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Notes from this week's Wrestling Observer

Becky Lynch The reason Lynch hasn’t worked house shows or done anything physical on television is that she also hasn’t been cleared as of press time. She was cleared from the concussion, but not from the nasal fracture. TLC The show isn’t sold out, but there are very few tickets left on the primary market and there are only 800 left on the secondary market -- but even so the demand isn’t that high as the price for entry is $51. MMA The 11/24 debut of Oscar De La Hoya’s Golden Boy MMA, built around the third Tito Ortiz vs. Chuck Liddell fight, is estimated at doing 40,000 PPV buys. Very underwhelming. TV Ratings Ratings were bad this week for both major WWE shows. RAW broke the all-time modern record for least-watched episode with a 1.61 rating and 2,286,000 viewers. There was a December 23, 1996 episode of RAW that did a 1.5 rating head-to-head with Nitro, which did a 3.1 rating head-to-head. Aside from that, this was the lowest rating for a WWE Monday night show, including Prime Time Wrestling, dating back to 1984. Baron Corbin's presence has seemed to repel viewership. Bayley and Rousey should be big with teenage girls, but Bayley’s been botched at a level where she’s not going to have any significant appeal and when Rousey comes out, you don’t hear women cheering, you hear men. RAW did a 0.47 in 12-17 (down 14.5 percent from last week), 0.55 in 18-34 (down 8.3 percent), 1.07 in 35-49 (up 9.2 percent from last week) and 0.87 in 50+ (down 9.4 percent). SMACKDOWN on 12/4 did 1,948,000 viewers. It was the lowest rating the show has ever done since moving to its live Tuesday night time slow with the exception of the 1,921,000 viewers on November 8, 2016, the night of the last presidential election. All demos were scary low by usual standards. SMACKDOWN did a 0.37 in 12-17 (down 21.3 percent from last week), 0.45 in 18-34 (down 21.1 percent), 0.87 in 35-49 (down 17.1 percent) and 0.78 in 50+ (down 10.3 percent). Dragon Gate Dragon Gate is the second most popular promotion at Korakuen Hall behind only New Japan. PAC winning the "Open the Dream Gate Title" was a standing room only crowd at the show. They overflowed Korakuen Hall with 1,858 people. NJPW FITE TV will be airing an Internet PPV of Wrestle Kingdom for $35. Not sure why you would order that when you could get the same show on New Japan World plus a month subscription for less than $9, but FITE is more convenient for some people to stream than New Japan World. MLW MLW announced the first of what they are hoping will be regular live shows on Bein Sports. They will be airing one hour live on 12.14.18. WWE HOF The reason behind NXT Takeover and the 2019 Hall Of Fame switching nights be might to accommodate The Rock. Dwayne Johnson is rumored to be the headliner for the HOF. If Johnson isn't it, then the reason for the move is to avoid NJPW/ROH at Madison Square Garden. Perhaps there is the feeling that, because of the respective building sizes and setups that more people would be at the MSG show and they didn’t want the news stories about how a rival promotion outdrew them. NXT will absolutely sell out once tickets are available for Takeover. This is a one-year thing and in 2020 things have to be changed since the Friday show will be a live Smackdown. So NXT or Hall of Fame would be Saturday and the other event would have to be on Thursday. WWE interested in New Japan star Kushida is a name that has been talked about for weeks by WWE management. He’s under contract to New Japan until the end of January. WWE Queen of the Ring An idea being talked about for 2019 would be a Queen of the Ring tournament with the main roster women. At this point it’s just an idea thrown around but they are looking for ideas for a second all women’s PPV show next year. Why you will never see Men vs Women in WWE again There was a promise to Mattel years ago when the deal was first made that they would never portray men physically overpowering women. WWE Attendance RAW doing 6,200 in Houston, one of the best wrestling markets in the country, is not good. SMACKDOWN only drew 3,800 fans in Austin the next night. The 12/5 WWE show in Santiago, Chile drew a nearly sold out crowd of 10,000 fans. WrestleMania 35 WWE might be planning a Sasha/Bayley vs Trish/Lita bout for the show.