Here is your news for
January 11, 2020 We’re starting off with one of
the most interesting marketing
strategies from WWE, today, as the company
reportedly wants to rename
a town after one of their Superstars. Reports have stated that WWE
are looking to rename Corbin,
Kentucky, to King Corbin, Kentucky, and the
WWE will be reportedly sending
a grassroots campaign of representatives, ahead of this
weekend’s Live Event at the
Corbin Arena. An official statement by the
WWE said: “WWE representatives, as well
as a WWE camera crew, will
be out in front of the Colonel Sanders statue in
downtown Corbin Sunday
afternoon, collecting signatures for a petition for the name change.” This WWE crew will also use
the opportunity to give out
free tickets to this Sunday’s house show, and if the
company is successful in their
temporary name change, then cities like Foley, Missouri or
Bradshaw, West Virginia may
be next on the list. More news for the reigning
monarch of WWE, as both
King Corbin and his foe Roman Reigns will appear twice at
the Royal Rumble. On SmackDown this week,
Corbin accepted the challenge
of the Big Dog for a match at the Pay Per View, and also
announced that he will be in the
Rumble match, just like Reigns. It was also announced that
Elias, Dolph Ziggler, Otis and
Tucker will be entering the Men’s Rumble match, whilst
Alexa Bliss and Nikki Cross
were announced for the Women’s Rumble Match. In addition to the two Rumble
matches as well as the Reigns-
Corbin match, it has also been confirmed The Fiend will
defend the Universal title
against Daniel Bryan, and that Asuka is looking to capture her
first RAW Women’s Title when
she tales on Becky Lynch. With the Rumble being just over
two weeks away, expect plenty
more names to be announced for the 30-person
matches, before the show e
manates from Minute Maid Park in Houston, on January 26th. Speaking of Pay Per View cards,
a match-listing for WrestleMania
36 has been spread on social media, which
supposedly lists the top 5
matches for the show. On this card, Brock Lesnar would
supposedly be defending his
WWE Title against Tyson Fury, whilst The Fiend,
Roman Reigns and Daniel
Bryan would compete for the Universal title. Becky Lynch and Shayna Baszler
are alleged to compete for the
RAW Women’s title, whilst there is reportedly going
to be a 6-man tag between
Samoa Joe, Kevin Owens and the Big Show, taking on
Seth Rollins and the AOP in
a hardcore tag team match. Before fans scream in horror
at the prospect of Bobby
Lashley and Lana facing Rusev and Liv Morgan at the show, it
turns out this so-called leaked
card is fake, and though Tyson Fury has said he is open
to competing at Mania, there
has been no discussion about him being part of the
show. In addition, Daniel Bryan is
not scheduled to be in any
main events on the show, as the reported plan is still for Roman
Reigns to challenge the Fiend
for the Universal Championship, two years after
he faced Brock Lesnar for the
same title. Whatever WWE’s WrestleMania
plans are, it’s clear the company
is keeping a tight lid on things, but fans should
expect to get a better idea of
the show, after the Royal Rumble. At this month’s Pay Per View,
Brock Lesnar will be
competing in the Men’s Royal Rumble match, and in an
unprecedented move, the
reigning WWE Champion has chosen to go first. Whilst we don’t know how
Lesnar, who won the contest
in 2003, will fare from the #1 position, fans should get used
to seeing the Beast around,
as according to Brad Shepard, Lesnar is scheduled
to appear on the post-Rumble
edition of RAW. Lesnar’s appearances do get
more frequent as on the road
to WrestleMania, and with reports of Lesnar appearing
regularly on RAW this month,
fans should get used to our Beastly WWE Champion. One place fans shouldn’t
expect to see the Beast though,
is WWE Backstage, as Lesnar appearances are both rare
and very expensive. Next Tuesday at 11PM Eastern
on FS1, the show will return,
and as revealed on Smackdown, The Usos will be
guests on the next episode. The former Tag Team
Champions just returned to
WWE after a five-month hiatus, after everything that happened
for the brothers in their time
away, this could make for a very interesting interview. Now, 2019 was unquestionably
the year of Becky Lynch, who
won both the Women’s Royal Rumble and the first
female main event in
WrestleMania history. Well recently it was revealed
that The Man isn’t going
anywhere, as she has signed a new contract worth $1 million
to stay with WWE, in what is
likely a five-year deal. This 7-figure salary is a big
jump for Lynch, but she isn’t
the only woman to get a pay rise, according to a source
for Wrestling News that said: “I was told that Dana Brooke,
Lana and Sasha Banks
(among others) have also received significant pay raises.
