We are just 24 hours away from the Money In The Bank pay-per-view which will take place live and pre-recorded from the WWE Performance Center and WWE Headquarters.
Today we will look at the odds of the two MITB ladder matches before publishing the full list of betting odds tomorrow night as the pay-per-view gets closer to bell time.
In the men’s Money In the Bank ladder match, two of the participants currently have the same odds and are top favorites. These are AJ Styles and Aleister Black who both have 11/10 odds and are favorite to win the match. King Corbin is third favorite with odds of 5/1. Daniel Bryan and Otis both have odds at 13/2 and Rey Mysterio is 22/1 and complete underdog in this match.
The women’s MITB ladder match looks to be more clearer according to bookmakers, although not by much. Shayna Baszler is 11/10 favorite right now but Asuka is hot on her heels with odds of 5/4. Nia Jax is third with 3/1 odds while Lacey Evans has odds of 11/2. Dana Brooke and Carmella occupy the final spots with 15/1 and 22/1 odds respectively.
Two years after joining WWE, Jeremy Borash made his WWE television debut on 205 Live yesterday joining Tom Phillips as host.
Borash, a longtime important figure at Impact Wrestling, surprised everyone when he jumped ship and was recruited to Triple H’s NXT team where he now serves as Senior Director of Content and Development. The 45-year-old is well-liked by everyone and is one of the hardest-working individuals backstage.
He is a veteran of this business now and has even worked for WCW from 1999 up until it was absorbed by WWE and later helped launched TNA with Jeff Jarrett.
For the first time in eight weeks, Smackdown registered an increase in the ratings compared to the previous week, getting a total of 2,039,000 viewers for the MITB go-home episode. That is up 121,000 viewers from last week.
Smackdown did 2,087,000 viewers in the first hour and 1,992,000 viewers in the second hour and a 0.5 rating in both hours in the 18-49 demo. Unfortunately though, the show placed last in both viewership and demo. (Ratings credit: Showbuzzdaily.com)
As always, the sixth episode of season five of Total Bellas was full of drama. I wish I could say I’m shocked, but really I’m not.
Nikki and her boyfriend, Artem, were invited to a party celebrating the premiere of the second season of Temptation Island, which Nikki was supposed to host. Not surprisingly, at a party for a show about temptation, Nikki herself became tempted by both booze and men. While she attended the party with her boyfriend, they arrived separately. By the time Artem got there, Nikki was already drunk, and chatting with other guys. Artem had never seen Nikki drunk, and seemed jealous while Nikki was talking to other men.
Artem stormed out of the salsa club where the party was taking place. While I don’t know if storming out on your drunk date is good idea, I can understand the impulse. Also, I was shocked that Artem hadn’t heard about Nikki’s drunken antics…I mean they very well documented on television.
However, I guess Artem had thought she would change because she was with him. Maybe he had never seen Nikki’s shows before. I felt as though Artem should have learned more about Nikki before getting into a relationship with her and maybe she should have learned more about him too and she would have known that Artem did not like her being drunk, and was jealous easily.
Luckily, Artem and Nikki have patched things up because at the end of the episode, Nikki revealed that she may be expecting a baby, So, there is plenty of drama left on this season of Total Bellas.
One UFC fighter and two of his cornermen tested positive for COVID-19 while all of UFC’s personnel were staying in the same hotel as AEW crew and staff in Jacksonville.
Middleweight Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza was notified yesterday that the pre-fight testing flagged him for the coronavirus just 24 hours before he was supposed to fight on UFC 249 tonight. Souza has been taken off the card and later two of his cornermen also tested positive for the virus.
All three were asymptomatic and were staying at the same hotel which All Elite Wrestling booked for their stars and crew while they were in town for the live episode of Dynamite. Souza and his team has now moved out of the hotel to self-isolate.
Despite the positive test, the Florida Athletic Commission has given the green light for UFC 249 to continue as planned tonight.
Episode six of season five of Total Bellas, titled Salsa Caliente, did only 415,000 viewers, down 185,000 viewers from last week’s episode. This was the least-watched episode of the season so far. (Ratings credit: Showbuzzdaily.com)
In an interview with the New York Post to promote tomorrow’s start of Undertaker: The Last Ride docuseries on the WWE Network, Michelle McCool talked about a variety of subjects including the breaking of the streak at WrestleMania XXX.
McCool said she found out late in the afternoon that Brock was chosen to break the streak and couldn’t believe it. “I don’t think it needed to happen. But, Mark was fine with it,” McCool said, adding that what people might not understand is that her husband is all about doing business and understands that business is business.
