Elimination Chamber Fallout
Elimination Chamber was Sunday, and that means it’s time to check in on my predictions and see how well I guessed the outcome of the show. I correctly predicted the outcomes of the Women’s Tag Chamber, the WWE Title Chamber, the Raw Women’s Title and the Cruiserweight title. That gave me a 4-2-1 result for this month’s show and a 14-5-3 record for 2019 thus far. Not too shabby for the 1st three PPV events of the year.
NXT News
4 of NXT’s biggest stars made a huge impact appearing on both Raw and Smackdown this week. Ricochet was featured teaming with Finn Balor on Raw and then facing Eric Young on Smackdown (poor Sanity). Aleister Black defeated Elias on Raw and Andrade on SDL. Former NXT tag champs DIY reunited and defeated current Raw tag champs the Revival as well as former SD tag champs the Bar. It was never made clear during either broadcast whether these were special one week appearances or full-time call ups. However, Gargano and Ciampa are both currently holding NXT titles so they would need to continue appearing on the black and yellow brand at least long enough to drop those belts.
In other NXT news, the Dusty Classic is back! There will be 8 teams in the tournament this year with the winners facing War Raiders for the Tag Titles at Takeover on April 5. The first 4 teams announced are Undisputed Era (Fish & O’Reilly), European Union (Aichner & Barthel), Forgotten Sons (Cutler & Blake), and Street Profits. The other 4 teams as well as the round one matchups will be revealed next week (unless of course you want to seek out the spoilers from this week’s Full Sail taping).
205 Live
Starting next week 205 will be holding an 8 man tournament. The overall winner earns the right to face Buddy Murphy at Wrestlemania for the Cruiserweight Title. The 1st two matches for round 1 will be Kalisto vs Tony Nese and Brian Kendrick vs Drew Gulak. Those two matches are set for next week’s show.
Injury Report
It’s been 4 months now since Roman Reigns announced that he needed to take time off from WWE to get treatment for leukemia. Since then word on his status has been fairly quiet with the exception of the occasional statement from a friend or family member that he was “doing well.” The biggest update came back in January when Dwayne Johnson shared a photo from the set of his film Hobbs and Shaw along with the announcement that Reigns had filmed a small role as his character’s brother. Roman is now set to appear on next week’s Raw and address his health status. Is it possible that he’s ready to return and could quickly be shuffled into the mix for Wrestlemania?
PPV Event Plans
Fastlane, Mar. 10
The 1st 2 matches were confirmed on Smackdown this week, while the other two were seemingly set up but not officially announced.
WWE Championship- Daniel Bryan© vs Kofi Kingston
Smackdown Tag Championship- Usos© vs Miz and Shane
Smackdown Women’s Championship- Asuka© vs Mandy Rose?
Women’s Tag Championship- Banks and Bayley© vs Jax and Tamina?
NXT TakeOver: New York, Apr. 5
WWE Hall of Fame Ceremony, Apr. 6
The first official inductees into this year’s Hall of Fame class will be DX. They are including the original 3 person version of the faction as well as the later, larger version. The 6 members of DX being inducted are HHH, HBK, Chyna, X-Pac, Road Dogg, and Billy Gunn. There are, of course, a lot of stories to digest with this list of inductees.
Michaels becomes the 2nd person in history, after Ric Flair, to be inducted as both an individual and a member of a faction. His best friend HHH also gets much due recognition without having to deal with the critical spotlight that would be on him as a solo inductee due to his familial connections. That lack of solo spotlight is actually the key benefit of the remaining members of DX going in together as a faction.
Road Dogg, though a loyal and hard worker for WWE to this day in his role behind the scenes, may not be seen as some as being a large enough star for solo induction. The New Age Outlaws could go in as a team, but Billy Gunn is currently under contract as a producer for AEW. Chyna is hugely deserving for her role in the history of women in WWE, but her post WWE life is problematic for a PG company. X-pac’s personal life away from WWE is equally problematic. Thus, putting all 6 in as part of the undeniably impactful faction Degeneration X seemingly allows them the recognition they deserve without too much emphasis on the issues any individual might bring to the table.
Wrestlemania, Apr. 7
Universal Title: Brock Lesnar© vs Seth Rollins
Raw Women’s Title: Ronda Rousey© vs Charlotte Flair
Departures
Tye Dillinger celebrated his birthday this week by asking to be released from his WWE contract. Dillinger announced this on his personal social media accounts, but there’s no word yet from WWE regarding whether or not they will grant his release. My sources aren’t sure how much time is left on Dillinger’s current contract either, so it’s unknown how much longer he would have to stick around if they don’t grant him the release.
It seems that Hall of Famer and long-time producer Arn Anderson was let go from WWE this week. I’ve not seen any details regarding the reason for his departure, but I assume he was just ready to retire. With the fresh crop of producers recently hired by the company the door opens for a guy like Arn to walk off into retirement. This is purely speculation on my part though and I’ll update the story in a future report if more details become available.
Contracts
Matt Hardy says that he has less than 2 weeks remaining on his WWE contract. Matt hasn’t been seen on TV since dropping the Raw tag titles last year to spend time recovering from long term injury issues. He had spent some of his time off screen working as a producer, but they’ve recently hired a bunch of new producers (Shane Helms, Sonjay Dutt, Chris Parks, Jeff Jarrett, Shawn Davairi), and may no longer need him in that capacity.
Though Matt did not directly mention his brother Jeff in his contract comments, it’s easy to assume that they signed similar if not identical contracts when they returned to WWE 2 years ago. Has Jeff signed a new deal? Might both Hardy brothers soon be free agents? This will be an interesting story to follow in the coming weeks.
Movie News
Fighting With My Family opens in theaters nation-wide today. Produced by Dwayne Johnson, the film follows the rise of now retired superstar Paige. Based on the reviews I’ve seen thus far, the film seemingly follows a fairly basic underdog sports movie formula with a good bit of humor thrown in. Johnson makes a few small appearances as himself, most of them already seen in the trailers and clips available online. Rising actress Florence Pugh stars as Paige alongside Jack Lowden as her brother Zack. Current Smackdown superstar Zelina Vega (real name Thea Trinidad) portrays former Divas Champion AJ Lee for what I assume is the climax of the film when Paige shows up on Raw challenger Lee for the title.
Also hitting the news this week is word that Thor star Chris Hemsworth will star in a Netflix biopic about iconic wrestler Hulk Hogan. The film is being directed by Todd Phillips (The Hangover films and the upcoming Joker movie starring Joaquin Pheonix) and produced by Phillips, Hemsworth, Bradley Cooper and Eric Bischoff. They’re said to be avoiding Hogan’s controversial later years and focusing entirely on his early career and the rise of Hulkamania. My gut tells me that they will tell a relatively formulaic story that culminates in a triumphant moment from the Hulkster’s career. My guess is that moment would have to be the Wrestlemania III match against Andre. It should be interesting to see who they cast as some of the other iconic stars of that era.
