The Spotlight On Cesaro’s Injury

November 23, 2015 Tom Lynch Spotlight On Raw, Wrestling Cesaro, Cesaro 4-6 months, Cesaro Health, Cesaro Injury, Cesaro Interview, Cesaro Return, Cesaro Surgery, Cesaro Torn Rotator Cuff, Cesaro WWE.com, Monday Night Raw, Raw, Raw Nashville, Raw Preview, WWE, WWE injuries

The hits just keep on coming for the walking wounded superstars of WWE. It was announced today through an exclusive interview with WWE.com that Cesaro would be out of action for 4-6 months following a torn rotator cuff. Cesaro explained that his injury actually occurred over two months ago but that he didn’t think it was too bad until recently. An MRI was done for precautionary measures and it that’s when the tear was identified.

Cesaro noted that he was actually already having the surgery done this afternoon. It’s a really tough break for one of the most consistent performers in WWE. Cesaro was really picking up momentum with the “Cesaro Section” movement which was something that started pretty organically a few months ago in Nashville, Tennessee (Ironically enough the place of Monday Night Raw tonight). Aside from that Cesaro was having some of the best matches in WWE over the past three years or so, most recently a number of Raw main events against John Cena.

Cesaro’s injury couldn’t have come at a worse time for WWE, who is already without Seth Rollins (Torn ACL/MCL) and Randy Orton (dislocated shoulder). F4wonline.com reported last night that Cesaro was supposed to have been in the traditional survivor series match that aired during the pre show but was replaced by Titus O’Neil once his injury was discovered. Once we hear any update on Cesaro’s health and possible return date, we’ll have that for you right here on thedailyspotlight.com .

To read the full interview with Cesaro about his health, you can do some right here http://www.wwe.com/inside/cesaro-injured-interview-28238589

The Spotlight On The Week Ahead For WWE: 11/16-11/22

November 16, 2015November 16, 2015 Tom Lynch Spotlight On Raw, Spotlight On The WWE Network, Wrestling JBL Legends, Nick Bockiwinkel Passes Away, Nick Bockwinkel, Raw, Raw Greenville Preview, Santa's Little Helper, Survivor series 2015, Survivor Series Preview, The Spotlight On The Week Ahead For WWE, Undertaker 25, Undertaker Week, WWE, WWE Network, WWE Tournament Quarterfinals, WWE World Title Tournament

Before I start the list of what to look forward to in WWE this week, I’d like to send my condolences to the family of WWE Hall of Famer Nick Bockwinkel who passed away over the weekend at the age of 80. WWE released a couple of breaking news bits on the WWE Network looking at Bockwinkel’s induction into the WWE Hall of Fame, as well as some of the many great moments in his career. Bockwinkel was unquestionably one of the all time greats. I expect that there will be a tribute to Bockwinkel tomorrow night on Raw, at least in some capacity. With no great way to transition, let’s get into the week ahead for WWE.

Monday: Later tonight WWE Monday Night Raw emanates live from Bon Secours Wellness Arena in Greenville, SC, returning to the States after a few weeks in the UK. I’m really looking forward to tomorrow’s Raw as the quarter finals in the WWE World Heavyweight Title Tournament takes place. The tournament is stacked with four matches that could be really great. They are as follows: Roman Reigns vs. Cesaro, Alberto Del Rio vs. Kalisto, Kevin Owens vs Neville and Dean Ambrose vs. Dolph Ziggler. On top of that this will be the final Raw before the 2015 Survivor Series and the Undertaker is advertised locally as being there live. It’ll be interesting to see how this all unfolds tomorrow night.

