ROHWorld.com Forum

WrestleMania 35 on April 7, 2019 will be held in New York, with MetLife Field as the likely destination. Philadelphia and Detroit were other cities in the running

There will be one, if not two Battle Royals, to get everyone on [WrestleMania 34.]

Jason Jordan was originally slated [for the Chamber match] and may be in it, but he has a neck injury (not a back injury as listed last week) which is significant. He has been working and they have been trying to protect him by having him do as little as possible. Jordan is having issues with his grip and that is usually very serious. Rollins is also working on a bad back.

There have been people now openly talking about next year’s WrestleMania at MetLife Stadium (before it was something talked about, but not in public to fans), so one would think the official announcement should come soon

Jordan’s surgery was a posterior cervical microdiscectomy, to decompress the nerve issue that caused the problems. There was no report on a return date but we’re told that Jordan vs. Rollins at WrestleMania is not a dead issue, but it’s far from a certainty.

As far as Rousey goes, the key item not really talked about is the goals and a major reason why she is there from a company standpoint. All the different questions about her value to the company financially I’m told are secondary.

The key to Rousey is more about Stephanie McMahon, which is why they want that super high-profile match (and if they can get Johnson, it makes it even more high-profile). Stephanie McMahon is a big star in wrestling, but she is not a mainstream star at all. It was explained to me that the key in all this goes back to what made Vince McMahon a big star, which was the program with Steve Austin, and what made Steve Austin a breakthrough star past being a pro wrestling top guy, which was hardly an interview at King of the Ring or the WrestleMania match with Bret Hart, as legend has it, but the angle in Fresno with Mike Tyson.

Rousey is a major sports star. The idea that she was the single most searched female athlete in the U.S. on the Internet in 2017, a year she never competed and for the most part laid low in, speaks volumes. The idea for the program is to make Stephanie a star outside of just the pro wrestling world.

kovs27 wrote: ↑Thu Feb 08, 2018 7:34 am So Rousey was brought in to make Stephanie a bigger star? Not someone who actually wrestles?

A few weeks ago, Danielson came across Evoke Neuroscience, a new brain testing procedure that essentially examines all the different parts of the brain. Unlike Impact testing, where athletes have learned to pretend to be slower in their baseline test, thus if they get a concussion, their follow-up tests wouldn’t be so different, this test you can’t cheat on. It has the potential, if proven effective, to be the new state-of-the-art in brain testing to see when athletes can return to the playing field after concussions.

Also, unlike all the cognitive tests he had passed, his high IQ and the potential of his brain creating new pathways around a possible damaged part of the brain to compensate for injuries wouldn’t be hidden.

It also should be noted that this testing is new science, actually first created by a doctor from the military looking at examining brain trauma in soldiers, as well as a prominent sports doctor looking for something that could help with examining all parts of the brain, to find if there is a weakness that is being overrode. Athletes at times that have had a brain injury but were no longer showing any symptoms, may have the damaged portion overrode and new pathways created around the injured region. This is most notable in athletes with high IQ’s.

A fluke mention by Kevin Kelly on the 1/5 New Japan New Year’s Dash show on New Japan World is really a key in what sets the wheels in motion on this. Kelly remarked the main event of that show, during the Briscoes match, that they did an IQ test of the entire ROH locker room many years back, and that Danielson scored the highest. The reference was made when Matt Striker actually was making a joke about what you would figure Mark Briscoe’s IQ was. Striker in making the joke, clearly thinking what most would think about Mark Briscoe based on his character. Kelly responded that Mark Briscoe actually had the third highest IQ in the promotion at the time, noting it was behind only Danielson and Nigel McGuinness. Essentially that line set the wheels in motion about a week later that led to Danielson finding out about this testing, which has just started to be used in some MMA circles. It was demonstrated that same weekend on the Inside MMA television show where Al Iaquinta was shown being examined, and the Ray Longo/Chris Weidman camp were the first team to use it to see if fighters were truly ready to return to hard sparring after a fight or knockout.

On 1/21, he flew to New York to be tested. Six days later, he got the results.

Danielson’s test showed a small subacute or chronic lesion in his temporal parietal region of the brain, the area of the brain that causes seizures. Danielson has had post concussion seizures for a long time and nobody could find any evidence as to why.

What is key here is that Danielson made the decision on his own to retire after finding evidence that something was wrong. He was not told after getting the test results that he had to retire, and he will be undergoing more testing, but the damage was still in evidence more than eight months after his most recent concussion.