Coming up, WWE seriously change their plans around the festive season, Johnny Gargano
seriously teases his NXT departure, the truth behind the Bron Breakker ring name and Tempest
will be here with a full review of last night’s WarGames.
Xmas is the time of giving, so go on, gives us a subscribe.
The festive season is also notable for being a time that people want to spend with their
nearest and dearest and yaknow not at work. But WWE usually has one of its shows fall
on an inconvenient day during the holiday period, trust me I know, we keep having to
do news about wrestling all through xmas week. Well this year, despite both Xmas eve and
New Year’s Eve falling on Fridays, WWE have decided to scrap their original plans to run
live shows of Smackdown. Dave Meltzer on Wrestling Observer Radio said
that the New Year’s Eve episode which was originally set to emanate live from the Spectrum
Center in Charlotte, North Carolina has been switched to a ‘year in review’ style episode.
According to Meltz, WWE management likely Nick Khan, Vince McMahon and Kevin Dunn decided
not to air a regular episode on FS1 since the show would do a lower rating - both taking
place on a holiday and the channel being available in fewer homes than FOX.
The Christmas eve show will be taped on December 17th, after the live edition of that show,
so fans in attendance in Chicago will get a double dose of Smackdown satisfaction.
WWE often air pre-taped editions of the show for the holiday’s, last year Big E beat
Sami Zayn for the IC title on Xmas Day in a pre-taped episode, but the ‘year in review’
episode is a huge walking back from the original plans of holding a live event.
Speaking of live events, last night was NXT WarGames, review of that in a short while.
And there is a lot of buzz surrounding a certain Mr Johnny Gargano who may or may not be leaving
WWE next week after reportedly signing a short term contract extension to work the Wargame
show. In the run up and aftermath of the show, Johnny
certainly seemed to be teasing a finality to his appearance in the double cage - firstly
through the medium of socks. Pre-show Gargano posted a picture of socks
branded with his wife Candice LeRae’s face saying: “@CandiceLerae has been in every
Women's War Games match.. and for obvious reasons she's unable to compete this year..
but I wanted to make sure she still found a way in the cage with me tonight.”
After the men’s WarGames match Johnny stayed in the ring to receive an ovation from the
fans in attendance and then addressed them directly saying there would be no Johnny Wrestling
without them and that he will address the situation on Tuesday night.
He also took to Twitter to post a graphic reading Johnny TakeOver referencing all of
his various ring attires from his PPV appearances saying: “hell of a run”
All sounds pretty final to me - but there’s always the potential he stays in WWE.
More news in a mo, after this word from our sponsor.
Before we get on with the rest of the episode, I’d just like to say a huge thank you to
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Gargano’s potential final match for WWE didn’t go the way Team Black and Gold and
fans of old NXT woulda wanted, as Team 2.0 and specifically Bron Breakker managed to
overcome the old guard and pick up the victory for the young blood.
Now lots has been said about just how silly a name Bron Breakker is, it’s really very
silly. Ahead of his debut with NXT 2.0 the name Rex
Steiner was floating around as a possibility, a good name that speaks to the dog faced gremlin
roots and wrestling connections of Bronson Rechsteiner.
We all laughed at how Vince like it was to name someone Bron Breakker when a perfectly
good name was staring them right in the face… and we were all wrong.
Speaking with Graham Matthews of Daily DDT Bron revealed that he CAME UP WITH THE NAME
HIMSELF: “We were just sitting around one day and
I’m like, ‘Well, when I used to block people in football, I used to try to break
them in half. That was literally what I tried to do: snap them in half and break them. What
if I’m the breaker? I break people, Breakker, and then it came to me. Bron is part of my
first name and that’s what we went with,” My estimations of the man, drastic go down.
Meanwhile on the main roster, Jeff Hardy was reportedly sent home following a match at
a live event on Saturday night. PwInsider reported that Hardy got sent home
from the road and did not appear at the Corpus Christi show last night.
On Saturday he had teamed with Drew McIntyre and Xavier Woods to take on the Bloodline
at an event in Edinburg, Texas. After spending most of the match in the ring
he was said to be more and more sluggish as the contest wore on, eventually making a hot
tag to Drew and immediately walking out through the crowd flanked by security - he did not
return to the ring to celebrate when his team eventually won.
Rey Mysterio stepped in to take the spot last night.
Sean Ross Sapp of Fightful said: “Unfortunately can confirm PWInsider's report that Jeff Hardy
was sent home after what was called a "rough night" for him, that became evident as last
night's live event match went on.” There has been no update on Hardy’s condition
beyond that from WWE or the man himself, but here’s hoping he’s doing well.
Here’s something weird We may finally have a reason why The Rock
could not appear at Survivor Series despite the entire show being a celebration of his
debut in WWE and the golden egg he laid for Vince.
The Rock has been too busy being the shadowy force behind the next season of Fornite.
At the end of Season 2 Dwayne Johnson was revealed to be a character called The Foundation
and helped to flip the island the game is set on, essentially creating a new map.
The Rock, in his role as The Foundation, joins characters from Gears of War and Spider-Man
as pop culture figures who are making the jump to Epic’s world conquering battle royal/weird
event space for this season of the game. And look at him, he’s all smooth and stuff.
Right enough of this war game, it’s time to head over to Tempest for a full review
of NXT WarGames from last night!