Giulia beat Zelina Vega to win the Women’s U.S. Title on SmackDown last night. (WWE)
There were problems with the live international broadcast of SmackDown on Netflix yesterday because the power went out in Riyadh shortly after the show began. It happened during what was supposed to be a Randy Orton and Cody Rhodes segment. The control room and Gorilla position were both sans power for a half hour. Orton stalled for time by talking to the live crowd and meeting with fans, and after about 25 minutes, Cody Rhodes finally came out when the power was restored. Carmelo Hayes came out to interrupt the segment and ate a Cross Rhodes. Wade Barrett and Michael Cole acknowledged the issues on air. Several matches had time cut from their length due to the technical difficulties. (PWI) WWE spliced it together in post and ran this notice on SmackDown: “The Cody Rhodes & Randy Orton segment experienced technical issues during the live recording from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Thank you for your patience.” (WWE)
Bill Goldberg credits stem cell therapy for helping him return to the ring: “Let’s be perfectly honest, if a Bioxcellerator didn’t hook me up with the stem cells, I don’t think I’d be able to be doing this. That was something that I strategically needed to place at the beginning so I could chill before slowly getting back into training and getting my shoulder back and hopefully getting my knee back and keeping my spine aligned.”
John Cena thinks his promo in Lexington was a failure: “Lexington, Kentucky. I’d opened the show. I had five minutes to speak before three other performers came out and that’s a real hard spot to be in because I can’t do any action yet, you kind of got to tell people what my purpose is and my character is not someone to rile up the audience, it’s somebody against the audience. I took the route of, okay, evil mastermind, I’d like to explain my plan and I did for five minutes. I planned this, all this shit, I knew this would happen so I made this move, I knew this would happen. I thought it was well constructed, I thought it was dropping Easter eggs for fans. They fucking hated it. The great thing is, they loved when the next three guys came out, so the bit itself worked. But man, it was crickets. I know the noise. I really cannot wait for this to be over, I really thought this was going to work.”
Gunther is looking forward to facing Goldberg on July 12th: “I don’t know – how I got up in wrestling or I got brought up, I feel like Goldberg is the complete opposite of how I would have imagined a wrestler that I really look up to. But, also, I’m able to understand that business is done differently as well. There’s different styles and just over here, the showmanship, the looks of a person are maybe sometimes more important than how technically finesse we are in the ring. I don’t wanna touch the style and it’s very successful. So in that aspect, being in WWE in the position that I am now, being able to – and that’s the thing with Goldberg is… like I said before, you can say whatever you want about him but, he’s one of the most outstanding guys in the history of this business and seeing a lot of the guys that he had before, it’s a great opportunity for me to step into the position now to be his last opponent because with all due respect, that’s what it is. I gain from that, being in the ring with Bill Goldberg because when he shows up, there’s a lot of interest in that and yeah, happy I got that opportunity.”
MJF was snuck into the building ten minutes before his surprise MLW appearance on Thursday night and left immediately after it was over. (PWI)
Michael Cole has confirmed that SmackDown goes back to two hours next week.
Chris Jericho’s latest Fozzy tour has ended so he can return to AEW/ROH at any time. His next tour is in the United Kingdom next February. (PWI)
Filthy Tom Lawlor is on an indefinite hiatus from wrestling because he needs a hip replacement and spinal surgery. The L-5 and S-1 vertebrae are said to be pinching a nerve in his back causing numbness and muscular atrophy. (WO)
Thea Hail advanced on the latest episode of WWE Speed.
Bayley announced a draft pick for the San Jose Sharks yesterday.
Collision on Thursday did a 0.08 and 285,000 viewers, down from 0.10 and 426,000 for the previous episode. (Wrestlenomics)
