WWE released the following photos of their website that reveal Lana’s in-ring gear for when she returns to WWE television on the SmackDown Live brand:
Several websites posted photos last month that displayed Lana wearing a dress and claimed that it would be her ring gear when she returns to WWE television. We knew at the time that she would not be wrestling in that because… well, who wrestles in a dress?
Baron Corbin got into it today on Twitter with CZW wrestler Geoffrey Bravo. It all went down with Bravo ripped Corbin for his appearance. Here is the exchange:
I don’t get Baron Corbin’s sex appeal that women love…. Y’all likevthe balding, kinda in shape, lost look in the eyes look? Lmao
— Geoffrey Bravo (@GeoffBravo5_aka) May 25, 2017
@GeoffBravo5_aka I don’t get how you call your self a pro wrestler. Wrestling for chips and maybe 5 bucks just makes you a pretend wrestler. Big difference
— Baron Corbin (@BaronCorbinWWE) May 26, 2017
@BaronCorbinWWE I’m apparently enough of a somebody to elicit a response…. and I didn’t even tag you. Have a great day, brother!
— Geoffrey Bravo (@GeoffBravo5_aka) May 26, 2017
PWInsider reports that Matt Hardy’s trademark application for the “BROKEN Matt Hardy” has been refused by the U.S. Patent & Trademark office. Matt has six months to respond to the application before it’s abandoned. The refusal reads:
“Registration is refused because the applied-for mark, as used on the specimen of record, identifies only the name of a particular character/personal name; it does not function as a service mark to identify and distinguish applicant’s services from those of others and to indicate the source of applicant’s services.”
As we are all no doubt very aware, Jinder Mahal is the WWE Champion. He’s bested the likes of Sami Zayn and Randy Orton, and is now seated comfortably at the top of the mountain. It is still unclear just how long he’s going to stay there, but things have changed. He is not going back down to where he was. WWE is clearly all in on the Maharaja Express. Once this is all done and there’s a new WWE Champion, don’t expect Mahal to fade away. From the looks of things, he is going to be around for a while.
Think about it. The last three champions, for some crazy reason, have all been transitional champions. I can’t believe it. If you add the total amount of days that John Cena, Bray Wyatt, and Randy Orton held the title this year, it’s less than the length of AJ Styles’s reign. The championship went nowhere.
Cena won it off AJ so he could get his 16 title reigns and lose it to Bray Wyatt two weeks later. Two weeks. What is this, the 70’s? Next up is Bray Wyatt. His reign started out alright. He won in the Elimination Chamber and retained against Cena and Styles in a triple threat. Cool. Randy Orton burned his house down and killed Sister Abigail to death. It was an awesome moment, but that was when the feud jumped the shark.
The bad blood between Wyatt and Orton devolved into a dick measuring contest. They argued over who had the superior magic powers, with Bray claiming he was born again and Randy just kinda stabbing the ground with a stake. Then they put on a garbage match at Wrestlemania that was certifiably spooky.
Randy won and then fought Wyatt in an even spookier House of Horrors match that he lost. He then lost his in his first title defense.
The very first thing that Jinder Mahal did on Smackdown was come out of a damn limousine like he was hot stuff. The Singh brothers weren’t even riding in the same car as him. They rolled out a carpet for him to step on. Then he had a Punjabi celebration that was actually really cool and colorful. Dancers and music were there in the stadium. It was quite nice.
They are clearly trying to present Mahal as a big deal, and he does seem like one now. This shows a surprising amount of effort. If they were just doing this for kicks and giggles, then they wouldn’t hire a whole crew of Indians to sing and dance. They wouldn’t hire a limousine. WWE is seemingly going the whole nine yards for Mr. Mahal.
Is Mahal going to retain at Money in the Bank? It’s hard to say. Randy Orton is now going after him, and where the hell is Rusev, seriously. Give that man his WWE Championship match. With a new Mr. Money in the Bank about to be crowned soon, we’re about to see some new faces in the main event scene.
Mahal, to his credit, has shown that he can hang with the best. He knows how to wrestle, even if he is a bit plain and uninspiring. The Singh Brothers add depth to his character by giving him unwarranted arrogance. He claims he’s the best, but he’s clearly not. Combine that with his attempts to make us feel racist, and now everyone hates him. It’s great.
A listener calls into the show and asks Taz if The Undertaker ever returns to WWE, will he return as The Undertaker or as Mark Calaway. Taz says that it’s a no brainer that he’ll return as The Undertaker gimmick if he ever returns. He says that there’s no reason for Undertaker to give up that gimmick and return as ‘Mark Calaway’ if he ever comes back.
