Thursday, February 4, 2010

Update on WWE's PPV EXTREME RULES, Jazz into Alumni, ECW Ratings, Update on Ziggler

WKYT-TV/CWKYT is reporting that the WWE Extreme Rules pay-per-view on May 23rd, 2010 has been moved to Detroit, Michigan. The originally announced location was Oakland, California. 
WWE has added former Women’s Champion Jazz to their Alumni roster.
This week’s episode of ECW with Vince McMahon’s announcement scored a 1.05 cable rating, rounded up to a 1.1. The show averaged 1.413 million viewers.
  Dolph Ziggler will be headed to Istanbul, Turkey soon to do some promotional work for WWE

Update on Jericho's Black Eye, Last minute changes made at Royal Rumble


The Royal Rumble pay-per-view in Atlanta at the Philips Arena drew an advanced sellout announced at 16,697 fans with about 13,500 paying for a gate of $800,000.
- Several WWE Superstars were brought into the Royal Rumble on Sunday and didn’t know until the day of the show whether or not they were in the Rumble match, given the empty spots and any last minute changes.
- Chris Jericho was saying that his black eye came from an accidental shot in his match with R-Truth at the SmackDown tapings in Cincinnati. It was believed by some that the black eye came from his taxi incident with Gregory Helms.
- Sources confirm that WWE and the USA Network are seriously considering having RAW air for three-hours each Monday night if TNA goes to Monday. WWE officials did not like the idea last year when USA pushed for it but now they are considering it.

Update on Wrestlemania 27, Joke on Hurricane-Jericho and More

It’s expected that WWE will be releasing several more wrestlers between now and WrestleMania.
- Nikki Bella noted on Twitter this week that her sister Brie Bella is dating Richie Kotzen, the former guitarist for rock bands Poison and Mr. Big.
- The NFL’s Atlanta Falcons will be co-promoting WrestleMania 27 with WWE. Part of their role with the promotion is to sell corporate sponsorships, similar to the deal made with the Arizona Cardinals for this year’s WrestleMania in Phoenix.
- There was a joke going around backstage at Sunday’s Royal Rumble pay-per-view in Atlanta among the WWE talents to avoid all taxis, a rib at the incident with Gregory Helms and Chris Jericho.

Reason of Why WWE might have to Suspend Hurricane

As noted before, Gregory Helms was found with a single soma pill in his bag when arrested with Chris Jericho. If Helms didn’t have a prescription for the drug like he claimed and even though the police aren’t charging him for it, WWE would be forced to suspend him for 60 days on his second Wellness violation. WWE’s current policy says that every prescription a wrestler has is supposed to be filed ahead of time with Dr. David Black. All prescriptions are supposed to be written by the company doctors who travel with the WWE crew. Helms has a previous violation against him for his name coming up in the Signature Pharmacy scandal in 2007 and has never failed a WWE drug test.
There has been a lot of talk backstage regarding Helms’ future with WWE after the incident. Based on the success of the Royal Rumble pay-per-view which he was pulled from, Helms missed out on a payoff from the show that would have been around $5,000.
It’s said that Helms was apologetic to WWE officials for the incident.

Heder on Hosting Raw, Update on DiBiase Jr. Injury

Past RAW guest host Jon “The Flame” Heder appeared on the George Lopez show last night and spent the whole time talking about his WWE appearance. Heder came out in his Ric Flair robe and they showed clips of him in action the night he hosted. Heder put the WWE product over and had a great quote, saying”It was probably the best moment of my life, kicking a midget (Hornswoggle) in the neck.”
- Michigan’s LansingCityPulse.com has an article looking at the WWE careers of Ted DiBiase Jr. & Sr. Both men are quoted in the article. As he becomes used to the WWE lifestyle as one of the top stars on the Raw brand, Ted Jr. says he doesn’t want to lose sight of the toll wrestling takes on the body:
“When you do that (take bumps) day after day, you kind of grow numb to it. That’s the scary part, when you ignore little pains that grow into big problems, like back injuries. Then you need surgeries. It’s not a matter of ‘if’ it happens, it’s ‘when’ it happens. That’s when you get your vacation.”

Joey Styles tears on DX, Tyson Kid depressed due to Rumble


While watching RAW last week, Joey Styles took aim at D-Generation X on his Twitter account, writing: “Is anybody else besides me sick of DX?”
He posted several other tweets commenting on the show, but they have all since been deleted.
- An apparently upset Tyson Kidd expressed his disappointment on being left off Sunday’s Royal Rumble match with the following message on his Facebook account: “Guess they found 30 guys better, either that or I drew number 31.”
Fellow Hart Dynasty member David Hart Smith was also left off the card.

John Cena Back Problems, Update on WWE NXT

To follow up on the news that John Cena underwent an MRI last week to determine the extent of his back injury, the MRI came back clean. It’s been reported that Cena has been working with a bulging disc in his lower back and he’s been working a lighter schedule in recent weeks, but he is in relatively good shape.
- Last night on ECW, Vince McMahon announced the brand is coming to an end and a new show featuring the “next generation” of WWE programming will debut in 3 weeks during the same timeslot on SyFy. The brand will be called WWE NXT, as in “next generation.” Word came out earlier today that there’s already an “NXT” wrestling promotion based out of Scottland. To give more background on the original NXT promotion, it’s actually a developmental promotion of sort for the Scottish Wrestling Alliance, a member of the UK’s branch of the National Wrestling Alliance.