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Originally Posted by Observer MLW has announced another match for next month's War Chamber television tapings. Austin Aries will face Brian Pillman Jr. at the event. It's taking place at the NYTEX Sports Centre in North Richland Hills, Texas on Saturday, September 7.

Originally Posted by PWI This Friday's episode was filmed at the Championship Wrestling from Hollywood venue and has been dubbed "Cali Combat." We have heard from several Impact sources that when you see the show, it was designed to be a backdoor pilot for a potential studio style Impact show that's been talked about as a secondary series if and when the flagship Impact series lands on another cable home. You could imagine management's reaction when the NWA announced their plans to begin producing a weekly studio series this fall.

Originally Posted by PWI Ring of Honor announced today that several of their stars will be heading to Mexico for CMLL's Grand Prix tournament. ROH Champion Matt Taven, Mark and Jay Briscoe and Kenny King will all be competing in the tournament. Luke Hawx, Oraculo, Big Daddy and Mecha Wolf 450 are also being brought in for the event. Previously announced for the tournament are CMLL stars Dragon Lee, Cavernario, Volador Jr., Negro Casas, Diamante Azul, Forastero, Rush and Soberano Jr. Last year's event streamed live for ROH Honor Club, but there has been no announcement yet that this will happen again in 2019. The tournament will take place on Friday 8/30 at Arena Mexico.

According to the Observer, the tournament won't be airing live on HonorClub.

Originally Posted by PWI Now in its sophomore year for the franchise, WWE 2K20’s 2K Towers invites players to take a WWE Superstar or created MyPLAYER into one of several different towers, each with a unique gauntlet of matches that boast different challenges, match stipulations and player modifications. WWE 2K20 will shine a spotlight on Roman Reigns, who shares the game cover with WWE Superstar Becky Lynch. In 2K Towers: Roman’s Reign, players will follow “The Big Dog” through his early days in WWE, including his time as a member of The Shield to his rivalries with Brock Lesnar, John Cena, Undertaker and more. Overall, players will compete in 16 matches and live out key chapters in Reigns’ impressive mark on WWE history, all while claiming championships and igniting the WWE Universe along the way. Every match includes a live action introduction from “The Big Dog” himself in exclusive, never-before-seen footage.

Originally Posted by Post Wrestling Will Ospreay recently spoke about his contract status with New Japan Pro Wrestling. Ospreay tweeted that he is with New Japan for the next five-years and his deal allows him to work for Revolution Pro and OTT. Ospreay has been with New Japan since 2016 and is coming off his first appearance in the G1 Climax.

Originally Posted by Observer Newsletter The Wednesday Night Wars are now official, with WWE announcing on 8/20 that NXT would be going live weekly on the USA Network ... Obviously FOX expected the deal since they had told affiliates a few weeks ago to expect the new wrestling show on FS 1. It had come out after that FOX affiliates meeting that the USA Network was also in play, but even then, FS 1, with the FOX synergy that they were looking for, looked to be the favorite. Even though this deal is groundbreaking, and makes NXT an economically profitable brand, which it was not previously, all negotiations were primarily done as a counter to AEW's deal on TNT from 8-10 p.m. on Wednesday. Anyone who knows Vince McMahon knew the move would be a counter. The key point brought up was that a lot of people felt that a show on lower-rated FS 1, which is in fewer homes than TNT, could lose in the ratings, something in this case McMahon couldn't stand for. While this does somewhat change the complexion of the FOX/WWE relationship, because it had previously been that WWE would have Smackdown and all other programming besides Raw on FOX or FS 1 (which is looking for new programming after losing so many hours of UFC in January), instead, it's more that the USA Network will come across as WWE's home base with FOX just having Smackdown and a weekly talk show. USA will be paying in the range of $30 million to $50 million per year over what appears to be two years for the two hours of live NXT from Full Sail University it appears ... So the deal appears to be in the ballpark of the AEW deal with TNT, depending on the value of the ad split. That speaks volumes since WWE also gives up 15 percent to CAA as its negotiator ... Another key is the far greater exposure of the brand's talent from a combination of the longer show and the far wider audience it will reach with viewership no longer confined to the roughly 1,167,000 U.S. homes (6/30 number) who have the WWE Network and instead be in the USA Network's 89 million homes

