[Emperor Smeat]

The Sheets (Observer Newsletter Edition):

Rebecca Quin aka Becky Lynch, the biggest genuine women’s pro wrestling star in the U.S. of the modern era, shocked the wrestling world on 5/11 by announcing she was pregnant. The announcement was made in the opening segment of Raw that night. It had already gotten out that she would make a major announcement about her future and rumors spread of her being pregnant, and that she would vacate the title to Asuka, who had captured the Money in the Bank briefcase the night before ... Quin is expecting in December, which would indicate probably February or early March for when she first got pregnant. She said she found out about it in April ... For the Raw after WrestleMania, which was actually taped before WrestleMania, meaning before she knew she was pregnant, Lynch did an interview that appeared to focus on a return match with Shayna Baszler, who she beat on the show with the idea it was a fluke pin out of nowhere, designed to keep the program alive. Nia Jax returned and was pushed as a monster at about the same time. Both Jax and Baszler were focused on a match with Lynch on that show. But on the first Raw new tapings done after WrestleMania, Baszler and Jax instead qualified for the Money in the Bank match and Lynch was not at the taping, which would indicate it being the early part of April when she told the company, and they kept it under wraps for about a month. Money in the Bank was taped on 4/15 so it’s very clear they knew before then. It had seemed weird with Money in the Bank so lacking in star power that Lynch wouldn’t be wrestling on the show. The actual original booking plan was for Lynch to wrestle Jax in a singles match at the MITB PPV, and to retain the title. Baszler was originally booked to win MITB and be Lynch’s main rival for the title. As far as the women’s division goes, Asuka, the best worker of the women on the brand, as champion will likely feud with both Baszler and Jax ... This was the first time in American pro wrestling when a major league promotion world champion vacated her title due to pregnancy.

WWE returned to PPV with a show built around a taped mini-movie Money in the Bank match on 5/10. The Money in the Bank match was a taping done on 4/15 at the WWE headquarters in Stamford, CT, where supposedly the six men and six women would start on the bottom floor and go from floor-to-floor until ending on the roof of the building where there was a ring with a briefcase held up and ladders all around ... it was okay since the 27:10 match still led to a main show that only went two hours and 24 minutes, which was a positive. There is no internal doctrine right now to keep shows to a shorter length, just a decisio made for this specific show. But since most took it as a positive, that could become the general rule until fans are back ... The show did 200,000 Google searches which indicates a normal amount of interest for a non-major PPV show. With the record low ratings leading into the show, there was thought that the interest level would be way down. But it was above the weaker shows or the Saudi shows.

Smackdown on 5/8 did a 1.33 rating and 2,025,000 viewers (a very low 1.26 viewers per home). But the rating was up 7.3 percent from last week and the total viewers were up 7.4 percent for the go-home show for Money in the Bank. It’s, by today’s normal, a good sign because the show had hit record lows for FOX last week and this was not only a solid increase, but the first time Smackdown had increased from the prior week in five weeks and stopped a significant weekly erosion which may indicate last week was a bottoming out as opposed to a continuation of big weekly drops ... FOX on the same week last year did 2,872,000 viewers and a 0.6 in 18-49, so it’s drop of 29.5 percent in viewers and 16.7 percent in the key demo.

A few more notes from the 5/6 television shows. AEW’s 1.38 viewers per home was the highest of any pro wrestling show of the past week, meaning more people on average watch the show together. For AEW, in males 18-34, the high point was Cody vs. Joey Janela and low point was the Jon Moxley beatdown by the Dark Order. For women 18-34, the high point was Chris Jericho & Sammy Guevara vs. Kenny Omega & Matt Hardy. The low point was Cody vs. Janela. For men 35-49, the high point was Cody vs. Janela. The low point was the promos with MJF, Shawn Spears, etc. For women 35-49, the high point was Jericho & Guevara vs. Omega & Hardy and the low point was also that MJF, Spears, etc. quarter that was almost all interviews. For NXT, in males 18-34, the high point was Johnny Gargano vs. Dominik Dijakovic and Akira Tozawa vs. Jack Gallagher. The low point was the Finn Balor stuff as Cameron Grimes vs. Denzel Dejournette. For NXT, in women 18-34, the high point was Gargano vs. Dijakovic and Tozawa vs. Gallagher. The low point was the Balor stuff and Grimes vs. Dejournette. For men 35-49, the high point was Chelsea Green vs. Xia Li and low point was Adam Cole vs. Velveteen Dream. For women 35-49 the high point was Gargano vs. Dijakovic and Green vs. Li tied, and the low point was Cole vs. Dream.

