Date: 02/04	11:00 PM
Views: 791

Fri. #2 is HERE. To help out the site subscribe to Mistah MegaManFan or support us on Patreon. With the cheap plugs out of the way here's Saturday's latest wrestling news.

Via social media Ronda Rousey has been added to WWE's MSG show on Mar. 5th. It shouldn't come as a surprise to you then that Rousey picked Charlotte Flair as her WrestleMania opponent on SmackDown last night. (WWE)

Speaking to Mashable, Hook talks about the reaction he got in AEW even before debuting: "It was really wild to see the reaction I was getting for that minimal role I had out there. I saw that I was gaining traction with that response from the fans, I felt I had something and I really wanted to make sure to make the most out of every opportunity that was given to me and just keep it rolling."

In this interview Eddie Kingston talks about his eye injury: "The injury is great. I'm ready to go right now. If the doctors would clear me, I would go, I would just have to protect (my eye) the whole time. I'm also used to that. I've had this injury before. On the independents, you have to go, I gotta make money and pay rent. My eye before... what happened was, I had the match, things happen, it's not ballet, we're fighting and I like to keep it as realistic as possible. I blew my nose and my eye swelled up. I said, 'Oh, it's an orbital, without a doubt.' I've had it before. I wanted to ask the AEW doctor, 'is it alright if I cut it again?' 'What are you talking about?' 'I cut it, don't do things for a little bit, and then I'm fine.' He's like, 'No, go to the doctor.' That's what I would do on the independents, I would cut it a little, get the blood or the air out and then work the next day."

Here Apollo Crews talks about working with Triple H in WWE NXT: "It was awesome. When it comes to anything with wrestling, his ideas, his mind the way it works, it is just a different level. So for me to be able to work hands-on with him, it was fantastic. He was always very open, he was easy to talk to, you could always come to him for anything. I feel like my time did get cut short in NXT, I think I was on TV for eight months maybe, it was really short. And, of course, when they tell you, 'hey you're going to come up to Monday Night Raw,' the last thing you're thinking of is, 'no I want to stay here longer.'"

Lita (Amy Dumas) is expected to be in Denver for Raw on Monday. (PWI)

Konnan (Charles Ashenoff) continues to have health problems from kidneys that are getting weaker and a strain placed on his heart due to COVID-19 that required surgery. He'll have to go on dialysis until he receives a new kidney (for the second time), and two possible donors have been found, but neither is yet confirmed as a match. (WO)

Keith Lee has reportedly got the eye of All Elite Wrestling now that he's a free agent. (WO)

SmackDown highlights and new WWE related videos are available below.

Impact Wrestling is bringing back the Gut Check Challenge. (IW)

The IMPACT Wrestling Gut Check tryout is coming back, with a 1-day camp at the prestigious Arnold Classic on Sunday, March 6th, in the main hall of the Greater Columbus Convention Center in Columbus, Ohio.

The Arnold Classic - the professional bodybuilding portion of the IFBB Arnold Sports Festival, also known as the Arnold Schwarzenegger Sports Festival - launched in 1989 and is expected to draw more than 20,000 athletes from around the world.

IMPACT Wrestling will have Meet & Greet opportunities with multiple wrestlers, including Knockouts, during the 3-day Arnold Classic. (The full list of which IMPACT stars will be in attendance has not been finalized.)

Gut Check was launched by TNA/IMPACT Wrestling in 2004 as a way to recruit new talent. Gut Check segments have been featured on the company's weekly flagship TV show, Impact! Many former wrestlers and company executives have scrutinized past Gut Check participants, always looking for the next breakout star. Several wrestlers have been awarded contracts with TNA/IMPACT after participating in Gut Check.

The Gut Check at the Arnold Classic will be run by longtime wrestler Lance Storm and current IMPACT Wrestling personality John E. Bravo.

Storm wrestled for more than 25 years after launching his career from his native Canada - and was a champion in multiple promotions, including WWF/WWE, WCW and ECW. Bravo has been an IMPACT referee, manager and more.

The winner of Gut Check at the Arnold Classic will be awarded an IMPACT Wrestling Developmental Contract.

Gabriel Kidd has been announced for TERMINUS II.

