The Raw Women’s title will be on the line at the Royal Rumble as Becky Lynch will be taking on Asuka in a rematch from last year’s Royal Rumble pay-per-view.
The two were in the same position last year with Asuka winning the match and retaining her Smackdown Women’s title by submitting Lynch. Lynch then went on to win the women’s Royal Rumble elimination match and main evented WrestleMania, winning both titles in a triple threat match.
This is the second title match announced for the Royal Rumble with The Fiend vs Daniel Bryan for the Universal title made official last week.
The Royal Rumble will take place from the Minute Maid Park in Houston, Texas on January 26. Tickets are still available from Ticketmaster.com.
BT Sport in the United Kingdom today announced that they will be airing both NXT and NXT UK, going all in with WWE programming which also includes live Raw, Smackdown, and all WWE pay-per-views.
This will be the first time that NXT and NXT UK will air on television in the United Kingdom and the first time that NXT UK will be on regular TV anywhere in the world.
NXT will air live at 1AM local time and the first show will start tomorrow, or better yet, January 2 early in the morning. Broadcast details for NXT UK will be announced in the near future. Both shows will also remain on the WWE Network.
WWE programming moves to BT Sport starting from tomorrow with Sky Sports airing its last live Raw broadcast early this morning.
Bloomberg is reporting that WWE was served with a lawsuit by an Oklahoma firefighters pension fund which claims that there is “a credible basis to believe” that WWE Chairman and CEO Vince McMahon and other WWE senior officials breached their duties to investors by diverting resources to the XFL.
Vince McMahon’s XFL is promoted to be as a separate entity than WWE but in the past, WWE teams helped with several production and live broadcasts. Unlike last time around, the XFL does not fall under the WWE books and it’s a project that Vince McMahon funded by selling thousands of his WWE stocks.
The lawsuit also suggests that WWE’s board members failed to conduct appropriate oversight to ensure McMahon didn’t engage in transactions that conflict with WWE’s interests.
The lawsuit was filed on December 26 in Delaware Chancery Court.
The Lana and Bobby Lashley wedding was crashed twice: once by the returning Liv Morgan and once by Rusev.
Before they were proclaimed husband and wife, Liv Morgan made her return on Raw and from the top of the ramp she said that the “love of her life” is right there. “I wouldn’t have made it through this year if it wasn’t for our love,” Morgan continued.
“I never touched this women in my entire life,” Lashley fired back. But there was a twist. It wasn’t Lashley, it was Lana! “Oh oh, no no no no no, I’m not talking about Bobby. I’m talking about Lana!”
As fans chanted “Yes! Yes! Yes!” Lana began to cry but then attacked Morgan and the two had a catfight. WWE referees and officials then separated the two so the ceremony could continue and even though they tried to rush through things, there was another surprise: Rusev was hiding in the big wedding cake in the ring and again before announced as husband and wife, Rusev attacked Lashley while Morgan returned to attack Lana.
After Raw went off the air, Lana screamed as she was covered in cake from head to toe with both Rusev and Morgan taunting her. Well, it was never a good idea for Lana to get married to someone else on Rusev Day and wrestling weddings never really have a happy ending, right?
Tonight’s Raw will be headlined by the wedding of Bobby Lashley and Lana and you know when it comes to wrestling weddings…nothing ever goes according to plan.
The wedding seems to be the climax of this angle which involved Lana divorcing from Rusev because he was a sex addict and multiple matches between Rusev and Lashley.
The WWE on FOX Twitter account described it as the “wedding of the decade” and CM Punk, the WWE Backstage analyst, was quick to reply saying, “Be a real shame if someone gets fired.” Punk was unceremoniously fired on his wedding day by WWE several years ago.
The only other thing announced for Raw so far is Aleister Black taking on Buddy Murphy in a rematch from the TLC pay-per-view.
Sports Illustrated is reporting that Cody Rhodes will introduce Arn Anderson as his new manager this coming Wednesday on the first episode of Dynamite of 2020.
Anderson, who with the Four Horsemen had a long feud with Cody’s father Dusty in the NWA, came to Cody’s help at the All Out pay-per-view this past August when Cody was wrestling Shawn Spears and Spears had Anderson’s ex tag team partner Tully Blanchard as his manager. On that night, Anderson came out and delivered his trademark spinebuster on Spears, helping Cody win the match.
