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Austin Aries returns to Impact Wrestling

By
Colin Vassallo
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Austin Aries, the former TNA champion returned to Impact last night at the first set of television tapings held at Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida.

This is Aries’ third stint with the company, following his first one in 2005 which lasted two years, and then in 2011 where he stayed till 2015. Aries went to NXT in 2016 and was part of the WWE cruiserweight division but his run there was less than stellar and was hardly used to the extent that TNA did in the past. He was released from WWE in July of last year.

On his first night back with the company, Aries received an Impact title shot against Eli Drake, a match that will air on Impact in a few weeks. The company even spoiled the result of the match on ImpactWrestling.com and all social media accounts to drive viewers to watch the show.

While he won no titles in NXT and WWE, his most successful run was in TNA where he won the TNA World title, the X Division title on six different times, and the TNA World Tag Team titles once with Bobby Roode.

WWE reps at TCA and CES conventions

By
Colin Vassallo
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The Television Critics Association and USA Network hosted WWE yesterday with Triple H, Stephanie McMahon, Shawn Michaels, Mark Henry, The Miz, Maryse, and The New Day all appearing on behalf of the company.

Topics up for discussion were the 25th anniversary of Monday Night Raw and the new USA Network unscripted series Miz & Mrs featuring The Miz and his wife Maryse.

Meanwhile, Stephanie McMahon traveled to Las Vegas to represent WWE at the annual CES – Consumer Electronics Show – convention. McMahon had a 30-minute interview with Jess Conditt of the popular Engadget.com tech blog to talk a variety of subjects, including WWE’s social media power, the women’s revolution, WWE Network, Facebook’s Mixed Match Challenge, and more. You can see the interview below.

Fans choose Carmella’s partner for Mixed Match Challenge

By
Colin Vassallo
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The last team of the Mixed Match Challenge was announced tonight with Ms. Money In The Bank Carmella teaming up with Big E of The New Day.

Backstage at Smackdown, Carmella said she’d be happy to team up with any of The New Day members as they all bring in something to the table. Daniel Bryan then gave her a box of Booty O’s that contained a pancake with the initial of the winning partner. Carmella then revealed a big E – no pun intended – on the pancake as all three members of The New Day danced.

When asked by Byron Saxton what their name will be in the MMC, the trio sang “We don’t know” to the beat of “New Day rocks!”

You can see the video below.

Total Divas episode preview for tonight: Three Alarm Fire

By
Colin Vassallo
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Total Divas is back on E! tonight starting at 9PM EST with episode nine of season seven titled Three Alarm Fire.

The synopsis for tonight’s show reads, “In the spirit of an episode of Sex and the City, Nia faces her fears and braves a date with a NYC firefighter. Meanwhile, Lana’s criticism of Nattie’s skills on the mic gets in Nattie’s head before her big SummerSlam match, forcing Nattie to do something drastic.”

Impact Wrestling goes back to a traditional four-sided ring

By
Colin Vassallo
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Impact Wrestling is switching back to a traditional four-sided ring with tonight’s television tapings.

The company has flip flopped between four and six-sided rings since its inception in 2002. When the promotion started, they used the traditional ring until 2004. That year, when Impact made its debut, it switched to a six-sided ring until 2010 when Hogan and Bischoff came in. After four years of using a traditional four-sided ring again, the six sides came back in 2014, lasting until tonight.

The ring set-up was photographed by Pro Wrestling NOAH star Taiji Ishimori who is in Orlando for the tapings. Perhaps the biggest thing from the photo is the big Twitch logo on the ring skirt. Twitch is a live streaming video platform owned by Amazon. Impact and Twitch have no commercial relationship so it will be interesting to see what will come out of it after tonight.

Smackdown rating for 01/09/2018

By
Colin Vassallo
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Smackdown did a total of 2,603,000 viewers this week, down 117,000 viewers from last week’s broadcast. It was #1 in the top 50 cable chart among the 18-49 demographic but #8 in overall viewership for the night. (Ratings credit: Showbuzzdaily.com)

Triple H misses Smackdown, dines with Ronda Rousey and agent in Los Angeles

By
Colin Vassallo
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TMZ is reporting that Triple H missed last night’s Smackdown Live episode because he had dinner with Ronda Rousey and her agent in Los Angeles.

At 8:16PM, Triple H left the Republique restaurant in a car and four minutes later, Ronda Rousey and her agent Brad Slater walked out and were caught by the TMZ paparazzo.

When asked what they were doing with Triple H, Slater said that they were catching up for the new year while Rousey laughed and said she enjoyed fine dining.

After Rousey got in her car, the paparazzo asked Slater about the WWE rumors and Slater just opened his arms and didn’t say a word. Brad Slater is also Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s agent.

You can see the video above.

