Here is your fight-size update for Wednesday, January 27th, 2021:
- CM Punk is celebrating his seven-year anniversary of leaving WWE. Saying on Instagram, if it costs you your peace, it is too expensive.
--happy anniversary to me--
— player/coach (@CMPunk) January 27, 2021
- Despite the fact that the match is no longer being advertised on WWE’s website, Santos Escobar spoke to Sports Illustrated about his potential title defense against Curt Stallion.
“No. 1, I am the Emperor of Lucha Libre. No. 2, Curt Stallion is nothing but a rookie, and I am going to make an example out of this rookie. I’ve been around for 20-plus years in this business. My success didn’t happen overnight. He made a terrible mistake trying to embarrass me last week. I urge the WWE and NXT Universe to tune in to the USA Network to see me destroy this rookie. This will be remembered as the night that Santos Escobar made an example out of Curt Stallion.”
- Tony Deppen was the most recent guest on the ROHStrong podcast. On the podcast, he detailed his COVID experience. (h/t: Andrew Thompson)
"Well, I was at a show and I came out, and I’ve been getting tested just because like when I did Ring of Honor shows for the Pure Title I was just like, ‘Okay, now every time I come home from shows I’m gonna make sure I get tested every time.’ So I was like, ‘I’m gonna get tested when I go home anyways,’ and I always wait like two days, three days because you don’t wanna get a false negative and around Tuesday, I started feeling a little funky. I’m like, ‘Well, I’m gonna get the test anyways but I’m pretty sure I have it’ and then the next four days was just me lying on my bed — well actually on my pullout couch because I slept downstairs because my wife was still pregnant at the time, and I didn’t wanna take the risk of getting anything with her.
She got it though, but she didn’t have the symptoms I had. But, I just felt like something kept dunking me in an ice bath and then all of a sudden it would stop and I would heat up to like 110 degrees, go back down real quick, I had body aches all day, a headache that wouldn’t go away no matter what. If it had gone on for like an extra day, I would’ve asked my wife to take me to the hospital because I normally don’t complain about being sick but that just whooped my ass, it was terrible and then I lost my taste and my smell and I still can’t smell and I still can’t taste, so, and it kinda takes the motivation out of you. I was really adamant on going to the gym every day, I was killing it every day and then after that, after my two-week quarantine went away and I came back negative, I had to find a lot of motivation just to even want to do anything.”
- GCW Fight Forever is free on FITE and YouTube. Speaking with Sports Illustrated, Brett Lauderdale opened up about why this event is important.
“We’re going to have a great 24 hours of wrestling, and maybe even more,” GCW owner Brett Lauderdale says. “Our goal is to raise $50,000, which will all go directly to the wrestlers. We’re amazed at how much people have already donated, and we still have a few more days to go before the show.
“We have guests from No Peace Underground in the 3 a.m. block, and they do deathmatches and no-ring stuff, which will bring a very different element to the show,” Lauderdale added. “We’ll have VXS at 5 p.m. on Saturday, and we’re going to welcome Freelance from Chicago, Glory Pro from St. Louis and Black Label Pro from Indiana. And there is a whole block of Effy-themed wrestling, which features all LGBTQ wrestlers and performers, and there is Allie Kat’s block right after, which is all women’s wrestling.”
- Speaking on the Complex Sports Podcast, Sasha Banks praised Kurt Angle.
“He is one of the greatest wrestlers and entertainers of all time. His matches are so crisp. If you are a wrestler and trying to get into the game, if you are trying to learn the basics and then learn the top techniques, you need to be watching Kurt Angle.”
- Check out the cold open for tonight's episode of MLW Fusion. We will have live coverage at 7 p.m. Eastern.
- Tokyo Sports reports that Hideki Suzuki, former NOAH star may be WWE-bound.
- WWE stock today closed at $57.44 a share
- Subscribe to Fightful Select to support our exclusive and independent coverage of professional wrestling. You'll get access to exclusive news, and dozens of additional podcasts.
- Also, subscribe to Fightful on YouTube