Undertaker Week: Tomorrow night immediately following Raw, on the WWE Network, Undertaker Week will begin with the first of a two part “Legends” interview with JBL hosting a sit down interview with Triple H, Shawn Michaels and Stone Cold Steve Austin. The four legends will discuss their thoughts on their many battles with the Undertaker and this 2 part interview wraps up on Thursday on the Network. Aside from that, the WWE Network will also feature two additional features on the Undertaker looking at his greatest moments on Tuesday and the most dangerous matches in his career on Wednesday. I also expect that there will be some sort of on demand section added to Undertaker Week similar to what they did with Black Histroy month. I say this because WWE has quietly added three episodes of Smackdown from 2007-2009 all prominently featuring the Undertaker. I’ve enjoyed all of the theme weeks on the Network and I’m sure that this will be no exception.

2015 Survivor Series- This of course all culminates on Sunday night when WWE presents the 29th annual Survivor Series event live on the WWE Network from Atlanta, Georgia. It appears that the event will feature both the semi finals and the finals of the WWE Heavyweight Title Tournament, a women’s championship match between Charlotte and Paige and a tag team match between The Brothers of Destruction and The Wyatt Family as WWE celebrates the 25th anniversary of the Undeetaker. Interesting to note that their are not any Traditional Survivor Series Matches announced for Sunday as of this writing. Things could certainly change this week at TV, however, and I’m sure all of you know that I’ll be rooting for a traditional survivor series match or two to be added. There is a one hour long pre show being advertised on Sunday so, worst comes to worse, WWE could certainly put one of those matches on the pre show.

Closing Thoughts:

Obviously with the conclusion of the World Title Tournament, The Survivor Series and Undertaker Week on the Network all coming up this week, it’s going to be a pretty important week for WWE. I should also mention that on November 17th, WWE Studios’ latest film, Santa’s Little Helper, will be released on DVD and Blu Ray starring WWE Studios mainstay, the Miz, and Paige. This is a release that I plan on checking out here sometime before the holidays, it looks like it’ll be fun.

Ok well that’s going to do it for me but what are you looking forward to most this week in WWE? What are some of your favorite Undertaker moments? Let me know in the comments section below or on own brand new official twitter @Daily_Spotlight.

The Spotlight on Raw 11/09/2015

November 10, 2015 Tom Lynch Spotlight On Raw, Wrestling Brothers of Destruction, Raw, Raw Highights, Raw Machester, Raw Match of the week, Raw Results, Raw review, Raw UK, Survivor Series, Survivor Series Preview, The Spotlight On Raw, The Undertaker, WWE, WWE World Title Tournament, WWE World Title Tournament Results

WWE Monday Night Raw just went off the air emanating live from Machester, Great Britain and I honestly thought it was a pretty strong show. We found out 2 quarterfinal matches for the WWE World Title Tournament as Roman Reigns will take on Cesaro and Dean Ambrose will take on Dolph Ziggler in two unique, fresh matches. Aside from that I also really enjoyed some of the other build for the Survivor Series as WWE is really making it feel like one of the big four shows, at least in my opinion. Let’s get right into some of the highlights on the show.

Highlights:

1) The Brothers Of Destruction Are Back– This one I’ll probably get a little flack for but I really enjoyed the ending of Raw with the returns of both the Undertaker and Kane. I also appreciated that, for the second week in a row, they continued to show old school clips of both the Undertaker and Kane to really point out how big of a deal what Bray Wyatt had done was. Say what you will about the hokeyness of the last segment with the lightning and the special effects but that’s part of what I love about wrestling. Whoever said wrestling had to be so serious? Furthermore, the crowd absolutely lost their minds when the Undertaker and Kane came out and they ate up the staredown with the Wyatt Family showering the ring with “This Is Awesome” Chants. Some of the folks on twitter seem a bit upset that Undertaker and Kane left the Wyatts laying but the Wyatts had done the same over the past few weeks. Now there is still one last Raw before Survivor Series to see how the Wyatts regroup. I’m hooked into this one, can’t wait to see where they go next.

