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WWE issues statement regarding Connor Michalek and Warrior Award

By
Colin Vassallo
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In a statement issued a day after Justin Roberts accused his former employer that the company skewed the Warrior Award and inducted Connor Michalek in the Hall of Fame for their benefit, WWE said that they find it offensive to suggest that they had different intentions in honoring Michalek.

Discussing the original intentions of Warrior’s idea of honoring those behind the scenes for their efforts, WWE said that moving forward the award will be given annually to acknowledge other unsung heroes among WWE’s employees and fans.

You can read the full statement below.

It is offensive to suggest that WWE and its executives had anything but altruistic intentions in honoring Connor and his legacy with The Warrior Award. In conjunction with Connor’s father, Connor’s Cure was established by Stephanie McMahon and Paul Levesque to raise awareness and funds for pediatric cancer, and to honor a boy that so many people within the WWE family came to love. The fund is managed by the Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh Foundation and has already raised more than $200,000 for pediatric cancer research.
 
In addition, following the Ultimate Warrior’s impassioned Hall of Fame speech last year encouraging WWE to recognize its unsung heroes, the Warrior Award was established in his memory to honor those who exhibit unwavering strength and perseverance, and who live life with the courage and compassion that embodies the indomitable spirit of the Ultimate Warrior. With the full support and input of Ultimate Warrior’s widow, Dana Warrior, Connor Michalek was the first recipient of the Warrior Award, and moving forward the award will be given annually to acknowledge other unsung heroes among WWE’s employees and fans.
 
WWE is proud to use our global platforms to raise awareness for important social causes, including Connor’s Cure as well as our longstanding partnership with Make A Wish, our on-going partnership with Susan G. Komen, which has resulted in more than $1.5 million in funds raised, and our international partnership with Special Olympics.

AJ Lee gone from WWE

By
Colin Vassallo
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Former WWE Divas champion AJ Lee decided to hang up her boots and is gone from WWE.

“AJ Lee (April Mendez) has decided to retire from in-ring competition with WWE. We wish AJ the very best,” said a statement on WWE.COM.

AJ’s relationship with WWE became complicated after her husband, CM Punk, left the company and blasted them over several issues. While AJ was never “punished” for her association with Punk, the relationship between the two parties was obviously a little bit awkward.

AJ participated at WrestleMania and the next night on Monday Night Raw, which is now her last WWE appearance ever.

The 28 year old started with the WWE in 2009 and was assigned to FCW. She made her television debut on the third season of NXT in 2010 with Primo as her WWE Pro and then moved to the main roster on Smackdown in May 2011.

AJ won the Divas title three times during her tenure with the WWE.

In February, she raised some eyebrows after she criticized Stephanie McMahon on Twitter after McMahon praised Academy Award winner Patricia Arquette for fighting for equal wages. AJ called out McMahon on Twitter and said that WWE Divas receive just a fraction of the wages that their male counterparts do and share little screen time compared to the males.

Ronda Rousey answers WM-related questions during Twitter Q&A

By
Colin Vassallo
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UFC Bantamweight women’s champion Ronda Rousey did a Twitter Q&A with her fans to promote the Fast & Furious 7 movie and answered a couple of WrestleMania-related questions.

When asked how awesome it was to be in the ring with The Rock, Triple H, and Stephanie McMahon, Rousey said it was like being asked to pinch hit in the World Series and hitting a home run in the process.

Rousey said it was “by far” more exciting for her to be at WrestleMania than to be at the premiere of Fast & Furious 7. “The squared circle fits me much better than red carpets,” Rousey honestly replied.

And who would win a real fight between herself and The Rock? “I would definitely win and @TheRock knows it too. ;)”

Dwayne Johnson kills it on Lip Sync Battle

By
Colin Vassallo
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Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson absolutely killed it last night on the series premiere of Lip Sync Battle, winning the LSB championship after his one on one against Jimmy Fallon.

Johnson hilariously lip synced to Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off” and Bee Gee’s “Stayin’ Alive.” During the Swift performance, The Rock turned around and gave the middle finger salute to Fallon who was watching on the side with host LL Cool J.

You can see both funny videos below.

