[Emperor Smeat]

The Sheets (Observer Newsletter Edition):

There were an endless number of stories coming out of the first-ever taped two-day WrestleMania presentation on 4/4 and 4/5 at the Performance Center in Orlando. Perhaps the biggest and most-discussed was whether the show should have taken place at this time. There are two ways of looking at it. The first is the health and risk aspect, and basically the show was no more or less dangerous in theory than the television tapings that WWE and AEW have been doing regularly. The second is business. It looks bad now, but if WWE isn’t able to have shows in arena by around September, then it might as well be done now. If it’s earlier, then they gave up tens of millions of dollars by being stubborn. Unlike with UFC, where the money comes from just doing the show, with WWE, for WrestleMania, the money comes from the live gate, the merchandise, the network subscription increases and to a smaller extent, whatever is left of PPV ... But the most important number will come in a few weeks when the company either does, or doesn’t announce the network subscriber number on the day after WrestleMania, usually the high point of the year. The paid number the day after last year was 1,767,000 worldwide. Nobody expects the number to be that high this year for all the obvious reasons ... If the number is significantly lower, it’s was a bad idea because at that point the reason to run didn’t come through and essentially they squandered the biggest thing they have, the name WrestleMania, based on timing. Right now the only people who know are those internally and the fact they have release numbers that are the numbers usually the con businesses use, social media engagement numbers which have no correlation to actual revenue, but not the important number, was notable ... Another story were the three unique matches. Undertaker vs. A.J. Styles was basically a long outdoor movie fight scene in a graveyard setting. It was tremendous for what it was, although all three of the matches were very polarizing with people loving and hating them. Michael Hayes was the guy in charge of this feature and it was so good people were calling for Undertaker to do these mini-movies every year since he may not be able to deliver great in-ring matches, but this could become the new Undertaker feature at WrestleMania ... However, doing things like this could run its course. Paul Levesque was also said to be very key in this being put together, and one person said he was the key person in that regard and it was largely the NXT crew shooting it, or the technical term, the WWE Performance Center Content Innovation Lab, headed by Jeremy Borash, who was along with Matt Hardy the key to the Final Deletion and similar shows in TNA, James Long, Cornell Gunter, Ryan Katz, Andrew Karr, Mark Donica and others. Many of the same group were in charge of the Johnny Gargano vs. Tommaso Ciampa shoot that was down that same week and aired on 4/8. Because of the finish where Styles was buried alive, and WWE’s perverse set of rules in that you can be electrocuted to death and be fine the next week, or things like that, but buried alive is actually adhered to, Styles will be out of action. It likely won’t be for long since he’s considered so valuable and they don’t have much depth on the heel side of Raw right now and have a babyface champion.

As far as actual early numbers, as notable, they’re not good. At press time, the WWE Network had more viewers for day one, even though Sunday is the familiar day. The Sunday pregame show, with Liv Morgan vs. Natalya, did the better of the two on the WWE Network and on television. Even though day one was better overall, it still got a mixed reaction and maybe people having seen a three plus hour show weren’t ready to see one another day. Google searches were even more pronounced. WrestleMania would be expected to do three to four million Google searches. It should be about that number for each show. The Saturday show did 1 million, way under expectations. Sunday did 270,000 (including Monday), which is so low as to be beyond shocking, and only 50,000 of that was for WrestleMania, as the breakdown was 100,000 for Flair, 50,000 for McIntyre, Cena and 20,000 for Mandy Rose. It was as if the public saw Saturday as the show, but even 1 million is the level of a B UFC PPV show and WrestleMania is usually better than Jon Jones level and this did half of Jones. Sunday was below the level of a Demetrious Johnson level PPV show. The preshow on FS 1 for Saturday did a 0.1 rating and 106,000 viewers and 44,000 (0.03 rating; 29,000 men; 15,000 women) in 18-49. The peak was 129,000 in the second quarter, while the only match, Cesaro vs. Drew Gulak, did 125,000 viewers. Excluding news shows, the show was No. 97 on cable during its one hour. FS 1 averages 120,000 in the time slot this year while last year had 824,000 viewers in the time slot since it was UFC prelims. The Sunday pre-show did a 0.1 rating and 112,000 viewers, with 56,000 (0.04 rating; 43,000 men; 13,000 women) in 18-49. The peak was 132,000 viewers for Liv Morgan vs. Natalya. FS 1 averages 117,000 in the time slot and last year did 250,000. Excluding news shows, the show was No. 92 on cable during its hour. For a comparison, the preshow last year on USA did a 0.5 rating and 749,000 viewers and an 0.26 rating in 18-49. It was going to do less on FS 1 than USA, and the Sunday show went head-to-head with ESPN airing the Ronda Rousey vs. Charlotte Flair vs. Becky Lynch match from last year’s Mania, which had already been on Raw six days earlier.

