The Undertaker was the first guest on “Stone Cold” Steve Austin’s new WWE Network show, The Broken Skull Sessions. During their interview, The Undertaker reflected on drawing influence from horror icons as well as having to live his gimmick at all times.
‘Taker pointed to slasher icons Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees, of Halloween and Friday the 13th, respectively, as inspirations. He explained how they never moved fast, but always appeared to be in the right place to make the kill. Their slow pace only added to their vicious nature.
“The character lent itself to being the boogeyman,” he said. “The boogeyman just shows up, so I would lull people into a false sense and all the sudden, ‘Bang!’ Quick, something fast. Boom! And then I’d throttle it back down.”
He then broached how he went the extra mile to inhabit his character at all times. Austin commented on how ‘Taker was known for living his gimmick and not wanting to break character or kayfabe.
“I lived it because I knew I couldn’t be different than what they saw on TV. I never stopped working. I never—you go in my house back then, open up my closet. I dare you to find something that wasn’t black. I lived it. I never tried to put myself in situations,” Undertaker said, “where I had to be anything other than what people saw on TV. They got a slight variation because I was in street clothes, but they never got much more than that. I think it worked.”
The Broken Skull Sessions is available to stream on the WWE Network.
All Elite Wrestling’s Jon Moxley believes it’s only a matter of time before he and Darby Allin clash once more. Speaking with 101WKQX to promote tonight’s AEW Dynamite show in Chicago, Moxley shared how he felt another match is “destined” to happen.
“Darby Allin. I wrestled him the other week, I’m a big fan of him. I think he’s just cool. I love that he just doesn’t give a damn what anybody thinks about anything,” Moxley said. “I love that. I think me and him are destined to have a few more clashes down the line. The whole roster of AEW is just so impressive just the athletes they are, some of the things they can do physically. I was watching Rey Fenix and Nick Jackson the other night and after the fifth jaw-dropping, amazing thing they do, you just go ‘OK, come on! F—k you, I’ve got to follow that dude!’”
When it was mentioned that AEW Champion Chris Jericho would be a guest on the show, Moxley praised Le Champion. He noted Jericho’s business acumen before adding it’s this intelligence that guarantees he won’t go after Moxley.
“Chris Jericho is a very, very smart man, one of the smartest guys in the business. That’s why he’s been at the top of this industry for so long. He’s drifting towards being the legitimate Greatest Of All Time. So what I mean by that is Jericho ain’t dumb. He ain’t going to f—k with me.”
Moxley recently defeated Kenny Omega in an Unsanctioned Lights Out match at AEW’s last pay-per-view, Full Gear.
Former SmackDown Executive Director Eric Bischoff has addressed the controversial comments recently made by Jim Cornette. On a recent episode of NWA Powerrr, Cornette remarked how “Trevor Murdoch is the only person who can strap a bucket of fried chicken to his back and ride a motor scooter across Ethiopia. Trevor Murdoch can take care of himself!”
Speaking on the post-show of his 83 Weeks podcast, After 83 Weeks with Christy Olson, Bischoff addressed Cornette’s statement. He highlighted Cornette’s unwillingness to adapt, and that this refusal to change with the times will ultimately put him “out to pasture.”
“Jim is a guy that is reluctant to adapt, and it’s really unfortunate because he’s a talented guy, he’s an entertaining guy, and he’s a very knowledgeable guy,” Bischoff said. “But if you’re not willing to grow and evolve and to understand the implications of some of the things that you do and say and how it affects other people adversely, then you’re going to get put out to pasture. I hope that doesn’t happen with Jim. But apparently that’s kind of what it appears to be. I don’t know where he goes from here… Who’s going to hire him? At this point, probably nobody.”
In the wake of Cornette’s statement, NWA took down the episode from YouTube to remove his statement. He is no longer a part of the promotion.
In an update to the news there could be a new member joining Bray Wyatt’s Firefly Fun House, it appears as though Erica Gimbel, a wardrobe stylist and designer for WWE, has revealed the character will be female.
Gimbel shared a video via her Twitter account of dress design, accompanied with the caption “Let Her In.” The Firefly Fun House themes song plays over the video as she adds details to the cuffs. She also tagged Bray Wyatt in the post. A few hours later, she posted a follow-up tweet, writing “Friday is going to be fun.”
