It’s a very important weekend for Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as his new movie Hobbs & Shaw comes out in theaters tomorrow, August 2.
This is the first spinoff from the Fast & Furious franchise and the movie carries the title Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw. Joining Johnson in the movie are Jason Statham, Idris Elba, Vanessa Kirby, Charlize Theron, and Helen Mirren in the leading roles. WWE Superstar Roman Reigns also has a role in the movie, playing the brother of Johnson’s character. The movie is directed by David Leitch off a screenplay by Chris Morgan and Drew Pearce.
With a production budget of $200 million, there are big expectations for the movie which is intended to expand into its own franchise. Industry experts believe the movie will make $60 million in the opening weekend in the United States from 4,200 theaters. A $60 million opening weekend would put the movie sixth in the series as far as best opening and also Johnson’s sixth as a personal best, behind all the Fast & Furious movies he appeared in and The Mummy Returns.
Finn Balor appeared briefly on the FS1 MLS All-Star pre-game show to promote WWE and talk a little bit about soccer.
The host promised that Bray Wyatt was not here today and when they came back from commercials, pyro went off as soon as Balor was about to talk which got laughs from everyone due to the great timing.
Balor was asked about The Demon character by former U.S. soccer star Alexi Lalas and he was quizzed if he ever went to a doctor to “control him.” Balor proposed to Lalas to go with him to the WWE Performance Center to introduce him to The Demon.
The host then asked Balor how he got the 8-pack, making a 6-pack look lazy! Balor said it’s a lot of dedication and hard work to stay in shape but that’s what they do. He also mentioned the stomach bug he got last week that made him miss a couple of WWE live events.
Balor was then presented with an All Star jersey with his name and number 19 on the back, but it was notably too big for him. “Bray Wyatt might fit in that one,” the host quipped!
During the whole segment, a banner was permanently on air at the bottom with the WWE logo and the text “WWE Smackdown premieres on FOX on October 4.”
WWE and 2K Sports will reveal the cover Superstar for this year’s WWE 2K20 video game on Monday, August 5.
2K also released the first two screenshots from the game: a close up of Brock Lesnar in front of the stage and a shot of Bayley from behind with her hands up as she makes her entrance.
Last year’s cover Superstar was Seth Rollins and this year there are rumors that a woman would be gracing the cover. No female Superstar has ever had a cover of a WWE video game so far.
A lot of WWE Legends have also filmed footage for the game which will be used for marketing purposes.
Colby Covington will be entering the Octagon at UFC on ESPN 5 to one of the most popular WWE theme songs, “Medal,” which is Kurt Angle’s entrance theme.
Ariel Helwani reported that Covington got Kurt Angle’s – and WWE’s – permission to use the song as his walk-out song for the event that will take place on August 3 at the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey.
Covington is a good friend of WWE Superstar Bobby Lashley and it was Lashley who “brokered” the deal for him.
The song “Medal” was originally used for The Patriot but then was given to Kurt Angle when he made his debut. It’s best known for fans chanting “you suck” during the theme, something that will probably happen as well in Newark when Covington walks down to the cage.
The event will also have in attendance two of the sons of U.S. President Trump, Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump, who are both supporters of Covington.
Episode 15 of season one of Miz & Mrs on USA Network did 911,000 viewers, an increase of 189,000 viewers from last week. Last week’s return episode did 722,000 viewers. (Ratings credit: Showbuzzdaily.com)
Former WWE Universal, NXT, and Intercontinental champion Finn Balor will be joining FOX Sports’ broadcast of the MLS All Star pre-game show tonight live from Orlando, Florida at 7:30PM ET on FS1.
FOX will be using WWE Superstars for promotions more often as time gets closer for Smackdown to move to the network starting in the beginning of October. Balor is not the first WWE star do to something similar for the network with FOX’s marketing machine getting ready to slide into high gear for the arrival of the blue brand.
The network has paid over $1 billion for the television rights of Smackdown, an agreement that will last at least five years. Smackdown will be produced by FOX Sports once the move happens.
Rewritten just hours before the show went on air, this week’s Smackdown did 1,911,000 viewers, down 251,000 viewers from last week’s show against heavy competition from the CNN debate. The CNN debate with the Democratic front-runners did 8.6 million viewers against Smackdown.
