Daily Update: WrestleMania battle royals, ESPN/UFC, WWE notes

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Today is the final day for our poll on the ROH 17th anniversary show, so you can leave a thumbs up, thumbs down or thumbs in the middle along with a best and worst match to dave@wrestlingobserver.com.

We’re looking for reports tonight from these weekend shows:

  • WWE Raw Saturday night in Milwaukee
  • AAA Rey de Reyes last night in Puebla
  • ROH TV tapings Saturday night in Las Vegas
  • OTT ScrapperMania Saturday in Dublin
  • Raw tonight from Chicago with the Main Event or dark matches
  • The Smackdown house show tonight in Rockford, IL

        Reports on all these shows can be sent to newstips@wrestlingobserver.com.

Raw tonight will be from Chicago on Monday with Ronda Rousey vs. Dana Brooke for the women’ title, Seth Rollins vs. Drew McIntyre and Finn Balor & ? vs. Bobby Lashley & Lio Rush. There is also a Smackdown house show that night in Rockford, IL.

Smackdown and 205 Live will be in Indianapolis on Tuesday. Kofi Kingston has the gauntlet match with Samoa Joe, Randy Orton, Sheamus, Cesaro and Erick Rowan, plus for 205 Live, Tony Nese vs. Cedric Alexander takes place with the winner facing Buddy Murphy at WrestleMania.

NEW JAPAN CUP QUARTERFINALS ON WEDNESDAY FROM SHIZUOKA AT 5 A.M. EASTERN ON NEW JAPAN WORLD

  • Manabu Nakanishi & Yuji Nagata & Yuya Uemura vs. Satoshi Kojima & Hiroyoshi Tenzan & Yota Tsuji
  • Juice Robinson & Mikey Nicholls & Ryusuke Taguchi vs. Chase Owens & Bad Luck Fale & Hikuleo
  • Togi Makabe & Toru Yano & Michael Elgin & Tomoaki Honma vs. Lance Archer & Davey Boy Smith Jr. & Taichi & Minoru Suzuki
  • Kota Ibushi & Hirooki Goto & Ren Narita vs. Tetsuya Naito & Bushi & Shingo Takagi
  • Colt Cabana & Toa Henare vs. Evil & Sanada
  • Hiroshi Tanahashi & Shota Umino vs. Zack Sabre Jr. & Taka Michinoku
  • Tomohiro Ishii vs. Yoshi-Hashi
  • Will Ospreay vs. Kazuchika Okada

NEW JAPAN CUT QUARTERFINALS ON THURSDAY FROM SHIZUOKA AT 4 A.M.  EASTERN ON NEW JAPAN WORLD

  • Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Zack Sabre Jr.
  • Colt Cabana vs. Sanada

F4W NEWSLETTER: Figure Four Weekly: WWE’s road to Ronda Rousey vs. Charlotte vs. Becky Lynch

Though the road getting here was as convoluted as possible, WWE has finally confirmed Ronda Rousey vs. Charlotte Flair vs. Becky Lynch for WrestleMania 35.

Storyline suspensions, injuries, and even an “arrest” for Lynch, the McMahons getting involved and Vince replacing Lynch with Charlotte, Charlotte fully turning heel and Rousey turning against the crowd, and dozens of tweets all led to Lynch facing Charlotte at Fastlane. The stipulation was that if Lynch won, the Raw Women’s Championship match at WrestleMania would officially become a triple threat.

WON NEWSLETTER: March 18, 2019 Wrestling Observer Newsletter: 2018 Observer Newsletter Awards

One of the two biggest issues of the year, the awards issue, is out right now.

The awards issue contains not only the award winners, but also top placeholders in every category and an all-time history of award winners dating back to 1980.

Have a look at the career and life of Dick “The Destroyer” Beyer, from football to college wrestling to TV stardom in Japan to teaching school. It’s really an amazing story of one of the first Americans to become a TV celebrity in Japan and the greatest American masked wrestler of all-time.

