[Emperor Smeat]

The Sheets (Observer Newsletter Edition):

WWE announced the return of live shows starting with the 7/16 Smackdown tapings at the Toyota Center in Houston, with them running shows in 25 cities through Labor Day. But the biggest potential news revolves around SummerSlam. While not confirmed, those within the company believe the show to be on 8/21 at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas. But with the Manny Pacquiao vs. Errol Spence Jr., fight already announced for 8/21 in Las Vegas, it would make SummerSlam the secondary event of the weekend. And nothing has been said officially. Sports Business Journal, which has a close relationship with key WWE higher-ups, wrote that the show was targeted for the weekend of 8/22, and that it would take place at an NFL stadium, listing Las Vegas, Hard Rock Stadium in Miami, SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, CA, NRG Stadium in Houston, MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, NJ and Nissan Stadium in Nashville as the possibilities. The 8/21 date would seem to make no sense because it would put it head-to-head against Pacquiao vs. Spence, and the combination of unfamiliar night for WWE PPVs, which have been on Sundays for more than a decade, and the boxing competition would hurt viewership greatly. Stories going around are that WWE has a main event and a guest host to make it stadium-worthy. The leading rumor is Roman Reigns vs. John Cena for the Universal title. We do know that as of last week they were in talks with Cena, that were not finalized, to appear on the 7/16 Smackdown show in Houston. We do know people within the company have talked of Reigns vs. Cena as the match but nobody has confirmed it. Reigns and Cena did do a program including one PPV match years back, designed for Cena to pass the torch, but Cena’s return to the ring would be a big deal. On paper, the only others one could surmise for Reigns to that level would be Dwayne Johnson, who should be saved for a WrestleMania unless he’s got a limited schedule and this would be a free time, since ultimately it’s his call if it does happen and when it does happen. There’s also the return of Brock Lesnar as a possibility, with the Paul Heyman natural storyline, or as a real stretch, Bill Goldberg or Undertaker. Tickets went on sale to the public on 5/25 and 5/26 for the first three dates, the Smackdown in Houston, the Money in the Bank PPV on 7/18 at Dickies Arena in Fort Worth, and Raw on 7/19 at the American Airlines Center in Dallas ... Sales were not as hoped for like UFC, which has now done four straight instant sellouts for monthly PPV shows from April through July. They were better than AEW, which was to be expected as the bigger company, but like AEW, sales moved at about the rate they would likely have done pre-pandemic. What it seems to show is for both companies, at least at first, they didn’t lose the key fan base during the pandemic, nor did the fan base grow to any major noticeable degree. Whether it maintains is the big question. There are no numbers for Houston, but it is a strong WWE market and the first show back. A sellout would be about 12,600 tickets sold. The floor is sold out and most, but not all, of the lower deck is sold, but the upper deck has tons of tickets. Conversely, in the same arena, UFC immediately sold 17,000 tickets for $4.1 million. Edge and Sasha Banks are both advertised for this show. It would be the return of Edge since WrestleMania. Fort Worth, for Money in the Bank, is the strongest performer of the shows, which shows the drawing power of the Money in the Bank concept. For a PPV, they will likely set up for around 10,000 and there were only 700 tickets left at press time, so it will sell out. Dallas for the first Raw back, would have a capacity of 14,000. Right now they have only opened about 9,000 seats up, with the entire upper deck except right in front of the hard camera not for sale. At press time about 6,500 tickets have been sold, which is a little softer than expected, but still about double of what AEW has sold for two nights later in the same market. It should be noted WWE house show business wasn’t strong before the pandemic.

Regarding the updated ticket sales when AEW goes on the road, there have been some changes. The 7/7 show in Miami at the Knight Center has opened up more than 2,100 new seats due to local ticket regulation rules just changing. They sold almost all of the first 1,250 immediately but now have to push sales again after first selling out. The 7/14 show in Cedar Rapids (outside of Austin), TX has almost 3,500 out and less than 600 left, so it should sell out or comes close. The 7/21 show in Garland, TX, has more than 3,300 tickets out in a 5,100-seat capacity. With WWE running the market twice with a PPV and Raw days ahead, that would theoretically slow down sales from this point.

