Wrestlers have been known to change their gimmicks throughout the years. It took me a while to realize PCO, recently signed to RoH as kind of the French Canadian version of the Undertaker, used to be The Mountie in WWF.
God that was a long show. Did it seem to anyone else that they were just cranking through the men’s rumble? Maybe the women’s rumble went long and they needed to make up for time (or the DB/AJ match went long because that was super boring). Regardless, not a bad show…but too long and not enough fun things happened.
Pierre Carl Oulett (PCO) teamed with Jacques Rougeau in The Quebecers, but it was Jacques Rougeau who was The Mountie. No, I did not know that off the top of my head, but when you posted, I wondered if that might have had anything to do with Raymond Rougeau not doing French commentary for Royal Rumble.
Wait, don’t tell me, let me guess:
On Tuesday, Charlotte will whine to the Smackdown GM that Fit Finlay had no authority to allow Becky into the Royal Rumble, so she should be declared the winner and be allowed to wrestle Rousey in the WM main event.
Becky will counter-whine.
Decision: Triple Threat Match at WM.
Result: Becky pins Charlotte, so Rousey can leave WWE (unless the whole “I want to start a family ASAP” thing is a giant swerve) without ever being pinned or submitting - something that will be shoved down our throats not only at the end of the match, but when she eventually makes her return. (Er, she has never been pinned or tapped out in WWE, right?)
Oh…and it looks like the WWE network’s “seven-second delay” doesn’t apply to just audio censoring (although that did happen at least once); I’m pretty sure a Nip Slip was black-screened.
Supposedly, Ambrose is done after Wrestlemania. Oddly, WWE’s official Twitter has seemed to confirm this, which somehow makes me even more suspicious that it’s a work.
Hm, so Nia Jax is both a career killer and a career resurger. Dean’s leaving after getting knocked out of the ring by her, and R-Troof gets the US title after getting Jaxxed up.
I’m reading reports that he was offered a seven-figure deal to stay, so clearly it’s not about money to him at this point.
Hideo Itami is reportedly also being granted his release. He lost his momentum after the injury a few years back and never got it back. I can easily see him going to New Japan or AEW, or even back to ROH.
Normally, I’d think that the wrestlers who want the spotlight the most will figure out how to get it on their own. Then they have Dubba J come back with his 60-year old body squeezed into his 30-year old outfit. No wonder they have so much bloat.
Is WWE really that concerned about AEW? (I keep wanting to call it Area Effect Wrestling. I played too much WoW.) They do better when they have competition.
I’m still in a “I’ll believe it when I see it” camp. Asking for releases and not renewing contracts happen ALL THE TIME in the dirtsheets and WWE never responds. This time they are? Not to mention they didn’t “future endeavor” him and “hope he’ll be back”.
It might happen, but I’ll wait it out a bit.
I’m all for this. Hideo kinda got screwed because of his shoulder injury, and he’s never been the same since. He also never looked right in WWE. Head back to Japan and be happy.
I honestly kinda doubt it. The people who want to leave (Dean nonwithstanding) are all low-level nothings who WWE could care less about. I doubt Dean’s motivation is to go off and join AEW, but who knows.
Running a national promotion is hard and takes A LOT of time and money. Fans who immediately think AEW is going to be the next big thing have some learnin’ to do. If (and I mean IF) AEW is going to be anywhere near WWE it’s going to take ~5 years at least. Besides, you know who should be scared of AEW? ROH and NJPW. Japan less so, but it’s going to absolutely kill their goals of expanding into the US. ROH is going to suffer a lot methinks.
Technically they left out “future endeavors”, but the same sentiment. “We wish him well” and “We wish him well in his future endeavors” are not dissimilar. Maybe the new intern didn’t glossed over the “future endeavor” paragraph?
actually I found out about ambrose on a msn affiliated tv site before wwe even commented
you know you probably ditch the actual rumbles themselves self like they did years ago for the survivor series tag matches since the main point of it was to set up the big money match for the wm main event… and you can do that at the event between rumble and wm if necessary
This past NXT taping saw Velveteen Dream win the NA title off of Johnny Wrestling…only for Johnny to get upset and they re-shot (not restarted the match) end of the match where Johnny wins and retains. From what I’ve seen/heard from those who were there, this was deliberately done to film two endings to the match and keep audiences guessing.
This makes me think the Ambrose situation is a work all the more.
If this is true, and coupled with the overt weirdness of the Ambrose situation, it seems that WWE is doing some media-savvy shit.
I seriously doubt Ambrose is a work. False press statements by a public company are bad. Filming multiple finishes to a match airing in the future - not bad. One can play with social media and the live TV taping audience. Play with official press statements and you’ll have SEC investigations and investor class action suit.
I can’t imagine anyone reading that press release (if you’d even call it that) is going to buy and/or sell WWE stock based on it. I hardly think this is an official press statement that the SEC and investors would even pay attention to.
Besides, if someone WAS dumb enough to move stock based on this announcement, and then try and come at WWE with it, they would:
A: Be fighting against Vince “I’ve never lost a lawsuit in my life” McMahon (even if that statement isn’t entirely true)
B: Have to convince a judge that the scripted wrestling show acted maliciously against its investors in order to move stock one way or another.
Neither of those have any chance of happening.