There's a bunch of news to go over as Wrestlemania weekend has officially arrived:
- Dave Meltzer reported yesterday at F4WOnline.com that there was a meeting the other day where Vince McMahon decided that the company will only be referred to as "WWE" from here on, with no references to "World Wrestling Entertainment." This is part of an effort to remove "wrestling" from the name even though it's Wrestlemania weekend. This isn't a huge surprise after the lengths that a WWE publicist went a few weeks ago to try to get TV Week to not refer to anything they do as "wrestling."
- Kofi Kingston will be replacing Vladimir Kozlov in the 8 man tag match tomorrow night, as The Corre attacked the latter after a match with Tyler Reks at Fan Axxess yesterday. You can see a fan-shot video of the match and angle on YouTube. There's also a WWE-shot version of the angle available via WWE Magazine's Twitter/TwitVid account and an article about the angle on WWE.com.
- Ric Flair is in Atlanta to be in attendance for Shawn Michaels' induction at the Hall of Fame induction ceremony. Presumably he won't be shown on TV for obvious reasons. According to Meltzer, it's been argued about a lot within TNA for months, so I would guess that he may not appear in the audience so fans in attendance don't see him.
- Jim Ross told fans at Axxess that he will be calling some matches tomorrow night. The last reports before that said that Josh Matthews and Booker T will be the core team for most of the show. The plans for the announcing on the show have changed many times, though, so if this all changes...
- Like last year, there will be no live stream of the Hall of Fame inductions that won't air on the USA Network special, which airs this year on Monday night an hour before Raw instead of right after the ceremony so as to make editing easier.
- As far as who will be inducting who since most haven't been officially announced, Triple H will induct Shawn Michaels, Dusty Rhodes is rumored to be inducting The Road Warriors & Paul Ellering, Ted DiBiase Sr. will inducting Jim Duggan, the person inducting Sunny is a surprise of some sort (and a WWE PR rep wouldn't even let her say if the person is male or female), Abdullah the Butcher is rumored to be inducted by Terry Funk (and planning an angle for the ceremony), Bob Armstrong will be inducted by all four of his sons (WWE referee Scott, Brian AKA Road Dogg, Brad, who had a brief WWE run in 2006, and Steve, who had his own brief WWF run in 1992), and Drew Carey is rumored to be inducted by Bob Barker as a way to get Barker in the mix after his standout performance as Raw guest host.
- Those who bought Hall of Fame tickets from Ticketmaster got an email noting that the "business casual" dress code for attendees will be strictly enforced, as will rules about how to behave. The warning reads: "Please show the proper respect to the WWE Superstars and Hall of Fame Inductees when they are on stage speaking. There will be no inappropriate behavior, cat calls, or chants of any kind tolerated at all. Violation of this policy will result in immediate ejection from The Philips Arena."
- Triple H will be using a hit Metallica song as part of his entrance. I hope he uses "Enter Sandman" solely to annoy ECW fans, because the comedy generated by the resulting online freakouts could be fantastic.
- The Rock told Brian Fritz of Between The Ropes that he will "absolutely" get physically involved tomorrrow night. When asked about John Cena, he said that "I'm gonna f--- him up." He will be appearing on The Tonight Show on Tuesday night. Since he's working Wrestlemania and Raw on the two nights before this, it should be interesting to see how much of the appearance is about WWE. Could it depend on if something happens tomorrow and/or Monday to help build towards another future WWE appearance?
We will be liveblogging the results of Wrestlemania 27 tomorrow night as it happens, starting around 7 PM Eastern time. The post will go up beforehand and if there are any reports of a pre-show, DVD exclusive dark match, we'll try to get the result up before the PPV starts. I hope that we'll see a lot of the readers join in the discussion in the comments as of the liveblog during the show. In addition to that, my predictions for the show will be up tomorrow morning as part of the show preview at SB Nation Atlanta.