[Emperor Smeat]

The Sheets (Observer Newsletter Edition):

New Japan Pro Wrestling returns to action on 6/15 and will have five other empty arena events this month before the first shows with fans on 7/11 and 7/12 at Osaka Jo Hall. The Osaka shows will be set up for around 4,000 fans, or 33 percent capacity. The first show will be the finals of the New Japan Cup, which starts on 6/16, a 32-man single elimination tournament. The 7/12 show will be Dominion, which has traditionally been the company’s second biggest show of the year, but with little in the way of foreign talent, that’s unlikely to be the case this year. Tetsuya Naito will defend the IWGP and IC titles against the winner of the New Japan Cup, meaning the full show line-up won’t be announced until just before show time. All 11 shows announced so far will air live on New Japan World, with the June shows along with the first four shows in July being built around the New Japan Cup tournament, that was originally scheduled for March. Nothing was said regarding announcing but there is no date scheduled for English language announcers to be in the country, or any of the foreign talent that isn’t living there. It is possible they could hook something up for Kevin Kelly to use a home studio and call the matches but not actually be there similar to what WWE does with Mauro Ranallo and Beth Phoenix, but right now nobody knows how the English broadcasting will be handled. The tournament is bracketed exactly like was planned for March, except that there are 15 new wrestlers of the 32 planned, with only two foreigners, Gabriel Kidd and Zack Sabre Jr. The belief is that it will be several months before they will be able to bring in foreigners. The target date we were told this week was October. Perhaps it could be sooner. Right now for a foreigner to get into the country it requires two weeks of quarantine when they arrive before they can work. The feeling is that the guys who do have places in Japan like Will Ospreay and Juice Robinson may be back sooner but they couldn’t bring people like that in because of the time constraints because once the decision was made, it was too late to bring them in for the tournament ... While Ospreay and Robinson live in Japan, both went home to their respective countries at the start of the pandemic and have not been able to return. The decision was made so late in the game of doing the tournament that they weren’t alerted with enough time to do the two weeks of quarantine necessary when traveling into Japan. Because of 15 replacements being needed, they went heavily to junior heavyweights to fill out the field, something that had never been done to this level in the past.

The 6/7 Takeover In Your House show was a mostly good easy watch. The show went two hours 17 minutes, and in this day and age without fans, shorter is almost always going to better. Four of the six matches were good, and one of the two that was nothing special was by design and accomplished its key goal. The main event delivered. There was some nice lighthearted entertainment from the nostalgia of the In Your House name ... This show was built around the women’s three way match where Io Shirai took the title by winning a three-way over Charlotte Flair and Rhea Ripley. The match delivered and was the best women’s match on an NXT show in a long time. The show ended with Shirai as the star, with the in-ring confetti celebration of the title change, just as it was designed to do. Shirai was supposed to stand out and did, while Flair was the workhorse and played her role as well. The finish is a new WWE trope that actually makes no sense, as Ripley was in Flair’s figure eight submission while Shirai came off the top rope with a moonsault. The moonsault actually mostly missed, although Shirai did graze Ripley’s face and pinned her. The problem is for decades pins off figure fours have been part of wrestling. So if Ripley’s shoulders were down, fact is, the initial move was the figure eight, not the moonsault. At worst, it would be judged a tie and otherwise with Flair having the move on first, she should have won. But this isn’t the first time WWE has done this finish and it won’t be the last. The idea was to take the title off Flair while still keeping her perceived as superior, since on the main roster, with Becky Lynch gone, Flair is pushed as the top female performer in the company. At the same time, her role should have been to put Ripley over, and instead, Ripley has been cooled off badly. Plus, it’s always cheap when you have a champion who actually doesn’t lose in the title change. It cheapens the title and cheapens the new champion. Granted, today, a lot of people who produce wrestling see belts as just props and nothing more. In NXT, that isn’t the attitude as you can tell by the booking with less fluke title wins. But in NXT, titles often feel like it’s somebody’s turn as opposed to it being emblematic of being the best person in the company at that period of time ... Paul Levesque after said that people will complain about Flair not losing the match herself but said in the long run it will all play out. There are scenarios where it could, such as Shirai vs. Flair where Shirai goes over clean, or Ripley over Shirai leading to Ripley beating Flair. But all scenarios for it to make sense end with Flair putting over someone on the brand in a high profile title match, and someone who stays on the brand, not then moves to Raw off the win. But that’s tricky because with Lynch gone, Flair’s role has greatly changed ... The weakest part of the show was the one that should have been the strongest. There is a huge advantage in taping matches ahead of time, such as the ability to do multiple takes and edit the bad things out. But the flip side of these cinematic matches is the standard has gotten so high after the graveyard match and Stadium Stampede. At this stage, if you’re going to do such a match, you need to be overflowing with ideas for the concept. And this match didn’t have that. There were far too few ideas and most of them were predictable. Adam Cole beat Velveteen Dream to retain the NXT title in a back lot match that was generally considered the weakest thing on the show. I thought it was average at best, bordering on bad. The stipulations were that Dream was to not be able to get an NXT title shot again as long as Cole is champion. That doesn’t mean never again. Some thought this would lead to Dream being called up, but he absolutely should not until we’re back with real spectators. Dream is a well below average empty arena wrestler. He is a very charismatic live show performer and unfortunately for him, the timing doesn’t work right now to introduce him. We’re told there are no plans for Dream on the main roster right now.