This new Fun House member will join the current lineup, currenntly comprised of Ramblin’ Rabbit, Abby the Witch, Mercy the Buzzard and Huskus the Pig Boy. Wyatt recently used his show to debut the new, blue strapped version of the WWE Universal Championship.
“The Fiend” competed at this past Sunday’s WWE pay-per-view, Survivor Series. He faced off against Daniel Bryan for the WWE Universal Championship. Wyatt eventually defeated Bryan, ending the match with the Mandible Claw.
This week’s episode of SmackDown will take place in the Legacy Arena in Birmingham, Alabama. It airs live on FOX every Friday at 8/7 C.
NXT commentator Mauro Ranallo will not be present to call the action for this week’s episode of NXT on USA Network, according to John Pollock of POST Wrestling.
Ranallo was originally set to return to announcing duties following his time away from this Sunday’s Survivor Series pay-per-view. Ranallo was missing from the show following comments made by Corey Graves. The SmackDown announcer had taken to Twitter to criticize Ranallo’s commentary during NXT TakeOver: WarGames. Announcer Michael Cole replaced Ranallo for NXT’s feature matchups. He explained how Ranallo had been too passionate the night before and had blown out his voice.
In the wake of Graves’ criticisms, Ranallo deleted his Twitter account. It was reported that WWE and Ranallo believed he would be returning to work this Wednesday night. There has allegedly been communication between them over the past few days, with a decision ultimately being made to allow Ranallo time away from the desk. At the time of writing, there is no word on if he will return for next week’s episode.
In case you missed it, Graves lobbied some critical feedback towards Ranallo, suggesting he was talking all over his NXT teammates. He wrote on Twitter:
“Just for the record guys, I know you wouldn’t know it, but there’s actually a WWE Hall of Famer AND a former Ring of Honor Champion on commentary. I’d imagine they have a lot to offer. #NXTTakeoverWarGames” He also noted how he had made “Far, far too many” references to the Chicago hip-hop scene.
Ranallo is an open, active mental health advocate. He has previously documented his own personal battles in his well-received documentary, Bi-Polar Rock’ N’ Roller.
Jon Moxley recently spoke with 101WKQX’s Kevin Kellam in Chicago where he discussed his latest match that aired on a pay-per-view presented by AEW.
He beat Kenny Omega in an Unsanctioned Lights Out Match that took place at the AEW Full Gear PPV. This contest saw them use everything from shatter glasses to barbed wire weapons.
During the show, Moxley’s wife, Renee Young, made her feelings known about the match in a series of posts on Twitter.
Moxley was asked how the conversation with Young went after the match, which he stated that she was “Over-dramatic, come on, like. it comes with the territory, you know what I mean?
You sign the contract, we’re together forever and I will love you forever, but you’ve got to understand that if you’re one of my friends or loved ones, especially if you’re my wife, you’re going to deal with some moments where we things get a little cringey and weird.”
Moxley stated that he tends to fly close to the flame sometimes not just in wrestling but life. He makes better decisions now compared to his poor decisions in his younger days. He stated that you’re going to have their moments as it’s part of a marriage.
“I could roll my bike down a mountain tomorrow and break my neck, you know what I mean? These things are constantly on the precipice of happening.”
Young saw his comments and reacted by writing the following:
“The Man” Becky Lynch has passed an import championship record previously held by Ronda Rousey. Lynch’s current reign with the RAW Women’s Championship is now the longest single reign in the title’s short lineage.
Longest single-reigns RAW Women’s Championship:
Becky Lynch (WrestleMania 35 – Present) 232+ days as champion.
Ronda Rousey (SummerSlam 2018 to WrestleMania 35) 232 days as champion.
Alexa Bliss (RAW 8/28/17 to WrestleMania 34) 223 days as champion.
Charlotte Flair (WrestleMania 32 to July 25th, 2016) 113 days spent as champion.
Alexa Bliss (Payback 2017 to SummerSlam 2017) 112 days as champion.
Lynch commented on passing Rousey’s record on Twitter.
She will team with Charlotte Flair at Starrcade this weekend and challenge the Kabuki Warriors for the WWE Women’s Tag Team Championships.
Lynch currently ranks 3rd all-time in terms of total days spent with the RAW Women’s Championship. She passed Rousey today for that spot and now trails only Charlotte Flair and Alexa Bliss. Lynch will pass Flair in this stat in 10 days.
