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June 13, 2016
WWE Announces All 32 Cruiserweight Classic Names
As seen below, WWE has announced all 32 competitors for The Cruiserweight Classic that starts taping from Full Sail University later this month on June 23rd:
* Kota Ibushi
* Tajiri
* Gran Metalik
* Zack Sabre Jr.
* Noam Dar
* Da Mack
* Zumbi
* Clement Petiot
* Harv Sihra
* Gurv Sihra
* Fabian Aichner
* Brian Kendrick
* Rich Swann
* Cedric Alexander
* Akira Tozawa
* Jack Gallagher
* Tony Nese
* Johnny Gargano
* Tommaso Ciampa
* Ho Ho Lun
* TJ Perkins
* Drew Gulak
* Anthony Bennett
* Tyson Dux
* Lince Dorado
* Sean Malura
* Raul Mendoza
* Kenneth Johnson
* Alejandro Saez
* Damien Slater
* Ariya Daivari
* Jason Lee
June 12, 2016
New TNA Minority Owner Revealed
Smashing Pumpkins frontman and TNA's Senior Producer of Creative & Talent Development Billy Corgan is set to be TNA's new minority owner.
Corgan started working with TNA in April 2015 but is now moving into a new role after purchasing a minority stake in the company. PWInsider notes that some sources say the deal is done while another says it's moving in that direction but not 100% complete.
Dixie Carter will retain majority ownership, something that she did not want to budge on during negotiations.
New details on Netflix’s upcoming women’s wrestling series GLOW
Diva Dirt recently sat down with a reliable source close to the development team behind Netflix’s new women’s wrestling series titled GLOW (Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling) to find out a little more about the program that we’re all so excited about.
GLOW tells the tale of a struggling actress in the 1980s that lands a role on a women’s wrestling product. Here she struggles through the many highs and lows of the (not so) glamorous world of wrestling. The show is “loosely based” on the real-life wrestling brand of the same name.
Something that has enticed many fans is the fact that the creator of Orange Is The New Black, Jenji Kohan, is also working on this project. The hit Netflix series has gripped the hearts of many with its exploration of different backgrounds (i.e. gender, ethnicity, economy etc.) and, fortunately for fans of the prison series, GLOW “has been pitched in a very similar light”, and the “producers and writers are very interested in exploring the [aforementioned] themes”.
The show’s genre has also been described as a “scripted dramady” – very similar to “Orange Is The New Black, [but] with women’s wrestling replacing prison life as the vehicle.”
As many women’s wrestling fans have also been wondering, we can confirm that the show “is casting actresses and wrestlers” to play some of the show’s biggest roles. Though no specific names have been announced, the directors are currently working on “the casting for Matilda The Hun and Mountain Fiji.”
It seems that after all of this, us women’s wrestling fans have a lot to be excited about over the next year, especially as Netflix recently ordered ten episodes of GLOW to be produced following news of the pilot’s creation.
Ex-wrestlers say one of their own sells them short
The night his professional wrestling career went bad, Chris Nowinski took a brain-rattling kick to his chin from a 325-pound brawler. Pain seized him, and his world turned gauzy.
Nowinski performed many nights after his 2003 concussion, absorbing a rat-a-tat of blows to his skull for the entertainment of millions.
Before he launched his pioneering career procuring the brains of dead athletes for medical research, Nowinski suffered the kind of debilitating head injuries that damaged countless other professional wrestlers and helped inspire him to expose the hidden perils of the body-slamming entertainment and sports industries.
Nowinski, a former Harvard football player whose star turn in the World Wrestling Entertainment arena was cut short by his brain injuries, is nine years into a campaign to try to solve the concussion crisis in sports, entertainment, and the armed forces — an effort he dedicated in part to former WWE colleagues such as Rene Goguen, who performed as Rene Dupree.
But Goguen and other professional wrestlers said in interviews that they believe Nowinski has sold them short because his Waltham-based Concussion Legacy Foundation has forged a financial bond with WWE, a billion-dollar corporation that has fought concussion-related lawsuits from its former performers.
Since 2013, WWE has agreed to donate $2.7 million to the foundation, making it the largest benefactor the nonprofit has publicly acknowledged. During that period, Nowinski and his foundation staff have reached out to the families of 12 deceased athletes to acquire their brains for researchers to study for links between repetitive head blows and chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, a degenerative brain disease that has been diagnosed in hundreds of sports and military veterans, many of whom have committed suicide or succumbed to drug overdoses.
But none of those brains belonged to a professional wrestler, despite nearly 100 of them dying since the WWE’s initial gift to Nowinski’s foundation. Many of those wrestlers died before the age of 50, including some of Nowinski’s fellow performers.
Brock Lesnar's UFC return is uncharted territory for pro wrestling industry
The curiosity that has always been Brock Lesnar's MMA career took another turn on Monday morning when it was announced that Mark Hunt, perhaps the hardest puncher in the UFC, would be his opponent at UFC 200.
The announcement and Lesnar's claim he's coming back due to being unsatisfied with how he was robbed of the prime of his career by diverticulitis came at a convenient time - right before UFC 200, and after Conor McGregor was pulled from the show. UFC 200 was going to do well with a Daniel Cormier vs. Jon Jones light heavyweight title fight, but it may not have challenged the all-time records.
Lesnar claimed the conversations for his return went back three months, saying he made the first call to Dana White long before the UFC pulled the McGregor vs. Nate Diaz fight from the show.
It's a unique situation because it's the first time Vince McMahon, the billionaire owner of the WWE, has ever put one of his top attractions in a situation totally out of his control. Lesnar, who works a part-time schedule for WWE, mostly big events and does regular television appearances building those events, is next scheduled for SummerSlam, on Aug. 21 at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn. A UFC win by Lesnar would absolutely strengthen his image and name value to WWE with the eyes that are on UFC 200.
