Bully Ray is reportedly done with Ring of Honor, according to PWInsider. Ray’s contract with the promotion expired on April 1.
The two sides had planned out and agreed upon his exit as he was originally expected to stay through Supercard of Honor over WrestleMania 36 weekend to close out his story with Maria Manic. Obviously that — and numerous other shows — was cancelled due to COVID-19.
The report continued that there’s no heat between Ray and ROH, but rather just a “realization that he had done all he could do there” right now. He debuted back in early 2017 at Manhattan Mayhem VI.
The WWE Hall of Famer is now a free agent and is able to sign with any promotion.
AEW announced eight matches for this Tuesday’s AEW Dark, streaming on AEW’s YouTube channel at 7 pm ET.
Among the matches, Brian Pillman Jr. will be making his Dark debut against Shawn Spears.
He was in the crowd during last Wednesday night’s Dynamite: Fyter Fest. Pillman has appeared for AEW once before at last year’s Double or Nothing in the Casino Battle Royale Match that Hangman Page won by lastly eliminating MJF.
“Months of preparation behind me and I will finally make my debut for All Elite Wrestling!” Pillman Jr. wrote on Twitter. “This is quite literally the BIGGEST opportunity of my life and I hope that everyone tunes in to see what I’ve been cooking up.”
Below is the full lineup:
* Joe Alonzo, Brady Pierce, Tony Donati, Faboo Andre vs. Lucha Brothers, The Blade, and The Butcher
* Brandon Cutler and Peter Avalon (with Leva Bates) vs. Dark Order (Grayson and Evil Uno)
* Big Swole vs. Rache Chanel
* Will Hobbs vs. Orange Cassidy
* Frankie Kazarian vs. Luther
* Michael Nakazawa vs. Shawn Dean
* Brian Pillman Jr. vs. Shawn Spears (with Tully Blanchard)
* Scorpio Sky vs. Serpentico
Months of preparation behind me and I will finally make my debut for All Elite Wrestling! This is quite literally the BIGGEST opportunity of my life and I hope that everyone tunes in to see what I've been cooking up 🔥🔥🔥 #AEWDark#PillmanDebuthttps://t.co/CN9sXTevT3
Tonight’s WWE SmackDown on FOX will air on a tape delay from the WWE Performance Center in Orland, Florida with more build for the “Extreme Rules: Horror Show” pay-per-view.
Kairi Sane is reportedly returning to Japan to be with her husband.
While Sane is returning to Japan soon, she is scheduled to return to RAW soon as she is listed for the tapings being held today at the WWE Performance Center, according to the Wrestling Observer Newsletter. These would be for the episodes that air on July 6 or July 13.
WWE has known about Sane returning to Japan since May, if not earlier. The move has been in the works for a while.
Sane has been out of action since suffering the cut on her head during the RAW match with Nia Jax, which aired on June 1 and was taped on May 26. This is why Sane has been off WWE TV but she has been cleared to compete since then. WWE made the decision at the time to not harp on the injury on TV, and pretty much ignore it publicly, which is why it was never played up and Sane hasn’t been talked about since.
The idea before that last Sane vs. Jax match was to do a career-ending injury angle with Sane at a later time, before it was time for her to return to Japan. That angle would have set up a SummerSlam match between RAW Women’s Champion Asuka and whoever they went with to put Sane out of action. The Observer noted that this has likely changed since Paul Heyman was dismissed from his role as RAW Executive Director. It’s believed that this spot would have went to either Charlotte Flair, who may or may not be back in time for the SummerSlam build, or Shayna Baszler. Original plans did not call for Jax to be the one who ended Sane’s WWE in-ring career.
There’s no word yet on what WWE has planned for Sane after she returns to Japan, but the Observer reports that there had been talk that once her contract was up, she would wrestle for one more year in Japan and then retire from action.
The 31 year old Sane was married to her longtime partner back in February of this year.
Sane signed a three year WWE deal back in March 2017. She worked the Mae Young Classic in 2017, and won the tournament by defeating Baszler in the finals. She would go on to become a one-time NXT Women’s Champion before debuting on WWE’s main roster in April 2019 after WrestleMania 35. She has held the WWE Women’s Tag Team Titles with Asuka on the main roster.
WWE has officially purchased EVOLVE Wrestling,PWInsider reports.
The deal was recently finalized after several months of negotiations.WWE now has the complete right to use the EVOLVE brand name and produce EVOLVE events.
WWE has also acquired the EVOLVE video library.
EVOLVE had been going through some financial issues and the COVID-19 pandemic made it worse. The cancellation of WrestleMania 36 Week in Tampa was catastrophic for the promotion.
EVOLVE was founded in 2010 by Gabe Sapolsky. Since 2015, the promotion has had a working relationship with WWE. When they signed that deal, EVOLVE created a new LLC, which is the company WWE has acquired. WWE has not purchased WWNLive, which will still reportedly go on.
As for talent, PWInsider reports that the existing EVOLVE/WWN talent contracts are not part of the sale. Though there is an expectation of at least four talents that will be signed and go to WWE NXT.
Apollo Crews, Austin Theory, Drew Gulak, Keith Lee, Johnny Gargano, Matt Riddle, Ricochet, and Oney Lorcan are just a few who used the promotion as a stepping stone to get to WWE.
