The trial in Hulk Hogan’s lawsuit against Gawker, which starts Monday in St. Petersburg, Florida, took a surprising turn yesterday during a motions hearing. During arguments, it was revealed that Bubba the Love Sponge Clem (formerly Todd Clem, he changed his legal name when he ran for office), who shot the video of his then-wife Heather Cole having sex with Hogan without Hogan’s consent, will not be testifying at trial. Well, he’s being called to testify, but he has retained a criminal defense attorney and will be asserting his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination. The information came out on Twitter during the hearing yesterday afternoon, but the most complete account so far is probably this Tampa Bay Times article by Anna Phillips.
This development is especially noteworthy since it came out this past week that Clem’s settlement with Hogan required him to cooperate with him in the lawsuit in not help Gawker. Mark O’Brien, the lawyer retained by Clem, refused to discuss Clem’s reasoning for pleading the fifth. Michael Berry, one of the attorneys on Gawker’s legal team, said yesterday that “It appears Mr. Clem may have perjured himself,” with Hogan lawyer Kenneth Turkel responding by saying that “I would disagree that Bubba thinks he perjured himself. I have no idea what he thinks.”
At the very least, Clem can’t be pleading the fifth about the filming of the sex tapes without Hogan’s consent, as the statute of limitations expired on that crime before the Gawker post with clips of the video ever went up. Gawker’s hunch about Clem committing perjury is, specifically, that Clem lied when he testified in his deposition. For a while now, they’ve been banging the drum that he might have perjured himself because he changed his story: Originally, Clem went on his radio show grandstanding about how Hogan knew he was on camera before changing his story and apologizing after they settled and he was removed from the lawsuit. Here’s what he said under penalty of perjury about if he was telling the truth when went on that rant on his radio show:
I’m spewing venom at this point. I’m the fake. I’m the fraud at this point; he’s not. I’m projecting. I’m guilty. I’m busted. And I’m just spewing out anything that comes off the top of my mind to keep people’s eyes off the truth and the ball. A. And I had the luxury of being on this bully pulpit and him not being able to respond back. It’s – it’s totally irresponsible and not fair.
Meanwhile, also addressed during the hearing yesterday was the issue of if Hogan’s lawyers can compare him to TV sports reporter and personality Erin Andrews, who’s currently in the middle of her own, somewhat similar civil trial. Judge Pamela Campbell ruled that Andrews could not be referenced during the trial, citing potential “confusion on the legal issues.” Andrews is suing both the man that shot videos of her changing clothes (through a manipulated hotel door peephole) as well as the hotel chain that made it possible for him to get rooms next to her’s.
The Hulk Hogan vs. Gawker trial starts Monday morning with opening arguments and should last about three weeks. Multiple news outlets are planning to stream the whole thing and we’ll have full coverage here at SEScoops.
Last August, WWE sued CTH Content Company, their TV partner in Thailand. Essentially, from the first quarterly invoice of the contract (covering the first quarter of 2014), CTH just didn’t pay WWE the agreed upon licensing fee, which was $560,000 per quarter in 2014 and $728,000 per quarter in 2015. CTH also never provided WWE a bank guarantee for each year’s total license fee, something else that they were required to do under the contract Throughout that whole period, CTH was running WWE programming. CTH never replied to the lawsuit, and on Thursday the judge entered a default judgment in favor of WWE in the amount of the full five year contract plus interest on the late payments:
ORDER granting 16 Motion for Default Judgment pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 55, as the Plaintiff’s claim is for a sum certain and is supported by affidavits showing the amount due. The Clerk is directed to enter judgment against Defendants CTH Content Company Limited and CTH Public Company Limited, jointly and severally, in the total amount of 23,387,360.76, representing liquidated damages of $22,942,500 and contractual interest of $444,860.76. Plaintiff may file a motion for supplemental judgment with an affidavit demonstrating Plaintiff’s entitlement to any interest for the period from 11/1/16 to 3/3/16. Signed by Judge Vanessa L. Bryant on 3/3/16.
With CTH being based out of Thailand and WWE winning a judgment in federal district court in Connecticut, it’s unclear if they have any chance of collecting the monetary award. This was not the first time WWE had to file such a lawsuit against a TV partner in that part of the world, as in 2013, they sued Solar Entertainment in the Philippines for similar non-payment issues. In that case, they had been doing business with Solar since 2007 when the problems arose. They also sued a South Korean home video distributor for non-payment in 2003 as well as filing another lawsuit in 2010 against a Portuguese clothing licensee for illegally sub-licensing to a different company in France.
As far as any kind of interesting information surfacing in the lawsuit, there was a little bit, as WWE included their licensing agreement as an exhibit. That included the itemized list of how much CTH was paying (well, supposed to pay) for each WWE TV show:
For 2014, the first year of the contract (it went up each year), the full three hour version of Raw was the most expensive show per episode at $13,461.54 ($700,000 per year).
Vintage Collection was the cheapest at $1,076.92 per episode ($56,000 per year).
NXT was the second lowest priced show, at $1,615.38 per episode ($84,000 per year). No other shows were under $100,000 per year.
By comparison, Superstars and Main Event (as well as recap show AfterBurn for some reason) were $5,384.62 per episode ($284,000 per year).
The other recap shows, Bottom Line, WWE Experience, and This Week In WWE, were exactly half the “C-show” price, which SmackDown doubled the “C-shows,” though it was the same price per hour of programming. That says a lot about the value of Smackdown in 2014, or it least it seems that way.
Tonight, for the first time since his departure from WWE, Jim Ross returns to a regular gig doing pro wrestling announcing with his first episode of New Japan Pro Wrestling on AXS TV. This all came about when Mauro Ranallo, who had called the show with Josh Barnett up to this point, was hired by WWE to be the voice of SmackDown. AXS clearly knew what they had to do: Ranallo’s work had been so highly praised that very few announcers would have been seen as anything but a step down, even if they do good jobs, but Ross is THE legend of wrestling announcers in the modern era. Ross is also great for getting the show/product publicity.
AXS TV sent out a screener of tonight’s show recently, which I’ve watched. I won’t lie: There’s a bit of an adjustment. Ranallo and Barnett did this show together for a year, and were good friends before that, so they had developed a smooth rapport. As a unit, Ross and Barnett aren’t there yet. It was also strange to watch a show where you don’t see Ross (even though you know he’s dubbing 10 month old matches), and hear him in a studio when we’re used to hearing him at ringside.
That said? It’s Jim Ross! A motivated, a reinvigorated Jim Ross. He did his homework, called moves well, and drama…everything you’d really want from Jim Ross. What stood out to me, though, was how he set up Barnett. At one point, there was a spot where Ross mentioned how you can see how Shinsuke Nakamura’s mixed martial arts training and fighting experience came into play. Barnett seemed a little confused for a second before Ross explained how the front facelock/front headlock has so many uses in MMA that can be adopted in pro wrestling. It was a great touch.
It was a very solid debut, and I’m sure Ross gets into even more of a groove in future episodes. Check it out tonight at 9:00 p.m. ET on AXS TV.
The biggest mainstream pro wrestling story of 2016 (at least that we know about so far) mports getting underway, and there’s a lot to unpack. However, as far as what you need to know the follow the case, it may be more simple than you think. Here’s our primer:
Who exactly are the parties involved?
Officially, the name of the case is Terry Gene Bollea (professionally known as Hulk Hogan) v. Gawker Media, LLC (A.KA Gawker Media), Nick Denton, and A.J. Daulerio. Gawker Media owns its namesake Gawker.com (sort of a tabloid gossip outlet turned political website) as well as other sites ranging from Deadspin.com for sports coverage to Gizmodo.com for gadgets, Kotaku.com for video games, and Jezebel.com for women’s issues. Denton is the founder and principle owner of Gawker, with Daulerio being the Editor in Chief of both Gawker.com and Gawker Media when Hogan sued back in October 2012. Daulerio also wrote the article about the Hogan sex tape that’s at the center of the case.
