[Emperor Smeat]

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Originally Posted by Observer With coverage of the 2020 election dominating the cable TV charts, AEW Dynamite finished outside the top 50 in the 18-49 demo for the first time ever last night. Last night's Dynamite averaged 717,000 viewers on TNT, topping the 610,000 viewers that NXT averaged on the USA Network. Dynamite was the go-home show for Saturday's Full Gear pay-per-view. Dynamite was down 8.2 percent in overall viewers from last week. In the 18-49 demo, the show finished 56th on cable with a 0.30 rating, down 6.3 percent from last Wednesday. NXT was down significantly from last week's Halloween Havoc episode. Last night's NXT was down 30.4 percent in total viewers from last week and finished 68th in the cable charts with a 0.14 rating in 18-49, down 44 percent from last Wednesday. In both viewership and the 18-49 demo, these were the lowest numbers for NXT since May. The combined Wednesday night viewership of 1.327 million was down 19.9 percent from last week. It's the lowest combined audience since May 20. Detailed demo numbers are not available at this time with both shows failing to chart in the top 50. Year-over-year, Dynamite was down 12.8 percent in total viewers and 14.3 percent in 18-49. NXT was down 25 percent in total viewers and 53.3 percent in 18-49. It's clear that, for whatever reason, the election coverage affected NXT more than Dynamite even though the opposite is usually the case. Taking out the cable news channels, Dynamite was second for the night in 18-49 while NXT finished 13th, which is close to normal levels for both shows. The entire top 50 last night were news shows.

For some reference, Smackdown lost around 275k viewers for its November 8, 2016 episode that went directly against the 2016 Presidential Election news coverage compared to the previous week.

Originally Posted by Observer AEW TNT Champion Cody spent nearly an hour with the media Thursday, answering questions about whether a trilogy match with Nick Aldis will ever happen, why he will stick to the stipulation of never challenging for the AEW World title, Dark, and why the TNT title means so much to him ... Here are some highlights: While he is happy to get the Rhodes last name back, he won't use it in the wrestling space. His real goal was to use it for third party ventures (ex. Go Big Show, acting gigs). He didn't provide any details on the negotiations but said it was a "no hard feelings" type arrangement. He reiterated that he will never challenge for the AEW World title because stipulations matter. He later put over how much the TNT title meant to him, how it's the "ace" title, and that maybe someday, Jon Moxley could challenge him for it. He said that Tony Khan reached out to Billy Corgan about making the Serena Deeb-Allysin Kay NWA women's title match and that the "bridges are down" when it comes to bringing in new talent. He talked about his early comments regarding AEW being more "sports-centric" and that he was referring to his own work. He put over the company's medical and concussion protocols and said the roster was having a meeting with Chris Nowinski today. He added that wrestling is violent and he thinks some fans have forgot that. However, while it's violent, he said it can't be so much that talent is injured. "We do ourselves no favors by running a sloppy shop." He said the credit for the current format of AEW Dark goes to Khan with indie talents in competitive matches. The name came from the Universal Dark Universe monster movies. He said he was "genuinely pissed" about not being no. 1 in the PWI 500 and said if wrestlers tell you they don't care about it, they aren't successful. He had a whole idea that was ruined because he didn't get the honor. He said he and Khan are on the same page with treating legends as luminaries as he didn't like how Dusty Rhodes was treated toward the end of his career. He was asked about whether he and Nick Aldis will face each other a third time and he was very doubtful that it would as he's happy about how the second match turned out.

Originally Posted by Observer Matt Jackson of the Young Bucks has a partially torn MCL and thinning of the ACL, considered a slight tear. Bryan Alvarez reported the injuries on Wednesday's Wrestling Observer Radio, explaining that is why Jackson has been selling an injury caused by FTR Pillmanizing his ankle on a recent Dynamite. Alvarez said Jackson suffered the injury in a July falls count anywhere match he and Nick Jackson had with The Butcher & The Blade. On the match-ending flying elbow spot off the set onto the stage (pictured above), the table leg jammed up his knee. He has been rehabbing it ever since, apparently avoiding surgery. The team has worked in eight matches since the injury. Dave Meltzer noted this isn't the first time Jackson has taken a real life injury and turned it into a storyline, referencing a back injury he had while still with New Japan Pro Wrestling.

Despite the injury, Matt Jackson stated on Twitter that he's been medically cleared for AW Tag title match at Full Gear this Saturday.

