Cody Rhodes has not been medically cleared to wrestle so he will not be in action this week on Dynamite.
He received eight stitches backstage at Full Gear after a bad cut above his eye and a photo showed his mother, an emergency room nurse, stitching him up. Rhodes also suffered a costochondral separation, an injury where the rib is separated from the sternum at the costochondral joint. This injury occurred when Cody went face and chest first following a dive on Jericho, but the AEW champ moved and Cody crashed into the metal ramp.
There was also a scare that he might have suffered a concussion after landing on the metal ramp and ringside doctor Dr. Michael Sampson – the former WWE doc who helped revive Jerry “The King” Lawler following his heart attack – had to check to make sure Cody was alright to keep on going with the match.
John Cena’s latest movie Playing With Fire will debut in the #3 spot in the box office chart this weekend with a total of $12,800,000 from 3,125 theaters across the United States. The movie did an additional $2,500,000 in international box office for a worldwide total of $15.3 million.
The comedy film, directed by Andy Fickman, follows a group of firemen who must watch over three children who have been separated from their parents following an accident. Joining John Cena in this flick are Keegan-Michael Key, John Leguizamo, Brianna Hildebrand, Dennis Haysbert, and Judy Greer. The movie is distributed by Paramount Pictures.
It currently has a CinemaScore of B+ and a 24% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
AEW President Tony Khan said yesterday during the post-Full Gear media scrum that the company is looking into running shows in Canada and the United Kingdom sometime next year.
Canada and the United Kingdom are two of the biggest markets outside the United States for All Elite Wrestling and they have strong television presence in both countries with TSN and ITV as their broadcast partners.
Since AEW does not tour, this would seem to indicate that the shows would be Dynamite television tapings. Khan said that while they are hopeful of doing the shows in 2020, there’s nothing which has been remotely close to being confirmed or locked.
The “fan” who threw a large drink at MJF when he was at the top of the entrance ramp was identified as Alan Angels, an independent wrestler from Atlanta.
The drink, which hit MJF square in the face and got a big “Oooooh!” from the crowd, came after MJF turned on Cody, giving him a low blow with JR screaming “you little bastard” on commentary. MJF had just caused Cody the title against Jericho, throwing in the towel after Cody was trapped in the Lion Tamer. The stipulation of the match was that Cody could never wrestle for the AEW World title again if he didn’t win.
Angels, real name Trey Tucker, is a 21-year-old indie pro wrestler from Snellville, Georgia, and mainly wrestles for Southern Fried Championship Wrestling and ACTION Wrestling, both promotions located in the state of Georgia.
This year’s Survivor Series will have two traditional elimination matches but instead of just five-on-five it will be five-on-five-on-five with NXT thrown in the mix as well.
Every year, Raw and Smackdown men and women face-off in these two matches, matches that go back to the original history of the Survivor Series where every match used to be tag teams of four or five individuals taking on each other. The 2019 event will be a little bit more complicated as WWE has to fit 15 WWE Superstars in total in each match due to the addition of the NXT brand as well.
In the men’s match, Team Raw will be captained by Seth Rollins with WWE promising the rest of his team being unveiled tomorrow on Monday Night Raw. Team Smackdown and Team NXT are still without any captains, let alone members. The same goes for the women’s match. Team Raw and Team NXT are empty at the moment but Team Smackdown already has three members, including team captain Sasha Banks along with Carmella and Dana Brooke.
The other matches announced so far for the Survivor Series are Lesnar vs Mysterio for the WWE title, Lynch vs Bayley vs Baszler in a triple threat match, and Viking Raiders vs New Day vs Undisputed Era in another triple threat tag team match.
Here are the results from last night’s Full Gear pay-per-view which took place from the Royal Farms Arena in Baltimore, Maryland.
Dr. Britt Baker defeated Be a Priestly in the pre-show; Santana and Ortiz defeated The Young Bucks; Hangman Page defeated PAC; Shawn Spears defeated Joey Janela; SCU defeated The Lucha Bros and Private Party in a three-way match to retain the AEW Tag Team titles; Riho defeated Emi Sakura to retain the AEW Women’s title; Chris Jericho defeated Cody to retain the AEW World title after MJF threw in the towel, causing Cody the match and the opportunity to wrestle for the AEW World title again the future; Jon Moxley defeated Kenny Omega in a lights out match.
In years past, WrestleMania travel packages were highly popular and very competitive to get, often selling out very quickly. This time around, it looks like the super expensive prices set for WrestleMania 36 travel packages are keeping fans away from biting the bullet.
How expensive?
Well, the top priced package for a single traveler looking to spend five nights in Tampa for all shows will cost $9,220. And if you want to share the space with three other friends it will run you $7,580…each!
