The back and forth in the WWE concussion litigation continued this past week, stemming from Jerry McDevitt filing a motion on behalf of WWE to compel proper discovery responses from the plaintiffs, Vito Lograsso and Evan Singleton. In the latest motion, WWE is looking to get the plaintiffs to
It took all of 70 seconds for the Ric Flair-Hulk Hogan double turn to take place at the WCW Uncensored PPV show on 3/14 at Freedom Hall in Louisville, and by the end of the match, Hogan had been screwed so many times by bad officiating that the turn was complete, even with the stipulation of Flair having to retire should he lose.
In just three sentences, the entire world of MMA may have changed.
UFC was planning its biggest set of shows in history, built around a Conor McGregor vs. Nate Diaz fight, which was expected to be the biggest money event in company history.
Whatever going on right now in Hulk Hogan’s lawsuit against Gawker clearly goes way beyond the courtroom. Media manipulation, while not new to the case, seems to be more prominent in recent weeks, or at least more obvious. By and large, the lines appear to be drawn as Hogan cozying up to “old media” companies that still have physical hard copy publications, while Gawker continues to live up to their stated goals of corporate transparency, with founder Nick Denton and others being much more available for quotes, interviews, etc.
The Monday Night Wars can officially be declared over. The World Wrestling Federation lost a few battles over the nearly four years, but has now won the war.
During the 70s and 80s, Blackjack Mulligan was one of the legendary characters in pro wrestling, a man whose life and career had major ups and just as legendary downs.
Just when WWE was basking in their victories in the stockholder lawsuit (dismissal) and many of the concussion lawsuits (most dismissed), a new complaint came down the pike on April 6th: Rene Dupree, real name Rene Goguen, sued over WWE Network royalties. Five days later, on April 11th, Dupree’s lawyers filed a notice of voluntary dismissal.
With the deluge of media publicity, including a cover story in USA Today, a two-part series on “Inside Edition” and even being the topic of conversation on the TV show “Politically Incorrect” and with an ESPN “Outside the Lines” segment scheduled for later this month, both WWF and WCW have taken separate directions that will no doubt determine the future of the wrestling industry in the United States.
There has never been anything in the history of pro wrestling quite like this past weekend.
Never have more fans attended more events, nor has more talent been in the same place then in Dallas.
The difference in one year was amazing. Last year, in the San Jose area, WrestleMania came to town, people came from all over the world, and events were held throughout the city in conjunction with the weekend. There was an awareness that WrestleMania was in town, but it was more a tourist event and in the city itself, the interest was nothing compared to a major sports event. There were only about 15,000 tickets sold within a 100 mile radius of Santa Clara for last year’s show, but it still broke the company’s gate and merchandise records and most of the events put on by other companies did well.
After little to no movement for the better part of a year, WWE got the class action stockholder lawsuit dismissed this past week. We covered this in detail back in issue #1044 (June 26, 2015) after discovering the back and forth that was going on involving the statements of Brian Maddox, who was formerly WWE’s Vice President, Global Sales. The firm handling the case for the plaintiffs had filed an amended complaint a year ago with a lot of new, specific allegations from Confidential Witness 1 (or “CW1”), who turned out to be Maddox. This included everything from things we knew (WWE’s social media numbers count a number of fans multiple times when they follow multiple WWE accounts, the issues with ad rates stemming from the number of low income viewers, etc.) to new information (not allowing anyone to sponsor the ring canvas has hurt ad rates and sponsor variety, WWE would drop sponsors for no apparent reason) to somewhat specious claims about WWE’s total audience.