Speculating on the rumors surrounding pro wrestling is a favored pastime of many fans, perhaps second only to actually watching the matches. In this daily column, we take a look at the latest rumors being
churned out by the pro wrestling rumor mill.
Important reminder: Rumors are just that — rumors. None of this has been confirmed as fact, it’s just circulating around the pro wrestling rumor mill. We track rumor accuracy in a weekly feature called Rumor Look Back you can find here. Remember, take it all with a grain of salt.
Rumors for the Day:
- WWE’s ”officially confirmed” next month’s Royal Rumble will start at 2 p.m. Eastern, per WrestleVotes/Fightful Select. That would mean a 10 p.m. start Riyadh time.
- Royal Rumble is currently planned as a four match card, according to Wrestling Observer Newsletter. There will be two championship matches in addition to the two Rumbles, but Dave Meltzer writes those title matches “are not finalized even though it’s just under two months away.”
- NXT’s unplanned title change on Tuesday night happened because Thea Hail knocked the wind out of Blake Monroe, and didn’t know to give Monroe time to recover before going for a pin. That from PW Insider, which added that WWE referees are told to call all pin attempts as legitimate.
- Fightful Select added that NXT had already pre-taped material with Monroe as North American champion for use through the end of the year, and Hail’s win caused “a pretty frantic rush to try to correct things that had already been filmed in order to make sense of them”. An ”NXT higher up” told the site that they expect new policies to be put in place requiring all talent involved in Monday pre-tapes to be at Tuesday live shows.
- Unsurprisingly, Fightful says a Hail/Monroe rematch is already being discussed. It’s expected to happen at New Year’s Evil, but that’s not confirmed.
- Despite reports of how impressed WWE officials were with Oba Femi, Sol Ruca, and Je’Von Evans in their recent main roster appearances, Bryan Alvarez told his X subscribers, “I had been told at this point, nobody has been called up”.
- Alvarez also reported on Wrestling Observer Live that Jake Something, Zachary Wentz, Steve Maclin, and AJ Francis are among the talent TNA recently signed to three-month deals.
If you have heard of any interesting rumors that you’d like to add, feel free to post them in the comments section below. Just remember they are rumors and not confirmed as fact, so please take them as such.