2) The Tournament– I really enjoyed the way that they did the first round of the tournament throughout the night while leaving three more of the first round matches for Smackdown. By spacing out the matches throughout the night, this gave the viewers reason to remain engaged in the show all night and I felt the tournament matches made the show go by pretty fast for a 3 hour show. As for the tournament matches, I felt that Dolph Ziggler and The Miz had a good match and especially felt that Dean Ambrose and Tyler Breeze had a good long match. I didn’t feel like Breeze lost anything by losing because he hung in there with Ambrose for so long and simply got caught by a rollup. The shock of the tournament so far, for me, was seeing Cesaro pick of a win over Sheamus (with a nice little assist from Rooney!). I assumed that Sheamus would get the win to set up a face-heel match with Roman. Instead we’re going to get Roman vs. Cesaro in a really intriguing match between two fan favorites.

3) The New Day- The New Day was in rare form tonight and hysterical by dropping in disses on Harry Potter and talking about how they really outdid themselves. They remain a highlight on every show they’re apart of and I was glad that they mentioned not being a part of the tournament because that;s the first thing I thought when I saw the bracket as well. As for the six man featuring the New Day against The Usos and Neville, it was the match of the night as all six of them busted their hides with high flying moves at every turn and Neville even getting a “Holy Shit” chant due to his Red Arrow off the top to the outside. Go out of your way to watch that match, it was great.

Closing Thoughts

Overall, the crowd deserves some credit here because they were great throughout the night and gave Raw a really unique feel to it. One of the first things I thought from watching the crowd was “Wow NXT: Takeover is going to be the best!” I can’t wait for that show.

In closing, we also found out that next week on the WWE Network it will be Undertaker week leading into the Survivor Series and his 25th Anniversary. Ironically, it will also be Undertake week here on the daily spotlight as I’ll be counting down my top 25 favorite Undertaker moments of all time. Hopefully, my piece will act as a good companion piece to Undertaker week on the Network. The WWE Network alwasy does a good job with their themed weeks and I’m sure next week will be no different.

Well that’s going to do it for me tonight but if you haven’t done so I’ve posted the first part of my Survivor Series Retrospective looking at the first 9 years of the Survivor Series from 1987-1995, so be sure to check that out. Until then, what was some of your favorite moments from Raw? What did you think of the Brothers of Destruction returning to Raw?

The Spotlight On The WWE Title Tournament (Updated With Bracket)

November 9, 2015 Tom Lynch Spotlight On Raw, Wrestling #RawManchester, dean ambrose, nxt, Raw, Raw Spoilers, Roman Reigns, seth rollins, Seth Rollins Injury, Survivor Series, WWE, WWE Network, WWE World Title Tournament, WWE World Title Tournament Bracket, WWE World Title Tournament Spoilers

Please note that below you will find a spoiler on the bracket for the WWE World Title Tournament, which will in fact feature 16 different WWE Superstars. If you’d like to continue reading from this point I won’t give away any of the first round results (I don’t actually know them myself) but just the matches that you can expect to see in the first round of the tournament. First off Roman Reigns will be going one on one with the Big Show. The winner of that match will face the winner of the first round match between Cesaro and Sheamus. Right below them on the bracket it’ll be Alberto Del Rio squaring off with Stardust and the winner of that match will face the winner of Ryback Vs. Kalisto ( I’ll be honest I’m pulling for upset here so we can get Del rio vs. Kalisto in the Quarterfinals, that’ll be a lot of fun.)

On the other side of the bracket, Kevin Owens will take on Titus O’Neil and the winner of that will face the winner of King Barrett vs. Neville. Rounding out the tournament below them will be The Miz taking on Dolph Ziggler & the winner of that match will take on the winner of Dean Ambrose vs Tyler Breeze.

Thus, those hoping for a “Battle Of The Best Friends” final between Dean Ambrose & Roman Reigns are in luck, as the only way that match can happen is in the finals. If you’re looking for a prediction from me I would say Reigns over Del Rio in the semis & Ambrose over Owens before Reigns outlasts Ambrose to win the world title.

