Table of contents for June 2019 in Pro Wrestling Illustrated

WE MET THREE Executive Vice Presidents and then a fourth. We met the Chief Brandi Officer. We even met a few men and women who won’t be moonlighting as executives. I think they used to be referred to as wrestlers. The only people we didn’t meet at the All Elite Wrestling rallies in Jacksonville and Las Vegas are the two men who are at the very top of the corporate hierarchy: Shahid and Tony Khan. No one expected to see Shahid, the family patriarch. He’s supportive of his son’s new business venture, but professional wrestling is far down his list of priorities. He’s listed as co-owner, but he’s more about sound advice and, well, money. Tony was at both events, but he got nowhere near the podium. He’s a lifelong…

THE ACADEMY AWARDS have come and gone, and once again WWE Studios was left out in the cold. In all seriousness, while maybe not Oscar-worthy, Fighting With My Family, the WWE-produced biopic on former Women’s champion Paige, was getting some love by critics upon in its release in February. The message to WWE might be simple: There’s no need to have your wrestlers play Marines or giant-sized orphans. Their real-life stories are far more interesting. On that note, here’s my annual Oscar-themed edition of “Quick Count.” Roll ’em. A STAR IS BORN Was it the moment she lost the Women’s championship match at SummerSlam to Charlotte Flair, and, in the process, won fans’ sympathies? Was it when she laid out Ronda Rousey on Raw while nursing a broken and bloodied…

Top 10 and Tag Team ratings are based on won-lost records for the past month, quality of opposition, and inherent skill of each wrestler or tag team. These ratings are compiled by a committee consisting of Stu Saks, Dan Murphy, Kris Zellner, Brian Yoder, Louie Dee, and STRIGGA (cagematch.net, purolove.com). The numbers in parentheses indicate a wrestler’s position in that category last issue. Agate-sized ratings are supplied to PWI by promoters and can be e-mailed to us at pwiresults@yahoo.com (please put the word “ratings” in the subject line). FOR PERIOD ENDED FEBRUARY 11, 2019 TOP 10 1 DANIEL BRYAN 210, Aberdeen, WA (1) WWE heavyweight champion 2 JAY LETHAL 225, Elizabeth, NJ (2) ROH heavyweight champion 3 JAY WHITE 198, Auckland, New Zealand (–) IWGP heavyweight champion 4 BOBBY LASHLEY 273, Colorado Springs,…

GENE KINISKI: CANADIAN WRESTLING LEGEND Long before the age of Wikipedia-styled websites and online echo chambers, writers of every stripe recognized thorough research as the cornerstone of any worthwhile literary undertaking. Even today, when the allure of visiting a bygone era is such that only a deep dive into the past will suffice to tell a complete tale, good historians and biographers still return to primary sources—eyewitnesses, photographs, and original documents—to effectively recount compelling stories. It is in this spirit that author Steven Verrier revisits the life and career of one of the most celebrated competitors of professional wrestling’s formative era in the book Gene Kiniski: Canadian Wrestling Legend. Verrier journeys to the roots of the wrestler's family tree in the book’s early chapters, tracing the family of Eugene Kiniski…

THERE ARE INHERENT dangers in wrestling. Inside the ring, bodies are slammed, twisted, stretched, and bent. Injuries are part of the game. But sometimes the worst injuries don’t happen inside the ring or in front of a crowd of fans. Sometimes, they happen on a lonely stretch of highway in the middle of nowhere. Ask an independent wrestler how many miles they put on their odometer every year, and they’re likely to say 15,000 or 20,000 miles is a good estimate. Sometimes a lot more. If you want to make it in wrestling, you need to travel. Wrestlers call it “making towns” or “doing the loop,” going from one city after another, carpooling to save money, traveling 14 hours roundtrip for a meager payout and a hope for future bookings.…

THE NEW DANIEL Bryan embraces healthy living, boundless ambition, and, supposedly, the desire to make the world a better place. The problem is the new Daniel Bryan is so caught up in self-motivation, self-improvement, and selfesteem that he’s become self-obsessed. Some would say he’s become very selfish. He also became the WWE champion for the fourth time in his career, defeating AJ Styles for the title on Smackdown back in November, and followed that with victories over Styles at TLC and The Royal Rumble. Sadly, Bryan probably wouldn’t have regained the WWE championship if not for his change in philosophy. He channeled Shinsuke Nakamura and caught Styles with a low blow in their November match. Bryan could have stopped there, but didn’t. He made the transformation complete by needlessly attacking…

IT’S HARD TO imagine our wrestling heroes attempting to make an ordinary living like the rest of us. Remember Mickey Rourke struggling as a supermarket employee in The Wrestler? AJ Styles once told me that he delivered water while his wife was going to college for her teaching degree. And, of course, Matt Striker was a history teacher! We’ve all heard the hard-luck stories of wrestlers who sacrificed everything to make it in the business: Hulk Hogan and Ed Leslie (the future Brutus Beefcake) eating raw potatoes in the back of their van while in Memphis, or Daniel Bryan and Brian Kendrick boiling ramen noodles while attending the Shawn Michaels Wrestling Academy. I thought of this about a year ago, when an inspiring article ran on The Philadelphia Inquirer’s philly.com…

IT’S A FRIDAY morning in early September 2014 at WWE’s Performance Center in Orlando. A roomful of eager yet exhausted recruits are there to prove to trainers like Bill DeMott, Norman Smiley, and Robbie Brookside why they deserve a contract with the world’s preeminent pro wrestling company. By the end of the tryout, six of the 20 would be hired, among them future WWE cruiserweight champion Rich Swann. Not among them was Jeff Cobb, the stocky Hawaiian powerhouse who had represented Guam in light heavyweight freestyle wrestling a decade earlier at the Athens Summer Olympics. It was a disappointing setback that would have dashed the hopes of many young grapplers. But Cobb was also not among those. “They pulled me to the side and said they didn’t have anything for…

BARELY ONE MONTH after upending Kenny Omega for the IWGP title in the main event of Wrestle Kingdom 13, Hiroshi Tanahashi lost the championship to “Switchblade” Jay White in a stunning upset at The New Beginning on February 11 in Osaka, Japan. Tanahashi became an eight-time IWGP champion by beating Omega and, with Omega leaving New Japan for All Elite Wrestling, “The Ace” seemed poised for a lengthy title reign. Tanahashi earned his WK title shot by winning the 2018 G1 Climax tournament with a 7-1-1 record, but the sole blemish in that historic run came at the hands of White. After again pinning Tanahashi in a six-man tag bout at New Japan’s New Year Dash event on January 5, White had firmly established himself as the top contender. At…

SEND LETTERS TO: BETWEEN FALLS Box 96 Ft. Washington, PA 19034 Or you can e-mail your comments to prowrestlingillustrated@yahoo.com PRO WRESTLING ILLUSTRATED welcomes readers' comments on any of our stories or columns. ACHIEVEMENT AWARDS All AJ Styles did was tie Ric Flair’s record, being voted Wrestler of the Year for a third straight time. Still, it was a woman who calls herself “The Man” who graced the cover of the April 2019 issue, which featured the presentation of our annual Achievement Awards. “You guys served several purposes by putting Becky Lynch on the cover,” noted reader Andrew Levin. “You got the hottest star in wrestling to promote PWI by holding up your magazine’s plaque. You obviously got back in Becky’s good graces after giving her an embarrassing number 11 in…