It was announced today that the winners of the mixed tag team tournament will be the 30th entrants in their respective Royal Rumble matches in January 2019. WWE is also promoting that the winners will receive “an all-expenses paid vacation to anywhere in the world.”
The four teams who are undefeated in the tournament are set to face each other on this week’s episode. Ember Moon & Braun Strowman will wrestle Mickie James & Bobby Lashley in the Raw match and Asuka & The Miz will face Charlotte Flair & WWE Champion AJ Styles in the SmackDown match. Asuka & The Miz were the winners of Mixed Match Challenge season one.
Mixed Match Challenge airs on Facebook Watch after SmackDown on Tuesdays. When the tournament was announced, it was noted that it would conclude at TLC on December 16.
Here are the current standings for Mixed Match Challenge season two:
Raw —
Ember Moon & Braun Strowman (3-0)
Mickie James & Bobby Lashley (3-0)
Bayley & Finn Balor (2-2)
Alicia Fox & Jinder Mahal (0-3)
Natalya & Bobby Roode (0-3)
SmackDown —
Asuka & The Miz (3-0)
Charlotte Flair & AJ Styles (3-0)
Naomi & Jimmy Uso (2-2)
Carmella & R-Truth (0-3)
Lana & Rusev (0-3)
A summit of European states due to be held in Israel has collapsed amid an escalating row over Israeli comments alleging Polish participation in the Holocaust.
The diplomatic row between the two countries had been escalating since Friday, when Israeli media reported remarks by Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, suggesting Polish complicity in the Holocaust.
On Monday, Yisrael Katz, the Israeli foreign minister, resurrected an old quote from Yitzak Shamir, a former Israeli prime minister and Holocaust survivor, by saying “Poles suckle anti-Semitism from their mother’s milk."
In response, Warsaw pulled out of the meeting, which was due to take place on Tuesday between the four Visegrad countries – Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Hungary – marking a new low in relations between Poland and Israel.
Mateusz Morawiecki, the Polish prime minister, branded the remarks "racist and unacceptable". He had previously said he would not join the summit, sending instead a lower-level delegation, but said on Monday that no Polish officials would now attend.
"Not only can we not accept such racist comments, but with all our strength we want to stress that we will fight for historical truth, for the honour of Poles," he told reporters.
Holocaust Survivors | The stories of those who escaped from Nazi clutches
He added that Poland was a victim of the Second World War and that many Poles had risked everything to help Jews fleeing the Nazis.
The Israeli ambassador to Warsaw was summoned for a half-hour meeting at the Polish foreign ministry on Monday, while the Polish ambassador to Israel tweeted the foreign minister’s remarks were “shameful, racist and utterly unacceptable.”
Jewish leaders in Poland issued a statement saying that Shamir’s words were "unjust already when they were first said, in 1989, when Polish-Israeli relations were just beginning to be rebuilt, after the long night of communism."
Although the Polish government accepted an explanation by Mr Netanyahu’s office that he had been “misquoted and misrepresented in press reports”, and that he was only referring to individual Poles rather than the Polish nation, his comments touched a nerve in Warsaw.
Poland's Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki with Mr NetanyahuCredit:
REUTERS/Kacper Pempel
While accepting that some Poles betrayed and even murdered Jews during the war, the Polish government considers any insinuation that the Polish state was involved in the Holocaust or that Poles are anti-Semitic unjust and unfounded.
Last year the government introduced a controversial “Holocaust law” criminalising the act of blaming the Polish state for crimes committed against Jews by the Nazis. The law prompted a spat with Israel amid claims Warsaw was trying to whitewash elements of its wartime history.
Israel’s foreign ministry said on Monday that the leaders of the other Visegrad countries would still come to Israel to hold bi-lateral talks with Mr Netanyahu.
The Polish decision is a blow for Mr Netanyahu, who had hoped the Visegrad summit would burnish his diplomatic credentials ahead of Israel’s April 9 election. He sees the Visegrad-4 as a counterbalance to western European countries, which tend to be more critical of Israel’s policies towards the Palestinians.
But Mr Netanyahu has also faced criticism in Israel over what some see as a bid to win allies in central Europe at the expense of revising Holocaust history and whitewashing anti-Semitism.
PWTorch editor Wade Keller presents a special Thursday Flagship edition of the Wade Keller Pro Wrestling Podcast featuring a WrestleMania 36 Preview with ex-WWE Creative Team member and professional stand-up comedian Matt McCarthy.
(Search “wade keller” to subscribe in podcast app or CLICK HERE to subscribe in Apple Podcasts.)
WWE star Dolph Ziggler appeared on the “Kennedy” show Thursday night in prime time on Fox Business.
Ziggler, who often tweets about political topics, was one of three panelists on the show reacting to the U.S. presidential race and other topics from the business & political sphere.
