** Following Tuesday’s episode of IMPACT Wrestling that aired on AXS and Twitch, IMPACT’s Twitch channel was banned. POST Wrestling reached out to Twitch for a comment on why the IMPACT channel was banned and a representative of Twitch responded with the following:
“We don’t comment on individual bans, but I’d note that sexual content is not allowed on Twitch.”
The following Rob Van Dam segment aired on this past Tuesday’s show:
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzk2moM8iNQ[/embedyt]
Sources in IMPACT Wrestling confirmed to PWInsider that their Twitch channel was suspended due to explicit content. The content in question was the RVD segment with Katie Forbes. IMPACT is working with Twitch to get the suspension lifted.
** On January 15th, the wrestling world lost Rocky Johnson at 75 years old. Brian B. Blair, who was a close friend of Rocky’s, spoke with the Associated Press and shared that Rocky Johnson had previously mentioned that he was dealing with an unspecified illness and missed a Church session with Blair and other wrestlers that he normally attended.
“He was just under the weather, he thought he had the flu or something,” Blair said by phone. “I said, ‘You need to get checked out Rocky.’ He said he’d be OK. Then he missed this Sunday, a few days ago. When I talked to him again, he said he still wasn’t feeling good and he still missed church. He still didn’t get checked out. I talked to Sheila and she said he was just being stubborn. He died at home today.”
** Booker T talked about Tessa Blanchard becoming the new IMPACT World Champion at the company’s ‘Hard To Kill’ pay-per-view during his Hall Of Fame podcast. Booker minced no words when explaining that he feels it’s the worst decision in IMPACT Wrestling history.
“I’m not holding my judgement on it. I mean, I’m serious. Big-ups to Tessa Blanchard because she’s good. She’s really good at what she does, but this is the worst decision for an idea that IMPACT Wrestling’s ever had in the history of that company. It’s really that bad. It’s worse than paying me $10 grand for a six hour power commercial that never aired. I’m serious. That’s how ridiculous it is.” Booker went on to explain why he thinks that, “Because, now the men — all of the men in the company, if they wrestle her and she beats them, it diminishes every guy in the company. I mean, who’s the top guy in the company now? I can’t see ‘The Man’ Becky Lynch wrestling Samoa Joe or Brock Lesnar. I mean, this is the worst idea in the history of wrestling, and to throw it out there, it’s the only way it can really be thrown out and it makes me question and wonder if somebody’s trying to blow this thing up on purpose. Like somebody’s saying, ‘Man, let’s see how bad we can mess this up.’ You know what I’m saying? I’m serious.”
Booker T further elaborated and said that if Tessa goes back to wrestling in the women’s division, she should be able to beat everyone in the division and whoever she loses to should be able to compete in the men’s division.
“Okay, if Tessa Blanchard should go back and wrestle the women, she should be able beat all of them. Now the woman that beats her, should be able to go out and beat the men too. The crossover inter-gender wrestling is something that’s for independent companies. If they wanna be looked at as this indie group, keep doing stuff like this.”
** The Wrap’s Tony Maglio chatted with Turner President Kevin Reilly during the Television Critics Association press tour. Reilly told the site that AEW Dark which streams on the All Elite Wrestling YouTube channel, may be re-branded but it will air weekly on TNT but not to the degree of every single week.
“We’re going to embellish [AEW Dark on YouTube] and put some additional material, kind of behind-the-scenes, kind of docu-follow stuff, if you will, about the athletes and the stories. We think that’s going to end up being a really good, robust, different kind of show.”
WarnerMedia extended AEW: Dynamite through 2023 and Dave Meltzer of F4WOnline reported that the deal is worth $175 million.
** Faye Jackson appeared on ‘The Queer Nerd’ podcast with Darnell Mitchell and Faye opened up about the injury she is currently recovering from. Faye suffered a torn meniscus and shared how that injury happened:
“Whew child. Freak accident at its finest. It was just a simple Battle Royal. Me and another person, we were the last two in the ring. Shawn Donovan, shout out to him because he actually helped me, regardless of kayfabe and all that stuff, he actually did help me. He’s been checking on me to this day just to make sure I’m okay. But like I said, freak accident. He went to toss me out of the ring and for some reason, my leg, my right leg got caught on the top rope and twisted with the middle rope, and I’m trying to pull myself out, and as I’m trying to pull my right leg out of these twisted, tangled ropes, I guess I pulled my meniscus and I tore it. Luckily I don’t need surgery, but I’ve been going to rehab. They said six-to-eight weeks for me. Right now, I think this is week three so I probably got about four more weeks before I’m actually cleared to get back into the ring so, we’ll see.”
