SquaredCircle

From this morning.

I have some questions about WWE ID.

OK.

Are these talents getting paid?

There is a belief among some we've spoken to that they would be getting a stipend, but they are not under contract like a NXT or main roster talent is.

If they have this WWE ID deal, are they blocked from wrestling talents from New Japan, TNA, AEW, etc.?

As of right now, we are told they have the freedom to go and wrestle anywhere they wish, including those promotions.

Does WWE have the right to tell them who they can't lose to?

No, we are told that as of right now, that's not part of the WWE ID deal. The talents have freedom to wrestle as they did and WWE doesn't control their creative or booking.

The reason I ask all these questions is if WWE isn't in control, what is in it for them?

What's in it for WWE is a few things. One, the belief is they would have right of first refusal on talent. A few years ago, WWE wasn't ready to sign Matt Riddle, so they asked EVOLVE to take and use him. They did regularly. When New Japan showed interest in Riddle, WWE made the decision to sign him. Everything I've heard sounds like that scenario on a bigger scale. If Wrestler X has interest from AEW, they can go to WWE and say, "Hey., AEW wants to sign me. WWE can then decide to sign them first or let them go elsewhere. It's more of letter of intent than anything else. AEW had something along those lines with Nick Wayne, showing they wanted to sign him when he turned 18. It's a way to keep the talents you think have the chance to develop under your spotlight without locking them in.

What will be the effect on the indies?

Well, for the promotions that are being used to indentify WWE ID talents, so to speak, it's a short term positive. Wrestling Open sold out last night in advance, something that has only happened 2-3 times previously. Memphis Wrestling got local news coverage of their taping this weekend. The WWE letters will help put eyeballs on companies from a fan base that otherwise might ignore them. Whether this can benefit the promotions long-term, however, remains to be seen. It could be that the WWE ID name helps sell a few tickets when those talents appear. It could be that some fans ignore shows that don't have that tag, but I think those fans would have likely skipped independent shows anymore. There's an entire fan base out there that only cares about WWE-centric properties.

Is this all WWE is going to do?

No, we know they are working with the announced wrestling schools and one would think that over time, they will expand the program, if they deem it worthwhile. The idea of all of these schools being open to the talents when they are in the area or need guidance sounds like a positive to me. I actually think they could add a few more schools, but we'll see if that happens.

(Sourcing link is from Cultaholic cause fuck the Observers paywall and I'm tired lol)

The expectation is All Elite Wrestling will be holding more Thursday night tapings of AEW Collision moving forward, according to Dave Meltzer in the Wrestling Observer Newsletter.

Meltzer noted the "main talent" are fans of taping on Thursday nights as it means they don't have to stay on the road for an extra couple of days or go home and then travel again a couple of days later.

Taping Collision on a Thursday does harm the show's ratings but Meltzer claimed the damage wasn't enough where it was worth AEW sacrificing the goodwill they have with talent.

Collision has often aired live on a Saturday night since the series premiered in June 2023, but more episodes have been taped on Thursday in recent months.

Collision will remain on Warner Bros. Discovery networks in the new year when AEW's new TV deal with WBD takes effect. Collision is planned to remain on the air throughout the deal which will run through December 2027.

I guess this makes sense. Doesn't bother me if the show is live or not as long as it's good and if it keeps the wrestlers happy all the better. Means AEW getting all their live/taping for the week done over a 24-28h period..I mean TNA has done that before doing like a months worth of show tapings over 2-3 days so its not impossible by any means.

Tonight, AEW Rampage comes to us from Bridgeport, Connecticut!

The card for tonight's show will be:

Singles Match
Hikaru Shida vs. Leila Grey

Singles Match
Mark Briscoe vs. Ariya Daivari (w/Mark Sterling)

Singles Match
Rocky Romero vs. Komander

Tag Team Match
Alec Price & Richard Holliday vs. La Faccion Ingobernable (Rush & The Beast Mortos) (w/Dralistico)

Singles Match
Ricochet vs. Dante Martin

And more!

Please check your local listings and AllEliteWrestling.com for more information on how to watch. Card subject to change, enjoy your show!

Tonight, WWE SmackDown comes to us from Milwaukee, Wisconsin!

The card for tonight's show will be:

WWE Women's Title Match
Nia Jax (c) vs. Naomi

WWE Tag Team Title Match
The Motor City Machine Guns (Alex Shelley & Chris Sabin) (c) vs. The Street Profits (Angelo Dawkins & Montez Ford) (w/B-Fab)

And more!

Please check your local listings and WWE.com for more information on how to watch. Card subject to change, enjoy your show!

