Laurie is off today, I assume because he wants to spend all the time he can with the Jam
That Jampionship, because once Tempest and I beat Luke & Oli this Sunday, we’ll go
on to Hell in a Cell, beat him for the title, and I will become your new Jam That Jampion.
Anyway, the news.
One of the most newsworthy points in the entirety of the wrestling industry at the end of 2020
and 2021 has been AEW’s partnerships with both Impact and New Japan Pro Wrestling, with
the Invisible Hand Don Callis aligning with Kenny Omega, Omega becoming Impact World Champion,
and KENTA showing up on AEW Dynamite to challenge Jon Moxley for New Japan’s United States
title.
This has knocked down the supposed Forbidden Door - Forbidden Door, title of your AEW PPV
- allowing the potential for dream cross-promotion matches as well as a continuation of New Japan
storylines with some of their former top stars, such as Kenny Omega and The Young Bucks facing
the likes of Okada and Ibushi.
But not so fast AEW and New Japan fans, because there may be a WWE sized obstacle that’s
come directly in the way of those plans.
According to the latest Wrestling Observer Newsletter, WWE President Nick Khan, who earlier
this week became one of the most powerful men in the company after their drastic backstage
releases, allowing Khan to consolidate several different departments under his watch, has
been “in talks with New Japan Pro Wrestling about WWE being the exclusive American partner
with the promotion”.
As of right now “there are no indications where talks are at” but “it would include
WWE sending talent and WWE top stars being allowed to work in New Japan”.
Of course this isn’t a purely altruistic partnership venture for WWE, because it reportedly
is “also to keep New Japan, which pre-pandemic was the third strongest company in the world,
away from working with other companies which could strengthen the opposition”.
This would stop any sort of relationship between New Japan and AEW, sealing that Forbidden
Door right back up.
But it’s not just AEW that would be hit, as New Japan has been working with Impact
Wrestling, and has relationships with CMLL and Ring of Honor.
This would potentially have knock-on effects for other promotions such as RevPro, who,
while based in the UK so in theory wouldn’t be subject to the exclusive American deal,
have relationships with both New Japan and Ring of Honor.
So you’d think that WWE wouldn’t be too keen to have New Japan talent working with
Ring of Honor talent at all, even if it took place in a UK-based promotion.
If these talks do continue and succeed, this could lead to some fantastic stories with
the likes of AJ Styles and Shinsuke Nakamura based off their history with the company.
Though most likely they’d bring Okada over for a 4-month feud with Baron Corbin where
he’d lose clean multiple times and now I’ve made myself sad.
New Japan’s El Phantasmo, who’s been working in Impact Wrestling lately, commented on the
report by tweeting: “wait, who's NICK Khan? have I been texting the wrong Khan guy this
whole time??”
What would you want to see out of a WWE and New Japan working relationship?
Let me know in the comments because I’ll be replying to people FROM OUTTA NOWHERE.
Someone who may need a new working relationship soon is Paige, because she’s found herself
in some hot water following a recent Twitch stream.
Paige’s Twitch channel, sarayaofficial, has been banned from the platform and is currently
offline as of the time of writing this news.
The ban seemingly came after she did a watchalong of the Jim Carrey movie, Dumb and Dumber.
She had also previously streamed the movie Labyrinth.
Twitch has been the subject of some strong DMCA copyright strikes in recent months, and
on top of this, their Terms of Service state that copyrighted material is not allowed to
be streamed.
Paige was a partner on Twitch, and made a significant amount of money from streaming
on the platform, however it’s unknown if this is a temporary or permanent ban as of
right now, but stay tuned to wrestletalk.com for the latest.
Paige isn’t the only one who’s found themselves without their primary source of income, as
there’s been yet another high profile release from WWE…
Yesterday WWE announced that they had come to terms on the release of former lead commentator
Tom Phillips.
It was originally thought that Phillips had also been part of the other releases from
earlier in the week, however this is reportedly not the case.
According to Mike Johnson of PWInsider, Phillips was on-camera for today’s episode of 205
Live, which was pre-taped earlier this week.
Phillips was also backstage at this week’s NXT episode, where he reportedly worked as
a producer for the show.
Phillips was the previous Raw play by play commentator, but was replaced by Adnan Virk,
who himself has also been released from the company.
Instead Jimmy Smith will be taking up that role as of this Monday.
We’ll always have the legend of Big Tom.
But regardless of any WWE releases as of late, it’s full steam ahead for gearing up for
SummerSlam, and there’s a whole lot of uncertainty surrounding the Biggest Party of the Summer
right now.
It had previously been reported that John Cena had been in talks with WWE to return
to the company on their first show back in front of live fans on SmackDown on July 16,
but according to new reports, this would be for much more than just a one off cameo to
welcome fans back.