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WWE Studios teams up with British firm for two new movies

By
Colin Vassallo
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WWE Studios and British production-financing company Richwater Films have teamed up to co-produce and co-finance two movies – Eliminators and Rampage – according to Variety.

Eliminators will be directed by James Nunn and star Scott Adkins and WWE’s Wade Barrett. The story follows a former U.S. federal agent who must abandon the witness protection program and come out of hiding after his London home is mistakenly invaded — leading to him finding himself on the run from Europe’s most dangerous assassin to get his daughter to safety. Eliminators will start shooting in London in the late spring.

Rampage, currently in development, follows an American counter terrorism operative who must work with an English MI5 agent to take down a dangerous terrorist in London. WWE and Richwater plan for the film to go into production later this year.

“Having watched WWE programming since the 1991 Royal Rumble and regarding Vince McMahon as the ultimate entrepreneurial pioneer, I am thrilled to be in business with WWE Studios,” said Jonathan Sothcott, CEO and founder of Richwater Films.

WWE grants NXT’s CJ Parker his release

By
Colin Vassallo
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XT talent CJ Parker has been released from his WWE contract effective today after Parker requested it.

“WWE has come to terms on the release of NXT Superstar CJ Parker, as of today, April 3, 2015. WWE wishes CJ Parker the best in all his future endeavors,” said a short statement on the WWE.COM website.

Parker was at WrestleMania weekend and participated in the NXT-related events, his last ones for the company. On April 1, he thanked all the coaches, staff, and fans in a message on Twitter and then wrote, “Best of luck in all YOUR future endeavors!”

He was signed to a WWE deal in 2011 and has been stuck in developmental ever since, something which probably weighed heavy on his decision to move on.

Brock Lesnar expected back in time for SummerSlam

By
Colin Vassallo
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Brock Lesnar is expected to be off WWE television up until the build to SummerSlam, which makes that around 4 months.

The sheriff of Suplex City, Bitch, was “suspended indefinitely” on Raw after he destroyed the Raw announce team of Michael Cole, JBL, and Booker T, flipping the broadcast booth on JBL and Booker and then F5’ing Michael Cole out of his shoe. He then F5’ed the cameraman as an exclamation point. Stephanie McMahon suspended Brock and then announced she was fining him as well.

The suspension is obviously a storyline to explain Lesnar’s time away from WWE television due to the way his contract is drawn up. Lesnar only has a set of dates to work per year and is brought in for the big and important events.

Ric Flair announces the Wooooo Nation podcast on Play.It

By
Colin Vassallo
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Two-time WWE Hall of Famer and 16 time World champion Ric Flair announced the creation of his new podcast yesterday when appearing as a guest on Taz’ Human Podcast Machine show.

Titled Wooooo Nation, the podcast will be part of CBS and their Play.it podcast network. Flair is the second wrestling personality, after Taz, to join CBS with a wrestling show. It’s not exactly known when Flair’s show will debut but the Nature Boy signed the deal with CBS almost two months ago.

The show will not only feature professional wrestling but also other topics. He said that former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee will be one of his first guests on the new podcast.

Justin Roberts slams WWE over skewing the Warrior Award and Connor Michalek’s story

By
Colin Vassallo
-

Former WWE ring announcer Justin Roberts launched an attack on WWE and their way of skewing certain stories to make the company look good, with the most recent one being the Warrior Award and the induction of his good friend Connor Michalek at the Hall of Fame.

Roberts noted how at the Hall of Fame last year, Warrior suggested that the company should honor those hardworking people behind the scenes and now WWE edited the speech to make it sound like WWE should honor those outside the company, “because that might make for a better story – and for better publicity.”

Roberts added that he came up with the whole idea of having Connor coming down the aisle and beat Big E for the “InterConnornental” title after Stephanie McMahon asked Roberts what they can give to little Connor when he visited Raw in D.C. The whole plan was changed and Triple H inserted himself in and got “knocked out” by Connor instead and Roberts, who wanted to introduce Connor in the ring, was not allowed to do so.

Justin Roberts goes over the whole back story of his friendship with Connor and how WWE manipulated everything so them, as a company, can look better rather than doing it just for Connor.

