The New Day challenged The Usos to a shot at the SmackDown Tag Team Championships on tonight’s episode of SmackDown Live. Usos accepted the challenge and will defend their titles on the card. No other matches have been announced for the show yet.
Battleground takes place on July 23rd from the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia.
Shane McMahon announced on tonight’s episode of SmackDown Live that Randy Orton will get a rematch against Jinder Mahal for the WWE Title at the upcoming WWE Battleground event. Jinder would later announce that the match is a Punjabi Prison match. Here is the updated card:
WWE Title: Punjabi Prison match
Randy Orton vs. Jinder Mahal
SmackDown Tag Team Championship
The New Day vs. The Usos
Battleground takes place on July 23rd from the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia.
Daniel Bryan announced on tonight’s episode of SmackDown Live that an Independence Day Battle Royal to determine a #1 contender for the United States Championship will take place next week.
Also announced for next week’s show is the return of John Cena and The New Day will compete against The Usos in a rap battle.
Pro Wrestling Sheet reports that Tyson Kidd will be moved into a non-wrestling role with WWE.
According to the report, it’s too early to determine if the role will be a backstage one such as a producer or an on-air personality. Kidd has been out of action since suffering a career-ending injury during a match against Samoa Joe back in 2015.
Speaking of Kidd, he is also set to return to Total Divas next season after sitting out the previous one.
Bischoff is joined on today’s show by his co-host Nick Hausman. Today’s show will be a question and answer session with Bischoff.
One listener writes into the show and asks Bischoff what he considers to be the new key performance indicator for professional wrestling, since television ratings are starting to become out of date. Bischoff thinks that’s a great question and he’s not really sure if the answer. There’s no denying that television ratings were his main consideration in WCW in the late 90s, but today’s promotions don’t seem to be nearly as motivated by ratings alone.
Another listener asks Bischoff if he thinks finishing moves are beginning to become obsolete. Bischoff says that the style of professional wrestling that we see today requires different things from the performers, and finishing moves aren’t nearly as ‘effective’ as they have been in years prior. Fans seem to enjoy multiple false finishes in matches, and this devalues finishing moves. He believes the devaluation of finishing moves is a result of the change in the in-ring product over the last two decades.
The next listener asks Bischoff what it was like to be a guest referee. Bischoff says that he hated it, and he always felt very uncomfortable. Being a professional wrestling referee is an art within itself, and it takes a lot of time and practice in order to master. He points out that a good referee does more than count to 3, they direct the match and are as important to the match’s execution as the two talents involved.
Ross congratulates new ROH Champion Cody Rhodes on capturing the Title by defeating Christopher Daniels last weekend. He says that he’s sure his old friend Dusty Rhodes would be so proud of Cody if he was still alive, and Ross couldn’t be prouder of Cody as well for everything that he has accomplished since leaving WWE.
Ross welcomes Jim Cornette to the show.
Ross asks Cornette if he still enjoys doing his podcast and Cornette says that for the most part he does. Some days he has to really grind in order to get through a two hour show if there isn’t a lot to talk about or if he’s just sick of his own voice, but for the most part it’s still very fun for him.
Cornette and Ross talk about the changing landscape of the professional wrestling business. Ross thinks that modern fans simply know too much about the business, and Cornette agrees. Cornette says that fans can’t just sit back and enjoy the product anymore, they need to overanalyze and criticize everything. He says that just because he watches Family Guy doesn’t mean he thinks he can write that show.
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It looks like Alexa Bliss could be defending her RAW Women’s Championship against Nia Jax at this year’s SummerSlam event.
Bryan Alvarez discussed plans for the RAW Women’s Championship on today’s installment of Wrestling Observer Live. Alvarez speculates that WWE appears to be moving towards a showdown between Bliss and Nia at this year’s SummerSlam event and that’s why they are doing the angles backstage between the two.
Originally the plan was for Sasha Banks to feud with Bayley over the Championship title on the show, but those plans have obviously changed as neither of one of them them are the champion.
We will keep you updated if we receive any other details…
As noted over the weekend, Daniel Bryan teased on social media that he could possibly return to Ring of Honor and challenge Cody Rhodes for the ROH Title once his contract with WWE expires. Jim Ross took to his blog on JrsBarBq.com and made the following remarks regarding Bryan possibly returning to the ring again:
“Seems as if Daniel Bryan is having some fun trolling social media as he teases a return to the ring which I seriously doubt will or should ever happen. If his existing medical condition put DB in a higher risk category, then he needs to be the responsible husband and father and refrain from lacing up his boots again. Don’t get me wrong, if DB could safely resume his career I’d be all for it as he is one of the great talents in recent memory.”
Taz opens today’s show speaking about the MizTV segment from last night’s RAW, which featured guest stars LaVar Ball and his two sons. LaVar Ball is a lightning rod in the sporting world right now, and WWE knew that they’d garner the attention of the mainstream sporting media if they had him make a guest appearance on RAW.
Taz says he’s sure that Vince McMahon knew this was going to be horrible, but he was definitely laughing his ass off in the Gorilla position. The positives outweighed the negatives in this situation, and that’s why McMahon loves to do these things from time to time. Regardless of all this, Taz was incredibly annoyed by Ball’s antics and wanted to jump through his television to beat him up.
He adds that he feels very sorry for Lonzo Ball, son of LaVar, who was recently drafted by the Los Angeles Lakers. His father’s heat resulted in him actually getting booed by the WWE audience in his hometown of Los Angeles, and he now has a huge target on his back as he enters his rookie season in the NBA.
PWInsider has confirmed speculation that WWE is planning on bringing back the Punjabi Prison match for the upcoming WWE Battleground pay-per-view event.
PWI claims that their sources have informed them that the match will indeed taking place on the card. The match is expected to see Jinder Mahal defend his WWE Title against Randy Orton. This will be the 3rd Punjabi Prison match in WWE history.
Russo was avoiding this discussion and he had no intention of talking about this on his show, but after multiple false reports from wrestling ‘journalists’, he thought he had to clear the air and get the true story out there once and for all.
Speaking about the wrestling ‘journalists’, he points out that not one of them reached out to him to get the actual story after this news broke. Instead, they all took the news and gave their own biased spin on it, which is the polar opposite of respectable journalism. This proved the point that he’s been saying for years, that if you’re paying for the opinions of these guys, you’re wasting your money.
Getting into the heart of the situation, Russo says that he has been ridiculed by Jim Cornette for over two decades. It has been a constant battle between him and Cornette, but in the past couple of weeks Cornette took things to an entirely new level by threatening violence on him and his family.
He says that he only lives roughly two hours from Cornette now, and his wife is often home alone. She was quite upset after Cornette’s recent rant, and Russo felt it was necessary to take matters into his own hands by getting this Order of Protection. Hopefully this allows his wife to relax, and keeps Cornette out of their business for the foreseeable future.