Wait, Hogan made a sex tape? On purpose?
No, not on purpose. When his marriage to his first wife Linda was on the rocks in 2007, Hogan’s then-best friend, radio personality Bubba the Love Sponge Clem (his legal name) and his then-wife, Heather Cole, suggested that Heather would be interested in some no strings attached sex with him. Hogan knew that their house was wired with security cameras, and asked Bubba before (at least) the first encounter if he was being filmed. Bubba said no, but he was lying, although Heather knew that she and Hogan were on-camera. Three videos were made (it’s unclear if there was more encounters than just those that were taped), all without Hogan’s knowledge or permission.
But I saw the video, and it looked like Hogan was aware of the camera.
Heather later told Tampa police that she positioned Hogan for the camera at Bubba’s request, as “[he] could be very controlling.”
So Bubba and Heather published it?
No. When they got divorced in late 2011-early 2012, Bubba moved some items out of the house and into his office drawer at the radio station, including the DVDs of her with Hogan and a few other men. Someone (believed by the police to beBubba employee Matt “Spiceboy” Loyd) stole the DVDs and started shopping them around, with TMZ’s Mike Walters putting him touch with a “sex tape broker,” Los Angeles-based lawyer Keith Davidson. Davidson didn’t find the interest they were hoping for, even after leaking screenshots to TheDirty.com, though TMZ did pay $8,000 to get possession of copies of the DVDs.
Several months later, in October 2012, after the story had seemingly long since died off, Gawker.com posted an article by Daulerio titled “Even for a Minute, Watching Hulk Hogan Have Sex in a Canopy Bed is Not Safe For Work but Watch it Anyway.” It was accompanied by a heavily edited version of one of the DVDs, which Gawker had been sent anonymously, while A.J. Daulerio’s article itself mused about both how “unsexy” the video was and the nature of celebrity sex tapes in general. When Hogan sued, he was able to quickly get the video taken down.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kmuqSN59vQ
Wait, so this Spiceboy guy sent it to Gawker? Or was it Bubba…or Heather?
Most likely none of the above. Loyd’s alleged accomplices told police that when they tried to make a deal to sell the tape to Hogan, they were advised by Davidson, the sex tape broker, to tell him that they were the Gawker source. In actuality, they had no idea who was responsible for sending the DVD to Gawker. Davidson was concerned that if Hogan thought the Gawker source was still out there and not part of the deal, he’d call off negotiations. The negotiation turned out to be an act on Hogan’s part, but…well, more on that in a bit. Regardless, reading the police report for the investigation into the theft of the DVDs, the only possible inference is that Spiceboy and company (who weren’t prosecuted, to Bubba’s frustration) weren’t who sent the DVD to Gawker.
Still, shouldn’t Hogan have sued Bubba and Heather?
He did. They eventually settled and were dropped from the lawsuit, with Bubba only paying $5,000 (yes, five thousand) and pledging to help Hogan (and not help Gawker) in the lawsuit.
So back to Gawker. What exactly is Hogan suing over and how much is he asking for in damages?
Hogan’s complaint includes counts of invasion of privacy, publication of private facts, violation of Florida’s “right of publicity” law, and both intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress. He’s asking for $100 million in damages, and will try use the potential retail value of the video as a way to make that amount seem credible, as odd as it sounds.
$100 million? Wow. So how much money did Gawker make off the video?
Directly? $0. Gawker has a policy of not running advertisements on “NSFW” (Not Safe For Work) articles, so with the article/video getting millions of hits (Hogan’s side claims 7 million people watched it), any ad revenue would be indirect, either from the article leading readers to other things on the site that had ads or from an increase in Gawker’s brand awareness.
Why didn’t Gawker just settle, anyway? Isn’t this kind of an open and shut case? That sounds like something you just can’t do.
This is where it gets tricky.
Gawker clearly ran everything by their lawyers before publishing everything. The video they ran, which is the main concern (Hogan had tried to get the article pulled, too, and the judge agreed before being quickly reversed on appeal), was edited so that it contained only eight seconds of sexual contact, which could be theoretically justified as verifying the authenticity of the video and illustrate the story. The article put it in a larger context. It’s obvious that they didn’t take this lightly.
Their defense is that publishing the edited video (at the top of the article that contextualized it) was in the public interest. Why?
Not only had Hogan publicly denied having sex with Heather Cole after he already had, but he had increasingly made his sexuality and his sex life part of his public persona. In the years preceding all of this, Hogan’s appearances on both Bubba Clem and Howard Stern’s radio shows had included a lot of graphic sexual discussion about his relationship with both of his wife. Gawker even cited a photo shoot he did for men’s magazine “Oui” (a censored version from the National Examiner tabloid can be seen on Kevin Eck’s blog) to promote Rocky III where two topless women were grinding against him.
It does kind of sound ridiculous, but every legal expert who’s weighed in on the case thinks Gawker will prevail in the end, even if it means filing an appeal. Even if you think it’s morally wrong, it may not be legally wrong.
What about criminal charges?
Those would be for Bubba Clem, not Gawker, and the statute of limitations in Florida expired before Hogan even knew that he’d been filmed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AtbuCwl3nA
If Gawker will win in the end, what are all of these stories about the case putting Gawker out of business talking about?
To appeal a jury award in Florida (and the jury finding for Hogan is far from out of the question), you need to post a bond for the award plus two years’ worth of interest. So with a $100 million award or anything close, it could be problematic for Gawker.
What’s the actual real-world significance of the case?
Depending on how far it goes in terms of appeals, it could end up being a very important case in setting a precedent for what’s considered newsworthy and what’s private. As Seth Berlin, the lead counsel of Gawker’s team, put it to the New York Times: “Gawker is defending its First Amendment right to join an ongoing conversation about a celebrity when others are talking about it and the celebrity is talking about it.” Hogan’s lawyer, David Houston, countered by telling the Times that “There’s a world of difference between discussing something and showing a pornographic video, something that goes online and can be seen forever.”
At one point, the judge presiding over the case, Judge Pamela Campbell, actually ordered Gawker to pull not just the video, but also the article. Ordering Gawker to take down the article along with the tape shocked and concerned the news media, as it was borderline unprecedented. Gawker refused to pull the article, and had Campbell’s ruling overturned on appeal (Gawker never put the video back up, though). And this was all years before they went to trial, so you can see what kind of stakes there are and why this case is a big deal: It’s at an intersection of celebrity gossip, freedom of the press, the legal world, etc.
Also: This is the first time any kind of “celebrity sex tape” lawsuit has gone to trial. All past cases were settled or otherwise dismissed.
Wait, why do I feel like I might have heard of a Pamela Campbell in Florida before?
Judge Pamela Campbell was the lawyer for the Schindlers, Terri Schiavo’s parents, in their legal battle with her husband, Michael Schiavo. Just read the Wikipedia entry because there’s too much to rehash here. Campbell was appointed to the bench by former Florida governor turned recently failed presidential candidate Jeb Bush about 18 months after the end of the Schiavo case.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRpnLCvRhkw
How do those racist comments Hogan made fit into this?
They came from one of the two videos that Gawker didn’t get. When the people who stole them were shopping them around, they produced a “summary transcript” of the video that included some of Hogan’s comments, and it was turned over to Gawker during the discovery process. Gawker also got some related items from the FBI.
…what?
Hogan went to the FBI, alleging that Sex Tape Broker Keith Davidson tried to to extort him. Gawker eventually had to sue the FBI to get the records of the investigation, which won’t be admitted into evidence at trial. The investigation resulted in a sting operation and they amassed some compelling evidence, but nobody was charged (even after a grand jury was convened) and the reasoning for that has not been made public. The speculation is that it was because Hogan was concerned about the racist comments getting out, but there’s no way to be sure.
So Gawker leaked the racist stuff?
They say they didn’t and the reporter who broke the story says they didn’t, but Hogan thinks they did. On one hand, it getting out helped sway some potential jurors against Hogan. On the other hand, everything Gawker got containing the relevant information was sealed by the judge, and if they were found to be responsible, Hogan would get the equivalent of a default judgment in his favor. So it would have been incredibly risky.
