[Emperor Smeat]

The Sheets:

Originally Posted by Post Wrestling For the second consecutive week, WWE Raw was able to top 1.9 million viewers for a show advertised as “Championship Monday” along with the return of Rey Mysterio, and an update from Edge. Monday’s three-hour show averaged 1,922,000 viewers, which is on par with last week’s average of 1,939,000. Both weeks finished with 0.53 in the key 18-49 demographic. The three hours of Raw this week finished fourth, sixth, and seventh among cable programming for the evening. Raw opened with 2,035,000 viewers in the first hour, which is the first time Raw has cracked two million viewers for any hour of the program since the night after WrestleMania on April 6th. In the second hour, it fell 4% to 1,950,000 viewers and declined another 8.5% in the third hour with an average of 1,782,000 viewers. The show built to the closing angle involving Rey Mysterio’s return alongside son Dominick and a brawl involving Aleister Black and Humberto Carrillo against Seth Rollins, Murphy, and Austin Theory. The consecutive weeks of audience improvement coincide with the recent creative shake-up where the company announced Bruce Prichard would be overseeing both Raw and SmackDown, while Paul Heyman was being removed from his position on Raw and would retain his on-air role. While the shows are always going to be Vince McMahon produced shows, a change in Raw’s presentation has been evident in the past two episodes. The key demographics were interesting when it came to the 12-34 audience. The show was a hit with males as they were up 30% from last week, although it declined 11% by the third hour. With females in the same age group, they were down 32% from last week, although that audience stayed consistent for all three hours with no decline in the third hour, which is a rarity for any demographic on Raw. Every other demo fell in the third hour compared to hour one with the biggest drop among males 18-49 declining by 17% in the last hour.

Originally Posted by Post Wrestling One of the patterns we are seeing since the [WWE] creative shake-up is more championship matches on television with three on last week’s Raw and another three this week. The show had a strong audience by current standards last week and assisted by a show-long tease of Christian’s first match since 2014.

Assuming it continues, similar mentality as NXT since it moved to USA Network with the constant tossing of title matches on tv compared to how it was handled before.

Originally Posted by Post Wrestling SunSport pushed out their interview with Sonya Deville. Deville was asked for her Mount Rushmore of women’s wrestling and her list included Asuka, Sasha Banks, Bayley, Charlotte Flair and Deville also mentioned Nikki and Brie Bella. “Yeah, I think (Charlotte would) be on there for sure. I think she’s incredible. I think Asuka’s incredible. Bayley and Sasha, are incredible. Becky, for sure. There’s a lot of women that have paved the way before me, everyone has added something different to women’s wrestling. The Bellas I think are incredibly smart, business savvy women that knew how to build a brand and are incredible in the ring too. I think we’ve all contributed to the success of women’s wrestling and we’re just going to keep going up from here because the talents [have] never been more competitive.”

Originally Posted by Post Wrestling Terri Runnels was a guest on the ‘Kee On Sports’ podcast and Terri recalled being harassed by Brock Lesnar backstage at a WWE event. She said that while she was walking down the hall, Lesnar called her name and opened the towel that was around his waist. At that point in time, Runnels was aware that Lesnar was making his way up in WWE and that the company was going to put the world title on him so he knew that he had pull. “I don’t have a lot of respect for Brock. I don’t think Brock respects wrestling fans. Brock did something that was, in today’s day in time… I mean he showed his penis to me, and called my name as I was walking past where he was in the dressing room and opened his towel so I could see his manly bits, and I’ve often said when I actually tell that story, I’ve often said — and of course this is me being absolutely [a] smart ass when I say it because I would’ve much rather him not been so disrespectful of a female that’s been in the business as long as I had been and at that point, he was a greenhorn. He knew he was gonna have a lot of power, that they were gonna give him the strap but at that point, I’d been in this business for a long time, I have respect and what he did was very, very wrong from a respect standpoint, from a sexual harassment standpoint. Whatever you wanna look at it [as], it was wrong. But my joke to kind of bring levity to it so I don’t get so darn upset about it is that I’m like, ‘If you’re gonna show me your junk, at least let it be impressive,’ and so like, I don’t know if you know what a pink feeder mouse is that they sell in animal shops to feed snakes. They’re like the mice before they get their little hair on them. Well, that’s basically what that vision was akin to. A pink feeder mouse, and so I’m thinking like, ‘Wow, why did…’ not that it would’ve been any less disrespectful or less sexual harassing had he been hung like a horse, but I mean come on, so, yeah. I mean that’s my only levity as that’s concerned.” Terri Runnels was a part of a miscarriage storyline on WWE programming with Val Venis. Runnels said that she fought against Vince Russo to put an end to the storyline before it got started. To this day, that storyline still upsets her. “Oh my God. So that to this day is one of the storylines that I fought and fought Vince Russo over and I lost. Obviously I lost because it happened, right? It was so tone deaf to women and for me personally, even though I told you Dakota [Terri’s daughter] gets the difference between gimmick and real life storylines and stuff like that, I’m like, that’s just one of those things that if her — she’s in school now and if one of her little friends says, ‘Oh my gosh, your mommy’s pregnant. Oh my gosh, your mommy lost her baby’ and like, that’s not a conversation I wanna sit down and try to explain what was even part of what I did with the character. That pissed me off, it upset me and yeah, I fought it and I lost obviously.”

