The SummerSlam card expanded by two more matches, with now a total of 10 matches, seven of which are for a title.
Added last night on Raw were Finn Balor vs Bray Wyatt and Big Cass vs Big Show with Enzo Amore suspended above the ring in a shark cage. With a few more matches to be announced, it’s highly likely that one or more of the announced matches will be moved to the Kickoff show.
SummerSlam takes place on August 20 from the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York. It’s free on the WWE Network for first-time subscribers.
With Bayley out of the SummerSlam pay-per-view due to a shoulder injury, Alexa Bliss is looking for a new number one contender for the Raw Women’s title.
That number one contender will be decided next week on Raw, just six days before the actual pay-per-view when Sasha Banks takes on Nia Jax. Banks lost the number one contenders match against Bayley a few weeks ago and Jax was the one who put Bayley out of commission.
Banks and Bliss already wrestled in June at the Great Balls of Fire pay-per-view, with Banks coming out victorious via count-out.
The Revival is having a tough time on the main roster as Scott Dawson suffered a ruptured bicep during a non-televised live event this weekend, putting him out of action for an undetermined amount of time.
Dawson still wrestled last night at the house show in London, Ontario, but had his right arm heavily taped up. The injury occurred during a tag team match against Sheamus and Cesaro.
“Dawson’s injury is consistent with a ruptured right distal biceps tendon,” Dr. Chris Amann told WWE.com. “He will be seen for a surgical consult early this week with the treatment most likely requiring surgical repair.”
With Dawson out of action it will be interesting to see what happens to the Hardy Boyz and their place on the SummerSlam card as the two teams were rumored to have a match on the show.
Dawson’s tag team partner Dash Wilder just returned from a jaw injury, an injury he suffered back in April at an NXT live event. That injury required him to have his jaw wired shut.
GFW fans who are cord cutters will soon be able to enjoy watching Impact Wrestling on another over-the-top streaming service.
DirecTV Now announced a deal to carry the CBS stations and with them comes POP, the current home of GFW’s Impact Wrestling. POP will be part of the ‘Just Right’ tier and above. The channel is also available for streaming on the PS Vue streaming service as part of the ‘Access’ tier and above and as well on the recently-launched Hulu Live service.
AT&T’s DirecTV Now boasts around 500,000 subscribers.
In an WWE.COM exclusive it was reported that Bayley will not be at SummerSlam due to the injury she suffered against Nia Jax last week.
Standing outside the Air Canada Centre, WWE’s Mike Rome said that after evaluations conducted this morning, Bayley’s separated shoulder problem will prevent her from wrestling Alexa Bliss for the Raw Women’s title.
Bayley will be on Raw tonight and will address the WWE fans as the company goes for plan B – whatever that might be – for the match.
A last man standing match will be headlining Monday Night Raw tonight as Braun Strowman and Roman Reigns will go one on one once again.
This is the second gimmick match in a row for these two following the ambulance match which Strowman won at Great Balls of Fire in June. That match saw Reigns then drive the ambulance, which had Strowman in it, into a semi-truck, totaling the back of the ambulance with Strowman still inside.
The faith of Bayley will also be revealed after she suffered a shoulder injury during her match against Nia Jax last week. More tests will be done today according to WWE.COM to exactly figure out where Bayley stands.
Birdiebee, the Bella Twins’ clothing brand, is being unveiled at the Curve Expo today in New York.
The Birdiebee project was launched last year and it was also featured on a few episodes of Total Divas as Nikki and Brie shopped around ideas to launch the brand including compression sock, read this article about what exactly is a compression sock and their benefits.
The twins wrote in a post on Twitter that they were heading to the Curve Expo as their products are “being introduced to the world,” calling this a dream come true. The Curve Expo is being held at the Javits Center at Hall 1B in New York and the Bellas are at booth 620.
It’s been a good week for Nikki and Brie as they also had their own wine bottled, labeled, and ready to launch. The name and label have been kept a secret for the time being and will be unveiled when the wine officially launches.
The second GFW non-televised live event in Staten Island was just as bad as the one in Long Island in terms of attendance as the Staten Island Richmond County Bank Ballpark at St. George looked awfully empty with few fans scattered around the park.
The ringside seats, which had around 250 seats, were not even full and in the stands you could see small pockets of fans scattered around.
This experiment clearly failed and the company obviously lost more money than it did to put up these shows. The third show, which was set for tonight in Bridgeport, Connecticut, was canceled.
Fans in Montreal last night got a special moment as three of their favorites all teamed up to finish off the heels in a non-televised live event.
