Your Account  |   Logout
HOME
APRIL 29, 2019 OBSERVER NEWSLETTER: SUPERSTAR SHAKE UP FALLOUT, PLUS TONS OF NEWS
BY OBSERVER STAFF | STAFF@WRESTLINGOBSERVER.COM | @WONF4W
TWITTERFACEBOOKGOOGLE+
Wrestling Observer Newsletter

PO Box 1228, Campbell, CA 95009-1228 ISSN10839593 April 29, 2019



NEW JAPAN SENGOKU LORD POLL RESULTS

Thumbs up 55 (69.6%)

Thumbs down 5 (06.3%)

In the middle 19 (24.1%)



BEST MATCH POLL

Kota Ibushi vs. Zack Sabre Jr. 78



WORST MATCH POLL

Mikey Nicholls vs. Chase Owens 47

Juice Robinson vs. Bad Luck Fale 8

Based on e-mails and phone calls to the Observer as of Tuesday, 4/23.



While last week was supposed to be the Superstar Shakeup, lots of things happened this past week that caused plans to change.

The biggest thing was the about-face of breaking up the relationship between Ashley Fliehr (Charlotte Flair) and Manny Andrade by putting them on different brands. The relationship wasn’t a secret and the decision was made with knowledge of this. But it didn’t play out well in real life so it was reversed with Andrade moving back to Smackdown the next week. Because they didn’t want to break up the Andrade/Zelina Vega act, they moved Thea Trinidad (Vega) back to Smackdown as well. Unfortunately, then they were breaking up a married couple, so her husband, Tom Budgen (Aleister Black) also had to be moved to Smackdown.

That broke up the Ricochet & Aleister Black tag team, and based on Ricochet losing to a repackaged Bobby Roode, now back to doing the Robert Roode character with a Don Frye mustache, the orders from above to protect the second run of NXT call-ups ended.

Regarding reports that Andrade and Vega were moved to Smackdown at the request of FOX, wanting a Latino act on the show, that’s not the reason, or at least the prime reason, but it’s not untrue either. The prime reason regarded breaking up the couple, whether it be because they were unhappy or because it made the company look bad regarding the original decision. The company is trying to listen to the audience and not look like bad guy, although that’s within reason, as it’s not like they’re going to give up the Saudi Arabia deal. The company is doing more focus group work than ever before to try and identify why ratings and arena business are down and what will keep fans engaged. In addition, they are fully aware that there is a wrestling war, and don’t want to come across as the bad guy promotion, giving the opposition the role of having fans rallying behind them as the protest vote.

What is notable is that FOX had already started airing promotional work for Smackdown’s debut on the network on 10/4, which was focused on John Cena, Roman Reigns, Charlotte Flair and Rey Mysterio. However, Mysterio, who was a big television draw to Hispanic homes years ago when Smackdown was on CW, was moved to Raw for some reason.

But that wasn’t it. Jinder Mahal, The Singh Brothers, Bo Dallas and Curtis Axel have all been moved to Smackdown.

Cesaro has been moved to Raw. With Sheamus out with a concussion, no decision has been made regarding him.

Kevin Owens, who was originally to be the No. 2 face on Smackdown behind Reigns, was turned heel, a combination of the rise of Kofi Kingston and the injury to Daniel Bryan.

Owens turned on Kingston on the 4/23 Smackdown episode in Lincoln, NE, and is scheduled to face him on the next PPV, Money in the Bank, on 5/19 in Hartford, CT.

The original plan for Owens was to be a guy next door babyface, who ate junk food, had the same problems everyone else had, had kids, but could kick ass and was given the ultimate modern WWE babyface finisher, the stone cold stunner (which at one point they were testing Becky Lynch out with at house shows).

Bryan was set to get a rematch with Kingston at Money in the Bank, but with him out of action, they needed a new opponent. The choices were Randy Orton, Rowan (who is lacking the charisma on his own to be top heel), or bringing over Drew McIntyre, Baron Corbin or Samoa Joe for Raw, who all had things figured in. A few days after Mania, the decision was made to turn Owens and put him in that spot, with the tease at first of him joining The New Day, after Big E’s knee went out and he needed surgery.

With Alexander Wolfe being moved to the NXT U.K. brand, the only wrestlers seemingly unaccountable right now are Killian Dain and Nikki Cross, who are also married. Neither appeared on television this week, although WWE officials have confirmed Cross is on Raw, and there is no confirmation where Dain is headed, but given they are married, Raw would be most likely.

Another change, based on fan reaction, is that the former War Raiders, then changed to Viking Experience, had their names changed again after one week to the Viking Raiders. There was also a questionnaire sent to fans after TV that listed their names as Viking Warriors, so it may change again next week, or at least at some point that name has also been considered.

So, with changes and injuries, this is how the depth chart has changed over the past week:

RAW

Top faces: A.J. Styles, Braun Strowman, Seth Rollins

Top heels: Baron Corbin, Bobby Lashley, Brock Lesnar, Drew McIntyre, Samoa Joe

Mid level faces: The Miz, Rey Mysterio, Ricochet

Mid level heels: Sami Zayn, Robert Roode, Cesaro

Face tag teams: Curt Hawkins & Zack Ryder, Lucha House Party, Usos

Heel tag teams: The Revival, Viking Raiders, The Ascension

Women’s singles faces: Becky Lynch, Dana Brooke, Naomi, Natalya, Nikki Cross

Women’s face tag teams:

Women’s single heels: Alexa Bliss, Alicia Fox, Lacey Evans, Tamina

Women’s heel tag teams: Billie Kay & Peyton Royce, Ruby Riott & Sarah Logan

Prelim faces: Cedric Alexander, Rhyno, Heath Slater, No Way Jose, Titus O’Neil

Prelim heels: EC 3, Eric Young, Mojo Rawley, Tyler Breeze



SMACKDOWN

Top faces: Kofi Kingston, Roman Reigns

Top heels: Kevin Owens, Elias, Lars Sullivan, Randy Orton

Mid level faces: Ali, Finn Balor, Aleister Black, Matt Hardy, Xavier Woods

Mid level heels: Andrade, Rowan

Face tag teams: Heavy Machinery

Heel tag teams: Colons, Luke Gallows & Karl Anderson, Rusev & Shinsuke Nakamura, Bo Dallas & Curtis Axel

Women’s single faces: Becky Lynch, Bayley, Carmella, Ember Moon

Women’s single heels: Charlotte Flair, Lana, Liv Morgan, Mickie James, Zelina Vega

Women’s face tag teams: Asuka & Kairi Sane

Women’s heel tag teams: Billie Kay & Peyton Royce, Mandy Rose & Sonya Deville

Prelim faces: Apollo Crews, Chad Gable, R-Truth, Sin Cara

Prelim heels: Buddy Murphy, Shelton Benjamin, Jinder Mahal

Unknown: Sheamus (injured, originally set for Smackdown), AOP (Akam injured), Bray Wyatt, Killian Dain, Fandango, Sasha Banks (contract issue, originally set for Raw), Daniel Bryan (injured, set for Smackdown), Jeff Hardy (injured, set for Smackdown), Nia Jax (injured, set for Raw)

Obviously, Raw needs a women’s face tag team, but that’ll likely be Naomi and someone, since Naomi worked with the Iiconics on Raw and pinned Billie Kay this past week. Natalya, Brooke or a face turning Bliss would be the obvious candidates.

They are also weak on Smackdown face tag teams, with the injuries to both Big E and Jeff Hardy. The whole tag division on Smackdown is weakened by the injuries to where, really Nakamura & Rusev are the only serious team, but Heavy Machinery should get a push with the Hardys and New Day gone. If there wasn’t the doctrine not to book Anderson & Gallows, they could fill the void, and they still could. The B Team could work on the face side even though they debuted as heels on the brand, but I don’t see being able to take them seriously.

As far as the short-term direction goes, the next PPV is Money in the Bank on 5/19. The key matches will be Rollins vs. Styles for the Universal title, Kingston vs. Owens for the WWE title, Lynch vs. Flair for the Smackdown women’s title, Lynch vs. Evans for the Raw women’s title and Reigns vs. Elias are official. At the house shows it’s looking like Rollins vs. Corbin as the Universal title match. There was a tease of Rollins vs. Lesnar, and if that match happens, it would be in Saudi Arabia, because that’s the only major show until SummerSlam.

The participants in both the men’s and women’s Money in the Bank matches will be announced on Raw on 4/29 in Lexington, KY during an Alexa Bliss segment

Other programs that look to be building are Usos vs. Revival, Tony Nese vs. Ariya Daivari for the cruiserweight title, Joe vs. Strowman for the U.S. title, Hawkins & Ryder vs. Viking Raiders for the Raw tag titles, and Iiconics vs. Asuka & Kairi Sane vs. Rose & Deville for the women’s tag titles.

Some notes regarding the show. The first is that as much as Elias gets a great reaction in the ring singing and comes off like a superstar, that isn’t the case when he does matches. Reigns working with him only makes Reigns feel like less than a top guy. Rollins vs. Styles is a main event that should tear the house down, even though both have been battling injuries. Lynch working twice on the show seems like a gimmick to feature her, and it allows her to drop a title while having an excuse of being injured in the first of two matches. Then they would have a different champion on each brand, which is inevitable. But the idea of Lynch vs. Flair at next year’s Mania, which absolutely was the idea in lots of the three-way build already looks tough by putting that match on now. Still, if they do the match now and Flair wins, and then they don’t meet again for nearly a year, with both spending the year mostly as champs, it could be done. But when they’re actually doing the storyline that they’ve already met over-and-over, building it as a Mania match, while not impossible, is more difficult.

As it turned out, Conrad Thompson, who is promoting Starrcast, announced on 4/23 that Undertaker and Kurt Angle have pulled out of the event.

It’s been known since the announcement that Vince McMahon was furious that Undertaker would appear on an event that is being held in conjunction with the AEW debut show in Las Vegas on 5/25. But with Undertaker also not being allowed to do his talk shows in the U.K., although he will be signing autographs, it’s clear WWE doesn’t want him making any appearances outside those the company sets up and approves. WWE did not want him going to the U.K. but he pushed to be allowed to do it.

There were people close to the situation for weeks indicating WWE was going to keep Undertaker from Starrcast, but the belief was that he had signed a contract. He had signed contracts with others as well, but the reality was that if he doesn’t come, people could take legal action, but the belief was that nobody would spend the money on that legal action.

Undertaker was considered the biggest draw at the event, not necessarily that he’s a bigger star than Ric Flair, but that he’s done so few of these events that the elusiveness of him appearing made him the star of the show. It was a big surprise when Angle was announced since by that point it was known WWE didn’t want its people attending. Still, people like Flair and Bruce Prichard are still scheduled. Flair is Thompson’s father-in-law, but even then, they were very careful regarding the timing of announcing him.

Get Engaged, the company that was representing Undertaker for all of his recent non-WWE bookings, has contacted Thompson, like they contacted Kenny McIntosh of the Inside the Ropes group in the U.K., to say they he couldn’t do the event. The group refunded Undertaker’s deposit.

It was well known, dating back to February, that WWE was attempting to get Undertaker off the event. WWE since signed Undertaker to a new contract that would not allow him to do events like this, but there would be obligations for previously signed deals, in theory.

At that time, many people had told us that in the end, WWE was going to make sure that the Undertaker appearance didn’t happen, but whether they never told Thompson until this week, or Thompson felt confident that due to signed contracts before Undertaker signed his new WWE contract that they would be unable to block the appearance, he was still listed and were going under the impression he would be there.

Thompson told Sports Illustrated that he was told that damages would be covered, a suitable replacement would be offered by WWE, or that there would be compromise to make everyone happy, although at this point nothing has been agreed to.

Thompson did announce Kenta Kobashi, in his first-ever U.S. signing and first time in the country in 13 years, Tom Magee, Mark Henry (not related to a WWE make good) and David Crockett, as well as a screening of the Magee vs. Bret Hart match from 1986 with both Magee and Hart talking about it after the fact. According to those close to the situation, WWE is aware and has allowed them to screen this tape, which looks to be part of a make good for pulling Undertaker and Angle.

It’s also pretty clear if there is another Starrcast convention in Chicago over Labor Day weekend that it would be without anyone with a WWE deal.

Thompson said that he asked for Vince McMahon, HHH or Stephanie as the replacement and offered to donate all of the proceeds of their events to Conor’s Cure, as well as personally match the revenue generated. He said that would turn a negative into a positive, in the sense by turning it down, HHH & Stephanie in particular were turning down significant money for the charity that they personally were involved in setting up. But obviously they aren’t keeping Undertaker or Angle off something that they’d ever consider doing under any circumstances.

At the same time, WWE very clearly doesn’t want anyone involved. Thompson was also told that WWE would not allow anyone on the current roster to be a replacement. He said he asked for Shawn Michaels.

While it was never reported, Michaels had agreed to do the event and was about to be announced months back, but canceled because he realized WWE would not have wanted him to do it. Thompson’s idea at the time, and he talked about this to Sports Illustrated, was to use Michaels and Scott Hall on a 25th anniversary of their WrestleMania X ladder match promotion, where they would screen the match, do commentary in front of fans for the match, and then have fans be able to get photos of the two of them together. Right now there is no agreement with WWE regarding substitutions or making things right.

Like Undertaker, WWE has signed Angle to a new deal that doesn’t allow him to do events like this without their permission. Angle is also expected to be pulled from a prior agreement to do WrestleCade.

“I had an agreement in place with the talent,” Thompson said. “Without exception, I dealt directly with the talent or their management. They set their terms and I complied. First class travel accommodations were made and marketing was done. Now, thanks to the influence of WWE, the performers are missing out on substantial income and their fans are being punished.”

C.M. Punk did a run-in under a mask at a pro wrestling event on 4/20 in West Allis, WI.

The significance of this, if any, is unknown. The show was held at the Knights of Columbus Hall in West Allis, WI, before about 350 fans. Punk, long before he became famous, used to wrestle regularly in the building, which was being shut down and this was to be its final show. The story is that Punk wanted to go there one more time, but who knows what the real story was.

Punk was covered from head-to-toe, wearing a hoodie sweatshirt and a mask, and hit the GTS on Daryck St. Holmes (long time area independent wrestler Daryck Beyer), who I believe was wrestling Ace Steel, who started his career with Punk.

It harkens back to an interview Punk did nearly four years ago with ESPN when asked if he would return to wrestling.

“You never know. I could pop up here and there. Let me explain that to you even better. It’s not going to even be televised. It’s going to be me in a ninja f***ing outfit wrestling one of my buddies and nobody’s ever going to know. It’s going to be very Monty Python.”

The show was promoted by MKE, a promotion headed by ROH wrestler Silas Young. Punk and Young have known each other dating back to early in both men’s careers.

It also later came out that this was not the first time Punk has quietly pulled such a trick. Sean Ross Sapp claimed he did something similar in December 2015 on a show in Chicago.

Punk, 40, quit pro wrestling more than five years ago after a dispute with WWE which led to a heavily publicized legal case after he did a podcast with former friend Colt Cabana on his reasons why.

As noted previously, The Young Bucks and Cody did attempt to get him to appear in some form at the first All In, and he was also pursued even earlier by Tony Khan regarding being one of the flagship stars if Khan started a wrestling company.

In seeing the footage, it didn’t look like Punk in that he was skinnier and the GTS he performed looked terrible. But those close to the situation confirm it was him. Young himself tweeted it out after the show. A photo of Punk attending a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu tournament that afternoon in West Allis, MI, at a local school, showed him wearing the same outfit as the guy doing the run-in.

At 40, Punk’s career in fighting is questionable at best. He lost two UFC fights, one to Mike Jackson, who was not a UFC caliber fighter. He lost almost all of him smokers (fights in the gym to get him ready for real fights) before his debut fight with Mickey Gall. The general feeling was that he was a great student, everyone liked him and he worked hard. But he came in at 37, with a body beaten up by pro wrestling and no fighting background, or even real sports background as he was not even a high school athlete. While he did great as a pro wrestler because he was a great talker, a hard worker, very smart and a student of the business, he never showed any special athletic ability. Some would even say his ability to have great matches and be a headliner for the biggest wrestling company in the world speaks that pure athletic ability is overrated when it comes to scouting wrestlers, and hard work and understanding of what the business is has far more value.

He has not been released by UFC. It’s doubtful they’ll book him for another fight. If he was serious about wanting fight more he’d push for one or the other, a release and the ability to fight elsewhere, or another fight in UFC. He did a great job from most accounts recently in doing commentary on an MMA independent show.

He made a lot of money in his last few years in wrestling. He also spent a lot in his legal case. He could walk back into wrestling tomorrow and there’s no major U.S. company, not even WWE, that wouldn’t take him. In fact, WWE would probably outbid any company for him if it came down to strictly numbers. But he has plenty of valid reasons, if he does want to return, to do so anywhere else.

Still, if he did this before and nothing came of it, there’s no indication anything’s different past he’s friends with the Young Bucks and they are management in a new company.

New Japan ran a first-time big show called Sengoku Lord on 4/20 at the Aiichi Gym in Nagoya.

It was to give Japan a somewhat big April show after the traditional early April Sumo Hall card was replaced by the Madison Square Garden show.

The show drew 4,731 fans for what was really a one match show, built around Kota Ibushi defending the IC title against Zack Sabre Jr. Sabre beat Ibushi during the New Japan Cup, before Ibushi won the title from Tetsuya Naito in MSG.

After retaining, Naito wanted a rematch and reiterated his vow to become the first person to hold both the IC and IWGP titles at the same time. The belief is that Ibushi vs. Naito will be one of the main events on the 6/9 Dominion show at Osaka Jo Hall.

The show was generally good, with the main event being a match that any year prior to 2018 would be considered a good candidate for match of the year, although with things elevating so fast in the last two years it probably falls just underneath that level this year.

There are a couple of significant shows this week on New Japan World.

4/26 in Hiroshima at the smaller Green Arena for a 5:30 a.m. Eastern time show has Ren Narita & Shota Umino vs. Yuya Uemura & Yota Tsuji, Toa Henare & Tiger Mask & Yoshi-Hashi vs. Minoru Suzuki & Yoshinobu Kanemaru & Desperado, Tomoaki Honma & Mikey Nicholls & Juice Robinson & Toru Yano & Togi Makabe vs. Tama Tonga & Tanga Loa & Chase Owens & Bad Luck Fale & Jado, Jeff Cobb & Ryusuke Taguchi vs. Taichi & Taka Michinoku, Hirooki Goto & Will Ospreay & Dragon Lee vs. Taiji Ishimori & Jay White & Hikuleo, Kazuchika Okada & Kota Ibushi & Tomohiro Ishii vs. Tetsuya Naito & Evil & Sanada, and a main event of Sho & Yoh defending the IWGP jr. tag titles against Shingo Takagi & Bushi.

Wrestling Hi No Kuni from Grand Messe Kumamoto at 2 a.m. Eastern on 4/29 (late Sunday West Coast show) has Honma & Narita & Umino vs. Henare & Tsuji & Uemura, Taguchi & Tiger Mask & Jushin Liger & Yoshi-Hashi & Cobb vs. Taichi & Michinoku & Suzuki & Kanemaru & Desperado, Ospreay & Lee vs. Ishimori & Hikuleo, Fale vs. Nicholls, Robinson vs. Owens, Okada & Ibushi & Ishii & Sho & Yoh vs. Naito & Evil & Sanada & Takagi & Bushi, Tonga & Loa defend the IWGP tag titles against Makabe & Yano, and the main event is Goto vs. White.

They also have live shows on 4/30 in Kagoshima at 5 a.m. and 5/1 in Beppu at 5 a.m.

