Caruso Alert!
In mine and Luke’s Raw review podcast yesterday, we birthed the idea of Commissioner Caruso
- the meanest authority figure in WWE history.
And the Twitter want it to happen too, with a random fan trying to book her in an Arm
Wrestling match against SmackDown’s Kayla Braxton at Survivor Series.
To which Braxton has run in fear, tweeting: “Have you seen her arms?
I forfeit.”
Another victory for Commissioner Caruso, the true captain of Raw.
Maybe she’s behind trying to get a fired WWE star their job back.
HeelByNature reported yesterday that WWE had filed to trademark the slogan ‘The Way’
- ‘The Way’, title of your wrestling pay-per-view or Network special.
Literally.
As the filing seemingly classified its use in a broadcast capacity.
But according to Sean Ross Sapp on Fightful Select, The Way could be for one Levy Valenz,
previously known as WWE’s No Way Jose.
Jose was released back in April as part of WWE’s mass firings and furloughs at the
start of the pandemic, along with big names like Karl Anderson and Luke Gallows, Kurt
Angle Erick Rowan and Rusev, as the company shed a reported 40% of its workforce.
While the majority have remained let go, WWE have brought back a handful of talent - like
a number of furloughed producers and backstage staff like commentator Nigel McGuiness and
definitely not a general manager Pat Buck, and several wrestlers too: allegedly offering
Heath Slater a new contract after his one-off segment with Drew McIntyre in July, which
he turned down to go to IMPACT, and, of course, WWE using the firings as a storyline, which
saw ...Drake Maverick legit get his job back in NXT.
Fightful notes that talent both inside and outside the company told them WWE has interest
in bringing back No Way Jose, as he was well liked in both the NXT and Raw locker rooms.
Since his release, he’s been taking independent bookings under his real name, including tagging
with Doc Gallows for Lariat Pro Wrestling in the Summer.
Perhaps bolstered by their record-breaking financial projections, WWE is actually hiring
people for a change - recently announcing their seeking a Talent Brand Manager for the
company.
This is for their new Talent Brand Management department they launched back in July, which
is meant to help stars with their individual brands.
I.e. stop tweeting and then deleting how badly you’re being booked by WWE.
The job description includes: “Align talent goals and personal interests to WWE strategic
initiatives” and “Collaborate with talent third parties to solicit and assess new opportunities.”
Which could potentially be enforcing WWE’s new rule where they own their contracted talent’s
Twitch and Cameo accounts now, which has reportedly massively upset the roster.
Sounds really rewarding!
Now before we get on with the rest of the news, I’d like to say a big thank you to
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There are many historic wrestling records currently under threat.
Ric Flair’s 16 world titles could soon be surpassed by John Cena. Roman Reigns could
eventually topple Kane’s 42 career Royal Rumble eliminations.
And Brock Lesnar will soon squash your favourite wrestler in the quickest time ever.
But in an example of how WWE don’t actually know how to book big guys, Braun Strowman
is giving Big Show a run for his face/heel turn money.
Show has almost 40 babyface/heel turns in his career.
Strowman has managed three this year alone.
He won the Blueniversal title against Goldberg as a face back at WrestleMania, then seemingly
turned heel during his feud with the Fiend, was drafted to Raw as a cheating monster,
kicking Keith Lee in the dick.
And now, just two weeks later, with no onscreen explanation, he’s apparently a babyface
again.
PWInsider is reporting backstage officials consider Strowman a good guy now, and are
booking him as such.
This follows news earlier this month that they’re also doing the same for the Fiend
and Alexa Bliss.
Braun is in the men’s Team Raw line-up for Survivor Series, where AJ Styles and Sheamus
are being positioned as the goofy and firefaced heel respectively.
At least Strowman is being booked, though, as Chelsea Green posted last month:
“I haven’t wrestled since May 27th” VERY ANGRY FACE EMOJI.
Which she’s now quote retweeted - and then deleted - “Update: I still haven’t wrestled
since May 27th” VERY ANGRY FACE EMOJI.
According to PWInsider, WWE is also discussing bringing back their Tribute to the Troops
special to TV next month.
The show, originally devised by JBL as a morale boosting event for the United States’ armed
forces, has run every year since 2003.
Last year’s was the first in its history not to be televised.
WWE have broadcast all their main roster shows from The Amway Center since SummerSlam, where
they’ve built industry award winning and - a rarity for WWE - a homegrown actual ratings
draw ThunderDome.
