Lots of WWE News and Notes

[Big Red Machine]

Source: www.F4WOnline.com

By Dave Meltzer | @davemeltzerWON | May 6, 2019 4:42 pm
Ryan Callihan, who was the lead writer for the home (the crew that doesn't travel) team writing crew on Raw was fired. Sean Sapp on Fightful was the first to report this and we confirmed it. We'll have more on this is the new issue. Callihan clashed with longtime writer Dave Kapoor and Kapoor won the battle.

Sasha Banks has said she wants to do a match with Tessa Blanchard. That will take some work and it's not likely. I have a feeling WWE will freeze Banks' contract so long she'll think she's in Antarctica.
WWE

Bobby Lashley and Bill Goldberg are going at it on Twitter so that could be the Saudi match.

The Raw crew files out after the show tonight to Belfast, Northern Ireland for the start of the European tour.

Listed for Smackdown tomorrow is Shane McMahon crowning new tag team champions, Ali vs. Andrade, Charlotte Flair & Mandy Rose & Sonya Deville vs. Ember Moon & Bayley & Carmella, plus Mike Kanellis vs. Akira Tozawa in a no DQ match is on 205 Live.

WWE will be involved in the Upfronts on 5/13 from both NBC Universal at Radio City Music Hall and FOX at the Beacon Theater in New York. With most of the talent in Europe for Raw, it'll be interesting to see who they have as guests.

There is a Table for 3 with wrestler wives tonight after Raw with Reby Hardy (Matt's wife), Giovanna Angle and Kim Orton.

A lot of WWE talent will be appearing on 5/29 at a benefit show from Samula Anoa'i, who is battling liver cancer. The show will be in Allentown at the Ville Sports Center. Samoa Joe, Michael Hayes and Kassius Ohno will all be appearing at the show.

[Big Red Machine]

But how will they explain that Randy's wife looks totally different than she did when Triple H broke into their house ten years ago (and WWE used an actor to play her because she didn't want to be on TV)?

[cero2k]

also

WWE INTRODUCES 'WILD CARD RULE' FOR BRAND SPLIT
https://www.f4wonline.com/wwe-news/wwe- ... lit-283156


While details are still sparse, WWE has introduced a rule to explain wrestlers making cross-brand appearances.

Vince McMahon started off tonight's Raw, with SmackDown's Roman Reigns, Daniel Bryan, and WWE Champion Kofi Kingston coming out during the segment. Vince said he had an epiphany and mentioned a Wild Card rule where three wrestlers from Raw and three wrestlers from SmackDown would be allowed to appear on the opposite brand "on a given occasion."

There was also an in-ring segment with AJ Styles and Vince, with Styles taking exception to Reigns appearing tonight on the same brand as Seth Rollins. Styles teased bringing two friends to SmackDown tomorrow night, but Vince said the way the Wild Card rule works is that wrestlers could be invited to appear on the other brand.

Reigns starting off tonight's Raw was hyped in advance. Raw posted record-low ratings for a non-holiday episode last week, while last week's SmackDown did the show's lowest ratings since the 2016 brand split.

Tonight's Raw is going against two NBA playoff games. The Milwaukee Bucks vs. Boston Celtics started at 7 p.m. Eastern time, while the Golden State Warriors vs, Houston Rockets tipped off after that game ended.

[KILLdozer]

Shane McMahon will Announce The B-Team as new champs...."B-Team YO YO YO!!!!!!"

[cero2k]

also

WWE INTRODUCES 'WILD CARD RULE' FOR BRAND SPLIT
https://www.f4wonline.com/wwe-news/wwe- ... lit-283156


While details are still sparse, WWE has introduced a rule to explain wrestlers making cross-brand appearances.

Vince McMahon started off tonight's Raw, with SmackDown's Roman Reigns, Daniel Bryan, and WWE Champion Kofi Kingston coming out during the segment. Vince said he had an epiphany and mentioned a Wild Card rule where three wrestlers from Raw and three wrestlers from SmackDown would be allowed to appear on the opposite brand "on a given occasion."

There was also an in-ring segment with AJ Styles and Vince, with Styles taking exception to Reigns appearing tonight on the same brand as Seth Rollins. Styles teased bringing two friends to SmackDown tomorrow night, but Vince said the way the Wild Card rule works is that wrestlers could be invited to appear on the other brand.

Reigns starting off tonight's Raw was hyped in advance. Raw posted record-low ratings for a non-holiday episode last week, while last week's SmackDown did the show's lowest ratings since the 2016 brand split.

