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The Rock confirmed for first Smackdown on FOX

By
Colin Vassallo
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Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson has announced that he will be appearing live at the 20th anniversary Smackdown episode on FOX this coming Friday, his first WWE televised appearance since WrestleMania 32.

WWE and Johnson, along with FOX, were in discussions for the special appearance but The Rock’s schedule had to be cleared for him to be able to travel to the STAPLES Center.

“FINALLY…I come back home to my @WWE universe. This FRIDAY NIGHT, I’ll return for our debut of SMACKDOWN! LIVE,” Johnson wrote in a tweet. “There’s no greater title than #thepeopleschamp. And there’s no place like home. Tequila on me after the show,” he added, writing the hash tags #IfYaSmell, #Smackdown #RocksShow, and #FOX.

The word Smackdown is largely attributed to The Rock after he used it in one of his promos in the late 90s. WWE eventually went ahead with the word as the title of their new show.

The Rock will be joined by Stone Cold Steve Austin, Ric Flair, Hulk Hogan, Mick Foley, Sting, Goldberg, Trish Stratus, and many others as special guests.

205 Live moving to Friday nights on WWE Network

By
Colin Vassallo
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Despite suggestions that 205 Live will be integrated more with NXT, WWE today announced that the Cruiserweight show will be moving to Friday nights at 10PM ET on the WWE Network. The live tapings will take place immediately following the conclusion of Friday Night Smackdown on FOX.

The NXT writing crew will be taking over the 205 Live show now and the Cruiserweight title and 205 Live Superstars will also be eventually appearing on NXT moving forward.

There were rumors that 205 Live would move to Full Sail University to tape following the live NXT episode of USA Network but for now WWE has opted to keep 205 Live tapings tag teamed with Smackdown.

AEW publishes the video intro of their weekly TNT show Dynamite

By
Colin Vassallo
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All Elite Wrestling published the opening video of their weekly TNT show Dynamite, a few days before it premieres on TNT at 8PM ET on Wednesday night.

The video uses colorful effects that go along with entrances and moves shown on screen, with quick cuts from the previous AEW shows featuring AEW’s top stars including Chris Jericho, Cody, Jon Moxley, Dustin Rhodes, SCU, Adam Page, Awesome Kong, Kenny Omega, PAC, and more.

You can see it below.

Cain Velasquez meets with WWE over potential future with the company

By
Colin Vassallo
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Dave Meltzer is reporting via the MMAFighting.com website that former UFC Heavyweight champion Cain Velasquez and his team has met with WWE regarding a potential future in the company.

Velasquez has been wrestling with Lucha Libre AAA in Mexico and had two matches so far, impressing critic on both occasions. It is believed that WWE wants him to wrestle for them only as they do with everyone else and so far Meltzer notes that it’s not clear if anything will come out of the meeting. The former champ also trained for a few days at the WWE Performance Center several months ago.

He is still under a UFC contract so it is unlikely that he will sign a new contract with another promotion as long as he’s still doing business with the UFC. Apart from the WWE, Velasquez and his representatives also met with New Japan Pro Wrestling and All Elite Wrestling.

John Cena visits injured police officer at his home

By
Colin Vassallo
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John Cena, whose schedule is busier than ever, visited an injured officer from the Colorado Springs Police Department after several months of requests.

Officer Cem Duzel was shot and gravely wounded in the line of duty during a shootout on August 2, 2018, spending several months recovering at Craig Hospital in Englewood. Now, Officer Duzel is still recovering at his family home in Suffolk County, New York.

“Remember all those posts of a John Cena figurine showing up around the police station, encouraging the WWE star to visit Officer Duzel in person? Well, it finally happened!” the police department wrote on Facebook on Friday. “Thank you to everyone in our community who helped make this happen for Officer Duzel, and thank you to John Cena for supporting our hero along his journey! We are amazed, humbled, and beyond thankful,” the post continued.

