Four matches have been announced for Monday Night Raw tonight as the show goes head-to-head against the NCAA football game which is expected to draw monster ratings on ESPN.
The four matches are Rusev vs Bobby Lashley, Aleister Black vs Buddy Murphy, Randy Orton vs AJ Styles, and a fistfight involving Big Show, Samoa Joe, and Kevin Owens vs Seth Rollins and the Authors of Pain.
Apart from these four matches, Brock Lesnar will also be in the house, his second appearance in a row this year as the road to the Royal Rumble continues.
Scott Dawson and Dash Wilder have filed for the trademark of Shatter Machine, presumable the name of their tag team should they depart the WWE as they are believed to do so in a few months.
The trademark, filed on January 8 under the entertainment and merchandise section of goods and services, is listed under their real name of Daniel Wheeler and David Harwood.
The attorney on record is Michael E. Dockins from Toledo, Ohio, the same attorney who filed several trademarks for Cody Rhodes last year as well as Charlotte Flair.
Dawson and Wilder are expected to be departing WWE in a few months after their contract runs out. While WWE has been aggressively trying to lock them in for another deal, the former tag team champions seem to be exploring their options.
There have been several rumors lately that just like Edge, Paige will be soon stepping back in the ring and be part of the women’s Royal Rumble match later this month. Paige also recently signed a new WWE deal, giving more fuel to those rumors.
Taking to Twitter to address these rumors, Paige joked that she is indeed coming back to the ring at the Royal Rumble. “I’m entering myself into the men’s and being number 2 and taking that bish to suplex city then go on to win the whole thing,” she wrote, adding a funny GIF of one of her entrances.
Then, to make matters worse for her, Triple H also talked about the rumors of both Edge and Paige returning, saying it’s solely a medical decision and if their medical experts say that they believe this person has done whatever needs to be done to get in shape and there’s no risk, then they allow them to return.
“When you’re talking about people as talented as Edge and Paige, who wouldn’t want them to return? I’m a fan just like everyone else. Yeah, we’d love to see them step back in the ring. More importantly than that though, I’d love to see them live a long healthy life,” Triple H said.
The former NXT and Divas champion was not amused though. “Even my boss jokes about me.. no wonder you guys still do it too,” she wrote.
Cannabidiol, more often known as CBD, is starting to gain tremendous popularity for many health-related reasons. While, initially, a lot of people would use it for anxiety relief, now, athletes are also using it to help them properly recover from their intense training sessions.
How CBD Helps with Your Workout Routines
CBD becomes beneficial to the body once it interacts with the endocannabinoid system (ECS). This specific system’s main role is to achieve homeostasis, or to keep the body in a healthy, balanced state.
Hence, it regulates mood and various bodily functions, such as cognition, digestion, and metabolism. It also interacts with the brain’s receptors to regulate body pains. Because of this, products like CBD oil makes a great post-workout recovery tool, especially for preventing muscle pains.
Are you curious about what CBD can do for your training? Here are four reasons why more and more athletes are starting to appreciate it:
Muscle Relaxant
Athletes who are trying to gain muscle mass are a lot likely to experience DOMS, or Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness, especially when they’ve pushed themselves too hard. Muscle tensions usually make the pain a lot worse. Unfortunately, these pains can last longer than what you’d normally expect. Thus, you’d want to do everything you can to help your body heal as quickly as possible.
In some cases, especially when the pain is too much, benzodiazepines, like Valium, are used. These drugs interact with the body’s GABA receptors. These play a huge role in regulating your muscles’ ability to relax. CBD has the same pain treatment properties as benzodiazepines, but minus their chemical nature and side effects.
Pain Reliever with Anti-Inflammatory Properties
Inflammation is one of the biggest issues that prevent proper muscle recovery. Because of the delayed recovery, people become more prone to lingering soreness and injuries.
Fortunately, CBD has anti-inflammatory properties that can help speed up the rate of healing. Although it isn’t advisable to work out as soon as the pain subsides, the faster recovery rate at least means that you’ll be able to train in full force sooner.
Mood Booster
CBD is also commonly known as a mood enhancer, especially for people who are dealing with stress, depression, and anxiety. Since CBD is known to have the ability to alleviate pain, using it can improve mood by eliminating possible causes of stress, such as muscle pains.
What does a good mood have to do with recovery? It significantly minimizes the amount of stress hormones that the body produces. This allows the body’s systems to perform their duties in the most efficient way possible because there are no stress hormones preventing them from doing their job.
Sleep Enhancer
Aside from eating the right post-workout food and exercising only within your body’s limit, sleeping adequately is a must for proper recovery. The problem is, muscle pains and stress may prevent you from having a peaceful sleep.
