Sheamus Comments on His Return from Injury & Had Considered Retirement Two Months Ago
As noted before, Sheamus made his in-ring return from a shoulder injury at this past Monday’s RAW show. Prior to his return, Sheamus had been out of action for WWE since this past August.
Sheamus reflected on Instagram about his recent in-ring return and revealed that he had considered retiring during his injury rehab process.
“The road back to the ring is slow, rough and unimaginally painful. 2 months ago i thought i was hanging up my boots for good but a lot of doctors, trainers and physios helped get me cleared to do what i love.. fight. #thisiswhatwedo”
A&E WWE Programming Ratings – April 14, 2024
This past Sunday’s WWE Most Wanted Treasures season premiere episode drew 281,000 viewers on A&E. This episode also drew a 0.09 rating in the 18-49 key demographic and a #36 key demographic rating.
This was down compared to the July 9, 2023 season two finale episode of 300,000 viewers but up compared to the July 9, 2023 episode’s 0.08 rating.
This episode focused on lost WCW memorabilia.
Source: Spoiler TV
WWE News & Notes
Wednesday’s WWE Speed show on Twitter featured Johnny Gargano defeating Angel to advance to the next round in the WWE Speed Championship tournament. Gargano will be facing off against Bronson Reed in a Semifinal Round match at a future episode of WWE Speed.
Dave Meltzer reported in a special preview edition of this week’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter that his sources stated that Vince McMahon was given a one-year no-compete clause as part of the terms of his resignation from WWE and TKO Group. Meltzer reported that McMahon’s no-compete clause is currently set to expire in January of 2025. Meltzer also reported that the current belief within the wrestling industry is that McMahon will likely not be launching a new promotion after his no-compete clause ends but those within WWE believe that a potential new promotion run by McMahon would be a formidable rival due to McMahon’s vast wealth.
TKO Group recently announced that they will be holding a new investor’s meeting to discuss the results of their 2024 fiscal first quarter report on May 8th.
In a recent interview with the Sports Business Journal, PHL Sports division of the Philadelphia Convention and Visitors Bureau Executive Director Larry Needle stated that Philadelphia would be thrilled to host another WrestleMania event in the future. Needle stated “This is such a highly-coveted event that we know there’s a long line of cities clamoring to host, and that’s just the reality of an event of this magnitude. But needless to say, we would be thrilled to have WrestleMania back, and at the right time we will engage in those conversations with the WWE.“
In a recent interview with TV Insider, NXT commentator Vic Joseph gave his thoughts about his belief of Michael Cole being the greatest wrestling commentator of all-time. Joseph stated “Michael Cole is the greatest of all time. I’ll say it again. He is the greatest of all time. I’ve learned so much from him. Here’s the thing about Michael Cole. He doesn’t want me to be Michael Cole. He doesn’t want Corey Graves to be Michael Cole. We all have our own distinct voices. It’s how you as a listener hear it. When I went to NXT, I didn’t want to be Mauro [Ranallo]. I don’t want to be Michael Cole. I want to be myself. But if you’re the greatest of all time why would you not want to pick a few things from them? There is no quarterback in the world that’s not looking at Tom Brady’s mechanics or Patrick Mahomes’ footwork. If you don’t study people who are the greatest, I think it’s foolish if you don’t. I will take as much as I can from Michael Cole and Corey Graves, for that matter, and mold it into my own. Then hopefully get to their level.“
In a recent interview with the Busted Open Radio podcast, Karl Anderson gave his thoughts about his and Luke Gallows’ recent return to WWE’s NXT brand. Anderson stated “That was fun. Having the opportunity to go down there and seeing guys that are truly new to professional wrestling, a couple of the kids that we worked about a month ago, that we wrestled with, they’re only two years in pro wrestling and only two years into training. So being able to talk with them about talking through a match and talking inside the ring about a match, and then after the match, talking to them about the match, it was kind of fun to be able to talk to legitimate kids that are 23, 24,25 years old that are hungry, and they’re really hungry because they’re passionate about the business. It’s been cool to go down there and see that.” Anderson also gave his thoughts about if The O.C. had viewed being sent down to WWE’s developmental brand as a negative for their WWE careers. Anderson stated “I don’t know so much that it’s not being used the way we think we should be used. It’s just, WWE, sometimes you gotta sit, and you gotta take your time, you gotta be patient, and you gotta wait. We’re competitive guys, right, so we always want to be used. We always want to be on TV, we’re always ready and willing to go. We want to be on Raw, we want to be on SmackDown. We want to be on all the PLEs. But sometimes you gotta take a step back because there’s a lot of guys there, a lot of girls there, a lot of stuff going on, especially with the last year, the last couple years, especially with the way it’s been. So you gotta be patient. Also, getting the call to go to NXT, zero negative. If anything, we got the text, I believe we were actually driving to SmackDown that day. We got the group text about going to NXT from one of the writers, and it just excited us. We’ve been doing this a long time, over 20 years, for us to get in the ring, talk wrestling, talk about promos, talk about storylines, and physically get in the ring and do it, it still excites us. It’s the only thing that really gets me going anymore in the world, besides watching my kids hitting a home run or something. So being able to go to NXT, total positive. We did it for about a month, I think it was a month or five weeks or whatever it was, and I wouldn’t mind it being more. Any chance we get to be in a pro wrestling ring, we’re just ready.” (Transcript h/t: Fightful.com)