[Emperor Smeat]

The Sheets:

Originally Posted by PWI WWE announced this afternoon that Alexa Bliss has not been medically cleared to compete in this Sunday's Women's Money in the Bank Ladder match and will be replaced in the match ... Bliss last wrestled on the 4/29 edition of Raw, losing to Naomi. PWInsider.com She has suffered several concussions over the course of her WWE run and has pulled from the ring in the past to be sure she had adequately recovered from them.

Some conflicting reports regarding the nature of her injury since both the Observer and Post Wrestling reported that her exact injury isn't known.

Originally Posted by Observer Newsletter Some notes regarding different things of late. Paul Levesque, while never saying anything publicly, those close to the situation say he’s very frustrated with how things are going on the main roster. One person noted that a big problem isn’t Vince not being open to suggestions, but that they believe he’s far too open these days to suggestions and that it ends up watering down all the original visions and storylines. We’re told that there has been too much input from too many people on the team who haven’t figured out that when you change something in a story, it has a ripple effect on every aspect of the story. He solicits input on so much from so many people that it leads to things being watered down. There is a question of how Vince is going to cope with things early next year once the XFL starts. I can recall in 2001 when everyone doing both was just exhausted during football season. For better or worse, Vince’s workload is crazy now. He’s often in the office past midnight, close to 3 a.m. at least once a week and Friday’s his easy day, he’s working until 8 p.m. It’s mostly work and lifting weights, and occasionally watching some football on the weekend. The feeling is once the XFL starts, even though he says nothing will change, that it is simply impossible that’s the case unless he spends little time on the XFL. And since he’s got so much riding on the XFL, and is spending so much money on it, I can’t see him staying out of it. Regarding the family, Levesque picks his spots to talk with Vince, but never does it in front of anyone. Stephanie has nothing to do with creative. Shane does pitch ideas for himself but they rarely get used

Originally Posted by Observer Newsletter An embarrassing story is that this past week, Alberto El Patron was using social media to build up a three-way match on 5/5 in Monterrey with Alberto & brother El Hijo de Cien Caras facing Pentagon & Fenix and El Hijo de Dr. Wagner & Galeno del Mal. In the buildup, Alberto said that Pentagon wasn’t really a star because a real star would never wrestle in front of 300 or 400 fans and he’d never lower himself to work those kind of shows because he’s a real star. He has claimed that because of the crowds he’s worked in front of that he is one of the biggest Mexican stars of all-time, and at one point had heat with his uncle claiming he was actually a bigger star than Mil Mascaras ever was. Pentagon shot back saying that Alberto used to be a star, but he isn’t one anymore. There were people who thought they had legit heat, but evidently not enough, since the match drew 500 fans in a 5,000 seat building. A lot of people were making fun of Alberto after the show regarding his drawing power. He was definitely a huge star years ago but his drawing power has fallen. He rarely wrestles and the last time he was in Mexico City a few months ago, that didn’t draw either

Originally Posted by Observer Newsletter Crowds were down for the recent War of the Worlds tour. It’s pretty clear things are flat right now. The actual crowd for 5/8 in Buffalo was 600. Toronto on 5/9 was 1,000, well down from the expected 1,500. Grand Rapids, MI on 5/11 was 700 and Chicago on 5/12 drew 900 for television, which is less than the 2,000 that MLW has been doing in the market

According to the Observer, MLW is currently the #2 promotion in the US going by event attendance and tv viewership. They beat ROH in ticket sales and Impact in tv ratings.

Originally Posted by Observer ROH has announced a Summer Supercard for SummerSlam weekend in Toronto. It was announced today that Summer Supercard will take place at the Mattamy Athletic Centre in Toronto on Friday, August 9. The show will include wrestlers from ROH, NJPW, CMLL, and the NWA. NJPW's G1 Climax will still be going on when Summer Supercard takes place, so Summer Supercard won't feature wrestlers in the tournament. Summer Supercard will air live on HonorClub. ROH hyped that it will "feature the greatest wrestlers from the US, Japan, and Mexico competing for championships and in dream matches."

Originally Posted by PWI Gursinder Singh announced that he has received his Impact Wrestling release, a month after publicly announcing he had requested it. Announcing to the world that I have officially been granted my release from Impact Wrestling. Looking forward to the future! #freeagent — Gursinder Singh (@GursinderImpact) May 15, 2019

Originally Posted by Fightful Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer reports that Road Dogg was "feeling so much pressure" during his time as SmackDown lead writer, which led to him stepping down. Meltzer notes that if/when he returns, he will likely work under/for Triple H.

Originally Posted by Fightful The IIconics address the post-WrestleMania rumors about Sasha Banks and Bayley. At WrestleMania 35 last month, Sasha Banks and Bayley walked into MetLife Stadium as the WWE Women's Tag Team Champions and they also dropped the titles to Peyton Royce and Billie Kay at the show. The IIconics are still holders of the titles coming out of WWE's European tour. Following WrestleMania, reports and rumors made the rounds that Sasha Banks and Bayley were upset and threw their respective "temper tantrums" about dropping the titles after winning them two months prior at Elimination Chamber. Peyton Royce and Billie Kay recently chatted with Express Sport and shared that they did not see any of what was rumored and added that everyone was happy for them including Banks and Bayley. “Immediately after the match we were all in tears, all crying." Peyton Royce shared. "Just filled with emotion, we got pictures together which we then posted on our Instagram. I mean, I know there’s all these rumors going around and we didn’t see anything."

