It was announced on this week’s edition of NXT TV that the final four teams in the Dusty Rhodes Tag-Team Classic will advance to NXT Takeover: Respect on October 7th to compete in the semi-finals and finals in the same evening.
NXT Tag-Team Champions The Vaudevillians will take on The Mechanics at this week’s NXT live event in Texas, while The Hype Bros vs. Jason Jordan & Chad Gable is also expected to happen this week. With Rhyno and Baron Corbin advancing this week, below are the updated brackets.
Bracket A – First Round Matches
Enzo Amore and Colin Cassady defeated Angelo Dawkins and Sawyer Fulton
Finn Balor and Samoa Joe defeated The Lucha Dragons
Bracket B – First Round Matches
The Vaudevillians defeated Wesley Blake and Buddy Murphy
Scott Dawson and Dash Wilder defeated Tucker Knight and Elias Samson
Bracket C – First Round Matches
Mojo Rawley and Zack Ryder defeated Noah Kekoa and Alexander Wolfe
Jason Jordan and Chad Gable defeated Neville and Solomon Crowe
Bracket D – First Round Matches
Rhyno and Baron Corbin defeated The Ascension
Johnny Gargano and Tommaso Ciampa defeated Tyler Breeze and Bull Dempsey
Bracket A – Second Round Matches
Balor and Joe defeated Enzo and Cass
Bracket B – Second Round Matches
The Vaudevillians vs. The Mechanics
Bracket C – Second Round Matches
The Hype Bros vs. Gable and Jordan
Bracket D – Second Round Matches
Rhyno and Corbin defeated Gargano and Ciampa
Semi-Finals
– Balor and Joe vs. The Vaudevillians or The Mechanics
– Rhyno and Corbin vs. The Hype Bros or Gable and Jordan
– As noted earlier, NXT Diva Asuka (formerly known as Kana) will be making her TV debut next week for her official contract signing. It’s rumored that she’ll be making her in-ring debut at NXT Takeover: Respect.
– WWE confirmed that next week’s NXT will feature Tyler Breeze vs. Bull Depsey and The Vaudevillains defending the NXT tag team titles against Blake & Murphy.
TNA President Dixie Carter recently spoke with Sports Illustrated’s Extra Mustard bllog about a number of topics. Below are some of the highlights from the interview.
On TNA’s status with Destination America: “The biggest challenge for us is building a brand in the U.S. That’s where we need to grow. We’re contracted to Destination America through the end of the year, and we are in discussions going on for 2016.”
On TNA’s future: “TNA will continue exist, and on a level that far exceeds what we’re currently doing. I’m looking ahead five years down the road, not a year down the road.”
On TNA creating competition and WWE: “Besides WWE, we’re the only global promotion in the world. We’re in over 120 countries worldwide and in 19 languages. We made a conscious decision about three years ago to take a step back and focus on young talent. We’ve had some of the biggest names ever on our show. People have given us a hard time about using WWE talent, but after a hot run with us, almost every one of them has worked with WWE again. That is a huge compliment for us.
“I do feel we’ve taken some unfair blows. Competition, no matter who it is, is healthy. It’s absolutely imperative for the industry to grow. There’s a reason that there is a Lowe’s on the corner of every Home Depot, and a Walgreens across from every CVS. It’s important for the industry.”
WWE COO Triple H announced on Thursday that NXT Takeover: London is officially sold out. The show takes place on Wednesday, December 16th from the SSE Arena Wembley and will air live on the WWE Network.
“I’ve lived with my longtime girlfriend, Lauren Hashian, going on, like, eight, nine years now,” Johnson remarked when asked if there was something he wanted to get off his chest. “She’s a singer-songwriter. We spend a lot of time with my daughter in Florida, Simone, who’s 13. We do these stories and we talk so much about the business end, the success end, but then Lauren isn’t mentioned and my daughter isn’t mentioned. I always like making sure we find the balance and my home life is in there and Lauren Hashian is in there and my daughter is in there.”
He continued, “You gotta get the better half in there. With all the cool shit and success that I’ve been lucky enough to get? That doesn’t happen unless the home life is solid.”
WWE’s ongoing storyline involving Rusev, Summer Rae, Lana and Dolph Ziggler will most likely conclude with Rusev and Lana being reunited, according to the Wrestling Observer Newsletter.