A few days ago, Cody wrote on Twitter that there will be a big change to his in-ring presentation. “Excited to make a big change and apply a new strategy to my personal in-ring presentation in 2020. Hopefully I can share the good news soon!”
Arn Anderson was fired from his producer role with WWE in February after apparently letting Alicia Fox wrestle during a house show while she was intoxicated. Anderson was in charge of the show that day and the axe fell on him.
Randy Orton suffered an apparent knee injury last night at the non-televised live event in Hershey, Pennsylvania while wrestling AJ Styles.
The former WWE champion went to hit an RKO early in the match and landed bad on his knee. The referee held up the “X” hand signal which signifies a real injury and the match was stopped. A couple of referees and a trainer came down to the ring to check on the Viper and then helped him to the back.
WWE has not acknowledged the injury yet and it could also be an angle that will be played further tonight on Raw.
UPDATE: WWE.COM now says that Randy Orton will address the results of his medical evaluation during Monday Night Raw tonight.
Tonight’s Monday Night Raw live broadcast on Sky Sports will be the last one ever on the network in the United Kingdom as starting from this Friday’s Smackdown, all WWE programming moves to BT Sport.
A few months ago, WWE and BT Sport announced a new multi-year agreement that brought an end to an era of WWE TV in the United Kingdom with WWE moving away from Sky for the first time in over three decades.
The partnership between WWE and Sky is the longest in terms of TV deals for WWE with Sky bringing WWE shows in 1989. It’s a partnership that even outlasts WWE’s deal with USA Network in the United States. Their last deal was signed on January 30, 2014 with a five-year agreement where Sky continued to be the exclusive home of all WWE shows including pay-per-views.
WWE viewership on Sky greatly diminished over the years and despite Sky being in 8.5 million homes in the United Kingdom, WWE only got a small fraction of that viewership every week, mainly due in part of the 1AM start time for live shows.
The Sky Sports Twitter account published a farewell tweet, saying, “The final Raw on Sky Sports airs tonight at 1am, bringing to an end a 30-year partnership between the two brands. To all of the loyal WWE fans who have followed the product on our platforms over the past three decades – thank you!”
Smackdown had a pretty good year and went from the “B” show to the “A” show when it moved to FOX in October, quickly becoming the most-watched wrestling show on television, something that Raw always held on to apart from a couple of special episodes here and there.
From the first episode of 2019 to the last one, Smackdown averaged 2,168,000 viewers per week, down from the 2,350,000 viewers the show did on average over 52 weeks last year. From January to September while still on USA Network, Smackdown averaged 2,066,000 viewers but once the move to FOX occurred, that jumped to 2,475,000 viewers on average. Taking out the week when Smackdown aired on FS1 and pulled in less than a million viewers, the show averaged 2,607,000 on FOX.
The October 4 premiere on FOX had the most viewers, with 3,869,000 tuning in off hours 3,920,000 and 3,818,000. That was a loaded show with The Rock, a WWE title change, and many other non-regular Superstars showing up for the 20th anniversary of the show.
The October 11 and November 8 broadcasts round up the top three most-watched shows with 2,898,000 viewers and 2,617,000 viewers respectively.
The least-watched Smackdown of 2019 was the October 25 episode, with just 888,000 viewers tuning in. That was when FOX preempted the show and it aired on FOX Sports 1 instead. The May 14 episode did 1,827,000 viewers while the April 30 episode pulled in 1,833,000 viewers to round up the bottom three.
Since October 4, Smackdown has beat Raw every single week in terms of viewership.
Impact Wrestling announced the first set of winners of the 2019 Impact! Year End Awards in a special broadcast that aired yesterday on AXS TV hosted by Josh Mathews and Scott D’Amore.
Among the winners announced so far include Taya Valkyrie winning the Knockout of the Year, Sami Callihan winning the World title on Impact’s AXS TV debut won the Moment of the Year, Willie Mack won the One to Watch in 2020, Rich Swann was declared the X-Division Star of the Year and Tessa Blanchard’s Magnum won the Finishing Move of the Year.
