Author: Andrew Ravens

Former UFC Heavyweight and Light Heavyweight Champion Daniel Cormier has been linked to pro wrestling despite never stepping foot inside of the squared circle for a match.

He was supposed to fight Brock Lesnar and even had a tryout as a commentator for WWE. He’s also good friends with Triple H and Stephanie McMahon. Since retiring from MMA competition, he has transitioned into the UFC commentary booth.

During a Twitter Spaces with Monster Energy, Cormier was asked about potentially working with WWE, and he noted that he had talked with the company a few times about working with NXT Tag Team Champions The Creed Brothers (Julius & Brutus Creed). 

\”I actually talk to them quite a bit. I\’m friends with a lot of people that are in that company. I speak to Triple H. I\’ve got some friends that are competing. My brothers, not my actual brother, one of my friends, Jacob Kasper [Julius Creed], he\’s part of the Creed Brothers. They are in the WWE and the NXT Champions. They are the smaller league champions. I\’ve been asked a couple of times to do stuff with them for the promotion, but I haven\’t been able to make it work. It\’s something I want to do,\” he said.

The Creed Brothers have been the champions since NXT In Your House 2022.  Cormier trained with Julius, a two-time NCAA All-American at Duke, ahead of his UFC 214 fight against Jon Jones.

H/T to Fightful for the transcript

Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s daughter, Simone Johnson, is going under the Ava Raine name in WWE NXT after signing with the company in February 2020. She appeared at two live events this past weekend.

While speaking with Entertainment Tonight at the premiere of his latest movie, “DC League of Pets,” Johnson commented on Simone’s recent debut at a set of NXT live events.

“She’s made history. Very, very proud of her. She is fiercely independent. It’s very important for her to make her own way, blaze her own trail, blaze her own path. She doesn’t come to me looking for a lot, which I respect that. And I’m here watching and supporting.”

The Rock also praised Montez Ford in this interview by noting that he thinks the former WWE Tag Team Champion is the total package thanks to his charisma and athleticism. He also was asked about wrestling again, and Johnson said he is always open to that.

It’s still unclear when Raine will make her WWE NXT television debut. “DC League of Pets\” will be released in theaters on July 29th. 

H/T to Joseph Currier of Wrestling Observer for the transcript

There’s been no recent discussion about the vacant WWE Women’s Tag Team Titles.

The titles have been vacant since WWE stripped Sasha Banks and Naomi in mid-May after the two stars walked out of the company and were suspended independently.

On an episode of SmackDown that same week, WWE announced that a tournament would be held to crown new Women’s Tag Team Champions, but that was the last word spoken of the titles on WWE programming.  

Fightful reports that talent they’ve spoken with have noted they\’ve received no word of when or if the tag team title tournament will happen. Since that announcement, talent claims they\’ve also heard no discussion regarding the titles.

The titles were introduced in February 2019, with Sasha Banks and Bayley being the inaugural champions. Banks and Naomi were the 13th set of champions in the history of the titles, with their reign ending at 47 days. 

In the weeks before the titles were vacated, Natalya had been moved into a singles title program with then-SmackDown Women’s Champion Ronda Rousey, while Liv Morgan and Rhea Ripley were split up, reducing the number of teams in the women’s division.

Following two reports by the Wall Street Journal in the last month, Netflix has reportedly scrapped a documentary planned about the life and career of Vince McMahon. 

Denise Salcedo reported Friday evening that the McMahon Netflix documentary has been pulled and is off the programming spreadsheet at Netflix. One source at Netflix confirmed it is no longer being listed on their spreadsheet, while another source at Netflix said, “that s**t’s out of here.”

Another source indicated the project had already been “deep” in post-production with several talent interviews conducted months ago, and millions were spent on the project. 

WWE first announced during its third-quarter 2020 financials call that they’ve teamed up with Netflix to air a docuseries on the life and career of McMahon.

Bill Simmons served as the executive producer, while Chris Smith, best known from Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened, was the director. At the time, WWE touted it as the highest-budgeted Netflix docuseries of all time.

The first report by the Wall Street Journal came out about McMahon allegedly paying a former $3 million in a settlement to stay quiet regarding their sexual relations. The Board of WWE is also investigating other nondisclosure agreements involving misconduct claims made by former female WWE employees about McMahon and WWE’s head of talent relations John Laurinaitis.

McMahon was in the headlines again after The Wall Street Journal reported he paid $12 million in hush money to four women in the past 16 years.

