Coming up, Bray Wyatt to AEW next week? Huge updates on the potential future of Dynamite
and Rampage! Has WWE cancelled an NXT 2.0 gimmick following backlash and loads more.
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of our 10th anniversary, that’s right WrestleTalk has been talking wrestling for 10 years now.
So if you didn’t send us an anniversary gift, we’ll take a click of the subscribe
button in lieu of a card. Onwards and upwards though, onto the wrestle
chat. And with AEW’s current roster packed to
the rafters with great talent, squeezing in even more signees might not necessarily have
crossed your mind. But the rumour mill has been churning and
after Bryan Danielson and Adam Cole arrived in the company, talk turned to the recently
released Bray Wyatt, aka Windham Rotunda. And a new update from WrestlingNews.co suggests
he could be debuting for them as early as next week.
The quick maths kids amongst you will have worked out already that Bray was released
on July 31st and it is currently only late September, so his 90 day non-compete clause
is still in effect. Well WrestlingNews.co is reporting that Bray
has the option to waive that clause, meaning if he chose to do so he wouldn’t be paid
for any of the 90 days but would be free to sign wherever he wants.
Dave Meltzer reported last week that there is interest in Wyatt from both AEW and Impact,
but the reason people are leaning towards AEW for next week is because the show emanates
from Rochester, New York, the home of Wyatt’s close friend, the late, great Brodie Lee.
This all needs to be taken with the heaviest pinch of salt for now, but Wyatt debuting
in Lee’s hometown does feel like a touching tribute.
That’s not the only interesting AEW news to come out as a report from Variety has changed
what we thought was going on with Dynamite and Rampage in 2022.
Previous report have said that both shows would be moving to TBS during 2022 - and the
Variety report says that Dynamite will officially be switching channel on January 5th. Which
was kind of what we assumed would happen. But according to the report, Rampage isn’t
moving any more, that show will be staying on TNT.
Whether that puts a dent in AEW’s momentum or just gives them greater exposure remains
to be seen. Because at the minute things are really on
the up and up for AEDUB. Wednesday’s Grand Slam show not only had
a bonafide match of the year contender to open up as Kenny Omega and Bryan Danielson
battled to a time limit draw, but the show also drew good numbers for the company.
According to WrestleNomics’ Brandon Thurston, Grand Slam brought in 1.273 million viewers
and a 0.48 rating in the 18-49 demographic. For comparison’s sake Raw drew 1.973 million
viewers and also got an 0.49. Those figures make Grand Slam AEW’s third
highest rated show in terms of viewers and demo, and helped it rank number one in cable
originals for the day. Over the fence and down the rainbow bridge
at NXT 2.0 something weird is going on. Tuesday’s show saw Joe Gacy debut a new gimmick which
was supposed to ‘pin the woke left’, and that’s according to bastion of common sense
reporting and professional s*** stirrers, if the s*** was being stirred by a bigger,
smellier s***, Fox News. Gacy’s gimmick following in the footsteps
of fake antifa Retribution and eco warrior Daniel Bryan was supposed to be a heel, and
cut a promo about microaggressions, the ring being a safe space and male privilege before
being beaten handily by Cameron Grimes - a kayfabe millionaire, I wonder what this story
means. The segment caught some mainstream attention
with the aforementioned Fox News, Murdoch corp sibling the New York Post and ugly cousin
from across the pond The Daily Mail all running headlines about the promo.
The Fox headline even described Gacy as a “controversial new wrestler’, and seemingly
WWE didn’t like this sort of attention as all traces of the segment have been removed
from social media, the WWE website and YouTube. So does this spell the end for NXT’s PC
Principal? Did Vince love it though? I bet he did.
NXT was also gutted quite recently, with a glut of talent being released from the brand
and tangentially 205 Live. With non-compete clauses coming up a bunch
of former WWE talent have just announced their free agency:
Like Tony Nese who said “free agency begins now”.
Ariya Daivari who was looking forward to “new promotions, new opportunities, new fans and
new goals’. And the former Killian Dain and best Wavelength
player I’ve ever met, Big D himself. Damo said: “As of tomorrow I am a free agent.
Thanks to everyone for all the support. I cannot wait to get back in the ring & prove
myself night after night. I have a few final legal hurdles before I can compete but it
will not be long now!” Hope everyone enjoys their new status and
gets lots of lovely bookings! Someone getting plenty of offers according
to this bit of gossip is Britt Baker. The DMD’s boyfriend Adam Cole may have recently
joined AEW, but before that was obviously one of the kingpins over at NXT.
Speaking with Renee Paquette on her Oral Sessions podcast he said that NXT officials had made
it clear to him that they were interested in bringing Britt Baker in, but that never
came to fruition. Fightful Select have more on this saying that
WWE/NXT would have made a play for Baker when her AEW contract came up this year, but instead
she signed a new deal to stay with AEW long term.
It’s said that no formal conversations happened between Baker and the E to avoid contract
tampering. Speaking of tampering - Chris Jericho was
thinking about meddling with the winning formula of his AEW faction.
Speaking with Stephanie Chase Jez said that after his program with MJF his original plan
was to break up the Inner Circle: “My idea was for us to respectfully disband
and go on our own ways. Tony (Khan) didn’t want to do that. He said, ‘Why would you
want to disband? You don’t have to be together all the time, but you’re still the Inner
Circle’.” “It’s good for us to go our own ways and
not be in each other’s business every week. It’s good that we’re still aligned. For
me, I thought it was a good time for us to go our own way, but we can still do that without
officially disbanding the band or breaking up the band.”
Makes sense and has worked recently as Jericho and Hager confront the men of the year, Santana
and Ortiz have been helping out the Lucha Bros and Sammy Guevara has been hanging with
Fuego del Sol. TBF a similar thing is going on with the New
Day as Kofi Kingston and Xavier Woods continue to team in the tag division and Big E has
ascended the roster to become WWE Champion! But with E, a Smackdown signee, now holding
Raw’s top title people keep asking what does this mean for your brand loyalty Mr Langston.
Speaking to Tony Pike & Rick Ucchino of Cincy 360 he said:
“In my mind though, Raw is my show. The WWE Championship means Raw is my show. I’m
the king of the hill there. Right now, I’ve been going back and forth a little bit, but
I do think that will be over soon. I want to focus on making Raw the best show it can
be. I take pride in that. A lot of times, the viewership and the quality of the show,
the onus is on the WWE Champion.” So sounds like once the Draft hits then Big
E’s Raw status will be set in stone and we may potentially see less crossover with
Smacky D. One last fun bit of news. Bryan Danielson
has been doing the rounds since joining AEW and some fun WWE tidbits have come out.
Speaking to Sports Illustrated Bryan said that his Elimination Chamber match with Drew
Gulak made Vince “so mad” and not for the reason you think!
He said: “Vince is very protective of me in almost like a fatherly type way. I was
wrestling Drew Gulak at Elimination Chamber right before the pandemic. I took a German
suplex that went a little bit wrong and I landed on my head. When I got to the back,
Vince was so mad at me and he was like, it wasn’t anything about the performance. After
he got mad at me, I said, ‘Was the match okay?’. ‘Yeah, the match was great, but
you can’t do that’.” I think it’s nice to know that Vince has
the same reaction to Bryan’s head bumps as we all do and I really hope Vince didn’t
watch Bryan vs Kenny Omega.