Austin Aries has been medically cleared to return to the ring, according to the Wrestling Observer. Aries has been out of action since October 2016 when he suffered an orbital fracture in a match against Shinsuke Nakamura.
With WrestleMania fast approaching, there has been talk of Austin Aries challenging Neville for the Cruiserweight championship at the event. Aries has been doing post-match interviews and recently pissed Neville off. During an interview segment on Monday’s RAW, Neville got in Aries face in what seems to be the start of a potential feud between the two.
– It looks like WWE is moving forward with plans to crown the first ever WWE Asia Champion. After the recent success of WWE’s United Kingdom Championship tournament, officials are now interested in holding similar events in other regions of the world. WWE officials have already begun scouting talent in Asia, with several wrestlers in talks with the company to iron out their eligibility and travel requirements. Any potential candidates would have to sign exclusive deals, and no outside bookings will be allowed if signed in the US, the UK, or Japan. Officials hope to avoid some of the confusion reported from the UK scene.
– We’ve reported how Samoa Joe vs. Triple H was one match discussed for Triple H at WrestleMania 33 now that Seth Rollins is injured. After this week’s RAW that match seems unlikely. PWInsider reports that one match that was at least discussed is Triple H vs. Shane McMahon. We also know that Shane vs. AJ Styles has been considered recently.
– The following Title Match Wrestling video from a recent Pro Wrestling Syndicate event in Sayreville, NJ features Scott Steiner facing indy wrestler Craig Steele. Steiner cuts a pre-match promo that is very NSFW and goes on to win the match when Steele taps out.
– We’ve reported how current WrestleMania 33 plans call for RAW Women’s Champion Charlotte defending against Nia Jax, Bayley and Sasha Banks in a Fatal 4 Way. It is unclear what WWE has planned for the SmackDown women’s division, but a number of former female WWE Superstars have been contacted for the show.
– This week’s NXT will feature a glorious NXT Championship celebration with Bobby Roode.
Speaking of Roode, Triple H called the recent NXT Full Sail tapings the first of the “Bobby Roode Era.” Triple H tweeted this photo with Roode after the tapings:
A rumor going around this week is that WWE Champion John Cena will be teaming with girlfriend Nikki Bella at WrestleMania 33 against The Miz and Maryse. Earlier this week, Dave Meltzer reported that he heard about Cena’s WrestleMania match and implied that fans wouldn’t be excited about it. Cena working an inter-gender tag match with his girlfriend does fit that description.
Cena defends the WWE Championship at Elimination Chamber later this month against AJ Styles, Bray Wyatt, The Miz, Baron Corbin and Dean Ambrose. After Randy Orton’s Royal Rumble win, it seems to be a foregone conclusion that it won’t be WWE Champion John Cena vs. Orton at WrestleMania. Orton is rumored to be working against Bray Wyatt at Mania, so Cena’s record-tying title reign may be a short one.
It’s also worth noting that in the fallout of Seth Rollins’ knee injury, there has been renewed talk of John Cena feuding with Samoa Joe. Prior to Joe’s surprise debut on RAW, WWE had given serious consideration to Joe working on the SmackDown brand.
Discussion: What do you think of John Cena teaming with Nikki Bella at WrestleMania?
Vince McMahon has changed his mind on one of the biggest WWE matches of the modern era – John Cena vs. The Undertaker. That match had been considered for WrestleMania 33 in Orlando but it’s now off the books.
No word yet on who Taker or Cena will face at WrestleMania but it was reported by The Wrestling Observer Newsletter that Taker won’t be facing Braun Strowman, as has been speculated, and Taker will not challenge for the WWE Championship or the Universal Championship.
The current plan for the RAW Women’s Championship is a fatal 4 way with Charlotte vs. Bayley vs. Sasha Banks vs. Nia Jax, instead of the expected Charlotte vs. Bayley singles match.
There are set to be 6 or 7 main event-level singles matches at WrestleMania 33 this year, not including cruiserweights or women. Top Superstars still without matches are Finn Balor, AJ Styles, Cena, Roman Reigns and Dean Ambrose, who may defend the WWE Intercontinental Championship in a multi-man ladder match. It looks as if Chris Jericho will be defending the WWE United States Championship against Kevin Owens.
As of this week, the confirmed top matches remain – Triple H vs. Seth Rollins, Goldberg vs. Lesnar and Shaq vs. Big Show. The Observer speculates that Lesnar vs. Goldberg will be the main event.
