Your Daily Source to Wrestling News
As previously noted, Brie Bella and Daniel Bryan welcomed their daughter Bridie this past Tuesday. Brie posted the following photo on their Instagram account:
“The greatest feeling in the world!!! Can’t even express the love I feel for her. From the moment I saw her I was in love. Thank you all for your love and support. Birdie Joe is her Daddy’s mini me!! #Imfinallyamommy #greatestlove #motherhood”
Lana defeated Danielle Kamella at the WWE NXT Live Event in Daytona Beach, FL. The finish of the match came when Lana used Rusev’s Accolade finishing hold on Kamella.
As noted, Lana is working NXT events and training at the Performance Center before she makes her SmackDown Live debut. She is scheduled to work the NXT Live Events in Largo and Dade City this weekend.
Russo says that WWE’s brand split is ‘atrocious’ in his opinion. When he almost returned to WWE in 2002, the first thing he said to Vince McMahon was, ‘You have to get rid of the brand split”. Eventually WWE took Russo’s advice and eliminated the brand split, but now a decade later they’ve returned to this failed concept yet again.
When he worked for TNA, he told Dixie Carter on multiple occasions that there were several performers on the roster that didn’t deserve to be there. He never thought he’d be saying that about WWE, but all these years later that’s the situation he finds himself in.
Russo decided to do a list of the 30 names that he’d want to work with, if he was writing a wrestling television show today. All of these people are stars, have the ‘It’ factor, and deserve to be on National television, unlike a lot of today’s performers.
Brock Lesnar & John Cena – He says that these two guys would have been just as popular in the attitude area as they are today, and they’re clearly in a league of their own right now. He does admit that he has an issue with the fact that Lesnar only shows up for a handful of dates a year, especially since he’s the Champion right now.
WWE is advertising Hideo Itami and Chris Jericho for the upcoming WWE Live Event on June 30th and July 1st in Tokyo, Japan at the Ryogoku Kokugikan. As many of you are ware, Jericho was written off of television so that he could tour with his band Fozzy.
Fozzy is booked for most of this month with their last event listed on their website as June 24th in Seattle. Jericho will most-likely return to WWE television around this time on a regular bases.
Bischoff opens today’s show speaking about RAW’s steadily declining ratings. He says that he’s still not worried about the ratings, because RAW is live 52 weeks a year and its ratings are impacted by seasonal occurrences. With the weather improving, there are less people watching television overall. In addition to that, they’re up against NBA Playoffs.
He says that although the rating is low, they still drew 2.4 Million people over a three hour span. He adds that there are producers of huge shows that have $5-$7 Million dollar budgets that would cut their left leg off to have 2.4 Million people watch their show.
Bischoff says that the recently announced Women’s Tournament that will air on the WWE Network is a very good idea. He thinks that the timing in perfect for this type of tournament, and he predicts that it will be very successful.
WWE teased a heel turn already with Charlotte Flair on this week’s episode of SmackDown Live during a backstage segment. For those who missed it, Charlotte was acting heel during he backstage segment when she pointed blame at Noami for Becky Lynch’s loss. Lynch stepped in to clam things down. While things appear to look good right now, they have begun teasing a possible Flair vs. Naomi match, which may take place after WWE Backlash.
Dave Meltzer mentioned on the latest installment of Wrestling Observer Radio that there was a lot of opposition in WWE on the idea of turning her babyface in the first place because they believed it was not exactly the right time for it. It is very possible that she only remains as a babyface for a little while before she turns back to a heel character.
Dave Meltzer mentioned on today’s episode of Wrestling Observer Live that plans Braun Strowman and the WWE Universal Championship would be discussed in a meeting today with WWE officials. The meeting was supposed to take place yesterday, but for unknown reasons it didn’t happen.
Meltzer mentioned that the company is hopeful that Strowman can be cleared to return to action by July. The feeling is if he can only be out of action for a month, the scheduled bout against Brock Lesnar for the WWE Universal Title won’t have to be put off. If Braun is unable to return in time for the July pa-per-view, Finn Balor and Seth Rollins would be the top candidates as possible replacements at the Great Balls of Fire event. Braun vs. Brock would then be pushed back to the SummerSlam event.
The Wrestling Observer Newsletter reports that Impact Wrestling has signed Northeast indie wrestler MJ Jenkins to a deal.
Jenkins worked the most recent set of Impact Wrestling tapings and made her debut for the company at the “One Night Only: Knockouts Knockdown” event in a losing effort to Rosemary. She trained at the school owned by WWE Hall of Famer Johnny Rodz and received a WWE tryout back in 2016 at the Arnold Classic.
It was noted earlier this week that Emma was sent home from the WWE European tour after she suffered an injury last Friday. Emma mentioned on Instagram that she was hopeful for good news regarding this injury when she goes to see the doctors.
It appears that she didn’t get the good news that she was hoping for as she posted the following cryptic message:
A post shared by Emma – WWE Superstar (@tenilledashwood) on May 11, 2017 at 12:00pm PDT