1. Ren Narita & Shota Umino beat Yuya Uemura & Yota Tsuji in 7:37. This was a strong opener, just a little too short. Uemura has kind of a Bruce Lee look now. Uemura & Tsuji did a great double dropkick. Uemura did a great underhook suplex. Narita pinned Uemura with a bridging overhead suplex. ***

2. Minoru Suzuki & Yoshinobu Kanemaru & Desperado & Taichi & Taka Michinoku beat Yuji Nagata & Jushin Liger & Tomoaki Honma & Satoshi Kojima & Toa Henare in 12:15. The big thing seems to be the Suzuki vs. Liger push. Liger claims that Suzuki is just a street fighter, and that street fighting takes no skill, that fans don’t pay to see it because they can see it for free in the streets, and that the fans come to see pro wrestling and to fight in New Japan you have to be a high level pro wrestler. Or Taichi. Suzuki at one point this week threw MMA gloves at Liger and Liger said the chair shots that Suzuki does aren’t even Pancrase. Taichi and Michinoku went after Liger’s mask. Honma is looking a lot better. He’s nowhere close to what he was before the injury, but his balance is better and he looks like he belongs in a match now rather than they have to play along because of his weaknesses. Henare got some near falls on Taichi that the crowd got into, before Taichi hit him with a superkick and won via stretch plumb submission. Liger was given a curtain call when it was over since he’s probably only got a few matches left in Nagoya before retirement. ***1/4

3. Togi Makabe & Toru Yano & Dragon Lee beat Tama Tonga & Tanga Loa & Taiji Ishimori in 8:13. Jado hit Lee with a kendo stick in the back as he set up for an early dive. The highlight was the Lee vs. Ishimori interplay. Lee did a huracanrana and flip dive onto Ishimori. Yano pinned Loa after Makabe clotheslined Loa. After the match Tonga hit Makabe with a belt shot and Loa hit Yano with a belt shot to build up their tag team title match. **3/4

4. Mikey Nicholls beat Chase Owens in 8:56. Basic match, better than average due to Owens but still the weakest match on the show. Owens is a good worker, really underappreciated, but his body holds him back. Nicholls is fine, but nobody really cared about the match. Nicholls won with a Mikey bomb. **1/4

5. Hirooki Goto & Ryusuke Taguchi beat Jay White & Hikuleo in 10:57. Hikuleo has improved greatly. With his size, he can be a real force in a few years. Goto used an ushigoroshi on White, then another on Hikuleo, and pinned Hikuleo with the GTR. The focus was building the Goto vs. White singles match for this coming week. **½

6. Tetsuya Naito & Evil & Sanada & Bushi & Shingo Takagi beat Kazuchika Okada & Tomohiro Ishii & Sho & Yoh & Yoshi-Hashi in 16:31. This was great. Basically they built to five key spots. The first was to build Ishii vs. Evil and they had great Ishii-style exchange. Sho vs. Takagi were so great in a different way. Takagi is one of the best in the world and Sho rises to the occasion when pushed like he was here. They are going to have one of the best bouts in the super juniors. Okada vs. Sanada was next. They were very good. A highlight was Sanada doing a standing moonsault, Okada moved, Sanada landed on his feet and hit Okada with a low dropkick to the back. Yoh vs. Bushi was next. And then Naito vs. Yoshi-Hashi was last and they were great as well. Naito pinned Yoshi-Hashi with Destino. Evil and Ishii did a pull-apart when it was over. ****

7. Juice Robinson pinned Bad Luck Fale to retain the U.S. title in 17:25. This was a basic story match. In interviews, the story is that Robinson vowed he would bodyslam Fale and Fale said he never would. So it built to slam attempts. Fale threw Robinson over three rows of chairs and slammed him on a row of chairs. Fale mostly beat him up. Robinson kicked out of the grenade. Early on when Robinson would try for the slam, Fale would block. Then Robinson got Fale up and collapsed with him on top. Finally Robinson hit the big left punch, got the slam and hit pulp friction for the pin. ***

8. Kota Ibushi beat Zack Sabre Jr. to retain the IC title in 28:58. Ibushi has tweaked his style and now comes across as a real main event champion. Really before, as great as he was, he felt like the guy who would challenge for the world title and come close, but he never felt like a world champion. Here, he felt like the star of the promotion and worked like a guy who could be world champion. Ibushi targeted the left leg with low kicks and had cool escapes from Sabre’s submissions. After a middle rope moonsault, where Sabre got his knees up, Sabre got the triangle. He went for the European clutch and Ibushi did a cool looking cradle. Sabre used a choke but Ibushi escaped and hit a German suplex. They traded half nelson German suplexes. Sabre used a penalty kick. There was a great slap exchange. Ibushi tried a last ride but Sabre went for a guillotine, slipped off but instead used a triangle. Ibushi power bombed out of it. Ibushi tried another power bomb but Sabre reversed into a Zack driver. They traded elbows and knees with both staggered. Ibushi ducked a European uppercut and used a half nelson German suplex. He tried a power German suplex, but Sabre got the guillotine. Ibushi used a Pele kick and Sabre reversed into a bridging cradle. He tried a European clutch but Ibushi blocked and used a head kick and a power bomb. Sabre escaped the Kamagoye and used a flying octopus and then a regular Inoki style octopus. Ibushi hit the GTS and another Kamagoye for the pin. It ended with Naito coming out and issuing a challenge for the title and Ibushi accepted. ****3/4

In pro wrestling, Moline, IL and the Quad Cities have, like most markets, seen many of the greatest wrestlers in history perform.

But still, there’s not a lot of major history known from the area. Today it’s best known as where Seth Rollins came from. Billed from Davenport, IA, he’s actually from a small-town of Buffalo, IA, which has a population of less than 1,300 people, not far from Davenport.

On July 16, 1975, there was an outdoor show at John O’Donnell Stadium, the minor league ballpark that still exists in Davenport, IA, where Verne Gagne’s original AWA championship belt was stolen. This led to the creation of the most famous belt, the gaudy gigantic belt synonymous with Nick Bockwinkel, which was used even after the original belt was recovered six months later. The gaudy belt was the one “accidentally” run over by Stan Hansen before he sent it back to Gagne after a dispute, and a different belt was used until the AWA closed several years later.

On March 13, 1976 in Davenport, an opening match saw the debut of Dick Blood, as he went to a time limit draw against another classmate, Scott Irwin. Blood later became Ricky Steamboat.

On 4/21, the 60th WWE event in the Quad Cities took place, with the first being on December 10, 1984. It was a WWE Network special, and the city was just coincidental. It happened to be the final match of Dean Ambrose’s contract, which he isn’t renewing, so it was billed as the last ride of The Shield. WWE had been trying to give The Shield a big run, but things constantly went wrong. Reigns got ill. Ambrose tore his triceps and nearly lost his career. Reigns got leukemia. Ambrose decided to leave the company. The plan to turn Ambrose on Reigns was thwarted when Reigns got the disease. Ambrose was turned back after WWE pushed too hard on his heel turn, trying to play off Reigns’ cancer, and it flopped. But Reigns returned and with Ambrose leaving, it gave them a very limited window to put them back together.

We already had the last match of The Shield on PPV and the last match of Ambrose on Raw. Then we got one more farewell here.

Still, to the locals, even with a WWE Network special, a night billed as historical and a local product in his first area match since becoming the Universal champion, a crowd of only 3,250 fans came to the TaxSlayer Center. The show was, other than being taped for the network and the closing interview, a normal house show night. The entire upper deck wasn’t sold and the lower deck was far from full. Still, the Shield’s Final Chapter T-shirt, which actually listed three dates, Moline, St. Louis and Springfield, IL, were visible everywhere in the building, even if, on camera, the most notable shirts were old Bullet Clubs.

1. Curt Hawkins & Zack Ryder retained the Raw tag team titles in a three-way over the Revival and Ricochet & Aleister Black in 13:58. Ricochet had Dawson pinned when Hawkins tagged in and beat Ricochet to the cover and got the pin. Really good match and the two face teams shook hands when it was over.

2. Tony Nese pinned Buddy Murphy to keep the cruiserweight title in 14:30. The match was what you’d expect. Crowd reactions were so-so. Nese won with a shooting star press.

3. Lince Dorado & Kalisto & Gran Metalik beat Jinder Mahal & The Singhs via DQ in 6:18 when Baron Corbin, Bobby Lashley and Drew McIntyre attacked the faces.

Alexa Bliss came out for A Moment of Bliss. Lacey Evans came out first, followed by Dana Brooke. Bliss slapped Brooke. Then they started double-teaming Brooke until Nikki Cross made the save. This led to a match.

4. Bliss & Evans beat Cross & Brooke in 3:35 when Evans pinned Brooke. This match was said to be terrible, with the comment being the match felt five minutes too long.

Next we had an Elias segment. Finn Balor came out and they ended up singing together. Balor has a better voice than Elias. Of course this didn’t end well with Elias jumping him.

5. Balor retained the IC championship over Elias in 6:32. This was a nothing match. I may have seen a worse Balor match in my life but if so, I can’t recall it. Little happened. Then Balor got the pin with a sunset flip, except he didn’t. It was supposed to be a near fall since everything’s a near fall except your finish. But the ref counted, Elias never kicked out, and they kept going. The crowd was confused. Balor won with the coup de gras. *3/4

Then Elias went to sing some more. The Riott Squad came out. Sarah Logan got to talk, which she almost never gets to. They were flirting with him. They were singing together until Bayley came out. This led to:

6. Bayley & Ember Moon beat Riott & Logan in 7:08. Liv Morgan was at ringside but eventually was kicked out. Moon pinned Riott with the eclipse. **

McIntyre, Lashley and Corbin cut a promo. Corbin was portrayed as the star, talking about how he beat an Olympic gold medalist in his last match. It does get easy and surprisingly good heat.

7. The Shield beat McIntyre & Lashley & Corbin in 14:38. This was a fun match. It was basic stuff. Crowd was fine with it. They chanted hard for Rollins in particular. Ambrose did the elbow off the top on a standing Lashley. Reigns speared Lashley. Rollins used a curb stomp on Lashley. Ambrose hit the Dirty Deeds on Corbin and it ended with a Shield power bomb on Corbin. They let Rollins get the pin since it was his home area. ***1/4

Really the best part of the show was the post-match. Fans did a “Thank You Ambrose” chant. Rollins spoke first, showing his belt and saying it was the culmination of the last 15 years, and he couldn’t have done it without the support of his family, who he said were at the show, and the support of the local fans. He said winning the title wouldn’t have been possible without this brotherhood. Ambrose then spoke about Rollins growing up here, and told people that if you really want something, don’t take no for an answer. He said that Rollins is proof of it. Then he talked about what Reigns just overcame and that The Shield was about kicking down doors and not taking no for an answer. He said that if someone tells you that you can’t do something that you want to do, stick your middle finger in the air, march forward and say that The Shield said so.

UFC in Russia

By Ryan Frederick

The UFC debuted in Saint Petersburg, Russia on Saturday, with UFC On ESPN+ 7, an event that saw Alistair Overeem pick up his 45th professional MMA win in the main event.

Overeem finished Aleksei Oleinik at the 4:45 mark of the first round in an entertaining back-and-forth headliner in front of a excited crowd.

Outside of that, it was a very weak undercard with not a lot of star power, but all-in-all an entertaining and enjoyable event.

Oleinik was in control early landing lots of punches on Overeem. He was punching himself out early, though, as Overeem was covering up and staying calm and collected under pressure. As Oleinik started to look tired, Overeem took advantage and landed some big knees that dropped Oleinik and he finished it off with big punches on the mat.

Oleinik did take this fight on somewhat short notice. He was in training camp for a fight against Walt Harris scheduled for May 4, but the call came for this fight and he took it, as this was a much bigger opportunity.

Overeem has now won two straight fights, ending both in the first round. He has looked good in both of those wins and this should set him up for another high-profile fight. He’s a big name and very valuable to the company as he can be used to headline events like these, or to add good depth to a big card.

He talked about wanting to next fight in September, targeting Alexander Volkov for his next opponent. He was originally scheduled to fight Volkov on this show, but Volkov was pulled for what the company called health reasons.

Whether that fight will happen in September depends on what the real situation with Volkov is. While that hasn’t been outright said, a report did come out that Volkov has been rumored to be victim of a failed USADA test. Questions post-fight about his status were never outright answered.

As for the rest of the event, there was a great fight in the second from top bout between Islam Makhachev and Arman Tsarukyan. Long-time women’s veteran Roxanne Modafferi picked up and upset win getting a split decision over Antonina Shevchenko, the older sister of women’s flyweight champion Valentina. And there were several big and impressive knockouts in the prelims.

Sultan Aliev, who defeated Keita Nakamura by unanimous decision on the prelims, announced his retirement following the event. Aliev, 34, who was fighting in his native Russia for the first time since 2014, finishes his career with a 15-3 record, including a 2-2 run in the UFC.

This card didn’t go off without a hiccup, as a light heavyweight bout between UFC newcomer Ivan Shtyrkov and Devin Clark was cancelled the night before the event. Both men made weight, but Shtyrkov fell ill while rehydrating and was taken to the hospital and pulled from the fight.

UFC Lightweight Champion Khabib Nurmagomedov was at the show and appeared on the post-fight show on ESPN+, saying he expects to fight Dustin Poirier in September. The UFC officially announced a 9/7 date in Abu Dhabi, which is a pay-per-view event, and that fight is currently targeted to be the main event.

The show, held at the Yubileyny Sports Palace, drew a sellout crowd of 7,236. No gate figures were announced.

The prelims aired on ESPN 2 from 10 AM to 1 PM eastern time and drew 232,000 viewers. Due to the station and time slot, as well as low interest level, it was the lowest number of viewers for a live UFC televised show since October 28, 2017, when prelims for a Fight Night from Brazil in a better time slot drew 198,000 viewers on FS 2, which is in 50 million homes, as opposed to bout 85 million for ESPN 2.

The $50,000 bonuses went to Islam Makhachev and Arman Tsarukyan for Fight Of The Night, and Sergei Pavlovich and Magomed Mustafaev for Performance Of The Night.

1. Magomed Mustafaev (15-2) beat Rafael Fiziev (6-1) in 1:26 in a lightweight fight. Mustafaev was fighting for the first time since November 2016 after suffering a broken arm in a loss to Kevin Lee. He rocked Fiziev early with a right and was throwing spinning stuff, then knocked him down with a spinning back kick and finished him with punches on the ground. Mustafaev called out Lee for a rematch following the fight, but I doubt he gets that rematch. He looked real good here though.

2. Michal Oleksiejczuk (14-2 1 NC) beat Gadzhimuard Antigulov (20-6) in :44 in a light heavyweight fight. They were throwing big punches at each other right away and Oleksiejczuk dropped him twice with big punches but Antigulov got up both times. Oleksiejczuk dropped him one more time with a right hand and finished it off in less than a minute. Oleksiejczuk looked impressive here.

3. Shamil Abdurakhimov (20-4) beat Marcin Tybura (17-5) in 3:15 in the second round in a heavyweight fight. They were both landing in a close first round. Abdurakhimov was landing harder and it was mostly even in the striking in the first, but Abdurakhimov took the round. Tybura was landing early in the second before Abdurakhimov rocked him with a combo. Tybura started eating a lot of punches and was finished standing by Abdurakhimov.

4. Alexander Yakovlev (24-8-1) beat Alex da Silva (20-2) in 3:10 in the second round in a lightweight fight. Da Silva took the fight a little over a week before the event and had an impressive 20-1 record coming in. He was pushing the pace early and got a big slam on Yakovlev and was controlling the action on the ground. It was an even first round that could have gone either way. Yakovlev took him down in the second round but they got up. Yakovlev started landing elbows and then locked in a guillotine choke to get da Silva to tap. It was Yakovlev's first fight since November 2016.

5. Sultan Aliev (15-3) beat Keita Nakamura (34-10-2 1 NC) via unanimous decision on scores of 30-27, 30-27 and 30-27 in a welterweight fight. This wasn't the most exciting fight in the world. First round was even on the striking but saw a lot of clinching and a lot of the referee looking for them to work. Second round was a lot of the same but Aliev got a slam takedown but did eat elbows from Nakamura on the mat. Third round wasn't much as Aliev got another takedown and both were threatening with submissions though none were close, and both were tired, especially Aliev, as it went the distance. It was close overall but I had it 30-27 Aliev, and all media scores were for Aliev.

6. Movsar Evloev (11-0) beat Seung Woo Choi (7-2) via unanimous decision on scores of 29-27, 29-27 and 29-26 in a featherweight fight. Both men were making their UFC debuts and this was a nice fight with some good action. Evloev was constantly looking for the takedown and showed a lot of potential. Evloev was scoring the takedowns, going 5-of-16 overall and controlling the action on the mat. He did land an illegal knee in the second round as Choi was downed, and it looked real blatant. He got deducted a point but Choi was able to continue. Just constant pressure from Evloev was too much for Choi. With the point taken, I had it 29-27 for Evloev, and all media scores had it for him.

7. Krzysztof Jotko (20-4) beat Alen Amedovski (8-1) via unanimous decision on scores of 30-25, 30-26 and 30-26 in a middleweight fight. Jotko had lost three straight coming into this fight. This was all Jotko in a completely one-sided fight. Total strikes were 111-6 in favor of Jotko and he also scored all four of his takedown attempts. First round was the closest, but not even that close. Jotko landed a spinning elbow in the first that stunned Amedovski, and he never seemed to recover. Amedovski was cut open big time around his eye in the second and ate a lot of strikes. It could have been stopped any time in the second or third round. Amedovski didn't even land a single strike in the third round, and Jotko had almost ten minutes of top control time over the entire fight. I had it 10-8 in the second and third round and 30-25 overall for Jotko. Jotko did his best Booker T impersonation after the fight in attempting a spin-a-roonie.

8. Roxanne Modafferi (23-5) beat Antonina Shevchenko (7-1) via split decision on scores of 29-28, 28-29 and 29-28 in a women's flyweight fight. This was one of the most intriguing fights on the card and the closest fight that went the distance. Modafferi was pushing the pace early but was eating strikes from Shevchenko that cut her open. Modafferi got her down twice late in the first and finished with the mount which got her a close round. Second round started off close but Modafferi was controlling the pace and got a takedown. Modafferi stood up but Shevchenko stayed on the mat so Modafferi went back into her guard and finished by landing lots of elbows at the end of the second. Shevchenko seemingly gave that round away. Her corner must have told her she needed a finish as she came out swinging to start the third. She was landing on Modafferi but Modafferi took her down twice, but Shevchenko got up both times. Shevchenko landed some hard knees at the end. I had it 29-28 for Modafferi, and all but one media member had the fight for Modafferi. It was a big win for her and Shevchenko suffered her first loss, and it was somewhat a dramatic fight. The judge who did score it for Shevchenko was Russian, for what its worth. Modafferi was back coaching kids jiu-jitsu in Las Vegas on Monday.

9. Sergei Pavlovich (13-1) beat Marcelo Golm (6-3) in 1:06 in a heavyweight fight. Both were landing hard shots early giving everyone the impression this wasn't going to last long. Pavlovich rocked Golm hard with a combo that sent Golm crumbling to the mat and the referee stepped in to stop it. Pavlovich looked like a world beater here.

10. Islam Makhachev (17-1) beat Arman Tsarukyan (13-2) via unanimous decision on scores of 30-27, 30-27 and 29-28 in a lightweight fight. This was a great fight. Tsarukyan was making his UFC debut. They weren't landing a lot of punches but both men were going for takedowns and there were lots of scrambles on the mat. Both guys got a takedown in the first but Makhachev did more with his and controlled the action more. Crowd was real loud for Makhachev. He got a takedown in the second and did more with his striking. He was up two rounds heading into the third. Both guys were throwing in the third and Makhachev got two more takedowns and held him down to ride out the fight. The scrambling for positions on the mat really made this fight as the transitions to the feet from both were good and the crowd was really into the fight. I had it 29-28 for Makhachev and all media members had it for him as well. Makhachev looked like a real threat and a lot of guys have been not willing to accept fights with him.

11. Alistair Overeem (45-17 1 NC) beat Aleksei Oleinik (54-12-1) in 4:45 in a heavyweight fight. These two had trained together in the past and Oleinik said he always had trouble trying to catch Overeem in submissions during training. Oleinik immediately pulled guard in the fight and was looking for his famous Ezekiel Choke but Overeem was able to stay out of trouble. Oleinik had Overeem in trouble on the feet landing lots of big punches, but was gassing himself out in doing so as Overeem was calm, cool and collected in covering up and not really taking much damage. Overeem started landing knees to the body of Oleinik which didn't help Oleinik's gas tank, and while Oleinik was firing back, the knees of Overeem became too much. Overeem landed a couple of knees right to the head that dropped Oleinik, who started to cover up as Overeem took his back and landed punches until the fight was stopped. Overeem took a lot of punches and he's been knocked out by harder punchers, but this was a good showing as far as being able to get himself out of trouble. After his loss to Curtis Blaydes last June, Overeem went to the Team Elevation camp alongside Blaydes to train, and it's paid off so far.

The Viceland documentary on the 1997 Survivor Series ended up with both Jim Cornette and Vince Russo taking credit for coming up with the finish, which, along with Shawn Michaels years ago, now makes three people.

In the wake of the show airing, the funniest take was the people trying to claim it was a work, which even included a somewhat confused Earl Hebner on Busted Open radio, who when asked if it was a work, said he’s been thinking about it for 20 years and thought so.

Cornette did two lengthy shows on the subject, one about his involvement and another with me, once again about his involvement with other details on what went down.

Everything basically went down at a meeting at Vince McMahon’s home on the Wednesday before the show. The only people, besides McMahon, at the meeting were Cornette and Russo, who along with McMahon made up the creative team at that point in time.

Cornette’s version, which he told me in 1998 and asked me not to report it, largely because he really liked Bret Hart and in time has had some misgivings about it, started with a frustrated Vince McMahon, who was unable to get either Michaels or Hart to lose to each other. He threw a few ideas at Hart, like having Jim Neidhart turn on him or others, basically anything to get him to lose that night. He threw the idea at Michaels, who was with HHH, where Michaels would lose and then Hart would lose in a return singles match. That was a scenario Hart was willing to do but Michaels wasn’t. Michaels in one interview after being stunned by the question, since that aspect of the story had always been overlooked in the “Bret refused to lose” story, said that during the conversation with Vince, he was told by HHH that in no uncertain terms he should not lose to Hart, since Hart was leaving the company for the opposition.

Cornette said he was the one who came up with the idea of a double-cross. At the time, Cornette’s mentality was that he liked Hart, he didn’t like Michaels, but, Hart was leaving and Vince wanted the title on Michaels. At first he suggested that if Hart wasn’t willing to lose the title in the ring, have Michaels be replaced by Ken Shamrock.

This was an offshoot of when Bearcat Wright was WWA champion and was supposed to lose the title to Fred Blassie, and double-crossed Blassie in the ring and wouldn’t lose. Wright was supposed to defend the title next against Edouard Carpentier, but instead of Carpentier, suddenly his opponent was Gene LeBell, the company’s shooter. Even thought Wright had been an undefeated heavyweight boxer and was 6-foot-6 ½ for real and 275 pounds and a very real fighter, he knew his limitations when it came to LeBell, and he got out of the ring, took off in his car and the next thing you knew he was working for a promotion in Phoenix.

