[Emperor Smeat]

The Sheets (Observer Newsletter Edition):

WWE is now two weeks away from WrestleMania, and there is at least a semblance of a lineup of what will take place on what night. The idea is for three-and-a-half to four hours shows on both 4/10 and 4/11 from Raymond James Stadium in Tampa. It will be the first WWE show with more than a few hundred fans in more than one year, and with the exception of 1/4 at the Tokyo Dome, the first pro wrestling shows of any kind with more than 10,000 fans in attendance. Announced for the Saturday night show is a main event of Bobby Lashley vs. Drew McIntyre for the WWE title, plus Sasha Banks vs. Bianca Belair for the Smackdown women’s title and The Miz vs. Bad Bunny. The Sunday main event will be Roman Reigns vs. Daniel Bryan vs. Edge for the Universal title (at this point it is announced as Reigns vs. Edge but that has been changed, and the change is expected to be announced after an angle on the 3/26 Smackdown show), Asuka vs. Rhea Ripley for the Raw women’s title and The Fiend vs. Randy Orton, likely in a stipulation match ... There have been a number of changes in recent weeks. The biggest is the Universal title match, where Edge turned heel and screwed Daniel Bryan in his Fast Lane main event with Reigns on 3/21. That was a late change stemming from a decision made by Vince McMahon that he wanted a number of things changed, including Reigns vs. Edge. Numerous suggestions were made by a lot of people, most of which were said to be bad. The one eventually greenlit was adding Bryan to the match, which everyone agreed to. At that point the feeling was Bryan would be the face. There was a lot of conjecture that Reigns would have been cheered over Edge, and that may have happened and may have led to Edge going heel, but we’re told that was not the reason the match was changed. One person close to the situation said that the age issue, not as much the number as the look of age (“he was looking older each week”) with Edge was a concerning point. But really, it was said it was just McMahon wanting to shake up the plans ... The Miz & John Morrison vs. Bad Bunny & Damien Priest match was changed from a tag to a single. Morrison hasn’t wrestled since suffering a knee injury in his 2/22 match with Riddle. But he is on television each week walking around. It’s unclear if that’s the reason for the change. One would think at WrestleMania if you can walk and do a music video (airing on the 3/29 Raw) that you could do a tag match, but no reason was given for the change. Both Morrison and Priest are to be in the corners. The idea of the match is obviously to get pub and media coverage for the company, and that’s good for a day. But the goal for using celebrities, as has been done historically, is to create long-term stars to the general public off them. It doesn’t always work out, but Cyndi Lauper was there for Wendi Richter and later Hulk Hogan, Mr. T was there for Hogan and Roddy Piper, Mike Tyson was there for Steve Austin, Donald Trump was there for Bobby Lashley and in this case, Bunny was there for Priest. Priest being out of the match and the promos may be removed from a key part of that equation, but time will tell. Priest also didn’t appear on Raw this week. Charlotte Flair announced she had COVID-19. She missed the 3/15 and 3/22 Raw. We’re told she is getting better. She was slated for a match with Asuka at WrestleMania. I suppose it’s possible to add her and they wanted to announce a match. Usually the company goes with two weeks, and a case from before 3/15 in theory should be fine by 4/10, but every case is different. It’s a surprise they’d take her out for a case from nearly a month earlier, but that’s what happened. Obviously COVID-19 changed a lot of plans. It mostly hit NXT, but as shown with Flair, the main roster was not unscathed. Of those who were gone last week, because the show this week was more than ten days after the outbreak and positive tests, many were able to return this week for NXT. Paul Levesque, who missed last week, was back running the show on 3/24. Johnny Gargano, Candice LeRae and Cameron Grimes were also back. The rest who missed last week were not back, including a number of people announced for the Takeover Stand & Deliver shows that they didn’t do any angles with. This is the first WrestleMania in years without a hotshot legend. The only non-weekly television regular involved at this point, besides part-timer Edge, is recording star Bad Bunny. It is almost the close of a era with no Undertaker, John Cena, HHH, Batista or Brock Lesnar scheduled on the show, although there are still obvious matches for Lesnar on the table with Reigns, McIntyre or Lashley. Tickets for WrestleMania went on sale on 3/18. They had announced 25,000 tickets would be available for each night. At press time, there were 1,203 tickets left for Saturday and 864 for Sunday, which sounds like each show will eventually be an easy sellout. But it is not clear how many tickets have actually been put on sale. There are numbers much lower than 25,000 floating around of tickets put on sale with the idea that more could be released late. There were between 1,300 and 1,400 tickets left after the presale for each night, which showed very few tickets were sold, almost none for Saturday and a few hundred for Sunday, over the past six days.

