[Emperor Smeat]

The Sheets (Observer Newsletter Edition):

WWE also has the 34th incarnation of Survivor Series, the second oldest annual big event on the calendar, taking place 11/22 at the Amway Center in Orlando. The build for this year’s Survivor Series has been unique in the sense the matches are pushed on television, but the two television shows are largely in their own alternate universe with the key stars involved in programs having nothing to do with the matches. There are still two weeks of Raw and three weeks of Smackdown left, but Raw is building some stuff when it comes to tension among the Raw men’s and women’s teams, but not building any angles yet with the Smackdown team. In the “money” spots, Roman Reigns right now has no program. His television time has been around getting Jey Uso to side with him and start a heel faction. He’s scheduled to work with Daniel Bryan, out of necessity it seems, because Bryan wasn’t positioned like a main event title contender at all when he returned. Raw is all about a three-way program with Randy Orton as champion with Drew McIntyre and The Fiend, and an offshoot of Miz in the shadows with the Money in the Bank briefcase. None of the televised feuds except for the internal turmoil on the men’s and women’s teams relate at all to Survivor Series. The decision was made to do a formula show, a men’s and women’s Survivor Series match and battles of the champions on each brand against each other in non-title matches. The winners and losers barely matter and in all cases won’t lead to any rematches. They’ve created a formula and decided to stick with it. They are also advertising that all of these matches could change, which would seem to indicate title matches on television for many of the titles beforehand ... The show also has elimination matches that in both cases should be long, as they should be five to nine falls. There does feel like far less interest without NXT involvement. COVID is a very serious issue, but it was NXT that was the lifeblood of last year’s event and it helped elevate Rhea Ripley and Keith Lee and the overall NXT brand. Granted, it’s tough right now, as while Io Shirai and Team NXT’s could create interest in three matches, the booking of Johnny Gargano in the ring with Bobby Lashley won’t do anyone any favors even if Gargano can wrestling-wise pull it off, and with the injury to Finn Balor, there is no NXT champion in play. Plus the tag champs of Oney Lorcan & Danny Burch would only serve to allow a clean finish in that match without the Street Profits or New Day beating each other.

Regarding the Twitch situation, there are some wrestlers who have been talking to Andrew Yang and a lot more just grumbling about it. As far as people thinking this could be a unification issue where they will try and stand up together or unionize, I don’t sense this or anything will do that. As far as what happens next in the political world, they do have an ally who is a fan and will push for them, but there are still a lot of things that will shake out as to whether or not anything more comes of this. If Trump wins, anything the slightest bit negative to Vince McMahon or Dana White looks to be totally off the table. If Biden wins, there is still the issue of spending time for such a relatively few people, and really, WWE talent, while they should be paid much more based on revenue generated, once you get to the main roster, the pay is very good to excellent. And just because there is existing legislation (The Ali act) for boxing that can be expanded to MMA, and that MMA fighters being real athletes resonates more with public perception, Yang would probably have more luck on that project. In the end it’s very clear WWE made the move because they want to either start something on their own or more likely make a group deal with Twitch or a similar platform and to do that can’t have people having individual deals. They also want to crack down on people using their wrestling names that WWE owns to make outside money. Many have brought up Bruce Prichard, who is an employee, is being able to continue his podcast while talent, not employees, are being stopped from making money on social media and in the case of some women, they can use their fame to make considerable money. It will be notable if they allow any future people who were indie stars like they did Adam Cole, Kyle O’Reilly, Matt Riddle, Walter, Keith Lee, Ricochet and others coming in to use established names that WWE wouldn’t fully own. There had been talk of a meeting taking place on 10/30, but there was no meeting. Talent was made aware of no more Twitch channels and that marketing yourself on YouTube is okay

