Former TNT champion Dustin Rhodes revealed on X that he has to do two knee replacements and will be having surgery later this month.
“Knees are both destroyed. I have to go under the knife August 21st,” Rhodes wrote. “They can’t actually fix the damage so we are getting 2 knee replacements. Damn!”
Two knee replacements at the same time will be pretty tough but that also means you heal at – theoretically – the same time rather than going through the same rehab process again.
Rhodes noted that this is not the end for him and hinted at returning to the ring when he’s back fully fit.
The Texan dropped the TNT title to Kyle Fletcher last week on Collision in a very bloody main event, just two weeks after winning it at All In.
The July 28 episode of Raw had 2,700,000 viewers globally on Netflix, the same number it pulled the previous two weeks.
Based on an editing running time of one hour and 59 minutes, there were a total of 5,500,000 viewing hours and Raw placed #8 in the Netflix top 10 global chart this week.
Raw was in the top 10 chart in 10 different countries including Bolivia, Canada, Ecuador, El Salvador, India, Mexico, Nicaragua, Sri Lanka, United Kingdom, and United States.
Hulk Hogan was laid to rest yesterday in a private funeral held at the Indian Rocks Baptist Church in Clearwater, Florida.
Vince McMahon, Triple H, Stephanie McMahon, Linda McMahon, Shane McMahon, Ric Flair, Kevin Nash, John Laurinaitis, Dennis Rodman, Jacques Rougeau, Kid Rock, Eric Bischoff, Jeff Jarrett, Jimmy Hart, and many other celebrities and wrestling stars attended the service, which was packed.
“Even in heaven, he sold out again,” wrote Ric Flair. “The most beautiful funeral I’ve ever attended! Everyone was there. The whole world showed up to pay respect to the greatest of them all. Rest in peace, Hulkster!”
President Donald Trump did not attend, but yesterday shared a picture of him and Hogan arm wrestling on X.
“They’re having the Hulkster’s funeral today, and I thought everybody would enjoy seeing this picture,” the President wrote.
Hogan’s son Nick and his wife, his ex-wife Linda, and his widow Sky were also at the funeral. His daughter Brooke chose not to attend.
“My father hated the morbidity of funerals. He didn’t want one,” Brooke wrote in a post on Instagram. “And although I know people grieve in many ways – and I’m so grateful for all celebrations and events organized to honor him, as his daughter, I had to make my own decision to honor him the best way I knew how…privately…the way that made me feel the closest to him. The only thing missing today was him in is pop up lawn chair watching the waves…and the sunset.”
Hogan passed away on Thursday, July 24 at his home in Clearwater after a cardiac arrest. At time of his death he was also suffering from cancer, more specifically, leukemia.
ESPN and WWE today announced a landmark agreement which will see ESPN Platforms becoming the exclusive U.S. home of all WWE premium live events starting in 2026.
The brand-new ESPN DTC service will stream all WWE premium live events annually with select events also simulcasting on ESPN’s linear platforms. WWE will retain the production of each event.
This will replace WWE’s deal with Peacock next year and will see ESPN paying a whopping $325 million per year for the events in a five-year deal worth $1.6 billion.
NBC Universal paid approximately $1 billion for all the WWE content when WWE shifted from the WWE Network domestically.
“WWE has an immense, devoted and passionate fanbase that we’re excited to super-serve on our new ESPN DTC platform. This agreement, which features the most-significant WWE events of the year, bolsters our unprecedented content portfolio and helps drive our streaming future,” said Jimmy Pitaro, Chairman of ESPN.
Mark Shapiro, TKO President and Chief Operating Officer, added, “We are proud to reinforce the ‘E’ in ESPN at such an exciting juncture in its direct-to-consumer journey. WWE Premium Live Events are renowned for exactly the type of rich storytelling, incredible feats of athleticism and can’t-miss, cultural tentpole experiences that have become synonymous with ESPN. Through our UFC relationship, we have experienced firsthand how transformational an ESPN presence can be, and we know this will be an exceptional partnership at a time of great innovation for both companies.”
WWE President Nick Khan said that the company’s agreement with ESPN is a pivotal moment for their millions of fans in the United States.
“The leader in sports entertainment partnering with the biggest brand in sports media. Bringing WWE’s flagship events to ESPN’s platform is tremendously exciting. We know the sky is the limit,” Khan said.
Brooke Hogan, the daughter of the late Hulk Hogan, had a long conversation with Bubba “The Love Sponge” on his show today to discuss her father’s passing and everything surrounding their relationship and difficult decisions she had to take.
Brooke said she hoped that her father would have trusted her with his intellectual property and trademarks, saying she would have done right by him and upheld his legacy. She was skeptical about some of Hogan’s business partners, calling them shady, and said they did not have his best interest.