But Shamrock would have never shot on Hart, while at the same time, had McMahon asked Hart to lose to Shamrock, it’s virtually a lock Hart would have done so. But in the end, Vince didn’t want Shamrock to be champion, and only wanted Michaels as champion, to lose to Austin (although had Hart stayed, Vince had entertained and even pitched Hart a program that if he would stay, would have led to Hart beating Michaels back in a match where he put up his career at Royal Rumble and Hart losing to Austin).

Many questioned that since Michaels had already gotten a reputation of winning titles and finding a way around losing them. This had happened time after time over the years, but to defend Michaels, there was plausible deniability in each case. Once it was tag titles that were vacated when he and Diesel were booked to split up as a team. Of course they could have lost, which is usually the way you set up the split, but it wasn’t booked that way. Once was a drug suspension. Earlier that year, Michaels was asked to lose the title to Sycho Sid, but then showed up the day of the scheduled match, announced he had a career ending knee injury, did his famous “lost my smile” promo and left. Even after Montreal, Michaels basically handed his European title, which at one point the plan was for him to lose to Owen Hart, to HHH in a mock wrestling match. Bret Hart had lost to Michaels at WrestleMania in their Iron Man match, and Hart was supposed to beat Michaels at WrestleMania that year. With Michaels out of action, Hart was instead given an I Quit match with Austin, which one could argue ended up being one of the most important, and best matches in WWE history.

Cornette noted that this took place right after he had read Scott Teal’s reprint of the book “The Fall Guys.” The Marcus Griffin book was on pro wrestling in the U.S. from around 1900 to the mid-1930s, a period rife with in-ring double-crosses in world championship scenarios, so the idea was fresh in his head.

Ironically, the two closest historical double-cross title changes to this one, besides whatever you call the Wright vs. LeBell match that never happened, were the May 26, 1950 Chicago double-cross on American Wrestling Alliance champion Don Eagle (Carl Bell) by promoter Fred Kohler in getting the title put on Gorgeous George in Chicago; and the November 25, 1985 double-cross on Wendi Richter by Vince McMahon in getting the title on Fabulous Moolah, who was under the mask as Spider Lady, in Madison Square Garden.

Both of those were fast counts, where both the eventual winner and the referee knew the spot. I don’t know the circumstances of Eagle vs. George past it was a promotional war deal by Kohler. I believe Eagle was being punished for working for an opposition, but the reality is that double-cross didn’t mean a lot because the rest of what was that version of the AWA still recognized Eagle, who, to unify the claim, beat George in a match in Columbus, OH, on August 31, 1950.

In that match, the referee Earl Mollohan fast counted Eagle, who clearly didn’t have his shoulder down and caused the crowd to get furious because it looked like what you’d do in a heel ref spot, back in the days when such a thing didn’t exist. This match is available on YouTube and you can see Eagle go crazy after the double-cross. He punched Mollohan but didn’t connect well, then connected better on a second punch and Mollohan ran out of the ring, similar to Earl Hebner, to the back and left the building. Commissioners held Eagle back (and he actually was suspended by the athletic commission legitimately for punching the referee). Eagle jumped over the ropes and grabbed Mollohan’s shirt as Mollohan tried to get away. While not on the clip, the belief is that Eagle did get one more shot in on Mollohan in the aisle before Mollohan got to the back and into his car and sped off.

Moolah-Richter was a combination of Moolah burying Richter to McMahon, Richter not getting over at close to the level hoped for, and Richter not signing a contract handed to her in the dressing room before the match. The idea was that Moolah would hold Richter in a cradle and the ref would count three. The problem is Richter broke the cradle easier than expected and it looked bad. Richter didn’t grasp what happened, but quit the promotion immediately and never did anything with WWF until she was inducted into their Hall of Fame. But even after that, Richter, when honored by the Cauliflower Alley Club, gave a speech that was very much based largely on thanking the women she worked with and burying both Moolah and Vince.

Most of the double-crosses in “The Fall Guys,” notably Stanislaus Zbyszko on Wayne Munn and Dick Shikat on Danno O’Mahoney, saw very legitimate badass wrestlers be put in there to take out gimmick performers. Munn was a giant football star, but had no wrestling skill. O’Mahoney was 21-year-old project of promoter Paul Bowser in Boston. Bowser was looking at making an Irish world champion to be a local draw. His actual choice was first Patrick O’Callaghan, who won the Olympic gold medal in both 1928 and 1932 in the hammer throw, becoming the first Irish gold medalist. But he was turned down. So Bowser signed O’Mahoney, a tall, good-looking man with a great physique based on 1930 standards before people did much weight lifting, let alone steroids existed. O’Mahoney was billed as the world’s strongest man and in those days, people bought strong men as wrestling champions. And he was very strong in real life, setting Irish military records in the hammer throw and 56 pound weight toss.

As a wrestler, O’Mahoney got over huge, with his biggest matches moved out of the Boston Garden to the baseball stadiums, and he became a unified world champion at first. Shikat double-crossed him and made him submit in Madison Square Garden, which, when the media reported about the story behind the double-cross and that O’Mahoney was a fraud as a wrestler and that the world championship was fake, business in much of the country went way down. It was actually the aftermath of the Shikat double-cross exposing the business that led to the feeling pro wrestling would die if fans found out it wasn’t real (even though most knew), since the business took such tumble post 1935 after the 20s and early 30s had been such a successful period.

Of course the problem is in the 20s and 30s double-crosses it was an expert legit wrestler doing the double-cross, usually when in with a gimmick performer who wasn’t a real wrestler. Even with the element of surprise in his favor, they weren’t about to have Michaels try and do a submission. The biggest fear was that if Hart was double-crossed and he knew Michaels was in on it, what would he do? Hart and Michaels had a dressing room fight months earlier in Hartford, CT which Hart got the better of, and in doing so ripped out a clump of Michaels’ hair (there was a visual scene in the Viceland doc of a clump of hair on the table but Cornette, who was there when Michaels ran into Vince’s office after the fight was broken up, said the actual clump of hair was much larger than depicted in that piece). Cornette actually took the clump home as a souvenir as Michaels had it in his hand when he ran to McMahon after it was over, slammed it on the table and claimed this was an unsafe working environment.

Cornette, when saying why the Moolah-Richter finish wouldn’t work, said McMahon went to him and said, “then how would you do it.” Cornette said that he took that as a challenge, and came up with the idea that a spot would be put in a match where Michaels would get Hart in the sharpshooter and the referee would ring the bell. It wouldn’t be a shoot hold that Hart would be wary of because the spot was that Hart would immediately reverse the move, and it was also told to Hart it would be during a ref bump so he’d have his guard down, even though Hebner was up at the time. Keep in mind after that, Cornette and Russo started talking other things and never heard about it again, nor did McMahon ever bring up to them he was doing it. Neither Cornette nor Russo, nor just about anyone except Michaels, the Hebner Brothers, McMahon, Gerald Brisco, Sgt. Slaughter and HHH had an idea of what was happening.

After the production meeting the night before, they were under the impression McMahon had a finish, although he didn’t say directly what it was. The hint was some sort of an outside interference DQ that would build to a rematch in some form, which was the proposed four-way on the next PPV in Springfield, MA scheduled on 12/7.

The day of the match, Pat Patterson, in agenting the match, threw in that Michaels would put on the sharpshooter and Bret would reverse out of it. If you watch the tape, Bret had just started that reversal when the bell was rung.

For years, Bret had believed Patterson had to be in on it. Patterson always denied it. Cornette, in speaking this week, said that there were the names everyone knew were in on it because it’s come out historically, the Hebners (at the last second), McMahon, Brisco, Michaels and HHH. He didn’t know about Slaughter and wasn’t sure of Bruce Prichard (who from the day after until this day has denied knowing, and the reality is there was no reason for him to know and they wanted to keep the number down to only those who had to know) and Patterson. Cornette believes Patterson didn’t know for a few reasons. First, Patterson would lose all respect in his role from at least some of the talent, and more, because Patterson was friends with both Hart and Michaels, and had been a key person who pushed Hart getting his championship level push in the first place. In addition, Cornette believes Patterson would have tried very hard to talk McMahon out of it. The other name in question was Chyna, who was part of the DX group at the time with HHH and Michaels, and was HHH’s girlfriend at the time. The belief by most is that she didn’t know.

By the time of the match, the key people “knew” the finish, which was that HHH and Chyna would run in, Owen Hart and Davey Boy Smith would save Bret and it would be Bret winning via DQ. The finish was still several minutes away and all concerned were in the Gorilla position waiting for the finish when the double-cross happened. Cornette was watching the match, completely unaware of the fact McMahon, or someone, had relayed to Patterson to get the spot in the match.

Cornette saw them go into the sharpshooter spot and freaked out. Then he saw the finish, and thinking that somehow it would be linked to him, got out of the building as fast as he could, speeding away, even ahead of Dave & Earl Hebner. As it turned out, it was never linked to him.

All were long-gone when Bret came out of the shower and punched out McMahon.

As best we can tell, aside from McMahon, the only people who knew were Michaels and Gerald Brisco, since Michaels and Brisco after the production meeting the night before went into a hotel room where Brisco tried to give Michaels a crash course in self-defense in case Hart attacked him in the ring. Sgt. Slaughter may have known from the start, but it’s confirmed that he and the Hebner Brothers were aware, because they had to be. Slaughter came to ringside with Vince, clearly there as Vince’s bodyguard if Hart tried to attack Vince. But Slaughter did not go after Bret when Bret spit right in Vince’s face and hair. It’s possible Slaughter knew.

Earl Hebner and Dave Hebner were told just as Earl was going to the ring, with the idea that Dave should get Earl’s stuff and then get in the car, and have the car running. Earl was to make the call and run to the back and into the car and to get out of the building before anyone figured out what happened. Earl Hebner, in the piece, said he locked himself in his hotel room and put furniture up against the door in case somebody tried to break the door down. For whatever reason, I’m skeptical of at least the latter, but it’s certainly possible under the circumstances.

It was a risk because whatever they were afraid of happening if Hart didn’t lose that night, the thing that would have been the worst was Hart being double-crossed, and then beating up their champion in the ring in front of the live audience. The TV people were not told the finish, but were told to get off the air as soon as it was over, without being told why. But the ear is the uncertainty of Hart’s reaction, which included hand writing “WCW” in the air and breaking some expensive equipment at ringside after the show went off the air. The fear was Hart knocking out Michaels or in some way beating him up before they rushed Michaels out of the ring.

That’s why, when it was over, Michaels looked at Vince and acted like he was even madder than Hart was. Michaels was told to always deny he was in on it, for fear under heated circumstances that somebody might take a shot at him later, whether it be a Hart family member or an irate friend. Still, a mutual friend of Kevin Nash and myself told me the next night that Nash knew Michaels was in on it. Other friends of Michaels said denied it to them until coming clean some time later on an episode of WWE Confidential. He has since admitted it on several interviews, including a sit down with Hart where Hart went after him with point after point of what happened and that painted Michaels in a bad light, and Michaels denied nothing, admitted to most, and said that he had forgotten other things Hart brought up.

The story had always been that Vince feared that Bret would leave as champion, take the belt and appear on Nitro the next day as champion. It was said so often that those in the company, including wrestlers who were told that as the explanation for why they did what they did, that it became “fact” among many in the company. I can’t tell you how many people told me Bret’s plan was to fly to Memphis and appear on Nitro with the belt, and thus, Vince had no other choice.

Of course the story was bullshit. Hart was planning on going to Ottawa the next day for Raw, although once he punched out Vince, breaking his hand in the process, he flew back home to Calgary.

Just the fact he wasn’t on Nitro the next day should have invalidated that story, but for whatever reason, it persisted for decades.

Cornette’s claim was that Vince never had any fear of that. The Ric Flair case in 1991 when Flair brought the WCW belt to WWF saw a court ruling that the championship belt is the intellectual property of the promotion. WWF had tried to argue that since Flair put down a deposit on the belt, but never got the deposit back, it was legally his possession until that time. WWF lost that one in court. Vince then made a similar looking belt for Flair to wear, and WCW sued again, claiming it was too similar and would cause confusion in the marketplace. Vince lost that ruling as well.

WCW also was being sued, and was not faring well, with a key point being that Madusa threw the WWF women’s belt into a garbage can on Nitro. Anyway, the logic that Bret would be on Nitro the next day should have ended when Bret wasn’t on Nitro the next day. Bret wasn’t even on Nitro until five weeks later, because that was the first week after both his WWF contract ended and the additional week Bischoff gave WWF so he could stay for one more PPV show and drop the title.

Still, Vince told everyone that’s why he had to do what he did.

Cornette said Vince was afraid of Bischoff going on Nitro the next day and announcing Bret, while still WWF champion, had signed with WCW. He also said that despite what he told everyone else, Vince was never afraid Bret wouldn’t be professional on the way out. He said Vince only didn’t trust Bischoff, although the same Bischoff had given WWF an extra week while he was under a WCW contract to stay in WWF and lose the title the right way. Still, Bret, in the conversation in the dressing room before Montreal that, had he not been wired, we’d have all thought Vince once again asked him to lose and he once again refused and refused to do business (lose the title at all). That is apparently what he told Prichard and others and what Prichard relayed to me. But unbeknownst to Vince, Bret was wired, and two key things were the case. The first was that Vince never once asked Bret to lose, and even told him that calling Bischoff about keeping the story quiet wouldn’t be necessary because so many people knew already.

We had reported Bret leaving on our hotline before Montreal and the story was all over the Canadian media, including reported by Michael Landsberg on TSN prior to the show in Montreal. It was not covered at all outside normal wrestling circles in the U.S., but it was in Canada already.

The idea Bischoff would announce it the next day is entirely possible. They absolutely did an interview segment in the ring the next day, making fun of McMahon being punched out and saying Hart was on the way. This was also after it was clear Hart wasn’t going back to work for WWF after the breach of Hart’s creative control clause. And they did tease a big announcement the next week on the show, but they did that all the time in those days. However, Hart had signed the WCW contract at the end of October. Bischoff had one episode of Nitro where, if he wanted to, he could have announced that he had signed the WWF champion. He didn’t. That’s a key point forgotten, just as the key point of Michaels refusal to lose to Hart on the Wednesday prior which would have made the entire scenario smooth sailing from all sides.

Bischoff has said many times that there’s no way they could have put Hart on that show due to his WWF contract, nor ever put the belt on the show due to the lawsuit. He also said he knew that, but he didn’t know if Vince would have known that, but given Hart had a contract until the breach, Bischoff had bent over backwards to allow Hart to drop the title on the next PPV when he didn’t have to, and the legalities over Flair and Madusa tell you that there’s no way Vince wouldn’t have known. Cornette has said the same thing, that he and Vince both knew there was no way Bret was showing up on Nitro with the belt, but they were trying to avoid Bischoff going on television and announcing that the WWF was coming before Hart dropped the title.

Whether they would have announced it or not, only Bischoff knows. At the time, the only version of the story was Vince was afraid Bret would show up with the belt. At the time I was told the agreement was that Bischoff wouldn’t announce it until Hart was no longer champion. Perhaps he’ll broach that subject now, although given Bischoff hates Hart and politically would take McMahon’s side in a controversy at this point, the opposite of what would be the case then, I’m not sure a 2019 answer is the 1997 answer.

Why Bischoff would do that dates back more than a year before. In 1996, when both sides were vying for Hart, when Hart agreed to stay and announce on live Raw his intentions, Vince asked him to bring the WCW contract offer and tear it up on the air. Hart refused, and in the live interview, went so far as to say his other offer was very professional and the other side was honorable, the last thing McMahon wanted on his own television show. Until the last minute, WCW, both Bischoff and a few of the more influential WCW wrestlers, were trying to convince Hart to make a last minute change of mind and sent him an updated contract offer. Perhaps to make sure what would be done, Hart actually left his WCW contract in the car with the guy who drove him to either the San Jose or San Francisco Airport (he was in Santa Clara on Sunday, the day before flying to Raw) so he wouldn’t have it on him when he arrived.

Vince did tell everyone in the dressing room that Hart had refused to lose, and he took the punch to save the company, portraying himself as the hero in this situation. He said Hart was going to go on Nitro with the belt. With that explanation, the generally furious wrestlers, and I heard from several Sunday night after the PPV, and they were mad and talking about quitting, quelled down, and understood. Under those circumstances, if that was true, Vince was justified. It’s just that wasn’t true.

What Cornette and McMahon never figured was that Hart, because of him growing up in the wrestling business, would ever go public with his story. And he had to be talked into it by people who felt that WWF would bury him if he didn’t give his side.

At the time I heard both sides. I was not close with Hart. If you read Hart’s book, the description is pretty much accurate. When Hart told me what he did, in ridiculous detail, which contradicted what those in WWF had said (and to be fair, I believe at least a few of those in WWF who told me the story told me what Vince had told them, and what they believed themselves), he said that in time he would prove every word of it. When it came to the key points, he provided ample evidence, including lawyer letters back-and-forth regarding the finish in Montreal and his planned last month in the company, that clearly showed not only his willingness to lose but even suggesting losing to Steve Austin, or anyone for that matter, just not in Canada. Hart even said he brought up losing to Brooklyn Brawler (who had won a Battle Royal on the previous Madison Square Garden show to get a title match) if that’s what they wanted. He said it had gotten to the point where he was even open to losing to Michaels as long as it wasn’t in Canada. There were reasons Canada was important at the time, as a WWF-dominated market, unlike the U.S., which WCW was the dominant promotion in during that time. Canada was also the market where Hart was clearly the biggest star. And I was told by those in WWF before Montreal but after Hart signed with WCW, during that week, that the WWF plan was to try and get the Canadian national hero thing from Bret Hart to Owen Hart, so Bret losing in Canada played into that. I also know that when Owen Hart returned and was given a massive raise to come back ($250,000 to $400,000 per year), he was promised a storyline where he would cleanly beat Michaels, by far the most hated wrestler in Canada at the time, with the attempt to put him in that position.

Of course, that never happened. Michaels broke his back in a match with Undertaker in San Jose. They had worked on Raw with a non-finish after Owen Hart returned to WWF, attacking Michaels at the Springfield PPV when Michaels was defending against Shamrock. After San Jose, Michaels only wrestled once more, the title loss to Austin at WrestleMania. That was a story in and of itself. Even with a broken back and knowing it was his last match, Michaels was putting up a fuss about losing. Undertaker taped up his fists and was waiting in the Gorilla position, in case something didn’t go as planned in the ring, but Michaels, in fact, did put Austin over that night and didn’t wrestle again for the WWF for four years.

As far as the punch goes, and the aftermath, for those who still do the “Flat Earth,” card, there were in fact some legal threats and cases that came out of this.

Hart looked at suing McMahon for the breach, but was told that he was not economically harmed since he was going from a $1.5 million per year contract to a $2.5 million per year contract, so what was the economic loss of the breach? Ultimately he could sue for principle, but there would be no money to win, so he was told the suit would be a waste of time and money. Unless you were a wrestling fan in 1997 or earlier, the idea that the result of a fake wrestling world championship match meant something would be ludicrous. The funny part of this story is that looking at in 2019, when belts are hardly taken as seriously by the fans (although, in fairness, they are by some of the wrestlers who grew up as fans), every aspect of the story looks ludicrous. That’s probably why people who don’t know the story and how wrestling was at that time will say it must have been a work.

McMahon threatened suit against Hart, probably more as a threat to a counter to a possible breach suit, since he threatened but never actually filed, bringing up the assault against him and the production equipment he destroyed after the show went off the air. But when Hart didn’t sue, neither did McMahon.

Hart got another threat when Russo called Bret weeks later, acting as if he was his good friend, sympathizing with him, and in the conversation Bret brought up wanting Owen out of there. Russo then must have relayed the conversation to Vince McMahon or WWF legal, as Bret almost immediately was threatened with a lawsuit for tortuous interference with a WWF contracted performer, his brother Owen.

This filled in some blanks for Cornette. Cornette was at a creative meeting where he said Russo was heavily pushing Vince to sue Bret over interfering with Owen’s contract, but Cornette never knew how Russo would have known. He also said Vince in the meeting was very much talking about doing so, because hostilities with Hart had gotten that bad.

WWE attempted to get “Wrestling with Shadows,” the documentary that was backstage while this was going on, tied up legally, particularly certain key moments. In particular, they did everything they could to get the scene of McMahon hobbling out of the dressing room after being knocked out off the finished product. But they had no legal grounds to do so based on the deal signed with High Road Productions and that went nowhere. But they were able to keep the documentary from airing on Turner stations.

As for why this all came out more than 21 years after the fact, it’s largely due to the documentary. The fact is, Cornette had strongly hinted what happened in a number of interviews, just never admitted to orchestrating the actual scenario. I had written everything but the name of Cornette, who had told me off the record, but had written about the conversation that led to it and logic would boil down to a few names. The only two in the room with McMahon were Cornette and Russo, although people didn’t know it and the speculated names were those two, Michaels, because he’d claimed credit in at least one interview, and Patterson, since it’s well known he was the one who approached Hart and Michaels before the match with the key spot.

From my perspective, I’d said that when the person died I’d write about it, and had also told Bryan Alvarez that in the event I died before Cornette, to reveal it and the scenario after Cornette’s death.

Cornette mentioned when he did his first podcast on the piece that he told me about it in confidence. I had thought, based on some claims made, that he had also told childhood friend Kenny Bolin, but Cornette made it very clear he never told Bolin that.