The merger of the entertainment assets of AT&T, the parent company of WarnerMedia, and Discovery Inc., announced on 5/17, is a major entertainment world news story. It’s impossible to know how this will affect AEW, which is under contract to WarnerMedia for two prime time shows (the second one, which, based on last week’s announcement of an 11/5 television taping on a Friday night before the Saturday Full Gear PPV in St. Louis would indicate Friday as the favorite for the second show, which will be one-hour and debut in the fall) through 2023. AT&T will receive $43 billion in cash, and debt securities, while WarnerMedia would also retain some of its company debt and AT&T shareholders will get 71 percent of the stock in the new company. Discovery would own 29 percent of the stock. On paper, since it’s the WarnerMedia side that would be getting the majority interest, it would at least look less likely this would have a negative effect on AEW. However, the President and CEO will be David Zaslav, who comes from the Discovery side. But the leadership teams of both entities will be merged, and the two companies are planning new streaming services for global consumption. If anything, because pro wrestling with WWE and UFC have shown to have strong value as streaming service content, that AEW, which from a popularity standpoint today is the second strongest pro wrestling entity, would appear to have value, particularly as they build a larger library. They are projecting that the new company would take in approximately $52 billion in revenue with EBITDA of $14 billion annually by 2023. One of the keys to the entertainment merger is that Discovery is a worldwide brand and streaming service, which is different from ESPN+ (UFC) and Peacock (WWE) which limit their streaming to the lucrative U.S. market. TimeWarner would be working with Discovery for HBO Max and Discovery + to be worldwide services and run in more than 200 countries. The new company will be investing more dollars in original content for its streaming services, so on paper that would seem to make AEW more valuable, particularly because it can also drive PPV event revenue individually like UFC does with ESPN, or do specials that would be different from PPV (think Impact’s eight or so annual specials on Impact +) as part of a streaming service or even the WWE model where they could do monthly big events and sell them at a guaranteed number to a streaming service ... The key to AT&T getting the lion’s share of control is in large part because of WarnerMedia’s sports assets, with the idea right now that a key to creating a streaming service with broad appeal is having a major sports component. According to Sportico, the belief is Discovery realized its niche channels were no match for the offerings of Disney Plus, Amazon and Peacock and that the future of the big services would be a combination of major sports and broad appeal entertainment . The merger will make the new group the second biggest media company in the country, behind Disney. The new group already has rights to the NBA, NHL, Major League Baseball, some NCAA tournament games as well as AEW and the belief is that the new group would invest more money into the NHL, NBA, MLB, PGA and the NCAA basketball tournament to get worldwide streaming rights. Of course you can never predict the future in these types of things. There are so many moving parts and it’s strongly doubtful AEW had anything to do with these talks, since AEW doesn’t have a presence on HBO Max. Barring a collapse in popularity of the company, it would seem this is far more likely to be a positive than a negative.

CMLL: Wrestling returned with fans at Arena Mexico on 5/21, with an instant sellout of the 500 tickets put on sale and a show put on streaming PPV ... CMLL removed all references to ROH as a partner at the show. On the Mas Lucha radio show, Miguel Reduicindo said that CMLL was talking with other U.S. groups about replacing the ROH partnership. That will be tough since Konnan is the intermediary for Impact, AEW and MLW, CMLL has no use for WWE and no significant U.S. group other than ROH would be a good fit for CMLL

NEW JAPAN: There was talk of extending the state of emergency in Tokyo and nine other provinces through 6/20. This was not official, but it was being reported in Japan that is likely. It’s too soon to know what that means for pro wrestling since everyone is running now at 50 percent capacity and attendance across all companies remains very weak

The debut of Atsushi Onita’s new FMWE promotion on 7/4 will be a death match with Onita & Minoru Fujita & Ricky Fuji vs. Abdullah Kobayashi and two mystery partners. Of Onita’s team wins, they will then blow up Kobayashi’s motorcycle. If Kobayashi’s team wins, they will blow up Onita’s trademark black leather jacket that dates back 30 years

Noelle Foley, 27, the daughter of Mick Foley, who was the co-star with her father in the Holy Foley reality show on the WWE Network which included her training to be a pro wrestler, revealed she’s got a hearing disorder that has made her life miserable, even when it comes to everyday things. “I’ve kept this to myself for quite some time, because I honestly just didn’t want to talk about it, but in February I was clinically diagnosed with a rare hearing disorder called Hyperacusis. Hyperacusis is when you have an extremely low tolerance to noise and most sounds are physically painful. My Hyperacusis was brought on by my concussion in 2019, and it was mild in the beginning, but unfortunately it has gotten worse over time. I’ve had several HORRIBLE setbacks in my recovery due to sounds, making it feel like my full recovery is light years away. If any of you are living with Hyperacusis you know darn well that it is an EXTREMELY debilitating condition to live with. It’d recently been severely affecting my every day life from grocery shopping, driving, restaurants, and even just being around people, including my family.