A photo was released of the people who are there to monitor the fans on Thunderdome with instructions of what exactly are immediate bans and getting the person off the air. The Heel by Nature web site was able to decipher as of this past week what WWE specifically bans: AEW, Impact, New Japan Pro Wrestling (mentions and logos) and names Enzo Amore, Tony Khan, Cody Rhodes, Brandi Rhodes, Marty Scurll, Young Bucks, Chris Benoit, C.M. Punk, Jim Cornette, Alberto El Patron, Ryback, Ashley Massaro, Superstar Billy Graham, Vickie Guerrero and flags of Hong Kong, Taiwan and Tibet. I’m guessing the last three are about offending their partners in China. I mean, Vickie Guerrero is a minor character on Impact but I have no idea what she did that puts her on the list, whereas Chris Jericho, Kenny Omega and Jon Moxley are not on the list. Maybe they aren’t because they were told earlier since we know of issues with people who had worn Dean Ambrose shirts being pulled ad Jericho would probably be the first guy you’d think would be on the list. Really, I can get most of the names for different reasons, Massaro on the Google issue because of the claims she made, but it does really show being spooked by Punk, Cornette, Ryback, Graham and Guerrero at a level they really shouldn’t be concerned about, although Punk was the go-to-protest chant by fans before the pandemic

The original plan for Reigns vs. Uso was just one meeting as the original Hell in a Cell booking was going to be a four-way with Reigns, Fiend, Strowman and a fourth person, which explains the Reigns-Fiend tease that was never followed up on at that time

Kylie Rae (Brianna Sparrey, 28), announced that she was no longer a pro wrestler after disappearing without calling Impact officials prior to the 10/24 Bound for Glory show. This was the second time Sparrey had missed a high–profile show in what were apparently terrible mental health issues. Sparrey would have likely been the top women’s star in AEW. She had a unique likability factor and was a great athlete who took to pro wrestling quickly. When she started breaking through on the Chicago independent scene, we were told that she had the “it” factor that would make her a major star. Struggles like this can be crippling in some cases. These are issues that far more people face than most realize, but obviously in her case it was at the extreme level ... Kylie Rae, as Smilin Kylie Rae, was introduced by AEW at its press conference in Las Vegas in early 2019. At the time, she and Britt Baker were being positioned as the top babyfaces in the promotion. Baker was a good female face of the company for media purposes due to being well spoken and the uniqueness of being a practicing dentist. Rae was the better wrestler of the two and had a unique connection that would have worked big with the nature of the AEW audience. The belief is she could have connected at the Bayley/NXT level, with Cody even getting heat for once making the comparison between the two and saying Rae was the real one of the two. It’s even possible inadvertently that this turned out to be the beginning of problems, as both Cody and Rae got a tremendous amount of horrible tweets from tribal type fans, and while Cody may be able to handle that it went with the territory, not everyone is like that. But it didn’t happen. She missed Fyter Fest with circumstances that were never explained. When we look back, it appeared certain insecurities she had were also what made her likeable and come across as real and authentic in an often-contrived world. At the Las Vegas press conference, she was backstage pretty much sitting by herself and smiling at people. She was clearly nervous when she went in front of the fans, which she pulled off in an endearing way. She got some whistles from the guys in the audience which made her happy. She noted she had just bought a new dress and was concerned how she looked in it and how that reaction gave her confidence. When she got a big reaction before Double or Nothing at the weigh-in event, she was moved to tears. She had uncertainty written all over her face. When she missed Fyter Fest, where she was scheduled for a win over Leva Bates, with no explanation, and nobody was talking about it, it led to the idea of a cover-up, and in hindsight it was an attempt to keep quiet the issues that were plaguing her. In September, after she had not made any public appearances for nearly two months, Tony Khan just said that she had asked for her release, it was given, and the split up was very amicable. Just two weeks later, she was back on the independent scene. She worked a date in Chicago as a surprise appearance and the crowd went crazy and she came across extremely grateful. A month after that, on October 20, 2019, she made a surprise appearance at the Impact Bound for Glory show in an intergender gauntlet match. She continued to work independent dates but didn’t return to Impact until March, just prior to the pandemic, when she signed a deal with the company. She had been a regular on television ever since, and won another gauntlet match at Slammiversary on 7/18 to become the top contender for the women’s title. She was scheduled to face Deonna Purrazzo for the title on Bound for Glory. She was in Nashville the night of the show. She never came to the PPV the next day. Obviously the company, after she didn’t arrive, tried to contact her and those who knew her in the company tried as well with no luck. The company eventually got so concerned they tried to get the hotel to conduct a wellness check. They opened up her hotel room and she was gone without a trace. They called numerous people including her fiancé, independent wrestler Isaias Velasquez. As the show went on, the company clearly did not know how to handle a tough situation. During the show nothing was ever said about her. Before her match was to start, announcer Josh Matthews talked about Purrazzo and Kylie Rae about to start, and they played the video package produced for the match. I’m not sure why they did any of this at that point ... Impact issued a gag order to everyone and none of the company officials, nor any wrestlers, have commented on what happened. All they knew, and this was after the show and the next day, is that she was unharmed and not injured (although she was injured in a match two weeks earlier, but she was said to be fine physically when she came to Nashville for the show). As best we can tell, everyone was sympathetic because of the belief it was a mental health issue that kicked in. Even to this point Impact did not address the situation publicly. Whatever her issues are must be serious, because at least for now, she seemed to make it clear she is not only no longer doing pro wrestling, but is dropping adding anything new to patreon content and removing herself from social media. Social media if a celebrity allows it to be, can be crippling from a mental standpoint due to the trolls. Every celebrity on social media has to deal with it in one form or another. With a woman celebrity, who is judged so much on their looks, it can be really cruel. Once she was upset because she had lost a good deal of weight in the past year, not that she was ever what one would call out of shape, but she got in great shape. Evidently she took criticism from people because of the idea she had dropped weight, almost the exact opposite reaction than you’d expect from male fans, but there will always be trolls. She said she was happier and felt better at her lighter weight and you could tell it was a subject that bothered her, in the sense she had trained and dieted to get in great shape and no matter what, there will always be many people who will harp on women over their looks.