The former Divas champion recalled that at WrestleMania 24, the powers that be wanted Edge to break the streak in his match against The Undertaker but Edge actually fought back and refused to get over in the match.
According to McCool, Edge said that it “makes zero sense” and “I don’t want to do that” when it was discussed with him. “It was Edge that went to bat for the streak,” McCool told the NY Post.
But with the streak broken, Mrs. Undertaker said that it’s all good and it’s not the end-all, be-all by any stretch of the imagination for her husband.
McCool said that any time WWE wants The Undertaker on a card, “he’s gonna be sitting by the phone waiting” and if Vince calls “and he needs to pull him out of the bullpen he’ll be ready go.”
But make no mistake about it, The Undertaker is not seeking out opponents or matches.
WWE’s Chief Brand Officer Stephanie McMahon followed her husband and sold a total of 23,255 WWE stocks on May 6 according to documents filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission yesterday.
The stocks were sold at a price of $44.29 each and had a total return of $1,029,963. After this transaction, McMahon still owns 144,952 of Class B common stock which at yesterday’s closing are worth a cool $6,801,147.
Triple H had a similar transaction a few days ago which also had over a $1 million payout.
The Mayor of Boston, Marty Walsh, announced that the city will not be accepting events of mass gatherings at least until Labor Day in September, meaning that the planned WWE SummerSlam at the TD Garden is effectively off the calendar.
“If your event brings crowds together in close contact – like a concert, a road race, or a flag raising – you should start looking at alternatives now,” the Mayor wrote in a tweet posted today.
WWE moved the biggest event of the Summer – along with Smackdown, NXT Takeover, and Raw – to the city and the announcement came in August of last year. Last year, Toronto hosted SummerSlam after Los Angeles and Brooklyn hosted the show for the previous six and four years respectively. Boston last hosted a SummerSlam in 2006.
Travel packages for the event began selling in February of this year but refunds will now have to be issued.
WWE has so far refrained from saying where future pay-per-views will be held and will be taping all shows and special events from the Performance Center until at least mid-July.
The last stop before Money In The Bank takes place on Smackdown tonight on FOX.
Three matches have been announced so far for the show including Mandy Rose vs Sonya Deville, Tamina and Lacey Evans vs Bayley and Sasha Banks, and Daniel Bryan, Drew Gulak, and a mystery partner vs King Corbin, Shinsuke Nakamura, and Cesaro.
Also on the show will be a face-to-face encounter between Braun Strowman and Bray Wyatt and Jeff Hardy returns to Smackdown!
During this week’s episode of the AEW Unrestricted podcast, AEW President Tony Khan said that the company lost millions due to the coronavirus and not being able to allow fans in arenas.
Khan said that the Dynamite shows leading up to Double or Nothing had some pretty full arenas which was going to result in big money for them coming just from gate money. But then coronavirus struck and they were forced, like everyone else, to change plans.
“We’ve lost millions and millions of dollars in live events. I don’t take it lightly, but I can’t take it out on the people that work here because it’s not their fault,” Khan said during the podcast. But Khan did not dismiss the possibility of letting go of some people in the future. “We’ve really not let anybody go here as a company and look… I’m going to be honest…there’s gonna come a day where somebody, we’re gonna have to, but now is not the time.”
Khan said that in the overall scheme of things, AEW is in good shape and the “second healthiest wrestling company in the world” and while admitting this was hard time for everyone, they take pride in being in that place without firing a single person to achieve it.
Former WWE and Universal champion Roman Reigns admitted with TMZ that the reason he’s not showing up on WWE television and pulled out of WrestleMania was not because of his health, but rather because of his newborn twins and the need to protect them.
Reigns said that he talked to his doctors and his immune system is good and the drugs he takes to fight the leukemia do not attack his immune system.
“We just had two newborn twins, twin boys,” Reigns said. “They’re 8 weeks old so I had to make a decision for them.”
Reigns, who was supposed to wrestle Goldberg for the Universal title at WrestleMania but pulled out days before the match, said that his family is more important and his children are his legacy. “No matter what I do in this world, my children are gonna be the ones to represent my name and carry our name forward. So I had to make that choice for them, to protect them being so young.”
While saying that he misses wrestling and wants to get back to work and be normal, he feels he has an obligation towards his family, himself, and the community.
“Also, to set the example because at the end of the day, we can do a lot of different things and say a lot of different things but its through our actions that really speaks volume. That’s what I’m trying to do.”