WrestleMania rumor season is picking up and according to The Wrestling Observer Newsletter, John Cena vs. The Undertaker and a multi-woman match for the RAW Women’s Championship are new probable matches.
In regards to Cena vs. Undertaker, Vince McMahon has not decided on the match but it’s being considered. Another opponent being discussed for Taker is Roman Reigns but there’s a feeling that Reigns is the future of the company while Cena vs. Taker doesn’t do anything for the future. This could be Taker’s last match and the last chance to do Taker vs. Reigns on the big stage.
With Reigns and Cena both receiving championship shots at the Royal Rumble, it’s possible Taker gets a Universal Championship or WWE Championship shot at WrestleMania. That would indicate Taker having a spot in the Royal Rumble main event
The Observer noted that Braun Strowman, who is another favorite to win the Rumble, could end up facing Reigns for the Universal Championship at WrestleMania.
Chris Jericho vs. Kevin Owens looks to be another WrestleMania match but The Observer reports that as of this week, only three matches are considered to be a lock for the big event:
-Triple H vs. Seth Rollins
-Goldberg vs. Brock Lesnar
-Big Show vs. Shaq
WrestleMania 33 tickets are now available as the pre-sale is underway. WWE announced two new pre-sale codes today – NETWORK and DOTCOM. Here are official details including ticket prices:
WrestleMania 33 pre-sale tickets available now
Tickets to the pop-culture extravaganza WrestleMania 33 go on sale this Friday, Nov. 18, at 10 a.m. ET, but you don’t have to wait until then to secure your seat at The Showcase of the Immortals.
Use the special pre-sale code DOTCOM now at ticketmaster.com to get your tickets. Don’t wait: The pre-sale period ends tomorrow, Nov. 17, at 11 p.m. ET.
WrestleMania 33 takes place Sunday, April 2, 2017, at the Orlando Citrus Bowl and will be broadcast live around the world on WWE Network.
Ticket prices range from $38-$1,065 (taxes included). There will also be a limited number of “Gold Circle” VIP Packages available for $2,130 (taxes included). The Gold Circle packages include seating in the first 10 rows ringside, access to a Gold Circle VIP Stadium Entrance and a commemorative WrestleMania 33 take-home folding chair. Tickets can be purchased through all Ticketmaster outlets, www.ticketmaster.com or by calling 1-800-745-3000. All tickets are subject to service charges and facility fees.
WrestleMania is more than just a one day event; it is a week-long celebration. In addition to WrestleMania 33, other events include: WrestleMania Axxess — WWE’s four-day, interactive fan festival at the Orange County Convention Center; the 2017 WWE Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony at the Amway Center; NXT TakeOver at the Amway Center; Monday Night Raw at the Amway Center; and SmackDown LIVE at the Amway Center.
WWE will also host activities designed to give back to the local community during WrestleMania Week including Be a STAR anti-bullying rallies, hospital visits and Make-A-Wish events. Additional information on these events will be announced in the future at www.wrestlemania.com.
Over the past nine years, WrestleMania has generated more than $700 million in cumulative economic impact for the cities that have hosted the event.
– As noted last week, Vader was involved in a serious car accident last Tuesday that left him trapped upside down for more than 30 minutes while unconscious. Vader tweeted this photo of his wrecked car, noting that he rolled over twice.
Rolled it over twice I was loke a giant penatta That bigdent is where my head was A very thanful Vader Time pic.twitter.com/hQ0buFnVQs
– Here’s the official logo for WWE’s new 205 Live cruiserweight series, which premieres on the WWE Network next Tuesday November 29th following SmackDown Live on the USA Network.
As soon as it was announced that Hulk Hogan had come to terms on a $31 million settlement of his lawsuit against Gawker, wrestling fans immediately began speculating about his return to WWE. Fueling the fire, Brooke Hogan told TMZ that her dad is already in negotiations to return at WrestleMania 33, while on last week’s Bauer and Pollock podcast, Court Bauer reported that Hogan has recently been taping talking head segments for WWE Network programming. The idea of the latter is that whenever they air, it’s under the radar enough that WWE can ease into bringing Hogan back, plus viewers don’t really know when those clips are filmed, anyway.