Smackdown was #5 in the top 50 cable chart among the 18-49 demographic and #12 in overall viewership for the night on cable. (Ratings credit: Showbuzzdaily.com)
The second match of the first-ever AEW on TNT show was announced today by All Elite Wrestling.
A huge six-man tag team match will take place with Kenny Omega and The Young Bucks taking on Chris Jericho and two mystery partners. Jericho and Omega wrestled each other at Double or Nothing with Jericho coming out on top, with the win earning him a title shot to crown the inaugural AEW champion at All Out next month.
As who are the mystery partners, that remains to be seen and it’s a smart tactic by AEW to keep some surprises so fans have more reason to tune in come October 2.
Tickets for this show go on sale this Friday at Noon ET on Ticketmaster.com
AEW is promoting a Jon Moxley “appearance” rather than a match at their inaugural TNT show on Wednesday, October 2.
The promotion is already advertising Cody vs Sammy Guevara as the first match for the weekly show and yesterday, the Moxley graphic went up on social media saying he will be appearing live. Moxley is currently working with New Japan Pro Wrestling and the G1 Climax tournament but will return full time with AEW once their weekly TV show starts.
With the show happening at the Capital One Arena in Washington, D.C., AEW is going all out – no pun intended – with American flags and the red, white, and blue theme for marketing purposes.
Tickets for this first show go on sale on Friday, August 2 at Noon ET on Ticketmaster.com. No official name for the show has been revealed yet.
Trish Stratus is officially stepping out of retirement and lacing up her boots once again as she will take on Charlotte Flair at SummerSlam.
The highly-rumored match was announced on Smackdown tonight after Flair interrupted Stratus while she was being interviewed by Jerry “The King” Lawler during The King’s Court segment.
Lawler asked Trish if she ever thought about having one more match but she replied saying she’s just a mom now. At that point, Flair came out and berated Lawler for doing the segment without a queen. Charlotte ran down Trish for making excuses and said she knows Trish cannot beat her and challenged her to a match. When Trish didn’t respond, Flair told her to get back in her mini-van and go back home to change diapers.
Trish told Charlotte that she’s just being a bitch and reminded her that without her and others, there would not be a trail to blaze. “You should know that to be the woman, you have to beat the women,” Trish said, accepting Flair’s challenge.
While Trish wrestled at the Evolution pay-per-view last October, this will be her first one-on-one match since her retirement match at Unforgiven in 2006 against Lita. That match also took place from the same arena in Toronto.
As fully expected, Raw didn’t come even close to last week’s Raw Reunion number and not only that, it was the worst number in over a month with an average of 2,321,000 viewers, down 772,000 viewers from the Raw Reunion show and down 132,000 viewers from the prior week’s broadcast.
The show started with 2,407,000 viewers, then went down to 2,324,000 viewers for the second hour before finishing the night with 2,233,000 viewers.
Raw was #2, #3, and #4 in the top 50 cable chart among the 18-49 demographic and #5 in overall viewership for the night on cable. (Ratings credit: Showbuzzdaily.com)
Netflix today announced a new half-hour, multi-cam comedy series titled The Big Show Show, starring WWE Superstar and former champion The Big Show.
The series will also have Allison Munn, Reylynn Caster, Juliet Donenfeld, and Lily Brooks. Josh Bycel and Jason Berger will serve as executive producers and showrunners. Susan Levison and Richard Lowell will also serve as executive producers for WWE Studios. Production on the 10-episode series will begin on Friday, August 9 in Los Angeles, California.
The synopsis of the show reads, “When the teenage daughter of Big Show, a retired world-famous WWE Superstar, comes to live with him, his wife and two other daughters, he quickly becomes outnumbered and outsmarted. Despite being 7 feet tall and weighing 400 pounds, he is no longer the center of attention.”
This is the second collaboration between WWE and Netflix following the recent announcement of the movie The Main Event.
Ryan Satin of ProWrestlingSheet.com reported today that with just hours to go to the start of the show, WWE Chairman and CEO Vince McMahon ordered a complete rewrite of tonight’s Smackdown, sending the creative team scrambling to come up with a new script.
This is not the first time that McMahon ordered something similar on the day of television shows, with the creative team sometimes even changing segments on the fly while the show is live.
The planned match of The New Day vs Drew McIntyre and Elias was scrapped and it has now been changed to a six-man tag team match with all three members of The New Day taking on all three members of The O.C. All six men carry a title.