The jury selection process in the trial of Terry Bollea (professionally known as Hulk Hogan) v. Gawker Media et al is finally complete after four strange days. Wednesday was completely bananas and Tuesday somewhat less so before things finally wound down today and the jury was picked. The demographic makeup of the jury, as reported by the Tampa Bay Times among others, is four women and two men, with another two women and one man as alternates. All said they had little to no knowledge of the case, and they had a wide range of views on the role of the press. One of the women who was picked said that “If I find something of interest or concern to me, I tend to look it up. I tend to do a lot of investigating,” seemingly indicating a willingness to hear out both sides.
It’s interesting that the jury’s ratio of women to men is two to one. Comparisons of what happened to Hogan (sex tape made without his consent and eventually sent to a gossip website that published a small portion of it) to “revenge porn” have been fairly common with in legal arguments themselves as well as the media. You’d think that women (or at least younger women), might be more inclined to be more put off by Gawker as a result, though there could also be a distaste for Hogan for his infidelities. It all comes down to how well the lawyers questioned the jurors and if the jurors answered honestly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AtbuCwl3nA
Meanwhile, Wild About Trial has a piece focusing on Hogan’s potential “hometown advantage,” since the trial takes place at home in Pinellas County, Florida. “Almost all of the people” that they spoke to mentioned things like Hogan’s charity/fundraising work, that he’s always friendly and amenable to fans who want his autograph and/or a photo, and so on. One reporter told them that “everyone around here either went to high school with Terry, will lie and tell you they did, or knows someone who did.”
Also, the New York Times and HLN have good articles about why exactly this case is important. Both are well worth reading, and we’ll also have our own case primer up shortly to explain why the case is important and what you need to know to follow along.
As far as the jury selection process itself, here are today’s highlights:
When Michael Sullivan, one of Gawker’s lawyers, was asking the prospective jurors what they thought about First Amendment rights, one member of the panel, a pastor’s wife, said they were “abused” too much. “Accuracy on the Internet is not guaranteed. That is something that has to be addressed.” She had concerns about the video being posted without Hogan’s consent, especially since a less than flattering photo of her had been posted on Facebook. ”I like the idea of ‘do no harm.’”
Male potential juror on if he would be able to “follow the law” if he didn’t agree with the content that was published: “Probably not.”
One woman who was dismissed: “I have an issue with ‘public concern.’ I’m not sure how a sex tape is any of my concern. I just don’t understand how that’s freedom of speech.”
Gawker lawyer citing the rape allegations against Bill Cosby: “Should the celebrities have the power in our society to decide what is and is not publishable?” None of the potential jurors said yes. Later: “There’s no place in the jury box for sympathy.”
The trial proper should last about three weeks and begins with opening arguments this Monday, March 7th. There will be a “pool” camera feed for media use and it’s expected to be streamed online in some form. We will have full coverage throughout.
Tokyo Sports and a number of pro wrestling websites have reported that Eiji Ezaki, best known as Hayabusa during his pro wrestling career, has passed away at 47 years of age. According to the Tokyo Sports report, he suffered a subarachnoid hemorrhage in his brain, though it’s not clear yet if the brain bleed was a spontaneous event or if he had hit his head in a fall.
There were two phases to Ezaki’s career professional wrestling. The first, as a performer, really kicked off 1994, when, at the famous Super J-Cup one night junior heavyweight tournament, he debuted the Hayabusa gimmick in a losing effort against Jushin Thunder Liger. He quickly became one of the top stars in the company, becoming the lead babyface when company founder Atsushi Onita retired (for the second and far from last time) a year later. Under Hayabusa, while FMW still had its fair share of crazy brawls and exploding barbed wire matches, it become a more wrestling centric promotion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTbOv9mZqt8
The second phase, as a promoter, began in 2001, when he was paralyzed in the ring after a freak accident where he slipped performing a quebrada (Lionsault) in the ring, landing on his head. As he grew depressed in the hospital, his friend Hiromichi Fuyuki, the FMW booker and his in-ring rival who was dying of cancer, told him that while he himself didn’t have much time left, Ezaki still had the rest of his life and couldn’t give up. Last year, in the above ceremony at Korakuen Hall, in front of a crowd of hardcore fans and fellow legends he walked unassisted in public for the first time since his injury 14 years earlier.
In the United States, Hayabusa would be best known for his ECW pay-per-view appearance in 1998, where at Heatwave, he and Jinsei Shinzaki (Hakushi of WWF fame) lost to Sabu and Rob Van Dam. He spent a lot of time in Mexico, as well, mostly during the period in the early ’90s were he was fine-tuning the Hayabusa gimmick before debuting it in Japan. While best known for his high flying and participating in the crazy gimmick matches that Onita had made famous, he was a very well-rounded worker and had a number of great matches. FMW was one of the best promotions in the world in the late ’90s, and Hayabusa was key to that, along with Fuyuki, Masato Tanaka, Mike “The Gladiator” Awesome, Mr. Gannosuke, Tetsuhiro Kuroda, Yukihiro Kanemura, Gedo, and Jado. When the promotion veered into a more “WWF-style” direction, he even experimented with a new unmasked persona, “H,” which was inspired by The Rock, even using the Rock Bottom as a finisher dubbed the “H Effect.”
WWE announced today that they had acquired a new corporate sponsor in the form of cellular service provider Cricket Wireless. Cricket is a prepaid mobile service provider owned and operated by AT&T and is one of the most popular players in that space, differentiated by their prices and being a rare prepaid provider to offer heavily discounted and free (after rebate) phones. They’re AT&T’s third tier brand, with the regular AT&T postpaid service being the first tier and the prepaid AT&T GoPhone service being the second tier (AT&T differentiates Cricket from GoPhone by offering lower price service, though with lower maximum data speeds.
WWE will promote Cricket on all of its platforms, from regular TV programming to WWE Network to social media. I honestly can’t remember the last time, if any, that WWE got a company-wide sponsorship like this, so this is a pretty big deal. There is a public perception that prepaid phone service is only for low income customers and those who need burner phones, and that may not be great for WWE given pro wrestling’s low status with advertisers. However, Cricket is trying to change that perception, and with good reason, as these days the prepaid providers often have the best deals and they’re often just the smartest buy.
Here’s the press release that WWE and Cricket sent out:
Cricket Wireless and WWE® Announce Integrated Multi-Year Sponsorship
Atlanta and Stamford, Conn., March 3, 2016 – Cricket Wireless and WWE (NYSE: WWE) announced today that the nation’s fastest growing prepaid wireless brand will team up with WWE in a multi-year agreement, providing Cricket significant visibility and consumer engagement at WWE’s biggest events of the year, including WrestleMania®, SummerSlam®, Royal Rumble® and Payback®.
WWE’s relationship with Cricket Wireless is highlighted by a sponsorship of WWE Network, the first-ever 24/7 direct-to-consumer network, that includes all live pay-per-views, scheduled programming and a massive video-on-demand library. WWE will also utilize its platforms including broadcasts on USA Network, the exclusive home of Monday Night Raw® and SmackDown®, as well as live events, digital and social media to generate awareness and exposure for Cricket Wireless. WWE Superstar John Cena®, the most-followed active U.S. athlete on Facebook, will serve as a Cricket brand ambassador and promote the sponsorship through social and digital media. Cena will also be featured in Cricket Wireless marketing materials and through custom branded content. Additionally, WWE Superstar Dolph Ziggler®, who began serving as a brand ambassador last year, will continue his relationship with Cricket.
“Fans came to our stores in mass, showing incredible passion for the family-friendly entertainment WWE offers and the larger than life Superstars and Divas that ignite the kind of excitement only they can produce,” said Janna Ducich, Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, Cricket Wireless. “It’s time to take it to the next level. This sponsorship enables us to reach fans through WWE events that have been staples in living rooms for decades. We are in an incredible position to introduce the simplicity, transparency and dependability that sets Cricket apart from all of its competitors.”
