SquaredCircle

Bret Hart takes a shot at Bill Goldberg. Drink.

AJPW President Tsuyoki Fukuda will continue to protect AJPW.

Actwres girl'Z announced that Asahi passed away.

On the newest Observer Radio, Dave revealed a lot of new info that he’s learned about the Rock/Roman situation, namely that it has apparently been the plan for weeks but it was kept a very close secret.

He says Rock being in the WM main event was part of his deal to join the TKO board and get his trademark back, it was all one deal. Says the deal was made on January 3rd. Dave does not know why Cody was booked to win the Rumble in spite of that, but he does know most people in the company did not know Rock was facing Roman and most people in the company were still being told as recently as last week that it was Roman vs. Cody.

The deal with Rock was done between Rock, Ari Emmanuel, and Nick Khan. Says “they didn’t tell almost anyone”. He also says he doesn’t know if they have decided to turn it into an angle, but they have already made merch and signed sponsorships related to the match so he’s unsure how open they would be to changing the match, regardless of the crowd reaction.

Source: https://www.f4wonline.com/podcasts/wrestling-observer-radio/wrestling-observer-radio-rock-and-roman-reigns-stardom-shake-up-vengeance-day-tons-of-news

Gonna be updating this through the day as news comes in and I have time to dig through what's been posted this morning, but tl;dr:

Rossy has been on contract since Bushiroad (NJPW's primary owners) bought the company in 2018 to run the day-to-day operations. Reports are that in the next month or so his contract was going to be ending/he was leaving.

Bushiroad is accusing him of poaching their talent, the idea being that Rossy is trying to get some Stardom talent to leave with him and go (likely) start a new promotion, and as such they have fired him.

A large number of Stardom talent also has their contracts up in March and given the fact that Rossy has been there since day 1 (being 1 of the 3 people to start the promotion) & are fiercely loyal to him, having given many of Stardoms wrestlers their starts in the business. As such there is an expectation that with Rossy gone, there may/will be a Misawa/NOAH level exodus from the company. Mayu is the only one unlikely to leave as, while she is also a Rossy woman through and through, she is on a longer contract due to the movie that came out/is coming out about her life.

"Okada (Geek-note: not that one) and Bushiroad Fight merchandise manager Oyama will take over as the bookers for Stardom effective immediately. The two don't have any background as bookers although Okada was part of a pro wrestling club while in college that staged matches."

"Bushiroad had known about talent leaving and some were given legal threats in recent weeks. Those who are leaving wouldn't be doing so until their contracts expire. This is part of the story of why Giulia will not be wrestling in Chicago and had said she was taking time off in March, when her contract expires."

Dave Meltzer said WWE had contacted Stardom months ago wanting to work with them, so he knows WWE wants to work with someone in the region. SRS has heard rumours that Rossy himself is WWE bound, which Alvarez denies.

• Also says Kairi leaving was in part because she found out Rossy was leaving
• He says Rossy wanting to break off predates WWE showing interest in Stardom so he doesn’t think WWE is directly connected to it, and he doesn’t think it’s a thing where Rossy wants to make a pipeline directly to WWE but he knows they want in somehow.
• He said some talent have been threatened with legal action and were scared of it, but most of the key talent have known he was leaving for a long while now so they’ve all had time to make their decisions.
• Reiterates the March timeline as when most of the talent decisions will be made

Dave Meltzer notes there were times Tony tried to get Stardom talent to work AEW shows but the dates he wanted were dates of Stardom PPVs where the names wanted had already been advertised for those PPVs.

Will continue to update with info and sources as I can.

Sources:

Stardoms press release

Rossy's tweet:

"Suddenly, after yesterday's game, I was notified that my contract would be terminated. The truth of the matter may be told someday. I'm worried about the players right now. Thank you for supporting Stardom for the past 13 years. From now on, it will be Stardom created by Bushiroad."

Bryan Alvarez: "We will have more later, but this Stardom story is way bigger than just Rossy leaving."

WON: "A lot of the talent is loyal to Ogawa, who founded the company and gave most of the women their career breaks. Expect several departures from the group in March, when most of the contracts expire."

It's Meme Monday! Use this space to share all the funny memes, gifs, pics, and shorts from the week that was in wrestling.

💥 TOP VOTED MEME WILL BE NEXT WEEK'S THUMBNAIL!! 💥

Remember to link your memes so our friends on Lemmy can see them! Thanks guys.

ETA 20minutes from me posting this thread should anyone wanna watch!

“First, let me say there is no bigger Cody supporter than me, ask

<60 mins of the Internet shitting on him later>

"To clear the record... #WeWantCody"

That ricochet'd quick.

