[Emperor Smeat]

Dirtsheets sponsored by WWE Bad News Friday:

Originally Posted by Observer WWE released at least eight performers today: Wade Barrett, Hornswoggle, Cameron, Alex Riley, Zeb Colter, El Torito, Santino Marella, and Damien Sandow. As per usual, most of these performers had not been used on TV much lately, except in a few cases. Wade Barret had already made it known that he was not going to re-sign in June when his current contract expired. Hornswaggle had not been used at all in many months especially after his wellness policy failure and suspension.

Observer hinting the domestic market for all of the recently released won't be as good as in past years due to the bigger companies having full rosters or money problems and the smaller ones not making good money these days. Also Pro Wrestling Sheet teased there are more names set to be announced for the roster cleaning.

Just a few hours after several WWE talents were released, two of those talents are already booked for Global Force Wrestling/WrestlePro shows. Hornswoggle and Zeb Colter have both been announced for the June 11 show in Keyport, New Jersey. You can check out the announcements from Global Force Wrestling below. Hornswoggle will be using the name 'Swoggle.'

Promoter of WrestlePro already hinted at the possibility of doing a WeeLC match with Swoogle for the show.

Originally Posted by PWI Former NXT Tag Team champion Wesley Blake is out with a MCL injury.

WWE's hottest group The Injured Guys stable claimed a new member

Originally Posted by Observer Tamina underwent an undisclosed operation this past week and is back out of action.

Originally Posted by Observer Bobby Roode was briefly advertised for the NXT UK tour by the WWE's Twitter this morning, but the tweet was later pulled. While not official, the belief is that both Roode and Eric Young will be signed and officially part of the NXT roster soon ... Young wrestled Samoa Joe on this week's NXT TV show, losing clean in the middle to Joe's choke sleeper. He hadn't signed a deal but the feeling was it was a tryout of sorts, and he did well enough in the match and on the microphone that it was expected he'd end up with a deal. Young had done an interview with Niagara This Week claiming that he was working on a deal, but that it wasn't signed and sealed yet.

Originally Posted by PWI The 5/5 episode of Smackdown did 2,346,000 viewers, up from last week's 2,109,000 viewers.

Originally Posted by Observer TMZ found Stephanie McMahon and asked her if Chyna was going to go into the WWE Hall of Fame. Triple H, when asked about this on the Stone Cold Podcast last year, basically shot the idea down, saying it was a double-edged sword because she had contributed so much to the business, but at the same time if some 8-year-old heard she went into the Hall of Fame and didn't know who she was, they might Google her and come across all sorts of unsavory material. Well, Steph, on the spot with a TMZ camera in her face, said there was no denying the contributions she had made to the business and of course she was going to be inducted. Hunter has also softened his stance since her passing so it appears a lock she will be going in.

BRISCOE/RODERICK STRONG VS. HIROSHI TANAHASHI/TOMOHIRO ISHII/KAZUCHIKA OKADA ACH VS. TETSUYA NAITO ROH WORLD TAG TEAM CHAMPIONSHIP TRIPLE THREAT REDRAGON (KYLE O'REILLY & BOBBY FISH) VS. WAR MACHINE (RAYMOND ROWE & HANSON) VS. THE ADDICTION (CHRISTOPHER DANIELS & FRANKIE KAZARIAN) MARK BRISCOE VS. JUSHIN THUNDER LIGER ALEX SHELLEY & CHRIS SABIN VS. RPG VICE (ROCKY ROMERO & BERRETA) LIO RUSH VS. MOOSE W/ STOKELY HATHAWAY VS. DALTON CASTLE W/ THE BOYS VS. MICHAEL ELGIN SILAS YOUNG VS. KUSHIDA CEDRIC ALEXANDER W/ VEDA SCOTT VS. DONOVAN DIJAK W/ PRINCE NANA ANX (RHETT TITUS & KENNY KING) VS. GUERRILAS OF DESTINY (TAMA TONGA & TANGA ROA) MATT SYDAL VS. GEDO

Current card for the upcoming ROH-NJPW ppv in New York.

Originally Posted by Observer The planned deal for AAA to return to PPV in North America looks like it's not happening. Court Bauer, who brokered both that deal and AAA's deal with The Fight Network, is cutting his ties with both AAA and Lucha Underground at the end of the month. With his being gone, the PPV deal for the World Cup and TripleMania this year is off. The belief is the 6/5 show from Los Palacios del Deportes in Mexico City will air on iPPV.

The situation for Mexico's AAA is getting pretty dire with some speculation the company might end up folding or collapsing within the near future. Would be a huge hit to Lucha Underground if it does happen (or AAA continued struggling problems).

Originally Posted by Observer Angelico’s injury suffered when he did a springboard move and landed badly on his elbow, was a dislocated elbow and fractured radius cup. He is expected to be out of action for about two months.

Update on Angelico's injury from last week's Season 3 tapings for Lucha Underground.

Originally Posted by Observer Priscilla Kelly, who managed Scorpio Sky in a dark match at last week’s tapings, is a 19-year-old reality TV star from “My Big Fat American Gypsy Wedding” which airs on TLC. We’re told WWE is aware of her, but right now they have an unwritten rule about not hiring women until they get to be 20 years old.

Originally Posted by Observer When ROH COO Joe Koff was on The Ross Report this past week, he mentioned that there has been internal discussion about the television show expanding to two hours. He also said he was open to a deal if WWE wanted to license the company’s archives for the network or for features since a lot of the talent came through ROH.

