Category: WWE

WWE Super SmackDown Preview 9/10/21

Tonight’s WWE Super SmackDown on FOX will take place live from Madison Square Garden in New York City.

John Cena is advertised to appear, likely for the dark main event. MSG has Cena and The Street Profits vs. WWE Universal Champion Roman Reigns and SmackDown Tag Team Champions The Usos advertised

RAW Superstars are advertised to appear on the MSG and WWE websites – WWE Champion Bobby Lashley, RAW Women’s Champion Charlotte Flair, RAW Tag Team Champions Randy Orton and Riddle, The New Day, Drew McIntyre

Sami Zayn’s WWE Contract Apparently Up In Fall Of 2021

With word Kevin Owens’ WWE contract ends earlier than expected, talk that Sami Zayn’s deal is up in the Fall of 2021 is logically front-page news.

It was reported on Tuesday that Kevin Owens’ WWE contract ends sooner than originally expected. Believed to be a five-year extension that was signed in 2018, the deal was restructured during the pandemic and ends in January of 2022, as per a report by Fightful Select. It’s also interesting that his extremely close friend in Sami Zayn has a WWE deal that is set to expire soon too. As always, when someone talks about Owens, they tend to also talk about Zayn.

According to a report posted by TVA Sports in April of 2019, Zayn had signed a three-year contract shortly before leaving due to injury. With some sick time added to the length of the contract, they noted he still had about two and a half years left on his current deal. That would put his deal up at the end of this calendar year. While some time might have to be adjusted based on him staying home during the first part of the pandemic, the point here is that two close friends, known as “professional wrestlers” at heart, have deals coming up around the same time.

Obviously, this news has garnered some attention as AEW seems focused on bringing in some of the best in-ring talent that is known for having tremendous matches. Owens may or may not be ready to go and based on his usage on SmackDown of late, it would be hard to blame him. Zayn is a strong heel character on WWE SmackDown, but his booking history has been up and down. It would be interesting to see if these two stars would make career decisions together. From an AEW perspective, it would be big to have both join the promotion together, if possible.

The questions surrounding WWE these days seem to be less about who might leave and more about how few performers might actually stay. WWE is losing a lot of people and their roster appears to be thinning out rather quickly. If Owens and Zayn go, that’s two more wrestlers that are considered among the better workers in the company no longer on the roster.

Source: TheSportster

Kenny Omega Tops 2021’s PWI 500, Top 10 Revealed

Kenny Omega has topped the PWI 500 for the second time in his career, beating Roman Reigns to number one.

Kenny Omega has topped the PWI 500 for only the second time in his career, knocking Jon Moxley off the top spot and all the way down to number six.

Pro Wrestling Illustrated has been ranking the 500 best male wrestlers in the business since 1991. Who deserves to be number one each year is heavily debated, with the likes of Hulk Hogan, Stone Cole, CM Punk, and AJ Styles all having clinched the top spot in the past. This year’s top ten has been revealed, and PWI has declared Kenny Omega 2021’s best male wrestler.

This is actually the second time Omega has topped the PWI 500. The Cleaner was named the publication’s best wrestler in 2018 as well. It was hard to argue with the decision to place him first then, and maybe even more difficult to make a case against him in 2021. During PWI’s assessment period, Omega won World Titles in three different promotions, holding them simultaneously.

The rest of the top ten has been revealed too, with Universal Champion Roman Reigns claiming the number two spot. That’s the highest Reigns has placed since he took the number one spot in 2016, bouncing back from dropping out of the top ten completely in 2020 when he missed a chunk of the year due to the pandemic.

Bobby Lashley, Drew McIntyre, and Finn Balor also make the top ten, as does Will Ospreay. However, the New Japan star appears to be a little miffed with only making it as high as seventh. It’s actually the highest Ospreay has ever placed, only cracking the top ten one time before this in 2019. The British star tweeted that he could beat Omega any night of the week in response to the top ten being posted on Twitter.

SouOmega responded that New Japan has been “ice cold” since he left, to which Ospreay replied by pointing to a sold-out MSG show and the best-selling Tokyo Dome show in the promotion’s history. Ospreay closes by challenging Omega to a match. The forbidden door between AEW and New Japan is wide open right now, so it could happen. Just last night on Dynamite Moxley defeated Minoru Suzuki.