Both NXT and AEW suffered declines on 5/13, both to near all-time low marks. The reasons are a few. The obvious is the empty arena format erodes numbers under the best of circumstances, although that’s no different from last week ... UFC also appears to have hurt both shows and really all of cable given AEW was down 17.4 percent in the key demo and was still in the No. 15 spot on cable for the night. AEW did 654,000 viewers and a 0.23 (294,000 viewers) in 18-49. The show was down 10.7 percent in viewers and 17.4 percent in 18-49. NXT was No. 46 in 18-49, with 604,000 viewers and 0.15 (189,000 viewers) in 18-49. It was down 8.9 percent in viewers and down 20.6 percent in 18-49. AEW figured to be affected more by UFC competition because it skews younger, like UFC. NXT, which had been doing a 56 year old median viewer age in recent weeks, was going to have less UFC crossover, but it took an even bigger hit in 18-49 than AEW did, which also indicates in the key UFC demo both companies got killed. It was the lowest number for AEW to date, and third lowest for a regular NXT show to date ... One key is that NXT pushed hard all day a major announcement by William Regal. The same strategy pushed all day by Raw two days earlier led to a very strong opening quarter, but for Raw it was an announcement by Becky Lynch which led to all kinds of speculation, including what was true. Trying to do the same promotional gimmick two days later will invariably not work, with this being the example. In this case, it was simply the announcement of the next Takeover show. Another key the decline was UFC related is that the declines for AEW were almost all 18-49 males, as the teenage audience was the same and over 50 had only a small decline. NXT suffered the same major hit in 18-49 males but not in teenage boys at all ... AEW was No. 8 not including news shows in 18-49 and fifth in its time slot trailing only MTV, Bravo, Home & Garden and The Food Network shows. NXT was No. 13 in its time slot. AEW was second on cable among entertainment shows in Males 18-49 and second in Males 12-34. NXT was fifth among entertainment shows in Males 18-49 and sixth in Males 12-34. So UFC hurt every show in that demo because of how well the wrestling shows even with the record lows did in placing ... AEW won all eight quarters, and in 18-49 won every quarter by a big margin. The first quarter with NXT getting the benefit of the bigger lead-in was close. AEW opened with the Cody brawl with Lance Archer and the beginning of Jurassic Express vs. Best Friends, doing 691,000 viewers to start and 284,000 in 18-49. NXT opened with Matt Riddle & Timothy Thatcher vs. Marcel Barthel & Fabian Aichner for the tag titles, doing 687,000 total viewers and 208,000 in 18-49. In the second quarter, AEW lost 38,000 viewers and 5,000 in 18-49 for Best Friends vs. Jurassic Express. NXT lost 51,000 viewers and 14,000 in 18-49 for the Riddle and Thatcher backstage brawl and Tegan Nox vs. Indi Hartwell. In the third quarter, AEW lost 7,000 viewers but gained 10,000 in 18-49 for Britt Baker vs. Hikaru Shida vs. Kris Statlander vs. Penelope Ford and the Pineapple Pete interview. NXT lost 31,000 viewers and 13,000 in 18-49 for Tony Nese vs. Jake Atlas and the Undisputed Era video conference. In the fourth quarter, AEW gained 27,000 viewers and 32,000 in 18-49 for Kenny Omega & Matt Hardy vs. Ortiz & Santana. NXT lost 38,000 viewers and 2,000 in 18-49 for the Karrion Kross & Scarlett video, a Dakota Kai & Raquel Gonzalez vignette, an Isaiah Scott promo and the special announcement by HHH, Shawn Michaels and Road Dogg. In the fifth quarter, AEW lost 24,000 viewers and 9,000 in 18-49 for the end of the Omega & Hardy vs. Santana & Ortiz match, Taz with Darby Allin, the Nyla Rose/Shida angle and MJF vs. Lee Johnson. NXT gained 53,000 viewers and 45,000 in 18-49 for Finn Balor vs. Cameron Grimes and the post-match with Damien Priest. In the sixth quarter, AEW lost 11,000 viewers and 18,000 in 18-49 for the MJF promo, Chris Jericho vs. Pineapple Pete and the Inner Circle promo destroying Vanguard One. NXT lost 49,000 viewers and 51,000 in 18-49 for Isaiah Scott vs. Jack Gallagher. In the seventh quarter, AEW lost 1,000 viewers and 8,000 in 18-49 for hyping next week and Double or Nothing and the main event ring intros. NXT gained 4,000 viewers and 4,000 in 18-49 for Kayden Carter vs. Aliyah and the Johnny Gargano & Candice LeRae vignette. In the final quarter, AEW gained 7,000 viewers and 13,000 in 18-49 for Brodie Lee vs. Christopher Daniels and the post-match brawl involving the Dark Order and Jon Moxley. NXT lost 5,000 viewers and 3,000 in 18-49 for Riddle vs. Thatcher.

