Alberto Del Rio had a very successful original run in WWE where he was a 2 x WWE Champion, 2 x World Heavyweight Champion, Royal Rumble winner, and Money In The Bank winner. He would end up being fired in 2014 after hitting a WWE employee who made a racist joke. He returned for a second run and win the United States Championship from John Cena, but would be quite the company after failing a wellness test and being unhappy with his push. Now though, it seems Alberto could be returning to the WWE for a third time in mid to late 2020, having told Alex Montiel’s ‘Nos Cayó la Noche’ program that he is in talks with the company. Currently, Alberto, along with Chavo Guerrero Jr., runs his own promotion Nación Lucha Libre, and in December returned to MMA, where he lost a one-sided contest to Tito Ortiz via first-round submission.

Since 2013 Triple H has been the Executive Vice President of Talent, Live Events, and Creative for WWE since 2013, but a SEC filing earlier this week revealed that he is now the Executive Vice President, Global Talent Strategy and Development.

It’s understood that from those within WWE, this is considered a demotion, and Triple H is no longer involved negotiating with talent, and instead, his role is to work on NXT, focusing on selling NXT TV rights and expanding the NXT brand worldwide. Triple H’s previous duties are now being picked up by Chief-of-Staff Brad Blum and Mark Carrano.

This could possibly indicate that Triple H is no longer regarded as the heir apparent to take over from Vince McMahon when the time comes, and over time this could become a significant news story.

The XFL has been taken down by the coronavirus, as Vince McMahon’s league has issued a statement confirming the regular season is over after five weeks of games.

XFL statementhttps://t.co/MbuHgUmzmZ pic.twitter.com/PIZLOl1fld

— XFL (@xfl2020) March 12, 2020

The wording would imply that they still intend to hold the playoffs, which are currently scheduled for April 18, April 19, and the Championship game on April 26.

News shows relating to the coronavirus dominated the television on Wednesday night, significantly affecting AEW Dynamite’s ratings, and somewhat NXT’s. During the shows, news broke of Trump’s Europe travel ban, Tom Hanks contracting the virus and the NBA suspending the league.

AEW had 766,000 average viewers, which was a 15.5% decline from last week, and NXT had 697,000 average viewers, also declining but only by 2.9% from the previous week. The reason for the more substantial AEW decline than NXT is likely due to NXT’s audience predominantly being older and seemingly being less interested in the latest coronavirus news.

NXT was from the Performace Center and opened with Keith Lee retaining his NXT North American Champion over Cameron Grimes, A confrontation between Charlotte Flair and Rhea Ripley that ended with Flair wrapping Flair applying a figure-four around a ring post on Ripley. NXT Tag Team Champions Matt Riddle and Pete Dunne defeating Bobby Fish and Kyle O’Reilly, with the show closing with a Tommaso Ciampa/Johnny Gargano brawl throughout the venue.

AEW opened with Cody defeating Ortiz, Bea Priestly turning on Nyla Rose after a tag match hitting her with the belt, setting up a future match, and amain event of Hangman Page and Dustin Rhodes defeating Chris Jericho and Sammy Guevara.

AEW has already announced that next week’s Dynamite (which has now changed locations) will feature the reveal of the Exalted One, PAC and the Lucha Brothers vs. Best Friends and Orange Cassidy, The Exalted One reveal, and a six-man tag team match for advantage in the upcoming Blood & Guts match.

Due to the coronavirus outbreak sweeping America, AEW has announced that as a precautionary measure, their March 18th episode of Dynamite has relocated from Rochester, NY to Jacksonville, FL with a restricted attendance policy. The new venue is Daily’s Place, where Fight for the Fallen was held and associated with the Jacksonville Jaguars.

In addition, New Jersey’s Prudential Center, the venue of March 25th ‘Blood and Guts’ themed edition of AEW Dynamite has announced all March events have been postponed. AEW has not yet announced where this episode will now take place.

On Wednesday night, WWE sent an email to their talent informing them they were going to hold this week’s episode of SmackDown from them Performace Center due to the Coronavirus outbreak.