Faye Jackson began her wrestling career in Ring of Honor and her departure from the company is one that is layered. She talked about how there were sly remarks made to fellow employees in the company among other factors that led to her leaving. She brought up current Ring of Honor talent Mandy Leon and how she dated the lead booker Delirious and Faye Jackson told the story of how she contemplated on coming to blows with Mandy after a six-woman tag team match.
“It was one show that I did. I think it was in Pittsburgh. I was so upset. When I tell you I was so upset at this six-woman [tag], because they’re constantly — they didn’t want me to have any shine, they didn’t want me to do anything in the match and it’s just like, ‘Just be happy that you’re here’ type-vibe, that I literally just started — so as I walked back to the curtain, I just busted out in tears because I was so unhappy, and people are coming over, ‘Oh what’s wrong? What’s wrong?’ And Mandy [Leon’s] going, ‘Oh, what are you happy to be in Women Of Honor or something?’ And I looked at her, when I tell you it took all of me to not punch her in the face. It took all of me, to just not give her a black eye in that moment, because it’s like, ‘B*tch what? No, I’m upset at being here. This place in toxic. You guys are saying all this sh*t about me that has been coming back to me’, because let me go back to once my name started popping a little bit, I was allowed to take bookings at other places. So I got that blessing to take bookings at other places, which I did, but then it’s also like, ‘Well, why are you working all of these places?’ But, isn’t that what I’m supposed to do because I can’t work Ring of Honor all the time so, shouldn’t I be working other places? And it’s almost like that kind of was my downfall — taking other bookings. ‘Cause then they’re like, ‘Oh well, she’s talking sh*t about the dojo. She talks sh*t about Women Of Honor’ and all this and I’m like, ‘I never… first of all, you’re insulting my degree that I had paid about $60 grand for.’ I have a Bachelor’s in Public Relations so the company that I am working for — I am currently working for, I would never bad-talk to anybody in the press, because that makes me look bad. Why would I do that?”
Faye and Darnell chatted about All Elite Wrestling’s women’s division and how the division is missing that one big star. Faye feels that Big Swole can be that star for the company and believes that the African-American audience connects with Swole but the masses do not connect with her just yet.
“And you know what? I hear people always talking about AEW’s women’s division and how they don’t have that one person yet. I will say they don’t [have that one person yet], and they still don’t, and it’s no shade to anybody there. I’ll say the closest they probably have is [Big] Swole, but our wrestling audience, for some reason, it’s people that — we connect to her. WE connect to her, but I don’t think the whole audience, if you get what I’m saying is connecting to her yet. I don’t know if it’s fear, or if it’s like, ‘Oh, maybe she’s doing too much,’ this, that and the third. Who knows? We don’t know what the whole audience is saying yet because I can tell they wanted Britt Baker to be that top person, and what they messed up on with Britt is constantly saying she’s a dentist. That turned the audience off because it wasn’t her saying that, it was them continuously telling them, ‘Oh, she’s a [dentist]’ and it’s like, ‘Okay! Alright. Now y’all done beat that down everybody’s throat. Now, we don’t wanna connect with her.’”
** Amazing Red and Low Ki are teaming up in Fight Club: PRO’s ‘Dream Tag Team Invitational’ tournament.
** TV Insider spoke with Chelsea Green and Chelsea talked about she and Zack Ryder’s forthcoming wedding. She mentioned that she wants to have a New Year’s wedding and wants to incorporate Zack’s love of action figures into the wedding.
“Of course, with his crazy toy podcast and love of toys and things like that, we’ve got some fun things planned — a little wedding pin we are going to give out to everybody at our wedding, fun stuff like that. I think we are going to do a New Year’s Eve wedding. We’re in the midst of trying to plan, but life on the road is crazy. It’s hard to plan a wedding when you’re on RAW, NXT, on the road. We’re both kind of taking it day-to-day.”
** Ring of Honor added Slex to the Supercard Of Honor talent lineup.
** EFFY vs. Tony Deppen is official for GCW’s ‘Run Rickey Run’ show on February 15th in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
** ‘Team Speed Kills’ on SBNation wrote a story about Bianca Belair earning an NXT Women’s Championship match at TakeOver: Portland.