Originally Posted by Observer Newsletter The question then becomes what does that mean for the talent. Will NXT tour more extensively and move to larger arenas? The last time WWE did something like this was with the creation of the ECW brand, which was televised on Syfy, they did about 1,000 fans per show and very quickly WWE pulled out of touring the brand because the show were money losers. That's about the same as what NXT out of Florida shows are doing, with only WWE Network exposure. Florida shows range from 150 to 500 for the most part with most 200 to 350 ... It also changes the dynamic of NXT from developmental, where you go to Full Sail to learn how to work on television, to a show with experienced workers aiming for the masses on television. But NXT Takeovers have been dominated by recruited independent stars, with only a few homegrown talents for years now. WWE touts to the investors the percentage of talent that makes the main roster through NXT, but in reality, the Kevin Owens, Finn Balor, Robert Roode, Shinsuke Nakamura and Samoa Joe types were already established stars with major names to the NXT fan base the day they walked in the door. There are a higher percentage of women who are actually NXT trained that make the main roster.

Originally Posted by Observer Newsletter Another question revolves around the West Coast. Thus far we've gotten no official answers on AEW on TNT, but the belief is it will go live on the West Coast from 5-7 p.m. That will be a disadvantage in theory for ratings, but also removes head-to-head, since USA will air NXT from 8-10 p.m. Pacific on a three-hour tape delay. From a ratings standpoint, that helps NXT, but if the goal of NXT is to siphon off viewers, at least for the West Coast, it doesn't look like that will be the case.

Originally Posted by Observer Newsletter Then there are questions about NXT talent ... While not confirmed, the word going around is that all developmental deals are going to be changed to main roster deals shortly. One would think that WWE would up the scale for new signees to prevent the next hot talent from going to AEW, but that also hasn't happened yet, but it does figure to be the next logical step as this plays out.

Originally Posted by Observer Newsletter The story going around is that NXT will continue its same path, with Paul Leveque in charge and no Vince McMahon and Kevin Dunn. And as long as ratings are good, while it's Vince's company and his directions and suggestions will happen, he'll probably be mostly hands off. He hardly has the time now and certainly won't come January with the launch of the XFL. If AEW wins in the ratings, Vince will obviously get more involved and all things are open to change, from increased use of major main roster stars, to moving out of Full Sail, to more ideas and suggestions and changes.

Originally Posted by Observer Newsletter Another very important key is that in the quest of big dollars now, the company's are risking audience burn out even worse. If we go with the idea that WWE and AEW are major league products, we are going from five hours of national television per week to either nine or ten (because it's been talked about adding a third hour of Smackdown, possibly for FS 1). That's with a business where the increase from four to five hours of WWE has led to strong decrease in viewers. Granted, for years we had six hours with TNA on Spike which did more than one million viewers. And during the Monday Night Wars, we had eight or nine at times between WWF and WCW, which worked until WCW collapsed ... There is an equivalent in MMA as when UFC increased television hours greatly on FS 1, the result hurt Bellator's numbers, and every other start up, because people couldn't keep up with all the television of the major brand, that the other brands got little unless they had some nostalgia act type of show. Even burning out their audience, UFC still fell upwards because of escalating rights fees, like WWE, and even Bellator did with its DAZN streaming deal. But it hurt them in the most recent negotiations because unlike WWE, which was holding steady when they were negotiating new deals, UFC was coming off a badly declining year. So WWE got the better end of the deals. Long-term, the real losers here look to be Impact and ROH, because AEW takes their slot as the alternative, and for fans who want to watch as much as possible, those will be the shows people will start to skip. New Japan will be hurt stateside as well, but the product is so strong that their small cult audience probably will not be hurt as badly. But from a WWE standpoint, if the move from four to five hours led to a greatly accelerating decline in virtually every business metric aside from the fact TV is willing to spend so much, adding more hours of WWE product is guaranteed more money short term and likely to speed the decline in popularity long-term. And in these types of businesses, few are playing the long game ... One television executive of a national station with great familiarity with both wrestling history, the current and the television landscape gave this appraisal of the situation. "I think it will help both shows the first couple of weeks, but fade from there and become a zero-sum game unless one/both get hot and create new demand for wrestling.