Originally Posted by Post Wrestling It was first reported by Dave Meltzer on Wrestling Observer Radio that Charlotte Flair is set to undergo surgery and it’s not known if she will be back for SummerSlam or not. Prior to the 6/22 episode of RAW on-which Charlotte Flair was written off TV by way of an attack from Nia Jax, Ric Flair appeared on The Wrestling Inc. Daily podcast and he mentioned that Charlotte would be taking time off and “finishing her commitments up until SummerSlam”. “I’m hoping that when she finishes her commitments up until SummerSlam or whatever it is — I mean I don’t know. I have no idea. I know she has a TV series looking at her. She’s got fitness people wanting to do work with her. I hope that she takes as long as she wants off so that all these people that can fill her shoes and do that every night have the opportunity. Good luck and God bless that thought.”

Seems Charlotte originally was planning on taking her break after SummerSlam but changed her mind recently.

Originally Posted by Post Wrestling Ring of Honor’s Marty Scurll was accused of sexual assault on June 22nd by Twitter user @mystickttn, who worked for the promotion IPW:UK at the time of the alleged assault. She was 16-years old at the time and ran into Marty Scurll at a post-show party. Per the story, she was drunk and Marty asked her to go back to the hotel and when they got there, he pulled out his penis and asked her to perform oral sex which she did. Before the situation escalated further, a friend of hers showed up and told Marty to leave. Scurll has released a statement on Twitter addressing the allegations and made mention that he believes the encounter was consensual and legal since the age of 16 is considered of age in the United Kingdom. “I am aware that a young woman has bravely come forward with her account of sexual abuse by some members of the wrestling community in the UK 5 years ago, a community I was a part of. Although I truly believe that our encounter that evening was consensual, and the fact that the encounter was legal; is almost not the point. I understand that she now views our encounter as part of a bigger problem within the wrestling community. What concerns me at this moment is that from what I have been reading, she is a fan of wrestling and was made to feel unsafe within that community. This is not acceptable. I also understand that people have been attacking her on social media, and I implore you to please stop. She has a right to her voice and it is our responsibility to listen.”

Originally Posted by Post Wrestling After many women in wrestling shared their stories of harassment and assault by way of Joey Ryan, Ryan’s former tag team partner Candice LeRae took to Twitter to show support for the women that have had these experiences with Ryan over the years. “I am mortified. I absolutely DO NOT and never have condoned such horrible actions. I have zero tolerance for it. To the women he did this to- my heart breaks for you. I trusted this person. Reading the stories and learning how he acted sickens me. Especially because you all trusted him too. I can’t imagine how YOU felt. For every woman and man who has been brave enough to speak out, I have nothing but love and respect for you.”