This was taken from the Q&A on PWInsider

I know you aren’t one to comment on others as much as Dave Scherer is, but seriously, how embarrassed are you by the Dave Meltzer-Dutch Mantel thing given Meltzer is allegedly the face of the insider wrestling writing circle?

You are right in that I choose not to comment on others, because in most cases, to me, it’s a waste of time given nothing is going to change and I prefer to let my work stand for itself as opposed to diving into chaos.  However, I am making an exception this ONE TIME because I have 13 emails here about the situation.  This is the one and only time I am commenting on Meltzer, so any follow-up emails will be deleted.

You asked if I was embarrassed by what Meltzer said about Dutch Mantel and his wife, so I went and listened to what Dutch said on his podcast about the situation.   Having listened to what was written, my thoughts are that was written by Meltzer was pretty thoughtless but I wasn’t embarrassed because Meltzer doesn’t represent me, or this website, or anyone else.  I was appalled by it, but not embarrassed by it.  Whatever I do represents me.  I don’t care what others do.

I’ve had readers write to me this week and ask me what “happened" to Meltzer.  I don’t know him personally but until earlier this year, we always had a professional, cordial relationship.  He regularly sent me a ballot for his Hall of Fame, but I never took part because I felt it was a conflict of interest since I work here.  He would email me from time to time asking me questions and I would respond when he did, and I met him in passing a few times at events (where we were cordial) but I don’t know him - and to be fair, he doesn’t know me.  I stopped communicating with him earlier this year by choice.

In a lot of ways, he’s become professional wrestling’s version of Rudy Giuliani, someone who garnered great respect for his body of work over a long period of time, but as he got older, his actions began to chip away more and rot whatever legacy he’s built, to the point you have to question what the original legacy and body of work was to begin with.  I don’t write that to be funny or cute, but because as a NYC resident my entire life, I can’t think of another correlation.  Neither of them seem to realize how they come across compared to the level of respect they used to command.

There’s been a constant barrage of mistakes or incidents including when Seth Rollins had to correct him for an incorrect story about Rollins making a backstage speech, Meltzer being accused of attacking Peyton Royce, Meltzer using fan-made documents and presenting them as actual internal WBD documents, etc.  Last week, Japan was allegedly hosting WWE Backlash.  Earlier this year, somehow Meltzer thought old footage was current and used that to write that The Rock was building to a Triple H Wrestlemania deal.   In some cases, there aren't even apologizes, because I have had readers upset writing me about that.

I know some who wrote to me wanted me to attack some of Dave’s opinions on AEW vs. his opinions on WWE.  I’m not going to do that.  One, I don’t know many of the things he’s written and two, he’s entitled to those opinions, whether you think they are great or inane.  If those opinions make your thoughts on him sink lower, so be it.   If you think the fact he seems to spend 24/7 fighting with people on Twitter lower your opinion of him, that's your call as well.  I can't tell you how to feel about it.  I don't understand it, but there's lots of things in the world today I don't understand.

As far as “what happened” to Dave Meltzer and whether the Dutch thing is an embarrassment to me, no I wasn’t embarrassed by him.  He should be embarrassed but chances are he wasn’t, because like Rudy, it seems to me that he’s so far-gone from where he used to be, Meltzer doesn’t understand where he is NOW.   As to "what happened" to him, I don't know and I don't care.  What he does speaks for itself and it's not pretty.

To close this out, let’s be honest.  There is no “face” of insider wrestling writing.  That’s silly and gives off the idea we all work together.  We don’t.  We all do our own thing.  I don’t wish anyone else ill, but the idea that anyone represents what we do here - or that I should represent what anyone else does  elsewhere is pretty silly to me.  There are some people in the space I like a lot professionally, some others even more personally.  I am sure there are people who don’t like me at all, and they are more than welcome to have that opinion if they want, whether it's warranted or not.

At the end of the day, Dave Meltzer represents himself and himself only - and if he wants to be the Rudy Giuliani of pro wrestling writing, well, that’s on him.   Not me.  Not anyone else.  I just hope he's using a better hair coloring dye than Rudy used in that infamous scene a few years ago!

My true, only hope is that whatever attention and controversy that came from Meltzer’s comments led to more people wanting to donate to Dutch Mantel’s GoFundMe, which you can find at this link.  Someone asked me if I thought Dave would apologize.  I don’t know that he will, but even if he doesn’t care to do so, he should at least go make a donation to help someone he kicked in the teeth during an obviously awful time for Dutch and his family.  That would at least show some awareness of how truly awful he came across in this instance.

