NEWS

Christian Cage became the new Impact World champion on Friday, August 13. The win came after the opening match on AEW Rampage, which featured Cage versus Kenny Omega. This was Omega’s first title loss since “collecting” several championships over the past year.
Cage’s victory in front of the red hot Pittsburgh crowd is perhaps a surprise to many fans. Omega does inevitably retain in the big match environment, after all. It’s not that Christian wasn’t valued as a title contender going into the bout. But AEW loves to tease an Omega loss and it never happens. However, now that Cage has won, it does set the table for his showdown against Kenny at All Out.
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The Christian Coalition News of Christian’s AEW Championship match versus Omega came on the August 11 edition of Dynamite. Cage was recently declared the new No.1 Contender to Omega’s title, so fans knew a match was coming. But no one seemed to believe it would come at All Out on September 5…

Welcome back. AEW has shaken up the wrestling world and what makes things even more impressive is how fast they have done so. The promotion has not even been around for three years yet and its flagship TV show has not even hit its second anniversary. Despite this, the promotion has quite the history and someone from that history has made a surprise return.
Jamie Hayter made her return to AEW at the end of this week’s edition of Rampage. Following Britt Baker’s successful defense of her AEW Women’s Title over Red Velvet, Kris Statlander attacked Baker. This drew out Hayter for the save to end the show. Hayter has not appeared in AEW in nearly two years and has only wrestled for AEW twice, including a loss to Baker in November 2019.
It was a big return. Check out Hayter, plus some of her time elsewhere:
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Opinion: This was an interesting way to bring Hayter..

Keep them coming. We are just over a week away from Summerslam, which remains one of WWE’s biggest events of the year. It is the kind of card that the company is going to want to stack as many big matches as they can manage. There are some top names on the WWE roster and it makes sense to put some of them together on the show. Now they have added another match to the card.
WWE has announced that Drew McIntyre will face Jinder Mahal at Summerslam. The match comes after Mahal became annoyed at McIntyre for not having time for him and attempting to steal McIntyre’s sword. McIntyre also destroyed Mahal’s custom motorcycle and has also attacked Mahal’s associates, Veer and Shanky. The two also met on the July 5 Monday Night Raw, when McIntyre won via disqualification.
It took some time to get here. Check out how the match was set up:
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Opinion: I don’t think t..

Welcome to KB’s Old School (and New School) Reviews. I’ve been reviewing wrestling shows for over twelve years now and have reviewed over 6,000 shows. Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, I’ll be posting a new review here on Wrestlingrumors.net. It could be anything from modern WWE to old school to indies to anything in between. Note that I rate using letters instead of stars and I don’t rate matches under three minutes as really, how good or bad can something that short be?
No Mercy 2017
Date: September 24, 2017
Location: Staples Center, Los Angeles, California
Commentators: Michael Cole, Booker T., Corey Graves
I don’t remember being this excited for a B pay per view in a very long time. This show is all about the double main event with a combination of Brock Lesnar defending the Universal Title against Braun Strowman and John Cena vs. Roman Reigns in one heck of a big time match. That should be more than enough to carry this show so let’s get to it.
Kickoff Show: Elias vs. Apollo ..

Unpack those bags. The Coronavirus has changed the way the world works and that certainly includes wrestling. While things are starting to get back to normal, there are still several things that are not quite what they were before. The virus is still causing issues and now one of the bigger issues is going to be changing plans for a fairly big wrestling promotion.
According to the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, WWE has canceled the plans for NXT to return to touring. NXT had been planning to return to its regular Florida touring schedule in July but no events have been held. Florida is currently experiencing more cases of the Coronavirus than anywhere else in the country and WWE is worried about another outbreak in the NXT locker room.
NXT has a history at these shows. Check out some of their moments:
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Opinion: This is another setback caused by the pande..

I guess it makes sense? A wrestler’s name is one of the most important things about their entire persona. The right name can make someone feel that much more important but the wrong name can put their career on the entirely wrong track. WWE has a strange habit of changing names out of nowhere and now we know why two names were switched. It turns out to have been the whim of one person.
During an interview on the What Do You Call It podcast, former WWE star Tucker said that he and Otis lost their first names in WWE due to Vince McMahon. According to Tucker, McMahon did not like how long it took to introduce their full names. Tucker and Otis were formerly known as Tucker Knight and Otis Dozovic, but McMahon cut off their last names. Tucker was released from WWE earlier this year.
It was quite the interview. Check out the full video (with the story beginning at about 56:45) and some of the team in action:
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What could have been. There are a lot of wrestling promotions in the world today and a lot of them do not get the same recognition as others. While WWE is the most well known promotion in the world, there are several others which have a lot of quality to offer. It turns out that WWE was impressed enough with one promotion that they made an effort to take the whole thing over.
According to the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, WWE attempted to buy CMLL, a major promotion in Mexico, a few years ago. WWE wanted to have a presence in Mexico, with the idea that some of the CMLL wrestlers could eventually be brought in to the American market. However, CMLL wanted WWE to purchase its arenas as part of the deal and WWE had no interest in buying them.
WWE has had some success in Mexico before. Check out some of their time there:
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Opinion: If WWE wants to get into an..

