WWE

Brock Lesnar to Appear for Every RAW Heading Into Great Balls of Fire

Brock Lesnar will be appearing at every RAW show from now until the Great Balls of Fire event to help build for his feud against Samoa Joe. Those dates include the June 12th RAW in Lafayette, LA, June 26th RAW in Los Angeles, and the July 3rd RAW in Phoenix. He is also confirmed for the show after the Great Balls of Fire event in Houston.

It’s unclear if he will actually be participating in any matches on these shows or appearing on television for that matter. In the past he would be advertised for the event, but sometimes not appear on television. He would often work the dark match main event instead. Let’s hope that isn’t the case this time around.

Edge Says Brock Lesnar vs. Samoa Joe Should Have Been Saved for WrestleMania

During the recent installment of the E&C Podcast of Awesomeness, Edge talked about the upcoming match between Brock Lesnar and Samoa Joe and mentioned that WWE should have saved the match for WrestleMania next year.

“You want my take? Here’s my take, ok, I’m assuming that they wanna go Reigns and Brock at WrestleMania. I personally would have gone Brock and Joe at WrestleMania because it’s different, it is fresh, it is believable. You have this 300 pound Samoan you know, beast and then The Beast Incarnate. So I don’t know, I think that to me it would have been a fun match to get at WrestleMania and I think people would have been excited to see that too.”

You can listen to the complete podcast here.

Reason Why Sister Abigail May Never Appear on WWE Television

While appearing on the PWTorch Livecast, former WWE writer Kevin Eck explain why fans will never see Sister Abigail appear in physical capacity on WWE programming.

“From what I know about how Bray Wyatt envisioned that character, I don’t think that character is ever going to be seen, because the way Bray explained it, and I don’t think it’s ever come out on TV. He speaks in riddles, so maybe if you read in-between the lines.”

He continued, “But Bray Wyatt was apparently a young man and Sister Abigail was an old black woman. I believe the swamps of Louisiana who had some supernatural powers and you know the history of voodoo and such in New Orleans. I believe she took him under her wing and kind of taught him the secrets of what she knows of the dark arts and things like that.”

Eck asserted that Sister Abigail is a witch-like character and the person who turned Bray Wyatt into what he is today. Eck stated that if WWE goes by Bray’s vision, the fans may not get to see a physical Sister Abigail.

Matt Hardy & Reby Sky Welcome Their Second Son

Matt Hardy and Reby Sky welcomed their second child late Thursday evening. Matt made the announcement on Twitter telling fans that King Maxel’s baby brother had arrived and was in good health.

Jim Ross Reacts to Lana’s Title Shot

Jim Ross published a new blog entry on JrsBarBq.com. Here are a couple of highlights:

WWE’s booking of Jinder Mahal: “I’m a fan of the decision to make Jinder Mahal the WWE Champ, but I feel that his random utilization of his Singh sidekicks might be overdone. Nonetheless, the former Bollywood Boys take a helluva, ass whipping. Enjoying the villains getting success, which generally adds to the build of most storylines within the genre. If I were to err in booking, and I have plenty of times, I’d suggest erring on the side of antagonist angst more often than not. ‘Heat’ is good.”

Lana’s SmackDown Women’s Title shot: “Lana ‘earning’ a Women’s Tile match? Hmm….the pressure is on for her to deliver in front of a somewhat unforgiving and discerning fan base.”

Upcoming female MITB Ladder Match: “Arguably, today I’m more excited to see the women’s [MITB] bout than the men’s in a few weeks, essentially because of the unique nature of this match being the first ever Women’s MITB match ever. I see these athletic women perceiving this booking as very personal and one can only hope that they are discerning about whey they want to do in this match and remember that their safety should never be compromised, which is largely up to the talents in the match. The Gents in the their TLC bout better lace them up tight or they could be outperformed by the women here.”

You check out the full entry at this link here.

Vince Russo’s The Brand Recap – Smackdown Analysis, Burying Jinder Mahal, Lesnar Turning on Heyman? More!

Russo is joined on today’s show by his co-host Jeff Lane.

He opens today’s show by saying that Smackdown Live simply isn’t for him. He has tried to review that show for three straight weeks now and it has been nothing more than six hours of wasted time. Next week Russo is going to switch back to watching and reviewing RAW because Smackdown Live just isn’t entertaining him.

Russo says that Smackdown Live is a ‘cookie cutter’ show. Every week it’s the exact same thing, and viewers are never given fresh looks or different programming. He points out that the opening segment with all the women in the ring was the exact same segment we saw with the men only two weeks ago.

He says that WWE has been hyping and promoting Lana’s debut for weeks, and when she finally came out the entire announce team no-sold it. He adds that they totally buried Lana by not selling her entrance, and it’s almost like they did it on purpose because it was that bad. He says that Tom Phillips is horrible because if he doesn’t sell something, the audience at home will never look at it as important.

The Taz Show Recap – Bringing Back War Games, Special Guest Jim Ross, Where’s Rusev? More!

Block 1:

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.

Note on Picture-In-Picture Advertising on SmackDown Live

As many of you have seen recently. WWE is now doing picture-in-picture advertising on the SmackDown Live brand on Tuesday nights. This was apparently the USA Network’s idea as they plan on doing it for other shows. The idea is to keep the viewers from changing the channel during commercial breaks.

It’s worth pointing out that WWE is only doing the picture-in-picture advertising for the non-important matches and are still doing full-on commercials for their bigger matches. This past Tuesday on SmackDown they did normal commercial breaks for the AJ Styles vs. Dolph Ziggler match and other popular matches.

Vince McMahon Says Chris Jericho Is The Only Person Who Could Get “Stupid Idiot” Over with Fans

Chris Jericho recently spoke with Rock 100.5 ATL’s Bailey and Southside. Here are some highlights:

The Creation of The List: “Working with this guys who’s a writer in the WWE named Jimmy Jacobs. He used to be a [pro] wrestler. He came up to me one day and said, ‘what if we do something where you put somebody on this list?’ I’m like, ‘I knew this guy once who had a list of people he didn’t like.’ I’m like, ‘oh, that sounds funny.’ So I said it and it kind of got a reaction.” Jericho said, “the whole concept of The List went through the roof. The List is more popular than 85% of the guys on the show. The List is more popular than I am! And you just never know what’s going to make an impression with fans.”

Getting Stupid Idiot Over: “They’re chanting it now, ‘stupid idiot’ and I remember when I started saying that, Vince was like, ‘nobody could say this, nobody can get away with this, but you can. You’re the only guy in the world who could do this’ because when I started using ‘stupid idiot,’ it got heat. I would call the fans, ‘you’re a stupid idiots’ and they’d be like, ‘boo!’ and then, like everything else, suddenly people loved it.”