Smackdown ads were all over the FOX NFL broadcast today as the show gets closer to the major switch on October 4.
WWE champion Kofi Kingston, Raw Women’s champion Becky Lynch, Charlotte Flair, and Roman Reigns were used heavily in promotional material on television ads as FOX announcers plugged the blue brand several times.
Reaction online to the barrage of PrintMoz’s sports banners and ads has been mostly positive although a good number of non-wrestling football fans were unaware of it and seemed to be shocked that Smackdown is moving to the main FOX network.
There are rumors that a draft will be held right after the switch that will once again shuffle the Superstars with the “wildcard rule” expected to be canned after the first episode.
The first Smackdown on FOX will be a 20th year anniversary episode which many Legends and Hall of Famers set to appear. The show will be live from the STAPLES Center in Los Angeles, California.
UFC Hall of Famer Stephan Bonnar made his return to Impact Wrestling during the company’s second television tapings in Las Vegas, Nevada.
“F yeah!!!! Introducing the new Mr. Impact Wrestling,” Bonnar wrote in a post on his social media along with the video of his return. Bonnar wrestled Moose and is part of the angle with Ken Shamrock, who is wrestling Moose at the Bound For Glory pay-per-view.
This is not Bonnar’s first time in Impact Wrestling. He actually teamed up with Moose to wrestle Bobby Lashley and King Mo with American Top Team in a Six Sides of Steel tag team match at Bound For Glory 2017.
Bonnar, who has a 15-9 record in mixed martial arts, is credited along with Forrest Griffin with having one of the most important fights in UFC history as part of The Ultimate Fighter 1 finale back in 2005. In fact, both fighters are now part of the UFC Hall of Fame.
The 42-year-old last fought in 2014 and lost against Tito Ortiz at Bellator 131.
WWE Hall of Famer and former seven-time champion Trish Stratus will be the subject of an upcoming WWE 24 episode. The news was revealed by Trish’s official website TrishStratus.com.
WWE cameras followed Trish as she prepared to return for her farewell match at SummerSlam against Charlotte Flair. Apart from being followed all weekend in Toronto leading up to SummerSlam, Trish was also followed during the WrestleMania 35 weekend in New York, and footage will be part of the WWE 24 special.
Highlights of the WWE 24 include her media whirlwind tour leading up to her match, footage of her and her family at home, training for her final match, and sit down interviews with Trish and other WWE Superstars.
Ric Flair has said that he has signed a new deal with Adidas although he did not elaborate on what that includes.
Flair told TMZ.COM that Adidas thinks he’s “The Man” and offered him a deal. “I signed a deal with them, and we’re fixin’ to make Nike the second brand. It’s not gonna be Air Jordan anymore, it’s gonna be Air Flair…and I can’t jump,” Flair said.
The two-time WWE Hall of Famer did drop a hint that it will somewhat involve working with a couple of NBA stars, namedropping Damian Lillard of the Portland Trailblazers and James Harden of the Houston Rockets.
“Nike’s gonna be [outta here]. We’re gonna fire a shot over Phil Knight’s bow,” he added, referring to the Nike Co-founder and Chairman.
The Undertaker appeared on ESPN’s College GameDay wearing the Texas Longhorns shirt much to the enjoyment of the fans.
Taker came out to his theme song complete with the white smoke and even some fireworks but no Undertaker costume, instead it was jeans, Longhorns shirt, and a bandana. When he came through the smoke, Taker raised up both his hands and did the Hook ’em Horns gesture as fans went bananas.
The broadcast was live from the University of Texas at Austin. Taker is a big Longhorns fan, hence the appearance. You can see his entrance below.
The Undertaker returns on WWE television next week on Smackdown live from Madison Square Garden.
Former NXT champions Johnny Gargano and Tommaso Ciampa along with Candice LaRae will be appearing at EVOLVE 135 and 136 later this month, interacting with fans for meet and greets.
EVOLVE 135 will take place on September 20 in Brooklyn while EVOLVE 136 is on September 21 in Queens, New York. Autographs and photos are $20 each for each NXT star while a combo of autograph and photo is $30 only and tickets are available through the WWNLive.com shop link.
Gargano and Ciampa will also be special guests at the WWN Seminar/Tryout in Brooklyn on the afternoon of September 20. The Seminar/Tryout is open to wrestlers, referees, managers and announcers.
Matt Hardy made fun of Chris Jericho in a hilarious video shot at a LongHorn Steakhouse restaurant, the same chain that was the “scene of the crime” where Jericho lost his AEW World title.
