NEWS

NXT
Date: September 30, 2020
Location: Full Sail University, Winter Park, Florida
Commentators: Beth Phoenix, Tom Phillips
It’s the go home show for Takeover, though I’m not sure you would realize that the show is coming up so soon based on the last few weeks. That has been a combination of the last of time before the show and the Coronavirus outbreak, neither of which are exactly good things. I’m not sure what that means for Sunday but NXT knows how to do a last minute build. Let’s get to it.
Opening recap.
Dakota Kai vs. Shotzi Blackheart Raquel Gonzalez is here with Kai. Shotzi doesn’t care for the trash talk to start and takes her down for some early hammering. Back up and Kai misses a kick to the chest, allowing Shotzi to roll her up for two. WELCOME TO THE BALL PIT has Kai in trouble and Shotzi hits a Codebreaker to the arm for two more. Shotzi takes her down by the leg and puts on….I guess you would say a Gory Stretch with the legs tied up on the mat.
Kai is face first on th..

A step in the right direction. The Coronavirus has changed the way everything works around the world and that is going to be the case for a long time to come. There are only so many things that can be done at the moment without severe precautions but various places are starting to move more towards a normal status. That is the case with WWE as well and they are making a slight recovery in one area.
WWE has a lot of different things going on inside their organization, including a huge training facility with the Performance Center. The building allows them to train their younger wrestlers like no other promotion has ever been able to do before, making them far more TV ready in a hurry. The Coronavirus took that away from WWE for a short time but now things have gotten a little better.
During the NXT Takeover 31 conference call, Triple H announced that the Performance Center was able to host training again after a Coronavirus outbreak. It was also made clear that this situation could ch..

That’s the worst case scenario. Injuries are a horrible thing to see in wrestling and there is never a good time for a wrestler to get hurt. It happens every now and then though, with some of them being a lot worse than others. What can make things even worse is someone being injured over and over, to the point where you aren’t sure if they will ever be completely healthy. That is the case again in a very bad way.
Over the decades, WWE has become much more of an international company with wrestlers from all over the world. It allows them to have so many different pairings and as a way to appeal to so many more fans. The Women’s Revolution has expanded the landscape even further in a very good way. These stars still have injuries though, and that is the case with a rather promising NXT star.
During the media conference call for NXT Takeover 31, Triple H confirmed that Tegan Nox has torn her ACL and already had surgery to repair it. There is no word on how long Nox will be out of actio..

WWE runs a show like this every year and every year I try to figure out if it makes sense to have a show built entirely around titles. On one hand it is about as easy of an idea as you can have for a pay per view, but at the same time, aren’t most shows built around title matches? Either way I’m not driving six hours one way for a middle of the road pay per view this year so things are looking up. Let’s get to it.
Kickoff Show: Raw Women’s Title: Asuka(c) vs. Zelina Vega This one was thrown together pretty recently but WWE did something smart to help set it up: they gave Vega a clean win over Mickie James. It is no secret that Vega does not have the most polish in the ring, but she has enough to get by. Now though, she has beaten someone with an established resume and that should give her enough to be a decent enough challenger to Asuka.
That’s how you get there:

Now that being said, there is no reason to believe that Vega has even the tiniest prayer here so it’s Asuka retaining in..

It was nice while it lasted. Over it’s rather long history, WWE has had all kinds of wrestlers working for it at one point or another. That is the kind of history that can be almost impossible to track, as there are so many wrestlers to remember. Some of them do not make the biggest impact, but others are going to leave quite an impression. One of the more prominent women’s wrestlers seems to be done for good.
The Women’s Revolution has changed the way WWE works and in a very good way. Women’s wrestling has gone from a glorified side show into something that has been a featured attraction for a very long time now. That is an amazing rise for the division and there is nothing to suggest that it is going to change anytime soon. The last few years have been pivotal to its rise, but there was a group of women who helped get it to this point. One has decided to hang up the boots.
In a new interview with Fightful Select, Lisa Marie Varon, formerly known as Victoria in WWE and Tara in Impac..

Time to restock. There are a lot of talented wrestlers in the world and several of them are working for one of WWE’s various branches. The company has an incredibly deep talent roster from all over the world and that has been the case for a very long time now. With so many wrestlers around, one of the issues that still comes up is having to bring in fresh talent. Part of WWE is currently doing just that.
Earlier this month, NXT UK returned to action after several months off due to the Coronavirus. There was little way to prevent such an issue but it was bound to happen eventually. That does not mean that everything is back to normal though as some wrestlers are not going to be around at the moment. There are other wrestlers out there too though and WWE is bringing some of them in.
According to Inside The Ropes, NXT UK is close to signing a group of new talents. The new wrestlers are in London for a three week tryout camp with NXT UK so WWE can take a better look at them to decide on ..