The “great war” between Matt Hardy and Ed Norhdolm ends in peace

By
Colin Vassallo
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The “great war” between Matt Hardy and Ed Nordholm of Anthem Sports & Entertainment ended in peace after Hardy today posted a photo shaking hands with his former boss, ending almost a year of legal battles between the two parties.

“I am thrilled to PROCLAIM that we have ACQUIRED new ALLIES on our side of #TheGreatWar,” Hardy wrote. “Ed Nordholm & The Owl of Anthem have revealed themselves as MAJESTIC beings who stand on the side of the LIGHT. The LIGHT always EMERGES, #WOKENWarriors. Everything is COPASETIC & WONDERFUL!”

It seems that Nordholm has kept his word in regards to the intellectual property of the Broken gimmick and judging from the words and photo, Hardy is now the owner of these rights.

The battle began after both Hardys decided not to extend their Impact deals and started working indie promotions using their Broken and Brother Nero gimmicks. Impact sent a cease and desist letter, forcing them to stop using the gimmicks that Matt Hardy created.

After their surprise appearance at WrestleMania 33 and their eventual full-time return to WWE, both Hardys kept using their old WWE characters and theme song and occasionally throwing the “Delete” hand signal. During the year, both parties fired shots at each other including nasty Twitter outbursts from Matt’s wife aimed at Nordholm and Jeff Jarrett who still worked at Impact at the time.

That all changed when Matt started getting “woken” when his feud with Bray Wyatt started, transforming himself into his Impact character that revitalized his career. During the same period of the transformation, Ed Nordholm said that the company will be letting its current and former stars use the gimmicks that were created while at Impact in other promotions.

You can see Matt’s photo with Nordholm below.

Former WCW President and Raw GM Eric Bischoff to appear at Raw 25

By
Colin Vassallo
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PWInsider.com is reporting that former WCW President and Raw General Manager Eric Bischoff will be appearing on the 25th anniversary episode of Raw in two weeks.

Bischoff has stayed away from appearing on live WWE television since he departed the company although he has been interviewed for several WWE Network projects and also attended Hall of Fame ceremonies.

You have to go back to December 2007 to find a live appearance from Bischoff on WWE TV. That night, he showed up for the 15th anniversary Raw episode and shared the screen with Chris Jericho. His last full-time run with WWE ended in December 2005.

He joined TNA in 2010, coming in with Hulk Hogan until their departure in 2014.

Impact returns to Universal Studios today for six nights of tapings

By
Colin Vassallo
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For the next six nights, Impact Wrestling will be taping several episodes of the show at Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida.

The fun starts tonight with shows kicking off at 6PM every night until the 15th. Apart from taping Impact shows, the company will also be doing One Night Only events that will air on pay-per-view internationally later in the year.

Since these shows are at Universal Studios, fans who are already in the park can attend the shows for free. Tickets are distributed on first come, first served basis.

The new regime of Scott D’Amore and Don Callis will be calling the shots for these tapings, their first one after both were hired and given the role of Executive Vice Presidents one month ago.

WWE extends TV broadcast deal with Malaysia’s Astro

By
Colin Vassallo
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WWE and Astro Malaysia Holdings Berhad, a Malaysian and ASEAN digital-first media and lifestyle company, will extend their partnership into its 17th year with a new agreement to continue airing WWE programming, including Raw and Smackdown. Astro will also continue offering WWE Network as a premium channel.

“Astro has been a long-time valued partner, sharing our vision for engaging and entertaining our fans,” said Michelle Wilson, WWE Chief Revenue & Marketing Officer. “Their commitment to WWE allows us to continue showcasing our unique blend of action-packed, family friendly entertainment across Malaysia.”

“Astro is entertaining Malaysian WWE fans with 24/7, non-stop WWE action and on-demand content in HD on big-screen TVs, and on mobile devices via Astro Go,” said Lee Choong Khay, Astro Vice President of Sports Business. “The response from the passionate fanbase has been tremendous, with nearly five million viewers in 2017 alone and we hope to serve more fans in years to come.”

Astro’s SuperSport channels 1 – 4 will air Raw, Smackdown, NXT, Afterburn, Bottomline, This Week and Main Event, with additional airings on Astro’s Arena sports channel.

WWE Network is a premium à la carte channel available exclusively in Malaysia on Astro TV and Astro GO. Subscribers can watch all WWE special events live and on-demand, with 24/7 programming featuring groundbreaking original series, reality shows, documentaries and classic matches. For more information, please visit www.astro.com.my.

Becky Lynch gets her preferred partner for Mixed Match Challenge

By
Colin Vassallo
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As Becky Lynch was meeting fans outside the arena last night at Smackdown, signing autographs and taking photos, she encountered a “fan” who did not want her to autograph…but a tag team partner.

