On Monday, one of the biggest non-WWE stars in pro wrestling—if not the biggest—tweeted something that could, if you squinted and tilted and hoped a little bit, be read as a call to arms.
Six days ago, WWE was in an uncomfortable position regarding its upcoming Crown Jewel event in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, the second card in a 10-year contract with the kingdom believed to be worth $20–$50 million per show. Saudi Arabia’s brutal war of attrition in Yemen and, more recently, Turkey’s insistence that the…
This week’s edition of WWE’s Monday Night Raw flagship made official a major development that had been expected for weeks: After eight and a half years of retirement, Shawn Michaels really is returning to the ring in a few weeks, at WWE’s Crown Jewel event in Saudi Arabia. Michaels had been steadfast for years about…
Denigrating the city in which an event is being held is one of the oldest and most reliable ways for a pro wrestler to get heat. It’s probably pretty cheap, honestly, but who cares. It’s easy to rip on a city’s sports teams, but there’s a reason wrestlers still do it: It generally works.
The biggest wrestling story of the week happened by accident, during a six-woman tag team match on this week’s edition of WWE’s Monday Night Raw. The Bella Twins, who returned to in-ring action a few weeks back, were the main attraction in that match; Brie Bella, in what has become one of her signature moves,…
Last weekend, longtime WWE star Matt Hardy might have taken off his boots for the last time. He also might not have, but he at the very least appeared to announce his retirement in a YouTube video. Explaining that he had worked out a way to fulfill his previously advertised commitments to WWE, Hardy told the camera…
The problem with entertainment options these days—TV shows, sports, books, blogs—is that there are too many of them. This especially applies to professional wrestling.
On Sunday, WWE hyped up its now annual Hell in a Cell pay-per-view event as the 20th anniversary of Mick Foley’s famous match with The Undertaker, where the former was thrown off of the top of the titular cage in one of the wildest stunts in wrestling history. This is not exactly true—the actual anniversary was June…
One of the most striking things about last Saturday’s All In pay-per-view, the independent wrestling event that sold out over 11,000 seats in suburban Chicago, was where the show differed from WWE. When it came to the in-ring wrestling style and the creative influence of Cody Rhodes and The Young Bucks, the wrestlers…
Former WWE personality Jason Sensation, who made a name for himself in wrestling during the late 1990s by doing solid impressions of famous wrestlers—most notably Owen Hart during an infamous skit with D-Generation X—threatened to kill himself inside Scotiabank Arena in Toronto during tonight’s RAW:
On Saturday night, former UFC fighter Matt Riddle, just three and a half years into his pro wrestling career, officially made his first appearance with WWE, appearing in the front row during the NXT TakeOver live special from Barclays Center in Brooklyn. While WWE has long had an unofficial policy of telling new…
Pro wrestling Twitter completely imploded on Wednesday. Well, more than usual.
Republican Glenn Jacobs, also known as WWE’s Kane, was elected mayor of Knox County, Tennessee, Thursday. Kane won the Republican primary back in May by just 17 votes, and immediately became the overwhelming favorite for the gig in the solidly conservative area.
Lots of wrestlers cosplayed as commies during the Cold War. Nikolai Volkoff, who died over the weekend, was way closer to the real thing, and took his act far more seriously, than all the rest. He was 70 years old.
One of my favorite villainous wrestlers when I was a kid was Rick “The Model” Martel. The gimmick was simple: Martel was a model, and he thought he was better than you.
Decades of pro wrestling history were upended via joint press release on Thursday when Ring of Honor, New Japan, and Madison Square Garden announced a joint show at “The World’s Most Famous Arena” for April 6, 2019. Unless an unannounced (but previously reported) planned show from Mexican promotion AAA materializes in…
PHILADELPHIA — Everybody in the arena knew Ronda Rousey was coming out next. The delay seemed to stretch on forever as we waited. It had been 25 seconds since Nia Jax’s theme ended ... 26, 27, 28, 29 … and, finally, “Bad Reputation” played. Ronda Rousey made her entrance. She got the loudest cheer of the night.
Tuesday’s edition of WWE SmackDown Live ended with something of a surprise. Daniel Bryan was being beaten down by The Bludgeon Brothers when Kane, his former tag team partner, returned to help him out. The day was saved, fans celebrated, and it all felt so familiar that it was easy to miss how weird it was. It wasn’t…
Pro wrestler Shinsuke Nakamura was scheduled to perform on “Smackdown Live” Tuesday night, in a U.S. Championship match against Jeff Hardy. But just a few hours before the event, WWE announced that Nakamura had not been medically cleared to wrestle.
