NEWS

It’s something else to do. Back in March, Big E. suffered a broken neck during a botched spot in a match on WWE SmackDown. Big E. has since spent months recovering and likely has several more months before he is close to being ready to returning to the ring, assuming he ever does. While he is still recovering, WWE has something else for him to do for the company.
Big E. was interviewed by ESPN and revealed that he will be helping scout talent evaluations at the upcoming tryout camps in Nashville, Tennessee over Summerslam weekend. This will include working with Triple H, who will be helping to run the tryout. This will be Big E.’s first official appearance with WWE since his injury and it is not clear if he will continue in the role after Summerslam weekend.
Opinion: That is very good to see as Big E. was injured through a freak accident and could have been in a much worse situation. It is great to see him getting to do something else in WWE, as it might be great for his mental state..

Things might be changing. WWE is the biggest wrestling promotion in the world and that has been the case for a very long time now. The company has quite a few stars on its roster but they have to keep things moving. At some point, new stars need to be brought in to freshen things up. That is the case on a regular basis, but now they might be shaking things up a bit.
Last year, WWE began changing its recruiting process to only look for athletes from outside of the wrestling industry to find people who can be trained for wrestling. At the same time, independent wrestlers were no longer invited to the company’s tryout camps, outside of special occasions. According to the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, various independent wrestlers will be invited to the tryouts being held over Summerslam weekend. There is no word on who will be invited.
Opinion: This is the kind of thing that you almost had to expect, as there are going to be some wrestlers out there who are going to catch attention. Th..

A bittersweet moment. Wrestlers do a lot of things in front of the cameras and most of the time, it can be pretty entertaining. That leaves fans with quite a few things to see, often as part of a live crowd. You get to see all kinds of things when you go to a live television taping, some of which is done after the television cameras are turned off. That was the case again this week in a rather emotional moment.
The main event of this week’s edition of AEW Dynamite saw Keith Lee and Swerve Strickland win the Tag Team Titles from the Young Bucks in a three way match, also involving Team Taz. Following the win, Lee addressed the crowd, talking about how there are very few people he is close to in life. This includes a man named Lascelles King, who was diagnosed with stage four colon cancer earlier this week. Lee promised that he was returning home to Texas to visit King and that he wanted King to fight harder than theye did tonight.
This was a very emotional moment. Check out Lee’s stat..

It might be a little while. There are some very talented wrestlers in WWE today but it takes something special to turn them into major stars. You know a major star when you see one and that is what WWE has on their hands with Roman Reigns. Unfortunately Reigns is not around very often due to his new contract, which will be more obvious in the upcoming months.
WWE has released the official poster for Extreme Rules on October 8 and Reigns is not included, nor is he advertised on WWE.com’s page for the show. Included on the poster are Seth Rollins, Bobby Lashley, Drew McIntyre, Becky Lynch, Riddle and Rhea Ripley. Reigns has only wrestled infrequently on pay per view this year, with his most recent taking place at WrestleMania Backlash in May.
#ExtremeRules is headed to @WellsFargoCtr on October 8! Get your tickets NOW using presale code: TWEETS
? https://t.co/DPWJnCXJJB pic.twitter.com/aSPaqnqNp4
— WWE (@WWE) July 13, 2022
Opinion: This is just how things work with Reigns these says ..

There’s your history. AEW has not been around for very long when you think about it but they still have put together a rather nice history for themselves. A lot of this involves the titles that they have around and that makes for some rather important moments. Title changes can make all of the difference in the world for a wrestler and that was the case again this week.
The main event of this week’s edition of AEW Dynamite saw Keith Lee and Swerve Strickland win the AEW Tag Team Titles, defeating Team Taz and reigning champions the Young Bucks. Strickland pinned Ricky Stars with the Swerve Stomp to win the titles. The win marks the first title in the company for either Strickland or Lee and ends the Bucks’ record third reign.
Opinion: They got me with the surprise title change here and that is a very nice thing to see. You don’t get that kind of a title switch very often and AEW made it work well here. The Bucks losing any kind of a match always feels like a major deal and that was t..

Dynamite
Date: July 13, 2022
Location: Enmarket Arena, Savannah, Georgia
Commentators: Excalibur, Tony Schiavone, Taz
We’re on the way to Death Before Dishonor and thankfully the build for that show hasn’t taken everything over like the Forbidden Door stuff did. It’s the first of four Fyter Fest shows and the Tag Team Titles are on the line as the Young Bucks defend against Swerve Strickland/Keith Lee and Team Taz. Let’s get to it.
Opening sequence.
TNT Title: Wardlow vs. Orange Cassidy Cassidy is challenging, with the Best Friends in his corner (complete with managers’ licenses). They go with the test of strength to start and Cassidy puts his hands in his pockets….which are torn off by Wardlow. Now Wardlow’s straps come down….with Cassidy putting them right back up. The Powerbomb Symphony is broken up and Cassidy snaps off a headscissors but comes up favoring his eye. The referee checks on him, allowing Chuck Taylor to whip out A CHAINSAW.
Believe it or not, that’s enough for an e..

