WWE has taken over the Allegiant Stadium already, with heavy machinery moved in to start setting up the stage and everything necessary to make it WrestleMania-ready.
A photo posted on X by user 0xholla shows several people working on the roof structure supported by six telescopic boom lifts, with the stadium already cleared of everything else.
There are no events scheduled at the Allegiant Stadium until WrestleMania, allowing WWE to enter the property earlier than usual. Constructing the set is a massive undertaking which requires hundreds of construction workers, typically hired locally and led by the WWE production crew.
Allegiant Stadium is also stopping the tours due to the WrestleMania planning, with Monday, April 7, being the last one to be offered. The next tours will resume on April 21 after WWE clears the stadium.
Jay White confirmed during a backstage interview on last night’s Collision that he has a broken hand and was sporting a cast.
White was supposed to be part of this year’s Owen Hart Cup tournament but was eventually replaced by newcomer Kevin Knight. Knight will now take on Will Ospreay in the quarter final round tonight during Dynasty.
On Wednesday’s Dynamite, commentator Excalibur said that White was attacked by The Death Riders and would be ineligible to compete. The attack was never shown on camera.
It’s unclear how long this broken hand will keep White out for and that was not addressed during the interview.
AEW announced that the Fyter Fest special will take place on Wednesday, June 4, and it will be a four-hour television special.
On that day, a two-hour Dynamite will air first from 8PM to 10PM ET and then immediately after, Collision will start from 10PM to Midnight ET.
The event will come live from the Mission Ballroom in Denver, Colorado and tickets go on sale on April 14.
Swerve Strickland, Toni Storm, Kenny Omega, Mercedes Mone, and MJF are being used for promotion for this four-hour broadcast.
Fyter Fest is a parody of the failed Fyre Festival from 2017, with the logo and name super similar to the Billy McFarland fraudulent luxury music festival. AEW has held it yearly since 2019 apart from last year.
Ludwig Kaiser responded to Charlotte Flair’s dig yesterday where she told Tiffany Stratton that Kaiser is in her DMs.
The German star simply tagged Flair in the X post and attached a video of Shawn Michaels telling Diana Hart, the widow of The British Bulldog Davey Boy Smith, “Please, do not flatter yourself.”
Kaiser and Stratton are a couple in real life.
Flair delivered the off-script line to Stratton after the champ exited the ring and was walking to the back, holding her title above her shoulder.
As noted earlier, Flair has been positioned stronger with better material in face-offs with Stratton and with the crowd firmly behind the champion and totally against Flair, it was indeed Tiffy Time to land a few jabs.
The segment totally went off script and it remains unclear if WWE will take any action over what happened or if they will embrace that direction moving forward.
The final part of the segment with Flair’s divorce and the Kaiser DMs line were removed from the WWE digital highlights but as of this morning were still on the Netflix replay.
Kevin Owens talked about his neck injury in more details while appearing on My Mom’s Basement podcast with Robbie Fox.
Owens said he thinks the injury happened in January during a regular match as in December he underwent a full body MRI where nothing particularly bad came out of it.
“I had a match, and in the match, two things happened that really jarred my neck,” Owens recounted. “That’s when the issues started.”
Owens had two matches in January, one against Rey Mysterio and one against Jimmy Uso. The other two matches were in February and March exactly a month apart – the ladder match against Cody Rhodes at the Rumble and the unsanctioned match against Sami Zayn at Elimination Chamber.
The former champ stopped short of mentioning which match or which move led to his injury but another MRI this week came back with the unwanted news and WWE informed him he was not being cleared for WrestleMania 41.
Owens, who announced yesterday on Smackdown that he’s out indefinitely and needs to undergo neck surgery, told Fox that the part that bugs him the most is that he won’t get to wrestle Randy Orton at WrestleMania.
It seems like Josh Barnett’s Bloodsport XIII event will be half-filled by WWE Superstars as yet another member of the WWE roster, Tavion Heights, was added to the show.