The short video starts with a wide shot in front of the restaurant with the name very visible as Matt Hardy exits from the door.
“Just had a wonderful date night with my beautiful wife at this classy restaurant as you can see…” Hardy starts. Then he stops as he tries to find his belt. “Hold up,” Hardy says, as he runs back in the restaurant.
Eventually, Matt comes back after a few seconds. “That son of a bitch tried to steal my belt! Reby, where’s our limousine?” he asks as he holds his belt in his hand.
A huge tag team match has been set for Monday Night Raw at Madison Square Garden, with all members of the Four Horsewomen involved.
Former Women Tag Team champions Sasha Banks and Bayley will be teaming up to take on Becky Lynch and her frenemy Charlotte Flair in a continuation of the storyline that has started when Sasha Banks returned and the heel turn of Bayley.
That is just one of the couple of segments which have been already announced for Raw, including Rey Mysterio vs Gran Metalik, AJ Styles vs Cedric Alexander, and the contract signing between Braun Strowman and Seth Rollins moderated by WWE Hall of Famer Stone Cold Steve Austin.
WWE managed to move some more tickets for this Madison Square Garden Raw ever since Austin was announced but many tickets remain available at Ticketmaster.com.
Tickets for the November 6 episode of AEW on TNT from Charlotte and the Full Gear pay-per-view three days later went on sale at Noon today on Ticketmaster.com. Both shows failed to being close to sell out although they did sell well.
The TNT show from Charlotte will take place from the Bojangles’ Coliseum and tickets in many sections, including floor area, remain available. The Full Gear pay-per-view sold a bit better than the Charlotte show with a handful tickets remain ringside but one side of the arena has many tickets in virtually every section. Full Gear will take place from the Royal Farms Arena in Baltimore.
While AEW’s hot streak of fast sellouts for shows and pay-per-views ended, demand is obviously there, albeit a bit less than a few months ago. Filling up 10,000-seater arenas every week will become more difficult as time goes by as it is evident from their competition.
Raw Women’s champion Becky Lynch will be featured in a few ESPN commercials that will be running on TV and social media, joining other sports personalities as part of the new This Is SportsCenter campaign.
The first commercial is titled What’s My Name? and sees Becky going to ESPN Cafe where she’s about to order a coffee. “Name?” says the barista. That trips Becky, who replies, “Name? What’s my name? Have you been hiding under a rock?” And then she explains who she is as the history-making, game-changing, WrestleMania headliner, champ champ and Becky two-belts. Lynch delivers the lines in very quick and funny manner that leaves the barista speechless. Once Becky is done, the barista says, “For the cup…”
The second commercial is called Vending Machine and sees ESPN’s Jay Williams trying to get something from a vending machine which isn’t working. Becky walks by and Williams asks her to help him get the candy bar unstuck. “Stuck, huh? I think I can help you out,” Becky says as she warms up a little bit. Then as she’s about to throw a punch she grabs the nearby phone and in a polite manner asks for facilities to come and help with the machine.
The Raw Women’s champ is also in a 15-second commercial titled Push which will only run on social media and online.
The AEW World title was recovered by Frank Price, a 41-year-old who found the belt on Sunday in the middle of a turn lane on Highway 20 according to the Tallahassee Democrat website.
Price was not aware of the title or that it was stolen and had to Google it when he went back home. He thought it was a replica belt and posted the item on Craiglist’s lost and found section!
After he was told that the title was actually stolen, Price made contact with the Tallahassee Police Department and he was told to bring it over to the station.
According to the Tallahassee Democrat, when Price was there at the station getting interviewed, the owner of Mike’s Limousine, who shuttled Jericho to the restaurant when the title was lost, was there to help file an insurance claim. The owner eventually gave Price $200 as a reward for finding and returning the title.
Investigators however were suspicious about the whole thing that the two ended up in the same place at the same time and was told to give a sworn statement that said that the meeting was coincidental and there was no plan for the reward.
To show the cops that he had nothing to do with theft, Price had e-mails, texts, receipts, and GPS data to show that he wasn’t anywhere close to the Longhorn Steakhouse when the belt was stolen. Price is not under investigation but police are still looking for the person who stole the belt.
“I was joking that there would be investigators following me around,” Price said. “I figure the best approach is to just tell the truth and have fun with the whole thing.”
NXT on September 18 and 25 will air on both USA Network and WWE Network live as USA is preempting the second hour of NXT due to other planned programming.