Read full coverage of the road to WrestleMania with most of the card as well as full coverage of Fastlane with a match-by-match rundown with star ratings, poll results and business notes.

Look at SummerSlam tickets, WWE creative, Bruce Prichard, Jeff Jarrett, AEW vs. WWE, Takeover Brooklyn’s complete card, newcomers to WWE this week, Dwayne Johnson award, Harlem Heat Hall of Fame notes, WrestleMania 2020 week updates, new WWE hire, WWE ticket sales, WWE stock price, most watched shows of the past week no the WWE Network plus notes from all the weekend house shows with results, angles and business.

This issue has updated coverage of the New Japan Cup, with this week’s shows, a rundown of every match so far in the tournament and an updated look at the brackets.

ORDERING INFO:  Order the print Wrestling Observer right now and get it delivered  via mail, by sending your name, address, Visa or Master Card number and an expiration date to dave@wrestlingobserver.com or by going to www.paypal.com directing funds to dave@wrestlingobserver.com.

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If you order by  mail with a check, cash or money order to P.O. Box 1228, Campbell,CA  95009-1228, you can get $1 off in every price range.

MONDAY NEWS UPDATE

Bryan and I will be back tonight with Wrestling Observer Radio and we have a ton of topics to talk about besides Raw, including the new UFC deal, New Japan Cup, BTE, Sue Aitchison and a lot more. You can send questions to the show to mailbag@wrestlingobserver.com.

Both the Andre the Giant and the women’s Battle Royal are currently scheduled for WrestleMania. There at least three more matches that haven’t been hinted about that will be on the show, so this is going to be a very long show.

We’ll be talking tonight about the ESPN+ deal with UFC as the repercussions are even bigger than they sound, but it’s essentially almost the death of the old television PPV major event industry as far as DirectTV, Dish and inDemand. The story of DirecTV and UFC not making the new deal when the contract expired at the end of the year had to do with these negotiations.

I want to make mention of how much Sue Aitchison deserves the WWE Hall of Fame award she is getting. She has worked behind the scenes and people within the company understand her work and how much she’s done but I’m glad the public will get to know at least a little of it.

Dave Bautista is not at television, but Brock Lesnar will be on the Raw show tonight in Chicago. We didn’t get official word the show is sold out, but earlier in the week we were told this would be the one for sure Raw sellout of this year’s Mania season.

Zack Sabre Jr. has announced an open challenge for the Mark Hitchock Memorial show over WrestleMania weekend on 4/4 at the Midtown Hilton in New York. 

WWE

  • Rey Mysterio drove the pace car at yesterday’s NASCAR event in California. Mysterio drove the car with his mask. (thanks to Kevin Witt) 
  • Both Glenn “Kane” Jacobs and Titus O’Neil have signed up for autobiographies. Jacobs’ book is called “Mayor Kane: My Life in Wrestling and Liberty,” which will be out in November. ECW press will be doing “There’s No Such Thing As a Bad Kid:  How I went from Stereotype to Prototype” on 8/6, written by Thaddeus Bullard (O’Neil).
  • Advertising in the Philadelphia market for the Extreme Rules PPV show on 7/14 is listing Roman Reigns vs. Baron Corbin and Seth Rollins vs. Drew McIntyre as matches. Very good chance that will change many times between now and then.
  • A story on an upcoming WWE house show. (thanks to Mike Kuzmuk) 

