[Emperor Smeat]

Dirtsheets sponsored by Rusev's dastardly attack on helpless cereal:

Originally Posted by Observer Other than commercials mentioning The Rock, there was little push for him. He actually sort of did a match, in the sense he took no punishment but beat Erick Rowan in seven seconds. Them using the Wyatt Family in his segment took them out of being in the Brock Lesnar segment and out of the Battle Royal. It led to a flat story in the Lesnar match that with hindsight makes no sense with Lesnar destroying Ambrose at every turn and then beating him clean at Mania. The funny part is that the stated goal of pulling Ambrose from the plan with Chris Jericho to Lesnar, and pulling Wyatt from Lesnar, was to get Ambrose over. Instead, every aspect of the Mania build up past making him a quirky midcard face who was endorsed by Terry Funk and Mick Foley, basically told the story that he’s a more charismatic Ryan Bader, a guy who beats most guys, but has no chance to beat any true top guy.

Originally Posted by Observer But evaluating it after the act, it’s weird. The guy on the show that fans thought was the least like a star, Baron Corbin, was the one being brought up with a push to the main roster ... Apollo Crews, who can perform at a top level, was also less over than most. It’s pretty clear that Balor, Joe, Nakamura, Zayn, Asuka, Bayley, Austin Aries, Jordan & Gable should all not only be on the main roster, but most should be top tier stars. Balor should be one of the top guys, and as a high flier who is 34 with a lot of miles on him, he shouldn’t be wasting his remaining bump card for a salary with one less zero at the end. In a company weak on top heels today, the idea of bringing up Corbin instead of Joe, who at 37, also shouldn’t be wasting his remaining best earning years both for himself and for the company when he’s probably the best opponent on the entire roster right now for Brock Lesnar ... Roman Reigns ... The Rock, as well as every other top babyface ... WWE just called up two women from developmental, Emma and Eva Marie, while leaving Bayley and Asuka here. Asuka is easily the best woman wrestler in the company, and is as good as any of the men as far as the wrestling aspect goes ... When the entire idea is to rebuild the women’s division to be taken as serious athletics and Eva Marie and even Emma are brought up ahead of her, well, that’s just mind boggling talent judgment, and I’m glad Emma was brought up ... Nakamura has experience in big buildings, but I didn’t know about his style translating without needing some time to figure out the differences between Japan and the U.S. But he’s already figured out how to get over in the ring in the U.S. more than guys who have worked 20 years in the U.S. ... Bayley is a different situation. She and Balor are the faces of the promotion. There’s also a really good chance the talent evaluators who see Eva Marie as a top star even though she’s got nothing but a killer body and very limited talent will totally miss the boat on Bayley ... Jordan & Gable are a fantastic team. They are the best team in the company. Enzo & Cass, who were just brought up, have a great act, and can be excellent show openers. Jordan & Gable can be a tag team that main events and carries a show ... The Vaudevillains were just brought up, but we’ve already seen in NXT that they have a limited shelf life. Shown and identified were Kota Ibushi and Bobby Roode. They wouldn’t have shown them if they didn’t believe they were going to be debuting them soon ... Ibushi should be main roster bound quickly ... But for quota reasons, since so many decisions are based on quotas in WWE, they may be reluctant to push more than one super working Japanese male on the main roster at the same time. For Nakamura, at least so far, he’s keeping his first name. It can change on the main roster, but given part of his value is to help penetrate the Japanese market and beat New Japan for the top spot there, changing a name that famous doesn’t make marketing sense in the big picture. He’s not keeping his music, but we knew that going in. He’s also keeping his bom a ye finish, although for whatever reason, not the name bom a ye. I have no idea why, although the new name is the Kinshasa.

Part of a longer Observer report on the recent odd NXT call-up decisions by the WWE. Also Nakamura's finisher is now named after the location of the Ali-Foreman fight instead of the chant the crowd gave to Ali and how it carried over to Inoki's wrestling matches. https://www.reddit.com/r/SquaredCirc...ura_joe_balor/

Originally Posted by ProWrestlingSheet Dave Bautista was never offered the job of guest referee in the main event of WrestleMania 32 … Vince McMahon wanted him in the segment which featured 3 of the most popular wrestlers ever. We broke the story back in January, Bautista met with Vince McMahon at the Royal Rumble this year and the boss laid out a pitch for the former champ to participate at Mania in a non-wrestling role. Well-placed sources tell us Vince was wanted Dave to appear in the legends segment Sunday night — the one that eventually featured Steve Austin, Mick Foley and Shawn Michaels getting physical with The League of Nations and Xavier Woods — but as we previously reported, Dave had to pass. The actor/former wrestler has instead been busy filming “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2” and was just announced as one of the cast members in the upcoming “Blade Runner” sequel. Despite reports though, a ref spot was never in the cards at WrestleMania.

Originally Posted by Observer It appears his role on top will be different from John Cena. Cena would laugh and smile at people who booed him. Reigns is going to be more reactive it seems, including yelling back and swearing at the vocal ringsiders, so long as a camera isn’t there to capture it. His role is now the world champion and he’s not turning heel, but he’s the old-school champion like Dory Funk Jr., Jack Brisco or Lou Thesz in the sense they become heels because they defend against faces with the psychology fans want to see a title change. But they never behaved themselves like heels, and just did a few subtle things in the matches to play that role. Reigns was mouthing stuff with his back to the camera at some ringside fans when they heckled him saying “I run this bitch.” He did something similar off camera at Mania, as ringsiders were booing him heavily as he was leaving the ring after the show, and he said, “This is my motherf***ing house, bitches.”

