WWE: The CW President on His Network’s TV Deal with WWE for NXT, Brian Gewirtz Denies The Rock Being Reason for WrestleMania 40 Doc Delay, More News

May 17, 2024

The CW President Comments on Their TV Deal with WWE for NXT

Variety held a recent interview with The CW President Dennis Miller. One of the topics discussed included Miller’s thoughts about The CW’s recently television deal with WWE for WWE’s NXT series.

“We knew that Raw and SmackDown were a little bit beyond our budget here. Then if you look, we have a lot of sports where we have kind of that next tier moving into the first tier here, whether it’s the Xfinity races leading into the Cup, or it’s NXT leading into Raw and SmackDown. So it just started to fit. Then over the course of a couple of months, we went back and forth and got the deal done.”

Brian Gewirtz Denies The Rock Being Reason for Delayed Release of WrestleMania 40 Documentary

As noted before, WWE delayed the release of their new behind-the-scenes documentary for WrestleMania 40 due to wanting to include additional footage from this past April’s two-day event into the film.

PWInsider’s Mike Johnson reported that several of his sources spoken to stated that they currently believe that the reason for the current delay in the release of WWE’s new WrestleMania 40 documentary is due to them waiting for final approval from Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. Johnson reported that this is something that he has yet to confirm being the actual case from his other sources.

Following Johnson’s report, Seven Bucks Productions and WWE executive Brian Gewirtz responded in a recent interview with The Ringer’s Masked Man Show podcast denying that the reason for the documentary’s release being delayed is due to issues with The Rock.

“Believe it or not, there is an awesome (documentary). The Rock isn’t holding hostage until he has approval of every frame. I think there was an error in terms of promoting it so soon because it wasn’t ready to come out. That was an error that was made. This is a doc that went from 11 minutes to 45 minutes and now it’s over an hour. It’s pretty awesome. It will be coming out, in some form, pretty soon, is my understanding.”

Transcript h/t: Fightful.com

WWE News & Notes

As noted before, Liv Morgan was arrested this past December in Florida for marijuana possession following an erratic driving incident and had her criminal case officially closed this past January following a plea of Nolo-Contendere. Bodycam footage of Morgan’s arrest was recently released by the Law & Crime Network.

Fightful Select reported that their sources stated that the reason why WWE held four First Round matches for their King and Queen of the Ring tournaments at this past weekend’s house show events was due to WWE officials wanting to avoid an “overkill” of tournament matches on television. Another reason reportedly was to help draw fans and added interest for this past weekend’s house show events.

This past Wednesday’s WWE Speed show featured Tyler Bate defeating Berto to advance to the Finals of the #1 Contender’s tournament for the WWE Speed Championship.

As noted before, WWE recently announced that Ivar had suffered an “injury” at this past Tuesday’s NXT show and would be out of action for an indefinite period of time. WWE provided an update on Thursday announcing that due to Ivar’s injury situation, they have pulled him out of the WWE Speed Championship #1 Contender’s tournament. It was also announced that Apollo Crews will be replacing Ivar for Tyler Bate’s match in the Finals of the tournament.

Warner Brothers Discovery recently announced that John Cena will be the official host for this year’s Shark Week programming on their network starting on July 7th.

In a recent interview with the Nikki & Brie Show podcast, Carmella stated that Becky Lynch was originally planned to win the 2017’s Women’s Money in the Bank Ladder rematch on SmackDown. Carmella stated “Originally, it was supposed to be Becky [Becky Lynch], she was winning it the second time, that was the plan. We had another match a week later, the plan was for Becky to win it, but because I came on SmackDown after Money in the Bank and cut a promo opening SmackDown. We had physicality later in the night when Bryan [Bryan Danielson aka Daniel Bryan] was the GM and he was supposed to talk about us having another match. The physicality was me on top, I was supposed to knock everyone out of the ring, and because the promo was so good, they changed it to where Becky and Charlotte [Charlotte Flair], I was down and out and they were up at the end of the night because I ended up winning it the following week. I’m so grateful it went the way it did.” (Transcript h/t: Fightful.com)

In a recent interview with the Insight with Chris Van Vliet podcast, Liv Morgan stated that she recently saved the lives of herself and CJ Perry from an oven fire incident at her home because she had learned how to use a fire extinguisher for her WWE Women’s Championship match against Ronda Rousey at WWE Extreme Rules 2022. Morgan stated “So like two weeks ago, I fly home from Monday Night Raw and CJ is staying in my house, we’re best friends. So she’s staying at my house and she’s like, ‘Do you want tacos?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah.’ So she puts taco shells in the oven because she wanted to toast them a little bit, and in typical CJ fashion, she hit broil instead of bake. I don’t know if y’all know what broil is, but broil is like fire. So pretty much my oven went on fire and we’re like, oh my god. I know I have a fire extinguisher and I only know how to use a fire extinguisher because of Extreme Rules 2022. So I swear, in that moment, you don’t even know I’m like, thank you wrestling.’ So I put out the oven fire and then it burst into flames again. I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh, so I put out the fire again, and then that was it. I don’t know if you guys ever put out a fire but the fire extinguisher leaves a crazy residue, this crazy residue all over my kitchen. So then we were on our hands and knees with toothbrushes scrubbing the tiles and cleaning it all up. It was the best-case scenario for a house fire though there was no damage. We cleaned it up and it was kind of just ended up being a funny moment. But it could have been bad but luckily it wasn’t. No tacos. You know what’s funny about it is I don’t even like hard shells, so it would have been for nothing.” (Transcript h/t: Fightful.com)