Wrestling News & Rumors

[Emperor Smeat]

The Sheets:

Originally Posted by Observer Newsletter The heavily promoted debut of Smackdown on FOX took place on 10/4 at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, drawing the largest television audience for the product since the 25th anniversary of Raw ... This time they pushed a higher level than ever before, having Dwayne Johnson, Steve Austin, Hulk Hogan, Ric Flair, Sting, Undertaker, Bill Goldberg, Kurt Angle, Mick Foley, and many more advertised. That turned into an issue because Johnson was the only one who even had a real role in the show and Undertaker, Austin and Sting were never on the show, while the others were limited to being shown at ringside ... The show did a 2.36 rating and 3,888,000 viewers (we don’t know viewers per home because the rating point covers 120.6 million homes, every television home in the U.S., and FOX is in maybe 107 million home but this week that number was lower because of the Dish Network issue). The key stat for FOX is that it did a 1.4 in the key adults 18-49 demo. In that demo it was among the ten most-watched shows of the past week in all of television, both broadcast and cable ... But on a positive standpoint, sometimes it takes a few weeks to bring your audience to a new time slot and this was promoted so well that they got them there on the first night. That key demo rating for a Friday night, when a lot of people in that age group go out, is particularly noteworthy for the show itself ... The audience was six percent below what FOX did last year for the same Friday, with Last Man Standing (6.34 million viewers), The Cool Kids (4.78 million) and Hell’s Kitchen (2.75 million viewers). But these days, a six percent year-to-year drop is fine and the demo was stronger, although far from double, a key because Smackdown right now is only getting about half the advertising dollars per ratings point of a regular FOX television show ... Sting was there in that setting, and even though he never appeared before the live crowd, which was a disappointment to many, he was in the building and spent the night in the company’s hospitality suite. Undertaker, who had pushed being there in his social media, after the show addressed it by saying that he was told before the show not to come as he was no longer needed. Austin and WWE have said nothing regarding him, but one of the reasons they likely maintained a strong audience throughout the show was people waiting for Austin ... There were AEW and Austin chants as the show ended. When the show went off the air, the chants for Austin were loud and then they turned all the lights on, told the fans the show was over, and gave the date for the next show in December. There were some boos, some AEW chants, and mostly groans from people as they were leaving. While we got a lot of complaints about Undertaker and some about Sting, those live said that nobody leaving complained about either, but it seemed like everyone on the way out was complaining about Austin.

Originally Posted by Observer Newsletter WWE’s Hell in a Cell show started out strong, and ended with a bang. The wrong kind of a bang ... There were two major problems with the show. The main event, obviously, was the biggest. It’ll go down as perhaps the worst misfire of a main event in company history. The Hell in a Cell match started out with problems, as they did a red tint for the match, making it hard for viewers either live or watching on television to focus on the action ... The story of the match led to Wyatt being cheered more and more. People expected a title change, since it was Hell in a Cell, there had to be winner, and beating Wyatt after all this monster build in his first match made no sense at all ... Finally, Rollins grabbed a sledge hammer from under the ring. Ref Rod Zapata told Rollins he was better than this and not to use it. Keep in mind this was Hell in a Cell and weapons were being used throughout the match. Rollins hit Wyatt with it and Zapata called for the bell. While it appeared Rollins was disqualified in a no DQ rules match, WWE later clarified the finish as the match simply being stopped ... “Cancel WWE Network” was trending on Twitter, for whatever that is worth, and really it’s means little. The last time that happened led to WWE having a big increase in WWE Network orders. Vince McMahon was reportedly, and this was confirmed by multiple people, that he was laughing about the crowd reaction and hardly taking it as a negative. But actions speak louder. It was very clear on Raw the next night that the subject of the match was not to be talked about during the show aside for one package that aired late ... The finish of the match was from McMahon, obviously. His idea was always that he wasn’t beating Wyatt this early, but wanted Lesnar, Rollins, Lynch and Flair as the four champions going into the draft and the new beginnings ... It’s hard to say if they hurt Wyatt long-term by not winning. The only prior example was when Ryback was really hot, and John Cena got hurt, he was put into a Hell in a Cell match with C.M. Punk. Since the long-term plan at the time was in place for Punk to have a long title reign before losing to The Rock, Ryback had to be sacrificed. Ryback never recovered from the wrong loss at the wrong time. And what made it worse was Ryback was so hot that the buy rate for that show was shockingly high, as people figured it was Ryback’s time to win. It was, but they had bigger fans than Ryback, so it went down like it did.

Meltzer gave that match -2 stars and the first negative star WWE match from him in the past 5 years.

