Weekend news round up – Cruiserweight names confirmed, WWE to bid for TNA and more…

Tonight sees the debut of WWE’s brand new Cruiserweight division, fresh off the back of The Network’s hugely successful Cruiserweight Classic.

Newly crowned Cruiserweight champion and winner of the CWC tournament TJ Perkins will lead the division alongside six other confirmed competitors; Rich Swann, Cedric Alexander, Lince Dorado, Brian Kendrick, Britain’s Noam Dor and runner-up of the Cruiserweight Classic Gran Metalik. With a number of the other Cruiserweight’s from the tournament also expected to join Team Red at a later date.

The new division and belt is being treated as a whole new entity by WWE, with it’s lineage not linked to the WCW Cruiserweight belt of the past nor the Light-heavyweight Championship it was merged with during the mid-2000s.

It remains to be seen if we’ll see this new championship defended at Sunday’s Clash of Champions pay-per-view.

Perhaps the most unlikely news of the weekend has been WWE’s link to purchasing TNA Wrestling. According to a , WWE along with Sinclair Broadcast Group, owner of Ring of Honour, have made recent bids to the cash-strapped Impact Ventures - the producers of TNA and Impact Wrestling.

However, before fans start booking an invasion storyline to rival WWE’s purchase of WCW in 2001 it seems that Smashing Pumpkins front man Billy Corgan is still the front-runner to become the company’s majority owner. Corgan, who has been involved with TNA as firstly a producer then investor since May 2015, has admitted there are a lot of bids on the table but hopes to up his commitment to the company ahead of their big Bound For Glory show next month.

One man who has become somewhat of a forgotten member of the last ‘Invasion’ angle is Buff Bagwell, but the former WCW Tag-Team Champion isn’t remaining quiet on the current WWE product and one Superstar in particular. Using a recent interview on the Pancakes and Powerslams Radio show to criticize current NXT star Samoa Joe.

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Accusing Joe - who crossed paths with Bagwell very briefly in TNA - of being out of shape and someone who he doesn’t believe can draw as WWE Superstar.

“Samoa Joe, to me, I’ve never got that. I know he’s very popular. I know he’s very good in the ring, I think he’s a great wrestler, I like to watch him. But when you’ve got a chance to do a storyline, to the world of wrestling fans, who’s going to be Sting’s tag team partner, and the options are Lex Luger, Marcus Bagwell, and Samoa Joe. I mean, who in the heck is Samoa Joe? And Luger wasn’t fit enough, so I fit the part perfectly…I really don’t know where [TNA] were going with that, except maybe a push for Samoa Joe? Me and Samoa Joe haven’t spoke 10 words together. He was on one independent show with in in Cleveland, and he got mad because I was in the main event and he wasn’t. To me, Samoa Joe is a fat, out of shape guy who looks like he should not be in a wrestling ring, and I’ve not heard or seen anybody ever draw a dollar with him.”

Strong words from Bagwell, who’s currently in the process of filing a lawsuit against WWE in regards to royalties from the WWE Network, but is best remembered by a WWE audience for a disappointing performance in his one and only televised bout against Booker T in July 2001.

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