Originally Posted by Observer Newsletter Regarding Katsuyori Shibata, he hasn't been cleared, but he will be attempting to get cleared. He trains with his students, but the issue in question is whether it can ever be healthy for him to take head shots, and if he were to return as Katsuyori Shibata, can they work around that issue within the New Japan style.

Originally Posted by Observer Newsletter Some of this is known and some is also not hard to figure out, but Gedo's original booking of 2019 was for Kenny Omega to beat Hiroshi Tanahashi and keep the IWGP title at the Tokyo Dome, and then defend it against Kazuchika Okada in Madison Square Garden. Omega would then be the one to lose to Kota Ibushi in the G-1 finals in the spot Jay White had. Whether that would have meant Okada vs. Ibushi or Omega vs. Ibushi at the Tokyo Dome, or both, I don't know.

Originally Posted by Observer Newsletter CAA, which represents CM Punk and also represents WWE, has had an agent reach out to FOX head honchos about Punk as a co-host of the upcoming new FS 1 talk show. From a WWE standpoint, my gut is that they'd hate the idea. He'd be working for FOX, not WWE. We're told there have been no negotiations at all regarding that. The impression is WWE wouldn't like it but things change daily.

Originally Posted by Observer Newsletter Jon Moxley has some kind of an elbow injury. It may be an infection that he got in Japan. He worked shows this weekend for Northeast Wrestling and with the exception of the 8/16 show in Poughkeepsie, his singles bouts were made tags. He pretty much insisted on doing his singles match with Pentagon Jr., and was very careful not to bump on the elbow.

Originally Posted by Observer Newsletter What's notable is that starting with show No. 2, every TNT show is being held on or adjacent to a college campus. It will be interesting if that comes into play in the television presentation. The one thing both WWE and UFC are weak on is in using the location to bring the atmosphere to a show. WWE does it somewhat in the U.K., and there are markets like Toronto and New York that do have a different feel, but for the most part, every arena is set up the same, looks the same, and there's nothing on the show, past a few graphics that WWE has started to put up, to give any kind of a location feel. WCW, when Zane Bresloff was promoting the live shows, went heavily for the unique location ideas, with college campuses being part of that playbook. But WWE often tapes on college campuses and the shows look exactly the same, and they do little or nothing on campus to give that feel.

Originally Posted by Observer Newsletter The plan for Rousey, as I'd been told, was at least as of a month or so ago, that the idea was if she decided to come back, she would but that they didn't want her on television just for a one-off like this. But those rules go out the window with the debut episode on all-stars on deck on FOX. There is no way of knowing if she'll return, as a lot has to do with whether she's going to have kids, which is her next goal in life. But if she comes back, the belief is she'll work a more limited schedule and be booked more as an attraction

Originally Posted by Fightful Inglewood Mayor James T. Butts Jr. confirms Los Angeles is a finalist for WrestleMania 37 in 2021 according to Arash Markazi.

Originally Posted by Fightful Sometimes, shit happens. It certainly happened to arguably the most successful WWE star, Stone Cold Steve Austin, as he revealed on an episode of Hot Ones. While he was experiencing a wing eating challenge, he was asked if he'd ever crapped his pants in the ring. The outspoken WWE Hall of Famer readily admitted he had. "A lot of times when you're doing international travel and there's a dietary change, things happen. He was weighing 600 pounds at the time. When he picked me up and slammed me, something happened. Things went south! Luckily I was wearing black trunks. Yoko was so cool -- he's no longer with us, god rest his soul. I was laying there on the mat, just crapped my trunks and said 'Yok, let's go home.' He said 'Okay, brah.' We did the finish, I got beat, went to the back and took a hell of a shower!" said Austin. Austin would joke right after that, he hoped the hot wings that he was ingesting wouldn't force him to have a Yokozuna match moment in front of the nine million-plus viewers who have already watched the episode. Based on our crack reporting, the incident would have happened on September 10 or 12th in 1996, during a tour of South Africa. However, both results have Austin beating Yokozuna.

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