Raw on 6/8 did 1,737,000 viewers and a 0.53 (684,000 viewers) in 18-49. The audience was slightly up from the 1,728,000 from last week, even though the interest in news was down week-to-week, but 18-49 was up 6.9 percent so that would be considered good ... It was the fourth lowest number in the history of the show, with all four of these numbers coming since 5/4 ... The first hour did 1,827,000 viewers. The second hour did 1,790,000 viewers. The third hour did 1,595,000 viewers. The audience was down 18.5 percent from last year. The 18-49 audience was down 20.6 percent from last year. But it should be noted that the same week last year went against an NBA playoff game (Warriors vs. Raptors) that did 18,217,000 viewers, and because of that, was the lowest non-holiday number in Raw history. And granted the pandemic has continued to hurt all numbers, but that’s a big drop from what was a record low at the time. The opening segment did 1,761,000 viewers for talking with Bayley, Sasha Banks, Charlotte Flair, Asuka and the Iiconics. The Iiconics vs. Flair & Asuka vs. Bayley & Banks match grew 124,000 viewers to a show high point of 1,885,000. Interviews with Seth Rollins and Rey Mysterio lost 66,000 viewers. Austin Theory & Murphy vs. Aleister Black & Humberto Carrillo gained 22,000 viewers. The Peep Show segment with Edge, Christian and Randy Orton gained 30,000 viewers. The Street Profits/Viking Raiders decathlon and Kevin Owens attack of Andrade and Angel Garza lost 77,000 viewers. Owens vs Andrade vs. Garza lost 17,000 viewers. Interviews with Kurt Angle, Drew McIntyre & Viking Raiders and the VIP Lounge with McIntyre and then Lashley, Vikings and Street Profits coming out lost 58,000 viewers. Viking Raiders vs. Lashley & MVP lost 84,000 viewers. Charlotte Flair vs. Asuka ended up down 60,000 viewers. The good thing is that it picked up interest late as the first half was down 131,000 viewers to a show low 1,503,000 viewers but the last 15 minutes picked up 71,000 viewers to 1,574,000 viewers.

Smackdown on 6/5 did a 1.27 rating and 1,984,000 viewers (1.30 viewers per home. It did another 0.5 in the 18-49 demo (656,000 viewers). Those numbers were down 3.8 percent in ratings, 3.4 percent in viewers and 3.7 percent in 18-49 against almost all rerun programming (aside from a new episode of 20/20 on ABC) on the networks and lesser news interest than last week but still that was significant. FOX finished second in 18-49 behind ABC at 0.6. Smackdown’s 0.3 in 18-34 won the night. Smackdown was last in total viewers but a rerun of The Wall on NBC did 2,085,000 so it almost beat one show. It won with males 18-49 and tied for last with women 18-49 and finished last in over 50. It did significantly beat rerun programming on FOX the same weekend last year which averaged 1,337,000 viewers and an 0.3 in 18-49, so up 48.4 percent in viewers and 66.7 percent in 18-49.