IMPACT: Josh Matthews was back as the lead announcer on these tapings. Matt Striker was unavailable for the tapings dates but is expected to return at the next set of tapings

AEW: Dynamite, as noted previously, was moved on 5/26 to 5/28 at 10 p.m., and that will also be the time slot on 6/4, the following Friday, with a 6/2 preemeption. That will be a live show as well, with Dark taped 8-10 p.m. and Dynamite live 10 p.m. to midnight. There will likely be other moves in June but that depends on the NBA playoff schedule which isn’t finalized because they don’t know how long some series will go. If there are games on Wednesdays after 6/2, the plans are 6/11 and 6/18 at 10 p.m. on Friday night. Some series’ may go quickly and nothing past 6/4 is etched in stone. It appears they are doing three weeks of taping on 6/4 and 6/5, since the next live taping is 6/26, a Saturday night, meaning it looks like the show will air that date from 8-10 p.m. that week, which would mean going head-to-head that night with a UFC show headlined by Cyril Gane vs. Alexander Volkov. Then they come back with another live taping on 6/30, which is the last Jacksonville show before 7/7 in Miami, and then they’ll be live weekly from there. Going live on the road will add greatly to expenses because running Jacksonville is low cost since they run the building to begin with, plus the travel costs are less with so much of the crew based in Florida and Georgia and they drive in. And it costs less to bring people in every other week. They will pick up live gates that will offset some of those added costs. It appears that for Dark they will give tryouts to wrestlers from the local areas For 5/28, which due to the time slot and the marquee value of the show, is likely to do the lowest number or one of the lowest numbers in show history.

Tony Khan announced that there will be a women’s Casino Battle Royal for a title shot at the All Out PPV show over Labor Day weekend. He also said that the promotion would be expanding with new talent and the new Rampage TV show

Shaquille O’Neal on Inside the NBA this past week was asked if he’s going to wrestle again and he said soon, this summer

WWE had a talent tryout this past week which was essentially the AEW Dark enhancement crew. Among the names at the tryout were John Skyler, Jake Logan, Tyson Maddux, Ray Jaz, Brady Pierce, Will Allday, David Ali, Ariel Levy, Eric James and Jason Cade. Skyler and Wheeler Yuta, who has worked New Japan Strong and ROH, were the biggest names at the tryout While there will always be exceptions, when it comes to trying out talent, the directive from above has changed, wanting younger and bigger guys again, which was the only doctrine that got changed when they wanted to take the ROH thunder years ago when ROH got hot and was after the great workers who were often smaller, not necessarily old but not young (as defined as mid-20s or younger).

There was a story going around this past week regarding a wrestler who had hidden a phone as a camera in a bathroom and that a talent found the phone and found “less than savory” files stored. The story got out this week and people thought it was something recent in the WWE dressing room. It was actually something at a party several years ago at the residence of a wrestler who is not with the company (not related to this at all) and as far as the person who owned the phone and was doing so, a number of wrestlers have known this story for years but it wasn’t until fairly recently that management found out the story when a major star went to management and that wrestler is also no longer with the company

Ratings:

