WWE
For Battleground on 7/20 in Tampa, it’s now Cena vs. Reigns vs. Orton vs. Kane for the WWE title, Rollins vs. Ambrose, Jericho vs. Wyatt, the Battle Royal for the vacant IC title, Usos vs. Harper & Rowan for the tag titles in a 2/3 fall match, Rusev vs. Swagger and A.J. Lee vs. Paige for the dias title.
The mixed tag program with Fandango & Layla vs. Ziggler & Summer Rae wasn’t pushed since Fandango and Ziggler are in the Battle Royal. There won’t be a U.S. title match since Sheamus was added to the Battle Royal. They were pushing on Main Event the idea that Sheamus wants to win the Battle Royal and unify the U.S. and IC titles. That’s an idea that gets brought up every so often and ends up not happening, but after unifying the two world titles, and not doing two shows with separate angles, there’s really not a major need for two secondary singles belts, particularly since those belts haven’t gotten people over in years. But that’s also because of how they’re booked. It’s not inherent at all that holding a secondary singles title gets you less over, because through most of history the opposite was the case.
Tenille Dashwood (Emma) had a crazy day on 7/2, as she was fired in the morning, and rehired in the afternoon. The firing came as a shock to everyone, because it was so inconsistent with how the company has handled arrests of things far more serious. The reaction of the fan base was very negative. Really, she should thank Cameron and Jack Swagger, because without their recent examples of being arrested and not being let go, there wouldn’t have been a recent precedent that made her firing for a shoplifting charge that is going to be dropped from her record after she does three hours of community service look so bad. She wasn’t on Raw this week nor was her name brought up.
The update on Bryan is that he may now also require shoulder surgery, as a full exam has revealed a lot of different shoulder and neck issues. At this point, because of uncertainty as to whether he’ll need surgery and what surgery it could be, he’s out of plans and there is no estimate on when he’ll return. The plan seemed to be the Roman Reigns ascension to being the top guy at WrestleMania 31 whether Bryan was hurt or not, but now the TV is built around Reigns as the major badass. Without the injury, and if Bryan was still champion and Cena was top guy, it would likely have been a slower burn. The idea was Reigns working with Orton and maybe a big PPV match with HHH all along coming out of the Evolution vs. Shield program and Shield split.
A lot of talent unhappiness over money. That’s always a concern, but there’s a realization that nothing is going to be done or changed as the complaints are that guys in the same positions are making less money on the same houses, for reasons explained here weeks ago. The company announced a fining system in recent weeks which didn’t help. They are back on the dress code kick, in the sense that if you were in public anywhere you are seen by fans, you have to dress in a professional manner. A failure to do so will result in a fine. It was also said that as far as arrival times at all arenas, if you are even one minute late arriving, a fine will be implemented. Then, this past week, the quarterly royalty checks were sent out. If you recall from the last quarter, the usual video game royalty check in the first quarter, the big one, has historically been around $70,000 if you are a star and in the game. Obviously if it’s a bigger star, it’s bigger, but that figure would be for people who would be considered major stars. Well, people at that level for the most part got around $11,700 for the first quarter of this year. Mick Foley went on a public rant about it. Lots of talents were privately very unhappy. One person who alerted us said that it was the nature of the sending of revenues from 2K Sports and the timing is different but some of it would be made up for during the next quarter. Well, the second quarter royalty checks came in and the number that most of the top level guys got was $1,555. I will say this much, there were guys in WWE who talked with UFC guys in Las Vegas and the subject came up. It was a pretty big deal this weekend. The WWE guys didn’t feel so bad because almost none of the UFC guys get anything from the video game. I believe if you are on the cover or are used in the video game ad itself you make something, but just being in the game you don’t. Don Frye refused to allow his likeness in the game the first year and I guess they felt it important enough that he got paid, but nowhere near what WWE people got. But that’s probably the reason he’s not in the new game.
The big thing is that WrestleMania payoffs should be mailed out this week. Nobody has been told anything, but if the talent is getting paid only on the PPV revenue, that will be down significantly from last year and bonuses will be declining monthly from the other shows. But if they pay a percentage of the network revenue to talent, the gap may close for Mania and be the same or more for the rest of the shows.
The feeling is no talent is going to do anything, because they all recognize there is nowhere else any of them can go and make even close to what they are making. But money concerns are not only the biggest issue from a management standpoint, now it’s also the most concerning issue among the wrestlers.