Having said all that, it’s not as if settling the sex tape lawsuit is/was the only hurdle for Hogan’s return. After all, it was, in and of itself, never the issue. The Gawker post didn’t hurt his career; last year’s National Enquirer article revealing his racist comments on a different sex tape (I subsequently located the audio for some of it in April) did. While they’re connected and the lawsuit being settled does chip away at the legs of the racist comments story, the settlement (if approved by the bankruptcy and trial judges) may not be the end for a few reasons.
The biggest is that Hogan still has a lawsuit outstanding that’s centered on the original leak of the racist comments. Filed in May in the same court as the Gawker lawsuit, it named not just the now-bankrupt blog empire (which Hogan alleged was the Enquirer’s source despite no compelling evidence), but also everyone who he believes was involved with the original sex tape leak to Gawker as well as a subsequent extortion attempt using all of the videos as bait. If that lawsuit keeps going, it’s going to keep the topic of his racist comments in the public eye for as long as the case lasts.
So is it gonna keep going?
That’s hard to say right now. Obviously the claim against Gawker, which was tenuous in the first place, is being dropped soon. When reached for comment, Gawker attorney Rachel Fugate said she had “no clue” if Hogan would be dropping the case against the other defendants. Charles Harder, Hogan’s lead attorney on the Gawker cases, did not return a request for comment. So it likely comes down to this: Did Hogan file the second lawsuit as part of the deal with Peter Thiel to drive Gawker out of business (with the others as collateral damage, albeit people who Hogan had no problem suing), or would he have pursued this case regardless?
While it ramped up after he started needing money in the aftermath of his son’s car wreck and his first wife filing for divorce, Hogan has been a very litigious man for going on two decades now. Ever since he filed an extortion lawsuit against the woman he sued him alleging that he sexually assaulted her the weekend before the first episode of Monday Nitro, he’s been relented. Last year, Amanda Hess wrote this in an article about the sex tape case at Slate:
Hogan is easily aggrieved. When a woman accused him of sexual battery, he sued her; when his ex-wife Linda alleged domestic abuse in her memoir, he sued her; when a series of back surgeries stopped Hogan from inking a last-hurrah wrestling contract, he sued the surgeon; when his auto insurance failed to cover the cost of his tipsy teenage son recklessly driving his sports car into a tree, causing permanent brain damage to a passenger, Hogan sued his insurance company; when that didn’t work, he sued Linda, too, for not forcing him to be better insured; when Hogan’s lawyers sent the bill for their services, he sued them as well.
That’s definitely missing plenty of cases, too. So it’s easy to make an argument for why he would continue to pursue the second lawsuit, but it’s just as easy to argue that it was primarily part of the plan to sink Gawker. The only mark against the latter is that if Hogan’s lawyers foresaw Gawker filing bankruptcy a month after they filed the suit (and it’s starting to look more and more like they did), then the second lawsuit was unlikely to push them further in that direction.
Until they know for sure whether or not this case is going away, though, it’s likely too risky for WWE to bring Hogan back as a an actual character, and not just a talking head on canned streaming shows. If the case is still going, then Hogan’s racist comments will literally be an ongoing issue in the public record until the case is resolved.
There’s a new promotion in the WrestleMania weekend indie show mix, and it’s a surprising one. WhatCulture Pro Wrestling, the new UK-based promotion, announced on Monday that it will be running a show in Orlando on the afternoon of April 1st.
That’s the day before WrestleMania 33, and if past years are any indication, WCPW will likely be running shows opposite WrestleCon, WWE Fan Axxess, Shimmer, possibly Evolve, and probably various local promotions. Announce so far are Joseph Conners, Joe Hendry, Martin Kirby, El Ligero, Grado, Primate, Drake and “Many more yet to be confirmed!” In other words, WCPW’s core wrestlers are committed but not any outside talent as of yet.
WCPW got a lot of attention for an internet pay-per-view a few weeks back that included very expensive fly-ins like Minoru Suzuki, Kurt Angle, Bret Hart as a surprise, and the commentary team of Jim Ross (during college football season, no less) and Jim Cornette (who never flies except for offers he can’t refuse). The response was mixed, in large part due to streaming issues on the WCPW side (FITE TV’s stream was unaffected).
Analysis: WrestleMania weekend is already a crowded space, to the point that this only makes sense if a lot oft he costs (staff flying in for WrestleMania weekend, the wrestlers working other shows and having promoters split the costs of flights, etc) are already taken care of in large part. Maybe this will have a unique appeal to the throng of British fans in town, but they also could decide they’d rather see different wrestling if they’re traveling abroad.