“I hope that whoever has his marks does that,” Brooke said. “I just know that the people around him are pretty shady and not in his best interest.”
Brooke also revealed that she took herself out of Hulk’s will because she did not want to go up against his wife, who’s a Scientologist.
Admitting that Sky, Hogan’s third wife, was always nice to her and has no problem with her, she knew that she was a Scientologist and she would have a very powerful backing when it comes to these legal things.
“And then I thought, oh my God…if I get left any money or Nick gets left any money…no offense, but my mom has been known to kind of find herself in the mix with things like that,” Brooke continued. “I’m like, I don’t want to fight Linda. I don’t want to fight Scientology. I don’t want somebody that I love to get knocked off.”
Brooke and her mother Linda are no longer on speaking terms and Linda blames Brooke for the Hogan family falling apart.
“I was sobbing when I wrote the text to Terry McCoy, the guy that manages his money. I was sobbing and I just said, ‘Take me off everything, I just…I don’t want to be a part of it!'” Brooke continued.
Brooke did say she will receive a small sum of money from a life insurance trust which she said will put towards her twins’ college education.
EXCLUSIVE: Brooke Hogan calls into our show to talk about the death of her father Hulk Hogan, his wife, what she knew about his health and so much more! pic.twitter.com/JhgUSsb6jl
— Bubba The Love Sponge®️ (@TheBubbaArmy) August 5, 2025
TNA star Mike Santana sat down with Chris Van Vliet in New York City to discuss his TNA return and how quickly it came together, not winning the World championship at Slammiversary and speaking to the fans after, his WWE debut in NXT, getting to work with Shawn Michaels, his ultimate dream match, battling addiction, how close he came to signing with WWE back in 2019 and more!
On the main event of Slammiversary:
“What a moment. Just that whole lead-up and just the day in general, it was special. It was special. I said it after we went off the air, I got on the mic a little bit, because the crowd was just like [unhappy]. I was like, there’s a riot rumbling in here, so let me calm them down a little bit. I told them that I wrestled in that building twice before in a throwaway match, like four or five minutes or whatever. And I was like, it’s crazy, I went from the throwaway to the main event. I went from undesirable to undeniable, and what a journey it’s been. It was like one of those full-circle moments of, if you believe in yourself, you make anything possible.
To have my family there and my daughter there, it was special. The way the city came out, and the way that crowd just reacted, and it was one of those things. I’ll be honest, I remember the fear that I felt when I finally got my release, and it was like, it’s over, right? Because you can hope and wish all you want, nothing is guaranteed. I had a plan for myself. I didn’t put a timetable on the plan. I was like, this is the plan. This is the plan that I’m gonna follow, whether it takes two years, five years, whatever it is, I gotta do what I gotta do. But I remember in the back of my head, I just prayed that I could continue giving my daughter the life that she has and making sure that she’s comfortable, and we don’t have to struggle. So there was a lot of that, right? It could work, it could not, but that fear is what made me say, I have to do it. Real quick story, my grandmother, God bless her, she had the opportunity back in like the early 90s, late 80s to buy a piece of property in the Lower East Side. And because of her situation, it was kind of unstable. She had a fear of not being able to afford it, and she had three kids to take care of, and all these things, so she ended up not buying it. That property today is worth like $4 million. I remember her telling me that story, and I was like, I will never allow fear to stop me from anything.”
On his ultimate dream match:
“AJ Styles. Just especially being put in this position in TNA as being that new guy and the new face, and they call me The Standard and stuff like that. I think it’d be amazing. Of course, there’s other people that I love to work with over there, and I have a lot of people that I know and that I came up on the indies with over there. But to me, AJ is the guy.”
On how close him and Ortiz came to signing with WWE in 2019:
“So we did the first Jericho Cruise. That was the first time that we met The Bucks and Cody and the whole Elite and stuff. So we got to work with the Bucks and had a great match, which probably will never see the light of day, but that was our first initial interaction with them and meeting them and getting to chat or whatever. The AEW thing wasn’t a thing yet. So we just continued doing our thing in TNA, and then Cody and I always stayed in touch. We exchanged numbers. We all stayed in touch or whatever. I remember we started hearing the rumblings of the AEW, and they could be starting a new promotion, and all this stuff. So it was a very interesting time. Then I remember being in the movie theater, I forgot what movie I was watching, I was with my daughter, and I got a text from Cody. You know you’re in the movie theater, and then a text comes in, you look down, and your eyesight is trying to adjust. So I look and I see Cody [has messaged me], I’m like, Oh, damn, what’s going on? Such a Cody text, by the way, I open my phone, and it goes, ‘It’s real. It’s happening. When is your contract up?’ So then we chatted a little bit and I gave him my word, and that was that. That to me, is everything. So that was a big component. Even when we were having the talks with WWE, I remember we were sitting in a parking lot in Puerto Rico, where we finally decided and we were going to tell WWE, hey, we’re gonna go do this other thing. The main thing that we said is, listen, we gave them our word.”
