Knotfest Wrestling is back for round two. I’m recapping last night’s WWE Money in the Bank premium live event, and sharing some weekend news and gossip.
Don’t forget, in just a few hours, on the Knotfest Youtube channel at 7pm eastern, hosts Alicia Atout, Jordan Olds and Colin Young will stream for a new episode of Knotfest Wrestling, where they will be recapping WWE Money in the Bank and some of the news stories of the weekend from this post and the last one. You can watch the stream below.
If you saw my predictions on Friday, I got everything but the Money in the Bank winners correct. Here are the quick results:
Overall, if you missed the show, there wasn’t too much worth going out of your way to see, except for maybe the last few minutes of the Usos and Street Profits.
A video teaser aired during the show which some speculated could be the return of Bray Wyatt (who is not under contract.) It is more likely that this will be used to bring Edge back:
And now, here are some news notes from the weekend:
Wrestlevotes reports that before the WWE Money in Bank show started, interim CEO Stephanie McMahon addressed the entire locker room, in a company-wide talent meeting. The meeting was said to have gone “well.”
Shotzi was bleeding from the back of her head after a bad spot during the ladder match. It’s unknown if she will miss any time.
Since Money in the Bank was in Vegas, and the big UFC show was in Vegas, after the WWE event concluded, Vince McMahon, Stephanie McMahon, Paul “Triple H” Levesque and announcer Pat McAffee were spotted at the UFC event, and shown on camera. They may have been guests of champion Israel Adesanya, as he came out to the Undertaker’s theme music.
Dave Meltzer noted on Wrestling Observer Radio that the plan for WWE Summer Slam was for Liv to defend her newly won title against Ronda Rousey, so no Charlotte Flair return just yet.
Multiple outlets are reporting that Bayley is gearing up for a big return to television.
The former Cesaro, Claudio Castagnoli shocked wrestling fans when he debuted at AEW Forbidden Door last week. He also shocked some of his former WWE co-workers. In the latest Wrestling Observer newsletter, Dave Meltzer reports that some people backstage were stunned that Claudio turned down what is being reported as a very lucrative offer to go to AEW.
Speaking of Forbidden Door, it is expected to draw around 125,000 buys according to Meltzer, down from the 155,000 buys Double or Nothing did last month, but still, it has to be considered a big success with all the injuries plaguing the show, and a lot of the New Japan talent not being too familiar to AEW fans. I was there live and had the time of my life. AEW owner Tony Khan seemed pleased with the results.
The original plan was for the Young Bucks to win the IWGP tag team titles at Forbidden Door, according to Meltzer. But as the lineup changed due to all the injuries, it made more sense for FTR to be in that role, and now they can do a big unification match with all the titles at stake. It seems as though that’s where the story is headed for AEW All Out in September.
In a recent interview with Denise Salcedo, NJPW wrestler and American talent liaison Rocky Romero talked about how Kenny Omega was responsible for initially creaking the Forbidden Door open by calling Rocky about KENTA appearing on Dynamite a few years back. “Kenny (Omega) called me and had pitched the idea of kind of opening the doors a little bit. Obviously, (Jon) Moxley and (Chris) Jericho were still working with New Japan, but Kenny and the (Young) Bucks were a pivotal, important part of New Japan prior to AEW and they are EVPs, so they hold a lot of power. Not wanting to forget about them completely, we had to open the relationship and Kenny kind of opened that and said ‘Hey, I have this idea of KENTA coming into AEW and working with Moxley since they already had a storyline’ and that’s kinda where everything started.” Romero noted from that point on, he and Khan would go back and forth about arranging more talent to appear on the show. Romero claims he was the one who pitched the idea to Khan of eventually doing a joint show, which became Forbidden Door.
I’ll be back in a few days with more. Don’t forget, in just a few hours, on the Knotfest Youtube channel at 7pm eastern, hosts Alicia Atout, Jordan Olds and Colin Young will stream for a new episode of Knotfest Wrestling, where they will be recapping WWE Money in the Bank and some of the news stories of the weekend from this post and the last one.
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