** Per Showbuzz Daily, the January 14th episode of WWE Backstage on FS1 drew 84,000 viewers which is down from last week’s 124,000. The Usos, Xavier Woods and Ember Moon all appeared on the show and next week, CM Punk is making his return to WWE Backstage just one week out from the Royal Rumble pay-per-view.
** AC Mack is scheduled to compete at GCW’s ‘For The Culture’ event during WrestleMania 36 weekend.
** Next week’s AEW Dark is premiering on the All Elite Wrestling YouTube channel from the Watsco Center in Coral Gables, Florida. Taz was on commentary for Dark and the company aired a tribute for the late Rocky Johnson. On next week’s Dark, Big Swole is taking on current WOW Tag Team Champion Diamante. Nyla Rose is clashing with Shanna in a Tables match, Evil Uno and Stu Grayson faced Sonny Kiss and Brandon Cutler, and Jurassic Express took on the Strong Hearts.
** Former Chicago Bears Left Tackle, Jim Covert is being inducted into the Pro Football Hall Of Fame. Jim was a part of the second WrestleMania in 1986.
** John Cena did an interview with ‘Extra’ and Cena expressed that he is not done with WWE and added that there is a great chance he’ll be back in the ring again.
“I’m not done with WWE yet… Keep in mind that being a sports-entertainer is like being an actor. You have to invest your full passion into it. Due to insurance liabilities for movies, you can’t do other stuff…. I am far from done with the WWE. I am trying to change perception — it’s not a transition.” Cena continued, “I’m saying there’s a great chance.”
** While speaking with Cinema Blend, John Cena praised Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson for being one of the pioneers in professional wrestling in regards to wrestlers making the transition to acting and it being acceptable to play a role other than the one they portray on their respective wrestling programs.
“It definitely has changed, and I think that rests on the already broad shoulders of Dwayne Johnson. He just made it acceptable to be something other than your wrestling persona. If you look at the correlation of wrestlers or WWE personalities in movies, they essentially played extensions of their WWE personality. I think Dwayne was one of the first ones to break that mold, and do it on such a grand scale that he couldn’t be ignored.”
** Prior to NXT going live on the USA Network on January 15th, Bronson Reed defeated Arturo Ruas, and Cameron Grimes defeated Danny Burch in dark matches.
** BT Sport conducted an interview with Conor McGregor ahead of his bout against Donald Cerrone at UFC 246. McGregor shared that he’s still interested in Boxing and has his sights set on becoming a world champion in the sport.
“Hell no, hell no,” Conor said when asked is he done with Boxing. “I will secure a world title in Boxing. Most certainly, yes. The weight I’m not sure. I’ll have to go through all the weight divisions and check out all the champions, right? I have to see who holds titles in the divisions. Thankfully, Boxing has so many world titles. You can just pick and choose and there’s also so many weights, so I haven’t gone deep into — obviously, I’m immersed in where I’m at right now but Boxing and the Boxing world title is an aspiration of mine and an aspiration that I will achieve.”
Tyson Fury has said in several media appearances that he’s been training with Conor McGregor for a potential fight in the octagon. McGregor said he has never spoken to Tyson a day in his life but let Tyson get that story out there because it wasn’t a bad one. McGregor did say that Fury is a good man and praised his Boxing skills.
“I know Tyson’s been talking about it a lot. Tyson keeps saying me and him spoke and said I trained him. I never spoke to Tyson in my life. So I don’t know what he’s saying. It’s not a bad little story so I let it kind of roll. Tyson’s a good man. I like Tyson, he’s a great boxer, phenomenal boxer. Probably the best natural boxer in the heavyweight division at this time so, who knows? I wouldn’t say he is just saying he’d do it and not do it, like a lot them do. I’d say Tyson would probably do it in time so, you never know. Maybe we could set something up. I would not be holding mitts for him or anything but I’d certainly, if he wanted to be trained by me or even educated by me, I’d need to see him in certain positions and certain situations. I need him to spar a heavyweight, I need to see him deal with the leg kicks, I need to see him in bottom position, and then I’d assess that and then I’d send him off and then I would tell him what work he needs to do and then off he goes. That would be something I could do for Tyson, but I found that funny that he was saying we hooked and all this. He’s a madman Tyson, isn’t he? I never spoke to the man in my life.”