The caller also asks Taz when he thinks The Undertaker will be inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame. Taz says he wouldn’t waste any time, and he’d induct The Undertaker next year. Undertaker is a first ballot Hall of Famer, and it’s only a matter of time before he takes his rightful place in the Hall of Fame.
Another listener calls into the show and asks Taz about the differences between cutting a promo in a small gymnasium versus a large arena. Taz says that no matter the size of the building, everything changes when there’s a camera in front of your face. Regardless of how many people are in the building, there might be millions watching at home so your promo needs to be more generic and more relatable to a larger group of people.
Another caller mentions that he doesn’t think The Miz has been booked as well since moving to Monday Night RAW. Taz says that as long as Miz is getting screen time with the mic, he’ll be okay because he’s a great talker. Taz does admit that Miz’s feud with Dean Ambrose has been dragged out, so after their next Intercontinental Title bout hopefully Miz will move on to a fresh program.
Bischoff is joined on today’s show by his co-host Nick Hausman.
Bischoff opens today’s show by discussing Ed Nordholm’s decision to divulge personal messages between himself and Matt Hardy to the wrestling media. This is a whole new level of small ball in Bischoff’s opinion, and it stinks of desperation. It’s a very amateur move, and by sending out this information Bischoff suggests that Nordholm is basically wearing a sign around his neck that says ‘mark’.
Bischoff believes that the harder IMPACT pushes back against The Hardys in this battle over the ‘Broken Universe, in the court of public opinion they will be found guilty. They’re bringing a lot of bad publicity to their brand by fighting this war, and they’d be much better served to just let it go.
He believes that this whole thing is probably one big running joke within WWE at the moment, because it’s incredibly stupid. The fact that Ed Nordholm and IMPACT tried to ‘sell’ WWE a gimmick is hilarious in Bischoff’s opinion, and there’s no way anyone at WWE’s head offices are taking this serious at all.
While speaking with AP News, Chris Jericho talked about his future with WWE and revealed that it will be a long time before he returns to WWE.
“WWE, it’s the brand name. I’m just a cog. An important part of it, people like it. But this is our band. People are here to see us. That to me, is a little more of a rush. It’s not under the auspices of another name. It’ll be a long time before I go back,” he said. “If I ever do go back, if I never go back, it’s fine. If I never wrestle another match, it wouldn’t bother me.”
It’s very interesting that Jericho questioned if he would be returning to WWE as he is being advertised for the upcoming WWE Live Event on June 30th and July 1st in Tokyo, Japan at the Ryogoku Kokugikan.
Plans for Rusev to return to WWE programming and go after the WWE Title have changed.
As seen on SmackDown Live a couple weeks back, WWE aired footage of Rusev saying he wanted a shot at the WWE Title at the Money in the Bank event. Rusev said he would be returning to SmackDown Live to confront Shane, which never happened and WWE hasn’t played up to that storyline at all on any of their programming.
With WWE announcing Randy Orton’s rematch for the WWE Title at the Money in the Bank event on SmackDown Live this week, it is now evident that plans have changed for Rusev and he will not be going after the Title on that show. We will keep you updated if we hear anything new regarding his return.
As seen at Sunday’s WWE Backlash event, Jinder Mahal defeated Randy Orton to capture the WWE Title for the first time ever. Going into the event, the plan has always for Mahal to defeat Orton for the title, however the original idea pitched was for him to drop the title the following week on SmackDown Live after Backlash. Obviously, plans changed and the company has other plans in place for Mahal’s championship run.
We noted earlier this week that the Mahal is inline for a Lengthy run with the title. Bryan Alvarez speculated on today’s installment of Wrestling Observer Live that Mahal could very well hold onto the title until September. That is when WWE heads overseas to tour India. The whole idea on putting the title on Mahal was to create a Superstar to cater to the fans in India.
Alvarez also indicated that there is a possibility that if things go well in the India market, Mahal could even hold onto the title as late as WrestleMania 34 next year.
Ryback is joined on today’s show by his co-host Jeff Buck.
Ryback informs that he had had a brutal week. His Instagram account was locked for four days for some reason that he’s still unsure of, but it was really disappointing given how often he uses that account to promote his business ventures. In a similar vein, Ryback estimates that he has lost roughly $20,000 in sales in the United States alone from the ‘Amazon debacle’ over the last little while.