Cornette also noted the irony of all this. Cornette, when he got into the business, was told over-and-over that you always protect the idea that the business isn’t a work to the public. Largely, it was the lesson of how the Shikat vs. O’Mahoney double-cross, and newspaper stories after it, led to the wrestling business in the Northeast going down hard for a number of years and the idea I such a thing kills the business.

An ironic byproduct of Shikat vs. O’Mahoney was that in 1937, with business so bad, they quickly rushed the world title on 21-year-old shooter Louis Thesz of St. Louis, because they felt they needed a fresh face who was both real and scandal-free as world champion, although they later took the title from Thesz to Steve Casey. But that was the start of the Thesz as the legendary world champion and legit no-frills star era that lasted until 1966.

Cornette, with hindsight, believes Hart doing talk shows going into the finish, and McMahon going on his own wrestling television show the week after with the interview about Bret not doing the “time honored tradition,” essentially saying Bret refused to do the job for Michaels and drop the title in the ring when he was leaving the company, was the end of protecting that business to the public. He’s not a fan of the modern business and traces it back to the business not protecting itself in 1997, and that he, who hates that it happened the most, inadvertently, was the cause of it all happening. Of course it was going to happen either way in some form.

When Cornette was contacted about doing the episode, he told me enough time had gone on and he wanted to tell the real story. He wasn’t sure he’d do it, but then after the interview, he told me he had.

As far as why now, the only thing I can think or was enough time had passed, and also because Cornette has turned into a huge wrestling history buff. Whether it’s the double-crosses of the past, or other stories in wrestling prior to the 70s or 80s, where everyone involved has passed away and things were kept hidden, it’s become the work of historians to try their best to explain the real story.

The perfect example of this is the Steve Yohe book on Strangler Lewis, which tells in great detail the history of pro wrestling from 1900 to the advent of television, while looking at the life of Lewis. He did great research, but the book was filled with suppositions, educated suppositions, but still suppositions of what happened because the direct people involved are dead. Some had written memoirs, but they were also still heavily going to slant history in their direction.

Whether one likes it or not, Montreal is a huge part of pro wrestling history. I think for reasons of history, Cornette wanted the real story out, perhaps because Russo and Michaels had already both claimed it was their idea. With hindsight, Cornette said he wished it hadn’t happened, and Russo, when he claimed credit, said the same thing.

In 2005, WWF was planning on doing a hit-piece DVD on Hart, similar to “The Destruction of the Ultimate Warrior” DVD they did. They had already taped segments with Hulk Hogan burying Hart, along with several others. They even got Roddy Piper to do so, which personally hurt Hart because he thought they were friends, although Hart didn’t hold a grudge against Piper for doing so.

As negotiations were going on, basically to get Hart involved and instead do a positive piece DVD, Marcy Engelstein, the assistant at the time to Hart, came to Stamford, CT to help with setting things up. While there, she saw Shane McMahon, who she had known for some time. Everyone was friendly, and Shane noted to her how much they all respected Bret and were glad he was going to cooperate with the new documentary. But he noted that his father had no choice, given Bret was going to go on Nitro with the belt the next day.

She was amazed that eight years later, he still believed that. She told him that wasn’t the case and all the reasons it couldn’t happen. But by that point, that story being that way had become WWE religion. It was the one explanation where Vince was the good guy and completely justified, even if Vince of all people, having been in the legal battles over the belt in the Flair and Madusa cases and with the ongoing suit against WCW, knew it couldn’t possibly happen.

Mighty John Quinn, a Canadian who U.K. All-Star Wrestling promoter Brian Dixon has called his biggest drawing card in history, passed away on 4/22 after complications from surgery after suffering a stroke.

Quinn was a major star in Europe and Canada in a career that went from 1961 to 1988. He also had a run with Bruno Sammartino in the WWWF as The Kentucky Butcher. He was 78.

At 6-foot-4 and upwards of 290 pounds, Quinn and his younger cousin Pat Quinn, both grew up in Hamilton, ONT. As kids, both wanted to play for the Hamilton Tiger-Cats of the Canadian Football League. Neither made it, but Pat ended up being an NHL star from 1968-77. who later coached the Philadelphia Flyers, Los Angels Kings, Vancouver Canucks, Toronto Maple Leafs and Edmonton Oilers in a career that went from 1978 and 2010. He coached Team Canada to a gold medal in the 2002 Olympic, twice won NHL Coach of the Year honors and was enshrined in the NHL Hall of Fame in 2016.

John became an amateur wrestler. While training in Montreal, he ended up working out with Edouard Carpentier. In those days, many of the top wrestlers actually trained as wrestlers and even though Quinn was much larger, he noted Carpentier, the biggest pro wrestling star in Quebec at the time, wiped the floor with him in training. Carpentier helped him get started in pro wrestling, and with his size, he became a headliner.

According to Ross Hart, Quinn was a decent worker who was very agile for his size. He was a solid pro as either a babyface or a heel and got a significant push everywhere he went. His finishing move was an elbow drop. But he lacked charisma and was not intense enough to really break through and reach superstar status in North America. But his size, wrestling skill and doing the right promos at the right time made him a huge star in England.

He became Mighty John Quinn in 1970. The name came from Manfred Mann’s top ten single “Mighty Quinn,” that was released in 1968. That song was actually written by Bob Dylan, who also released his own version of it in 1970.

Quinn was very intelligent and articulate, but the story throughout his career was he was moody and walked out on promotions at the wrong time, which impacted his career negatively.

In 1972, as one of the major stars of the British Columbia territory, he left Gene Kiniski and Sandor Kovacs’ promotion, where he was a significant star, to work for Dean Silverstone, a promoter that Kiniski and Oregon promoter Don Owen considered opposition. Doing so led to NWA promotions not using him again, and informally blacklisting him. Stu Hart brought him back to Stampede Wrestling, where he had previously been a star in a 1971 run, during the summer of 1974.

In 1981, after being the highest paid heel wrestler in the U.K. for Joint Promotions (he claimed he earned $100,000 without tax that year, although that sounds high for U.K. wrestling), he switched over to the opposition group run by Brian Dixon and Orig Williams.

Joint dominated the television for several years, although continued to lose its top stars to the opposition. Even though the Daddy vs. John Quinn match in 1979, drew the largest crowd of that era, the only time in that time period Joint ever sold out Wembley Arena with 10,000 fans (even the famous Daddy vs. Giant Haystacks on June 18, 1981 only did 7,000 fans), Joint would never bring him back after he approached them about returning years later.

In John Lister’s book “Have a Good Week...Until Next Week,” on the history of British wrestling, he talked about the build to that match.

Quinn debuted on U.K. television on January 13, 1979, knocking out Beau Jack Rowlands. While Canadian, he was billed as American and became the top heel very shortly after his debut. He told the television audience that his father was a former U.S. Air Force pilot and had told him the British were cowards in World War II. Given a large number of viewers were either alive during the war, or had fathers who served in the war, it immediately led to tremendous heat, from what was later called his “All limey’s are cowards” interview. Quinn continued to knockout opponents and things unheard of in the U.K., like fan signs that read “Yankee go home,” appeared during this matches.

From that interview, there was a notable spike in live attendance for Joint at every club Quinn would appear.

In an Easter Saturday four-man television tournament, Quinn went to a draw with Tony St. Clair, with each winning one fall in the six round bout. in a tournament semifinal, but advanced via coin toss. He then forfeited the final when he refused to wrestle Giant Haystacks. On the FA Cup Final day, where the television audience was its largest of the year, Daddy & Ringo Rigby beat Quinn & Rollerball Rocco, with Rocco of course, being the one who lost the fall.

Wembley was booked for June 27, 1979. It drew the largest crowd in the U.K. for a pro wrestling show since Bert Assirati vs. The Angel in 1948 drew about 15,000 fans for an outdoor soccer stadium show. The sellout was more impressive since ticket prices were far more than usual. The cheapest tickets at Wembley were double the price of ringside to see Daddy in smaller halls in London.

It was billed as a match with no pins, no submissions, and no rounds. It was said it could only end via knockout and the loser would have to leave England. Quinn came out to Manfred Mann’ rendition of the song that gave him his nickname. Fans booed Quinn heavily. One fan even tackled him, but ended up being kicked away. Daddy was mobbed, and his daughter said he was nervous because Quinn had hurt him in previous matches.

The atmosphere was incredible. The match wasn’t. There were a few belly bumps. Quinn knocked Brian Crabtree, Daddy’s brother, off the apron. Daddy hit three slams and the match was stopped after a double elbow, with Quinn going out on a stretcher. Due to Daddy’s limitations, the biggest match in the U.K. of the era only lasted 1:42. Still, the crowd went crazy for Daddy, chanting “Easy, Easy” when it was over.

Quinn, having to leave, was booked for months in Germany and Austria, until returning at the start of 1980.

They built to a world heavyweight title match, with Wayne Bridges defending against Quinn on April 21,1980 at a sold out Brent Town Hall, a card shown on the day of the FA Cup, again meaning it would also be in front of the largest TV audience of the year. They two me split falls. Bridges was knocked out of the ring and came back covered in blood. Ref Max Ward then stopped the match and awarded the title to Quinn due to the bleeding. As Quinn and manager Yasu Fuji celebrated, Daddy jumped in, which set up a tag team match for the second show at Wembley Arena.

That show, on June 11, 1980, one year later, was headlined by Daddy & Bridges vs. Quinn & Yasu Fuji. But the crowd by this point was more interested in Quinn vs. Bridges, rather than Daddy, and the crowd was closer to 5,500. Daddy & Bridges won a poor match in two straight falls. Most at the time said there would have been more crowd interest in Quinn defending against Bridges in a singles match, and it also would have been a far better match.

But this was to set up Bridges getting his return title shot in August at Wembley Arena.

But the match never happened.

Quinn quit the promotion, taking his world heavyweight title with him, when rival promoter Orig Williams brought him in, with his world title belt, with a 1,000 pound down payment to jump. Even though that meant he was off television, he was part of a mass exodus of stars from Joint Promotions, including Tony St. Clair, Rocco and Johnny Saint. Quinn continued to defend the title until losing to St. Clair on May 8, 1982, winning the third fall in the 15th round of their match. Bridges eventually left Joint and renewed his feud with Quinn. Quinn captured the heavyweight title three more times over the next several years and Dixon said that Quinn in those years was the biggest drawing card in the history of the promotion.

He was also a major star in the tournaments in Germany and Austria run by Otto Wanz in the 80s. But in 1983, when he refused to put over Haystacks in the finals of the 1983 Bremen tournament, the promotion refused to book him and wouldn’t bring him back for two years. When he was brought back, he immediately had to put over Haystacks clean in the middle.

Dutch Savage once said that “John is his own worst enemy, shot himself in the foot all the time.”

He had a number of NWA and WWWF title matches during his career, against champions like Bruno Sammartino, Jack Brisco, Terry Funk and Harley Race.

In Stampede Wrestling, where he worked on-and-off from 1971 to 1984, and held the North American title five times, he headlined the company’s biggest show of the year, the Stampede week card in Calgary, in both 1974 against NWA champion Brisco, and 1977 against NWA champion Race.

His title reigns were usually short. He had a one month reign in 1971, winning and losing to Black Angus Campbell. He had a three-month reign in1974, winning over Danny Little Bear and losing to Benny Ramirez. He beat Ramirez to regain the title and held it two months before losing to Les Thornton. He beat Thornton a few weeks later, and held it for about a month before losing to Larry Lane. His final title run was in 1977, a one month reign winning it from and losing it to Killer Tim Brooks.

He held the Pacific Coast title in British Columbia twice and the Mid South North American title in a 1972 feud with Cowboy Bill Watts, under the name The Stomper. He also held the Canadian Open tag team titles nine times between 1970 and 1978, four times with Bulldog Bob Brown, as well as stints with Dutch Savage, Gerry Romano (San Francisco wrestler Jerry Monti), Kinji Shibuya, Kurt Von Hess and Don Leo Jonathan.

In the 80s, during the Dynamite Kid era of Stampede Wrestling, Quinn, who would work there when not in England, was used as the territory’s big powerhouse babyface.

In Japan, he teamed with Nick Bockwinkel in the first JWA World tag team tournament, and also wrestled in the 1977 IWE World Series and in the second IWGP heavyweight title tournament in 1984.

He wrestled regularly until 1987. He had a falling out with Brian Dixon. Joint Promotions, where he first made his name, wouldn’t use him due to the way he left in 1980. Being 47 years old and the territorial system in North America dying, there was really nowhere left to go. He ended up in Vancouver, where he had been a top star during the 70s, but the territory was dying and he had a falling out with promoter Al Tomko in 1988, and then quit the business for good.

He had little or any involvement in pro wrestling until 2005, when a promotion, Top Ranked Wrestling, out of Abbotsford, BC, did a John Quinn tribute show.

After his career ended, Quinn worked as a truck driver, and then a taxi driver, until a encountering assorted health problems over the last decade.

He had back problems from his years in the ring, and was hit by a bike and suffered a knee injury. He also had a serious auto accident.

In 2010, he suffered from cellulitis in his leg, which led to him being hospitalized for nine months and caused him to lose 100 pounds. He had a large chunk of his calf and some of the bottom of his foot removed. He didn’t heal property for those surgeries and needed vascular surgery, and later needed his big toe amputated.

While he mostly worked under his real name, he also used such names as The Butcher, Danny Dubois, John Clay, The Kentucky Butcher, Virgil the Kentucky Butcher, Little John, Marcel LeMay, The Masked Spoiler, part of The Masked Yankees tag team and The Stomper.

His 1968 run as the Kentucky Butcher in the WWWF climaxed with a March 11, 1968, match in Madison Square Garden, where he was pinned by Bruno Sammartino before 13,148 fans. That was the second WWWF show at the new Garden which opened that year. It was a down period for the company because of lack of local television. Still, he was not remembered high on the list of Sammartino challengers. He had multiple matches with Sammartino in most of the other cities, including getting a count out wins in Boston and Philadelphia and doing a 60 minute draw in Washington, DC. His feud with Sammartino outside New York ended with Texas death match losses in Boston and Philadelphia. On the way out, he lost to only top faces like Victor Rivera and Spyros Arion. He and Sammartino then feuded later in the year in the Pittsburgh territory.

Even though he only got one shot at the title in New York, the Sammartino vs. Butcher match drew the best crowd in the early years of the new Garden, which held up until the January 19, 1970, Sammartino vs. Ivan Koloff match drew 16,858 fans.

Butcher came in as a stronger than usual challenger having pinned Carpentier, who rarely lost a singles match, on the MSG show before his title shot with Sammartino.

Even with the Butcher name, he was not the typical big opponent for Sammartino, doing more actual wrestling than most. He didn’t do the usual heel stuff like chokes or eye raking. He even, shockingly, shook Carpentier’s hand in the ring after beating him to set up the Sammartino match, which was unusual in that era.

It was his second and final WWWF tour. He had worked there as Virgil, the Kentucky Butcher, in 1965, but wasn’t used as a headliner.

In 1965, he formed a tag team with Wes Hutchins as the Mighty Yankees in Ontario, including winning the vacant International tag team titles, which they lost to Whipper Billy Watson & Bulldog Brower.

Thanks to John Lister, Greg Oliver/Slam Wrestling, Tony Earnshaw, Ross Hart and Mike Omansky for the historical information in this article.

Smackdown on 4/23 did 2,072,000 viewers, the lowest since 2/12, and down 6.6 percent from last week’s draft show, which should be expected.

It was down 18.6 percent from last year’s show, even though last year had far tougher NBA competition when it came to marquee playoff games head-to-head.

Smackdown was ninth for the night on cable, trailing two NBA games, Curse of Oak Island and news shows. The early NBA game head-to-head with Smackdown did 2,275,000 viewers (down 37 percent from last year). The NHL playoff game head-to-head did 1,297,000 viewers.

The show did a 0.45 in 18-34 (down 4.3 percent frmo last week), 0.57 in 18-34 (up 7.5 percent), 0.85 in 35-49 (down 10.5 percent) and 0.85 in 50+ (down 5.6 percent).

The audience was 68.1 percent male in 18-49, which is unusually high, and 57.3 percent male in 12-17.

Miz & Mrs. did 940,000 viewers after Smackdown, which was the lowest in its history and actually puts the show below the USA Network prime time average factoring out Raw & Smackdown.

The retention rate from Smackdown was 71 percent with women 18-49, 48 percent with men 18-49, 51 percent with girls 12-17, 48 percent with boys 12-17 and 35 percent with 50+. It was eighth in its time slot on cable.

Raw on 4/22 did the lowest audience in the history of the show outside of football season, with a 1.70 rating and 2,374,000 viewers (1.57 viewers per home).

The last episode to do a lower number was 1/7, going against the College football championship game. The viewer number was down 10.9 percent from last week’s draft show and the rating was down 9.6 percent. The viewer number was down 23.5 percent from the Raw episode of the same week last year and rating was down 22.9 percent.

It’s bad because traditionally the number will decline from this level until the end of the NBA playoffs in June.

Raw was sixth for the night on cable, trailing two NBA games and three news programs. The NBA playoffs, which are also down significantly from last year, saw the game that went head-to-head with most of Raw do 2,811,000 viewers. The late game did 2,963,000 viewers, which started early in the A.J. Styles vs. Baron Corbin raw main event.

The big drop was in the second hour of the show, with a lesser drop in hour three. The first-to-third hour drop of 19.9 percent was the tenth biggest drop in history. The first-to-second hour turnoff ratio (14.3 percent) was the fourth highest in history.

The first hour did 2,680,000 viewers. The second hour did 2,296,000 viewers. The third hour did 2,146,000 viewers.

As far as the audience declines from the first-to-third hour in the different demos, Women 18-49 were down 18.5 percent Men 18-49 declined 15.5 percent, Women 12-17 declined 6.3 percent, Men 12-17 declined a record setting 32.3 percent and 50+ declined 16.8 percent.

The other key is the audience that declined the most from last week was under 35, as the older audience stayed more even, but even that audience tuned out of the show in significant numbers as it was going on.

The show did a 0.43 in 12-17 (down 30.6 percent from last week), 0.55 in 18-34 (down 21.4 percent from last week), 1.23 in 35-49 (up 9.2 percent from last week) and 0.97 in 50+ (down 6.7 percent).

The audience was 64.6 percent male in 18-49 and 57.8 percent male in 12-17.

The second week of the Dark Side of Wrestling series on 4/17, the show about the Montreal screw job, was up 17.5 percent to 181,000 viewers.

This is the third and final issue of the current set. If you’ve got a (1) on your address label, it means your subscription expires with this issue.

Renewal rates for the printed Observer in the United States are $13.50 for four issues (which includes $4 for postage and handling), $25 for eight, $35.50 for 12, $46 for 16, $69 for 24, $92 for 32, $115 for 40, $149.50 for 52 up through $184 for 64 issues.

For Canada and Mexico, the rates are $15 for four issues (which includes $6 for postage and handling), $27 for eight, $38.50 for 12, $50 for 16, $75 or 24, $100 for 32, $125 for 40 issues, $162.50 for 52 and $200 for 64.

For the rest of the world, the rates are $17 for four issues (which includes $9 for postage and handling), $33 for eight, $47.50 for 12, $62 for 16, $77.50 for 20, $93 for 24, $108.50 for 28, $155 for 40 issues and $201.50 for 52 issues.

You can also get the Observer on the web at www.wrestlingobserver.com for $10.99 per month for a premium membership that includes daily audio updates, Figure Four Weekly, special articles and a message board. If you are a premium member and still want hard copies of the Observer, you can get them for $8 per set in the U.S., $9 per set in Canada and $11.50 per set for the rest of the world.

All subscription renewals should be sent to the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, P.O. Box 1228, Campbell, CA 95009-1228. You can also renew via Visa or MasterCard by sending your name, address, phone number, Visa or MasterCard number (and include the three or four digit security code on the card) and expiration date to Dave@wrestlingobserver.com or by fax to (408)244-3402. You can also renew at www.paypal.com using dave@wrestlingobserver.com as the pay to address. For all credit card or paypal orders, please add a $1 processing fee. If there are any subscription problems, you can contact us and we will attempt to rectify them immediately, but please include with your name a full address as well a phone number you can be contacted at.

All letters to the editor, reports from live shows and any other correspondence pertaining to this publication should also be sent to the above address.

This publication is copyright material and no portion of the Observer may be reprinted without the expressed consent of publisher/writer Dave Meltzer. The Observer is also produced by Derek Sabato.

