Here is your fight size update for Wednesday, May 5, 2021:
- WWE Champion Bobby Lashley recently shared a photo of himself with WWE Hall of Fame elect Dave Bautista. In the caption, Lashley said that he would give Batista a championship match if he ever decided to unretire.
- Speaking with Sports Illustrated, Chris Jericho opened up about why now is the right time to do the Blood & Guts Match and in the process, took some shots at how WWE currently books their gimmick matches.
“It made me think of what Hell in a Cell or Elimination Chamber or Money in the Bank used to be,” Jericho says. “Now you see matches just get thrown in there. It’s like, F---, there’s no reason for it other than the name of the pay-per-view. This only works when the story demands it, and with what we have done here, the story here demands it. It wasn’t right for us to wait until Dynamite was touring again to have this match. You don’t book this match and have an angle follow it—you have the angle that leads to this match. That’s the only way to do it, and that’s why the time to do this is right now.”
- Maxwell Jacob Friedman, MJF, who will be captaining another team in Blood & Guts, spoke to Paste Magazine about his old faction in Major League Wrestling, The Dynasty.
“Oh, I love the Dynasty, baby, of course, I have. It saddens me… when I left I felt like I was leaving afloat on a raft, almost, in treacherous waters. But I think I underestimated them. They’re huge stars in MLW, as if they weren’t already huge stars before. Alexander Hammerstone is, in my opinion, easily the biggest star they have there in that promotion, and Richard Holliday isn’t far behind. He’s a guy that you can really put in the ring with anyone, in my opinion, and he’s going to have an incredible match, and he’s going to get the fans invested. Those two guys are great dudes. I love ‘em, I’m still Dynasty for life. And you know, who’s to say we won’t see those two guys again on a different program? You never know.”
- Santana and Ortiz, who will also be in Blood & Guts, recently spoke to WrestleZone about the violent nature of the impending matchup.
“Man, I’ve been upping my training in the gym and I’ve been focusing on this match. So, really I’ve had tunnel vision these past two weeks. I mean, even before the match was announced and we got to this point that we’re at now, I was already kind of ramping up my physical training. But this match just gave me a new fire, for the lack of a better term, gave me a new fire under my ass. I mean there’s been tunnel vision this whole week for me, so literally, after we’re finished with this interview I’m gonna jump back into the gym and ready to go. I know that this isn’t gonna be an easy match to get through and I know all five men that we’re going to face are tough individuals in their own right. I’m anxious more than anything. I’m anxious, I’m afraid in a sense, because I’m always afraid to go to the place mentally that matches like this takes us and I’m going to keep my guts in my body. So, yeah, I’m excited, anxious, afraid—all those emotions balled up into one,” said Ortiz.
Santana added, “And to add to what Ortiz just said, he had mentioned the mental part. I think that’s, for me, personally, it’s not just getting myself ready physically, but also mentally. We’ve had these kinds of matches before and I always tried to take myself to a very dark place mentally and know that this is about survival more than anything. So, it’s definitely put me into a different state of mind these past few weeks.”
- Hybrid Wrestling has announced an upcoming matchup between homicide and Lio Rush:
*HYBRID UPDATE!*
— Hybrid Wrestling (@HybridPA) May 5, 2021
Just Signed:
LIO RUSH
vs
HOMICIDE
Tickets on Sale NOW:https://t.co/LmHAnK8UNp
Roll of the Dice
Fri 6/4 - 8PM
Atlantic City, NJ
More Info -- pic.twitter.com/WUVFKZJlRW
- Samuray Del Sol, formerly Kalisto in WWE, recently hinted that he will be making his boxing debut.
- Check out the preview for tonight's AEW Dynamite here.
- Today, WWE stock closed at $54.21 per share.
- Speaking with Chris Van Vliet, QT Marshall reflected on the first time he met Cody Rhodes.
“It was backstage at Ring of Honor. I was doing commentary at the time for Women of Honor, that was the deal. I met him and he was nice. He asked me if I could let Brandi [Rhodes] in the back door. Damien Priest told Cody that I had a facility, because Brandi wanted to train. One thing led to another, he wanted to train somewhere for All In. He wanted someone with passion and thought the same way he did. When AEW started he was presented with the opportunity to have an assistant. I remember him asking me to join and telling me what I was going to make. Man, I was like Jesus, I just want to wrestle. I didn’t want to ruin anything that I already have. But I’m always going to be known as Cody’s guy, but that’s not what I want. I want to be someone who gets opportunities by working hard.”
- Variety listed Stephanie McMahon in their New York Women's Impact Report:
Stephanie McMahon
Chief Brand Officer, WWEA fourth-generation wrestling promoter, McMahon has done it all for the WWE, starting off as a model, then writing, overseeing and acting in its storylines. Since 2013, she’s helped steer its business and PR strategies as chief brand officer. In January, she helped close a streaming deal with Peacock, but her biggest thrill came in April when the WWE held its first in-person event in more than a year, Wrestlemania 37 in Tampa. “To look out and to see [fans’] faces and to hear them cheer … it was just one of the most humbling and incredible experiences of my career,” she says.
- Mad Maxine was recently interviewed by the Two Man Power Trip Of Wrestling Podcast. In the interview, she discussed The Fabulous Moolah and her legacy. The Two Man Power Trip of Wrestling Podcast sent these quotes:
On the Fabulous Moolah:
She was considered the best person to train women wrestlers when I was coming up in the business. When I first got in I was told that if I was really serious about this, I would need to go down to Columbia South Carolina and get trained with the Fabulous Moolah. It’s not like Moolah did the training for the most part, it was Donna Christiantello who did a lot of it, then Moolah came in and trained as I got ready for my first match. We all lived on this compound in South Carolina with a lake in the middle. It was kind of like Army barracks. Well we all had roommates and everyone stayed on the compound for the most part. Some of the ladies had other jobs in between training, for instance I had a job at Kinkos and would come back to the compound for more training after work. I can’t believe how tough it was to train and to learn how to take my first bump. All the basics I really learned through Donna and her patience. So I paid the $1500 to get trained by the Fabulous Moolah and it took about 6 months of 4 hour a day training, 6 days a week, to be ready.
Relationship with Moolah:
I don’t feel like I knew Moolah as well as others who were trained by her. She has her staunch defenders, and that’s great, and I am sure she had some people she treated well, but I wasn’t one of them. If you judged her on her actions, then she wasn’t a great person. I think she took advantage of the girls that trained under her. She would send out some of the girls out to men and those men would pay Moolah to have sex with some of those female wrestlers. She tried to get me to do that and I spoke to the guy point blank, what are you expecting here? It was pretty obvious to me that it was a situation where Moolah was pimping out some of the girls. Not all of the girls, because I have heard from some of them that, that wasn’t their experience, but I know firsthand she did pimp out some of the girls. It was definitely my experience and I wasn’t the only one.
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