It broke today on all of the major sites that TNA creative team member and wrestling legend Dutch Mantell has been released by TNA Wrestling as well as former WWF Intercontinental Champion and at the time one of TNA’s road agents, Savio Vega a.k.a. TNT a.k.a. Juan Rivera.

What does this mean for the future of TNA?

Well Jeff Jarrett recently took a sabbatical from TNA after the story came out about the bizarre real life backstage love triangle between himself, Karen Angle, and Kurt Angle. Jeff Jarrett, alongside his father Jerry Jarrett and Bob Ryder, founded TNA in 2002 and still owns a small portion of TNA to this day.

Dutch Mantell joined TNA back in 2003 and was considered by everybody who worked there Jeff Jarrett’s right hand man in the company, even more-so than Vince Russo. According to those close to management, whenever there was a creative situation or a situation that required management to butt heads, Mantell would unanimously take Jeff Jarrett’s side in each and every argument, despite how ridiculous it could be.

As it was explained to me today, there are those within the company that feel this cements what has been speculated for the past couple of weeks about Dixie Carter either heavily cutting down Jeff Jarrett’s political power or perhaps even buying his remaining portion of TNA and forcing him out of the company.
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First off, thanks to Luke Thomas @MMANation on Twitter for tweeting his play by play of the press conference. Follow him immediately.

Here are some of the highlights:

Vitor Belfort has been signed to face Rich Franklin at UFC 103, which goes head up with Floyd Mayweather vs. Juan Manuel Marquez. Looks like I’m watching the boxing live and DVRing the UFC show.

Tito Ortiz is back with the UFC as we all pretty much figured. He says that he wants to fight near the end of the year. He also said that his back is healthy.

Dana White conceded in not signing Fedor. He said that they tried everything they could, including offering an “assload” of money to he and M-1 Global.

They signed a three-year deal with ESPN in the UK and supposedly are close to a deal that would change the UFC forever. But he didn’t go into it any more.

UFC 100 did at least 1.5 million buys as White said he was going to jump off the Mandalay Bay hotel.

So what does it all mean?

Well, our own Duan thinks the initial proposed main event for UFC 103, which was Rich Franklin vs. Dan Henderson was a smoke screen because it didn’t make much sense in the aftermath of UFC 100. I pretty much agree, though White says they changed it because the people weren’t feeling it.

But now it looks like this sets up Henderson to get his rematch with middleweight champion Anderson Silva, after Silva is done with Forrest Griffin.

Dana said that Tito could fight Mark Coleman in his first fight back since he hasn’t fought in over a year, but I’m not sure that’s really a fight people would be interested in.

As for Fedor, they basically threw him under the bus, but didn’t seem to be done negotiating. Well, they didn’t really throw him under the bus, but M-1. But the casual fans won’t really know the difference.

WWE.com is wishing THE Brian Kendrick well in his future endeavors.

Does this surprise anybody? This man consecutively did jobs to an over-the-hill Jerry Lawler and to US Champ Kofi Kingston in under 30 seconds. He was doomed from the minute he was drafted to Raw.

Why was he fired though?

While I may not have the definitive answer, in combining what I have heard from a few people, including people inside of WWE and wrestling journalists, Kendrick had a problem with sticky icky icky. Apparently Brian was having issues controlling this habit. Now let it be known that failing a weed test does NOT constitute a strike on the WWE wellness policy, it does constitute a fine of 1,000 dollars each time. WWE does 4 weed tests per year, so if you get busted all 4 times, you gotta pay 4 grand a year. Not exactly a good idea. Apparently the head of WWE Talent Relations, John Laurinatis (Johnny Ace) told Kendrick to stop failing tests and that even though he was paying the money out, it still looked bad to fail these tests.

Of course, this is just speculation and there is no actual written proof of this or statement from either.

Well apparently he pissed SOMEBODY off and was treated like a joke until now, when they put him out to pasture.

Maybe now we’ll see The London & Kendrick vs. Motor City Machine Guns Dream Tag Match people have salivated over.

We’re back with FGB Radio.

I interview Tim Starks to talk about Vernon Forrest’s career. As a bonus, if you listen all the way to the end, I add the second part of our conversation which focused on the Floyd Mayweather vs. Juan Manuel Marquez fight, which also goes head to head with UFC 103.

Then Big D and I talk Affliction, take Twitter questions from the listeners, welcome JP who calls in to talk Fedor, and finish off with talk about SummerSlam.

The show is Twitter interactive, so follow us on Twitter @fightgameblog. You can also follow Big D @EmperorBigD, and Stevie J (who hosts this podcast) @Angrymarks.

Thanks to Stevie J for letting us be a part of his Angrymarks podcasting network. Please visit Angrymarks for all the news in pro wrestling and MMA.

Listen to the show below.

Right click to download.

This fight is just over two weeks away and I want to know who the good people who read this blog think will win between Gina Carano and Cris Cyborg.

The fight main events the upcoming Strikeforce card on Showtime and is a great step in the right direction for women’s MMA.

So who wins?

Will it be Gina, or Cyborg? Vote on the right hand side.

You can always add some commentary in the comment thread below.