“We are proud to unveil this new multi-year relationship with Cricket, an aggressive and fast-growing brand that provides its consumers with a tremendous value proposition and first-class customer experience,” said John Brody, WWE Executive Vice President, Global Sales & Partnerships. “Cricket’s sponsorship will provide them with tremendous opportunities to utilize WWE’s platforms and reach our passionate fan base.”
The relationship with WWE provides Cricket an important platform to educate WWE’s passionate fan base about a better choice in prepaid wireless. Retail promotions, celebrity store appearances, and special incentives, such as free trials to experience WWE Network, will give consumers an opportunity to engage deeply with the entertainment they love and a brand that will make their wireless experience better.
With a hearing scheduled for tomorrow to address some disagreements about what deposition testimony can be used during the trial, there were hopes that jury selection in the trial of Hulk Hogan’s lawsuit against Gawker would end today. It didn’t, as they didn’t have a jury as of 5:00 p.m. local time, so it looks like tomorrow’s going to be a marathon day for Hogan and his lawyers. As for the jury selection process, it wasn’t quite as ridiculous as it was yesterday, but still had many strangely entertaining moments.
As noted by ABC Chief Legal Correspondent Dan Abrams in the above video from Good Morning American, jury selection in this case is tricky because both sides more or less agree on the facts of the case. As a result, this jury is going to be interpreting the law: Hulk Hogan needs jurors who are outraged, while Gawker needs jurors who are vociferous defenders of First Amendment rights, especially since Abrams feels their argument is better suited for an Appeals Court than a jury.
The jury selection here, as in most televised trials (the trial proper be streamed online when it starts this Monday, March 7th) is not televised, so what you’re reading here is mostly sourced from the Twitter feeds of CNN’s Tom Kludt. Here are some of today’s highlights:
Gawker issued this statement as the jury selection started for the day: “We are defending the First Amendment against Hulk Hogan’s effort to create a world where celebrities can promote themselves around any topic, in this case sex, and then veto how the media covers their lives. This tape shows Hulk Hogan having sex with his best friend’s wife, and in fact the tape was made by his best friend Bubba who also appears in the video. Hulk Hogan bragged about his sex life for years, denied this particular sexual encounter, and now thinks his own choices are worth $100 million somehow.”
Actual quote from one of Hogan’s lawyers: “Show of hands, how many of you watch ‘SVU’?”
Kludt described Kenneth Turkel, a member of Hulk Hogan’s legal team, as “really yucking it up with the potential jurors”
One female juror had never really heard of Hogan before this week’s process started. She wouldn’t have recognized him out in public and “just knew he was a fighter of some sort,” but not if he was a boxer or a wrestler.
When the prospective jurors in the room were asked if they had any negative biases against Hogan coming into this process, nobody raised their hand.
One lawyer (I believe for Hogan) asked, half-jokingly, if any potential jurors were upset by Hulk Hogan body slamming Andre the Giant or turning heel to join the NWO and become Hollywood Hogan.
A male potential juror felt that Hogan was “not serious enough” about his son Nick’s car wreck (which caused severe brain damage to passenger John Graziano), but still felt he could be impartial.
Only five of the 91 potential jurors there had heard of Gawker.
When asked about the limits of media, Potential Juror #4 said that ”the New York Times gets away with a lot of stuff politically that they aren’t held accountable for.” Then they talked about Howard Stern.
The lawyers conferred at the bench and the sound in the media room was turned off when a female potential juror said that she felt uneasy serving on a jury in a case about a sex tape due to “personal experiences.”
One woman said that it would be impossible for her to be impartial because “It goes against my personal beliefs, and my relationship with Jesus Christ.”
Another female potential juror on the sex tape: “Do I want to look at it? No. Am I willing to, as a citizen? Yes.”
One male potential juror cracked a joke: “Unfortunately I had no excuse to not be here.”
One of Hogan’s attorneys (I believe Kenneth Turkel) asked THIS: “NSFW. How many of you are familiar with that acronym?”
No potential jurors were familiar with Gawker founder Nick Denton or former editor (as well as writer of the Hogan article) A.J. Daulerio. They’re co-defendants with Gawker as a company. Gawker’s lawyer joked that they need to talk to their public relations staff.
When asked about Gawker’s other websites, one man said he reads Jezebel, their women’s issues site. None of them read Kotaku, Gawker’s video game site.
36 potential jurors were dismissed at 5:00 p.m., with 70 returning tomorrow for the final jury selection. Nine of the 70 will be picked.
We’ll have more tomorrow, and in-depth coverage starts with opening arguments this Monday, March 7th. We’ll also have a guide to everything that’s going on in the case by the end of the weekend.
There had been speculation for a while, but it looks like we finally know where next year’s WrestleMania, WrestleMania 33, is going to be held. Early this morning, the Orlando Business Journal posted what they classified as a “rumor” that the show is going to be held at the Citrus Bowl in Orlando, Florida, with an official announcement coming as soon as next week. According to the article, Orlando “has been in the mix” for at least the lost month or so, with visions of, in the words of reporter Richard Bilbao, “steal[ing] the show from long-rumored market Minneapolis.” The city of Orlando confirmed in January that they had put in a bid to get the show, with hopes of a $50 million economic impact on the city. WWE, of course, has a major presence in Orlando these days, with the WWE Performance Center and NXT tapings both in the Orlando metropolitan area.
A few hours later, Justin LaBar of TribLive tweeted that he had confirmed the story with a WWE source:
Lot of speculation & I just confirmation from source in #WWE—WrestleMania 33 will be in Orlando at the Citrus Bowl.
He later added that the plan right now is for the show to take place on April 2nd, 2017. That;s tentative, though: WWE has also drafted promotional materials that list April 9th, 2017 as the date, and it’s currently being mulled over with local and stadium officials
The Orlando Business Journal had also reported last month that the cities in consideration were Orlando, Minneapolis, and Los Angeles. It surprised a lot of people when Raw hit Minneapolis in December for the Slammy Awards show and there was no announcement about WrestleMania. Why? In August, the Minnesota Vikings posted a video claiming that WrestleMania was coming to the brand new U.S. Bank Stadium, with the claim that “Before the building is even open we have already secured the Super Bowl in 2018, the NCAA basketball Final Four in 2019, we are a finalist and seem to be in a pretty good position to secure the college football playoffs, the BCS championship game, you know we’ve got WrestleMania coming.” WWE responded to news stories about the video with the following statement:
Minneapolis is one of the many cities that has expressed an interest in hosting a future WrestleMania. Beyond WrestleMania in Dallas, TX on April 3, 2016, locations for future WrestleMania’s have not been announced.
Nobody thought much of it, because WWE likes to announce the WrestleMani location themselves. Four months later. the lack of an announcement at the Slammy Awards show (which was a lot closer to when it’s usually announced then an announcement next week would be) appeared to signal that they were out of the running for WrestleMania 33.
After the potential juror pool was narrowed down yesterday with the initial questionnaire, people getting hardship exemptions, and so on, things got a lot more interesting today when it comes to jury selection the Hulk Hogan vs. Gawker (officially Bollea vs. Gawker) civil trial. Today was the first day of voir dire, the session where lawyers from both sides question jurors to look for potential biases that could help or hurt their cases. There were 106 potential jurors yesterday when the dust cleared, and today, the attorneys for both sides started to question them. The result was an utterly bizarre spectacle that unfortunately wasn’t broadcast due to restrictions by the judges (the trial proper will be streamed online starting Monday/March 7th) and resulted in some amazing Twitter content.
Probably the most worrisome panelist was Potential Juror #13, a woman who said that she didn’t hold any bias against Hogan for his use of the N-word. “I don’t know how it made me feel. I may have thought, ‘Oh how sad.’” That isn’t inherently a problem. This quote, however, is: “Frankly, if I could talk about that word for a minute, it’s a double edge sword. A certain race can say it, but a certain race cannot. It’s just not right that that happens.” Somehow, she wasn’t excused, and will return tomorrow for further questioning. The other potential jurors mentioned were, while clearly less potentially malevolent, as entertaining if not much more.
