WWE Chairman & CEO Vince McMahon sold 306,000 shares of company stock back on November 30.
WWE made a new SEC filing on Monday and revealed that McMahon sold 306,000 shares of WWE stock for a total of $22,866,523.61.
It’s possible Vince unloaded the stock to help finance the XFL launch planned for 2020. Vince sold $100 million worth of stock to launch the Alpha Entertainment company last year as the parent company of the league, and he has reportedly told people that he expects to spend an estimated $500 million in the first three years of operations. The league is scheduled to officially announce the 8 host cities & venues for the inaugural season on Wednesday.
Vince still owns 31,887,375 shares of stock, which would be worth almost $2.4 billion at the current stock price of $73.59 per share.
It’s been over one year since Jack Swagger signed a deal with Bellator MMA … and now his first fight has finally been made official!
Swagger made the announcement Monday on Ariel Helwani’s MMA show and confirmed his debut will happen January 26th during the Heavyweight Grand Prix Finals at The Forum in Inglewood, CA.
His opponent will be 41-year-old JW Kiser, who has only fought (and lost) one professional fight.
“I think my career will be a lot longer than most people imagine, in mixed martial arts,” Swagger — aka Jake Hager — told Helwani. “I have nothing to prove. I’m doing this for me and my family. I know I belong and you will see that I do when I step in the cage.”
On Last night’s RAW from Houston, Texas Heath Slater defeat his tag team partner Rhyno in a match that saw the loser get fired.
The match was made
by General Manager-Elect Baron Corbin, who said he had been crunching some numbers and found that RAW only had room for one of them. Corbin gave them the chance to quit to save the other’s job but they refused and he made the match.
In a twist to the story, Corbin later confronted Slater in a backstage segment and revealed that he’s keeping him on the red brand as a referee, not as an in-ring performer.
Rhyno announced his retirement to the live crowd during a commercial break after the match. Stay tuned for updates on his retirement.
There’s no word yet on what they have planned for Slater in the referee role, but we will keep you updated.
UPDATE: It looks like The Man Beast isn’t finished with WWE just yet as he’s booked for this week’s live events in South America, according to PWInsider. Rhyno has not tweeted since the angle on last night’s show. Stay tuned for updates on his status.
Last night’s WWE RAW from Houston, Texas opened with JoJo leading a 10-bell salute for President George Herbert Walker Bush, who passed away at the age of 94 on Friday. The 41st President lived in Houston.
Former WWE Divas Champion Jillian Hall recently shared an embarrassing story on Twitter after an incident at The Pain Management Group in Hendersonville, Tennessee.
As seen in the tweets below, Hall found staff at the office looking up her mugshot from a previous arrest. Hall said she was “brought to tears with embarrassment and anger” over what happened. She also said she spoke with a Physician’s Assistant about the matter they defended the receptionists who were looking up her information on Google.
Hall was arrested for battery in 2012 and then for DUI in 2015. She did not indicate which mugshot the staffers were looking at.
WWE has announced that their first-ever tryouts in India will take place in March 2019 from Mumbai.
Below is the full announcement:
MUMBAI, INDIA and STAMFORD, Conn. — WWE today announced that it will visit India in search of the next generation of WWE Superstars by holding the first-ever talent tryout in Mumbai in March 2019. The four-day tryout will give up to 40 athletes from India the opportunity to showcase their abilities with the goal of being selected to begin training at the state-of-the-art WWE Performance Center in Orlando, Florida, U.S. The talent pool will comprise of elite performers with a diverse background in sports and athletics including kushti, kabaddi, wrestling, American Football, basketball, combat sports, cricket and bodybuilding.
“India has an extremely large and passionate fanbase and remains a top priority for WWE as we continue to localize content globally,” said Paul “Triple H” Levesque, WWE Executive Vice President, Talent, Live Events & Creative. “I am confident this latest talent tryout will result in a world-class pool of athletes ready to pursue their dream of becoming the next WWE Superstar from India.”
Beginning today, the official WWE recruitment website at www.wweperformancecenter.com is available in Hindi. Tailored to athletes who are interested in pursuing a career in sports-entertainment, the website features information about the WWE recruitment process and provides a detailed look at what day-to-day life is like for NXT Superstars and members of the WWE Performance Center roster.
The online hub includes step-by-step instructions on how to apply for a tryout, as well as access to the official application form; an overview of the many resources available to WWE Performance Center recruits, from professional development and life-skills services, to in-ring training and on-site medical care; photos of the entire Performance Center roster, including current NXT Superstars and champions; biographies of the WWE PC’s industry-leading coaching staff; testimonials from Monday Night Raw and SmackDown LIVE Superstars; and videos from past tryouts, both those held at the Performance Center and internationally.
A major success story from WWE’s global talent recruiting efforts is Kavita Devi of Haryana, India, who was discovered at WWE’s first open tryout in Dubai in April 2017. Devi made WWE history becoming the first woman from India to compete in a WWE ring when she made her debut in the inaugural Mae Young Classic. She has also competed on WWE’s biggest stage during the Women’s Battle Royal at WrestleMania in New Orleans. In January, Devi was one of the 112 women to be honored as “First Ladies,” a distinction given to high-achieving female pioneers, by The President of India, Shri Ram Nath Kovind.
