Dave Meltzer of The Wrestling Observer Newsletter reports that it was Vince McMahon who put together this year’s men’s Royal Rumble match. Jamie Noble and Michael “PS” Hayes also assisted the WWE Chairman with putting the match together.

WWE Hall of Famer Pat Patterson, the individual that created the Rumble match, was also backstage at Sunday’s event to offer his expertise.

The post Individuals Who Put Together This Year’s Men’s Royal Rumble Match Revealed appeared first on Wrestling News & WWE News, Rumors & Spoilers.

Justin Barrasso of Sports Illustrated wrote a piece about Monday’s 25th Anniversary of RAW that revealed several behind-the-scene notes from the event.

According to Barrasso, the reason WWE opened the show with “Stone Cold” Steve Austin and Vince McMahon was an attempt to attract more casual viewers to the show to help build towards WrestleMania.

“The goal remains to attract more casual viewers during the build to WrestleMania 34, which is why the show opened with Steve Austin and Vince McMahon in an interaction that was certain to attract millions of viewers, many of whom do not watch the product every week.”

Barrasso has many other notes from the show, which can be read at this link.

The post Reason Vince McMahon & Steve Austin Opened Monday’s RAW appeared first on Wrestling News & WWE News, Rumors & Spoilers.

Taz is joined on today’s show by his co-host, Seth.

Taz opens today’s show speaking about his decision to wear suits when he worked on Smackdown’s commentary team. All the other commentators at that time were were t-shirts or other outfits, so Taz wanted to wear a suit to be different. Vince McMahon loved the way Taz looked in a suit and soon mandated that all the announcers needed to wear a suit on air. He got ridiculed by Michael Cole and Jim Ross for a while after that because they were forced to wear a suit because of him.

Taz gets into his analysis of last night’s episode of NXT.

He points out that he liked the cold open of the show featuring The Undisputed Era. He likes that they stared into the camera while cutting their promo, but this was a bit too similar to how nWo would cut their promos during the attitude era for Taz’s liking. NXT even produced this to have a guitar riff in the background like the old nWo promos as well.

Taz urges Triple H to get together with his staff and come up with some original, creative ideas. He points out that this isn’t the 1980’s NWA or 1990’s WCW, this is 2018 NXT, and they have enough creative people there to come up with fresh, new concepts on their own.

Taz says that he’s just going to stop being critical of Mauro Ranallo’s commentary work on NXT programming. It’s obvious that nobody in WWE is going to help Ranallo get better or ask him to fix the things that he continues to do wrong, so it’s pointless to keep talking about it in Taz’s opinion. Instead, Taz simply muted the majority of last night’s broadcast.

The post The Taz Show Recap – NXT Analysis, Kassius Ohno Needs Work, Big Praise for Lars Sullivan, More! appeared first on Wrestling News & WWE News, Rumors & Spoilers.

While speaking to Between the Ropes, Chris Jericho discussed the original plans for WrestleMania 33 and revealed that at one point the plan was for him to face Nakamura on the card.

Jericho explained, “After we went to Japan in June or July I remember coming back and talking to Vince, and I said you’ve got to bring this Nakamura guy up to the main roster. I wanna work with him. Let’s debut him at WrestleMania. I said I’ll stay until WrestleMania if I can work with Nakamura. Vince said okay. Then about a month later, I said that I actually think me and Kevin Owens could work at WrestleMania.”

You can listen to Jericho’s remarks below:

The post Chris Jericho Reveals Original Plans for WrestleMania 33 appeared first on Wrestling News & WWE News, Rumors & Spoilers.

While speaking with Peter Rosenberg for Rosenberg Radio, Daniel Bryan talked about his retirement from WWE and revealed that he initially refused to retire from WWE when Vince McMahon asked him to do so.

“I get the call from Vince McMahon on a Saturday and I retire on a Monday in Seattle, Washington. And I got a call on a Saturday from Vince McMahon and said, ‘I would like you to retire Monday in Seattle. I just think it would be the best for you,’ that sort of thing. At first, I said, ‘I don’t want to do it.’ And then, I talked to Brie and called him back and I was like, ‘hey, if I’m going to have to retire, my mom can be there, my friends can be there, there can be this support system around me.’” Bryan noted, “I was very thankful that WWE gave me such a platform to retire on, but it was just a hard day.”

Bryan continued, “They asked me to do commentary for a thing that they did called the Cruiserweight Classic, which was on the WWE Network. And they asked me to do that, and I said, ‘yeah, that sounds great!’ It’s only 10 episodes and I only have too go do it a couple of times, and I get to help this young, independent talent because they were all unsigned talent at the time. And I thought it was great, but then, they told me, ‘you’re coming back as the General Manager.’ That wasn’t a question. That’s not an ask. And I was like, ‘argh, I don’t know if I want to do this.’”

“One of the hard things about what I do now is that the entrance is the best part. And then, I go out there and I talk. And, like, I’ve gotten better at this whole thing. I used to be someone who is very bad on the microphone. But now, I’ve developed into being more comfortable with it, finding myself with it, and that sort of thing. But it’s still not my passion. I’ve learned how to do it because that’s what my job required.”

You can listen to the full interview here.

The post Daniel Bryan Reveals He Initially Refused to Retire When Vince McMahon Asked Him To appeared first on Wrestling News & WWE News, Rumors & Spoilers.

– Monday’s Christmas episode of RAW is expected to be a sell out or at least very close to as sell out in Chicago, IL.

– After Vince McMahon sold 3.34 million shares of his stock on Thursday to help fund his new XLF project, the price for WWE stock dropped to $29.55.

– Dave Meltzer pointed out on Wrestling Observer Radio that The USA Network has had a streak of being the #1 overall cable network in prime time for the past 12 years. This goes without saying that the network is not going to give up it’s right to have WWE programming easily when the contract between the two expire in 2019.

