[Emperor Smeat]

The Sheets:

Originally Posted by Observer In their article on the WWE writing team shake-up that Dave Meltzer reported last night, The Wrap wrote: “The SmackDown moves also come amid growing questions about Bischoff’s leadership of the show. The insider cited Bischoff’s decision to hire Stevie Long, a former Sons of Anarchy writer who was found asleep in the writers room by longtime producer Michael P.S. Hayes on his first day on the road with WWE. (Long is still with WWE.) Bischoff declined to comment; Long’s manager was unable to provide a comment from his client by the time of publication. Bischoff and his SmackDown creative team have also come under scrutiny for this summer’s Erick Rowan doppelgänger storyline, in which an unknown attacker drop heavy backstage scaffolding on top of Roman Reigns, injuring the company’s No. 1 star. According to the WWE insider, the storyline was botched so bad that explaining to anyone what it was supposed to be wouldn’t make any sense at all.”

Originally Posted by Observer Daga has signed with Impact

Originally Posted by PWI In advance of tomorrow's War Chamber event (which is about to sell out in advance), MLW issued the following announcement ... DALLAS – With Major League Wrestling's Dallas debut tomorrow night tracking to sellout, MLW today announced its return to the Dallas area. MLW will return Saturday night January 11, 2020 to the NYTEX Sports Centre with MLW: ZERO HOUR

Originally Posted by PWI Starting with this Wednesday's Ohio Valley Wrestling Fight for Freedom event at 4th Street Live in Louisville, Kentucky, OVW will be airing their TV series live weekly on WBNA Channel 21. The series will air every Wednesday until October, where the series will move to Tuesday nights for the first time in its existence, airing live on that day instead in order to avoid the WWE NXT vs. AEW Wednesday Night War.

Originally Posted by Post Wrestling With one week remaining, AAA has finally announced additional matches for their card at Madison Square Garden. On Friday, they announced that Cain Velasquez will team with Psycho Clown and Brian Cage against Black Taurus, Rey Escorpion, and Texano Jr. Despite the set up at TripleMania, Killer Kross is not booked in the match, it was reported by Fightful this week that due to the issues between Kross and Impact Wrestling that it was implied to AAA not to book Kross on the Madison Square Garden show next weekend. The AAA show at The Garden will also feature a tag match with Pentagon Jr. & Rey Fenix vs. LAX, and they confirmed the Reina de Reinas championship match between Tessa Blanchard and Taya Valkyrie. The main event on the show is a rematch from TripleMania between Dr. Wagner Jr. and Blue Demon Jr. The card takes place Sunday, September 15th and will be available on Fite TV.

Originally Posted by Observer Newsletter WWE are gearing things up for October. A few things are notable. One is that even though NXT will be on television, the idea of bringing up guys from NXT to the main roster, being Raw and Smackdown, will continue, as opposed to NXT being its own third major league brand . There are plans for people to be called up. As noted earlier, there are plans for the announcing teams to be separated, at least at this point, which would mean no more Graves on both shows. He’ll end up on one or the other. There will be changes in the roster, not a ton but some, with the idea of another draft special for October ratings mostly to try and keep the expected first week momentum that the first Smackdown show is expected to get bringing in all the stars from the past as well as Lesnar and all the Raw stars being on Smackdown first week. So the next draft will take place starting on the second Smackdown on 10/11 in Las Vegas, with it finishing up on the 10/14 Raw show in Denver. The idea is that FOX will present that show like it is a legitimate sports draft. Starting on Smackdown is supposed to be a sign that Smackdown is no longer the B show as well

Originally Posted by Observer Newsletter On the announcing side, with Renee Young hosting the FS 1 weekly version of UFC Tonight, except it being WWE and I’m virtually certain it’ll be even more of a house organ (not that UFC Tonight wasn’t but they never ignored big issues and I can’t imagine the WWE show being like that), FOX is very high on her which could lead to her being exclusive with that brand. The second part is still up in the air

Originally Posted by Observer Newsletter For MSG, it’s about 75 percent sold for Raw on 9/9 and 55 percent for Smackdown on 9/10. They’ve been advertising heavily in the local market, far more than usual. The belief was that even before Austin was announced, they would sell out Raw for sure, but given how many tickets are left, it doesn’t look good and Smackdown has little chance without a late gimmick or papering. Those within the company have said they don’t believe it’s the lack of interest, but the ticket prices, and the ticket prices are a major factor for sure. I was told Sacramento, which is historically a great WWE market, is not looking like it will sell out for Hell in a Cell either, which in the market is also blamed on the pricing as opposed to a lack of fans having interest. Smackdown with Undertaker given ten days out and 7,000 tickets out, that has to be the lowest for a TV shoot in that building in history

Originally Posted by Observer Newsletter Bayley, Banks and Mysterio’s promos on Raw were all done without being scripted word-for-word, basically the old bullet points style and going for it. There is a movement to try and do more of that going forward, similar to the leeway that Owens (and I believe Bryan but that hasn’t been told to me directly) get on Smackdown and why his promos, if not both of theirs, come off better than almost anyone

