NEWS

Welcome to KB’s Old School (and New School) Reviews. I’ve been reviewing wrestling shows for over ten years now and have reviewed over 5,000 shows. Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, I’ll be posting a new review here on Wrestlingrumors.net, starting today. 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?
Backlash: In Your House #28
Date: April 25, 1999
Location: Providence Civic Center, Providence, Rhode Island
Attendance: 10,939
Commentators: Jim Ross, Jerry Lawler
It’s the final show and not a lot has changed. We’re getting a few Wrestlemania rematches here as Austin is defending against the Rock again while Mankind is facing Big Show in a boiler room brawl. Other than that we have the fully heel HHH facing X-Pac in a match for revenge. For once, the name of the show fits the theme perfectly. Let’s ..

You wouldn’t like him when he’s angry. Whether you are a fan of his or not, there is no one more powerful in all of wrestling than Vince McMahon. He has been on top of the wrestling world for decades and will be until the day he is gone. As a result, anything that he does can change the industry as a whole, either in the long term or the short term. At the moment, part of the short term is not going well for him.
You might have heard about some of the bad news that McMahon has had to deal with as of late. Between all of the stress of having to find ways to keep his television programs running during the Coronavirus epidemic and the XFL closing for the second time, it has not been the most stress free time for McMahon. As it turns out, a lot of people around him have noticed the issues as well.
According to PW Insider Elite Audio by way of Ringsidenews.com, several in WWE have known that McMahon is currently in a horrible mood and it has become something of a running joke in the compa..

It’s certainly a foot in the door. Earlier this month at WrestleMania 36, Drew McIntyre changed the WWE main event scene by defeating Brock Lesnar to become the new WWE Champion. McIntyre’s coronation as the top name in the company had been a long time coming and nearly went down during his first run in WWE. McIntyre certainly came into the company with a bang, but what made him such a big deal so fast?
McIntyre made his original debut in WWE back in 2007 and was soon dubbed Vince McMahon’s Chosen One. This was rumored to eventually see McIntyre become WWE Champion, but instead he wound up being part of a comedy rock band. It is clear that plans changed for a few reasons, but what was it that WWE saw in him in the first place? As it turns out, it was something rather simple.
During an interview with MuscleManMalcolm, former WWE writer Dave Lagana talked about McIntyre’s early days on the main roster and what caused McMahon to push him. Lagana said that one day he, Dusty Rhodes, Vince..

That would explain a few things. Like almost any other business, WWE is not so much about what you know but rather who you know. At the end of the day, you can have all the skill in the world, but if the higher ups don’t care for you, it isn’t going to matter. There will always be wrestlers who can do whatever they want in the ring and never get a chance to shine on the main stage. Some get the chance at one point, though it doesn’t always last.
Dolph Ziggler is one of the more controversial names in all of wrestling. He certainly has talent, but fans have been waiting to see him break into the main event for good for a long time now. Eventually fans realized that there was little reason to believe that the move was ever going to happen. It hasn’t made sense for a long time now, though we may finally understand why.
On the latest episode of his Arn podcast, Arn Anderson explained why Ziggler never moved into the main event scene permanently. According to Anderson, the higher ups in W..

How nice to finally meet you. Wrestling is a different form of entertainment as you constantly need fresh names and faces coming in to keep things moving. This could be due to people leaving, people moving on to different stories or just for the sake of bringing in some fresh blood. That is especially the case in NXT, where talent moves in and out in a hurry. It was the case again recently, and now they have done something to make it better.
Over the last few weeks, NXT has offered various glimpses of some recently arrived wrestlers but has yet to give them a formal introduction. While the fans are pretty clear about who they are and you can see a few peaks of them here and there, nothing had been officially announced. That problem has now been taken care of and things have been formally started.
During this week’s NXT, another video aired from Killer Kross and Scarlett Bordeaux. However, this time the announcers officially acknowledged it and announced that Kross and Bordeaux, now k..

Every little bit helps. The entire world has been turned upside down by the spread of the Coronavirus and there does not seem to be much hope as far as things getting better in the near future. While things will get better in the end, the situation is not exactly looking great at the moment. Little things can make the situation a bit easier, and now some wrestlers are doing their part.
One of the major problems with the whole Coronavirus situations is the lack of personal protective equipment for healthcare workers. As a result, it can make checking those potentially infected with the virus that much more dangerous, meaning a diagnosis can be a little more difficult. That is where the wrestling industry can step in, using their own brand of skills.
According to the BBC, Mexican wrestler El Hijo de Soberano is making and selling lucha libre themed face masks for use to help stop the spread of the Coronavirus. Sobreano has been using the same material that he uses to make wrestling att..