Fax messages can be sent to the Observer 24 hours a day at (408) 244-3402. Phone messages can be left 24 hours a day at (408) 244-2455. E-mails can be sent to Dave@wrestlingobserver.com

CMLL: They had a big week for attendance this past week due to holidays. The 4/16 show at Arena Mexico was just a regular show with nothing special and drew 5,000 fans, which is the best Tuesday night crowd in a long time. The 4/19 show was up to 11,500 for the second week of the Parejas Incredibles tournament. Unlike the first week, which had some very good matches toward the end the bouts were rushed through. To the surprise of nobody, Volador Jr. & Ultimo Guerrero won the tournament. They first beat Niebla Roja & El Terrible in 3:23, than beat Rush & Vangellys via DQ in 2:28 when Rush dropkicked the ref on purpose, and then beat Mistico & Cuatrero in the finals in 6:10. This sets them up against last week’s tournament winners Titan & Cavernario on 4/26. Usually the tournament finals are great and this, given who is involved, certainly has the chance to be. Mistico & Cuatrero reached the finals with wins over Stuka Jr.& Hechicero and Atlantis & Negro Casas. In the top non-tournament match, Caristico & Atlantis Jr. & Angel de Oro beat Rey Bucanero & Sanson & El Hijo del Villano III. The big thing is they had the start of what is expected to be a long, long feud with Atlantis’ son and Villano III’s son, since Atlantis beat Villano III for his mask in one of the most legendary matches in Lucha Libre history

The 4/26 show should also drew well as its’s the 63rd anniversary of the opening of pro wrestling at Arena Mexico, which the company built and opened in 1956. Besides the tournament final, the top bouts are Angel de Oro & Soberano Jr,. & Niebla Roja vs. Cuatrero & Forastero & Mascara Ano 2000 and Valiente vs. Hechicero

The column by El Planchitas said that Brazo de Plata has been removed from the CMLL payroll. His career is over and he hasn’t wrestled for a longtime. Paco Alonso had previously ordered him kept on the payroll due to his legendry status and tenure with the company. The story is that CMLL believed the operations he was getting on his leg were not medically necessary and that he would never be able to return to the ring after them.

AAA: Tirantes the long-time heel ref, who just left CMLL, showed up as the new TV announcer on the Lucha Azteca show. Tirantes said that when he quit CMLL, he was planning on taking a year off, but then decided he couldn’t turn down this offer. They pushed on TV that he was hired by TV Azteca to announce wrestling as opposed to working for AAA. He did say he was open to being a referee in AAA

AAA did a 2.5 rating and 3.9 million viewers on 4/12. We didn’t get the CMLL rating for that weekend. For 4/19, which was the Rey de Reyes show that included a cage match with Psycho Clown, the tag title matches where Pentagon Jr & Fenix first beat El Texano Jr. & Rey Escorpion for the titles, and then lost them to the Young Bucks, did the largest rating for pro wrestling in Mexico in a long time, with a 3.2 rating and 5.4 million viewers in the Friday from 4:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. time slot. CMLL on 4/20 did a 0.9 rating and 1.0 million viewers. There has been pressure on CMLL to modernize the show. The show literally consists of nothing but matches, so it’s actually less modern than it was when we used to watch it in the late 80s in the U.S. when it had the video features, the unique ring entrances along with the matches

For the multi-promotional tournament that starts on 5/2, taped for a weekly short-term television show on TV Azteca, it’s opening with four multi-person matches. As noted previously, the idea of the tournament is that AAA, Elite (the Mexican version, not AEW, which at this point doesn’t exist but there is always talk of it getting TV and being revived as a sister company or rival to AAA), MLW, Arolucha (which also barely exists) and Impact as the groups. The first night has heavyweight tournament participants L.A. Park (Elite, returning), Pagano (AAA), Jacob Fatu (MLW) and Taurus (AAA but billed as representing Arolucha) in a multi–person match. The tag team tournament has Pentagon Jr. & Fenix (AAA), Bengala & Puma King (Elite), Dezmond Xavier & Zachary Wentz (Impact) and El Texano Jr. & Rey Escorpion (AAA) in a multi-team match. The middleweight match is Imposible (Elite), Ace Austin (MLW), Flamita (Elite), Draztick Boy (Arolucha), Emperador Azteca (Elite), Rich Swann (Impact), Arez (Arolucha), Super Fly (AAA), Zumbido (Elite), Argenis (AAA) and two more to be named. The light heavyweight first night has a multiple person match with Golden Magic (Elite), Eddie Edwards (Impact), El Hijo del Pirata Morgan (Arolucha), Averno (AAA), Steve Pain (Arolucha), Eterno (Elite), Daga (MLW), Dr. Karonte Jr. (Elite), Parka Negra (AAA), La Mascara (AAA) and two other to be named later. There has been speculation these will be round-robin tournaments like they do in Japan

Killer Kross returns on 5/18 for TV tapings in Tuxtla Gutierrez and also a taping 5/19 in Villahermosa. The first night top bouts are Dr. Wagner Jr. & Pagano & Psycho Clown vs. Texano Jr. & Escorpion & Kross, El Hijo de Vikingo & Laredo Kid & Puma King vs. Chessman & La Mascara & Sammy Guevara and Faby Apache & Lady Shani vs. Tessa Blanchard (AAA debut) & Chik Tormenta. 5/19 has Wagner & Psycho & Puma King vs. Blue Demon Jr. & Daga & Kross, Vikingo & La Parka & Laredo Kid vs Hiedra & Escorpion & Texano Jr and Pagano vs. Mascara vs. Chessman in a TLC match.

THE CRASH: The next show in Tijuana is 5/4 with Pentagon Jr.& Fenix vs. Bandido & Flamita, Austin Theory vs. Rey Horus vs. MJF vs. Adam Brooks for the Crash heavyweight title, Bestia 666 & Mecha Wolf 450 vs. Ultimo Guerrero & Gran Guerrero and Jonathan Gresham defending the Crash cruiserweight title in a four-way with Black Danger, Soberano Jr. and Adrian Quest.

ALL JAPAN: I was told that Kento Miyahara and Yuji Okabayashi have been killing it in the tournament. I’m told most of Miyahara’s matches are **** or better, although I was told his upset loss to Gianni Valletta was maybe ** and it looked bad because the ref was looking right at Valletta when he hit Miyahara with a chain. Okabayashi was said to have had ****½ matches on 4/20 with Dylan James and 4/21 with Zeus. The James match was a big guy slugfest that went to a 30:00 draw. James’ eye was bleeding and all swollen when it was over. The Zeus match was a battle of brutal chops which was fast paced with a hot crowd

The current standings as of 4/25 were: A block–1. Yuji Okabayashi and Dylan James 4-2-1; 3. Kento Miyahara and Zeus 4-3; 5. Shuji Ishikawa and Ryoji Sai 3-3-1; 7. Atsushi Aoki 3-3; 8. Gianni Valletta 3-6; 9. Yuma Aoyagi 2-6. B block–1. Naoya Nomura, Yoshitatsu, Joe Doering, Suwama, Hashimoto and Jake Lee 4-3; 7. Joel Redman and Takashi Yoshida 3-4; 9. Sam Adonis 2-5

The tournament ends this week. On 4/25 at Korakuen Hall it’s Aoyagi vs. Sai, Zeus vs. Ishikawa, Aoki vs. James and Miyahara vs. Okabayashi in what should be one of the best matches of the tournament. I can see Zeus and James losing and the Okabayashi vs. Miyahara match deciding it

4/28 at Korakuen Hall has Hashimoto vs. Adonis, Yoshitatsu vs. Yoshida, Suwama vs. Nomura and Lee vs Doering. With six guys tied in the B block, it’s almost certainly coming down to a tiebreaker situation

This week’s results: 4/20 in Sapporo before 502 fans saw A block bouts where James drew Okabayashi and Valletta scored the huge upset over Miyahara in 14:02 with the chain shot. The B block saw Redman over Suwama in 11:12 with a flying crucifix and Hashimoto beat Nomura in 12:57 with the shining wizard

4/21 in Sapporo drew a sellout of 614. The A block bout on the show was Okabayashi over Zeus in 16:28 with a Golden splash. There were three B block bouts with Yoshitatsu over Redman in 10:44, Doering pinned Hashimoto in 8:05 with a flying body press and Suwama pinned Lee in 22:18 with a back suplex

4/23 in Sendai before 320 fans saw A block matches with Aoki over Valletta in 6:49, Sai pinned Okabayashi in 10:04 and James pinned Ishikawa in 15:20 after a choke slam. The B block bout saw Hashimoto over Yoshitatsu in 11:26 with a shining wizard

4/24 in Nagaoka saw A block bouts with Okabayashi over Aoki in 8:32 with the torture rack and Miyahara beat Sai in 22:52 with the shutdown Germans suplex. The B block matches had Doering over Redman in 8:32 with a crossbody off the top, and Lee beat Adonis in 10:12 with a back suplex.

PRO WRESTLING NOAH: In the tag team tournament on 4/21 in Bambi Island, Nakajima & Shiozaki got a forfeit win over Yone & Storm. Sugiura & Sakamoto won over Saito & Inoue in 11:28 when Sugiura cradled Inoue. The main event saw Kiyomiya & Kenou over Taniguchi & Hino in 17:38 when Kiyomiya pinned Taniguchi with a Tiger suplex.

NEW JAPAN: Kota Ibushi said that he’s made a lifetime deal to stay with New Japan. He signed an extended contract and said that he would be with New Japan for the rest of his career, using the term “until the day I die.” I guess we should hope for Kenny Omega to be back because The Golden Lovers really need to do matches from time-to-time and there needs to be an Omega vs. Ibushi match in MSG or the a Dome

The best of the Super Juniors tournament, which takes place from 5/13 to 6/5, ending at Sumo Hall, officially announced what we had listed from an ad a few weeks ago as far as the names went, including the mystery person who is expected to be El Phantasmo. They announced the final guy would be revealed on 5/4, which will be the mystery partner of Taiji Ishimori in a match against Will Ospreay & Dragon Lee at the final night of the current tour in Fukuoka. The other 19 are Ryusuke Taguchi, Tiger Mask, Rocky Romero, Sho, Yoh, Ospreay, Ishimori, Desperado, Taka Michinoku, Yoshinobu Kanemaru, Bushi, Flip Gordon, Titan, Marty Scurll, Lee, Robbie Eagles, Jonathan Gresham, Bandido and Shingo Takagi. The blocks weren’t announced, but this means each wrestler will be doing ten singles matches, like G-1, rather than eight as in previous years. The entire tournament will air live on New Japan World with English commentary. Going to Sumo Hall for the finals is a big risk, because not only will be it be juniors in the main event of a major building, but the match itself won’t even be determined until a day or two before the show. And they can’t do too loaded a show because one of the three biggest shows of the year, Dominion, is four days later at Osaka Jo Hall. They aren’t running any major buildings for the tournament, as they are doing smaller buildings in Osaka (which makes sense with Dominion 10 days after) and Nagoya. They are doing three straight nights at Korakuen Hall from 5/22 to 5/24

Hiroshi Tanahashi and Yoh are in a music video for the Japanese rock band Low IQ 01

The Sydney, Australia date is 6/30 at the UNSW Roundhouse, a 2,200 seat venue, the day after what they are gearing to be a major show at Melbourne’s Festival Hall

Juice Robinson, who lives in Joliet, IL, is considering moving to Tokyo. I know that Will Ospreay has at least talked about this as well, with the idea he and Bea Priestley would be based there, but Priestley signing with AEW hasn’t happened at the time

The first of the three straight nights at Korakuen Hall was 4/22, which drew a near sellout of 1,619 fans. Togi Makabe & Toru Yano & Ryusuke Taguchi retained the Never six man titles over Tama Tonga & Tanga Loa & Hikuleo in 14:17 when Makabe pinned Hikuleo with a King Kong kneedrop off the top rope. The main event saw Jay White & Taiji Ishimori beating Hirooki Goto &Dragon Lee in 18:33 when White pinned Goto after blade runner

4/23 at Korakuen Hall before 1,577 saw Okada & Yoh beat Sanada & Bushi in the main event when Okada used the rainmaker on Bushi in 16:15

4/24 drew a sellout of 1,660 for what was billed as the Jushin Liger 30th anniversary show. While Liger started his career under his real name in 1984, his first match as Jushin Liger was on New Japan’s first-ever Tokyo Dome show on April 24, 1989, beating Kuniaki Kobayashi. The idea is that Suzuki was there to ruin his anniversary match and again push for a singles match. Naito & Evil & Bushi beat Ishii & Ibushi & Yoh when Evil used the scorpion deathlock on Yoh, which heated up Evil vs. Ishii since Ishii is a protégé of Riki Choshu, and Evil used Choshu’s trademark move in 13:02. The main event was said to be great with Sanada & Takagi over Okada & Sho when Sanada used the skull end on Sho in 19:38.

OTHER JAPAN NOTES: The career of Riki Choshu is expected to legitimately come to an end on 6/26 with his retirement match at Korakuen Hall. Choshu, 67, first retired at a sold out Tokyo Dome on January 4, 1998, and vowed he’d never come back unless business got bad. Well, as everyone knows, business got bad. Choshu came into New Japan in 1974 after representing South Korea in the 1972 Olympics in Greco-Roman wrestling. While it was well known he was an Olympian, the fact he represented South Korea (the connection was never made because people were told his real name was Mitsuo Yoshida. He competed internationally under that name but in the Olympics competed under his Korean name, Kwak Gwang-Ung. He actually won the collegiate nationals in 1971 and the Olympic trials for Japan for the 1972 team, but wasn’t allowed to compete because he was actually South Korean. South Korea then recruited him to join the team. If the three biggest stars in Japanese history were, undeniably, Rikidozan, Antonio Inoki and Giant Baba, Choshu would be among many, like Jumbo Tsuruta, Tatsumi Fujinami, Akira Maeda, Mitsuharu Misawa, Keiji Muto, Genichiro Tenryu and Atsushi Onita in the debate for fourth place. His final match will be Choshu & Tomohiro Ishii (his protégé) & Shiro Koshinaka vs. Fujinami (his biggest rival) & Togi Makabe & Muto. The event will air live in movie theaters throughout Japan for closed-circuit, one of the very rare closed-circuit events in modern Japanese wrestling history. It may be the first since Kenta Kobashi’s retirement

Choshu worked a 4/21 Dradition show in Osaka before 1,300 fans. The main event was Choshu & Shiro Koshinaka & Yukio Sakaguchi over Fujinami & Hiro Saito & Daisuke Sekimoto in 12:07 when Choshu pinned Saito after a lariat

Command Bolshoi’s retirement show was 4/21 at Korakuen Hall before a near sellout of 1,530 fans. First, she won a Battle Royal that brought back legends like Jaguar Yokota, Shinobu Kandori, Yumiko Hotta, Kyoko Inoue and many current stars. She also did 5:00 time limit draws in singles matches with Mayumi Ozaki, Kaori Yoneyama and Hanako Nakamori.

HERE AND THERE: Chet Coppock, a Chicago sportscasting legend, who had ties to WWE and Roller Derby, passed away on 4/17 from injuries suffered in a car crash in South Carolina six days earlier. He was 70. Coppock was called a legendary sportscaster who changed the landscape of sports broadcasting in Indianapolis, one of the markets he worked, where he was once voted the most liked and most disliked sports media person in the city in the same year. Coppock was a flamboyant, loud and opinionated sportscaster, stemming from his childhood background of being a fan of Buddy Rogers in Chicago during the early 60s. In Chicago, he was known as “The Godfather of Sports” for his decades of radio and television work. Coppock was a passenger in a car driven by a 50-year-old woman. The accident took place in Okatie, SC, between Savannah, GA and Hilton Head Island, SC. The car he was in crossed a median and struck a car coming in the other direction head on. A third car struck the other vehicle from behind. Coppock suffered major injuries and was taken to Memorial University Medical Center in Savannah and died. The woman driving was also hospitalized with serious injuries. Those in the other two cars only had minor injuries. Coppock grew up in Chicago, and was fond of saying all of his friends idolized Ernie Banks, a star in the 60s with the Cubs, but he wanted to be Buddy Rogers. He promoted boxing while in college. He then worked as the television producer for the Milwaukee Bucks in the 1970-71 season, when the team, led by Louis Alcindor (who later changed his name to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and was one of the greatest centers in NBA history), Oscar Robertson and Lucius Allen won the NBA championship. He also worked as a sportscaster for WFLD in Chicago, which aired Bay Bombers Roller Derby. He would also push the AWA big shows in the market on television at that time. He was a big Derby fan and made a connection with Jerry Seltzer when the Bombers toured Chicago. When Seltzer opened up a team in Chicago, the Midwest Pioneers, he hired Coppock as his play-by-play announcer. Coppock was actually the second choice as the first guy they hired was atrocious, not being able to keep up with the action and sometimes calling the women skaters with the name of their male counterparts. Coppock, then 23 years old, was a perfect fit for Roller Derby, with the ability to portray is as a somewhat serious but also fun pseudo-sport and was great at getting the team’s personalities over and being what was then called a “homer” announcer, since Derby had babyfaces and heels. He was more colorful than Walt Harris, the legendary voice of the league. He was a great balance of entertaining, but not so over the top that he made the games not feel like a sport. It’s hard to come up with a comparison as he was more of a personality than the top wrestling announcers of that period. While most would point to the team’s top star, Joanie Weston, the “Golden Girl,” as the prime reason, Coppock’s announcing did play a part in building the Pioneers into the best drawing and most profitable team in the league. They regularly sold out the 10,000 seat Amphitheater in Chicago and once sold 50,118 tickets to Comiskey Park for a 1972 game that turned away thousands. He was able to get virtually every member of the team, both men and women, over as unique and likeable personalities. But outside of Chicago, the other Derby home teams were sputtering and the company was losing money, and folded at the end of 1973. Even at the end the Pioneers ran three nights in a row at the Amphitheater during the last run and did 25,000 total fans. Coppock briefly worked for Roller Games, as an announcer for the Los Angeles T-Birds, who took over the Chicago territory from the Pioneers as the home team. Roller Games hired him only to help in the transition and then let him go. He worked as a television sportscaster in Indianapolis from 1974-81, where he would give results of Dick the Bruiser’s shows on the sportscast. He was best known for going to Indiana Pacers games wearing a full length fur coat like he was Ric Flair and going on the court at halftime. He hosted a nightly sports talk show in Chicago. In 1981, he was named Best Sportscaster in the Illinois Broadcasting awards. In 1984, he started his daily radio show “Coppock on Sports.” He was also the ring announcer for WWF shows in Chicago in the 80s, including at WrestleMania II. Coppock was a longtime reader of this publication. We actually first became acquainted in 1972 when I wrote him a letter, and he wrote back, and we corresponded by letter throughout his Derby tenure. We got reacquainted when he got into pro wrestling with WWE. It was funny because during the WWF vs. Jim Crockett Promotion vs. AWA war in Chicago in the 80s, Coppock would only talk WWF. He would refuse to talk about the other promotions. I’m not sure if WWF offered him a position but because he was a good looking guy and well known in the Chicago market, it was definitely talked about him as a back-up to Gene Okerlund as an interviewer. On radio, he always called his guests “My close personal friend,” which he may have either gotten from Okerlund, or Okerlund got from him. The problem is he was 6-foot-6 which worked against him in that role. He did the pre-game and post-game shows during the heyday of Michael Jordan with the Bulls. He won an Emmy in 1992. He was featured in a 1994 book about the 60 most notable people living in Chicago, and wrote five sports books himself. He was the radio host for Notre Dame football and basketball from 2006 to 2015. He was named to the Chicago Sports Hall of Fame in 2013 and once did a national TV commercial for Wheaties and did a P.F. Chang’s commercial with Michael Jordan and Walter Payton. He also once wrestled Victor the Wrestling Bear

The Viceland documentaries left after this week are The Von Erichs on 5/1, Gino Hernandez on 5/8 and Fabulous Moolah on 5/15. I’ve seen the first two of these three. The Von Erichs is a must-see. The gist of the story has been reported, covered, and done in documentaries in the past. Jack Adkisson aka Fritz Von Erich was one of pro wrestling’s top heels in the late 50s and into the mid-60s. In the mid-60s, with three sons, he decided to leave wrestling on top and live a simpler life, running a fish, bait and tackle shop in Corpus Chrsiti, TX. But in doing so, he did some area wrestling and became the hottest star in the territory. He ended up, instead, being involved in a wrestling war in Dallas and Fort Worth, and with the backing of NWA President Sam Muchnick, won the war. After the death of Morris Sigel, the booking agent for the Texas territory, it was Adkisson, and not Paul Boesch, who became the key booker, although Boesch and Joe Blanchard (San Antonio & Corpus Christi) did their own angles and booked their own cities, using talent from the outside as well as the regulars booked through Adkisson’s company, Southwest Sports. Jack’s three oldest sons, Kevin, David and Kerry became wrestlers, and after a few years, they became huge stars as teenage girls in particular started attending area shows in big numbers to see his sons. They also became huge in St. Louis, the NWA’s leading wrestling city, showing it was more than just their father protecting them, although that was certainly part of it. Due to having the best produced television show in the country and the Von Erichs vs. Freebirds feud, for a time, the promotion was on fire. And then, David died in 1984, a death that changed the history of the business. Mike and Chris, the two youngest sons, who both wrestled but physically were not like the three older brothers, committed suicide. And finally, in 1993, Kerry died. Fritz and mother Doris also died, so Kevin, who lives in Maui, is the last of the family. He, his sons, and their wives and kids all live on the same land in different houses. Kevin, who was also a gigantic celebrity in Israel and Egypt as World Class was huge on television in that part of the world during their heyday, notes that you can be a television star and a celebrity, but in time you learn that the greatest thing is eating dinner every night with your family. This is a must-see documentary, showing Kevin, now 61, going through the lives and deaths of his brothers and father is very descriptive terms. Helping him is David Manning, the head referee and lead guy in the office during the glory years, who was the closest to Jack when it came to working with him in the office. There’s not a lot new that hasn’t been covered other than both Kevin and Manning going into detail on the different deaths. About the only thing I didn’t know was how much Kevin hated the idea of Lance Von Erich, a supposed cousin who was created after the death of David, billed as the son of Waldo Von Erich, who was Fritz’s fake brother. He was actually from the Dallas area, a very good looking bodybuilder who, if you looked at him, you would think he’d have been a big star, good athlete, tall, looked like a television star, great body, but he had two left feet in the ring. Women loved him, but his matches weren’t very good. But Kevin, like Gary Hart, felt using him was a huge mistake, because too many of the local fans knew they were being lied to. And then he had a falling out, and Fritz, mistakenly, went on television, upset, and said that his name was William Vaughn, that he was not a relative of the family and that he owns the name Von Erich and Vaughn would never be able to use it again. The problem is that Fritz and his sons had been telling people for a few years he was the first cousin. That’s not why World Class died. The reasons are long and lengthy. But the performance by Kevin, moved to tears in going into detail on the deaths more than he ever has before, makes this a must-see, and Manning and Jim Cornette, who worked there and knew and understood the history, added a lot. I was in there as well. Kevin told us as far as a conclusion, despite everything he’s gone through, “It’s been a good life.