The first hour of both shows will air as scheduled on USA Network but hour two of both shows will then move live to the WWE Network as USA is airing the final two episodes of their original TV series Suits at 9PM.
The first full, two-hour episode of NXT on USA Network airs on October 2, which, surprise surprise, is the same date that AEW starts on TNT.
Former AAA and Lucha Underground star Hijo del Fantasma has joined WWE and is heading to the WWE Performance Center.
The 35-year-old, real name Jorge Bolly, is the son of lucha libre star Fantasma. He made his wrestling debut in 2000 and also went by the name of King Cuerno in Lucha Underground. He appeared three times for Impact Wrestling, wrestling at Slammiversary, Bound For Glory, and the Redemption pay-per-views.
He lost his mask in a match against LA Park last year at AAA’s TripleMania.
Even though AEW’s next pay-per-view Full Gear is over two months away, the company announced out of the blue that Chris Jericho will be defending the AEW title against Cody Rhodes on the show.
The match was announced with no angle leading up to it and no real good explanation how Cody got the shot although AEW President Tony Khan noted the excellent “win-loss record” that Rhodes has so far as the reason why he got it. AEW had five weeks to come up with a program on television since AEW on TNT starts on October 2 and the pay-per-view is on November 9.
Jericho also has an AEW title defense on the third episode of AEW on TNT which somewhat renders the match useless now that the Jericho/Cody match is being advertised.
This is the second match on the show so far joining Moxley vs Omega on the card.
Smackdown drew 2,130,000 viewers this week, up 42,000 viewers from last week’s broadcast. The show was #1 in the top 50 cable chart among the 18-49 demographic and #7 in overall viewership for the night on cable. (Ratings credit: Showbuzzdaily.com)
The website TheWrap.com is carrying an exclusive story about an “earthquake” in the WWE creative department this week with writing teams for both Raw and Smackdown moving around.
Jonathan Baeckstrom, who has been working for WWE since 2013 and as a lead writer for 205 Live since 2016, has been promoted to lead writer of Monday Night Raw. He started as a writer’s assistant and then moved to associate writer before taking over 205 Live. Baeckstrom has been working on Raw since Paul Heyman came in as Executive Director and was handpicked to work on the red brand by Heyman himself.
Ed Koskey, who is the Vice President of Creative Writing and who has been the lead writer for Monday Night Raw is now moving to Smackdown as the man in charge of the blue brand. Koskey started working for WWE in 2001 as a production assistant, then to writer and senior writer before taking over Raw as lead writer in 2009.
Ryan Ward, who was the lead writer for Smackdown for the past couple of years, has been moved out on “personal leave.” Ward was promoted to a writer position in 2009 after a year as writer’s assistant. In 2012 he was the lead writer of NXT and then eventually was taken to Smackdown. He also holds the title of Vice President of Creative Writing. Ward has gone through some tough weeks lately after McMahon has been “tearing up” the scripts of Smackdown almost on a weekly basis and ordering re-writes.
The “Nature Boy” Ric Flair told TMZ in a video that he will let WWE use “The Man” as the gimmick for Becky Lynch as long as they pay him royalties for the trademark.
Flair recalled how he talked to WWE’s attorneys last year after the SummerSlam match between Becky and Charlotte and they blew him off saying that what they’re doing is different than what he is claiming. Eventually, Flair’s attorney reached out next to his WWE counterparts and the same reasoning was given to him.
Flair said that he called Triple H and tried to amicably reach a settlement for WWE to use “The Man” with Lynch but that resulted to nowhere. Flair added that when he was stuck in hospital for 31 days, 12 of which were on a death bed, there was one person who stuck with him 24/7 and that was his wife Wendy and he’s determined to take care of her and her family like they took care of him, even if it involves getting into litigation with WWE.
The two-time WWE Hall of Famer said that his daughter Charlotte was not happy that he filed for the trademark in late August but he had to do whatever it takes to get the money he deserves. Flair said that he has nothing against Becky Lynch and he would allow her to use the trademark even if the United States Patent and Trademark Office gives him the sole rights for the trademark but WWE has to pay up.
If WWE continues to use the term “The Man,” Flair said that he will consider taking legal action against the company. “I don’t care what the WWE thinks of me personally, I know they love me, but obviously they’ve lost respect for me,” Ric said.
The first two matches for the first NXT on USA Network episode on September 18 were announced by WWE.
