Will Ospreay is going to join Marty Scurll as a regular for ROH once everything is cleared from a visa standpoint. Both men start with the promotion in November when ROH heads to the UK. Ospreay remains under contract to NJPW; he's just being booked to work ROH when not doing tours for that promotion.
Gran Metalik is booked in Mexico through the end of October. He doesn't want to move until he finishes his bookings there, as he would like to return to Mexico at some point. That's a good attitude.
Big Show and Mark Henry are being moved into more "ambassador" like roles, meaning they'll be wrestling less. Show is still expected to face Shaquille O'Neal at WM33, and could still wrestle somewhat regularly in 2017, but he isn't expected to wrestle through the end of 2018. Henry signed a three-year deal in 2013, and there's been no word of him getting a new contract, so it's somewhat up in the air how much longer he'll be officially considered a wrestler.
WWE is looking to do a dual-branded show the night after Thanksgiving. Whether that's just a live event or if it will be turned into a Network special is unknown. That's the week following Survivor Series.
WWE is currently in the midst of a large tryout session featuring such names as:
- Eddie Kingston, who has 14 years of experience and more than 650 matches to his name. Kingston is a regular for CHIKARA and HOH.
- Eddie Kingston, who has 14 years of experience and more than 650 matches to his name. Kingston is a regular for CHIKARA and HOH.
- Former UFC competitor turned independent wrestler Shayna Beszler.
- Su Yung, who has eight years of experience and worked briefly as Sonia in FCW. A lot has changed since those days on both ends.
- Heidi Lovelace, who has five years of experience and is another known commodity on the indie scene.
- Cedric Rougeau, son of The Mountie.
- Joseph Fatu, son of Tama/The Tonga Kid. I'm starting to think WWE has some kind of contract to sign a number of Samoans every so often. The Anao'i family is on track to produce enough wrestlers to have its own Royal Rumble.
- Jeff Parker and Matt Lee, who perform as 3.0. The duo have 14 years of experience individually and worked with The Revival on NXT TV earlier in the year.
- Former Buffalo Bills player Corey Knox
- Ariel Monroe, who recently lost to Nia Jax on Raw.
- Jessica James, who has ten years of experience and has worked with ROH on a number of occasions in their women's division.
-- They've got quite the class there. It's good to see them looking to fill the ranks of the women's divisions.
--- WWE also announced a European tryout in November and an Australian tryout in December. They're going all out with trying to pick up good talent.
Should WWE purchase TNA, they would likely shutter the company ASAP due to the debt it has accrued. WWE would take possession of the video library and likely bring in some names who are under contract there, but there'd be no real reason to continue the brand when they can just use the roster to add to Raw, Smackdown, and NXT. I wouldn't expect any kind of invasion angle, especially considering the audience TNA has compared to WWE. TNA's following is closer to NXT's than to Raw or Smackdown.
There's an idea to do a long movie featuring the Hardy Boys, presumably in the vein of Final Deletion. As much as I'm enjoying their characters and angles, I think that could be overkill. TNA needs to try to get other things to catch fire instead of milking that to the point of no return.
Should Billy Corgan buy TNA, the plan is to fully rebrand it as Impact Wrestling. That's probably the best move. The product has changed since the TNA heyday, and that would symbolize a new direction.
Should Aroluxe Marketing gain control of TNA, they'd cut back to just a few sets of TV tapings a year in order to save costs. That strategy has its pros and cons, as we saw with the World Title Series days. Talent working a lot of matches on back-to-back days over the course of a week or more would be pretty grueling.
Taeler Hendrix vs. Sumie Sakai is set for this weekend's ROH TV taping. I assume that will just be for YouTube.
Adam Cole vs. Silas Young is set for ROH's October 22 live event. Good to see Silas acknowledged in that way.
ROH will tape a TV episode consisting of WOH matches at the October 29 taping. ODB is booked for that date.
ROH has plans for an eventual women's championship, but we won't see it in the immediate future.
Billy Corgan discussed TNA's future on ESPN Radio Thursday:
- Corgan doesn't believe Vince is buying TNA at this moment. WWE would have to buy Corgan out in order to have full control of the company.
- Everyone involved wants BFG to happen this weekend, but the funding needs to be there. Billy doesn't want to do a deal where the parties involved are in the same position in a few months, fighting for funding and ownership of the company.
-- The stakes are really high going into this next set of TV tapings.
New York State has updated its rules regarding the regulation of pro wrestling. They take effect in January:
- Promotions must put up $20,000 for a license in order to be an official promoter, meaning they can't run under another promotion's banner. This could make it really costly for smaller companies.
- Events must also have an ambulance with at least one paramedic. A great idea, but expensive for smaller promotions.
- Performers can no longer verbally abuse or threaten the crowd. Laaaaaame.
- An 11 p.m. curfew has been set for shows. WWE might not be affected by this (or are willing to pay a fine), but smaller shows have to be done by then. This means shows running long will have main events cut short. That's also ridiculous.
- Table spots are unofficially banned. The State Commission just became the biggest heels in the business.
- The athletic commission recently tried to stop an intergender match for being against state law, but no such rule exists and the match was continued. Damn right it was. This is AMERICA. USA. USA. USA.
-- Some promotion (HOH?) needs to do a Right to Censor kind of angle playing off all these dumb rules. Talk about some great heat. Unfortunately, the faces have their work cut out for them in coming out ahead on this issue.
Kota Ibushi will team with Hideo Itami in the Dusty Classic. That should be AWESOME. I'm glad Kota's still appearing in NXT.
- Other teams announced for the Dusty Classic:
-- The Revival
-- Andrade "Cien" Almas/Cedric Alexander
-- Johnny Gargano/Tommaso Ciampa (#DIY)
-- Bobby Roode/Tye Dillinger
-- Tino Sabbatelli/Riddick Moss
Paige is preparing for neck surgery. I hope she comes back and delivers at a high level. She's been in a rut for a while.
WWE is not believed to be in current conversations to buy TNA. It's entirely possible WWE will wait things out and try to get things at the right time for the right price. So, it looks like things are going to continue for TNA for the time being, with Dixie Carter, Billy Corgan, and Aroluxe (among others?) scrambling for control of the rights and finances.
Dixie Carter tweeted in relation to recent news stories about TNA. The Bound For Glory broadcast is going to be really monumental one way or another.
Smackdown will tour Saudi Arabia on November 3 and 4 before a big WWE tour in Europe. They keep busy on the road.
Bianca Blair made her first in-ring appearance for NXT recently, losing to Aliyah at a live event.
Elias Samson returned to the ring at an NXT live event recently, teaming with Sawyer Fulton and Alexander Wolfe in a main event loss to Tye Dillinger and TM-61.
Bin Wang did not work the recent NXT live event despite being advertised. He didn't appear at all. No word on went on there.
For my take on yesterday's PWInsider.com questions:
1. I would think WWE could pursue legal actions if he deliberately tried to play off a name they hold the rights to. If he legally changed his name to Cody Rhodes, he'd be in the clear, but is it really worth it if he's not planning on wrestling long-term?
2. That probably has something to do with it. No need to potentially set themselves up for a lawsuit.
3. WWE has a lot of matches to book, and a lot of wrestlers to keep strong, so they do that thing a lot.
4. Getting high with RVD and Sabu and discussing Ancient Aliens sounds AMAZING.
5. I don't think Rollins is intentionally reckless. He just does a lot of moves that have higher chances of hurting someone because that's what gets over with the modern "smark" audience in an age when everyone knows wrestling is fake.
More wrestling tomorrow.
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