Ryback discusses the recent report that an indie promoter has offered CM Punk $1,000,000 to come wrestle for his promotion. Ryback says that he knows this promoter and let’s just say he’s not the straightest shooter in the World. Ryback assumes that if Punk accepted this deal he’d somehow find himself locked in a 7-year contract working thousands of shows a year.
The promoter also reportedly said that he’d consider it a victory if Punk even hears about this offer. Ryback says that’s a ‘mark’ comment if he has ever heard one.
They actually did it, you guys. The absolute madmen, they actually did it. Jinder Mahal beat Randy Orton at Backlash to become the WWE Champion. Not only that, but he is the 50th person to hold the title. He’s now in the same league as men like The Rock, Stone Cold, Bret Hart, and Hulk Hogan.
Meanwhile, Kevin Owens retained the US title by trapping AJ Styles’ leg in an announce table. Natalya beat Becky Lynch (no surprise there) to pick up a victory for the Welcoming Committee. Shinsuke Nakamura finally had a match. Obviously all of these have repercussions and consequences, so let’s try to figure out how the Smackdown environment will change.
Unfortunately, Tyler Breeze and Fandango were not able to pick up a win (and the Smackdown Tag Team Championship) at Backlash. They lost to the Usos, who resorted to sort of underhanded tactics to win. This “tainted” win will most likely mean that this feud is not over.
Unfortunately it really feels like the tag team division is spinning its wheels until the New Day can arrive. While they put on quite a match and won our hearts, Breezango ultimately feel like placeholder contenders to be fed to the Usos while New Day is on hold. With the Hype Bros out and American Alpha MIA (hopefully doing a hard reset), there was clearly no one else left to challenge the Usos.
This most likely means that Breezango gets one more match and then brutalized to give the Usos some heat. With the ever looming threat of the New Day hanging over the tag division, I expect the Usos will be keeping the titles warm for the them to take.
Kevin Owens barely won the match. After securing a count-out victory, Owens proclaimed that he was better than AJ Styles. Styles, of course, will not take that lying down. He will most likely demand a rematch. Not that there’s anything wrong with that as they put on a great match.
Maybe at Money in the Bank, Styles and Owens will lock horns again. Hopefully this time there will be a decisive winner. The question is, will it be AJ Styles or will Kevin Owens hold onto the gold?
Styles has just come off one of the best debut years in recent history. He debuted in a WWE Championship match, was in the main event of two pay-per-views within the first four months of his WWE career, beat John Cena clean as a whistle, and became WWE Champion. Meanwhile Kevin Owens became Universal Champion, was unable to successfully defend it without interference, and lost to Goldberg in under 30 seconds. Who needs a win more?
I feel that Owens will retain the US title, which will free up Styles to re-enter the WWE title picture. That’s already starting to look crowded, but in a good way. Meanwhile Owens can defend the title against Sami Zayn or Tye Dillinger. Both of those programs show promise.
The Welcoming Committee have firmly established their dominance over the whole division (read: six people) at Backlash by making Becky Lynch tap out to Natalya. The backlash from this? We’re about to find out.
Charlotte is still gunning after the Women’s Championship, but there are other sharks circling about. Carmella can claim a shot at the title, because she pinned Naomi. As they say, you pin the champion, you get a title match.
Natalya, however, also may have a few words to say. She won the match for her team, which means she beat Naomi and Charlotte. She beat the champion and the number one contender. Surely that boosts her standing a little? Either way, Naomi has new foes to face.
She is probably going to drop the title soon, most likely to Charlotte. Hopefully this will allow for a Becky Lynch v. Charlotte match at Summerslam where Becky can pick up the win. It’s been so long since she has won.
The million dollar question now is this: what’s going to happen to the WWE Championship? Jinder Mahal is for sure not holding onto the title for very long.
Orton was kicking his ass decisively until the Singh Brothers came along and Randy casually murdered them. Randy Orton is not someone you want as your enemy.
There’s also Rusev demanding a title shot. While he hasn’t shown up yet, surely they’ll humor him. He’s on the hunt, and right now his target is Jinder Mahal. If all goes well, Rusev will have a match at Money in the Bank.
Money in the Bank. You know, where someone gets an opportunity for a WWE Championship match anytime and anywhere? That thing? Yeah, it’s happening next month. So now the champion has to potentially deal with Randy Orton, Rusev, and Mr. Money in the Bank. It could be Baron Corbin, or Sami Zayn. Heck, it could even be Erick Rowan. This is going to be an interesting title picture for the next few months.