AEW’s Full Gear PPV is 11/7 from Jacksonville, a show that on paper looks to be the strongest lineup in the history of the company. Because AEW’s weakest PPV show in its history from a business standpoint (around 85,000 buys) was last year’s Full Gear, the company is going in with lesser expectations than for its other shows this year. Instead of putting on a lesser show, they’re putting on two matches that have been teased for a long time. Adam Page vs. Kenny Omega was teased from the end of last year and throughout their tag team run, only at that point it appeared Page would be the heel and now Omega is. Young Bucks vs. FTR is an insider rivalry that dates back four years. Whether it was two months since the last show, or competition from college football, or simply less interest in last year’s show even though it was the first one promoted by weekly television are all things this year will help us learn. Last year Tony Khan picked a date with no UFC, but ended up with stiffer competition from the younger audience with a Logan Paul fight. This year there is a UFC, but it’s a weak ESPN 2 show, but has the usual Saturday night college football to contend with. Jon Moxley vs. Eddie Kingston for the AEW title headlines, a match that five months ago would have been looked at as little more than a TV squash match. But the mic work by both has been strong, and the face-to-face on the go-home show was at all-time classic level. As great as Kingston has been, from television, it feels like a Moxley vs. Omega direction right now. Tony Khan confirmed them going on last, which given how strong the undercard is likely to be, is quite the challenge. FTR vs. Young Bucks for the tag titles has two key stipulations. The first is that if the Young Bucks lose, they can never challenge for the titles again. The second is that Tully Blanchard is banned from ringside. The angle where they Pillmanized the ankle of Matt Jackson was the cover because Matt actually has a partially torn MCL and a thinning ACL. He’s doing rehab rather than surgery at this point. So this will be more of a storytelling match, although it no doubt would have been either way. The injury does affect things, but these are two of the best tag teams of the last decade working together for the first time ... Everyone figured Full Gear tickets would sell out instantly when they were put on sale, like All Out did. But with 925 tickets put on sale on 10/30, by the next evening they had sold 841 and at press time there were 45 tickets left, all but six priced at $130 or more. With business partners tickets, they will put slightly more than 1,000 fans in the building which would be the second largest U.S. crowd for wrestling since the pandemic. But this is a great lineup and forget about the local market, it tells you people are not willing to travel in great numbers right now for an AEW show. I don’t think this is a fair sign of anything past the difficulties in selling tickets to a major live wrestling event right now. I don’t take this so much as a representation of the drawing ability of the product but simply just how few people are willing to travel in at this time, and the oversaturation with running live almost every Wednesday night in Jacksonville. My suspicion is when WWE moves out of Orlando if they go to a place and sell tickets, they’ll probably sell out instantly the first week with huge demand and then really struggle by a few weeks as well. If WWE tries to sell even a small amount of tickets in a new market, it’ll be every Monday and Friday, and one Sunday per month, all in the same building. So they may end up with the same issues, which also won’t be indicative of the true market strength of the product as much as the circumstances.