But what about a loss? And there are different types of losses. The intrigue with Hunt, is that he may not be the best fighter in the heavyweight division, but he also may have the highest chance of delivering the worst kind of loss, the walk-off knockout that is his specialty.
From a pro wrestling standpoint, the worst kind of loss opens up unanswered questions. This is uncharted water. Nothing like this has happened in modern American pro wrestling or MMA so there's no precedent as to how the worst kind of loss would resonate to the pro wrestling audience.
Another Name Qualifies For WWE Cruiserweight Classic at Evolve 63
You can officially add Tony Nese to the list of wrestlers qualified for the WWE Cruiserweight Classic.
After making his case at Friday’s Evolve 62 event, Nese was added to an elimination match at Saturday’s Evolve 63 featuring TJP, Lince Dorado, Drew Gulak and Johnny Gargano – the other members of the Evolve roster qualified for the upcoming WWE tournament – with the stipulation that if Nese won the match, he would earn his spot.
Nese has been wrestling for nearly 11 years, with stints in TNA and championships in Dragon Gate USA, FWE and PWS. He will join Rich Swann, Tomasso Ciampa, Johnny Gargano, Zack Sabre Jr., Noam Dar, Ho Ho Lun, Akira Towaza, Lince Dorado, Jack Gallagher, TJ Perkins and many, many names still unnanounced when the WWE Cruiserweight Classic kicks off on June 23rd.
June 11, 2016
Dave Mustaine presents Triple H with Spirit Of Lemmy Award at Download
Megadeth frontman Dave Mustaine presented wrestling icon Triple H with the first ever Spirit Of Lemmy Award on the Main Stage at Download today.
Minutes after Megadeth's performance, Mustaine invited Triple H on to the stage to present him with the award – which forms part of the Metal Hammer Golden Gods.
This year's ceremony takes place at the Eventim Apollo in Hammersmith on Monday night (June 13).
Triple H says: "Having Dave give me this award is a dream come true. Standing on the Lemmy Stage, named after one of my great friends and being given the Spirit Of Lemmy Award is amazing.
"I can feel Lemmy here right now, sitting up on that black cloud over there – drinking a Jack and Coke, probably. The true Spirit Of Lemmy is this fucking crowd right here.
"This is the Spirit Of Lemmy, the Spirit Of Lemmy will never die, because of all of you."
Mustaine, who last year won Metal Hammer's Golden God Award, introduced Triple H to the crowd, bringing huge cheers when he mentioned Lemmy's name.
June 10, 2016
Brock Lesnar talks about prescription drug abuse during first WWE stint
Ahead of his return at UFC 200, Brock Lesnar talks about abusing alcohol and prescription drugs during his first WWE stint and a mid-flight altercation it led to.
Brock Lesnar's return has been far from quiet.
Lesnar, who has been entered into the USADA testing pool, has been controversially granted an exemption to the USADA provision requiring a four-month notice for athletes coming out of retirement. This exemption is a source of much ire for his UFC 200 opponent Mark Hunt who believes Lesnar has likely been using PEDS. But PEDS are not the only drugs to come up recently in discussions with Lesnar.
On Thursday, Lesnar went on ESPN's Highly Questionable with Dan Le Batard and Bomani Jones in a bit of promotion for his return to the UFC. The interview touched on an assortment of topics, including Lesnar's abuse of alcohol and prescription drugs during his first stint with the WWE and what led him down that road.
"That was the early years of me when I was a young performer in the wrestling ring. You go through things in life such as you become rich and you become famous and you're naïve and you're young and to top it all off you're travelling 360 days a year. The wrestling is fake but the things that go on in the ring - the ring is still a very non-forgiving environment to be in so you're dealing with a lot of different injuries at one time.
"Not only that, I'm not a man to be on the highway. I'm not a man to be in a hotel room every night. I'm not a man to be in an airplane every day and it took all that for me to discover that and to cope with all that was my best friends, vodka and Vicodin."
Gawker Update: Purchase Agreement Reached, Nick Denton Comments
As noted, Gawker Media filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy today after a judge issued a $140 million final judgment in favor of Hulk Hogan.
Gawker issued the press release below revealing that the have reached a purchase agreement with Ziff Davis, which operates IGN, AskMen and PCMag. It stated that the sale will be conducted through a bankruptcy court supervised auction, so others could buy the company if they submit a higher bid.
Judge Issues Final Judgment in Hulk Hogan vs Gawker Case, Gawker Reportedly Files For Bankruptcy
According to Recode.com, Gawker was back in court today and a judge issued a $140 million final judgment in favor of Hulk Hogan. The verdict in the Gawker case was upheld, and furthermore a permanent injunction was issued earlier this week which prohibited Gawker from posting Hogan’s sex tape video. Additionally, a 4.77% interest rate per year was imposed on the $140 million which is owed to Hogan.
As a result of the past two key decisions in the Hogan vs Gawker case, Gawker Media has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and plans to find a new owner for the company. The Recode article notes Gawker has a “firm bid” from publisher Ziff Davis to buy the company for under $100 million. Ziff Davis operates IGN, AskMen and PCMag.
WWE SmackDown Garners Lowest Audience Since Move To USA, Drops Below 2 Million Viewers
This week's episode of WWE SmackDown garnered their lowest audience since their move to the USA Network in January.
Thursday's episode averaged just 1.996 million viewers, down 8% from last week's show, which averaged 2.169 million viewers.
It was the second least watched first-run non-holiday episode in the show's history, barely beating out the September 2, 2015 show on SyFy, which averaged 1.981 million viewers.
