NXT's Jordan Myles Isn't Standing Down Over The Racist Shirt WWE Designed for Him
It is incredibly rare for WWE talent to be vocal about their treatment at the hands of the company, and doubly rare when that mistreatment pertains to issues that are broader and more sensitive than things like booking. This is a big part of what makes the ongoing and very public dust-up between WWE...
Greg Hardy's MMA Career Has Been A Master Class In Cheating
In a different context, it would be hilarious....
WWE Is Banking On Crossover Athletes To Carry Its Next Creepy Saudi Show
When WWE signed a deal with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia last year, only the basics of the pact with the Gulf dictatorship were clear—biannual shows, in the kingdom, in exchange for a massive payday. Everything beyond that was difficult to imagine at the time, and became more and more difficult to ju...
Seriously, What The Hell Is WWE Even Doing Right Now?
It’s been a weird week in WWE, and not in a way that anyone at the promotion would have wanted. ...
WWE Had The Best Action, But AEW Won The Ratings Battle By A Shocking Margin
Barring a disaster next week and beyond, everything in pro wrestling has changed. All Elite Wrestling, the biggest competitor to World Wrestling Entertainment’s stranglehold on the American and broader international pro wrestling scenes, made its television debut on Wednesday night, directly opposit...
Forget The WWE-AEW War For Minute: SmackDown's Fox Premiere Is A Big Fucking Deal
This week sure looks likely to be one of the more momentous in recent wrestling history. Most of the focus is on the emergence of the “Wednesday Night War,” and rightly so. It’s been a long time since WWE had another promotion to pick a fight with, and NXT expanding to two hours on USA Network to ba...
Impact Wrestling Has A New Network, But The Same Old Question Marks
If all you knew of Impact Wrestling came through articles on this here website, you would probably view it as the most interesting wrestling company on earth. It was where NFL veteran DeAngelo Williams had a pro wrestling match, but it’s also a company that also has notorious difficulty converting T...
American Gladiators Is Iconic Because It Took Itself Just Seriously Enough
Virtually from the moment that it launched 30 years ago this week, people both loved and misunderstood American Gladiators. For a show that was successful with viewers and which inspired a constellation of spinoffs and reboots and knockoffs, it’s a strange legacy. Bill Hicks’ “Go back to bed, Americ...
Bigoted Wrestling Fans Are Getting Loud And Promotions Need To Set Boundaries
All Elite Wrestling’s All Out, the promotion’s fourth event and the last before their weekly TV show launches on TNT on October 2, ran on Saturday night in the Chicago suburb of Hoffman Estates. One of the key storytelling aspects of the show was setting up the match to determine the first AEW Women...
NJPW Let KENTA Finish A Match Despite Being Obviously Concussed
Months ago, fans had Saturday circled as one of the wildest pro wrestling days of the year: All Elite Wrestling’s All Out pay-per-view event would get the bulk of the American attention, but that day also featured dueling events from New Japan Pro Wrestling and WWE in the UK. There was so much going...
For Better And Worse, Starrcast Isn't Like Any Other Wrestling Fan Convention
It wasn’t even late on Thursday morning during Memorial Day weekend when things got weird. I was unable to sleep on my overnight flight from New York to Las Vegas, passed out for several hours of desperate sleep, then met England’s Maffew Gregg, the mastermind behind long-running online wrestling vi...
With NXT Moving To USA Network, WWE's Wednesday Night War With AEW Is Officially On
It is happening again....
All Elite Wrestling's Newest Signing Is As Divisive As Wrestlers Get
By the strange but very real standards that govern these sorts of things, All Elite Wrestling’s video announcement on its Twitter page that it had signed Orange Cassidy earlier this week qualified as a relatively significant amount of fanfare. Contrast that with Marko Stunt, who announced his AEW si...
With Shots At "Gory Crap," Vince McMahon Uses His Old Wrestling War Playbook Against AEW
Vince McMahon is nothing if not predictable....
Everyone Is Getting Signed, But Indie Wrestling Will Be Just Fine
While the rest of the sports world is deep in a summer lull, independent wrestling is in the middle of a hectic 10 days of notable shows. Last weekend, Pro Wrestling Guerrilla, everyone’s favorite all-star indie, ran their usual buzzy, action-packed show in Los Angeles; DEFY, the top group in the pa...
Vince McMahon's Defiant Paranoia Was Shaped By His Steroid Trial
Twenty-five years ago this week, at the now-shuttered federal courthouse in Uniondale for the Eastern District of New York, WWE chief Vincent Kennedy McMahon was acquitted on charges of conspiracy and possession with intent to distribute anabolic steroids. It was a pivotal moment in wrestling histor...
Transit Records Show How 12,000 WWE Fans Got Stranded After WrestleMania
The biggest story of WrestleMania 35 might have been just how damn long the show was, a whopping seven and a half hours, including the “kickoff” show. The card ran until just before 12:30 a.m., which impacted everyone watching both live and at home, but it caused a very specific set of problems for ...
Does NJPW Understand Why American Fans Like NJPW?
New Japan Pro Wrestling’s Dallas show on Saturday was another step in its attempt at international expansion, but it carried a particular significance: It was the opening night of the promotion’s 29th annual G1 Climax round robin tournament, where some of the finest wrestlers in the world try to out...
Paul Heyman's First Monday Night Raw Showed Real Signs Of Life
After three days of embarrassing attendance at the Stomping Grounds pay-per-view and the subsequent editions of Raw and SmackDown, and after months of chatter that the product had sagged and stagnated, WWE finally decided to make a big move last week. That the move in question wound up being the sh...
As WWE Wraps Up A Crazy Week, AEW Winds Up For Its Second Show
This ended up being one heck of a week for All Elite Wrestling to have their second show....