Originally Posted by Observer In a post-Dynamite video released on AEW's Twitter account, Tully Blanchard said he is banned from ringside for FTR's Tag Team title defense against the Young Bucks at Saturday's Full Gear. The reason given was that because of Blanchard's repeated interference in past matches and involvement in FTR's attacks on the Bucks, AEW management made the call to bar him from ringside. Blanchard said he is planning a lawsuit if the situation doesn't get fixed, citing that other managers haven't been treated like this. FTR said it was favoritism but that they would win anyway. If the Bucks don't win the titles Saturday, they will never challenge for them again.

Originally Posted by PWI All Elite Wrestling announced they will air a special episode of AEW Dark tomorrow ahead of Full Gear, featuring: *Christopher Daniels vs. Matt Sydal. *Brandon Cutler vs. Michael Nakazawa. *Sean Maluta & Ryzin vs. The Dark Order. *Ricky Starks vs. Trevor Read. *Chuck Taylor vs. Lee Johnson. *Big Swole vs. Tesha Price. *Griff Garrison vs. Ariel Dominguez.

Out of that card, Daniels vs. Sydal and Taylor vs. Johnson have potential of being very good and something I'd recommend if your interested in watching. Also a 7-match card with some potential Full Gear promotion stuff probably means its going to be somewhere in the hour to 90 minutes range for length.

Originally Posted by PWI WWE held a virtual all hands on deck "Town Hall" style meeting for employees this morning with Stephanie McMahon, Nick Khan, Sarah Cummins (Senior Vice President, Consumer Products) and new CFO Kristina Salen, among others, taking part. The major news was that the company is instituting a flexible work policy going forward. Depending on their role for the company, going forward, employees can choose to work from the office or home and will not be required to return full-time to the office. WWE is still moving forward with their new HQ in Stamford, but has obviously delayed that process. They are still going to move the company to the new, much larger HQ, however. Salen specifically stated that going forward, she will be doing presentations on the company's quarterly earnings for employees so she and the company can directly communicate with the employees. The presentations would happen after the company's earnings calls. During a Q&A portion of the town hall, live events were brought up and the company stated that they don't know for sure when they can resume them given the current COVID-19 environment. There were also a lot of questions asking Khan and Salen about what brought them to the company. We are told it was a mostly positive meeting with the company thanking everyone for their hard work and stressing they want to increase communication so that everyone has greater awareness of how WWE is doing.

Originally Posted by PWI Historian Tim Hornbaker is currently working on a biography of former WWWF Champion "Nature Boy" Buddy Rogers. The book, which will be published by Crowbar Press, has been titled Master of the Ring.

Originally Posted by PWI Jaxson Ryker has deleted his Twitter account. He and The Forgotten Sons have not been seen on WWE programming for some time.

Originally Posted by PWI Internally, Ring of Honor believes ROH Champion Rush and ROH TV Champion Dragon Lee will return at next month's TV tapings.

Originally Posted by Post Wrestling Jake “The Snake” Roberts joined the ‘Nothing Beats Experience’ show on the ‘Premier Live TV’ YouTube channel. Jake was candid about his recent health issues that resulted in him needing a nasal cannula for the interview. Jake mentioned that his health issues arose shortly after Lance Archer contracted Coronavirus which was in late September. Roberts added that he’s battling chronic obstructive pulmonary disease which he’s been open about in the past. Both Archer and Roberts were featured on this week’s AEW Dark. “I’m just gonna hit on it fairly briefly because we’re still struggling with it. About a week ago man, I just couldn’t quit coughing, and couldn’t breath. That’s not good, you know? And wound up having to get to the hospital and stay for a few days and I wish I could say this was COVID, but it’s not. It’s not. What I’ve got is worse than COVID. It’s something that was passed down to me through the bloodlines, hereditary and all that stuff and it’s not your happy camper stuff man. It’s issues with C.O.P.D. (Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease). Of course, me being an ignorant son of b*tch, I smoke cigarettes, you dumb f*ck. Guys, if you don’t ever do anything in life, just don’t smoke and you’ll live much happier. I promise you that, really. I mean it’s the bastard companies that hook us all and get us all into that. Such bullsh*t but… it’s serious, for me. I don’t get the right amount of oxygen into my blood and that’s not good and I don’t know how much it’s going to limit me in my future. We’re testing it today for the first time to try and go do something. I know that without the oxygen, if I talk for about 20 seconds, I’m done. I can’t go anymore. It’s not there. So this is gonna be something I’m going to have to work with and the thing that I’m happy or happiest about is that I’m in AEW and they actually give a damn. It’s really wild. They actually care about the athletes, they actually get us the help that we need, they actually set up protocol so us dumb ass wrestlers don’t say, ‘Hey, I’m okay. I can get in there. I got one arm missing, you know? It’s okay.’ Wrestlers just don’t quit, we don’t quit, we don’t quit. ‘Man I can’t,’ you know? That’s what losers do. But, these guys are smart enough to protect us from ourselves and I am so over the top happy with them. The care that they’ve given Lance [Archer] because he does have the COVID and… it’s so weird man how that all happened. It’s like he went down with the COVID and then I went down the next night with this, and it’s like what? But, that’s just the way it turned out and again, I just, all I want to do is get out there and just do what I do man. That’s all I want.” Jake talked about working on the writing team with Vince McMahon in WWF. He recalled seeing the star potential in Stone Cold Steve Austin early in Steve’s career, even when Vince didn’t think Steve could become a main-event talent. “But, when Steve Austin came to WWF, I was helping write television, and I watched him, and I said, ‘This motherf*cker got it man. He’s got that ‘it’ factor and he don’t even know he’s got it.’ He didn’t. String ass blonde hair, get rid of that sh*t. He ain’t got none left anyway. I know how that feels but anyway, he started talking to me and I started talking to him, he wanted to get better and he was listening. Every night he was on the road, he would call me and tell me what happened in his match and how he dealt with it and how he brought it to the end, and what result it had. Did it make him bigger, smaller, what? So I worked with him. Well at the same time I’m helping write television, I’m starting to scoot him into places. Sort of as an afterthought so nobody was watching. Well then one day I told Vince [McMahon], I said, ‘That guy right there is gonna be your next super, superstar.’ ‘You kidding me Jake?’ He said, ‘That guy, he’ll never make it past fifth, sixth match. He’s not a main-eventer.’ I said, ‘The f*ck he ain’t.’ He said, ‘Do you think so?’ I said, ‘Yeah I think so,’ and we tried the thing and I guess it might’ve worked huh?”