On top of that, Judge Pamela Campbell, after imploring the jury pool to avoid news coverage of the case, went off on a tangent about the quality of online journalism…well, or her perceived lack thereof. “There used to be investigative journalists,” she said. To some, it sounded like a “dog whistle” rant about Gawker and it came off as wildly inappropriate.
Here are some of the highlights from 35 potential jurors being questioned:
Way less people than you’d expect had heard of Gawker.
Potential Juror #5 had information about her posted online without her consent: Her weight. Potential Juror #6 also had an ex-girlfriend smear her in some way on MySpace. Yes, MySpace.
Potential Juror #8 was the first male questioned. “I don’t follow a lot of mainstream media. I’m not a mainstream media kind of person. […] I’ve heard the word Gawker..But I don’t really know anything about Gawker.” He had, however, heard of Gizmodo, Gawker’s gadget site, as well as Jalopnik, their car site, but didn’t appear to know it was part of Gawker Media.
Potential Juror #10, a local bar employee who said that “[Hogan] seems to enjoy the circus atmosphere that follows him. Sex with a friend’s wife, although consensual, seems a bit slimy,” before adding that “I’m very opinionated.” She was excused, of course
Potential Juror #11 saw parts of the Hulk Hogan/Heather Cole sex video at the center of the case…on Gakwer…right? “No, on porn sites.” He’s a “former wrestling fan” (to quote Kludt, not the juror) who listens to Bubba the Love Sponge sometimes and said that what he’s learned about Hogan’s private life “lessen[ed]” his opinion of theHulkster. “Seems to me like a rather inappropriate arrangement. One man’s wife is one man’s wife and…should remain that way.” He also had negative feelings about Gawker, though: “The idea that [the video] was received in good faith does not seem possible to me.” He was the second to be dismissed/excused.
More jurors than you’d expect only knew Hogan from local news stories about his divorce and his son’s car wreck.
A female potential juror had “party” photos posted of her on Facebook without her consent and the offending party refused to take them down. “That makes me feel kind of victimized.”
Potential Juror #19, a self-identified “devout Christian,” singled Hogan out as a “sinner” for his infidelities.
A male who saw the edited sex tape (presumably the Gawker post) on where he found it: “I couldn’t tell you the website. Someone was like check this out.”
Potential Juror #22 was dismissed for sharing mutual friends with Bubba Clem and Heather Cole. On serving on this case’s jury: ”Probably not a good idea.”
This happened:
Attorney: Do you follow wrestling? Juror: “Yeah, when it was real back in the day." #hulkvsgawk
The day started at 9:00 a.m. local time. They didn’t find anyone who was offended by Hogan’s racist comments until Potential Juror #46 at around 3:38 p.m. “I know the plaintiff has used a word that I find abhorrent.” Also: ”I find the amount [$100 million] that’s been requested in this case to be…very excessive.” Guess what happened.
On Gawker: “It’s a fairly well known phenomenon.” On the nature of the affair, paraphrased by Anna Phillips:
Juror says the fact that the sex was extramarital bothers her. What if the husband approved? That's even worse, she says. #hulkvsgawk
One man wrote “I’m on Terry Bollea’s side” and “I like Hulk Hogan” on his questionnaire.
As paraphrased by Tom Kludt: Potential Juror #80 said that Pat Robertson’s 700 Club evangelical Christian television show was “one of his primary news sources.” A few minutes later, presumably from the same man: “I don’t know anything about Gawker. Never seen it. The name to me would imply a site that shows pornographic material.”
The day ended with a guy wearing sandals who wasn’t sure if he could be impartial because “I have a very pleasant memory of Hulk Hogan.”
That’s it for today. We’ll have more tomorrow, and remember that full coverage of the trial proper starts Monday.
On Monday, Gawker filed a motion to exclude deposition testimony of a corporate representative of MindGeek during the trial in Hulk Hogan’s lawsuit against them, which starts this coming Monday, March 7th. MindGeek is the company behind a ton of different pornographic websites, including many of the “YouTube of porn” types of websites. The reason this all came up is because Hogan, is trying to determine the damages that he should be awarded if he prevails over Gawker at trial, is arguing that for each person who viewed Gawker’s “highlight reel” of the video of him and Heather Cole, he should get the “standard price to access and view” a celebrity sex video. To determine this amount, Hogan will be calling Shanti Shunn, an e-commerce expert, as a witness who will testify that the video was viewed 4.46 million times and that the views should be multiplied by the $4.95 fee to view Vivid Video’s celebrity sex website.
In a deposition, Shunn conceded that he had no experience with the pornography business and the he wasn’t aware that Vivid puts its celebrity videos on PornHub (one of MindGeek’s free sites) for free viewing. Part of Shunn’s expert report was that to see Vivid’s celebrity videos, they HAD to pay at least $4.95, so Gawker deposed MindGeek via corporate designee Brett Goldenberg just 13 days ago on February 18th. Goldenberg’s role was to establish that an explicit five minute video of Kim Kardashian and Ray J, which is owned by Vivid, had been legally streamed 105,771,119 times via the official “Vivid Celebs” PornHub channel as of March 18, 2015. The inference, of course, is that Shunn’s method of calculating damages for Hogan isn’t valid.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uvEhrmhIzI
In the same deposition of Goldberg, Hogan’s lawyers tried to get information about what type of revenue is generated by videos being viewed at PornHub, though the MindGeek lawyer shut down a lot of that questioning. They also tried to get Goldenberg to answer questions about the PornHub terms of use, user-uploaded videos requiring the consent of everyone appearing in them, etc. to try to bolster the privacy claims at the center of their case.
Hogan’s side is trying to get the deposition thrown out, but Gawker argues that they were granted approval to take the deposition by the judge, that they stayed within the agreed parameters, and that there’s no reason for Hogan’s motion to be granted. The conclusion of Gawker’s pleading reads as follows:
Plaintiff has failed to offer any meaningful basis for the Court to revisit its July 2015 ruling that Defendants could secure testimony from MindGeek that celebrity sex tapes can be viewed for free at PomHub in light of the expert testimony proffered by Plaintiffs expert that a person would need to pay at least $4.95 to watch those tapes. Moreover, nothing about Mr. Goldenberg’s deposition presents the compelling circumstances to warrant the drastic remedy of excluding his testimony.
We’ll have more later going over ridiculousness of today’s jury selection process.
LawNewz, the website founded by ABC Chief Legal Correspondent Dan Abrams, broke an interesting story today when it comes to the whole Hulk Hogan sex tape mess. Originally, when Hogan filed his lawsuit against Gawker, both Bubba the Love Sponge Clem and his ex-wife, Heather Cole were both co-defendants along with Gawker, Gawker founder Nick Denton, and then-Gawker editor A.J. Daulerio, who wrote the article about the sex tape of Hogan and Cole. Clem (who recorded the counter on a hidden security camera feeding into a DVR/DVD burner system) and Cole (who was aware she and Hogan was on camera and later told Tampa police that positioned the Hulkster for “better” shots) were dropped from the suit after Clem settled with Hogan. The terms of the settlement were sealed, and little was known…until today.
It had already come out via past filings that Clem transferred the copyright of the video (Bubba didn’t register it; all works are automatically copyrighted under United States law going back to early 1989) and had to make a public apology, which he did on his radio show. What weren’t known were the financial terms of the settlement. Today, after digging through various transcripts of hearings from Hogan’s case against Gawker, found one of Gawker’s lawyers discussing the settlement, including the financial terms and some of the other promises Clem made:
Mr. Clem got out of this case with a promise to testify to cooperate, to not disparage Mr. Bollea, and to not help us, and paid what they called the substantial sum of $5,000.