Originally Posted by Observer Newsletter As far as the All Out PPV goes, it was a mixed bag. Traditional U.S. television PPV was down significantly from Double or Nothing, although will finish well ahead of All In. Streaming PPV in the U.S. on B/R Live was up, although we don’t know by how much. TNT did a one hour hype show at 10 p.m. the night before, but on TNT, they pushed B/R Live as the way to see it and not traditional PPV as hard, so it made sense B/R numbers would be up. FITE TV worldwide numbers were down ... But ITV PPV numbers in the U.K. were up. The impression was that they expected to end up about the same as the last show, which would be considered a success. But based on the U.S. PPV numbers, I think it’ll be down slightly, since TV PPV was down in almost every city we’ve gotten numbers from. The only straight number we have, which is U.S. television PPV, looks to be about 28,000 buys. Double or Nothing as of a few days after was closer to 35,000 and ended up 39,000, so this should have another ten to 12 percent added to that number when all is said and done. All this together would indicate something around 100,000, which, while not up from last time, does show staying power which was the big question. It’s still above what any company other than WWE/F and WCW ever did, and many of those companies had weekly television on strong stations. It also beat most of the WCW shows at the end. On both television PPV and B/R, 46 percent of those ordering had ordered Double or Nothing. That means 54 percent didn’t.

Originally Posted by Observer Newsletter New Japan ran its biggest show in the U.K. in its history, Royal Quest, on 8/31 at the Copper Box Arena in London. The show drew a near sellout crowd, with 6,119 paid. What’s notable about this crowd is that they had a lottery for tickets, similar to what AEW did for its first show in Las Vegas

Originally Posted by Observer Newsletter The 9/15 AAA show at the Hulu Theater is now a joint show with Impact. That’s strange announcing this two weeks before the show. The reason is that AAA didn’t have a license to promote in New York, so they asked for a local promotion, ended up asking Impact, which has run there many times, and Impact wanted to be part of the branding in exchange for using their license.

Originally Posted by Observer Newsletter Daniel Rodimer, 41, who was part of the 2004 Tough Enough show with The Miz and Daniel Puder, and was the company’s No. 1 pick for stardom out of the group, is running for the U.S. House of Representatives in 2020 as a heel from Nevada. Rodimer with his blond hair,6-foot-6 and 285 pound fame and bodybuilder physique giving him the Dave Draper look to Vince McMahon (Draper was a famous 1960s bodybuilder who was the poster boy in that world before losing his spot to Arnold Schwarzenegger), didn’t win, because WWE left the voting up to the fans, who picked Puder due to his angle with Kurt Angle where he got Angle in a Kimura in a shoot. There were forces in the company, including coach Bill DeMott who tried to push WWE to ignore the voting, where it was clear Puder would win, and just pick Miz, who was far more of a fan. Anyway, Rodimer was signed and sent to OVW. He cut his hair which changed his look. Still, Stephanie McMahon loved him and wanted to put him in Team RKO with Edge and Randy Orton in 2007, and giving him the name Daniel Rodman. But he decided pro wrestling wasn’t for him, and quit right before the team was going to be put into play and he was already on the booking sheets and figured in when he quit. He ended up moving to Las Vegas and got his law degree in 2013. He ran unsuccessfully for state senate in Nevada last year. The Daily Beast in an article on him brought up a 2010 arrest for misdemeanor battery at a Waffle House in Naples, FL. As the police report goes, he was at the Waffle House at 2:30 a.m., and allegedly was bothering some women and a friend of the women asked him to leave them alone and he gabbed the guy by the neck and shoved him hard t the floor, hard enough that the police noted fresh red marks all over his back and neck. He then allegedly challenged another person to a fight, was screaming that he likes to “F*** people up” until two of his friends calmed him down. Police were able to arrest him quickly because, after doing all this, he threw down his business card with his name and face on it to the women, which was how police knew to arrest him. He allegedly told police at the time that he liked to hurt people. The charge was dropped after he agreed to go through anger management. He was on Fox & Friends recently and vowed to form a tag team with Donald if elected

Originally Posted by Observer Newsletter Talks of Impact going to AXS are said to be still quite active. As noted before, those at Impact were talking up the idea they’d be off Pursuit by the summer and move to a bigger station and those were the talks referred to, but the deal has been slower in being put together. Some of the talks did involve Anthem purchasing AXS, which would be interesting. I’ve heard nothing in this direction, and who knows what deals would have to be made, but when The Fight Network first started with Mike Garrow in charge, before he had to sell it to the Asper Family because of the losses, he and I always talked about the station coming to the U.S.

Originally Posted by Observer Newsletter The [AEW] talent was all being face scanned over the weekend for a video game, which Nick Jackson basically confirmed last week

TPWW Frontpage:

• WWE Announces Signing of El Hijo del Fantasma and Former Mexican Football Player
• NXT on USA Update: Only the First Hour Will Air on USA for the First Two Weeks
• AEW on TNT Will Be Rated TV-14
• Ricochet Comments on Rumors of Kacy Catanzaro Leaving WWE