Tonight's Raw is going against two NBA playoff games. The Milwaukee Bucks vs. Boston Celtics started at 7 p.m. Eastern time, while the Golden State Warriors vs, Houston Rockets tipped off after that game ended.

[NWK2000]

also

WWE INTRODUCES 'WILD CARD RULE' FOR BRAND SPLIT
https://www.f4wonline.com/wwe-news/wwe- ... lit-283156


While details are still sparse, WWE has introduced a rule to explain wrestlers making cross-brand appearances.

Vince McMahon started off tonight's Raw, with SmackDown's Roman Reigns, Daniel Bryan, and WWE Champion Kofi Kingston coming out during the segment. Vince said he had an epiphany and mentioned a Wild Card rule where three wrestlers from Raw and three wrestlers from SmackDown would be allowed to appear on the opposite brand "on a given occasion."

There was also an in-ring segment with AJ Styles and Vince, with Styles taking exception to Reigns appearing tonight on the same brand as Seth Rollins. Styles teased bringing two friends to SmackDown tomorrow night, but Vince said the way the Wild Card rule works is that wrestlers could be invited to appear on the other brand.

Reigns starting off tonight's Raw was hyped in advance. Raw posted record-low ratings for a non-holiday episode last week, while last week's SmackDown did the show's lowest ratings since the 2016 brand split.

Tonight's Raw is going against two NBA playoff games. The Milwaukee Bucks vs. Boston Celtics started at 7 p.m. Eastern time, while the Golden State Warriors vs, Houston Rockets tipped off after that game ended.

Shane is the boss' son. Elias is said son's friend and the guy the boss pegged to be a big deal. It goes against the rules,, surely, but if two additional guys could break that rule, it'd be those two.

[Big Red Machine]

also

WWE INTRODUCES 'WILD CARD RULE' FOR BRAND SPLIT
https://www.f4wonline.com/wwe-news/wwe- ... lit-283156


While details are still sparse, WWE has introduced a rule to explain wrestlers making cross-brand appearances.

Vince McMahon started off tonight's Raw, with SmackDown's Roman Reigns, Daniel Bryan, and WWE Champion Kofi Kingston coming out during the segment. Vince said he had an epiphany and mentioned a Wild Card rule where three wrestlers from Raw and three wrestlers from SmackDown would be allowed to appear on the opposite brand "on a given occasion."

There was also an in-ring segment with AJ Styles and Vince, with Styles taking exception to Reigns appearing tonight on the same brand as Seth Rollins. Styles teased bringing two friends to SmackDown tomorrow night, but Vince said the way the Wild Card rule works is that wrestlers could be invited to appear on the other brand.

Reigns starting off tonight's Raw was hyped in advance. Raw posted record-low ratings for a non-holiday episode last week, while last week's SmackDown did the show's lowest ratings since the 2016 brand split.

Tonight's Raw is going against two NBA playoff games. The Milwaukee Bucks vs. Boston Celtics started at 7 p.m. Eastern time, while the Golden State Warriors vs, Houston Rockets tipped off after that game ended.

Shane is the boss' son. Elias is said son's friend and the guy the boss pegged to be a big deal. It goes against the rules,, surely, but if two additional guys could break that rule, it'd be those two.

Yeah. I read Elias showing up as having nothing to do with the Wildcard Rule, and I read Lars' showing up as Vince changing the rule to now be four so I'm not sure this report is totally fair.
That being said, I still think WWE deserves some of the blame for people thinking this way because their own obsessive over-hype of concepts style of announcing made it feel as if it was.

[NWK2000]

Yeah. I read Elias showing up as having nothing to do with the Wildcard Rule, and I read Lars' showing up as Vince changing the rule to now be four so I'm not sure this report is totally fair.
That being said, I still think WWE deserves some of the blame for people thinking this way because their own obsessive over-hype of concepts style of announcing made it feel as if it was.

It also goes into the beef I've had with smart marks for a long time, which is "What is there to gain from immediately lambasting WWE's concepts and poking holes in it, other than that self-congratulatory show of your intelligence."

[cero2k]

Shane is the boss' son. Elias is said son's friend and the guy the boss pegged to be a big deal. It goes against the rules,, surely, but if two additional guys could break that rule, it'd be those two.

and Lars?

[NWK2000]

Shane is the boss' son. Elias is said son's friend and the guy the boss pegged to be a big deal. It goes against the rules,, surely, but if two additional guys could break that rule, it'd be those two.

and Lars?

