[Emperor Smeat]

The Sheets:

Originally Posted by Observer While down slightly from last week, Dark Side of the Ring's Herb Abrams episode still drew the third-highest viewership in series history. The Abrams documentary averaged 246,000 viewers on Vice TV last night, down from the 255,000 that last week's David Schultz episode drew. This season's two-hour premiere on Chris Benoit is the only Dark Side of the Ring documentary that has done better viewership than those two episodes.

Originally Posted by Observer Next week's episode of WWE Backstage will feature CM Punk's sixth appearance as an analyst. It was announced on last night's Backstage that Punk will be part of the panel for next Tuesday's episode of the show. It will be Punk's second appearance since the show switched to being done remotely due to the coronavirus pandemic. Punk's most recent appearance on Backstage was on the April 14 edition of the show.

Originally Posted by Observer Cash Wheeler and Dax Hardwood, formerly Dash and Dawson of The Revival, spoke about their departure from the WWE in the latest episode of Talk is Jericho. They went into detail about their release, with Cash saying they had asked around January of 2019. He said they asked for their release following a match with the Lucha House Party, saying that they were unhappy with the direction tag team wrestling was going with the company. He mentioned specifically the time where Braun Strowman “steamrolled the entire tag team division” and also the time when Strowman won the Raw Tag Team titles with a ten-year old. Dax felt that those in the company thought they were bluffing when they asked for their release. Jericho asked if WWE promising a more focused tag team division was just a way to keep them on board. Dax agreed with that, saying that he felt deep down they would never focus on teams, pointing out that two singles wrestlers put together as a team had a better chance of getting a push than a consistent team. The topic then shifted to the final meeting between them and Vince McMahon. Cash said it was difficult to meet with Vince due to the transition to FOX, but one day they were working on putting together a match in the ring when they were called to Vince’s office for a meeting. Cash said that the designs that ended up being leaked were “100% real” and were presented by Vince McMahon himself. Dax noted that most of the time, “the boys” are kayfabed about everything, and was sure whoever had leaked the pictures were part of the creative team. Cash said he laughed out loud upon seeing the designs in front of everyone at the meeting, which included Vince McMahon and Bruce Prichard. It was explained to them that this would be a way to showcase a different side to the team, showcasing their charisma. Cash said that he told them that these “were not good” but would do the characters until their contract expired. Cash noted that this was on a Friday, and by the following Wednesday they were told they were being taken off the road. He also said that the money they were being offered was higher than the $750,000 that was being reported.

Originally Posted by Post Wrestling Dax Hardwood reveals that he received a text from Bret Hart on the day of their release: “The day we were granted our release, that day I got a text message from Bret Hart, and he told me how proud he was. He asked me to send it to Daniel [Cash Wheeler] which I did. He told me how proud he was of us and how proud he was we stood up for ourselves and stood up for what we believed in because it would’ve been so easy to just sit back and collect the money, and when he sent me that text, I knew beyond any shadow of any kind of doubt that we had done the right thing because the guy who is the king of standing up for himself, I mean he punched Vince in the face. The guy who is the epitome of standing up for what he believes in took five minutes out of his day to text me and tell me how proud he was of us for doing that and that’s when I was like, ‘Oh hell yeah, we’re on the right path now.’”

Originally Posted by Observer This year's Best of the Super Juniors tournament is the latest professional wrestling event to be affected by the coronavirus pandemic. NJPW announced tonight that all 19 shows that were scheduled for this year's Best of the Super Juniors tour have been canceled. NJPW wrote that the decision was made in response to the pandemic and in light of the extension of state of emergency measures in Japan. The Best of the Super Junior tour was set to kick off at Korakuen Hall in Tokyo on May 12 and conclude at Tokyo's Ota City General Gymnasium on June 6. Refund information for the canceled shows will be announced soon. In their statement about the cancellation of the tour, NJPW noted that they will make announcements regarding events that are scheduled for after June 6 upon careful monitoring of the developing situation with the pandemic. NJPW also wrote that they're "continuing to explore the possibility of presenting matches without fans in attendance if staff and wrestler health and safety can be protected to the highest possible standard."

Originally Posted by PWI PWInsider.com has confirmed the following viewership for WWE's Best of Wrestlemania specials this week last night on FS1: 7 PM - Ric Flair's Best WWE Matches - 157,000 overnight viewers. 8 PM - Edge's Best Wrestlemania Matches - 213,000 overnight viewers. 9 PM - Brock Lesnar's Most Dominant Matches - 255,000 overnight viewers. 10 PM - Roman Reigns' Best Wrestlemania Matches - 198,000 overnight viewers.

Originally Posted by Post Wrestling WWE Backstage was not listed among the top 150 cable programs on Tuesday night.

