WWE news and notes: 9-26-13

Dolph Ziggler

- WWE officials have reportedly completely soured on pushing Dolph Ziggler, which is a turnaround from where they were a year ago, pegging Ziggler as the future of the company. The current line WWE is feeding states that they don’t see Ziggler as a headlining star or a big money-maker, but the reality is this is likely punishment for the recent interview that Ziggler did where he made his very negative and unflattering feelings towards Randy Orton, one of the WWE’s “golden boys”, publicly known.

- Former WWE star Charles “The Godfather/Papa Shango” Wright is returning to wrestling full-time after being mostly retired for several years. Since leaving WWE in 2002, Wright has been the manager of a strip club called Cheetah’s in his hometown of Las Vegas, NV.

- Former WWE star Nick “Eugene” Dinsmore is back with the company, albeit in a non-active role. Dinsmore will be acting as a coach and trainer in WWE’s developmental system, NXT, replacing fellow former star Joey Mercury. Mercury is staying with the company and is being promoted to the role of a backstage producer.

- Former MMA star Phil Friedman, who was wrestling in NXT as James Bronson, has been released from his contract. The signing of Friedman was partially a favor to his dad, who is the president of Toys ‘R’ Us and former president of Mattel, the company that handles WWE’s action figure line. NXT announcer Tony Dawson was also released last week, with WWE citing his complete lack of passion for wrestling as the reason.

- Eva Marie, the newest WWE diva and one of the stars of Total Divas, is impressing officials as they feel like she comes off as a star on television. However, her in-ring work is not very good at this point, hence the reason she has yet to see any real action on television at this point. Currently, officials are trying to figure out something for her to do in order to keep her on television while keeping her in-ring activity to a minimum.

- CMLL star Volador, Jr. is currently being heavily scouted by WWE, likely to not only increase WWE’s Latino audience, but also to hopefully somewhat make up for the fiasco that has been Sin Cara‘s entire run with the company. Volador has competed in the US in the past, having worked in TNA briefly for their World X-Cup event as well as forming a short-lived tag team with Japanese star Hiroshi Tanahashi.

- It is being reported that, when Sweet T re-signed with WWE a couple of years ago, WWE signed him to a deal worth roughly $400,00o/year, a significant increase from the $100,000/year that New Japan Pro Wrestling was paying him. The reason this is coming up now is because WWE reportedly has interest in Karl Anderson and Prince Devitt, two American wrestlers (or gaijin) who, much like T did as Giant Bernard, have made pretty big splashes in Japan.