The 5 News Week: Why's Shayna Baszler Been Off TV For Months!?, Extreme Rules 2020 Is Going To Be "Loaded"!?

Hello, my fellow wrestling fans and welcome to the 5 news week. The post where I report 5 major or minor news of the week that I don't have time to do it separately. Without further ado, here are the 5 news week.

Why's Shayna Baszler Been Off TV For Months!? 

Ever since the few RAWs after the 2020 Money In The Bank, we haven't seen Shayna Baszler on TV which is a crime against humanity if you ask me. Now, why is that? 

Well, to summarize the recent edition of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter (from Wrestlingworld.co), there were big plans for the submission magician whether it's winning the women's Royal Rumble (the plan was changed a week before the show). 

Winning the RAW women's championship and winning the Money In The Bank briefcase but they were all changed because Vince didn't see eye to eye with Paul Heyman regarding Shayna Baszler being portrayed as a monster heel. 

On a side note, Becky Lynch said in the Bella Twins' podcast (Transcript from Fightful) that she thought that she'll lose her title bout with Baszler which the man also pitched. 

Like I said earlier, it is a crime against humanity that Shayna hasn't been utilized to her best potential but to be fair, she's been on the main roster for 4 or so months so will see where she goes. 

Bray Wyatt Reportedly Taking Time Off TV But Why? 

Bray Wyatt's current feud with Braun Strowman is the least exciting match on the Extreme Rules PPV even though I liked their build for Money In The Bank. 

The reason why Wyatt hasn't been on TV in person is that according to Wrestling Observer Radio (From WrestlingInc) Jojo gave birth to Bray's daughter on May 28th. 

Apparently, the swamp fight will start shooting this week. I'm hoping that WWE surprises me because the build ain't good.

WWE On Whether They’ll Schedule Live Shows In Latin America. 

The entire Latin America market is honestly a market that every company should invest in. 

A promotion that did do that is Impact Wrestling as they just announced it 3 days ago. 

WWE has already a Spanish announce team for decades as well as some Spanish spoken shows for the fans over there to watch. 

So, it makes what WWE's executive vice president of global sales and partnerships, John Brody said on the Sportspro podcast, a lot of sense (from Post Wrestling):

"There’s a tremendous culture of fandom for wrestling, for WWE throughout Latin America. It’s been an area where we see opportunity and growth.

It’s an area where we’d love to be able to create a televised live event. Some sort of special live event in the short-to-medium term. 

Our fans have passion there. We deliver tons of content through YouTube and all of our other channels and we just watch the numbers continue to go up so, anywhere we have a particular fan-base that needs to be served, we want to try to super-serve them and I think there are a lot of exciting plans that we’ll be unveiling for Latin America in the months ahead."

Fun fact, WWE actually held one of the 3 New Year’s Resolution PPVs in Puerto Rico back in 2005. If you don’t know, now you know. 

Jim Ross On Whether WWE was Worried That The Hitman Might Join NWO. 

On the latest audio chapter of Jim Ross' Grilling Jr (Omar, why are you calling a podcast episode an "audio chapter"? This ain't that type of writing bruh), Jim Ross tells whether WWE was worried that Bret Hart might join WCW to be part of the NWO back in 1996 (from 411mania): 

"On if WWE was worried Bret Hart might jump to WCW to join the nWo: “Well, sure. Anytime you got a star whose contract is, the exit, the end date is within eye sight, so to speak, within arm’s reach, yeah, you want to make sure that you have some leverage and some control over the situation. 

When I sign top guys, if they sign a three year deal, generally speaking, not all the time, but generally speaking, we were talking renewal, if we wanted to renew or extend, better deal, whatever, and a lot of guys had low side guarantees that had out earned it and had proven themselves to be more valuable than we had perceived originally, contracts were tore up, and new contracts were issued before the existing contract expired. 

That was a theory that I had, because I didn’t want to get caught with this Luger stuff. Even though Luger going to WCW didn’t kill us, he was their issue to deal with, we wanted to make sure we didn’t get caught with our pants down. So yeah, we talked about it." 

Bret Hart did end up joining WCW and the NWO a year later. It's just that the "NWO" stable was getting stale at that point. 

By the way, I really enjoy listening to Jim Ross' takes regarding talent relations and how he's the middle man between the performers and Vince McMahon. It's a learning curve but exhausting at the same time, to say the least. 

Extreme Rules Is Going To Be "Loaded"!? 

Money In The Bank and the PPV after it,  Backlash are two different shows in terms of length time (no sh*t, Omar). 

If you like more matches which means more time spent watching a show, you're going to like this piece of news if the news turns out to be the case (I don't because it is draining to watch a 4 hour PPV and then write a 1500 word review). 

From Cagesideseats, WWE's upcoming PPV is going to be "loaded with matches, even if they don’t get a lot of time". It's really funny that a few months back, A report came out that WWE wanted the PPVs to be shorter and now, you read this. Sensational. 


What do you think about the news I just reported and follow me on the tweets @omartheplayaguy. Anyways, stay safe smarks.