According to the latest Wrestling Observer Newsletter, “WWE has a main event and a
guest host to make it stadium-worthy”, and that main event is currently speculated to
be John Cena vs Roman Reigns for the Universal Championship.
Reportedly, “people within the company have talked of Reigns vs. Cena as the match but
nobody has confirmed it”.
This would most certainly feel like a stadium-worthy SummerSlam main event, and would arguably
be one of the biggest matches that WWE could put on right now, with the only one supercedeing
that being potentially Roman Reigns vs The Rock.
Cena vs Reigns happened a few years back, designed to be Cena’s big passing of the
torch to Reigns, so having this match happen at SummerSlam sounds quite lovely, and I would
be really really into it.
Plus this would be a match for Cena’s record-breaking 17th world title win, as well their history
together, as well as Reigns’ Tribal Chief character, oof.
That sounds good.
However it’s still not clear where exactly SummerSlam will take place, as recent reports
suggested it would be the Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas.
However, this may now be changing, as a new report from Andrew Zarian of the MatMen Podcast
has indicated that SummerSlam may be taking place on a Saturday this year, on August 21.
Coincidentally, Manny Pacquiao vs Eroll Spence Jr. is taking place at the Allegiant Stadium
on August 21, which means WWE physically couldn’t hold the event there if they wanted to.
Other locations have been thrown around, as Sports Business Journal listed, alongside
the Allegiant Stadium, Hard Rock Stadium in Miami, SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California,
NRG Stadium in Houston, MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, and Nissan Stadium
in Nashville as potential locations for the show.
However, according to the latest Wrestling Observer Newsletter, the potential for WWE
to hold SummerSlam on a Saturday “would seem to make no sense because it would put
it head-to-head against Pacquiao vs. Spence, and the combination of unfamiliar night for
WWE PPVs, which have been on Sundays for more than a decade, and the boxing competition
would hurt viewership greatly.”
Fightful Select is reporting that these differing reports surrounding dates and locations have
all actually been true at one point or another, as things have changed rapidly within WWE,
and there has been lots of back and forth surrounding the location.
But could we be seeing a huge angle take place at the show?
Like, I don’t know, a Brock Lesnar return?
If SummerSlam wasn’t big enough with the potential of John Cena vs Roman Reigns, then
perhaps we need a Brock Lesnar return thrown in there as well.
Heyman recently appeared on SportsTalk790, and dropped a little hint that we might be
seeing Lesnar in WWE once fans are back in attendance:
“Maybe, maybe he has been waiting for the live events, and maybe he’ll choose Houston
to make that return… or maybe not, because Brock Lesnar is going to do whatever Brock
Lesnar wants to do.”
If he does come back to set up a feud with Reigns, that also sounds quite delightful
just purely based off the interactions with Paul Heyman and whose side he would align
with.
However it’s another former Universal Champion that the creative team for Raw reportedly
have their eyes on.
Finn Balor made his return to NXT in October 2019, capturing the NXT Championship for a
lengthy second reign before succumbing to Karrion Kross.
Having just lost in the rematch to Kross, fans online have been speculating that this
may be the end of Balor’s run in NXT before he heads back up to the main roster, with
the Irishman even stating in interviews he’d like to go back to the main roster at some
point.
Well it seems his wishes may be about to come to fruition, as WrestleVotes is reporting
on Twitter that “members of the RAW creative team have asked for him for months now.
No edict has come down from the top yet yanking him from Orlando.
The NXT crew adores Balor so unless the main roster has major plans for him, I’d think
he’s OK where he is.”
What those ‘major plans’ could look like is anyone’s guess, but returning to Raw
to immediately start vying for the WWE Championship sounds like a good start to me.
But championship plans seem to change on the fly in WWE these days, as another example
of just that has come to light recently.
Natalya recently appeared on Renee Paquette’s Oral Sessions podcast, where she revealed
that she was originally going to go into a feud with Sasha Banks earlier this year, but
that all changed once Bianca Belair won the Royal Rumble.
“I was so excited about wrestling Sasha because I think she’s one of the greatest
women’s wrestlers in the world, if not the best.
TJ said to me, ‘You and Tamina need to be a team.
You would be perfect together.’
He pulled up a picture and showed the family history, Owen with Yokozuna, the Headshrinkers,
the Bulldogs, the Hart Foundation.
‘Look at all the greatness your families have done together.
You guys should be a team.
You should pitch it.’
I went from being sad not working Sasha because I had all these ideas and we were training
together and Sasha lit this fire in me.
Then I had this new fire in me of teaming with Tamina.”
The pair are now women’s tag team champions, so hey it’s not all bad news when plans
get changed is it?