It has been reported that during “The Greatest Wrestling Match Ever” that was taped last Sunday but airs tonight at Backlash, Edge suffered a torn triceps. WWE had worked hard to keep this news under wraps so fans didn’t know the match was taped, but it leaked earlier today. While most people can recover a full range of motion after surgery, it can take up to a year, which is unfortunate news for Edge, who was away from the ring for nine years before making a triumphant return at this year’s Royal Rumble. In his contract, he had committed to wrestle five matches this year, but now that won’t happen. The belief was that after Edge defeated Orton at WrestleMania 36, Orton would get his win at Backlash, and the rubber match would take place at Summerslam.

Word spread on social media on Sunday that Kris Statlander had suffered a knee injury during her tag match on last Wednesday’s Dynamite. Shortly after the news broke, she would go on to confirm it was correct, and the severity of her injury on Twitter.

Based on the tweet, it appears it occurred when she went for a suicide dive on Kip Sabian, who was accompanying Penelope Ford, and she landed on her knee. This type of injury typically takes athletes 8-12 months to recover from, which is a big blow for AEW, where she has already become an integral part of the women’s division since signing with the promotion last December.

AJ Styles previously of the Raw brand would also be part of SmackDown’s Intercontinental Championship Tournament, with the reason for his inclusion believed to being part of the newly instated brand-to-brand invitation. Then while walking to the ring for his first-round match against Shinsuke Nakamura, the commentators confirmed Styles had been traded to the blue brand. At the time of the trade, there didn’t appear to be anything unusual about the move, but now it seems it was due to AJ Styles being unhappy with Paul Heyman, who was Executive Director of Raw at the time according to Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter.

Meltzer would post on the F4W message board explaining the reason for Styles unhappiness at being part of Raw under Heyman.

Styles, along with Gallows and Anderson, were part of The O.C. faction on Raw, and Styles would refer to the duo as his “little brothers.” Gallows and Anderson last year had negotiated fantastic deals at $750,000 each per year, and that kind of pay put them on Vince McMahon’s radar when he had decided to make roster cuts.

Somewhat ironically, Paul Heyman was a big fan of AJ Styles, saying in an interview with Sky Sports in 2017 that Styles was “everything that Shawn Michaels, and Bret Hart, and Ric Flair were to their generation and he’s updated it. He’s evolved their styles to truly be the single most phenomenal in-ring performer I have ever had the honor and the pleasure of watching up close.”

MVP is currently enjoying a career revival after successfully converting a one-off surprise entrant spot in the Royal Rumble match into a full-time contract on the Raw brand, and he is doing great in his role.

It’s incredible watching him now and thinking that when he was younger, he spent nine-and-a-half-years of his life in prison for armed robbery and kidnapping. Thankfully, MVP managed to put his criminal past behind him with the support of a corrections officer who also worked independent wrestling shows that introduced him to the business.

Being a natural athlete and being solid on the mic, it only took MVP three years to get a WWE tryout, which led to him working for Vince McMahon’s company between 2005 and 2010. It wasn’t that long of a run, but he did twice became United States Champion, and with Matt Hardy, he won the WWE Tag Team Championship.

Now in an interview with Lilian Garcia on her Chasing Glory podcast, he spoke about WWE, and specifically Vince McMahon giving him an opportunity despite him being a convicted felon.

It’s easy to say negative things about Vince McMahon, but he does have a good side and showed that by giving an unproven MVP a chance when it would have been easier not to.

WWE began pushing the Edge vs. Randy Orton match that airs this Sunday at Backlash as the greatest wrestling match of all-time, even before it was taped. It’s an interesting concept and has created interest in B level PPV that likely wouldn’t have existed otherwise. Smartly, WWE has given both men the best possible chance of having the best match they can by taping it in advance, thus giving them the option to make edits and possibly redo spots, but the likelihood it lives up to the billing is very slim.

Ric Flair, widely regarded as one of the best ever in the ring, has seemingly taken this as an opportunity to remind fans of his own greatness by posting the below on Twitter along with a photo from his match against Ricky Steamboat at the Chi-Town Rumble in 1989.

In 1989 Flair and Steamboat wrestled three-times, starting at the Chi-Town Rumble, then Clash of the Champions, and finally WrestleWar. These matches set the bar for generations to come. The photo that Flair shared would indicate that he believes the first match of the trilogy was the best, or maybe it was the first image that came up on Google. Critics, though usually consider the match at WrestleWar to be the best of the bunch where for 33 minutes, the pair told a captivating tale between two amazing storytellers who were at the peak of their profession.

Realistically naming a match as the greatest ever is too subjective. That said, popular sentiment between wrestling aficionados is that the 2-out-of-3-falls Kenny Omega vs. Kazuchika Okada at New Japan’s Dominion 6.9 in Osaka-jo Hall in June 2018 is as close to a perfect match that has ever taken place, and therefore what Edge and Orton have to aspire to.

Former ECW head honcho was made executive director of Raw in June 2019, essentially meaning he ran creative of the brand, although Vince McMahon did always have the final say. Now though, WWE has announced that he has been removed from that position and will be focusing solely on being a performer as he is currently Brock Lesnar’s advocate.

As the above tweet states, Bruce Prichard now leads creative for both Raw and SmackDown, having previously solely focused on the blue brand. This is possibly bad news for Aleister Black, Apollo Crews, Angel Garza, and Buddy Murphy, who were all known to be Heyman guys and were receiving pushes under him.

