WWE news and notes: 26 August, 2013

Randy Orton

• WWE Night of Champions is the next PPV event, and thus far, only one match has been made official, that being WWE Champion Randy Orton defending his title against the former champion, Daniel Bryan. While the rest of the card is only rumored for now, given the current storylines, most, if not all of the rumored matches are pretty much a lock. They are as follows: RVD vs. Alberto Del Rio for the World title; The Big Show and Mark Henry vs. Roman Reigns and Seth Rollins for the WWE Tag Team titles; CM Punk vs. Curtis Axel for the Intercontinental title; Dolph Ziggler vs. Dean Ambrose for the WWE United States title; A member of the Total Divas (the Funkadactyls and Natalya-the most likely candidate given her recent submission win over AJ) vs. AJ Lee for the WWE Divas title; and the Usos vs. Luke Harper & Eric Rowan.
• The Miami Marlins of the MLB had a Pro Wrestling Night after their game last night, featuring several former WWE stars, as well as current and former TNA stars. The show was headlined by an appearance by former WCW and WWE World Champion Goldberg, who also threw out the opening pitch for the game. He followed the pitch up by jokingly hitting a spear on Marlins pitcher Tom Koehler. In a later interview with The Miami Herald, Goldberg said he would be open to a WWE return for Wrestlemania XXX, but would not come back if put into a program with Ryback, who is often compared to the former star. Goldberg stated that if he does come back for Wrestlemania, he wants to face either The Undertaker or Steve Austin. Do not bet on either of those matches happening.
• In case you haven’t been able to keep up on NXT, Hulu.com announced that every episode of WWE’s developmental show will now be available via their streaming TV service. That is all seven seasons, including the current version of the show as well as the original pseudo reality TV version.
• The Brooklyn Brawler recently tweeted about completing a 40-year career, saying his very first in WWE was against Curt Hennig, and his last match being against Ryback. This is likely a sign the famed jobber is officially calling it a career, as far as in-ring appearances go.
• Despite his current schedule and recent abdominal injury, WWE are hopeful The Rock will return to WWE TV soon in order to help promote the new WWE 2K14 game, of which Rock appears on the cover.
• Former boxing World Champion Riddick Bowe recently posted on his Twitter that he would like to get involved in wrestling, saying he would like to be the first man ever to be a World Champion in both pro boxing and pro wrestling. Bowe is 46 years old, which is a very old age to have your rookie year in pro wrestling. Even if he followed through on this, he would likely need at least 2-5 years of training, which would put him at an even older age when he eventually makes his debut. Much like Goldberg at Wrestlemania, don’t bet on this one happening.