What I could tell you is that the first round of the tournament is going to be completed this week between Raw & Smackdown. This would suggest that the Quarterfinals of the tournament would likely take place next week and the semi finals & finals of the tournament would both take place at the Survivor Series, similar to the way they did it with the Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Invitiational down in NXT.

I’ll be back a little bit later to kick of my Survivor Series Retrospective and, at the lastest, tomorrow morning looking at Raw. Until then, who do you guys think is going to win the tournament? Let me know in the comments section below, on Twitter @TommyOnTheSpot or via email at thedailyspotlight2@gmail.com!

The Spotlight Tough Enough Power Rankings for Week 5

July 28, 2015July 28, 2015 Tom Lynch Spotlight On The WWE Network, Wrestling Hulk Hogan, nxt, Raw, Tough Enough, Tough Enough Contestants, tough enough new judge, tough enough patrick, Tough Enough Power Rankings, Tough Enough Preview, tough enough sara lee, Tough Enough Thoughts, tough enough thougts, tough Enough ZZ, WWE

Last week’s Tough Enough saw the surprising elimination of Patrick Clark who had been number one on our power rankings for quite some time after proving to be passionate about the business and also winning a string of competitions. Patrick seemed to be the front-runner of this season’s Tough Enough. So what happened? Well, Patrick became everything that he hated from the Tanner in the beginning of the show. In the beginning of the show, Patrick was the likable, humble kid who knew everything about the wrestling business and showed the most respect for the history of the WWE product in general. He was also quite critical of Tanner for coming across cocky and not having any sense of humility after winning a few of the challenges. Well, fast forward a few weeks and now Patrick is the alpha dog of the Tough Enough male contestants and he, in essence, became Tanner. Patrick started to become less humble with each victory as the show went on and he started getting fights with, literally, all of the other male contestants, even ZZ. To make matters worse, Patrick also started to show a bit of disrespect towards the history of the business by stating that the big guys’ time in WWE was over, referencing that the Ultimate Warrior was gone and Hulk Hogan had retired (Does he not know that Brock Lesnar and the Undertaker are headlining Summerslam this year and, more to the point that Hulk Hogan was a judge on the show?). Lastly, to bring it back full circle, Just how Tanner motivated Patrick so much so that he eventually did beat him, Patrick got everyone else in the competition motivated by his attitude that he started to lose challenges. In the end, it’s a shame that Patrick got voted off the show last week but Patrick is just 19 years old and has plenty of time to grow as a performer and mature as a person. I do expect that he’ll get a chance again.

Tonight is a new night for the final 8 of the show and actually for the show in general. Obviously due to all of the controversy surrounding Hulk Hogan (I’ll get to him later in the week, don’t think I forgot about the Hulkster) in his personal life, there will be a new judge called on to take Hulk Hogan’s spot tonight. Everyone from Ric Flair, to Mick Foley, to Bret Hart to the trainers rotating into the judge role has been rumored. If I had to choose though, I would say that it’s either going to beTough Talk host, The Miz (who’s been the breakout star of tough enough, for me, thus far) or the actual host of the show, Chris Jericho, will make the easy transition into the role of judge. I’m actually curious to see if WWE even makes mention of Hogan’s disappearance from the show, though I honestly wouldn’t blame them if they completely ignored him after his terrible comments. With all of that out of the way, let’s get into this week’s power rankings.

1) Mada Abdelhamid (Last Week #5)

A really tough week for the power rankings this week because honestly each one of the contestants has there faults and there is no clear breakout performer, now that Patrick is gone. Mada is the one guy who I will say has been on the rise since day one and has continued to get better each week. Mada has a unique look and also cuts a good promo in being able to throw some Arabic in with his English from time to time. It’s also come out that Mada used to play professional basketball, so he’s obviously an athletic guy, he seems to be everything WWE would want. The one thing about Mada is that he lost his biggest supporter in the competition with Hulk Hogan being gone so it’ll be interesting to see if he can win over Daniel Bryan and Paige. Mada is the only male contestant never to be in the bottom three.