As for when he’s getting back inside the ring, Reigns is unsure but it’s okay because he’s enjoying being a full-time dad.
The WWE podcast After The Bell with Corey Graves received a nomination in the 24th Annual Webby Awards and voting ends today.
The podcast is part of the Podcasts: Sports category and it’s up against ESPN Films’ The Sterling Affairs, Champion’s Mojo Podcast, Wondery’s The Lead, and Luminary Media’s Sonic Boom: How Seattle Lost Its Team. The nominated episode of After The Bell features Kevin Owens, Shayna Baszler and The Viking Raiders and was released on November 27, 2019.
Additionally, WWE Webby Honorees this year include WWE on Instagram (Social: Sports), Table for 3: Little Big Appetite (Video: Unscripted), WWE 365: Alexa Bliss (Video: Reality) and The Bella Twins YouTube Channel (Video: Reality).
Held each year by The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, the Webby Awards have honored excellence on the internet each year since 1996.
NXT, with two big title matches, was no match to a live Dynamite as the show did 663,000 viewers, up 26,000 viewers from last week’s broadcast. NXT had a 0.18 in the 18-49 demographic and was #33 in the top 50 chart. The difference between the two shows this week was of 69,000 viewers, up from the 56,000 difference of last week. (Ratings credit: Showbuzzdaily.com)
AEW extended their lead over NXT this week in the Wednesday Night War with the live Dynamite getting 732,000 viewers, up 39,000 viewers from last week’s show and their highest audience since March 25. The show did a 0.28 in the 18-49 demographic, landing Dynamite in #12 in the top 50 cable chart. (Ratings credit: Showbuzzdaily.com)
83 WEEKS WITH ERIC BISCHOFF 05/04/20: TNA IMPACT GOES TO MONDAY 3-8-10
Bischoff talking about the Hulk Hogan/Eric Bischoff contract with TNA: “It was $1.5 million. That was completely absorbed by Spike TV. That did not come out of TNA’s budget. Many people did not know that until many years after the fact. In fact, we didn’t really understand it completely until after the fact. We found out later, much later, the same thing was true with Sting and a couple other big talents that came in that Viacom offset the costs for.”
Bischoff clearing up whether TNA thought they would be competitive going up against WWE: “Nobody said that. Nobody believed that, myself included because I knew the nature of the product. There was no way you were going to have a TNA show in the Impact Zone, with a soundstage with 250 people, 30 or 40 or 50 of them you recognize because you see them every week. That show didn’t have the energy and the scope and magnitude to compete with RAW. But we did believe that by going head to head and poking the bear, so to speak, a couple things would happen. The first thing is it would create a buzz…with advertisers. By making this move, we would plant a flag. We may not be WWE but we are here. We have a guy by the name of Hulk Hogan, who is a proven commodity from a media perspective…At the very least, we would get some people to sample the product. We knew, going in, we discussed it going in that we would give this a run. Let’s see what we can do with it. Let’s see if we can go from whatever the audience was and see if we can grow it and take it with us, if and when we would have to move back to Thursday nights.”
Bischoff talking about his heat with Scott Steiner: “We were trying to get James (Storm) over. We wanted him to beat Scott Steiner…We told them early enough in the day and said go figure it out, come back to me, let me know what you got so we can smarten up the director so we can make sure we capture it all. James kept coming up to me throughout the day saying Scott doesn’t want to do anything. He doesn’t want to put me over. I said go talk to him. This is the story and go have the conversation. Tell your agent, it’s not my job. He came back to me two or three times and I figured it out. He didn’t want to confront Scott. I don’t blame him for that. Scott can be really difficult when he was in a certain frame of mind…I finally got involved and told Scott this is what we need. He said I don’t want to do it. I said, ok, we will find somebody else to do it, meaning it’s not that big a deal that Scott gets beat, it would be nice, that would be our first choice. That would have elevated James but the show is not going to stop. We aren’t going to have to replace the match because of it. We will find another opponent. Of course, two days later, all of this gets back to TNA management and Scott Steiner got fired. Scott Steiner figured I’m the one who fired hm. Then he blamed Hulk.”