.The Hernandez documentary is also one I’d recommend. For those who saw Hernandez, you’ll find a lot of it interesting, including the revelation, at least in there, that he supposedly did date Farrah Fawcett at one time. That has been debated for decades after he showed a photo of him with Fawcett on Georgia Championship Wrestling, and stories were they were simply at the same club and got a photo together, to that they dated. And it’s possible the former story is still the accurate version. Bruce Prichard, who grew up working in the Houston office when Hernandez was one of the top stars, was on it, as was Jake Roberts and Jeannie Clark-Williams (who lived next door to him at the time of his death and was a performer herself, including at one point married to Chris Adams and Steve Austin). But the keys were Hernandez’s mother, Hernandez’s ex-wife and his daughter. For those who never saw Hernandez, the footage of him would be great because you can see that he had a certain level of charisma that would have made him as headliner today if his work could have gotten up to modern levels. In his day, Hernandez was considered too small to be a top heel in WWE even though he excelled at the role like few in the last 35 years. He died in 1986 due to a cocaine overdose, and it’s also been rumored that he was really murdered. The documentary really doesn’t answer that question. What’s notable is that months back, I was told a number of things that would be in the documentary, that would have made it amazing. None of that ended up in. I can’t answer why, whether it’s legal or they didn’t want to hurt his name with the direction they ended up going. His father is another direction. It was always rumored in wrestling that Hernandez was the son of Paul Boesch. Boesch always denied it. At first this was going to be addressed and the story was going to deny Boesch was his father, but they decided not to go in that direction. I always note that in 1987 I was in Paul Boesch’s old office and there was this gigantic photo of who I thought was Gino Hernandez, and asked Boesch, why he had a gigantic photo of Gino wearing a 1940s bathing suit on. Paul told me that it was a photo of him when he was a lifeguard in New York. His mother, who was 16 when Gino was born, said that Gino’s father was Charles Wolfe, and Gino’s real name was Charles Wolfe Jr., but Gino never knew his father, nor did his father know him. Paul told me the same thing. Yet, when a television special was put together on the life of Boesch in Houston, which Bruce Prichard had a major hand in it, there was a long feature that seemed to otherwise make no sense in the special with clips and videos of Gino. Gino was raised by and was the stepson of pro wrestler Luis Hernandez, and was always known as Gino Hernandez from childhood. Boesch did tell me that he loved Gino like a son and had a big hand in helping him get into pro wrestling. Luis Hernandez died of a heart attack after a match in Japan in 1972, when Gino was 14. This was not in the piece as it was a direction they didn’t go, but the story that they said they uncovered among many, was that Charles Wolfe was a police officer and worked security many Fridays nights at the Sam Houston Coliseum during Hernandez’s heyday, but had no idea Gino was his son until after Gino’s death

Chris Jericho donated $5,000 to the James “Kamala” Harris Go Fund Me that was set up by Brian Blair which allowed Harris to avoid be evicted for non-payment of property taxes for a number of years. Harris needed to have both of his legs amputated due to issues with diabetes and needs dialysis three times a week and nearly died due to fluid around his heart and lungs and needed emergency surgery for that in 2017

Mahmoud Sebie, 26, a world class wrestler, is now training in Northern California at the Pro Wrestling Revolution promotion’s school. Sebie was a five-time African champion, who was named the best wrestler, regardless of weight, in Africa in 2015 and competed in the last Olympics representing Egypt but lost in the first round. He’s looking at competing in the 2020 Olympics representing the U.S

Jazz vacated her NWA women’s title for what she called medical and personal reasons. She was to defend against Allysin Kay on 4/27 at the Crockett Cup show in Concord, NC. Kay will face Santana Garrett for the vacant title.

EUROPE: Fight Club Pro did a tag team tournament over the weekend in Wolverhampton as well as some other unique matches. Champion Mark Davis lost via DQ to Jeff Cobb on 4/19 and then retained his title beating Pentagon Jr. on 4/20. The match people were going crazy for, saying it exceeded high expectations, saw Will Ospreay beat Fenix. People were raving about it like it was just below or the same caliber as Ospreay vs. Bandido in New York. In tag team tournament matches the first two nights, Chris Brookes & Kyle Fletcher beat Frightmare & Hallowicked; Pentagon Jr. & Fenix beat Eita & Pac from Dragon Gate, tag champs Mat Fitchett & Davey Vega (Besties in the World) beat OVER (Dave & Jake Crist) and LAX beat Jody Fliesch & Jonny Storm. On 4/21 in the semifinals, Pentagon & Fenix beat LAX and Brookes & Fletcher beat Vega & Fitchett. Pentagon & Fenix beat Brookes & Fletcher to win it all. Davis retained his title on that show in a four-way over Ospreay, Pac and Dan Moloney.

ROH: A Tama Tonga & Tanga Loa ROH tag title defense against the Briscoes has been announced for the 5/12 show in Chicago

An update on the 5/8 show in Buffalo, which is the first night of the War of the World’s tour and the next actual ROH show (they are affiliated with the 4/27 Crockett Cup show but that’s an NWA promotion by Billy Corgan). The lineup has Tonga & La vs. Jay Lethal & Jonathan Gresham for the ROH tag titles, Marty Scurll & PCO & Brody King vs. Jeff Cobb & Yuji Nagata & Satoshi Kojima for the six-man titles, Flip Gordon vs. Bandido, Rush vs. Silas Young, Seiya Sanada & Evil vs. Mark Haskins & Tracy Williams, Hikuleo vs. Shane Taylor, P.J. Black vs. Alex Coughlin and Vinny Marseglia & T.K. O’Ryan vs. Clark Connors & Karl Fredericks

5/9 in Toronto has Taven vs. PCO for the ROH title, Briscoes vs. Haskins & Williams, Nagata vs. Silas Young, Lethal vs. Kojima, and Cobb vs Brody King vs. Hirooki Goto vs. Shane Taylor for the TV title

5/12 in Chicago has Evil & Sanada vs. Nagata & Kojima

The Crockett Cup show will air live on 4/27 on Honor Club at7 p.m. Eastern from Concord, NC, with Nick Aldis vs. Scurll for the NWA title, Willie Mack vs. Colt Cabana for the National title, Allysin Kay vs. Santana Garrett for the vacant NWA women’s title, and a Battle Royal fr the final spot in the Crockett Cup. The Cup is an eight-man tournament, with Jackie & Frances Crockett (son and daughter of Jim Crockett Sr.) both attending,. First round matches are Mark & Jay Briscoe vs. Ricky Morton & Robert Gibson, Brody King & PCO vs. Kojima & Nagata, Gordon & Bandido vs. Guerrero Maya Jr. & Stuka Jr., and Crimson (former TNA wrestler) & Jax Dane vs, the winners of the Battle Royal.

IMPACT: They have the Rebellion PPV on 4/28 from Toronto with Johnny Impact vs. Brian Cage for the title with Lance Storm as referee, Pentagon Jr. & Fenix vs. LAX in a Full Metal Mayhem (TLC style) match for the tag titles which should be incredible, Taya Valkyrie vs. Jordynne Grace for the women’s title, Gail Kim vs. Tessa Blanchard and Rich Swann vs. Sami Callihan for the X title. They shot an angle on location at Robert Irvine’s restaurant in Las Vegas (Kim is married to Irvine) and Blanchard went in and started harassing and berating the workers there.

AEW: As was expected by many and reported in some places including Pro Wrestling Sheet a few weeks ago, Dustin Runnels’ (Dustin Rhodes/Goldust) is headed here and will face brother Cody on Double or Nothing on 5/25 in Las Vegas. Runnels asked for his notice from WWE on 1/19, and they gave it to him, but he was given a 90-day non-compete which ended on 4/19. From the WWE side, Vince McMahon was said to be against it but Paul Levesque talked him into allowing Runnels to leave. The reality is WWE hadn’t done anything with Runnels in years, and he’s 50, and coming off double knee surgery. It’s hard to figure the decisions on who they let go, since with Runnels, it was a lock if he was let out of his contract, he was coming here (and his contract was expiring fairly soon, but WWE could have frozen it and continued it for another eight months due to his time off after the most recent surgeries). So the scorecard is that Runnels, Tye Dillinger and KENTA were let go, although KENTA is likely returning to Japan. Not let go have included The Revival, Banks, Harper, Kanellis and any others that haven’t gone public with it. Basically the decision seems to be they’ve let go people who they think won’t help the opposition, but did let Cody’s brother and former tag partner go. As I’ve said before, as a general rule, the brother vs. brother stuff in pro wrestling doesn’t work. That doesn’t mean this won’t work, just that most of the time it doesn’t. This is a unique audience and my feeling is it will be fine here based on the promos both will do, in the sense it won’t be a cartoony thing like a lot of the times when WWE did brother vs. brother (which in WWE world worked for Bret vs. Owen, but didn’t work for Cody vs. Dustin or Matt vs. Jeff, although Matt vs. Jeff did play out better in Impact). The two wanted to do a WrestleMania match several years back and they even started building it and then Vince McMahon cut it off. Dustin was tremendous in the video announcing the match, easily his best work on interviews in years. This is also a different era and a different crowd. With the crowd they are playing to, if they can make the promos work and have a good match it’ll be fine because this is very much a crowd that is in on it and wants everything to work. Even if Dustin isn’t the future, he’ll be treated better here than in WWE, and if he can go as a high level, probably much better, since Vince has the age thing going and simply wasn’t going to do anything with him going forward. And to be fair, with all the new talent in WWE, Vince wasn’t wrong in doing so. I think there’s far more longevity in them being aligned and really, if they wanted to do this match, I’d also rather they started out as a team, told a story about not getting along and did the slow build to the match where one brother wanted it and the other didn’t, which is what made Bret vs. Owen work and the spiritual father vs. son Bruno vs. Zbyszko feud set records because in stuff like that, just doing a match out of the blue to do it is like Mark vs. Jay Briscoe. Mark vs. Jay is one that to me was never a bad thing, and they’ve had great matches because they can beat each other up because people believe they are brothers who are so nuts they would, but really people enjoy it but don’t care about it. They can always do a reconciliation after a program and Young Bucks vs. Rhodes Brothers can be built up into a program as well

The 7/13 show in Jacksonville had about 1,000 tickets left (set up for 5,180) after the first day of ticket sales to the general public. It wasn’t the instant sellout, but I don’t know that anyone expected a local market show in Jacksonville to have that kind of a ticket run. Daytona Beach on 6/29, the over/under would be the 2,350 that the similar CEO show did in the market last year with Omega, Kota Ibushi and Tetsuya Naito as the top stars and now it’s Omega, Young Bucks and Cody. Jacksonville usually draws 250 to 400 for NXT and the AEW crowd will beat most WWE shows in the market. So if they sellout or come close, and it’s a virtual lock they’ll come close in Jacksonville, that’s impressive for a group that has no television and with only Kenny Omega vs. Cima and Brandi Rhodes vs. Allie announced. It was funny people after 30 minutes of presale when there were more than 2,500 tickets sold, people were immediately ready to call the show a failure. Obviously a non-traveling show in a less than major market isn’t doing 10,000 tickets or have a worldwide demand of 43,000 tickets in 30 minutes instantly. No matter how you slice it, it’s still a wrestling promotion with no television doing a local market show until the TV kicks in. And at that point it’s still likely not going to be an instantaneous explosion like UFC did in 2005 and it’s really impossible to predict what getting good TV means for regular live touring shows because we don’t know how good the TV will be, how well they’ll get the stuff over, and how many people are going to hear about it or watch a new wrestling product when you’ve got five live prime time hours

Also signed were an independent tag team, Private Party, who do all kinds of acrobatic moves. They are Isiah Kassidy and Marq Queen. In clips they look phenomenal but that’s not the same as a match. They were both trained by Amazing Red in New York. One wrestler who worked on a show with them said both seem like really nice guys, that Colin Delaney , who has worked with them is extremely high on them and Empire State Wrestling was looking at building them up for a match with Pentagon Jr. & Fenix. The description is that both are unbelievable as far as athleticism goes, but they are both pretty green, their selling needs work but being in with experienced major league talent will probably help them improve rapidly. Their high spots are very impressive. Both are around 5-foot-10 and 160-170 pounds, but they are young and will likely get bigger. They are clearly projects and not finished commodities. We’re told that they have gone to places as unknowns and gotten really over to live crowds

Peter Avalon and Leva Bates were both hired to play The Librarian role as part of a storyline that appears to be a behind-the-scenes power struggle with Omega & Cody on one side and The Young Bucks and Christopher Daniels on the othe

. Jim Ross was at the corporate offices with Excalibur and Alex Marvez learning to work together as an announcing crew to get ready for the PPV. It’s an interesting dynamic. Excalibur knows the talent and the moves and has experience calling some of the best matches in the world on PWG. Marvez, while a lifelong fan, is a football guy who became a huge NJPW fan and is there to give the sports feel that they want from the product. Ross is, as Cody would say, he’s Jim F’n Ross. The idea is it’s the familiar wrestling voice of people’s childhoods who is there to get the product over and the talent over. Right now it looks like it’ll be a three-person full-time booth for the PPV and television, plus Justin Roberts as ring announcer, Alicia Atout doing interviews

Jenn Decker, better known as Jenn Sterger from the Brett Favre story in 2010 when he allegedly sent her photos and suggestive text messages that became a huge scandal, is getting a tryout as well for a host/interviewer role. Decker, 35, was best friends with C.J. Perry (Lana) when both went to Florida State and they gained notoriety in 2005 when they and two friends, who were the hottest girls in the college, dressed up to make sure they were noticed, wearing cowboy hats as the FSU Cowgirls during a game on ABC and Brett Musberger, when the four of them were shown in a crowd shot said, “1,500 guys have just applied to attend Florida State.” She’s done several sports shows on cable and even on ABC. She hosted a game day show for the New York Jets (Favre was on the Jets and this is where that story came from, although Sterger said that she’s actually never met or spoken to Favre) and the notoriety led to posing in Maxim and Playboy and being on an E! special of the 20 hottest women in the country at one point. She’s now Jenn Decker because she married Cody Decker, a minor league baseball player. She’s also doing the weigh-ins for Double or Nothing

SCU along with Chris Harrington and Jeff Jones are headed to Shanghai on 5/1 for business with OWE. There is talk SCU may be doing a match in China that week

On Stubhub for the month of April, the average sale price of a ticket was $116.51. For All In, the average Stubhub sale price was more than $200 which was among the highest in wrestling history. Right now there are 1,600 tickets left on the secondary market five weeks out which is normal level for an event of this type

On Being the Elite, the new storyline is that they are making fun of all the guys being Executive Vice Presidents. Cody flew to Kenny Omega’s cottage in Winnipeg. They basically set up a behind-the-scenes feud with the Young Bucks because there were too many people in power and Omega said this was just like WCW 2.0 and you know what happened to WCW. So they formed a pact to work together. Their first decision was to hire Leva Bates to be the librarian and not Peter Avalon, who Matt Jackson and Christopher Daniels wanted for the role. They made their announcement first before the Young Bucks and Daniels knew. Then Matt and Daniels offered Avalon the role and he accepted, and said Cody had offered him $1 million. Daniels said not a chance and went to put together a contract. So then both sides made the announcement their guy was The Librarian. They introduced Sammy Guevara’s mom as a character. He gave her a T-shirt when he dropped by the house and she was mad it wasn’t an official AEW T-shirt and he also got her the wrong size. Matt & Nick each told the other that Chris Jericho had talked with them about breaking up. That was a weird ending, although I’m guessing more to come later because otherwise it seemed like they started something with no payoff. As they talked about being the best tag team in the world, and how they’ve been off while the Lucha Brothers are working regularly, Nick showed Matt clips of Private Party, and said he thinks they’re the future of tag team wrestling. It was a series of great acrobatic and double-team moves, and then came the announcement they are signed. Joey Ryan was shown training hard and getting more aggressive and no longer being a guy everyone beats up. He was in the ring superkicking people with a Candice LeRae doll in the corner. Kenny Omega was making calls spending ridiculous money to book a helicopter for a ring entrance and Tom Cruise for one of the upcoming shows. Then Matt got a phone call from the head offices in Jacksonville regarding recent business expenses and that included millions of dollars that he didn’t know about for a helicopter and Tom Cruise. Matt also yelled at Hangman Page for eating a potato chip when he’s supposed to be dieting. They also teased a Dead Friend 1 for a future episode.

UFC: They announced three new shows outside the U.S. for later this year. They will be debuting in Uruguay on 8/10 in Montevideo. There will be a 9/7 PPV show that is looking like it will be in Abu Dhabi. The plan is to headline that show with Khabib Nurmagomedov vs. Dustin Poirier for the lightweight title. They also have a 11/16 date in Sao Paulo, Brazil

Darren Till was one of five men arrested while in Tenerife, Spain on 4/25 for allegedly causing damage to a hotel and stealing a taxi. According to reports from local media, a group of U.K. visitors, which included Till, broke furniture and sprayed and emptied fire extinguishers in a hotel room they were staying in. After being kicked out of the hotel, they went to another hotel. But that hotel wouldn’t let them book rooms. Then they allegedly called a taxi. As the driver put their bags in the back of his car, Till and another person allegedly got into the car and drove off, until police stopped them. And they were arrested. Till was ordered by pay a fine of 700 Euros. The number of incidents between arrests and such that we report seemingly weekly involving UFC fighters is staggering. The company needs to take control and start cutting guys or suspending guys if they have issues like this, but the problem is the biggest star is the one in the news for things like this the most often

Cristina Ferguson, he wife of Tony Ferguson, has withdrawn her restraining order against him. Tony Ferguson is trying to get back fighting in UFC

Four UFC fighters were suspended six months for positive tests for Ostarine. The four fighters were Nicco Montano, Sean O’Malley, Augusto Mendes and Marvin Vettori. All had small amounts of Ostarine in their system, and USADA ruled the quantities were so low that it would be consistent with supplement contamination. What’s notable is that from the wording of the release, none of the four were able to find a contaminated supplement, so their cases were identical to that of Tom Lawlor, who was suspended for two years, and then cut right before the suspension ended. It was known that O’Malley and Mendes were suspended, but because UFC no longer announces suspensions until fully adjudicated, the suspensions of Montano and Vettori were not known. Montano tested positive in a test taken on 10/25. The result came in on 11/15 and her suspension began, and will end up 5/15. O’Malley failed tests on both 9/5 and 12/8, both for low amounts of Ostarine and it was felt that both tests were for the same ingestion. He was first suspended on 9/19, so his suspension is now over. Vettori’s suspension was from an 8/24 test, He had also failed a 3/7 test. Vettori’s suspension is over but he had asked for and been given his release in June. Notably, UFC has in many cases, including that of Lawlor, not given fighters releases while on USADA suspensions. USADA suspensions only cover UFC, but are often upheld by athletic commissions. If they are suspended by athletic commissions, they would be ineligible to fight in the U.S, Canada or Brazil, but could fight with other promotions in non-regulated countries

. This week’s show is a head-to-head battle with UFC vs. Bellator. The UFC show is switching three outlets which sounds silly on the surface. It starts at 5:30 p.m. Eastern on ESPN 2, with Court McGee (19-7) vs. Dhiego Lima (13-7), Angela Hill (8-6) vs. Jodie Esquibel (6-4) and Jim Miller (29-13) vs. Jason Gonzalez (11-4). Then it moves to ESPN at 7 p.m. with Gilbert Burns (14-3) vs. Mike Davis (5-1), Virna Jandiroba (14-0) vs. Carla Esparza (13-6), Augusto Sakai (12-1-1) vs. Andrei Arlovski (27-17) and Takeshi Sato (14-2) vs. Ben Saunders (22-11-2). The main card will be on ESPN+ starting at 9 p.m. with Roosevelt Roberts (6-0) vs. Thomas Gifford (14-7), Cory Sandhagen (10-1) vs. John Lineker (31-8), Glover Teixeira (28-7) vs. Ion Cutelaba (14-3), Mike Perry (12-4) vs. Alex Oliveira (19-6-1), Dmitri Smoliakov (9-2) vs. Greg Hardy (3-1) and headlined by Ronaldo Jacare Souza (26-6) vs. Jack Hermanson (19-4)

The next season of Dana White’s Contenders Series will start on 6/18 and run weekly on Tuesday nights through 8/20. I believe it’ll be on Fight Pass and air live from the new arena that UFC is finishing up building on its Las Vegas headquarters. As noted before, the ultimate plan is to have events in the new arena for streaming content 365 days a year down the line, including boxing, kickboxing, MMA and perhaps other fighting sports

Deron Winn’s UFC debut will be against Markus Perez on 6/22 in Greenville, SC. Winn is a training partner of Daniel Cormier and beat Tom Lawlor on the Oscar de la Hoya show with Ortiz vs. Liddell

Eddie Wineland vs. Grigory Popov has been added to the 6/8 show in Chicago

Priscila Cacheoira vs. Luana Carolina has been added to the 5/11 show in Rio de Janeiro.