The No Quarter Catch Crew member will be taking on Royce Isaacs at the event. His fellow NQCC team mate Charlie Dempsey is also on the show in a separate match.
Out of the nine matches at Bloodsport XIII, seven of them have WWE Superstars in it, a record for a show not promoted by WWE. Bloodsport XIII is a GCW event and will take place on Thursday, April 17 at The Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas.
The program between WWE Women’s champion Tiffany Stratton and Charlotte Flair went up to another level last night on Smackdown as their in-ring segment descended into chaos and off script.
Ever since the feud started, it seemed as if Flair has always been better-positioned and had the upper hand in segments when it comes to talking while Stratton had to be happy coming second-best.
But during last night’s segment, the champion, also thanks to an assist from a very anti-Flair crowd, turned the tables and had some very personal zingers that visibly got under Charlotte’s skin.
The crowd barely let Flair talk on the mic and she had to stop multiple times, clearly showing that it was affecting her. And the crowd also played a big part in pushing Tiff get that extra motivation to one-up the self-proclaimed queen.
“You love to facade that nothing gets to you,” Tiff told Charlotte. “Then you’re crying on some talk show? No matter how many titles you’ve won, when it all comes down, you’ll always be second to your daddy, Ric Flair!”
Charlotte was on a talk show this week where she discussed keeping her now third divorce from Andrade secret.
Tiff asked Charlotte what was she doing at 25 years old: playing volleyball and drinking in her daddy’s basement while she will be walking into WrestleMania as the WWE Women’s champion.
Tiffany said Charlotte might be the queen in the ring, but outside the ring, she’s the queen of shit. At that point, Flair mocked Tiffany for her high-pitched voice as the crowd booed.
“I can’t hear you Tiffy, it’s so squeaky,” Flair said, speaking in the same tone as Stratton.
“For 16 more days you get to call yourself WWE’s least-favorite nepo baby, congratulations,” Stratton continued, with Flair correcting her saying she’s a nepo queen.
“And when I beat you at WrestleMania, Charlotte, and when it’s all said and done, you’re going to be just like you are outside the ring: alone,” Tiff said.
As the segment was coming to a close, Stratton had one final personal zinger.
“What is that record, like, what? 0-3? Wooooo!” Tiff said referring to Charlotte’s divorces as the crowd gasped. The champion threw the mic at Flair and quickly exited the ring as the much-amused Wade Barrett stepped in to prevent Flair from following.
But as always, Charlotte Flair needed to have the last word, with another personal shot.
“Hey Tiffany, is that why Kaiser’s in my DMs?” she said, referring to Tiff’s real-life boyfriend Ludwig Kaiser.
The segment clearly went off-script and in fact, the personal insults were removed from the digital highlights uploaded by WWE.
You can see the full, unedited segment below.
Here is the full Tiffany Stratton and Charlotte Flair segment from #Smackdown
A couple of more WrestleMania matches were announced on last night’s Smackdown.
The United States title will be defended on the show as LA Knight puts up his gold on the line against Jacob Fatu. Fatu won a last man standing match last night on Smackdown to become the number one contender for the title.
On next week’s Smackdown, the challengers for the WWE Women’s Tag Team titles will also be known following a gauntlet match. The teams of Katana Chance and Kayden Carter, Bayley and Lyra Valkyria, Shayna Baszler and Zoey Stark, Michin and B-Fab, Piper Niven and Alba Flyre, and Natalya and Maxxine Dupri will be involved to see who will go on to WrestleMania to face Liv Morgan and Raquel Rodriguez.
This is in addition to the Jade Cargill vs Naomi match which was also made official on Smackdown.
This puts the WrestleMania card to nine matches so far, with a few more to go. One match, Orton vs Owens, was removed due to Owens’ neck injury. It is believed that Orton will still be on the show against another opponent.
