Columnist Rob Pasbani catches you up on all the news leading into WrestleMania season.
With WrestleMania season just around the corner, it’s the best time to be a wrestling fan, as all the speculation starts heating up. From the moment Roman Reigns won the WWE Universal championship, fans were fantasy booking matches with Roman vs. The Rock, and right now the match has the strongest possibility of happening at this upcoming WrestleMania, since it will take place in Los Angeles (really the city of Inglewood) at SoFi Stadium.
The Rock has said if he were to come back, he wanted to do it in Los Angeles. According to the latest Wrestling Observer, the hope is that the Rock will be available to be at January’s Royal Rumble event, to be a surprise entrant, win the Rumble and have a reason to go on to face Roman Reigns at WrestleMania.
Meltzer goes out of his way to say this is not at all locked in, but the ultimate hope of WWE creative. It’s up to Rock to make sure his schedule would allow for this to happen. Whatever the plan is, it needs to be locked in by mid-January
This would certainly be a very entertaining way to kick off the feud. Royal Rumble takes place at San Antonio’s Alamodome and is already on pace to be the largest gate for a Rumble ever. And if the Rock returns there? It will be an event WWE fans won’t soon forget.
On this week’s Knotfest Wrestling live stream, Jordan Olds and I each fantasy book our ultimate PPV revolving around the Jewish winter holiday. There are PPVs with Halloween themes, Thanksgiving themes, and Christmas themes, so we wondered why not a Jewish holiday as well? The results end up pretty fun, as we explore matches like the “8 crazy weapons match” and “spin the dreidel, make it fatal!”
Multiple wrestling news outlets are reporting that all signs show that William Regal is heading back to WWE after basically being written off TV on AEW this week.
The main point of discussion is how Regal was allowed to return. Fightful reports that Regal signed a short-term contract that expires in December. Earlier this week, Dave Meltzer reported that Regal was signed for three years, but now is saying there may have been an out-clause. Bryan Alvarez noted that the belief from WWE sources is that Regal informed Khan that if Triple H were to return to power in WWE, he would want to return. Whether Khan has let Regal out of his contract out of respect, or because that was written in is not known.
But one thing is for certain, Regal is coming back to WWE. This might end up being a costly move for AEW, as essentially they just allowed what will surely be WWE’s top talent scout to scout all the AEW talent, see how they perform, and how they behave backstage. The wrestling war is certainly heating up!
WWE Smackdown is on FS1 tonight at 8pm, not Fox with only one match official:
AEW Rampage is on tonight at 10pm eastern on TNT:
CM Punk is still officially under contract to AEW. According to the Wrestling Observer, he has told friends that he’s ready to move onto his next project and the holdup is entirely on AEW’s end.
Stokely Hathaway revealed on Renee Paquette’s podcast that the original plan for The Firm was to feud with CM Punk after the All Out PPV, and that Punk personally handpicked Stokley to work with. Obviously, with Punk gone all of those plans changed.
Nick Khan and Stephanie McMahon spoke at the recent Wells Fargo Conference. A full recap can be read over at Wrestlenomics. The most notable thing discussed was Stephanie revealing the company is in the market for “mergers and acquisitions” and gave examples of other wrestling companies or
Eric Young has finished with Impact Wrestling and is headed back to WWE.
Dave Meltzer reports that Kota Ibushi has begun doing some light training and his shoulder seems to be holding up. Ibushi’s contract with New Japan is up in January, it’s unknown if he will resign or go elsewhere (like AEW).
