Daily Update: Saturday Night’s Main Event, Konosuke Takeshita, GCW

This Week’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter

• November 18, 2024 Observer Newsletter: The 2024 Hall of Fame class

This Week’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter Back Issue

• June 4, 2007 Observer Newsletter: UFC 71 recap, WWE Draft incoming

Thursday Update

WWE

• PWInsider reports that WWE Hall of Famer Jimmy Hart is scheduled to make an appearance at the return of Saturday’s Night Main Event on December 14. The show is being held at Nassau Coliseum in Long Island, New York and will air live on both NBC and Peacock. 
• NXT North American Champion Tony D’Angelo (Joe Ariola) and his wife Isabella Borini got married in Orlando yesterday.
• Vulture shared the full one-hour video of their conversation with Becky Lynch from Vulture Festival 2024.
• In celebration of New Day’s 10-year anniversary, WWE uploaded an interview with Big E, Kofi Kingston & Xavier Woods looking back at some of their greatest moments.
• Jade Cargill appeared on Celtic Warrior Workouts with Sheamus (episode filmed last month prior to her injury).
• WWE shared a Playlist video documenting the story for the Bloodline vs. Bloodline OG WarGames match at Survivor Series this Saturday.
• WWE wished Erick Rowan a happy 43rd birthday.

AEW/Other Wrestling

• AEW International Champion Konosuke Takeshita will be in action for DDT Pro Wrestling on January 3, competing for the promotion in Japan for the first time since July. He’s also set for NJPW Wrestle Kingdom 19 on January 4 and Wrestle Dynasty on January 5.
• The Butcher (Andy Williams) celebrated the five-year anniversary of his AEW debut, writing that he loves everything the promotion allows him to do:
  • Yesterday was 5 yrs with @aew for me. I feel like I’ve lived 50 lives since then. Monocle, pants sash, long hair, tassels, fat, shredded, bald, Malenko trunks, bunk house Butch, white clothes,..etc. Now I’m rampage man or something. Love what this company has allowed me to do.
• Chris Van Vliet asked Jake “The Snake” Roberts if it bothers him that he never held a championship in WWE:
  • No, not at all. My god, I’m grateful I did not have to carry that too. You know, I carried a 50 or 60 or 75 pound snake around, and we’d be on the road for two and three weeks at a time, all your clothing, everything you gotta carry, the last thing I want is a 10-pound belt to carry around too. Would I have liked to have had a championship? Yeah, of course. You know, that would have been something, but I had had several championships up until then. Maybe not [the] WWF Championship, but I’d had several – Calgary, I had it in Louisiana, and Mid-South. I had it in Texas. I had it in different places around, Mid-Atlantic. So I’d had my time with the belts. I mean, it was all right. I would have liked to have had the money that was associated with that belt. But how can I complain about [the] career that I had?
• While speaking with TV Insider, Eric Bischoff reacted to next year being the 30th anniversary of WCW Nitro’s debut:
  • My show 83 Weeks is a nostalgia-based show, so I’m always looking into the history of the Monday Night War with WWE and WCW and all those things that happened during that era. I live in that era. In that sense, to me, that time was yesterday. The Mall of America, when you say that was almost 30 years ago? I think, ‘Not a chance.’ It seems like yesterday in a lot of ways, but in others, it seems like a lifetime.
• Due to an injury suffered in pre-match training, NJPW Young Lion Masatora Yasuda had to miss today’s World Tag League event. His scheduled pre-show match against Daiki Nagai was pulled from the card.
• Amazing Red is the latest talent confirmed for GCW’s show at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City on Sunday, January 19.
• Josh Barnett vs. Royce Isaacs has been announced for GCW’s Highest in the Room event in Los Angeles on Saturday, December 14.
• Slam Wrestling published an obituary paying tribute to wrestler/actor/stuntman Scott L. Schwartz, who passed away this week at 65 years old.

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