The feud between Jade Cargill and Naomi will climax at WrestleMania 41 and the two women will be making history at the show of shows.
In a stat that is somewhat hard to believe, Cargill vs Naomi will be the first-ever singles women’s match at WrestleMania which is not for a title or a gimmick match.
The last time there was a singles match not for a title at WrestleMania was at WrestleMania 22, 19 years ago, between Torrie Wilson and Candice Michelle, but that match was billed as a Playboy pillow fight and lasted a whopping four minutes.
Cargill and Naomi is, so far, a regular singles match and only the second time that two black female wrestlers will have a singles match following Sasha Banks vs Bianca Belair at WrestleMania 37 which was for the title.
The rivalry between the two started back in November when Cargill was taken out by a mystery assailant while she was one half of the WWE Women’s Tag Team champions. Naomi eventually replaced her in the team with Bianca Belair, but after a few months, it was revealed that it was Naomi who took Cargill out.
It took a full Smackdown to get to it, but CM Punk finally revealed what is the favor that he is owed by Paul Heyman.
While Reigns thought last week that getting Punk a main event slot was the favor, he found out last night that Punk bailing out The Bloodline at WarGames had a higher price.
In the main event segment of the show with Reigns, Rollins, Heyman, and Punk in the ring, Punk revealed that at WrestleMania, he would force Reigns out of his comfort zone and he’s going to force him to “deal with us.”
“Because at WrestleMania, in the main event, in my corner, your Wiseman, my best friend, Paul Heyman,” Punk told Reigns as an amused Rollins stayed in the background.
First, Reigns laughed at the idea and said that even if he let him, Heyman wouldn’t and Reigns told Heyman to reject the idea. An emotional Heyman told Reigns that it was the deal and could not reject the favor. With Reigns getting angrier and cornering Heyman, Punk came from behind and took out Reigns with a GTS.
Punk turned his attention to Rollins, who spent the final part of the segment laughing at Reigns, but Rollins knew better, and decided to exit the ring rather than confront Punk.
Kevin Owens is not going to WrestleMania despite his advertised match against Randy Orton.
The former WWE Universal champion appeared on Smackdown last night to announce that he has a severe neck injury which will require surgery. Owens told the crowd that for the past 25 years, he’s done some amazing things, but everyone in the locker room had a price to pay at some point, and now it was time for him to pay it.
Owens revealed that he has been dealing with a neck injury for the past four months and now doctors have finally figured it out and it will keep him out of action for the foreseeable future. Owens apologized to the fans and said he does not know if or when he will return to the ring. He thanked the fans and especially WWE for allowing him to do this in person and said that he never took anything for granted, especially being in a wrestling ring.
While on his way out of the ring, Randy Orton came out and the two had a short face-to-face, and you could clearly sense the disappointment in both of their faces. Smackdown GM Nick Aldis, who was also in the ring, told Orton that with KO out of action, he no longer has a match at WrestleMania.
That did not sit down well with Orton who RKOd Aldis for delivering the news.
Owens has not wrestled since the Elimination Chamber match against Sami Zayn.
Shayna Baszler is the sixth WWE Superstar to be added to the Josh Barnett Bloodsport XIII event during WrestleMania weekend.
Barnett announced on social media that the former NXT Women’s champion will take on Stardom’s Konami during the April 17 show.
This will be Baszler’s third time wrestling for Bloodsport and has two wins over Masha Slamovich and Miyu Yamashita.
Karrion Kross, Natalya, Pete Dunne, Charlie Dempsey, and Karmen Petrovic all have matches on this event which will take place from the Palms Casino Resort.
After five weeks of viewership increases, Dynamite this week drew 594,000 viewers, down 69,000 viewers from the prior week. This was the least-watched Dynamite since February 19. The show had a 0.16 rating in 18-49, down 0.01 from last week. No cable rankings are available as of press time. These numbers do not include viewers from Max. (Ratings credit: Wrestlenomics)
For the first time in three weeks, WWE television returns to the United States with Smackdown live from the sold-out Allstate Arena in Rosemont, Illinois.
