WWE: Drake Maverick Contract Update, Extreme Rules 2020 Announced, Updated SD Ratings

Drake Maverick WWE Contract Update

Drake Maverick was among the talent released by WWE this past April. Despite being released, Maverick continued to work for the NXT brand for their Cruiserweight Championship tournament, which resulted in him losing in the finals but earning a contract in the end.

PWInsider’s Mike Johnson reported that his sources recently stated that Maverick’s release had indeed been genuine. Maverick reportedly was left unaware until the day of the tapings for the finals of the Cruiserweight Championship tournament that WWE had reconsidered his release and were going to offer him a new contract.

Johnson reported that Maverick being left in the dark was the reason why he filed several trademarks on May 27th (for Rockstar Spud and “Spud”) since he had assumed his time in he company was over and was preparing for his future.

---

WWE Announces Extreme Rules Event for July

During this past Sunday’s Backlash event, WWE aired an advertisement officially announcing that their next pay-per-view event will be Extreme Rules and will take place on July 19th.

The advertisement also revealed a brand new logo and design for this year’s event.

Similar to the announcements for their recent Money in the Bank and Backlash events, the location for this year’s Extreme Rules event was not revealed. This event was originally scheduled to take place at the SAP Center in San Jose, California but is now currently expected to take place at the WWE Performance Center instead.

---

Updated WWE Friday Night SmackDown Ratings

This past Friday’s episode of WWE Friday Night SmackDown drew a final viewership of 2,065,000 on FOX, according to Showbuzz Daily. This was up compared to the initial overnight number of 2,016,000 viewers on the network.