I was going off the Reddit post, but they could go with the old "Who's going to tell THAT BIG SCARY GIANT NO? WAKA WAKA" chestnut. Less logical than Elias and Shane, but it's a relatively simple correction.

[cero2k]

and Lars?

I was going off the Reddit post, but they could go with the old "Who's going to tell THAT BIG SCARY GIANT NO? WAKA WAKA" chestnut. Less logical than Elias and Shane, but it's a relatively simple correction.
[/quote]

it's not about explaining things, it's about 'why do you announce a really specific rule and then change it hours later'. If they already had 5 guys backstage, then say 5. if you don't know how many you want, then announce the rule at the end of the show when you know.

What we saw was a legit shoot, Vince came out with an idea on the spot and ran with it, and fuck it, we'll do it live

[Big Red Machine]

Yeah. I read Elias showing up as having nothing to do with the Wildcard Rule, and I read Lars' showing up as Vince changing the rule to now be four so I'm not sure this report is totally fair.
That being said, I still think WWE deserves some of the blame for people thinking this way because their own obsessive over-hype of concepts style of announcing made it feel as if it was.

It also goes into the beef I've had with smart marks for a long time, which is "What is there to gain from immediately lambasting WWE's concepts and poking holes in it, other than that self-congratulatory show of your intelligence."

WWE invites that on themselves with their booking and the way they announce the shows and the way they try to sell their concepts. Michael Cole making a big deal of specifically saying ""ANOTHER SMACKDOWN SUPERSTAR IS HERE!"" calls the Wildcard Rule that they had been pushing so hard for the last ninety minutes to the viewer's mind, when the line it self didn't need to be said because Graves already explained to us that this was an issue from Smackdown that "spilled over" to Raw. Graves' comment lets you know that Elias is a Smackdown wrestler, but it puts the focus on the feud itself, drawing the connection for the viewer that Elias is here with Shane. Cole's shouted "ANOTHER SMACKDOWN SUPERSTAR IS HERE!" puts the focus on the "another Smackdown guy is here" part, and him doing it in his same "surprised but also excited" raised voice, just like he did earlier for Roman, Bryan, and Kofi, draws the wrong connection for the viewer.

Also, while this particular aspect of might fit your argument that fans are too quick to lambast and poke holes in WWE's concepts, please note that throughout the night Vince kept telling us that the wrestlers had to be "invited" to the other show, while the announcers (and Cole in particular) framed it as the wrestlers being able to show up of their own initiative. That is a very important detail for which there is absolutely no excuse to be giving us contradictory information about, and this is a problem that WWE has regularly. Sometimes they talk like the wrestlers have a choice about switching brands in the Superstar Shake-up and sometimes they don't. In past years they've tried to portray the moves as "trades" between the shows, but we never found out exactly who got traded for who, and a good chunk of the people who go from Raw to SD would work both shows that week even though most of them probably should have already officially been part of the SD roster because the people they were supposedly traded for also worked Raw that week.

People used to show up on the other show (or even flat out switch shows) with no explanation and Vince never cared and the announcers never even brought the switch up, but now all of a sudden Vince is getting bent out of shape about it (he wasn't just angry at Roman, he was angry at Bryan, Kofi, and Lars, too)? It hasn't been six months since they decided that they weren't doing automatic rematches anymore, and they're already going back to them again.

Those are some of the more egregious and recent examples, but WWE's entire philosophy is that it is best to explain as little as possible and not call attention to/outright ignore things that really should be explained but aren't, because they believe this gives them wiggle room if they need to change plans or do something differently in the future (two quick examples of this are the fact that injured wrestlers were not drafted in the original draft even though they logically should have been, and the fact that almost every time we've had people challenging for a title on a show they're not on, they not only didn't explain to us what would happen if, for example, The Bar had won the Raw Tag Team Titles at Greatest Royal Rumble, but the idea that this would be problematic was never even brought up.).

Because WWE has treated their own rules like a joke, it should be no surprise that fans have begun to do so as well. If you treat rules like something you can change at your convenience then of course you're going to get people lambasting you when it looks like you couldn't even go two hours without deciding to change it.

[Big Red Machine]

and Lars?

I was going off the Reddit post, but they could go with the old "Who's going to tell THAT BIG SCARY GIANT NO? WAKA WAKA" chestnut. Less logical than Elias and Shane, but it's a relatively simple correction.

it's not about explaining things, it's about 'why do you announce a really specific rule and then change it hours later'. If they already had 5 guys backstage, then say 5. if you don't know how many you want, then announce the rule at the end of the show when you know.