** NWA’s Ricky Starks appeared on Jason Powell’s Pro Wrestling Boom podcast and Starks talked about the initial doubts he had about the NWA Powerrr series. He stated that in wrestling, sometimes talents are fed certain things and those things don’t turn out to be how they were presented so there was an initial guard up when he was first approached with the idea of working on NWA Powerrr.
“At first, yeah. At first, I was like, admittedly, I didn’t get where it would go, and I think that’s for a lot… because you get sold on so many goods that they end up being spoiled fruit by the last sentence. You know what I’m saying? So, I have those types of expectations but after that first episode aired and after the second one aired and I saw the feedback, I was like, ‘Oh damn, this is a lot bigger than what I could’ve imagined.’ So I’m very excited to see where things go. I can only see it going up from here, especially because wrestling is so — you can’t predict it. You can’t predict the landscape always.”
One of Starks’ personal career goals is to make it to New Japan Pro-Wrestling. He stated that one guy who he’d like to wrestle is the current IWGP Heavyweight and Intercontinental Champion Tetsuya Naito.
“You know, I wouldn’t mind having a pit-stop there at all. I think that’s one of those things that, and it may sound sad but it’s just something I never thought I could do, you know? As far as getting there and making something but, as I get older the confidence builds upon itself and I go, ‘You know what? I can do that. I can go there and I can do things in different promotions that I otherwise didn’t think I could.’”
** WWE is reporting their fourth quarter and full 2019 results on February 6th. Chairman Vince McMahon and co-Presidents George Barrios and Michelle D. Wilson are hosting the conference call.
** Paige and Stephanie McMahon appeared on Good Morning Britain and Paige was asked if she’ll be returning to the ring one day.
** NJPW Fantastica Mania Results (1/16/20) Tokyo, Japan
– Fuego & Ryusuke Taguchi def. DOUKI & Namajague
– Audaz & Guerrero Maya Jr. def. Yoshinobu Kanemaru & Luciferno
– Shingo Takagi, EVIL & BUSHI def. Hiroshi Tanahashi, Dulce Gardenia & Flyer
– Forastero & OKUMURA def. Titan & Stuka Jr.
– Ultimo Guerrero & Barbaro Cavernario def. Caristico & Satoshi Kojima
– CMLL Family Tag Team Tournament Match: Cuatrero & Sanson def. Euforia & Soberano Jr.
– CMLL Family Tag Team Tournament Match: Niebra Roja & Angel de oro def. Tiger & Negro Casas
** Ring of Honor announced former ROH World Television Champion Jeff Cobb for Supercard Of Honor.
** Brian Cage, Rich Swann, PJ Black and Caprice Coleman are set for Qatar Pro Wrestling’s show on February 21st.
** A new episode of WWE After The Bell came out on 1/16 and Drew McIntyre and Keith Lee joined the show. During Corey Graves’ singular portion of the podcast, he briefly talked about Wrestle Kingdom 14 and proposed the idea of WWE splitting WrestleMania up into two days:
“I am still late to the party as I often am because I have little to no free time. Tried my best to check out New Japan Wrestle Kingdom. Shout out to those guys. My guy Juice Robinson who I will never forget even though he doesn’t acknowledge us and he’s disowned us and his WWE family. I think it’s really cool that the event has gotten so big, they did it over two days, which doesn’t seem out of the realm of possibility for WrestleMania. What do you think? Would you be into two, four hour WrestleManias or a three hour and a four hour show rather than a 31 hour WrestleMania like we’ve had for the last few years?”
** Daily Mail interviewed Cain Velasquez and the former UFC Heavyweight Champion hinted a possibly returning to the octagon.
“Who’s to say that I’m finished with the UFC? I’m doing this (WWE) right now but I’m still training. There could be a time when I go back.”
Velasquez’s last bout took place in February of 2019 when he fell in defeat to Francis Ngannou. Cain said that there are no regrets about the fight but admitted that he is salty about the result.
“There’s no regrets. Obviously the outcome wasn’t what I wanted it to be but that’s what happens. I’ve been in that sport long enough to know that not everything goes your way. You can train as hard as you can and be as committed as you can but that night was not my night. I’m still very salty, still very upset about what happened in the fight. That’s just me as a competitor… I obviously want to win them all.”