Ziggler, making his first appearance on the show, equated the 2016 presidential race to pro wrestling storylines, especially Donald Trump wanting to remain an “outsider” grabbing votes because he doesn’t seem like he’s part of the establishment. Meanwhile, Ziggler equated the Democratic race between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders as a storyline building to the climax at Summerslam/the Democratic Convention.
The interview started with the host, Lisa Kennedy Montgomery, jokingly asking Ziggler if wrestling is fake. Ziggler laughed and said it’s only fake when he loses, which happens a lot.
Later in the panel discussion, the topic of women’s looks came up. Ziggler said he sees a lot of colleagues repeatedly posting photos of themselves online, pointing to self-image issues. He said there’s also a “belly-flattening tea” that is popular in the locker room, since it is a cosmetic business, amplified by trying to look impressive on social media.
With the passing of former St. Louis booker, author, and announcer Larry Matysik this weekend, we wanted to post a list of links to his various appearances on Wrestling Observer Radio with Dave Meltzer and Bryan Alvarez.
Note the following doesn’t include any of his appearances on Eyada with Dave and Bryan, but we’re working on moving those shows over to our archives at some point in the future.
Click Here: liverpool mens jersey
February 2010: Larry came on to discuss the then-passing of former NWA star Jack Brisco. Click here to listen.
September 2010: In a short appearance, Larry discussed the 2010 Wrestling Observer Hall of Fame class. Click here to listen.
January 2011: Larry came on to discuss a book project he was working on listing the top 50 wrestlers of all time. Note the interview starts later in the podcast. Click here to listen.
May 2011: Larry discussed the news of the passing of Randy “Macho Man” Savage. Click here to listen.
August 2011: Larry joined the show to discuss a lower than expected buyrate for WWE Money In The Bank. Click here to listen.
August 2012: Larry returned after a year’s absence to discuss the 2012 Wrestling Observer Hall of Fame. Click here to listen.
March 2013: Larry returned to discuss his book, ‘The 50 Greatest Professional Wrestlers of All Time’. Click here to listen.
July 2013: Larry came on to discuss the Brian McGhee incident and to give his thoughts on the current day product. Click here to listen.
October 2014: Larry discussed the year’s HOF candidates from the St. Louis area. Click here to listen.
August 2016: In what would be his final WOR appearance, Larry gave some health updates and his thoughts on the past, present, and future of pro wrestling. Click here to listen.
The woman’s face was hidden behind a black veil but her voice was full of defiance and pride for the caliphate that she had left just hours before.
“You’re the first infidel I’ve seen in four years,” Umm Hamza said as The Telegraph approached.
She gestured back towards Baghuz, the village in eastern Syria that is now the last fragment of Islamic State territory. “The brothers are lions. They will fight on,” she said. “The Islamic State remains. We are weak now but we will come back again.”
The 21-year-old was one of hundreds of bedraggled women who emerged from Baghuz in recent days. They waited in a huddled mass in a clearing to surrender to the Kurdish fighters of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
Mothers clutched dirty blankets and tugged suitcases through the mud while trying not to lose track of their exhausted children. A woman lifted her black abaya to defecate in a field. There was shouting as families shoved past each other to get to the trucks that would take them north to the refugee camps.
These are among the final citizens of the Islamic State, the last people to have lived in the jihadists’ failed experiment in empire. The SDF now estimates that around 5,000 civilians and 1,500 fighters remain in Baghuz, more than originally thought but still a fraction of the 8 million people who once lived under the jihadists’ black banner.
The SDF have been shocked at the numbers of civilians coming out of the village of BaghuzCredit:
Sam Tarling
Even in their hour of humiliation and defeat, many of the women still burned with the fanaticism that powered the Islamic State for the last five years. They offered no remorse for the caliphate’s crimes and vowed that it would it one day return.
That was the promise of Umm Mohammed, a 37-year-old from the nearby town of al-Bukamal. Like most Isil women she identified herself by her Arabic nickname, meaning Mother of Mohammed.
Whatever her oldest son’s real name was, he is dead now. He was killed defending al-Bukamal, she said, while a second son was cut down in the town of Sousa. Her five remaining children were huddled around her feet, their eyes wide with fear and faces caked with dirt.
Was it worth losing two sons in battle and subjecting her other children to horrors of war?
The demise of ISIL in Syria and Iraq
“We stayed in the Islamic State because we want heaven. And we buy heaven with our souls and our children’s souls,” she said. “God didn’t create us for this life, he created us for the next life.”
In between dense paragraphs of religious dogma and venomous condemnations of Shia Muslims, Umm Mohammed offered glimpses of the situation inside Baghuz.
She and her family had been living in a tent made of rags for two weeks. “Our tents were like palaces because they were in the Islamic State,” she said.
