[Emperor Smeat]

The Sheets:

Originally Posted by PWI The third episode episode of Viceland's pro wrestling documentary series Dark Side of the Ring on 4/10 garnered 214,000 overnight viewers for their Bruiser Brody episode, up from last week's 181,000 overnight viewers. Next Wednesday's episode will focus on the Von Erich family.

Originally Posted by Observer Rhea Ripley issued an apology after using a homophobic slur while appearing on a Twitch stream with Brennan Williams, Mansoor Al-Shehail, and Reina Gonzalez. The stream had an option for viewers to tip $15 and receive an insult in Spanish or Australian. Ripley wrote in her apology: “Demi Bennett speaking here: I know a lot of you are upset with me after tonight, but I just wanted to publically say that I am sorry. My brain to mouth filter came down for a second and I forgot that some words are a big no no to a lot of people. I am a firm believer that everyone should be treated equally, whether that be race or sexual orientation. With that said, I just wanted to say how dearly sorry I am to everyone that was offended by my choice of words tonight.”

Apparently the NXT person who hosted the stream scrubbed both his Tiwtch account and Youtube channel afterwards likely due to WWE being pissed when they found out.

Originally Posted by PWI The Shad Gaspard and Jayson Paul General Partnership have applied to trademark 'Cryme Tyme' for "Entertainment services, namely, wrestling exhibits and performances by a professional wrestler and entertainer." WWE trademarked the name back in 2009 but cancelled their registration in 2015. The 'AEW', 'All Elite Wrestling', 'Tuesday Night Dynamite' and 'Fight for the Fallen' trademarks will be published for opposition on 5/28. This may not mean much now but the 'Dead Man Talking' trademark by Starrcast will be published for opposition on 5/21.

Originally Posted by Observer Newsletter The biggest thing was the about-face of breaking up the relationship between Ashley Fliehr (Charlotte Flair) and Manny Andrade by putting them on different brands. The relationship wasn’t a secret and the decision was made with knowledge of this. But it didn’t play out well in real life so it was reversed with Andrade moving back to Smackdown the next week. Because they didn’t want to break up the Andrade/Zelina Vega act, they moved Thea Trinidad (Vega) back to Smackdown as well. Unfortunately, then they were breaking up a married couple, so her husband, Tom Budgen (Aleister Black) also had to be moved to Smackdown. That broke up the Ricochet & Aleister Black tag team, and based on Ricochet losing to a repackaged Bobby Roode, now back to doing the Robert Roode character with a Don Frye mustache, the orders from above to protect the second run of NXT call-ups ended. Regarding reports that Andrade and Vega were moved to Smackdown at the request of FOX, wanting a Latino act on the show, that’s not the reason, or at least the prime reason, but it’s not untrue either. The prime reason regarded breaking up the couple, whether it be because they were unhappy or because it made the company look bad regarding the original decision. The company is trying to listen to the audience and not look like bad guy, although that’s within reason, as it’s not like they’re going to give up the Saudi Arabia deal. The company is doing more focus group work than ever before to try and identify why ratings and arena business are down and what will keep fans engaged. In addition, they are fully aware that there is a wrestling war, and don’t want to come across as the bad guy promotion, giving the opposition the role of having fans rallying behind them as the protest vote.

Originally Posted by Observer Newsletter The Sasha Banks situation also remains unchanged. She isn’t happy and the company isn’t reacting much to her. The attitude right now from the company side is that she can go sit out the rest of her contract if she wants to. The bad part of that is that if she doesn’t wrestle and tries to sit out, they can freeze the contract as well.

Originally Posted by Observer Newsletter Another change, based on fan reaction, is that the former War Raiders, then changed to Viking Experience, had their names changed again after one week to the Viking Raiders. There was also a questionnaire sent to fans after TV that listed their names as Viking Warriors, so it may change again next week, or at least at some point that name has also been considered.

Originally Posted by Observer Newsletter As was expected by many and reported in some places including Pro Wrestling Sheet a few weeks ago, Dustin Runnels’ (Dustin Rhodes/Goldust) is headed here and will face brother Cody on Double or Nothing on 5/25 in Las Vegas. Runnels asked for his notice from WWE on 1/19, and they gave it to him, but he was given a 90-day non-compete which ended on 4/19. From the WWE side, Vince McMahon was said to be against it but Paul Levesque talked him into allowing Runnels to leave. The reality is WWE hadn’t done anything with Runnels in years, and he’s 50, and coming off double knee surgery. It’s hard to figure the decisions on who they let go, since with Runnels, it was a lock if he was let out of his contract, he was coming here (and his contract was expiring fairly soon, but WWE could have frozen it and continued it for another eight months due to his time off after the most recent surgeries).