When was your contract up?
“August 2019.”
On WWE’s reaction:
“They understood, they respected it. They understood. A big thing with that was the schedule. We both had young kids at the time, and we wanted to be home. We were like, best case scenario, we go to WWE and things blow up, we’re never going to be home. I was like, I want to see my daughter grow up. Thankfully, things have changed; even now, the schedule is not what it was. But back then it was like we want to see our kids grow up, and also being a part of that legacy. They were like, ‘Yo, you’re gonna be in the main event of the very first Dynamite.’ No matter what I do, my name is always gonna be there. So yeah, a big part of that was being a part of something fresh and new, and that the name was always gonna be there.”
WWE announced three rare NXT non-televised live events for the first week of September.
While NXT does non-televised live events, they’re always in Florida and it’s very, very rare that they go out of state for house shows.
Three three shows will be on Friday, September 5 at the Spartanburg Memorial Auditorium in Spartanburg, South Carolina, on Saturday, September 6 at the North Charleston Convention Center in North Charleston, South Carolina, and on Sunday, September 7 at the Bell Auditorium in Atlanta, Georgia.
Tickets go on sale to the general public tomorrow, August 6 at 10AM ET via Ticketmaster.com. A pre-sale is available now using WWENXT as code to unlock tickets.
Appearing on The Ringer Wrestling podcast, three-time WWE Hall of Famer Bret “Hit Man” Hart did not pull back any punches on his comments about Hulk Hogan when the topic of his passing was brought up.
Hart said that Hogan never really looked out for anyone except for one person…himself.
“I always thought the day I won the belt, Hulk Hogan would come up to me and pat me on the back and tell me how glad he was I was the guy that they picked to pull the sword out of the stone for him,” Hart said. “And unfortunately, that’s not how it was.”
Bret said that the moment he won the WWE title the first time, he became the enemy and he had something Hulk always wanted.
“We were never really friends again after that,” Bret said.
Calling Hulk a “bullshitter,” Hart noted how he will always remember Hogan as a roadblock in his career.
“I will always shake my head and wonder why he was such a roadblock for me,” Hart continued. “He wouldn’t do anything for me.”
He also added that when he went to WCW, he knows for a fact that Hogan made sure to tell the people in charge not to do anything with him.
On Raw last night, WWE took a rare moment to explain when they contacted Brock Lesnar to return to the company following a two-year absence.
Facing the camera, Michael Cole said that earlier in the day he had the opportunity to sit down with WWE President Nick Khan and WWE Chief Content Officer Paul “Triple H” Levesque and asked them when it was determined to bring Lesnar back to the company.
“They told me they reached out to Brock a couple of weeks ago and said, ‘We believe it’s time for you to come home.’ Brock Lesnar said, ‘Let’s do it,’ and here we are,” Cole said.
Lesnar’s appearance came as a big surprise as he is still mentioned in the Janel Grant lawsuit. He was take off the Royal Rumble premium live event last year when his name cropped up and removed from the WWE 2K video game as well.
Yesterday, Janel Grant’s PR team issued a statement regarding Brock’s return.
“We look forward to the full set of facts, including those about Mr. Lesnar, coming out in a court of law where they belong but, in the meantime, we refer you back to Janel Grant’s updated complaint, which outlines, in detail, the abuse she endured by McMahon and others while employed at WWE,” the statement said.
Mercedes Mone will be defending the TBS title in a four-way match at the upcoming Forbidden Door pay-per-view. The match was announced by AEW President Tony Khan on social media.
A four-way qualifying match will determine one participant who will be facing Mone in London, Set for tomorrow night’s Dynamite, the match will have Queen Aminata, Skye Blue, Alex Windsor, and Billie Starkz.
Her other two opponents will be one from the Stardom promotion in Japan and one from the CMLL promotion in Mexico. It was not announced how the other two opponents will be chosen or picked.
Mone has been TBS champion since May 2024, with her reign now extending to 436 days and counting.
Smackdown on Friday night drew 1,544,000 viewers, down 163,000 viewers from last week’s show which drew a bigger audience due to Hulk Hogan’s death. The show had a 0.46 rating in 18-49, down 0.02 from last week and was #1 on cable and #1 in all of television for the night, doubling the rating of the second-placed show. (Ratings credit: Programming Insider)
Gunther will be out of action for an undetermined amount of time as he needs to undergo nose surgery.
While the injury was known prior to SummerSlam, it played into the storyline as well, with Punk busting up Gunther’s nose during the match.
On Raw it was said that the former WWE World Heavyweight champion suffered a septal hematoma and an orbital blowout fracture. Gunther was not on the show and SummerSlam was his last appearance for a while.
