07/20/15 – Monday News Update

The latest edition of Talking Sheet is available on the site, so check that out. Hugh and I break down the week in wrestling news, including the Undertaker’s return, Liger at NXT and WWE setting its sights on ROH, plus a look at James Caldwell’s terrific feature story in the PW Torch examining the current culture in WWE, and how Vince McMahon’s leadership style may be hurting the company. We’re also joined this week by Divas Correspondent Sealia Bloom who helps break down the current landscape of women’s wrestling in WWE, and how Total Divas is being covered this season on all the wrestling news sites.

Two columns on the site of note, Hugh’s Views has been published, with Hugh breaking down his week in wrestling knowledge, including links to bunch of great primers on how to access the G1 Climax tournament, and previews for this year’s annual running.

New columnist Walt Rushin also has a piece on the site looking F4Wonline’s tasteless ads, even on the paid membership side of the pay-wall – something every other premium pay site has managed to do away with for members.

And check out the latest cartoon by our very own comic satirist MeatyFist, looking at F4WOnline’s Filthy Tom Lawlor’s plans after his upcoming fight with Gian Villante.

And now, let’s get to our recap of the day’s wrestling news.

Monday News Update

** Obviously lots of Battleground fallout from last night on all of the top sites.

** Meltzer classified the show as generally good from a match quality standpoint, but bordering on atrocious from a booking aspect, and highlighted the finish of the Cena/Owens match as characteristic of the atrociousness. He also didn’t have pleasant things to say about the main event.

** Bryan Alvarez and Vinny Verhei on their show also were also miffed about the finishes, adding Bray Wyatt defeating Roman Reigns as illustrative of the bad booking, too.

** Alvarez seemed to be pushing the idea that WWE is planning to add Sting to the mix with Reigns and Wyatt, however tonight on Raw we saw what appeared to be a kickoff of Wyatt/Harper and Reigns/Ambrose as a program. So it’s possible there will be a third added to the heel side. Or, they’ll take out Ambrose, and Sting will replace him.

** Over at the Torch, Wade Keller hosted a post PPV roundtable with Todd Martin and Bruce Mitchell, in what was pushed as their first time ever talking, and definitely their first appearance on the same show. Martin and Mitchell got into it over the Owens/Cena finish, with Todd taking the side that it was awful, and Mitchell taking the side that it was actually decent booking.

** Generally mixed results on the women’s match last night, with many feeling like it was better than typical “Divas” matches on big PPV cards, but not as good as the best matches on NXT. A lot of talk that Brie Bella hurt the match.

** Heavy intimations once again by Dave Meltzer and Bryan Alvarez over at F4Wonline.com that Kevin Owens is too fat to be a star in WWE. Alvarez called this out last night on his Bryan & Vinny Show that he needs to lose weight to stop this backslide he’s facing. Meltzer also mentioned that this comes down to a story he told Alvarez offline a couple weeks ago regarding two schools of thought regarding Owens; one says he isn’t going to make it, the other says he can. Meltzer noted that the powers behind the “not going to make it” school of thought have given Owens the appearance of every chance in one of those deals where Meltzer claims it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy because the crowd will eventually cool on him due to losing, even though he’s been booked in high profile matches.

** Tons of G1 Climax 25 coverage for you on the top sites.

Bryan Rose at Voices of Wrestling has a written review of Night 1 here

James Caldwell of PW Torch has virtual time coverage as he watched the show here.

Sean Radican’s night one blog reviewing the show is here.

** PW Torch has the standings after night one here.

** Rob McCarron crushes it with video recaps of the action on YouTube

https://youtu.be/9ILqfhvMb84

** Controversy among the cut/paste sites over plagiarism! David Bixenspan recently transcribed some scans of the Hogan vs Gawker court filings, and a deposition of Hogan that appeared in a BuzzFeed article by Mary Ann Georgantopoulos.

** Not too long afterward, the exact same transcription appeared over at WrestleZone, with the same subject headers and everything.

** Bixenspan and the folks at WrestlingInc. must have called attention to this, because the article has since been removed from the WrestleZone site.

** ProWrestling.Net has the card for ROH Death Before Dishonor on iPPV this Friday from Baltimore, Maryland

** Check out Kris Zellner’s Lucha Report at PWInsider here. Really great rundown of match results from Mexico.