The 6/10 battle saw disappointing numbers from both AEW and NXT, seemingly hurt by NASCAR and news coverage. NXT in particular should have gotten a bump coming off the Takeover show, but there was less interest in this past Takeover than most ... AEW did 677,000 viewers, its second lowest in history (it did 663,000 on the night before Thanksgiving but that week also did huge DVR numbers) and 0.23 (296,000 viewers) in 18-49, also a low level number. NXT did 673,000 viewers and 0.16 in 18-49 (213,000), the latter being among its lowest 18-49 numbers. AEW was down 7.3 percent in viewers and 20.9 percent in 18-49, a bad drop in the key demo. NXT was down 5.9 percent in viewers and 17.1 percent in 18-49, which was less than AEW, but really significantly worse because it was coming off a Takeover ... The NASCAR race from Martinsville, VA, which featured A.J. Styles and Daniel Bryan all over promoting Smackdown and as starters did 1,711,000 viewers and a 0.30 in 18-49. Worse, the AEW audience was older than usual, with over 50 up but every other demo down, and real bad drops under 35. NXT did terribly in 18-34 in particular. In the demos, AEW won in all the key categories. In males 18-34, AEW did 51,000 viewers (down 32.0 percent) and NXT had 31,000 (down 31.1 percent). In women 18-34, AEW had 22,000 (down 56.9 percent) and NXT had 20,000 (down 33.3 percent). In men 35-49, AEW had 147,000 (down 9.8 percent) and NXT had 106,000 (down 10.9 percent). In women 35-49, AEW had 76,000 (down 10.6 percent) and NXT had 56,000 (down 11.1 percent). The basic breakdown is that AEW won the first hour in viewers and NXT won the second hour, AEW taking the first four quarters and NXT taking the next four. So NXT got stronger. AEW won in 18-49, but the gap closed greatly as AEW won the first quarter by 107,000 viewers and the final quarter by 68,000. In the main event battle, Cody vs. Marq Quen for AEW did 632,000 viewer and 288,000 in 18-49. Adam Cole vs. Dexter Lumis for NXT did 653,000 viewers and 220,000 in 18-49. AEW opened with 760,000 viewers and 322,000 in 18-49 with FTR vs. Butcher & Blade. It was also the high point of the show. NXT opened with 758,000 viewers and 215,000 in 18-49 for an Undisputed Era in-ring and an Undisputed Era backstage with Keith Lee & Mia Yim. In quarter two, AEW lost 30,000 viewers and 16,000 in 18-49 for the ending of FTR vs. Butcher & Blade, the in-ring with Butcher & Blade and Young Bucks and ensuing multiple team brawl and backstage interview with Dustin Rhodes, Brandi Rhodes, Q.T. Marshall and The Bunny. NXT lost 74,000 viewers and 22,000 in 18-49 for Lee & Yim vs. Johnny Gargano & Candice LeRae and a Damien Priest interview. In quarter three, AEW lost 26,000 viewers and 12,000 in 18-49 for Kris Statlander & Hikaru Shida vs. Penelope Ford & Nyla Rose, plus Darby Allin & Tony Hawk and a Britt Baker workout comedy bit. NXT lost 68,000 viewers but gained 4,000 in18-49 a Cameron Grimes/Damien Priest spot, an Io Shirai segment, and a Saurav & Gurjar squash. In quarter four, AEW lost 52,000 viewers and 5,000 in 18-49 for Best Friends & Orange Cassidy vs. Santana & Ortiz & Jake Hager. NXT gained 35,000 viewers and 14,000 in 18-49 a Cameron Grimes skit with girls and Drake Wuertz and William Regal, a Fandango & Tyler Breeze profile segment, a Tommaso Ciampa non-interview and Rhea Ripley & Robert Stone. AEW had 652,000 viewers this quarter to 651,000 for NXT. In quarter five, AEW gained 19,000 viewers and 15,000 in 18-49 for the ending of Best Friends & Cassidy vs. Santana & Ortiz & Hager and the post-match with Chris Jericho and the oranges, MJF and Billy Gunn and the beginning of Sammy Guevara vs. Colt Cabana. NXT gained 37,000 viewers and 19,000 in 18-49 for Finn Balor vs. Cameron Grimes. The NXT lad in viewers of 688,000 to 671,000 would be only the second time since October that NXT beat a segment with Jericho, even though Jericho was only in for a few minutes in the quarter. In quarter six, AEW lost 17,000 viewers and 9,000 in 18-49 for the ending of Guevara vs. Cabana, the Dark Order coming out, Guevara in-ring with Matt Hardy, a Joey Janela & Sonny Kiss vignette and Cabana going into Brodie Lee’s dressing room. NXT lost 27,000 viewers and 25,000 in 18-49 for Dakota Kai vs. Kacy Catanzaro and a Timothy Thatcher skit. In quarter seven, AEW lost 42,000 viewers and 24,000 in 18-49 for a look at next week’s show, Jon Moxley, Taz and Brian Cage in a parking lot brawl and the beginning of Cody vs. Quen. NXT gained 15,000 viewers and 28,000 in 18-49 for the Drake Maverick/Fantasma segment and another Undisputed Era segment. And in quarter eight, AEW gained 20,000 viewers and 17,000 in 18-49 for the remainder of Cody vs. Quen and the post-match. NXT lost 26,000 viewers and 12,000 in 18-49 for Cole vs. Lumis and the post-match.

