CENA ELIMINATES STROWMAN.
CENA ELIMINATES BALOR.
ROMAN HITS THE SPEAR.
THEN COMES THE CENA AND ROMAN REIGNS STARE-DOWN.
ABSOLUTELY CHILLS 🔥
#RoyalRumble
“As much fun as I’ve had alongside you, champ… at SummerSlam, it’s gonna be me standing in front of you.”
- Charlotte Flair to Rhea Ripley 👀
#SmackDown
Nick Khan claims that the plans for WrestleMania 40 never changed:
“By the way, the plan was always how it ended up in Philly two years ago. It’s a pre-determined outcome in wrestling. You want to throw the fans off, you want to let things bake, and then boom, it ends up the way that we wanted it to end up. It never changed. That was just online rumors and gossip that we were changing. It never changed.
We convinced Dwayne Johnson to come back. He’s on our board of directors. It was a Tag Team Match. He’s about the same age I am, so two years ago, let’s say he was 50. He was obviously in phenomenal shape. He did everything that we asked of him and then some. But that was always the result we were looking for.”
(@SBJ)
Nick Khan says WWE will never respond to social media criticism of the product, recalls a meeting with Shawn Michaels last year about accelerating the next generation of talent:
“We will never respond to social media criticism. If ratings are down, if revenue's down, if relevancy's down, it's up to us.
A year ago, we got together. Triple H, [Chris] Legentil, myself, a guy named Shawn Michaels who runs our developmental system, Hall of Fame wrestler. And we said, ‘Hey, look, we have John Cena on his retirement tour. Rock came back and now he's gonna be filming Jumanji and Smashing Machine at the time. Our other big stars, CM Punk's 46. We got a number of men who are 40 years or older and they're performing at the high level. We got to accelerate the next generation of talent. So what do we need to do to accelerate it?'
Shawn Michaels said we need to take them on the road so they get the crowd response of a live crowd. That's part of what makes wrestling unique. If you're getting cheered, great. If you're getting booed, great. If there's no response, terrible. So you need that live crowd to figure that out, so we made the investment in that.”
(@SBJ)