We alluded to this in our Hanukkah live stream above, but Colt Cabana revealed he almost died during his match with Chris Jericho a few weeks ago saying “A couple of weeks ago, I wrestled Chris Jericho. And I wanted to share the story of how I almost died wrestling Chris Jericho. Not a lot of people know this story. Some of the people in the back know this story, the doctors know this story. I’m not telling this story to make an excuse, nobody would have even known, everyone complimented me on my match — and I’m appreciative for that. But this is just a fun story and in 20 years I will laugh about it. In the moment, I did not laugh about it. I guess a couple weeks afterwards I can laugh about it. Of course, in my laundry room is my wrestling gear. I’ll wash my kneepads, I’ll wash my singlet. I don’t dry them, though. Just wash them. Hang dry them. And of course, I wash my wrestling socks. Now, I’m sure those of you with a washer/dryer in your home know about the case of the disappearing socks. Well, I don’t know where my wrestling socks went. They went somewhere. And with me, I like long black soccer socks, long wrestling socks so there isn’t a gap in-betweenྭ my boots and my kneepads. I don’t want just like airy skin, so I like the long soccer socks because it fills in that space. So before I was going to wrestle Jericho, I had to go out and buy a new pair of socks. And of course I procrastinated. So I waited until the night before. I went over to Target, I asked where the soccer section was, and I looked for the soccer socks. I went over there and they only had long black socks for the kids. So my next move was, I guess, going to the men’s socks section. And as I make my way over there I do see a pair of long socks. Now, these socks are called compression socks, which I kind of know what they are but not really. That’s fine, they’ll fit and I’ll wear them under my boots and my kneepads. So I do. And Iྭwrestle against Chris Jericho. Now of course that match, there was many emotions, there was a lot of tension going into it. My anxiety was high, tensions were high, the building was hot. So as I go to wrestle Jericho, I put on my compression socks, my kneepads, and my boots. What I don’t realize is that I have essentially just made a tourniquet for the bottom half of my body. Here you go, I’m going to read this from the internet right now. ‘What is the benefits of wearing compression socks? Compression stockings are specifically designed to apply pressure to your lower legs, helping to maintain blood flow and reduce discomfort and swelling. They may be prescribed by your ‘general practitioner’ if you have a condition that causes poor blood flow in your legs.’ Well here’s the thing, my blood flow is absolutely perfect, so essentially what I did was restrict everything. And I remember vividly thinking, ‘Man, I can’t feel my legs. I guess it’s just the nerves.’ But it was nerves. It was the anxiety. But it was also the compression socks. And by the time I did that moonsault to the outside and had to run myself into the ring to go give Chris Jericho a Flying Asshole, I had absolutely nothing left in my body. And I just attributed that to the night of wrestling, but no, it was because I literally cut off the supply of blood to my own legs, causing high blood pressure and low, low oxygen. I knew I was on live TV, I knew it was in front of a giant crowd, I knew it was a big moment for me. So I figured a way to do it to Jericho knowing the match would come to an end very quickly. It did, I for some reason could not move as I make my way back to the trainers’ room asking for electrolytes and the trainers being like, ‘We’re not sure what’s going on.’ And me just saying, ‘I gotta get this stuff off of me. I feel so compacted.’ And I ripped my singlet off and it still didn’t feel like enough. And I couldn’t breathe, I felt lightheaded, I had a headache, and my head was pounding. Then I’m just like, ‘Can you take my boots off?’ And I felt like such a schmuck asking a grown man to take my boots off. But the trainer was like, ‘Of course, that’s my job.’ He rips my boots off. Then I’m like, ‘Can you take my kneepads? I just feel so constricted.’ He takes my kneepads off. And then I’m like, ‘Can we get my socks off?’ And I say, ‘You know, I bought these compressions socks last night.’ The eyes of the trainers are just like, ‘What?’ As I was asked to lay back for the next two hours while ice was just put all over my body. I was educated as to why you should not professionally wrestle in front of 10,000 people and almost a million people at home in compression socks. Hopefully my wrong can help somebody in the future and you are either a current or a future pro wrestler. And you, needing socks, know just grab the regular ones.”
Do you enjoy pro wrestling? Knotfest Wrestling has a bi-weekly column filled with wrestling news. Read previous editions of this column here. You can always follow me @robinjection on Instagram and Twitter and @Squaredcirclpit.
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