Originally Posted by Post Wrestling Miro guest appeared on Chris Jericho’s ‘Talk Is Jericho’ podcast to discuss his career in WWE and his aspirations in AEW. Miro reflected on the storyline involving himself, Lana, Liv Morgan and Bobby Lashley. Miro stated that when initially informed about the storyline, Paul Heyman told him that the payoff could be a main event spot at WrestleMania. “And I left and I stayed home for three or four months and I think Paul Heyman called us with that story, and I was like, ‘Where is it leading?’ Of course because this is my first question. Cool, it’s not my favorite story but where is it leading? ‘Main event of WrestleMania. One of the main events of WrestleMania.’ When you hear that, what are you gonna say? There’s plans and this is September, October, whatever it was so it’s a few months planned and it’s very realistic. Cool, I jumped on board and I knew it was a red flag since the beginning. But we still — we did turn it around. I think because the story was good, it was very controversial, but it didn’t turn around once again until I started having fun. I started playing the crazy guy because Paul Heyman was telling me, ‘You don’t care about her, you’re so over it. You just wanna have fun. You’re fine to be away,’ and we got there eventually but the other side, the other camp, Vince is thinking the complete opposite of, ‘Why are you smiling? Why are you [like] this? You’re heartbroken.’ Now, they can’t get it together between each other and I’m stuck in the middle, and at the end of the day, when everything was said and done, they went all for me but during the period, I guess Vince loved Bobby [Lashley] and his heat and decided [for] him to beat me every night or whatnot" ... Further commenting on he and Lana’s real-life marriage being brought into WWE storylines, Miro reiterated that the higher-ups in WWE were not too happy about that. He was supposed to win the Intercontinental Title prior to the news of he and Lana’s marriage becoming public but those plans were scrapped. “I never had heat with anybody. I remember the one time I had heat was about the wedding, but that was not our fault either. When me and CJ [Lana] got engaged, they said that we leaked the pictures which is not true at all, in real life. So we were in an angle. Me and Summer [Rae] against Lana and Dolph [Ziggler], and we did get engaged but she sent that picture to the office and to some of the girls. It’s the happiest day of her life, she’s getting engaged. Somebody leaks that and they blame her, they blame me, I do jobs for six months. Our story gets cancelled that night, that night! We [were] in Chicago, I remember it because I was supposed to win the I.C. Title. We were supposed to get married with Summer. They nixed it that night and when I talked to Vince, he was like, ‘Well TMZ, it’s like CNN, it’s like world news. Everybody knows it’s true.’ I’m like, ‘What?’”

Originally Posted by Post Wrestling To promote AEW Full Gear, Tony Khan chatted with Bleacher Report Live to discuss the match card. While speaking about Hikaru Shida and Nyla Rose’s AEW Women’s World Title match, Khan explained Vickie Guerrero and Nyla Rose’s absence from TV and shared that Vickie was unavailable due to personal reasons. “I would have liked — Vickie Guerrero was unavailable. Not because of illness. It was not anything like that, but Vicky had been unavailable to us for personal reasons between her and us, these last couple weeks and I would’ve liked to have seen a little bit more of Vickie and Nyla in the build and that’s because Vickie had said, ‘Nyla’s not gonna be around, not gonna do anything until she gets a chance to challenge for the title.’”