Combined Days Spent as RAW Women’s Championship
Alexa Bliss (3x) 398 total days spent as champion.
Monday’s post-Survivor Series edition of WWE Raw averaged 2.109 million viewers, down from 2.127 for the “go home” show. Raw did a 0.71 rating in the Adults 18-49 demographic, essentially even with last week’s 0.72.
Here’s the hourly viewership data, courtesy of ShowbuzzDaily:
Hour 1: 2.241 million viewers
Hour 2: 2.190 million viewers
Hour 3: 1.896 million viewers
Raw featured Seth Rollins hosting a ‘Town Hall’ meeting with the entire roster, Rusev getting revenge on Bobby Lashley, Alesiter Black sending a message to Buddy Murphy, Rey Mysterio capturing the United States Championship from AJ Styles, Asuka vs. Charlotte Flair and the surprise return of AOP in the final segment of the show.
Marty Scurll has announced that he will compete at the upcoming Ring of Honor Final Battle pay-per-view on December 13th from Baltimore, MD. Scurll will team up with Flip Gordon in a match against Bandido and Flamita.
You can view Scurll’s announcement below, which was filmed from a Cracker Barrel:
Marty Scurll’s contract with Ring of Honor is set to expire at the end of this month. He is rumored to be joining All Elite Wrestling, but there is still a possibility that WWE makes him a strong offer to join NXT.
He has also expressed interest in wrestling for New Japan Pro Wrestling, which would help ROH’s chances of re-signing him.
Marty Scurll owns the name of his “Villain Club” faction and could theoretically form a new incarnation of that group wherever he goes next.
– Lana has signed a new 5-year contract with WWE, according to Pro Wrestling Sheet. She has been with the company since 2013 and is currently featured in the love triangle storyline with her husband Rusev and Bobby Lashley.
Rusev is currently in negotiations with WWE, but the two sides have not yet agreed upon a new deal.
– WWE Hall of Famer Shawn Michaels recently spoke with Sports Illustrated about NXT and his time as a coach at the Performance Center in Orlando.
Although Michaels has made a few appearances on WWE television in recent months, he prefers working behind the scenes at this stage of his career.
“I’d rather stay behind the scenes and let the stars of tomorrow take their rightful place,” said Michaels. “My time has come and gone. This is all about them.”
Michaels added that “NXT is wrestling at its best” and he’s focused on showing the world that NXT has them most talented wrestlers in WWE.
Visit SI.com to read their full interview with Shawn Michaels.
AEW World Champion Chris Jericho recently spoke with Uproxx to promote his new Christmas song, a hard-rock version of Father Christmas by the Kinks. Proceeds from the single are being donated to Juvenile Diabetes Research Funding. You can hear the song at the bottom of this article.
Of course, pro wrestling was a major topic of discussion during the interview. When asked about CM Punk’s return to WWE television, Jericho says he can’t believe what a letdown it was and how little buzz there has been.
“It’s a long time coming,” Jericho said. “We knew there would be a Mötley Crüe reunion and we knew CM Punk would come back to wrestling. It was just a matter of time. I think he came back with more of a sigh than a scream.”
“It seems kinda funny that he came back on a show that drew 150,000 viewers where it could have been 5 million viewers,” he added. “But if it’s part of the process to slowly wean him into the wrestling business, then good.”
Chris Jericho says, “WWE sure needs” Punk, because this business is built on star power. He says “Good for him for coming back” but believes that CM Punk’s return was nowhere near as big as it could have been or should have been.
“He’s back for the first time in five years and no one really cares,” said Jericho. “But I’m sure it will lead to more. I don’t see how it can’t.”
It’s no secret that CM Punk had some talks with All Elite Wrestling about joining them. That may still happen, but it seems like a long-shot at this point – especially with Seth Rollins repeatedly calling out CM Punk for a match at WrestleMania.
Jericho admits that Punk would have been a nice addition to AEW, but they don’t need him. “I’m not disappointed,” said Jericho. “I know there were some conversations, but Punk’s his own guy. Could we have used him? Yes. Does it hurt us to not have him? No, not at all.”
For all the success of NXT’s weekly TV show, one criticism has been the small studio audience at Full Sail University.
NXT’s in-ring product has been stellar. However, there are clear drawbacks to performing in front of the same audience each week. Especially when that venue limits attendance to just a few hundred fans. Unfortunately, WWE will not be taking NXT to larger venues each week any time soon.