“Becky, Becky! It’s Becky, love you too!” the fan said. “You want me to sign?” replied Becky. “No, no I don’t want a signature. I want…a partner,” he said as he removed the wig and hoodie, revealing himself to be Sami Zayn.

Becky, who has been lobbying to be teamed up with Zayn, jumped up and down with joy and said that she’s gonna bring the old Sami back…the good Sami. Zayn said he’s always been the same and now he’s going to bring the best out of her too.

You can see the video below.

2-out-of-3 falls match for SD Tag Team titles at the Royal Rumble

By
Colin Vassallo
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After the addition of the Raw Tag Team titles match to the Royal Rumble card on Monday, the Smackdown brand will also have its Tag Team titles on the line on January 28.

The current champions, The Usos, will be defending their titles against the team of Chad Gable and Shelton Benjamin in a 2-out-of-3 falls match. The match was made official by Daniel Bryan last night on the show.

Last week, Gable and Benjamin won the titles after Gable pinned the wrong Uso. Gable was also not the legal man and the referee restarted the match after a second official pointed out the mistake. The Usos then got the pin to retain.

This is the seventh match on the Royal Rumble card and the fifth title match.

Wrestling stars at online gaming

By
Daniel Street
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Wrestling stars at online gaming are becoming increasingly popular. A lot of people in the online casino gaming community absolutely love wrestling, so this makes sense. It’s common for people to do sports betting on online casino gaming websites in general. Betting on professional wrestling is particularly popular and common.

It makes to bet on professional wrestling even when compared with other forms of sports betting. The odds really do seem to be more favorable under these circumstances, especially with the help of a betting calculator from https://www.winnersodds.com/matched-betting-calculators/. People who bet on professional wrestling are only going to have to worry about the performances and the statistics of two different players. When it comes to team sports, many other factors are involved.

People need to find a way to figure out how the entire team interacts in the context of team sports. People also need to be able to get a sense of how individual players will contribute to the overall scoring. There is also the fact that teams will change very frequently. Keeping up with all of that is going to be difficult as a matter of course. Keeping up with professional wrestling will be much easier for the majority of skilled sports betting enthusiasts.

Many professional wrestlers are also very skilled when it comes to establishing their own personal brands. These days, people will tend to be familiar with individual sports teams and not necessarily the sports players themselves. The players can become somewhat anonymous when surrounded by the other people on their teams, and this can make it more difficult to use them in certain promotions. This is less likely to be the case in the context of professional wrestling.

A lot of professional wrestlers are very good at promoting themselves. There are wrestling stars that are famous even among the people who don’t know a thing about professional wrestling, and this is certainly something that most people will find interesting. This is also a trend that will make professional wrestlers much better when it comes to promoting online casino gaming websites and other activities that are related to gaming of all kinds.

There has been a movement towards the creation of casino promotions created to suit the individual preferences of all players. This is almost always a good move. To a certain extent, this has really always been the goal of advertising. People need to find a way to reach their audience in some way or another. They can only really do this by trying to get a sense of what people want and what will get their attention.

Traditionally, advertisers have focused on demographics. However, this is more complicated in the Age of Information. A lot of traditional marketing demographics have started to break up, and there are lots of different demographics that are now interested in online casino games. People want an experience that feels more individual in nature and that feels like it was aimed at them personally. It seems that using a lot of public icons can still be part of that process today.

More WWE Legends confirmed for Raw 25th anniversary episode

By
Colin Vassallo
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More WWE Legends were confirmed yesterday for the Raw 25th anniversary episode including a few Hall of Famers.

A video which aired on Smackdown advertised Ted DiBiase, Sgt. Slaughter, Teddy Long, The Godfather, Brother Love, John Laurinaitis, and The Boogeyman as appearing. They join The Undertaker, Kevin Nash, Steve Austin, DX, The Dudley Boyz, Scott Hall, Ric Flair, The New Age Outlaws, The APA, The Bella Twins, Jim Ross, and Jerry “The King” Lawler who will also be on hand for this milestone episode. John Cena and Brock Lesnar are booked as well for the night.

The episode will be simulcast live from two different locations, with the main show taking place at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn and the other part of the show live from the Manhattan Center in New York. The two locations are 8 miles apart so it could be possible that certain stars will appear at both locations throughout the evening.

The Raw 25 show will be the 1,288th episode of the WWE flagship show. It first aired on USA Network on January 11, 1993.

Two more women join the Royal Rumble, 14 more spots open

By
Colin Vassallo
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Two more participants were added to the first-ever women’s Royal Rumble match last night with a total of 16 female WWE Superstars officially part of the match as of right now.

Mickie James and Nia Jax became the latest individuals to throw in their names for the Rumble match, joining Asuka, Ruby Riott, Liv Morgan, Sarah Logan, Sasha Banks, Bayley, Naomi, Natalya, Paige, Sonya Deville, Mandy Rose, Tamina Snuka, Lana, and Carmella.