JIM CORNETTE’S DRIVE-THRU 05/04/20
Jim Cornette talking about the Barbarian drinking in a bar in 1985: “He was in the hotel bar and was drinking. They wanted to close and he didn’t want them to. He wouldn’t let them close the bar. He wouldn’t get up. If they weren’t going to serve him, he was going to reach over and serve himself. They call the cops. He is not creating any incident. He’s not trying to get sh*t free. He just is not going to leave and he is not going to let them close the bar is the way I heard it. There was not a big fight or anything until the cops got there. By that point, he was not going to let them take him out of there or close the bar either. When they tried to, then there was some resistance. It took like 7 of them to get him out to the car. He either broke a set of handcuffs and they had to do the double handcuffs. They couldn’t get his hands behind him. He headbutted the roof of the police car in getting mad at them and busted his head open. He ate the mace. They sprayed him with the mace and he licked that off and ate that. Finally, he decided, ok I’ll go with them. Then he goes and they sow his head up and he head butts the wall and busts his head open again.”
ARN 05/05/20: PAYBACK 2015
Arn on why the perception of NXT had diminished: “Some of the guys from the main roster have been bumped back down so you have more star power on that show. In the front office’s mind, we will take some of these proven talents and bump them back down to make that a more competitive brand. When they come back down, they bring the RAW or SmackDown style with them. So, it’s not NXT and NXT style matches. Now the dynamic changes. They are seeing a lot of stuff they see on Monday or Friday. Now it’s on NXT so now it’s not a pure NXT show.”
Arn talking about Cody as Stardust in WWE: “I didn’t dislike it from the fact that the costuming and Cody looked good in that character. I know every time I dealt with Cody from day 1 he would give you the best he could. I knew there should be some good things happening for him because his attitude was good. His ability was good. They put this costume on him and I didn’t know how strongly he was against it until later. But there was no plan passed that to take Cody Rhodes to the next level. When they change you and change your character and you stay at a level push and you don’t go anywhere with that, what was the reason for the change if there were no positive plans to elevate you and that is one I couldn’t figure out.”
Arn’s thought on the Ascension: “Why would you take any character that is on our show that the company professes to being the number one wrestling company, or the number one sports entertainment company in the entire world and put them on our TV show, which is valuable TV time and have the announcers bury them. We make them look bad on our own show. What is the sense to all that? What could the mentality possibly be to get guys out there and other than enhance them in every way possible, you make clowns out of them. And it happens all the time. Everything character wise passes by the big chair if it’s the last place they go, it goes to the big chair for approval, make no mistake, character, angles, you name it.”
AEW UNRESTRICTED 05/06/20: TONY KHAN
Tony Khan talking about his ideas for empty arena came from: “When everything shut down, I watched a lot of other programming. I watched a lot of wrestling. I watched a lot of other stuff too and tried to get an idea of what people were doing with the restrictions without an audience. The thing that really captivated me was I have a really good friend who is a writer for Jimmy Fallon who works on the tonight show. I watched the show Jimmy Fallon did without an audience and he had his writers and his band in the studio, a small group of people and their laughter and the exchange they had made all the difference to other talk shows where they were out there cold. I thought the Tonight Show and Jimmy Fallon were really on to something and I thought that is what I want to do…The next day I figured we can have a babyface side and a heel side and that was good too.”
TALK IS JERICHO 05/06/20: THE REVIVAL OF THE REVOLT
The Revival talking about the tag team division: “Long term, there is just not enough attention paid to the tag team division because there are so many good tag teams there all the time that I think can contribute so much more…We are not happy. The tag team titles don’t mean anything. Nothing against Brawn (Strowman), Brawn is a great guy and I get along with him very well, but he steamrolled the entire tag team division and then a 10 year old won the tag titles at WrestleMania. Then no tag teams were featured at SummerSlam until the last minute they added the women’s tag titles. When we sked for our release in January, we went straight to the top and asked for it. I think initially they thought we were bluffing and they said we were planning on putting the tag titles on you. We are planning on giving you this big run and Daniel said, it is not about the tag belts. We want the whole division to be featured and everyone to get an opportunity to work. They initially said they will give us our release. We went to the talent relations office. They said you can have your release, and I am not kidding you, as soon as we walked out of that talent relations office, everyone knew. I don’t know how but everyone knew we asked for it. We were getting texts from everybody. Right after that, we were getting tagged on twitter that we were complaining and being crybabies. I dare you to ask any of our coworkers if we ever complained.”