SPOILER: show

With the apparent demise of Showbuzz Daily, right now there is no source for a lot of key Nielsen information, the most important being comparison shows and rankings. For the week of 5/17 to 5/21, we have actual as opposed to estimated numbers from a significant system. It’s not Nielsen, so it doesn’t track things like viewers per home nor demos. But it has other info such as how long the average viewer watched and DVR numbers. There are pluses and minuses of this. This has actual numbers, not estimates like Nielsen, and is based on millions of homes and not less than 100,000. But Nielsen is more scientific when it comes to a cross-section and the numbers we have are biased toward the type of person who subscribes to the system. Nevertheless, it’s a huge sample size. Raw on 5/17 placed first for the night on cable at 0.48, but also had no NBA competition, with the most-watched NHL game doing 759,000 viewers and 0.25. The final episode of Miz & Mrs. did 683,000 and 0.22. The show with +9 viewership had 76 percent of its viewers live, 20 percent via DVR and four percent via VOD. That would mean 2,195,000 viewers including DVR viewers. The average viewer watched 58.4 percent of the show meaning 3,758,000 tuned in for a part of the show. Total time viewed was down 0.9 percent from the prior week but total people tuning in was up 4.7 percent. The difference is because the viewer time fell from 111 minutes to 105 minutes. NXT on 5/18 with +8 viewership had 72 percent live, 23 percent via DVR and five percent via VOD. At 0.15, it ranked No. 35 for the night in 18-49. It would have had 865,000 viewers on average for the show, including DVR viewers. The average viewer watched 58.3 percent of the show meaning 1,484,000 viewers tuned in for part of the show. Viewers hours including DVR viewership was up 1.9 percent because viewers watched through the week longer, but total individual viewers were down 1.8 percent. AEW on 5/19 doing an 0.28 placed seventh for the night on cable, trailing four NBA related telecasts and two episodes of Real Housewives, which being a women’s show, wouldn’t have been hurt as much as AEW by the NBA playoffs. The playoffs were big as the head-to-head game in most of the country did 2,293,000 viewers and 0.85, but the game against the West Coast airing of AEW was the Warriors-Lakers game which was the most-watched NBA game on ESPN since 2019, doing 5,618,000 viewers and 2.21 in 18-49. The NHL playoff game head-to-head did 730,000 viewers and 0.25, and the game against the West Coast airing (which would have gotten killed by Warriors-Lakers) did 401,000 and 0.15. With +7 viewership it was 59 percent live, 32 percent via DVR and 9 percent via VOD. Total +7 viewership was 1,127,000, The average viewer watched 66.8 percent of the show and 1,687,000 watched some point of the show. +7 viewers were down 10.8 percent from the prior week and viewers who watched some part of the show were also down 10.8 percent, which would be a combination of a weaker lineup than in previous weeks and the NBA competition. AEW on 5/12 doing an 0.31, finished tied for third with Real Housewives, trailing an NBA game (1,130,000 viewers and 0.41) and Married at First Sight (1,006,000 viewers and 0.39). It beat the NBA game that went head-to-head with the first 90 minutes which did 777,000 viewers and 0.26. Smackdown on 5/14 with +5 viewership was 68 percent live, 27 percent via DVR and five percent via VOD. Total +7 viewership was 2,367,000 and the average viewer watched 55.9 percent of the show and 4,234,000 watched at least a portion of the show. ROH did 88 percent live with +4 viewing, with 11 percent via DVR and one percent via VOD. The average viewer watched 58.4 percent of the show. Impact on 5/13 with +6 was 76 percent live, 21 percent via DVR and 3 percent via VOD. The average viewer watched 51.5 percent of the show.

Raw on 5/24 did 1,620,000 viewers and 0.45 in 18-49. It was the fourth lowest number of viewers in the history of the show and it was the second lowest in 18-49. The record lows were 1,527,000 viewers and 0.41 in 18-49 set on December 14, 2020, going against a monster football game. The first hour did 1,661,000 viewers. The second hour did 1,655,000 viewers. The third hour did 1,546,000 viewers. The audience drop was much lower than usual so the number was due to the low number tuning in from the start, with it being the second lowest first hour in history. There were 1,458,000 watching live and 203,000 watching via DVR as of 3 a.m. On the night of the show the average viewer watched 51.7 percent of the show. The show was down 11.1 percent in viewers and 6.3 percent in 18-49 from last week. From one year ago, the show was down 6.6 percent in viewers and 11.8 percent in 18-49.

Smackdown on 5/21 did 1,933,000 viewers and 0.50 in 18-49. The show placed second in 18-49 behind Shark Tank at 0.55, and was last among the ten network shows in overall viewers, with the second lowest being 2,699,000. It was 1,643,000 watching live and 290,000 watching via VCR as of 3 a.m. On the night of the show the average viewer watched 51.3 percent of the show. The show was up 0.8 percent from last week in viewers and up 13.6 percent in 18-49. As compared to the same week last year, viewers were down 5.4 percent and 18-49 was down 7.4 percent.

NXT on 5/25 did 698,000 viewers and an 0.13 in 18-49, the second lowest 18-49 number in history, and going unopposed, made worse because it was the Karrion Kross vs. Finn Balor main event that had been heavily pushed, but the NBA playoffs hurt it badly. On that night up until 3 a.m. it was 618,000 live and 80,000 via DVR. The average viewer on that night watched 52.4 percent of the show. Viewers were down 0.3 percent from last week while 18-49 was down 13.3 percent from last week. As compared to the same week one year ago, viewers were down 4.5 percent and 18-49 was down 31.6 percent.

