Random News Tidbits.

[jagilki]

Shit that really don't belong in FWL news, or are just to worthless to be there and too worthless for their own thread.

-The reason why Alicia Fox is portraying a crazy woman on TV is because someone saw the surveillance video from last week (posted by TMZ) of Solange Knowles attacking Jay-Z in an elevator in New York City while her sister Beyonce stood by. Someone in the company pitched the idea to use it in a storyline so they went with it.



No one knows why Solange had the meltdown so they are playing it up the same way on WWE TV. Alicia had a meltdown on Raw and WWE Main Event but it wasn't really explained why she had the meltdown.









www.ewrestlingnews.com/news/the-reason-for-alicia-fox-s-storyline-meltdown

[Fnord]

I've heard rumors about WWE making a faction of disgruntled wrestlers. Alicia Fox would fit in there. And what Sandow did on the RAW pre-show would put him in there. Zack Ryder could be in there as well, I heard.

[jagilki]

stolen from a poster on FAN

A lot of TNA talent has contacted ROH and Jeff Jarrett due to nervousness that gets stronger every week that goes by without a new television deal announced.

With the first round of network subscriptions coming due on 9/2, the WWE is looking to load up the 9/21 Night of Champions show in Nashville. Lesnar is to return for a two-show program, starting at SummerSlam and continuing at NOC.

The $1 rise in price of Netflix is something to watch regarding the WWE network. A $1 price range, if the company should do it, brings in $7 million or more per year in revenue. Netflix and Amazon have both recently raised their prices. The only reason WWE and UFC kept their price at $9.99 was that Netflix established a low price point as the value of a streaming service.

For the second straight week on Raw, the overrun segment involving The Shield had the highest rated quarter of the show. It's been pretty consistent in recent weeks that the ratings champions have been segments with The Shield and Evolution along with Bryan's segment. Cena's wasn't on the 5/5 show because it was the week they held him off Raw to try and build network subscriptions by advertising his promo as a Main Event exclusive. After Raw did its third lowest rating of the year, even though a day after a PPV, they may not do that again.

The reason a lot of WCW theme music is now being used on the network instead of dubbed over is settling some deals as well as the settlement of a lawsuit by Jimmy Papa, who had produced music for both WCW and World Class. Papa had sued WWE in 2012, claiming the company had used WCW theme music, as well as his most popular song, "Badstreet USA," that he had written with Michael Hayes. He sued WWE, Hayes and Jim Johnston for copyright violation and for claiming Johnston had written the songs. The case was settled with the terms sealed, past the point WWE is now allowed to use the music.

It's been noted to us what an impossible position Paul Levesque has been put in when it comes to talent relations, because Vince McMahon is still the guy making all the final calls, and he changes his mind frequently. It's become a big frustration of talent that they are told a certain direction by Levesque, and then Levesque is put in the position of having to get with the talent again and explain that what he told them before isn't happening. Either he's really good, or he's in a bad position, because talent for the most part sees him as one of them and that he's frustrated from above when things change.

We've heard more pay grumbling from referees, noting that they are having troubles making it due to road expenses. Because they are paid less than talent, but paid the same way, based on how the business is doing, they get hurt the worst when payoffs are down at the house shows because they've got the same road expenses, which are not going down, and in many cases increasing.

