[Emperor Smeat]

Dirtsheets sponsored by Rasslin Dancing Appreciation Day:

Originally Posted by Observer Gabe Sapolsky tweeted about Velveteen Dream working EVOLVE 112 in Joppa, Maryland on September 7 and EVOLVE 113 in Queens, New York on September 8: “Dream was requested by us because of his history at the MCW Arena in Joppa, MD. We wanted a homecoming. He was then asked to do Queens, to give the fans something special at La Boom. Dream was not ‘sent’ by anyone, he agreed and wanted to. This is WWE helping the independent wrestling scene. This is WWE, EVOLVE and Velveteen Dream giving fans a unique, memorable and exciting experience. This is what is good for our business. Thank you.”

Link: https://twitter.com/BookItGabe/statu...83442873843713

Originally Posted by Observer Keith Lee told WWE.com about how Dusty Rhodes helped with his “Bask in my Glory” catchphrase: “When I first met and worked with him, he let me know how much and where I lacked. I applied his words and honed myself. During the 2013 tryout, if you were going to show who you were on a microphone, you had to do it in front of The American Dream. When I finished, he pulled me aside and said to me, ‘That's it, baby. You've got a presence I can literally bask in. Take it and do what you want.’ And thus, ‘Bask in my glory’ was born. It is now something I hold very dear.

Link: https://www.wwe.com/shows/wwenxt/art...-lee-interview

Originally Posted by Observer Indies Roundup: ROH has officially announced that Jushin Thunder Liger will be facing Kenny King at Death Before Dishonor in Las Vegas, Nevada on September 28. Dave Meltzer reported that the match would be taking place at the PPV in this week’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter. Along with continuing to build to Nick Aldis vs. Cody Rhodes, the latest episode of the NWA's All Incoming features emotional comments from Cody about his father Dusty and wife Brandi. beIN Sports is currently off AT&T, DirecTV, and DirecTV NOW amid a carriage dispute. In addition to airing on beIN on Fridays, MLW also uploads their TV episodes to their YouTube channel at 6:05 p.m. Eastern time on Saturdays. El Hijo de LA Park vs. Jimmy Yuta is set for MLW’s War Games event in Fort Lauderdale, Florida on September 6. Hiroshi Tanahashi has been added to the Ring of Honor television tapings on Saturday, September 29th in Las Vegas. There will be a large contingent of New Japan talent on the tapings as the tapings are one day before New Japan’s next Long Beach card in California.

ROH: https://www.rohwrestling.com/news/ki...r-his-hometown , NWA: https://youtu.be/3-1NIrp8V_4 , MLW: https://twitter.com/MLW/status/1034945201310257152

Originally Posted by Observer A few details have emerged regarding the injury that Toni Storm suffered at NXT United Kingdom's television tapings in Birmingham, England over the weekend. Dave Meltzer notes that it was a spine injury that Storm suffered. She hasn't been evaluated yet, but the injury is not believed to be too serious at this point. The referee put up the "X" sign to signal that Storm was hurt on Sunday after she lost to Rhea Ripley in the finals of the two-night, eight-woman tournament to crown the first NXT UK Women's Champion. Storm was able to walk to the back unassisted after the match. PROGRESS and wXw announced yesterday that Storm is off their shows this coming weekend due to the injury. Storm had held the wXw Women's Championship, but the promotion announced that the title would be vacated since it would have gone over four months without being defended.

Originally Posted by PWI WWE Super-Showdown will air live at 5AM Eastern/2AM Pacific in the US on October 6 (in the US) according to WWE.com.

Originally Posted by PWI DK Publishing are currently working on books about the first 20 years of Smackdown as well as WWE's Greatest Grudges for 2019 releases.