UFC is set to make what they considered a HUGE announcement this Friday. The speculation and rumors about Fedor Emelianenko’s signing and battling with Brock Lesnar are climaxing more and more. Dave Meltzer says they have bigger fish to fry, but what? What could possibly be bigger than that?

Well we’ve learned that UFC has actually picked up 20 contracts from Affliction MMA, as part of an absorbtion deal. We are not sure of who exactly is signed, but I can definitely tell you UFC President Dana White has had interest in bringing back Vitor Belfort as well as a handful of others.

InsideFights.com reports the following:

We have no word on which contracts have been picked up, but they would appear to be lower-tier fighters. Gegard Mousasi and Renato Sobral are scheduled for a bout at the Strikeforce show on Aug. 15, so we can rule them out as potential pickups. Jay Hieron will allegedly face Nick Diaz for the Strikeforce welterweight title (although we’ve heard conflicting reports today on whether or not Hieron has actually signed the deal at this point), so he can be ruled out as well.

You can read the full article by clicking here.

We now await Friday…

P.S. – I will be doing my critically acclaimed Superfriends Podcast tonight at 10PM where we will preview the forthcoming UFC 101: Declaration PPV. You can listen live tonight at 10PM here. Parental Discretion is Advised.

Here’s video of Shaq battling the Big Show after the main event on Raw:

WWE Night of Champions 2009 is in the books. A PPV sold on every single match being for a championship in an era where titles don’t matter anywhere near what they used to might not sound like such a saliva-inducing purchase. However it seems like we all agreed it was pretty decent. Let’s hear what the FGB Crew had to say…

Alan

Thumbs middle.
Best – Punk/Jeff
Worst – Maryse/Mickie

Main event was great I thought. Punk’s facials from start to finish were so engaging. Loved the way they worked the match. Big Show as the mystery man was such a downer for me to kick off the show. What a wretched decision. I hated most of the undercard – the womens match, the Raw main event, the tag… all poor. The 6 man, the Christian match and the Rey match were all fine.

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Open the Historic Gate Full Results (Thanks to wikipedia):

- Lince Dorado defeated Cheech, Cloudy, Johnny Gargano, Chris Jones, Louis Linden, Aaron Arbo, and Andy Harper in an 8-Way Fray Dark Match. This will not be on the PPV or DVD.
- Yamato defeated BxB Hulk
- 2 Cold Scorpio defeated Ken Doane
- The Colony (Fire Ant & Soldier Ant), Jigsaw and Mike Quackenbush defeated F.I.S.T. (Icarus & Gran Akuma), Amasis from the Osirian Portal and Hallowicked in the Chikara 8-Man Tag Match
- Dragon Kid defeated Masato Yoshino
- The Young Bucks (Nick and Matt Jackson) defeated Warriors-5 (CIMA and Susumu Yokosuka) - Open The Dream Gate & Brave Gate Champion Naruki Doi defeated Shingo to retain the title

This is not the type of site that typically just has random results from cards without some kind of meaning. To me, the meaning of this is the show itself. I’ve been looking forward to “Open The Historic Gate” for months and months. This is a very historic show and a historic moment for independent wrestling. Possibly the first time that a Japanese wrestling company has legitimately tried to expand into North America and been wildly successful, and they had the ECW Arena rockin. While DGUSA did not sell out the building, tickets were moved quicker for this show than perhaps any debut show for an independent in the history of the US. “Open the Historic Gate” was indeed historic and I can not WAIT to see what else happens. Former ROH Booker Gabe Sapolski, who was fired from his position a little under a year ago (possibly due to jealous eyes), and now, with recharged batteries and along with the most talented roster of young wrestlers on Earth, plans to take Dragon Gate USA into the next stratosphere.

Open The Historic Gate will be broadcast on Pay-Per-View as “Enter the Dragon” on September 4th, 2009. From what I’ve read – you MUST buy this show!

Next up Chicago will host Open the Untouchable Gate, featuring the two MVPs of ROH, “American Dragon” Bryan Danielson and Davey Richards. Add some Chikara and DG talent and you’ve got the recipe for another unbelievable show.

Alan dammit we’re doing it! We’re doin it baby!!!

Be sure to check DGUSA.tv for updates.

This is the PPV where all of the matches are championship matches.

The first match is for the tag belts and we get to see who Chris Jericho’s “evil” partner is. My guess is Seth Green, aka Scott Evil. Let’s hope not.

1. Legacy vs. Chris Jericho and The Big Show

Well, the Big Show is the partner. And he’s wearing a new blue singlet that makes him look as fat as ever. I wonder if this takes him out of the 6 way? If it does, Evan Bourne should be in and the match should be much better.

This was an interesting match because both teams are heel teams. When Jericho was in the ring, he pretty much played face, setting up the hot tag for the Big Show. Rhodes and DiBiase looked good. Rhodes even hit a moonsault.

Jericho hit a codebreaker on DiBiase, which lead to Big Show hitting his version of the camel clutch and DiBiase tapped immediately.

Winner: Chris Jericho and The Big Show

CM Punk just cut a very righteous promo about Jeff Hardy and parenting. It got good heat.

2. Tommy Dreamer vs. Christian
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