If you’re having trouble sleeping after a hard workout, CBD may be able to help. In fact, CBD is known to have therapeutic effects in people who are dealing with insomnia.
Using CBD for Training Recovery
Before anything else, make sure that you’ve gotten your doctor’s approval before you try out CBD. You don’t want to use it when you’re dealing with health issues that will only worsen when you take the said compound.
CBD products come in a variety of forms. The most common ones are oils and tinctures, but, nowadays, you’ll also find capsules, gummies, vapes, balms, and lotions in the market.
If you’re planning to use CBD for training recovery, it’s mostly a matter of choosing whether you prefer oral or topical administration. The recommended dosages are:
1-6mg of CBD per 10 lbs. of body weight
5-10mg of CBD per day, increasing by 5-10mg until you feel the desired effects
Take CBD in small quantities first to see how your systems will react. The aforementioned dosages are a normal starting point, but it may take you a few trials before you figure out how much CBD works well for you. In any case, ingesting CBD or applying it topically over sore muscles is usually a great way to help you recover from tough workouts.
Conclusion: CBD Helps Improve Your Post-Workout State
While CBD doesn’t directly contribute to muscle health and growth, it’s more than useful in treating pains that can delay recovery. Hence, if your doctor approves of your use of it, CBD is certainly worth trying out.
As you may already know, a slow recovery is one of the biggest hurdles in training improvement. Since CBD is known to help users rest and sleep better, you can expect CBD to give you the rightful recovery that you deserve from all the hard work you do at the gym.
Multiple industry insiders are reporting that Impact’s Brian Cage has signed a deal with All Elite Wrestling. The news was originally broken by SoCalUncensored.com.
Cage was supposed to wrestle Rob Van Dam yesterday at Hard To Kill but an injury prevented him from doing too much physical stuff. Van Dam then ended up wrestling Daga instead.
The 35-year-old Cage worked for Impact between 2012 and 2014 and then returned in 2018 where he won the Impact World title. Cage was supposed to take part at the Double or Nothing Casino Battle Royale back in May but his appearance was pulled out due to some creative differences between AEW and Impact Wrestling, who opted not to have their world champion competing in a battle royal.
Cage’s wife, Mellissa Santos, refuted the online reports that her husband is now part of AEW. On Twitter, Santos wrote, “Really?? How can you confirm something that isn’t true???? I’m his wife and I can CONFIRM, he hasn’t signed on any dotted line.”
Tessa Blanchard wrote her name in the pro wrestling history books last night at the Hard To Kill pay-per-view becoming the first woman to win a promotion’s world title. She defeated Sami Callihan in the intergender main event, wrapping up a year-long storyline that saw Blanchard rise to the top.
Her weekend wasn’t all going great though as after a tweet meant to unite the females in the wrestling community, several of her former co-workers fired back, exposing her as a bully and a racist, statements which Blanchard denied on social media when replying to her accusers.
But her victory speech last night after Hard To Kill went off the air somewhat addressed those rumors, saying that she hasn’t been perfect.
“Nobody in this life is perfect. We’re all human,” Blanchard said. “It doesn’t matter what you call me. I’ve got one of the strongest minds that I’ve ever known. So whenever you come for me, you come for all these people.”
Blanchard, the daughter of WWE Hall of Famer Tully Blanchard, wrapped up her speech by telling fans that she is now the standard bearer of the promotion. “Man or woman…pound for pound…I am one of the best in the world, and I am now your world champion.”
Here are the results from last night’s Hard To Kill pay-per-view which took place from The Bomb Factory in Dallas, Texas.
Ken Shamrock defeated Madman Fulton; Ace Austin defeated Trey Miguel to retain the X Division title; Taya Valkyrie defeated Jordynne Grace and ODB in a triple threat match to retain the Impact Knockouts title; Rob Van Dam defeated Daga; Eddie Edwards defeated Michael Elgin; Moose defeated Rhino; The North defeated Rich Swann and Willie Mack to retain the Impact Tag Team titles; Tessa Blanchard defeated Sami Callihan to win the Impact World title.
The Undisputed Era ran riot at the end of NXT UK Takeover: Blackpool II and destroyed Imperium, including their leader and WWE United Kingdom champion Walter.
Walter had just defeated Joe Coffey in a near 30-minute match and was celebrating with the rest of his faction before Adam Cole, Bobby Fish, Kyle O’Reilly, and Roderick Strong ran through the crowd to attack the NXT UK group.
The loud crowd went absolutely bonkers at the sight of The Undisputed Era and chanted “NXT! NXT! NXT!” as Cole and company destroyed Walter, Barthel, Aichner, and Wolfe.
Imperium and The Undisputed Era will be taking on each other in an eight-man tag match at the upcoming Worlds Collide WWE Network special on the eve of the Royal Rumble in Houston, Texas. Worlds Collide will pit NXT vs NXT UK stars, replacing Takeover during the Rumble weekend.