Just do it. For well over thirty years, pay per view content has been one of the cornerstones of professional wrestling. The bigger promotions have spent years using their television shows to build up to pay per views that can be purchased nationwide, allowing them the chance to bring in all kinds of money if they can convince fans to buy the show. However, that model might be changing in WWE.
Back in February 2014, the WWE Network officially launched and everything changed for the wrestling world. Fans could suddenly have access to everything that they wanted to see from WWE for a rather low price. This not only included the pay per view archives, but also the new monthly pay per views. WWE even went so far as to mock fans who would still pay the full price for a pay per view event. Now they are changing their philosophy overall and it might make things rather different.
According to the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, the new plan for WWE is to pump out as much content as possible i..

Well that’s a little different. There is little way to deny that WWE is the biggest wrestling promotion in the world. While it might not be the most popular in some ways, WWE is still the highest level of wrestling from a business standpoint. There are other promotions out there though, and one of them might be getting involved with one of the biggest names in entertainment today.
Even when he was still in wrestling, there was no hiding the fact that the Rock was destined for something more. He had all the charisma that you could ask for and made everything he touched look easy. That is not the kind of thing you are lucky to see once in a generation at most and WWE is lucky that Rock is willing to do some things with them from time to time. However, Rock might be doing something else with a rather different wrestling promotion.
Earlier this year, Ken Shamrock was announced as the latest inductee into the Impact Wrestling Hall Of Fame. His induction will take place next month, so Sham..

The card keeps growing. We are just over a week away from NXT Takeover and that means things are starting to come together in a hurry. This time the show is going to be a little bit different though as there are only so many wrestlers available due to a Coronavirus outbreak. NXT still has a pretty deep bench though and some of them are going to be able to make the show. Two more of those names have been confirmed.
One area where NXT tends to thrive is building up a feud in the midcard. They have figured out how to take people and a story with little business in a featured role and make it into something fans want to see. That has become a staple of Takeover and it is what we are likely to see again this time around. This one is in the form of a grudge match which has been built up over the last several weeks.
WWE has announced that Kushida will meet the Velveteen Dream at Takeover on October 4. This comes after the two have traded attacks on each other, beginning with Dream attacking..

Another reason. One of the bigger stories of the week has been the Coronavirus outbreak in NXT which has seemingly left a lot of wrestlers out of action. That is the kind of thing you can only plan for to a certain extent and it has been causing problems for NXT. What matters most is keeping the wrestlers healthy, but another wrestler is missing some time for another reason.
This week’s NXT featured a rather interesting match with Danny Burch/Roderick Strong teaming up to face Fabian Aichner/Raul Mendoza. The four of them are all parts of different tag teams and the winners’ teams would later face off for the #1 contendership to the Tag Team Titles. It would seem that the regular partners’ absences may have been due to the Coronavirus but that is not the case at least for one name.
According to the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, Bobby Fish, Strong’s regular partner in the Undisputed Era, missed the show because of a knee injury suffered when training Brazilian ju-jitsu and kickboxing..

That explains things. The Wednesday Night Wars have been an interesting study to follow as NXT and AEW Dynamite have been going head to head once a week. Fans have been curious to see which show draws the higher audience and ratings. That was the case during the original Monday Night Wars from 1995 until 2001, when Monday Night Raw defeated Monday Nitro. That was a long time ago, and things have changed a good bit. Now we may know why.
There is no secret to the fact that the television audience for wrestling has gone consistently down over the years. The Monday Night Wars saw millions of fans watching the shows at once, while now it is rare to see anything other than Monday Night Raw or SmackDown regularly draw over a million fans. There is something to be learned there, and someone has tried to find out why.
YouGov has released a poll, courtesy of the Variety Intelligence Platform, which looked at why wrestling fans have stopped watching. The poll was conducted with 471 people over ..

The more things change. The biggest story in the world over the course of the summer has been the Coronavirus, which has certainly been the case in the wrestling industry. Wrestling companies can have events without fans, but there are only so many ways that such a thing can be done. At some point you need to have fans in the arena to add the extra energy as well as money. That might be the case in the near future.
Over the last few months, both AEW and WWE have been running their events exclusively in Florida. WWE has been in Orlando at either the Performance Center or the Amway Center while AEW has been in Jacksonville at Daily’s Place. Only AEW has been able to bring in some fans, with about 15% capacity for their events. Those numbers might be about to expand in a big way.
The Orlando Sentinel reports that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has ordered that all restrictions on businesses be removed as Florida enters Phase Three of its recovery efforts. This means that crowds could be ..