Originally Posted by Fightful On Monday, it was reported that WWE Backstage would not continue in its current weekly format ... On his Hall of Fame podcast, Backstage co-host Booker T commented on the news. "We got the news that we're not going to be shooting a weekly series, not right now anyway. I want to think everybody on the Fox family crew and making it work for eight months. Hopefully, the project will be a little different and going to something digital, we don't know just yet. A show like that is something needed to be able to deliver that side of insight. The show last week that I did with Bret Hart really touched me. I never knew that if Bret Hart had a chance to do it all over again, he would have said, 'I'm staying in WWE.' Stories like that for people to hear, it brought something different to the table. Hopefully, we'll be back on track soon and doing it again," he said. Booker was the co-host of the show alongside Renee Young. The panel of guest hosts included Christian, Mark Henry, Paige, and more. CM Punk also served as a monthly special analyst. When asked if he would have done anything different with the show, Booker replied, "I wish we could have done things differently at certain times, but some things I wouldn't change at all, like all those suckas I ripped in promo school. I always thought about The View and that format and how they talked about a little bit of everything. To be able to talk about Independent wrestling groups, for instance, NWA, EVOLVE, to talk about how those groups might be no more, that's news. These are stories that are prevalent in professional wrestling and stories that need to be captured." WWE Backstage largely focused on the week that was on WWE television and had interviews with various superstars.

Originally Posted by Fightful PROGRESS Wrestling made structural changes on Monday morning, and on Monday evening they are taking even more action. PROGRESS announced that the company will shut down until they are happy with the changes they have made, saying they will pioneer the change that the industry needs.

Originally Posted by Fightful After being forced to cancel the 2020 event due to the COVID-19 pandemic, WrestleCon is ready for another ride in 2021 in Los Angeles. The convention has announced WrestleCon will be held at the Westin Bonaventure in downtown Los Angeles from March 25 - 28.

Originally Posted by Fightful Ring of Honor is dedicating an episode of its weekly television to Hana Kimura. The company recently announced that an episode of "Ring of Honor Wrestling" taking place in July will do a tribute episode to Kimura, who tragically died in May. Below is what ROH said about the future episode. "As first announced on “ROH Week By Week,” ROH is dedicating an entire episode of “Ring of Honor Wrestling” to the late Hana Kimura next month. The tribute show will celebrate Hana’s life and feature some of her outstanding matches." Kimura wrestled for a number of promotions throughout her career, most notably with Stardom, which did a ten-count in tribute to Kimura on a recent show. Kimura has wrestled for Ring of Honor a handful of times, competing in the tournament to crown an inaugural Women Of Honor champion, losing to eventual tournament winner Sumie Sakai in the first round. Kimura also wrestled at Madison Square Garden at the ROH/NJPW G1 Supercard in 2019 and also in a match at Wrestle Kingdom 14, teaming with Giulia to face Mayu Iwatani and Arisa Hoshiki in a tag team match.

Originally Posted by Fightful Being The Elite posts statement regarding past episodes featuring Joey Ryan. Ryan has been accused by multiple women of sexual assault and abuse, leading to him leaving social media and closing down Bar Wrestling. Ryan gained in popularity thanks to Being The Elite, the online show put together by The Young Bucks, Kenny Omega, Brandon Cutler, and more. On Tuesday's episode of BTE, the crew posted the following statement: Hi guys and girls. We hope this video provides an escape, or even maybe makes you laugh during these tough times. We love you all. Out of respect to the victims, we have began the process of taking down BTE videos which featured an accused serial sexual abuser. Our biggest regret is providing a platform unknowingly to such a despicable person. Our hearts go out to the victims and anyone else affected. - From the BTE Team Being the Elite #109, which features the Joey Ryan memorial has already been removed along with episodes #82 and #83.

Originally Posted by Fightful Sarah Logan will be stepping away from the wrestling business. The former WWE star announced on Instagram that she won't be in the wrestling business "for the foreseeable future." Logan wrestled for WWE in recent years, but was part of the talent releases that were announced back in April.

TPWW Frontpage:

• Charlotte Flair Injury and WWE Return Update
• Former NWA VP David Lagana Denies Allegations Against Him
• Impact Releases Joey Ryan and Dave Crist, Suspends Michael Elgin
• WWE Backstage Reportedly Canceled as a Weekly Show
• Various: NJPW Announces New Weekly Series, New Owen Hart Documentary, #SpeakingOut Allegations Update
• The Undertaker Indicates That He’s Done Wrestling