According to a report at PWInsider, WWE has committed to tape NXT TV from Full Sail Live through the end of March 2020. WrestleMania season would be an opportune time to take NXT TV on the road, especially if WWE features crossover with ‘main roster’ talent as they did in the lead-up to Survivor Series.
WWE is currently selling tickets for NXT at Full Sail through the end of January. If you’re in the Orlando area, visit Ticketforce.com to attend an NXT TV taping.
Below, you can check out the Top 10 Moments from last week’s NXT:
Impact Wrestling presents a special episode tonight on AXS TV. In fact, Impact Wrestling isn’t even the promotion hosting tonight’s show. Instead, it will be the Impact Provincial Wrestling Federation presenting a throwback episode filled with references to pro-wrestling from the 1980s.
Impact Wrestling has even changed its Twitter handle to reflect the IPWF promotion which will be hosting tonight’s show:
Joey Ryan and Kiera Hogan will be hosting the Cock Pit tonight:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q74SuVb5GYY
Impact Wrestling Building To Hard To Kill
While tonight’s episode might travel back in time to the early 1980s, Impact is building to the Hard to Kill PPV on January 12th. Last week on Impact, Tessa Blanchard won a gauntlet match to earn a title shot at Sami Callihan. Blanchard vs Callihan III will headline Hard to Kill.
Last week, Major League Wrestling (MLW) announced that “Filthy” Tom Lawlor has signed a new multi-year deal with the promotion.
On the latest episode of the ‘Filthy Four Daily’ show at F4WOnline, Lawlor spoke with Bryan Alvarez about his decision to stick with MLW.
Alvarez joked that it seemed Lawlor could be NXT bound, even though Lawlor says he told Bryan “a million times” he wasn’t signing with WWE. Lawlor was recently in Orlando, FL for a week and then wouldn’t reply to Bryan’s texts about his future, which fueled the uncertainty.
Lawlor says he accepted a “very good deal” from MLW, which allows him to continue wrestling across the world for other promotions. At this stage in his career, that’s very important to him. He was negotiating with MLW for the past several months and he was genuinely considering other options. In the end, MLW made an offer he couldn’t refuse.
Lawlor touted the flexibility afforded to him by the MLW deal and acknowledged that some people were surprised that MLW was able to retain him and MLW World Champion Jacob Fatu. “Onward and upward,” he said.
In addition to working for MLW and other wrestling promotions, Lawlor added that he is not retired from Mixed Martial Arts, so we might see him back in a cage at some point.
Tom Lawlor returns to action for MLW next week at the MLW Opera Cup from New York City. Tickets for the event are still available at MLWTickets.com.
WWE will present Starrcade this Sunday at 7 PM airing on the WWE Network. The promotion recently announced 2 new matches for the event.
Asuka and Kairi Sane will defend their WWE Women’s Tag Team Championships on the show. They will face 3 other teams in a fatal 4-way match including the duo of Becky Lynch and Charlotte Flair. Sasha Banks & Bayley and Alexa Bliss & Nikki Cross will be the two other teams in the match. This match had originally been advertised as just involving the Kabuki Warriors and Lynch & Flair.
Also booked for Starrcade this Sunday will be a Last Man Standing match between Bobby Lashley and Rusev.
Matches Announced For Starrcade:
WWE Women’s Tag Team Championship Fatal 4-Way Match The Kabuki Warriors (c) vs. Raw Women’s Champion Becky Lynch & Charlotte Flair vs. Bayley & Sasha Banks vs. Alexa Bliss & Nikki Cross
Last Match Standing Match Rusev vs. Bobby Lashley
The event will emanate from the Infinite Energy Center in Duluth, Ga.
WWE has applied to trademark two former ECW event names recently, including the name given to the first-ever ECW PPV from 1997.
According to a report from PWInsider, WWE is attempting to trademark the names “Barely Legal” and “Cyberslam” for wrestling purposes.
WWE’s trademark application states the following purposes the names Barely Legal and Cyberslam will be used for:
“a show about professional wrestling; entertainment services, namely, the production and exhibition of professional wrestling events rendered live and through broadcast media including television and distributed via various platforms across multiple forms of transmission media; providing wrestling news and information through broadcast media including television and distributed via various platforms across multiple forms of transmission media; providing information in the fields of sports and entertainment through broadcast media including television and distributed via various platforms across multiple forms of transmission media; providing a website in the field of sports entertainment information.”