Cena sported a “4901 Warrior On” t-shirt, the badge number that Officer Duzel had. Duzel is a huge WWE and John Cena fan and earlier this year, Cena sent him a personalized video, urging him to never give up and thanking him for sharing his story and message on the Internet. “And moreover, thank you for involving me in whatever capacity whether it’s a punching bag or a form of inspiration,” Cena said in the video.

The 16-time champ signed a WWE spinner title for the officer and posed for photos with the whole family while visiting at his home.

CBS4 Denver even covered the story during one of their news bulletins.

Big WWE Premiere Week kicks off today

By
Colin Vassallo
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This week will be a big one for WWE as they present eight hours of prime time programming, including the debut episode of Smackdown on FOX.

On Monday, it will be the season premiere of Monday Night Raw with Seth Rollins vs Rey Mysterio for the Universal title, AJ Styles vs Cedric Alexander for the United States title, Alexa Bliss vs Sasha Banks, a Brock Lesnar appearance, and Miz TV with Hulk Hogan and “Nature Boy” Ric Flair.

On Tuesday, season nine of Total Divas will premiere on E! at 10PM ET. WWE Superstars Ronda Rousey, Natalya, Naomi, Nia Jax, Carmella, and Sonya Deville are part of the cast. Nikki Bella and Brie Bella will make guest appearances in the series as well.

On Wednesday, NXT goes full-time on USA Network with both hours of the live show airing on USA Network for the first time. Matches so far involve The Undisputed Era vs The Street Profits for the NXT Tag Team titles, Shayna Baszler vs Candice LaRae for the NXT Women’s title, Matt riddle vs Adam Cole for the NXT title, and Johnny Gargano vs Shane Thorne. This NXT episode will have limited commercials.

Then on Friday, WWE will celebrate Smackdown’s 20th anniversary with the much-anticipated debut on FOX. The show currently has Kofi Kingston vs Brock Lesnar for the WWE title, Shane McMahon vs Kevin Owens in a ladder match, Charlotte Flair and Becky Lynch vs Bayley and Sasha Banks, plus appearances from many WWE Hall of Famers and Legends.

Prior to the premiere, the Friday Night SmackDown Kickoff Show “blue carpet” special will air at 7:30 PM ET on FOX from STAPLES Center featuring celebrity, Superstar and Legend arrivals, as well as backstage access.

WWE Superstars on FOX & Friends all week ahead of Smackdown debut

By
Colin Vassallo
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Starting today, WWE Superstars will be appearing on FOX & Friends as the countdown to the debut of Smackdown on FOX continues.

Each segment featuring WWE Superstars will start at 8:30AM ET followed by a meet and greet at 9:15AM. Only the first 150 fans will be able to do the meet and greet and it all depends if the weather cooperates. The meet and greet will happen at FOX’s News Corp Plaza at 1211 Avenue of the Americas in New York.

Scheduled to appear are WWE champion Kofi Kingston today, Chief Brand Officer Stephanie McMahon on Tuesday, former Raw and Smackdown Women’s champion Charlotte Flair on Wednesday, and former WWE and Universal champion Roman Reigns on Thursday.

Thousands of tickets back on sale for AEW’s debut TNT show in Washington, DC

By
Colin Vassallo
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The originally sold-out AEW Dynamite debut show from Washington’s Capital One Arena has thousands of tickets back on sale as ticket scalpers look to recuperate some of the money they spent when they snapped up the majority of the tickets for the first show on TNT.

Ticketmaster.com has several thousands of tickets available as the seating chart turned from all grey to a sea of blue, showing the enormity of tickets which have been put back on sale. Only 11 sections are all grey, meaning no tickets available in the section. There are even around 230 tickets available in the ringside area with tickets going all the way up to nearly $400 for platinum seats.

Ticket prices on Ticketmaster start from $20 while other secondary market tickets are going as low as $4.

Pyro, lasers, new sets and theme songs all ready for new WWE season

By
Colin Vassallo
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Kevin Dunn, WWE’s Executive Vice President of Television Production, has confirmed with the New York Post that pyro is coming back to WWE television starting with tomorrow’s season premiere of Monday Night Raw.