SummerSlam and all the usual things that go with it look very unlikely for Boston in late August. Boston Mayor Marty Walsh said that they don’t envision a point this summer where it makes sense to have large crowds gathered in the city. He said that all parades and festivals in the city would not take place until 9/7 at the earliest ... Regarding rumors of SummerSlam being moved to September, Vince McMahon is determined to have a live crowd for this year’s SummerSlam. Right now it is scheduled for August but if waiting until September is the only way to have the show in front of a live crowd, the thought is he would make that move but it is not a move decided on and he hasn’t outright committed to it. Vince is the person who will make the call and he changes his mind constantly, sometimes brilliant and often in almost complete denial of what is going on in the world and right now he sees the pandemic as something inconvenient because it gets in the way of his vision of what the product is supposed to be and his plans

They officially announced as IC title tournament on Smackdown. Even though nobody can say it publicly for obvious reasons, there is a lot of unhappiness that Zayn exercised the option that they gave everyone regarding not wrestling if you don’t want to right now. I mean, the IC title doesn’t mean much and we’re long past the period of taking titles too seriously and they can do whatever they want. The tournament will start on the 5/15 Smackdown show It should be noted that I know of several people in the company who are not comfortable at all about working right now but were not about to take WWE up on the offer for job security reasons, and this was before all the firings. There are still people not working who live in the U.S. but they are very few. It’s also notable with AEW that Tony Khan said roughly the same thing, and evidently his employees believed him at the time. The promise that you can take the time off and it won’t hurt you or your position is hard to take seriously. The only person who publicly said he wouldn’t wrestle in a pandemic was Lio Rush as he was then fired. Now, granted, my belief is he was fired because he complained about pay and went into a depression about money and how he was being used months earlier. And those guys were the first guys let go.

This is the situation with Mysterio. They shot an angle on Raw this week where Rollins took out his eye. Mysterio’s contract is coming due and at least as of a week ago he had not signed a new deal. I don’t expect him to leave but it’s not a lock that he won’t. One of the key things to him is the future of his son. There is the idea not to do anything to upset WWE because it could negatively affect his son’s career. He also has a very high contract with WWE because they very badly didn’t want him working for New Japan, which he had just started doing. He signed before there was an AEW, but after the new TV deals were made so they knew they had all the money they’d ever need to sign people they wanted and Mysterio got a great deal, and was able to negotiate an 18 month out which the feeling was would make it perfect timing to be a free agent. But it’s not perfect timing now. The word is that WWE is not giving any raises right now, so the guys who signed in the last year or so, after AEW started, and got the big offers based on them wanting to own everyone marketable looks to be a lot more limited. One would have to think there is interest in Mysterio in AEW, especially since they booked him in the main event of All In (which WWE badly wanted him off of but he refused at the time to pull out of that commitment) ... So the Rollins thing when Rollins took out his eye is either to give him an angle with Rollins if he stays, or it’s following the Matt Hardy playbook if he leaves

Rachael Ellering, 27, who wrestled as Rachael Evers (after Lance Storm’s real last name since Storm was her trainer) is now a free agent. I believe her release was around the same time as the other releases but the name never got out but her 30-day non-compete should be over or just about over and she put up a video that seemed to tease being a free agent. It’s been confirmed she’s no longer with the company. A few months ago she spoke to the company about having issues with the medical team and medical procedures. She was rehabbing after reconstructive knee surgery. Her complaints were not received well and a few weeks ago she was given two options, both of which essentially were that she was getting released. She chose one of them and was then released. There was a time when she was interested in leaving but this was a company decision

The situation with Sting is this. He was originally set for being a character in Mattel’s Legend Series 7 line and then removed. When this came out on The Major Wrestling Figure podcast, Mattel wrote in response, “Due to circumstances out of our control Sting needed to be removed from Legends Series 7. We’ll look to include this figure in a future wave if he becomes available to us again.” The reason for this is that Sting no longer has a merchandising contract with WWE. This has coupled with Sting starting to tweet AEW things. That also would indicate no longer being under contract with WWE. Cody tweeted something like he heard something. As far as AEW goes, this is what I can say. I’ve asked and gotten no response to the question and if there was nothing going on the odds are I’d be told there was nothing going on

President Harold Meij of New Japan Pro Wrestling gave a YouTube update in English on the company’s current and future plans, and said that at some point they would be doing empty arena matches. He said that due to the success of the two-day WrestleKingdom events on 1/4 and 1/5 at the Tokyo Dome, that the company has been financially okay so far, even though saying that they have incurred significant financial losses from the decisions they’ve made to not run any events. Meij thanked the New Japan fan base for their continued support during these challenging times, noting in particular that New Japan Word numbers have not fallen significantly in the two plus months where the company hasn’t presented any new live shows, and that online merchandise sales have been extremely successful. He said that there was no sensible option but to not run shows at this time, but that these decisions were not taken lightly, and recognize they have disappointed fans, wrestlers and staff, and noted how painful these decisions have been ... He also noted that the company has come up with a lot of new merchandise and their new global web site has allowed them to ship their merchandise to 33 countries worldwide.

