Here is your fight-size update for Wednesday, February 17, 2021:
- Recently, FTR has been embroiled in a feud with Jurassic Express. Speaking on the Sunday Night’s Main Event podcast, the former Tag Team Champions stated that they both feel the sky's the limit for Jungle Boy.
“I've said it many times before, but wrestling has done so much for me and all I ever wanted to do was do something good for wrestling. I think that match with Jungle Boy on Dynamite was something good for wrestling. It wasn't everybody's cup of tea I understand that... I shut him down, he kept trying to come back and valiantly fighting, I shut him down, and then on top of it all I had this one last run with all these roll-ups and he slipped into his finisher and made me tap out and that's a story. A lot of wrestling fans talk about knowing storytelling and saying that the word storytelling, do they really know? That match was storytelling and if you didn't like that match, not just because I was in I don't even know if you were wrestling fan cash sent me a text after he watched the match I don't think I'd watched it yet cuz we got a link to it he sent me a text saying he said dude I'm not even kidding I just watch that doing cardio and I broke down in tears because it's a match so beautiful and I'm not kidding you you know I may lose some manly points but I'll watch it and I broke down in tears to because it was it felt so real.”
(Should you use any portion of the quotes above, transcription credit should go to Fightful with a h/t linking back to this article.)
- Trump Plaza in Atlantic City, NJ, which partnered with WWE to present WrestleMania IV and V in 1988 and 1989, was demolished this morning.
- Speaking with DAZN, Tom Lawlor broke down his 2020.
“All things considered, if I take a look at the goals and things that I had set out for myself to accomplish, not a whole lot of them happened. The point of this time, more I look at, the overall landscape and you know, overall things are most people accomplish them. I'm sitting in a pretty good place. I made it through what I think is going to be the harder part of the pandemic. I'm not worse for the wear. The 2020 Opera Cup is probably my favorite stuff in wrestling that I've done, so I can't look back on it and be upset with that. I'm happy with that. There's good and bad. I really don't like to rest on any sort of laurels. There's always going to be more for me to accomplish. If there's not, then I should probably stop.”
- Speaking with Andrew Thompson, Shane Taylor gave an update on his ROH deal.
"I signed a multi-year deal I think in the beginning of, let’s see, 2019? So 2019 went through, 2020 — no sorry, the beginning of 2020. So, 2020 was what it was, I signed a multi-year deal with an option. So this is the last of that year and then we’ll have an option for a third. It’s possible [that I’ll sign a new deal]. Anything is possible. What I really wanna make sure is that no matter what happens, that Shane Taylor Promotions remains a unit. So if I do go somewhere, I wanna take them with me. If I stay, then we’re all there together but, the goal is to take this thing and make it our version of DX, our version of Bullet Club, our version of the nWo and make it something that people can celebrate and historically can compare to some of the greatest factions ever in the history of the sport and I think we have the talent to do it, so we’ll see. There’s a lot of time between that decision and right now so we’ll see but that’s the goal."
- Speaking with FOX Sports, Ric Flair commented on Vince McMahon never seeing him as an old man when he first started in 1992.
"There’s nothing more rewarding than to be highly thought of by your peers," Flair told me. "Whether you’re a lawyer and you’re the No. 1 guy in your firm or a doctor … but wrestling, especially."
He added, "I did [have something to prove], but really to myself," Flair said of his move to WWE. "Vince McMahon never thought of me as being old. My age was nothing."
- Speaking with WrestleZone, Savio Vega commented on his issues with Salina De La Renta.
“You know what? Salina de la Renta, she’s Puerto Rican. She represents that flag too, you know. She’s a product from Carolina, Puerto Rico. I’ll say five minutes from the stadium, and now she comes in like, ‘I want to buy the company!’ She becomes a witch. Esta loca, she’s crazy. That’s what she is—a big bruja!”
He continued, “You have no idea my friend what things I did, what I sacrificed to put over this company,” said Vega, who doesn’t think highly of Salina’s new source of income. “Salina’s like, ‘I want to buy the company, I have somebody with a deep pocket.’ Yeah, he’s a deep pocket, but you crazy loca, because there’s a hole in the pocket because you have to go deep, deep, deep, deep, and maybe all the way to the socks. But anyway, the company’s not on sale and now she brings Mil Muertes and now we gonna have this Aztec Jungle Match.”
- Speaking with WWE’s The Bump, Seth Rollins commented on his daughter’s birth fueling him. (h/t: WrestleZone)
“I’m a little confused, some of the social response, social media response was that they thought maybe I was gonna come back, I don’t know, softer, in some way, that I was gonna be a bit of a snowflake, that being a dad was gonna make me a wimp, [that] it was gonna give me less conviction and that’s just not the case,” said Rollins. “I’ve got this beautiful baby girl, and she is now the motivation for everything that I do. So I gotta double down, I gotta work harder, I gotta grind deeper to get where I wanna go.
“I’m not gonna sit back and pretend like I’m gonna come back and be a big softie. No, I’m gonna come back and double down on my beliefs and my convictions, not for me, [but] for her.”
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