Source: TheSportster

Triple H Undergoes Surgery Following ‘Cardiac Event’

WWE’s COO and Executive Vice President of Global Talent Strategy Development, Triple H, recently suffered a ‘cardiac event’ that required surgery.

WWE stalwart Triple H is recovering from surgery following a ‘cardiac event,’ the company revealed on Wednesday, September 8th.

“Paul Levesque, a.k.a. Triple H, underwent a successful procedure last week at Yale New Haven Hospital following a cardiac event,” WWE said in a statement. “The episode was caused by a genetic heart issue and Paul is expected to make a full recovery.”

There’s been no word on Triple H’s expected recovery time, but it’s highly unlikely that he will be well enough to oversee the upcoming NXT relaunch, which is set to take place next Wednesday on USA Network.

Triple H is the founder and executive producer of NXT, which began life as WWE’s development system but soon evolved into a third brand. He has served WWE in an executive capacity for over a decade and is currently the company’s COO as well as its Executive Vice President of Global Talent Strategy Development.

The 52-year-old is a fourteen-time world champion with WWE, but he has only worked 8 matches since the start of 2018. His last match was in June of 2019 — over two years ago. In that match, he teamed with Shinsuke Nakamura to take on Bobby Roode and Samoa Joe in a winning effort at a WWE live event in Japan.

Recent reports suggest that Triple H’s real-life father-in-law Vince McMahon and Vince’s right-hand man Bruce Prichard will soon be taking over production duties on NXT. As we previously reported, WWE’s president Nick Khan recently confirmed that revamp of WWE’s developmental system was imminent. “We’re doing a complete revamp on NXT, led by Triple H,” Khan said at the time.

Source: TheSportster

Kevin Owens’ WWE Contract Expiring Sooner Than Expected

According to Fightful Select, the contract of Kevin Owens is actually expiring sooner than expected with WWE. What’s next for Fight Owens Fight?

Previous reports by the likes of Dave Meltzer and other media sources noted that WWE Superstar Kevin Owens had a contract that ran with the company until the Spring of 2023. Apparently that is no longer accurate and a new report by Fightful Select suggests Owens’ deal is up much sooner than that. The rumored five-year contract was changed and Owens could be one of the next big stars headed out of WWE.

According to Fightful, his WWE contract expires in January 2022. That would mean that technically, Owens only has another four months on his active contract before he’s free to look at other options or extend with WWE. Of course, many will speculate that Owens will heavily consider AEW because that promotion has a lot of his former friends employed there and it’s exactly the type of wrestling company that would mesh well with his in-ring style.

Interestingly, Owens also posted a couple of tweets on Tuesday that dropped a tease about his contract situation. He’s since deleted those tweets, but one was the coordinates to Mount Rushmore. The second was a photo of his Mount Rushmore stable that included himself (as Kevin Steen), Adam Cole, Nick Jackson, and Matt Jackson. Kevin Owens has changed his bio location to “almost there.”, which many have assumed means almost at the end of his deal.

Fightful added in their report that WWE restructured several contracts during the pandemic and among them was Owens’ deal which was changed and is now set to expire in January 2022. There is no word on why his deal was shortened or if that was happily agreed to or left a sour taste in Owens’ mouth.

Perhaps it’s far too early to say that Owens and AEW is a given if the new report of his contract expiring in a few months is accurate. He could absolutely re-sign with WWE. But, WWE seems to be moving away from a number of talent who don’t necessarily fit their new “character-heavy” and family-friendly style. Meanwhile, AEW is picking up and targeting wrestlers who were very close from the independent scene and have ties to The Elite, which Owens does.

Source: TheSportster

New Day Set To Star With The Undertaker In Interactive Netflix Horror Film

New Day and The Undertaker are both featured in a new WWE and Netflix interactive film set to debut in October on the streaming platform.

Don’t look now, but the Undertaker is doing more work with WWE… kind of. A new interactive horror film that will be presented on Netflix and feature both The Undertaker and New Day is set to hit the streaming platform on October 5, 2021. In it, viewers will be able to choose what path New Day takes to escape from The Deadman.