WWE wrapped up a two-week European tour on Monday, which had six live TV broadcasts from Barcelona, Brussels, Bologna, Glasgow, and twice in London, with sold-out, loud crowds at every location.
Over 15,000 fans are expected at the Allstate Arena, with the stage removed to accommodate for the additional crowd. Cheapest tickets available are $100 for an obstructed view and $125 for limited view seating.
CM Punk, Seth Rollins, and Roman Reigns will all be appearing to further their WrestleMania Saturday main event and Rey Fenix will make his debut. Scheduled matches include B-Fab vs Naomi, Jacob Fatu vs Braun Strowman with the winner getting a U.S. title shot at WrestleMania, and Motor City Machine Guns vs DIY in a WWE Tag Team title number one contenders match.
TNA announced that the Against All Odds TNA+ streaming special will take place on Friday, June 6 live from the Mullett Arena in Tempe, Arizona.
The 5,000-seater arena is located on the campus of the Arizona State University and it will be a venue debut for TNA.
The company will also do additional TV tapings the following day in the same location.
A pre-sale will be held on Wednesday, April 9 at 11AM PT with the code MULLETT while tickets go on sale to the general public on Friday, April 11 at 10AM PT at MullettArena.com.
The ROH World title match has been confirmed for Dynasty with a title vs mask match set between champion Chris Jericho and challenger Bandido.
Tony Khan announced the match via social media after Jericho issued the challenge on last week’s broadcast, a challenge which was never formally accepted on TV.
Another match was also added to the pay-per-view card with Kyle Fletcher vs Mark Briscoe in the Owen Hart Cup tournament quarter final.
The show is now at 10 official matches plus one pending with The Opps also looking for action. No Zero Hour matches have been announced yet.
Two title matches were confirmed for the upcoming TNA Rebellion 2025 pay-per-view following last night’s episode of Impact Wrestling.
In the main event, TNA champion Joe Hendry will defend his title against Frankie Kazarian and NXT’s Ethan Page in a three-way match.
The TNA Knockouts title is also on the line with champ Masha Slamovich defending against Tessa Blanchard, who gets her first crack at gold since returning to the company.
Meanwhile, El Hijo del Vikingo, Matt Cardona, and Leon Slater have been added to the six-man Ultimate X match for the X Division title. With champion Moose, that leaves two more open spots in the match.
Rebellion takes place on Sunday, April 27 from the Galen Center in Los Angeles, California.
Rey Fenix is making his much-awaited WWE debut tonight on Smackdown in front of a packed crowd at the Allstate Arena.
The Mexican luchador signed with WWE last month, just weeks after obtaining his AEW release following some very turbulent months filled with controversial comments on social media related to his treatment by AEW.
He had not been used on AEW television since July 2024 and was supposed to join WWE with his brother Penta, but AEW extended his contract due to his time injured even though he made it clear he was not re-signing.
In an interview published today on the WWE Deutschland social media, Penta said that “the best wrestler in the world” has finally come to the “best company in the world.”
He added that his dream match is against his brother in a mask vs mask match, although he’s not sure if it will ever happen.
During a media call with reporters ahead of this weekend’s Dynasty pay-per-view, AEW President Tony Khan said that he did not speak to Sting yet regarding potentially appearing at the WWE Hall of Fame ceremony.
Lex Luger has requested Sting to induct him in the Hall of Fame and it’s believed that WWE has reached out to Sting to see if it can be done. Sting remains under an AEW Legends deal. Luger was not allowed to appear on camera for Sting’s retirement match due to his WWE Legends deal.
“The last time I talked to Sting, that didn’t come up,” Khan said. ” would have to talk to him about that.”
Khan said that he spoke to Sting right before Revolution. Luger’s news of his Hall of Fame induction came two days before the AEW pay-per-view.
