[Emperor Smeat]

The Sheets (Observer Newsletter Edition):

WWE officially announced on 2/10 that the 37th WrestleMania will be coming to the new SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, CA, just outside Los Angeles, on March 28, 2021 ... SoFi Stadium, which is scheduled to open in July and be the home of both the Los Angeles Rams and Los Angeles Chargers starting with the upcoming football season, is listed with a capacity of 70,240, but it can be expanded for another 30,000 seats and the Super Bowl is legitimately expected to draw 100,000. WWE will also likely announce six figures, likely announcing a larger number than their public company record of 101,763 set for WrestleMania 32 at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, TX on April 3, 2016. The Arlington police department later reported that 80,709 fans was the actual turnstile count for that event. If they expand the stadium, and likely will, this can break what is the legitimate largest crowd in WWE history.

New Japan Pro Wrestling made two major announcements and a few minor ones on 2/9 at the New Beginning in Osaka show. The big one is that New Japan World Pro Wrestling will return to prime time in April, with a weekly show at 8 p.m. on Friday nights on BS Asahi, the satellite channel of TV-Asahi ... From its inception in 1972, until 1987, 8 p.m. on Friday night was the traditional New Japan television time slot. When ratings declined in 1987, it was moved first to Tuesday, and then to Monday, also at 8 p.m. In 1988, it was moved to Saturday afternoon at 4 p.m. and then after that, as has been the case for the last 30 plus years, the show has aired post-midnight, first a 60 minute show, and then cut to 30 minutes, around 2:30 a.m. early Sunday morning ... Harold Meij put the new deal together which gives the company its strongest television time slot in decades. Part of the deal is that no planned blood is allowed on the show, although the bloodbath Tetsuya Naito vs. KENTA match may be allowable since the blood was not planned. Those in New Japan believe that being back in prime time will help create a new fan base.

A second announcement is that New Japan will promote its biggest event for the remainder of 2020, Wrestle Dynasty, on 8/22 in Madison Square Garden. The show will take place on the same weekend as SummerSlam, which will take place the next day in Boston. But it will go head-to-head with the NXT Takeover show in Boston. It also comes two weeks before All Out 2 in Chicago. The idea is that New Japan will present a card equivalent to a Wrestle Kingdom ... As things stand right now, neither Jon Moxley or Chris Jericho would be allowed to appear on the show as their AEW deal only allows for them to work for New Japan in Japan. It’s notable that after all the pressure coming from the WWE side, that in the end, Madison Square Garden gave them this date. New Japan had planned on announcing this show on 1/5 at the Tokyo Dome, but it wasn’t finalized until recently for the obvious issues. The combined New Japan and ROH show sold out the MSG this past April, and it was very clear it was New Japan, and not ROH, that was the key. It is the only non-WWE show in United States and Canadian pro wrestling history ever to do a $1 million gate. But when tickets were sold, Kenny Omega was the IWGP champion. There was also a huge amount of scalper interest in the show, as it was the first non-McMahon family promoted pro wrestling event in MSG since 1960. As it turned out, it was a soft secondary market, so scalpers may not be as apt to buy in this time. There are a lot of questions that will be answered regarding the interest level in the U.S. of a pure New Japan show without any major American names as well as a second show in the building as opposed to a first. Going against NXT, even if it’s four hours away, is also legit competition for some of the some of the same fans. Most likely NXT will get a jump by putting tickets on sale first.

