[Emperor Smeat]

Dirtsheets sponsored by Rusev's Beauty Shot:

The idea of NXT replacing one hour of each RAW broadcast: “If the thought would be to do it there that night, then you’re just doing a third hour. Then, it’s not NXT, then it’s not different and not a different feel and flavor. Is there a way to do that? Maybe. I think at the end of the day, three hours – no matter how you do it – is extremely difficult. I’ll be the first guy to admit that if I go to a movie and it’s longer than two hours, then I’m looking at my watch, no matter how good it is.” If WWE will call NXT talents up to the main roster to help strengthen RAW & SmackDown: “The thing that I hate doing is, ‘Well, there’s a lot of injuries right now, so we’re going to pull this guy up,’ but then the injured guys will come back and then we’re not sure what we’ll do – now we have too many guys for the space,” Hunter said. “I hate taking a guy as talented as Finn Balor and saying, ‘You’re the band-aid to hold us over until all these other guys come back and then we’ll see from there.’ If we don’t have that gameplan for when we call these guys up, especially for a Finn Balor, then it’s not the right time. You need to have something in your mind, and hopefully a long-term plan in place that gets them to where you want them to be. At least that would be the goal for me when guys come up.”

Some highlights from the recent NXT conference call Triple H had.

* Triple H said that after the holidays, they will be making some announcements that he feels the people will be very excited about. This year exceeded his expectations and he hopes 2016 will exceed them as well. * When asked about moving Finn Balor to the main roster, Triple H said that Balor wanted to ground himself to NXT and it’s important to remember that he came from Japan so he still had many aspects he’s still learning. They do not want to rush anyone, and wants there to be a long term plan for them when they are brought up and not a quick fix for injured performers. * When asked about NXT working with UK Independents, said he is wide open to finding talent wherever they are, whether it is talent who have been doing this for years or guys who find their way to WWE immediately. He wants the best talent in the world, and watches a lot of international video with William Regal. Next he says that the success of the independents are vital to them finding talent; having talents go out to Progress, ICW, Rev Pro, EVOLVE or New Japan to fain experience and time learning their craft is important. He’s open to working relationships with independent groups that do business the right way.

A few more highlights from the same Triple H conference from a different website.

Originally Posted by Observer Cena’s TV series “American Grit” is right now scheduled to finish up filming in Washington on 12/16, which means he could return on the 12/21 Raw, although his first advertised date back is 12/26 in Madison Square Garden. Cena was doing media with NBC on 12/8, appearing on both “The Today Show” and “The Tonight Show,” to promote the movie “Sisters.” Cena is listed as the third lead behind stars Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, who play sisters who want to throw one last wild party in their house that their parents have just sold. Cena plays a muscled up drug dealer. The movie comes out on 12/18

It's now confirmed that WWE Network pulled the recently added Stampede Wrestling episodes due to Bret Hart owning all footage that has him in it. As noted, Bret's parents gave the rights to his content to him before they passed. This has been known for years, so it appears there was a miscommunication somewhere. I heard Bret actually found out about the Stampede uploads on Twitter. The Wrestling Observer Newsletter reports that Hart then called WWE's Mark Carrano, who claimed to Hart that WWE owned all Stampede footage after a deal was made with Bruce and Ross Hart. Bret then contacted Vince McMahon, who said he would look into the matter first thing this past Monday. Hart also contacted WWE attorney Scott Amann and said there would be an issue if the footage wasn't removed. Bret then sent a copy of the agreement between WWE and Ross Hart, which apparently says Bret owns the rights to all footage involving him. Vince ordered that all Stampede footage be removed from the WWE Network until the situation is resolved. No word yet on when the episodes may be added back.

Update on the Bret Hart & WWE Network news regarding Stampede Wrestling footage.

It was noted on a recent episode of MLW Radio that "Road Dogg" BG James is the one writing most of the creative for WWE SmackDown these days. This makes his recent social media responses to fan criticism pretty interesting. On a related note, we told you about how Road Dogg recently told fans to try checking out Lucha Underground or Ring of Honor if they were so unhappy with the WWE product. He was responding to a fan that wrote, "ISIS didn't bomb WWE Survivor Series tonight. WWE Creative did." It was speculated that James' controversial tweet mentioning Lucha Underground and ROH could really get him into hot water with WWE higher-ups. It was said that if someone in WWE wanted to get James in trouble, all they would have to do is bring those tweets to the right people's attention, if they haven't been seen already.

Originally Posted by Observer While the [New Japan G1 Tag League] tag team tournament in recent years hasn’t been that big of a deal, this year’s tournament saw more signs and the Jim Crockett Promotion pattern continues. Essentially, Jim Crockett Promotions was on fire in 1985 and 1986, at one point increasing annual attendance from 800,000 to 1.9 million in one year. They were loaded with standout performers, but for a number of reasons, going with a pat hand too long being one of them (they also had repetitive badly booked finishes and hot shotted angles, neither of which is an issue here), things went down in 1987 ... It’s very clear the excitement level of 2012 to 2014, when the company tripled business behind an incredible crew of performers, has waned, and attendance since the summer has noticeably declined. The tournament finals in Sendai, drew 2,291 fans, by far the lowest attendance for a New Japan tag team tournament final in history. The biggest show of the tour, on 12/6 at the Aiichi Ken Gym in Nagoya, drew 5,500 fans, which was the company’s smallest crowd as far back as I can remember (and that would go back to the 70s) in that arena. Most of the shows were sellouts, but they also booked most shows in barely 1,000 seat buildings. The company has not said anything about ticket sales for the Tokyo Dome, while the past three years by this point had talked about how sales were ahead of previous years.