As of now, Balor vs Ziggler is still on the card and so is The King’s Court segment with Trish Stratus, a segment which will kick off Stratus’ return to the ring against Charlotte Flair.
The 24/7 title was a main feature in the first hour of Monday Night Raw with the first husband and wife champions crowned.
R-Truth successfully defended the title in the opening match as he teamed up with Carmella to take on Drake Maverick and his wife Renee Michelle. Unfortunately for Truth, many WWE Superstars surrounded him after he won and they all jumped on him to pin him.
It was Mike Kanellis who managed to take the title away and run though, and the announcer declared him the new champion. Running through the backstage area, Kanellis locked himself in the referee’s locker room as all the other Superstars tried to get in.
Kanellis didn’t open the door obviously but then his wife Maria came by and she told him to open the door. When he asked her to confirm her identity, Maria told him that if he doesn’t open the door, she was going to kick him in his vagina!
In a later segment, Maria told Mike to get on his back so she could pin him for the title so at least, her unborn child would have a parent who is a champion. Mike reluctantly obeyed as a referee counted to three. Maria came out of the room and dissed all the other Superstars, reminding them that she’s pregnant and no one would touch her. She did, however, invite them to her OBGYN appointment later this week so if anyone wants to pin her while she has her legs up and open, they can try.
Impact Wrestling today announced that Tenille Dashwood, the artist formerly known as Emma in WWE, has signed a deal with the company and has joined the Knockouts division.
The 30-year-old Australian will make her Impact debut in Mexico City, Mexico during the upcoming Impact television tapings on August 15 and 16.
Dashwood spent six years in WWE, first as part of Florida Championship Wrestling and then NXT. She moved to the main roster in 2014 but a year later she went back to NXT before she got called back in 2016. She was eventually released from the company in October 2017 just days after losing to Asuka in a match on Raw.
Last year, Dashwood signed a deal with Ring of Honor but an illness and shoulder surgery kept her out of the ring for months. She was written off ROH TV when Bully Ray put her through a table in April of this year.
Ricochet got another shot at the United States title after the former champ won the gauntlet match on Raw.
The match started with Rey Mysterio against Cesaro and after Mysterio won, Sami Zayn came out. Mysterio got rid of Zayn in seconds but Mysterio’s run stopped there as he was later pinned by Andrade. Ricochet was the last entrant in the match and got the pinfall on Andrade to secure his SummerSlam match.
Ricochet won the United States title at Stomping Grounds against Samoa Joe but lost it to AJ Styles at the Extreme Rules pay-per-view.
Four-time Emmy-winning TV host Chris Van Vliet announced that he has signed a deal with All Elite Wrestling with his first show being the premiere of AEW on TNT on October 2.
Van Vliet is well known in the entertainment industry and has conducted several in-depth interviews with many wrestling stars throughout the years.
“As a lifelong wrestling fan, this is a dream come true to mix my passion for broadcasting and pro wrestling as a backstage interviewer for AEW,” he wrote in a long post on Instagram.
Vliet said that he grew up idolizing wrestlers and wanted to be a professional wrestler and enrolled in a wrestling school when he was 20 years old. However, that journey was put on hold as he chose to focus on graduating with an honors degree in Communication Studies and pursuing his other dream of being a TV host. Vliet added that the best part is that he’s just getting started.
Apart from doing backstage interviews, Vliet will also be hosting AEW’s digital shows.
Apart from the two matches announced over the weekend for Raw, WWE today also added three more to the show, probably a record for pre-announced matches for a television show.
The number one contenders match for the United States title will be decided tonight in a gauntlet match with Ricochet, Cesaro, Andrade, Sami Zayn, and Rey Mysterio looking for a SummerSlam ticket to wrestle AJ Styles.
What happens when you get arrested over the past few days in WWE land? Well, you earn a Raw Tag Team titles shot as The Usos and Luke Gallows and Karl Anderson will take on The Revival for the titles in a triple threat tag team match.
Also announced is a mixed tag team match with R-Truth teaming up with Carmella to take on Drake Maverick and his wife Renee Michelle with the 24/7 title up for grabs. Renee Michelle is a professional wrestler and also was part of the Mae Young Classic tournament.
WWE Hall of Famer Jerry “The King” Lawler is suing Hardeman County, Tennessee in a $3 million lawsuit over the wrongful death of his son.
Brian Christopher Lawler, 46, passed away on July 29, 2018 and was found hanging from his jail cell after he was arrested for a DUI.
