WWE has signed Ryan Bishop, 27, to a developmental contract. He is a former tight end for the New York Giants. He was on the Super Bowl champs’ training camp roster last season, but apparently didn’t make the team as there are no NFL profiles or stats on him. He has the size WWE likes as he is 6 foot six and 255 pounds. He is currently learning wrestling in Florida Championship Wrestling. He played college football at the University of Hawaii.
The March 15 issue of Sports Illustrated has a story on 80s steroid dealer Tony Fitton. In the story, Fittons claims that he was distributing steroids to a “good few in the WWF.” The article said that he watched WWF on television, and didn’t like Randy Savage due to his TV persona, and so he didn’t trust him. However, one of Fitton’s clients, John Mitton a.k.a. Big John Studd, vouched for Randy Savage as a person, and then agreed to distribute steroids to him. Sports Illustrated attempted to contact Savage for the story, but didn’t return their calls. The connection between Fitton and Big John Studd was pretty well known during the late 80s.
This week’s edition of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter is reporting that reigning ECW Champion Chavo Guerrero actually has two WWE suspensions on his record, not one. Unlike the other wrestlers busted in the Signature Pharmacy scandal last fall, they only sat out for 30 days, whereas Guerrero sat on the sidelines for over 60 days, so it adds up. Guerrero returned to action on November 3, 2007, which was a Saturday night SmackDown/ECW house show. That was the first scheduled WWE show a wrestler on a 60-day suspension from the Signature Pharmacy scandal would have permitted to appear on. Apparently, Guerrero’s first suspension quietly slipped under the cracks some time ago. Back in July 2006, after a number of SmackDown stars went down with Wellness related issues the week before the Great American Bash pay-per-view, which caused havoc on the card, Vince McMahon made the decision to not pull future suspendees from television because he didn’t want sudden suspensions to ruin his heavily-hyped pay-per-view cards. Instead, future suspensions called for wrestlers to miss a month’s worth of downside pay, not to mention their pay-per-view bonus. Also, the suspendees would be pulled from all house shows for a 30-day period. The new rule allowed Randy Orton to wrestle Hulk Hogan at the 2006 SummerSlam, who was suspended in August 2006 for a Wellness Policy violation. Starting on August 13, 2006, Orton was removed from house shows for a little over a month. To save face, Orton claimed that his house show hiatus was due to him moving into a new home with his fiancée — which is actually true — however, he was indeed serving a suspension during this time frame as well.
