Rumor Look Back: July 24 - 30, 2015

Welcome to the Rumor Look Back, where we take a look at the rumors from six months ago and see how they came to pass.

Before we begin, I have a rumor from June 5, 2015 that needs addressing:

It is not expected that AJ Styles will be going to WWE any time soon.

While "any time soon" leaves a bit of subjectivity to this rumor, it was within 7 months and I’m going to say that falls into "any time soon". (0/1)

I’ve also sat on this one for a bit from September 13, 2014 and decided to finally grade it:

There is talk of having Tyler Breeze join the Miz when he comes up so Miz can have an entourage stable.

This rumor came out when Miz still had Mizdow, but I decided to sit on it see if they do somehow pair Miz with Breeze. They have not and fans of Tyler Breeze are likely unhappy with what’s been done with him on the main roster. (0/1)

Now onto this week's rumors.

July 24, 2015

The Observer notes that SummerSlam can look like this:

• Brock Lesnar vs. Undertaker
• Seth Rollins vs. John Cena
• Roman Reigns/Dean Ambrose/Sting vs. the Wyatt Family
• Ryback vs. the Big Show
• Prime Time Players vs. the New Day
• Cesaro vs. Kevin Owens
• Team Bella vs. Team BAD vs. PCB
• Dolph Ziggler vs. Rusev

Three of these were wrong. Sting was not involved in the Wyatt Family feud, Miz was involved alongside Ryback and Big Show, and the tag match was a fatal four way. Lesnar/Undertaker was already announced so that was not a rumor. (4/7)

The plan for the NXT event in Brooklyn is to go about under 4 hours, including dark matches, an hour of TV taped, and the TakeOver show.

I actually can’t find if there were any matches that didn’t appear on the TV taping or the TakeOver special, but otherwise, this is correct. (1/1)

Speaking of TakeOver, they are likely going to add more matches than the four that have been announced.

There were six total, so that is true. I’m not sure which ones were the late adds. Maybe the Apollo Crews debut and Samoa Joe/Baron Corbin? But either way, this is correct. (1/1)

Apparently, the reason that Bully Ray didn’t work NXT shows in May was because he had an ear injury and opted against working it and not because he was on TNA as a referee one night.

I don’t remember any rumors about Bully Ray in NXT, and I’ve read every rumor on here a year up to this point.

July 25, 2015

Ric Flair is the leading candidate to replace Hulk Hogan on Tough Enough, with Mick Foley, the Miz, and Chris Jericho also being thrown around as possibilities.

I’m going to just grade the Flair part since that’s the meat of the rumor. Miz was the one picked. (0/1)

Speaking of Tough Enough, Vince McMahon still sees it as a major priority and is skipping SmackDown tapings to oversee the production.

I wonder why this was so big for Vince. Maybe he wanted to keep USA happy and try to get those ratings up, or maybe he just was hoping for another decent revenue stream.

Bully Ray is already done with TNA despite being named the General Manager of the show.

He only had one live appearance and some backstage bits. He was written out as part of Jeff Jarrett’s takeover angle. (1/1)

July 27, 2015

There’s word that Sting’s involvement in SummerSlam could be made clear tonight’s Raw.

He wasn’t involved at all. And they didn’t actually say that on Raw so this is incorrect. (0/1)

It looks like Stephen Amell will be appearing on the August 10 episode of Raw to run an angle with Stardust.

This was already teased, but not announced, with this promo. Amell did show up and after getting shoved by Stardust, leaped the ropes to attack him. It was good stuff. (1/1)

There have been some rumors that SummerSlam will be a 4-hour event but PW insider notes it is still schedule to run for 3 hours.

It was a 4-hour show. Since this rumor has both sides, it’s a wash, and I’ll leave it ungraded.

Apparently Ring of Honor talent were told that moving ROH from 8 p.m. to the 11 p.m. slot on Destination America was to test to see how original programming would do at the 8 p.m. slow, and they’ll be back there in a few weeks.

The bulk of this rumor was about what the talent was told, and that isn’t known. But they never made it back to the 8 p.m. slot and were eventually canceled from the Destination America schedule, alongside TNA.

