We noted earlier today that Paige went to go visit the doctors for a check up on her neck injury that has sidelined her for nearly a year.
Paige may have got some good news, as she posted the following photos to Instagram which would indicate that she’s training for her return:
A post shared by Paige WWE (@realpaigewwe) on Jun 13, 2017 at 11:55am PDT
A post shared by Paige WWE (@realpaigewwe) on Jun 13, 2017 at 11:58am PDT
On today’s show Russo and his co-host Jeff Lane will be discussing WCW’s Monday Nitro from April 10th, 2000.
Russo says that watching this show made him sad because it’s evident that he could work well and create some good television with Eric Bischoff and Jeff Jarrett. This was the first episode of Monday Nitro that he co-wrote with Eric Bischoff, and he really wishes they could let bygones be bygones and move on with their lives without all of this bad blood.
Russo informs that he originally reached out to WCW after Vince McMahon told him to get a nanny to take care of his kids. Family was more important than that to Russo, so he inquired about work opportunities in WCW. Russo was hired in WCW as head writer, but he knew pretty early on that things were problematic there.
Bill Bush, an Accountant, was looking over WCW at that time for TNT and he knew nothing about professional wrestling. Russo and Ed Ferrara’s first goal when arriving in WCW was to elevate the mid card and introduce some new blood into the main event picture. The old guard of main eventers like Hulk Hogan and Sting were not happy about this, and they were quick to get in Bush’s ear.
As previously reported, John Cena is slated to make his return to WWE television for the July 4th episode of SmackDown Live.
According to PWInsider, it appears that the company has been talking about presenting Cena as “free agent” once he returns to the company. This storyline would allow him to appear for both RAW and SmackDown.
We noted earlier today that Cena could possibly be facing Jinder Mahal soon after his return. Those plans may or may not change. We will keep you updated.
On a recent episode of his podcast, Conversation with the Big Guy, Ryback let out his thoughts on Nia Jax’s controversial tweet about the WWE Creative. Jax had tweeted criticizing the red brand’s creative team by pointing out how RAW doesn’t use all it’s women wrestlers while its rival brand, SmackDown LIVE does.
The tweet was then quickly taken down by Jax herself as it was garnering a lot of attention and possibly made the creative look really bad.
Here are Ryback’s comments on the said issue : (quotes credit ewrestlingnews.com)
“Everybody is frustrated there, from top to bottom. She’s been handed a lot early on, in my opinion. It’s very early on to make a comment like that and when I saw that I totally understand it, like, if you are not on TV a couple of weeks is frustrating. With her character on TV, it’s not like they can just throw her in random. It could be a good TV that you’re not on TV every week. If you’re being booked for live events, who the f**k cares? You’re making money until they find something good for you, but when you go and make comments like that, there’s no good that comes out of that because it’s not like real sports where you control the outcome. It’s writers and Vince, they control your character and they can write her and job her out every week. She has to either go do it or not do it and get released, so she put herself in a real bad position by making comments like that on social media. It reminded me of that guy with Lord Tensai, Sakamoto. I remember there was Japanese heat for another Japanese guy coming on the roster, Yoshi had gone on social media and made a comment. If we were in UFC it’d be cool, you may have gotten yourself booked for a big fight and a big payday, but in pro-wrestling you can’t go on there and say that. A week later he got Jobbed out on RAW. That is what it reminded me of because no good ever comes out of it, but she’s young, so it is what it is.”
You can check out all our other podcast recaps from Jim Ross, Taz, Ryback and many more at this link.
Jessie Godderz is no longer working for Impact Wrestling and his profile has been removed from the roster page on the company’s website. Godderz worked for the promotion dating back to 2011.
While speaking to Scott Fishman of TV Insider last month, Godderz was asked about why he hasn’t been appearing on television for Impact and he confirmed that he was still under contract with the company.
“I just had a handful of other projects that took precedent. They were understanding with it. I’m still under contract right now. Other than Sonia and my CBS family at Big Brother, obviously I owe the world to Impact Wrestling for giving wrestlers chances to branch out. Everything is as planned and on schedule as of right now.”
It is very possible that he contract could have ran out over the past couple of weeks. We will keep you updated if we receive more information.
While speaking to NOLA.com, Kevin Owens was asked about his dream opponent for WrestleMania. Owens revealed that if it was a superstar from the past, he would pick Shawn Michaels. If he had to pick someone from today, he would pick Sami Zayn.
“If you say past, it’s Shawn Michaels hands down. If you say present, Sami Zayn and I have had such a rich history, I feel like a one-on-one match at WrestleMania would be so perfect. But there’s also Finn Balor. He’s my best friend. He’s probably the one guy if I could sit across from in the ring at WrestleMania, that would make my career. Finn and I got to WWE at the same time, and we dived into an unknown territory. We gravitated toward each other very quickly. He’s like a brother to me now.”