She said there were shortages of food but also that poorer families were unable to pay the high prices that come with a siege economy. Isil fighters had distributed some food but it was not enough. Without phones or internet access, they had little sense of the scale of Isil’s collapse. They knew only that Western warplanes were overhead all night and all day.
Islamic State losing its grip on Syria
As she spoke, a female Kurdish fighter searched through the folds of an Isil woman’s abaya. The jihadist’s wife stood patiently as the young woman in the colourful scarf checked her.
As far as the Kurds knew, any one of these women could be a suicide bomber. Isil has no qualms about using women or children in attacks and none of these people had been searched for explosive vests before they reached the SDF’s lines.
The frantic hours it took to load the Isil families on to the trucks passed without incident under the watchful eye of Kurdish fighters. A column of American special forces drove past and bearded commandos peered through the windows at people from Baghuz.
There were moments when the women’s certainty seemed to crack. One mother said that the Isil fighters had promised them that the UN would be waiting to receive them once they came out of Baghuz. Instead they found only their Kurdish conquerors and waiting journalists.
But she insisted that Isil had not misled her. “There is no betrayal in the Islamic State.”
The large numbers of civilians in the remaining Isil pocket have complicated the SDF offensiveCredit:
Sam Tarling
The woman said that Isil had ordered them to go as part of a deal struck between the jihadists and the SDF. Their understanding of the terms were murky but some suggested that the SDF agreed to let them out in return for Isil releasing Kurdish prisoners.
The SDF strongly denied that there was a deal but said that they welcomed civilians coming out of Baghuz. “We are fighting a terror group. Either they surrender or they have to fight and die,” said Adnan Afrin, an SDF commander.
The women said that was exactly the intention of the remaining Isil fighters, who were heavily armed and prepared to launch suicide bombers to defend Baghuz. “The brothers have everything and they are ready always. Even the women are carrying guns and are ready to be suicide bombers,” said one.
SDF commanders have been shocked at how many women and children have emerged from the tiny pocket of Isil-territory. They had originally expected there were only around 1,500 civilians inside but so far more than 5,000 have come out.
The large numbers of civilians have made it difficult for the SDF to call in airstrikes and will likely confound the predictions of a quick victory made by Donald Trump and others. Cmdr Afrin said it was impossible to predict how much long the operation would take.
While most of the women continued to proclaim their loyalty to Isil, a few began a familiar routine of claiming that they had nothing to do with the jihadists.
Umm Mohammed had some advice about women who said that. “Everyone here is from the Islamic State. Every one of us,” she said. “Anyone who says they are not is a liar.”
PWTorch editor Wade Keller presents a special Thursday Flagship edition of the Wade Keller Pro Wrestling Podcast featuring a WrestleMania 36 Preview with ex-WWE Creative Team member and professional stand-up comedian Matt McCarthy.
(Search “wade keller” to subscribe in podcast app or CLICK HERE to subscribe in Apple Podcasts.)
Former WWE/ECW star Rob Van Dam is going through a divorce, reports TMZ.
RVD’s wife, Sonya, reportedly filed for divorce in Los Angeles court citing “irreconcilable differences.” The couple had been separated since December.
TMZ talked to Sonya, who says they’re still talking to each other and on “relatively good terms,” but “it’s a private time; it’s a hard thing for me to even talk about.”
RVD and Sonya had been married since 1998. Sonya is asking for spousal support, RVD to pay her attorney’s fees, and for her last name to be restored from Skatkowski to Delbeck.
Van Dam has been off WWE TV for about two years. He did appear at the 2016 WWE Hall of Fame ceremony in April in Dallas supporting The Godfather.
RVD told WWE’s website at the time that he’s been working on movie projects since his last WWE run.
“I had to undergo a knee scope on my left knee to clean out some of the gunk that built up over the past few months after the ACL/Meniscus repair” she wrote, saying that the reason for the scope was that there was a bump in the knee that was causing her to have issues. That issue has now been fixed.
She also noted that her rehab was heating up, and credited the WWE Performance Center staff for her rehabilitation.
“Genuinely don’t know what I would do without the amazing medical staff at the PC,” she wrote. “They push me to give me all 100% of the time but are always there to help/comfort me when I feel like I just want to quit or if I feel like I have no more to give!”
Nox injured her ACLduring a match against Rhea Ripley in a Mae Young Classic quarterfinal match back in August. She had just come back from an ACL injury in her other knee that kept her out for a year.
She noted in the post that she hopes to be back by next summer.
Estonia’s surging far-Right is threatening to bring down the country’s liberal government in elections that mark the spread of populism to the furthest corners of the EU.
The country’s extremist EKRE party has more than doubled its support ahead of today’s election, threatening a significant upset to the country’s two main parties.