Yes, just $5,000, when Hogan is suing Gawker for $100 million. Gawker was trying to get the settlement admitted as evidence in the trial, and they felt the settlement amount was an important detail. Why? The case against Clem was dismissed “without prejudice,” meaning Hogan could re-file the case against Clem. Here’s the note about the settlement terms in context:
Then there is this dismissal without prejudice. Mr. Clem got out of this case with promise to testify to cooperate, to not disparage Mr. Bollea, and to not help us, and paid what they called the substantial sum of $5,000. But at that point, if Mr. Clem testified differently in his deposition, if he comes into court come March 7th and testifies differently in this courtroom, Mr. Bollea can restart a hundred million dollar lawsuit against him. That is the problem.
You can read that as, more or less, that Gawker is concerned by a former co-defendant and key witness changing his story after settling might have changed his story because the settlement terms were so forgiving. Especially since Hogan could just sue him again after he gets favorable testimony in the trial. The low settlement figure also makes you wonder if, by that point, Hogan was aware of the racist comments he made on one of the three videos Clem and Cole made of him (not the one Gawker had) and was willing to give Bubba a sweetheart deal to make sure Bubba wouldn’t do anything that would lead to those comments surfacing.
After months of delays and drama, Pinellas County Court in Florida was the site of the beginning of the Hulk Hogan vs. Gawker civil trial. Hogan sued the new media company in October 2012, just days after their flagship nd namesake blog posted an article accompanied by a “highlight reel” of a video that included Hogan having a sexual encounter with Heather Cole, then known as Heather Clem, wife of radio show host Bubba the Love Sponge Clem. Hogan has always sworn that he had no idea he was being filmed.
The short video included about eight seconds total of actual sexual contact, which Gawker claims was solely to authenticate that this was the actual rumored sex tape (and posting any video authenticating that the video cited in the article was real). The article mused about how “unsexy” the video was while musing about the public’s interest in celebrity sex tapes in general. The video was quickly pulled and Hogan almost got the article pulled, but the latter was kept on the site after Gawker appealed. Gawker’s defense is that the Hogan, largely via appearances on both Clem and Howard Stern’s radio shows, had made his sex life a matter of public interest.
The trial proper starts next Monday, with jury selection beginning today, with Hogan tweeting about it early this morning:
Time for the real main event!"I AM" going to slam another Giant! Hogan vrs Gawker! Watcha Gonna Do Gawker? Only Justice Brother HH
Some of the potential jurors seemed excited by the proposition of this being the trial they might serve on if they didn’t get out of jury duty.
There were 250 potential jurors in each session, with one morning session and one afternoon session. The 14 page juror questionnaire included, on top of standard questions about potential conflicts of interest via work and family, included queries such as “Do you follow celebrity news?” and “Have you ever had private information posted online without your consent?“
CNN Money included another question from the 12 page questionnaire: “This case involves images depicting sex and nudity, and the use of profanity. Would receiving and viewing this type of content affect your ability to serve as a fair and impartial juror in this case?“
By the end of the day, they were whittled down to 106 potential jurors who will return tomorrow, with most of the pool running for the hills when they found out that the the trial would most likely last about three weeks.
Several jurors “scoffed audibly” when it was explained that Gawker’s defense is that the video was “a matter of public concern.”
There will be a hearing in the case on Friday, which will mostly deal with what portions of different deposition testimony can be admitted. Legal experts don’t expect Hogan to prevail in the end, with Stephen MacNamara of Florida State University’s College of Communication and Information telling the Courtroom View Network last week that the video being recorded in someone else’s home reducing the expectation of privacy on top of giving credence to Gawker’s first amendment arguments. According to McNamara, a Hogan win being upheld on appeal “would change the face of a whole lot of things.”
At long last, Lucha Underground episodes are available to fans who don’t get El Rey on their cable/satellite provider and don’t subscribe to Sling TV. Both all of Season 1 and the ongoing Season 2 are now available for purchase on iTunes. Single episodes are the standard iTunes pricing of $1.99 for standard definition or $2.99 for high definition. As full seasons go, the complete 39 episode first season available for $44.99 in high definition (or $34.99 in standard definition) and a season pass for the ongoing season two available for $39.99 for high definition (or $29.99 in standard definition). In addition, the season two premiere, “A Much Darker Place,” is available for free.
During the first season, Lucha Underground was also available across the United States on the Unimas broadcast television network, but with Spanish commentary and other change (including alternate Spanish takes) to gear the show towards a Spanish-speaking audience. The Sling TV streaming service has El Rey and thus the English version of Lucha Underground, but it’s $20 per month, which is a bit steep for one show, especially if you already have cable or satellite television.
Yesterday, ESPN UK’s Nicholas Atkin posted an article based on an interview he did with Kurt Angle on January 30th in London, England during TNA’s UK tour. As far as newsworthiness, there are two things to note:
The first addresses something that happened at the tapings: We noted at the time that there was fear that Angle suffered a concussion at TNA’s first taping of the UK tour on January 29th in Manchester, which happened to be the night before the interview. At the time, the reports were that Angle seemed better after about half an hour and was cleared to wrestle the next night inHowever, Atkin wrote that Angle told him that he did indeed suffer a concussion in Manchester, but the doctor still cleared him for London. Angle told Atkin that “I’m healthy, I don’t have any problems. You have injuries, you’re gonna have injuries in wrestling. Everybody does,” but it’s not 100% clear if he was speaking generally or referring to the concussion.
At the time, it was classified as Angle having a “concussion scare” but turning out to be OK. Clearly, that wasn’t actually the case. Obviously, we don’t have the whole story, like who exactly the doctor was and if (s)he was affiliated with TNA, but for a doctor to clear someone the night after suffering a concussion is a terrible look, to say the least. With WWE fighting off lawsuits alleging that they acted improperly with regards to handling concussions, it’s mind-boggling that something like this could happen in TNA, even if you’re someone who has a low opinion of the company. Angle’s TNA farewell matches were indeed the most hyped part of the tour, but in 2016, you would think that the fans would be understanding if he had to bow out after Manchester with a concussion. It also looks even worse with the news coming out a few weeks after Daniel Bryan’s retirement speech, though the actual concussion happened just over a week before Bryan made his retirement announcement.
For what it’s worth, elsewhere in the ESPN article, Angle says that he’s better overall shape than people think, especially when it comes to his oft-injured neck: “A lot of people feel I’m banged up. I had some bad luck with my neck for a couple of years in WWE. Ever since I’ve been pretty healthy as far as my neck. Obviously I’ve had knee injuries, shoulder injuries, we all do. It’s just a matter of the recovery time and when you can come back, and I’ve been very fortunate to come back soon.”
Meanwhile, as for all of the talk of whether or not Angle is retiring, he said that “I’m gonna take a break from [professional] wrestling, I know that for sure, at least a year. So we’ll see how it goes and I’ll go from there.” Angle then clarified thet “I’m not gonna say I’m gonna retire. I am pretty much done with TNA. Not sure, maybe down the road, maybe I might come back, but most likely I probably won’t, because there’s a chance that I might not wrestle again. I just wanna get a feeler this year and see what I wanna do and see where I wanna go.” The TNA UK tour was set to be the site of his last matches for the time being, but it looks like the offer to wrestle Rey Mysterio at the UR Fight card next month must have been too lucrative to pass up. Although if he suffered a concussion on January 29th and it was far from his first, wrestling on March 20th may not be a great idea.
