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Former TPWW Royalty
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The Sheets:
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Originally Posted by Observer
The ratings for the official debut of WWE Backstage on FS1 can only be described as disappointing.
ShowBuzzDaily reported that WWE Backstage averaged 49,000 viewers last night, with a 0.02 rating in the 18-49 demo. It did not crack the top 150 shows on cable for Tuesday ...
This was the first time that Backstage aired in its regular time slot at 11 p.m. Eastern on Tuesday. Two preview episodes aired last month and did significantly better in the ratings, though both of those shows had strong lead-ins.
The first preview episode on October 15, which aired following an MLB playoff game, drew 597,000 viewers. The second episode on October 25, which followed SmackDown airing on FS1 due to the World Series, scored 426,000 viewers.
WWE had promoted last night's show with appearances by Shawn Michaels, John Cena, and Rob Gronkowski. They also advertised an episode of Firefly Fun House featuring new WWE Universal Champion The Fiend Bray Wyatt.
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Originally Posted by PWI
This Friday's episode of 205 Live will indeed be taped at tonight's WWE NXT taping at Full Sail University.
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Originally Posted by PWI
Impact Wrestling officially announced their next PPV, Hard to Kill, will take place on 1/12/20 at Gilley's in Dallas, Texas, which was the site of Slammiversary 2019:
Hard to Kill - January 12th, 2020 - Dallas, Texas! pic.twitter.com/y9tgTjgHwq
— IMPACT (@IMPACTWRESTLING) November 6, 2019
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Originally Posted by PWI
The XFL issued the following:
Two commentator teams from ESPN’s college football and NFL rosters will call ABC and ESPN’s 22-game schedule during the inaugural XFL 2020 season.
Play-by-play voice Steve Levy, analyst Greg McElroy, field analyst Tom Luginbill and reporter Dianna Russini will call the highly-anticipated XFL kickoff game – Seattle Dragons vs. DC Defenders (Feb. 8, 2 p.m. ET), the West Final (April 19, 3 p.m. ET), the XFL Championship (April 26, 3 p.m. ET) and weekly Saturday games on ABC in 2020 ...
Play-by-play voice Tom Hart, analyst Joey Galloway and field analyst Pat McAfee will call weekly Sunday games on ESPN and ABC, beginning with the St. Louis BattleHawks vs. Dallas Renegades (Feb. 9, 5 p.m. ET, ESPN).
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Originally Posted by PWI
In an interview with Justin Barrasso of Sports Illustrated to promote his appearance on ABC's The Goldberg's tonight, WWE Hall of Famer Hulk Hogan disclosed that he's undergoing yet another back surgery next week.
“I’m going in for another back surgery next Tuesday,” said Hogan. “They’re going to fuse six levels together, so we’ll see how I feel after that.”
Hogan has pushed for one final Wrestlemania match, and with Mania 36 in his hometown of Tampa, Florida, it makes sense he would be envision that as the environment for a final Hogan hurrah.
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Originally Posted by Post Wrestling
On Monday evening, Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter had reported in his daily update some notes from the meeting. Meltzer included that ‘Seth Rollins attempted to do a rah-rah speech while telling people to keep things like this off social media in the future’.
On Tuesday, Rollins refuted the story in a pair of posts on his Twitter account. This included Rollins denying that he spoke: “before, during or after the meeting.”
In a statement to Fightful, Rollins elaborated on his involvement at the meeting:
"Vince and Triple H held an all talent meeting to explain the travel situation returning from Crown Jewel. They commended the talent for their conduct in a tough spot and fielded questions and allowed anyone to voice their feelings on the matter. Some talent spoke up and overall it was a productive forum. I said zero words. I made no speech. Pretty simple."
Following Rollins’ posts on Twitter, Dave Meltzer issued an apology and retraction on his website on Tuesday evening.
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Originally Posted by Fightful
MJF says his "controversial" commentary needing to be edited out was the reason for the delay for the November 5 episode of AEW Dark.
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Ended up causing a situation where AEW's Twitter account was live tweeting stuff that was supposed to happen but had not yet aired due to those tweets being pre-scheduled and the Youtube stream being delayed.
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Originally Posted by Fightful
On a recent episode of Prime Time with Sean Mooney, NWA Vice President David Lagana joined the podcast to discuss NWA Powerrr and his time in WWE.
You can listen to the full podcast at this link. Fightful was sent the following highlights which can be seen below.
On NWA's business model: "This is not a sustainable model. Meaning spending what we spend per episode, and putting it on YouTube.... I'll be transparent; the production is not being paid for right now on YouTube money alone. But what has happened since we launched was, the audience has grown so quickly, that we are a lot closer to being sustainable than when we started.
Paying for this is ticket sales, merch and YouTube ad money. Our breaks will evolve...as long as it fits the genre, and we produce the content so it fits inside of our world, this show can be a marketing tool to anyone who wants to sell to this kind of audience."
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Originally Posted by Fightful
ROH World Champion RUSH's issues with CMLL have been well-documented, but he goes deeper on what the future of the CMLL/ROH relationship could be.
In an interview conducted in Spanish with Solo Wrestling, RUSH said things could get complicated with him standing at the top of ROH because of the working partnership the two promotions currently have. CMLL stars have gone to ROH, especially during the annual Global Wars tour.