AEW’s Double or Nothing key matches for 5/23 in Jacksonville have been announced, with the biggest news being the involvement of Mike Tyson, who will present the TNT championship belt to the winner of the Cody vs. Lance Archer tournament final ... Tyson is interesting because obviously it’s mainstream publicity play. Tyson attended last year’s Double or Nothing show. He was backstage and didn’t stay for the entire show. He was also a guest in September at a Jaguars game. Reports were that they got him for a good deal, but under any circumstances, Tyson doesn’t come cheap. The idea is getting mainstream publicity for the title, the winner and the company. Tyson, when he was in his mainstream culture prime in 1998, was a key factor in turning the tables in a wrestling war that WCW was dominating. Doing an angle with Steve Austin propelled Austin to going from being a major wrestling star to someone known outside of the wrestling world. He refereed the Austin WWF title win over Shawn Michaels. He pulled in $3.5 million from that appearance which is still believed to be the biggest one-night payday anyone in pro wrestling history has ever received ... But still, Tyson remains big in the culture, remembered as a better boxer than he really was, and he was the biggest drawing card in sports during his heyday. He also had a controversial past, growing up a hoodlum and serving time for a rape conviction. But his modern image has been remade as this fun-loving cool guy who was the baddest man and hardest hitter on the planet. A recent video of him throwing punches, still bringing the heat, went viral in recent days and has led to recent talk of him perhaps boxing once again at 53. There is the question of adding a high cost for Tyson on a show with no live gate and a question regarding how the PPV will do ... AEW did break even in April, actually making a very small profit. With television not being taped every week, it has reduced costs, although the reduction of costs is not enough to offset the loss of the live gates from what would have been five Wednesday night shows, but the reduction does partially offset that. The company turned a very small profit between the money from TNT for television, online merchandise money and costs being down by doing all the taping over two days in Decatur, GA. This was done with paying everyone on staff and the talent, and the production crew was paid the same as they would have for weekly shows even though the shows were done in two days rather than five days. And there were cost savings by doing two shows where everyone was flown in and out once, as opposed to paying for everyone for five trips to various locations. But they would have likely had a very big month. They were expecting good houses in Milwaukee, St. Louis, Boston, Philadelphia and Houston, particularly since St. Louis and Houston are strong traditional wrestling markets and this would have been AEW’s first time in both cities. That, along with Rochester and Newark, which were figured to be two high grossing events, Newark perhaps setting the company’s all-time record, and this period was hoped to be where they start making back the losses of the first year, but with a pandemic, that period is going to have to wait. The show will be at Daily’s Place except for the Stadium Stampede match, which will air live from TIAA Field, with the match taking place all over the empty football stadium. The idea is similar to a famous Minoru Suzuki match at the empty Tokyo Dome a few years ago. The football field is adjacent to Daily’s Place as in the street fight with Matt Hardy & Omega vs. Jericho & Guevara on 5/13, they went backstage and you could see the football field, done on purpose because of what it was to build ... The entire show is expected to be nine matches. From television this past week, the most notable tease was Wardlow vs. Luchasaurus, and they are clearly building something in that direction at some point, whether now or later.

At last week’s Lucha Fighter press conference, announcer Jesus Zuniga said that the AAA ownership would be deciding on the big show plan on 5/30. He said that TripleMania could take place with no fans. The problem is the main revenue stream for TripleMania is the live gate. In addition, like last year, AAA was hoping to get the top AEW stars to attend and Kenny Omega is their world champion. That would seem very unlikely at this point

The planned [UFC] show on 5/23 has been canceled. After the 5/16 show, the plan for the next show is 5/30. They are hopeful of 5/30 being in Las Vegas but that depends on if the commission approves it. If not it’ll be somewhere else. AEW tries to avoid Saturday’s with UFC shows for its PPVs but the way things have been, that is going to be more difficult since UFC shows aren’t planned out months in advance during this period. But it looked like they were head-to-head and now AEW has the night unopposed