Some possible concerns for NJPW heading into their biggest annual event.

Originally Posted by NJPW 00. New Japan Rumble 01. IWGP Jr. Heavyweight Tag Titles: reDRagon (c) vs The Young Bucks vs Ricochet & Matt Sydal vs RPG Vice 02. Special Tag Match: Toru Yano, ??? & ??? vs Bad Luck Fale, Yujiro Takahashi & Tama Tonga 03. Special Singles Match: Michael Elgin vs Jay Lethal 04. IWGP Jr. Heavyweight Title: Kenny Omega (c) vs KUSHIDA 05. IWGP Heavyweight Tag Titles: Karl Anderson & Doc Gallows (c) vs Togi Makabe & Tomoaki Honma 06. Special Singles Match: Hirooki Goto vs Tetsuya Naito 07. NEVER Openweight Title: Tomohiro Ishii (c) vs Katsuyori Shibata 08. IWGP Intercontinental Title: Shinsuke Nakamura (c) vs AJ Styles 09. IWGP Heavyweight Title: Kazuchika Okada (c) vs Hiroshi Tanahashi

Current card for Wrestle Kingdom 10.

Originally Posted by Observer Raw on 12/7 did a 2.14 rating and 3,039,000 viewers (1.48 viewers per home), the new lowest rating mark since 1997, and the second lowest non-holiday audience of the modern era. It was still third for the night on cable television. The show did a 1.48 in Males 18-49 and 0.61 in Women 18-49, meaning in that demo there was a 70.8% male skew, which is higher than usual. The show did a 1.04 in 18-34, 1.04 in 35-49, and 1.19 in 50+. The strongest age group right now for the program is Males between the ages of 50 and 54. Smackdown on 12/3 did a 1.49 rating and 2,044,000 viewers (1.46 viewers per home). With the exception of last week’s Thanksgiving show that shouldn’t count, it was the lowest viewership number for the show since 9/10 and third lowest for a first-run episode during the Syfy era.

Some expanded details regarding recent ratings for the WWE. Biggest being right now the WWE's strongest viewership group is old people.

Originally Posted by Observer The Wednesday, December 9th edition of TNA Impact Wrestling that featured the quarterfinals of the TNA title tournament saw the ratings rise from recent weeks with 269,000 viewers tuning in for the 9 p.m. show and 68,000 tuning in for the midnight show for a grand total of 337,000 viewers. That 9 p.m number was up from usual but the midnight number fell right in line with the norm. Given that the entire tournament of taped matches is now complete (the previously taped semifinals and finals are being scrapped and redone) the last few weeks on Destination America will be time fills of two hours with old taped matches before the company's January 5th live show launch on Pop TV.

The final matches in the tournament will be part of the live show debut for POP TV.

Originally Posted by Observer For the second week in a row, no WWE talent appeared this week on SportsCenter. Last week Jonathan Coachman wrote that it was just a week off because he was out of Bristol. This week neither he nor WWE said anything, although Coachman is covering the UFC shows in Las Vegas this week but the coverage wasn’t starting that early in the week. However, WWE talent is booked on SportsCenter on 12/15 so the series is not done nor considered on hiatus

Starting to confirm rumors that the WWE-ESPN deal really is just paid advertisements on a week-to-week basis.

Jimmy Snuka’s trial on charges of third degree murder and involuntary manslaughter has been set for 3/22. The Judge at the hearing admonished Louise Argentino-Upham, the sister of Nancy Argentino, to stop posting links to stories about the case on Facebook because it was in violation of the gag order, and threatened the prosecution with sanctions if she doesn’t stop.

Some other sheet news includes:

• Stardust ended up being sent to the hospital after getting hurt during his match against Swagger on RAW. WWE was worried about possible bone fractures but tests came back negative.
• According to reports, NBC has been somewhat successful in getting advertisers to reconsider their stance against wrestling. Biggest one being Coca Cola sponsoring this year's WWE Slammy Awards show.
• NJPW revealed the English broadcast for Wrestle Kingdom 10 will be a three man team with an unannounced person to join Matt Striker and Kevin Kelly in the booth. Supposedly GFW wanted to be the US distributor again for the ppv but NJPW wasn't interested. ROH also made a bid to help distribute the show but also got rejected.
• According to reports, Rey Mysterio might need to take another break from wrestling due to another possible knee injury.
• Dynamite Kid currently dealing with serious health issues from a stroke and other health problems the past 6 weeks.
• DDP revealed AJ Styles is using DDP's Yoga workout program to help deal with injury and health issues. https://twitter.com/RealDDP/status/675031236604207109

Some TPWW news:

• Newest episode of TPWW's TLP was recently released: http://tablesladderspodcast.podbean....st-133-120915/