[Emperor Smeat]

The Sheets (Observer Newsletter Edition):

Mysterio has still not signed a new WWE contract. At last word, as of a few weeks ago, he was asking for a raise and Vince McMahon was not offering one. That may have changed since the last word is that the sides are not far from a deal and McMahon and Mysterio would be meeting once again soon to try and finalize things.

A scheduled U.S. title match with Apollo Crews defending against MVP didn’t happen. They announced that Crews didn’t get cleared due to a bulging disc. In reality, he tested positive for COVID but they must have hoped he’d be okay for the show.

With their 90-day non-compete over and no longer under WWE contract, Karl Anderson (Chad Allegra, 40) and Luke Gallows (Andrew Hankinson, 36), the Good Brothers tag team, did a two-hour video interview with New Japan’s Rocky Romero and Ryan Satin that was released on 7/18. The interview focused mainly on their time in WWE and the decision to sign, as well as their firing in April and their future, signing with Impact Wrestling and their expected return to New Japan Pro Wrestling ... They also talked about being fired by WWE, and how this led directly to A.J. Styles demanding to be moved from Raw to Smackdown saying that he wouldn’t work anymore with Paul Heyman, who Vince McMahon personally told Styles was the person who made the decision to fire Gallows & Anderson. While obviously preposterous, since all cuts were made by McMahon, and reasons for the cuts fit into the categories of the people being cut for McMahon’s perception of not being difficult negotiations that ended up costing the company more than they originally wanted to pay them at a time when the rule was don’t let anyone leave for AEW, and it was those guys as well as the guys McMahon had decided he wasn’t going to use anymore who were cut.. This was the classic story we’ve heard for more than 30 years, when Vince would want someone gone. He’d use his head of talent relations as his buffer, whether it be J.J. Dillon, Jim Ross, John Laurinaitis or others in that role. The idea was that the talent believed Vince loved their work, and liked them personally, but the other person, fill in the blank, didn’t like them and were responsible for them being gone. After some time, Ross would tell talent that it wasn’t Vince, even though it was, but learned to use the term that creative couldn’t come up with anything for them, thus Ross avoided the heat on Vince or him, and used the nebulous writing crew as the scapegoat. Later he had Laurinaitis make calls, so talent thought it wasn’t a decision from Vince or Ross, but Laurinaitis or creative were the people they had issues with. But in any key decision in the company, it’s always Vince ... A lot of the reaction to the interview centered on the idea of how could they be so naive to think it was Heyman and not Vince, the reality is Anderson did say he knew it was still Vince’s call. Even Styles, while ripping Heyman publicly, also admitted he knew it was Vince’s call. Internally both stories have gone around, one that it was Vince’s call but Heyman didn’t fight to keep them, another that Vince had a list of people to cut and they were not on the list, bu after a discussion with Heyman about what he was doing for the future, decided to put them on the list. Some said it was not exactly Ross/Dillon having to play bad cop for Vince’s decision but in the end, everyone said it was Vince’s decision ... Gallows said when they got the word there would be layoffs, he told his wife he was highly confident they weren’t going to be cut. He said they realized McIntyre beat both of them at the same time in quick fashion on television, but Heyman assured both that doing so wouldn’t hurt them in the long run. He said as soon as they were fired, Brodie Lee texted them, “They f***ed you guys.” Anderson said when he got fired, he remembered HHH saying to them when trying to get them to sign,“I look at you and I see your kids. What if AEW doesn’t last? You know WWE will always be here.” “We had f***ed our friends and we knew that.” They also noted that some of the guys who were fired have been called about coming back but for much lower money and then turned it down. Essentially them promising to sign with AEW, and signing with WWE one day before a meeting scheduled with Tony Khan left bad feelings with the company. Another key is that with FTR being let go just before their contracts were to end, and AEW loaded with good tag teams, bringing FTR and Gallows & Anderson in at the same time, was not a move I’d have made even if what happened last summer hadn’t happened. Impact made them the same strong offer that they made them last summer, and agreed to allow them to work around their New Japan schedule when they made their deal with New Japan, which was pretty much imminent from the day they were let go. The situation isn’t perfect as the pandemic changed their lives. Without the pandemic, they would almost surely still be in WWE, but even if not, they’d be in New Japan on big shows starting this week. New Japan is expected to bring them back, but they first have to be able to get them into the country without two weeks of quarantine and also get back on their own feet as a company financially, which requires drawing the kind of houses they expected to be doing when they made their budgets. New Japan had a hiring freeze, since those in the administration took sizable pay cuts and the doctrine from the top was that nobody with the company will lose their job during the pandemic unless it’s the last resort ... Anderson said that in 2016, he didn’t think Levesque really wanted them as much as they wanted Styles. Actually the key is they wanted to stop New Japan from breaking into the U.S. and felt Styles was their key star, a move that kind of backfired since Omega, who ended up being a far bigger star in the spot than Styles ever was, was put in the Styles spot in New Japan and the company grew a lot bigger and more popular. The Young Bucks were very close to coming with them to WWE, but ROH made the Young Bucks the biggest money deal in the history of their company. Anderson said that he didn’t think Levesque even knew what they had accomplished in Japan, their tag title runs, tournament wins or that he had gone to the finals of the 2012 G-1 Climax tournament. Anderson said at first he didn’t understand WWE style. He also said that a lot of people told him and Gallows that they would get lost in the shuffle in WWE, but they were very confident they’d do well because of the level they had reached in Japan. He joked he would tell people who said they wouldn’t make it to the top in WWE, “Wanna bet?” and then noted they quickly realized they would have lost those bets ... Anderson noted that AEW had made them a very good offer in 2019, and that Impact also made them a great offer, a lot more than either of them thought they ‘d be able to make. He said the Impact offer for both of them was more than a lot of their friends make in WWE now.

