WWE: SmackDown Christmas Taping Plans, Chelsea Green Update, New Trademarks

Dec 9, 2020

WWE Reportedly Not Taping Live SmackDown Episode on Christmas

WWE reportedly will not be taping a new live episode of Friday Night SmackDown on Christmas Day this year, according to Inside The Ropes.

Inside The Ropes’ Gary Cassidy reported that the company currently is planing to give their SmackDown brand the Christmas holiday off. Cassidy also reported that WWE will still be airing a new episode of SmackDown on that day but will be taping the episode on an earlier date in the week.

It is currently not known if WWE will also be taking New Year’s Day off as well for SmackDown’s weekly tapings.

In 2017, WWE aired a live episode of SmackDown on Christmas Day and also aired a live episode the following week on New Year’s Day.

Chelsea Green Status Update

As noted before, Chelsea Green made her official main roster debut for the SmackDown brand last month, which resulted in her suffering a broken wrist injury. Prior to her debut, Green had been quietly called up to the main roster following the May 27th episode of NXT.

Fightful reported that the reason for the long delay between Green’s intitial call-up and her SmackDown debut was due to WWE scrapping several plans for Green over the past several months.

One of those plans involved a feud with Mickie James that would have been inspired by James’ “stalker” storyline with Trish Stratus from 2005-2006. This storyline reportedly would have had Green playing the role of the “stalker” and James playing the role of Stratus. WWE reportedly had taped content to start the angle but all of the plans for the storyline were abruptly dropped hours before it was set to officially start.

WWE Files New Trademarks

WWE recently filed several new trademarks to the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

A trademark for “Karen Kwan” was filed on October 20th but only recently appeared in the USPTO’s trademark database for wrestling and entertainment-related purposes.

A trademark for “Tyler Rust” was filed on December 2nd for wrestling and entertainment-related purposes. NXT talent Rust Taylor revealed on Twitter that this will be his new ring name in NXT and WWE going forward.

A trademark for “NXT New Year’s Evil” was filed on December 6th for wrestling and entertainment-related purposes. This was revealed by NXT during this past Sunday’s NXT TakeOver: WarGames 2020 event to be the name of their next television special on USA Network.