Originally Posted by Observer Newsletter Week two of the Wednesday Night Wars saw both AEW and NXT suffer significant declines. It’s hard to exactly evaluate AEW because it aired on both TNT and Tru TV in a simulcast. Realistically TNT vs. TNT would be the proper comparison which saw a significant 27.8 percent drop from week one. Even adding in Tru numbers, the decline from week one was 19.2 percent. Even though week one saw major increases throughout the show with teenagers, the teenage demo dropped 36 percent from the first week. The key seems to be that teenagers liked week one, but as far as changing their lives to make it a regular weekly part of viewing, that didn’t happen. Some of the decline could be attributed to the Los Angeles Dodgers vs. Washington Nationals game doing 5,856,000 viewers on TBS, but that would not lead to a decline of that magnitude. For TNT over the past few years, the average weekly decline of a new series is 20 percent, but this fell above that figure, and even adding in Tru numbers with the simulcast the decline was nearly 20 percent. AEW did 1,018,000 viewers on TNT and another 122,000 on Tru, for 1,140,000 viewers. The TNT replay at 10 p.m. drew another 360,000 viewers, down 14.9 percent from 423,000 the week before. NXT fell 11.3 percent from last week to 790,000 viewers ... It is still well above the original projections for the show and those at AEW were happy as it more than doubled NXT in the key demo ... But in the ad demo, AEW fell from a 0.68 to 0.46 (or 0.51 including Tru–32.4 percent for the station and 25.0 percent overall ), compared to NXT at 0.22 (a 31.3 percent drop from the big show the prior week). AEW went from No. 2 on cable for the night to No. 8. Still, in its time slot, it was in third place in the key demo, behind only baseball on TBS and Basketball Wives and Black Ink Crew 8 on VH-1. It beat an NBA preseason game on ESPN that did 1,000,000 and a 0.43 in the demo. NXT on USA in the key demo fell behind TBS, VH-1, TNT, MSNBC, Fox News and The History Channel. Because of the bigger decline in younger viewers, the median age for an AEW viewer grew to 42, still the youngest of any wrestling show. Worse, NXT was 55, six years higher than the week before ... AEW on TNT opened with 1,138,000 viewers and ended with 1,036,000. Overall, the end of the Young Bucks vs. Private Party and the Jericho interview, a segment that was the peak in a number of major markets, actually lost 44,000 viewers overall. Darby Allin vs. Jimmy Havoc lost 196,000 viewers. The women’s tag match gained 58,000 viewers. Jon Moxley vs. Shawn Spears gained 27,000 viewers. And the main event and post-match angle gained 53,000 viewers ... NXT opened with 836,000 viewers and the last quarter did 728,000 but after AEW ended, they did grow to 792,000, so they only got 64,000 viewers after AEW ended. Rhea Ripley vs. Aliyah lost 45,000 viewers. Tyler Breeze & Fandango vs. The Forgotten Sons gained 17,000 viewers. Cameron Grimes vs. Boa and Killian Dain post-match lost 29,000 viewers. Roderick Strong vs. Isaiah Scott and the post-match stuff the Undisputed Era and Velveteen Dream gained 47,000 viewers. Bianca Belair vs. Dakota Kai lost 25,000 viewers. Walter vs. Kushida lost 73,000 at the same time AEW gained 53,000, and then Walter vs. Kushida picked up 64,000 for its finish once AEW was off the air ... While the AEW drop is not good, for NXT it’s worse because this is not week one of lots of hype to week two, but week three to four, with all four weeks dropping significantly, and now being well below the USA Network prime time average for a show that will deliver much lower per viewer ad rates. If AEW in week four has those level of drops from week three in the key demos, that would be very bad.

Originally Posted by WrestlingInc In other news on this week's AEW viewership, the Dynamite replay that airs at 10pm ET on TNT drew 363,000 viewers, according to PWTorch. Last week's 10pm replay on TNT drew 423,000 viewers, so it dropped 14%.

Originally Posted by Observer Newsletter New Japan announced the annual junior heavyweight tag team tournament lineup this past week, and the biggest news was that Dragon Lee was out. Lee & Titan were scheduled, but not announced, but posters in some cities listed them on the tour. CMLL has this past week forced promotions in Mexico to choose between either using Rush or Dragon Lee, or their own talent, even going to so far as to pull four wrestlers off sold out Crash show on 10/5 in Tijuana because the promotion wouldn’t pull Rush and Lee off the card. Other promotions have pulled Rush & Lee off shows ... New Japan said that they wanted Lee and CMLL to sort out their differences. For Lee, things become interesting. ROH also has a strong affiliation with CMLL. However, what was key here is Lee teaming with a CMLL wrestler. Perhaps if CMLL wrestlers weren’t in the same ring the situation would be different, although CMLL has pushed promoters with the idea that they would not send any talent to a show that Lee or Rush are on ... Losing New Japan would change Lee’s mentality, where before he had no interest in going anywhere that would preclude him from working with New Japan. This could open the door to MLW, which is working with Crash and Lee will be working regularly with Crash ... With no New Japan, Lee would also be open to individual deals with either AEW or WWE. Paul Levesque is said to be high on Lee, and who wouldn’t be, as he’s a very special talent. Still, as Gran Metalik shows, a Luchador of Lee’s level does not have great career prospects in WWE at his size. Rey Mysterio was already a huge name before he went to WWE, and Andrade was bigger and even he’s struggled on the main roster when you consider his push vs. his talent level and how well his act with Zelina Vega got over in NXT. Lee would probably do better in AEW, and Lee would be a gift-wrapped present that they never expected. And with AEW, it would not close the door to New Japan forever, where WWE likely would.

