As previously reported, WWE has changed Matt Riddle’s name to just Riddle on WWE.com. At first, it was presumed it was a directive from Vince McMahon due to him preferring singular names such as Cesaro, Elias, and Sheamus. However, Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter has reported the change is because WWE is concerned with fans Googling “Matt Riddle” and reading the allegations made against him as part of the Speaking Out movement. In June, Riddle had serious claims made against him by a female wrestler he worked with when competing for Evolve Wrestling. Riddle denies these accusations. However, his accuser has filed a lawsuit against him, WWE, Evolve and Evolve booker Gabe Sapolsky. Riddle himself has taken to Twitter and confirmed the name change, and revealed he prefers his mononymous name, as you can read below.

WWE recently made the controversial decision to take over their talents Twitch and Cameo accounts and take a cut of their earnings. Not only that, but that revenue would count towards their downside guarantee. With WWE now due to take ownership, several talents have chosen to stop streaming and recording videos rather than allow WWE to force them into something they are not happy with.

The first wrestler to take a stand has been AJ Styles, who posted on his that he was suspending his stream due to WWE “making some changes that involve streaming.”

After AJ Styles’ announcement, fellow wrestlers and regular Twitch streamers Zelina Vega, Xavier Woods, Aleister Black, Mia Yim, and Cesaro followed suit and suspended their channels and issued subscription refunds. Big E, Matt Riddle, Scarlett Bordeaux, and Kevin Owens have also stopped taking Cameo requests and are now unavailable on the site. We now need to wait to see how WWE responds to this and whether they reconsider their stance, considering how unfavorable it has been received.

On Thursday evening, Jake Hager returned to the world of MMA and took part in the prelims of Bellator 250. He took on fellow undefeated heavyweight Brandon Calton in a fight that went the distance, but he ultimately won via split decision (28-29, 29-28, 29-28). This takes his MMA record is to 3 wins and 1 no-contest.

It was a tough fight for Hager, who struggled to get the takedown, so they had to trade strikes with a fighter nicknamed “Bone Crusher.” Hager did end up getting the best of the majority of exchanges, with the consensus among fans being the right man won the fight.

The former WWE World Heavyweight Champion wore his Inner Circle t-shirt during his entrance and had AEW’s logo on his tights. Following the fight, AEW would take to Twitter and congratulate their man, who last wrestled for them on October 7th.

Love him or hate him, there is no denying the fact that Vince McMahon is a fascinating individual, and soon fans will get to learn about WWE’s head honcho in a new Netflix docuseries that was announced during WWE’s latest earnings call.

Not much is known about the series other than it will have one of Netflix’s docuseries’ largest budgets ever and is being produced by Chris Smith, who directed Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened, which was about the ill-fated Fyre Festival of 2017. Also on board is Bill Simmons, who is behind ESPN’s 30 For 30, the acclaimed André the Giant documentary for HBO.

It will be interesting to see how deep they can delve into McMahon’s life and how factual the series is. WWE is well known to alter facts in their own documentaries, going as far as claiming they changed the companies name from WWF to WWE for marketing reasons, not because they lost a lawsuit initiated by the World Wildlife Fund.

Matt Riddle made a name for himself on The Ultimate Fighter and competing in the UFC before spending four years wrestling on the independents and a further two years in NXT. Therefore you’d think his name was set; nevertheless, Vince McMahon’s obsession with wrestlers only having a one-word name has seemingly struck again.

Earlier today, WWE changed Matt Riddle’s official superstar page on WWE.com to WWE.com/Superstars/Riddle, and in addition to removing “Matt” from the URL, they also changed it from the title and bio. The original page is still live but is no longer linked on WWE.com.

We will have to wait until Monday’s Raw to see if WWE follows through on the name change. Although it does appear at this time, Riddle has now joined the likes of Antonio Cesaro, Elias Samson, and Big E Langston, who all had their names shortened. It’s also believed that Dominik Mysterio will also soon be dropping his legendary surname and joining them.

Road Dogg wears a mask, but he isn’t a fan of doing so and questions their effectiveness. He would reply to a tweet supporting this view, and this lead to Shane Helms commenting. After numerous tweets back and forth, the consensus was Shane Helms got the better of the discussion, with the majority siding with his takes over Road Dogg’s. This resulted in Road Dogg announcing that he was quitting Twitter, as you can read below.

Even though Road Dogg had quit the social media platform and lost 142 followers since the debate, while in contrast, Helms had gained 404 followers, the former Cruiserweight Champion couldn’t resist adding further insult to injury. Helms would tweet not only mocking Road Dogg for abandoning Twitter but also going as far as to use some of the same hashtags that Road Dogg regularly uses to parody his tweet style.

With a few exceptions, those that publicly quit Twitter do usually return, and Road Dogg never took the next step and deactivated his account so he may return when the heat dies down. The wrestlers have worked together for many years, so hopefully, the pair can eventually put a Twitter disagreement behind them.

Thunder Rosa has recently been competing in AEW despite being signed to Billy Corgan’s NWA due to the promotions agreeing to a working relationship. However, this past Tuesday, Thunder Rosa lost the NWA World Women’s championship to Serena Deeb during a United Wrestling Network pay-per-view, which has lead to much speculation about her future. Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter revealed on his message board that he had heard she was headed to WWE and that news circulated on social media.

Now, NWA’s owner Billy Corgan has addressed this claim during a Q&A session on his Instagram account and was seemingly annoyed with Dave Meltzer for staring it.

