In this WrestleTalk News, the weird reason why Judgement Day was split up, two top WWE
stars upset, the McMahon family infighting and more…
Subscribe and enable notifications to always on for daily wrestling news videos, like WWE’s
latest evil plan to make new stars: clone Randy Orton.
With Cody Rhodes potentially out of action for up to eight months recovering from his
torn pec, Randy Orton working a lighter schedule and Ted Dibiase Jr being sued by the state
of Mississippi - actually true story, WWE is currently without any former Legacy members
to face Roman Reigns.
So as WWE have done time and time again, when your back is against the wall, just try to
unsuccessfully replicate what worked in the past.
New WWE signing David Bostian managed to get himself a lot of internet buzz purely for
looking like Randy Orton.
He made his in-ring debut before last night’s episode of NXT 2.0 using the typically boring
name Myles Borne, where he was defeated by Guru Raaj.
The match will air on Friday’s episode of NXT Level Up, for the two of you that watch
that.
Now we just need a young John Cena clone, and we can make them feud forever!
But secretly swabbing wrestler DNA and growing new, faster versions of them in lab isn’t
the only way to fix your talent depth issues.
You can also haphazardly break up your top heel faction.
Despite only being a full act for a few weeks, teasing more members to join, Judgement Day
turned in on itself on Monday’s episode of Raw, when Damien Priest and Rhea Ripley
sided with Finn Balor to beat up the man that brought them all together, Edge.
You can watch our review of that insane angle by clicking the link in the video description
below.
It was seemingly a very last minute decision, as you can probably tell with Edge’s music
and namebar graphic still being used on the show despite Balor kicking him out the group.
It was first speculated this could either be because Edge is injured - although his
character could easily just take a more managerial role while he recovers - or because WWE suddenly
sound themselves in desperate need of a top babyface on Raw with Cody out injured.
PWInsider corroborated the latter idea when they reported Edge was now being listed internally
as a babyface.
But a new report has come out from Fightful Select that suggests Edge was booted from
his own faction because of a creative disagreement backstage.
Apparently Balor was pitched to join Judgement Day, turning heel in the process, several
days before Hell in a Cell.
In this storyline, there was no mention of Edge leaving the faction.
Instead, Balor would likely become yet another one of Edge’s misused superstars who have
seen the purple light.
The reason Edge left the group, then, might be because of the more “supernatural route”
WWE wanted to take the Judgement Day faction - a classic Vince McMahon move, mistaking
anything dark with ‘ooo let’s give them magical powers’.
Edge was reportedly opposed to the supernatural direction, probably because that’s not the
point of the faction - having a more psychologically dark tone than the actual macabre, and seeing
how badly received Priest disappearing from the ring to end his AJ Styles match in April
went down.
If spooky spooky really is the route WWE wants to go with this act, we can probably expect
its new leader, Finn Balor, to become an actual demon soon.
What do you think of the Judgement Day storyline?
Let me know in the comments.
Sunday night saw one of the most visually impressive feats of wrestler badassery in
recent times, as Cody Rhodes fought through the immense pain of his pectoral muscle being
torn off the bone to wrestle a 25 minute Hell in a Cell match against Seth Rollins.
No one asked for this, but Cody has now posted a series of Instagram stories that show the
spreading progress of the internal bruising. 1 - It first started out as a little purple
blotch.
Barely a nipple cripple.
Aw and look its Ghost the doggy in the background.
2 - ok, yes, the second picture shows it spreading to the armpit.
But somehow in the sexiest way possible.
3 - yep.
Alright.
That’s starting to look like a blotchy infection of the venom symbiote now.
4 - oh god it’s taking over your flesh.
5 - and there’s the final bruising in full Hell in a Cell glory.
Watch Vince McMahon walk around backstage trying to yank unsuspecting wrestlers’ arms
backwards, because that bruise has directly led to ratings!
WrestleNomics is reporting Monday’s episode of Raw pulled in 1.87 million viewers, which
is the highest total viewership since the Raw after WrestleMania two months ago.
This was up 25% from the previous week’s episode, and was helped specifically by the
near 2 million viewership Cody’s hour one promo received.
This was despite being up against tough competition with the NHL Playoffs, and, very impressively,
is up 232,000 viewers year on year - although last June we were still in the Thunderdome.
A lot can change in a year.
The unthinkable can happen.
Cody, AEW’s founding member, is now in WWE.
Jason and Krishell both got together and broke up in Selling Sunset.
And now Vince McMahon is seemingly turning on his own children.