WWE WrestleMania 33 will take place from the Citrus Bowl in Orlando, Florida on Sunday, April 2nd, 2017. “It’s huge,” Orlando mayor Buddy Dyer said. “We’re a place that handles big, special events, and I think a lot of people don’t really realize the enormity of having WrestleMania.”
A press conference was held on Tuesday morning. Vince McMahon, Stephanie McMahon, John Cena, Ric Flair, Roman Reigns and The New Day were all in attendance.
Since hosting WrestleMania 24 back in 2008, the aging Citrus Bowl stadium underwent a massive renovations.
“All of us were very favorably impressed by all of the improvements made to the Citrus Bowl,” said John Saboor, WWE’s executive vice president of special events. The upgrades “will provide an unprecedented experience with the WWE universe attending and the millions more watching around the world.”
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.
With this past Monday’s RAW taking place from Minneapolis, MN at the Target Center, a lot of fans in the area were hoping WWE would announce that WrestleMania will be coming to the city in 2017.
U.S. Bank Stadium, the Minnesota Vikings’s new home, will host the Super Bowl in 2018 and had been rumored as a potential host for WrestleMania 33. No announcement came and then Mike Johnson of PWInsider.com reported that Minnesota will not be hosting WM33.
Jim Ross commented on the situation in his latest blog at JRsBarBQ.com:
“Apparently, Minneapolis is no longer in the hunt for the 2017 WrestleMania as was once rumored. That has yet to be confirmed but that’s what I’m hearing.”
WWE announced the WrestleMania 32 location on January 20, 2015, so an announcement regarding WrestleMania 33 should be coming in the next month or so.
– Following the announcement that Alberto Del Rio will be John Cena’s return opponent on next Monday’s edition of WWE RAW at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York, the WWE United States Champion posted the following on Twitter, warning Cena to be afraid in Spanish.
– There was no announcement regarding WrestleMania 33 following last night’s WWE RAW at the Target Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota. After months of speculation, PWInsider.com is reporting that WrestleMania 33 will not be held in Minnesota in 2017.
– Former World Kabbadi League Champion, Lovepreet Sangha and two-time Kushti National Heavyweight Champion, Satender Ved Pal, will be making their in-ring debuts at the upcoming WWE live events in New Delhi, India on 1/15 and 1/16. Both talents signed developmental deals with WWE back in June.
– Japanese women’s wrestler Kanna, who is rumored to be headed to WWE in the near future, is expected to take her medical tests in Pittsburgh in October. Scottish independent wrestler Nikki Storm, who was in the second season of TNA British Boot Camp, is also scheduled to take medical tests in Pittsburgh next month.
– WWE is expected to make the official announcement regarding the location for the 2017 edition of WrestleMania this December. Right now the leading candidate is Minneapolis, Minnesota. For what it’s worth, the post-WrestleMania 33 edition of WWE RAW is scheduled to take place from the Target Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota on December 21st.
– The following are some recent WWE attendance figures:
* August 28th in Ft. Myers, FL drew 6,000 fans (John Cena tour)
* August 29th in Orlando drew 6,500 fans (Cena tour)
* August 29th in San Juan, PR drew 13,000 fans (Roman Reigns tour)
* August 30th in Daytona Beach drew 4,000 fans (Cena tour)
* August 30th in Tallahassee drew 7,000 fans (Reigns tour)
* August 31st in Tampa for RAW drew 9,000 fans
– Monday’s post-WrestleMania 31 edition of WWE RAW in San Jose, California drew a legitimate sell out of 11,000 fans. Tuesday’s WWE SmackDown television taping in Fresno, California drew 11,000 fans as well.
– The new Minnesota Stadium in Minneapolis, Minnesota is said to be the front-runner to get WrestleMania 33 in 2017. The stadium, which is scheduled to open next year, is expected to hold around 63,000 fans for a WrestleMania event and has a retractable roof so the weather will not be an issue. While they are the favorite, they are not considered to be a “lock” at this point, as other cities are still in the running, such as Orlando and Philadelphia.
Officials based out of Minneapolis, Minnesota have announced their intentions to place a bid to bring WrestleMania 33 to the brand new Minnesota Vikings stadium, which is scheduled to open in 2016.
The Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal is reporting that city and Minnesota Sports Facilities Authority officials plan to work together to attempt to bring WrestleMania 33 to Minneapolis, Minnesota in 2017.
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania is also listed as a contending city.