The cheapest package for a single traveler is the Silver three-night deal which will cost $2,555. Still a lot of money and that goes down to $1,570 each for a four-person booking. The Silver four-night package is $3,115 for one person and $3,555 for a five-night package. Out of the five packages available – Championship, VIP, Platinum, Gold, and Silver – and in the many three/four/five-night possible combos, only the VIP and Platinum three-night packages have been sold out. Pretty much everything else is available, including the limited top-tier Championship package.
Despite being held in the usually tourist-friendly state of Florida, flying into Tampa for WrestleMania is going to cost a bomb. International flights to the city, and even internal flights landing at Tampa International Airport, are quite expensive, not to mention the over-the-top hotel prices, most of which are in the $250+ a night region.
Travel packages can be bought at WrestleManiaTravel.com while regular tickets go on sale next week.
The taped Smackdown from Manchester, England yesterday drew a total of 2,617,000 viewers, up 74,000 viewers from last week’s broadcast off hours 2,725,000 and 2,510,000. Smackdown on FOX beat all networks in the 18-34 and 18-49 demo and placed second in the 25-54. The show this week also beat ABC programming apart from The CW, finishing third out of the five networks in terms of viewership. (Ratings credit: Showbuzzdaily.com)
Live tonight from the Royal Farms Arena in Baltimore, Maryland, AEW presents Full Gear on pay-per-view and B/R Live. The full card is as follows:
Jon Moxley vs Kenny Omega in a non-sanctioned lights out match; Chris Jericho vs Cody for the AEW World title; Riho vs Emi Sakura for the AEW Women’s title; SoCal Uncensored vs Lucha Brothers vs Private Party in a three-way tag team match for the AEW Tag Team titles; Adam Page vs Pac; The Young Bucks vs Santana and Ortiz; Joey Janela vs Shawn Spears; and Bea Priestley vs Britt Baker in the pre-show.
Full Gear will be available to purchase on traditional pay-per-view as well as streaming live on B/R Live. Internationally, the show is available on FITE.TV.
Impact Wrestling will make history at their January pay-per-view Hard To Kill as current champion Sami Callihan will be defending the title against Tessa Blanchard in an intergender match. This will be the first time that a female wrestler will challenge for the top title in any of the top promotions.
“IMPACT Wrestling has always been a trailblazer in the professional wrestling world, from our Knockouts division to never-before-seen matches like Ultimate X,” Impact executive vice president Scott D’Amore said. “In her short career, Tessa Blanchard has already demonstrated that she is not only one of the best female professional wrestlers in the world, but one of the very best, period. On January 12th, she will get the opportunity to make history when she challenges for the World Championship live on pay-per-view.”
Callihan and Blanchard already have a history, with the two headlining the Slammiversary pay-per-view earlier this year. On that night, Callihan came out on top with a victory.
Hard To Kill will take place at The Bomb Factory in Dallas, Texas and tickets go on sale on Monday, November 18. VIP tickets go on sale on Friday, November 15.
In his latest episode of his podcast The Jerry Lawler Show, WWE Hall of Famer and Raw commentator Jerry “The King” Lawler talked about the talent meeting that took place this past Monday prior to Raw.
Following the major issues resulting from the Saudi Arabia trip that saw over 150 WWE Superstars, crew, and employees getting stuck in Saudi Arabia for an extra day, Vince McMahon called a meeting with all the talent that were present for Raw on Monday to explain what happened.
Lawler said that many on the roster were frustrated because while they were in Saudi, the information was not getting through to them as no one bothered to explain to them what was going on, resulting in mass confusion. He noted that talent become “their own worst enemy” when they start believing all the rumors, which didn’t help the situation while on the ground in Saudi.
The King said that during the meeting, United States champion AJ Styles and fellow O.C. member Karl Anderson spoke up on behalf of everyone, saying how the lack of info relied to them was frustrating to everyone. Vince McMahon explained to everyone the timeline of events and what happened and also went over the “expanded” deal with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia which will see them going to Saudi twice a year for the next eight years.
WWE Hall of Famer Hulk Hogan will be undergoing another back surgery on Tuesday. Hogan confirmed the news during an interview with Sports Illustrated this week.
“I’m going in for another back surgery next Tuesday. They’re going to fuse six levels together, so we’ll see how I feel after that,” Hogan said.
Hogan’s ultimate goal is to have another match at WrestleMania but with such a big surgery and several months of recovery time following this surgery, WrestleMania 36 in his home state of Florida looks out of the picture.
But Hogan still looks at the bright side of things. “People have stuck by me, even when I made mistakes,” he said. “Their love and loyalty have blown me away. The memory of wrestling still connects me to people. Hopefully it’s a memory that will live forever.”
Hulk last appeared on WWE TV at Crown Jewel where his team defeated Team Flair in a five-on-five match.
This episode of Total Divas, begins exactly where the last one left off.
