[Emperor Smeat]

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SPOILER: show

Originally Posted by PWI Should Rollins not be able to work Wrestlemania 33, there will obviously be a change in plans. One pitch that has made the rounds over the last 24 hours is for Triple H to wrestle Shane McMahon at the show. We will see if that ends up being the direction if Rollins' injury requires an extended period of absence from WWE storylines.

Spoiler tag used since its related to potential Mania plan changes.

Originally Posted by PWI The 2/2 edition of Impact on Pop brought in 299,000 viewers, down from last week's 307,000.

Originally Posted by Observer The "This was the XFL" special last night on ESPN did 917,000 viewers, which is a good number for such a show.

Originally Posted by PWI Kevin Kelly, who has served as the voice of Ring of Honor since 2010, departed the company this week, PWInsider.com has confirmed. Kelly had taken a full-time job with the company in their office last year, juggling his announcing duties with logistical duties that were meant to ease the pressures on ROH booker Hunter Johnston. At the time Kelly took the full time job, he had told PWInsider.com that he was there to work as a liaison between the wrestlers and the office to insure better communications and to help spearhead projects that ROH needed to work on, such as a streaming service and an updated website. We are told that Kelly gave notice and departed the company. He completed his duties for the office this weekend is not currently scheduled for any additional announcing for the company at this time. He was not scheduled for this weekend's ROH events and is scheduled to travel to Japan to call the 2/5 New Japan Pro Wrestling event in Sapporo, so it would appear his exit from ROH would have no bearing on his NJPW duties. New Japan has expanded their English language commentary for their New Japan World streaming service.

Originally Posted by Observer An update on the Kevin Kelly situation is that he had to make a choice between keeping his full-time office job with ROH or his commitment to New Japan, as New Japan wanted him in Japan for the entire week this coming week. So he chose New Japan, which pays well, well enough to get Don Callis back into a business that he pretty much walked away from 15 years ago. Kelly is expected to still be used as on-air talent by ROH.

Originally Posted by Observer Cody Rhodes talks WWE wrestlers' knowledge of the indie scene. On leaving WWE on his own accord: "I've done everything and more I was hoping to do, a lot of these independent groups come across like independents, they come across as brands. It's cool that I've done the more smaller independent shows, but also the larger companies too, last year I wrestled at WrestleMania, Pro Wrestling Guerrilla's Battle of Los Angeles, TNA's Bound For Glory, Ring of Honor's Final Battle and then obviously I did New Japan Pro Wrestling's Wrestle Kingdom, so the statistic is rather staggering for me, to have a period of these events coming so fast in a featured way, it ways heavily on my mind because you want each to be good."

Link to the interview: http://www.totalwrestlingmagazine.co...print-edition/

Originally Posted by Observer Jim Ross promoted his WrestleMania weekend show in Orlando. On WWE using older wrestlers to build the product: "They’re using some guys with some miles on the tires -- I’m not saying if the tires are treadless or not. But there’s two ways to use those veterans.You can use them against each other, get more eyeballs on the product and expose the younger talents in other ways, or you can figure out the way for the veterans to best give the rub to younger guys. WWE is doing a nice job of that right now."

Link to the interview: http://www.orlandosentinel.com/sport...202-story.html

Originally Posted by PWI Kenny Omega was announced today for Ring of Honor "Honor Rising" events at Korakuen Hall in Tokyo, Japan on 2/26 and 2/27. The word that is making the rounds is that Omega will be making appearances Stateside for ROH later this year as well.

Originally Posted by PWI Since we have gotten some emails about a few TNA related topics, here is the latest: *As of this writing, the company has not locked in Matt and Jeff Hardy to new deals. *Drew Galloway has also yet to sign a new deal. *Dixie Carter has moved out of the TNA offices in Nashville, TN and is not involved in any TNA decision-making. Her husband, Serg Salinas, is also no longer with the company. He lists on his LinkedIn Profile that in January, he left the company to work as General Manager of Trifecta Entertainment and Tex-Ville Tunes Music Publishing in Nashville, TN. Trifecta Entertainment was the company Dixie Carter owned and ran before TNA. *Jeff Jarrett is believed to be coming on board as the new Executive Producer, replacing John "Big" Gaburick, but we have heard differing accounts of whether Jarrett's deal is done. Jarrett is still moving forward with GFW so it's possible he will try and bridge the two entities together going forward. I wouldn't be shocked to see the GFW TV that was filmed in Las Vegas eventually end up on Fight Network, but that's only my gut feeling. *The latest word is John Gaburick is not leaving the company as we have heard he has restructured his deal to remain. *There have been no major office departures and thus far, no real talk of moving the company to Toronto (yet). *Dutch Mantel is officially on Creative, joining Matt Conway, Gaburick and Madison Rayne. *Don West is, thus far, only back to help liquidate the TNA warehouse. We are told there was a ton of merchandise that needed to be sold off so the company is working towards that end. Bringing back West was a Jarrett idea.

Originally Posted by PWI The owners of Lucha Underground, Lucha Libre FMV LLC, have applied to trademark "Penta OM", the new name for the former Pentagon Jr. What makes that interesting is that Pentagon Jr. left AAA to become an independent talent and changed his name because it was owned by AAA. AAA's Dorian Rodan was named head of Lucha Libre FMV right before Pentagon's exit and now that company is filing a trademark on Pentagon's new independent name, premumably to prevent him from actually using it.

Originally Posted by SportsNet.ca Legendary professional wrestler Bret (Hitman) Hart says he’s 100 per cent recovered and back in the gym a year after surgery for prostate cancer. Hart says it was a tough battle and he feared the worst, but he benefited from early detection. The situation is not the same for his older brother, who also has prostate cancer. Hart says his brother didn’t go for testing or take care of things early, and now he’s looking at maybe a year to live. Hart, who is 59, has had serious health issues before -- he suffered a stroke in 2002 that left him partially paralyzed, but he made a successful recovery.

Some other sheet news includes:

• The Orlando Sentinel recently had an interview with Sgt. Slaughter regarding his heel turn during the Gulf War. http://www.orlandosentinel.com/sport...203-story.html
• Vice had a recent article about Kenny Omega's rise from his days as a Junior hockey player to becoming a big star in wrestling recently. https://sports.vice.com/ca/article/k...ling-superstar
• According to PWI, Tamina is expected to join the Smackdown brand based on recently updated card for an upcoming MSG house show. Also rumored to be returning as a face for the women's division.
• Recent rumor going around the net involves Micheal Cole wanting to retire as a commentator and work in production for the WWE within the near future. May or may not be the reason why Corey Graves got promoted as a full-time RAW announcer recently.
• In a "WWE Did You Know" type fact, Emmalina hype promos only need 18 more days to surpass the amount of time Emma was out injured. Emma had been injured for around 140 days before being cleared to return while Emmalina hype videos have been going on for around 123 days.
• According to the Observer, Emmalina has become a running joke within the WWE and they currently don't have any plans for her actual debut. https://twitter.com/davemeltzerwon/s...73072982970368