Being that TNA had been negotiating with A.J. Styles and now he’s on WWE television with a push, it’s no surprise that they have a Styles DVD set coming out to capitalize. While it wouldn’t be the first time that TNA reacted to a former roster member going to WWE by putting out a DVD set, it’s entirely possible that they were planning this going back to their talks with Styles late last year. Regardless, at four discs, it’s a very comprehensive look at Styles’ TNA career, and you can’t really blame TNA for trying either way. Here’s the full match listing that TNA sent out, which is pretty comprehensive and even includes a tag team match with pre-TNA rival Jason Cross:
DISC 1:
June 2002: Jerry Lynn, Low Ki & AJ Styles vs. Flying Elvises (first ever TNA match)
June 2002: X Title: AJ vs. Low Ki vs Psicosis vs. Jerry Lynn (to crown the first X Champion)
May 2003: AJ Styles & D-Lo Brown vs. CM Punk & Jason Cross
June 2003: World Title: AJ Styles vs. Raven vs. Jeff Jarrett
April 2004: World Title: AJ Styles vs. Jeff Jarrett
June 23, 2004: AJ Styles vs. Jeff Hardy (Hardy’s TNA debut)
August 2004: Street Fight: AJ Styles vs. Kid Kash
Final Resolution 2005: Ultimate X: AJ Styles vs. Petey Williams vs. Chris Sabin
Lockdown 2005: Steel Cage: AJ Styles vs. Abyss
DISC 2:
Hard Justice 2005: World Title: AJ Styles vs. Jeff Jarrett
No Surrender 2005: AJ Styles vs. Sean Waltman
Unbreakable 2005: AJ Styles vs. Samoa Joe vs. Christopher Daniels
Bound For Glory 2005: Ironman Match: AJ Styles vs. Christopher Daniels
Slammiversary 2006: Tag Team Title: AJ Styles & Christopher Daniels vs. America’s Most Wanted
No Surrender 2006: Ultimate X: Christopher Daniels & AJ Styles vs. The Latin American Xchange
Bound For Glory 2007: Tag Team Title: AJ Styles & Tomko vs. Ron Killings & Consequences Creed
February 2008 IMPACT: AJ Styles vs. Tiger Mask
DISC 3:
Slammiversary 2008: AJ Styles vs. Kurt Angle
Hard Justice 2008: Last Man Standing: AJ Styles vs. Kurt Angle
Destination X 2009: Legends Title: AJ Styles vs. Booker T
September 2009 IMPACT: AJ Styles vs. Chris Sabin
September 2009 IMPACT: AJ Styles vs. Douglas Williams
No Surrender 2009: World Title: AJ Styles vs. Sting vs. Kurt Angle vs. Hernandez vs. Matt Morgan
Bound For Glory 2009: World Title: AJ Styles vs. Sting
Turning Point 2009: World Title: AJ Styles vs. Samoa Joe vs. Christopher Daniels
DISC 4:
Lockdown 2010: World Title: AJ Styles vs. D’Angelo Dinero
No Surrender 2010: I-Quit Match: AJ Styles vs. Tommy Dreamer
September 2010 IMPACT: Ladder Match: AJ Styles vs. Sabu
October 2011 IMPACT: AJ Styles & Rob Van Dam vs. Christopher Daniels and Jerry Lynn
Bound For Glory 2011: I-Quit Match: AJ Styles vs. Christopher Daniels
Slammiversary 2012: Tag Team Title: AJ Styles & Kurt Angle vs. Christopher Daniels and Kazarian
Hardcore Justice 2012 Ladder Match: AJ Styles vs. Samoa Joe vs. Kurt Angle vs. Christopher Daniels
July 2013 IMPACT: AJ Styles vs. Jeff Hardy
No Surrender 2013: AJ Styles vs. Austin Aries
Bound For Glory 2013: World Title: AJ Styles vs. Bully Ray
Last night, Mike Johnson broke the news at PWInsider.com that TNA has been actively seeking out new investors for the company as of late, which TNA Executive Vice President,Creative & Talent Relations John Gaburick confirmed. “TNA has been in in strategic partnership talks with several major global media companies and investment firms about the company’s next phase of growth,” adding that “TNA CEO Dixie Carter has talked in recent media interviews about the company’s execution of its 5 year growth plan” and “It’s a very exciting time for TNA.” Gaburick also confirmed that Dixie Carter had spent a lot of time in New York and Los Angeles as of late for meetings.
On last night’s Wrestling Observer Radio podcast for F4WOnline.com subscribers, Dave Meltzer said that he didn’t have much in the way of details other than that “It’s up for sale.” It wasn’t entirely clear if he just meant shares or trying to sell outright, but he took a fairly negative point of view since it’s not like TNA is in good shape right now and they’re losing their biggest name star, Kurt Angle.
Panda Energy, the Carter family’s main company, is no longer financing TNA, and the belief is that they haven’t been since Jeff Jarrett’s minority stake in the company was bought out last year. Panda may still own TNA on paper, but paychecks that used to come from Panda’s Texas offices are now coming out of TNA’s Nashville, Tennessee offices.
The newer international TV deals, like with Sony Six in India, are enough to keep the company afloat, but not enough to make TNA a “player,” and Dixie Carter wants TNA to be a “player” in the pro wrestling business. right now.
Johnson has heard that interest in buying into the company has been shown by a United Kingdom based group of some kind, with TNA also having meetings in New York and Los Angeles, “including meetings at the Pop network.” It’s not clear if he means Pop was showing interest in buying to TNA or just that some of the meetings could have been routine meetings with Pop.
The company isn’t necessarily for sale, with every source specifically telling Johnson that they’re looking for partners, but theoretically, if “the right offer came along,” it’s not like they’d dismiss it out of hand. Of course, TNA has turned down offers to sell in the past, with one (from a group led by Jeff Jarrett and Hermie Sadler) getting close but not going through when Bob Carter insisted that Dixie must continue to have an onscreen role. Jarrett and Sadler pulled out of the deal because they felt that was dictating creative direction as part of the sale.
It doesn’t seem like TNA is in good shape right now, especially if Panda Energy is no longer funding them. That said, they’ve pulled a rabbit out of their hat before, so it wouldn’t be a huge shock if they found a strategic partner.
UPDATE: WWE deleted the article right as I was posting this one. Beloved Twitter personality @TheFrayMovement tweeted screen grabs of the article, though:
Earlier today, WWE.com posted the official announcement (sort of, t’s on the site but I cant find where it’s supposed to be linked for) of the March 12th March to WrestleMania special that will air live on WWE Network from the Ricoh Coliseum in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It wasn’t a secret that the show was coming, but WWE hadn’t really acknowledged it until now.
The big news coming out of the announcement is that not only is Brock Lesnar wrestling on the show as expected, but Triple H will be as well, and he’ll be defending the WWE World Heavyweight Championship there for the first time since winning it at the Royal Rumble. His challenger has not been announced as of yet.
Triple H will also be wrestling 13 days later at Madison Square Garden, where, as we noted yesterday, the lineup has been changed to include he and Sheamus vs. Roman Reigns and Dean Ambrose as the main even (Kevin Owens vs. A.J. Styles was also added). Since Triple H transitioned into a part time role as a wrestler several years ago, he’ll sometimes return at a major market house show to shake potential ring rust off, and it looks like he’s doing that again here.
Past house show return matches even included the blow-off to Triple H’s feud with Sheamus, as he was transitioning to feuding with The Undertaker for WrestleMania so their program was forgotten on TV.
One of the strangest stories this week involved The History Channel’s hit series “Pawn Stars” about the Gold and Silver Pawn Shop in Las Vegas, Nevada. One of this week’s new episodes, “First Lady of Pawn,” was advertised for last night with this description by Zap2It and anyone using their channel guide services:
WWE Hall of Famer, Tammy ‘Sunny’ Sytch, brings in her Hall of Fame ring; Corey checks out a 1927 Essex Sedan rat rod; an 1891 $1 silver certificate.
You can still see that description in the listing on LocateTV. Other guide providers, like TV Guide, just referred to it generically as just a WWE Hall of Fame ring being brought into the shop. Sytch, when asked on Twitter, angrily denied she’d be on the show, including after a fan showed a picture of the on-screen guide from his cable/satellite box:
Given her history as of late (including the storyline where her trying to sell the ring turned into her doing porn when she shot the video close to a year before she “put the ring up for sale”), not everyone believed her, to say the least. Well, the segment aired last night, and it turns out she was telling the truth:
It was some third party selling Paul Bearer’s ring. What exactly the miscommunication was, nobody knows as of yet. Being that it was only on one guide data provider’s listing, it makes you wonder if someone at Zap2It just guessed for some reason stemming from the publicity stunt Sytch pulled about selling the ring to promote her pornographic videos.