Once it leaked online WWE quickly denied this saying:

It is not known why WWE would deny this when they had told the talent already the plans, but it has now been officially confirmed that SmackDown will this week come from WWE’s training facility in Orlando, Florida.

Friday's episode of SmackDown Live is going to look a little different… pic.twitter.com/PVPysAVkC6

— WWE on BT Sport (@btsportwwe) March 12, 2020

John Cena, Paige, and Jeff Hardy (returning from injury) have all been announced for this episode previously, and it’s assumed they will still be in appearing.

We now await an update on Monday’s upcoming episode of Raw.

The World Health Organization has announced that the coronavirus is a pandemic following more than 115,000 people being infected throughout the world. Sporting events and large gatherings are being reviewed, and many are being canceled or played inside virtually empty areas. So with WrestleMania 36 being just over three weeks away, there is a genuine possibility that WWE’s biggest show of the year will be affected.

WrestleMania is being held in Tampa, Florida, and as of yesterday, 21 Florida residents had been diagnosed with the coronavirus, and two of those have died. But as of writing, the event is still scheduled to go ahead as planned according to the City of Tampa’s official Twitter account. Replying to a fan’s question, they posted the below tweet.

Hello, at this time @WrestleMania is still planned to proceed on schedule. Please contact the @WWE with questions about cancellations. The City is currently monitoring the spread of coronavirus and will work with venues as needed.

— City of Tampa (@CityofTampa) March 11, 2020

With infections increasing by the hour, WrestleMania’s status could change at any time, and we will keep you informed on the updates here on WIJ.

WWE has issued its 2019 proxy statement to stakeholders ahead of next month’s annual shareholder’s meeting, and it was revealed that Shane McMahon (who has no corporate role) was paid $2,082,011 as a wrestler.

Throughout 2019 he wrestled 15 matches, so this works out that Shane McMahon earned circa $139,000 per match, although that isn’t totally accurate as he would have been paid for appearances where he did not wrestle as well. Regardless these types of payoffs would make him one of the highest-paid wrestlers in WWE and on a per match basis, only surpassed by Brock Lesnar, The Undertaker, Goldberg, Triple H, and Ronda Rousey.

Over half of Shane’s matches were on PPV and included a match against Roman Reigns in Saudia Arabia, where the payoffs are known to be far higher than usual. His final match of the year would come on the 4th October episode of SmackDown when he lost a Loser Is Terminated ladder match against Kevin Owens.

WWE’s Wellness Policy has caught several wrestlers the last few months, including Samoa Joe, Andrade, and Robert Roode showing WWE are taking the policy seriously again, having not had any failures since 2016.

Ryback would discuss the policy on his Shooting Blanks Wrestling Report podcast, saying that the policy has holes in it and call out the time taken between failure in suspension, potentially referring to Samoa Joe’s suspension, which seemingly took three weeks to be announced.

Ryback would comment on this saying:

Ryback would also shockingly share that some referees would warn the wrestlers about upcoming tests when he was with the company, seemingly allowing them time to take steps not to fail.

Ryback would add that not all PED’s were just for making wrestlers look better.

Ryback himself did fail a Wellness test himself back in 2006 while wrestling for part of WWE’s then developmental territory Ohio Valley Wrestling promotion. The failure was for taking over-the-counter bodybuilding supplements that were eventually removed from sale due to this effect. Despite this, his strike was not removed. You can listen to all of Ryback comments from the 29 minute mark.

Scott Steiner was backstage at an Impact taping last night, recoding for an upcoming retro TNA-themed episode where he collapsed and was rushed to the hospital. At one point, he stopped breathing and had to have his heart restarted. Tommy Dreamer, Scott D’Amore, and Joey Ryan attended the hospital and stayed with him overnight.

His wife, Christa Rechsteiner, has confirmed that her husband is expected to make a full recovery, and we understand that Steiner has either just had or will shortly have a heart procedure to rectify the problem.

Our thoughts are with Scott and his family at this time.