TNT aired an AEW repeat with no promotion at all at 12:45 a.m. on 6/6 and it still placed No. 40 in 18-49 for the night at 0.13 with 319,000 viewers of which 171,000 were in 18-49. Also notable is that it did 1.39 viewers per home and for a show in a post-midnight time slot to do that is shocking. If you take out news shows, it was No. 3 for the entire night in the Male 12-34 demo trailing only UFC and the Sports Center show and No. 6 in Women 12-34. In males 18-49 it was No. 5 and overall 18-49 was No. 9 all day and was first in its time slot in overall viewers and in almost every demo.

Will Ospreay, who has been concentrating on eating and heavy lifting with no wrestling happening, is up to 227 pounds and ripped. That’s about 25 pounds up from nine months ago. He’s probably going to have to adjust his in-ring style to compensate for the added weight. Whether it’s a good or bad thing is to be determined. We’ve seen it work both ways where guys who aren’t going to be mass monsters add weight and it works against what they can do. Japan, like the U.S., has still favored thickness in its top guys and obviously Ospreay is looking to be on top in the heavyweight division. Often also when guys add weight it ups their injury rate because larger muscles tear more often and more weight can be detrimental to knees and back

MLW and DAZN have reached a deal and MLW programming started airing on the station on 6/9. MLW programming is expected to appear on DAZN worldwide, both on Demand and as part of the regular programming schedule. Right now episodes of MLW Fusion as well as the Opera Cup are appearing now. The key to the deal will be monthly live arena shows once MLW starts running again. The main MLW Fusion show will for now remain on Bein Sports and YouTube. There’s still hope to move the show to another platform as there’s very little money in YouTube MLW is still in talks regarding another U.S. cable deal

ROH are in the stage of planning for a return and doing shows for television without fans. Right now they have been doing weekly one hour profiles using their library for the television show but the feeling is they have to start planning weekly content. Whether this be Florida or its home base of Maryland (which, due to its athletic commission would probably have stricter protocols regarding how shows are handled, even with no fans) or somewhere else is probably not yet determined and there is no start date past the point they recognize how to do it and are working on protocol for how to handle policy and testing for a return

Regarding the stuff from last week involving the names teased for the 7/18 Slammiversary PPV, obviously no Drake Maverick. Luke Gallows & Karl Anderson are looking for what was described as two deals, one of which would be New Japan, which would be the main deal, and the other would be a U.S. deal, and Impact is in play for being the second deal. They can’t actually do anything until mid-July because they are still under a WWE deal, but they legally could appear on Slammiversary if they make a deal here a few days beforehand. .. Taylor Wilde (Shantelle Malawski, 34) has been teasing on Twitter a return to the company.

