It’s fair to say that the WWE’s flagship show for Monday Night RAW is experiencing some major criticism for their show. The show has tanked in recent months and has set back to back all-time lows for the show and part of the issue stems with creative; namely Vince McMahon. However in spite of all this, former WWE writer and current IMPACT Wrestling writer Jimmy Jacobs took to Twitter to defend the mess that has become the WWE’s flagship programming by tweeting out;
Writing a 3 hour wrestling tv show every single week is fuckin hard. https://t.co/ohGZXBAJkx
— The Zombie Princess (@JimmyJacobsX) December 12, 2018
While I respect Jacobs, a lot, I also have to point out that the show used to be really good. So the whole “iz hardy” argument is a sad and pathetic cop out for the situation. The show is bad. The show’s been bad. It’s not hard to write a good show. It’s merely hard to write a good show when your bosses are the McMahons.
Thankfully wrestling is thriving outside of the WWE and one brand that is on the upswing is the NWA. At their pop up event in Claskville, Tennessee on January 5th, 2019 will see two other title matches besides James Storm challenging for Nick Aldis’ NWA World Championship. The other two will be Jazz defending her Women’s World Championship against two time IMPACT Wrestling Knockouts Champion Allie and Willie Mack defending his NWA National Championship against Matt Cross. The show is being hosted and co-promoted by Tried-N-True Wrestling.
John Cena talked with ESPN recently and revealed why he hasn’t wrestled as much lately due to his filming commitments, and they make sense, saying;
…The biggest difficulty is trying to juggle stuff because I have learned, and I’m trying to fight this system but I’m losing, once you’re in production for a movie, they don’t allow you to wrestle. Because I can’t go to a WWE taping and have my nose put over here.
Not only doesn’t it look good, it’s, ‘Man, you don’t look right.’ So they shut the whole movie down, (there are) 150 people that are expecting a paycheck for that movie and I just screwed them out of their wage. It ups the budget of the movie, so I just put the movie behind the eight ball of possibly being a financial success.
Which makes sense to me.
Sgt. Slaughter is one of the most iconic wrestlers of all time, so prolific he was made into an actual G.I. Joe character. Slaughter was working with the WWE for years, especially before his WWE Championship win back in 1990. So it’s no surprise he has some interesting stories. Speaking with Wrestling News.com, Slaughter opened up about how Vince McMahon himself wrestled under a mask once because he had the itch. Vince McMahon wanted to be a wrestler but his father, Vince Sr. forbade it, citing Vince’s future as the owner as the big reason why he couldn’t be one of the boys. As slaughter tells it;
Vince never was able to become a wrestler, his father wanted him to be behind the microphone, so he could control things a little better. One night we were driving in the car together and he says, ‘One thing I miss Sarge is getting in the ring.’ I asked him if he wants to get in the ring, he says yes, so I tell him to go put a mask on one night when we have a smaller event and I’ll wrestle you. So we did, and it wasn’t the funnest time of my life, but we got it done
In MMA news, ONE Championship has apparently signed a deal with Turner Sports and will air cards on Bleacher Report and TNT. According to Ariel Helwani the deal begins on January 1st, and will see 24 events air split between TNT and Bleacher Report live. The first show is a January 19th event in Jakarta, Indonesia.