Watch yesterday’s WrestleTalk News for the full story - link’s in the video description
below - but the recap version is: Stephanie McMahon announced she’s taking a leave of
absence several weeks ago, and then WWE allegedly planted a story about how she wasn’t good
at her job, so Vince pushed his daughter out of the company, in trade journal Business
Insider - a significant step up from just burying her to a ‘dirtsheet’ PWInsider
or Wrestling Observer.
Both Fightful and Dave Meltzer have since reported this is not true, citing sources
close to both Nick Khan and Stephanie that the decision to step back from WWE was her
own.
Meltzer went one further, saying his sources think the sudden burying of Stephanie is because
Vince doesn’t like it when you leave the company on your own accord.
It certainly fits in the WWE playbook of spreading stories about released wrestlers having always
been ‘difficult to work with’ - like Keith Lee and Bray Wyatt - when it seems more of
a way to harm their chances outside the promotion.
Call me a romantic, I just never thought Vince would do that to his own daughter.
That’s not to say there aren’t a few smoldering embers in all the smoke.
Fightful note that some WWE employees had commented on performance issues with Stephanie,
one of them being hiring Claudine Lilien as WWE Head of Global Sales and Partnerships.
Fightful reports Lilien was let go by McMahon, who didn’t think she was right for the position,
which was blamed on Stephanie.
And now in a move as efficiently ruthless as being kicked out the event WhatsApp group
when you say you’re no longer attending, Fightful add that Stephanie has now been removed
from internal production emails as of this week’s Raw.
But Stephanie isn’t the only backstage drama in WWE.
WWE have announced a series of convention appearances for their stars in Texas and Virginia,
promoting the likes of The Undertaker, Seth Rollins, Edge, Kevin Owens, The Bellas and
Rey Mysterio.
And also Carmella, although you wouldn’t know that going by WWE’s tweet, because
she’s neither on the poster or tagged in the copy, prompting her to reply.
“ILL BE THERE TOO!!!!!!!”
in all caps with a gif saying ‘um, hello’ Which isn’t that out of the ordinary.
Wrestlers, especially heels, post worked outrage tweets like this all the time.
Where this is different is Carmella made a follow up post, retweeting a fan comment that
says: “They always forget bout you and I’m sick
of it, Give Mella a mic and let her tell how she really feels!”
- with Carmella adding ‘this four fingers pointing at the tweet emoji.
Maybe similar to how Alexa Bliss was publicly frustrated with her lack of creative over
WrestleMania, Carmella hasn’t had a match since WrestleMania 38, and has seen her tag
team with Zelina Vega break up, get back together, then put on ice with Vega’s injury.
Becky Lynch’s Twitter game, however, is far more likely a work.
After Monday’s Raw, where she was beaten by Dana Brooke for the 24/7 title, Lynch has
blacked out her social media on Twitter and Instagram, changing her bio to simply read
‘unknown’.
Wrestling just can’t get enough of the worky mcworkshoots right now, but, in truth, there
is only one worky mcworkshoot to rule them all.
In an update to the MJF AEW pipebomb fallout, Fightful is reporting the Saturday fan meet-and-greet
no show was most likely a shoot.
As in that part is real.
Sean Ross Sapp noted he heard from people involved “that you absolutely do not work
if you’re anybody in the company and that Tony Khan would not work”.
Likely reflecting the working environment in AEW, those people’s initial reaction
on hearing that MJF hadn’t shown up to the meet-and-greet wasn’t anger, it was concern.
“They had genuine concern for MJF’s safety.
We’re told at one point there’s discussion about having his hotel room kind of busted
in to make sure he was safe.”
Sean continued, saying MFJ no showing meant “a couple of wrestlers had to stay over
time and were not happy” and that it ended up costing AEW $10,000 - again making it far
more likely at least this part was real.
AEW talent Jake The Snake Roberts, no stranger to all time great promos, has shared his thoughts
on MJF’s follow up pipebomb to DDP, speaking on their podcast:
“For me, it made me sick.
It really did.
I would love to see what the locker room is like.
The bomb that he dropped is going to have repercussions with people.”
Roberts went onto say how he was shocked MJF no-showed the signing, because of how important
the fans are to Tony Khan.
MJF has also been removed from AEW’s show intros, website roster page and merchandise,
while other reports say Warner Bros Discovery have specifically requested him be dropped
from all promotion work going forward.
It’s the shootiest worked work shoot work we’ve had in quite some time.
Find out more by watching on…