Originally Posted by Observer TNA is attempting to restructure the contracts of all or at least most of the key talent to where they are in control of all their bookings. This is likely a move to have everyone under exclusive deals that they control the schedule of as part of a sale. A lot of the top guys who worked heavy indie schedules and were names coming in have deals where they are under contract to TNA but they book themselves on their off days. The newer contracts with the guys most recently signed put TNA in charge of booking their non-TNA dates. The new deals are for significant money, as they would have to be when you figure that the Hardys, just as an example, can do several thousand dollars a night on a good night in indies between their pay and photo and merchandise money and their trans and hotels are taken care of. Others with names also do well with outside bookings and don’t want to give it up so it’s not an easy decision. The speculation is they want everyone exclusive so they can use that as asset value in the sale. Whether that means if/when the big deal is consummated that the promotion will be looking at doing a regular house show schedule would make sense, but that’s all speculation and details of negotiations are being kept very quiet. Obviously the people involved have been asking questions as to why the deals are attempting to be restructured and not really gotten answers nor is anyone being told what the sale situation is. Although at least one person was told that when all was said and done when it came to the acquiring of a new investor/owner, the claim was that Dixie Carter and John Gaburick would still be in control. They are also back to offering some fairly significant money deals to those not with the company, similar to what they were doing a few months back.

Originally Posted by Observer More on the incident with Ric Flair after tapings on 4/27 at Logan International Airport in Boston, according to Massachusetts State police spokesperson Dave Procopio, is that Flair was waiting to board a Delta flight when he tripped and hit his head on a metal stanchion. State Troopers and an EMT were called and he received medical attention for a cut on his head and was told to rest for a short time. He missed a flight but was booked on the next flight. This was a major story for a day, but ended up being a non-story once the police officers stated that he wasn’t drunk. Flair had an incredible amount of heat on him because the company hates talent being in TMZ, which gave the impression he was drunk and Flair has been in trouble in the past after the situation at the 2013 SummerSlam video game conference interview. The night before Flair used the line “kill yourself” to Natalya at the Smackdown tapings, but since it was a taped show, they edited it out. When the story first broke, there was a lot of talk about what to do because the company doesn’t like TMZ stories that claim talent was drunk, particularly with Ric’s back story. But by later in the afternoon everything was fine, basically once the police reports came out that said he wasn’t drunk and had just tripped and hit his head, it became a non-story.

Originally Posted by Observer The latest on the Jimmy Snuka homicide case regarding the 1983 death of Nancy Argentino is that Judge Kelly Banach will hear from mental health experts on 5/13 before deciding whether Snuka is competent to stand trial. If the decision is that Snuka, 72, is not mentally fit for trial, the case could be stalled indefinitely. Some defendants who are declared mentally incompetent for trial are sent to a mental hospital until competence is re-established, but I don’t know would happen in this case. Snuka’s attorney Robert Kirwan, claimed Snuka suffers from post-concussion syndrome and doesn’t understand what he’s being accused of, and that he has trouble remembering the names of family members and didn’t recognize his attorney. Prosecutor Charles Gallagher claimed that Snuka’s mental health was talked about during the grand jury process and detectives with him saw no signs he was mentally impaired. Kirwan refused to share the report from Dr. Frank Dattilio that the defense made regarding Snuka’s mental competency.

Ten days later, Vince called again. He warned me that he was about to tell me something that would make me really angry: Hogan was flat-out refusing to put me over, saying I wasn’t in his league. Vince had decided that Yoko would be getting the belt instead. I couldn’t believe that Hogan would do this to me. I remembered him shaking my hand at WrestleMania IX, and telling me he’d be happy to return the favor. Vince said he’d have one more meeting with Hogan to try to sell him on it, but if he didn’t go for it, I’d work with Lawler at SummerSlam -instead. Hogan didn’t go for it. I wanted to believe that Vince hadn’t told me the whole story, and I made up my mind to confront Hogan as soon as he’d dropped the belt to Yoko. I’d wait till then, because it didn’t seem right for me to change Yoko’s destiny. I showed up in the dressing room for King of the Ring in a dark mood and promptly drew a blackboard cartoon of Beefcake with his face buried in Hogan’s ass cheeks with a caption that read, “Be careful, Brutus, you don’t want to loosen the screws in your face . . . speaking of screws . . .” I was taking my frustration out on Beefcake, which wasn’t right, but I was too pissed off to know it at the time.

Bret Hart story from back in the day regarding Mania IX from his book.


Some other sheet news includes:

• WWE recently announced the dates for the second UK tour later this year. http://www.pwinsider.com/article/101...dates.html?p=1
• Jim Cornette and The Young Bucks along with Kenny Omega got involved in another Twitter feud recently. This time starting after Cornette called Omega a bad wrestler and his comedic stuff as evidence for his stance. https://twitter.com/MattJackson13/st...01970706534401
• Lita recently praised WWE's current women's division for their hard work on helping to change the perception of the division in the WWE. https://www.instagram.com/p/BFFBqSGgbrn/
• According to reports from today's NXT house show, NXT wrestler Kenneth Crawford suffered a serious injury during his match. https://www.reddit.com/r/SquaredCirc...chered_out_at/
• In a "WWE Did You Know" type fact, Only 9 out of the 28 "rookies" involved in NXT season's era are currently still with the WWE. Baring any sudden changes, pretty much guaranteed to be down to at least 8 during the summer once Ryback leaves. Also out of the 9 remaining, only 7 are active wrestlers (Otunga and Byron Saxton being the non-active members). https://www.reddit.com/r/SquaredCirc...al_nxt_series/
• For reasons unknown, Adam Rose recently reposted his doctor's note on social media as part of his protest against his recent Wellness suspension.
• Eric Young had a recent interview with website NiagaraThisWeek with some highlights including currently working on getting an official WWE contract done and his feelings about leaving TNA. http://www.wrestlinginc.com/wi/news/...ntract-status/