Nikki Bella has challenged Becky Lynch for the WWE Women’s Intercontinental title. The challenge was made on Raw last night during an in-ring segment between the two.
Becky Lynch tore into Bella and said that she and her hot husband are the greatest wrestling couple of all time.
“But wait a minute, at one point that would have been you and your…,” Lynch said as the crowd gasped.
“Oh wait, you can’t see him anymore,” Lynch continued as she did the John Cena “you can’t see me” hand sign. The crowd chanted “holy shit” as Nikki stood there and took it in like a champ, acknowledging that it was actually a good one.
Bella then told Lynch to put the title on the line in a one on one match. The crowd did the “Yes!” chant. Becky then was about to tell Nikki why they never went one-on-one, but sucker punched her before she could finish her sentence.
The representatives of Janel Grant issued a statement to several media outlets following SummerSlam and the return of Brock Lesnar.
Lesnar was named in the lawsuit as receiving sexually explicit content of Grant recorded by Vince McMahon and McMahon later offered her services to Lesnar in his pursuit to have Lesnar sign a new WWE contract.
“For far too long, abuse was allowed to thrive under WWE’s leadership. Instead of righting this wrong, WWE has done nothing to ensure those responsible are held accountable. This attempt to sweep misconduct under the rug will backfire,” the statement said. “We look forward to the full set of facts, including those about Mr. Lesnar, coming out in a court of law where they belong but, in the meantime, we refer you back to Janel Grant’s updated complaint, which outlines, in detail, the abuse she endured by McMahon and others while employed at WWE.”
Deadline.com is reporting that Heads of State, the latest movie from Amazon MGM Studios with John Cena and Idris Elba, became the fourth most-watched studio film of all time on Amazon’s Prime Video service.
Heads of State has registered over 75 million worldwide viewers since it premiered on July 2.
Amazon MGM’s most-watched movie on Prime is the Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evas Christmas movie Red One, which did 50 million viewers in four days plus $186 million worldwide in box office.
In Heads of State, Cena plays the role of the U.S. President while Elba plays the role of the British Prime Minister, who together become targets of a foreign adversary and are forced to rely on each other to thwart a global conspiracy.
Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Carla Gugino, Jack Quaid, Stephen Root, Sarah Niles, Richard Coyle, and Paddy Considine make up the rest of the main cast in the movie.
Tickets for TNA Bound For Glory are now on general sale through the Tsongas Center website.
Ticket prices are $39, $79, $154, and a massive jump to $803, which is the highest-priced ticket for TNA in years, if not ever.
Speaking to Denise Salcedo, TNA President Carlos Silva said that they had the biggest pre-sale ever in the last 48 hours, citing its success due to the great response from Slammiversary.
“And we’ve set up the arena so that we can break the record that we just broke at the UBS Arena,” Silva added.
TNA broke its North American attendance record at last month’s show, packing in 7,623 fans.
Bound For Glory takes place on Sunday, October 12.
SummerSlam this past weekend featured four title changes from a total of nine title matches, six of which came on night two.
Three of the title changes were on Saturday and two of those three came in the main event.
Charlotte Flair and Alexa Bliss became the new WWE Women’s Tag Team champions after they defeated Raquel Rodriguez and Roxanne Perez of The Judgment Day. This marks Charlotte’s second time with the title after she won it before with Asuka and its Bliss’ fourth time with the tag gold having previously won it twice with Nikki Cross and once with Asuka.
CM Punk won the WWE World Heavyweight title for the first time and his first WWE title in over a decade when he beat Gunther in the main event. Unfortunately for Punk, karma came to bite him back in the ass as Seth Rollins cashed in his Money In The Bank briefcase to win his second WWE World Heavyweight title. Punk’s reign lasted less than five minutes and lost his title in 10 seconds from when the bell rang.
Night two had a whopping six title matches, with all the bouts on the card being for a title.
Out of those six title defenses, five successfully retained it and only John Cena ended up losing it. His record-breaking 17th title reign ended after 104 days, with Cody Rhodes reclaiming his kingdom.
AEW announced that the Full Gear pay-per-view will be held at the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey.
The date will be Saturday, November 22 and this will be the third time that the arena has hosted the same show following 2022 and last year.
The announcement came via AEW President Tony Khan in a story for the New York Post.
“Full Gear is one of the best events every year for AEW and the wrestling fans and I’m very excited to bring Full Gear back to the Prudential Center,” Khan said while putting over the fans around the New York and New Jersey area.
Full Gear was the last pay-per-view which did not have a date and location for the rest of 2025. AEW has four other PPVs apart from this on the calendar: Forbidden Door in London, All Out in Toronto, WrestleDream in St. Louis, and Worlds End in Hoffman Estates.