Here are the results from today’s NXT UK Takeover: Blackpool II which took place from the Empress Ballroom in Blackpool, England, exclusively on the WWE Network.
Eddie Dennis defeated Trent Seven; Kay Lee Ray defeated Toni Storm and Piper Niven in a triple threat match to retain the NXT UK Women’s title; Tyler Bate defeated Jordan Devlin; Gallus defeated Imperium, Grizzled Young Veterans, and Mark Andrews and Flash Morgan Webster in a fatal four-way tag team ladder match to retain the NXT UK Tag Team titles; Walter defeated Joe Coffey to retain the WWE United Kingdom title.
Live from the Bomb Factory in Dallas, Texas, Impact Wrestling presents Hard To Kill on pay-per-view. The full card is as follows:
Sami Callihan vs Tessa Blanchard in an intergender match for the Impact World title; Taya Valkyrie vs Jordynne Grace vs ODB in a three-way match for the Knockouts title; Ace Austin vs Trey Miguel for the X Division title; The North vs Rich Swann and Willie Mack for the Impact Tag Team titles; Eddie Edwards vs Michael Elgin for the Call Your Shot trophy; Brian Cage vs Rob Van Dam; Moose vs Rhino; Ken Shamrock vs Madman Fulton.
Apart from airing on pay-per-view, Hard To Kill will also be available on FITE.TV for non-US orders at a price of $19.99.
The University of Minnesota Gopher Wrestling honored the current WWE champion Brock Lesnar yesterday, celebrating the 20th anniversary of Lesnar winning the NCAA championship.
The presentation aired live on the Big Ten Network during the Big Ten Wrestling Championships collegiate competition.
“Bigger than life…bigger than most,” the commentator said as several photos of Lesnar in the WWE and UFC flashed on the screen. Lesnar then came out jogging through some pyro, all smiles, as fans gave him a standing ovation. He was then presented a big canvas print from his NCAA final win. After the presentation was over, the mascot came out with a big WWE title cardboard cut out and gave it to Brock as the two posed together for fans in attendance.
NXT UK is back with another Takeover live today on the WWE Network titled Takeover: Blackpool II. The show will take place from the Empress Ballroom in Blackpool, England. The full card is as follows:
Walter vs Joe Coffey for the WWE United Kingdom title; Gallus vs Imperium vs Grizzled Young Veterans vs Mark Andrews and Flash Morgan Webster in a fatal 4-way tag team ladder match for the NXT UK Tag Team titles; Kay Lee Ray vs Toni Storm vs Piper Niven in a triple threat match for the NXT UK Women’s title; Trent Seven vs Eddie Dennis; Tyler Bate vs Jordan Devlin.
The show, airing exclusively on the WWE Network, starts at 5PM local time / Noon ET / 9AM PT. A 30-minute pre-show will start at 5:30PM local time. This is the first Takeover airing on a Sunday rather than on a Saturday.
A tweet by Impact star Tessa Blanchard opened the floodgates, and not in the good way, after Blanchard wrote, “Hey women, try supporting one another. Cool things happen.”
A bunch of former co-workers hit back at Blanchard, who apparently wasn’t the model citizen on her rise to the top. Today, she headlines the Hard to Kill pay-per-view with Sami Callihan for the Impact World title in an inter gender match.
NXT star Chelsea Green was the first to call her out on the tweet. “You’ve consistently put down, bullied, and belittled countless female coworkers, including me. Is that support?” Blanchard, to her credit, replied, saying that she’s never been anything but kind to Green during her time working together. She told Green that she has zero merit in her comments and she’s not saying that she’s been a saint either and made silly decisions as well. “Instead putting me down here for a little clout…you’ve got my #,” Blanchard added.
Former Impact wrestler Allysin Kay, who wrestled under the name of Sienna, also accused Blanchard of doing nasty things. “Remember when you spat in a black woman’s face and called her the N-word in Japan? Was that you ‘supporting women’? The AUDACITY of this tweet.” Blanchard once again replied to the tweet, flatly denying Kay’s statement. “That’s my statement and the most attention I’ll give it because of how actually ridiculous it is,” she answered. Kay wasn’t done yet though, explaining that different people tried to deal with Blanchard behind the scenes for years and she never changed. “Denying things even happened shows you haven’t grown. So it was time for that ass to get exposed. I guarantee you she will treat everyone w/ respect now, bc people are watching that much closer.”
But the individual who was on the receiving end of that spit, La Rosa Negra, jumped in to thank both Kay and Green for calling out Blanchard. She said that it happened in Japan in 2017 and if Tessa doesn’t remember it happening, she certainly does. “I am not a mean girl with any coworkers around the world,” La Rosa Negra wrote.
