Various News: SD Social Media Score, Richards Speaks Out, Sags

Partial Source: The Pro Wrestling Torch

— Trendrr.tv reports that Friday’s episode of SmackDown scored 60,701 in social media activity, which is the highest for a first-run Friday night episode since March 9. This episode topped the pre-WrestleMania clip-show edition, which scored 59,163 on March 30. Smackdown ranked #3 on cable TV, trailing only the NHL playoffs and SpongeBob SquarePants on Nickelodeon.

— NOAH has released a portion of their card for the “Mitsuharu Misawa Memorial Night” event on June 13, taking place in Tokyo. The information was posted on NOAH’s Facebook page. Included is a six-man tag match that will feature US and Australian wrestlers: Luke Gallows & Roderick Strong & Bobby Fish vs. Zack Sabre, Jr. & the team of Mikey Nicholls & Shane Haste from Australia. The top six-man tag match announced is Morishima & Kensuke Sasaki & Shiro Koshinaka vs. Jun Akiyama & Akitoshi Saito & Go Shiozaki.

— WrestleShark spoke with Jerry Sags about returning to WCW, about what led to the company closing and a shoot incident involving Scott Hall and Kevin Nash. Here are some highlights:

On Returning to WCW: “I always had a thing in my heart for WCW, I liked the style of Wrestling there. It had it’s own jive going on, it was a different style. It wasn’t until Nash and Hall tried to make WCW like WWE, that’s when I didn’t like it. I liked it the way it used to be, it was just a good old wrestling company backed by Ted Turner…I didn’t like it as the new company they tried to make it, which turned out to be the death of it.”

On the death of WCW: “I think it was the success and the death of it were caused by Eric had unlimited funds with Ted Turners deep pockets, to roll with it for those many years was fine so long as it was Ted Turners company. I was there for the first merger…things changed after that…you have to remember, Ted Turner loved wrestling all his life. Wrestling made [his networks] headline news when he was trying to make it…

“What happened was when the mergers, he lost a little bit of the grip there, it became a bit more obvious that the merger with Time Warner that now it was more of a ratings game…The crusher of it was that when it was peaking in the late 90s, the second merger happened…pretty much Turner lost almost all control over the company. When the ratings dropped off, and it was costing more to keep going than it was to drop off then it’s dry and simple…it’s gone. The ratings go, they end it. That’s as simple as it is.”

On a shoot incident involving Scott Hall and Kevin Nash: “The guy I punched in the mouth was pretty powerful in the company, my old buddy Scott Hall, I wish I could take that punch back a million times. Hall and Nash came in, I didn’t know Kevin that much…he became friends with friends of mine, Shawn, Triple H and Scott…Scott was different when he came down to WCW. I don’t know if it was chemically altered.

“Everyone changes when they come out of that pressure cooker in WWF. It’s stressful, some of the guys turn into backstabbers, some guys deal with the pressure in different ways. We were doing a thing…I felt this blow to the back of my skull, it knocked me out, I had a concussion, the whole nine yards. I was mad about it, almost the kind of thing I was gonna fight him then, but I let it go.

“JJ Dillon called me and said, we just need you to make the rest of these bookings, you’re on the marquee. So we get into the match, I tried to stay out as much as I could, it got all screwed up because Six Pac was supposed to run down and do something, but he never showed up. Suddenly, I didn’t know what hit me, I went down, I’m seeing stars.

“I feeling like there was a cut on the back of my neck, but I’m feeling back there and there’s no cut. I look around and I didn’t know who hit me from behind, I see Scott with a chair and he throws it in my face. I go that’s it, I walked in the ring and just started hitting him with punches, knocked him out. It just happened like that, I didn’t wanna fight him, it just happened.

“Something was building up there from the first time he hit me, then it happened again…. I hear this noise from the shower, Kevin Nash came in the locker room with a bat and was smashing above Knobbs head with a bat and was saying “we’ll see who has the stroke in this company…that was pretty much him telling us we were getting fired. At the time they were practically booking, and I’ve just knocked the bookers teeth down his throat. When we watched the tape back, we see Oh my god! It wasn’t Scott with the chair, It was Kevin Nash with the tag belt.”

— Former Ring Of Honor World Heavyweight Champion Davey Richards spoke with The Fight Network’s John Pollock about his recent car accident from earlier this month. Richards claims that the accident caused him to miss a tour for New Japan because he could not afford the cost of changing his plane ticket after being delayed by the crash. The former champion also discusses Michael Elgin, Kevin Steen’s rise to main event status and whether or not he considers himself a locker room leader following in the footsteps of Samoa Joe and Daniel Bryan.

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