Coming up, let’s forget about the football and talk about wrestling.
We’ve got a scrapped Fiend faction, a WWE star being run off Twitter, President Biden
wading in on the non-compete clause debate and so much more, so subscribe to the channel
to get your daily wrestling news fix and yaknow, really help us out, we need a little boost,
we lost the football.
I hear Oli is still crying and that’s why he’s not here.
Where o’ where has the little Fiend gone, where o where can he be.
Because he came back at WrestleMania, magically recovered from severe burns, lost to Randy
Orton and then disappeared off into the ether again.
While it’s been noted that Bray is off for a reason and there is a plan to bring him
back - he’s even advertised for an upcoming Raw show - no one outside the company really
knows the reasons he’s gone.
As with all things in wrestling it could either be a long term plan or scrapped completely
and thrown together at the last possible moment.
And those sorts of scrapped plans seem to follow the Fiend like a bad smell.
It was Ring of Honor Best in the World this weekend and before the show Mike Bennett,
who was released by WWE in April 2020, spoke to Metro about his near brush with the Fiend
and a faction.
“Early on when Bray Wyatt turned into The Fiend, Vince was always high on having Bray
lead a group for some reason – he always wanted him to lead a group.
“We were about a week away from making it happen where me and Eric Young were gonna
be part of Bray Wyatt’s group.
We were gonna actually be – they were gonna bring to life the puppets.
Each puppet was gonna represent an actual person.
I don’t remember, there were talks that I was gonna be Sister Abigail and Eric Young
was gonna be a buzzard.
“I thought it was really cool, I was ready to sink my teeth into it.
But then like most stuff there, right before it happens they’re like, ‘Oh yeah, we’re
not doing that anymore.’
You’re like, ‘Oh, oh OK cool.
That would have been a really cool spot but I guess I’ll go sit in catering.’”
There’s something decidedly Eeyore-ish about the way everyone always says “oh well, I
guess I’ll sit in catering”.
WWE really does drain the life out of people.
What do you think to these plans?
Would you have liked to see the puppets brought to life by wrestlers like a live action Disney
remake?
Let me know in the comments because I’ll be replying.
Speaking of fascinating faction factoids here’s another one.
We all know AEW star Jon Moxley was formerly the lunatic fringe of WWE Dean Ambrose, a
character perhaps most famous for his time in The Shield along with Roman Reigns and
Seth Rollins.
Well once upon a time he was almost marching to a different tune.
Speaking with Such Good Shoot former WWE talent Heath Slater, who was also released last year
along with Bennett, said that when transitioning his character from the one man band to uhhh
an actual band there were some other mans he tapped to join.
“I was like, ‘Come on.
I need a band now.
I’ve been a one man band.
Let me have a band.’
They’re just like, ‘Oh, who are you thinking?’
I pitch [Dean] Ambrose, Fandango, and EC3.
And this is before any of them are on TV.”
Slater revealed that he put this to Michael Hayes and quick Google of the history will
tell you that not one single bit of that happened.
Heath instead was paired with Jinder Mahal and Drew McIntyre.
The news that Jimmy Uso had once again been arrested for driving under the influence broke
early last week, and it tends to make you think a few things - it’s reckless and irresponsible,
but I hope he gets help if he’s genuinely struggling.
What it shouldn’t make you think though is ‘great this is a good opportunity to
attack Jimmy Uso’s wife Naomi on Twitter’, which is regrettably something fans on Twitter
have decided to do.
Almost as if they never heard the phrase two wrongs don’t make a right.
Shocking racial and personal abuse was leveled at Naomi which seemingly forced the Smackdown
star to close down her Twitter account and her Instagram profile.
Many WWE stars came out in support with Mia Yim tweeting: “Naomi, you are loved.”
And also saying that she was reporting all of the abusive tweets.
Cedric Alexander also sent “All his love and support to Naomi and her family!”
Someone needs to tell these sorts of wrestling fans and England football fans that you can
love something without it turning toxic.
Sticking with Jimmy Uso, who was arrested Monday night in Pensacola, Florida after running
a red light while speeding and failing a sobriety test, he appeared on Smackdown on Friday despite
the facts that reports claim higher ups at WWE were: “extremely disappointed and legitimately
pissed off” at his actions.
