NXT Title change, singer on Smackdown, NXT live event notes, Show in action again, female superstar back soon, Bucks sign new ROH/NJPW deal, WWE scouting NXT women, post-Mania Raw note, Carmella update, guests at NXT Japan, no pre-shows this week, and Questions on paid coverage, Zeus vs. Abdullah, Charlotte having the same impact her dad did, veterans volunteering to do the job, and why WWE repeats venues

Shinsuke Nakamura won back the NXT Championship in Japan. I assume Joe might get his rematch in San Antonio to wrap things up for good and presumably start the countdown to Joe joining one of the other brands.

- Shinsuke discussed winning the title again. I wouldn't assume they did this to one-up/draw attention away from ROH's title change, but that could have played a part in the decision.

- The match will be shown on this week's NXT.

Singer Sophia Grace will be part of Smackdown this week, with the story she's been invited by Nikki Bella. Apparently Nikki and Grace worked together on something.

At an NXT live event in Florida:
- Jack Gallagher beat Noam Dar
- Tian Bing beat Jeet Rama
- The Bollywood Boyz lost to Angelo Dawkins and Kenneth Crawford
- Rich Swann retained the cruiserweight championship against Kona Reeves (formerly Noah Potjes)
- Tommy End beat Lince Dorado
- Cedric Alexander and TJ Perkins beat Alexander Wolfe and Big Damo
-- So, with a lot of bigger names in Japan, they got plenty of cruiserweight action and a number of newer names. It's good for them all to get experience like that!

Big Show beat Rusev at a Raw show in New Mexico. He should be back on TV soon, potentially feuding with Braun Strowman. Then the countdown begins to facing Shaq at WM33 in what could be Show's last Mania. How much he steps in the ring after WM33 is somewhat up in the air. I'm under the impression he's still under contract through the end of 2017 at least. He'll presumably be an ambassador primarily, but I would be surprised if he doesn't continue doing matches here and there on international tours and such until his current deal wraps up.

Tamina Snuka has been cleared to return to the ring, and could be on TV as soon as Monday's Raw. She's expected to join that brand. I think she has something of a ceiling there since Raw already has Nia, but maybe they'll do the obvious feud between the two and ship one or the other off to Smackdown at the next draft. I'm also curious how much longer Tamina will wrestle. She'll be 39 next month and just got off a lengthy recovery.

The Young Bucks have signed a new two-year deal with ROH and NJPW, which is a little surprising as I expected WWE would make them a pretty good offer to jump ship. While I wouldn't assume there's much left for them to accomplish outside WWE, they've got a lot of freedom to do their own thing and can make a good amount of money working their own schedule. And they won't exactly be old when that deal expires, so they could easily still join the company in 2019. I'm curious what effect, if any, this will have on Adam Cole and Kenny Omega's futures. I think Omega might still be pretty locked in to his deal, but Cole's current ROH contract is coming due in April or so.

WWE could use a number of NXT women on their year-end holiday tours. That could more or less be a tryout to see who among them joins the main roster in 2017.

The post-WM33 Raw has sold out. That should be a big night!

Carmella got a legitimate black eye on Smackdown. At least she didn't end up like Austin Aries!

Kazuchika Okada, YOSHI-HASHI, and Yoshihiro Takayama visited at the NXT show in Japan. I'd definitely love to see the Rainmaker in WWE.

There are now pre-shows scheduled for Raw and Smackdown this week. That's interesting. I wonder if that's a one-time thing or they're going to shutter them entirely.

For my take on yesterday's PWInsider.com questions:
1. No promotion pays them to cover their shows. They just happen to be in the area for some events/attend some live. That said, ROH has run ads on their site for quite some time and PWInsider runs a lot of press releases/advertises a lot of content from them. They're free to do that.

2. Ahh I miss the '80s. I mean, I wasn't around for them, but they apparently had some fun ridiculousness. I hope Zeus gets in the HoF someday.

3. That's a REALLY tall task for anyone to achieve, and it's way too early to say. Hopefully she does do pretty well for herself, though.

4. He probably can make those kinds of suggestions, but the bookers have their own ideas for when/why someone should go over. I'd imagine part of why Kane has lasted so long in the company is not being a headache to the writers. And it's not like Kane hasn't put over a LOT of talent over the years.

5. "Hey this show did pretty well here this year. Let's do the same exact thing next year" is pretty easy to do. If they know they can draw money at a certain place at a certain event, people there are easy to work with, etc., it's best for business and all that to go that route.

More wrestling tomorrow.