The feeling behind the scenes is that both Rusev and Lana are worse off now than when they were together, which is hard to deny. Rusev remains a dominant physical force and has been pretty funny on Twitter when taunting Lana, but this angle has not done his character any favors. Lana was red hot earlier this year and really on the cusp of becoming a breakout performer before WWE stripped her of the evil Russian spokesperson gimmick that got her over.
No word on whether Ziggler and Summer Rae will wind up on television, but hopefully Rusev and Lana can rekindle the heat they had just a few months ago.
– For WWE’s European tour in November, one tour, which includes shows in Leipzig, Germany on 11/13 and in Stuttgart, Germany on 11/14, is advertising John Cena vs. Seth Rollins for the WWE World Heavyweight Championship and Kevin Owens vs. Cesaro as the top two bouts.
– Tanner Saraceno of WWE Tough Enough fought at a Gladiator Challenge MMA show in Kuwait back on 9/11, however there hasn’t been any word on results from the show. He says he still wants to do pro wrestling and his plan now is to get fights to help him save money so he can attend wrestling school, as WWE hasn’t apparently offered him a developmental deal as they have with several other contestants from this past season.
There was an NXT talent meeting held on September 3rd having to do with what we reported previously about talent not getting paid on the house for the successful NXT live events, including a $200,000 plus gate in San Jose, California.
The question was whether or not the talent would get paid for the huge gate in Brooklyn, New York at the Barclays Center the night before WWE SummerSlam, as they sold out the venue as well, producing what had to be in the high six-figure range in terms of the gate.
Canyon Ceman told talent that they would not be paid for the Brooklyn show, or paid extra for the upcoming U.K. tour, noting that the overall NXT business model is losing money and they are all still getting paid their guarantees.
It was also noted that unlike the main roster talent, who have to pay for their road expenses, WWE does cover travel expenses for NXT talents when they work WWE live events, where they also get paid extra, and they also get road expenses covered for the first 90 days once they are on the main roster.
Several NXT talents took the idea of NXT being positioned as an alternate touring brand, which it basically is, seriously, and figured that they would be paid like an alternative brand, at least on the bigger events. Essentially, it is a third touring brand for the public, but to the talent, it’s still a developmental system.
Former WWE writer Brian Gewirtz was named Senior Vice President of Development for Seven Bucks Productions, the production company owned by Dwayne Johnson and his ex-wife Dany Garcia, who recently appeared on an episode of Total Divas as the new business manager of Eva Marie.
When Gewirtz left WWE back in July, it was reported that he would be taking on an executive role in Johnson’s company.
Gewirtz was the lead WWE writer for several years, but was taken off of the writing team back in 2013, although he would continue to remain with the company through a consultant role. He would be brought back to the writing team whenever Dwayne Johnson would return as The Rock for WWE appearances, because Johnson would often use him to help write his material.
Gewirtz’s new role in Johnson’s company will be to oversee television content development.
– WWE talent, including those who are from previous eras and are no longer wrestling but are still affiliated with company through Legends deals or other ways, were told to not have any contact with Hulk Hogan.
There are those who have talked about the situation as a double standard, as WWE has immortalized Ultimate Warrior now, cleaned up his past, given him a statue, all the while the feeling is he said things as bad, if not worse and was public with his comments as opposed to private.
– Former WCW president Eric Bischoff is the guest on the latest edition of Ric Flair’s “Woo Nation” podcast. As Bischoff and Flair have been involved in lawsuits and heated battles over the years, part one of Flair’s two-part conversation with Bischoff should be a fun episode for fans. You can download the show at Play.it.
After months of denials, it’s official, albeit with a twist: TNA Impact Wrestling has been cancelled by Destination America effective the end of the year. While the original report from Dave Meltzer in the Wrestling Observer Newsletter said that Destination America’s opt-out clause allowed them to cancel Impact after the end of this month, TNA President Dixie Carter told Sports Illustrated that they’re done at the end of the year.
In the Sports Illustrated article, Justin Barrasso wrote that “[Spike TV] cut ties with TNA last December, leaving TNA without a television network in the United States. History repeated itself a year later, as TNA’s current home for TV–Destination America–will no longer air Impact in 2016.” Dixie Carter added that “The biggest challenge for us is building a brand in the U.S. That’s where we need to grow. We’re contracted to Destination America through the end of the year, and we are in discussions going on for 2016.”
Per Meltzer, the original memo issued within Discovery (Destination America’s parent company) read as follows:
Destination America is not renewing TNA Wrestling next year. While the ratings were strong, the audience was not large enough to justify the program investment. We plan to honor the current contract and continue to air original episodes of TNA Wrestling on Friday nights through the end of the third quarter 2015. When the up-front rate card is released, the Friday night anthology title will now be called ‘American Tales,’ which will be a combination of Paranormal and Americana programming. I hope this is good news given all of the advertisers that included TNA on their DNA list.
