Alexa Bliss has signed a new five-year deal with WWE according to Sean Ross Sapp of Fightful Select, a deal which was signed on the morning of the Royal Rumble.
Sapp wrote that Bliss was flown into Indianapolis after signing her name and was factored in the women’s Royal Rumble where she made her surprise return after two years out.
Shotzi was supposed to enter the match instead of Bliss and was also part of the rehearsal until the “Goddess” showed up to take the spot.
The negotiations were left in the hands of The Paragon Talent Group, which was founded by Steven Kaye and former WWE Superstar Dean Muhtadi, formerly known as Mojo Rawley.
“The biggest congrats to my friend, my party partner, and my client Alexa Bliss on not only the new contract, but also a pop that blew the roof off of the Royal Rumble,” Muhtadi wrote on X. “Absolutely deafening!!!!! It’s been a long and rewarding road with the best yet to come! Thanks for trusting me, @StevenMKaye, and our company @ParagonTG as your representation! Now let’s go celebrate!!!”
During the Pat McAfee Show yesterday which had Jey Uso as one of the guests, Michael Cole recounted the story of how he went back to the hotel after the Royal Rumble and Rikishi was there hosting a watch party being all emotional.
“Your dad had no idea what was going on and he walked out and he had these tears in his eyes and gave me a massive hug,” Cole said. “He had no words for it, he’s so incredibly proud of you and as you know, he has been one of your biggest supporters through all of this in all the ups and downs in your career.”
Cole said that it was an incredible moment for him to see that emotion coming out from the Hall of Famer.
Jey added that his father called him when he went back to the locker room and he did a FaceTime where he as joined by John Cena, CM Punk, and his brothers.
“My dad knows everything in the business man, so I’m not gonna tell him everything, I’m gonna surprise him too, Uce,” Jey said.
“Your dad had no idea you were gonna win the Royal Rumble and when I saw him he had tears in his eyes” ~ @MichaelCole
“My dad knows everything in the business and I wanted to surprise him..
The WrestleCon social media account announced that WWE Hall of Famer and boxing legend “Iron” Mike Tyson will be at this year’s WrestleCon in Las Vegas during WrestleMania weekend.
This is the first time that Tyson will be appearing at WrestleCon and is the first star confirmed for the popular fan convention.
WrestleCon has promised that there would be over 200 wrestling personalities at this year’s event.
While he has not appeared on WWE television in years, Tyson did appear on AEW TV during the pandemic era although he later stated that he would preferred to be on WWE TV even though AEW paid more. Oops!
Raw is getting phenomenal…in the form of AJ Styles!
Styles, who returned at the Royal Rumble, has officially switched brands and will now be on Netflix after Raw General Manager Adam Pearce announced that he managed to score another star before the transfer window expired on Saturday.
The former two-time WWE champion had not been seen on WWE television since October when he suffered a leg injury during a match against former NXT champion Carmelo Hayes.
His return at the Rumble was kept as a surprise and Styles came out to his original theme song.
Styles was not on Raw last night but he’s advertised for next week’s broadcast live from Nashville.
Friday Night Smackdown on the eve of the Royal Rumble drew 1,578,000 viewers, up 123,000 viewers from the prior week and the best number since November 22. Smackdown had an impressive 0.51 rating in 18-49, up 0.07 from last week and was #1 not only on cable television but in all of television including network. (Ratings credit: Programming Insider)
Fightful Wrestling is reporting that Duke Hudson, the former member of Chase U, was released from the company last month.
Hudson’s last appearance on NXT television came in September when he lost to Ridge Holland and the faction disbanded later in the month after Andre Chase lost against Holland as well in a match with a stipulation that if he loses, Chase U had to go.
He signed with WWE in 2019 and he is a former one-time NXT Tag Team champion with Andre Chase.
The Ring Boys lawsuit against WWE which was filed this past October on behalf of five survivors is moving ahead after the Maryland Supreme Court voted 4-3 in favor.