The post Monday’s RAW Expected to Sell Out, WWE Stock Takes A Hit, Negotiations with USA Network appeared first on Wrestling News & WWE News, Rumors & Spoilers.

Rusev took to Twitter to joke about the rumors of Vince McMahon possibly bringing back the XFL professional football league. He sent out the following tweets:

If it’s true sign me up for D Tackle! #RusevDay

— Rusev (@RusevBUL) December 16, 2017

In the next few days i may or may not release a starting lineup offense and defense for the NASHVILLE CRUSHERS ! Because it’s #RusevDay

— Rusev (@RusevBUL) December 16, 2017

The post Rusev Jokes About Rumored XFL Return appeared first on Wrestling News & WWE News, Rumors & Spoilers.

The Big Show recently spoke with Sports Illustrated. Here are some highlights from the interview:

His commentary work: “That’s definitely a possibility. That’s something I’ve discussed quite heavily with Michael Cole, Jerry Lawler, and JBL. I need to sit down with Vince and Hunter to see what’s next for the Big Show. Vince is all about giving opportunity, and Hunter is, too. Doing color commentary to help get the talent over is not something I’m opposed to doing. I could speak from my experience, but my number one goal would be to highlight why you should pay attention to what you are seeing in the ring.”

Big Show on going to the indies: “That’s never crossed my mind, and it’s something I’ve never been asked. But let’s be clear–I don’t have the talent that Cody Rhodes has. I think Cody is one of the most underrated and underused talents that we ever let go. I was a huge fan of Cody, his ideas, and what he could have brought to the table, and I’m so happy that his success outside of WWE has been so good. Sometimes in this business, you have to go away to come back. You have to find out who you are. For me, at this stage in the game, I’m enjoying helping the next generation. I did everything I could to pass the torch to Braun. I had a hip resurfaced a couple months ago, so Vince and Hunter want me to finish on my main goal, which is getting healthy. Then we’ll discuss my future. There are a lot of projects I want to do with producing and acting outside of wrestling. As far as an indie run, I don’t know, but you never say never.”

Thoughts on WWE tending to rush storylines: “Sometimes, when stories are rushed or put together too fast, people can’t enjoy them. That’s the only criticism I have with our industry right now, it’s really tough to build stories like we used to. The writing was on the wall for my fight with Braun Strowman, because he looked like my replacement as the next dominant giant. When I came out in ’95, even though it was part of the storyline, I was known as the next evolution of Andre, the next giant. I was that young, athletic, trash-talking monster. That was my introduction to the industry, and I was able to build on that. Braun Strowman is the next evolution of that monster. He’s athletic and explosive. I think Kane is fantastic, but I don’t think people were ready for the angle between Kane and Braun or their match. Technically, psychologically, mechanically, there is nothing wrong with the matches, but people don’t like the story of the two opponents in the match. The crowd hasn’t been able to get into it yet, but with social media and our business, criticism is going to be a lot more prevalent.”

The post Big Show Asked If He’d Ever Work the Indie Circuit appeared first on Wrestling News & WWE News, Rumors & Spoilers.

While appearing on Busted Open Radio, Chris Jericho talked about informing Vince McMahon about his upcoming match at Wrestle Kingdom 12 and revealed that he didn’t actually get his permission to do the match. Jericho also mentioned that Vince seemed super excited about the match.

“I know he wasn’t upset because I called him six weeks before and told him as soon as the deal was done. I would never surprise him like that. You know, I didn’t ask him for his permission, but I didn’t have to. I told him what was going on, and to be quite frank with you guys, he was super excited about it.”

Jericho added that Vince knew his intentions were in the right place and that the situation is a win-win for everyone involved.

“You see the thing about Vince is he loves wrestling. It’s what he knows best, and I think obviously his mission is to seek and destroy and kill every other company. But I think he secretly likes it when other companies do good, because it just makes it better for his company. And when Chris Jericho goes to New Japan, everybody knows I’m not a New Japan guy. I’m a WWE guy. You see Chris Jericho vs. Kenny Omega, it’s not like it’s some kind of a behind the scenes screw job. It’s taking a great opportunity and helping the business, helping Kenny Omega, helping New Japan. But guess what? It helps Chris Jericho. Which in turn helps the WWE.”

The post Vince McMahon’s Reaction When Finding Out About Chris Jericho’s Match Against Kenny Omega appeared first on Wrestling News & WWE News, Rumors & Spoilers.

Matt Morgan recently spoke with the Wrestling Inc. Podcast. Here are some highlights from the interview:

WWE officials telling him to start wearing a mask to improve his character: “They put a mask on me, first they said because it was going to improve my body language. What? Anyways, you shut up and do what you’re told. So I went to wrestling practice with a hood and a mask, and then I’d be on TV with a mask,” Morgan explained. “So Jim Cornette was like, ‘How the hell do I explain this? You’re the top babyface, you’re the champion, what do I do?’ So I lost a Loser Leaves Town match, come back as The Blueprint and wear a hood and I’m not Matt Morgan anymore, I’m just The Blueprint.”

The mask being part of the plan to turn him into Kane’s Brother: “The cool part was they were going to turn this into, I was gonna be Kane’s brother Abel,” Morgan said. “And I would’ve killed for that! I would’ve worn a hood gladly for that just because I’m a huge ‘Taker and Kane fan. What leads to Kane leads to ‘Taker, right? Nine-year-old Matt Morgan inside was going bananas.”

So what happened?: “Vince (McMahon) stepped in and came up with stuttering Matt Morgan.”

The post Original Plans Revealed for Kane to Have Another Brother on WWE Television appeared first on Wrestling News & WWE News, Rumors & Spoilers.