ECW Barely Legal was a one-time PPV held at the ECW Arena (2300 Arena) in Philadelphia, PA. The event drew just over 1100 fans and was the promotion’s first venture onto PPV.
ECW Cyberslam was an annual event the promotion held from 1996 to 2000. In addition to a wrestling event, Cyberslam would also include an interactive fan convention which included Q&As with wrestlers.
NXT Champion Adam Cole has reflected on his past month in WWE. Cole has not only recently been featured on RAW and SmackDown, he also competed on both Saturday and Sunday for TakeOver: WarGames and Survivor Series, respectively.
Cole wrote the following on Twitter, “This past month, I have proved over and over again that my @WWENXT championship is going nowhere. It’s where it belongs…and the #ERA of #AdamColeBayBay is just getting started.”
The Undisputed Era lost the WarGames match at TakeOver after Tommaso Ciampa sent Cole crashing from the top of the cage through multiple tables, courtesy of an Air Raid Crash. Despite this considerable bump, Cole would subsequently defend his NXT Championship the next night against “The Bruiserweight” Pete Dunne. Despite stiff competition, he successfully retained.
“I Am Undisputed”
Following his victory over Dunne, Cole was interviewed backstage. He stressed that not only is the NXT Championship the most prestigious title in the industry, but he is the best pro wrestler on the planet.
“Yeah, it’s not new to me being questioned. My entire career, people have said ‘No, no, Adam Cole can’t be a World Champion,’ ‘Adam Cole won’t be a World Champion,’ and I knew deep down that I was gonna prove everybody wrong and spit their face while doing it.”
He continued, “This past month, not 24 hours, but month I have show the world that I am the best pro wrestler on the planet. Nobody is better than me. No championship is more prestigious. I proved that at Survivor Series, and I will continue over and over and over again to prove it. Hurt or not, banged up or not, nobody can stop me ‘cause I am the freaking man. I am the freaking show, and most notably, I am undisputed.”
If you use any quotes from this article, please provide a H/T to SEScoops.
Matt & Nick Jackson are both Executive Vice Presidents of AEW. In the end, however, it is Tony Khan who has final say over wins and losses.
According to recent comments made by Nick Jackson to Monsters and Critics, if Khan didn’t have that control, the Young Bucks would have suffered even more losses recently than they already have.
“I feel like most of the audience that we have, have seen the Young Bucks wrestle and has seen Cody, has seen Kenny, and the acts like that,” Nick Jackson explained. “So, it’s important for us to help out the lesser acts that haven’t been on television at all or the mainstream audience hasn’t seen. Like you mentioned, Matt and I wrestling Private Party. I felt like, and I think the whole company agreed with us, after that match, we got backstage and we felt like we made those guys into stars overnight.”
In the short history of AEW, the Bucks have already dropped matches to Private Party, the Lucha Bros, and Proud and Powerful.
“It’s funny because we have this argument with Tony all the time,” Nick continued. “And Tony was right about it. He goes, ‘if I didn’t have final say on who wins and who loses, you guys would be 0-10 by now.’ It’s true because, in a very selfish business, Matt and I have never really been selfish. We’ve always looked out for other talents and other wrestlers because we almost get more out of helping others than helping ourselves at this point.”
Monsters & Critics’ full interview with the Young Bucks can be read here.
Triple H has spoken highly of NXT Champion Adam Cole’s stellar week leading into this past Sunday’s Survivor Series pay-per-view. He referred to the Undisputed Era leader as “NXT’s Iron Man.” Now he has praised for NXT Women’s Champion Shayna Baszler for her major main event victory.
“The Game” wrote the following on Twitter, responding to WWE’s own message highlighting Survivor Series’ final scores:
“.@QoSBaszler: The Queen of Spades, the #WWENXT Women’s Champion and the Standard Bearer of the @WWENXT Women’s division. The exclamation point of this #SurvivorSeries in her victory over two of the VERY best in this business. #NXT 4#Smackdown 2#WWERaw 1”
.@QoSBaszler: The Queen of Spades, the #WWENXT Women’s Champion and the Standard Bearer of the @WWENXT Women’s division.
Prior to her Sunday night main event opportunity, “The Queen of Spades” wrestled in a hellacious WarGames at NXT TakeOver. Despite her team’s best efforts, Team Ripley would walk away successfully from the cage.
