wrestling Page 22 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Dean Ambrose Is Leaving WWE And Contract Season Just Got Much More Interesting
The biggest news in pro wrestling this week probably should have involved in-ring, canonical storyline fallout from WWE’s Royal Rumble weekend in Phoenix. And there was indeed news made there, or at least the set up for the next round between Ronda Rousey and Becky Lynch, which will likely be pushed...

Can WWE Be Trusted With Intergender Wrestling?
The Royal Rumble is where WWE usually pulls out its biggest surprises of the year, with debuts and nostalgic returns littering the titular matches, in which 30 men and 30 women enter one at a time, and the match continues until 29 of them have been thrown over the top rope to the floor. The winners ...

A.J. Styles's Weird Right-Wing Web TV Appearance Went About As Well As Could Be Expected
On Monday, the self-described “conservative comedian” Steven Crowder tweeted out the guest list for his online talk show, Louder With Crowder, which streams on the Glenn Beck-owned BlazeTV. There is no reason any person should care about this beyond the fact that, among those guests, was the WWE sta...

Women Ruled At "Evolution," But WWE Has Been Regressing Ever Since
I remember where I was the day that Triple H, Vince, Stephanie, and Shane McMahon announced that they themselves would be taking charge over both Monday night RAW and SmackDown Live. I shouldn’t, probably: it was a very average Monday, I had made a very average dinner, and was ready to live tweet th...

Cody Rhodes, The Khans, And Chris Jericho Made Their New Promotion Official, And It Could Be Big
The news officially arrived through a pair of statements, a rally outside TIAA Bank Field, and a subsequent press junket, but the Jacksonville Jaguars owners Shahid “Shad” Khan and his son Tony made their bold new foray into the pro wrestling business official on Tuesday. The name of the new promot...

“Mean” Gene Okerlund Dead At 76
Longtime pro wrestling interviewer “Mean” Gene Okerlund died today, WWE announced. He was 76....

Impact Wrestling Is Stuck In TV Purgatory And Facing A Bleak Future
The long-beleaguered Impact Wrestling, which had been hunting for a new American TV deal, announcing a new destination last Friday. Starting on January 11, the two hour eponymous weekly Impact show moves from Thursday nights on PopTV (formerly the TV Guide Channel) to Fridays at 10:00 p.m. ET on the...

High School Wrestling Ref Who Called Colleague The N-Word Makes Black Wrestler Cut Off His Dreadlocks
Alan Maloney, a high school wrestling referee in New Jersey who called another referee the n-word in an incident two years ago, this week told a black teen from Buena High School that he couldn’t wear a cover over his dreadlocks during a wrestling meet, and that he would have to forfeit or cut them ...

How Did $5 Million Of Vince McMahon's Money Wind Up In The Trump Foundation?
On Tuesday, the New York State Attorney General’s Office announced that they had reached a settlement in their suit against the Donald J. Trump Foundation over its (prolific) self-dealing and other assorted misdeeds. Beyond the usual Trump-scented malfeasance in which the foundation engaged, one de...

As Ring Of Honor Closes The Book On 2018, A New Startup Wrestling Promotion Looms
Ring of Honor’s year-end pay-per-view event, Final Battle, will air live on Friday night from the Hammerstein Ballroom at the Manhattan Center in New York City. It’s become one of the biggest events in independent wrestling, but there’s more intrigue around it than usual this year, as it looks likel...

The Unfortunately Named Russian Martial Art Sambo Would Make For A Kickass Olympic Sport<em></em>
The International Olympic Committee announced today that sambo was among the sports whose international governing bodies achieved temporary IOC recognition, a move that brings the regrettably named combat sport one step closer to eventual Olympic status. While fellow Olympic hopefuls like kickboxing...

WWE Is Preparing For Global Domination And Everyone Is Finally Noticing
Over the course of the last few weeks, a crush of news on the WWE talent development front has changed how many fans look at the company. A Monday report from WrestleTalk revealed major changes to the contracts for WWE’s United Kingdom-based developmental talent; the new language specifically limite...

If Pro Wrestling Is Art, Daniel Bryan Is His Generation's Master
Welcome back, Daniel Bryan....

"Broken Face" And All, Becky Lynch Is Suddenly The Biggest Star In WWE
When last we discussed Becky Lynch in this space, she was already a star but still a few weeks removed from turning on Charlotte Flair at SummerSlam. This was a problem for WWE, even if they only sort of seemed to know it then. Becky was and still notionally is a heel, but fans stuck with Becky as t...
![Former WWE Wrestler Enzo Amore Booted Off Flight Because He Wouldn't Stop Vaping [Update]](https://images.deadspin.com/tr:w-900/cqepivkb2e2u1gykyic9.jpg)
Former WWE Wrestler Enzo Amore Booted Off Flight Because He Wouldn't Stop Vaping [Update]
Former WWE wrestler Enzo Amore, real name Eric Arndt, was reportedly kicked off a flight this morning after he refused to stop vaping. Pro Wrestling Sheet reports that Arndt was headed from JFK airport in New York to Los Angeles on a Delta flight, but the flight was delayed and he was eventually kic...

Ronda Rousey Basically Called Becky Lynch A Beta Snowflake Cuck On <i>Raw</i> This Week
Aside from its concessions to Saudi Arabia as part of a larger business deal with the murderous gulf autocracy, WWE’s recent programming has been as apolitical as it has been in ages. It’s the sort of thing that’s more notable in its absence, but the promotion’s classic xenophobic and jingoistic sto...

WWE Released A Failed 1989 Wrestling Pilot And It's Awesomely Terrible<em></em>
The WWE Hidden Gems section of WWE Network’s on-demand library is one of the more reliably enjoyable things that the promotion offers, a weekly release of unseen or rarely seen footage from their vast archives that offers a compelling look at weird days gone by in the sport. Not every week is a home...

Crown Jewel, WWE's Return To Saudi Arabia, Had Less Propaganda But More Irony<em></em>
Once the call was made to go on with WWE Crown Jewel, the second event of WWE’s 10-year contract with Saudi Arabia, one question loomed larger than any other going: What would this thing look like? The promotion’s first Saudi show, April’s Greatest Royal Rumble, was unvarnished pro-Saudi propaganda,...

What Will It Take To Get Jim Jordan Out Of Congress?
LIMA, Ohio — Within five minutes of meeting Janet Garrett’s campaign team for the first time, I’m asked to help with their speaker set-up. The laptop audio playing the Spotify playlist is coming out of the projector, and they don’t know how to hook it up to the main speaker, where it would be louder...

Yes, WWE Wrote John Cena And Daniel Bryan Off Friday's Saudi Arabia Card
After a week of unconfirmed reports that both John Cena and Daniel Bryan were refusing to work this Friday’s WWE Crown Jewel event in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, we have our answer. It wasn’t a straight one from the promotion itself, unsurprisingly—WWE had repeatedly refused to address whether Cena and Br...