As previously reported, Brock Lesnar is being advertised to face Baron Corbin at the July 29th SmackDown Live Event from Detroit, Michigan.
Brock is now being advertised to replace John Cena at the SmackDown Live Event on Saturday August 12th at the Amalie Arena in Tampa, Florida.
Steve is the Founder of RingsideNews, AllWrestlingNews, and Wrestling dot News. He has been writing about professional wrestling since 1996. He first got into website development at the time and has been focusing on bringing his readers the best professional wrestling news at it’s highest quality.
Former WWE Diva Victoria (Lisa Marie Varon) was in attendance for Tuesday’s SmackDown taping in San Diego but was not allowed backstage.
Victoria noted on Facebook that she wanted to go backstage and congratulate the female Superstars on their Money in the Bank Ladder match but the office would not allow her to due so. She wrote the following remarks on Facebook regarding the matter:
Impact Wrestling sent out the following press release today announcing their acquisition of Global Force Wrestling :
NASHVILLE | TORONTO – Anthem Wrestling Exhibitions LLC, a subsidiary of Anthem Sports & Entertainment Corp. and parent company of IMPACT Wrestling, announced today that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Global Force Entertainment, LLC d/b/a Global Force Wrestling.
Jeff Jarrett, the founder of both IMPACT Wrestling and Global Force Entertainment, will join Anthem Wrestling Exhibitions as a member of its board of managers, equity owner and Chief Creative Officer.
“We are thrilled to be joining forces with Anthem as a partner to build the business,” said Karen Jarrett. “This partnership will be complementary of our strengths and bolster our capabilities to grow the IMPACT Wrestling brand. Ed Nordholm as President and Jeff Jarrett as Chief Creative Officer make a great tag team”
“We are excited by the progress we have made with IMPACT Wrestling since acquiring the business in January,” said Ed Nordholm, president of Anthem Wrestling Exhibitions. “Jeff and his team have been instrumental in this success and we are pleased that we have reached an agreement on the basis of which we can combine our businesses to continue to grow. Slammiversary XV will be a fitting occasion to bring the promotions together and merge the titles under the new IMPACT combined belts. By combining our resources and talent, we can produce the best product for our global audience.”
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.
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.
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.