In this interview Jimmy Smith praises Roman Reigns for his ability to get heat: "He's a genius, I will say this a million times over. The heat that Roman Reigns got, they love his work, will he be cheered or will he be booed? You never know with Roman Reigns because the fans respect him so much. He got booed in the Seth Rollins match, deafeningly booed, and he played the crowd so well. He went after him and pounded his chest, they booed more. It was brilliant. The reactions, not only that he was able to get, but elicit. There's a difference, some people can get a reaction, other people elicit a reaction. He got one, and then he poured gasoline on it and got more. It was brilliant stuff. The loudest reaction I heard was the heel work of Roman Reigns, it was absolutely brilliant."

Alex Kane will defend his National Openweight Title at Superfight on February 26th against Matt Cross, Calvin Tankman and ACH. (MLW)

Matt Cardona has been added to GCW in Atlanta on March 12th.

A new "Pretty" Peter Avalon interview is below.

The updated Vengeance Day card is below. (WWE)

* NXT North American Championship: Carmelo Hayes (c) (w/ Trick Williams) vs. Cameron Grimes
* NXT Women's Tag Team Championship: Toxic Attraction (Jacy Jayne & Gigi Dolin) (c) vs. Indi Hartwell & Persia Pirotta
* Steel Cage Match: Pete Dunne vs. Tony D'Angelo

Ricky Starks enjoys the commentary work he's done for AEW: "It's very beneficial to me, not only to get my practice in for right now, but also my post-life after wrestling. It's a very difficult thing to do, commentary, but I feel like I'm somewhat finding a groove every time I do it. I have great people to work with alongside me. I really do enjoy it. It's one of the things I never thought I wanted to do, but I like being challenged and put in situations and seeing if I can thrive. So far, I think I'm keeping my head above water when it comes to doing commentary."

In this interview Anthony Bowens talks about how he and Max Caster became The Acclaimed: "I don't know how Tony Khan does it. He's a visionary. He just sees these things and they spring up like a flower. But yeah, Max and I. He's from Creative Pro, which is a school where we both trained. There's one in Long Island, New York, and the other is in New Jersey. And I'm from the New Jersey school and Caster is from the New York school. We never really crossed paths all that much - I think we maybe wrestled once or twice. I didn't really know much about him and he didn't really know much about me. At the time, we were fielding offers from the other company and eventually Tony found out, so he invited us to come meet him in Jacksonville. I'm in the elevator and the door opens and Caster steps in. We find out we're both going to meet Tony together. We get to his office and he's like, 'Hey, I've got this idea. You guys are going to be The Acclaimed.' OK, well, what is that? Who are we? What do we say? What does our gear look like? We had to make a lot of decisions because if the owner of the company has a vision for us and believes in us, then let's go out there and make it happen. We ended up wrestling Best Friends and there was no audience due to the pandemic, so it was completely quiet, and I had no idea what I was doing. We had a great match though, and we started working on our craft every single week and we went to those guys who had no idea who The Acclaimed were to one of the best tag teams in the best tag team division in the world."

Gangrel (David Heath) and his partner Susan Nelson just got married. Congratulations and all the best to them!

Victoria (Lisa Marie Varon) talks about returning for the 2021 Royal Rumble: "When I went back to the Rumble last year, I didn't think that these girls would know who I was. I went up and said, 'Hi, my name is Lisa,' and they're, 'I know who you are, you're Victoria'. I'm Like, 'Ah, you know who I am?' Because we're all in a bubble that, still, they forget that we're still normal people that still have to pay out bills. We're doing our laundry, we have to freaking pay for our car insurance. We have our life still outside. I wish we had publicists and managers to help us out with this stuff. Most of us do it ourselves. We forget what we've done and it's so humbling to have people still 'Do you remember this? Do you remember that? Oh my God, that was my favorite moment'. And you're still - it's shocking to me."

In this interview Lince Dorado talks about asking for his WWE release: "Before I asked for my release, I remember telling the office, 'If this is the best you have for us, it isn't enough. We spent weeks, months and years presenting something that wasn't stereotypical, that wasn't generic. I had six years there total, and by the third year, I saw my glass ceiling—and I was so determined to break it. They understood I was a luchador, but they didn't understand the story or the motive or the creative thought that went into being a luchador. All they saw was, 'This is just a guy in a mask that does incredible things.' One of the things we told Vince McMahon was that wrestling, for us, was the easy part. We wanted to be superstars. And I didn't want to be WWE's Spanish star. I wanted to be represented as a WWE star who happened to have Latino culture and background. But they saw me only as a high-flyer. I knew I could be so much more, and that's what I am working to become. There were no layers to my character in WWE, so there is so much for me to show. I had great rapport with Vince, John Laurinaitis and Michael Hayes - the problem was a disconnect between what they thought about lucha libre and what we all know about lucha libre. I hate quitting, but I left with two years left on my contract. I left behind more money than I'll ever see the rest of my life, but I've been poor. I've been broke, I've been homeless, I've been in the street, I've been in the ghetto - and I survived. I'll survive without WWE, too. I want more, and I need more."