The Revival on meeting with Vince McMahon with new gimmick to stay: “There were multiple different versions of their vision for what they wanted to do for us. The pictures have leaked online. They are 100% legit. They were handed to us by Vince McMahon himself. I can tell you with 100% certainty that the boys are not the ones leaking out most of the information. Those photos had to have come from someone from creative who came up with that costume. We told them these are bad. These are not good, but we will do these until our contracts expire. We will do whatever you want. We will give it 100% and go all in and have fun with it, but when our contracts expire, we are done. There is no way that we are going to be staying here past June. We got a phone call saying we have been pulled from everything going forward. I don’t know if because we agreed to do it, it lost some of its hilarity to them. The numbers that have been reported contract wise, $750,000 per year, the number was higher than that. They offered more than that for us to do the clown cat in the hat.”
GRILLING JR 05/07/20: WRESTLE WAR 89
Jim Ross’ talking about Ricky Steamboat not knowing Terry Funk was going to attack Ric Flair after the match: “I think Ricky had a tumultuous marriage. I think that was probably his biggest cause of consternation. But to not be informed of what was going on after your losing the world title was disrespectful and that’s how I perceived how Ricky felt. How much disrespect, we didn’t know? Again, as my role as a broadcaster, I tried to stay away from all that stuff. I didn’t want or need that extra information. I didn’t have a clue he (Terry Funk) was going to do that. But you don’t do that to your world champion because earlier in the day, when all that was discussed, he was the world champion, but he wasn’t treated like a world champion. Enough was enough and we lost a really good talent.”
THIS WEEK ON EXCUSE ME THE VICKIE GUERRERO PODCAST:
Vickie welcomes none other than former WWE Superstar and Vickie’s son-in -law: Aiden English. Aiden English shocked the world in NXT by wrestling and showing his operatic singing ability. Aiden was part of the layoffs this past April. He is back talking about his newest passion, “Wrestling with Whiskey.” Aiden also discusses how you can book him and his future plans.
A&E Network today announced a new WWE series titled The Quest For Lost WWE Treasures, a partnership with WWE Studios which joins the previously announced greenlight of five Biography specials showcasing WWE Legends Macho Man Randy Savage, Rowdy Roddy Piper, Booker T, Stone Cold Steve Austin and Shawn Michaels.
The 10-episode, one-hour series features Triple H and Stephanie McMahon who will unearth rare items held by collectors in the hopes of preserving and sharing the legacy behind the memorable moments in WWE history. In each episode, McMahon and Triple H will lead a team of collectors, WWE Superstars and Legends as they investigate, negotiate, bid and travel across the country to hunt down and reclaim some of the most elusive WWE collectibles.
Episodes will feature exclusive WWE footage as well as unprecedented access to the WWE Archives, which holds more than 10,000 rarities including Andre the Giant’s custom boots, Vince McMahon’s cement-filled Corvette, The Undertaker’s caskets and more.
The Quest for Lost WWE Treasures is produced by WWE Studios for A&E Network with Susan Levison and Ben Zierten serving as executive producers. Elaine Frontain Bryant, Dolores Gavin and Jonathan Partridge serve as executive producers for A&E Network.
Documents filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission on May 6 reveal that Paul “Triple H” Levesque unloaded a total of 23,255 WWE shares on May 4, selling at $43.80 a piece for a total payout of a cool $1,018,569.
The former WWE champion who now holds the title of Executive Vice President of Global Talent Strategy & Development for WWE, still has a total of 144,646 WWE shares in possession which at today’s value are worth nearly $6.5 million.
He follows another executive, Mark Kowal, who sold 4,000 shares at $44.05 each for a total of $176,200 on May 1. Kowal is a Senior Vice President and Controller at WWE.
The Maryland State Athletic Commission fined All Elite Wrestling $10,000 for having blood at their November 2019 Full Gear pay-per-view in the main event match between Jon Moxley and Kenny Omega.
The consent order lists some of the brutalities that the two did to each other during their lights out match and concluded that the company violated one of their codes which states that there should not be unsportsmanlike or physically dangerous contact, deliberately lacerating oneself or opponent by any means, and introducing human or animal blood in the ring.
The order noted that AEW is agreeing to the fine to avoid litigation and while the commission took note that AEW took precautions to minimize injury to the two, blood was still used. The company must pay the $10,000 fine within 30 days.
With a killer entrance – no pun intended – Karrion Kross and Scarlett made their NXT debut last night and left many wanting for more.
The former Impact Wrestling stars finally showed up, complete with smoke, special effects, and a black and white entrance as the two impressed in the quick squash match.
Kross, 34, and Scarlett, 28, were signed to a WWE deal months apart from each other, with Scarlett coming first and then Kross crossing over from Impact where he was tied up there and not being used for not wanting to blade during an Impact Wrestling pay-per-view earlier in the Summer.