Netflix has previously jumped into the interactive film world on their platform and WWE is the latest company to partner with the streaming video service to that end. Essentially, the question of, ‘Can New escape The Undertaker?’ is asked and the entire point of the film is to help direct the WWE trio on their quest to get away and escape his haunted mansion. The house is filled with traps and challenges and you, as the viewer, get to make choices to see what happens. If you’ve ever watched a Bear Grylls show where you choose what he does out in the wild, this is like a wrestling version of that.

WWE signed a deal with Netflix back in February 2019 and at least one of their partnered productions has already aired on the service, such as “The Main Event” the featured Keith Lee, Kingston, Sheamus, The Miz, and Commander Azeez. There are also future projects in the works, such as the Vince McMahon docuseries which is set to premiere on Netflix at a later date.

As far as this New Day and Undertaker film is concerned, as per a report and some photos by Bloody Disgusting, the film is described as “The Undertaker has set a trap for the decorated tag team The New Day at his mansion. What they don’t know: The Undertaker’s mansion is an extreme Haunted House, packed to the brim with supernatural challenges. It’s up to viewers to decide the fate of these three poor souls trying to survive the wrath of The Undertaker.”

Source: The Sportster

WWE NXT Preview 9/7/21

Tonight’s WWE NXT episode on the USA Network will be another taped show, the final before next week’s live show that is set to be a reset for the brand.

Mick Foley Says WWE Has A Problem In AEW

WWE Hall of Famer Mick Foley took to Facebook this morning and issued a video warning to WWE following the AEW All Out debuts of Adam Cole, Bryan Danielson and Ruby Soho.

Foley titled his video, “WWE – WE’VE GOT A PROBLEM.” You can read his full comments and watch the video below:

“Hello, this is ‘The Hardcore Legend’ Mick Foley. I’d like to title this video, ‘WWE – We’ve Got a Problem’ because I think you do and that problem is that WWE is no longer the place for talent to aspire to,” Foley began. “Part of it is because AEW is doing a great job of attracting great talent, proven talent, building other talent, creating storylines, but part of it is a problem of your own making. I think younger talent sees the way that developmental characters are cut or left by the wayside, or in the case of Karrion Kross, greatly watered down and even made a joke of when they debut on the main roster. If it’s not broke, don’t fix it.

“If I was an aspiring talent now, big league talent with a major decision to make, I’m not sure that I would trust WWE creative to do the right thing with my career. You guys did wonders with me back in the day… that was a different time, different place. If it was today, I’m not sure I would trust the powers to be with my career in their hands, and until that changes, WWE – you’ve got a problem.”

Source: Wrestling Inc.

WWE SmackDown Preview 9/3/21

Tonight’s WWE SmackDown on FOX will take place from the Vystar Veterans Memorial Arena in Jacksonville, Florida.

WWE has just one match advertised for tonight and that’s Finn Balor vs. WWE Universal Champion Roman Reigns with the title on the line.

It’s interesting to note that the WWE website has Sasha Banks advertised for tonight’s show. She has been away from the ring since missing the WWE live events the week before SummerSlam. It wast reported at one point that she was not expected back this week, but was hopeful for next week’s Super SmackDown taping from Madison Square Garden.

Source: Wrestling Inc.

The Miz Reportedly Set For Dancing With The Stars

Veteran WWE Superstar The Miz is reportedly set to compete in the next season of ABC’s Dancing With The Stars.

The Miz has been cast for the 30th season of ABC’s popular reality competition series, according to PWInsider. The season is scheduled to begin on Thursday, September 30.

We noted before how The Miz missed this week’s RAW after he was announced to face John Morrison in the first match of their new feud, just one week after turning on his former tag team partner. Miz was not backstage for RAW and it was noted that the reason for the absence looks to be related to the upcoming Dancing With The Stars gig.

The official DWTS 30 cast announcement should be coming in the next few weeks. Singer and YouTube personality Jojo Siwa has already been confirmed as one of the celebrity participants.

The Miz, who turns 41 on October 8, celebrated the 15th anniversary of his WWE debut earlier this week, as noted here.

The Miz joins Chris Jericho, Stacy Keibler and WWE Hall of Famer Nikki Bella as stars who competed on DWTS while affiliated with WWE.

Source: Wrestling Inc.