BELLATOR: One of their biggest shows of the year is 4/27 on DAZN stating at 10 p.m. Eastern. The main card has Nathan Stolen (7-4) vs. Gaston Bolanos (4-1), Benson Henderson (26-8) vs. Adam Piccolotti (11-2), Liam McGeary (13-3) vs. Phil Davis (19-5), Ilima-Lei Macfarlane (9-0) defends the flyweight title against Veta Arteaga (5-2) and Rory MacDonald (20-5) defends the welterweight title in a first round Grand Prix tournament bout against Jon Fitch (31-7-1)

Leslie Smith, 36, who was dropped by UFC for attempting to unionize fighters last year, has signed with Bellator and will be moving to featherweight, a division where the company lacks serious contenders for champion Julia Budd. Smith fought at bantamweight in UFC and said she never had trouble making 135, but said in a Yahoo article that in her year, she did research and believed she was anorexic, and has switched from four workouts a day earing 2,000 calories to two workouts a day and earing 4,000 calories. She said that before she never ate carbs and she found she was carbohydrate deficient. She noted she still wants to unionize fighters and was jaded by a lack of public support from other UFC fighters. She said there is a difference between being a fighter and a martial artist, saying as more martial arts come into the sport, they’ll embrace doing things the right away and make whatever sacrifices are needed to make the sport go farther. Smith said that she believes in Bellator there isn’t the climate of fear that the is in UFC. “They’re a company that cares. They listen to their fighters. They put their fighters first and they give them the opportunity to have sponsors and there is a lot of expression that can happen inside those deals with the sponsors.”

OTHER MMA: Rizin ran on 4/21 at the Yokohama Arena for a show headlined by a bout to create their light heavyweight championship as Jiri Prochazka knocked out King Mo Lawal in the third round. Lawal, 38, had a first round knockout win over Prochazka when they fought in 2015. The fight was competitive early, but Lawal was gassed by the third round and a sitting duck for Prochazka to take over. Lawal has now been knocked out in four of his last five fights. Tenshin Nasukawa knocked Fritz Biagtan down twice in the second round of a kickboxing match and it was stopped. Biagtan had Manny Pacquiao in his corner. Nasukawa, who was brutalized by Floyd Mayweather in a boxing match on New Year’s Eve, is still only 20 and has a 30-0 kickboxing record. In the other big fight, Kyoji Horiguchi finished Ben Nguyen in 3:00 after knocking him down twice. After the match, it was announced that Horiguchi would challenge for the Bellator bantamweight title against Darrion Caldwell on Bellator’s 6/14 show in Madison Square Garden. Horiguchi submitted Caldwell at Rizin’s New Year’s Eve show in a battle of Rizin champion vs. Bellator champion. The bad news is the show did a 5.8 rating, which is about 6 million viewers. That’s down from the New Year’s Eve show doing a 7.5, but they weren’t going to beat Mayweather vs. Nasukawa. They did a 6.1 for the show before that, headlined by Horiguchi vs. Nasukawa in a kickboxing match

Rodrigo de Lima, 26, who fought in UFC in 2014 and 2015, was killed on 4/21 after a dispute with an Uber driver in Belem, Brazil. Michel Prazeres, a good friend of his, said that the fighter and some friends were in a car. De Lima and the driver started arguing. The two got out of the car and continued to argue. They may have had a small fight. But the driver drove away. Then the driver turned and came back and ran over de Lima from behind. Jefferson Roger Maciel was accused in the case and was fired by Uber. De Lima had a 9-3-1 record and last fight in June, winning over Luiz Fabiano via submission for the Shooto promotion in Brazil.

WWE: The Backlash PPV that was scheduled for 6/16 in San Diego looks to be moved to 6/23 in Tacoma. This is not official, but it’s pretty much a done deal. The Pechanga Arena in San Diego is no longer advertising the show as Backlash and it’s not just a house show. Tacoma wasn’t even on the original schedule, a WWE had shows scheduled for Abbbotsford, BC and Spokane that night, which are going to have to be moved or canceled. The deal seems to be that with the 6/7 Saudi Arabia show (which is not official at press time but given all the changes being made, they have to consider it’s a lock) they didn’t want to do PPVs one week apart. The house show run scheduled for 6/7 to 6/9, which included Salt Lake City, Denver, Boise, Oakland, Fresno and Stockton would likely all be changed or moved. Salt Lake City was moved from 6/7 to 6/16, and Denver was moved from 6/8 to 6/15. We still haven’t gotten an answer as to whether the 6/8 Takeover show in San Jose is still on. Takeover would be talent that wouldn’t be in Saudi Arabia to begin with so they could do that show. All the decision have to be made before the next set of NXT tapings on 5/1, including what to do regarding the tag team titles with the Viking Raiders moved to the main roster before they dropped the titles

The Saudi Arabian government once again made WWE look sleazy by going. One would have thought they wanted to make the announcement of going at the investors call on 4/25 because the expectation is the company will either make a very small profit or actually have lost money this past quarter due to major added expenses. So announcing a $40 million plus show would be a good thing, especially when the negativity the company got about going last time has quelled down. But on 4/23, the Saudi government beheaded 37 people. The person who got the most U.S. media play was Mujtaba al-Sweikiat, who seven years ago, when he was 17, went to a pro-democracy rally and was arrested. He was actually detained just before he was to get on a plane to the U.S., where he was moving after being accepted by Western Michigan University. He had been accused of attacking, shooting and injuring security forces and civilians, destroying public property and participating in a terrorist cell to make and deliver Molotov cocktails. But the human rights group Reprieve defended him, saying he was actually tortured until he would confess, as did many of the others executed. The group was convicted in court and ordered to get the death penalty in a terrorism trial

WWE stock closed on 4/24 at $98.50 per share, giving the company a $7.687 billion market value. The price rise this past week, and for a brief time on 4/23 it topped $100 per share, was because a JP Morgan analyst increased its target price from $95 to $105, and said if things went well, it could hit $120. The three key reasons given were the expectation of a huge increase in the television contract in India that is due at the end of this year; the belief that a third hour will be added to Smackdown in October which would give them another hour of television to sell at the current high market price (this hour would not air on FOX and would likely be on FS 1) and that belief that the overall popularity in every sector will increase with the move to FOX. What some stockholders have talked about but analysts have yet to consider is if FOX ratings aren’t at a competitive level, while they will still get paid through late 2024, that expected gain in popularity won’t be there, and on a weaker station, the ratings would be expected to decline on Fridays to a huge level. Sports is treated different from entertainment shows when it comes to being canceled and pulled, but Smackdown had a very different ratings profile and expectation when the deal was first made. The value of Raw and Smackdown on cable to increase the profile and the average of the station as a whole is not the case with a network show, and it’s not going to bring ad rates equivalent to similarly viewed entertainment shows. The news about the June Saudi Arabia show, which isn’t out but analysts are aware of the plans, has been considered a positive to the bottom line and thus helping the stock price with the belief there won’t be a media and public push back this time. This all comes at a time when predications are that WWE profits will be way down until October. The company has increased spending before the new TV deals go into effect. The belief in the stock market is that the expected lower profits aren’t material because the price is based on expected 2020 and forward profits. The WWE’s stock call is 4/25 and the consensus among analysts for the quarter, which would not include Mania (the real Mania attendance number won’t be out for another three months) is the first quarter would deliver $197.3 million to $199.2 million in revenue and the company would have losses between $700,000 and $800,000. Really, the revenue and profits aren’t going to effect the stock price right now because it’s all based on what numbers the company will be doing in 2020. At that point, the stock price indicates profits have to be through the roof or it’ll be deemed overpriced. At that point, everything, network numbers, live events, will all be scrutinized but none of it really matters to most analysts right now. It also should be noted that running the Rumble in a stadium rather than an arena will lead to an increase in arena attendance that in a sense is misleading unless both Rumbles are factored out

Speaking of Saudi Arabia, this is a stat that has come through in a unique way. Someone on our message board mentioned being turned off WWE because of them going to Saudi Arabia the second time and that a lot of people were, and wondering that’s part of the reason for the decline in ratings. So my thought was, the only way to know is to compare the year-to-year drop pre-Saudi show and post. For the six months prior to the second Saudi show, the year-to-year drop of Raw was 9.2 percent. Since then, the average weekly drop is 19.8 percent. Also keep in mind there is an artificial actual decline that year that should make this year look better because 2018 was a Winter Olympics year in the first quarter. Either the product has gotten far worse to a marked degree since November, which is not the case, or there are external forces at work. This would seem to indicate there could be something to this. However, the declines are far greater under the age of 35 than over, and one would think it would be those 18-49 making the moral decisions, as those over 50 who watch wrestling have been doing it for life and aren’t changing, and teenagers and kids as a general rule aren’t going to make a moral decision about wrestling

Right now the WWE side of things regarding Luke Harper is that he is not going to be released and they’ve added six months to his contract because they’ve said that his contract term that was to end in November, has been added to because it was frozen due to his time off for wrist surgery. So their viewpoint is that he can’t leave until just before next year’s WrestleMania. From an outside perspective, this seems to be a way to dissuade people from going public and saying they’re unhappy. The flip side was Dustin Runnels, who has been out for months with double knee surgery, but because he never said a word, denied he was leaving when rumors came out, was given a release and was able to immediately walk into a good position with AEW

There’s still nothing new on Daniel Bryan

The Sasha Banks situation also remains unchanged. She isn’t happy and the company isn’t reacting much to her. The attitude right now from the company side is that she can go sit out the rest of her contract if she wants to. The bad part of that is that if she doesn’t wrestle and tries to sit out, they can freeze the contract as well

There is internal heat on Lio Rush. On Raw this week, he wasn’t out with Lashley (neither were on Raw itself but Lashley worked the dark match main event). Rush is a very confident man. That can rub people the wrong way, even though you have to have that to be a star in this business. The story goes that he’s made it very clear to many people that he thinks he should be a/the top guy on the brand, and hasn’t been shy about saying it

Rousey did a video interview on her web site and basically said what we’ve said all long that there is no guarantee she’ll be returning. “A for WWE plans in the future, we want to have a baby first. I don’t know what it’s like to have a baby. I could look down at this beautiful child and be like, `F*** everything, I don’t care about anything else other than this baby’ And you’ll never see me again. Or, I could be like my mom, who trained until she was eight month pregnant and then won the U.S. Open (in judo) six weeks after giving birth. Which was unbelievable. I don’t think I’m going to try and aspire to her level. But, I’m just saying, you never know. I don’t want to make any promises about the future when I don’t know how I’m gonna feel in the future.”

. A few notes on ratings. While USA Network bills itself as No. 1 on cable, they use the term in entertainment. For 2018, the top ten stations, in order, were Fox News Channel, ESPN, MSNBC, HGTV, USA, TBS, TNT, Hallmark, History and The Discovery Channel. USA averaged 1,291,000 in prime time but would fall to around 950,000 without WWE, or out of the top ten, which is why the rights to Raw were so valuable. If nothing changes next year with USA and the other channels, with the loss of Smackdown would fall only below TBS and still beat TNT. But with the loss of Raw, they’d fight for the ninth spot, and that explains the value of Raw t that network even with the declining ratings. USA dropped nine percent for the year, so the wrestling shows are declining faster than the network. Since, with AEW rumors, TNT’s prime time average in 2018 was 1,171,000 viewers. That’s going to be a very difficult number for a new show with only an Internet fan base to hit. It should also be noted that TNA did beat station averages, albeit far weaker stations, on Spike, Destination America and Pop, even if all three canceled it for various reasons, and New Japan has consistently been one of the best rated shows on AXS, as has MLW on Bein, but the standards are obviously far lower on those stations. FOX this past Friday averaged 3,043,000 viewers in the time slot Smackdown is getting

Ziggler did an interview this week about the Rumble. He said he wasn’t even called about being in the match until the night before and if it wasn’t for the fact he booked a comedy show after the Rumble that night in Phoenix, he wouldn’t have even been in town where he could have done the show. As it turned out, because the men’s Rumble ended so late, he had to rush to take a shower and get to his comedy show. The technical term for him is he’s on vacation

In something that surprised me at first, but after thinking it didn’t, WWE has had communication with Joey Ryan. Ryan isn’t under contract to AEW, perhaps because until recently he was under a Lucha Underground deal and was one of the people suing to get out of it. But he’s the one guy who isn’t who is all over the Being the Elite show, so the presumption is he’ll end up with AEW since the rule of BTE is that they will pay off all their storylines if you invest in watching. Ryan was not given an official offer as of earlier in the week but they contacted him after getting word he was a free agent when the word was out that he was let out of his LU contract, and asked if he was willing to move to Orlando, wrestle a few years there and then move into a coaching position. He owns a home in Los Angeles and earns far more than a usual NXT salary working indies. The way it was explained to us, was that he would have absolutely taken the offer if he was 29 years old, but at 39, taking a pay cut to start with WWE (or anyone offering less than what he’s already making) is probably something he’s not going to do. I guess when Ryan didn’t jump at the chance they decided to make Bobby Roode into Joey Ryan

Obviously with the Becky 2 belts chant and catch phrase, the ban on the word belts has come to a close. WWE even sent out a promotional e-mail using the term “title belts,” a term that had been banned for years because Vince associated it with old school rasslin

Jeff Hardy was injured on the 4/20 show in Madison WI. We’re not sure the severity but it appeared at the show to be a right knee injury. He’s had the bad right knee since his 2015 dirt bike accident, and has been working with a torn PCL the past four years. He was at the show the next night in Rochester, MN, but didn’t wrestle and was limping going to the ring seconding Matt. He didn’t appear before the fans in either Sioux City the next night or at TV in Lincoln. We haven’t gotten any official word of the nature or severity of the injury, past that within WWE the belief among the people who need to know for storyline reasons is that he is scheduled for surgery this coming week after Smackdown, which is probably why the injury itself is being kept secret. Those close to him just said that he’s injured, hopefully not terribly bad and time will tell but right now he’s playing things safe. So don’t know if he’s going to work next week and do an injury angle and/or title loss, or how this will be handled storyline wise. We also don’t know the nature of the surgery, whether major or minor

Right now advertised, and this doesn’t mean a lot, for the 7/24 Extreme Rules PPV in Philadelphia is Rollins vs. Corbin for the Universal title, Reigns vs. Orton and Styles vs. McIntyre

Sports Business Journal did a story on the Performance Center. There wasn’t much to it, but they noted that Canyon Ceman was the guy who handles who gets picked and is brought to the training camps. They noted 40 percent of the talent there comes from outside the U.S. Ceman said he looks for elite athleticism, physical toughness, charisma, size, work ethic, professionalism, education, and coachabiilty. He noted that he was watching “American Ninja Warriors” on television when he spotted Kacy Catanzaro. What is interesting is that the story listed who are five to watch, meaning these are people WWE felt would be future stars. The list were Catanzaro, 29, a college gymnast, who they see as a star because of her acrobatic ability; Velveteen Dream, 23, Bianca Belair, 29, a former college hurdler who Mark Henry spotted when watching a Crossfit competition and tried to get her to come to a tryout, and it was noted that she was not offered a contract after her first camp, but was later signed in 2016 after a second invitation; Damien Priest, 36, the former Punishment Martinez, who did early MMA fighting before doing independent pro wrestling; and Xia Li, 33, a marital artist who owned a fitness studio in China

There will be a tryout camp in Shanghai, China from 7/15 to 7/18. They did a similar camp in 2016 and signed several people for NXT. They are asking people with athletic backgrounds to submit applications and will be picking 50 people to try out

Shadia Bseiso and Nasser Alruwayeh were released. Bseiso, 32, who competed in submission grappling, got a lot of pub when she signed, as she was a television personality in the Middle East and was the first Arab woman (she is from Jordan) signed by WWE

A number of NXT performers did donations for auctions to benefit Ricochet’s mother, in helping her rebuild her home. Those who donated were Dakota Kai, Dominik Dijakovic, Drake Wuertz (referee), Kassius Ohno, Shayna Baszler, Ray Rowe (Erik), Hanson (Ivar), Matt Riddle, Tegan Nox, Johnny Gargano, Tommaso Ciampa, Candice LeRae, Adam Cole, Kyle O’Reilly, Bobby Fish and Roderick Strong

The U.K. tapings this past weekend were being written and produced by the Progress crew as well as the U.S. NXT crew

Beth Phoenix will be working the Raw tour of the U.K., I believe doing tag matches with Natalya

Alexander Wolfe has been moved off the main roster to the U.K. brand. He was at the weekend tapings in Glasgow and has been put in a remake of Ringkampf, which is called Imperium of Walter, Wolfe, Marcel Barthel and Fabian Aichner. Walter, Wolfe and Barthel were all in wXw’s original Ringkampf heel group

WWE has applied to trademark the name Garza Jr. That means that at least of this week, that’s the name he’s being planned to use. But most notably, Vince McMahon hates the term Jr. Of course Vince can always change his name if he ever gets to the main roster

Mick Foley was announced as one of the stars in a horror movie called “12 Hour Shift,” which is being produced by David Arquette. The movie is currently being filmed. It’s a horror comedy about a group of nurses who are caught stealing organs and putting them on the black market

Dates were officially announced for a Smackdown Latin American tour on 8/24 in Lima, Peru; 8/25 in Panama City, Panama; 9/5 in Santiago, Chile, 9/6 in Buenos Aires, Argentina and 10/25 in San Juan, Puerto Rico

For Adam Cole and Kassius Ohno going to Evolve, Cole will wrestle Evolve champion Austin Theory on 5/10 in Livonia, MI in a non-title match and A.R. Fox on 5/11. Ohno will team with Harlem Bravado vs. Fox & Leon Ruff on 5/10 and then face Josh Briggs on 5/11. This will be Briggs’ first match back since suffering a dislocated hip

Breeze is working NXT shows on the road this coming week, or at least is being advertised for such

The ten most watched shows on WWE Network the past week were: 1. The 4/21 show from Moline with The Shield final match; 2. WrestleMania 35; 3. NXT from 4/17; 4. Worlds Collide from 4/17; 5. This Week in WWE; 6. NXT Takeover New York; 7. 205 Live from 4/16; 8. NXT U.K. from 4/17; 9. WWE Chronicle: Roman Reigns part two; 10. World Collide from 4/14

