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Changes in Wellness Announcements: WWE officials have been discussing a major change that may be implemented soon for talents who fail Wellness Tests. In the future, the company may start announcing what caused the talents to test positive.The hope is that if they start to announce what substances the wrestlers tests positive for, it may discourage other talents from taking banned substances.
- WWE Changing Billing for Sin Cara: WWE is now billing Sin Cara as the most popular wrestler in the history of Mexico.
- More on Randy Orton: As noted yesterday, a report from SuperLuchas on Monday stated that Randy Orton’s WWE future was up in the air after meeting with Vince McMahon, Triple H and Kevin Dunn at WWE headquarters on Friday. The report stated that the meeting’s atmosphere was “hostile” and it was determined a further decision concerning Orton awaits. SuperLuchas says that several WWE officials were lobbying for Orton’s termination as a cost-cutting measure.PWInsider now reports that WWE officials indeed met with Orton over the weekend and there is definitely talk about not bringing him back as soon as his suspension is over. Their report doesn’t mention Orton being terminated but the idea would be to make Orton “sit it out and stew” once the suspension is over.
We noted earlier that one change coming out of the Orton suspension is WWE may start announcing which banned substances talents test positive for. One temporary change we will see is a lot of the RAW Superstars working SmackDown tours this summer while Orton is away. Rey Mysterio will be returning in a few weeks to add some depth to SmackDown but expect to see guys like Kofi Kingston, R-Truth and Zack Ryder work a lot of the upcoming SmackDown live events. John Cena and CM Punk have already been booked for upcoming SmackDown tapings.
- Feelings on Raw going 3 Hours: Raw will expand to a three-hour show, starting with the 1,000th episode on July 23 at 8/7 CT on USA Network. Of WWE employees broached on the subject by PWInsider.com, no one had a positive feeling on the addition of one hour to Raw. Rather, those talked to are “genuinely concerned” about the harm making it a three-hour show on a weekly basis could do to the WWE product.
- THQ loses UFC License: THQ announced the loss of their UFC license yesterday, and revealed that they will be laying off employees of THQ San Diego, which has developed many of their WWE games.“THQ confirms that today’s announcement regarding the UFC license transition will affect the company’s San Diego studio,” Angela Emery, THQ VP of Communication, told GamesBeat. “THQ is working closely with those relevant staff to either find possible employment within the company, or potentially with EA.”
UFC President Dana White announced securing a multi-year deal with EA to make UFC games yesterday.
“Over the last three years, THQ has delivered best-in-class, all-encompassing experiences to MMA fans, sports enthusiasts and fighting gamers around the globe with its UFC Undisputed series,” White stated in a press release. “We want to thank them for their stewardship of our brand.
“We look forward to joining forces with EA to leverage their sports platform, and expand our brand in the video game space. There’s no one better at creating authentic sports videogames than EA Sports, and we’re excited to have a partner who shares our vision of deep, connected and multi-platform global game experiences.”
- More on TNA Lawsuit on WWE: Representatives from WWE and TNA had a conference yesterday regarding TNA’s lawsuit against WWE. There is a temporary injunction hearing set for July 11th. TNA still has a temporary restraining order against Brian Wittenstein and WWE. There was a big process where WWE’s servers, the laptops of John Laurinaitis and others were looked at by WWE IT for any wrongdoing. IT reported back that the TNA information from Wittenstein was not found on his company provided Blackberry or laptop. IT also went through their servers and e-mail boxes of 27 employees that worked in creative and talent relations. They did not find that the information from Wittenstein had been sent out over their servers.Once the lawsuit was filed by TNA, WWE says they did due-diligence, searched again and concluded that the TNA information from Wittenstein was never on their servers or used by their employees. They noted that the laptop and e-mail server used by John Laurinaitis was also checked and the information was never on there. WWE feels TNA has no basis for a lawsuit, based on those searches. WWE says they never had the information from Wittenstein and the only time it was seen was when Wittenstein brought them a print out and a CD with information he had collected while working for TNA.
TNA wants the situation resolved immediately. They feel that they have been wronged, damage has been done and they want to make sure no talent problems come out of this. They wanted statements from Triple H, John Laurinaitis and others yesterday but likely scheduling conflicts are putting that on hold. While the case has been continued, both WWE and TNA are still under the court order that was previously set.
PWInsider reports that Wittenstein has not been served the lawsuit yet. People that have spoken to Wittenstein say they felt no sense of alarm or worry from him. Wittenstein does have a lawyer that TNA has been in contact with but he was not represented in court yesterday, for what it’s worth.