Twice as nice. WWE has a long history of presenting tournaments. It is something that has been done for the better part of the last fifty years if not even longer and that is going to be the case for a long time to come. The idea makes a lot of sense too as wrestlers can be grouped together without much effort in the name of winning a prize. That seems to be the case again.
According to Andrew Zarian of the Mat Men podcast, WWE will be bringing back the King of the Ring tournament in October, with the finals taking place at the next Saudi Arabia event. WWE has yet to announced either the tournament or the event itself. This comes after rumors that WWE will be running the Queen of the Ring tournament at the same time, which has been confirmed by SmackDown’s Liv Morgan.
The King of the Ring tournament was first held in 1985 and first aired on pay per view in 1993. After being an annual event until 2002, the tournament has been held intermittently in the following nineteen years, with f..

Rampage
Date: April 13, 2021
Location: Petersen Events Center, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Commentators: Excalibur, Chris Jericho, Mark Henry, Taz
It’s the debut of the secondary show which is actually on television and not full of squashes. I’m not sure what this is going to mean for the company as a whole, but if they can put some stuff on here instead of cramming it all onto Dynamite, we could be in for something good. The card is pretty stacked tonight too so let’s get to it.
Opening sequence.
Impact Wrestling World Title: Kenny Omega vs. Christian Cage Omega, with Don Callis, is defending. They go with the feeling out process to start and Christian flips him off in the corner to start the mind games. It’s too early for both guys to hit their finisher and Omega bails to the floor for an early breather. Back in and Omega chops away but Christian knocks him to the apron for the dropkick back to the floor. Hold on though as Callis offers a distraction, allowing Omega to shove Christia..

History has made an Impact! The wrestling world has been changing a lot in the last few years and that is likely going to be the case for a long time. The rise of new promotions has changed how everything works and AEW has been right at the top of the list. They have shaken things up in a huge way and they are still doing that now, with a pretty unique title change taking place.
This week on the debut edition of AEW Rampage, Christian Cage defeated Kenny Omega to win the Impact Wrestling World Title. The win marks Cage’s third World Title reign in Impact Wrestling, though his first two came as the NWA World Champion before the promotion changed names. Cage is scheduled to challenge Omega for the AEW World Title at AEW All Out on September 5, though he will also be defending the Impact Wrestling World Title at Emergence on August 20.
Cage has been here before. Check out his time in Impact wrestling, which was pretty great:
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History has been made! Titles are one of the easiest ideas in all of wrestling as anyone can get the idea: take two people, put a big shiny belt in between them and whoever wins is champion. You can go all kinds of ways with an idea like that and the idea has worked forever in wrestling. It still works in modern time too and now we have a new champion crowned.
This week on SmackDown, King Nakamura defeated Apollo Crews to become the new Intercontinental Champion. The match came after Nakamura defeated Crews via disqualification when Commander Azeez interfered. Azeez was ejected during the rematch, leaving Nakamura to defeat Crews with the Kinshasa. The win makes Nakamura a two time Intercontinental Champion.
Nakamura has been here before. Check out his time as champion:
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Opinion: It’s a good idea to give Nakamura the title. He has been doing well with th..

Smackdown
Date: August 13, 2021
Location: BOK Center, Tulsa, Oklahoma
Commentators: Michael Cole, Pat McAfee
We have two shows to go before Summerslam and John Cena is actually on TV this week. For some reason he has been around for the last few weeks working dark matches but hasn’t shown up on the actual shows. He’s here tonight to face Roman Reigns though and that needs to be great. Let’s get to it.
Here is John Cena to get things going. After we get a quick look at how Cena vs. Roman Reigns was set up, Cena says that since school is back in session, it is time to give Roman his report card. Reigns gets a D, because he is a D-head, a D-bag and a D-isappointment. At Summerslam Reigns is getting an F, but for now though, it is time to have a pop quiz. The fans are asked if they think Reigns will beat him up at Summerslam and they don’t quite buy it. Cena admits that he will take a beating at Summerslam but he’s also beating Reigns.
Cue Reigns and Paul Heyman for a chat after a break..