[Emperor Smeat]

Dirtsheets sponsored by Okada Eating Food Appreciation Day:

Originally Posted by Observer Despite going against regular season NFL football for the second straight week, Impact Wrestling viewership was up again last night. The episode averaged 258,000 viewers on Pop TV, up from last Thursday's 236,000. This is the fifth straight week that Impact viewership has been up, with the promotion climbing back after drawing just 168,000 viewers on August 9.

Originally Posted by Observer/PWI/Post Wrestling Indies Roundup: PCW Ultra on 10/26 has announced Penta 0M, Shane Strickland, Tessa Blanchard, Jake Atlas, Hammerstone, Daga, Puma King, Abyss, Joey Janela, Sinn Bodhi, Brody King, Darby Allin, Eli Everfly and more. The Monster Factory in Paulsboro, NJ, which has produced a number of stars over its decades-long existence, including Bam Bam Bigelow, Raven and current ROH TV Champion Punishment Martinez, will hold their first-ever TV taping tomorrow evening. The promotion will be announcing the broadcast outlet shortly. In what will be the biggest test for the National Wrestling Alliance to date, tickets for their 10/21 70th Anniversary event at the Nashville Fairgrounds (aka TNA Asylum) are officially on sale, with ringside seats at $70 and general admission tickets at $19.48 at nwa70.com. It will be the biggest litmus test to date to see whether the promotion's excellent YouTube series will translate into ticket buying customers for the promotion's first full scale event since Billy Corgan purchased the company a year ago. The event will be headlined by NWA Champion Cody vs. Nick Aldis in a rematch from All In as well as the crowning of a new NWA National Champion. The three hour event will air live on FITE.tv, priced at $24.95. MLW has announced that tickets for their WrestleMania Week card will be going on sale October 10th at 10 am Eastern. MLW’s event is scheduled for Thursday, April 4th in New York City and will feature a taping for their Fusion television program on beIN Sports. Wednesday night’s episode of Lucha Underground saw the series hit their lowest average of the season with 79,000 viewers watching on the El Rey Network. It was a 21% drop from last week’s figure.

Originally Posted by PWI Anthem Sports & Entertainment filed a motion asking the United States District Court of Tennessee for an extension in time so they can properly respond to the lawsuit filed by Jeff Jarrett and his company, Global Force Entertainment. Noting that Jarrett's attorneys have already agreed to an extension, Anthem has asked that the court give them until 10/15 before they file a response.

More details: https://www.pwinsider.com/article/12...wsuit.html?p=1

Originally Posted by PWI Are Paul Heyman and Brock Lesnar under WWE deals anymore? WWE has been very mum on the subject of Brock Lesnar. It was known he was finishing up at Summerslam, but it's never been stated that he's no longer under contract and any questions of that nature have been ignored. It's possible his deal expired, but it's just as possible he's still under contract but is being given the time off to pursue his UFC exploits, just as he was given the chance to compete at UFC 200. As for Heyman, he has been backstage at recent TV tapings working in a behind the scenes capacity.

From PWI's weekly Q&A articles.

Originally Posted by PWI Yahoo! Sports has an interview with Brie Bella about the challenges involved in returning to the ring after becoming a mother, including changes to her body after having given birth. On her dive mishap last week on Raw, Bella commented, "With any type of physical body change, it changes so much. Even last week on ‘Raw’ when I did the suicide dive and it was less momentum than I should have had, I forgot that I’m 10 pounds heavier than what I was. Gravity doesn’t lie. That was a little different for me. I don’t mind if I fail or if I succeed. No matter what, I want to look back with no regrets. If I fail, last week for example, I went to sleep at night and I was kind of bummed out, but I learned something about myself. I learned where my body is at, where I am at.”

Link: https://sports.yahoo.com/reclamation...015914952.html

Originally Posted by PWI Zack Ryder tweeted: I started my journey to become a professional wrestler 15 years ago this week. It all started in this garage... @NYWCWRESTLING. My only “job” has been wrestling for @WWE for the past 12 years. Dreams come true if you do the work...and stay #AlwayzReady. pic.twitter.com/TygDDcCzJl — Zack Ryder (@ZackRyder) September 13, 2018

Link: https://twitter.com/ZackRyder/status...77517540712448

Originally Posted by Observer El Hijo del Fantasma said that he was staying in AAA and not going to WWE

For those wondering, he is King Cuerno in Lucha Underground.

Originally Posted by Observer The 9/30 Long Beach show is barely two weeks away and there are about 2,400 tickets sold, coming after a first show at the Walker Pyramid that sold out instantly. There was no way to get the traveling fans so soon after All In, but there was a feeling that after doing 6,333 paid in San Francisco, a different market, with largely local fans, in what is right now not considered as good a market as Southern California, that this is a disappointment.