Jerry Lawler said in a Bleacher Report interview that he's working to get the Memphis tape library together and then sell it to WWE for the network. It's a weird deal. A ton of stuff is still in existence with tape collectors (I'm betting I've got nearly everything of note from 1981 to at least the early 90s myself, and Jim Cornette would have stuff from the 70s, but a lot of the masters were sold to different people and there are all kinds of questions regarding ownership. Lawler and Jerry Jarrett owned the company from the late 70s through the mid-90s. A guy named Larry Burton came in and became friends with Lawler, and was able to swindle investors from Cleveland to pay a couple of million for the territory, which at the time was losing money. Jerry Jarrett, who noted he was not in business to lose money, was about to shut it down, so the idea of getting $250,000 from Lawler for his half was fine by him at that time, seeing no future in territorial wrestling. Lawler then sold the entire company to the new group at a large profit, and they went out of business quickly from there. Lawler did manage to work with Randy Hales to start up and run a new group on Ch. 5, because wrestling was a tradition on that station, as a WWE developmental territory, which worked out fine until Lawler and WWE split up and WWE wouldn't work with Hales unless he got rid of Lawler. Hales chose Lawler over WWE, but eventually that group shut down, and Ch. 5 eventually lost interest in Saturday morning wrestling. But nobody really owns the tapes, as the Cleveland group headed by Mark Selker, which should have owned all assets, declared bankruptcy in the late 90s, and nobody bought any of the assets. I know that MMA promoter Jeff Osborne had bought rights to a lot of the original masters from Randy West, who was the director of the TV show and who still had them. Cory Maclin, who owned a later promotion and worked for the Jarrett/Lawler company as an announcer, sold the rights to his tape collection of whatever he had of his own group and the old group, and Lawler ended up suing him over selling rights to the old collection that he didn't own. He later passed away in an auto accident.

The expectation for the arrival of Fergal Devitt is the late summer, tentatively August.

When they do tryouts nowadays, they tell everyone to be careful what you write in social media and not say anything to get you into trouble. The most notable situation there was with Mark & Jay Briscoe, who were in when their ROH contracts expired, but when Jay wrote the wrong thing on Twitter, about not wanting someone gay teaching his kid, which he immediately apologized for, WWE wouldn't touch him or his brother.

Layla and Summer Rae are going to do a program when Rae returns to TV

-WON

[The TeeJ of Philly]

The reason Netflix bumped up has nothing to do with them, more so they paid Comcast to provide faster connections for people because the demand was so high and Comcast was hustling them saying "Wow,  you sure have a lot of people using your service, we could make it faster for some more money on your end", I dunno the figures, but it was not cheap.

Hence the dollar bump.

[jagilki]

But this report is saying that WWE will watch that bump in Netflix' price to determine any future raises in THEIR service.

[The TeeJ of Philly]

But this report is saying that WWE will watch that bump in Netflix' price to determine any future raises in THEIR service.

Yeah, I know, just letting people know why Netflix did it, had nothing to do with them looking to make more money, in fact it was down so they wouldn't lose money.

I think WWE would be foolish to do it so soon after launching. Netflix has done streaming for like 3 or 4 years now, and this I think is their first bump in price. It'd look like a total money grab and turn off some people.

[GM Franchise]

I HOPE Lawler gets the Memphis tap library together and sells it to WWE. I used to love Memphis Wrestling back in the day.

[Kise]

Love this picture.

[jagilki]

Stolen from a poster on FAN

According to sources within the company, plans before the surgery were for Bryan to return on the 6/29 Money in the Bank PPV in Boston. The latest word is that he may not make that deadline and they are booking a new card if they are without him as a contingency plan.

For Bryan, with his style of wrestling, this neck operation may be the beginning of long-term problems. A number of the biggest names in wrestling history, who are following his situation, noted to me that he needs to start toning down his style.

Some have suggested giving up moves. The missile dropkick, because of the way he lands while doing it, the diving head-butt and the topes, because he often crashes into the barricade, were the three moves mentioned the most. But that's a tough deal. I know that with Chris Benoit, who had a more serious neck surgery, the idea of giving up the diving head-butts was suggested to him, he continued to use that and said that when he could no longer do the move, that's when he would probably want to retire. Harley Race, who pioneered the move in the U.S. in the 70s, has stated on many occasions the unnatural way of landing is brutal on the neck, and even though it was his trademark, recommended people not do it. Race did more of a falling off the top rope version and not a soaring version like Benoit, Dynamite Kid and Bryan are known for. Just a few weeks ago, Bryan did the move off a forklift two-thirds of the way across the ring in an angle with Kane on Raw.

Another way this could be handled is to not drop the moves completely, but save them for only big singles matches, so the long-term wear-and-tear won't be as bad, and he would still do what he wants in the big matches that he'll be most remembered for.