Pat McAfee will be absent from calling the action with Michael Cole on tonight\’s episode of SmackDown.

During the WWE After the Bell podcast this week, WWE Raw color commentator Corey Graves announced that he\’ll call tonight\’s SmackDown as McAfee is at Lake Tahoe for the American Century Championship celebrity golf tournament.

This will be the post-Money in the Bank episode of the show. After the broadcast ended on Saturday night, Happy Corbin attacked McAfee and accepted his challenge for a match at SummerSlam in Nashville, Tennessee, on Saturday, July 30.

McAfee wore a neck brace while attending UFC 276 in Las Vegas later that night, but said on his radio show that he was just wearing it as a precaution. 

Earlier this week, WWE announced McAfee had signed a multi-year contract extension with WWE and noted the deal \”will see McAfee entertaining the WWE Universe for years to come.\”

WWE announced this afternoon that Drew McIntyre vs. Sheamus will take place on SmackDown, with the winner earning the right to challenge either Roman Reigns or Brock Lesnar for the Undisputed WWE Universal Title at the WWE Clash at the Castle Premium Live Event.

WWE announced today that Pat McAfee has signed a multi-year deal with the company. 

After signing with the company in April 2021 to be the SmackDown color commentator alongside play-by-play announcer Michael Cole, McAfee quickly became a fan favorite. 

WrestleVotes reported after the announcement that the deal was signed a few weeks back, and those involved were thrilled with the two sides reaching a new agreement that will see him remain with the company for years to come. 

It was said, “WWE knows exactly what they have in McAfee and were steadfast on making sure they kept him around.”

It’s been reported that Vince McMahon is high on McAfee’s commentary and thinks a lot of him personally, as McMahon did his first sit-down interview in years on McAfee’s radio show to promote. McAfee joined Vince, Stephanie McMahon, and Triple H in attending UFC 276 this past Saturday night.

Reactions to Pat McAfee Re-Signing

Michael Cole and Triple H were just some of the people who reacted to the news of McAfee’s extension on Twitter: 

In addition to calling matches, McAfee occasionally wrestles and has been praised for his in-ring work. The former NFL punter made his WWE in-ring debut in August 2020 when he lost to Adam Cole at WWE NXT TakeOver: XXX before getting back into the ring that December for a WarGames match where The Undisputed ERA defeated Danny Burch, Oney Lorcan, McAfee & Pete Dunne. 

At WrestleMania 38 earlier this year, McAfee beat Theory in a singles match before being beaten down by Vince McMahon. The SmackDown color commentator is slated to wrestle Happy Corbin at SummerSlam on Saturday, July 30, 2022, from Nashville, Tennessee.

There have been conflicting reports on the WWE status of Sasha Banks and Naomi. However, an update has come from PWinsider, reporting today that Banks and Naomi were removed from WWE\’s Internal roster over the last 24 hours.

It was added that they had heard rumblings that Banks may be doing some signings outside of WWE this fall, but that is not confirmed. 

There were reports from Wrestling Inc. and WrestleVotes that Banks had been released. Dave Meltzer previously reported that Banks and her lawyers were still working on getting her release, but the release had not been granted.

• WWE Censors Sasha Banks Fan Sign on SmackDown

Banks and Naomi walked out of a Monday Night Raw event this past May because of creative differences with Vince McMahon regarding a six-pack challenge on the show. The plan was for Naomi to challenge Bianca Belair for the Raw Women’s Title while Banks was supposed to wrestle then-SmackDown Women’s Champion Ronda Rousey at Hell in a Cell. 

WWE later announced that the two stars were indefinitely suspended and stripped of the Women\’s Tag Team Titles. They later removed their merchandise from WWE Shop and their contracts were put on hold.

• 5 Moments That Defined Sasha Banks’ WWE Career

This year’s WWE Money in the Bank was a memorable night with several notable moments. It was also successful for the company. 

Fightful Select posted a backstage update on last Saturday’s event in Las Vegas as an internal document that has been making the rounds in the company to executives to tout the event’s success.

The memo noted the event was the “most-viewed” Money in the Bank show in history and drew the second-highest gate in the event’s history.

Merchandise sold at the show is said to have increased 95 percent from last year’s Money in the Bank show, which was previously the highest-selling merchandise for the event.

The event didn’t start to a strong start, as it was originally announced at Allegiant Stadium. After weak ticket sales, WWE pivoted and moved the show to the MGM Grand Garden Arena. After moving to the arena, the event sold around 12,000 tickets.