There are a few key notes on the ratings from the past week. WWE did three weak numbers overall. Raw and Smackdown were up from the prior weeks with total audience but given the PPV, coming off the PPV, Randy Orton vs. Big Show, it was the most disappointing number really in the show’s history. AEW had its best numbers in four months, since the debut of Matt Hardy and before the pandemic did a number of viewership. But what was noteworthy is that Wednesday night was the biggest night for 18-49 viewers, which has happened before but should never happen since Friday has all the advantages of being available in so many more homes and on a broadcast network channel. It’s more a shift of younger viewers. Also, for the first time in history, AEW was No. 1 for the week in a demo, and it’s one that one wouldn’t guess. AEW, with competition, had 58,000 women 18-34 this past week, ahead of 55,000 for Raw and 43,000 for Smackdown. In overall 18-34 viewers, AEW had 129,000, slightly below the 143,000 for Raw and 144,000 for Smackdown. But AEW also had head-to-head competition and without it, would have passed up both WWE main shows in the 18-34 demo already. Including NXT, Wednesday had 183,000 viewers 18-34 and 445,000 35-49. Monday had 143,000 in 18-34 and 455,000 in 35-49. Friday had 144,000 in 18-34 and 457,000 in 35-49.

To me, the 7/20 Raw ratings were the scariest in recent history. While overall numbers were up 4.3 percent, ths week’s show should have had a major increase because they had spent weeks building the Randy Orton vs. Big Show unsanctioned match like a major PPV match, and it came the day after a PPV where they pulled out Rey Mysterio’s eye and did a disputed women’s title match finish designed for next-day curiosity. The results were 1,627,000 viewers, the second lowest in the modern history of the show, above only last week’s 1,561,000 viewers, the record low. It did an 0.46 in18-49 (598,000 viewers), barely ahead of the all-time low (594,000) set on 5/4. The latter number was down 4.2 percent from last week. The third hour of Raw, featuring Bayley vs. Kairi Sane and Orton vs. Show, did the second lowest total audience for an hour in Raw history, behind only hour three of last week. At 0.42 in 18-49 (542,000 viewers), it did the lowest rating in that demo for any hour in the history of the show ... The show did 1,740,000 viewers in the first hour, which isn’t good but was well up from last week, probably due to curiosity coming off the PPV on Mysterio, since that angle did tremendous in casual interest by modern pro wrestling standards. But curiosity and controversy if the angle sucks often doesn’t mean much when it comes to ratings themselves. The second hour fell to 1,609,000 viewers and third hour to 1,535,000 viewers. Orton vs. Show itself did 1,580,000 viewers, just over the average for hour three. In the key demos, the show did 88,000 in males 18-34, 55,000 in women 18-34, 298,000 in males 35-49 and 157,000 in women 35-49. The 11.8 percent first-to-third hour drop was normal, but that’s misleading as most of the audience, 50 and up, didn’t drop. It was the younger audience that left during the show. Women 18-49 fell 23.7 percent from hour one to three. Men 18-49 fell 14.1 percent. Teenage girls fell 32.9 percent. Teenage boys fell 41.1 percent. But over 50 only dropped 2.5 percent as the show went on.