Lawler’s attorney, Jeffrey Rosenblum from Rosenblum & Reisman, Attorneys at Law, wrote in a press release, “Jerry Lawler filed a lawsuit on Friday, July 26, 2019 seeking justice for Brian Lawler’s family. Lawler is seeking compensatory damages and punitive damages in an amount to be determined by a jury for the numerous failures of the county and its employees that resulted in the wrongful death of his son, Brian Christopher Lawler. Lawler is also asking the court to order Sheriff Doolen to make changes at the Hardeman County Jail to protect all inmates from future harm.”
Rosenblum told TMZ that Christopher was attacked by an inmate during his time in jail and suffered a head injury, left eye gash and a possible concussion. Officials refused to get him help, the attorney says, and instead of assisting, they placed him in solitary confinement. He used his own shoe laces and the bolts sticking out from the jail cell to hang himself.
Apart from the lawsuit, Lawler is also demanding an apology from the Sheriff’s Department and a court order “requiring Hardeman County to correct their unconstitutional deficiencies so that no other family has to go through what this family has had to endure over the past year.”
The $3 million sum and other punitive damages, if awarded, will go to benefit Brian’s son.
Lawler claims that while his son was in jail, he met with the Sheriff to try and get him help for drug and alcohol addiction and was promised he would get the proper treatment. Lawler explained that that’s the only reason why they didn’t pay the money to bail him out and now he feels betrayed by the Sheriff for failing to act.
Coming on the heels of both Monday Night Raw and SmackDown Live, the best sportsbooks have released the odds on three main matches from this year’s SummerSlam: WWE Universal title match, Raw Women’s title match, and WSmackdown Women’s title match.
Let’s look at the odds and possibilities for each.
WWE SmackDown Women’s Champion
Ember Moon is challenging Bayley for the SmackDown Women’s Title. If we go by the odds, Bayley is a moderate favorite to retain the belt. Ember Moon is coming in as a +150 underdog. And though it’s underdog odds, they are not long by any means. Bayley is a -200 favorite or 1 to 2. So, although Bayley is favored, the odds are not entirely lop-sided.
People have been talking about this match happening for some time now. And it’s about time that they have been paired against one another in a No. 1 contenders match. They have a running list of ring appearances together in tag-team situations, but never head-to-head, one-on-one.
The main reason that I think Bayley will win is the fact that Ember Moon’s previous events have been met with very little fanfare. Mostly, Ember Moon has been reduced to the secondary-sidekick role. Even her appearance at WrestleMania was less than bombastic.
Bayley, on the other hand, has more star power. And we should see her retain the Women’s Title in SummerSlam to build up some momentum for the future. But, hey, you never know. The odds are short for a reason.
WWE RAW Women’s Champion
Becky Lynch is the -250 favorite over Natalya, +170. Again, these are not overly long odds, but the reigning woman is still expected by odds-makers to retain the title. Some expected Becky Lynch to be facing Rowdy Rhonda, but it isn’t the case. Natalya gets her shot at the RAW Women’s Title. Especially after the beat down Rousey put on Lynch before WrestleMania, and then the way that Rowdy lost her title with Lynch and Flair momentarily teaming up to take Rhonda down.
But, Natalya won the Fatal 4-Way and is the new No. 1 contender by tapping out Alexa. This will actually be a great match to watch. Nattie has a smooth style and both are powerful, skilled wrestlers. I wouldn’t be surprised to a change of hands with the title come out of this match.
WWE Universal Champion
Seth Rollins Battle Royal to regain his spot as the No. 1 contender, but if he wants to be Universal Champion he has to go through the Beast, Broc Lesnar, on August 11th. This is becoming an epic rivalry. Lesnar made history as the first wrestler to cash in –Money in the Bank– on the person who had previously cashed in on him. Now they are going head-to-head for the Universal Title.
Will Lesnar lose his title on the follow-up Pay-Per-View event? It doesn’t seem likely, and that is a big part of why Broc Lesnar is listed a the -200 favorite in Toronto. That said, Broc has sucked up a lot of time over the last couple of years as the Champ, so it wouldn’t come as too much of a shocker to see him dethroned by Rollins.
We’ll have to wait and see what happens. Yes, each Champ is listed as the favorite to win … but we can’t expect that to hold. At least one of the current champions is going down on August 11th.