You can check out the full video here.
Ahead of tonight’s NXT Live Event at the Download Festival in England, Pete Dunne attacked Mark Andrews at a concert. Andrews was able to recover and flipped off the stage, taking Dunne out. The two are scheduled to face later today for the WWE UK Championship.
Here is footage from the flip:
While speaking to Josh Barnett of USA Today, Austin Aries addressed reports that he was taking time off from WWE soon. He explained that the quote from the interview he was featured in was taken out of context.
“If you look at the full quote and what I said was, Everyone is dealing with various stuff,” Aries said. “I don’t think there is anyone in the locker room is 100%. We’re all nicked and banged up to various degrees. Like anything else, you pick and choose the times you need address when it needs to be addressed and some times are better than others. I figure no matter what interview I do, the real good ‘journalists’ are going to find the completely irrelevant quotes that will drum up some controversy and stick it on their page to get some clicks and completely miss the real context of what the interview is about. That’s what we do nowadays and call it ‘journalism.’”
While the Wrestling Observer Newsletter reported last week that Nakumara was the favorite to win the Money in the Bank briefcase this year, betting odds would have you thinking otherwise.
Early betting odds suggest that Baron Corbin will be leaving the June 18th as the rightful holder of the briefcase. Here are the odds for the match:
* Baron Corbin -165
* Kevin Owens +500
* AJ Styles +600
* Sami Zayn +600
* Shinsuke Nakamura +700
* Dolph Ziggler +2500
A listener calls into the show and points out that the promo graphic for Great Balls of Fire somewhat resembles a penis and two testicles. Taz says that this has been brought up online already and it’s hard to deny the resemblance. He says that WWE has a graphic design team that does all the work for PPV graphics, but Vince McMahon has to approve everything.
Taz says that he just chooses to look at that logo and see a literal ball of fire, but some people might choose to see other things. Either way, it’s an interesting piece of graphic design work without a doubt.
Another listener calls into the show and says that WWE should change the Cruiserweight division to a Light Heavyweight division. Taz says that if they did that they’d still have all the same issues that the Cruiserweight division has, because more than the name needs to change. Taz says that the specific Cruiserweight branding with purple ropes and aprons simply isn’t working.
In addition, filming 205 Live after Smackdown Live isn’t working either. Taz says that WWE needs to change their approach to the Cruiserweights and start filming 205 Live at Full Sail University. He also doesn’t mind the idea of WWE merging the Cruiserweights into the main roster, where they can also challenge for WWE Titles such as the United States Title and Intercontinental Title.
Bischoff opens today’s show speaking about Bruce Prichard’s recent episode of ‘Something to Wrestle With’, which focused on Bischoff’s time in WWE.
Bischoff says that he thinks about his initial WWE interview quite often, when Vince McMahon asked him to interview a broom. He didn’t know that Bruce Prichard was there that day; in fact he couldn’t even see McMahon, he only heard his voice. Looking back now, he thinks this was a genius move by McMahon because by putting people in uncomfortable positions, you’re able to test their confidence and see their ability to improvise.
When Hogan arrived in WCW, Bischoff says that he and Hogan spoke often about his departure from WWE. From Bischoff’s perspective it was easy to see that there was a strong personal relationship between Hogan and McMahon. Although they had their differences, Hogan seemed to regret the way everything played out, and Bischoff didn’t sense any distain or hatred from Hogan when he was talking about McMahon. It was easy to see that there was still some affection there.
During his show, Prichard said that he believes McMahon would have done a lot of the same things Bischoff did during the Monday Night Wars if the roles were reversed, such as giving away the finishes of taped matches.
Gail Kim recently did an interview with Kevin Eck of Pressbox Online. Here are a couple of highlights from the interview:
Tell me about the nature of your back injury and how you’re feeling now.
“My back was injured just basically from wear and tear over the years. Luckily, Impact has been so good to me in terms of letting me take time off to make sure I’m healthy and never making me feel bad about it. I’ve been ready to come back for a little while but [Impact Wrestling] has had some time off because we film a bunch of shows once a month or once every other month, so that’s the only reason why I haven’t been back in the ring, but I’m going to be back shortly.”
You’re not under contract with at Impact at the moment, correct?
“Technically, no, but I have a contract in hand. I won’t ever go anywhere else. That’s my family.”
Have you given thought to how much longer you’d like to wrestle?
“Those questions have popped in my head. We kind of incorporated it into the storyline, and I guess we teased [retirement]. People really thought I retired because we never really continued it or explained it; I just really got injured and never came back, so people assumed I was retired. I said, “No, you will know when I’m retired. I wouldn’t go away that quietly.”
Click here for the full interview.