Originally Posted by Observer Newsletter The look and feel of NWA Power was to bring you back to the early 80s ... One of the throwbacks was no music, and lots of interview time between matches. But the interviews were completely different from WWE. They were clearly unscripted past bullet points, and free flowing. The personalities came through and you didn’t have wording that felt insincere. About 15,000 people between YouTube and Facebook watched the show “live,” as in first run as it was going on. The number was impressive when you consider AEW Dark the same night did 25,000, Impact has been doing about 3,500 and when WWE did Mixed Match Challenge, immediately after Smackdown and heavily promoted, an average week might peak around 60,000. For total viewers, which is a horribly misleading stat because of how they compile them, the show at press time had 168,000; as compared to 419,000 for AEW Dark the same night, 31,000 for MLW on Friday, 60,000 for CMLL on Friday (anniversary show did 294,000) and the last four minutes of the first AEW show did 2,048,732 and Scarlett Bordeaux’s debut in AAA is at 32.7 million. With the average viewer watching 13.9 minutes of the NWA show, the 168,000 viewers, if it was a television rating, translates not to 168,000 viewers but to 39,000 viewers.

The last paragraph is pretty interesting since it gives an idea of what the potential conversion rate of Youtube viewers to TV viewers likely would be not just for NWA's new show but other promotions as well that have a big focus on Youtube.

Originally Posted by Observer Newsletter Tyler Bateman, who debuted on 9/28 in Las Vegas by beating Jake Atlas, will be a regular for ROH. Jake Atlas is also expected to be working more dates in ROH. Atlas had already turned down deals from Impact and MLW

Originally Posted by Observer Newsletter MLW taped TV on 10/5 at The Crash show in Tijuana with their biggest crowd in their history, a sellout of more than 4,500 fans at the Auditorio. They noted that WWE was in San Diego, which is the next city over, head-to-head, and they outdrew WWE.

Originally Posted by Observer Newsletter There is a lot of talk regarding taking NXT on the road every Wednesday and looking at 5,000-seat buildings, similar to AEW. The target seems to be January, because WWE has inquired about buildings of that size to shoot television on Wednesday nights. Even before the first week ratings came out, there was talk that Full Sail was only running weekly because they had no time to set things up and that a move to different arenas would take place in early 2020. As noted, once week one ratings came out, with NXT having such a strong show on 10/4 and having spent two weeks building it, the location was more likely to get the blame

Originally Posted by PWI AEW Dynamite will have replays this weekend on the following cable stations and times: * Sunday 10/13 on TNT at 1 AM. * Sunday 10/13 on TruTV at 2 AM. * Sunday 10/13 on TruTV at 10 AM. * Sunday 10/13 on TBS at 11 PM. * Tuesday 10/15 on TNT at 2 AM. * Tuesday 10/15 on TruTV at 8 PM.

Originally Posted by PWI The majority of CM Punk shirts have been removed from ProWrestlingTees.com, replaced by a "CM Punk Sucks" t-shirt. I am sure someone will find a conspiracy theory in all that!

Originally Posted by PWI We've had some emails asking about WWE touting that FOX and the USA Network were involved with tonight's Draft and what it means. We are told that WWE consulted with the Networks to make sure each side was happy with what talents they ended up with as the plan is to keep the rosters separate as much as possible after the Draft is completed. So, execs from the networks were involved but WWE made the final determinations. The company is keeping the Draft plans heavily under wraps

Originally Posted by Post Wrestling Former wrestler Nick Mondo is working with All Elite Wrestling and is listed as a director. Mondo got into film after his pro wrestling career ended and directed the spots involving Jon Moxley escaping prison earlier this year that were released after Moxley left WWE.

Originally Posted by Post Wrestling Fight Network in Canada will be moving Impact Wrestling to Tuesdays at 8 pm eastern to coincide with the move to AXS TV on Tuesday, October 29th. The move will also include Fight Network’s international feeds, including in Greece and Portugal. Impact will continue to air on Game TV in Canada each Saturday at 7 pm eastern, which is also a property of Anthem Sports and Entertainment.

Originally Posted by Fightful Ronda Rousey will be back in WWE, at least according to Triple H. Rousey, a decorated MMA star-turned-pro wrestler had an impressive showing in the WWE over her year-long run from WrestleMania 34 to WrestleMania 35. However, since headlining the latter, she's been completely absent from the ring. On Friday, WWE hosted a press event to announce matches for the upcoming Crown Jewel show. Afterwards, Triple H participated in a media scrum, where he reportedly stated "she's coming back," per Ryan McKinnell, who was in attendance.

TPWW Frontpage:

• WWE’s Original Idea for Wyatt vs. Rollins Also Wasn’t Very Good
• Cain Velasquez Signs “Lucrative” Multi-Year Contract With WWE
• Sasha Banks Injury Update
• AEW Is Now the Most Watched Wrestling Show in the UK + Impact Beats Raw