The next story involves the changes in the show. Even though Roman Reigns left for health concerns on 3/26, over the next week he was still advertised for his title shot at Bill Goldberg on the ensuing Smackdown and Raw show. When Levesque was asked about it, he talked about the creative way they were going to tell the story. As it turned out, that never existed. It was the weirdest thing. On the Smackdown show the night before the match, they were running down the card and mentioned Goldberg vs. Strowman in passing. Reigns was never mentioned again on television or either night of the PPV, even if he was all over the video packages and the advertising mainstream for the show ... The Reigns situation is pretty much unknown. Essentially it is said to be up to Reigns when he returns and that nobody knows. If he was worried about his health, and with three kids, he should be, it’s not as if the situation changes and after WrestleMania the dangers are no longer there. Some have noted it isn’t wise for him, and others who have any immune system issues, to be working until this is over, whatever that means because it’s not a snap your fingers and on this day it’s over. Reigns appeared to be the only wrestler who pulled himself off the show, although everyone was told they didn’t have to come. The only others who would be noticeable immediately that weren’t there were Mauro Ranallo, Nigel McGuinness and Beth Phoenix, the NXT announcing team. Phoenix may have still been off to sell the Randy Orton injuries. It would have been a fitting finish to have her involved in a small way at the finish, maybe in trying to first talk Edge out of doing the concerto finish and then either he does it, or she changes his mind and he does it. But that’s a small deal. Ranallo and McGuinness have been off NXT since Californians have been urged to stay inside. Ranallo wasn’t in Orlando for the taping of the 4/8 NXT show, but he did solo voiceovers on the show, believed to be from a home studio .

As far the show itself ... there were matches that were stopped and re-shot after moves were missed.

They did want Hogan for this year’s WrestleMania but the two sides couldn’t come to financial terms. This would not be to wrestle, but for an appearance

Regarding the Flair title win, the decision was made so Flair would be a champion on NXT with the idea a main roster star is what NXT needs to close the ratings gap. Flair is scheduled to work both Raw and NXT for now. Given there are no house shows, it’s not like doing so gives her an unbearable schedule. She should help the NXT women’s division. That said, the result itself, let alone winning clean via submission with the figure eight, makes no sense. Flair really gained nothing for the win. The NXT title doesn’t enhance her. Some would say it’s a step back, but I wouldn’t say that. Beating Flair would have greatly enhanced Ripley, and would have made for a better series of returns in NXT, and made NXT fans happy and having reason to hate Flair, who could be a big heel in NXT, with an obsession of beating Ripley and getting thwarted. Instead, it cut off Ripley’s legs as she was rising, plus, to protect her, nearly any finish other than that was done would have been better. It was that classic somebody gets hot, and they even took advantage of it, and now wanted to make clear she’s really not at the level of the real stars.

By putting what was supposed to be the main event of the biggest NXT Takeover of the year, the Johnny Gargano vs. Tommaso Ciampa final, NXT beat AEW 693,000 to 692,000 in total viewers, but AEW still won 0.26 to 0.19 in the 18-49 demo. I would have expected a slight NXT win in total viewers, but more than it was, and AEW still winning in the key numbers because the gap to close was too large. Numbers are going to be down at this point so I wouldn’t read much into this. One would expect that with AEW pushing a Jon Moxley vs. Jake Hager title match hard for next week, while NXT wasn’t pushing anything, that AEW should probably win handily in total viewers next week, unless something this week was greatly negative for AEW or greatly positive for NXT. AEW was No. 32 for the night in the demo on a night dominated by news shows. AEW did lose to Black Ink Crew 8B on VH-1, Forged in Fire on the History Channel, Sistas Series on BET, Married at First on Lifetime, My 600 Pound life on TLC and Guys Grocery Games on The Food Network, making it seventh in entertainment. NXT was 11th in entertainment in 18-49 and 51st overall. The one hour Gargano-Ciampa presentation helped NXT increase 17 percent overall and 22 percent in 18-49 over this past week. Because it didn’t crack the top 50, we don’t have any other details. AEW was up one percent in viewers and one percent in 18-49. In the key demos, AEW had the 58,000 to 44,000 edge in Males 18-34, NXT had a 36,000 to 31,000 edge in Women 18-34, AEW had a 166,000 to 114,000 edge in Males 35-49 and AEW had a 76,000 to 48,000 edge in Women 35-49. The totals in 18-49 were 331,000 for AEW and 242,000 for NXT.

