Former WWE personality Yamaguchi-San has been hospitalized after suffering a stroke. Yamaguchi’s brother Shunsuke, who currently does Japanese commentary for WWE, posted the following on Facebook:

“Some of u might have heard but my brother Yusuke aka Yamaguchi Wally or Yamaguchi San had a stroke. This is a pic from 1 am est. Don’t know how long he has. Some of his friends from school and Gong Magazine have visited him. Love you brother!!!”

Funaki also poster the following on Twitter:

Prayers to Yamaguchi-san and family #Kaientai pic.twitter.com/be2PvGegYf

— FUNAKI (@shofufu824) December 14, 2017

The post Former WWE Personality Suffers A Stroke appeared first on Wrestling News & WWE News, Rumors & Spoilers.

Russo is joined on today’s show by his co-host Jeff Lane.

Lane presents a clip of Bryan Alvarez from last week, where Alvarez said that wrestling fans seem to enjoy watching big guys smashing into each other again. Russo says the fans were always into the big guys, but for a period of time little ‘dweebs’ like Alvarez were convincing marks all around the world that small guys drew money.

He points out that WWE embraced talents like Kevin Owens, Sami Zayn and Finn Balor, but not one of them drew a dime. Now none of those guys are in the main event picture and the only guy that fans are interested in at all is Kevin Owens because he’s in a storyline with Shane McMahon. If McMahon wasn’t part of that feud, nobody would care about Owens either.

Russo says that WWE realized they made a mistake and now they’re gone back to doing what made them money for 30 years: spotlighting big guys.

Another clip of Alvarez presents him discussing Okada’s number one ranking on the PWI500. Alvarez pointed out that Okada was the first Japanese wrestler to be ranked number one, but Russo couldn’t care less. He says that this is a fake list ranking fake fighters, and there’s no reason to give it the time of day. Next thing they’ll be arguing about who gets a Slammy.

The post Vince Russo’s The Brand Recap – WWE Embracing Big Guys, Dirt Sheets Wrong About Jeff Jarrett Story, Are Promos Essential? More! appeared first on Wrestling News & WWE News, Rumors & Spoilers.

Sami Zayn recently spoke to The Sam Roberts Wrestling Podcast, here are some highlights from the interview:

WWE moving passed stereotypical character: “Yeah, well, I’d like to think that we’ve kind of evolved passed that in the [pro] wrestling business. [It is] probably not entirely true. See what our WWE Champion Jinder Mahal is currently [doing]… even he’s not like a stereotypical Indian in a way, the new school. There [are intricacies]. I mean, the 80s was just a different time.”

“That change has really only happened recently. I’d say, I don’t know, in the last generation, if you want to call it that. I don’t think you have to be the thing that you are and I don’t think you have to be that simple. Japanese guy? Come out and bow. Or Irish guy? Do a little jig. There’s no Arab guy, ‘yeah, put on a turban.’ We’re passed that. And I’m proud of that. I’m proud to see that the company that I dreamed of working for my entire life that I’m not fortunate enough to work for, which is the WWE, I don’t have to fit into these boxes anymore. None of us do.”

Ska influence for his character and how it was integrated into his character: “Yeah, [ska music was foreign to WWE brass] and It’s not something that I actively pitched or something. God, I don’t know if I want to get into the whole story. The nuts and bolts is they kind of picked up on the fact that I liked that kind of music, that I’m into punk or ska or whatever it is, and they were like, ‘oh, you like this kind of music?’ The music I had at the time was pretty generic stock [music], like ‘dun-nun-nun-nun-nun, juh-juh-juh-juh-juh-juh [emulating a heavy guitar riff]’ and it really wasn’t me. And then, Hunter, Triple H, thought… Paul to me, Triple H to you, but he got wind of it and he was like, ‘oh, that’s who you are and that’s the kind of music you like. We can do something that’s more in tune with who you are as a person in real life.’ So again, it goes back to that thinking of like, not fitting into these boxes and bringing out who you really are and playing that up and amplifying that.”

Zayn’s response to Roberts on the suggestion that his current TV persona is annoying: “I hate the word ‘annoying’! I don’t know, ‘enthusiastic’ perhaps. Well, not to get into the whole thing, but it’s all about the interaction with these other characters, so if you’re going to roll your eyes at me, I’m annoying, but if you find it, like, charming, which it could be, and because it’s aspects of my real life personality, and there have been times, I’m sure, that I’ve annoyed people. And there have been some times, I’m sure, that I’ve charmed some people.” Zayn added, “if you’re going to sell it, so to speak, as endearing, it’s endearing. But if you’re going to have guys rolling their eyes, then, ‘urgh, this guy.’ Then, it’s whatever you make it to be.”

