[Emperor Smeat]

Dirtsheets sponsored by Classic WCW Nitro Moment:

Originally Posted by Observer Today is the 20th anniversary of the death of Brian Pillman. I will be doing a podcast with Chris Jericho that drops tomorrow on the Talk is Jericho show covering Pillman. In addition, it was announced today that a biography called Crazy Like a Fox: The Definitive Chronicle of Brian Pillman 20 Years Later" will be released later this month on Amazon. The book covers Pillman's personal and professional life with interviews with members of the Pillman family, myself, Kim Wood (a former coach of the Cincinnati Bengals who was like his father figure), Bruce Hart Raven, Jim Cornette, Mark Madden and Les Thatcher.

Originally Posted by Observer The next WWE media investors call will be Thursday, 10/26 at 11 a.m. with Vince McMahon, Michelle Wilson and George Barrios. The WWE will announce the network subscriber number as of 9/30 at the call.

Originally Posted by WrestleInc WWE bringing back War Games for NXT Takeover next month was reportedly a late decision. Dave Meltzer reported in the latest edition of Wrestling Observer Radio that the original plan for next month's Takeover main event was Drew McIntyre defending his NXT Championship against Adam Cole. Also originally scheduled for the show was SAnitY defending the NXT Tag Team Championship against Kyle O'Reilly & Bobby Fish. The War Games match, which hasn't been used since an episode of WCW Monday Nitro in 2000, will feature NXT Tag Team Champions SAnitY (Eric Young, Killian Dain, Alexander Wolfe) vs. Roderick Strong & The Authors of Pain (Akam, Rezar) vs. The Undisputed Era (Adam Cole, Kyle O'Reilly, Bobby Fish). Also at NXT Takeover, NXT Champion Drew McIntyre will defend his title against Andrade "Cien" Almas in the co-main event. NXT TakeOver: WarGames takes place on November 18th at the Toyota Center in Houston, Texas.

Originally Posted by WrestleInc According to Deadline, Batista has partnered up with STX Entertainment to star in and produce a new action-comedy franchise. No other details were given on the upcoming project. Batista most recently appeared in Blade Runner 2049, which will be released in the U.S. tomorrow.

Link to the article: http://deadline.com/2017/10/dave-bau...49-1202182825/

Originally Posted by WrestleInc Chris Jericho said he's asked all the time what his favorite match is from his career and his pick is against Shawn Michaels at No Mercy in 2008. Including the build-up, the match itself, and the finish, Jericho put it at number one.

Link: https://www.instagram.com/p/BZ4JbVBFErg/

Originally Posted by WrestleInc WWE has a new poll asking fans which Superstar has done the most to grow the Women's Evolution - Charlotte Flair, Sasha Bank, Bayley, Becky Lynch, Emma, RAW Women's Champion Alexa Bliss, Carmella, Asuka, The Bella Twins, SmackDown Women's Champion Natalya or other. As of this writing, 28% voted for Flair while 20% went with Banks, 14% voted for The Bellas, 11% for Bliss, 7% for Asuka and 7% for other. The rest received 4% or less.

Originally Posted by WrestleInc The WWE 24 special on Bill Goldberg will premiere on the WWE Network after RAW goes off the air on Monday, November 13th. Below is a preview for the special.

Announcement by WWE: https://twitter.com/wwenetwork/statu...53037235412992 , Link to the clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RJofJhxCY4

Originally Posted by Observer Due to the problems with the earthquake, the 9/29 and 10/1 Arena Mexico shows, as well as the 9/30 Arena Coliseo show, were canceled. The Mexico City government gave CMLL permission to start running again regularly on 10/3. The 10/3 return to Arena Mexico also drew poorly, barely 1,000 fans as people just aren’t ready to return to regularly going to wrestling. The feeling is that it’ll be a while that business will remain down due to the problems in the city. Tourists aren’t coming to Mexico right now and those who are coming aren’t going to wrestling, and that’s a lot of their crowd and people aren’t attending any events in the city in large numbers yet.

Originally Posted by Observer There will be casting being done on 10/20 and 10/21 with a TV pilot for what is being called a television show similar to Raw and Smackdown, but it will have an element of Lucha Libre to it. The casting call said that there will be a lot of outside the ring segments so they are looking for experienced actors. From what we understand, the people behind the promotion are Aroluxe, which formerly did the production and also for a time were funding TNA. Aroluxe is the company with Ron & Don Harris & Jason Brown in charge. The mentality behind it is that Lucha Underground was a strong concept but done wrong in the sense it was aimed at the English speaking audience primarily, and that this would be a Lucha Libre product with the attempt to sell it to Spanish language television. The production company is looking for both pro wrestlers and actors who have some pro wrestling experience. The idea is to use experienced wrestlers who are good flyers and workers, and use a few actors to do scenes with them with the idea of replicating the success of Dario Cueto ... They will be filming the pilot in December, probably in Nashville, and hope for a 2018 pickup and to run a promotion from there, which would include house shows. One of the ideas is the feeling was that Lucha Underground wasn’t going to continue so that they could go after all of that talent as the nucleus for a new group, but Lucha Underground isn’t completely dead, even though a large percentage of its talent wants to be released from their contracts since they haven’t gotten paid since last summer. Those with no pro wrestling experience have to have acting experience, be athletic, and willing to train ... The company involved is not named but the hint out was that it claims it has run both television shows and pay-per-view live that have run both nationally and internationally (they were behind TNA shows). The punch line to all this is they are interested in hiring Vince Russo as a television writer, for a Lucha Libre show aimed at the Hispanic audience.