WWE moves to its new location, the Yuengling Center in Tampa on the campus of the University of South Florida for the Raw show on 4/12, the day after WrestleMania. There are no plans at this point for selling tickets to the Tampa shows, which are expected to be the case for a few months. That can change, and WWE can sell every available seat in the building as there are no governmental restrictions. It’s notable that both major U.S. wrestling companies are running Florida with no restrictions on ticket sales, and both are limiting ticket sales, unlike UFC.

WWE’s final PPV before WrestleMania, Fast Lane, on 3/21 from Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, was a mixed bag overall. The overall Daniel Bryan vs. Roman Reigns main event was great, and was a clever way to tell a story to get to the destination of a three-way as Edge laid out both with chair shots and beat them down, but Reigns was able to pin Bryan. The match included Bryan forcing Reigns to tap to the yes lock during a ref bump. It’s also notable that this was largely the same as New Japan with Evil in the sense it’s all kinds of ref bumps and outside interference. It’s seems with WWE, people overlook it. With AEW they don’t like it. With New Japan they despise it. You could say it’s because it’s gotten old in New Japan, but nobody relies on it more than WWE, as with almost every Reigns match since his return has been based on outside help and referee bumps. Sheamus vs. Drew McIntyre was a great hard hitting match. Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Seth Rollins and Riddle vs. Mustafa Ali were good. The rest was not good at all. Big E vs. Apollo Crews was short with a botched finish, and a surprisingly slow pace. Braun Strowman vs. Shane McMahon was a simple bait-and-switch that only WWE or AAA could get away with because fans of any other product would be furious at how they were treated with the false advertising. Alexa Bliss vs. Randy Orton was exactly what it was going to be when you have a match where Orton isn’t allowed to touch Bliss or do any moves to her. The most notable thing about the show was the lack of interest in it. Based on Google searches, the show did between 110,000 and 140,000 searches, a number lower than any WWE PPV shows have done with the exception of some of the Saudi shows or the Australia show held on weekdays or bad time slots. It was the first time in history that an AEW show, with Revolution topping 200,000 searches, had more general interest than a WWE show in the same period. The AEW show had more interest in 38 of the 50 states. Granted, it was AEW’s biggest show to date and this was the least interest in a major WWE show, and WrestleMania will have far more interest than Revolution. Even in WWE’s traditional home base of New York, Revolution had a 27 percent edge, but there were key markets like Minneapolis (where there was 113 percent more interest in Fast Lane), Houston, Memphis, Dallas, St. Louis and the Carolinas, the traditional wrestling markets that in all cases rejected WWE the strongest in the 80s, that all had an edge today for WWE. Among the markets where Revolution had a 50 percent or more edge included the San Francisco Bay Area (56 percent more), Chicago (50 percent), Boston (94 percent), Las Vegas (123 percent), Baltimore (86 percent) and Seattle (78 percent). AEW was even in Tampa and even well ahead in WWE’s home base of Orlando, ahead in Miami and 103 percent ahead in AEW’s home base of Jacksonville. This correlates with PPV pretty well, since when we got market-by-market PPVs, Minneapolis, for instance, did more buys for WWE on traditional PPV than AEW, even though WWE’s vast majority of viewers watched on the WWE Network. However, Salt Lake City, which at the start was AEW’s worst PPV market, still had a 33 percent edge in interest of the two shows this month. Of course this is an unusual set of circumstances but it will be something to look at in May, as to whether AEW can keep all the new interest it got in PPV leading into the last show.

Will Ospreay won the New Japan Cup on 3/21 at the Xebio Arena in Sendai, beating Shingo Takagi in perhaps the greatest match in the long history of the tournament ... After a grueling 30:06, which included one of the most amazing sequences ever, Ospreay hit the storm breaker to get the pin. That would have been a great ending to the show. Unfortunately, it wasn’t. Instead, in doing a promo after the match, where Ospreay noted he had been wrestling for some time with a torn rotator cuff in his right shoulder, and had broken his nose in the match with Sabre seven days earlier, he noted that he didn’t care about legacy, or history, only about being the No. 1 wrestler in the world today. He said winning the tournament does not make you No. 1, but winning the IWGP world heavyweight title does, and said about his title shot at Kota Ibushi on 4/4 at Sumo Hall in Tokyo, “I need this more than anything and I will do anything it takes to take this away.” He said, “I love this more than anything or anyone,” and then turned to longtime girlfriend Bea Priestley and hit her with a diamond cutter and laid her out. He left the ring with Jeff Cobb and the Great O’Khan, while Priestley was in the ring getting attended to. New Japan is introducing a new World championship belt for Ibushi, to be defended for the first time on 4/4. Ibushi will first wear the belt on the 3/30 show at Korakuen Hall. The angle was controversial. It was done because Priestley is not signing a new deal with New Japan. Her being helped out was either writing her out of the promotion (most likely) or perhaps there will be another appearance or two, but probably not, and she is leaving. The decision to not sign was her’s.