You asked, there's my thoughts.  The end.

No official reports or anything, but was noticed by a few on Bluesky.

“It was very validating to be thought of on that Mount Rushmore of wrestlers. That’s something that they can never take away from me now. It felt like I elevated up to a level, and now people refer to me as a Hall of Famer. It’s very prestigious. So I was honored. The fact that it was during COVID and we didn’t have a crowd was kind of disappointing after going to Hall of Fame for so many years and watching the really long speeches. They told us to go three to five minutes on our speeches after hearing [really long speeches]. So it kind of felt like when I was in high school, all the grades sell M&M's to pay for the senior trip, and then when you’re finally a senior, then you capitalize on it, but by the time we made, they stopped taking the boat to the Bahamas, and instead we got screwed because we just went to this local amusement park. That happens to me sometimes. But the thing about the time and there not being people there, if you’ve seen my speech, then you’ve seen like nine minutes of it, but the whole thing was actually 27 minutes, so I actually went in theory maybe 24 minutes over the three-minute request. I didn’t hear anything. When I got back, I said, ‘That was a little long, wasn’t it?’ I had no idea until I saw the whole thing that it was that long. You’re playing off of somebody turning the volume up and down on a response. I’ll have to get in it again," Rob Van Dam said.

Tonight, TNA Impact comes to us from Fayetteville, North Carolina!

The card for tonight's show will be:

Tag Team Match
Alan Angels & Jake Crist vs. The Rascalz (Trey Miguel & Zachary Wentz)

Singles Match
Rosemary vs. Jada Stone

Singles Match
Mike Santana vs. KC Navarro (w/AJ Francis)

Singles Match
Ryan Nemeth vs. Joe Hendry

Non Title Match
Nic Nemeth vs. Brian Myers

Six Man Tag Team Match
Eric Young, Jonathan Gresham & Steve Maclin vs. The Northern Armory (Josh Alexander, Judas Icarus & Travis Williams)

And more!

Please check your local listings and TNAWrestling.com for more information on how to watch. Card subject to change, enjoy your show!

Tonight, ROH on HonorClub comes to us from Providence, Rhode Island!

The card for tonight's show will be:

Non Title Tag Team Match
Dustin Rhodes & Sammy Guevara vs. Love Doug & TJ Crawford

Tag Team Match
Griff Garrison & Preston Vance vs. Waves And Curls (Jaylen Brandyn & Traevon Jordan)

Tag Team Match
The Righteous (Dutch & Vincent) vs. Jimmy Diaz & Matt Raven

Singles Match
Katsuyori Shibata vs. Aaron Solo

Singles Match
Serpentico vs. Kevin Knight

Singles Match
Viva Van vs. Abadon

NJPW STRONG Openweight Title Match
Gabe Kidd (c) vs. Angelico

Tag Team Match
BEEF & JD Drake vs. Shane Taylor Promotions (Lee Moriarty & Shane Taylor)

Singles Match
Shingo Takagi vs. Ariya Daivari

Singles Match
Josh Woods vs. Komander

ROH Women's World Title Match
Athena (c) vs. Leila Grey

Four Way Tag Team Match
Grizzled Young Veterans (James Drake & Zack Gibson) vs. Gates Of Agony (Bishop Kaun & Toa Liona) vs. The Dark Order (Alex Reynolds & John Silver) vs. The Undisputed Kingdom (Matt Taven & Mike Bennett)

And more!

Please check your local listings and RingOfHonor.com for more information on how to watch. Card subject to change, enjoy your show!

Tonight, AEW Dynamite comes to us from Bridgeport, Connecticut!

The card for tonight's show will be:

Singles Match
Penelope Ford vs. Dr. Britt Baker DMD

Falls Count Anywhere Match
Roderick Strong vs. Lance Archer

Tag Team Match
Adam Page & Christian Cage vs. Bang Bang Gang (Jay White & Juice Robinson)

Full Gear Four Way Contenders Series Tag Team Match
FTR (Cash Wheeler & Dax Harwood) vs. House Of Black (Brody King & Malakai Black)

Singles Match
Swerve Strickland vs. Lio Rush

Non Title Match
Adam Cole vs. Konosuke Takeshita

And more!

Please check your local listings and AllEliteWrestling.com for more information on how to watch. Card subject to change, enjoy your show!

Nitter

Welcome to SquaredCircle's 'Meme Monday'!

Have you seen a great wrestling meme this week that just made you crack up? Did you watch a silly moment in a show and just need to craft a meme out of it? Well post em below!

The highest voted meme shall win and be showcased in next week's thread!

Last week's winner attached!