It is easy to understand why WWE would be interested in Thunder Rosa due to her speed and technical ability. She was previously on their radar as they have offered her a trial, but only as a referee. Since then, though, her career has skyrocketed due to her appearances in AEW. If WWE is interested, it seems they will need to be patient, as she is with the NWA until 2022.

Tracy Smothers, a pro wrestling veteran who competed in WCW, WWE, ECW, and Smokey Mountain in the 1990s, has sadly passed away at 58 years old. He was diagnosed with stage III lymphoma last November and combated it with six rounds of chemotherapy. While receiving treatment, it was also discovered he had previously suffered a heart attack that he wasn’t aware of, and his heart had a reduced function of just 55%. In recent weeks he had sadly again been hospitalized and was pending hernia surgery.

Smothers’ big break came in 1990 when he and Steve Armstrong signed with WCW. The Southern Boys/Young Pistols, as they were known, feuded with The Fabulous Freebirds and worked a house show program with Steiner Brothers during this time. After departing WCW, his biggest career success came as part of Jim Cornette’s Smokey Mountain Wrestling between 1992 and 1995, where he twice was the SMW Heavyweight Champion and also won the SMW Tag Team Championship with Dirty White Boy. On one occasion, he teamed with our very own Chris Jericho getting a DQ victory over Brian Lee and Chris Candido.

After SMW folded, he worked as an underneath talent named Freddie Joe Floyd in WWE, notably getting a win over Bradshaw on Superstars and a count-out victory over Triple H on Raw. Due to WWE’s relationship with ECW, he wound up wrestling for Paul Heyman as part of the Full Blooded Italians, where he would be comically announced as being from Nashville, Italy.

In 1999 and 2000, he sporadically wrestled for WWE and put over the names such as Val Venis, Rikishi, and Tazz. After that, he predominantly worked independents, with his final match taking place on 5th October 2019.

Our thoughts are with Tracy’s family, friends, and fans at this sad time.

This weekend a backyard wrestler we only know as Justin was taking part in what his friend describes as a “live amateur wrestling event” when he suffered horrific injuries to both his legs. If you are active on social media, you’ve likely seen the distressing video, but if not, you can watch it here. For those of you not wanting to witness the injury, the simplest way to describe it is that following posing on the second rope, Justin jumps down, and both his knees snap backward with his legs breaking in the process.

Since the accident took place, Justin has undergone three surgeries and had rods and pins inserted into his left leg, with more surgeries scheduled. Amputation is sadly a possible outcome because Justin does not have medical insurance, so a GoFundMe has now been set up with a $200,000 target set. Of that target, almost $8,000 has been raised from 342 people, with Nick Jackson and Joey Janela donating $500 and $200, respectively.

You can view Justin’s GoFundMe, and donate if you are in a position to do so at this link.

Braun Strowman signed with WWE in 2013 even though he had no wrestling experience and was fast-tracked on to Raw with less than ten matches to his name. WWE pushed him due to his size and presence, and he was main eventing in 2017. While on the outside, it appeared his career couldn’t be going better, internally he had to deal with mental health issues, and Vince McMahon had what he likens to a father-son talk with him.

Now speaking to Lilian Garcia during the season premiere episode of Chasing Glory on the WWE Network, Strowman shared the news he has no intention of every wrestling anywhere but for WWE.

Braun Strowman still has three years remaining on his WWE contract, and with a reported $1.2 million per year downside, it’s unlikely he’ll financially need to wrestle anywhere else. That said, it probably isn’t great for future contract negotiations to reveal that you’ve no intention of wrestling elsewhere.

During a virtual press conference Asistencia Asesoría y Administración, based out of Mexico City, announced they are working with Marvel to bring the new Funko Lucha Libra Funko Pop toys to the wrestling ring. So far, four wrestling characters have been revealed, with Aracno (Spiderman) and Leyenda Americana (Captain America) scheduled to wrestle Terror Púrpura (Thanos) and Venenoide (Venom) at Triplemanía XXVIII. The show’s date has not yet been confirmed, although the teaser trailer you can watch below indicated it would be in December.

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Following the announcement, AAA’s Managing director Dorian Roldán Peña would go on to call the partnership a “union of two fantastic worlds that house characters that the public have turned into their great heroes.” As

As of now, it hasn’t been verified which luchadors are playing the comic book superheroes and villains or how many more characters are due to be introduced.

Apart from being the star defensive tackle for the Kansas City Chiefs, Chris Jones has been working on expanding his brand. Since January 2019, he has been selling a range of sodas under the name “Stone Cold Jones Sodas,” in conjunction with KC Soda that feature his likeness. Their popularity is growing, and numerous flavors are available, including South Beach Lemonade, Wake Up It’s Gameday Espresso Soda, Mississippi Mud Chocolate Cream, and Berry The Niners, as you can see below.

Unsurprisingly marketing them under this name has resulted in a legal dispute with WWE due to the use of “Stone Cold,” a trademark WWE owns along with the trademark “Stone Cold Steve Austin.” Vince McMahon’s legal team formally filed a dispute on September 14th, claiming that the “Stone Cold” trademark is both uniquely and exclusively associated with WWE and indelibly linked in the public’s mind with them. On October 23rd, Stone Cold Jones LLC, the company owned by Chris Jones, claimed that the name is also recognized with the NFL player and unlikely to create market confusion.

It’s also understood that Jones Soda Co. and Stone Cold Brewery have also filed disputes over the name, but Stone Cold Jones LLC. has not yet responded. It now seems this issue could have to be resolved in court.