At Survivor Series, Baszler defeated both WWE RAW Women’s Champion Becky Lynch and WWE SmackDown Women’s Champion Bayley. They competed in a non-title Triple Threat matchup. This win helped NXT comfortably take the point advantage over RAW and SmackDown. The black-and-gold brand ended their night with 4 victories.
With NXT coming out on top, WWE has firmly established them as their third brand, further distancing themselves from the developmental system they once were.
All Elite Wrestling’s Kenny Omega has addressed criticisms lobbied at the promotion’s utilization of women’s division. Omega, who is also one of the promotion’s Executive Vice Presidents, helps to oversee their women’s division and has been key in hiring Joshi talent.
Speaking on Wrestler Observer Radio, Omega explained how one of his main focuses in AEW was to showcase Japanese talent who haven’t had the opportunity be seen on a global scale.
“There hasn’t been much exposure of Stardom on a worldwide scale, but people know who they are, mainly due to Kairi Sane and Io Shirai,” he said. “Since their NXT debuts, people have dug a little deeper and gone back to the roots and seen what Stardom is all about. I’m sure they’ve gained fans through that, but there are other styles of Joshi wrestling and other talent that people haven’t seen, that don’t wrestle for Stardom. These are the people I want to introduce to the world.”
He continued, “But it’s not the be-all, end-all because there are all sorts of flavors of wrestling. I want to be the one, as best as I can, to show the variety in that.”
Division Criticisms
Omega explained that he is fighting for the AEW women’s roster to be featured more prominently on Dynamite and Dark. He shouldered some of the blame for this, noting how his angle with Jon Moxley took a lot of time on the show away from female talent.
“At the end of the day, there’s only so much time in an episode. It’s almost amazing how fast it gets eaten up. We haven’t been able to focus on women as much as I’d like. Some of it has been availability. We have girls signed and hopping on board. I hate to say ‘wait til 2020,’ but I can safely say in 2020 there are going to be interesting and exciting signings that will shake up the division. As soon as we have a women’s tag division, that will balance (things) more and give the women more of a stage. Once there’s that ‘thing’ for them to fight for, you’re going to see more time devoted per episode for the women.”
Omega recently lost to Moxley in an Unsanctioned Lights Out match at AEW’s last pay-per-view, Full Gear.
Last night on WWE RAW, Seth Rollins opened up the show by berating several members of the RAW roster for their performance at Survivor Series.
During the segment, the Chicago crowd began to chant for CM Punk. Rollins told the live crowd that he tried to get Punk on the show but that Punk would rather sit behind a desk in LA.
According to a report from Wrestling Observer Radio, Vince McMahon was upset backstage that Rollins acknowledged the chants.
“Unless Seth and Vince worked it out and Vince was working everyone backstage by being furious when this is going on, Vince was really upset about Seth responding to (the CM Punk chants) because Vince’s rule is that you don’t, on television in particular, you do not push the idea of a match that you are not going to deliver,” Dave Meltzer said on the show.
“I think that most likely that Vince wasn’t putting on an act and there is no deal as of right now and that Seth responded and Vince acting like he was furious was because he was actually not happy that (he) responded.”
Meltzer would allow for the possibility that Vince McMahon was “working” people in the back by pretending to be upset, however.
“I leave that open because it is Vince McMahon and anything’s possible especially on something like this,” Meltzer continued. “I don’t believe it, I’m just throwing out that 2% possibility that its that level of ‘work.'”
You can watch the Seth Rollins ‘Town Hall’ from Monday’s RAW below:
Owner of the Jacksonville Jaguars, Fulham F.C, and All Elite Wrestling, Shad Khan spoke with Forbes recently about his investment in the wrestling industry.
When asked if All Elite Wrestling was his idea or his son Tony’s, Shad says it was Tony’s idea and has been pleasantly surprised by the promotion’s early success.
“This is one of those cases where, as a father, you don’t mind being wrong,” he said. “Obviously my son Tony, who had passion for it, this was his idea and God’s blessed us, we have the financial means, and we’ll try it. You get to a stage in life where you can fail and it’s not life-threatening and this was one of those. I am as surprised as anybody.”
Khan was then asked what drew him into thinking wrestling was something he could invest in.
“The golden age of wrestling would be in the late 90s when you had two competitive leagues, WCW and WWF, and we know wrestling is scripted but what was definitely unscripted, real, was the competition between the leagues. In those days you had 10 million hardcore wrestling fans, today there are probably 2 million or less. So there was an audience that was underserved.”