Originally Posted by Observer Newsletter A few notes on ratings. While USA Network bills itself as No. 1 on cable, they use the term in entertainment. For 2018, the top ten stations, in order, were Fox News Channel, ESPN, MSNBC, HGTV, USA, TBS, TNT, Hallmark, History and The Discovery Channel. USA averaged 1,291,000 in prime time but would fall to around 950,000 without WWE, or out of the top ten, which is why the rights to Raw were so valuable. If nothing changes next year with USA and the other channels, with the loss of Smackdown would fall only below TBS and still beat TNT. But with the loss of Raw, they’d fight for the ninth spot, and that explains the value of Raw t that network even with the declining ratings. USA dropped nine percent for the year, so the wrestling shows are declining faster than the network. Since, with AEW rumors, TNT’s prime time average in 2018 was 1,171,000 viewers. That’s going to be a very difficult number for a new show with only an Internet fan base to hit. It should also be noted that TNA did beat station averages, albeit far weaker stations, on Spike, Destination America and Pop, even if all three canceled it for various reasons, and New Japan has consistently been one of the best rated shows on AXS, as has MLW on Bein, but the standards are obviously far lower on those stations. FOX this past Friday averaged 3,043,000 viewers in the time slot Smackdown is getting

Originally Posted by Observer Newsletter Kota Ibushi said that he’s made a lifetime deal to stay with New Japan. He signed an extended contract and said that he would be with New Japan for the rest of his career, using the term “until the day I die.” I guess we should hope for Kenny Omega to be back because The Golden Lovers really need to do matches from time-to-time and there needs to be an Omega vs. Ibushi match in MSG or the a Dome

Originally Posted by Observer Newsletter The 7/13 show in Jacksonville had about 1,000 tickets left (set up for 5,180) after the first day of ticket sales to the general public. It wasn’t the instant sellout, but I don’t know that anyone expected a local market show in Jacksonville to have that kind of a ticket run. Daytona Beach on 6/29, the over/under would be the 2,350 that the similar CEO show did in the market last year with Omega, Kota Ibushi and Tetsuya Naito as the top stars and now it’s Omega, Young Bucks and Cody. Jacksonville usually draws 250 to 400 for NXT and the AEW crowd will beat most WWE shows in the market.

Originally Posted by Observer Newsletter The Saudi Arabian government once again made WWE look sleazy by going. One would have thought they wanted to make the announcement of going at the investors call on 4/25 because the expectation is the company will either make a very small profit or actually have lost money this past quarter due to major added expenses. So announcing a $40 million plus show would be a good thing, especially when the negativity the company got about going last time has quelled down. But on 4/23, the Saudi government beheaded 37 people.

WWE's Saudi deal might be the ultimate "Monkey's Paw" scenario in wrestling history. WWE got a ton of money and in return can't catch a break with the timing of all the controversies that keep happening.

Originally Posted by Observer Newsletter Obviously with the Becky 2 belts chant and catch phrase, the ban on the word belts has come to a close. WWE even sent out a promotional e-mail using the term “title belts,” a term that had been banned for years because Vince associated it with old school rasslin

Originally Posted by Sports Illustrated WWE road agent Dean Malenko has quit his role with the company, multiple sources have told Sports Illustrated. Malenko (real name Dean Simon, 58) had been employed by WWE as a backstage agent for the past eight years, booking matches .

Originally Posted by Post Wrestling The WWE released their results for the first quarter with the company hit with declines in several key areas ... For the WWE Network, they did release the total number of subscribers on the day after WrestleMania 35 earlier this month. On April 8, there were 2 million total subscribers, which is down 6% from the day after WrestleMania 2018, which hit an all-time high of 2,124,000 subs. Of the 2 million subscribers worldwide this year, 1,767,000 were paid and 233,000 were on a free trial. The paid number is down 2% year-over-year, but the free number dropped 26% when it had 316,000 free subs last year. The free number being down isn’t inherently a negative if free subscribers were converting over but in this case, the paid number was also down and would indicate there are less interest in this year’s show. For the entire quarter, they averaged 1,584,000 paid subscribers, which is up slightly from 1,558,000 in the first quarter last year. They are projecting an average of 1.7 paid subs for the second quarter, which includes WrestleMania ... Television ratings were down 14% for Raw and 13% for SmackDown this quarter with the USA Network down 12% and the top 25 cable outlets down 5% ... The explanation the company kept going back to what the number of performers that missed time and citing this as reasons for television viewership and live events being down. That reason only holds so much water because this decline came at their peak time of the year leading into WrestleMania and it’s not like we don’t write about the enormous declines each week, which have continued, specifically for Raw. When assessing viewership being down due to cord cutting, the USA Network was in 91 million homes in 2018 and this year they are in 90 million homes.

Stocks got hammered due to investors not buying Vince and WWE's excuses this time for the company's woes. They also remembered all the broken promises within the past year by Vince to fix the company.


Some stuff from TPWW Frontpage:

• WWE Reportedly Not Going to Release Luke Harper, Adding More Time to His Contract
• Lio Rush Reportedly Has Backstage Heat
• Decision to Turn Kevin Owens Heel Was Made After Daniel Bryan Injury
• More Superstar Shake-up Brand Changes: Nikki Cross, Bo Dallas, Curtis Axel, More
• WWE Releases 2019 Q1 Earnings Report – Stock Down Big