A few notes regarding the 4/1 Wednesday night ratings. While the empty arena format is the main reason both shows were down, the AEW movie lead-in was down 30 percent from the prior week. At the time both prior shows ended, USA had 1,012,000 viewers and TNT had 647,000. As soon as wrestling started, in the first minute, USA lost 215,000 viewers and TNT gained 106,000 viewers. Still, AEW was first for the week with 1.39 viewers per home ... Overall, even though the viewership difference overall was 685,000 to 590,000 and both did much lower than usual in the most important 18-49, it was 328,000 for AEW and 199,000 for NXT. So compared to every other week to date, wrestling did the worst ever in the key demo, even against Trump speeches and World Series games ... AEW dominated every quarter in 18-49, however in overall, due to over 50 viewers, NXT won the main event quarter, doing 608,000 viewers for the Keith Lee North American title defense against Dominik Dijakovic and Damien Priest, while AEW did 607,000 for Cody & Darby Allin vs. Sammy Guevara & Shawn Spears. However, even that quarter was a huge edge in 18-49 with AEW at 308,000 to NXT’s 203,000 ... AEW’s first quarter drew 703,000 viewers and 341,000 in 18-49 for Kenny Omega vs. Trent, while NXT drew 668,000 viewers and 244,000 in 18-49 for Velveteen Dream vs. Bobby Fish. In the second quarter, AEW lost 29,000 viewers and 23,000 in 18-49 for the end of Omega vs. Trent and a replay of the Chris Jericho/Matt Hardy angle. NXT lost 68,000 viewers and 23,000 in 18-49 for the end of Dream vs. Fish, the post-match and the Dexter Lumis vs. Jake Atlas match. In the third quarter, AEW gained 25,000 viewers and 4,000 in 18-49 for Hikaru Shida vs. Anna Jayy. NXT lost 50,000 viewers and 36,000 in 18-49 for a replay of the Tommaso Ciampa vs. Johnny Gargano brawl and Shotzi Blackheart vs. Deonna Purrazzo. In the fourth quarter, AEW gained 26,000 viewers and 19,000 in 18-49 for the video package with Jon Moxley and Jake Hager and Lance Archer vs. Marko Stunt. NXT lost 10,000 viewers and 19,000 in 18-49 for Blackheart vs. Xia Li, Blackheart vs. Aliyah and Blackheart vs Kayden Carter. This may have been the least watched segment in 18-49, with just 166,000 viewers, since NXT has been on the air. In the fifth quarter, AEW lost 18,000 viewers but gained 1,000 in 18-49 for the Brodie Lee backstage segment and Dustin Rhodes & QT Marshall vs. 8 & 9. NXT gained 52,000 viewers and 31,000 in 18-49 for Blackheart vs Dakota Kai. In the sixth quarter, AEW lost 13,000 viewers and 14,000 in 18-49 for the Chris Jericho/Vanguard 1 segment and Nick & Matt Jackson preparing for a return. NXT lost 39,000 and 15,000 in 18-49 for Kushida vs. Joaquin Wilde. In the seventh quarter, AEW lost 22,000 viewers and 3,000 in 18-49 for the first part of Cody & Allin vs. Guevara & Spears. NXT gained 57,000 viewers and 14,000 in 18-49 for another Ciampa/Gargano package plus the beginning of Lee vs. Dijakovic vs. Priest. In the eighth quarter, ending both main events, AEW lost 65,000 viewers and 17,000 in 18-49 for its main event while NXT lost 2,000 viewers but gained 7,000 in 18-49 for the ending of its main event.