Dunn said that apart from pyro, there’s also new sets and lasers that will be utilized during both Raw and Smackdown. “We’re rolling out completely new sets, openings logos, graphics, theme music for both Raw and Smackdown next week in WWE Premiere Week. For the first time ever we’re going to have dedicated writing teams, Raw led by Paul Heyman and Smackdown led by Eric Bischoff,” Dunn said in a phone interview.

Smackdown’s new theme song is ACDC’s ‘Are You Ready For A Good Time,’ although what theme Raw will be using remains to be seen.

WWE will be completely splitting up the brands again once the draft episodes air the following week and Raw and Smackdown will be treated as two different entities, meaning that the “wildcard rule” will go away as well.

Rick Bognar, man who portrayed the fake Razor Ramon, passes away

By
Colin Vassallo
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Rick Bognar, the man who briefly portrayed the character of fake Razor Ramon when Scott Hall moved to WCW, passed away last week at age 49. No cause of death was revealed.

Bognar made his professional wrestling debut in 1988 as Big Titan and wrestled in the Canadian indies before moving to Japan to wrestle for Frontier Martial-Arts Wrestling. After a very short stint in ECW in 1996, Bognar joined WWE in September of that same year and was introduced by a heel Jim Ross as the new Razor Ramon. Glenn Jacobs, who later went on to become Kane, was transformed into the new Diesel as part of a storyline following the departures of Scott Hall and Kevin Nash.

The fake Razor Ramon and fake Diesel gimmicks did not last long though and by the end of January 1997, the storyline was dropped and later that year he departed the company after his one-year deal was up.

Bognar, returning to his Big Titan name, then joined New Japan Pro Wrestling where he wrestled until 2001.

Smackdown’s Greatest Hits on FOX rating

By
Colin Vassallo
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The first WWE broadcast on FOX yesterday, Smackdown’s Greatest Hits, did 1,391,000 viewers in the 8PM time slot. That is actually less viewers than last week’s repeat of MasterChef did on FOX as that show 1,467,000 viewers. It only managed to beat The CW among the five networks. (Ratings credit: Showbuzzdaily.com)

Cody says CM Punk made them “look like dumbasses” in interview with ESPN

By
Colin Vassallo
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In an interview with Collider ahead of AEW’s debut on TNT, Executive Vice President Cody Rhodes said that CM Punk made them “look like dumbasses” when he said in an interview with Marc Raimondi of ESPN that they sent him an offer via a text message.

“I’m sure we texted him, but we also called him. Someone also met you in a coffee shop. We made genuine efforts,” Rhodes said with his wife, Brandi, by his side. “We got to focus on who really wants to be on board with us versus going out and finding someone who perhaps doesn’t really want to be part of this,” Cody said in a dig at Punk.

Cody said that he did not communicate with Punk further after the interview and while he expected to run into him at Starrcast, he did not. “I’m sure we’ll run into each other at some point. If he ever wanted to be part of this and he had the passion to comeback to wrestling…that door is always open. No ego…no situation would ever prevent us from having him come in because the fans have never given up on Punk…ever. It is crazy,” Rhodes added.

Punk appeared at Starrcast this past August during the AEW All Out weekend in Chicago and took part in a sold-out Q&A panel moderated by PWInsider’s Mike Johnson. Johnson was the one who also broke the news that Punk participated in an on-screen audition to be part of the WWE Backstage show on FS1 this week.

AEW Plus subscription on FITE now available for purchase

By
Colin Vassallo
-

The AEW Plus subscription on FITE TV is now available for purchase for $4.99 per month.

The subscription is only available for those living outside North America and included in the price is the live, weekly episodes of AEW Dynamite every Wednesday along with some behind-the-scenes videos and additional content. The AEW pay-per-views are not included in the price. You can also purchase single episodes of AEW Dynamite a la carte for $2.99 each.