He can make this work. The future of the wrestling world seems to be in good hands as there are more young, talented performers than the business has seen in a long time. That is a great thing to see and something that you can’t really plant to have happen. However, one of the brighter stars of the future might be slowed back a bit by an injury, and he would know more about it than anyone.
There are very few wrestlers around these days who can match the speaking abilities of Maxwell Jacob Friedman. He has as quick of a wit as you can find today and that makes him one of the most valuable assets that AEW has. That makes him someone you would want to see on television fairly frequently, but that has not been the case as of late. Now, we have a better idea of why.
He would know best. Check out Friedman’s update on his medical status:

This week on Dynamite, Friedman gave an update on his health status, announcing that he was currently out of action due to a hangnail. The update comes a..

NXT
Date: April 22, 2020
Location: Full Sail University, Winter Park, Florida
Commentators: Tom Phillips, Byron Saxton
We’re at an interesting point here as they are having to come up with some more stories without a full crew. It certainly seems that Adam Cole is gone for the time being, meaning we need to find a way to fill time until Velveteen Dream can challenge him. Dream has something to do tonight though, as he faces Finn Balor. Let’s get to it.
Opening recap.
Something has happened to Finn Balor in the locker room and he’s out of the match against Dream.
Here’s Dream to say new levels and new devils while doing Balor’s finger guns. In his experience, sometimes you are just dealing with the same new demons. Now he has been stood up by a demon….and here Adam Cole to interrupt. A lot of people have been assuming that the winner of Dream and Balor would be the new #1 contender and now Balor is nowhere to be found.
Cole knows what Dream is trying to do but he’ll never be the NX..

Welcome to KB’s Old School (and New School) Reviews. I’ve been reviewing wrestling shows for over ten years now and have reviewed over 5,000 shows. Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, I’ll be posting a new review here on Wrestlingrumors.net, starting today. 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?
WWF House Show
Date: August 13, 1988
Location: Los Angeles Sports Arena, Los Angeles, California
Commentators: Gorilla Monsoon, Superstar Billy Graham
It’s another show that was recently added to the Network and it’s from my favorite era so let’s take a look. Randy Savage is the World Champion here and defending against Andre the Giant while Hulk Hogan is taking a bit of a break. We’re also coming up on Summerslam so you can expect to hear quite a bit about the show. Let’s get to it.
The announcers t..

Yeah it’s still going. Wednesday was a bad day for WWE, with over three dozen people either being released or furloughed from the company. That is not something you see from them very often, if ever, and the situation left several questions. One such question was whether or not WWE was done letting people go, and it turns out that they weren’t finished quite yet.
While most of the people let go were main roster wrestlers, there were other people from other lines of work who lost their jobs as well. Some of these names were from down in NXT, which has a rather big lineup of its own. In addition to the people you see on television, there is also the Florida live event circuit. NXT took a beating of its on Friday, with several more releases taking place.
Friday saw five more NXT releases on Friday, including the following names according to PWInsider.com:
Taynara Conti
Tino Sabbatelli
Cezar Bononi
Mars Wang
Conti and Sabbatelli had appeared the most of the four, with both of them appe..

That didn’t go well. To say Ronda Rousey was a big success in WWE is about as much of an understatements as you can get. While it’s true that she had a lot of attention, star power and celebrity status when she came into the company, she hit the ground running and was a huge star in the company the second she arrived. Since leaving though, things have not been as pleasant and one famous wrestling personality didn’t take kindly to it.
Last week, Rousey gave an interview where she did not have the most positive things to say about her time in WWE. Rousey said that while she did love her time with the rest of the locker room and wanted to help them, she wanted nothing to do with the “ungrateful” fans, blaming them for ruining her time with the company. This rubbed some people the wrong way and someone had something to say about her comments.
Jim Cornette responded to Rousey’s comments this week on his Jim Cornette’s Drive Thru podcast. Cornette did not care for Rousey’s statements, with..

That’s going to make for some interesting time. There are not many ways for wrestling companies to keep going at the moment, but one of the best ways seems to be running marathon taping sessions. The idea is rather simple: tape a bunch of stuff in advance so you have as much content as you need for the next several weeks if not months. Some companies are doing that, but one show is going to look a little weird for the time being.
While WWE and AEW have gotten most of the attention in the wrestling world as of late, there are some other companies still running events, even if they might not be on the same stage. That is the case with Impact Wrestling, which is the latest company trying its hand at the marathon taping idea. However, things are not going to go as they have been in recent weeks.
According to the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, neither Impact Wrestling World Champion Tessa Blanchard nor Tag Team Champions the North were present at the company’s recent tapings. Blanchard ch..