Roberts also included a tweet from McMahon, who retweeted the Twitter co-founder quote at the WWE Business Partners meeting last week which said “Philanthropy is the future of marketing, it’s the way brands are going to win.”

You can read the interesting blog at http://bit.ly/1bSC4Jb.

Dwayne Johnson on series premiere of Lip Sync Battle tonight on Spike

By
Colin Vassallo
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Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson will be on Spike TV tonight as he appears on the series premiere episode of Lip Sync Battle.

The show, hosted by LL Cool J, will feature celebrities going head to head against each other as they…well, lip sync battle each other to songs of their choice. There will be costumes, choreography, backup dancers, and for the winner, a championship belt of course.

Tonight’s episode features the former WWE champion taking on Jimmy Fallon, who actually came up with the original idea and who has a similar segment on The Tonight Show which he now hosts.

The Rock will lip sync to Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off,” and Bee Gee’s “Stayin’ Alive.” It starts at 10PM EST.

Reigns went in to WrestleMania believing he was going to be the champ but…

By
Colin Vassallo
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PWInsider.com is reporting that the decision to give Rollins the WWE title was made mid-WrestleMania week after Lesnar announced that he signed a new WWE deal.

The interesting part of the story was that those involved in the match were not told of plan until WrestleMania was already on the air and only a few people knew the scenario, probably to avoid any leaks.

The plan going into the show for Lesnar and Reigns was that Reigns was going to win the title and Rollins wasn’t aware that he was about to get the biggest moment of his career by the time the pay-per-view goes off the air.

As noted at the Hall of Fame, a ton of members of the Anoa’i family were in attendance to witness one of their own winning the WWE World Heavyweight title, something which eventually didn’t pan out.

This also maybe explains why Rollins told Reigns, “Thank you so much,” when covering him for the final pinfall.

Paige lands her first WWE Studios movie with The Miz

By
Colin Vassallo
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Paige has landed her first WWE Studios movie along with a WWE Studios veteran, The Miz!

The duo will star in the holiday comedy Santa’s Little Helper which will be released in time for the holidays later this year.

The synopsis of the movie reads, “After getting fired from his job, a slick, fast-talking businessman (Dax) is given an opportunity of a lifetime to become Santa Claus’ second-in-command. However, getting the job won’t be that easy: Dax must go head-to-head against an elf that feels she’s more deserving of the title. As the competition heats up, Dax learns the true meaning of Christmas… but ultimately who will become “Santa’s Little Helper?”

Paige said she was excited to get her first gig in a movie while The Miz said he’s just the “gift that keeps on giving!”

E! renews Total Divas for fourth season

By
Colin Vassallo
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E! announced that Total Divas is returning for a fourth season following a very successful season three.

The press release announced that The Bella Twins, Natalya, Naomi, Alicia Fox, Paige, and Eva Marie as the cast which means Cameron and Rosa Mendes are out of the cast and Naomi returns after she was left out of the second half of season three. The cast has not been confirmed by WWE so their omission might simply be a mistake.

Total Divas is produced by WWE and Bunim/Murray Productions. Jonathan Murray, Gil Goldschein, Jeff Jenkins and Russell Jay are Executive Producers for Bunim/Murray Productions. Kevin Dunn is Executive Producer for WWE.

The show returns in Summer 2015, with the last date announced being July 7.

Rousey’s agent says no other WWE dates in her future for now

By
Colin Vassallo
-

Ronda Rousey’s agent Brad Slater told Ariel Helwani on UFC Tonight that the UFC Women’s Bantamweight champion has no other dates with WWE planned, at least for now.

Slater said with certainty that for this year there is nothing planned and there is no guarantee of anything beyond what happened at WrestleMania 31 with The Rock, Triple H, and Stephanie McMahon.

Anything involving Rousey, who is under a UFC contract, has to be signed off by UFC President Dana White and White might not be so keen about having his star fighter wrestle for the competition.

A few days ago, Rousey wrote on Twitter that her and the WWE Universe are “just getting started.”

All three Raw announcers back to work on Monday!

By
Colin Vassallo
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The injury angle from the Raw after Mania where all three announcers were destroyed by Brock Lesnar will be over by next week’s show as it was announced on WWE.COM that all three will be returning behind the broadcast booth on Monday.