MISCELLANEOUS

  • ROH announced these matches for 3/31 in Baltimore:
    Rush vs. Tracy Williams
    Silas Young vs. Mark Haskins
    Kenny King vs. PJ Black
  • SPW announced a digital TV deal for Wrestling at the End of the world on TVNZ Duke in New Zealand this year. We’ll have more on this closer to the launch of the show. (thanks to Kevin Chiat)
  • CWE on 3/27 in Portage La Prairie, MB at the MNP Exhibition Buidling featuring Psicosis vs. Mentallo in the main event and Danny Duggan defends the CWE title against MMA fighter Martin Pain.
  • IPW from last night in London: Ben Basden b Sugar Dunkerton, Sam Stoker & Lewis Howley b Maverick Mayhew & Connor Mills to keep the tag titles, Stewart Shepherd b Malik, Rob Sharpe b Dan Moloney, MJF b Kip Sabian, Bobbi Tyler b Rebel Kinney, David Starr b Rob Lynch to keep IWP title. Tony Khan was backstage at the show with MJF and Sabian wrestling there. He came from the Fulham game that took place that afternoon.
  • A clarification on the Matt Morgan story we reported earlier. Morgan, the Deputy Mayor of Longwood, FL, in doing a show over the weekend and a fund raiser helped raise $17,350 (this was the total as of last night, it may be higher now) for Lyman High School’s football team in Longwood, for speed flex football helmets that lower the risk of concussions. The helmets are $350 each at this point which a lot of families can’t afford. Morgan will be going to the state legislature in Tallahassee to try and find a way to earmark money to make high school football safer in the state. The Longwood police department donated $2,500 to the project. Team Vision Dojo brought the wrestlers, and the ring and helped promote the event. Morgan wrestled on the show and Mayor Ben Paris was there as well.
  • Ross & Marshall Von Erich will headline for River City Wrestling on 4/12 in Selma, TX at the Retama Park Horse Race Track.  They will face Hernandez & Joey Spector in the main event. Also on he show will be Scarlett Bordeaux & Christi Jaynes vs. Katie Forbes & Rebel. Gail Kim will manage Forbes & Rebel.
  • So after yesterday’s story about Bob Armstrong’s retirement show over the weekend, we got sent a promo for a show on 4/13 in Chipley, FL with The Bullet under a mask wrestling and doing a promo and there you go.
  • Adam Rose has announced that once his current obligations are finished, he will be retiring from wrestling. He said he will be fulfilling all of his agreed upon dates but won’t be taking any new dates.
  • Japanense wrestler Mitoshichi Shinose, 44, who was diagnosed with brain cancer, did his retirement show at Korakuen Hall today for the Asuka Project promotion. (thanks to Shannon Walsh and Wrestlingwithdemons.org)
  • Revolution Wrestling Federation on 3/23 in Harrisburg, PA at the Midtown Arts Center in downtown Harrisburg.
  • The first appearance of Japanese wrestlers in Scandinavia was on Saturday’s show in Copenhagen, Denmark: Sixt b Yuu, Rick Dominick won seven-way over Lucky Kid, Chuck Mambo, Erik Sabel, Captain Bodyslam and Toby Zane, Sweden’s Elite b Tank & Burnett and Randers & Pagne for the tag titles, Joseph Conners b Shigehiro Irie, Chris Brookes & Michael Fynne b Peter Olisander & Emeritus, Rick Dominick b Olisander to win the Body Slam title. Killer Kelly appears on the next show on 5/4 in Odense, Denmark. (thanks to Kristian Nielsen)
  • Preview of an RF Video interview with Enzo Amore.
  • The much talked about Walter vs. Jordan Devlin match is up on the OTT site.
  • A very interesting video regarding the 1995 North Korea New Japan show with Antonio Inoki vs Ric Flair including the scary Scott Norton story. (thanks to Jonathan D’Antoni)

Daily Pro Wrestling History: WCW’s final PPV

Ed in San Antonio presents the WRESTLEMANIAWeekend Events (more to be added):

  • Saturday, April 6th, at 12:00 pm: Lunch (all you can eat) at Churrascaria Plataforma ($90 per person), located at 316 W. 49th street in Manhattan. Purchase tickets here~!
  • Luxury Bus to MetLife Stadium for Wrestlemania: We will depart from the Hilton Midtown (site of Wrestlecon) located at 1335 Avenue of the Americas. Departure time is 4:00 pm and will return from MetLife approximately 30 mins after the event. Times are subject to change, and cost $67.00 per person for the round trip. Purchase tickets here~!

CONTACT INFORMATION