I’m Pete Quinnell, welcome to the WrestleTalk News, and this video is brought to you by
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Just in case you missed it, on SmackDown this past Friday, Asuka was gifted with a brand
new championship, the WWE Women’s Championship, replacing the Raw Women’s belt.
It’s just like Roman’s Undisputed belt, but with a white strap instead black.
It’s boring is what it is.
And just like Roman’s belt, Asuka’s belt says ‘Undisputed Champion’ on it.
Which…is not true.
And this seems to have caused some frustration backstage in WWE as well, as Fightful Select
is reporting that some backstage were frustrated with the misuse of the term ‘Undisputed’
in two cases: one for Asuka and one for Roman where there is now another world champion
besides them.
One WWE higher up even reportedly admitted that it was confusing, saying: “I don’t
know why there is an insistence on doing that, and a lot of people have brought that up and
it’s been dismissed.”
According to Fightful Select, making Asuka’s new belt exactly like Roman’s belt was done
intentionally, and not through laziness, which I still think is a viable contender, you can
never rule out laziness, because WWE reportedly want to “help portray it on an even plane”
as Roman’s belt.
Now Asuka just needs to hold it for 1000 days, can’t wait.
But that is of course not the end of the changes coming, as there’s still the issue of the
SmackDown Women’s Belt being on Raw.
Rhea Ripley’s belt is also set to receive “some other sort of adjustment as well,
either in name or appearance”.
And for those curious on the Roman front as to what WWE title lineage it will be following,
we’ll need to know for future episodes of Survival Series I’m sure, it’s reportedly
- both.
A WWE source claimed to Fightful Select that both WWE and Universal title lineages are
still separate, but that most likely the WWE title’s history would be continued once
Roman drops the belt.
It genuinely would be a massive shame to lose that title history if they did opt to keep
the Universal Title lineage, because then we’d lose the title that has been held by
the company’s top stars for decades, like Vince McMahon, Jinder Mahal and Sid.
This appears to just be the first in some wholesale changes coming to WWE soon, with
the NXT Women’s Tag Belts and WWE Women’s Tag Belts becoming unified on SmackDown next
week as well, on top of a reported overhaul of the entire women’s tag division.
This comes from BWE on Twitter, who claimed that the women’s tag division would be receiving
an overhaul, with the unification match coming from the brain of Nick Khan as his goal right
now is to elevate NXT.
According to Fightful Select, there were reportedly several within NXT at the time the NXT women’s
tag belts were created that were “confused” as to why they were being created at all and,
yeah, same.
However there were reportedly plans to unify the tag belts as far back as April when the
Draft occurred, but the plans were delayed due to the injuries that took place within
the division.
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Anywho, back to WWE overhauling and streamlining a lot of things right now, it seems that trend
may be set to continue, as BWE on Twitter is claiming that there are a “few returns
in the coming months”, as well as a “couple of title updates” and “talent repackaging”.
We’ve already spoken about the titles being updated, though there supposedly could be
more, but on the subject of returning talent, there’s been quite a few notable people
on the shelf for a while now.
Which means we could hopefully be seeing the returns of people like Kofi Kingston who’s
been out with an ankle injury, Randy Orton who’s been out with a back injury, Tommaso
Ciampa who’s been out with a hip injury, or maybe…Big E?
Is that too much to ask?
I hope we get to see him wrestle again.
And with talent being repackaged, it wouldn’t surprise me if we’ve already seen the beginnings
of that process with various vignettes airing on Raw and SmackDown for wrestlers like Johnny
Gargano and Candice LeRae, which hopefully makes them a bit more serious and less of
Dexter Lumis’ pal.
And maybe we can get the return of Ezekiel - because we might not be having Elias around
for that much longer either.
According to Fightful Select, Elias’ WWE contract was originally due to expire in late
2022, but of course he’s still been around and doing stuff in 2023.
They reportedly asked WWE to confirm what the deal was with his contract, but WWE haven’t
responded.
My guess would be that his contract was extended when he had that lengthy period off TV, while
his younger brother Ezekiel was on our screens instead.
That makes sense to me.
I wonder what happened to that guy?
I hope he’s doing ok.