With NXT moving to USA Network live every week, production and matches will have to be taken up a notch especially after October 2 when AEW kickstarts their TNT show head-to-head.
The first match is a triple threat women’s match to determine the number one contender for the NXT Women’s title. Mia Yim, Io Shirai, and Bianca Belair will go against each other with the winner receiving a title shot, a title currently held by Shayna Baszler. The next Takeover is in November so it will be interesting if they will get the match before then as WWE did not announce when the title match will be held. All three wrestlers lost to Baszler in the past.
And the second match will feature the North American title as champion Velveteen Dream looks to defend it against Undisputed Era member Roderick Strong. Strong is currently the only one out of the Undisputed Era not to hold a title in NXT as Cole is the NXT champion and Fish and O’Reilly are the NXT Tag Team champions. Strong was in a triple threat match for the North American Title which also involved Pete Dunne at Takeover: Toronto, a match which Velveteen won.
There are games and martial arts which have been around for centuries, but it is safe and fair to say that wrestling is one of the oldest types of combat. There’s a debate as to whether wrestling is a sport or a martial art, but we can actually say that it is a both a martial art and a sport.
The history of wrestling is older than the most other sports and martial arts that we know of, not to mention that wrestling didn’t change significantly in thousands of years. Sure, there are many games that are quite old and there are such where the rules have remained pretty much the same or at least similar for many years, but not a lot of games have remained almost identical over the years.
Even if we take number games, or card games where there aren’t a lot of options for change, we’ll notice that the games evolve over the years. Let’s take bingo for instance. Even it has been around for less than five centuries, so a lot less than wrestling, the game has changed significantly over the years, especially since the first online bingo sites were launched and many new variants have appeared since then. Let’s get back to wrestling though.
Wrestling is mentioned in numerous ancient books
The history of wrestling begins about 15,000 years ago. That’s right, not 1,500 years ago, but ten times earlier. Wrestling is depicted on a number of cave drawings from prehistory. There are drawings from Egypt and Babylon which show wrestlers doing moves and mastering holds that are still used in modern wrestling and that is the key argument used when discussing the history of wrestling.
All these drawings show us that wrestling is the same sport, or martial art as it was many centuries ago, but let’s see at how wrestling has progressed over the years. The first sources that we can use to trace back the history of this ancient art are, believe it or not, religious books and holy scriptures.
The Bible and the Indian Vedas both feature instances of wrestling. The wrestling fight between Patriarch Jacob and an angel is mentioned in the Bible. These aren’t the only two ancient scriptures where the practice of wrestling is recorded, Ramayana and Mahabharata also include instances of wrestling. For instance, a wrestling match between Bhima and Jarasandha, both accomplished wrestlers, is described.
Graeco-Roman wrestling and how it came about
However, as we can get lost if we try to look at all instances where wrestling is mentioned in all ancient scriptures and books, we would get completely lost. The line of modern wrestling originates from Ancient Greece. As you know one of the most popular types of wrestling nowadays is known as Graeco-Roman wrestling. Graeco-Roman wrestling came about when traditional Greek wrestling was incorporated in Roman culture.
Graeco-Roman wrestling is one of the dominant and main forms of wrestling nowadays and one of the two variants that’s featured at the Olympics. Graeco-Roman fights were featured at the first modern Olympic Games in 1896 and it has been an Olympic discipline since 1908.
The main characteristic of this type of wrestling is that it is illegal to grab the opponent below the waist. Typically, Graeco-Roman tournaments are direct elimination with the number of wrestlers being divisible by four. It is interesting to note that this style never gained popularity in the UK or the US, freestyle wrestling reigned and still reigns supreme in the Western English-speaking world.
It is fair to say that the actual style of wrestling that was practiced in Ancient Greece is quite different, but wrestling was the first discipline that’s not a footrace to be added to the Olympic Games. Milo of Croton was one of the most popular wrestles of Ancient Greece, but it is hard to tell if he is as popular as some of our modern-day WWE fighters.
The Kenny Omega vs Jon Moxley match has been rescheduled to the Full Gear pay-per-view, becoming the first official match for the post-TNT era PPV of All Elite Wrestling.
Moxley had to be replaced at All Out a week before the pay-per-view due to an MRSA infection in his elbow that required surgery. PAC was brought in as his replacement and defeated Omega at All Out.
The former WWE champion is expected to be out for four weeks so he should be ready for the first AEW on TNT show on October 2.
Tickets for Full Gear go on sale tomorrow at Noon ET at AEWTix.com.