With the expectation of NXT on USA moving from Wednesday to Tuesday starting on 4/13, Impact Wrestling announced it was moving from Tuesday to Thursday on AXS. The move takes place starting on 4/8, and to establish the new day, they are doing their first television match with Kenny Omega. Omega & Doc Gallows & Karl Anderson will headline against Rich Swann & Eddie Edwards & Willie Mack, to help push the Omega vs. Swann title vs. title match on 4/25. The move makes sense. In its past history, whenever WWE programming went on the same night as Impact, Impact had a large bite taken out of its audience, often 30 percent or more. Now it has been a long time, but they aren’t willing to take that risk and Impact is the highest rated show on AXS. The moves will lead to, for the first time ever, pro wrestling on national television on all five weeknights in prime time, not to mention the variety of streaming shows ... They are pushing that this is a move to the traditional night and time slot of Impact. Impact at its most popular ran Thursday nights at 9 p.m. on Spike TV. TNA started outside of prime time in 2005 on Spike with a one-hour late night show, but moved to Thursdays in 2006, as a two-hour show, through the Spike run that ended at the end of 2014. In 2015, when it moved to Destination America, it moved to Friday, and then later Thursday in 2016 after moving to Pop TV. It moved to Tuesday in 2019.

Regarding La Sombra, all of a sudden this week it was announced by CMLL that there is a new Los Ingobernables group of Angel de Oro & Niebla Roja & El Terrible. El Terrible at times had been part of the original group

There was a protest match with about 50 wrestlers from various companies in Mexico City on 3/18 asking for the government to allow Lucha Libre at 30 percent capacity. El Fantasma (the father of Santos Escobar) who heads the Box y Lucha commission, led the protest. He delivered a message to Mexico City government sub secretary Efrain Morales Lopez and then said Lucha Libre may open up in two weeks. Mije was one of the wrestlers and said he was selling snacks and sweets now for money. CMLL did acknowledge some of its talent protested but said they were not part of the protest and that they support the government and will wait for the government to decide when they can bring back fans

Two of the biggest legends in Japanese wrestling history, Genichiro Tenryu and Antonio Inoki, have been hospitalized of late. Inoki, 78, had recent surgery and was in a bad way. Tenryu, 71, has been hospitalized since 3/19 with congestive heart failure. He is expected to be hospitalized for some time. It would have probably been kept quiet except he was scheduled for a talk show on 3/28 with Kenta Kobashi that he had to cancel

The 3/3 Stardom PPV did 3,000 buys, of which about 750 were outside of Japan. The number of buyers outside of Japan was more than the company had expected. Stardom World subscriptions the first week of March went up at the fastest rate in the history of the service. A lot of the PPV buys and new subscribers that week came after the show, so that was based on word of mouth from people who had seen and talked about the show ... There has been talk of doing live shows on Stardom World in 2022 but right now they are very happy with making money from the PPV and since both did above expectations after the Budokan Hall show, right now it looks like they won’t mess with what is working. Over the past 15 months, even with no airing shows live, Stardom World subscriptions have more than doubled

There is at least the beginning of talk of reviving Lucha Underground. It would be the same type of ideas, although with a different name

The [Impact Wrestling] Xplosion show which has been around forever was quietly canceled. They are doing the same amount of television, but they now have an extra hour from 7-8 p.m. on AXS which is the preview show for Impact, and they do one exclusive match on that show

AEW: They officially announced a new reality show that will air later this year on TNT called “Rhodes to the Top.” It will be a weekly 30 minute show on Cody & Brandi Rhodes ... They had done a pilot episode for TNT and it was well received enough that they greenlit the new series that will debut later this year. This is in addition to the third hour of AEW wrestling for later this year as well. Obviously this is at least partially built off E! and USA having success with Total Bellas and Miz & Mrs ... The goal is to eventually branch out into doing scripted shows like Big Show did with NETFLIX. Another hope is that doing a reality show will add a new female audience to other AEW programming similar to how Total Divas changed the television demos of WWE to a higher percentage of women viewers. The biggest take coming out of the last week is that the relationship with TNT and AEW appears to be strong. AEW has been promoted heavily during the NCAA tournament broadcasts on TBS and TNT, and adding a second spinoff to the already planned first spinoff indicates strong network support.

