Commentary Re-Taped For Mae Young Classic, Reigns Mocks Haters, Cody On Not Using Rhodes Name

JR Lita

JR and Lita Re-Call Mae Young Classic

Jim Ross revealed on his latest podcast that he and Lita decided to redo the commentary for the pre-taped Mae Young Classic tournament.

“I felt like we did a better job. The job wasn’t bad the first go-around, but the creative change, the things that we were talking about were planned and now they had been tweaked. That’s entertainment, that’s the business. Anytime you get a chance to do the rewrite, you’re gonna do the rewrite. Always make it better, always make it better.”

“I like the fact that it’s a single-elimination tournament, the winners advance, the losers go home. Therefore it is an episodic production, so it goes from chapter one to chapter two, that kind of thing. So if Lita and I do our job, which we really tried hard to do, we’ll give you enough background on these ladies that you’ll care about them enough to want to watch them participate in this tournament and see if they have to survive or if they have to go home.”

Speaking of the Mae Young Classic, Triple H discussed the tournament in a recent interview with NBC Sports:

“I think the Cruiserweight Classic was easier from a sense of being able to find video and opinions on talent. There are cruiserweights working all over. The opportunities for guys at that level in our business is numerous. While not lucrative necessarily, there’s guys doing it all over the place and all you need is a phone right now to post your stuff up, so you can find footage of people everywhere. It made it easy.

The women is a lot different. The women don’t get booked on the independents nearly as much. That opportunity is very small and that was kind of the key about creating the Mae Young Classic. The thought about it in the very beginning was to create that opportunity. There’s a respect level that I have for these women and it speaks to the difference you’re talking about.

The cruiserweights were the guys that while they might have said ‘Oh I’m smaller, I don’t know if I would make it in WWE,’ you had some examples of smaller guys having success like Rey Mysterio, but there were still other opportunities. You could travel around and get booked all of the time. There was a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow no matter how you were doing it. The ability to stay active was there.

For the women, they got into the business for the same reason all of us did. They love it. They watched it one day and thought it was the greatest thing they ever saw and thought I have to do this. Except there was no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. There was the opportunity for maybe a woman here or there and those were even limited. Even the bookings, if you go to any show in any little armory around the world there’s probably one women’s match on there, if you’re lucky. If one woman is on the show she’s usually someone’s valet.”

Reigns Responds To Fan Hate Video

Roman Reigns has bluntly mocked fans who took part in the pre-SummerSlam Sports Illustrated video that criticized him.

Cody Talks WWE Trademark Issues

In an appearance on Jerry Lawler’s podcast Cody discussed not using the Rhodes name on the independents.

“It’s a very simple matter of, if I want to ask for my last name, if I want to ask for Cody Rhodes back to perform under it — I perform under it at non-televised events, it’s not secret to the fans that’s my last name — but when it comes to television, that’s WWE’s intellectual property. And I am wholeheartedly sure that if I were to ask them to go by Rhodes, they would have no problem. But I don’t mind going by just Cody. I think there’s something cool about it.”

Of course, technically Cody’s real last name is Runnels and that’s why he can’t legally use Rhodes.

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