The DNA in “DNA list” means “do not advertise.” It refers to shows that a sponsor opts out of buying time on when they buy ads across a whole network. In this case, due to pro wrestling being perceived as downmarket or having low income viewers, advertisers who bought ads to air on most or all Destination America shows didn’t want to put their ads on Impact.
Triple H returned to his old home, the WWE.com sit-down interview, in the 100th episode of Michael Cole’s weekly segment on WWE.com and WWE’s official YouTube Channel. This time out, Triple H (mostly out of character as Paul Levesque but still called Triple H)shared some of his thoughts on his baby, NXT.
When asked if he thought it was possible in advance that NXT could sell out the Barclay’s Center, he said:
I think you want to shoot for the stars with that stuff. And, yeah, I wanted to create sort of a counter brand, another brand for the WWE that we could build the future in and try to make it as big as possible. A lot of people even asked me just going into Brooklyn when Brooklyn was suggested, I originally balked at the idea. I felt like we could sell it out, I felt like the interest in the brand was there, and I felt like the desire to see it would be there, especially in the New York area being Brooklyn, but I was hesitant to do it. What I didn’t want to do is disappoint people and have them think it would sell out and then sell 10,000 tickets and have that be seen as a disappointment. So I played up [that] I didn’t believe in it a little bit but was excited that it did as well as it did.
In the interview, Triple H also talks about the presence of NXT alumni on the main roster, Sting’s impact on WWE, and more. There’s also a reference having lost 65 pounds in the last 11 months, which is pretty impressive of his part.
Sting recently spoke with The Houston Chronicle to promote his WWE World Heavyweight Championship match against Seth Rollins at this Sunday’s WWE Night Of Champions pay-per-view.
During the interview, Sting spoke about finally joining WWE after avoiding the promotion for so many years.
“Quite honestly, I never thought it would happen, that I’d be in the WWE, but here I am,” said Sting. “Whether I was right or wrong, I made a decision to stay with another group that came to the table with everything I was asking for.”
Sting continued, “I stayed apart from WWE, and I was fine. This year, I figured it was time.”
– Although WWE had been indicating that John Cena vs. Seth Rollins would headline this Sunday’s WWE Night Of Champions pay-per-view, they are now talking like Cena vs. Rollins will take place prior to Sting vs. Rollins.
– Michael Cole recently noted that he has lost 65 pounds in 11 months.
– The next edition of “Superstar Ink” with Corey Graves will feature Kofi Kingston. You can check out a preview below.
Sting, who’s doing his late media for this Sunday’s Night of Champions pay-per-view event, granted an interview to Rolling Stone’s Kenny Herzog that went up today. Among other topics, he talks about the promo he cut on Seth Rollins a week or two back where it seemed to some fans like he was randomly putting over Triple H at Seth Rollins’ expense. “I don’t pay attention a lot of times to what’s out there, so this is the first time I’m hearing any news of that. I don’t think there’s anyone who’s going to carry all that to Night of Champions and think about that, because the bottom line is, my focus is Seth Rollins. Triple H is Triple H, and he’s worth the put-over.”
When it comes to Sting’s promos right now, he said that “I’m working collaboratively, but there’s no one looking over my shoulder making sure this or that is being said. I am definitely allowed to ad-lib and be Sting.” Later, when asked about how he’s shown different sides of his character on his promos as of late (like tha “Joker Sting” from TNA), he answered by saying that “This is one of the things I always try to tell the younger guys when they ask for advice. I try to tell them to step outside of their comfort zones, try something different.”
Noting that some fans are always asking him to go back to the blonde spiked hair, different fans ask for the stoic, non-verbal “Crow” Sting, others ask for “Joker Sting,” and so on, he told Herzog that “You can’t please everybody all the time, that’s for sure, and I can’t say that I have blown it or failed over the years by trying different things and trying to evolve and show different sides of my character. Hopefully, it’s working.”
In the full interview, Sting discusses other topics like wrestling at 56 years old, whether he’ll ever engage fans on social media, and more.
Featured below is a video from a WWE SummerSlam signing in New York City where it appears that a handler at the event tries to rush a group of fans through before they get their autographs and photo-opportunity with Roman Reigns.