Regarding TNA, there are those who believe the company is done and are just taping as much TV as possible without a clear long-term plan for the company.

While this has too many unknowns to grade, this would be around the time TNA taped a ton of matches for the World Title Series, which they aired from October through December because they didn’t have any tapings planned. So while we can’t say for sure if they "knew they were done" they sure planned to tread water for a while.

July 28, 2015

The early word on John Cena is that he is while he’s not going to wrestle for a couple weeks following his broken nose, he shouldn’t miss any TV time.

John Cena missed two weeks of Raw. (0/1)

WWE is playing it safe with Daniel Bryan but he should be back by the end of the year.

It’s looking more and more like he never will be back. (0/1)

According to a survey sent out by WWE, the company may be considering offering PPVs at $4.99 a show apart from an actual month long subscription.

There has been no word of this. I can’t imagine that being a great business idea since a lot of people may end up only needing to pay half of what they do if they only have the Network for the big shows. (0/1)

Rey Mysterio left WWE on good terms and there’s at least a possibility that he goes back.

I’ll put it in the outstanding column. Recent rumors make it sound like he’s having the same issues with Lucha Underground that Alberto del Rio had, so this definitely not outside the realm of possibility.

July 29, 2015

There’s word being passing around by wrestlers that Sting may team up with Green Arrow since they are both vigilantes to go against Stardust and the Miz.

It ended up being the Green Arrow and Red Arrow vs. Stardust and the Cosmic King, which was a great character for the brief time we had him. (0/1)

That being said, there’s also reports WWE doesn’t plan to use Sting at SummerSlam, despite being rumors linking him to the Wyatt Family feud with Ambrose and Reigns.

This is correct. Sting was used at Night of Champions though. (1/1)

There is talk that WWE is really high on Cesaro, and there’s a big push for him coming soon.

Hmmm… they definitely painted him in a good light and played up the Cesaro Section. But he wasn’t winning anything major since this rumor. He lost to Kevin Owens at SummerSlam, wasn’t even on the Night of Champions card, then was fed to Big Show so Show could go job to Lesnar at Madison Square Garden, he was on the pre-show of Hell in the Cell, and did the job in the WWE Title Tournament to Reigns.

Yeah, that’s not a "big push." I think this is 0 for 3 on Cesaro "Big Push" rumors. (0/1)

It looks like New Day vs. Prime Time Players vs. Lucha Dragons vs. Los Matadores is the tag match at SummerSlam.

That was the match. It’s one of the two times in the year they raise the Matadors from jobber status to be in a multi-team championship match. (1/1)

It looks like Destination America is getting out of the wrestling business by the end of the year, with both ROH and TNA leaving the channel.

Yup. Now they’re just in the Alaska Ghost Hunter BBQ Pit Master business. (1/1)

July 30, 2015

As depressing as it may sound, there may be more racist comments from Hulk Hogan coming out soon.

To judge this, I limited my Google search from 7/15-7/29 and then did 7/30 for the next month. There were no new recordings reported on the later search, with his phone call to his son in jail being released prior to this rumor. This first round was bad enough as is. (0/1)

Brock Lesnar is now being advertised for the MSG house show event and PW Insider is reporting he will be there, as well as Chris Jericho.

Well, it’s not really much of a rumor if the advertisement is already out. Chris Jericho was there too and lost to Kevin Owens. (1/1)

There’s some speculation that Enzo and Big Cass will be getting a call up soon. They worked a dark match on SmackDown this week.

I swore they were getting called up after SummerSlam, especially since they did not get the title match at TakeOver: Brooklyn. But instead, the Dudleys returned and the Realest Guys are still in NXT and look to be feuding with Dash and Dawson still. (0/1)

Adam Rose may be going back to the Leo Kruger gimmick soon as he’s been teasing on social media. He may also join the Wyatt Family.

Adam Rose is still Adam Rose and now a member of the #SocialOutcasts. I read the rumor to mean that if he became Leo Kruger again, he’d join the family so I didn’t grade it separately. (0/1)

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This Week: 12/25 - 48%

Overall: 650/1,217 - 53%

Have a good week everyone.