Notes from the Raw tapings in Des Moines. The show was built around three matches to set up Rollins’ MITB challenger. What was notable is that in the two three-ways, they kept both Strowman and Reigns out of the picture. Obviously with the main event decision being Rollins vs. Styles, you have to book backwards. What was weird is that they announced the two three-ways right at the start of the show, and then did the long interview segment where HHH told the fans and Rollins about the two three-ways. Rollins didn’t know, and then all six guys came out like they wanted to be in the matches that were already announced. As far as Corbin going to the finals, which ended up being the almost unheard of boring match for Styles which got virtually no reaction except for Styles’ two big spots (the calf crusher and the forearm), it really does make sense. In theory Corbin is hated, but it’s not the kind of hate that at least on this night led to crowd reactions for his match. Really, people don’t want to see almost anyone in two long matches on the same show, but that goes double for Corbin. But they didn’t want McIntyre to lose, nor have Styles face Miz in a face vs. face, so by process of elimination, that means Corbin. The show drew 7,000 fans. For Main Event, it opened with Brooke over Riott in 5:26 with a Samoan driver. Brooke got a nice reaction but nothing much to the match. EC 3 beat No Way Jose in 7:15 with the one percenter. Bout was good for a match on Main Event. Raw opened weird as noted. After the announcement to start the show, HHH told Rollins what the television audience was already told. They were in Des Moines, not far from where Rollins grew up in the Davenport, IA area, so the crowd went crazy for him. HHH tried to get the crowd to cheer even louder by holding the mic up and signaling to them to make noise. He wore an “Iowa’s own” T-shirt as well. HHH said he hasn’t heard from Lesnar or Heyman an he assumes Lesnar I still in Las Vegas licking his wounds. It sounded like they were teasing a rematch down the line, which my gut says will be in Saudi Arabia but nobody has even hinted the date to me. Everyone came out. McIntyre said the only reason Rollins is champion was because he got to Lesnar “before me.” He never brought up that he had a television win over Rollins. It was never pushed after the day it happened so probably everyone forgot and it was all for naught. Miz got a big pop and still talked about Shane. Corbin came out and said how he beat an Olympic gold medalist in his farewell mach at WrestleMania. Styles came out and just said he was winning both matches. Styles won the first three-way over Mysterio and Joe in 17:44. This was very good. Mysterio did a corkscrew pescado. Styles looked really good in this match. Styles power bombed Mysterio on Joe, and in the landing, it looked like Mysterio’s elbow hit Joe in the face, leaving him bleeding from the nose area and with a cut on the side of his right eye. Styles then hit Mysterio with a Styles clash and pinned Joe. They showed clips of Cena hosting Ellen Degeneres. The stuff looked funny in the clips. Naomi pinned Billie Kay in 1:10 with a sunset flip into the ring. They’re beating the Iiconics every match since they won the belts. There are ways this could have been done much better. Kay should have won due to help from Royce, leading to a partner coming out to help Naomi. Or if they wanted Naomi over, Royce still should have interfered, a partner should even the odds and Naomi’s win would directly lead to a tag title match. It can still establish a tag title match down the line, but without a partner for Naomi, the champs are losing too much. There was another Wyatt vignette. Corbin won his three-way over Miz and McIntyre in 14:58. This was mostly good. Miz did a plancha off the top rope onto both of them on the floor. Miz used the figure four on McIntyre, but McIntyre broke it with an eye poke. They did a lot of near falls, ending when McIntyre hit Miz with a Claymore kick, but Corbin threw McIntyre out of the ring and stole the pin. It made sense. They wanted Styles against a heel, so that rules Miz out, and since Styles is headlining the PPV, he needed a clean win. Better to beat Corbin than McIntyre. I mean, better for McIntyre and to protect him, but not better for the night since the Styles vs. Corbin match had surprisingly little crowd reaction. Styles did an interview, saying he was like a Bulldog and it’s not the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog. Styles listed all his credentials and also said that he regularly beat up Cena. Zayn came out. He’s the funniest thing on the show. He said his time away from wrestling was the happiest time of his life. He showed photos of himself with a big smile on his face on vacation in places like Sweden, Norway and Mexico. He then blamed the fans for the toxic culture and told the audience they could go to hell. As he was leaving, Cedric Alexander was coming. They kind of did a staredown and it looked like maybe they were going to slot Alexander with Zayn. And they may. But to make sure it’ll be meaningless, Cesaro then pinned Alexander in 6:24 when Alexander did a springboard into the ring and was met by an uppercut. The timing of this looked tremendous in slow-mo. The Usos did a promo. The Revival showed up. The Revival started talking and the Usos pretended they fell asleep. The Usos made a remark in their promo about drunk driving, to poke fun at the fact they’ve both been arrested for it. Not sure that’s the thing to poke fun at. The Viking Raiders destroyed the Lucha House Party 2-on-3. The match never got started. It was clear the Viking Raiders were meant to be the heels. The term Viking Experience is being used for their new finish, which is a new move, and not their previous fallout finisher. Ryder & Hawkins did a promo. Talk about awful scriptwriting. They are setting up a title match with the Viking Raiders and called them smelly, horny, wooly mammoths. Lynch came out for a promo. Evans came out and said she was coming after both belts. They did a my turn your turn promo battle. Evans came across really good here. Lynch beat Fox in 8:01 with the disarm her. There was a botch and then the match just fell apart. Fox then looked like she got poked in the eye for real. It was a mess. Lynch finally got it over with. Evans then came out and laid out Lynch with the women’s right. When Lynch was about to recover, Evans hit her with a second one. Evans did a great job in both segments. Robert Roode, which is his new name with a new mustache to where he looks like Don Frye or Joey Ryan, pinned Ricochet in 11:15 with the glorious DDT. The crowd was dead. I guess Ricochet’s days as Vince’s new shiny toy are over and he’s moved on from the doctrine that he and Black can’t be booked to lose. Still, they couldn’t have made Ricochet look like the next Apollo Crews anymore if that was their exact goal. They aired another vignette with Wyatt. He’s doing an evil Mr. Rogers/Pee Wee Herman gimmick with his Firefly Fun House. He’s got some puppets and he’s got the sweater. He smiles, talks about how he’s no longer the bad guy he used to be. But then he took a chainsaw cut off the head of a Bray Wyatt life-size figure. To his credit, he looks like he’s been lifting weights as he’s both less fat and much thicker in the chest and shoulders. The main event saw Styles beat Corbin in 13:04 with the phenomenal forearm to become the top contender for the title. There wasn’t much to the match. For a high-stakes match, the crowd wasn’t much into it and it was boring. They did react big when Styles got the calf crusher and when he his the phenomenal forearm for the pin. Rollins came out. The two ended up shaking hands as the show ended. After Raw went off the air they did a dark match with Rollins & Strowman over McIntyre & Lashley. Strowman powerslammed Lashley and then Rollins hit the curb stomp on Lashley for the pin. Lio Rush wasn’t out with Lashley. Rollins ended the show with another promo thanking the fans

Notes from the 4/23 Smackdown tapings in Lincoln. The main focus of the show was to build the women’s and WWE title matches on the PPV. What was notable is after Bayley was booed so much the prior week, she was cheered and people were really behind her in her match with Flair. They’re also heavily playing up going with the Internet with Charlotte as management favorite to make her a heel. I mean, they both are, Charlotte, Lynch and Evans are the clear favorites. They only drew 3,000 fans, one of the lowest TV taping crowds in a long time, and by the time they got to the Reigns vs. Orton match after 205 Live, there were maybe 1,500 left in the building. The show opened with Heavy Machinery over Axel & Dallas. No word if Axel & Dallas have been moved. They could have used Gallows & Anderson, who were on the road already, in this spot from the brand it’s not like they didn’t have anyone else available to get squashed on the road already. Smackdown opened with Shane out. He once again told Greg Hamilton to give him the big intro. He showed clips of Reigns punching Vince. Shane put over Vince as one of the great people of all-time, and that Reigns punching Vince was like Reigns defacing the American flag, or tearing down “Rount Mushmore” (he actually said that). Shane asked if he should fine him, suspended him or fire him. He asked for Reigns to come out. Reigns did. Reigns had a mic and just threw it down. Shane threw down his mic. Elias then came out and distracted Reigns and Shane started throwing punches and knees. Reigns made a comeback, and in doing so, looked like he gave Shane a shiner since his left eye was starting to swell real good in the promo later. Elias joined in and they beat Reigns down, with Elias laying him out with drift away. Elias & Shane did an interview. Kingston did an interview with Woods and Owens joining in. Balor got his win back from last week without even bothering to do a title program, beating Andrade in a non-title match in 7:40. The finish saw Vega come off the top rope for a crossbody on Balor, who moved, and Andrade caught her. Balor gave Andrade a Woo dropkick and the coup de gras. Elias sang a song about facing Reigns in Money in the Bank. Shane & Elias then left the building together in a car. Sane pinned Royce in 1:35 with the elbow off the top, which looked great. It’s ridiculous how many jobs Royce & Kay have been doing in quick squash matches while being champions. The whole act is the promos building up to saying “Iconic” and doing their pose. On Monday, it got this reaction like a few people were reacting but mostly indifference, but here it seemed like it was starting to get over. Before the match, Rose & Deville were mad at Paige for not reforming Absolution and going with Sane & Asuka as a team. So it looks like a three-way program on the Smackdown side for the women’s tag titles. Rose & Deville told Paige if she changes her mind, it’s too late. The elbow looked great in slow-mo. Rose & Deville than started sarcastically clapping for Sane & Asuka. Black did a promo. Gable vs. Mahal never happened. Sullivan attacked Gable and was beating him down. He laid out Gable with the freak accident. He turned toward Mahal and the Singh Brothers. Mahal just ran off. Sullivan then laid out Samir Singh with the freak accident. He gave Sunil Singh the power bomb. R-Truth ran in and attacked Sullivan, who pretty much no sold it and then laid out R-Truth with the freak accident and a power bomb. Flair came out. She said that at WrestleMania, she didn’t lose, Rousey lost. She said Lynch never beat her for her title and she wants a match with Lynch. The crowd gave the mention of Lynch’s name a good reaction. Lynch got out and got an even better reaction. She said she went to WrestleMania to show she could beat Rousey because she already knew she could beat Flair. Flair noted that she’s all Lynch can talk about on Twitter, even when she’s talking about Evans. Flair told Lynch that Lynch has everything to lose now and she has nothing to lose. Lynch said she’s already beaten Flair and wants new challenges like Bayley and Moon. Bayley then came out to a good reaction. She said that Lynch may have beaten Flair multiple times, but she’s beaten her zero times. Bayley challenged Lynch for a title shot. It ended up setting up Flair vs. Bayley with the winner getting a title shot. Flair beat Bayley in 10:29. This turned into a very good match. It was rough and a little off in spots, but the intensity was great from both, but especially Flair. They really tired to push the Flair as management favorite story. The crowd got into it because of the intensity, and were completely behind Bayley as the face. After some good near falls, Flair got the pin after a spear. Lynch did an interview and said that she’s fight both Evans and Flair on the same night. She was asked by Kayla Braxton if she’s underestimating her competition. She said he’s just betting on herself. Kingston beat Nakamura in a non-title match in 13:26. This was also a good match. Nakamura seemed more on than usual and it was one of Kingston’s better singles bout. Owens and Woods were at ringside doing commentary with plates of pancakes in front of them. Kingston hit the SOS when Rusev, who was dressed in a suit and tie and at ringside with Lana, jumped in and attacked Kingston. Woods ran in to attack Rusev. Nakamura hit the Kinshasa on Woods, and then Kingston hit the trouble in paradise on Nakamura after pushing Owens out of the way. Owens then superkicked Kingston and turned on him, and then tore off his New Day t-shirt for an Owens t-shirt. Owens grabbed the belt. Kingston made a comeback on Owens but Owens beat him down. Owens set up a piledriver on the floor on Kingston, but Woods saved Kingston. Owens then clotheslined Woods and gave Woods a power bomb into the ring frame and left Woods laying. 205 Live opened with Gulak doing his politician gimmick talking about how Alexander and Murphy are gone and talked about the show. They’ve added David Otunga to the announce team of Vic Joseph and Aiden English. Jack Gallagher said that he now realizes Gulak has been using him and that Gulak cost him his match with Humberto Carrillo. Carrillo beat Gulak. Carrillo won with a sunset flip power bomb and an Aztec press. Oney Loran cut a promo on his match with Ariya Daivari where the winner would get a shot at Tony Nese’s cruiserweight title. Drake Maverick told Mike & Maria Kanellis that he’s tired of Maria getting involved in Mike’s matches. It turned into a brawl with Akira Tozawa and Mike. Daivari beat Lorcan to become the top contender for the title, winning with a high fly flow and rainmaker, so we know what he’s been doing while injured. Nese came into the ring to congratulate him and offer a handshake but Daivari wouldn’t shake his hand. After the show went off the air, Reigns wrestled Orton. They announced this match during a commercial break in Smackdown so people would stay, and there was a time that would have worked, but it didn’t here. They wrestled for a few minutes until Elias interfered for the DQ. Balor made the save. This turned into a tag match with Reigns & Balor winning

Notes from the first night of the U.K. tapings on 4/19 in Glasgow, Scotland. They did about 850 fans both nights for the tapings, The building was half full both nights. Kassius Ohno pinned Oliver Carter in the dark match. Zack Gibson & James Drake came out and it was announced they would defend the U.K. tag titles against Kenny Williams & Amir Jordan. They also announced there would be four singles matches that would lead to a four-way the next day to determine the top contender for the U.K. Title. Trent Seven & Tyler Bate beat Jay Melrose & Mike Hitchman. Joe Coffey beat Flash Morgan Webster in the first qualifying match. The Coffeys & Wolfgang cut a heel promo on Dave Mastiff, but everyone cheered them anyway since they are from Scotland. Nina Samuels beat Kasey Owens. Samuels then issued a challenge to champion Toni Storm. Walter beat Pete Dunne to keep the U.K. title. Marcel Barthel and Fabian Aichner helped Walter retain the title. The finish saw Barthel hit Dunne with a belt shot. They are doing a new version of Ringkampf for WWE called Imperium. The U.K. show looks to be built around stables. Piper Niven (Viper) beat Jamie Hayter, who was making her debut. Jordan Devlin beat El Ligero to qualify for the four-way. Ilja Dragunov beat Jack Starz. They did an angle showing Amir Jordan being beaten down with the idea Gibson & Drake did it. Xia Brookside wrestled Killer Kelly next. Jazzy Gabert debuted along with Jinny and beat down both of them. Mastiff beat Wolfgang for a spot in the four-way. The Coffey Brothers and Wolfgang (Gallus) attacked Mastiff after the match. Travis Banks beat Joseph Conners for the last spot in the four-way. Rhea Ripley did a promo and they seemed to be building her up for a match with Niven. Main event saw Noam Dar back from his knee injury teaming with Williams against Gibson & Drake in a tag team title match. Gibson & Drake retained. After the match, Wolfgang and the Coffey Brothers attacked Williams & Dar. Bate & Seven made the save. In what may have been a dark match, Bate & Seven & Williams & Dar beat the Coffey Brothers & Gibson & Drake

Notes from the 4/20 NXT tapings. The main thing was the main event of the final show where Travis Banks won the four-way to become the top contender to Walter’s title. It opened with Kenny Williams over BT Gunn in a dark match. Walter & Aichner & Barthel came out for a promoter with the new Imperium. This led to Bate & Seven & Dunne attacking them and. This set up a six-man tag. Mark Coffey & Wolfgang beat Team White Wolf of A-Kid (the guy who has had the phenomenal matches with the likes of Ricochet, Zack Sabre Jr. and Will Ospreay in Spain) & Carlos Romo. Ohno pinned Jack Gallagher. They got more time than most matches and said to be a great technical match. Ohno won with the spinning elbow. Toni Storm beat Nina Samuels to keep the women’s title with the Storm driver. Good match. Wild Boar & Primate beat Saxon Huxley & Tyson T-Bone. Also good. In the best match of the taping, Water & Aichner & Barthel beat Dunne & Bate & Seven when Wolfe debuted and helped Imperium win. Kay Lee Ray beat Kasey Owens. Dar pinned Mark Andrews. Strong match. They played a storyline off the last match they had in which both got hurt, and teased the injury spots. Gibson & Drake cut a promo talking about defending their tag titles at the Download Festival. Gabert & Jinny beat Brookside & Isla Dawn. Dragunov pinned Conners. Banks won the four-way over Devlin, Joe Coffey and Dave Mastiff to get the shot at Walter. Great match. Coffey were cheered the most since he’s from the area

.The U.S. NXT crew ran only Florida this weekend. They opened up on 4/18 in Lakeland before 450 fans for a unique show. Albert Hardie Jr. (ACH) beat Sam Shaw with a bridging suplex. The crow loved this one. Taynara Conti beat Rachael Evers. Conti showed a lot of personality. Crowd was into the match. Conti used her judo to win. Dominik Dijakovic pinned Kona Reeves with Feast Your eyes. Eric Bugenhagen came out and did air guitar. Court Moore (Stokley Hathaway) came out to interrupt. This allowed Jermaine Haley (Jonah Rock) to jump Bugenhagen from behind and leave him laying. Brennan Williams pinned Brendan Vink. Shane Thorne beat Denzel Dejournette via submission. Wesley Blake & Steve Cutler beat Oney Lorcan & Danny Burch. Io Shirai beat Deonna Purrazzo. Shirai won with a Lion tamer style Boston crab. Keith Lee & Kushida & Babatunde Aiyegbusi beat Bobby Fish & Kyle O’Reilly & Roderick Strong. The one thing about Aiyegbusi is that he diminishes the Impact of Lee by a lot. This was Lee’s first match back from injury. Kushida worked most of the way selling so the match was really good. The Undisputed Era sold great for Lee & Aiyegbusi. Kushida made O’Reilly submit to the hoverboard lock

The 4/19 show in Jacksonville drew 400 fans. Raul Mendoza pinned Cezar Bononi. Reina Gonzalez pinned Kavita Davi. Shane Thorne beat Nick Comoroto. Haley, managed by Moore, beat Daniel Vidot, the Australian rugby star. The Street Profits beat the former 2.0- of Jeff Parker & Matt Lee. Kushida beat Trevor Lee. Vanessa Borne & Aliyah beat Kacy Catanzaro & Lacey Lane. Velveteen Dream pinned Dominik Dijakovic to retain the North American title

4/20 in Tampa drew 375 fans. Albert Hardie Jr. beat Boa with a German suplex. Kacy Catanzaro & Lacey Lane beat Marina Shafir & Jessamyn Duke . Shane Thorne beat Jeet Rama. Brennan Williams & Mansoor Al-Shehail beat Jeff Parker & Matt Lee. The wining move saw Williams pick up Al-Shehail in a choke slam and he flipped in mid air basically doing an assisted moonsault. Dan Matha and Riddick Moss destroyed

both teams. Robert Strauss (formerly Robbie E) then cut a promo saying he’s now managing the two of them and they were called The Outliers and that they will dominate the tag team division. Erik (Ray Rowe of the Viking Raiders) beat Luke Menzies. The crowd did this sarcastic Viking Experience chant. Erik won with a knee strike. Street Profits beat Saurav Gurjar & Rinku Singh. Shayna Baszler beat Jessie Elaban. Main event saw Keith Lee & Kushida over Fish & O’Reilly. Kushida got a huge reaction and used the hoverboard lock for the finish

The Raw crew opened on 4/19 in St. Louis before 4,000 fans. Wow, they come twice a year and that’s what they get. During the entire Sam Muchnick Wrestling at the Chase era with roughly 17 shows per year, I think they only did less than 4,000 fans once. For the house shows, the old rosters were in effect although Lynch worked the Friday night Raw show, then moved to the Smackdown crew on Saturday and Sunday, and was back on the Raw crew Monday. Both Bryan and Styles were advertised for the Smackdown shows but weren’t there. Styles is still banged up with his hop injury even though he’s working TV. 4/20 in Springfield, IL drew 3,200. 4/21 in Moline, IL, which saw the second half of the show go live on the WWE Network, drew 3,250

Smackdown opened on 4/20 in Madison, WI, before 2,500 fans. 4/21 in Rochester, MN, drew 4,000. We didn’t get a crowd for the 4/22 show in Sioux City, I

St. Louis opened with Balor over Elias with the coup de gras to keep the IC title. Hawkins & Ryder beat The Revival when Hawkins pinned Wilder with a crossbody off the top to keep the tag titles. Dorado & Kalisto beat Samir & Sunil Singh when Dorado pinned Sunil with a shooting star press. The Singhs wouldn’t leave and demanded another match. Black & Ricochet came out and beat the Singhs quickly when Black pinned Sunil with black mass. Lynch beat Bliss to keep both belts using the disarm her. Lacey Evans & Riott & Morgan & Logan beat Bayley & Cross & Brooke & Moon when Evans pinned Cross after a moonsault. Nese retained the cruiserweight title over Murphy with a roll-up. Main event saw The Shield beat Lashley & Corbin & Mahal (subbing for McIntyre who had transportation issues that day and didn’t make it into town). The match ended with the Shield bomb on Mahal and Ambrose pinning him

Springfield, IL changed several things around with Lynch moving to the Smackdown tour and McIntyre being there. They opened with Ricochet & Black over The Revival in a match where the winners would face Hawkins & Ryder for the tag team titles late in the show. Nese again pinned Murphy with the 450 to keep the cruiserweight title. Bayley & Cross beat Riott & Logan when Bayley pinned Logan after the Bayley-to-belly. Morgan was there in the corner. All three members of the Lucha House Party beat Mahal & Singh Brothers. Balor retained the IC title over Elias with the coup de grace. Ryder & Hawkins retained the tag titles over Ricochet & Black when The Revival ran in and attacked both teams. Interesting that they protected Ricochet & Black from losing in a title match on a house show with that kind of a finish but had Ricochet lose on television. There was a Moment of Bliss segment with Evans. They ended up interrupted by Moon and Brooke. This turned into a tag match where Bliss & Evans beat Moon & Brooke when Evans pinned Brooke after a moonsault. Main event saw The Shield over Lashley & McIntyre & Corbin with Reigns hitting Lashley with the spear, Rollins using the curb stomp on McIntyre and Ambrose hitting Dirty Deeds on Corbin, and then ending with the Shield bomb on Corbin

Smackdown opened in Madison, WI. The Hardys kept the tag titles over Usos when Matt pinned Jey with a twist of fate. Joe was supposed to defend the U.S. title against R-Truth. Joe attacked Truth before the match and Truth had to be helped to the back. Rowan pinned Ali with a claw slam. The crowd wasn’t much into it. Owens pinned Andrade with a stunner. Vega kept complaining after the match and wanted another match with Owens. Owens said that he brought a friend, and as an unadvertised surprise (likely to make up for Bryan and Styles not being there), out came Strowman, who powerslammed Andrade. He got a huge reaction as a surprise. Lynch beat Flair to retain the title with the disarm her. Said to be great. R-Truth came back out and wanted his title match. Joe choked him out quickly. Royce & Kay retained the tag title in a three-way over Rose & Deville and Naomi & Carmella . Naomi had Deville pinned when Kay threw Naomi out of the ring and Royce jumped on Deville for the pin. Main event saw Kingston retain the WWE title in a great match over Orton. Cesaro attacked Woods. There was a ref bump. Woods came back to attack Cesaro. Orton hit the RKO on Woods, which allowed Kingston to hit the trouble in paradise and get the pin

Rochester the next night was the same show

With so much of the talent either booked for Raw, or originally booked for Raw and then pulled from the brand, they didn’t have the Usos, Joe, Andrade & Vega, Strowman, Naomi or The Iiconics available nor Jeff Hardy due to his injury. So the new show opened with Carmella over Deville. Carmella & R-Truth did their dance break when it was interrupted by Gallows & Anderson. This led to them confronting R-Truth and Matt Hardy made the save. Hardy & Truth beat Gallows & Anderson. Flair beat Bayley. Elias came out to sing. Reigns came out and this lead to a match with Reigns winning via pin. Moon pinned Rose. Balor pinned Ali in a match similar to their Smackdown bout to keep the IC title. Kingston pinned Orton again to keep the WWE title.



wrestling news
wrestling newsHOME   |   AUDIO ARCHIVE   |   NEWSLETTER ARCHIVE    |   SUBSCRIBE    |   THE BOARD   |    ABOUT US  |   CONTACT
Need technical or billing help?:

Open a Helpdesk ticket