While New Japan gets a lot of credit for the Shibata crew, nobody has the level of young talent that Dragon Gate has right now, with Ishida, Skywalker, Dia Inferno, Kota Minoura, Dragon Dia, Strong Machine J, Kobune, Taketo Kamei and Madoka Kikuta. All are 26 or under and most are 20 to 22. Kobune, Kamei and Kikuta are all legitimate rookies and Kobune is this year’s rookie of the year standout. Dragon Gate also has another ten wrestlers waiting to debut.

AAA: Konnan was on his podcast talking about the Marvel deal. He said the original plan was a stadium show in Monterrey after the very successful TripleMania Regia show where they would debut the new characters. Konnan specifically said Terror Purpura, who will be the Thanos character, will be the dominant character. Everything about the Thanos character I’ve heard indicates to me that if he hadn’t signed with WWE, that Killer Kross would have had a good shot at the role. Plus, Konnan was always singing his praises about being a superstar.. He said Marvel is very detail oriented on this project right down to how the characters walk to the ring. Marvel, AAA and fashion designer Vero Solis will be putting together a Marvel superhero themed clothing line as well

[AAA] They did the drive-in shows at the Hermano Rodriguez race track in Mexico City this weekend. The biggest show on 11/1 aired live on Facebook and got great reviews ... This was the last of the drive-in shows so at this point nothing is on the schedule except TripleMania, and that doesn’t have an official date. This was the last show for the promotion for at least a few weeks During the show Hugo Savinovich talked about the Colon family of Carlito, Orlando “Epico” and Eddie “Primo” were coming to AAA as would be Lio Rush. Konnan has a long friendship with the Colons and he’s a big fan of Lio Rush’s work

Even though he’s not even wrestling on this tour, Jeff Cobb is still in Japan and staying through New Year’s Dash. He’s basically living at the dojo and training. Cobb has no real role unless he ends up in The Empire group which was talked about but the spot went to Great O’Khan. He’s their own trainee and it’s time for him to get a push so he does. It’s just how it works there even though Cobb would have worked out so much better in the spot. But he still could be an addition. He was to be in the tag team tournament but his planned partner (Mikey Nicholls) couldn’t get to Japan

The death of Sean Connery, the original James Bond, at 90 on 10/31, leads to a few notes on Bond/wrestling crossovers. Connery was first discovered after placing third in the 1953 Mr. Universe bodybuilding contest. He had two notable villain opponents in movies who were famous pro wrestlers. In the 1964 movie “Goldfinger,” former Olympic silver medalist in weightlifting, Harold Sakata, who became pro wrestler Tosh Togo, was cast as his villain rival Oddjob, with a magic hat. That role ended up being considered one of the all-time classic villain roles in action movies. After the movie came out, he changed his wrestling name to “Oddjob Tosh Togo” for the rest of his career and was billed as a movie star. In the 1967 movie, “You Only Live Twice,” he had a fight scene with Peter Anderson, who as Peter Maivia, the grandfather of Dwayne Johnson, who went on to become one of pro wrestling’s biggest superstars of the late 60s and 70s. Actually the scene of Maivia, who was known in wrestling as a famed streetfighter, throwing Connery threw a window was reminiscent of the famous 1969 brawl he had with Billy Robinson. Later in his Bond career, British heavyweight star and former bodybuilder Wayne Bridges was used as Connery’s body double at times