Now that women are being
featured more prominently in storylines, they are showing
that they can draw big ratings.” It’s no secret that women have
been featured a lot more
prominently recently, and though some fans may not love
everything the company does,
the female stars have proved they can draw at ratings. Lana’s segments with Bobby
Lashley and Rusev have drawn
above average numbers on TV, as well as huge numbers
on social media, whilst Lynch
has been responsible for some of the highest-rated
segments of 2019, along
with Sasha Banks. Another reason WWE has
chosen to offer these bigger
contracts to all talent is to keep them away from AEW, but it’s
obvious that the women
deserved this pay raise after years of hard work. Speaking of the brand new Mr
and Mrs Lashley, the happy
couple finished their wedding off with an abbreviated
ceremony on RAW, but their
reverend almost didn’t make it to the ring. During the show, security tackled
the reverend played by actor
Rick Malone, and new video has emerged showing
Malone convincing the
security that he wasn’t a barricade-jumping fan. The Wrestling Observer
Newsletter has confirmed that
the WWE staged this incident, and they showed it on camera
for a brief moment, to keep
fans tuned in to the show. The Observer reads: “People figured security screwed
up on live TV and thought he
was a fan. It was actually all part of the show. It
was a way to get people
talking by doing something out of the box with the idea anything
can happen on the show and
they did it right before a planned commercial break with
the idea of hooking people to
not switch channels during the break by having people
see something they thought they
weren’t supposed to see.” With WWE being a tightly
scripted promo, anytime
something happens that fans weren’t meant to see, it quickly
creates a lot of buzz, and it
seems now WWE is trying to plan out those spontaneous
moments. We’re jumping from WWE to
AEW now, and the latest
segment from the Dark Order has had fans speculating on
who is in charge of the group. Fans have pointed out that a
tennis racquet in the
background and sunglasses being thrown at Evil Uso seems to
point to Jim Cornette being
the leader, and though this would be a huge swerve, we
doubt that Cornette would do
the angle, given that he’s said a lot of negative things
about the AEW roster. In another recent video, the
leader of the group can be
heard saying Wonderful, a line that Matt Hardy used in his
Broken days, and if AEW can
stretch the angle out, this could be working towards
Hardy’s AEW debut. As previously reported, Matt is
expected to leave WWE when
his contract expires on March 1st, and according
to Dave Meltzer: “Hardy is the leading speculated
name for the leader of the Dark
Order since they just started teasing a leader and
Hardy just started putting
out the videos.” It’s worth noting that the Young
Bucks and the Hardys
discussed doing a year-long storyline in ROH, three years ago,
but Matt and Jeff then got offers
to return to WWE, so this angle was cut short. Speaking of Jeff, his WWE
contract has been frozen as
he looks to deal with his personal issues, but it wouldn’t
surprise anyone if both brothers
joined AEW as soon as possible. Back to WWE now, and while
fans may not have heard too
much from Liv Morgan regarding her relationship with
Lana, this may change in a
couple of days. Though some think this story
will be great for Morgan, who
is now a top-tier player on RAW and one of the most talked
about Superstars around,
others believe it will kill her chances as a main event player. According to Liv herself though,
fans should tune into RAW next
week, as she says it will be very interesting. Ever since the initial wedding,
Morgan has been posting
what she deemed evidence on social media, of just how
close she and Lana have
gotten in the previous years. Inserting Morgan into the
storyline has been an interesting
choice, as many fans expected her to join the Fiend
Bray Wyatt, but regardless of
this, Morgan is still in a featured role, and is looking
to make the most of it. While nobody wants to see the
Lana-Lashley-Rusev angle
drag out for too much longer, adding Morgan to the
situation has certainly got
fans interested in, as it seems this latest chapter is just
getting started. Back to AEW now, and the new
company certainly appears to
be one of the hottest tickets in town. Their 10,000 seat venues sell-
out almost immediately, and
one 20,000 seat sellout gained the attention of scalpers,
meaning it’s often hard for fans
to get tickets. Scalpers bought out AEW’s first
few tapings for Dynamite, which
means not every seat was filled, as some scalpers
were left with tickets they didn’t
have time to sell after flooding the market. According to the Wrestling
Observer Newsletter though,
there are some who have been told that Tony Khan
brought all the tickets for some
sold-out events, to make it appear like the product was hot. Khan obviously hasn’t confirmed
this rumour, but if it is true, it’s
an interesting strategy to both fight off scalpers,
and keep your product looking
hot. Of course, buying all the tickets