Former Impact Wrestling star Michael Elgin has released a video denying claims made against him in the #SpeakingOut movement.
The nearly ten-minute video is titled “Hopefully you’ll listen” and begins with Elgin saying he hasn’t enjoyed thinking about wrestling the past two weeks.
He then addresses the #SpeakingOut movement and says it’s truly terrible that a lot of serious offenses were committed towards wrestlers/fans.
“A lot of things have been said about me,” he said next in the video. “And even though everything is drastically different, a lot of the things that were going on in wrestling were people using their power, using their position, or even taking advantage of younger people, and that sucks. But it was brought to my attention that some girl made claims about a hotel room in 2011.”
“Now, I don’t know if anything had ever happened to this young lady, I hope that it hasn’t and I hope that if it has she’s found some peace and some resolve. And I’m sure that’s impossible, because I can’t speak on anything like that. But what I can say, is that in 2011, I did share a hotel room with the girl and I did share a bed with the girl,” Elgin added. “But what has been left out is there was four other people in the room and I laid down in the bed next to the girl, asked her to come closer, or to have sex, I don’t know the exact verbiage. All I remember is her saying no and me going to sleep and the next morning the four wrestlers asking if we slept together. When I said no, they said, ‘Oh, we know. We heard her turn you down.’ And joked with me for months after about getting turned down.”
“I’m many things and I’ve made many mistakes in my life, but never, ever would I do anything to try and force anybody to do anything. Because, one, it’s not good for either one of us. The act. And, two, I mean, there’s legal consequences behind that,” he continued.
As for allegations made regarding him sending unwanted explicit photos to a female wrestler, Elgin claims to have reached out to the woman saying he didn’t recall doing that. She then told him that it was done as a dare while he was out drinking with wrestlers, as he explained while apologizing after it initially happened. Because of this, he apologized once again, though he says the photo may have been a picture he found online and not his own.
He also says a fan claiming he called her fat wasn’t true, as he grew up obese and knows what it feels like to be picked on for size, therefore he wouldn’t do that to someone.
Lastly, Elgin addressed the infamous video of him claiming to have urinated on a woman in a hotel room who was asking him to stop. Here’s what he had to say in full:
“Yes, I said that story. I said that story in 2013, because at that time those overly sexual stories or overly wild stories were getting massive downloads and massive buys because people wanted to hear them. So a story that happened in Timmins. Myself and two other wrestlers met three girls, and this was like maybe 2007, and we went back to the hotel. And there was joking about peeing on someone consensually on the ride up, and we did definitely joke about it, and somebody pee’ed on a girl in the shower when they were showering together, and joked about it after.
We went out with the girls the next day for breakfast. We saw them the next two times we went to town. It was an over-exaggerated story that I should have never told because now I realize, as I’ve matured, as I’ve growed, that … one, the story is outlandish and paints everybody in a bad light. But at that time, I was trying to sell DVDs. That’s not an excuse, that’s not anything. Because I take full blame for people bringing it up because it was me that said it. But I’ve tried to correct that story a million times, even the person that pee’ed on the girl in the shower corrected the story two years ago. And it just still floats out there. Again, that’s on me. One-hundred percent. I take ownership of that. I’m taking ownership of everything.
As we previously reported, Impact Wrestling says Elgin will not appear in future programming.
We haven’t seen Mickie James in a WWE ring for over a year, but it turns out she was just weeks away from returning before COVID-19 struck.
James, who tore her ACL during a house show last year, had apparently been medically cleared and was close to making a comeback. “The doc had already cleared me, so I was literally just getting that last two weeks to get cleared to come back to in-ring action and everything got shut down,” she told Chris Van Vliet in a new interview. “So, I went home and I just haven’t been back since.”
For the time being, James is fine with staying away from the Performance Center. “Theres no need to take that risk of going there if I’m not doing anything,” she explained. “I would rather bide my time and wait for the perfect opportunity.”
When she does return, James has some (mostly tongue-in-cheek) goals in mind. “I’m going to go in and take all the championships,” she said. “I’m going to be my own tag team partner and I’m going to go in there and take those championships first, and then I’m going to take both of the women’s championships at the same time.”
After teasing a big announcement for this week, WWE on-air talent Renee Young revealed today that has written a cookbook.
Renee posted a video to Instagram and noted in the caption that she handed over her manuscript today. She has been writing and booking for over three months while working on the book.
She wrote, “Announcement time!!!!! Finally it’s here and i can share it with you guys!! I wrote a cookbook! I finally handed over my manuscript today. Been writing and cooking my butt off for 3 months, and i couldn’t be more excited for the rest of the process to get this book to you lovely people!!”
Renee noted in her Instagram video that the cookbook will feature more than 70 recipes, including breakfast items, sandwiches, cocktails, and more. The recipes will also include a music playlist to set the mood. She also said she will announce the name, release date and more details at later dates. She’s leaning towards “Holy Bleep That’s Good” for the title.
As reported back in April, AEW World Champion Jon Moxley appeared on The Wrestling Inc Daily podcast and mentioned how his wife had been cooking meals for him everyday. He also told Wrestling Observer Live that she had “some cooking projects she’s experimenting with” while at home during the coronavirus pandemic.