The lawsuit was able to go forward after the state’s General Assembly passed the Maryland Child Victims Act in 2023.
Filed by DiCello Levitt and Murphy, Falcon & Murphy, the lawsuit says that the underaged Ring Boys were groomed, exploited, and sexually abused by ring crew chief Melvin Phillips Jr., who targeted children from broken homes. His sexual assaults occurred not only at the wrestling venues, but also in hotel rooms and other locations where Phillips would shuttle the boys in plain sight.
World Wrestling Entertainment, Vincent K. McMahon, Linda McMahon, and TKO Group Holdings are listed as plaintiffs.
“The WWE and McMahons had a responsibility to these underaged boys, and they failed them in the worst way possible. We will vigorously fight to uncover the truth about this systemic, insidious, and life-altering abuse,” said Mark DiCello, founding partner of DiCello Levitt, after the lawsuit was filed. “We commend our clients for their bravery in coming forward and promise to relentlessly seek justice for them.”
CM Punk and Liv Morgan were the first two Superstars to qualify for the Elimination Chamber, winning their respective qualifying matches on Raw last night.
Morgan was the first one in, defeating Iyo Sky via a cheap disqualification finish after Rhea Ripley attacked Morgan and Raquel Rodriguez. Morgan is the first one to qualify for the women’s match.
Later in the show during the main event portion, CM Punk defeated Sami Zayn to become the second person in the men’s Elimination Chamber along with John Cena. Things got worse for Zayn who was attacked by Kevin Owens after the match.
Another two qualifying matches will take place next week with Bayley taking on Intercontinental champion Lyra Valkyria and Rey Mysterio vs Logan Paul.
TMZ.COM is reporting that Charlotte Flair and Andrade have divorced after Flair filed papers in June 2024. The divorce was approved by a judge in October of last year.
Flair, who won the Royal Rumble this past weekend, and Andrade, who returned to WWE at last year’s Royal Rumble after a stint with AEW, got married in Mexico in 2022.
There were rumors in the past that the two were not on good terms after they each stopped posting photographs together on social media.
This was Flair’s third marriage and she seems to be following her father’s footsteps not only in the ring, but also in her personal life.
WWE and Tubi, Fox Corporation’s ad-supported streaming service, today announced the launch of WWE EVOLVE which will showcase in-ring action featuring rising WWE prospects as they wrestle with the dream of making it to NXT and, perhaps, one day to SmackDown and Raw.
WWE EVOLVE is slated to premiere March 5, 2025, at 8PM ET, exclusively on Tubi, with a new episode dropping each week on Wednesdays.
“We are excited to work with our incredible partners at Tubi to showcase our young, rising talent to the WWE Universe, as they start their in-ring journey competing each week to fulfill their lifelong dream of becoming a WWE Superstar,” said WWE Senior Vice President of Talent Development Creative Shawn Michaels.
“The next generation of professional wrestling will unfold through the brand new series WWE EVOLVE on Tubi,” said Adam Lewinson, Chief Content Officer, Tubi. “Tubi offers WWE access to a broad base of young, multicultural audiences who represent a wide array of fandoms and we’re proud to partner as WWE develops the superstars of the future. To quote CCO Paul Levesque, ‘Are You Ready?’”
WWE EVOLVE will introduce viewers to the most intense and charismatic prospects recruited from college athletics and independent wrestling as they strive to build their in-ring careers and elevate their personas. WWE EVOLVE will prominently feature talent from WWE’s world-class Performance Center in Orlando, Fla., and WWE ID, a first-of-its-kind developmental program.
In a press release issued today, WWE announced that the 2025 Royal Rumble became the most-successful and highest-grossing Royal Rumble event in company history.
The show generated the largest gate for any single-night event in WWE history. The 70,342 attendance is only behind WrestleMania 40 Saturday & Sunday for any single-night gate.
Royal Rumble 2025 set the event’s all-time viewership record, up nearly 14 percent domestically, distributed on Peacock, from last year’s record-setting audience. International viewing numbers are up even higher year-over-year with Royal Rumble shifting to Netflix globally.