Jericho talked about his return on his podcast this past week. He said that there was discussion of him coming back to work with Bryan last year at Mania (this would be toward the latter part of 2013) but they didn’t go in that direction. This would have been before the Bryan vs. Sheamus plan. He said at the time, he brought up when the Bryan thing fell through, about working with Wyatt, but he was told at the time (this would have been late 2013) that they were earmarking Wyatt for Cena. He said that about a month ago, someone from creative brought up his working with Wyatt in a program over the summer. He noted that unlike past summers, he hadn’t been able to put together an extensive tour for “Fozzy,” so he had a few dates booked but that was it. I don’t think he said this, but the impression I had was he was up for working with Wyatt but it took several weeks before Vince officially agreed to go in that direction. He said on 6/27, he and Paul Levesque negotiated for all of five minutes before reaching a deal. He was hidden out in a production bus until his segment, with the exception of working with The Wyatts and Miz in setting up the segment. I know that they wanted it to be a big surprise, but it did get out a couple of hours ahead of time. He had his first match back on the 7/6 house show in Toronto against Miz, the night before the Raw match. Jericho didn’t say how long he had signed for, but as things stand right now he’s staying through the 9/22 Raw in Memphis, which is the day after the Night of Champions PPV, which would be his final major show. He will be working a regular house show schedule through that point, although has some time off for Fozzy commitments. He has several dates with Fozzy during that period, including his record release on 7/24 in Los Angeles at The Whiskey and an 8/2 date in Syracuse, as well as three September dates while he’ sunder his new WWE deal. He’s got a regular Fozzy touring schedule from 9/23 to 10/11.
Regarding Sting, he posted “7.14.14" on his Twitter account, which people will take as a tease of something. That is the date of this coming week’s Raw in Richmond, but the impression is this is something related to a different project, perhaps a video game. For a long time, there was no real impetus to get the Sting deal signed, since if he’s going to be involved in next year’s WrestleMania, that’s a long time away, which may explain why the deal was so slow in being finalized.
Laureen Ong, the former President of the Travel Channel, was elected to WWE’s Board of Directors. She had spent three years with the channel, with her responsibilities being brand building strategy, program development and creating new business opportunities. She also was the former COO of the Hong Kong based STAR Group Limited, a TV channel which goes into 55 countries. She was also the first President of the National Geographic Channel when it launched and was once awarded the Woman of the Year award in Women in Cable Television. She has a long history in TV, as she was Vice President of Programming for the Chicago White Sox cable channel, Sportsvision, from 1979 to 1986.
The KENTA signing announcement takes place on 7/12 in Osaka. This is the Japan week with shows on 7/10 and 7/11 at Sumo Hall in Japan, as well as the Osaka show, as well as the 7/12 Madison Square Garden show. Charlotte debuts on the main roster on the domestic tour.
Fans in Japan have noted that WWE and Antonio Inoki are able to get far more mainstream publicity than New Japan gets and far more press coverage for their announcements.
Masahiro Chono has apparently completed a deal with WWE to where he’ll be able to sell NWO T-shirts in Japan. When WWE bought WCW, they bought the rights to the NWO. During the NWO era in the late 90s, with Chono and Keiji Muto as the leaders of NWO Japan, they sold 400,000 T-shirts. Chono has been negotiating with WWE, thinking that it’s the right time to bring the shirts back as a nostalgia thing. The shirts would be the NWO designs from that era, but also include a WWE logo.
For 7/12 in Madison Square Garden, the main event is Cena vs. Wyatt in a lumberjack match. The 20 lumberjacks will be split among two teams, the face lumberjacks led by Ric Flair and heel lumberjacks led by HHH. The show also has a Highlight Reel with Jericho and Sheamus vs. Orton vs. Del Rio for the U.S. title. Jericho was briefly listed for the Japan tour that weekend, but then moved to where he’s working Wildwood (7/13) and MSG. Adrian Neville and Sami Zayn, likely against each other, possibly for the NXT title, was added to the Japan tour.
With the opening of “Fast & Furious 7,” (which just completed filming this past week) moved to 4/3, up from 4/10, that would seem to lessen the chance of Dwayne Johnson doing WrestleMania, since he’ll likely be booked all over the world the two weeks before that, promoting the movie. It’s not impossible, but they’d need a great idea because he only wants to come back to break records, and I don’t know there’s a record breaking match for him out there.