The main event featured Jinder Mahal taking on Sami Zayn for the WWE title, a match which ended with Mahal winning after the Singh brothers interfered. After the match was over, all three attacked Sami Zayn but Pat Patterson, who was sitting ringside for the match, jumped on the apron to help Zayn.
Still three on two, Kevin Owens’ theme song hit for a thunderous pop from the crowd. Owens evened the odds and worked with Zayn to get rid of Mahal and the Singh brothers.
The fans chanted “Yes” – in French – as Owens and Zayn stood face to face in the ring but Owens did not stay there for the celebrations, and left the ring.
The Smackdown Tag Team titles will be on the line at SummerSlam as WWE announced this morning that The New Day will be defending the titles against The Usos again.
With the Smackdown Tag Team title match added to the card, it means that seven out of the eight matches announced so far are all title matches. The WWE Championship, Universal title, Raw and Smackdown Women’s titles, United States title, and Cruiserweight title are also all on the line. Only Rusev vs Randy Orton is the non-title match so far.
SummerSlam is expected to top the four-hour mark so more matches will be added to the card. Last year the card had 12 matches in total although three of them were on the pre-show.
Judging from pictures posted online from last night’s GFW non-televised live event at The Sports Arena in St. James in Long Island, attendance was pretty poor and did not even top 300 fans.
The 45,000 square foot multipurpose arena did not look at its best with just floor seats and large red barricades to close off parts of the floor. You can see a photo of the poor attendance below.
The second live event happens tonight at the Staten Island Richmond County Bank Ballpark at St. George.
GFW champion Alberto El Patron will not be at any of the two non-televised live events this weekend as he remains suspended by the company.
El Patron was suspended by GFW after the airport incident with Paige hit the press and at the time it looked like he was the culprit. It ended up being that El Patron was the “victim” in this case and Orlando PD dropped all investigations against him after it was clear that Paige was the offender.
Global Force Wrestling said that they are conducting their own investigation into his actions and he remains under suspension until further notice. During an appearance on Busted Open on SiriusXM, El Patron said that GFW has set a date for the suspension to be hopefully lifted but it surely won’t be this weekend, so he can’t be at the New York live events.
El Patron still appeared on the taped Impact shows despite the suspension and most likely his suspension will be lifted in time for the next set of Impact tapings in a couple of weeks.
Impact on POP did 276,000 viewers last night, down 10,000 viewers from last week’s show. This was the third week in a row that the show suffered a decline in viewership. (Ratings credit: Showbuzzdaily.com)
WWE announced that the company and Eva Marie have mutually agreed to part ways as of today, August 4.
“Today I’m saying a bittersweet goodbye to @WWE,” Eva tweeted. “Thanks to the entire team, and YOU, my fans, for these 4 years! #AllRedEverythingForever.”
Eva Marie’s road to the WWE main roster was anything but easy and more often than not got flack for being horrible in the ring. Eva was introduced to WWE fans during the first season of Total Divas. During her appearances throughout six seasons, she was usually the heel in the cast and pretty much every member on the cast had a clash with her.
When her main roster experiment failed, she was sent back to NXT to work on her character and then during the draft last year, she was drafted to Smackdown. During the month of August, she failed to wrestle after faking multiple incidents to avoid getting in the ring.
Unfortunately for her, that gimmick soon ended after she was suspended for 30 days for violating the WWE Wellness Program policy and lost her place at the SummerSlam pay-per-view. She has not appeared on WWE television since mid-August.
In the meantime, Eva Marie was signed up by Dany Garcia, who happens to be Dwayne Johnson’s ex-wife and current business manager/partner. Eva Marie is part of “Team Rock” and has been busy filming movies lately.
When Jim Ross hosts his Ringside with JR shows around the country, usually during weekends when there are important wrestling events, he always brings in a special guest or two with him.
At the next Ringside show on Friday, August 18 during SummerSlam weekend, Ross will have one of the biggest guests so far, Paul Heyman!
Heyman and Ross share a history on-screen, having been broadcast partners both in WCW and later in WWE during the Invasion angle. Their work together at WrestleMania X-Seven was one of the best ever for a commentary team and when it was time to break them up, Heyman lunged at JR but Ross provided some “ground and pound” of his own right on the commentary table.
“Come on you son of a bitch!” screamed Ross, as Heyman is hauled away by security.
The Ringside with Jim Ross show in New York will be held at the Gotham Comedy Club. For more information, go to gothamcomedyclub.com.