** Soon-to-be WWE Hall Of Famer Dave Bautista is serving as the grand marshal of the Gasparilla Pirate Fest in Tampa, Florida on January 25th.
** T.J. Wilson (Tyson Kidd) appeared on the ‘Perched On The Top Rope’ podcast and Wilson reflected on his tag team run with Cesaro. The duo captured the WWE Tag Team Championships one time as a duo.
“Yeah it was something. We brought something out of each other. At the same time, he was on that very first-ever — that NXT ArRIVAL. He had that awesome match with Sami Zayn and I was on the next two TakeOvers. One against Neville, then the four-way with Sami, Neville and Tyler Breeze, and it was almost like our careers in some funny way were mimicking each other and in a few weeks before that, we teamed up. We did a Triple-Threat with myself, Cesaro and Dolph Ziggler in Liverpool that — I’m very proud of that match. If you go back and watch, we have chemistry in that match and hit some double-teams and stuff and so, I don’t know where the idea came from — throwing us together but I’m glad it happened. To win the tag titles with Cesaro, because at that point, we’d only been teaming for like two months, less than three months and then to go into WrestleMania as Tag Team Champions. If you had told me that like the month prior, I wouldn’t [have] thought that was gonna be the case at all so, it was awesome man. I literally… at that point, I had already gone through my knee injury and I knew what it was kind of like to be away from the ring and how grateful I was to be back, and to be back on the main roster. I tried my best to not take things for granted. It’s hard, sometimes, when you’re in the bubble, to not get lost in that but I took everyday of teaming with Cesaro, I knew that it was something. Even that very first time we teamed up, I knew it was something special there, so I did my best to try and hang on to [it] and enjoy every second of it.”
** Xavier Woods and Tyler Breeze are back for season two of ‘Battle Of The Brands’ on SmackDown vs. RAW 2006. They went over some the rules for this season in the following video via the UpUpDownDown YouTube channel:
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EN1muJhQ9Ts[/embedyt]
** All Elite Wrestling official Aubrey Edwards spoke with CBS Local Sports for an interview. Aubrey reflected on calling the main-event of All Out between Chris Jericho and Hangman Adam Page for the AEW World Championship. Aubrey said that once she got to the back, praise was heaped on her by fellow AEW official Earl Hebner.
“So after the match at All Out with Jericho and Page, I walked to the back, and I’m just kind of like, ‘Oh my God, that happened’, and I see Earl, and I’m like, ‘Do you have any feedback?’ He goes, my feedback is, ‘I’m going to put my resume together, because you might’ve put me out of a job.’ He’s a sweetheart. Super supportive guy. I’m thrilled and blessed, whatever word you like. Grateful. I could come up with the adjectives all day, but to have him on our team and be able to learn from him and get feedback from him, it’s like he’s Earl frigging Hebner, right? It’s insane. But everyone’s got their favorite refs. My favorite reference is Bryce Remsburg. He’s the GOAT. I love him. I’ve taken so many things from him when we were on the indies and then now we’re working together every day. It’s great.”
Aubrey has become a role model for the younger generation of women who are looking to potentially get where she is professionally. Aubrey said she constantly receives messages from parents who are trying to get their daughters into wrestling. She talked about how her being a woman can inspire other women to pursue their goals in hopes of one day making those goals a reality.
“I literally have messages from parents every day. A lot of times it’s dads who say that they’re trying to get their daughters into wrestling, and it’s a lot easier when you have a strong authoritative woman who’s not taking any crap from men, and it kind of goes back to what I said before, representation matters. People want to raise strong women, and that starts when we’re all young, and part of that is seeing people that look like you do things that you want to do, and now we have all of this interest. One of the shows I worked up in near Seattle, there’s this little girl. She wants to be a veterinarian and a ref, and she knows she can do both because Britt Baker is also a dentist. It’s fantastic. The people that weren’t even thinking about this before are now like, ‘This is a possibility’, and that’s probably the thing that I didn’t know I was going to get out of this, but probably my favorite part… all of the little girls that know that this is something they could do, and they’re not afraid to do it because big tall dudes are intimidating. But if I’m not taking anybody’s crap, neither should they.”
** The National Wrestling Alliance announced that Marty Scurll will be at the post-‘Hard Times’ television tapings on January 26th.