Originally Posted by Observer Newsletter All Elite Wrestling and WarnerMedia announced officially at the latters’ upfronts at the Hulu Theater a deal for weekly prime time wrestling on TNT ... The deal also includes content on B/R Live, including PPV shows. The PPV content will be done more like UFC, where it will be a full price PPV at $49.95, and not undercutting the PPV providers’ price. That may have been something that they had little choice on, because in cutting recent deals with inDemand, Dish and DirecTV, the contract stipulations likely called for an inability to undercut the price on streaming. WWE was able to do that by basically just doing it, and the PPV providers had to either agree to continue airing the shows or not. But WWE had leverage due to its long history which AEW wouldn’t have had.

Originally Posted by Observer Newsletter The belief within the company is this deal will allow them to be profitable by 2020. But there are still very obvious challenges, such as being able to draw prime time ratings on a station like TNT. TNT averaged 1,171,000 viewers in prime time in 2018, putting it in seventh place on cable, behind Fox News, ESPN, MSNBC, HGTV, USA and TBS. From the Turner side, because of the ability of wrestling to be a product on multi-platforms, with television as the main driver but not the only driver, that it doesn’t have to do the network average to be a big success. But the number is always important. Previously, because the role of wrestling was largely to bring up the network average, since wrestling performed poorly when it came to selling ads, a wrestling show was of no value if it didn’t beat the network average. TNT is available in slightly more homes, just under 90 million, than USA, which is in just under 89 million homes. USA only beats TNT in ratings due to Raw and Smackdown.

Originally Posted by Observer Newsletter Cesar Gonzalez, best known as Silver King in Mexico and Ramses in the movie “Nacho Libre,” passed away in the ring on 5/11 on a show in London due to a heart attack during a match with Juventud Guerrera ... Guerrera said that while he didn’t know it at the time, Gonzalez had a pre-existing health condition. Others have stated the same thing, although he had passed tests to get licensed in several commissions in Mexico. The Torreon commission said he passed their medical testing last in February. Daniel Lopez (El Satanico), who heads the commission in Zapopan, outside Guadalajara, said that he doesn’t want to say what he really thinks about all this because it would get him in trouble, but said that he will insist on more stringent medical procedures as a necessity than what he saw on the video. Most commissions that regulate wrestling require a doctor, and some an ambulance. But in the U.K., where things aren’t regulated, like really most of the U.S. and Canada, there was no such requirement. The incident had led to a movement, mandated in MLW, and talked about in other companies by referees, regarding referees taking CPR classes. Still, in Mexico, the media has not come down hard on it for the most part. Gonzalez was working a series of shows for Lucha Libre World, a promotion headed by El Hijo del Santo ... Silver King delivered a flying clothesline, and then went for a pin. Guerrera kicked out. Silver King then seemingly couldn’t get up. He struggled and moved and then couldn’t any longer and laid on the mat. Both Guerrera and Terry tried to stall for time for him to get up, rather than checking on him ... Guerrera then went to end the match and tried to turn Silver King over to his back, but had to struggle to do so since Silver King was dead weight. He went for the pin. Terry counted to two, but knowing this wasn’t the planned finish, actually held up the count very awkwardly for a few seconds, before counting three. This was about 90 seconds after he collapsed. Guerrera celebrated. King laid there and there was another 90 seconds before anyone else got in the ring. A few people working at the show were in the ring, hovering over him but not treating him. Other wrestlers, including Santo and Guerrera were also in there. Fans in the arena were confused, with many thinking it was part of the show. The match was being streamed like on Santo’s Facebook page and those watching could see Silver King laying there with nobody tending to him for a long time. Finally, at about seven minutes in, a stretcher was brought in and they announced they were taking a break in the show. An ambulance arrived after ten minutes after he collapsed but it was too late. Due to his death, the show didn’t resume.

Originally Posted by Observer Newsletter We don’t know of what sponsors reacted past Mars Wrigley Confectionery was furious after receiving a letter from a circlejerk user who used the name “SnitchBoy.”

at the user name of the person who brought Suillivan's past bigoted comments back into the public. Also seems based on Meltzer's report, WWE becoming more aware of mental health issues post-Ranallo bullying incident and not wanting to release him since he could be of value elsewhere ended up being the key reasons why Lars wasn't fired.

Originally Posted by Observer Newsletter [AAA owner] Roldan’s goal is still U.S. expansion, noting there is so much more money to be made in the U.S. He also said that by targeting the Hispanic market, they are not competition for WWE and AEW. I think he doesn’t understand how WWE thinks. He said the success or lack of it for the MSG show will determine what happens next. He said they never expected to sell out in advance like the New Japan/ROH show, because the Hispanic market buys late. He felt they’ve done well. I do know that MSG is very concerned over the ticket sales, particularly coming off New Japan selling out in an instant and MSG’s belief that there are so many more Latinos than Japanese, not realizing Japanese aren’t the ones supporting New Japan, and again, it may have been a Young Bucks & Omega & Cody sellout in hindsight.

Originally Posted by Observer Newsletter Ranallo has signed a new multi-year contract to continue announcing NXT. The contract has the same stipulations as the previous deal in that he can announce for any other company except those within pro wrestling. He highest-profile gig is with Showtime boxing and he also works for Bellator, but not on every show

Originally Posted by Observer Newsletter The stock was down this week, closing at press time at $81.22 per share giving the combat a market value of $6.339 billion. It’s actually lower now than when the earnings report came out so despite analysts being bullish on the future with the great TV deals and the expected big India deal, the market hasn’t come back

Almost 20% of the stock's value got wiped away since WWE's recent fiscal report.


Some stuff from TPWW Frontpage:

• Various: Tye Dillinger & Tyler Breeze Open Wrestling School, Austin Aries’ MLW Opponent
• WWE Reportedly Moving to a New Channel in the UK
• WWE Is High on Andrade
• Lars Sullivan’s Anxiety Issues Were Reportedly Due to Fear of Repercussions for Past Comments