On the latest Wrestling Observer Radio Dave Meltzer revealed that “nothing’s happening”
at the moment regarding a fine or suspension and speculated that this could be because
Jimmy is involved in a major angle that could include The Rock at WrestleMania.
He said: “There’s stuff that’s in the plans that they feel is far too important,
and they don’t want it screwed up, and that’s the answer”
Here’s hoping that WWE are at least offering Jimmy and Naomi support behind the scenes
to deal with any issues and the abuse that they’ve received if they aren’t pursuing
the route of a fine or suspension.
Moving on to WWE’s own problems, a major one of which has been the recent glut of releases.
Talent let go from the company legally can’t work anywhere else until they have seen out
a 90 day non-compete clause in their contract - unless you’re Malakai Black who’s NXT
contract wasn’t updated properly giving him a 30 day one instead, hence why he is
already in AEW despite only being released last month.
Ultimately though non-compete clauses are a fairly common business practice, they say
to protect trade secrets and investments, but they do also disempower employees to make
better choices for their own careers and drive down wages overall as people can’t move
as freely to gain higher pay.
Don’t take my word for it, take the word of US President Joe Biden, who is using an
executive order to ask the Federal Trade Commission to ban or limit these sorts of agreements.
In a speech the Pres said: “At least one in three businesses require their workers
to sign a non-compete agreement.
These aren’t just high paid executives.
Recent studies found that one in five workers without a college education are subject to
non-compete agreements.
Workers should be free to take another job if someone offers it.
If your employer wants to keep you, he or she should make it worthwhile for you to stay.”
While Biden didn’t specifically mention WWE in this address should what he is proposing
come to pass it could seriously affect WWE’s current business model and make them think
long and hard about their increasingly common cuts.
One of whom just made waves over in Ring of Honor.
It was the promotion’s Best in the World pay-per-view last night, which excitingly
saw Bandido conquer RUSH to become the ROH World Champion.
Also announced at the show was a 16 woman tournament to decide who will be crowned the
new Women of Honor Champion.
Maria Kanellis and Lenny Leonard announced that Vita had been declared ineligible for
the tournament and taking her place was none other than Chelsea Green.
The hot mess herself.
Interestingly Green was released from WWE after she broke her arm during her debut and
announced here that the Maryland Athletic Commission had not cleared to wrestle saying
she’d sit out the tournament and challenge for the title a month after her cast comes
off.
Just before the show Fightful Select reported that Ring of Honor had reached out to “multiple
recent WWE releases, with a deal in place for one to come into the company imminently”.
Imminently was pretty darn imminent.
It’ll be interesting to see who else is on their shopping list over the next few weeks.
If you’ve been keeping up with most of this news episode, then you’ll know that 90 day
non-compete clauses are a thing and it doesn’t take a beautiful mind to work out that 90
spins of the old globe haven’t passed since Green was released by WWE back in April.
It was close but not quite 90.
Sean Ross Sapp updated on this saying that “You’ll notice this is before Chelsea
Green’s non-compete was scheduled to be up.
We confirmed with WWE sources recently that she was one of those that asked for an early
out on it.”
This may be a case of WWE going oh well it’s only a couple of days really, but it’ll
be interesting to see if anyone else asks for and is granted an out from their clause
in the coming months.
Before Biden gets the rid of the things entirely.
Maybe.
One person seeing out his non-compete with a series of interviews is the former Killian
Dain, Big bloomin’ Damo, of QuizzleMania fame.
Dain was released last month in another shocking set of cuts within WWE, shocking especially
as Killian revealed to the It’s My House podcast that he had signed a contract extension
just prior to his release.
Adding: “Not a lot of people know this, I just signed
an extension so I could easily have been gone at the same time as Alexander Wolfe, because
our deals expired on the same day.
So I genuinely believe that this is something that was a last minute thing you know?”
He also pointed out that he had just been featured in a feud with Fandango who was also
released, ominously and quite rightly pointing out that it seemingly could happen to anyone
at any time.
If you want to hear more from Damo about his time in WWE head over to the WrestleTalk Podcast
channel because Adam Blampied did a special interview with him.