The AEW Plus service was created with FITE due to the lack of proper international distribution for Dynamite at the moment. The only partnership announced so far is with ITV in the United Kingdom but that deal is far from ideal, with ITV4 airing Dynamite on a four-day delay on Sunday at 8:20AM.

The original deal called for Dynamite to air live in the United Kingdom and Ireland but different regulations when it comes to ad breaks for live TV in the UK meant that Dynamite has to be heavily edited. Instead of having live edits starting at 1AM every week at the ITV offices, AEW and ITV decided that for now the show would air on tape delay, angering fans who live in the country.

Rusev becomes a U.S. citizen

By
Colin Vassallo
-

Former WWE United States champion Rusev is officially a United States citizen after attending the ceremony yesterday.

“It’s was a long road. 14 years in the making. So much hardship and obstacles along the way, but in the end who cares! I’m proud to be an American,” Rusev posted on Instagram along with a photo of him holding a small American flag.

The 34-year-old from Plovdiv, Bulgaria, emigrated to the United States in 2005. A couple of years later, he started wrestling training in California at the Knokx Pro Wrestling Academy under the care of Gangrel and Rikishi. In 2010, WWE came knocking and he signed a developmental deal with the company and he has been working for WWE ever since.

Rusev, real name Miroslav Barnyashev, began dating fellow WWE Superstar Lana while both were in NXT and the two eventually married in 2016. The couple now live in Nashville, Tennessee.

Kambi publishes odds of who will be the king of ratings next week

By
Colin Vassallo
-

Sports betting giant Kambi has come up with 12 ratings-related odds for next week’s big week as Smackdown moves to FOX and AEW and NXT go head-to-head for the first-time ever on cable television.

Among the odds available there are audience totals for all wrestling shows, Dynamite to have more viewers than Raw, Dynamite to have more viewers than NXT, Smackdown to have more viewers than Raw, AEW, and NXT, and more.

Kambi placed odds of 17/20 of Raw, Smackdown, NXT, and AEW to have a combined audience of over 8 million next week. It’s a long shot as Raw usually draws in the lower 2 million mark and NXT and AEW might get over a million each. That leaves Smackdown on FOX needing over 4 million viewers on its debut night on FOX.

AEW Dynamite having more viewers than Raw is set to 9/2, another hard task but doable due to the curiosity factor. Those odds are the underdog as Raw has 1/10 odds of beating AEW next week. AEW Dynamite is the favorite though of beating NXT in the ratings next week, with odds of 7/10.

Smackdown beating all combined wrestling shows has odds of 2/1, a possible reality considering all the hype of moving to FOX. But the odds are in favor of no, with 1/3 odds set on Smackdown failing in that test.

AEW Dynamite has 5/4 odds of doing more than 1.25 million viewers for its debut episode and 11/20 odds of doing less than that.

Raw is at 19/20 for doing more than 2.4 million viewers for its new-look season premiere while Smackdown is 3/4 to do 3.5 million viewers or more for its FOX debut. NXT is 11/20 for over a million viewers in its first head-to-head show against AEW.

Hogan, Flair, Undertaker, and others all scheduled for Crown Jewel 2019 in Saudi Arabia

By
Colin Vassallo
-

Tickets for yet another controversial WWE Saudi Arabia show will go on sale this coming Monday, September 30.

Taking place from the King Fahd International Stadium in Riyadh on Thursday, October 31, the show will be titled Crown Jewel again, with WWE’s top stars including Seth Rollins, Kofi Kingston, Roman Reign, The Fiend, and Brock Lesnar all advertised to appear. In addition, Hulk Hogan, Ric Flair, and The Undertaker are also scheduled to make an appearance on the show.

Tickets will be available through TicketMX.com and they start at 25 Saudi Riyals, which is less than $7.

This is the fourth WWE event in a 10-year agreement that WWE signed with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The show will be live on the WWE Network and it will be interesting to see how WWE handles Smackdown the next day since the majority of the talent will be in Saudi the day before.

Last time, WWE also took two women with them – Natalya and Alexa Bliss – but they did not end up wrestling after the Saudi government pulled the plug on the first-ever female match after initially giving the okay to proceed.