The party, which is set to increase its share of the parliament’s 101 seats from 8 to 20, has previously called for an "Estxit" referendum, with recent successes mirroring the rise of right-wing populism across Europe and the US.
A torch-lit march through the capital city of Tallinn last week, part-organised by EKRE, bore a striking resemblance to the Unite the Right "Tiki torch" marches held by Trump supporters in Charlottesville in 2017. Some 10,000 Estonians are believed to have taken part.
EKRE, whose name stands for The Conservative People’s Party of Estonia, is capitalising on growing anti-refugee sentiment and concerns that the tiny nation might be swallowed up into a federalised EU.
The tenure of Estonian Prime Minister Juri Ratas is under threat from the surging far-Right EKRE partyCredit:
Mohamed Abd El Ghany/Reuters
Tajo Kadajas, 65, from Estonia’s second-largest city of Tartu, said he voted for EKRE over fears that the country was losing its identity.
"The EU has forced quotas on us, to attract thousands of migrants. Members of our parliament just push buttons, rubber stamping all the laws that come out of Brussels".
"I voted EKRE because they stand for the preservation of our nation, and our Estonian culture and language".
However, this anti-refugee sentiment stands at odds to official statistics. Of the 550 refugees Estonia was required to take in, it is estimated that only 206 asylum seekers ever arrived in the country and that 80 of those have already left.
EKRE’s rise has followed populist Right-wing movements sweeping Europe from north-to-south, Italy Sweden. But while many parties are share sympathetic views towards Russia, EKRE takes a hard line against its neighbour.
Nationalist sentiment in Estonia is rooted in Russian expansionism and aggression, and among EKRE’s promises are to close the Russian-speaking schools that cater for 20 per cent of the country’s school-age population.
The upswell in support for EKRE is sweeping away smaller parties that traditionally make up a centrist coalition.
Dr Allan Sikk of the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies said "uneasy bedfellows" from across the political spectrum may need to work together in order to keep EKRE out of power.
PWTorch editor Wade Keller presents a special Thursday Flagship edition of the Wade Keller Pro Wrestling Podcast featuring a WrestleMania 36 Preview with ex-WWE Creative Team member and professional stand-up comedian Matt McCarthy.
(Search “wade keller” to subscribe in podcast app or CLICK HERE to subscribe in Apple Podcasts.)
U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump referenced a recent conversation with WWE CEO Vince McMahon in an interview with NBC News’s “Meet The Press with Chuck Todd” that will be airing Sunday morning on NBC.
In an interview recorded Saturday, Trump was asked by Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd about his wrestling-style entrance at the Republican National Convention Monday in Cleveland.
Trump responded by noting his strategy and post-entrance conversation with Vince McMahon, who endorsed the theatrics.
The interview will be Trump’s first network TV interview since being formally nominated for the Republican party’s presidential ticket on Thursday…
NBC News Release Transcript
CHUCK TODD: Let me tell you, you bring up Thursday night, I’ve got to ask you about your entrance. Before we get to Thursday, that Monday night entrance was something else. I know you’ve gotten a lot of feedback on it.
DONALD TRUMP: I think I’m a little bit lucky, and a couple of people had that idea and I went along with the idea. And everything just worked right. And it was so good that they wanted to do it on Thursday night. I said, “Never in a million years, because you’ll never get it that way again.”
CHUCK TODD: I don’t think I’ve seen that even on WWE.
DONALD TRUMP: Yeah, I know. Well, Vincent’s a good friend of mine. He called me, he said, “That was a very, very good entrance.” But I didn’t want to do it a second time, because, you know, it never works out the second time.
***
Trump was inducted into the celebrity wing of WWE’s Hall of Fame three years ago surrounding WrestleMania 29 in New York/New Jersey and has a long history with the McMahons and WWE.
WWE also has a working relationship with NBC Universal, mainly for WWE Raw and Smackdown programming on USA Network. WWE and NBCU also entered into a promotional relationship last year trying to address WWE’s image among advertisers and potential business partner.
A second Chris Jericho cruise will officially be happening.
Jericho posted a video today announcing that “Chris Jericho’s Rock ‘N’ Wrestling Rager at Sea part two: Second Wave” will be taking place. Jericho noted that further details will be announced in January.
Dave Meltzer had reported after the first cruise that Jericho was planning on making it an annual thing. This year’s cruise sold out a few days before it took place, with it sailing from Miami, Florida to Nassau, Bahamas from October 27-31.
Jericho partnered with both Ring of Honor and Impact Wrestling for matches on this year’s cruise. ROH’s Sea of Honor tournament (which was won by Flip Gordon) and Kenny Omega, Cody Rhodes & Marty Scurll defeating Jericho & The Young Bucks in a six-man tag match aired on Fite TV and HonorClub on November 3 as a special called “Streaming for Vengeance.” The first cruise also featured podcasts, music, and comedy.