2) Sara Lee ( Last week #8)

I will admit a bit of bias here as Sara Lee is my favorite of the remaining women in the competition. Sara remains the favorite amongst the majority of fans and last week she showed a bit of fire getting right into the faces of both Giorgia and Amanda, showing that she isn’t going to stand for getting pushed around any longer. The other thing with Sara is that she’s also getting better in the competitions. While she hasn’t passed Giorgia yet, getting better proves that she is more trainable than originally thought. The thing with her would be for her to stay out of the drama. Patrick let Tanner pull him into the drama and Sara is now letting Giorgia and Amanda pull her into it.

3) Joshua Bredl (Last Week #7)

I’m finally starting not to look so silly for picking Joshua as my number one pick to start the series off as Joshua is really starting to come into his own. I know Joshua was in the bottom three last week, but that was an aberration as I don’t think anyone other than Hulk Hogan though Josh deserved to be in the bottom three. Joshua has started winning challenges and has really improved his conditioning, dropping 35 pounds since the series began. Last week, we even saw Joshua’s softer side as he facetimed with his daughter. Joshua can still improve in the personality department but he’s getting there.

4) Tanner Saraceno ( Last Week #2)

After one or two weeks where it looked like Tanner was just letting his reputation from the first week carry him through, Tanner really upped his game last week. To me, he came across really arrogant during the first few weeks and that was ok when he was dominating competitions but once he started to show his weaknesses, Tanner lost his only redeeming quality. Well, last week Tanner showed that he is a pretty good guy as after he dominated the obstacle competition, he went back to try and help all of his peers. After that, Tanner also went to the doctor with Chelsea to continue to show this selflessness. Tanner biggest thing is whether he can do it in the ring and also improve some of his promos.

5) Giorgia Priscina (Last Week #3)

I don’t understand why every time a contestant on this show starts winning competitions, they have to become arrogant. I really liked Giorgia prior to last week but she came off just as bitchy as Gabi was last week. She really started having a big head and also ratted out Chelsea for not being able to compete. She came off bad there and worse when she started fake crying about it right after this. She may be the best in challenges but if this how she acts now imagine if she wins the $250,000 contract?

6) ZZ Loupe (Last Week #4)

ZZ has the most personality amongst anyone left on the show and if he got voted out, I’d be pretty bummed to lose my favorite character on the show. That said, ZZ really isn’t doing well in many of the physical competitions and his lack of conditioning is starting to become a problem for the judges. The thing that rubbed me the wrong way was when ZZ said that he’s been trying to step it up over the past few days. He really should have made conditioning a priority right when he made the show, like Joshua did. ZZ is even losing some of the fan support as last week he ended up getting less votes than Josh in the vote to send Patrick home. I hope ZZ finds a way to improve because I think he’d make a great addition to WWE in some role.

7) Chelsea Green (Last Week #9)

Chelsea started out in this competition doing really well and even seemed to have a leg up on the competition due to her past training and brief stint in WWE. Then last week she got hurt and had to skip out on the in ring competition. If her injury continues to hinder her, there is no way she’ll be able to last in this competition.

8) Amanda Sacaranato (Last Week #6)

Mark my words: Amanda is the next to go from this season’s tough enough. As a matter of fact, I think she would have went home last week had she been put in the bottom three. How this girl has escaped the bottom three every week is baffling to me. She is the one contestant who really hasn’t showed anything throughout the whole completion. She’s pretty and has a good look but she hasn’t looked good in the ring, she hasn’t showed the personality and, last week, she didn’t even finish the obstacle course. I think Amanda is on borrowed time, and you know I’ve been a fan of hers since the beginning.

Well that’s going to do it for me today but make sure to tune into a brand new live Tough Enough tonight on the USA Network at 8PM EST! Do you agree with my ratings? Let me know why or why not. Please be sure to also hit the subscribe button so you can get these Tough Enough updates delivered to your email every week.

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