Hurricane and Santino removed from Royal Rumble

Both The Hurricane and Santino Marella have been removed from Sunday's Royal Rumble match, while Matt Hardy and Chris Masters have been added. Thus far, 24 participants have been announced.

Here is the updated card:

Raw: Big Show, Carlito, Chris Masters, Cody Rhodes, Evan Bourne, Jack Swagger, John Cena, Kofi Kingston, Mark Henry, MVP, Shawn Michaels, Ted DiBiase, The Miz and Triple H

SmackDown: Batista, Chris Jericho, CM Punk, Kane, Matt Hardy and The Great Khali

ECW: Shelton Benjamin, William Regal, Yoshi Tatsu and Zack Ryder

It was also announced on Friday that Michelle McCool would defending her WWE Women's Championship against Mickie James at the event.

Matches announced thus far include:

World Heavyweight Championship Match
Undertaker (c) vs. Rey Mysterio

WWE Championship Match
Sheamus (c) vs. Randy Orton

ECW Championship Match
Christian (c) vs. Ezekiel Jackson

WWE Women's Championship Match
Michelle McCool (c) vs. Mickie James

Updates on WWE Divas and Hardcore Holly

Former WWE Divas Candice Michelle, Lisa Marie Varon, Lilian Garcia and Amy "Lita" Dumas are available for personal appearances and autograph sessions via The I.P.A. Network, which represents a number of celebrities and wrestling stars. Those interested in booking them can contact Steve Woolf at celebritysignings@sbcglobal.net or visit www.ipanetwork.com.
 

Lilian Garcia is auctioning off a sexy red outfit featured in the 2005 book "WWE DIVAS UNCOVERED."  Also, Lilian announced this past week on Twitter that she will be releasing a new music album later this year — which will be in English.
 

Former WWE Women's Champion Candice Michelle spoke to www.Candi-Shop.org on a slew of topics including her favorite wrestling matches, whether she will ever return to the industry, what made her decide to enter the Diva Search contest in 2004, her greatest accomplishment, and much more.

The former WWE Diva also made note of her multiple injuries, saying her biggest regret was returning to the ring too quickly from them. However, she wants people to know that she's not injury prone.

"The biggest frustration of my career has been my lack of responsibility to myself thus resulting in my injuries," Michelle said.

"Some things are unpredictable in the ring but after one broken collarbone and not a release note from the doctor to get back in the ring, but I did anyways because I was so excited to get back resulting in shattering it and surgery. Then I tried overdoing it on my return and not listening to my body resulting in the two torn ligaments. So to everyone who thinks I'm injury prone, that's such phony baloney! It would be easy to say that but I'm a big girl and learned to take responsibility for my mistakes. "There's no mistakes as long as you learn from them!" Needless to say I learned the hard way!" 

In today's wrestling birthday, Bob "Hardcore" Holly turns 47 years old

Rey Mysterio speaks on his Retirement

It appears Jim Ross is staying busy while he’s away from WWE TV. Ross wrote the following on his Twitter yesterday: ” Working on some very exciting projects. Stay tuned.”

- WWE Diva Maria will be taken off SmackDown TV for a while because apparently there is a clause in her contract for Celebrity Apprentice that says she can’t appear on any other TV show while Apprentice is on the air. The season is set to begin on NBC on March 14th.

- Rey Mysterio said in a recent interview from Mexico that he was 2 to 3 years away from retiring and said it all depends on how his reconstructive knee surgery goes. Rey is scheduled to get the surgery in April after WrestleMania, if it can go that long.

Rey was asked in the interview who will be the replacement as top Mexican star in WWE when he leaves, noting that Dos Caras Jr., Super Nova and Incognito are all in WWE developmental. Rey said he doesn’t see any of them as replacements because WWE doesn’t work that way.

Update on Randy Orton and Straight Edge Society

WWE’s live event on Valentine’s Day in Guadalajara, Mexico is sold out.

- Former WCW star and FCW trainer Norman Smiley now has a TV role in WWE developmental as the Lieutenant General Manager.

- Randy Orton reportedly just signed a long-term contract with WWE for the next ten years. Orton also received $600,000 bonus pay for main eventing WrestleMania in 2009.

- The newest member of CM Punk’s Straight Edge Society, Serena Deeb, has changed her name in WWE developmental from Mia Mancini to Serena Mancini so that may be the name she uses on WWE TV. WWE has been continuing with shaving crowd members heads at live events with finding local independent wrestlers or actual fans who want to do the angle in the ring.

Update on WWE's Raw Guest Host, Undertaker and more

The Undertaker had his knee scoped after the January 19th SmackDown tapings in Greenville, which is why he wasn’t working the live events last week. Taker is going into the Royal Rumble less than 100%. The original plan had him having more of an involvement at the RAW in Knoxville last week but he was in so much pain when he arrived that all he ended up doing was the promo at the start of RAW. He did work the SmackDown tapings this past week but didn’t do much.

- WWE’s creative team has been told that there is no chance of The Rock vs. John Cena at WrestleMania and right now are back to working on Cena vs. Batista for the big event.

- While there has been talk of stopping the RAW guest host angle after WrestleMania, there is now talk of continuing it indefinitely if TNA goes to Monday nights permanently.