[Emperor Smeat]

The Sheets:

Originally Posted by Observer Newsletter The 12/11 ratings war saw a tie with viewers at 778,000 each while AEW won the key demos for the 11th week in a row. In the head-to-head two hours, NXT had 771,000 viewers. AEW in the head-to-head won the first six quarters and the only reason it was close was because of how strongly NXT won the main event segment with the three-way with Finn Balor vs. Tommaso Ciampa vs. Keith Lee overwhelming the Young Bucks vs. Santana & Ortiz street fight by a 756,000 to 685,000 overall number, and then the overrun after AEW ended doing 881,000 viewers. Usually the overrun of late has been gaining 150,000 to 200,000 viewers and this week it was only 125,000, which says that people who normally would wait until AEW is over, switched over early to see the main event ... The overall show demo numbers were closer but AEW still won in every key category except teenagers and over 50 ... The difference was such that AEW would have won without the Spectrum cable blackout of TNT in many markets, but that wasn’t enough to make up the difference when falling from last week ... The first quarter saw AEW with Jon Moxley vs. Alex Reynolds and Chris Jericho recruiting Moxley doing 870,000 viewers and 424,000 in 18-49. NXT with Lio Rush vs. Angel Garza for the cruiserweight title did 840,000 viewers and 320,000 in 18-49. The second quarter with AEW with Cody & QT Marshall vs. Butcher & Blade lost 48,000 total viewers and 59,000 in 18-49. NXT with the ending of Rush vs.; Garza and a Shayna Baszler video package lost 55,000 viewers overall and 24,000 in 18-49. The third quarter with AEW with the MJF promo and a Dark Order vignette lost 8,000 overall viewers and 15,000 in 18-49. NXT had the Garza proposal and Raul Mendoza vs. Cameron Grimes and lost 26,000 overall viewers and 7,000 in 18-49. The fourth quarter with AEW with Big Swole vs. Emi Sakura and a Pac promo lost 18,000 viewers and 21,000 in 18-49. NXT with Travis Banks vs. Jaxson Ryker and a Mia Yim package lost 36,000 viewers and 7,000 in 18-49. The fifth quarter with AEW with Kenny Omega & Adam Page vs. Joey Janela & Shawn Spears lost 14,000 viewers but gained 3,000 in 18-49. NXT with Mia Yim vs. Dakota Kai gained 59,000 viewers and 29,000 in 18-49. The sixth quarter with AEW with the ending of the Omega tag match and Sammy Guevara vs. Luchasaurus lost 10,000 overall viewers and gained 10,000 in 18-49. NXT with Tyler Breeze & Fandango vs. The Singh Brothers lost 40,000 viewers and lost 18,000 in 18-49. The seventh quarter with AEW with the end of Guevara vs. Luchasaurus and the Jericho/Jungle Boy post-match angle lost 87,000 viewers and lost 30,000 in 18-49. NXT with Bianca Belair vs. Kayden Carter gained 41,000 viewers and 8,000 in 18-49. This looks to be people tuning out for the NXT main event. The final quarter with AEW with Young Bucks vs. Santana & Ortiz lost 2,000 viewers and stayed even in 18-49, so as noted the viewers really left before this match even started. NXT with the Lee vs. Ciampa vs. Balor match lost 27,000 viewers but gained 15,000 in 18-49. The overrun gained 125,000 views and 69,000 in 18-49.

Interesting enough is Meltzer thinks NXT has a good chance of winning the overall viewership but still not the key demo next week solely because of Finn Balor's star power and his match next week being a major one.

Originally Posted by Observer Newsletter Raw on 12/9 did 2,149,000 viewers (1.36 viewers per home), down 2.6 percent from the prior week. The number was lower even though the NFL game between the New York Giants and Philadelphia Eagles was down 19 percent to 11,360,000 viewers ... The high pont of the show was the Lana/Rusev divorce which did 2,363,000 viewer. The low point was the spoof on Saturday Night Live’s weekend update with The Street Profits that did 1,864,000 viewers.