Fellow wrestler Shanna jumped in La Rosa Negra’s defense as well, saying that Blanchard did more nasty stuff in Japan. “Never forget. Practice what you preach sweetheart. I standby @LaAbusadoradePR, she’s a fun loving person who would never disrespect anyone,” she wrote. Blanchard did not address these tweets.
NXT UK’s Isla Dawn also called out Blanchard’s bluff. “As someone who experienced your bullying firsthand, received regular verbal abuse, was spat on, had rumours spread about me, dealt with multiple attempts by you to blacklist me from other companies, (plus more), I just pray you now follow your own advice,” she wrote.
And indie star Priscilla Kelly advised Blanchard to delete the tweet because what she said and what she is are completely different. “Remember publicly putting me down on Twitter last year for something that didn’t involve you whatsoever, then continuing to drag my name to other people for it?” Kelly was a bit controversial last year when she put a “bloody tampon” from her…well, you know…and then shoved it in her opponent’s mouth.
NBC has ordered an 11-episode comedy show titled Young Rock, inspired by the life of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and featuring Johnson himself. The show is described as chronicling his “formative years.”
Johnson will appear in every episode of the single-camera comedy which will be co-written by former Fresh Off the Boat showrunner Nahnatchka Khan and her longtime collaborator Jeff Chiang. Both will exec produce alongside Johnson and his Seven Bucks Productions’ Dany Garcia, Hiram Garcia, Brian Gewirtz and Jennifer Carreras.
A premiere date for the series has not yet been revealed although industry insiders believe it will be for the 2020-21 broadcast season.
Smackdown did 2,502,000 viewers this week on FOX, off hours 2,679,000 viewers in the first hour and 2,326,000 viewers in the second hour. That was up 84,000 viewers from last week’s show, a show which was surpassed by Raw for the first time since October. Smackdown tied the number one spot in the 18-49 demo with 0.8 and 0.7 rating but only beat The CW in viewership during those two hours. (Ratings credit: Showbuzzdaily.com)
In a marketing stunt, WWE is trying to rename the southern Kentucky city of Corbin to King Corbin according to WKYT News.
WWE will be in town tomorrow at the Corbin Arena for a non-televised live event and WWE reps as well as a camera crew will be in front of the Colonel Sanders statue in downtown Corbin in the afternoon collecting signatures for a petition for the name change. Anyone who shows up will also get a free ticket to the house show later in the day.
The event is being marketed as the WWE New Years Revolution Supershow and tons of tickets remain available for the event, hence the handing out of free tickets.
More names have been added to the Royal Rumble match, with five added to the men’s match. The new participants are Dolph Ziggler, King Corbin, Elias, and Otis and Tucker of Heavy Machinery.
These five bring a total number of 13 Superstars so far in the match, joining Brock Lesnar who will be the first entrant, Randy Orton, Rey Mysterio, Roman Reigns, AJ Styles, Erick Rowan, Drew McIntyre, and Ricochet.
Roman Reigns and King Corbin will also have a match during the show, with the two going against each other prior to the Rumble match.
Meanwhile, the women’s Royal Rumble match has only three participants confirmed so far with Charlotte Flair, Nikki Cross, and Alexa Bliss.
WWE Raw Women’s champion Becky Lynch has denied the story making the rounds that she has signed a new, five-year deal with WWE worth $1 million per year.
Lynch, who is the most popular female wrestler on the roster at the moment, used Twitter to shoot down the report, writing, “Report not true. Haven’t signed anything new in years. Deal coming up soon.”
Ever since she adopted “The Man” moniker in late 2018, Lynch has skyrocketed in WWE popularity, winning the Royal Rumble last year and then won the main event of WrestleMania, becoming the first female to carry the both Raw and Smackdown titles.
The news of her contract expiring was used in the storyline with Asuka late last month on Monday Night Raw.
On January 8, USA Network announced that it has renewed Straight Up Steve Austin for a second season, the TV show hosted by WWE Hall of Famer Stone Cold Steve Austin which features celebrity interviews, adventures, and good, old-fashioned fun.
The first season saw Austin cross the country to swap stories with a wide range of notable celebrities, including singer and actor Trace Adkins, NASCAR legend Dale Earnhardt Jr., comedian Gabriel Iglesias, WWE Superstar Becky Lynch, NFL Quarterback Baker Mayfield, actor and retired United States Marine Corps Reserve officer Rob Riggle, and star of Impractical Jokers, Sal Vulcano.
Season 2 will consist of eight half-hour episodes, with guests still to be announced. It will be produced by Line by Line Media, with Steve Austin and Dave Barsky (Dirty Jobs) as executive producers.
