Daily Update: Cody Rhodes, Wheeler Yuta, Pat Buck

Daily Update

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This Week’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter: AEW & NJPW announce joint show, Windy City Riot review

  • The new issue of the Observer has these stories:
  • Forbidden Door PPV and the history of NJPW and AEW going from a cold relationship to running a joint show
  • Match of the Week/Performer of the Week
  • What people thought of NJPW Windy City Riot
  • Part one of looking at February & March business and comparisons with one year ago
  • Windy City Riot, the good, the bad and the technical issues
  • WrestleMania Backlash and early notes on WWE’s summer stadium shows
  • Saturday’s UFC show
  • What arena has had more great matches than any other and its 60th anniversary
  • Television wrestling viewing over the past week, including comparisons with other sports, head-to-head competition, who watches
  • CMLL Universal title tournament
  • Stardom Cinderella tournament
  • All Japan Champion Carnival tournament
  • Update on Kota Ibushi
  • Are streaming services plateauing?
  • Notes on the biggest indie shows of the past week
  • AEW video game news
  • Ticket updates and sales for WWE & AEW shows over the next month plus
  • International TV ratings
  • Dana White talking major fight this summer he’s working on
  • Coverage of Bellator’s biggest show of the year and this week’ doubleheader
  • How much fighters actually weigh getting into the cage vs. weigh-ins
  • Fight of the year talk
  • Notes on Kushida leaving WWE
  • How WWE first came up with the developmental system and the idea behind it
  • Paul Levesque talks developmental
  • Steve Austin talks doing future big shows
  • Streaming numbers

This Week’s Retro Observer Newsletter: March 21, 2005 Observer Newsletter: Raw leaving Spike TV, TNA Destination X review

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Tuesday News Update

WWE

  • Cody Rhodes on Instagram wrote about Randy Orton’s 20th anniversary: “I have an assortment of jovial stories about this man – but often I miss the mark on the most important aspect…Randy Orton took me under his wing; perhaps begrudgingly or not, but he did it sincerely. Up in the stands earlier in the day, in the car, in the locker room, on the apron…constantly delivering wisdom and functional advice, and it came from a place of experience and wasn’t just rhetoric. His passion for our sport is aggressive. Loud and proud. Did it his way and in the process entertained millions. Thank you. Cheers to 20 @randyorton.”
  • Edge revealed the name of his new stable consisting of himself and Damian Priest last night on Raw. Together, they are now known as Judgment Day.
  • Main Event matches for this week include The Street Profits vs. Cedric Alexander and Shelton Benjamin and Liv Morgan vs. Nikki A.S.H.. This will be the 500th episode of the show, which launched back in October 2012.
  • PWInsider reports that Rick Steiner is backstage at tonight’s NXT.
  • WWE 2K22’s first DLC package, the Banzai Pack, is now out. This adds Yokozuna, Umaga, Omos, Rikishi, and Kacy Catanzaro (now Katana Chance) as playable characters.
  • Sasha Banks was a guest on Good Mythical Morning.
  • The preview for tonight’s new episode of Young Rock: “Nashville, 1987: Ata and Rocky’s marriage hits a rough patch; when teenage Dwayne questions his dad’s decision making, Ata tells him the story of how she and Rocky met; in 2032, candidate Johnson decides to face his challenger head on.”
  • Bruce Prichard has filed to trademark the term “I used to be over”.
  • Matches added to WWE’s YouTube account today include John Cena vs. Shawn Michaels vs. Edge vs. Randy Orton from Backlash 2007, John Cena and Rob Van Dam vs. Triple H, Shelton Benjamin, and Chris Masters from the May 15, 2006 edition of Raw, and Triple H vs. Brock Lesnar in a steel cage match from Extreme Rules 2013.

AEW/ROH

  • This week’s AEW Road To, which focuses in-depth on the friendship and career of FTR as they face one another this week on Dynamite in an Owen Hart Foundation tournament qualifiying match.
  • Former WWE producer Pat Buck confirmed on Twitter he is now part of AEW. Buck left WWE the day after the second night of WrestleMania 38, where he played a part in the Brock Lesnar vs. Roman Reigns main event.
  • In an interview with WrestlingInc, Wheeler Yuta talked about his new role in AEW as part of the Blackpool Combat Club. He also said that Bryan Danielson and Jon Moxley have been helping him with promos. “It’s absolutely a part of my game that I have been working on, and been trying to improve, and they’ve been very helpful with a lot of that. It’s really cool to be able to stand there and do interviews with them,” he said. “On Dynamite, we did one before the match with The Gunn Club that aired that week on Rampage, and just being able to kind of discuss with them how they approach just doing interviews was mind-blowing to me. They’ll stand in front of mirrors and work on gestures, and things like that. Things that I never thought of, there’s drills for that, just like there’s drills for being in the ring. Being able to stand by them and learn from example watching them, and also having my little moments where I can interject my own verbiage, or my own personality has been really helpful.”
  • Variety reported that Warner Bros. Discovery will be cutting scripted programming development at TBS and TNT.
  • This week’s Sammy Guevara vlog.
  • This week’s Thunder Rosa vlog with Dustin Rhodes.

Other Wrestling

  • GCW is heading to the Evansville Coliseum on Sunday, July 3.
  • In an interview with Sports Illustrated, Tetsuya Naito says he doesn’t have any interest in challenging anyone from AEW for the Forbidden Door show in June. Instead, he sees many in AEW challenging him. “There is no wrestler I want to call out,” he said. “The reason is simple. Wrestlers in AEW will all gather and shout, ‘I want to wrestle Tetsuya Naito!’ and ‘I want to fight Los Ingobernables de Japon!’ It isn’t hard to see this happening. It won’t take long before it does.”
  • Dragon Gate announced that Gamma and Super Shisa will be leaving the promotion at the end of the month. Gamma is planning to retire in August with a self-produced retirement show set for August 14.
  • DEFY Wrestling announced that their Wild Ones show on April 30 will stream for free on Pluto TV’s wrestling channel. Jon Moxley vs. Tom Lawlor will headline the show.
  • The Bollywood Boyz credited DEFY for their help in securing visas following their release from WWE in an interview with Slam Wrestling. “We’ve gotta give props and much love to DEFY Wrestling who called us within days of us getting released, and they took care of us, they took care of our visa situation, because obviously without a visa, we’re not going to be making a name for ourselves in the States,” said Gurv Sihra.
  • Killer Kross has applied to trademark his name.