Hello and welcome to the WrestleTalk Super News - I’m Oli Davis.
We’ve got a packed show for you today, including SmackDown potentially going three hours when
it moves to Fox, how much the NXT deal is actually worth, and WWE possibly cancelling
205 Live! Click the timestamps in the video description
below to jump to any of those stories right now!
And answer our question of the day in the comments down below: Should WWE cancel 205
Live? Because I’ll be answering comments for the first 15 minutes after this video
goes live… and FROM OUTTA NOWHERE But first, as if Vince McMahon didn’t have
enough on his plate with SmackDown moving to Fox, the impending Wednesday night wars
with AEW and diving into his giant vats of money...
He’ll also be restarting his previously failed alternative American football league
the XFL early next year - the one blemish on his otherwise spotless business record.
If you don’t include his bodybuilding federation. Or WWF New York. Or his range of ICO-Pro supplements.
Or Tout. Or Bayley on the main roster. To build hype for the XFL’s launch, the
league announced the names of the eight teams that will be competing for the UniversalBowl,
or whatever Vince ends up calling the final championship.
They are the Dallas Renegades, the Houston Roughnecks, the Los Angeles Wildcats (meow),
the New York Guardians of the Galaxy, the St Louis Battle Hawks (likely to soon be renamed
the St Louis Hawks Experience), the Seattle Dragons, the Tampa Bay Vipers (who hear voices
in their head), and the D.C. Defenders of Washington.
Unfortunately, only the Tampa Bay Vipers ties into a WWE gimmick with Randy Orton, who will
hopefully be their mascot dressed as a giant penis snake on match days.
We’ll find out when the league properly launches on Saturday 8th February, which is
the week after the NFL annual season concludes with the Superbowl, and also a very worrying
just six months away. But it also falls on another important date.
Rusev Daaaaaay! I forgot about that insanely hot gimmick too segway.
Rusev hasn’t been seen on WWE TV since the 51-man Battle Royal at Super Arabia all the
way back in June, and his wife Lana hasn’t featured for even longer, last appearing on
the April 23rd episode of SmackDown. Neither have been appearing at live events either,
meaning the couple have effectively spent their last several months on holiday away
from WWE. Dave Meltzer has reported Rusev and Lana are
currently on a hiatus from the company after requesting time off, but there’s also a
looming contract expiration date for them both, with Rusev’s WWE deal apparently up
relatively soon. There have been many reports over the years
of Rusev and Lana being unhappy with their booking in the company, with rumours of backstage
heat and requested releases. And Rusev himself told Lilian Garcia’s Chasing Glory podcast
earlier this year how he’s feeling earlier: “I feel like, the more you hang around,
the more you're forgotten. It doesn't matter how good you are. I think I'm good, I always
think that I'm good...It doesn't matter what I do, I kinda end up with the same thing.”
Unfortunately, as Robert Roode’s moustache showed, even Rusev recently unveiling a new
look isn’t likely enough to catch Vince’s attention.
The increasingly sketchy wrestling reporter Brad Shepard first claimed earlier this month
that: “According to a source in #WWE, it’s possible
that Rusev and Lana may not re-sign with the company. They’re currently weighing their
options.” But now he’s reporting things have changed:
“Update: According to a source in #WWE, both Rusev and Lana are now expected to re-sign
with the company.” An update that Bulgaria’s George Clooney
himself has since replied to! Rusev quoted Shepard’s latest report about
him now being expected to agree a new deal with WWE:
“You need to make up your mind my dude” To which Shepard rather arrogantly replied:
“I report, you decide.” Which Rusev rather astutely pointed out:
“How can you report when you have no idea !!!!!!”
Which means Rusev’s WWE contract status is still in doubt. How could we possibly find
out what’s true or not? I know! This week I tweeted the most handsome man
in WWE Rusev to find out if he will stay with the company:
With the talent war between WWE & AEW already underway, and the contradictory reports on
your contract status, I would love to ask @RusevBUL himself: RUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUSEV DDAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY
TROPHY EMOJI DANCE EMOJI PLEASE RETWEET MUCH LOVE OD X
What a gimmick! Well, at least Aiden English got a big push out of it. Let me see if he’s
replied… OH GOD DAMMIT I FORGOT TO ASK HIM THE CONTRACT THING.
But while WWE has plenty of rubles to offer Rusev to stay, they might apparently be severely
lacking in that CFO Money. Puntacular Segway!
As WrestleVotes are reporting their head music producers CFO dollar sign have reportedly
left the company. “Received a few questions asking about CFO$
and WWE Music. The relationship is in fact over, and it has been for a few months now.
CFO$ is no longer working with WWE in anyway.” CFO Dollar Sign first started working with
WWE in 2012 when their song ‘The Night’ was made Raw’s official theme from the 1000th
episode. Soon after, they replaced longtime musician Jim Johnston as the executive producers
for the WWE Music Group, where they most notably wrote Glorious Domination for Bobby Roode
and The Rising Sun for Shinsuke Nakamura - which both reached No. 1 in the iTunes soundtrack
chart. The very bland themes debuted for Elias and
Buddy Murphy this week suggest CFO$ really have departed WWE.
A production company linked to CFO$ called Arcade Songs, however, have implied they are
still working with WWE - quote replying a tweet about NXT moving to the USA Network
and adding: “Something tells me we’re going to be
hearing a lot more @CFOSofficial HAPPY FACE EMOJI WITH HANDS UP I DON’T REALLY KNOW
WHAT EMOTION THIS ONE TRIES TO CONVEY” NXT was officially promoted to the main roster
with all the pomp and circumstance of a brief Twitter wall graphic on this week’s SmackDown.