His character being in a state of flux: “The character is in flux, I would say definitely because there [are] aspects of the character, and I don’t want to drone on and on about this too much, but there [are] aspects of the character that’s about always standing your ground, and fighting the good fight, and always trying to do things the right way, like an upstanding guy. And again, aspects of that were more in display, let’s say, when I was doing a program with Braun Strowman, this insurmountable oppressor, so I was, like, standing up to an oppressor and standing up to tyranny. Right. And then, like a week later, I’m George Costanza, so the character is in this strange sort of position at the moment. Yeah, and exactly, I think there is a balance and I think the balance, the middle ground, is me, the real me, because I am both of those.”

The post Sami Zayn Explains Why His Character Is In A State of Flux appeared first on Wrestling News & WWE News, Rumors & Spoilers.

As seen on last night’s NXT Takeover: Brooklyn III, Alexander Wolfe and Eric Young, the members of SAnitY defeated the Authors of Pain to become the new NXT Tag Team Champions. However, one-half of the new tag champs, Wolfe, ended up making history with his victory.

Wolfe became the first ever German-born superstar to hold a championship in the WWE.

He began training to become a pro-wrestler at the mere age of 13 and later on competed in a German promotion known as East Side Wrestling. He has also done a number of Japanese Puroresu stints as well as a brief stint in CZW before being contracted to the WWE in 2015.

The post Alexander Wolfe Creates History at NXT Takeover: Brooklyn III appeared first on Wrestling News & WWE News, Rumors & Spoilers.

Russo is joined on today’s show by Big Vito LoGrasso.

On today’s show, Russo and Big Vito will try to uncover what led to the transition from the professional wrestling they loved into this new Japanese style. Russo says that he simply has no care for the Japanese style of professional wrestling, and he doesn’t care about any sports outside of the United States in general. That’s why losing the North American style of wrestling that he loved to the Japanese style is so disheartening.

Russo just doesn’t understand the concept of ‘strong style’ because it’s 2017 and everyone over the age of 12 realizes that wrestling is a work. If these guys are so tough and they want to kill each other in the ring, why don’t they just fight for real somewhere?

Big Vito informs that he traveled to Japan to work for a promotion in 1992, and it was a significant adjustment for him because the style was very different than what he was accustomed to in the United States. The ‘strong style’ was very evident to him right away, but it was a different strong style than what we know today.

Back then, Japanese ‘strong style’ was defined by guys like Bruiser Brody, Vader, The Road Warriors; big, powerful, believable men that could lay their offence in and be aggressive in the ring. Today, ‘strong style’ is defined by average sized men who flip and flop all around the ring without any safe way to protect themselves and their opponents.

The post Vince Russo’s The Brand Recap – Japanese Influence on Today’s Product, Wrestling’s Downhill Trend, Why Are Talents Killing Each Other? More! appeared first on Wrestling News & WWE News, Rumors & Spoilers.

On a recent episode of his podcast, Conversation with the Big Guy, Ryback let out his thoughts on Nia Jax’s controversial tweet about the WWE Creative. Jax had tweeted criticizing the red brand’s creative team by pointing out how RAW doesn’t use all it’s women wrestlers while its rival brand, SmackDown LIVE does.

The tweet was then quickly taken down by Jax herself as it was garnering a lot of attention and possibly made the creative look really bad.

Here are Ryback’s comments on the said issue : (quotes credit ewrestlingnews.com)

“Everybody is frustrated there, from top to bottom. She’s been handed a lot early on, in my opinion. It’s very early on to make a comment like that and when I saw that I totally understand it, like, if you are not on TV a couple of weeks is frustrating. With her character on TV, it’s not like they can just throw her in random. It could be a good TV that you’re not on TV every week. If you’re being booked for live events, who the f**k cares? You’re making money until they find something good for you, but when you go and make comments like that, there’s no good that comes out of that because it’s not like real sports where you control the outcome. It’s writers and Vince, they control your character and they can write her and job her out every week. She has to either go do it or not do it and get released, so she put herself in a real bad position by making comments like that on social media. It reminded me of that guy with Lord Tensai, Sakamoto. I remember there was Japanese heat for another Japanese guy coming on the roster, Yoshi had gone on social media and made a comment. If we were in UFC it’d be cool, you may have gotten yourself booked for a big fight and a big payday, but in pro-wrestling you can’t go on there and say that. A week later he got Jobbed out on RAW. That is what it reminded me of because no good ever comes out of it, but she’s young, so it is what it is.”