Originally Posted by Post Wrestling The WWE has adjusted several European dates from the first weekend of November and moved the shows to October. It is widely believed this will clear their calendar for their second card in Saudi Arabia that weekend, with PWinsider.com reporting the event, is scheduled for Friday, November 2nd. Earlier this year, the WWE entered a ten-year deal with the General Sports Authority of Saudi Arabia that launched with an event in April in Jeddah. While some attempted to divorce the WWE from the politics of the region, it became impossible with so many concessions made by the WWE with regards to who could work the show and amplified by a public service announcement on the broadcast to promote the changes within the country. The event is expected to take place one week after the all women’s pay-per-view.

In another case of WWE being tone deaf with this deal, Saudi government recently announced they will be executing a female activist among a group of activist who were arrested for advocating for more human rights in the country. Since WWE's Greatest Rumble event, they have been cracking on female activists trying to promote for more women's rights in the country.

Originally Posted by Post Wrestling As I stated on Rewind-A-SmackDown, the portrayal of Becky Lynch has been slightly adjusted coming off last week’s reaction to her turn. The new idea is for Becky Lynch and Charlotte Flair to have less of a babyface and heel dynamic and instead, they are two ex-friends that each have valid reasoning for their actions. It is not designed to be a double turn. The thinking behind turning Becky initially was to freshen her character and have her in a bigger spotlight, which they feel they can still achieve this way. While they are many examples of the WWE fighting the audience on specific characters, this is one where they seem to have realized immediately that there is a better option to achieving the same objective.

Originally Posted by Observer There were three ideas for venues for All In, one being the Citizens Bank Arena in Ontario, CA, which is near where the Young Bucks live; the other was the Cow Palace in San Francisco, ironically for a July date that New Japan ended up taking, because it was inexpensive to rent for a building of that size and was a legendary arena that Cody had drawn one of the bigger independent crowds in recent years at as the headliner for a cage match with Joey Ryan promoted by All Pro Wrestling. The decision was made for Labor Day weekend, and the Cow Palace had costs associated with streaming that didn’t make it viable. So they went for the Sears Center in Hoffman Estates, IL, which had the advantage of being the same city as Pro Wrestling Tees, one of the events sponsors, meaning shipping tons of T-shirts could be done the most conveniently and the most economically. Even if the show failed to sell out or draw 10,000 people, it would likely have been a success figuring in the merchandise sales ... Most notably, with the exception of WrestleManias, which also does about 75 percent of ticket sales outside the area of the show, this would be the most widely traveled to U.S. event in history. Because there is no precedent historically for this show, promoted with no local television and off some out-of-market ROH syndicated television but mostly through their own YouTube show, there is no real way to read what this means. About the only thing for sure is they ran a building too small for the ticket demand, and priced the show far too low ... But going in, there was no track record and their idea was to keep the price affordable to make it so price was not a barricade in hitting the number 10,000.

Originally Posted by Observer The more successful, the harder it will be. A huge success will have WWE looking to shut it down as much as possible, and that’s not even mentioning the MSG success. With the exception of Marty Scurll, who is under contract to ROH for about another year, and Mysterio Jr., who is all but gone to WWE already, almost every key player on this show will have contracts due before February.

Originally Posted by Observer Due to all the heat about Rush vs. L.A. Park hair vs. mask not being on the 9/14 anniversary show, CMLL has actually responded ... Rush now says that Park was being disrespectful by working for AAA and that they couldn’t make the match when Park had put his mask up somewhere else. Actually that does make sense. Julio Cesar Rivera on the CMLL Informa show said it wasn’t Park’s fault, but the fault of AAA, which they said was threatening CMLL over using Park and because of that CMLL couldn’t sign him for the match. Well, that would make sense if Park wasn’t booked on that very show, and continuing to be booked regularly ... By the way, AAA has made a lot of legal threats to wrestlers over the years, but this seems to be a story completely made up. Konnan actually said the story was made up. Park, who is working the anniversary show, posted legal papers showing that he owned the name and that AAA had given up any rights to the name, and AAA couldn’t stop him from doing the match ... The issue, in the end, is because it’s the one nobody can say publicly because in Mexico they are still careful about how far they’ll go in saying results are not real and nobody can say this, is that Park came in to lose his mask for a big payoff on a big show figuring Dr. Wagner Jr. got his payoff and he’s 52 years old and it’s time. Then, he kept drawing big houses week after week and became the hottest wrestler in Mexico. Realizing that, plus he was able to work AAA’s big shows on top, and that unlike many, his gimmick is so important to his character that he will take a career hit as just Adolfo Tapia, the unmasked guy as opposed to the legend in the legendary outfit, he felt that maybe his career wasn’t just about over after all and reconsidered. We do know that Park has talked with promoters about being willing to lose his mask, but he’s trying to delay it until 2019 or later, as opposed to now. The other half is what we mentioned last week, that CMLL could still have done the match, but had Rush lose his hair, which isn’t the end of the world although Rush has never lost his hair, but he’s got super charisma, could get mileage out of being bald and having it grow back and eventually it’ll grow back. But CMLL wasn’t going to let Rush lose his hair to somebody who also works for AAA and is an outsider.

