Re: The Official WWE Thread - Part 17

[Onyx]

We noted a few weeks back how Paul Heyman received big praise for his promo when Brock Lesnar returned on RAW and was named John Cena’s opponent for SummerSlam. Heyman continues to receive rave reviews backstage for his mic work, especially how he’s helping to sell Cena vs. Lesnar with Lesnar off TV.

Another WWE star is getting the other kind of attention from WWE officials. Cameron has had some heat recently for her in-ring work. A source noted that her work has been called “nothing less than awful.”

[RealGunner]

Raw is Monday night in Austin, TX. Neither John Cena nor Brock Lesnar are advertised to be there live.

A lot of focus on Brie + steph, Reigns n orton and Dean n Rollins I guess.

[Onyx]

Gonna be a boring RAW imo. Not interested in any of that.

[Onyx]

Alfonso Castillo of Newsday has a lengthy Q&A up with Paul Heyman at this link, to promote Heyman’s new WWE DVD. Below are a few highlights:

CASTILLO: I imagine a couple years ago, even you wouldn’t have thought WWE would be releasing a DVD about you. Whether it’s true or not, there’s at least a perception that, storylines aside, the McMahons over the years have not been the biggest Paul Heyman fans. So what does it say that they put this much time, effort and resources into releasing a DVD about you?

HEYMAN: I look at it from many different perspectives. Number one, I don’t think I ever had any bigger advocate, besides my father, than Vince McMahon during the 1990s. There’s a story that is recounted on the documentary. I was sitting in the office with Steven Chau in 2000, who was the president of the USA Network reporting directly to Barry Diller. This was at the time when WWE was in federal court in order to jump to Viacom off of USA Network. And USA was looking to fill the programming slot, and ECW was the frontrunner for that option at the time. And during the meeting, Steven Chau showed me a printed-out email that he had received the night before from Vince McMahon that said, “If your network doesn’t do business with ECW and, more specifically, with Paul Heyman, you will be depriving your network of a great resource and your viewers of guaranteed great programming.” And Vince had no reason to do that except it’s what he felt at the time. He felt ECW was a great shop for the industry in terms of developing talent. So I can’t tell you that I’ve spent my life butting heads with the McMahons. I’ve had my ups and downs with them, as anybody else in my position would. I would not have guessed three or four years ago that a documentary on my career would have been released by WWE. But I wouldn’t have guessed three or four years ago that I would have been back in WWE.

CASTILLO: You brought up ECW. At one of those TNA tapings recently at the Manhattan Center it was, again, another ECW revival. It was Tazz and Rhino, and everyone was talking about ECW and soliciting “ECW” chants from the crowd. There ended up being a back-and-forth between Tazz and Wade Keller of the Pro Wrestling Torch about how relevant this is anymore. Is it time to move on? When you see that kind of thing — the umpteenth ECW revival — is it heartwarming for you know that there’s still that passion for something you helped create? Or do you also think it’s kind of time to move on?

HEYMAN: I think it’s very much time for anybody and everybody to move on, especially on a product that you’re trying to push forward. Nostalgia tours are great, but not in a youth oriented and dominated industry. I think the lesson learned in all this is that Spike TV didn’t renew them. And one of the reasons has to be that the most passionate reaction they can get is for a product that went away in 2001. And they’ve been trying to brand themselves since their inception and they can’t get it done. They should have spent that time and energy trying to brand themselves and not trying to elicit a response of an audience based on a product that they don’t even own.

[Onyx]

As noted, WWE released Ricardo Rodriguez last week. His contract was set to renew the night after SummerSlam.

Ricardo had been frustrated that he wasn’t really being used as a wrestler in any significant way after Alberto Del Rio turned on him. Ricardo has reportedly been injured recently also.

The original person WWE wanted to use as Del Rio’s “personal ring announcer” told people that he wasn’t interested in doing ring announcing, which led to Ricardo getting a tryout around SummerSlam 2010.

Source: F4Wonline.com

[Onyx]

After he has another surgery soon, it’s possible Daniel Bryan can make his return at the 2015 Royal Rumble pay-per-view. It’s worth noting that WWE creative didn’t find out about Bryan needing another surgery until the press conference he did about the burglar incident at his home.

___________________________________________

WWE is still planning on something big for Cesaro and Paul Heyman, possibly the rumored Cesaro vs. Brock Lesnar match. It was said this week that the “amicable split” between Cesaro and Heyman is part of a slow build to something bigger.

Source: F4Wonline.com

[Onyx]

[Onyx]

[Firenze]

Script - Part 11:

Spoiler:

[M99]

Just now caught myself up after stepping away for a month.

FFS why is AJ Divas Champ again?