Smackdown on 7/17 did a 1.24 rating and 1,912,000 viewers (1.28 viewers per home) and an 0.5 in 18-49 (601,000 viewers) for a show built around A.J. Styles vs. Matt Riddle for the IC title. It was basically the same as the week before with the rating down 0.8 percent), total viewers up 1.1 percent and 18-49 down 1.0 percent. Smackdown was first in 18-49 for the night, but aside from an episode of 20/20, which did an 0.4 in 18-49, everything else was in reruns. 20/20 did 2,416,000 viewers. Ironically the two first-run shows, which did the best in 18-49, also did worse than all the reruns but one. Smackdown was last among viewers and 20/20 was third to last. The show did 101,000 viewers in males 18-34, 43,000 in women 18-34, 261,000 in males 35-49 and 196,000 in women 35-49 ... By segment, the open, plus New Day vs. Cesaro & Shinsuke Nakamura and the beginning of the Alexa Bliss interview segment did 1.95 million viewers. The majority of the Bliss interview segment, plus Asuka & Nikki Cross vs. Bayley & Sasha Banks and a Bray Wyatt interview did 1.88 million viewers. Braun Strowman vs. John Morrison and Naomi vs. Lacey Evans and a Sheamus-Jeff Hardy interview angle did 1.92 million viewers. Styles vs. Riddle for the title did 1.81 million viewers. The median audience age was 55.4 years old, slightly younger than the past two weeks. Last year on this weekend the FOX network did 1,310,000 viewers and 0.25 in 18-49 with rerun programming so viewers were up 46.0 percent and 18-49 was up 100.0 percent.

On 7/22, AEW did its best numbers since 3/18, finishing in the No. 5 spot in 18-49 and doing 845,000 viewers and a 0.32 (409,000) in 18-49. NXT was No. 35 with 615,000 viewers (lowest since 5/20) and 0.17 (219,000) in 18-49. AEW was up 7.2 percent in viewers and 7.6 percent in 18-49. NXT was down 2.5 percent in viewers but up 17.7 percent in 18-49. AEW was third on cable among non-news shows in 18-49 and first with males 18-49. It was third in males 12-34 but won its time slot, as the two shows beating it were a Premier League soccer game at 3:10 p.m. from the U.K. on NBC Sports Network and 12 Oz Mouse on Adult Swim at midnight. NXT was No. 15 among non-news shows in 18-49, and No. 17 overall in male 18-49. Last week was hurt by NASCAR and UFC head-to-head which this week didn’t have. In two weeks, with NBA, NHL and baseball, it will be the real test of how it holds up against major sports. Next week has baseball and soccer. AEW once again won every key demo. In men 18-34, AEW had 71,000 viewers (up 1.4 percent from last week) and NXT had 37,000 (up 516.7 percent from the ridiculously low 6,000 of last week). In women 18-34, AEW had 58,000 viewers (up 11.5 percent from last week) and NXT had 17,000 (down 41.4 percent). In men 35-49, AEW had 210,000 (up 9.9 percent) and NXT had 114,000 (up 32.6 percent). In women 35-49, AEW had 70,000 (up 4.5 percent) and NXT had 51,000 (down 21.5 percent). AEW did a 0.15 in 12-17 (up 7.1 percent from last week), 0.18 in 18-34 (up 5.7 percent), 0.46 in 35-49 (up 8.5 percent) and 0.31 in 50+ (up 3.2 percent) ... NXT did a 0.04 in 12-17 (down 33.3 percent), 0.08 in 18-34 (up 54.3 percent), 0.26 in 35-49 (up 9.3 percent) and 0.33 in 50+ (down 8.3 percent).