** T-Hawk is challenging Alex Hammerstone for the MLW National Openweight Championship at FIGHTLAND on February 1st.
** Here’s episode two of Magic City Live with EC3, Braun Strowman and former NXT and 205 Live commentator Percy Watson:
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45SkME4xRZI[/embedyt]
** According to PWInsider, The Undertaker was present at the WWE Performance Center on January 16th. The site noted that Undertaker reviewed last night’s episode of NXT with the roster and gave them advice and feedback.
** John Cena appeared on ‘The Late Late Night Show With James Corden’:
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gn-RDWPo9IQ[/embedyt]
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGKLuYpKv2U[/embedyt]
** Sheamus was interviewed by talkSPORT and during their chat, Sheamus reflected on his recent Celtic Warrior Workout with Xia Li. Sheamus said it was one of the hardest workouts that he’s ever done and he was warned ahead of time by Sasha Banks.
“It did, it did! I got warned about it by Sasha Banks and I’ve worked out with a lot of people like Becky Lynch, John Cena, Batista – I don’t have time to go through everybody because there’s like 200 workouts, but, no, I heard about her, and for anyone who doesn’t know who Xia Li is, she’s the first Chinese female to be an NXT superstar. Unbelievable. She was a personal trainer in China. I think she’s got background in Jiu Jitsu and CrossFit and all sorts of bad stuff, and she kicked my ass man. At the end of the workout I was literally hanging by a thread and I was crawling to the end of the workout. By the end, I took my t-shirt off, I rang it and it was like taking a mop out of a bucket. That was proper sweat. 100% proper sweat. In the past for stuff like doing an advert or something I sprayed my shirt so it looks like you’ve been sweating, but this was this was real man’s [sweat]… it took me a while to get over this workout. She’s insane. But, she’s incredible. She’s gonna be a huge star for WWE.”
Sheamus also talked about he and Cesaro’s recent run as a tag team and how that concluded. The two men competed in the SmackDown Tag Team Championship four-way match at WrestleMania and the next night on RAW, they had a tag match with then-newly crowned champions Kofi Kingston and Seth Rollins. Sheamus said that he and Cesaro were not supposed to be at that show and got the call just a few hours before RAW went live.
“The truth is, I wasn’t ready to be done,” Sheamus said about his neck injury. “There are things that pop into your head, like doubts that [are] saying, ‘I might be done’. I got back to that question just after ‘Mania and I felt I was kind of burnt out too. I felt like me and Cesaro – as great as a tag team we were, we’d already won the titles five times, and I just feel, creatively, there was no direction for us at the time, and I guess we were both burnt out. Then we went back for that RAW after ‘Mania man. We interrupted that Kofi and Seth match, and we weren’t supposed to be there. We got a call a couple of hours before we were supposed to go on there, and, you know, the crowd just sh*t on it, and it was just like, we hit that point where it felt like we’d hit that roadblock, and I was burnt out too, I wasn’t feeling great and I went away for a while. [Then] I just worked my ass off man. I had so much fun wrestling with Cesaro and we created a legacy with The Bar and you don’t want that to be diminished.”
While on the topic of Cesaro, Sheamus feels that Cesaro needs to stay the course in WWE because there could come a time when he gets that same reception from the fans that Kofi Kingston and Daniel Bryan received that propelled them to a world title victory.
“Here’s the thing – that’s up to the fans. The fans gave Kofi that moment. They’re the ones that highlighted it for him. So they realize they have the power. Same thing happened for Daniel Bryan. They have the power and here’s the thing, sometimes it’s like there’s always that shiny new penny, you know? And a lot of NXT guys come up; great talent from NXT. Buddy Murphy is doing great, Aleister Black is doing great, Elias [is] doing great, you know what I mean? Obviously from the women’s wrestlers we’ve had some great ones over the years like Sasha come up. Alexa Bliss, Becky [Lynch] who is doing great, The IIconics, so you’ll always have these new talents coming in, but it’s up to the fans. The fans have a weight behind what they want, and they can they can show big Tony the support because he is the most talented in ring performer, without a doubt. I’m super glad he’s not wearing those bleeding, long pants anymore. He came out rocking new gear two weeks ago and he looks phenomenal. I think he looks better than anybody on the roster. So, Tony just needs to stay the course and I’m hundred percent sure it’s gonna happen, and I’d love it to happen. I’d be the first person there to see him when he came back because we’ve been through a hell of a lot together. Through thick and thin, we’ve had each other’s backs. You do a lot when you’re a solo superstar but when you’re a tag, you share a lot of the weight and that’s a really cool thing sometimes.”