Laredo Kid from AAA, ACH, Lio Rush and Davey Boy Smith Jr. were at the last set of [MLW] tapings. They were taping multiple shows daily with no audience and it was said to be a very hard Relations between Court Bauer and Smith are said to be fine. Smith said he’s known Bauer since 2004 when he was a teenager and he’s always liked him. He’s under contract through 12/18. He was going to start as a regular with All Japan at the Champion Carnival tournament and then the pandemic hit. He was at Chris Jericho’s Halloween party this past week and spoke to Tony Khan but they aren’t talking any business until after his MLW deal is up. He’s had interest from WWE, Khan expressed interest, and there is interest from All Japan, Impact and MLW and has no favorite or leaning past saying this decision will be made based on offer and whatever makes the most sense business-wise.

The reason there was no Miro & Kip Sabian vs. Best Friends match on the [AEW Full Gear 2020] PPV is the decision was made to keep that as a long-term Dynamite program, similar to Best Friends vs. Santana & Ortiz and Darby Allin vs. Ricky Starks

Regarding Pac, the issue isn’t as much getting him into the U.S. as getting him back. Every time he goes back he would have to go through two weeks of quarantine. But they do have something in place for him to return

The WWE Network is promoting November around Undertaker so the live feed is featuring tons of Undertaker compilations and documentaries and because of that, it dominates the rankings. Much of the rankings are based on what shows air in the right time slots on the regular streaming feed as opposed to VOD. This week there was also a huge increase for NXT because of the Havoc show and NXT U.K. because of the word of mouth of the Walter vs. Ilja Dragunov match. Viewership numbers for all but the live specials aren’t that large so word-of-mouth can greatly affect the ranking. The top ten this week was: 1. Meeting The Undertaker; 2. Hell in a Cell; 3. Undertaker’s Most Bone Chilling matches; 4. NXT from 10/28; 5. Uncool with Alexa Bliss with Tyler Breeze; 6. NXT U.K. from 10/29; 7. WrestleMania 30; 8. Lilian Garcia’s Chasing Glory with Zelina Vega; 9. Talking Smack on 10/31; 10. Best of WCW Halloween Havoc. 205 Live wasn’t top 25 and there were no other secondary shows in the top 25 nor any independent shows or compilations

WWE Ratings, AEW vs. NXT Ratings:

SPOILER: show

Raw on 11/2 did 1,656,000 viewers and 0.48 in 18-49, making it the fifth lowest total viewers in history and tied for fourth lowest in 18-49, and hour three was the least watched hour in the history of the show. The number was a combination of factors to where you can throw a lot of this out. The show has done notably better since moving to the Thunderdome, but this was the day before the election and that was going to hurt somewhat. In addition, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers vs. New York Giants football game on ESPN did 11,703,000 viewers, 3.54 in 18-49 and 2.46 in 18-34. It was also a game where the outcome was in the balance in the third hour, an hour wrestling numbers plummeted. Hour three had 1,455,000 viewers, breaking the all-time record low of 1,463,000 set by hour three on 7/27, during the dead Performance Center period when the TV was setting record lows. The second-to-third hour drop of 16.7 percent was the third largest second-to-third hour drop in history, trailing only shows this year on 2/17 and 3/30. The hour was built around New Day vs. Shelton Benjamin & Cedric Alexander in a non-title match, Ricochet vs. Tucker and Drew McIntyre in a handicap match against The Miz & John Morrison. The bottom line is that what they were teasing, a Randy Orton comeback on McIntyre and the handicap match, wasn’t something that got people to stay, but the competition was definitely a factor in that. The show did 1,767,000 viewers in the first hour. The second hour did 1,747,000 viewers. Hour three also was the lowest watched ever for 25-54, 50+ and second lowest (behind 9/7) for men 18-49 in the history of the show. Raw was No. 39 overall and No. 9 in 18-49 ... It was down 4.4 percent in viewers from last week and 5.9 percent in 18-49. It was the least-watched Raw show since 8/17, which was when it bottomed out before the comeback in the Thunderdome. As compared to last year, on a show that also did poorly (at the time the fourth lowest non-holiday show in history), it was down 22.4 percent in viewers, 36.8 percent in 18-49 and 43.8 percent in 18-34.

