[Emperor Smeat]

The Sheets:

Originally Posted by PWI Last night Dwayne Johnson's "Titan Games"two hour second season premiere received 0. 7 in the 18 to 49 demographic with 3.42 million viewers, which was a little down from the first season premiere.

Originally Posted by Observer Triple H responded to a question from TMZ about whether or not we’re going to see Ronda Rousey back in WWE: “I think Ronda's in a place in her personal life where she's figuring some things out. But, the thing with Ronda is you never know what she is saying. Is she attacking the business really or is she attacking the business because she knows that's what will light up the fans that love the business?" Triple H called Rousey one of the greatest performers ever for WWE and said they still have a great relationship with her and would love to have her back when she’s ready.

Originally Posted by Observer Apollo Crews tweeted about his United States title win on last night’s Raw: “The grind never stops!!! And it won’t stop now!! Here’s where the hard work really begins! Thanks to anyone who has supported me since day 1! Let’s make this the first of many!! #AndNew #unitedstateschampion #WWERaw @usa_network @WWE”

Originally Posted by Post Wrestling STARDOM founder Rossy Ogawa chatted with Sanspo.com about Hana Kimura’s death and talked about how the ‘Terrace House’ series brought a great deal of negative attention to the 22-year old. Rossy said that with the blessing of Hana’s family, STARDOM as a whole are considering taking legal action against cyberbullying. “I discussed this matter of slander with Chigusa Nagayo (of Marvelous Women Pro Wrestling). We can’t judge it on our own, but in consultation with her bereaved family, STARDOM is considering taking legal action against malicious cyber-bullying.”

Originally Posted by Post Wrestling Lilian Garcia welcomed JTG onto her Chasing Glory podcast to discuss the passing of JTG’s longtime friend, Shad Gaspard. To open the discussion, JTG recalled how he received the news of Shad’s disappearance and after searching for hours on end, JTG began to accept what happened but he still held out hope. “Siliana [Gaspard] called me Sunday night. I was getting ready to go to bed and she called me from Shad’s phone. When Shad calls me, I pick up on the first, second ring. We speak to each other every day. We text and we spoke to each other every day. But [his number] called me that evening and it was his wife and his wife told me that Shad was missing… the first thing I thought it was a prank because we always prank each other. That’s Shad and I’s relationship. We roasted each other, we pulled pranks on each other and that’s the first thing that came to mind but for some reason the tone in her voice, I’m like, ‘Either this is real or she’s a good actress.’ But I said I’m gonna go along with it. Jumped in the shower, brushed my teeth and I rushed over there and then we were on the beach with flashlights looking for Shad. I was there a little past midnight, and that day I think I accepted it. I had to accept it. I was waiting for a big bear hug from behind like, ‘Ah! Got cha,’ but a part of me is still waiting for that big bear hug from behind.” JTG further expressed his feelings about Shad’s passing and said he has never dealt with losing somebody that he was that close with. “I’ve been on this planet for 35 years. I’ve never lost somebody this close to me where you engage with them every day, where you share the most intimate stories with them and I’ve lost family, I’ve lost distant uncles and grandparents. But you know they’re older and it’s like, I don’t want them to be here and suffer, so when they transition you’re like, ‘Okay, they’re at peace.’ I’ve lost co-workers. We’ve lost a lot of co-workers but it never really hit home like this.”

Originally Posted by Post Wrestling Two-time WWE Hall Of Famer Ric Flair joined The Wrestling Inc. Daily Podcast. Last week, Flair shared a photo of the new WWE contract he signed and he spoke about re-signing during the interview. Flair said he wasn’t going to go anywhere else but did recall a conversation he had with AEW President Tony Khan in-which Khan said that he would never bring Flair into AEW out of respect for Flair’s relationship with WWE. “Well it’s not for life, no, but I hope they keep renewing me. You know, I’m obviously never gonna go anywhere else, so if they didn’t renew me, I gotta be honest with you and I thought about this answer so I’ll answer before you ask it, but Tony Khan was at my — when Hunter immortalized me with the statue. Tony was there and Tony had told me when I’ve seen him that he wouldn’t even ask me to come to work there, because he knows how tight I am with them. Our friendship is one thing, but he respects my loyalty to the company. It’s like when we make a joke about it when we did — he said, ‘I won’t even ask you.’ That’s how much respect he has for me and my relationship with the company which speaks volumes to what kind of guy Tony is.”

Flair also probably signed the new deal since he didn't want to cause any issues for Charlotte considering the level of pettiness WWE can be at times.

Originally Posted by Post Wrestling Former WWE talent Rusev hosted a Twitch stream recently and he shared his thoughts about AEW’s Double Or Nothing event and stated that he enjoyed the show. “But speaking of wrestling though, last night was fun. I work out every now and again, and I set my phone or whatever and I watched a little of AEW. I don’t know if it’s legal to say. Is it legal to say? I’m looking at my lawyer. Is it legal to say? ‘Yeah, yeah. You can talk about it. Don’t worry about it,’” Rusev said sarcastically as he played the role of his ‘lawyer’. “Okay, so I guess I can talk about it. It was fun man. It was fun watching, especially that main event.”