Originally Posted by Observer Right now it looks like Lucha Underground may continue, but with much a much smaller budget. Eric Van Wagenen was on Afterbuzz TV and asked about the future of the show. He said he didn’t have any hard news but said it was a better than even chance there would be a season four and said that he expects a decision to come from El Rey sometime over the next month. Wagenen said that El Rey has a certain time frame to announce the renewal before they would lose the rights to the show and if that was the case, then they would shop it elsewhere. Making a new deal won’t be easy, as noted by the fact that since season one, they haven’t made a Spanish language deal and season one was viewed far more by the Spanish station (Unimas) than El Rey. His explanation is that MGM and El Rey have different opinions on the costs of the show. The reality of this is that El Rey wants the show, and they will pay something for the show, but nowhere near enough to actually fund the show. Up to this point, nobody has been willing to come through and fund the next season. The people who funded seasons two and three aren’t willing to put more money into it. He didn’t say this, but word of talks broke about two weeks ago that they have some funding to do a fourth season, but it is nowhere near the money they had in the past, which means lots of budget cutting will have to be done. Regarding the talent appearing on Impact, he said that was Dorian Roldan’s call (not mentioning him by name) and said he was at first against it, but is now no longer negative because since they aren’t giving the talent work right now and hope that everyone can get work elsewhere. Obviously that explains their ability to work with Impact in allowing talent to appear

Originally Posted by WrestleInc Meltzer noted that many of the stars that he's spoken to that are under contract with Lucha Underground want their release. Ricochet told Sports Illustrated in July that even though his contract with the company expired, his no-compete doesn't expire until 90 days after the conclusion of the third season. "My contract finished last June," Ricochet told Sports Illustrated. "I'm on the no-compete for the rest of Lucha Underground's season three, then I have 90 days after that. I can be on any TV as long as it's not American TV. I can work indies, I can do iPPVs, most anything, really, just not on American TV. I'm not sure about a Season 4 with Lucha Underground. I'm busy until October, and I might take November off to heal up again. I really want to work on my diet and get myself in the best shape possible."

Link to the interview from July: https://www.si.com/extra-mustard/201...ovidence-diary

Originally Posted by Observer Even though The WWE did not contact or threaten them on it, The Young Bucks are going to dump the “suck it” stuff from their marketing. The cease & desist letter from WWE led to, just a few days later, them coming up with a “Cease and Desist” T-shirt showing them doing the hand gesture with censored being written over it, and then on the bottom saying “TOO SW#%T!” When they put the shirts for sale on 9/29, it led to the most first day sales of any t-shirt they had ever released and even though it was released with only two days left in September, it was the most purchased T-shirt on Pro Wrestling Tees for the month

Originally Posted by Observer The plan now is for Impact to tape from major markets with multiple shows in a row, such as New York, Toronto or Chicago, although many are skeptical of them taping outside of Canada. They are getting tax breaks for filming in Canada and the expense of New York or Chicago would be high for a company that right now isn’t in the position where they can make any money and is trying to cut budgets as much as they can. The company got itself into major financial trouble the last time it started taping on the road, but they were going into large arenas, which I don’t see them doing this time, and not doing multiple nights in the same building. Still, the product is cold and selling tickets won’t be easy

Originally Posted by Observer While it hasn’t been pushed hard on television, there are plans, or at least were as of two weeks ago, to induct a new Hall of Famer at Bound for Glory. Earlier this year the word got out that it would be James Storm, and given that Storm has been with the company from the start and is still there, and his played every role and done everything imaginable, he’d have been a good choice. The word going around is that it would be someone else

Originally Posted by Observer PWInsider reported that Cena will not be getting the part of Shazam! in the upcoming Shazam! movie. They reported Cena met with director David F. Sandberg last month, but is no longer in the running for the part. Dwayne Johnson has been talked about as playing Black Adam, but they reported he would not be in the first Shazam! film

Originally Posted by Observer Regarding the Dr. Christopher Amann lawsuit with C.M. Punk & Colt Cabana, Cabana was on Live Audio Wrestling and said, “The update is that it’s still going on, it’s costing me a lot of money, and that’s the extent that my lawyers will allow me to talk. So nothing breaking here. But just do know that it’s always on my mind. It’s always a very sad thing.” “It’s always in the back of my mind now, which is a little upsetting. But that’s the way of the world, I guess.

Some other sheet news include:

• Recent episode of Ring Rust Radio podcast show had Ted Dibiase as the guest talking about what he wants people to remember the most about his career, origins of the Million Dollar Man gimmick, and Bobby Heenan. http://www.wrestlinginc.com/wi/news/...on-dollar-man/
• In a "WWE Did You Know" type fact, today is the 20th anniversary of Kane's debut in the WWF. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLT_1nySIsw
• In another "WWE Did You Know" type fact, Shinsuke Nakamura currently has the highest win percentage all-time in WWE history at 92.6% with El Torito in 2nd place at 91.8%. This only counts main roster matches and not anything from NXT or other development brands. http://www.profightdb.com/wrestlers-...rcentages.html
• Sami Callihan is currently rumored to be leaving Lucha Underground for Impact Wrestling within the near future, according to the Wrestling Observer.

Some stuff from the TPWW Frontpage:

• WWE News: HHH Misses NXT, WWE/India, CFO$ Interview, Total Bellas
• John Cena No Longer Advertised for Survivor Series, Brock Lesnar Now Is
• Spoilers: NXT TV Taping Results – Oct. 4, 2017 – Four Weeks of Shows