What we saw was a legit shoot, Vince came out with an idea on the spot and ran with it, and fuck it, we'll do it live

Or even just four and have the announcers portray the Elias thing as different. I mean... who booked Lars in a match on last night's Raw if not Vince? Didn't Vince see these guys backstage? He should have known about Roman and I'm shocked Bryan wouldn't have tried to talk to him before the show, and he booked Lars in a match, so he knew about everyone other than Elias and maybe Kofi before the show started (though I find it very hard to believe that the WWE Champion could be backstage on a show he's not supposed to be on and word wouldn't get back to Vince), and by the time he made the rule Vince surely knew about all four of them.

And f*cking Lars showing up didn't even do anything but make this all stupider because Lars didn't do anything of value.

[Bob-O]

Styles taking exception to Reigns appearing tonight on the same brand as Seth Rollins. Styles teased bringing two friends to SmackDown tomorrow night

I'm actually all for The Wildcard Rule if they use it right. Obviously they're using it to recover ratings, which whatever, we could fill 20 pages of things they could do instead, but they're doing this instead... which if they use it to build big crossbrand matches whithout overexposing the feud, I'm 100% fine with it. I will geek out if AJ shows up on Smackdown tonight with Anderson and Gallows to prove a point.

Raw posted record-low ratings for a non-holiday episode last week, while last week's SmackDown did the show's lowest ratings since the 2016 brand split.

Tonight's Raw is going against two NBA playoff games. The Milwaukee Bucks vs. Boston Celtics started at 7 p.m. Eastern time, while the Golden State Warriors vs, Houston Rockets tipped off after that game ended.

Has anyone else realized that MITB is going up against the Game of Thrones finale? I feel like this is a fairly big deal right now.

it's not about explaining things, it's about 'why do you announce a really specific rule and then change it hours later'. If they already had 5 guys backstage, then say 5. if you don't know how many you want, then announce the rule at the end of the show when you know.

What we saw was a legit shoot, Vince came out with an idea on the spot and ran with it, and fuck it, we'll do it live

lmaooo... he did it live alright... "Three Superstars from Smackdown can be invited to Raw, and Three Superstars from Smackdown can be invited to Smackdown."

Especially given your point (they knew they had 5), why put a limit on it at all? Now they're obligated to do three every time they want to borrow guys. Just saying "We're introducing The Wildcard Rule that will allow Superstars to be guests of the opposite brand by invitation only" serves their purpose, is open ended, and still respects a line that needs to exist but has become very blurry.

[Big Red Machine]

Has anyone else realized that MITB is going up against the Game of Thrones finale? I feel like this is a fairly big deal right now.

Irrelevant. Both are watchable on demand.

[cero2k]

It also goes into the beef I've had with smart marks for a long time, which is "What is there to gain from immediately lambasting WWE's concepts and poking holes in it, other than that self-congratulatory show of your intelligence."

it does go the opposite way of my overall thoughts of things with WWE, movies, food, and whatnot. "Why do people buy this shit?"

This isn't like Red finding inconsistencies with a 1 year build up story, this is your regular joe shmoe finding inconsistencies in the same show. It doesn't take an analyst to see that WWE tried cruising on their Saudi and FOX money and it it catched up to them

[Bob-O]

Has anyone else realized that MITB is going up against the Game of Thrones finale? I feel like this is a fairly big deal right now.

Irrelevant. Both are watchable on demand.

Relevant. Raw and Smackdown are also watchable on demand, yet WWE is making national financial headlines for tanking due to viewership.

[Big Red Machine]

Has anyone else realized that MITB is going up against the Game of Thrones finale? I feel like this is a fairly big deal right now.

Irrelevant. Both are watchable on demand.

Relevant. Raw and Smackdown are also watchable on demand, yet WWE is making national financial headlines for tanking due to viewership.

PPVs aren't measured by buyrate anymore because the WWE Network is so cheap. If Raw and SD ratings decrease, they can't charge as much for ads. Whether the vast majority of people don't watch the PPV live- or even at all- because they're watching Game of Thrones does not in any way effect how much money the Network pulls in that month (and there may or may not be clauses in their new deals about what ratings they need to maintain to not get kicked off the air or moved to FS1 or whatever).

[KILLdozer]

All the fatboy-isms in this topic!