To play up the angle, the story said that Michael Cole was diagnosed with a bulging disc and severe neck, back, and shoulder pain. JBL had an abdominal wall tear and Booker T has contusions and soreness. All three, in reality, were fine and the only real damage was to Byron Saxton who didn’t fare well on commentary on his own.

Meanwhile, someone very funny updated Michael Cole’s Wikipedia entry, adding a “death” section. First, the cause of death was written as “ground shaking F5” and Lesnar had “yet to be charged in the court of law” but he was “suspended for his actions.” Then the Wikipedia entry was altered saying that he died of “anal bleeding!” Whoops!

WrestleMania 31 breaks some more records for WWE

By
Colin Vassallo
-

WWE issued a press release announcing more records for WrestleMania, which broke records for viewership, attendance, social and digital media engagement and merchandise sales.

The company is marketing WrestleMania 31 as the most-watched WrestleMania in history with 1.3 million Network subscribers plus additional traditional pay-per-view data still to be counted. As noted elsewhere here, Raw after Mania did nearly 5.4 million viewers making the show the most-watched program on all of cable television for the 11th week in a row.

As reported before, the attendance was 76,976 with fans from all 50 states and 40 countries. The previous record at the new stadium was 70,799. The show grossed $12.6 million.

When it comes to social media, WrestleMania 31 was the most social event in WWE history with a record 142 worldwide Twitter trends, including 10 number one worldwide trends, which was more than any broadcast or cable show that night. WWE-related content saw more than 60 million video views across all platforms on the day of WrestleMania. WrestleMania 31 garnered a record 165 million impressions on Facebook and 92 million impressions on Twitter, an increase of 62 percent and 23 percent year-over-year, respectively. During WrestleMania, the WWE flagship App saw its most usage since launch in 2012, while reaching nearly 18 million downloads during WrestleMania. The WrestleMania 31 App had four times as many downloads as last year’s WrestleMania 30 App although no exact figures on that one were released.

In merchandise, WWE generated an additional $3.3 million in WrestleMania merchandise revenue, eclipsing the previous record of $2.7 million from WrestleMania 29.

Top two matches for Extreme Rules 2015 set

By
Colin Vassallo
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The top two matches for the upcoming Extreme Rules pay-per-view which will take place on April 26 at the Allstate Arena in Rosemont, Illinois were announced during the Smackdown television tapings.

The WWE World Heavyweight title will be on the line as Seth Rollins will defend the gold against the number one contender Rany Orton. Also, John Cena will be defending the United States title against Rusev, making that two WrestleMania rematches on the same card so far.

The poster of the show features John Cena with the American flag painted on his face and the Extreme Rules logo across his face.

NXT live specials on Network to remain quarterly

By
Colin Vassallo
-

The NXT Takeover specials that the recent WWE press release indicated that will be airing monthly has been changed as common sense prevailed and the decision was changed to leave them as quarterly events.

The decision to go monthly raised some eyebrows as the quarterly live specials are super popular with fans and changing it to monthly specials would have somewhat decreased the importance.

The press release circulated online still has monthly specials listed but the WWE.COM story now has “Airs quarterly on Wednesdays.”

Undertaker and Sting photographed together at airport

By
Colin Vassallo
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The Undertaker and Sting shared the same American Airlines AA1231 flight from San Jose, California, to Dallas, Texas, on Tuesday morning and were photographed together at the airport.

It was impossible for the two Superstars to remain incognito even though Taker was wearing a beanie hat and Sting was wearing a baseball cap, with no makeup of course. With Starbucks in their hands, the two chatted as they waited to board the aircraft back home.

You can see the photo below.

 

Raw rating for 03/30/2015

By
Colin Vassallo
-

The Raw after WrestleMania drew huge ratings for WWE, getting an average of 5,364,000 viewers for the three hour broadcast. That is up 1.1 million viewers from the last Raw prior to Mania. This was the best number since the July 23, 2012 edition of Raw, which drew just over 6 million that day.

The first hour started with 5,227,000 viewers, then went up to 5,597,000 for the Brock Lesnar destruction, and then it went down to 5,267,000 for the third and final hour. (Ratings credit: PWInsider.com)

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