AAA: Dorian Roldan held a press conference on 7/20 to say that the planned TripleMania date of 8/22 wasn’t happening. We pretty much reported that last week. He said he hoped they could do the show before the end of the year, but there is no new date and there’s no way he could know anything. He didn’t say anything about Monterrey but they are hoping to do a big show at the baseball stadium there on 10/10, which may be called TripleMania, or TripleMania Regia, as the big Monterrey show last year was called Roldan did announce an idea called Auto Luchas, a drive-in wrestling concept at Six Flags in Mexico. The idea is to have people come to shows and park in assigned places and watch from their cars, like drive-in churches and movies. The ring will be put higher than usual and big screens will be put up as well. Tickets will only be able to be purchased on-line, fans would be required to wear masks and stay in their cars. Merchandise will be sold including face masks. Cars will be limited to four people for a regular car and seven for an SUV. They will also broadcast commentary you can pick up via your car radio. They will take place on weekends with multiple shows per day, like a theme park stage show as opposed to a live arena pro wrestling event. There will be mostly singles matches, and some tags, rather than trios, to limit the number of people in the ring at one time. Only wrestlers from Mexico will be used due to travel restrictions. Roldan talked about streaming or airing the shows on television and said talks are positive about doing so but no deal is in place.

The Women of Wrestling group that was thought to be dead when AXS canceled the show, considers itself still alive. They are planning fall tapings for a television network and would announce the network at the tapings. Rumor has it as a station that was looking to get into pro wrestling in 2019 but missed out on making the deal

[AEW] They announced an eight-team women’s tag team tournament that will take place on Dynamite during the summer called The Deadly Draw. This is not to create women’s tag team champions, although I think women’s tag champions and trios titles make sense, particularly when the second show starts airing. The idea is to do an annual summer women’s tag team tournament, but the first year will be the test marketing and if it goes well, it will be, but if it doesn’t, it will be chalked up to a learning experience

Based on YouTube, the biggest [AEW] star is Jon Moxley. Moxley vs. Brian Cage topped 1 million views, which is what a top Raw segment usually does. His biggest segment, when they did the angle where he got his eye taken out, did 6.7 million views. His biggest match on YouTube was the Jeff Cobb match at 1.3 million views

Makes sense since Moxley and other ex-WWE guys have a big advantage of being more recognizable to general wrestling fans than some of AEW's newer stars that simply need time to build up their own name recognition to similar levels.

Right now, and this can change 100 times (it seemed television this week along changed that many times), the plan is for Edge vs. Orton in an I Quit match as one of the key matches for next WrestleMania. It was already scheduled for SummerSlam before the Backlash “Best in the World” match took place, but Edge’s injury made that impossible. Edge on Raw and Daniel Bryan on Smackdown both have significant creative influence. The term I was given is they were part of the writing teams of the respective shows right now. McIntyre vs. Orton was as of this past week the new scheduled SummerSlam main event. There have been rumors floating that Orton goes over and leads to a match with Edge, but that seems so counterproductive to take the title off McIntyre for Orton. The audience needs to see new people getting superstar pushes just to have the idea that things can change, because the idea that everything is always the same has been detrimental

What is notable is that Vince McMahon actually has said that since Mania is over and with a lot of guys missing due to COVID and other reasons, that this is the time where they have to make new stars, which seems to contradict most of what the actual creative is doing

Probably shouldn't have fired the one guy who was trying to put the pieces in place for the gradual build up of star power for potential new big stars.

The night before and all day on 7/20 they were rewriting Raw. The rewriting was such that the show started being taped three to four hours after it was scheduled, although they taped early enough that there were no issues getting it on the air on time. But it was a long day because they were taping seven plus hours, three more hours of Raw for 7/20, three more hours for 7/27, and Main Event shows for both weeks ... There was an idea for the show to reform the Nation of Domination. Both Ron Simmons (who did appear on the show in a quick cameo for no reason) and Mark Henry (who was not on the show) were brought in to kickoff that angle. We don’t know if they are going to do that or if it was dropped. We do know people who thought from a real life timing situation that redoing the Nation right now would be incredibly tone deaf, so a lot did want it nixedl

For what it’s worth, Wall Street estimates for the 7/30 quarterly call for WWE right now look to be $229 million in revenue and $12 million in profits. Keep in mind that all the cuts, because of the talent still being paid for 90 days, doesn’t have any effect and they still are expected to be well up in profits even with no arena events, from the same quarter last year

The most-watched shows of the past week on the WWE Network were: 1. Extreme Rules; 2. Undertaker: Tales from the Dead Man; 3. Extreme Rules pre-show; 4. Best of Extreme Rules; 5. WWE Top 10 scariest matches; 6. WWE Now: Extreme Rules post-show; 7. Undertaker’s Last Ride episode five

Not a good sign for NXT to drop out that quickly from the Top 10 after stringing together a few weeks where they were ranking very well. Also mirrors their recent tv issues of not being able to capitalize on the momentum gained from the Great American Bash.