Also recruited from the Dubai tryout alongside Devi was Indian TV star Saurav Gurjar, from Madhya Pradesh, India, and Rinku Singh, from Uttar Pradesh, India. Singh achieved worldwide fame in 2008 after winning reality TV show “The Million Dollar Arm” and joining MLB’s Pittsburgh Pirates as a pitcher. Both Gurjar and Singh began training fulltime at the WWE Performance Center in January this year.
The tryout in India is the latest example of WWE’s global talent recruiting efforts. In recent years, WWE has scouted rugby and soccer players from Europe, kabaddi and kushti athletes from India, and martial artists and boxers from China. WWE has held similar tryouts in Shanghai, Dubai, Jeddah, Cologne and Santiago.
Below is the official second trailer for the upcoming CREDIBLE documentary. The film documents former ECW World Heavyweight Champion PJ Polaco, f.k.a. Justin Credible, as he tries to get his life back in order.
The new trailer includes footage from Polaco’s September lockup. The producers of the documentary bailed Pete out of a correctional facility in New Haven, CT, which was captured on film. The production will continue to shoot through the winter, which will include new interviews with Scott Hall and Kevin Nash. A January 5th show at Battlefront Pro Wrestling’s ‘To Hell And Back’ will feature a match between Justin Credible and Ryan Fraust as the main event. The documentary crew will be chronicling the day leading up to the event and the match itself, including Justin Credible being featured in the music video shooting the same day by the band Crossing Rubicon. The band’s music will be featured in the documentary.
Production for the documentary was halted earlier this fall over after an eruption from Polaco towards the director, Eric Nyenhuis. Plans have been recalibrated to shoot the final months of the documentary based around Polaco’s court proceedings.
“We continue to outline a man who has deep and painful layers unraveling all at once, and only one of them is about pro wrestling,” producer David Gere said. “At one point I asked Pete to tell us who Justin Credible is and who Peter Polaco is. You will see the response in the new trailer and it’s heartbreaking, but it opens the door for redemption.”
In addition to being an accomplished Hollywood producer, Gere also moonlights as professional wrestling manager ‘DG Haven’ in promotions like Tommy Dreamer’s House Of Hardcore, first met Credible when paired with him on an indy show in 2015 at PWA’s ‘Rise Of Injustice’ show.
“I worked this show years back as Pete’s manager and it was the first time I had met him,” Gere said. “Things were cool in the back at first, but by the end of the match against Bull Dredd, Pete legitimately snapped over the finish, left the ring area, came back, broke his kendo stick over my head, busting me open, which we hadn’t discussed, and walked out of the building. Despite all this, I felt for the guy, it was evident that he was in a very bad place emotionally. He had been a world champion, and a lot of my friends in the business like Dreamer and Kevin Nash had a long history with him. I wanted to help. Director Eric Nyenhuis came up with the idea for the documentary, and I knew it would be a gripping and important journey for everyone, especially those who are dealing with similar issues.”
Last spring, Gere connected Polaco to a small cameo role in a prison yard fight scene in the 1970’s era crime film, VAULT, that he executive produced, directed by Tom DeNucci. Polaco was being bars several months later.
Executive Producer Douglas Cartelli, a Connecticut and New York based businessman man, is seen in the documentary taking a very serious stance on Polaco’s choices upon getting him released from jail.
“The day we got Pete our was very tough,” Cartelli said. “He was broken, but motivated to take a forward step. This is a unique story. It’s about fame and success, then watching it all crumble. It is about family. It is about darkness. It is about the hope of making one move at a time to beat what has become Pete’s worst opponent.”
Producer Chelsea Vale handled Pete’s wife, Jill Jurecki’s involvement in the documentary.
“Working on interviewing Jill was very hard as I could see the anguish and pain pouring out of her,” Vale said. “This is evident in the trailer, as it is a very big part of the story – the despair cast on Pete’s family is probably the most difficult aspect to observe.”
Despite the difficult time earlier this fall and the extreme lows he has faced, Polaco himself is motivated to have the world see and hear his story.
“I’m filled with anticipation for people to see this because it’s a deep look into my life that’s marked with many dark degrees of struggle from addiction and alcoholism,” Polaco said. “But it’s also about what it means to survive as a professional wrestler at the age of forty-five, and about a man needing to take care of his family.”
NXT Superstar Riddick Moss has made a full recovery following a torn Achilles heel. The injury was expected to take approximately 8 months to completely heal, but Moss has returned after only 5 months. In a tweet featured below, Moss claimed it is, “faster than any athlete from any sport ever.”
Moss returned to the ring Friday night at an NXT live event in Jacksonville, Florida, attacking Matt Riddle during a promo and then competing against him in a match later in the same night. Although, Kassius Ohno would interfere from ringside and try to distract Riddle, Matt would use his Bromission submission to make Moss tap out and lose his return match.
Moss signed with WWE in 2014, first making his in-ring debut at a live event in December of the same year.
He may be best remembered for tag teaming with Tino Sabbatelli (who went down with a torn pectoral muscle in May), starting in October of 2016. Their tag team split up prior to both men having to rehabilitate from their respective injuries.
WrestleMania 35 weekend next year has undergone a minor shakeup, as WWE confirmed NXT TakeOver will now take place on Friday night instead of Saturday.
A rep for WWE confirmed to Pro Wrestling Sheet, “WWE will be going back to its previous WrestleMania Week schedule with NXT TakeOver on Friday, April 5 and the Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony on Saturday, April 6. We believe this better serves our fans.”
Fans who purchased travel packages were first alerted of the change this morning via email.
This means TakeOver will NOT run against the ROH/NJPW show at Madison Square Garden.