Originally Posted by Observer Things are not going well for Pete Polaco, 44, best known as Justin Credible in ECW and WWE. His wife had taken out an order pr protection against him in March and he has been arrested twice since then for violating it. He was released from the New Haven Correctional Center after the second arrest on $50,000 bond over the weekend. He was bailed out by the people involved in doing a documentary on his life and went to rehab. He had earlier gone through WWE sponsored rehab, thanked them and said he had turned his life around

Originally Posted by Observer Konnan is now working as a senior agent for MLW and will be on almost all of the shows. MSL is head of talent relations, Bruce Prichard is a senior producer and Alex Greenfield is also a senior producer. Brian Pillman Jr. signed a three-year deal. They may try and work a deal to send him to New Japan as a trainee with the idea that for him to become a good worker and gain experience, he will progress far faster there than in US ... MLW is also looking at moving tapings from Thursdays to Saturdays, which will be easier to draw fans, but tougher to get talent. Indie talent gets the majority of their bookings on Fridays and Saturdays and very little on Thursday, so they can get a lot more talent on those days, especially with the guys who are in demand, many will have Saturday bookings. But the key guys they are building around are under contract which means they’ll have priority on their dates and even the Mexicans who are in high demand are getting their dates well ahead of time MLW wanted to run Center Stage in Atlanta and this was the first time they’ve tried to run a venue where the venue told them they wouldn’t rent to them based on a deal with other companies. The two companies that run Center Stage are ROH, which has no history of trying to block people, and WWE, which runs NXT shows there, and certainly does have a past history but it’s not as if there’s any direct tie that this came from WWE, just that they were told they couldn’t run the venue

Some more details on yesterday's batch of MLW news.

Originally Posted by Observer World of Sport was up to 500,000 viewers on 9/8, which is a 25 percent increase from the series low of 400,000 the week before. But it’s still the second lowest, and next week will probably do worse because it’s being moved up another half hour to 4 p.m. ... Even though the first-run ratings have dropped from 937,000 to as low as 400,000, those with the project expect it to be renewed for at least a second season as ITV and Martin Goldsmith have the early 2019 tour which will need TV to make it work. My gut is the tour may be used as a barometer for the future as if ITV can make money off touring and merchandise with the project they may keep them on in spite of falling ratings. More bad news is that the 9/22 show is moving to 2:30 p.m., before soccer instead of after it.

Originally Posted by Observer Due to his size and look, both New Japan and WWE have interest in Killer Kross.

Originally Posted by Observer More notes on the All In rating from 6-7 p.m. on Sunday on WGN America. The 196,000 number was down from the 227,000 number that Blue Bloods did in the same time slot the prior week. However, it drew a much younger audience, with 107,000 of the viewers 18-49 whereas Blue Bloods had 75,000, and 72,000 of those 18-49 viewers (67.3 percent) being male as opposed to Blue Bloods where it was 25,000 males in the demo and only 34.7 percent of the viewers being male

Originally Posted by Observer According to a report we got, after a three-way tag title match on the 9/7 Raw show Birmingham where Ziggler & McIntyre retained over The B Team and Matt Hardy & Wyatt, a fan after the match begged Hardy not to retire. His response was, “Unfortunately, I don’t have a choice. This was probably my last match ever.” Hardy did work the rest of the weekend shows. He had already been pulled off television and reports from the weekend were that he was moving like he was hurting. Hardy had pretty much indicated that he wasn’t going to be wrestling for a while and has been learning the role of a producer while being out of action. Hardy then, after his match on 9/9 in Biloxi, wrote that it was the last match of Woken Matt Hardy. The last we heard, retirement was a possibility but not official, likely depending on how his body reacts to rest and injury rehab

Originally Posted by Observer This past week has seen more talk regarding Penta 0M & Rey Fenix, and at this point it does look like not only is nothing happening in this direction soon, nor can it because of their Lucha Underground contracts. Both have started making commitments to promoters for next year, which indicates they aren’t planning on doing anything here anytime soon. WWE has had interest, obviously, since they are Mexican stars who can work great with Americans and have names on the indie scene ... They are under contract with Lucha Underground until a few months after the season ends. At that point, I expect they’ll have the option to go almost anywhere. The belief right now is that Lucha Underground is solid for another season, and that El Rey is paying them enough to continue as flagship programming going forward. With Konnan having a strong hand in creative in AAA and them being his guys, and Fenix being world champion right now, obviously they’ll be able to get a joint deal from both groups which would also likely have them working for Impact as well, just like they are now, and be able to do U.S. indies. But they are in talks about a deal with AAA and Impact right now. AAA does want them exclusively for Mexico if they can get that deal done, to keep them from also working for The Crash and CMLL.

Originally Posted by Observer Stephanie McMahon spoke at the Sports Business Journal Game Changer conference on 9/12 and said “We’re successful for one reason only: We listen to our audience.” You can just imagine the reaction that drew. It was enough that reporter Katie Rosenberg, who tweeted that line, noted she woke up to a number of fans saying the opposite. Every writer I’ve ever spoken to, and most people who have run creative, have always said either these words or something approximating them, that the show is written for “the audience of one,” which is Vince McMahon

Some stuff from TPWW Frontpage:

• Updates on Statuses of Neville and Matt Riddle
• Paul Heyman Has Taken on a Backstage Role in WWE
• WWE May Be Bringing on More On-Air Managers
• WWE Offers Deal to Indie Star WALTER
• Dean Ambrose Says He “Nearly Died” Due to Infection While He Was Injured