Because she's by far the most entertaining Diva

[RealGunner]

Yea pretty much. She is the only Diva who manages to get the reaction from the crowd lol

[Onyx]

Former WWE superstar Stone Cold Steve Austin joined Shan & RJ of Texas' 105.3 The Fan, and spoke about many topics including the Dallas Cowboys, Austin's latest projects, and fellow pro wrestlers.

Austin was put on the spot and asked who was the bigger legend between him and Hulk Hogan.

"If you're talking to me, it's going to be Stone Cold Steve Austin," said Austin. "If you guys are talking to Hulk, it's going to be him."

After Austin comically shared his opinion with both hosts, he praised the "Hulkster" for his contributions to pro wrestling.

"I respect Hulk Hogan because his career lasted some 30 odd years," Austin stated. "I think I lasted about 15, but during my peak years, I took the business to a height it never seen before.

When says to anybody off the street, 'Hey, do you know anything about pro wrestling?' They'll say, 'Yeah, wasn't that guy Hulk Hogan a pro wrestler?' His name might come to your mind before mine, so I give that guy all due respect. He had a tremendous run."

The hosts then informed Austin had won their fan poll with 70% of the votes.

Austin was then asked if WWE's current product makes him upset, because of the PG rating and how entertainment comes first with the promotion. Austin said their number one goal is to entertain all demographics, but also said a way to improve the product would be to have great wrestling matches, make the titles mean something, and add some personal storylines into the mix.

He also isn't a fan of the juvenile humor, and that nobody takes it seriously because of the shenanigans. He said it doesn't have to go back to the "Attitude Era," but some things should be left out.

[Onyx]

Due to popular demand, part 12 of the script will be up soon.

[Onyx]

[Onyx]

They could have just used all of Orton's attempts at breaking a table in that vid imo.

[Onyx]

On a recent Ross Report podcast, Jim Ross threw out the idea of working with CM Punk as broadcast partners for New Japan Pro Wrestling's iPPV events. Through other channels, the idea of Ross doing NJPW shows was pitched but the impression given was that New Japan didn't bite on the idea.

It could be because the iPPV's don't have a lot of buys outside of Japan. It should be noted this was just a JR idea and there was no talk within NJPW of making it happen. Ross also noted he hadn't talked to Punk about it.

[Casciavit]

Due to popular demand, part 12 of the script will be up soon.

Haven't read a single one, u mad?

[Firenze]

guardians of the galaxy is smashing a lot of records, Batista's getting a lot of praise. Can see him becoming a top 5 mainstream wrestler of all time.

Vince will be begging him to hold the title

[Onyx]

Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy with Batista as Drax the Destroyer had a huge start this weekend and was expected to bring in up to $100 million. The movie had an opening day of $37.8 million, beating The Rock’s Hercules by $10 million.

The Hercules numbers include the entire opening weekend but Guardians did open in 500 more theaters. Hercules is expected to be at $52 million when this weekend is over.

[Onyx]

Paul Heyman recently joined Doug Mortman and Dave Lagreca on Busted Open. You can hear Busted Open on SiriusXM 92 and on the SiriusXM app. Here are some highlights:

His early days in the business hustling to get press passes: “I just didn’t want to be another face in the crowd. I was a huge fan of the product. On Sunday my parents would go to the lower east side of Manhattan because my Mother likes to shop there and my Father and I would bum around before we picked up my Mother. One of the things My Father liked to do was we would pick up these radical lower New York free news papers with their own social agenda because their writing was always very passionate. Whether we agreed with their politics or not doesn’t matter, you would find great emotions in the writing. In one of these papers was a sports column and it was more of a sports gossip column and the writer mentioned that after Madison Square Garden, Vincent J McMahon would take his inner circle to lunch at Ben Bensons Steak House in midtown Manhattan. Now I don’t know the readership of this article, so I don’t know if a lot of old WWWF fans got to see this, so I figured this was some inside information. I found out that the office was at the Cape Cod Coliseum which was owned by Vincent J McMahon, so I called and said ‘My name is Paul Heyman. I was told to call by Vince McMahon to get my press pass for Madison Square Garden’. I’m put through 3-4 assistants until I got patched through to Vince J McMahon. I said ‘This is Paul Heyman from the Wrestling Times’ because we have The New York Times. I said ‘I was talking to you at Ben Bensons and you said to call you about a press pass at Madison Square Garden.’ He said ‘I did?!’. I said ‘Yeah you did.’ Because who else would know he dines at Ben Bensons and who would tell him that he was in a radical news paper in the lower east side of New York with a readership of a couple hundred, so I must have been real. He said ‘Go to the Holland Hotel at 42nd street and 8th Ave and talk to Gorilla Monsoon and Arnold Skaaland and I look forward to seeing you at the Garden.’ I got a ride down to the Holland Hotel and I saw Monsoon and Skaaland playing pinnacle with a bottle of booze, I got my press pass, BS’d my way into Madison Square Garden with my press pass and got in Vince Sr’s good graces by snapping some photos with him and Andre The Giant and bringing him some 8X10 the next month. For the rest of the time he was in charge, I would bring pictures they could use in their programs or on posters and they would give me 50 bucks for my transportation and trouble. I’ve always found that honesty is dramatically overrated.”