Smackdown on 10/30 did strong numbers with a 1.36 rating and 2,286,000 viewers (1.39 viewers per home, well above normal) and an 0.65 (849,000 viewers) in 18-49. It was the best 18-49 number since 3/27 and viewers were the highest overall number since 9/11, a show which drew big over the novelty of the Thunderdome. It actually beat the draft show in both numbers, although a major key was lack of sports competition as compared to the past two months, not that quality and interest in storylines aren’t the biggest reason. It was up 4.4 percent in households from two weeks ago, 17.7 percent in viewers, 17.4 percent in 18-49 and 25.0 percent in 18-34. The biggest take is they kept the audience throughout the show as this was the first episode of Raw or Smackdown in recent memory where the last segment actually was the highest rated, which tells you that the Roman Reigns/Jey Uso situation resonated in a way that changed usual viewer habits. They’ve been battling constant competition at the level of an NBA or MLB playoff game. The other thing is that on a network station, a large percentage of the homes with network access doesn’t have cable access. Network competition is way down due to the absence of new scripted prime time shows. Aside from Shark Tank on ABC, everything else on network TV were reruns and news. Smackdown tied Shark Tank for first place on television in 18-49 but Smackdown was far ahead with males 18-49 ... Smackdown still had the fewest viewers of any network show except a rerun of America Ninja Warrior that did 1,945,000 viewers, but only 0.3 in 18-49. Smackdown’s total viewer number was so much lower than all the other network shows because it was last by a pretty big margin in 50+. Because Smackdown was on FS 1 last week, any comparisons only show how much different airing on cable and network is, given it rose from 881,000 viewers and 0.25 in 18-49. The same thing happened, actually worse, last year. The combination of no World Series and cable vs. network was worth 2.6 times the number of total viewers and 2.6 times the number of 18-49 viewers. As compared to the same week last year, although last year was against strong network competition, it was down only 9.6 percent in viewers, a far lesser drop than Smackdown or Raw have done as compared to last year in a long time, down 20.0 percent in 18-49 and 33.3 percent in 18-34. Basically that shows even on a very good week the show has “aged up” notably as compared to the same period last year. In the segments, the big news was the final segment with the Sasha Banks/Bayley and Roman Reigns/Jey Uso plus Uso vs. Daniel Bryan match which did 2.34 million viewers. It was the highest segment in recent memory and the first time the last half hour was the highest rated on the show also in recent memory. The first half our with Reigns & Uso plus Kevin Owens vs Dolph Ziggler did 2.32 million viewers The second half hour with Lars Sullivan, Aalyah and Murphy and Bianca Belair vs. Natalya vs. Billie Kay did 2.22 million viewers. The Murphy, Aalyah, Seth Rollins, Rey & Dominik Mysterio segment plus Street Profits vs. Shinsuke Nakamura & Cesaro did 2.27 million viewers.