The deal with Kurt Angle and WWE, and this is why there was no response from WWE to him the last time his contract was due, is that after being scared in 2006, Vince McMahon made the call that no matter what, there was not going to be an Olympic gold medalist dying on WWE's watch. It perhaps was overblown when people said he was on death watch, but even before Benoit, and far more since, the issue has been, even if the chance was slim, this, at least a few years ago, was simply a risk McMahon wasn't willing to take.

NXT SPOILER
[spoiler]{Spoiler}

The idea, or at least part of it, for the Charlotte vs. Natalya NXT women's tournament final on 5/29 was to have Ric Flair and Bret Hart rooting in separate corners. But Hart had an issue that made it impossible to come, so it'll just be Ric in Charlotte's corner. Hart has not signed a new legends contract.

[/spoiler]

It is now official that Tough Enough will be filming for six weeks starting early July at the Performance Center in Orlando, for a fall season on the WWE Network.

More on the Memphis tape collection. I was under the impression that Jeff Osborne, a former independent pro wrestler who became an MMA fighter, then a pioneer MMA promoter (he was really the one who started women's MMA at any level in the U.S.) who briefly worked as an announcer for UFC, owned a lot of it. Osborne purchased about 40 tape masters from Paul Neighbors, a longtime referee for Jarrett Promotions, who owned them, in 1992, for $3,000. The entire collection was pre-1985 as Osborne felt the post-1985 stuff not to be worth as much. For years, Jerry Jarrett taped over the masters to save $20 each week. But Osborne sold his collection to someone in Georgia for somewhere between $16,000 and $25,000 somewhat recently. Mike Lano claimed he bought two master tapes of shows with Andy Kaufman in studio and that Eddie Gilbert had told him that he owned some master tapes and 8mm footage shot from house shows.

Several new women have just started in Orlando in recent weeks. One is Danielle Jackson, who came from OVW, where she used the name Dani Jaxx. Another is Savelina "Lina" Fanene, who is of Samoan descent and is a cousin of Dwayne Johnson. Her grandfather and Dwayne's great grandmother were brother and sister. She's from California, and attended the WrestleMania with the first Rock vs. Cena match. Apparently she was a good basketball player. Ata Johnson, Dwayne's mother, suggested she consider trying pro Wrestling after seeing that show. At first she wasn't interested, and even thought the idea was crazy. Then she asked about training schools in California. She had a tryout and WWE saw something they liked in her and signed her. Another is Dasha Gonzalez, who is using the name Dasha Kurat (she just got married so I'm presuming Kurat is her married name). She was a gymnast who did beauty pageants and fitness modeling and was the 2009 Miss University of Central Florida.

For what it's worth regarding this week's programs for down the line, The idea is Shield vs. Wyatts, Cena vs. Bray Wyatt with Usos vs. Harper & Rowan, Barrett vs. Big E and Sheamus vs. Miz as a U.S. title program.

-WON

[jagilki]

Love this picture.

[Tezmission Black]

Is Bootista a closet geek? Or just pointing out his latest costar?

[Duckman]

I watched the Beyond the Ring documentary on him on the WWE Network the other day.  Turns out he's a total nerd. Growing up was a big comic book guy, really shy and nerdy.

[Marq]

Dude, his dad was a Filipino hairdresser.

I'd have stayed at home and read comics, too.

THEN get buff and fuck as many women as humanly possible.

[Rob]

Good thing he likes wrestling too... That's not at all nerdy

[Kise]

Since our feature story on the WWE's Vince McMahon came out he has lost more than $750 million, including a pile-driving $350 million in one day as shares in his WWE took a beating in the wake of a TV deal WWE had signed with NBCUniversal. That brutal day in May knocked McMahon out of the billionaire ranks. WWE's shares were up 89% in the first three months of 2014, and McMahon's net worth peaked in mid-March at $1.6 billion.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/danalexander/2014/05/28/wwe-boss-vince-mcmahon-has-lost-750-million-in-two-months/

Here's the older story:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/danalexander/2014/05/16/wwe-ceo-vince-mcmahon-no-longer-billionaire-after-losing-340-million-in-a-day/