Hello SquaredCircle! Welcome to our Weekly Discussion Thread!

What have you watched lately? Seen any great matches? Have suggestions for things to watch? Anything not getting covered in other threads that ya wanna fill people in about? Questions about promotions, wrestlers, 'the business' or more?

Feel free to post below!

(Reminder, this thread can and will contain spoilers for possibly any show. Spoiler tags are not required in here, but if the show just happened try and keep spoiler talk it to its respective discussion thread for the first day).

Saturday night's alright for fighting!

Tonight, Collision is LIVE from Edinburg, TX! The card includes:

• “The American Dragon” Bryan Danielson vs. Hechicero

• Eddie Kingston vs. “Bounty Hunter” Bryan Keith

• Queen Aminata vs. Serena Deeb

• The Patriarchy (Christian Cage, Killswitch, & Nick Wayne) vs. Daniel Garcia & FTR (Cash Wheeler & Dax Harwood)

• We'll hear from Mark Briscoe!

And more!

Show starts at 8pm EST | 5pm PST | 7pm CST | 1am BST

AEW can be found on: TNT in the US, TSN+ in Canada, ViX in Latin America, ESPN in Australia, and FITETV/DAZN in the UK, EU, and elsewhere.

It's one of those wonderful days where we have numerous wrestling events occurring on one evening (and morning lol).

So here's your cards for the festivities!:

AEW Collision

GCW The Coldest Winter 2

MLW Superfight

NOAH Cross Over in Sendai

STARDOM Supreme Fight 2024

Tellum will have the normal AEW Collision discussion thread up (I would assume), so should anyone be watching the other 4 events do feel free to use this as your official discussion thread if you don't wanna make one yourselves.

If you see any matches that interest you, feel free to point em out! (I'm personally hoping for 2 Stardom title changes!)

PWInsider.com is told this wasn’t done to target and politic Cody out of his main event out of malice, but out of the belief that Johnson was the best idea to make money now and respect his new position with the company’s parent company. This was a strategic move to give Johnson more political power overall and to show Endeavor’s faith in his involvement and that even Paul Levesque, who has done an admirable job as the Chief Creative Officer, would "lose that power struggle with Johnson at this point", as one source surmised.

Source: https://theboard.f4wonline.com/forum/the-board/pro-wrestling/5656091-lmao-cody?p=5656350#post5656350

“Dwayne pushed super hard for it. Read last week's issue and this week's. The card changed when Punk & Brock were out and all the dominoes fell. Dwayne already wanted it and they felt they now needed it as well. Felt this was better to change the news flow away from Vince.

Cody was the plan. Dwayne was going to face him later, maybe next year's Mania, maybe Saudi. Shit happens with Vince and Punk, the Vince thing ends up worse than they thought and they changed the plan. I literally didn't know until yesterday that it could change and then I was told it's under lock. But 100% it was Punk vs. Seth and Cody vs. Reigns until Punk got hurt.”

Should save this one for our Meme Monday thread but I mean...

#wrestling #prowrestling #professionalwrestling #sq #squaredcircle #wwe #therock #tko #wrestlemania #SquaredCircle

2011, 2024, whatever.

#wrestling #prowrestling #professionalwrestling #sq #squaredcircle #wwe #therock #tko #wrestlemania #SquaredCircle

(lemmy)

THIS IS RAMPAGE!!

Tonight, Rampage comes to us from New Orleans, LA! The card includes:

• Hechicero, Mascara Dorada, Mistico, & Volador Jr. vs. Angelo Parker, Christopher Daniels, Matt Menard, & Matt Sydal

• ELIMINATOR MATCH: AEW World Tag Team Champions © Big Bill & Ricky Starks vs. The Dark Order (Alex Reynolds & John Silver)

• Willow Nightingale vs. Queen Aminata

• Top Flight (Dante & Darius Martin) vs. Private Party (Isiah Kassidy & Marq Quen)

• We'll hear from Cassidy, Chuck Taylor, and Trent Beretta!

And more!

Show starts at 10pm EST | 7pm PST | 9pm CST | 3am BST

AEW can be found on: TNT in the US, TSN+ in Canada, ViX in Latin America, ESPN in Australia, and FITETV/DAZN in the UK, EU, and elsewhere.

Tonight, WWE is LIVE from Birmingham, Alabama! The card includes:

• Roman Reigns comes face-to-face with Cody Rhodes

• Logan Paul journeys to SmackDown following Royal Rumble controversy

• Bayley to declare who she will challenge at WrestleMania after Royal Rumble victory

And more!

Show starts LIVE at 8pm EST | 5pm PST on FOX. Check your local listings for more information.

Full BTS video