Originally Posted by PWI Q - Regarding the recent WWE releases, why were most of the releases were male Superstars? Is it because of the Women's Evolution? A - From what I heard, the main factors for the releases were what the talents cost and did the company think that they could get that value out of the contract. I think it means that the women they have on the roster they see value in, at least at this time.

From PWI's weekly Q&A articles.

Originally Posted by Post Wrestling Tony Khan was on Wednesday’s AEW Unrestricted podcast and discussed the process of running their empty arena shows beginning March 18th, one week after the shutdown period began in the U.S.: -His favorite empty arena shows have been the first one on March 18th and last week’s episode with the TNT semi-finals -A friend of is a writer for Jimmy Fallon and saw how they incorporated the writing staff and crew to serve as audience members to react to Fallon and utilized that for the AEW shows with wrestlers in the crowd compared to other wrestling shows that are “cold” -They had just over ¼ of the roster to tape ahead in Georgia and wanted to tape ahead to be safe -Khan positioned the TNT Championship as a title on par with the AEW title and was an idea he had and has worked on for a while with Cody for a second title -The only agents they had were involved in their own matches, so they were limited in that aspect of match layouts ... -An interesting line was Khan stating they have not let anyone go during this time period and “it’s not the right time for re-organizing or re-structuring for us” -Aubrey Edwards was the referee for 20 matches within a period of 24 hours and spent 19 days in Jacksonville and Georgia at a hotel -Chris Jericho offered to do commentary the night before after Khan went over all the ideas he had for the episodes, they didn’t have someone in place to do commentary and it was going to be split between Colt Cabana and Shawn Spears, who would also be wrestling matches -They continued taping matches after the April 1st show ended and the following day, some matches have not seen the light of day ... -Khan estimated they would drop 10% in viewership with the empty arena shows, he did not want to rely on airing past pay-per-views ... -Television is their revenue stream right now and had sold 12,000 tickets for the show in Newark at the Prudential Center, they have lost “millions and millions of dollars in live events” -He said there will come a day when they do have to let people go “but now is not the time” and said in the big picture they are in good shape and characterized themselves as the second healthiest company in the industry -They are going to keep people isolated and practice social distancing for these upcoming shows, they will be testing people (he didn’t elaborate on the type of testing)

Originally Posted by Fightful Fans haven't been allowed in the arena for wrestling since March 11 when AEW and NXT ran their last live shows with an audience. Beginning with the March 13 episode of WWE SmackDown, both AEW and WWE have held shows inside an empty arena ... Speaking on AEW Unrestricted, AEW President Tony Khan looked back on the sudden change following Dynamite in Salt Lake City ... AEW ran live shows during the initial stages of the coronavirus pandemic as states remained open, but Florida and Georgia issued stay-at-home orders in April that didn't allow for any gatherings related to sporting events. "I first had an inkling that things were going to be shutdown going into the third show, which is when we taped all these shows. States were starting to shut down and I never considered us or tried to force us to be 'an essential business.' I never tried to stay open against restrictions. When we heard Florida and Georgia were going to shut down, we would shut down too and we needed to tape as much content as we could before the shutdown," said Khan. On April 9, Florida deemed WWE "essential business" under the guise "employees at a professional sports and media production with a national audience -- including any athletes, entertainers, production team, executive team, media team and any others necessary to facilitate including services supporting such production -- only if the location is closed to the general public." Technically, AEW could have resumed live shows as well following the order, but the company had already taped weeks of television in Georgia and decided not to take advantage of the memo in Florida. Khan said things changed rapidly in Georgia as they thought they would have a couple of days to tape everything, but the stay-at-home order came down just before the April 1 show, forcing the company to tape as much content as possible before the order went into effect at midnight on April 3.

Originally Posted by Post Wrestling Brian Hughes, who is the chief administrative officer in the city of Jacksonville was on The Luke Thomas Show on Wednesday. Hughes stated that all events running in the city, including pro wrestling, will need to have testing for COVID-19. Hughes added that the city has a surplus of testing with ample hospital space and resources. This would affect UFC & AEW, which are both testing for COVID-19 but would not extend to WWE, which is not running in Jacksonville.

Originally Posted by Post Wrestling MLW has announced a distribution deal with Fight Globe, who will be dealing with the distribution of MLW’s content in Europe, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, Canada, and Mexico.

Originally Posted by Post Wrestling Vice TV has released the trailer for next week’s episode of Dark Side of the Ring ‘The Last Ride of the Road Warriors’

TPWW Frontpage:

• AEW Dynamite & NXT Cards for Tonight + AEW Rankings
• Impact: #1 Contender Tournament, More TNA Content Coming, Kimber Lee Joins Impact