Lilian Garcia Makes Surprise Appearance At NXT Event

Former WWE ring announcer Lilian Garcia made a special appearance at Wednesday’s NXT event in England as she sang “God Save The Queen” to help kick off the show.

The event took place at the First Direct Arena in Leeds and began with a moment of silence for victims of the Manchester bombing and attack at the London Bridge.

Garcia then surprised the crowd with an appearance and sang the British national anthem.

NXT’s event at the Manchester Arena that was scheduled for Tuesday was canceled due to the bombing and WWE instead sent Superstars to visit with victims/help raise money. Those with tickets to the initial event were given free admission tonight to the show in Leeds.

Watch the video of Garcia’s performance below.

June 12, 2017 Wrestling Observer Newsletter: Extreme Rules and Best of the Super Juniors finals reviewed, tons of news

Submitted by dave on Wed, 2017-06-07 19:13Samoa Joe won the five-way title shot eliminator at Extreme Rules on 6/4 in Baltimore to set up a WWE Universal title match with Brock Lesnar on 7/9 in Dallas.
Joe winning gives the match with Lesnar an interesting aura with the idea of two tough guys going for the championship and is something of a 2004 dream match that took 13 years for it to take place.
While the PPV didn’t appear to have that much interest as compared to usual Raw shows coming in, with Joe winning, clearly interest was there coming out as the first hour of Raw was way up, the best opening number in seven weeks and the overall rating for the show was up 14 percent from the week before. Plus, an angle where Joe choked out Paul Heyman, leading to a phone call where Heyman talked to Lesnar and said that he wanted the beast unleashed and to teach Joe to fear Lesnar was done to build up the 6/12 Raw in Lafayette, LA, which features Lesnar’s first appearance since the day after ..

Mojo Rawley Being Groomed As The Next Big Babyface?

On this past episode of Smackdown Live, we saw Mojo Rawley take on Jinder Mahal yet again on WWE programming. It was under different circumstances with Mahal being WWE champion and Mojo fighting for a chance to be in the Money in the Bank ladder match. This match was match after Mojo told Shane McMahon he wanted more opportunities on Smackdown Live. Mojo put up one great fight but failed to come away with the victory.

We fast forward to Talking Smack and Mojo is one of the guests. Instead of sitting there whining and complaining, he owned up to the lost and gave repeated thanks to Shane for the opportunity. This whole stint may not mean anything to most of you, but it spoke something to me. I could be wrong here but I do believe this was the start of the big babyface push for Mojo Rawley.

Mojo Rawley is a superstar that is easy to love. He runs around all the time on his unlimited supply of energy, he hits hard, and he loves to have fun. He’s always been an exceptional talent that had his run stalled due to Zack Ryder getting injured. After that, we started seeing Mojo back in singles competition again. He would lose more than he would win, but you left the match feeling entertained by him. Then Wrestlemania comes along and the unthinkable happened when Mojo won the Andre the Giant Battle Royal. Sure he had help for Rob Gronkowski, but Mojo worked his tail off in that match and earned the victory.

 

Things were looking up for Mojo, until we recently stopped looking at him on our television sets. It’s like he vanished from the program. He recently showed on this past Tuesday, and there has to be a reason. We thought things were looking up for Mojo before, but this may only be the beginning. Heck with Mahal winning the WWE Championship, anyone is capable of winning some gold.

His actions on Talking Smack seemed like phase one in this plan. Although he failed to capture a spot in the Money in the Bank ladder match, big things are on the horizon for Mojo.

Sooner or later Mojo will get an opportunity at the United States Championship. Owens looks to feud with Nakamura for the time being, but he will need a new challenger after that is over with. A battle royal could be held to determine a number one contender, with Rawley coming out victorious. This would set up Rawley vs Owens for the title.

Owens won’t hold on to that title forever. Eventually he’s going to challenge for the WWE Championship. We saw with his run as Universal Champion that he can be a great heel champion. So he’s going to get a run as the top heel on Smackdown Live sometime soon. This works well for Mojo because he can be the one that swoops in and takes the United States Championship.  It’d be the first championship for Mojo, and what a celebration it will be.

The babyface push for Mojo seems to be beginning on a high note. If the crowd can stay behind him and help uplift him, then Mojo will receive all the opportunities he wants on Smackdown Live. When your moniker is “the land of opportunity”, you have to push new talent. The good thing is Mojo can be a special kind of talent and shoot up the ranks quick like Mahal did. Expect big things from Rawley, cause the hype train isn’t stopping anytime soon.

Planned Title Match Nixed from SmackDown Live Next Week

WWE had originally planned to have Jinder Mahal defend his WWE Title against Randy Orton on the June 13th SmackDown Live event, but those plans have been nixed.

While the match is still being advertised locally, it will now be only be a dark match at next week’s show and will not take place during the broadcast. They have been doing this match up as a dark match at recent SmackDown tapings. The match would normally end by DQ with interference from The Singh Brothers.

Rusev Posts Cryptic Tweet

Rusev took to his Twitter account to post this crytpic tweet that has a lot of people talking on social media:

As previously noted, Rusev was set to make his SmackDown debut a while back but those plans got nixed once the company decided to go all out with Jinder Mahal’s championship run. There is no new information on exactly when the company plans to bring him back, but we will keep you updated.

Dinner with the King Recap – Creating ‘The King’ Gimmick, Opinions of McMahon/Ross/The Rock, Great Balls of Fire! More!

Lawler is joined on today’s show by his co-host Glenn Moore.

Lawler informs that he injured his knee recently and it might require some attention in the near future. He recently visited a doctor with his son and the doctor told him that his son’s knees are three times worse than his, and his son is looking at a double knee replacement surgery. Lawler considers himself lucky to have been wrestling for 46 years and he has never required a knee surgery.

Lawler worked a cage match recently and had ‘The Mouth of the South’ Jimmy Hart in his corner for the match. He says that the cage was actually a very stable structure which surprised him, because he has worked in some pretty sad looking cages during his career. He informs that Hart threw his megaphone into cage at one point during the match and that reminded him of a cage match he worked against ‘Macho Man’ Randy Savage many years ago.

Savage had Miss Elizabeth accompany him to the ring, and at one point she jumped into the cage. When she tried to climb back out of the cage, Lawler grabbed her skirt and the whole skirt came right off. The Memphis crowd got quite a show that evening. Lawler says that Elizabeth was a tremendous talent both as a valet and as an in-ring worker.