Big Cass Updates – There’s more fallout over the Big Cass release.  Apparently another incident that lead to his release was him blowing off Kevin Dunn’s request for a promo rehearsal.   When they ended up going live for the show that night, the promo failed, went long and was so poorly received the WWE fired the writer of the promo; this according to The Observer.  Big Cass is serving a 90 day no-compete clause after his termination.

Francine Talks Vince’s Warped View on Women – Shane Douglas’s Triple Threat Podcast recently interviewed his former valet Francine.  During the conversation she revealed her disdain being in the WWE during her 2006 stint, saying;

I can tell you something, when I was hired and I was in line to get a draw one evening and (Vince McMahon) pulled me from line because earlier in the night I was talking to Johnny Ace in his office and I was crying and I was begging for my release. Johnny said they weren’t giving me my release and I was like Johnny please – you are not using me and I am not happy so he must have went to Vince. He pulled me from line and we start walking and he says, ‘You are a beautiful girl and beautiful girls are a dime a dozen, I have no idea what you can do.’ I looked at Vince and I am not lying when I say this but I looked at Vince and I said, ‘Didn’t you buy our tape library?’  He just looked at me as to say ‘I didn’t watch it’ or ‘I don’t watch it’ and I am then like well okay he has his crew that watch stuff and they report back and I was told that Shane McMahon was the big ECW, I don’t want to say mark, but fan and he loved ECW and that was Shane’s thing. He told his Dad who to hire and I know Tommy had a part in it too but for Vince to tell me, someone that he has hired that he has never saw my work? He didn’t know what I could do? I am thinking to myself just how on earth can I be standing under contract in this building right now? Period. It blew my mind.

Jericho Thinks NJPW is Close – Chris Jericho and Kenny Omega spoke with the Winnipeg Free Press and revealed that he thinks NJPW is close to competing with the WWE.  During the interview, he’s quoted as saying;

…that’s slowly but surely increasing its worldwide popularity and basically breathing down the neck of the WWE. It’s a Japanese wrestling company, the top stars are Japanese, but there we were, two foreigners, headlining and main eventing the Tokyo Dome. It would be like two Japanese football teams in the Super Bowl. The fact it’s two guys from Winnipeg is a really huge deal.

WWE Working With NOAH? –  The Observer is reporting that the WWE and Japanese promotion, Pro Wrestling NOAH have apparently agreed on a deal to work with one another.  A Japanese reporter who covers NOAH on a regular basis named Hisame (Twitter handle), believes this to be a one off thing.  Why?  Well, because there’s only one date scheduled at the moment and it involves NOAH legend, Hideo Itami.  The current date is set for August 29th, but there’s not even a show for NOAH on that date.

Naomichi Marufuji’s twenty anniversary in wrestling is that week, and Hideo, better known as KENTA, had a long standing feud with him.  The other noteworthy point is NOAH and IMPACT still have a working relationship as of right now.  IMPACT has been trying to work more with New Japan Pro Wrestling, but that doesn’t mean their work with NOAH would stop necessarily.  Just last year they worked with both AAA and CRASH from Mexico, and those two promotions have long standing issues with each other.

Quick Hits – IMPACT Wrestling is reducing it’s pay per view prices for Slammiversary, dropping it by twenty dollars down to $19.99 on the Fite App.  The price may reflect their pay per view providers as well.  Kenny Omega thinks he’d do well in the WWE, due to their restrictions forcing him to be more creative.  Austin Aries will work the Best in the World event on June 29th for ROH Wrestling.