A few more are expected to be announced during Smackdown tonight.

Meanwhile, the big rumors are obviously surrounding former UFC champion Ronda Rousey and her involvement in the Rumble. It’s no secret that Rousey is training to become a professional wrestler and has been doing sessions at the WWE Performance Center as well so it would make sense to have her debut during the big pay-per-view.

Here’s what odds and prediction sites like Sports Betting Dime has to say about Ronda Rousey’s odds on making her debut at Royal Rumble:

“It appears Ronda Rousey is going to make her WWE debut sometime in 2018. The best way to introduce the former UFC Champ to the WWE masses would be at the Women’s Royal Rumble on Jan. 28th, potentially entering last and winning the match, thus setting up a huge fight at WrestleMania against either the Smackdown or RAW champ. The storyline basically writes itself, which is why we have Rousey’s odds to appear at Royal Rumble at 1/3.”

There are 22 females on the main roster at the moment, two of who are champions and will not be part of the Rumble. With this Rumble match having 30 entrants, WWE has to get 10 others from either NXT, former Superstars, or other surprises to reach that number.

Raw rating for 01/08/2018

By
Colin Vassallo
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Monday Night Raw drew an average of 2,759,000 viewers, facing heavy competition from college football. The show was down 106,000 viewers from last week.

Hour one started with 2,993,000 viewers, then dropped to 2,784,000 viewers in the second hour, and then down again to 2,502,000 viewers for the third hour. Raw lost nearly half a million viewers from hour one to hour three.

Raw was #6, #9, and #10 in the top 50 cable chart among the 18-49 demographic. The night was dominated by the football game which drew a big audience of 27 million in direct competition with Raw. (Ratings credit: Showbuzzdaily.com)

Samoa Joe joins the Transformers animated series as one of the voice actors

By
Colin Vassallo
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The Hollywood Reporter has exclusive details today about the final season of the Transformers animated series which has added WWE Superstar Samoa Joe as one of its voice actors.

Joe will be voicing Predaking in Transformers: Power of the Primes, and this season will close out the trilogy that launched in August 2016. The new season will launch in the second quarter of 2018.

“Very happy to announce I am joining the cast of the new Transformers animated series,” Joe wrote on Twitter. Showrunner F.J. DeSanto called the addition of Samoa Joe and the new voice actors – which also include Mark Hamill and Ron Perlman – as “unbelievable.”

This is the second WWE/Transformers tie-in as John Cena will be playing the leading role in the upcoming Transformers spinoff movie centered around Bumblebee.

Natalya gets Shinsuke Nakamura as her Mixed Match Challenge partner

By
Colin Vassallo
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Today it was Natalya’s time to find out her Mixed Match Challenge partner while she was in the hallway at the Smackdown tapings.

“If I have the right partner, we can go to distance and win it all,” Natalya said as Shinsuke Nakamura slowly danced his way into the picture from behind. Natalya was asked if she takes a lot of selfies and she said yes. She was told to take a selfie now for the camera, not realizing that Nakamura was behind her.

“Oh my God, this is much better than Rusev,” Natalya exclaimed. “Do you like cats?” Nakamura asked. “Meow,” Natalya replied.

Meow indeed! You can check out the video below.

Virtual Reality experience coming to WWE starting this year

By
Colin Vassallo
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NextVR and WWE have announced a new partnership to bring fans unique WWE experiences in virtual reality, featuring highlights from select 2018 WWE special events.

The virtual reality experiences will be approximately 10 minutes and available for free to the WWE Universe globally on a new WWE channel within the NextVR app following each event. The content will provide fans with a completely new experience, featuring highlights from WWE’s biggest events, including the excitement of the fans, athleticism of WWE’s larger-than-life Superstars, pivotal moments, epic showdowns and surprise appearances, giving them the opportunity to see the action as if they were there live.

“WWE is amazing in VR, and we know fans are going to love it,” said David Cole, NextVR CEO. “Our patented VR broadcasting pipeline will bring fans ringside with WWE Superstars to experience the electrifying energy and spectacle firsthand.”

“We are always looking to create compelling content across platforms, and we are excited to partner with NextVR to bring our fans closer to the action than ever before,” said Michelle Wilson, WWE Chief Revenue & Marketing Officer. “As the technology behind virtual reality continues to evolve, this is a unique opportunity for us to partner with NextVR, a leader in this space, to provide new experiences to our passionate fans around the world.”

For each production, NextVR will work alongside WWE’s award-winning TV and production team to position NextVR’s custom virtual reality cameras throughout each event to capture the most immersive views of WWE action.

Fans with a Samsung GearVR headset or Google Daydream View, along with a compatible smartphone, PlayStation VR, or Windows Mixed Reality can download the free NextVR app from the corresponding platform store to access the free highlights.

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