Due to election coverage leading to the top 54 shows on cable being all news shows on CNN, Fox News and MSNBC, the wrestling shows took a hit. Because of both AEW and NXT being out of the top 50, we don’t have the usual ratings details. AEW was No. 56 doing 717,000 viewers and 0.30 (383,000 viewers) in 18-49. NXT was No. 68, doing 610,000 viewers and 0.14 (181,000 viewers) in 18-49. There are only a few basic takes. As far as the numbers, they are probably indicative of about as low numbers as either show could get based on competition, because they will likely never face another night quite like this, or at least not for four years. But they do show that the AEW audience has changed greatly over the past year. Last year, AEW would be hit hard by sports and big news events, while this year it holds up much better. It was only down 8.2 percent in viewers and 6.8 percent in 18-49 from last week. In particular, the 18-49 number was stunning that it was that high. The other thing of note is that NXT doing the big number for Halloween Havoc, did not maintain any momentum off it. In particular, they had 28,000 viewers 18-34 as compared with 102,000 the week before. The numbers are about what would have been expected against this level of news, maybe older viewers doing a little better, but at 18-49, that would be the worse than expected. They did less than half of AEW in every key demo but women 35-49. But the issue is that the hope was last week with the matches and key angles was good enough to keep at least some of the new audience away from AEW and that didn’t happen. NXT was down 30.4 percent from last week in viewers and 44.5 percent in 18-49, so they did the worst at keeping the fans who checked out last week’s show than the rest of their new viewers ... By demo, in male 18-34, AEW had 56,000 viewers (down 15.2 percent from last week) and NXT had 13,000 (down 79.0 percent). In women 18-34, AEW had 64,000 viewers (down 15.8 percent) and NXT had 15,000 (down 62.5 percent). In men 35-49, AEW had 184,000 viewers (up 3.4 percent) and NXT had 92,000 viewers (down 37.8 percent). In women 35-49, AEW had 79,000 viewers (down 23.3 percent) and NXT had 61,000(down 19.7 percent). In the main event segment, AEW nearly tripled NXT in the key demo. AEW with Cody & Billy & Austin Gunn vs. Colt Cabana & Preston Vance & John Silver did 700,000 viewers and 392,000 in 18-49. NXT with Velveteen Dream vs. Tommaso Ciampa did 551,000 viewers and 149,000 in 18-49. NXT, with its stronger lead-in, actually won the first two quarters but declined throughout the show, losing 34 percent of its 18-49 audience and 23.8 percent overall from start-to-finish, which was worse than a bad Raw does. AEW finished 17.0 percent up from where it started in 18-49, although in total viewers it was down 1.0 percent. The peak of the show across the board was The Young Bucks vs. Private Party match, which also skewed the youngest. AEW skewed slightly younger than usual overall while NXT skewed its oldest to date, with a median viewer nearing 60. In the first quarter, AEW did 707,000 viewers and 335,000 in 18-49 for MJF & Wardlow vs. Sammy Guevara & Ortiz. NXT did 723,000 viewers and 226,000 in 18-49 for Ember Moon vs. Dakota Kai. In the second quarter, AEW did 656,000 viewers and 321,000 in 18-49 for a Tony Schiavone interview with Kenny Omega and the first part of Trent vs. Miro. NXT did 672,000 viewers and 199,000 in 18-49 for the ending of Moon vs. Kai, some promos and the beginning of Kushida vs. Cameron Grimes. In the third quarter, AEW did 707,000 viewers and 366,000 in 18-49 for the end of Trent vs. Miro and the post-match. NXT did 600,000 viewers and 182,000 in 18-49 for Kushida vs. Grimes. In the fourth quarter, AEW did 739,000 viewers and 424,000 in18-49 for an FTR/Young Bucks video package, a Taz & Brian Cage & Ricky Starks promo and the beginning of Young Bucks vs. Private Party. NXT did 632,000 viewers and 180,000 in 18-49 for Killian Dain & Drake Maverick vs. Ever Rise, the Pat McAfee crew beatdown and McAfee promo. In the fifth quarter, AEW did 762,000 viewers and 428,000 in 18-49 for Young Bucks vs. Private Party and the post-match beatdown with FTR, Adam Page and Kenny Omega. NXT did 610,000 viewers and 187,000 in 18-49 for the end of the McAfee crew promo and burning the Undisputed Era banner, beating up Dain in the parking lot, a Johnny Gargano video and the beginning of Shotzi Blackheart vs. Toni Storm. In the sixth quarter, AEW did 711,000 viewers and 399,000 in 18-49 for the Eddie Kingston & Jon Moxley in-ring and Pac video from Japan. NXT did 570,000 and 173,000 in 18-49 for Storm vs. Blackheart and the tank angle with Candice LeRae. In the seventh quarter, AEW did 752,000 viewers and 401,000 in 18-49 for Nyla Rose vs. Red Velvet, the Vickie Guerrero promo and the Omega & Page video. NXT did 522,000 viewers and what may be a record low 140,000 in 18-49 for Thatch-as-Thatch-can with Akeem, and promos by Xia Li and Rhea Ripley. In the final quarter, AEW’s main event lost 52,000 viewers and 9,000 in 18-49 while NXT gained 29,000 viewers and 9,000 in 18-49.