Global Force Wrestling will have two non-televised live events in the state of New York this weekend, the first such shows in years.
The company booked The Sports Arena in St. James in Long Island and the Staten Island Richmond County Bank Ballpark at St. George. Another event, in Bridgeport, Connecticut, was canceled due to “unforeseen circumstances and logistical challenges.”
These events will also see the GFW debut of John Hennigan, better known to fans as Johnny Mundo in Lucha Underground. He will not be able to appear on Impact for now due to his contractual obligations with El Rey Network but can appear on any other non-televised events.
On both events, he will be in six-man tag team matches which will serve as the main events.
There are rumors floating around that Japanese female sensation Io Shirai is not coming to WWE after her results from the physical tests showed several problems regarding her neck.
Shirai was given the all-clear by doctors to resume wrestling but WWE decided to pull their offer from the table according to Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer. After the WWE offer was gone, Shirai wasted no time and returned to Stardom in Japan on the July 30 show after saying her farewell several weeks before.
The 27-year-old had announced in mid-June that she would be leaving Stardom to rehab her neck injury, an injury she suffered after taking a nasty piledriver during a match in mid-May. During the same timeframe in mid-May, Shirai agreed to join WWE. In March she had a tryout with WWE, a tryout with a difference as she did not participate in regular workouts but was there to check out the area and the facilities as WWE tried to woo her to join the company.
Shirai is considered one of the best female wrestlers on the planet and is the MVP of World Wonder Ring Stardom.
Sports Illustrated is reporting that Brock Lesnar’s return to the UFC is “imminent” and will take the Jon Jones fight after he completely fulfills all his WWE dates which run through WrestleMania 34.
Those in the UFC are pushing away the story, saying Lesnar has not given them written notification that he wants to return and thus cannot be put back in the USADA drug testing pool, which now has a minimum of six months before any returning fighter can fight. Lesnar also has six months to go on his suspension once written notice has been sent.
Both Jon Jones, the UFC Light Heavyweight champion, and his team wants the fight against Lesnar because it’s big money and a big attraction. Lesnar, who would make a fortune from the fight as well, already warned Jones to be careful what he wishes for.
Lesnar will be defending his WWE Universal title at SummerSlam in a fatal 4-way match and Paul Heyman threatened that his client would quit WWE if he loses the title, with WWE already playing off the rumors that Lesnar will indeed eventually go once his current deal expires. There are also rumors that Paul Heyman is pushing the idea behind the scenes to have Samoa Joe win the title at SummerSlam.
Brock has the best contract in the company at the moment, making millions of dollars for only limited dates. If Lesnar gives notice to the UFC about his return in August, the earliest he could fight, assuming he does not fail any drug tests, is in March of 2018. With WrestleMania in April, it’s highly unlikely that he will fight prior to that and a Summer return to the Octagon looks more doable.
WWE and Foxtel extended their partnership into its 18th year with a new agreement to broadcast WWE programming live in Australia, including Raw and SmackDown as well as WWE pay-per-views, including WrestleMania and SummerSlam.
“Foxtel is a long-time, valued partner who shares our vision and passion for engaging and entertaining our fans,” said Michelle Wilson, WWE Chief Revenue & Marketing Officer. “This agreement allows us to continue showcasing our unique blend of action-packed, family friendly entertainment across Australia.”
Foxtel channel FOX8 airs Raw live at 10AM Tuesdays and Smackdown live at 10AM Wednesdays. Fans can order all WWE specials live on Foxtel pay-per-view channel Main Event, including WrestleMania, SummerSlam, Survivor Series and Royal Rumble. All programs will be available on demand.
“We are thrilled to extend our long-standing partnership with one of the biggest brands in entertainment,” said Stephen Baldwin, Foxtel’s Director of Channels. “WWE has such a passionate fan base in Australia, and Foxtel is pleased to bring this popular content to our customers.”
In a short Facebook Live video a few days ago, WWE Hall of Famer Sting revealed that if he wants, he can still wrestle, but he’s not going to do it.
When someone was showing Sting what all the blue icons popping up on his video meant, he also read one of the comments that said he wished he could still wrestle. “Yeah, I can still wrestle. I can still wrestle,” Sting said. But then came the part which nobody wanted to hear. “I’m just not going to,” he added while cracking a smile.
Sting had his last match against Seth Rollins at Night of Champions, suffering a serious neck injury in the process and was barely able to finish his match. At the Hall of Fame induction ceremony six months later, he revealed that he has retired from in-ring wrestling.