In partnership with Fanatics, merchandise sales were up more than 95 percent versus the previous Royal Rumble record set last year in 2024, making Royal Rumble 2025 the highest-grossing non-WrestleMania event of all-time.
Sponsorship revenue was up 94 percent versus the previous record set in 2024. Royal Rumble featured 14 total partners, with 100 percent of the matches sponsored.
Royal Rumble 2025 set a record for the most social video views in Royal Rumble history. WWE Superstar Bron Breakker spearing popular streamer IShowSpeed became the most-viewed Royal Rumble social post of all-time, generating more than 300,000,000 social views in less than 24 hours.
The X account of Merriam-Webster, the oldest dictionary publisher in the United States, saluted the victory of Jey Uso in the Royal Rumble with an entry yesterday of Uso’s favorite word – YEET!
“yeet | interjection | used to express surprise, approval, or excited enthusiasm,” the entry says.
Jey’s win was something pretty much nobody saw coming especially a week after he lost a WWE World Heavyweight title opportunity against Gunther at Saturday Night’s Main Event.
The two are expected to run it back at WrestleMania, with Uso reportedly going for the title that Gunther currently carries on the Raw brand.
It seems like that the Internet is not happy with the two Royal Rumble winners if you base it on the YouTube video “dislikes.”
The thumbs down counter on YouTube is hidden but there are many services which reveal that number.
The WWE official video of Charlotte Flair winning the Royal Rumble has only 278,000 views so far, and while 7,159 fans pressed the thumbs up button, a whopping 31,405 pressed the thumbs down.
Meanwhile, Jey Uso’s victory has 688,000 views and 20,502 thumbs up presses. But 36,569 viewers pressed the thumbs down button.
Alexa Bliss’ return had the most views for individual videos with 752,000. 29,776 pressed the like button and only 46 disliked it.
Interestingly enough, iShowSpeed’s interview with Jackie Redmond after his brutal elimination has 1.3 million views, trumping everything else from the Rumble apart from a video of every entrant in the men’s match which has 2.6 million views.
Qualifying matches for the Elimination Chamber in Toronto will start tonight on Monday Night Raw on Netflix.
John Cena is already in the match so for the men’s Elimination Chamber, there will be five other competitors who need to qualify. Cena announced his participation on Saturday after the Royal Rumble and Triple H said that Cena doesn’t need to qualify for anything due to his WWE career and that he has earned his spot.
Tickets for the Elimination Chamber are currently on sale on Ticketmaster and the show will take place from the Rogers Centre in Toronto, Canada, the site formerly known as the SkyDome.
Tickets are not cheap, with the least expensive one at CA $239.05 in the rafters.
WWE weirdly announced two attendance numbers for the Royal Rumble: a graphic which said 65,407 and then Triple H and the commentary team saying 70,347. Either way, the number at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis was the the biggest Royal Rumble ever and the third-largest gate in the history of the company.
The number outdraws even a lot of WrestleManias, an incredible feat considering breaking the 1997 Royal Rumble attendance record was not on the cards for this one.
Originally, Lucas Oil Stadium was only half open, with the hard cam section pretty much closed off, as is the norm for non-WrestleMania stadium shows. But demand grew each day and sections were opened weekly until the whole stadium was open on the final day.
Fans from all over the world packed the future WrestleMania stadium to its rafters, making this the biggest non-WrestleMania wrestling event ever in North America.
With Peacock at 36 million subscribers and the show airing on Netflix around the world, it’s also safe to say that this will be one of the most-watched WWE shows ever.
Multiple insiders are reporting that there was some commotion backstage at the Royal Rumble last night following the elimination of Drew McIntyre from the match.
PWInsider.com reports that McIntyre was “screaming and cursing” and exited the building before the show was over in frustration.
The story suggests that other individuals were also unhappy with how certain things played out, especially concerning somebody who was said to be trying to “get himself over” rather than work the match like everybody else.