It was at this point that Reigns spoke up and stood up for the fans. Also featured below is a fan commenting on what happened, as well as Reigns’ response.
TNA co-founder Jeff Jarrett is no longer a minority share holder in TNA Wrestling, according to a report at PWInsider.com.
Jarrett shocked the wrestling world this past summer when he made a surprise return to Impact Wrestling. TNA’s pitch to Jarrett included a buyout of his remaining TNA ownership, an induction into the TNA Hall of Fame, promotion for Global Force Wrestling and GFW acquiring the rights to book TNA talent for their live events.
The real-life situation will play out on tonight’s Impact Wrestling, with TNA and GFW stars squaring off in a Lethal Lockdown match. Dixie Carter and Jeff Jarrett will be represented by their respective teams, with the winner receiving full control of TNA.
TNA issued the following statement regarding tonight’s big match:
“The real-life drama between Dixie Carter and Jeff Jarrett, that for weeks has played out on IMPACT WRESTLING, will all come to a head tonight in a shares vs shares, Winner Take All match. It is true that if Dixie’s Team TNA defeats Team GFW, Dixie will acquire Jeff’s shares in TNA and he will no longer be a stakeholder.”
– The Dudley Boyz worked a dark match at the television taping on Tuesday night. Bubba Ray and Devon defeated the team of Heath Slater and Brad Maddox prior to the start of the Main Event and SmackDown tapings.
– The band “Bring Me The Horizon” from the United Kingdom will be at the NXT Takeover: Respect event on October 7th. Below they are with Corey Graves making the announcement.
The intellectual savior of the masses is back. After shedding his most recent Macho Mandow gimmick, Damien Sandow dusted off his blue robe and made a triumphant return at Tuesday’s WWE SmackDown tapings from Little Rock, Arkansas.
In a dark match that took place prior to SmackDown, Sandow defeated “party pooper” Adam Rose.
Sandow cut a promo before the match telling the crowd that he’s back as the Voice of Common Sense, no longer a stunt double. He worked as a babyface.
– WWE posted the following teaser for the Brock Lesnar vs. Big Show match scheduled for the October 3rd WWE Network special from Madison Square Garden.
“On Saturday night, Oct. 3, the award-winning WWE Network thunders into New York City, presenting an earth-shattering special event: WWE: LIVE from Madison Square Garden! For the first time in over a decade, The World’s Most Famous Arena will feel the wrath of The Beast Incarnate as Brock Lesnar enters the hallowed halls to compete in an epic clash of titans against Big Show.
Can The Conqueror overcome the all-out fury of The World’s Largest Athlete? What other matches are destined to be added to this explosive event? Do not miss a moment of the action, LIVE from MSG, Oct. 3, at 8 ET/ 5 PT, only on WWE Network.”
– Part-time WWE performer Batista appeared at the Jaguar-Land Rover party for the premiere of 007: Spectre in Germany. As noted, Batista plays the role of Mr. Hinx. Below is a photo of Batista with the James Bond cars.
This week’s Total Divas featured Paige’s boyfriend Kevin Skaff proposing to her. Skaff is the lead guitarist and backup vocalist for the band A Day To Remember.
During the episode, Paige caught wind of the forthcoming proposal and Natalya told her, “You barely know him, you’re not going to marry him” and Paige agreed, but still accepted. She noted that she’s fine waiting a year (or ten) before getting married.
WWE has signed a global licensing agreement with Jakks Pacific to create a new line of products based on WWE series and characters. Mattel will retain the master toy license for WWE through 2019.
The new WWE Jakks toys will hit stores in 2016 and will include products for “everyday dress up, role-play, radio control vehicles, seasonal costumes and Jakks’ 3D IT Character Creator brand, as well as action figures across the Asia-Pacific region.”
WWE Executive Vice President of Consumer Products Casey Collins commented:
“In addition to our long-standing master toy partnership with Mattel, we are excited to expand our toy portfolio with a company as innovative and creative as JAKKS Pacific. This new line of products will bring to life our favorite WWE Superstars and Divas in a new way that we are sure our fans and collectors of all ages will enjoy.”
We’ve got an update on TNA star Bram (Thomas Latimer), who was arrested last month for felony domestic battery by strangulation and false imprisonment after an incident with his girlfriend.
He posted $6,000 bond and was released from jail a few days later, but remains suspended from TNA.
Bram has plead not guilty to the charges and is scheduled to have a hearing next Monday, September 21st. The hearing relates to the order that states Bram is prohibited from contacting the victim