It’s time for the Saturday Wrestling Observer Live with Jim Valley with lots of holiday wrestling for the weekend.
We’ll run down Friday’s WWE SmackDown and WWE Raw taping results for next Friday and this Monday, respectively.
Plus, AEW Collision was at a special time Saturday, AAA Guerra de Titanes, House of Glory, CMLL and AEW this weekend at the Hammerstein Ballroom.
It’s the holiday season and people are too uptight about end of the year lists. John Cena is more “The Last Jedi” than “A New Hope” and lots more. A packed show.
One of the craziest weeks for bloodletting in WWE history finished with a scorecard of ten wrestlers suspended, three fired, one front office employee fired and two major stars quitting. In the vast majority of the cases, drugs were involved in the decision making.
For the first time in perhaps modern history, the television shows taped on 9/1 in Cincinnati and 9/2 in Columbus, OH, for Smackdown, ECW and Raw, were designed more to write characters out temporarily and make necessary changes in championships due to suspensions, then continue previously crafted storylines and build an already scheduled series of matches on PPV.
The dust hasn’t fully settled at press time, but when it does, a lot of questions have to be asked. The key is, What was the true intent of the Wellness policy? From the appearance of things, based on the loopholes and even the wrestlers who were found in the Signature Pharmacy investigation getting Nandrolone (Decadurabolin), something athletes in a drug testing sport theoretically would avoid like the plague, things are even more fishy than even the most skeptical would have believed.
There are a lot of questions that need to be asked right now as WWE got the worst news possible this week with a government investigation uncovering the names of numerous wrestlers who were getting steroids and other drugs through the Internet in the ongoing investigation of the Jupiter, FL, based Signature Pharmacy.
Sports Illustrated listed ten current WWE wrestlers who received Signature Pharmacy packages after February 2006 as Chavo Guerrero, Gregory Shane Helms, Randy Orton, John Hennigan (John Morrison), Ken Anderson (Mr. Kennedy), Shoichi Funaki, Charlie Haas, Edward Fatu (Umaga), Darren Matthews (William Regal) and Adam Copeland (Edge).
Worse, probably the most outspoken wrestler of late in the company on the subject, Ken Holmes aka Anderson aka Kennedy was found to be receiving shipments as late as February. Anderson did numerous media interviews, including claiming the company no longer had a steroid problem.
John Cena will be honored at next month’s Sports Illustrated Sportsperson of the Year Awards.
Sports Illustrated has announced that Cena will receive the Muhammad Ali Legacy Award at the Sportsperson of the Year ceremony in Los Angeles, California on December 11. Colin Kaepernick won the award in 2017, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Jim Brown & Bill Russell, Jack Nicklaus, and Magic Johnson have won it since 2014. It was formerly known as the “Legacy Award” before being renamed in honor of Ali in 2015.
The award honors a sports figure “who embodies the ideals of sportsmanship, leadership and philanthropy and has used sports as a platform to make the world a better place.”
“I am truly thrilled to receive Sports Illustrated’s Muhammad Ali Legacy Award,” Cena said. “Ali’s commitment to helping others, his dedication to the sport and his generous spirit are incomparable and he was a role model to us all. To be linked with him in any way is an honor that means so much to me.”
“From his unparalleled work with the Make-A-Wish Foundation to his support for a wide range of causes ranging from activism for military families to cancer research, John has made personal outreach and generosity of time and spirit his calling cards,” Sports Illustrated executive editor Stephen Cannella said. “He might just be the most charitable person in sports, and his dedication to philanthropy richly reflects the spirit of the Ali Legacy Award.”
For the first time since he pulled out of being in the World Cup tournament at Crown Jewel in Saudi Arabia, Cena will return to WWE at Raw’s house show at Madison Square Garden on December 26. He’s been announced for 13 shows in December and January, including two Raw episodes and a SmackDown taping.