But RUSH goes one step further and criticizes CMLL for not fully taking advantage of its partnerships with both ROH and NJPW. Like with ROH, CMLL sends stars to NJPW, especially every January for the Fantastica Mania tour. Yet, RUSH mentions the fact that top NJPW and ROH stars rarely, if ever, make the trip down to Mexico for their biggest shows.
"I think there is [going to be issues] because I'm the champion, I'm the face of the company now and with the partnerships [CMLL] has had, honestly, they don't know how to make the most of it. They have a tremendous alliance with NJPW, but you never see their top stars in Arena Mexico, you never see top ROH stars. When they sent us to Japan, they sent their stars, but didn't take advantage of it. Why? I don't know but those were factors that slowly wore me out. I asked for opportunities, I wanted to face new people. I was one of the strongest, if not the strongest out of CMLL, but there was nothing, no big challenge for me there," RUSH said.
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Originally Posted by Fightful
The National Wrestling Alliance will be featured in the upcoming RetroMania Wrestling game. The deal was announced on Tuesday's episode of NWA Powerrr in a video package led by Nick Aldis. RetroMania Wrestling is a new take on the classic WWF WrestleFest arcade game. The game is set to release in 2020 and will be available on PC, Nintendo Switch, PS4, and Xbox One.
The addition of NWA means fans can play in 3 new arenas, including NWA Powerrr, NWA 70, and Austin Idol's Universal Wrestling College and go for the 10 Pounds of Gold in an all-new game mode
NWA Champion Nick Aldis and NWA National Champion Colt Cabana have been added to the game roster as well.
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Originally Posted by Fightful
On the latest episode of his After The Bell podcast, Corey Graves gave his account of what happened in Saudi Arabia and addressed theories floating around online. For those unaware, WWE talent was stranded in Saudi Arabia following WWE Crown Jewel due to reported mechanical issues ...
While mechanical issues have been the given reason by WWE and Atlas Air, not everyone is buying it. Vince McMahon allegedly got into a dispute with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman over unpaid money, leading to the Crown Jewel feed in Saudi Arabia being delayed. After Crown Jewel, Vince immediately left the country, and some theorized that Vince perhaps knew there would be an issue and got out before anything happened, leaving the talent behind. However, Graves isn't buying this theory.
"What really got to me was when the rumors started coming out. The first one being, that Vince left everybody in Saudi Arabia. That's not true," he stated. "If you work here, you know that every week, no matter where we are, as soon as the final bell rings, Vince gets on his jet and goes home or to the next city because the guy is busy running WWE. It might be a sexy headline saying, 'Vince left before everybody. Everybody was stuck except for Vince and Brock.' When you're Brock Lesnar, Tyson Fury, Hulk Hogan, Ric Flair; you've earned that. It wasn't like [Vince] said 'to hell with the talent.' Vince did exactly what he has done every week, without fail. It wasn't some, 'Gotta get the hell out of the country, there's something crazy going on.' It was exactly how it works. That's how things operate every week, this is no different."
In fact, Graves is putting partial blame on WWE superstars for taking to social media and adding fuel to the fire that is was more than mechanical issues.
"All these conspiracy theories that have been drawn up...and half of it comes from some of the boys that were on the plane. If you are that insecure and you feel so strongly that you're gonna get on Twitter and complain that our flight got screwed up, what's Twitter gonna do? All it is is fuel for these 'journalists,' and then everyone puts their two cents in and starts coming up with their conspiracy theories. If you're mad that your flight got delayed and you weren't one of the Saudi 20, that's on you. Quit crying about it on Twitter. You know who wasn't complaining? Randy Freakin' Orton. If anyone has the cache and the right to speak his mind, it would be Randy Orton. He got it. It was about doing the damn show," he explained.
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Also claimed the top talent that left on a separate plane was only due to them being advertised for Smackdown the next night and not WWE playing favorites. Same for repeating the company line of mechanical issues being the cause of the delay and nothing else happened during that time.
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Originally Posted by Observer
The updated advertised lineup for WWE’s house show in Mexico City on November 30 lists that Rey Mysterio will now team with Humberto Carrillo against Luke Gallows & Karl Anderson. Mysterio teaming with Cain Velasquez had originally been announced for the show. Velasquez is still advertised to appear but doesn’t have a match listed.
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Originally Posted by Observer
WWE noted that Alexa Bliss' injury is minor and she’s expected to return to the ring soon. PWInsider reported yesterday that Bliss is dealing with a shoulder injury.
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Originally Posted by Observer
Shayna Baszler spoke to the Sporting News about NXT’s invasion of last Friday’s SmackDown: “It was very last minute. I'm sure people have heard but I got up that morning and went and did a workout. I actually wasn't booked for anything NXT-wise the rest of the week. I happened to have that Friday and Saturday off so I crushed it in the gym expecting, OK, I can kill myself in here right now because I can rest for a couple days finally. So, I was on my way home and got the call to pack up and be ready to leave on a word, be ready to leave right now. Got all ready, did that, and the timing worked out that, no exaggeration, that the shuttle to the arena... The plane landed and the show had started already. I left my bags on the shuttle and ran from the bus to the ring. That's not an exaggeration. It wasn't like we cut it close. I literally ran. There was someone waiting and I ran off the shuttle when we got to the venue to the ring. It was pretty wild.”
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