Meltzer's Matches Star Ratings:

SPOILER: show

Notes on the 5/21 Smackdown. Crews retained the IC title over Owens, Zayn and Big E in 21:53 in a ****1/4 match. All kinds of big spots. E did a splash on Crews and Zayn at the same time on the apron. Owens did a flip dive on E. Crews did a moonsault off the apron on E. Crews gave E three German suplexes. Zayn did a Michinoku driver on Owens for a near fall. Owens did a fisherman buster off the middle rope on Zayn. Crews did a Death Valley bomb on Owens and then E tackled Crews to the floor. They did all kinds of near falls. Owens did a frog splash on E. Owens did a German suplex on E and a cannonball on Crews. Zayn did a half nelson German suplex and blue thunder bomb. Owens did a superkick on E. Zayn did a power bomb on Crews. Owens backdropped Zayn over the barricade into the timekeepers’ area. Zayn gave Owens a half nelson German suplex on the floor. E hit the big ending on Crews but Azeez pulled E off. E threw Azeez into the post. They pretended the lights went out and then Black was in the ring and laid out E with black mass so Crews could pin him and retain

Notes from the 5/24 Raw show. Flair beat Asuka in 21:24 of a ***½ match. Very good long match. Asuka went for a hip attack but Flair chop blocked her and worked on Asuka’s left knee. Asuka came back with a German suplex, a spinning backfist and a kick. Flair did the Andrade double moonsault spot. She went for the figure four but Asuka reversed into the Asuka lock. Flair then reversed into a bridging pin. Then they announced Flair gets the shot at Ripley, which was the original plan. But it makes no sense since Asuka beat Flair last week, so at best they are 1-1 and there should be a deciding match to see who gets the shot. Riddle pinned Woods in 12:49 of a **** match. Both were strong high school wrestlers. Riddle was state champion in New York and once beat Jon Jones. Woods was a very good high school wrestler in Georgia. There was a great monkey flip into a vertical suplex by Woods. There was a triple reverse tombstone spot although neither guy ended up actually taking the tombstone. Woods did a press slam into a gutbuster. Riddle did the Kota Ibushi power German suplex. The finish saw Riddle get the pin after an RKO, which no doubt will lead to a confrontation next week with Orton.

Notes from the 5/25 NXT show. Pete Dunne pinned Bobby Fish in a **** match in 12:10. Dunne was busted up early under his left eye with a forearm. Fish backdropped Dunne on the floor. Fish gave Dunne a running knee into the barricade. Fish gave Dunne an overhead suplex into the turnbuckle and Dunne landed nearly on his head. Dunne came back doing the broken finger spot and the bitter end for the pin. Oney Lorcan came out and attacked and beat down Fish. Lorcan worked on Fish’s bad arm that he had the triceps surgery on. It was a long attack and nobody made the save for Fish. Looks like Dunne is moving on while Fish’s program will be with Lorcan. Kross beat Balor in the main event in 22:39 of a ****1/4 match. Just a fantastic showing by Balor here. It was pushed as the biggest match in NXT history with a great early presentation. They copied AEW with using records, saying Balor is 34-8 (I have no idea where that came from since he’s had hundreds of NXT matches) and Kross is 14-0, and that Balor is 14-1 on Takeovers. Cross was throwing Balor around early. Balor got a crossface. Balor did a double foot stomp. Kross got the crossjacket choke but Balor made the ropes. Kross used the Bad Luck Fall into the barricade. Balor came back with a flip dive. Kross no sold it and back dropped him on the announcers table. Balor came back with another double foot stomp, a Woo dropkick, but missed the Coup de gras. Kross drove Balor into the turnbuckles and hit a German suplex, and a Saito suplex. Balor did a front rolling cradle and then used an abdominal stretch and dropped it into a lateral guillotine. Kross powered out of that. Balor got a choke but Kross powered out. Balor got a triangle but Kross power bombed his way out, followed with a clothesline, the elbows to the back of the neck on the ground and got the straitjacket choke. Balor went out and the match was stopped.

Smeat's Note: Since AEW won't be airing Dynamite on Wednesday next week as well, might end up doing a sheets report for that day.