You can check out all our other podcast recaps from Jim Ross, Taz, Ryback and many more at this link.

The post Ryback Criticizes Nia Jax’s Tweet About WWE Creative appeared first on Wrestling News & WWE News, Rumors & Spoilers.

Welcome to NXT TakeOver: Chicago!

For the past several months, the general feeling has been that NXT had lost a little something with so many talents leaving and few stars being made in their wake. Last months NXT TakeOver: Orlando was a very good show but definitely a transitional one. Tonight in Chicago however, all the places have fallen in place and NXT is set to have its best show of the year.

NXT Champion, Bobby Roode, has reigned supreme since defeating Shinsuke Nakamura. There were a number of viable contender’s to Roode’s title, from Kassius Ohno and Roderick Strong, to Drew McIntyre and Eric Young. However it was the returning Hideo Itami who staked his claim as next-in-line. Itami has had a rough tenure in NXT thus far, having been injured for the majority of that time, but tonight looks set to be his crowning. Roode has been a great Champion so far but the time feels right for Hideo to finally assert himself as the man in NXT.

He’s been ready to Takeover for years…@HideoItami pic.twitter.com/adc21lIGNg

— Shane Thorne (@ShaneThorneWWE) May 18, 2017

Asuka is still undefeated! The Empress has been undefeated since her debut in NXT, and this is an amazing fact that WWE doesn’t play-up enough. Asuka has had a personality change as of late and she’s so much fun to watch. Tonight’s match was originally a Fatal 4-Way with Ember Moon, Nikki Cross, and Ruby Riot, however Moon injured her arm and was forced out of the match. So we’re set for a Triple Threat match for the NXT Women’s Championship and Asuka’s streak is once again on the line. This should be a great match but I would like to see Asuka retain again. Nikki Cross and Ruby Riot are more focused on killing each other, than they are the title, so I think it would make sense for Asuka to retain and look towards a new challenge. Maybe Asuka will face Ember Moon again, or maybe, and more exciting if you ask me, she will be challenged by NXT’s newest signee: Io Shirai. This Japanese phenomenon has wrestled for Lucha Underground and she would make for an amazing opponent for Asuka; imagine Asuka’s face when a rising talent from Japan comes to challenge her as she did several years ago, the story writes itself.

Next up we have the NXT Tag Team Championship match between D.I.Y and The Author’s of Pain. These two teams have been doing battles for months and tonight is set to be an end-cap on their rivalry, as they square-off in the first-ever NXT tag team ladder match! As is customary for D.I.Y, this match is expected to be an off-the-charts affair that blows the roof off of the All-State Arena in Chicago. We had a scare over the past 24 hours as Tommaso Ciampa was injured at a live event, however he has been cleared to compete and will look to win back the NXT Tag Team Championships with his partner, Johnny Gargano!

caught #DIY preparing for their big match tomorrow. check https://t.co/4fHUDkjviV for the story pic.twitter.com/T6vUsFvUIH

— Cathy Kelley (@catherinekelley) May 19, 2017

Another match on tonight’s card see’s the United Kingdom Championship be defended, as Pete Dunne challenges Tyler Bate. This match comes hot-off the heels of the first episode of the WWE UK show, in which Dunne defeated Trent Seven to become number one contender, and Bate overcame Mark Andrews in an insane match. Dunne and Bate were the two finalists of the United Kingdom Tournament, which saw Bate crowned as the first-ever UK Champion, and tonight we get the rematch. This match has all the makings of an instant-classic.

Elsewhere on the card tonight, Roderick Strong takes-on Eric Young in a bid to destroy Sanity once and for all. Strong has had a renaissance since WWE aired the 2-part series looking at his difficult life. Can he do what Tye Dillinger never could, and finally take-out the head of the beast? I expect at least one more match to take place on tonight’s show, possible a women’s match, or Aleister Black.

NXT TakeOver: Chicago begins at 8 PM ET, with the half-hour pre-show beginning at 7:30 PM. Which match are you most excited for? Let us know in the comments, be sure to check out the awesome Ringside News app, and enjoy the show!

The post WWE NXT TakeOver: Chicago Live Results – May 20 2017 appeared first on Wrestling News & WWE News, Rumors & Spoilers.