Originally Posted by Observer Newsletter WWE’s final PPV of the year, Tables, Ladders and Chairs, which takes place on 12/15 at the Target Center in Minneapolis, has six matches official and four more expected to be announced later this week ... Other matches officially announced at press time were Rusev vs. Bobby Lashley in a tables match, New Day vs. The Revival for the Smackdown tag team titles and Aleister Black vs. Buddy Murphy. The Revival are replacing the originally planned Robert Roode & Dolph Ziggler. We’re not sure if this was switched because of Roode’s drug test failure and suspension or not. Last week, before the suspension was announced, it was listed on the schedule but even then we were told that it could change. There was a tease for Viking Raiders vs. Luke Gallows & Karl Anderson for the Raw tag titles already. The match was on the schedule for the show last week, teased on Raw, and indications we were given is that it is still on the card. What has been announced is the Viking Raiders doing an open challenge for the titles, but with that match not a secret and teased, who knows if they will go with the original plans ... Seth Rollins vs. Kevin Owens had an angle shot on Raw, and was a possibility last week. As of 12/10, it was not scheduled and at that point in time it was not expected to be added either. Rollins suffered a broken little finger in a 12/8 house show match with Erick Rowan, so he did not wrestle on Raw the next day. The injury isn’t serious and he was expected to be cleared by Sunday. But they shot an angle where Owens was beaten down by Rollins and AOP and he went out in an ambulance, so returning six days later seems premature. As far as an angle on the show or on Raw the next night, that would seem likely. The advance for the show isn’t strong by current standards. Most of the upper deck, except sections in front of the hard camera, aren’t being sold. There are even sections in the lower bowl not being sold. There are 560 tickets on the secondary market with a $43.48 get-in price.

Originally Posted by Observer Newsletter In a strange one, especially given no wellness test failures in seemingly forever (none have been announced since 2016 but there have been failures in NXT that were not announced since then), WWE announced on 12/10 that Robert Roode, 42, and Primo Colon, 36, were suspended for test failures. Colon hasn’t even worked a show for the company since February and it wasn’t even clear if he was still under contract as he’s been working for WWC in Puerto Rico. It’s possible Roode’s failure was discovered a few weeks back, since they did the angle with Reigns on the 11/29 Smackdown where he was injured and went out on a stretcher. But Roode was still tentatively booked for TLC a week ago and I’m guessing that changed because of the suspension being known. But it’s hard to say because when it comes to failures and suspensions, even if management times them, literally nobody is told about them besides the talent, Vince, maybe Paul Levesque but the creative team has never known about them in advance in the past. Both are first violations and are 30 day suspensions without pay. It is hard to believe that nobody could fail on the main roster in more than three years and then two do essentially at the same time, especially when we have so many failures in UFC, where bodies aren’t nearly as important and when you face two year suspensions and not 30 days on the first offense. A key difference is that in many real sports, and UFC being one of them, TUE’s for testosterone are not allowed while in WWE they are, so often when you see guys who you look at and think they have to be on something (and there’s not a lock they are as there are people who have the right genetics and are very disciplined) they may have TUE’s for testosterone, essentially giving them free reign for at least testosterone use and that’s the base of most cycles. At one point about a dozen years ago we were told only a few were approved and nobody new would be, but talent there says TUE’s are plentiful so that doctrine is no longer the case. Obviously WWE isn’t completely serious with the policy as compared to UFC, and there’s an argument that as not a real sport they don’t need to be.

Originally Posted by Observer Newsletter The next season of Miz & Mrs. on USA will debut on 1/29. It will air on Wednesdays at 10 p.m., after NXT. That may mean an end to the overrun. Another key is how the ratings hold up as Miz & Mrs. popularity was from following Smackdown and a wrestling audience of 2.1 million, as opposed to NXT with an audience of maybe 35 percent of that

Originally Posted by Observer Newsletter After attempting and failing to get a release and some digs at management, Chris Girard, 33, (Oney Lorcan) has agreed to return to the company. Girard noted on Twitter that he had signed a new deal. At the time he posted it, according to those with knowledge of the situation, the contract had not been signed, but his actual wording was he had agreed to a new deal, which was confirmed to us that the WWE side was confident that they had an agreement and he was staying. Whether WWE would have released him is unknown. He had stopped working for the company and his contract had been frozen. Unless he came back, they could have frozen him out pretty much forever. With Sin Cara and Harper, they were willing to work but wanted to leave, so they couldn’t be frozen and with Harper, give the 90 days, it all ended up the same either way.

Originally Posted by Observer Newsletter Regarding releases, within the company the belief is that there are more coming. But these things change rapidly, as for so long it was nobody getting released, then it was if they aren’t happy let them go, and then still, nobody was getting released. It is notable that everyone released was 39 or older except for Albert Hardie Jr. (ACH/Jordan Myles)

Originally Posted by Observer Newsletter Some notes on the WWE tryouts this past week. While there are some independent wrestlers, you can see with guys they are back to focusing on big guys, with a lot of college football players. While their track record with the big football players hasn’t been the best, the reality is they are loaded with smaller guys who can work and the independents will continue to turn these guys out. On the women’s side, there are some models but the focus, unlike years ago, is on higher level legitimate athletes including legitimate top tier track, basketball and volleyball players as well as the MMA and kickboxer types. I think the success of Bianca Belair as a home grown star that the feeling is those type of people can do well at this. Before it was always about looks first, the ability to pose in bikinis and hopefully some athletic background to go with it