Prichard’s rise to the top of WWE is quite astounding, considering that in 2008 he was fired by Stephanie McMahon after bringing a gun to work. A decade later, he’d make his return as his former onscreen character, Brother Love on an episode of Raw, and not long after he’d bring a video version of his successful podcast to the WWE Network. Surprisingly, this eventually led to him joining the creative team in February 2019, and eight months down the line, he replaced Eric Bischoff as executive director of SmackDown.

Jeff Hardy was out of action for almost a full year after suffering a knee injury, and sadly during that time, he had a recurrence of some personal issues that have tormented him on and off for years. Now with his return to SmackDown, WWE has decided to base an angle about his real-life struggles to set up a match between Jeff Hardy and Sheamus at Backlash.

On the 29th May SmackDown, it appeared Jeff Hardy had crashed a car into Elias and was arrested in the storyline for DUI. Hardy would return later in the show as he had been cleared by police and went after Sheamus, who was trying to frame him.

While some people considered this angle offensive, including Jeff’s brother Matt and sister-in-law, WWE has upped the ante for Friday’s SmackDown by further deriding Jeff Hardy’s former drug problems.

A brief summary of what was recorded is below, and we understand Vince McMahon personally produced it.

Vince McMahon is well known for his love of toilet humor, so it’s easy to understand why he took charge of filming this, and seemingly it is him who is driving the questionable angle.

The Streak was extraordinary, and fans brought it into it, and it gave the fading Undertaker a reason to return every WrestleMania for a highly anticipated match filled with drama. Whoever finally defeated him would be launched to an even higher level than before. Edge had been seriously considered as the man to end The Streak at WrestleMania 24, but he was against it. The Streak, though, did end at the hands of Brock Lesnar at WrestleMania 30, and now in an interview with CBSsports.com, The Undertaker discusses this and even proposes whom he felt could have been the man to finish it.

Roman Reigns would go on to get a victory over The Undertaker at WrestleMania 33, in what was almost The Undertaker’s final match, but due to it failing to live up to expectations, The Undertaker was motivated to return to the ring. This story is documented on Undertaker: The Last Ride, which is currently airing on the WWE Network.

Vince McMahon has an insane work ethic that few can match, and at 74 years of age, the billionaire shows no sign of slowing down. It’s been claimed he doesn’t watch movies nor visit shops, and his life is all WWE, with some XFL thrown in until recently. Now on the latest episode of his podcast ARN, Arn Anderson, who worked as a road agent for WWE’s head honcho from 2002 until 2019, has revealed a day in the life of Vince McMahon.

Vince McMahon’s lifestyle wouldn’t appeal to most people, especially for those in their golden years, but perhaps it’s what is required to maintain a dominant global brand that has been part of pop-culture for almost 40 years.

Darby Allin needed a hospital visit after last week’s episode of Dynamite. Thankfully he appears to be feeling fine as he posted a video on Twitter of himself jumping from a balcony into the swimming pool despite not yet being medically cleared.

[adthrive-in-post-video-player video-id=”ub6s5rWK” upload-date=”2020-06-09T14:12:34.000Z” name=”Darby Allin Balcony Dive” description=”” player-type=”default” override-embed=”default”]

Darby Allin is one of AEW’s breakout stars and is fastly becoming recognized as one of the most exciting wrestlers in the entire industry. Often likened to a young Jeff Hardy due to his devil may care attitude, as this stunt shows. His story is fascinating, so I suggest everyone checks out his Talk is Jericho episode, Coffin Talk With Darby Allin, where he discusses carrying out skateboarding stunts with two broken ankles, living in his car for 18 months, and being straight-edge.

Between the Divas, NXT Women’s Championship, Raw Women’s Championship, and SmackDown Women’ Championship, Charlotte Flair is a 12-time women’s champion, on top of that she was one of the first two women to headline a WWE pay-per-view event and one of the first three women to headline a WrestleMania. There is very little left for her to achieve in women’s wrestling, so perhaps it won’t be long bere she is competing against men for titles.

She’d discuss this possibility in a recent interview with Sportskeeda when the subject of Tessa Blanchard being the Impact Wrestling World Champion, was mentioned.

A woman winning a men’s championship in pro wrestling isn’t that uncommon. Besides Tessa Blanchard’s being Impact Wrestling Champion, Madusa, Daffney, Jacqueline have all won the Cruiserweight Championship, Sexy Star was the Lucha Underground Champion, and perhaps most famously, Chyna beat Jeff Jarrett to become Intercontinental Champion in 1999. That said, becoming WWE or Universal Champion is a huge step up on those achievements, and whilst Charlotte isn’t thinking about it right now, she is the most likely candidate in the foreseeable future.

On the 19th May episode of SmackDown, an angle aired where Elias was stretched out after being hit by a car in the Performace Center parking lot. This removed Elias from the WWE Intercontinental Title Tournament, where he had progressed to the semi-finals after defeating Baron Corbin at the 11th May SmackDown tapings.

WWE would update fans that Elias had suffered broken ribs and a torn pectoral muscle as a result of the incident. At the time, many thought it was a continuation of the storyline, but it turns out the torn pectoral muscle is a real-life injury, and the angle was used to explain his absence. No timeframe is known yet for his recovery, but with surgery likely, he looks set to be out up to 9 months.

This is further bad news for WWE, who recently lost Jinder Mahal to a knee injury.