The kidnapping spots on NXT are to lead to the introduction of Jorge Bolly, or whatever name El Hijo del Fantasma will go by. It’s the Simbianese Liberation Army storyline where the captives sympathize with their captors and Raul Mendoza and Joaquin Wilde become his Patty Hearsts

AEW finished a marathon set of tapings on 4/2 in Decatur, GA, at Q.T. Marshall’s school. The tapings were done with a skeleton crew. Unlike WWE and UFC, talent from certain parts of the country were not going to be brought in, most notably California and New York City. In addition, all talent was told that they didn’t have to come and they would be paid in full. The tapings were for Dynamite and Dark through as long as 5/20. Depending on the situation, it is possible they could do another taping in early or mid-May, but if not, they have enough covered and there won’t be any tapings for several weeks. AEW used mostly talent that lives in the Southeast and a few from Texas, but will have footage of talent not there for television. Jon Moxley, who is based in Las Vegas, had his 4/15 title match with Jake Hager taped at the prior set of tapings. Jim Ross will be used as the commentator for this specific match, doing voiceovers from home, as it will be from Daily’s Place in Jacksonville while the rest of the show next week will be from Decatur, GA. Aubrey Edwards, who is based in Seattle, stayed in the area since this started as Tony Khan also told talent that they could avoid flying back-and-forth if they wanted to stay in Jacksonville or in the area and the company would pay for their lodging through this set of tapings. The TNT tournament is taped up until the finals. Tony Schiavone and Chris Jericho will be the announcing team for all the remaining shows from Georgia. The next major event, the 5/23 Double or Nothing show, remains up in the air. There are three choices, all obvious, based on what will be allowed in Las Vegas. The show is booked for the MGM Grand and was about 1,500 ticket shy of being sold out a month ago, but it’s doubtful many if any tickets have moved in recent weeks ... The AEW Southern California crew, notably The Young Bucks, SCU, Peter Avalon and Brandon Cutler, along with Simon Lotto and Steven Andrews taped matches for Being the Elite this past week. The bouts were basic matches, actually quite good wrestling-wise but toned down in the risk department, Excalibur doing voiceover work completely tongue-in-cheek. The location was a ring set up on a tennis and basketball court that was in Rancho Cucamonga, CA. Excalibur called it the AEW Compound and would talk of a capacity crowd with nobody else there ...

Impact is taping this week at Skyway Studios in Nashville even though Nashville is shut down. It is believed that wrestling is able to tape during shutdowns, and at least in Tennessee this is the case, because the Tennessee shutdown exempts media and the claim is this is a closed studio doing a television media event ... For Impact, as opposed to the other two companies, there is more of a need because their contract with television in India is based on providing a certain number of shows, which include weekly television and 12 other events. The India deal is believed to be the largest revenue stream the company has. The attempt is to tape for as long as two months, including the Rebellion show that has been pushed. That show was to take place on 4/19 in New York, which isn’t happening ... A big problem is that the PPV was to be build around a Tessa Blanchard vs. Michael Elgin vs. Eddie Edwards title match, and the word going around which is confirmed is that Blanchard, the Impact men’s world champion, who is based in California, is not leaving the state at this time ... The plan a few weeks ago was to tape the shows in Houston at Booker T’s gym, which is notable but because Impact has fallen so far, it is AEW, and not Impact, on the WWE’s enemy list. The plan was also to tape not this week there and it was changed because they felt the need to get it done now due to the risk of not being able to get it done if they waited until the normal timetable.

For Dark Side of the Ring ... While the first episode on Chris Benoit was very well received, the second on New Jack from those who know the story was not. There were complaints that they glorified him far too much particularly the way he was fawned over on the post-show. They ran with a lot of stories that were fiction, particularly in the post-show. There were a lot of things not discussed, such as the fact Smoky Mountain Wrestling, where he got his first break, saw attendance decline significantly during the period he was pushed so the idea of inciting fans racially backfired. That didn’t happen in ECW and he was very popular with that fan base for short spots, where he’d come in, with music playing, do a short brawl and often dive from high places. Vic Grimes claimed at the funeral of Roland Alexander that everything he and New Jack did was them working together and that they were friends, contrary to how New Jack described things.

Konnan said that Rey Horus signing here [ROH] doesn’t affect his status with AAA, but if Horus goes to New Japan through his deal with ROH, at that point he wouldn’t be able to work anymore with AAA, because CMLL would go to New Japan and New Japan would go to ROH and nix it

Due to the virus, the situation in Japan has changed once again. Before, nobody wanted to sell to WWE and now with most companies in tough financial straits, it’s become a buyers market and it is believed companies that otherwise wouldn’t sell would be willing to do so and WWE could have a local infrastructure and start being a force in that market. The general belief is that with MMA no longer a big deal except for a few shows a year, that the only thing that can threaten New Japan, past a current act of God, wouldn’t be another company in the market, but WWE in the market with roots which always could have happened but now the odds are significantly better to make such a deal