CM Punk auditions for role with WWE Backstage on FOX Sports

By
Colin Vassallo
-

PWInsider.com is reporting in an exclusive story that CM Punk auditioned for an on-air role of the WWE Backstage show on FS1 this week.

The former WWE champion traveled to Los Angeles to meet with FOX Sports executives and do the test. Renee Young, who is the lead host of Backstage, was also present when Punk got in front of the camera.

“We have not confirmed that Punk has signed on for the series,” Mike Johnson of PWInsider.com said. Johnson was specifically picked by CM Punk to conduct his interview at the Starrcast event in August during the AEW All Out weekend.

Punk quit WWE in January of 2014 after the Royal Rumble and then had a long legal battle against one of its doctors. Punk has since softened his hard stance against WWE and during his interview at Starrcast pointed out that he would talk to WWE if they called with a decent idea.

Apart from CM Punk, former ECW champion and Smackdown commentator Taz was also brought in to test as well as Rey Mysterio, Paige, and Sean “X-Pac” Waltman.

FOX Sports, who are handling all the production for the show, want from three to five people on the broadcast every week with the format they’re going with and anyone signed on to be part of the show will be on the FOX Sports book rather than WWE’s.

30-minute pre-show set for NXT show next week

By
Colin Vassallo
-

As NXT prepares for the full-time, two-hour start on USA Network next Wednesday, WWE will hold a pre-show 30 minutes before the show goes live on the air.

The show, hosted by Charly Caruso, Pat McAfee, and Sam Roberts, will air on the WWE Network, WWE.COM, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter starting at 7:30PM ET.

The gang will run down the big night ahead at Full Sail University, with three NXT titles on the line plus surely some other surprises considering the importance of that night.

NXT will run with limited commercials on USA Network as the company tries to prevent people from switching channels over to TNT for All Elite Wrestling’s Dynamite debut.

For professional wrestling, Wednesday night will never be the same again with both NXT and Dynamite running head-to-head, recreating the famous Monday night war between WWE and WCW.

Sting and Robocop to reunite at Starrcast IV during Full Gear weekend

By
Colin Vassallo
-

Starrcast IV in Baltimore during AEW’s Full Gear weekend will feature the reunion of Sting…and Robocop!

Yes, that’s right. Robocop is returning to a wrestling event for the first time since 1990 when he appeared at WCW’s Capital Combat in Washington, DC to save the Stinger from an attack from the Four Horsemen. On that night, Sting was locked in a steel cage and Robocop came out and tore the door off its hinges as the heels backpedaled.

For Starrcast IV, Sting will be appearing in his red, white, and blue face paint and jacket and carrying the WCW World title, otherwise known as The Big Gold Belt, for photographs. Sting worn the same outfit at Great American Bash 29 years ago when he defeated Ric Flair in Baltimore.

Sting will be seen next on television next week as WWE celebrates 20 years of Smackdown on FOX.

For more information and tickets for Starrcast, visit starrcast.com. The event will be held at Power Plant LIVE! at the Inner Harbor section of downtown Baltimore.

Smackdown’s Greatest Hits airing on FOX tonight at 8PM ET

By
Colin Vassallo
-

WWE’s first broadcast on FOX will air tonight starting at 8PM ET with WWE Smackdown’s Greatest Hits, a one-hour show hosted by Charlotte Flair and The Miz.

The two WWE Superstars will highlight 20 years of memorable Smackdown moments ahead of the show’s return to Friday nights starting on October 4.

Speaking of which, to celebrate the arrival of Smackdown on the network, FOX Sports has engaged Facebook’s Spark AR Studio to create seven AR filters that can turn anyone into a WWE Superstar. The AR filters will swap your face with a wrestler’s face in video footage and photos that are being created by the company.

These filters will be available on Facebook and Instagram and feature The Undertaker, Triple H, Randy Orton, Charlotte Flair, and others. The AR filters are being tested by FOX Sports according to Engadget.com and will be rolling out in the coming days.

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