There was concern Mauro Ranallo WWE career could be over following a negative tweet from Corey Graves that caused him to miss Survivor Series and last week’s episode of NXT. WWE covered for Ranallo missing the shows by claiming Ranallo had hurt his voice at the TakeOver event. Corey Graves would apologize on his podcast, which may have gone some way towards repairing the damage. Thankfully Ranallo returned to commentary tonight for the live episode of NXT, seemingly putting this unfortunate situation behind him.

On Thursday, WWE is holding tryouts at the Performance Center in Florida, and the 26-year-old daughter of Steven Seagal and Kelly LeBrock will be attending.

Arissa LeBrock posted the confirmation email and a video announcing this.

Arissa is a model and has also trained at Paragon Jiu-Jitsu & Kickboxing Academy in Goleta, Calfornia, so she has what WWE looks for in potential recruits. Hopefully, it goes well for her.

It looks like AEW has decided to poke the bear with their new advert. It aired last night during the Trailblazers vs. Clippers basketball game on TNT and stated that “AEW crushes/trounces/buries NXT.” You can watch it for yourself below.

It would be great to know what Vince McMahon and Triple H’s reactions were when they heard about this. All’s fair in love and (Wednesday night) war.

On last night’s NWA Powerrr, Ricky Morton and Robert Gibson, who are a combined age of 124, won their ninth World Tag Team Championship by defeating The Wild Cards (Thomas Latimer & Royce Isaacs).

The actual win was taped on October 1st during the second day of NWA Powerrr television tapings, and news had got out, but you can now witness history being made below.

The WWE Hall of Fame tag team is currently enjoying a career resurgence having competed at New Japan’s Fighting Spirit Unleashed events in New York and Philadelphia in September.

They also made appearances for AEW on an episode of Dynamite and again at the Full Gear PPV, with Morton hitting a Canadian Destroyer on Santana, and then a suicide dive onto Sammy Guevara and Ortiz.

Even at there advanced years, The Rock ‘n’ Roll Express are showing they can still go and will defend their NWA tag titles against The Wild Cards at the upcoming “Into The Fire” PPV on December 14th available on Fite.tv.

Last night on “WWE Backstage,” it was announced that John Morrison has re-signed with WWE.

Pro Wrestling Insider had reported this back in September, but Morrison would seemingly dispute this with the below tweet the following day.

The former Intercontinental Champion and WWECW Champion was previously with WWE from 2002 to 2011 after appearing on Tough Enough and going on to debut with Joey Mercury and Melina as part of MNM.

Since he left WWE, he has been acting, most notably in Boone: The Bounty Hunter, Russell Madness, and Netflix series GLOW. He also continued to wrestle with Lucha Underground and AAA as Johnny Mundo and Impact Wrestling as Johnny Impact, plus with numerous independents.

Also, since leaving WWE, he married Taya Valkyrie, who is the current longest-reigning Impact Knockouts Champion, so speculation will now start regarding her future.

Chris DeJoseph joined MLW about a month ago as a co-executive producer, but it turns out he had been in talks with WWE beforehand, and they have finally offered him a position. MLW has been understanding and allowed him out of his deal so he could re-join WWE as part of the creative team.

DeJoseph previously worked in creative for WWE between 2004 and 2010 but is best known to fans as the on-air character Big Dick Johnson, who was a male stripper.

In his time away from WWE, he has worked with Lucha Underground, Big Brother, and Hotel Paradise.

Thanks to Robert Miqueli for sharing this news with us.

Tommaso Ciampa returned to WWE in 2015, having been away for 8 years. He joined the NXT brand and as a world-class performer it was noticeable to the product when he had to miss 7 months with a severe neck injury.

Now he has returned it would be expected that having been in what was is deemed developmental for several years, he would be due a call up to Raw or SmackDown, but it seems that isn’t going to happen.

Speaking to Lilian Garcia’s Chasing Glory podcast, he said:

“I have a little one at home, and my schedule is better in NXT than it would be on the road – and I had neck surgery, and I’m not freaking stupid. I get that my window is smaller than it was and my bump card is ticking, and I just look at it like if I’m doing 200+ days a year on the road with Raw or SmackDown, or I’m doing a manageable load of 30 to 50 matches with NXT.”

“So I can do four years of that in the time I do one year with Raw and SmackDown. So how long can my career and portfolio grow here as opposed to going there? Now it’s become a thing where I have legitimately vocalized to them that if I have to go to Raw or SmackDown, then I’m going to retire. And I would love to produce or coach or be a part of it, but there’s no way I’m taking on that load.”