** Kurt Angle chatted with SunSport about Brock Lesnar.
** Here’s the latest video from Ronda Rousey’s YouTube channel:
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACpMSW7h9ZI[/embedyt]
** All Elite Wrestling uploaded the newest Control Center video which focused on AEW Dynamite: Bash At The Beach.
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6ak0TASSn4[/embedyt]
** Major League Wrestling ring announcer Mark Adam Haggerty joined the ‘LGBT In The Ring’ podcast.
** The latest edition of ‘India Asks WWE’ featured former United States Champion AJ Styles.
** Fightful spoke with MLW interviewer and backstage correspondent Alicia Atout and Atout shared how her being a part of MLW came to be:
“They pretty much reached out to me, saying, ‘Hey, we like what you do. We’d like to have you on-board.’ After a bit of discussion it seemed like a great fit. I already love the locker room. I have so many friends there. Management seemed to be absolutely wonderful. Everyone’s hard working. So, I’m excited to be the newest member of the family.”
** GiveMeSport released another portion of their interview with WWE Hall Of Famer Kurt Angle. Angle discussed NXT’s Velveteen Dream and praised Dream’s charisma and in-ring ability and expects Dream to be called up to either RAW or SmackDown soon.
“I would like to see Velveteen Dream breakout this year. He’s an incredible athlete, his character is very likeable. Someone like him could step on the scene and main-event very quickly. I’ve known Patrick Clark since 2011. I remember him in a small independent company trying to make it and I saw something great in him. I thought, ‘I’m going to keep in touch with this kid’ and I did. He was part of Tough Enough where he didn’t win and he was let go, then the company eventually brought him back. He’s found his edge in the Velveteen Dream and he’s becoming more popular every day. I expect him to be called up soon.”
** Natalya’s latest column for the Calgary Sun is ’25 Things That Fans Do Not Know About Me’. She noted that The Undertaker will always be intimidating to her, she wants to have a match against Rhea Ripley, talked about her favorite meals, favorite show and more.
** On the January 23rd edition of NXT U.K. on the WWE Network, Imperium (Fabian Aichner, WALTER, Marcel Barthel & Alexander Wolfe) will speak out ahead of their match against Undisputed ERA at Worlds Collide. Jazzy Gabert is set to take on Killer Kelly, Ilja Dragunov will be in action and two spots to enter the NXT Cruiserweight Championship match at Worlds Collide will be up for grabs. Jordan Devlin is taking on Ligero, and Brian Kendrick will meet Travis Banks and the winners of those matches will have secured their spot at Worlds Collide where they’ll be joining Isaiah “Swerve” Scott to challenge Angel Garza for his Cruiserweight Title in a Fatal 4-Way match.
** Vampiro sat down with Chris Van Vliet for a lengthy interview. During their chat, Vampiro opened up about he and Konnan’s layered relationship and how they’ve never been friends and don’t see eye-to-eye, but there is no disrespect there between them.
“I mean, everybody thinks so. I tend to think that… maybe,” Vampiro laughed. “But not like you would think. It’s kind of like, that’s my spouse. We’ve been together since 1989, me and that f*ck, and when you spend 30 years with somebody, whether you like it or not, you know them and one day he said — we’ve tried 300 million times to bury the hatchet. I have mental health issues. He has mental health issues. Different than mine but, anytime you’re a creative, successful person, you’re a weirdo and we understand each other but we’re not friends. But we don’t dislike each other. We just can’t be in the same place. We’re too much the same, and out of respect from the way I grew up on the streets and stuff — he was before me, and I will tell everybody that. If it wasn’t for him, there would be no Vampiro. He’s the guy that opened the doors for all the foreigners in Mexico with a different thing and I came in a little after him and I say that every time I get the chance but, we don’t, not get along, but it has to be a special circumstance for us to work together.”
** The 2019 Ring of Honor match of the year award was given to Matt Taven vs. Jay Lethal vs. Marty Scurll for the ROH World Championship at G1 Supercard in Madison Square Garden.
** Former WWE Universal Champion Seth Rollins was featured in the band Trophy Eyes’ music video for their song ‘Figure Eight’:
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ga3rxkmR9zo[/embedyt]