Observer on the difference between Reigns and Cena when it comes to dealing with negative crowds.

Originally Posted by 411Mania According to Pro-Wrestling Stats & Analytics guru Chris Harrington, former WWE performer Rene Dupree has filed a class action lawsuit against the WWE. The suit is over unpaid royalties, from both the WWE Network and Netflix.

Originally Posted by Observer After little to no movement for the better part of a year, WWE got the class action stockholder lawsuit dismissed this past week. We covered this in detail back in issue #1044 (June 26, 2015) after discovering the back and forth that was going on involving the statements of Brian Maddox, who was formerly WWE's Vice President, Global Sales. The firm handling the case for the plaintiffs had filed an amended complaint a year ago with a lot of new, specific allegations from Confidential Witness 1 (or "CW1"), who turned out to be Maddox. This included everything from things we knew (WWE's social media numbers count a number of fans multiple times when they follow multiple WWE accounts, the issues with ad rates stemming from the number of low income viewers, etc.) to new information (not allowing anyone to sponsor the ring canvas has hurt ad rates and sponsor variety, WWE would drop sponsors for no apparent reason) to somewhat specious claims about WWE's total audience.

Originally Posted by Observer This year’s WWE Fastlane was the least purchased WWE PPV in history. While WWE is focused primarily on signing up WWE Network subscribers they do still make the shows available via PPV. Fastlane did 18,000 PPV buys in North America and 25,000 PPV buys outside of North America for a total of 43,000 PPV buys. Last year’s WWE Fastlane did a total of 56,000 PPV buys.

Managed to topple ECW December to Dismember for the record which was 55k buys total.

Originally Posted by PWTorch This week’s Lucha Underground episode drew the most viewers in the show’s history, continuing to build on momentum from the Aztec Warfare episode two weeks ago. Lucha Underground drew a combined audience of 234,000 viewers, up five percent from last week. Lucha topped the Aztec Warfare episode from two weeks ago, which drew 232,000 combined viewers. Tuesday’s first-run airing drew 156,000 viewers, which was down slightly from the past two weeks. The replay then drew 78,000 viewers, the second-most of the season. The bump in replay viewership helped draw the most total viewers in the show’s history.

It does have a bad downside since the very valuable 18-49 age market was down by a lot compared to two weeks ago.

Originally Posted by Observer [Shane's] three sons were at ringside at the NXT show with Linda McMahon. One of them was chanting with the fans unkind things about WWE officials when they kept stopping the Samoa Joe bout.

Originally Posted by Observer Johnny Gargano, 28, and Tommaso Ciampa (Tommaso Whitney, 30) were both recently signed to what were described to me as NXT touring contracts. The deal is probably similar to that of what Samoa Joe originally signed (until they renegotiated his deal). They are not developmental contracts and they get paid more then the developmental talent (or least the non-main eventers) per show. They don’t have to relocate to Florida and they can continue to take indie bookings but WWE gets first priority on their dates.

Originally Posted by Observer WWE announced the WrestleMania 32 live gate at $17.3 million while other sources with access to actual numbers said it was almost $17 million. The number destroyed the record of $12.6 million set last year in Santa Clara at Levi’s Stadium. What’s amazing is that as late as 2011, they set the U.S. gate record with $6,268,391 at Phillips Stadium in Atlanta, which tells how much they’ve been able to raise tickets prices in just the last five years. The fact they could sell so many seats at the prices they charged this year makes it likely prices will rise again for next year.

Rising ticket prices was a huge reason why Mania 29 topped Mania 28 for highest revenue made at the time even though its buy sales were around 200k lower.

One source noted to F4Wonline.com that there were a lot of typical WrestleMania production steps like rehearsals and shooting that was not done this year because WWE officials figured everything would change the morning of the big event anyway.

Would explain some of the odd feeling Mania had this year.

Originally Posted by Observer Because he’s so over in the U.S. due to Lucha Underground, Pentagon Jr. is going to be working almost every weekend he can get booked in the U.S. He’s way more over in Mexico where he won a fan balloting for most popular wrestler but with the peso to dollar exchange rate he can’t make the money there. He’s staying with AAA because they’ve been more flexible in allowing him dates off for him to make more money in the U.S. When he works U.S. indie shows, he makes a killing with merchandise, particularly his masks.

Some other sheet news includes:

• Nakamura's NXT theme is currently the #1 selling song on the iTunes store soundtrack chart based on a recent press statement by the WWE.
• According to reports, Eric Rowan recently granted a Make A Wish request to a terminally ill child in Texas during WWE's Mania tour. http://abcnews.go.com/Lifestyle/term...ry?id=38163692
• Cody Rhodes recently tweeted he plans on retiring from wrestling when he is 40 years old. https://twitter.com/princecgr/status/718106999594979328
• Current rumors regarding Prince Puma/Ricochet is him likely signing a WWE deal by mid-Summer due to him telling indie promotions to not offer dates after June.
• In a "WWE Did You Know" type fact, today marks the end of Titus O'Neil's current WWE suspension.
• In another "WWE Did You Know" type fact, Bret Hart's first ever wrestling match involved Bret punching Dennis Stamp in the nuts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijk72dahlIM
• According to reports, Scottish indie wrestler Nikki Storm recently signed a deal with the WWE.
• Recent episode of Stone Cold Steve Austin's podcast had Enzo and Big Cass as his guests. http://podcastone.com/pg/jsp/program...36&pid=1641985
• Update to the Gawker-Hogan lawsuit as Gawker is pleading for Hogan's award to be dropped to $1.875 million due to the circus-like nature of the trial and the company itself is only valued at $83 million.