Originally Posted by Observer Newsletter Regarding Scurll, obviously from the BTE tease (and some would say the Jericho tease although “Marty” in his list of guys he wouldn’t defend against could mean a number of different things), the betting line would be AEW. What we do know is that he’s agreed to at least one indie date that both sides have agreed to keep secret for now, but that deal would indicate right now he’s not planning on renewing here. He also posted a photo of himself with Luke Harper with the idea of them being the Villain Club. Scurll owns the rights to the Villain Club name. The indie group he’s working with would not be allowed generally speaking if he signed a new ROH contract, but he’d probably be able to do it for now with an AEW deal

Originally Posted by Observer Newsletter The next [AEW] PPV will be 2/29, avoiding major competition, in Chicago at the Wintrust Arena, the home of DePaul University basketball, which with a PPV set up can probably hold about 8,000 fans. Chicago was chosen because much of the talent was already going to be part of the C2E2 Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo that weekend. AEW will have a major presence at the Expo.

Originally Posted by Observer Newsletter Chris Jericho on his podcast this week talked about the forming of the Inner Circle. He said Tony Khan came up with a name for the group that he didn’t like, and he came up with the name FIST, thought it would make for cool merchandise, but Khan didn’t like that name. Jericho had used the term inner circle in a BTE episode so the Young Bucks came up with that name and Jericho liked it. They wanted Pentagon & Fenix in he group but Jericho thought they were too much like super heroes for Mexicans and wanted a more ruthless type of team, so Santana & Ortiz fit better. The company suggested Anthony Agogo, an Olympic medalist in boxing that they are training, for the enforcer role. Jericho said he wanted somebody physically bigger which was where Jake Hager fit in

Originally Posted by Observer Newsletter The reason the 12/11 [AEW Dynamite] show was booked in Dallas was because the NFL Owners meeting was in Dallas on that same day and Tony Khan had to attend the meeting on a Wednesday and still have a television show to run that same day

Originally Posted by Observer Newsletter The problem previously with Dragon Lee in AEW is that he was a New Japan/CMLL guy, but that barrier isn’t there now, as I don’t think New Japan would stop him, although it is possible they might, and AEW works with AAA, so that channel should be open.

Originally Posted by PWI ImpactWrestling tweeted that, officially, Rob Van Dam will face Brian Cage at the January 12 "Hard to Kill Pay-Per-View in Dallas, Texas.

Originally Posted by PWI WWE announced the following: WWE and TikTok have launched a new partnership to bring WWE’s unique blend of family-friendly entertainment, edge-of-your-seat action and world-class athleticism to the TikTok community leading into the WWE TLC: Tables, Ladders & Chairs pay-per-view event this Sunday, Dec. 15. To kick off the partnership, WWE launched their official TikTok account and is also making available WWE Superstar entrance themes for more than 30 Superstars and Hall of Famers including “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, The Undertaker, Ultimate Warrior, Becky Lynch, John Cena and Sasha Banks, among others. The themes and original entrance music will be integrated into TikTok’s vast content library joining music from top artists like Lil Nas X, Mariah Carey, Lizzo, and emerging artists like Arizona Zervas.

Originally Posted by PWI WWE Network News is reporting that the December Classic Content Drop will be more episodes of " WWE Confidential" coming this Monday, December 16. It is unclear at this point, how many episodes of the series will be added.

Originally Posted by Post Wrestling The Wrap has tabulated the prime-time audience numbers for all cable networks in 2019 ... TNT was #7 with 1,055,000 viewers in prime-time. AEW would fall below that figure with 921,000 viewers per episode since its launch on October 2nd. The USA Network was #8 with 1,042,000 viewers, so it tells you how valuable Raw is to their overall average. At worst, Raw is hitting a two million viewer average on Mondays with the third hour frequently hitting 1.8-2.0 million. Conversely, NXT would be below that average at 829,000 viewers per episode since launching September 18th ... E! was listed at #43 with 302,000 viewers, a figure Total Divas fell beneath for this past season that just wrapped and was its lowest in franchise history. Viceland, which carried Dark Side of the Ring and The Wrestlers was #83 with 77,000 viewers on average. The first season of Dark Side blew past the station’s average with the six-episode season doing 206,000 viewers per show ... AXS TV was #92 with a prime-time average of 61,000 viewers. We don’t get any viewership figures for Impact Wrestling, New Japan, or WOW on the station. The average is below Impact’s prior homes on Pop TV and Destination America but above the Pursuit Network (which wasn’t listed among the top 115 cable stations). beIN Sports Espanol was #109 with 11,000 viewers on average and beIN Sports was #112 with 5,000 average viewers. I don’t know what numbers MLW does on the station, but it would be hard to imagine wrestling doesn’t top those low figures.

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