The Wrestling Observer Newsletter has published its reader-voted awards for the period between January 1, 2019, and December 31, 2019, and our very own Chris Jericho won the big one!

Coming in a whopping 562 points above second-placed Kazuchika Okada saw Jericho win the coveted Lou Thesz/Ric Flair Award for Wrestler Of The Year for a third time, having previously won in 2008 and 2009. The only other wrestlers to have won the award three or more times are Kenta Kobashi, Mitsuharu Misawa, Hiroshi Tanahashi, and Ric Flair, which puts Jericho in esteemed company.

The full history of the award since inception can be seen below.

1980 – Harley Race; 1981 – Harley Race; 1982 – Ric Flair; 1983 – Ric Flair; 1984 – Ric Flair; 1985 – Ric Flair; 1986 – Ric Flair; 1987 – Riki Choshu; 1988 – Akira Maeda; 1989 – Ric Flair; 1990 – Ric Flair; 1991 – Jumbo Tsuruta; 1992 – Ric Flair; 1993 – Vader; 1994 – Toshiaki Kawada; 1995 – Mitsuharu Misawa; 1996 – Kenta Kobashi; 1997 – Mitsuharu Misawa; 1998 – Steve Austin; 1999 – Mitsuharu Misawa; 2000 – HHH; 2001 – Keiji Muto; 2002 – Kurt Angle; 2003 – Kenta Kobashi; 2004 – Kenta Kobashi; 2005 – Kenta Kobashi; 2006 – Mistico; 2007 – John Cena; 2008 – Chris Jericho; 2009 – Chris Jericho; 2010 – John Cena; 2011 – Hiroshi Tanahashi; 2012 – Hiroshi Tanahashi; 2013 – Hiroshi Tanahashi; 2014 – Shinsuke Nakamura; 2015 – A.J. Styles; 2016 – A.J. Styles; 2017 – Kazuchika Okada; 2018 – Kenny Omega

Jericho would also win Best On Interviews for the fourth time with his previous wins in 2003, 2008, and 2009. In addition, he won the United States/Canada MVP, Best Box Office Draw, and Most Charismatic.

In other notable awards Tag Team of the Year went to Pentagon Jr and Rey Fenix, Promotion of the Year went to New Japan, Best Weekly Show was won by Dynamite, Match Of The Year was Will Ospreay vs. Shingo Takagi from NJPW Best Of The Super Junior XXVI, Most Overrated By King Corbin, Most Underrated by Shorty G, Rookie of the Year by Jungle Boy, and Best Gimmick by The Fiend.

To read the full awards, you can subscribe to the excellent Wrestling Observer Newsletter here.

With Matt Hardy being a free agent and the Young Bucks appearing in his latest YouTube video, there was a lot of curiosity amongst fans whether he would debut on the 4th March post-Revolution episode Dynamite, possibly as The Exalted One.

Hardy didn’t appear, but the show was noteworthy with Jake “The Snake” Roberts debuting and cutting a promo on Cody Rhodes saying he was bringing in a client to AEW. There was also PAC forming a group called Death Triangle with the Lucha Brothers and a main event of Chris Jericho and Sammy Guevara defeating Jon Moxley and Darby Allin, followed by the Inner Circle powerbombing Moxley off the stage through tables.

NXT battled this show by having two steel cage matches with Dakota Kai defeating Tegan Nox, and Roderick Strong beating Velveteen Dream. Adam Cole would get involved in the men’s cage match and begin setting up a future match between himself and Dream for the NXT Championship.

The final ratings saw Dynamite having 906,000 average viewers up 4.7% from last week, and NXT having 718,000 average viewers up 0.14% from the previous week. This takes the current Wednesday Night Wars score to Dynamite 18, NXT 3, Tie 1.

Next week NXT is live from the Performance Centre and has NXT North American Champion Keith Lee defending against Cameron Grimes, plus NXT Tag Team Champions Dunne and Riddle defending against Fish and O’Reilly. Dynamite has announced MJF, and The Butcher and The Blade against Jurassic Express, plus Cody Rhodes vs. Ortiz.