I think it’s safe to say that reaction to the new Fiend, charcoal edition, has been
a bit of mixed bag since his bbq-ness crawled out of the ring at Fastlane.
A rough consensus is new melty mask cool, goopy magic bad.
Words to live by.
But it doesn’t take a genius to work out that WWE are clearly high on the partnership
of the The Fiend and Alexa Bliss with the amount they are featured on Raw and now it
is being reported by WrestlingNews.co that Vince McMahon is said to be a huge fan of
all the stuff involving the two.
I mean he does love puke.
With The Fiend set to face Randy Orton at WrestleMania WrestlingNews.co said that a
lot of effort is being put into The Fiend’s entrance for the show, as this will be WWE’s
first major show with fans for over a year.
Interestingly Ringside News have been reporting that there has been a pitch internally at
WWE to give Alexa her own mask - soooo if Mania is all about going big with both characters
maybe that is a place where we could see a new mask debut?
What do you reckon?
Do you want to see Alexa Bliss in a mask?
Do you think it’s a good idea?
Let me know in the comments because I’ll be replying from….
My desk at home, when the video goes live.
So Paige here was the most recent guest on Renee Paquette’s Oral Sessions podcast and
as is usually the case gave out some choice bits of information for us fans.
As conversation tends to with injured/retired stars the pair moved on to talking about whether
or not Paige thinks she will ever get back into the ring after having been sidelined
with a lingering neck injury after returning in 2017 and taking a bad bump in a match with
Sasha Banks.
But necks ain’t what they used to be in WWE as proven by Daniel Bryan and Edge both
being medically cleared to compete in recent years.
Which is what turned Paige’s mind back to the ring according to the podcast.
She said: ““I got chills when I saw Bryan and Edge
talking to each other backstage.
It was so inspiring and makes me feel good.
I haven’t had any issues with my neck right now.
Sometimes I’ll wake up and it feels weird, but it will go away.
I’m going to get my neck checked really soon to see the progress of it.
Hopefully, it looks good.
I’m not saying any form that they’re going to clear me, it’s literally just a check
up, but I am intrigued to know how my neck has progressed.”
Cleared or not one can only dream right?
And Paige herself has certainly given the idea of an in-ring return some serious thought.
And some of those thoughts are quite terrifying, as it must be for Bryan and Edge .
“It scares me as well to come back to wrestling because I really want to and would come back
tomorrow, but I’ll have it in the back of my head like ‘what if something happens
and I do get paralyzed?’
It does scare me and I know I’m not going to be fully ready mentally to come back, but
watch out world, when I am mentally ready to come back, everyone is in trouble.”
There’s been some bruhaha about a reported backstage meeting before this week’s NXT
where it is said Triple H addressed the locker room about the show moving to Tuesdays post
WrestleMania.
Originally Man of Whispers Dave Meltzer reported that Trips had said that NXT had been “bullied”
off of Wednesday nights by AEW.
But a correction has come through with Meltz tweeting: “in last night’s description
of the meeting Paul Levesque had with talent, while the description was largely what was
said, two people have said the “bully” line was never said.”
Dave’s initial report framed the conversation as Paul from the back office talking about
how NXT had always been on Wednesday and AEW came to ‘their night’ and forced them
off it - by being more popular with a larger percentage of the viewers.
But Fightful Select are reporting now that a number of WWE wrestlers and staff have denied
that anything close to Meltzer’s original report was said, instead it notes that Triple
H focussed on why NXT was moving to Tuesdays, saying it was a positive - the lead in from
Raw being a major reason.
The report also states that the move has been in the works for a while and discussions were
had with USA last year and the replay being shown on Peacock is another positive for the
brand as it is hoped fans will concentrate on the show rather than the TV viewership.
Speaking of TV viewership, one WrestleMania tradition is trading in that sweet sweet kickoff
show spot for a special WrestleMania edition of Smackdown.
WWE decided, on April Fools Day of all days, always working us the bastards, to announce
that the Andre The Giant memorial battle royale - the yearly competition for the caramac Andre
trophy will be held on next week’s Smackdown rather than at Mania.
The field was revealed as mostly catering crew with notable exceptions of the hurt by
the business Cedric Alexander and Shelton Benjamin, Shinny Naks, all the disparate parts
of the ex-Retribution, still with s*** names, and a VERY low-key return for Murphy.
The episode will also see a Fatal Four Way competition for the Smackdown Tag Team Championships,
though the participants for that have not been announced as of yet.
In news that you might of missed - because who actually watches 205 Live.
Joking, because actually the man we’re talking about THE Brian Kendrick hasn’t been on
TV since October.
Reports surfaced last November of him working backstage on NXT last year because he was
at the Capitol Wrestling Center for 205 Live on Wednesday Nights.
But more recently the 41-year-old star of the Cruiserweight division has been moved
up to producer duties on Smackdown and not performing in ring.
Now in a video posted to the WWE Performance Center’s Youtube channel it’s seemingly
been confirmed that Kendrick has retired from in-ring action.
In the video Brian said: “Initially the idea of producing seemed like a good - not
a retirement plan - but the next best thing to wrestling.
But it turns out it's just as rewarding, in different ways.
I love every bit of it.
It's a whole new way of looking at wrestling for me.
I welcome the challenge.”
Over the fence in AEW one of the stars of their women’s division Britt Baker has been
addressing fan’s concerns about the booking of the division in the company in an interview
with WrestleTalk - hey that’s us.
You can read more about this over on WrestleTalk.com where there will be plenty more updates from
the interview but Baker was saying fans need to be ‘patient’ with the division:
“the women’s division especially has little to no TV experience.
So we’re learning on the fly for your entertainment, so please be patient with us.”
““(They’re saying we) deserve more, but it needs to be the right time and everybody
needs to be ready for the opportunity as well.
And a part of me is thankful for all the criticism because if we didn’t have it, I don’t
think I would have had as much of a fire under my ass for this main event match.”
So the moral is keep criticising and then we get classic matches like the sanctioned
match with Thunder Rosa?
Gotcha.
I don’t think that’s what she was going for.
Let’s talk ratings to close things out because soon it won’t matter!
In the penultimate week of the Wednesday night war NXT’s go-home edition for Takeover Stand
and Deliver drew 654,000 viewers which is down from last week by 20 odd thousand.
Dynamite raked in 700,000 sets of eyes, also down from the previous week by 57,000, and
was also down 13% in the 18-49 demo with 0.26, which is tied as the worst rating for that
key demo this year - the last one occurring on night of the Capitol riot back in January.
Before we go, let’s check in with Simon Longden who has found the REAL reason the
Hurt Business broke up on ScreenGrapple.
Vince
McMahon
was super down
on a
segment with Edge on WWE, find out more about that by clicking the video over there.
Or click the one below for news of another WWE backstage release.
Subscribe if you haven’t already to stay up to date with all the latest wrestling news
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I’ve been El Fakidor, your Jam That Jampion, Jam THAT Jam.