Elias has been around in WWE since 2014 if you can believe that, dating back to the black
and gold NXT as Elias Samson.
So he’s been in WWE for nearly 10 years.
That seems…not right.
That’s a long time isn’t it?
That’s a long time.
And speaking of…long times, it’s been a long time since the last King of the Ring
hasn’t it?
My segue’s need some work.
We were originally supposed to be getting King & Queen of the Ring in May this year,
but that show got changed to Night of Champions instead, because…I guess they didn’t want
to splash out on the crowns.
Cheapskates.
The announcement had many fans excited to see the tournaments back, mainly because they
called it Queen of the Ring this time and not QUEEN’S CROWN TOURNAMENT, which was
ass.
A load of ass.
However, even though it was replaced by Night of Champions, we still might be getting King
and Queen of the Ring at some point, just, not now.
As according to Fightful Select, they enquired whether King & Queen of the Ring could be
rescheduled for some time this year, and those in the know told them that they hadn’t heard
of it being rescheduled yet, but it was something that had “in their back pocket” for future
Saudi Arabia shows.
Back pocket, title of your Saudi show.
Moving on over to AEW now, and it’s almost time for Forbidden Door 2!
Which means it’s nearly time for Bryan Danielson vs Kazuchika Okada.
And Kenny Omega vs Will Ospreay 2.
I would watch a show with just those two matches on I think.
However, there’s been some question marks over the show with regard to the involvement
of Stardom.
Stardom of course is the joshi promotion that had previously been purchased by Bushiroad,
the parent company of New Japan, and since then there’s been a bit more inclusion of
Stardom talent at shows like Forbidden Door, as well as the New Japan Strong Women’s
Title being introduced and such things.
And while previous reports noted that talks had been had between Tony Khan and Mercedes
Mone to appear at Forbidden Door, which presumably would have been with her NJPW Strong Women’s
Title were it not for her unfortunate injury during the match, there’s still been a question
mark about the rest of Stardom.
It doesn’t seem to be much clearer either, as Fightful Select had previously reported
that there were in fact conversations between AEW and Stardom as to the use of their talent
on the show, but then Dave Meltzer on Wrestling Observer Radio said that there weren’t conversations
at all, and the only contact AEW and Stardom had had had been Stardom requesting that perhaps
an AEW wrestler could wrestle Kairi for the IWGP Women’s Championship at the Tokyo Dome,
which didn’t end up happening, and also noting that none of the Stardom talent would
even have Canadian visas for Forbidden Door in Toronto, so they couldn’t work the show
if they wanted to.
But then, the plot thickens, as Sean Ross Sapp on Twitter noted that while the Stardom
roster not having Canadian visas was most likely true, AEW not contacting Stardom about
using their roster on Forbidden Door is “absolutely untrue” and there has been contact in the
last month.
He then also notes - the Stardom roster doesn't need a Canadian visa to work Forbidden Door,
because the rules are different in Canada than they are in the States.
So we might or might not be seeing some Stardom wrestlers jump across to AEW, and that may
or may not prove one person’s report right or wrong.
Sounds conclusive!
One of the people competing at Forbidden Door is Kazuchika Okada, who once again is wrestling
Bryan Danielson and I can’t quite get over it.
He recently spoke to Tokyo Sports, where he mentioned that New Japan, All Japan and NOAH
have been working together recently, and they should continue to build this relationship
by normalizing transfers between companies: “It would be better (for wrestlers) to transfer.
Since the three organizations are working together, I think it would be interesting
if we could try to have that kind of exchange.”
There genuinely hasn’t been a more collaborative time in wrestling that at least I can remember,
and I think we should take Okada’s idea and apply it to Impact, AEW, New Japan, NOAH,
All Japan, and whoever else.
We can make it like transfer deadline day in football, we’ll have a livestream where
we’ll be talking about all the moves happening, the discussions taking place, the medicals
that are being done, and we can cut to people to give their thoughts and reports while they’re
roaming, it’d be perfect.
I actually want to do that now.
But for now while that remains a pipe dream, why don’t you check out Adam Blampied’s
list of 9 fantasy booking pitches for Money in the Bank this year.
Here’s a clip.