The Shad Khan interview can be viewed in the player below, with his comments about AEW taking place around the 11-minute mark. If the embed does not work, visit Forbes.com.
In addition to wrestling talk, he also speaks about his investment in the new Black News channel (which debuted earlier this month), his other investments and more.
Following this past Saturday’s NXT TakeOver: WarGames event, Triple H took part in a media conference call. One subject “The Game” spoke about was the possibility of WWE’s black-and-gold brand hosting TakeOver events worldwide.
“I think that’s a little bit of a work in progress,” Triple H confessed. “It’s a big world, a lot of really cool places to go work. As much as I can look at the UK and say, going back to Blackpool, I think they’d do spectacularly in London. I also think we can go to Glasgow. We went to Cardiff, it was amazing. There’s so many places, and that’s just picking the places we already go to on a regular basis, I think when we get outside of those, start going to different countries and regions, oh my gosh.”
He continued, “And then you start talking about NXT here, like this NXT U.S. brand, any one of those places could kill it. You could go to Japan, you could go to Australia, it’s a big world. I’d love to look at all of it, I’d love to bring them to all of it. Trying to figure how to make that happen with live TV and everything else, that’s the trick.”
In recent years, WWE has branched out its NXT brand, starting with NXT UK. NXT UK has since hosted their own TakeOver events, but these were roster and brand-specific events. There have been discussions in the past regarding further brand extensions in different countries.
Seth Rollins believes that it’s only a matter of time before he and NXT’s Tommaso Ciampa cross paths again. Speaking with 101WKQX Chicago before this past Sunday’s Survivor Series, Rollins talked about NXT being WWE’s third brand and how it has earned its spot alongside RAW and SmackDown.
“They’ve got a ton of really talented guys and girls down there and they’ve been making waves and earned their spot,” Rollins said. “They got the television show on USA Network on Wednesday nights basically on their own, building it from the grassroots from where we were seven years ago at this point—but they’re doing well. It’s certainly added an element of chaos and there’s a lot more bodies to go around, so it feels like every show is unpredictable. You never know when something’s going to happen. Is it overkill? Maybe, but it’s been a fun couple of weeks at the very least.”
High-Calibre Match
Last week’s episode of the black-and-gold brand ended with Rollins and Ciampa brawling in the ring. Reflecting on his NXT homecoming, Rollins confessed he has a lot of respect for the former NXT Champion, sharing how he has been admired him for a long time.
“Ciampa’s a guy that I’ve admired for a long time from afar. He and I never really crossed paths in the ring, so that was really the first interaction that I can recall and sort of the first interaction where we’re both at different levels.”
Rollins then shared that he assumes their paths will cross again in the future. For him, he’d prefer a one-on-one matchup so they can give the WWE Universe a matchup to be remembered.
“I can only assume at some point down the line our paths will cross again,” Rollins stated. “Hopefully in a one-on-one contest and we can give fans who are clamoring for a match of that caliber the one that they deserve.”
NXT Superstar Keith Lee received significant praise from his fellow Superstars following his Survivor Series performance. Lee participated as a member of Team NXT during the 5-on-5-on-5 Elimination Match.
One notable Superstar who had high words for Lee was “The Big Dog” himself, Roman Reigns. Taking to Twitter, Reigns wrote: “Well, damn. That was fun, Chicago. Respect to #Raw and #WWENXT. @RealKeithLee, I’ll see you again big man. #SurvivorSeries”
Lee has since responded to Reigns’ comment, admitting that it was an honor for him to compete in the ring with the calibre of Superstars that were a part of that match. He stated that, although Team NXT came close to winning, they just weren’t close enough before adding that he looks forward to meeting Reigns in the ring again in the future.
“If I’m being honest…..it was an absolute honor just to compete with everyone in that ring, from my own squad to the competition. Came close….but not close enough. I look forward to the next meeting…”
If I'm being honest…..it was an absolute honor just to compete with everyone in that ring, from my own squad to the competition.
Came close….but not close enough. I look forward to the next meeting… https://t.co/SdvQvIjjyi
Team SmackDown would walk away the winners of their Elimination Match with both Team RAW and Team NXT. Reigns would lead SmackDown to victory, eventually putting away Lee for the final, decisive fall.