Originally Posted by Post Wrestling Per ‘TheCubsFan’, CMLL announced that they will not be doing live shows over the next several weeks. Play-by-play commentator/executive Julio Cesar Rivera stated that CMLL had a deal with TicketMaster for September and October shows but not beyond that. They will return to Friday nights on November 27th. CMLL’s TV shows will feature new content.

Originally Posted by Post Wrestling On the latest AEW Unrestricted podcast, Tony Khan joined the show to discuss all things Full Gear. During the podcast, Khan revealed that he originally wanted to use David Arquette in the MJF/Inner Circle Town Hall meeting segment on Dynamite. “I also had an idea. I wanted to use David Arquette. I thought he would’ve been good too and David Arquette actually was the original person I wanted to use in Peter Avalon’s spot of the, ‘Can I join The Inner Circle?’ But it would’ve been a very different reaction. It would’ve been a very different reaction. They would’ve considered it maybe a little more with David Arquette as opposed to Peter Avalon.” MJF and Chris Jericho’s Le Dinner Debonair segment aired the week prior to the Town Hall segment. Khan shared that when Jericho pitched the idea to him, he wanted it to be a dream sequence, as in when Jericho came to, he realized that he and MJF’s entire musical number was a daydream he had while at dinner. “This was something where Chris came in and he pitched — the one thing on this little grid of stuff that I really took exception to was he pitched a dream sequence. That it would be a dream sequence where they would start singing and it would be like his dream and I was like, ‘No, we’re not gonna do that.’ We can’t do that and I can’t cannibalize the show like that but I do love the idea of Chris and Max singing. If I could do something again in hindsight and we all agreed on this and I brought this up and everyone thought it was a good point I think. I would’ve done it in the ring. I would’ve rather done it in the ring and I think, it would’ve been challenging to do it live but we could have even taped it in the ring and I think it could have come off great but I think having it between the ropes and in the squared circle would’ve been the way to go. But, hindsight’s 20/20 but I think the idea of it was great. Now I was not gonna do it as the dream sequence but I thought that was — the idea of Chris and Max singing really appealed to me and it still does, and I think there’s a lot to it and so it definitely created conversation around this match.”

Originally Posted by Post Wrestling The Two Man Power Trip of Wrestling podcast welcomed Arn Anderson onto the show. Arn is in the process of trademarking the ‘Four Horseman’ name for pro wrestling purposes and he talked about what led to that decision and the process of trademarking it. “I came up with it. I came up with the name, and it was on a promo and it just happened generically. It just kind of happened, and it came from the Bible verse and all that stuff. I’ve never trademarked it, I never owned it but I have since, since I’ve been the one constant as far as Horsemen go throughout the years, I thought, ‘Well, I will check into this’ and had a lawyer check into this, trademark lawyer and it hasn’t been trademarked. So, we’re right now in the middle of attempting to trademark that and it’s — I don’t think you can use it just for anything but — and I know you can’t but Notre Dame had some issues with it, obviously. Comes from the Bible, you can’t really fight the Bible nor do I want to. But for wrestling purposes, for appearances or the name of a group or something like that, that’s solely what I’m trying to do. Whatever we do, if anything, the name going forward, I just wanted to make sure it was protected, it’s special. Somewhere down the road, somebody might wanna break it out and use it again, who knows?”

Originally Posted by WrestleTalk WWE reportedly had interest in signing another indie star who will be finishing up on the indies soon, indicating he’s signed a contract. Fightful Select reports that WWE did have interest in Alex Zayne, although doesn’t confirm whether he’s signed or not. WWE has expressed interest in a number of indie wrestlers who have been showcased on the likes of AEW Dark and NJPW Strong recently. Game Changer Wrestling made the announcement today that Zayne’s final indie match would be this Sunday at the promotion’s So Much Fun show.

Originally Posted by 411Mania It was reported earlier this year that the NWA reneged on releasing Zicky Dice from his contract, after it was previously claimed that he was a free agent. Fightful Select reports that his deal with the company expires at the end of the year. Since he was the TV champion, NWA rolled over his deal on September 1 to go until the end of 2020. He then dropped the belt to Da Pope at a UWN Primetime Live show. That reportedly took place “without incident.” According to the report, Dice has also had some heat with Nick Aldis, as well as disagreements that were “well known” in the NWA locker room. If Dice leaves, then he will join James Storm, Ricky Starks and Royce Isaacs as wrestlers whose contracts have expired this year.

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