Last fall, the family went down to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina (I didn’t have much of a choice so spare me the “why there” questions) for a vacation. It wasn’t my thing, but at one point I did head out and find a bookstore to pass some time. The store was adjacent to a local mall where I thought they might sell playing cards (one of my other passions, with a current collection of 923 decks (27 wrestling) and counting).
Inside the mall I found….very little, as the place was mostly dead. One thing I did find though was an old school arcade inside a comic book store, with a ton of arcade cabinets and a row of pinball machines, including the old WWF Royal Rumble game. Each play was a quarter each so I ran through at least five bucks and had one of the best days of the entire trip there on my own.
So what does this have to do with wrestling? Heck if I know, but what does pinball have to do with Summerslam?
That’s something that has been bothering me about the build to this year’s Summer..

It may be time for a change. There is more wrestling content on television today than there ever has been before and that can cause some issues. Above all else, it means that wrestlers are going to be seen more often than any other time and things can get stale rather quickly. That means a change might be needed and now WWE seems to be teasing another one.
This week on Monday Night Raw, Alexa Bliss and Asuka teamed up to defeat Nikki Ash and Doudrop. During the match, commentary suggested that Bliss was not as good as she was before her hiatus. According to Wrestling Observer Radio, this is likely a WWE decision, as there was no reason to suggest that Bliss is not as good as she was before. This could mean that Bliss is in for a change of some kind in the near future.
Opinion: I could see this leading to a Bliss heel turn, though can we please have it be something other than the Lily doll period? It is bad enough that she keeps carrying the thing around with her as it is enough of a ..

Flash from the past. WWE has been around for a very long time now and the company has a rather incredible history. Over time, there have been a lot of different periods and eras, some of which are a lot more famous than others. There have been some very famous ones though, and WWE seemed to be interested in bringing back something that likely would have only fit in one era.
In a new interview with NBC Sports’ Boston Steve, former WWE star Killer Kross talked about an idea he had pitched to revive the Corporate Ministry. Kross felt that the idea would work due to nostalgia and said that there was a group of writers on board with the concept. The idea would have been to fictionalize the idea of cults and evil businesses and put them on television with nostalgia thrown in. There is nothing to suggest that the idea ever went past the planning stage.
Opinion: I’m not sure I could imagine this working, as the Corporate Ministry is about as Attitude Era as you could get. While I get the ide..

That’s the reason. Wrestling is a lot of things, but it is supposed to be presented as a sport. That means following various rules and regulations, with most matches following the same ones. On occasion there will be a match with something changed for a special situation, but this time around things were even more out there, as a match ended due to a rule that few know about.
This week on Monday Night Raw, AJ Styles and Ezekiel defeated the Miz and Ciampa via disqualification when the illegal Ciampa attacked AJ Styles. According to Wrestling Observer Radio, this was due to a secret rule in WWE. In a tag match, a wrestler is allowed to make one illegal save, with the second drawing a disqualification. Ciampa was making his second save and was disqualified as a result.
Opinion: I’m not sure I get why this is a secret rule. If someone is making an illegal save, isn’t that breaking a rule by definition? This doesn’t sound so much like a secret as much as it sounds like being a bit tediou..

It worked while it lasted. With so many wrestlers on the WWE roster, the company has to mix up its roster by putting the wrestlers on different brands. That is something that can keep the wrestlers apart for a rather long time, though it does allow for some interesting matches when people move around. This time though, someone seems to be moving away from WWE as a whole.
NXT’s Io Shirai has not wrestled a match since April 1 amid reports that she was injured during that match. There have also been rumors that she is not interested in signing a new deal with WWE and would rather return to Japan to be closer to her family. According to Wrestling Observer Radio, Shirai is already mostly out of the company and is not likely to return. There is nothing to suggest that there is any heat between the two sides.
Opinion: This is something that seems to have been in the works for a long time now and that is not the worst thing. Shirai does not so much seem to be unhappy in NXT but rather wants..

They might not be back. There are a variety of titles in the wrestling world and some of them are featured on a regular basis. A few of those titles are designated for specific groups or classes of wrestlers, meaning the competition for them is a bit more narrow. Now though, it seems that you might not be seeing some of them again, as WWE doesn’t exactly seem interested.
Back in May, Sasha Banks and Naomi walked out of WWE, vacating their Women’s Tag Team Titles in the process. Shortly thereafter, WWE announced that a tournament would be held for the titles, though nothing else has been mentioned. According to Fightful Select, there has been no backstage discussion of the tournament or the titles. It is not clear if anything will be done with them or if the titles are gone for good.
Opinion: I can’t say I’m surprised by any of this, as the titles were barely noteworthy for most of their existence. WWE just does not have the depth in its women’s division to make them viable at the mom..