Ian Riccaboni says he had a recent bout of COVID-19 and credits his relatively mild symptoms to being vaccinated beforehand.

A new "Wildcat" Chris Harris interview is below.

Via social media TNT and GCW announced they are partnering for a UK show.

In this interview Killer Kross talks about his career highlight to date: "Currently the highlight of my career has been my entire run in NXT. Just the entire period of it. I know a lot of people, because they express it to me like almost every day, they were really pissed about what happened with the main roster transition and the whole run and run all that. But for anyone who needs to hear this on my behalf out there, for me personally, I had this idea since I was a little kid and it changed and developed and expanded about the presentation I wanted to do on TV for you guys. And when I was permitted to do it in NXT, it worked."

A new "Speedball" Mike Bailey interview is below.

This week's Impact did a 0.02 18-49 demo and 114,000 viewers, well down from the 0.05 and 186,000 it did ahead of Mickie James appearing in the 2022 Royal Rumble. (Wrestlenomics)

Sonny Kiss talks about having a match with Cody Rhodes: "That whole week my palms were so sweaty. I was like 'oh my god, I can't believe this is happening.' Cody actually came up and told me, literally the week before. Because at that point, I hadn't had that many TV matches and stuff like that. So I was like 'oh my god, I can't believe this is happening. This is so cool.' And then I went into the match thinking 'okay, I'm just going to go into it and show people I can be just a wrestler.' But I think Cody was just like 'we're going to do a showcase for you.' And I was like 'okay!'"

Bill Goldberg returned on SmackDown to challenge Roman Reigns. (WWE)

Matt Cardona is challenging Trevor Murdoch for the NWA title on PowerrrTrip on Feb. 12th.

Apparently at least one person was happy the Royal Rumble was on a Saturday and that person was Corey Graves: "Having the Rumble on Saturday has done wonders for my voice because rather than rolling from Sunday night into Monday, with half a voice, I had a full day to recover. So I actually feel pretty great. It was quite a long drive from St. Louis to Cincinnati. I know, I fell asleep instantly, that was on the list of potential things to do and it's like, 'Wow, I don't know when the last time I had a chance to sleep this much was'. So I was making the most of this opportunity."

New Japan has announced their WrestleCon show details. (NJPW)

Details set for Lone Star Shootout at WrestleCon!

Tickets on sale for NJPW STRONG's WrestleCon event

On April 1, NJPW STRONG will be a huge part of proceedings at WrestleCon! A special taping will take part at the event, as STRONG sees a Lone Star Showdown!

Tomohiro Ishii, Jay White, Tom Lawlor, Fred Rosser, Ren Narita, Yuya Uemura, Clark Connors, Gabriel Kidd, Chris Bey, JR Kratos, FinJuice and more are set to be in action in Dallas' Fairmont Hotel.

Tickets go on sale FRIDAY at Noon Eastern for WrestleCon Superfans, and general sale will be SATURDAY at noon Eastern.

For the first time, fans will also be able to watch STRONG matches live on FITE, as Lone Star Showdown will be available as part of FITE's WrestleCon bundle, as well as separately.

Stay tuned for more information as NJPW returns to the Lone Star State this April!

NJPW STRONG Tapings: Lonestar Shootout

Friday, April 1 2022 5PM

Fairmont Hotel, Dallas TX

Seats Advance
Arena D $30
Arena C $45
Arena B $80
Arena A $150

The updated Elimination Chamber card is below. (WWE)

* WWE Championship Elimination Chamber Match: Bobby Lashley vs. Brock Lesnar vs. Austin Theory vs. Riddle vs. Seth Rollins vs. AJ Styles
* WWE Universal Championship Match: Roman Reigns vs. Goldberg
* Raw Women's Championship Match: Becky Lynch vs. Lita
* SmackDown Tag Team Championship Match: The Usos vs. Viking Raiders
* Drew McIntyre vs. Madcap Moss