The XFL debuted this past week to what I’d call very impressive numbers, and also positive reaction. Unlike the first incarnation, which was treated as a laughing stock after a few weeks due to terrible (for the time) prime time ratings, this league, basically marketing straight football with no gimmicks, was covered like a legitimate major league sport with scores read on sports radio and ESPN SportsCenter. While the ratings were not much higher than the AAF debuted with in its first week (2.9 million for AAF, 3.3 million for XFL), the XFL had a better station lineup with FOX, ABC, ESPN and FS 1 all having games ... The long-term goal for success would be if the network games average 1.5 million viewers and the games on ESPN and FS 1 end up at 700,000. The expectation is a big drop over the next few weeks and by week three or four things would settle in ... The good sign was that they were able to hit that same level for the second game, and more importantly the Sunday games. That was the big story here. Basically it said the first day numbers were more than just a one-time novelty of people checking something out once out of curiosity and moving on. The FOX 5 p.m. game on Saturday did 1,418,000 viewers in the 18-49 demo while the FOX 2 p.m. Sunday game did 1,336,000, the ABC game on Saturday did 1,366,000 and the ESPN game did 1,211,000. Because the league was more organized and had hired Elevate Sports Ventures to hire sales staffs well ahead of time, the league is said to have already, through season tickets, sold more tickets for this season than the AAF did even though AAF claimed more. The league is projecting doing attendance figures of 15,000 to 20,000 per game. The first weekend average of 17,455 was less than the AAF’s first week of 19,210. The first XFL averaged 35,115 in week one, but it came in with so much more hype, and also all three of these numbers came with liberal papering. But Seattle and St. Louis came into the season having sold more than 10,000 season tickets.

According to Meltzer, any new tv contract for XFL likely will need to be around at least $125 million per year just to cover the losses the league is planning to lose for the 1st 3 years.

Bill Goldberg’s latest WWE return will be for the 2/27 Super Showdown event in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, at the International Arena at The Boulevard, where he will face Bray Wyatt for the Universal title. It’s going to be a tough match to put together, although it no doubt will be kept short. The problem is that Goldberg isn’t good in a match where he has to sell much, and Wyatt’s gimmick is based on not selling big moves. Previously on his WWE run, Goldberg had been a Paul Heyman project, starting with carefully crafting his matches and interviews to do a program with Brock Lesnar. That was supposed to be his retirement run, but it got over so big and he still looked the part, so Heyman, when he was put in control of Raw, wanted Goldberg to be his late 1970s Bruno Sammartino, who would come back every once in a while to pop ratings and vanquish a heel. The idea, like with Sammartino, is that he wouldn’t lose until his finite time ended to where you couldn’t do the role ... The sad part of this is when it became apparent Goldberg was facing Wyatt, it also became clear that there would be more interest in Goldberg vs. Roman Reigns at WrestleMania for the title than Wyatt in the spot, even though Wyatt has been pushed in his Fiend character as an unbeatable monster. The plan originally was still Wyatt vs. Reigns and Goldberg was only scheduled for Saudi Arabia. But his return to television showed he still had a level of ratings juice, at least at first, that nobody else on the roster has. It also says volumes about the ability to create a star now. Bringing someone back based on a huge run nearly 22 years ago outshines the guy protected more in booking than anyone else who is also the company’s top merchandise seller.

Even though both had strong shows, both AEW and NXT were down this week, but the AEW drop was significant and NXT drop was minimum, leading to a significant closing of the gap ... The difference is that NXT won three of the first four quarters overall, although AEW won every quarter in 18-49. NXT faded while AEW grew as the show was going on. AEW won by a significant margin in the second hour. AEW’s lead-in was down 42 percent from usual (coincidentally it was the movie “Pain and Gain” featuring Dwayne Johnson), and that could partially explain the weak open, but only partially. Most wrestling fans tune in to a station rather than are regulars watching the station. A big lead-in helps and a bad lead-in hurts, but it shouldn’t be to this degree. But the show started so low after the bad lead-in, and that’s with a strong opening segment, that it broke the Wednesday pattern for both shows of starting high and trickling off ... Also notable is that after AEW ended, NXT’s main event of Adam Cole vs. Kushida only gained 136,000 viewers and 38,000 in 18-49, a far lower increase than is usual. The overrun really meant little difference overall as NXT would have done 755,000 without the overrun.

