a budget of $400,000 per episode that draws 100,000 to 175,000 viewers weekly over two airings, and more importantly, where viewership generally has been down this season and not up, and overall buzz is way down. According to one person close to most of the parties involved, there is a major divide among the management team. On one side, they want to shut the project down, arguing that the costs are too high and after three seasons they’ve never made any money. The feeling on that side is that you know where you stand, the audience isn’t growing, and anything more would be throwing good money after bad. Two key executives are of that belief. On the other side is Eric Van Wagenen, Dorian Roldan and Vampiro, who all believe in the project and feel it just needs time and better exposure to watch on. Alex Garcia and Antonio Cue-Navarro, who put up the money for the last two seasons, have refused to put more money into the project. Right now it appears that unless they can find new funding, or get a new TV station to pay the costs, the choice is to stay on El Rey for a heavily stripped down version or to close it down.

Originally Posted by Observer The Pro Wrestling Hall of Fame in Wichita Falls, TX is under investigation by local police after discrepancies were found in financial records and when board members discovered them, they all resigned. All local members of the board resigned on 8/24. On 10/4, an embezzlement complaint was filed with the Wichita Falls police saying that a review of the monthly bank statements conducted by current and previous board members on 8/30. They found that the Hall of Fame’s bank account was significantly overdrawn and that looking at bank records they found significant expenses that looked to be questionable and found significant spending that was done without board approval nor that the board was even aware of. Some were found to have no correlation with the operations of the Hall of Fame. Former wrestler John Lusk, better known as Cowboy John Mantell, who is the President of the Hall of Fame, said that there were internal issues and they are in the middle of trying to work out their internal problems, but wouldn’t say anything more

Originally Posted by Observer The top ten most-watched shows of the past week on the WWE Network were: 1. Hell in a Cell; 2. Hell in a Cell post-game show; 3. Hell in a Cell pre-game show; 4. Story Time episode three; 5. Story Time episode four; 6. No Mercy 2017; 7. NXT from 10/4; 8. Story Time episode two; 9. Story Time episode one; 10. WrestleMania 2017. 205 Live was down to 15th place this week, including behind two an Asuka special and a NXT episode from a few years ago that they were pushing on the network which had Asuka’s NXT debut on it, as well as behind this year’s SummerSlam show

Some other sheet news includes:

• Card manufacturer Topps recently released a new set of WWE trading cards featuring the past, present, and future of WWE's Women's division.
• According to PWI, a new wrestling drama show called "Heels" from Starz Network recently offered CM Punk a role on the show but at the moment the project has been put on indefinite hold by the show's producers due to issues with the project. https://www.pwinsider.com/article/11...drama.html?p=1
• According to the Wrestling Observer, Kalisto's reign as Cruiser champ is going to be short since the new long term plan for the division involves Enzo as the champ instead.
• Rumor going around the net regarding EVOLVE's "The End" storyline is besides it being the newest big storyline for the company, supposedly its going to lead to Gabe Sapolsky bolting from EVOLVE and WNN in favor of the WWE. Been rumored for a while people in EVOLVE are worried about Sapolsky getting too close to the WWE and being vague about the future of EVOLVE. https://twitter.com/LeakyGabe
• Rumor going around the net involves Dean Ambrose versus Seth Rollins for Wrestlemania 34 with Ambrose triggering it by being the one who betrays The Shield this time.

Some stuff from TPWW Frontpage:

• Various: New John Cena Movie Trailer, New Mick Foley Book, EVOLVE
• James Ellsworth Says Carmella Pitched Their Pairing to Vince McMahon
• Free New Japan Pro Wrestling Based Horse Racing Game Released