But with the NBA starting a new season next month, WWE are being forced out by the venue
on November 24th.
Because WWE want to stay in one place to cut down on the set up costs for the ThunderDome
staging, they’re having to look at venues which won’t be hosting NBA or NHL games.
And according to Dave Meltzer, the frontrunner right now is the domed roof Tropicana Field
baseball stadium in Florida.
Maybe new house hunting was where Vince McMahon was last Friday night, as Ringside News have
reported - to be later corroborated by PWInsider - that last week’s SmackDown was the first
main roster show he’d missed since the ThunderDome era began.
According to the report, Bruce Prichard was in charge of the show, while Ed Koskey and
Ryan Callahan handled creative.
The previous week, Prichard also missed the taping, which led to Triple H helping out
more backstage.
But while he wasn’t there in person, McMahon was sure there via gravelly voice, as he was
reportedly on the phone all day keeping tabs on production.
The reason for his absence isn’t known.
Vince to AEW confirmed.
Surely he’ll be in at least one of their video games.
Because they didn’t just announce one.
They didn’t just announce two.
AEW announced three new games at last night’s Apple-parody stream…
In an excellent spoof of every Apple product launch ever, the AEW Games 1.0 special event
saw Kenny Omega in his best Steve Jobs black turtleneck and jeans to unveil the promotion’s
long-teased first video game - revealing the early test footage of an 8-bit match of him
vs Jon Moxley, which everyone agreed was crap - I quite liked it - so he decided to recruit
Hideyuki Iwashita, the legendary developer and director of one of the best loved wrestling
games of all time No Mercy, to help create the AEW game,
Created by Yukes, the developers who left their long-running WWE partnership with 2K
last year because they were so frustrated with how bad 2K20 was, they then played early
developmental footage of Omega vs Chris Jericho, which became Omega getting beaten up by Hikaru
Shida - teasing this is where dream matches become reality.
Dream scenarios, like AEW actually pushing their women’s champion [DRUM BDM TSK].
And finishing with a tasty morsel of the Young Bucks Meltzer Driver.
Those graphics look terrible.
But AEW weren’t done there.
In addition to the console game, Aubrey Edwards came out - also dressed as Steve Jobs - to
announce the mobile game AEW Elite General Manager, where you can build a roster, book
matches and manage backstage morale, and Cody Rhodes appeared near the end of the stream
- also dressed as Steve Jobs - to announce the AEW Casino Double or Nothing mobile game
coming this winter, which appears to be a gambling app.
But most revolutionary was Britt Baker - also dressed as Steve Jobs - unveiling AEW’s
reimagining of the t-shirt, with AEW Games on the front, with an industry redefining
two sleeves and head hole, which was immediately put on sale.
Because, never forget, they are just a t-shirt company.
There was a lot to take in, so Cody posted a tweet to sum it all up:
“a “no mercy” style console game w/@yukes_official a GM simulator game
a new tee shirt a mobile casino game”
-with a photo of Aubrey, Omega, Cody and Baker, the bunch of Steve Jobbers.
It’s exciting stuff, but one Evil Uno was left disappointed by the event, tweeting:
“Oh... no AEW Wacky Race game?
Okay.
#AEWGames” - with a gif of a very sad boy.
The games, particular the Yukes console one, are incredibly exciting.
But this is also a massively important business, business, business development for AEW - diversifying
away from their core product, t-shirts, and their secondary, much smaller outlet, professional
wrestling shows on TV.
And in the New Normal - the New Normal, title of your indie wrestling faction - an arm of
your business which can take place entirely in your customer’s home is a vital move.
Especially with that other major part of professional wrestling, live events, being so decimated
by the pandemic.
And expanding into non-televised live events - aka house shows - was in AEW’s plans for
2020.
As first revealed by Jim Ross several months ago, Dave Meltzer has now revealed Tony Khan
was planning to run “about 20 hour shows a year…
every other week.”
These would be planned to not coincide with New Japan’s big house show loops, as a lot
of AEW’s roster, like Jon Moxley and Chris Jericho, still wrestle for them overseas.
WWE’s insane plans for Buddy Murphy and Aalyah Mysterio might’ve been revealed!
Click the video on the right to find out what they might have in store.
And is chess, you know, one of the oldest board games in the world, actually good?
Click the video below that for Luke Owen’s brand new video on our board game channel
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I’ve been Mr Davis, telling you to download SurfShark using our links below now, VPN that
VPN.