Brock vs. Cena at Summerslam: “Brock Lesnar is going to beat John Cena. That’s not a prediction, that’s a spoiler. Brock is going to win and it will bring more prestige and box office draw to the championship title than anybody in the past 25 years. Brock Lesnar is going to make that title mean more than it ever has before and people are going to understand that when the title is on the line it is special and it’s going to mean something.”

The shock of Lesnar ending Undertakers Streak and why people didn’t believe him when he announced that Taker will lose to Lesnar: “You should have listened to me. I’m gonna tell you this again, Brock Lesnar is going to deliver an F-5 that will drive Cena with such force he will pin John Cena and win the WWE World Heavyweight Championship. You can believe what I’m telling you and you won’t be surprised next time you interview me and you can say ‘every time Heyman says something it comes true. He’s not Nostradamus and he doesn’t have a crystal ball or any special voodoo powers’ Brock Lesnar is going to beat John Cena. Take it to the bank.”

Where the moment Brock pinned the Undertaker ranks in his career: “As an advocate and performer, it is the moment. Absolutely. Nothing else is even close. John Cena brought it up on Monday night. 40 men have held the WWE championship. Only one man can say ‘I beat the streak’. That’s a moment. The only equivalent I can give you is if someone was announced as the President of the United States and someone comes up and says ‘I’ve been elected God’. There have been a few men who ever had the title. Only one man beat the streak.”

His relationship with Vince McMahon today: “Strictly platonic. I think Vince McMahon serves his company well as the chairman and recognizes the talents and exploiting the ability of Paul Heyman every Monday night on Raw.”

[Onyx]

Below is the updated announced card for this month’s WWE SummerSlam pay-per-view:

WWE World Heavyweight Title Match
Brock Lesnar vs. John Cena

Flag Match
Rusev vs. Jack Swagger

Chris Jericho vs. Bray Wyatt
Erick Rowan is banned from ringside.

Stephanie McMahon vs. Brie Bella

[Onyx]

[Onyx]

Randy Orton responded to a fan on Twitter this weekend who ranted on him for having a Dishonorable Discharge from the Marines. Orton replied:

“Bad Conduct Discharge, not Dishonorable. Fact check next time ya D bag”

Orton also responded to fans who asked him questions, telling them to ask Zack Ryder or Dolph Ziggler instead. He wrote:

“I don’t do Q&A’s. So stop asking. Try @ZackRyder or @HEELZiggler.”

[Onyx]

GOOD GAWD ALMIGHTY.

[RealGunner]

The WWE is currently working on the basis that Daniel Bryan won’t return from injury until January 2015, according to the Wrestling Observer Newsletter.

At that point Bryan would return at the Royal Rumble, taking up the spot of the third most important wrestler in the company. He had previously been the firm number two man, if not the almost equal to John Cena’s number one spot. However, his long term absence with a neck injury has relegated his status. This past week he found out he would need a second surgery on the nerve damage, effectively ruling him out for a further six months. There are now long term plans for John Cena to be the number one guy, with Roman Reigns the heir apparent. Bryan would return as a strong third franchise star, but the top two babyface positions are now locked for Cena and Reigns.

The loss of status will be a personal blow to Bryan, who was the key man at this year’s WrestleMania 30. His main event victory seemed to be the start of his career push, but it now looks as if it was in fact his peak. The reason for his loss of momentum was the nerve injury in his vertebrae, which required a surgery in May. Since that surgery, Bryan has failed to recover strength in his right arm. As a result, it was decided last week that he will undergo the second surgery. The Wrestling Observer reports that the recovery time will be a further five to six months, leading to the reported January return time.

The new surgery will see Bryan’s nerve moved and placed under his muscle. The star has noted that while he doesn’t have strength on the right side, the injury isn’t aggravating in daily life. Hopefully he will have a speedy recovery and be back to action as soon as possible.

http://whatculture.com/wwe/daniel-bryan-wont-return-from-injury-until-wwe-royal-rumble-2015.php

[Onyx]

Bryan will be back to being the number 1 guy when he returns imo. His overness and return pop will be insane and WWE once again will have no choice.

Reigns is eventually going to get booed.

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