Originally Posted by Post Wrestling Lewis Nicholls has an extensive interview with former two-time WWE Tag Team Champion Rico Constantino. Towards the end of the interview, names were pitched to Rico and he would go on to share his thoughts about those names. Booker T was brought up and here’s what Rico had to say about Booker T: “Booker T, I’m really mixed with that. When I had my full face paint instead of the lines, it was told to me that Booker T was complaining because the sparkles were coming off my face and then getting in his hair and his girlfriend at the time… was saying he was going to strip joints. Accusing him of going to strip joints after he wrestled me. So they asked me to tone down the makeup so it went from the full face to the lines to just the stuff over the eyes. So I had to tone down. That’s my memory of Booker T" ... Rico also reflected on the ‘ceremony’ segment with Billy, Chuck and Eric Bischoff from 2002. Rico said that the entire day, Vince McMahon was catering to the “minister” who Bischoff was dressed as and the ‘minister’ was introducing himself to everybody. Rico said that there were very few people who were clued in but the majority of those backstage thought the minister was who he appeared to be. “Me personally, I feel like if that was on live or on RAW, that would have been the best kayfabe event in the history of wrestling, even better than the double Hebners with the Hulk Hogan thing. The reason why I say that is only a handful of people actually knew that the minister was Eric Bischoff and that was the people in the inner circle. Vince came to the arena in his limousine as he usually does, but he brought the minister, and he took him out of the limousine. He was already in makeup and everything, shaking and Vince catered to him the whole day. Now on a TV taping day, TV starts about 6:30, 7 o’clock, where whatever brand you tape Heat and go into RAW or tape Velocity, go right into SmackDown. So we’re there, at noon and everybody sees this old minister. Vince caters to him in the catering room, goes and gets him a plate of food and is walking him around introducing him to everybody, puts him in the green room and everybody thinks this is the actual minister for the ‘commitment ceremony’ of Billy and Chuck. So the only people that know about it is me, Billy, Chuck, Stephanie, Rosey, Jamal [Umaga], Eric, Vince, the agent for the show which Stephanie was basically the agent for everything. That’s all that knew.”

Originally Posted by WrestlingInc WWE officials are reportedly working on plans to resume regular live event touring. It remains to be seen when WWE will be allowed to move forward with regular touring, but @Wrestlevotes reports that internally the company is slowly rebuilding their live event schedule. It was noted that still nothing is expected to happen with fans attending events before July at least, but things are apparently happening behind-the-scenes so that the company will be ready when they are given permission to resume touring amid the coronavirus pandemic. There have been discussions about ticket sales for arena events moving forward, with social distancing guidelines remaining in place.

Originally Posted by Post Wrestling Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has lifted the state of emergency in Tokyo, Hokkaido, Kanagawa, Chiba, and Saitama. In a statement, Abe said that hospitalizations have fallen to approximately 2,000 from the coronavirus compared to over 10,000 during the peak. It comes the same day that Japanese baseball has stated it will open its season on June 19th while excluding fans from attending games. The teams will be able to practice beginning next Tuesday on June 2nd. The Super J Cast crew posted a photo indicating the dates that pro sports can move forward with empty arena shows able to begin June 19th, 50% capacity with a limit of 5,000 fans is being targeted for July 10th, and 50% of the maximum capacity of a venue on August 1st.

Originally Posted by PWI The promotion [MLW] began work on a new TV pilot over the weekend. There has been talk of a talk show featuring personalities from the company as well as a project centered around Alicia Atout in recent weeks.

Originally Posted by Fightful On day two of the WWE tapings, Fightful Select learned that an injury went down about an hour into the Raw portion of the tapings. In a match with Nia Jax and Kairi Sane, Kairi sustained a cut to her head outside of the ring. The spot occurred outside near the stairs when Kairi was thrown and her head hit the corner of the stairs, opening her up. The match was paused and medical came out to take care of Kairi Sane, sealing the wound and bandaging her up. We were told that Kairi indicated that she was fine, and insisted on finishing up the match. WWE would resume the match, which will have to be edited. Pretty quickly, Nia and Kairi Sane went to the finish.

Originally Posted by Fightful The lawsuit between Jeff Jarrett/GFW and IMPACT/Anthem could finally be coming to an end. Mike Johnson at PWInsider reports that Jarrett and Anthem are set to go to trial on June 30. The trial will begin at 9 a.m. local time. The trial is expected to last up to a week with the court noting the "trial date is realistic notwithstanding COVID-19, and the parties shall anticipate going forward on that date." The lawsuit between Jarrett and Anthem revolves around the usage, and deleted, of the GFW Amped tapes. Jarrett and GWE hit IMPACT and Anthem with a lawsuit in August 2018, suing over copyright infringement pertaining to their use of Jarrett's name and likeness along with their use of GFW Amped content. There reportedly was an attempt to resolve the lawsuit with the two parties entering mediation last month. Jarrett attended the mediation in person while Anthem Wrestling President Ed Nordholm appeared via teleconference as he is in Canada and unable to enter the United States. However, discussions to reach a settlement failed, leading to the upcoming trial.

TPWW Frontpage:

• Hana Kimura’s Cause of Death Revealed, New Cyberbullying Law in Talks, Terrance House Update
• Vince McMahon Says That He Isn’t Going to Buy Back the XFL
• Notes on Last Night’s WWE Tapings & Crowd
• Finn Balor vs. Damian Priest Added to NXT TakeOver – Updated Card
• Matt Riddle Reportedly Scheduled to Debut on SmackDown Very Soon (Update)
• Drew Gulak Has Re-Signed With WWE