NXT wrestlers are paid much less than full-time roster members of Raw and SmackDown, so it’s unusual to not want to move brands but makes perfect sense given the circumstances.

You can listen to the interview below.

After going 7-0 down in the Wednesday Night Wars, NXT finally got on the scoreboard thanks to bringing in Seth Rollins and Becky Lynch for week 8.

Week 9’s numbers were delayed because of Thanksgiving, but we can confirm that NXT won the week, and the score is now 7-2 in AEW’s favor.

AEW Dynamite decreased from 893,000 average viewers to 663,000 viewers, and NXT fell from 917,000 average viewers to 810,000.

Numbers were expected to be down for both shows due to it being Thanksgiving eve. History shows people don’t watch as much TV that night due to travel or being with their families.

That said, AEW has to be disappointed with that number despite winning all the demos except the over 50’s

NXT saw tag champions Roderick Strong, and Kyle O’Reilly defeat Keith Lee and Dominik Dijakovic, Cruiserweight Champion Lio Rush beating Akira Tozawa, and Finn Balor defeating Tommaso Ciampa in the main event thanks to Adam Cole’s interference.

AEW had Chris Jericho’s Thanksgiving Celebration, Kenny Omega beating PAC MJF winning the Dynamite Diamond Ring, and Chris Jericho retaining the AEW Championship over Scorpio Sky.

Starrcade was once one of the biggest shows in all of pro wrestling, headlined by the likes of Ric Flair, Hulk Hogan, Sting, Goldberg and Roddy Piper. Now it is a WWE special house show event shown on the Network as one hour special for bonus content.

Unluckily for fans wanting to watch the special, it became challenging because the WWE Network crashed. Reportedly the issues were mainly in the Midwest and Northeast of the US. The reason for this isn’t known because as of writing WWE hasn’t addressed the issue.

WWE would do the best they could given the circumstances and put the stream on their YouTube channel 20 minutes into the hour special. At its peak it had just over 40,000 fans watching live. That figure either indicates there wasn’t that much interest in the event or they did a poor job getting the word out to fans. After the presentation, WWE would set the video to private.

The broadcast show itself was a letdown because WWE did not deliver the advertised main contest of Bobby Lashley vs. Rusev in a Last Man Standing Match. Instead, Lashley won by forfeit when Rusev’s restraining order stopped him competing.

Kevin Owens would come out and face Lashley instead, but that ended in a DQ win for Lashley when Rusev ran in and attacked Lashley, violating his restraining order anyway.

Whatever happened to the Network will likely remain a mystery, but hopefully, WWE has learned from it. Imagine if it happened during WrestleMania!

The main event of Saturday night’s WrestleCade Supershow was Rosemary vs. Taya Valkyrie vs. Tessa Blanchard vs. Jordynne Grace, and for some reason, before the match, The Sandman would tell the women they should not be main eventing. He would add that any male wrestler with any experience would agree.

Jordynne Grace would post about this on Twitter as you can see below.

Given this outdated opinion, it seems The Sandman wasn’t a happy man watching WrestleMania or Survivor Series this year.

It is no secret that Luke Harper wants out of WWE. Things went wrong for him when a planned push was canceled by Vince McMahon after he watched Harper vs EC3 in a dark match and hated it.

Harper would request his release, but fearing he’d go to AEW it was declined by WWE and they and they actually added the time he had missed through injury onto his contract. His deal would have originally ended November 2019, but with the added time the new date is around April 2020.

Harper has now begun making plans for his post-WWE career by trademarking the name Brodie Lee. This was the name he used between 2003 and 2012 on the indies, notably with Ring of Honor and Chikara.

It isn’t known where Luke Harper, soon to be known as Brodie Lee will end up, but AEW and New Japan are both realistic options.

Bray Wyatt is currently WWE’s top merchandise seller and it’s unlikely that’ll change anytime soon. That said his latest piece of merchandise is going to be a challenge for many fans to purchase.

The new belt debuted on last night’s edition of Friday Night Smackdown and less than 24 hours it’s available on WWEShop.com for $6,499.99, but you do get free shipping and 25% of your order as part of their Black Friday sale.

The high price is because it is a limited edition, and hand made by Tom Savini Studios, who made the original title mask.

WWE states you need to pay in full upfront, there are no refunds, they can’t guarantee Christmas delivery and it will only ship within the United States.