It’ll begin airing live on the USA Network from the 18th September, well placed for the
Wednesday Night Wars when AEW goes weekly on TNT from the 2nd October.
But while the move has been made to strategically oppose All Elite Wrestling, that doesn’t
mean WWE can’t make a load of money off it at the same time, with some stock market
analysts estimating the deal to be worth up to $100 million a year.
Curry Baker, however, has written the deal is for “one or two years” and is actually
worth $30 million a year - or about $600,000 per episode - which Dave Meltzer has since
confirmed on Wrestling Observer Radio. While it’s not the lofty $200 million price tag
some projected, this will cover production costs with a bit left over - marking the first
time NXT has ever made money. And according to NXT daddy Triple H, he’s
got much bigger plans for his small indie promotion, saying: “this is the start. This
isn’t the destination, this is the start. This brand is just getting started.” I think
it’s ‘the start’, folks. But really, we’ve got someone else to thank
for all this: Chris Jericho. After heelishly taking credit for every positive
thing that’s happened to AEW since he joined it, Y2J has started claiming he’s responsible
for NXT now being promoted to the main roster: “Oh by the way... @WWENXT on @USA_Network
? #YoureWelcome #IndustryChanger” Jericho was one of the mentors on the first
season of the old NXT, and he would later occasionally wrestle matches in its early
days as a developmental promotion - like in 2013 against Bray Wyatt here. He would then
tell Busted Open Radio, though, that even though he deserves credit, NXT going to the
USA Network is a bad move that will dilute WWE’s product.
So someone from WWE gave him a rather sarcastic reply…
With NXT General Manager himself William Regal - although there are no authority figures
these days in WWE, we’re the authority figures - tweeting Jericho:
“Yes,thank you Chris. From us both being on NXT in 2010 until today, being a mentor,
announcer and GM, NXT has given huge opportunities for many talent who would never of got a chance
before, to be real game changers. And it’s all down to you.Thank you so much”
Regal’s current Twitter profile picture, by the way, is magnificent.
Likely in response to the NXT move, AEW have ramped up promotion of their own weekly TV
show due to start on Wednesday 2nd October on TNT - announcing a PPV-level line-up for
their fifth show, which would give All Elite the traditional four weeks of build.
Jericho will be in action for the first time on AEW TV on the 30th October instalment,
and it’ll also see the final of the promotion’s tag team tournament - crowning the first ever
AEW World Tag Team Champions - at the Charleston Coliseum, with a capacity of 14,000.
That means on a regular non-pay per view week, we’ll get three hours of Raw, two hours
of NXT, two hours of AEW and two hours of SmackDown. I know what you’re thinking - I
want more wrestling! Because it’s been an almost wholly condemned
move since 2012, arguably chasing off half Raw’s audience, and being amongst the many
reasons WCW failed - there are reports that SmackDown will also be going three hours soon!
Dave Meltzer has said on Wrestling Observer Radio that WWE have “talked about adding
a third hour… possibly for FS 1” when it moves to Fox in October.
This could mean WWE will do for SmackDown just what they did for Raw, providing extra
content for Fox to justify their $1 billion price tag. Or this extra hour could actually
be the already announced talk show for FS1 that’s speculated to be called WWE After
The Bell. Perhaps with all that extra TV time, Ali might
get to actually get to complete a storyline he’s started.
Ali got a shock win over the Intercontinental Champion Shinsuke Nakamura on the 30th July
- seemingly setting up a title match for SummerSlam. But on this week’s episode, Nakamura randomly
paired up with Sami Zayn as his new manager - I say ‘randomly’, but it’s quite obviously
because WWE don’t think Japanese people can speak English good - and appeared to start
a feud with The Miz. When asked on Twitter if the Ali/Nakamura
storyline was just randomly dropped, Ali himself confirmed: “Yes.”
Storylines being randomly dropped by WWE is unfortunately nothing new. Entire shows, however,
is a bit different. Again according to Dave Meltzer on Wrestling
Observer Radio, with SmackDown possibly going three hours when it moves to Fox in October,
the backstage expectation in WWE is that 205 Live will be cancelled as it is a failed experiment.
This ties into reports from Brad Shepard - yes, I know Rusev, he’s to be taken with a pinch
of salt - from last month that 205 Live would be discontinued before the end of the year.
205 Live debuted almost three years ago on 29th November, 2016 - but it failed to capitalise
on the critical success of that Summer’s Cruiserweight Classic. They lost two of their
top prospects Zack Sabre Jr. and Kota Ibushi during that tournament, as neither wanted
to sign exclusively with WWE, and seemed to lose more every year, with former Cruiserweight
Champions Neville, Enzo Amore, Rich Swann and TJP all leaving the company for a variety
of reasons since. Despite often having some of the best in-ring
action in WWE week to week, its episodes are consistently ranked outside the top 10 most
watched shows on the Network. Maybe the King of the Ring tournament could
spin off into a King of the Ring live weekly Network show to replace it! I don’t know,
because this is actually just an awkward segway into Housemate Simon dissecting what makes
a true King of the Ring winner… the stupid outfit they’re dressed in.
Huge details about the Playstation 5 have been leaked?! Click the video in the bottom
corner of the screen now to learn more with Luke and Laurie on today’s ScreenStalker
News - which also includes the Xbox spying controversy and the second SuperHot Let’s
Play! I’ve been Oli Davis, and that was wrestling.