Rob Naylor, who worked as Creative Assistant under Dusty Rhodes in Florida Championship Wrestling/WWE NXT from 2011 to 2013, tweeted some interesting stuff over the weekend. He kept formats, memos, and other documents from his time with WWE and decided to make some images of them public…
Format sheet for the first Full Sail University pilot taping in 2011 (note the puns):
Another gem. Before there was "NXT" – a secret pilot was taped at "Full Sail". Dream dubbed it "Project H" #1stdraftpic.twitter.com/jqJOr8nRLr
A list of indie wrestlers from 2012 that Naylor would sign if he could, which he was asked to make by Triple H’s assistant (the note about Alex Shelley being clear of a TNA contract is most likely due to TNA’s lawsuit against WWE and Brian Wittenstein being an ongoing matter at the time):
Naylor also mentioned that he found other things going through his collection of records, like performance reviews and a list of tips from Ricky Steamboat on how to work babyface, so hopefully there’s more to come.
There is a strange listing on Ticketmaster for the Monday Night Raw in Baltimore, Maryland the night after the pay-per-view in Newark, New Jersey that is now Extreme Rules: As if this writing, the show is billed as “WWE Monday Night RAW vs. WWE.” On one hand, this could be absolutely nothing, as Ticketmaster listings for WWE events being incorrect and/or oddly formatted is not out of the ordinary at all. On the other hand, this sounds like it plays directly into the Shane McMahon storyline that started on last night’s edition of Raw: If Shane beats The Undertaker in a Hell in a Cell match at WrestleMania, he gets control of Raw, or at least that’s how it was specified in the promo.
Again, it could easily be nothing, but today, it’s very easy to read it as something, so we’ll have to see what happens.
Meanwhile, Shane McMahon has joined the Twitterverse. While he’s not verified yet (and he only has one tweet so far), his father, Vincent Kennedy McMahon, did tweet at him a few minutes ago and the official WWE account identified him as real:
While Jim Ross had said last week that he would be calling boxing soon on CBS Sports Network, those were all of the details that he gave. Today, he officially announced the details as part of a press conference in Las Vegas (embedded above), which was covered by the Associated Press: Ross is going to be the play by play announcers for “Knockout Night at the D,” a a series of cards from the Downtown Las Vegas Event Center. The first show will be March 12th with Zab Judah vs. Josh Torres in the 10-round junior welterweight title main event.
Ross explained to the AP that “I can’t overnight become a boxing expert. There will be learned boxing fans, longtime fans, that are going know infinitely more about boxing than I do, and I have no problem with that. My strengths are storytelling and getting you to know the fighter, and then bringing that spontaneity, that voice that cuts through the clutter.” Color commentator Al Bernstein added that “Jim is an iconic broadcaster who comes from a different kind of telecast, but has already shown in brief forays into boxing [with Golden Boy Promotions on Fox Sports 1] that he is well studied and very respectful of the sport.”
According to PWInsider, Payback will be on May 1st with the location to be announced, while Extreme Rules is now indeed the May 22nd show in Newark, New Jersey.
ORIGINAL:
Well, this is curious.
All of a sudden, on Ticketmaster’s website, WWE Payback on May 22nd, which is in the middle of its ticket pre-sale, has been renamed Extreme Rules, logo and all. At least as of last night during Monday Night Raw, all local New York market ads for the tickets going on sale (the card is at the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey), the show was still branded as PayBack.
Extreme Rules had originally ben scheduled for April 24th (three weeks after WrestleMania), but no location had been announced and tickets never went on sale. Extreme Rules is, as of right now, not listed on WWE.com’s event page in any form, though Payback is. Unless there’s something else going on, it looks like the second April pay-per-view has been cancelled to have a longer build for the May post-WrestleMania special. Maybe there’s a piece of the puzzle missing, but with Newark tickets on sale and no location even announced for the second April show, it looks like this is the case.
Sonjay Dutt is a veteran cruiserweight/X Division style wrestler who made a name for himself in TNA and other promotions, but lately, he hasn’t been as visible as a wrestler. In large part that’s because he’s working in the office for Global Force Wrestling along with Jeff Jarrett and Scott D’Amore. This week, he talked about GFW, his health, and more as the latest guest on the Two Man Power Trip of Wrestling podcast, and here are some of the key quotes they sent out:
What was his reaction to Daniel Bryan announcing his retirement?
I think the number one thing coming from that and it should have hit every wrestler watching is if his brain is supposedly like that, then who knows how many other wrestlers are in that same situation. It’s just that we just don’t checked, we don’t get it checked out and had the rigorous testing that he had. It was obviously sad that someone so talented and so young would be forced to retire. Who knows if me or the next guy who went through the same testing won’t find the same thing in our brain. Which is scary to think.
What’s next for Global Force Wrestling?
I think the number one question is when are we going to see it on TV and that is the next step. What I’ve learned is trying to get 52 weeks of television content on a major cable network is not the easiest thing in the world or the quickest thing to do but that is the next step for Global Force and 2016 is just starting and this year we’ve made quite the leeway in those regards and I think that the further along we get here in this year, the more announcements we are going to be able to make and hopefully sooner then later we can get our content on television and really show wrestling fans how we are trying to be different and what type of program we are trying to present.
Has GFW considered some kind of streaming service for their TV show?
Initially we’ve discussed it and still those discussions are on the table. We’ve discussed all digital platforms. Technology and entertainment are ever evolving and some stuff that was around a year ago isn’t around now and new stuff comes and goes and we are trying to figure out what the best route is to showcase Global Force whether it be on cable television or whether it be through a digital or a streaming service like a Netflix, and all of those options are absolutely 100% on the table.
What did he think of working on GFW shows as part of the company’s minor league baseball stadium tour last summer?
I loved them. They are just so different from your regular arena setting and your regular arena shows and honestly on a nice summer day what is better than sitting in a ballpark watching pro wrestling. It’s a cool atmosphere and a cool environment. We’ve got a lot of families and a lot of kids coming around and there is a nostalgia factor to it as well and at all of our ballpark shows we’ve had a legend of pro wrestling come and sign and it was a good time across the board.
Does GFW have one of the most underrated rosters in the business?
I think that the name of the game of any start up pro wrestling company is getting the word out there and getting people to know you exist and then you can really showcase your talent which at the end of the day is THE number one thing that sells a pro wrestling company. What we are trying to do is show a different batch of guys out there that you might not know and that is what we were doing on our baseball shows. We would go to these towns and have your regular wrestlers and we would go to these towns to try and find that diamond in the rough and since Independent wrestling is (crazy) thriving throughout the country, just to find out those stars that are regional and nobody knows about and put them on a bigger stage.
WWE’s Madison Square Garden house show that takes place in the weeks leading up to WrestleMania is usually up there with the biggest WWE live events of the year, along with the Christmas week Garden show. WWE usually loads up that particular MSG show, and this year’s is no different, as they’ve announced that it’s going to be Daniel Bryan Appreciation night, much like they’ve done similar events for Bret Hart and Hulk Hogan at MSG.
The lineup as advertised right now is Roman Reigns vs. Sheamus (with WWE World Heavyweight Champion Triple H), the Madison Square Garden debut of AJ Styles, Kevin Owens (c) vs. Dean Ambrose in a 30 Minute Iron Man Match for the WWE Intercontinental Championship, Big Show vs. Bray Wyatt, Kalisto vs. Alberto Del Rio for the WWE United States championship, and “also appearing” are Ric Flair, WWE Tag Team champions The New Day, The Dudley Boyz, The Usos, Rusev, The Miz, The Wyatt Family, and Ryback. It wouldn’t necessarily surprise me if Triple H’s role changed at all, because in the past, he’s used this show to get his timing back before WrestleMania, but that’s just baseless speculation.