The name of this person was not immediately released although judging by how his elimination went, there was a collision with Damian Priest and McIntyre who bumped into LA Knight and Logan Paul who were nearby doing their own spots.
It looks like the Revolution pay-per-view next month will be headlined by Jon Moxley defending his AEW World title against Cope.
In a backstage segment which aired on Collision last night, the former TNT champion threw down the challenge and told Moxley that he’s going to beat him, he’s going to hurt him, and when he’s a relic getting out of bed at 65 and he can barely make it out and his daughter will ask what’s wrong, it’s going to be because of him.
“So here it is Moxley. For the first time ever, one-on-one, March 9th, Los Angeles, Revolution, Cope vs Mox for the AEW World Heavyweight championship,” Cope said. “Step up and accept, kid.”
Revolution will take place from the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles and tickets are available for sale on AXS.COM.
There’s a new women’s Royal Rumble record holder and her name is Roxanne Perez.
The young 23-year-old former NXT Women’s champion lasted a total of 1 hour, 7 minutes, and 47 seconds in the match before she was thrown out by Charlotte Flair. This beats Bayley’s previous record of 1 hour 3 minutes and 3 seconds.
Liv Morgan and Iyo Sky also beat Bayley’s number, with Morgan lasting just 47 seconds less than Perez while Iyo Sky clocked in 1 hour 6 minutes and 45 seconds. Sky and Morgan were #1 and #2 while Perez was #3.
On the opposite side of that spectrum, Maxxine Dupri was the one with the shortest time in the women’s match with 1 minute and 20 seconds.
Nia Jax had the most eliminations with nine, while the winner Charlotte Flair had four. Chelsea Green and Liv Morgan each had two to their name while Maxxine Dupri, Nikki Bella, Sonya Deville, Giulia, Shayna Baszler, Trish Stratus, Ivy Nile, Zoey Stark, Jordynne Grace, Piper Niven, Naomi, Bayley, Bianca Belair, Iyo Sky, and Roxanne Perez all had one.
This was the longest women’s Royal Rumble match so far with the match lasting 1 hour 10 minutes and 20 seconds.
In the men’s match, Penta was the one with the longest stint in the match with 42 minutes and 5 seconds. In reality, there should be an asterisk to that as Penta’s feet touched the floor in the opening minutes, an obvious mistake, but was allowed to continue and a replay was never shown.
Roman Reigns was next with the longest at 37 minutes and 15 seconds while winner Jey Uso clocked at 36 minutes and 59 seconds.
Ludvig Kaiser was the joke of the Rumble this year, and after taking his time to get in the ring, he was eliminated in just six seconds. iShowSpeed, who came in to replace Tozawa, was next with 56 seconds. Speed got killed by Breakker with a spear which felt like a train ramming into somebody.
In eliminations, Bron Breakker, Jacob Fatu, and Roman Reigns each had four eliminations while John Cena and Jey Uso had three. Braun Strowman, Damian Priest, Logan Paul, and CM Punk each had two while iShowSpeed, LA Knight, Otis, Finn Balor, AJ Styles, and Penta all had one.
The men’s Rumble match lasted a total of 1 hour 20 minutes and 15 seconds.
NXT was well represented in the women’s Royal Rumble match last night with a total of five NXT stars entering the match.
Roxanne Perez, who came in at #3, now holds the Royal Rumble record for the most time in a match and had one elimination to her name before she was eliminated by the eventual winner Charlotte Flair.
Lash Legend came in at #9 and did very well lasting over 17 minutes before she was thrown out by the United States champion Chelsea Green.
Jaida Parker came in at #16 and lasted just under seven minutes and was Jordynne Grace’s first elimination.
Chilean star Stephanie Vaquer was in #24 and did 19 minutes before Nia Jax threw her out.
And last and certainly not least, NXT Women’s champion Giulia was #28 in the match and had 10 minutes on the clock before fellow NXT star Roxanne Perez threw her out. She had one elimination to her name, newcomer Jordynne Grace.
There were no men from NXT in the other Royal Rumble match.