The event featured three championship matches and the two traditional Money in the Bank ladder matches for both men and women. Theory won the men\’s bout while Liv Morgan won the women\’s match and later cashed in to win the SmackDown Women\’s Championship from Ronda Rousey. 

WWE NXT Champion Bron Breakker made his latest title defense against Cameron Grimes in the main event of the Great American Bash special of NXT on Tuesday night. 

The match saw Bron get a fast start only for Grimes to work him over in the commercial break. Bron won with a spear. Post-match, JD McDonagh, formerly known as Jordan Devlin, laid out Bron by putting him through a table. 

WWE set up this match on the June 14th edition of NXT when Grimes issued the match challenge and Breakker accepted it. This was after Breakker gave Grimes an encouraging word by telling Grimes that he will be a champion again someday after his North American Title loss. Grimes said that he was not looking for sympathy from anyone. 

Later in the show, after Breakker\’s successful title defense against Duke Hudson, Grimes insinuated that Breakker had been fast-tracked due to his family name as the son of Rick Steiner. He said that everyone knows Breakker’s dad and no one will remember Grimes\’ late father\’s name. 

Breakker previously made a title defense against Joe Gacy in the main event of the In Your House event in Orlando, Florida at the Performance Center on Peacock last month. 

Cora Jade and Roxanne Perez are the new WWE NXT Women\’s Tag Team Champions as they dethroned Toxic Attraction (Jacy Jayne and Gigi Dolin). 

In the opening match of Tuesday’s special edition of WWE NXT Great American Bash, the bout opened the show and went back and forth. NXT Women’s Champion Mandy Rose got involved as she pulled the referee out of the ring when the challengers were going for a pin attempt, so she got thrown out. 

Moments later, Perez hit her pop rocks finisher on Jayne for the win, marking the first time Jade and Perez held gold in NXT. 

Dolin and Jayne had been in their second reign as Tag Team Champions. Their first reign started last October when they defeated Io Shirai & Zoey Stark and, Indi Hartwell & Persia Pirotta in a triple threat Scareway to Hell ladder match to win the titles. 

Although they later lost the titles to Dakota Kai and Raquel González at Stand & Deliver this past April, WWE had them win the titles back three nights later. 

WWE has seen its popularity decline for several years since the Attitude Era, but they’ve been able to stop the huge drop that they had been experiencing in recent years. WWE consistently dropped in popularity (TV ratings and attendance) from 2017 to 2021. However, that has largely halted. 

Since launching in 2019, All Elite Wrestling has grown rapidly as they were able to secure a television deal with WarnerMedia just months after launching and have been able to draw over 100,000 PPV buys with every event they’ve presented thus far. 

Dave Meltzer went into detail about how WWE is getting more interest than usual of late during today’s Wrestling Observer Radio. 

“WWE being up was interesting to me. Almost across the board, whatever they are doing… another interesting thing about that is they’re up (and) one of their biggest drawing cards Roman Reigns is not even on these shows other than Nashville (SummerSlam), which is doing pretty well.

Whatever it is, there’s definitely an upswing in interest in the product, for whatever reason. So that was kind of an interesting thing to see. The ratings of WWE have been up… WWE is on an upswing right now, so they’re doing something right, whatever it is.”

Meltzer noted that although AEW’s TV ratings have been down over the last few months, he cited the mega-list of injuries they’re dealing with as several stars are out of action, including CM Punk and Bryan Danielson. 

Brandon Thurston of WrestleNomics has posted an article looking at the key performance indicators for WWE and AEW and how they compare.

This report notes WWE still leads in nearly every category in terms of numbers (TV tapings and attendance). It was said, “AEW’s lower profile consistently grew in previous comparisons, and still is growing.”

For WWE, they have yet to reach popularity to the heights of the years following the launch of the WWE Network in 2014, but it was stated the Peacock deal for its Network rights had come at the same time they were seeing stabilization and improvement in multiple areas.

TV Ratings

• Raw’s ranking among other programs on Monday remains strong and improved in the second quarter of 2022. SmackDown continues to remain among the most-watched shows on Fridays.
• Dynamite’s key demo ranking is up strongly year-over-year, although the show is having its first negative year-over-year comparisons just slightly after several consecutive quarters of growth.

Attendance

• WWE averaged higher attendances for TV events than AEW through all four quarters since returning to touring in July 2021.
• WWE also has the edge with premium live events/pay-per-views compared to AEW because they run stadium events.

Other metrics such as YouTube views and social media engagement can be found in the complete report here. 

H/T to WrestleTalk for the transcription