Contrary to reports, the price tag for The Greatest Royal Rumble was NOT $200 Million, as reported via various online sources. Also, WWE didn't pay $70 million dollars to put on the event, contrary to what was reported by perpetually terrible source, the UK Sun. Even though the New York Post isn't big on reporting wrestling news, they also ran the news aggregated from the Sun for some reason. For the record, the UK Sun is on the "citation blacklist" at Fightful.com, which generally happens when a perceived source has reported nothing but incorrect news on their outlet.
Fightful also posted a number of Greatest Royal Rumble statistics, but thus far, the actual payment number has not been revealed as of yet.
I spoke to independent wrestling standout Jordynne Grace for an exclusive interview that aired on last week's Pro Wrestling Unlimited Fightful Wrestling Weekly video, and also on The List & Ya Boy. Grace has appeared for prominent indie promotions like Beyond, Combat Zone Wrestling, SHINE, SMASH and others, but hasn't done anything with WWE, Impact, Ring of Honor or even Stardom. That was a little surprising to me considering that her boyfriend Jonathan Gresham works for Ring of Honor. When I asked her about it, she mentioned that she actually had a conversation with ROH booker Hunter Johnson and that "something was definitely there." With the focus on women's wrestling increasing in Ring of Honor, she seems to be a natural fit. She also admitted that she's aware there are politics that go into that company.
As far as WWE goes, Jordynne said that she's done extra work for them, but has never gained a tryout. She said that she thinks that's mainly because of her age (22). However, WWE had Austin Theory at their February 2018 tryouts, and with her extensive experience on the indies, I'm not sure why that would exclude her.
Kiera Hogan
I also talked to Impact Wrestling's Kiera Hogan recently. She talked to me about her WWE tryout in 2015 -- which was when she was just 20 years old -- and said that WWE seemed to like her, and her personality, as well as the fact that her name is Hogan. The irony is, her gimmick was "fire based," which was given to Ember Moon about a year later. That wasn't something that Kiera brought up during the interview, but it's kind of hard to ignore the similarities. Hogan called the tryout "exhausting." Her tryout would have been one of the first during the Matt Bloom era, right after Bill DeMott was sent packing.
As far as Impact Wrestling goes, Hogan told me that she's under an actual contract, which is much different than many of the per-appearance deals going on these days. This surprised me, as Impact seems to be moving away from those. However, Kiera told me that she actually signed in June of 2017, which put her contract as expiring in June of this year. So Impact signed a woman, and kept her on ice for six months, to debut her in January and get half of her deal. This, in a nutshell, is a good example of why you see the company moving away from long-term deals.
We had a lot of crossover content this week on Fightful.com. Most notably was UFC title challenger Colby Covington targeting Ronda Rousey and the way she's acted in WWE. Covington stated that Ronda Rousey was ruining the potential for UFC crossover for other fighters by showing up there and acting like a "mark." This is a really unique scenario, because typically I'd agree (despite the term 'mark' is ignorant), but ideally the way that Rousey has acted as far as a personality in WWE isn't how many expected she would (or should) act. However, she's more over than most would have anticipated if they ever followed her before her WWE career.
Covington also said that he's had some talks about returning to Impact Wrestling, but his schedule is slammed. He did indicate, however, that he'd be open to making an appearance at WWE Summerslam. He claims that he's talked with WWE a little bit, but nobody within the company had heard of that whatsoever. It is worth noting, however, that he's friends with Bobby Lashley, so that could be a bridge between the two sides.
Impact Trademarks
Had an inquiry from a reader about former Impact stars' ability to use trademarks -- ie Nick Aldis using "Magnus" even though he wasn't in Impact when the decision was made to give wrestlers the access to use the IP of their characters. When I asked, I was told by a prominent name "I'd assume so. They're just giving everything away."
The remaining Four Horsewomen in Jessamyn Duke and Marina Shafir were signed to WWE this week officially and started at the Performance Center. I won't pretend to know what Shafir's skill set it like in the ring, as that's an unknown, but I've seen Duke do chain wrestling and it was very impressive. I've been told that both Duke and Shafir are expected to spend twice as much time in the ring as the other recruits for obvious reasons. Both are well liked at the Performance Center and aren't really new faces, as they've both spent plenty of time around there in the past.
Smackdown Live
Not many noteworthy behind-the scenes notes from this week's Smackdown Live. There weren't any segments or VTR clips cut for time from this week's show like last week's Sanity vignette. Perhaps a funny note was that the Bludgeon Brothers segment had all of the teams listed as if they were actually going to be in the vignette, as opposed to being smashed up little toys.
You can see production assignments below.
Jeff Hardy vs. The Miz (Dean Malenko)
Charlotte Flair vs. Peyton Royce (Tyson Kidd)
Xavier Woods vs. Cesaro (Arn Anderson)
Mandy Rose vs. Becky Lynch (Sarah Stock)
Daniel Bryan vs. Rusev (Michael Hayes)