Another broadcast, set for Saturday, January 4, will hand out the awards for Tag Team of the Year, Wrestler of the Year and the Impact Match of the Year. The show starts at 8PM ET.
On his personal Instagram account bearing his real name Windham Rotunda, Bray Wyatt put over Daniel Bryan as “one of the greatest of all time” and talked about the match the two had at the 2014 Royal Rumble when Bryan was “red hot” before he went on to win the titles at WrestleMania XXX.
“In 2014 I had one of my favorite bouts of my career against Daniel Bryan at The Royal Rumble. Bryan was red hot, it was his time. He went on to main event WrestleMania and become the champ. Deservedly so, Bryan is without a doubt the best I’ve ever been in the ring with,” Wyatt wrote.
He added that just like himself, Bryan wasn’t a guy that the company said “this is a guy we should build our companies future around” when they walked through the WWE doors the first time around.
“WE had to scratch and claw, outwork, out talk, out perform everyone on the pedestal in front of us. Daniel Bryan is one of the greatest of all time. But this is not his time, it’s mine,” he continued.
Wyatt concluded by thanking Bryan for the blood they spilled together over the years. “But understand, for me, this is my war worth dying for. The choice isn’t mine to make. Good luck.”
The two will meet again at the 2020 Royal Rumble for the Universal title.
It has been a while since we heard about the name of Lars Sullivan. The WWE Superstar is currently out injured after undergoing knee surgery and it was perfect timing for him as he had been just fined $100,000 for unearthed offensive messages on the Bodybuilding.com forum from several years earlier, messages which were racist and homophobic.
But out of the blue, Sullivan was back in the news yesterday and trending on Twitter after some eagle-eyed fans unearthed something else – performing in homosexual adult videos under the name of Mitch Bennett!
The old photos and videos discovered show a tattoo of “DM” – the initials of his real name Dylan Miley – on his right arm, a tattoo which was later covered up with another design.
And while there’s nothing wrong about being homosexual, the problem here is that when taken into context, Sullivan was fined and punished by WWE for making several homophobic comments, comments which you would not expect from someone who in the past did perform in such adult-oriented videos.
Sullivan was ordered to undergo sensitivity training in May of this year after the original Bodybuilding.com forum comments were discovered. He even issued an apology, stating, “There is no excuse for the inappropriate remarks that I made years ago. They do not reflect my personal beliefs nor who I am today, and I apologize to anyone I offended.”
WWE also came out with their own statement after the press kept pushing for comments. “WWE supports a culture of inclusion regardless of gender, race, religion or sexual orientation, and we are committed to embracing all individuals as demonstrated by the diversity of our employees, performers and fans worldwide. Dylan Miley (aka Lars Sullivan) will be fined $100,000 and required to complete sensitivity training for offensive commentary uncovered from his past. WWE will also facilitate meetings for Dylan with community organizations to foster further discussion around the power of social media and the impact of your words.”
It will be interesting to see how – and if – WWE will be tackling this latest revelation.
In a video posted on Instagram in front of his private jet prior to leaving to Japan, Chris Jericho issued a challenge to his Wrestle Kingdom 14 opponent Hiroshi Tanahashi, telling him that if he can beat him at WK, he will grant him an AEW title shot.
Jericho said that he heard the comments Tanahashi made and that he would be requesting a title shot if he beat him and Jericho asked AEW President Tony Khan to see “if it was okay” to grant him that request. “And he said yes…so if you can beat me in the Tokyo Dome, I will give you a championship match for the AEW title,” Jericho said.
This will be Jericho’s third Wrestle Kingdom appearance in a row, first wrestling Kenny Omega at Wrestle Kingdom 12 and Tetsuya Naito last year at Wrestle Kingdom 13. He is so far 0-2 at this NJPW event having lost both his previous matches. Jericho’s match against Tanahashi will take place on January 5 on the second night of the event.
AEW commentator Jim Ross admitted that the closing segment of last week’s Dynamite with The Dark Order was not ideal, referring to it as an “amazing sin that can never be duplicated.”
Ross did not hold back on his criticism of the angle which was universally panned by fans and critics. He said that over his career, he called some bad angles from every brand involving the biggest name in the business and he knew that the crowd did not like it because he was there in the arena for it.
