Daily Update: Vince McMahon-Oliver Luck lawsuit, CM Punk, AEW tickets

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This Week’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter: Elimination Chamber review, Undertaker to WWE Hall of Fame

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Monday News Update

Bryan and I will be back tonight for Wrestling Observer Radio talking Raw, the AEW announcements, WrestleMania news as well as taking your emails questions to dave@wrestlingobserver.com.

WWE

  • Raw is tonight from Columbus, OH. Raw today passed 7,000 tickets out which would be the largest Raw crowd of 2022. Damian Priest vs. Finn Balor for the U.S. title is advertised plus Edge appears. Tommaso Ciampa is backstage which makes sense since the idea is now to shoot angles on Monday for Tuesday and they have Ciampa & Bron Breakker vs. Dolph Ziggler & Robert Roode as the NXT 2.0 main event.
  • The Vince McMahon-Oliver Luck lawsuit is headed to trial on 7/11 by orders of Judge S. Dave Vatti. WWE has claimed Luck destroyed evidence within an hour of being terminated.
  • As was teased on Smackdown, the official listings for WrestleMania does have Queen Zelina & Carmella defending the women’s tag tiles against Naomi & Sasha Banks.
  • For Saturday’s MSG show, WWE has pulled the advertising of Seth Rollins as the opponent for Roman Reigns. It is just listed as Brock Lesnar and Roman Reigns both defending their titles against unnamed opponents. On television, they have pushed the Lesnar title defense hard and not mentioned the Reigns match. The announced matches are Becky Lynch vs. Bianca Belair vs. Rhea Ripley for the Raw women’s title, Charlotte Flair & Sonya Deville vs. Ronda Rousey & Naomi and Usos vs. New Day for the tag titles. Rollins is advertised still on the show, just not against Reigns.
  • Both Rollins and Becky Lynch were not on the weekend house shows even though they had been advertised. No announcement was made nor any reason given.
  • Two episodes of the Corey Graves & Carmella reality show pilot were released today on WWE’s YouTube channel. The promotion heavily publicized this.
  • There will be an Ilja Dragunov vs. Nathan Frazier match on NXT UK on Thursday.

AEW

  • Esquire Magazine did a major piece on C.M. Punk and his return that is worth reading even though most of you know the gist of the public part of the story but there is some private stuff that has never been out.
  • For Revolution, there are 29 tickets left priced at $271 to $900.50 and 429 tickets left on the secondary market at three to four times the usual face value.
  • The 4/6 show in Boston as of this morning was 366 tickets shy of a sellout (thanks to William Zdon/Wrestle Tix).
  • On BTE, the Young Bucks and Matt Hardy did a total spoof of the WWE/Jeff Hardy issues on today’s show.
  • Tay Conti is scheduled for the 3/26 EMW show in Tijuana. 

Other Wrestling

  • Johnny Gargano today said that he wants to remain a free agent at this time so he can pick and choose what he wants to do for the time being.
  • The debut of up-to-date New Japan on AXS will be Thursday at 10 p.m. with Hiroshi Tanahashi & Kazuchika Okada vs. Sanada & Tetsuya Naito and Evil vs. Tomohiro Ishii for the Never open weight title. From 3/10 to 3/31 they will be airing matches from 2/19 and 2/20 in Sapporo with Okada vs. Naito as a full show match on 3/31.
  • A video promoting the upcoming Matt Cardona vs. Nick Aldis NWA world heavyweight title match.
  • Slam Wrestling has an interview with Shane Taylor, formerly of Ring of Honor, where he talks about what is next.
  • Slam Wrestling also has a Q&A with “Dazzler” Ken Dunlop, who was a name wrestler in Australia and who recently released his autobiography, Dazzler Dunlop: Inside my Squared Circle.
  • Defy had its 50th show on Saturday night in Seattle: Titus Alexander b Ethan HD, Cody Chhun & Guillermo Rosas b Midnight Heat & Levi Cooper (Tucker in WWE) in a handicap match where Chhun & Rosas would have to leave Defy if they lost, Bollywood Boyz b Rocky Romero & Kevin Knight to keep Defy tag titles, Christopher Daniels b Clark Connors to keep Defy title, Jonah b Schaff, Sw3rve b Nick Wayne. Shane Strickland is just going by the name Sw3rve (thanks to Matt Farmer).
  • Regarding the question from yesterday as to whether AZM and Starlight Kid were the youngest wrestlers to get a ****1/2 or better rating or a match there was a ***** match in Mexico between Rey Misterio Jr., who was 19, and Juventud Guerrera, who was 20, in December 1994.
  • CWE announced shows for 4/6 in Yorkton, Saskatchewan, 4/7 in Prince Albert, 4/8 in Saskatoon and 4/9 in Regina.
  • Minoru Suzuki vs. Kevin Blackwood was announced for West Coast Pro on 4/15 in South San Francisco, CA at The State Room.

UFC

  • Rafael Fiziev, who was to face Rafael dos Anjos in the No. 2 bout on this coming Saturday’s UFC 272 PPV show, is out after testing positive for COVID. Both Islam Makhachev, who just won on Saturday night, and Paul Felder, have said that they would take the short notice fight against dos Anjos. For Makhachev that’s something because he’s already earned a title shot and has nothing to gain from a win over dos Anjos.
  •  UFC 274 on 5/7 will be from Phoenix.
  • Sportsbetting.ag has placed odds heavily in favor if Islam Makhachev winning the lightweight title. He’s listed as a -415 favorite against Charles Oliveira, and a -600 favorite against Justin Gaethje.