Newcomer Ronda Rousey had invited all of the other women wrestlers out to her alpine cabin for agility training. The other invitees included Nia Jax, Carmella, and Natalya. I’m not sure whether I would enjoy Ronda’s version of a girl’s weekend. Her weekend included archery, a stroll in the snow and just in case that wasn’t enough a run in same conditions.
Also, Ronda seem to view the girls as hired help because she even had them shovel the driveway. Rousey and fellow Superstar Sonya Deville even had a competition to see who could shovel the driveway the fastest. Their competition was not limited to driveway shoveling. The two competed for the whole weekend, mainly because Sonya still had feelings of contempt for Ronda due to her calling Sonya “a hobbyist” on Twitter. Ronda claimed she had only done this in order to cement her heel turn. Rousey also said that if she had had something bad to say about her she would have said it to her face. It was good to see the ladies make up. This should make for a more peaceful locke room.
Meanwhile, Natalya spent the entire weekend trying to get Ronda’s dog to like her. I don’t know what Natalya’s obsession with becoming a dog lover was but she tried everything to get Ronda’s dog, Roadie, to like her. Eventually, Nattie spread peanut butter all over herself in order to make the dog lick her, Ronda said that she was glad for the gesture, but Nattie could stay a crazy cat lady.
Meanwhile, in Los Angles, Nia Jax, had been invited to model in a fashion show for the Bella Twins fashion show. Considering the fact the Nia Jax has recently found out that she has crippling knee injury she really needed the comfort of her old friends, Nikki and Brie encouraged Nia to take care of herself, and promised that they would always be there for her.
However, just because Nia is injured it doesn’t mean there won’t be lots more drama on Total Divas.
Smackdown will be taped from the Manchester Arena tonight from Manchester, England as the WWE Superstars are in Europe for their second European tour of the year. The show will obviously not be live on FOX due to time difference but will air in its regular time slot of 8PM ET.
Scheduled for tonight are Roman Reigns vs King Corbin, The Revival vs The New Day for the Smackdown Tag Team titles, Sasha Banks vs Nikki Cross, and an appearance from England’s own Tyson Fury, who last week beat Braun Strowman at Crown Jewel.
NXT, which featured The O.C. storming Full Sail University, drew 813,000 viewers last night on USA Network, up 233,000 viewers from last week’s show. It was #12 on the top 50 cable chart among the 18-49 demographic. The gap between the two shows was of just 9,000 viewers, down from last week’s 179,000 viewers. (Ratings credit: Showbuzzdaily.com)
AEW Dynamite did a total of 822,000 viewers last night on TNT, up 63,000 viewers from last week’s show. It was #8 on the top 50 cable chart among the 18-49 demographic. This was AEW’s sixth win in a row in the Wednesday night war with NXT although it was the closest one yet. (Ratings credit: Showbuzzdaily.com)
Cain Velasquez is no longer advertised to be teaming up with Rey Mysterio in Mexico later this month.
Mysterio will now be teaming up with Humberto Carrillo to take on Luke Gallows and Karl Anderson, quite the change from the originally advertised match featuring Mysterio and Velasquez vs Drew McIntyre and Andrade.
The former two-time UFC Heavyweight champion is still advertised to be appearing at the show, however he does not have a match anymore. It’s not known why Cain was pulled out of the match. He wrestled his first WWE match last week against Brock Lesnar in Saudi Arabia at Crown Jewel.
The dual-branded show will take place from Mexico City on November 30 live from the Arena Ciudad de Mexico.
Episode six of season nine of Total Divas, titled MountainMania, did only 191,000 viewers, down 92,000 viewers from last week’s episode. This was the least-watched episode in the history of the series. (Ratings credit: Showbuzzdaily.com)
During a commercial break before the start of the main event of Dynamite last night, fans chanted “stupid dick” at Chris Jericho following the promo cut by Cody earlier in the broadcast.
Jericho pretended not to hear what they’re saying which only made the fans chanting it louder before he responded with “What?” to laughs from the fans. Eventually, fans changed their chant to the unmistakable “asshole” chant before going back to “stupid dick.”
The AEW champion said that he can’t understand them because of their thick southern accent which got him more heat and more chants and then he was asking the crowd what they’re chanting. “John Wick? Katie Vick?” Jericho responded as fans laughed some more. “It wasn’t my idea,” he continued, referring to the bad WWE angle involving Kane, Triple H, and the dead Katie Vick.
Before the broadcast returned from commercials, he told the crowd that maybe he’s not the asshole, but they are the assholes instead.
The premiere episode of WWE Backstage on FS1 did only 49,000 viewers at 11PM. Yes, forty nine thousand viewers. The last preview episode which aired after Smackdown two weeks ago did 426,000 viewers. (Ratings credit: Showbuzzdaily.com)