Chris Jericho had the Inner Circle on Talk is Jericho this week to talk about the formation of the group. Jericho asked Sammy Guevara to join the group over Labor Day weekend last year. When WWE & AEW & Impact were all recruiting Santana & Ortiz since it was known their contracts were up, AEW won the bidding by telling them their idea was to put them in a group with Jericho so they knew they’d be used well. Jericho said that Pentagon Jr. & Fenix were originally suggested to him to be his team since they had been the Young Bucks top rivals previously, but Jericho thought they were too gimmicky for what he wanted. Jericho was pitched on Anthony Agogo, a former pro boxer who won a bronze medal in boxing in the 2012 Olympics, who AEW signed to a developmental deal, as his tough guy. Jericho wanted Jake Hager, who is much bigger, had lots of pro wrestling experience and they knew each other and trained at the same MMA gym Jericho also gave some background on the Mike Tyson angle. Hager said he wrestled Rashad Evans in college which would not be correct since Evans wrestled at 174 at Michigan and Hager at heavyweight for Oklahoma. They were contemporaries. Evans was a senior in 2003 and competed at the 2002 and 2003 NCAA tournament. Hager was a senior in 2006 and competed at the 2005 and 2006 NCAA tournament. The original plan was for Tyson to knock out Sammy Guevara in the brawl, but that changed. The actual plan was for only Evans, Vitor Belfort, Tyson and Henry Cejudo to come out and not any of the other guys. But Tyson was doing what he wanted and he brought other guys out. Jericho was pissed about actor Mickey Gooch Jr., coming out. If you watch the replay of it, you can see Jericho going after Gooch and trying to throw him out of there. Jericho also mentioned the Hager, Adam Page and Kenny Omega bar fight was done in one take. They put baby oil all over the bar so Page would slide on it when Hager threw him but it didn’t work as well as hoped for. He also said by the time they did the Omega-Guevara finish it was raining badly. He also said the fire marshal was there and not happy about all the explosives and pyro being used

Cena made a $1 million donation to the Black Life Matter Foundation. Some people talk the talk or say what is convenient without walking the walk. Cena goes much farther than just walking the walk. Some people will say he’s rich and all, and he is well off obviously, but even for him, that is a very significant amount of money

Mahal underwent knee surgery this past week in Birmingham. Originally it was scheduled to be minor surgery but the damage ended up being more significant than expected. There was a report regarding a McIntyre vs. Mahal program that had to be scrapped. There was talk due to the dearth of top heels of doing one match since they have the storyline of being former partners (although bringing that period up kind of reminds people of just how low on the totem pole both were for years) but not a long-term program

There are a lot of different versions of what happened that led to the firing of Christopher DeJoseph. The consistent stories is that he was on a Zoom conference call with Stan Stansky, the Senior Vice President of Creative Services, and Kevin Moore, the Senior Vice President of E-Commerce and Venue Merchandise. Essentially he said things that he shouldn’t have and according to some versions came off to them in a bad way, and Vince McMahon found out and that was it

The most-watched shows on the WWE Network this past week were: 1. NXT Takeover In Your House; 2. Ric Flair: The Final Farewell; 3. Best of The Nexus; 4. Undertaker’s Last Ride episode three; 5. NXT Takeover pre-game show; 6. Masked Impostors; 7. Money in the Bank 2020; 8. Raw Talk for 6/8; 9. Undertaker’s Last Ride episode two; 10. WrestleMania 35. The regular NXT show from 6/3 did not crack the top 15