The WWE Hall of Famer also added that if he didn’t see the video of the masked wrestler very poorly executing punches on Dustin Rhodes, he wouldn’t have known “just how bad it was.” The clip, unfortunately for AEW, went viral for all the wrong reasons.
“It was poorly executed, folks. And hopefully nothing like that will ever occur again,” Ross continued. “And I know everybody that has some ability to change things in AEW are well aware of it.”
Smackdown this week drew 2,438,000 viewers off hours of 2,540,000 in the first hour and 2,337,000 in the second hour. That is up slightly by 24,000 viewers compared to last week’s show. Smackdown won all demos for the night and this week it beat both The CW and ABC in terms of total viewership, placing FOX third out of five networks. (Ratings credit: Showbuzzdaily.com)
Kris Statlander’s other commitment on January 1 was revealed to be another booking for Bar Wrestling, the promotion run by Joey Ryan, who will be holding an event called Rosé Parade at the Bootleg Theater.
Statlander became the number one contender for the AEW Women’s title last week on Dynamite and was going to cash in her title shot this coming Wednesday on the first live Dynamite of 2020 on New Year’s Day.
But AEW yesterday said that the match had to be postponed because Statlander had other commitments, a very important detail that somehow fell through the cracks. Statlander had this booking before she officially signed with AEW but still wanted to honor her booking despite the big day planned for her on national television.
AEW President Tony Khan noted on Twitter that rather than forcing Kris to choose between her title shot or honoring her commitment, they’re allowing her to do both with women’s champion Riho now defending the title in a four-way match against Nyla Rose, Britt Baker, and Hikaru Shida, with the winner of this match meeting Statlander on the January 8 episode live from Southaven, Mississippi.
In a statement on Twitter, Bar Wrestling thanked All Elite Wrestling for taking care of them when they could have easily pulled Statlander out. “Losing Kris Statlander would’ve been a big blow to us not only financially with travel and replacement costs but also quality of talent loss. Thank you to Kris for keeping your bookings next week with Beyond Wrestling and with us and to AEW for caring about independents,” the statement read.
One of the main events of the Royal Rumble was confirmed last night on Smackdown after Daniel Bryan won a triple threat number one contender’s match against King Corbin and The Miz.
Bryan, who is back to his American Dragon look from his Ring of Honor days, will now be getting a second Universal title shot against The Fiend after he was unsuccessful in his quest at the Survivor Series. After a couple of weeks off television following The Fiend dragging Bryan under the ring and ripping his hair out, Bryan returned at the TLC pay-per-view and attacked Wyatt after he won his non-title match against The Miz.
The match yesterday on Smackdown was interrupted twice, first after Reigns attacked Corbin at the top of the show, then it was a singles match between Bryan and The Miz because Corbin said he was injured but Corbin’s men caused a double DQ and then it finally went back to the original triple threat match.
Roman Reigns and Dolph Ziggler will be working until the very last of 2019 as the two were announced to be having a match during the FOX New Year’s Eve special which will start airing at 8PM ET live from New York.
Hosted by Steve Harvey with co-hosts and big WWE fans Maria Menounos and Rob Gronkowski, the FOX special will feature performances by The Chainsmokers, Florida Georgia Line, Backstreet Boys, LL Cool J, and others.
The show will air from Times Square and the match will be part of that broadcast, presumably live as well with a ring erected in the busy square. Several other WWE Superstars will also be in attendance to ring in the new year.
After pushing the AEW Women’s title match between champion Riho and number one contender Kris Statlander for the January 1 episode of Dynamite, AEW today announced that due to prior commitments, Kris Statlander will not be part of the show.
The Japanese champion will still however put her title on the line in a four-way match against Nyla Rose, Britt Baker, and Hikaru Shida, with the winner of this match meeting Statlander on the January 8 episode live from Southaven, Mississippi.
Tickets for the show, taking place at the Landers Center, are still available at Ticketmater.com starting from $22.
The Christmas Day episode of NXT did a total of 831,000 viewers, up 36,000 viewers from last week’s broadcast. The show did a 0.22 rating in the 18-49 demographic, good for #29 in the top 50 cable chart. This week, NXT ran unopposed as AEW did not present a show. (Ratings credit: Showbuzzdaily.com)