There is an interesting thing going on regarding some of the talent like Taurus, El Hijo del Vikingo, Laredo Kid and others. AAA right now has business relationships with AEW, Impact and MLW. That in and of itself is difficult because MLW realizes it has no leverage and doesn’t insist on exclusivity, Impact doesn’t really want them dealing MLW but knows they can’t try and push them not to deal with AEW. AEW hasn’t forced them not to deal with anyone else but at times has muscled them regarding Impact guys on their shows that AEW would be on. Impact did for a time push for them not to use Killer Kross when he was under contract to them but they were at the impasse. Anyway, AAA wants the guys who are great workers to sign a U.S. deal but their own stability. Impact, AEW and MLW all run very few dates, so if they sign with those groups, AAA can still use them on pretty much all their TV tapings, maybe every now and then there’s a conflict but usually not. But what it does is solidify their guys being in the U.S., which is now the goal for a lot of the younger talent and where there is more money, but keeps them from going to WWE, which will sign anyone with talent to stockpile, but if they do, then AAA can’t use them anymore. For obvious reasons, AEW has the edge and priority, but AEW isn’t in the mode of signing everyone with talent. They’ve slowed down on new people because they don’t have enough TV to feature all the guys they have. So they aren’t rushing to sign new guys, even Vikingo. MLW and Impact have interest in signing those guys

Kenny Omega will return to defend his AAA title at Rey de Reyes on 3/21 in Merida. Pentagon Jr. & Fenix will also be defending the tag titles on that show. The main event will be the Psycho Circus vs. Rush & Park & Bestia del Ring stemming from an angle shot this past week

The story with Cobb is that he’s still a free agent and only has agreed at this point to do the program with Moxley. It’s interesting that they were willing to use an ROH guy (Cobb never signed a new ROH contract so he can work wherever he wants) for a short-term program. They used footage to introduce him from All Pro Wrestling rather than ROH or NJPW, which was also telling about relationships. Cobb has been offered a deal by Cody but his goal is working as much New Japan as he can right now

There is still not a full explanation as to why Michelle Wilson and George Barrios were fired. Within the company it was said that they were against the idea of signing up talent that wasn’t being used and the much higher talent expenses to keep anyone and everyone from leaving, which lowered the profit margin that Wall Street was expecting from the big TV windfall, and thus made the stock price not hold. From Vince’s standpoint, I can see it. You can see he still remembers the WCW situation, where WWF had such a lead and WCW was always floundering as a business in comparison, and then suddenly he was No. 2. And if not for Steve Austin and the sheer incompetence of those in charge of WCW being so out of touch with their audience, he could have lost that war. McMahon’s feeling in hindsight was always that WCW nearly beat him with his own creations, Hulk Hogan, Kevin Nash, Scott Hall, Randy Savage, Roddy Piper and so many others. So the idea is not to let that repeat itself

As of right now, the plans for the 3/8 Elimination Chamber PPV will be Reigns, Corbin, Bryan, Strowman, Nakamura and Roode in a Chamber match with the winner getting a shot at Wyatt at WrestleMania. Those names may change and probably will. We were told that the ad has placeholders in the sense Reigns is probably a lock but they haven’t decided on the others and was told there is a solid chance some of these names will change. They were just looking to advertise a men’s chamber match for a title shot locally in Philadelphia to move tickets. Right now Reigns would be the scheduled winner since Wyatt vs. Reigns has been earmarked for the match but again, nothing happens until it happens

WWE has been making overtures to some U.S. indie companies regarding tape libraries for new network content. This isn’t new and was part of the premium tier idea, but with the new idea, nobody knows what that means for the tiers idea

The story going around about Brie & Nikki Bella and Jushin Liger as being in the 2020 WWE Hall of Fame class is accurate as of right now. The Bellas make sense as WWE unwritten rules are that a woman has to go in every year and they’ve both just retired, and it makes sense to put them in together. Liger is an interesting one but he’s probably as far as a true pro wrestling Hall of Fame is concerned, would be among the most deserving of anyone in the last 40 years. He only worked one match for WWE in his career, on an NXT Takeover against Tyler Breeze, but he did just retire and his name is pretty well known in the U.S. One would expect both announcements imminently