Originally Posted by Observer Starting with the 9/1 show, World of Sport is moving up 30 minutes to a 4:30 p.m. start time and will remain in that time slot until all ten episodes are finished, which would be 9/29 ... It was considered a good sign that they didn’t take it off the schedule or just air it on a Sunday morning because this would have been a face-saving excuse. The real good sign was the ratings on 8/25 were up 28 percent to 700,000 viewers and peaked at 900,000. And while this isn’t exactly fair because of ITV’s reach and WWE on Sky, but a replay of Raw that went head-to-head with a replay of WOS saw ITV do 155,000 viewers and Sky do 1,000 viewers. Then again, two months from now there is a good chance there will be no ITV World of Sport so this one-sided victory means nothing in the big picture. Still, a 28 percent increase in ratings was a great sign and if there is another big increase this coming week it ups the odds for a renewal, that looked very unlikely a week ago.

Originally Posted by Observer Xavier Woods is now in the Guinness Book of World Records for having the most subscribed to video game channel in the world which as of last week had 1,633,509 subscribers, which is really quite the accomplishment. The channel is also not under the Woods name, but the Austin Creed name (a prior pro wrestling name, his real name is Austin Watson), meaning he owns it and can control it if he leaves WWE

Originally Posted by Observer I’m not sure if this means main roster or just ideas, but WWE is looking to trademark about 15 new names, mostly newcomers and Corey Graves who are on the main roster. The names not on the main roster, and one would think this indicates they are on the call-up radar, are Shayna Baszler, Kairi Sane, Kyle O’Reilly and Bobby Fish.

Originally Posted by Observer Regarding this week’s rumors, the idea of A.J. Lee in the Evolution PPV would sound very difficult given the circumstances. As of two weeks ago, there was nothing to it and there were rumors, but it sounded like a very difficult deal. The whole situation with the lawsuit against her husband (C.M. Punk) would seem to make it almost impossible even with the suit being settled. Stranger things have happened but this would be high on that list

Originally Posted by WrestlingInc The @WrestleVotes Twitter account, which has broken several legitimate scoops in the past year or so, noted that Bray Wyatt is in line for a slight refresh to his character. They wrote, "The character should remain in tact once he returns to TV, but I'm expecting a renewed push along with a singles baby face run. Pivotal time in his career ahead."

Some other sheet news includes:

• According to the Observer, WWE recently downgraded their ticket sales expectations for the upcoming Australian Super-Show from 80k to around 60-70k.
• Also according to the Observer, early ticket sales for WWE's Evolution PPV are slower than usual for a WWE PPV event. Didn't hit sell out status in any of the pricing sections being sold.

Some stuff from TPWW Frontpage:

• WWE 2K19 Roster: First 75 Wrestlers Announced
• Velveteen Dream to Wrestle for EVOLVE Next Week
• Various: Old Young Bucks TNA Video, SummerSlam BTS, Mae Young Brackets
• WWE: Why WWE Refused to Release Neville, Kevin Owens/Paul Heyman Rumor Killer