to your own show isn’t going to
make Khan any money, but it seems that AEW is a huge
success with a crowd that is
more than happy to pay. From one new show to another
now, as ‘Straight Up’ Steve
Austin followed RAW throughout it’s run on the USA
Network, and now the show is
back for its second season. In a statement by the USA
Network, a second season
was confirmed, as the Rattlesnake will receive eight
more episodes to raise some
hell. The statement read: “USA Network today announced
it has picked up hit unscripted
series STRAIGHT UP STEVE AUSTIN for a second
season. Expected to premiere
this summer, Season 2 will consist of 8 half-hour episodes
and is produced by Line by
Line Media with Steve Austin and Dave Barsky (“Dirty Jobs”)
as executive producers.” In the first season, Austin had
Becky Lynch on the show, and
it’ll be interesting to see if he gets another Superstar for
the show in season 2. It probably wouldn’t feel like
much of a chore at all for any
WWE Superstar to spend the day with Steve Austin, but
that’s not a bad thing either. More news from outside the
ring now, as there is currently
a documentary crew, interviewing pro wrestlers. Commenting on the documentary,
Dave Meltzer said that WWE may
have been doing the same thing we just reported
that AEW are alleged to have
done, as he said: “The story came from people in
WWE who explained to them
that version, that the fast ticket sales and early sellouts
were the company buying up
all the tickets. So it’s actually a story propagated from
within WWE talent or told to
WWE talent from within the organization. You’d think
people who see through the
obvious, but I guess not” AEW’s Dynamite debut on TNN,
as well as the weeks that
followed in Boston and Philly, were sellouts, and though
they didn’t have butts in every
seat, the seats were sold. We’re not sure who bought up
all the tickets, but it would
have been pretty self-defeating for AEW to buy
the tickets themselves just to
flood a secondary market and keep fans from getting them. We’re heading back to the Liv
Morgan angle now, as whilst
the 25-year-old has become a big name because
of the lesbian storyline, this
hasn’t sat too well with the company’s first actual openly
lesbian performer Sonya
Deville, or her Tag Team partner Mandy Rose, who
pitched a similar angle in the past. Fox News recently spoke to
Deville about representing
the LGBTQ+ community, and its clear Deville takes her role
seriously, as she said: Obviously representing the
LGBTQ community is something
near and dear to my heart because you look at me, circa
2015 when I was getting on
Tough Enough and Triple H asked me on TV are you in a
relationship. A simple question
for most people to answer, but for me, I wasn’t
openly gay yet, so I was like,
uh what do I say? At that moment I said I have a girlfriend.
From that moment on it has
been kind of like a learning process for me as a
person; getting comfortable
with who I am and being OK with saying those words, ‘I’m
gay’ out loud and being
comfortable with my sexuality.” “It is really to cool to be at the
place that I’m at to advocate
or be an example for young girls and guys that are
in my shoes, that I was in 3-4
years ago. It is really special and I think just me being me,
being who I am and being a
wrestler can inspire people at home because now they
know it is cool, and they
can do it as well.” As someone who has legit MMA
training, as well as being a
fantastic ambassador for the company, Deville has all
the skills to be a huge star
in the women’s division, but fans will just have to see whether
the WWE utilises the Jersey
Devil to her full extent. And finally, we’ve got some news
from Kurt Angle, as the Olympic
Gold medalist continues to be a person of
interest after his retirement. A family man, Angle and his wife
recently adopted a son from
Bulgaria, and in an interview with Chris Van Vliet,
Kurt revealed that his son has
some big ambitions. He said: Our adopted son Joseph wants
to be [a WWE Superstar]. He’s
a big WWE fan and wants me to get him a WWE try
out when he gets older. I told
him if he does good in school I’ll get him a tryout.” A tryout with WWE would
motivate even the worst student
to try their best, but that isn’t all Angle has had to say. In that same interview, Angle
also spoke about his 2001 face
run against The Alliance, and even admitted that whilst
fans may have loved the
segment where he doused the group in Milk, it didn’t smell too
good for the passengers on a
flight. He said: “That was my fault. I had just
got done and had milk all
over me and there was a red-eye flight in an hour and it
was the only flight I could catch
that night so I went soaking wet. I went and about
three hours on the plane it
smelled like sour milk. Everyone’s looking around like,
‘Who stinks?!’ It was great.” “I had to throw the shoes out. It
was funny. Anytime — if I could
do it again I would to see the looks on those people’s
faces on the plane, yeah.” Though it’s been nearly 20 years
since the incident, Milk-O-Mania
is still running wild with Angle, who has settled in
well it seems, in his new WWE
role as a backstage producer.