Khan has purchased the rights to the song “Where is My Mind?” by Pixies, for Orange Cassidy. It will debut on next week’s Dynamite. Actually it’ll probably debut on Dark before that since they taped a Cassidy & Chuck Taylor win over Ryan Nemeth & JD Drake for Dark this coming week prior to Dynamite in front of the fans

[AEW] There has been talk of Daga coming in. As far as Tessa Blanchard goes, that’s a decision that ultimately will be made based on the perceived value of her to the product vs. the negativity and backlash in some quarters such a signing would have.

Riddle’s winning the U.S. title was not the original plan. The booked idea for the three-way was for Riddle to lose the fall to Lee, as a way to get the belt off Lashley since they were moving him to the WWE title, and get the U.S. title on Lee. But Lee missed the show due to health-related issues and still hasn’t returned

Logan Paul has been responding to Zayn on social media so they may be doing something with him. Really, once those guys did a number on the AEW PPV number, both AEW and WWE should have tried to embrace them

Ratings:

SPOILER: show

Raw on 3/22, a combination of being helped coming a day after a PPV, but hurt by the NCAA tournament, averaged 1,816,000 viewers and 0.53 (682,000 viewers) in 18-49. Raw was fourth on cable behind NCAA tournament coverage. The games head-to-head saw a CBS early game to 5,851,000 viewers and 1.35 in 18-49. The CBS laet game did 4,219,000 viewers and 1.14 in 18-49. The TNT early game did 1,483,000 viewers and 0.46. The TNT late game did 1,976,000 viewers and 0.56. The TBS game did 1,748,000 viewers and 0.56. Raw was 13th overall behind only college basketball and news shows. Raw was third with women 18-49, fourth with men 18-49, fifth in 18-34, fifth in women 12-34 and fifth in men 12-34. The first hour did 1,878,000 viewers. The second hour did 1,841,000 viewers. The third hour did 1,729,000 viewers. However the drops were with older viewers as 18-49 viewers increased during the show. Raw was down 1.5 percent from last week in viewers, 5.4 percent in 18-49 and 24.2 percent in 18-34. As compared to one year ago, even though the show one year ago was the lowest viewer number for a live show in Raw history at the time, it was still down 9.5 percent in viewers, 12.7 percent in 18-49 and 37.5 percent in 18-34. Raw did 95,000 viewers in men 18-34 (down 22.8 percent from last week, 82,000 in women 18-34 (down 23.4 percent from last week), 329,000 in men 35-49 (down 1.8 percent) and 176,000 in women 35-49 (up 10.0 percent). The first-to-third hour movement was women 18-49 down 2.5 percent, men 18-49 up 4.7 percent, teenage up 7.3 percent, teenage boys up 10.1 percent and over 50 was down 10.8 percent. The show did a 0.25 in 12-17 (down 13.8 percent from last week), 0.25 in 18-34 (down 27.4 percent), 0.81 in 35-49 (up 2.0 percent) and 0.89 in 50+ (up 1.1 percent).

Smackdown on 3/19 did a 1.30 rating and 2,093,000 viewers (1.33 viewers per home) with an 0.57 (741,000 viewers) in 18-49. The numbers were down slightly, almost surely attributable to going against the NCAA tournament which had games on CBS (4,439,000 and 0.99 in 18-49 and 3,454,000 and 0.98); TBS (2,677,000 and 0.84 and 1,983,000 and 0.61) and TNT (2,347,000 and 0.73). With Shark Tank in reruns (NBC also ran nothing but reruns), Smackdown was fourth among the nine network shows in 18-49, fourth in 18-34, fifth in women 18-49, fourth in men 18-49 and last place in over 50. It beat a rerun of Blacklist on NBC at 2,087,000 to barely avoid being last place for total viewers. It was down from last week 0.8 percent in homes, 3.6 percent in viewers, 6.8 percent in 18-49 and 2.9 percent in 18-34. From the same week one year ago it was down 15.6 percent in homes, 18.5 percent in viewers, 28.8 percent in 18-49 and 43.3 percent in 18-34. The show did 118,000 viewers in men 18-34 (down 24.8 percent from last week), 120,000 in women 18-34 (up 39.5 percent from last week0, 296,000 in men 35-49 (down 6.3 percent) and 207,000 in women 35-49 (down 12.3 percent). The audience was 55.9 percent male in 18-49, usually low, likely because of all the basketball competition.

There wasn’t much of major note with the Wednesday night ratings. AEW placed sixth for the night with 757,000 viewers and 0.30 in18-49 (384,000 viewers), up from last week but still below the usual 0.32 level. NXT was No. 29 with 678,000 viewers and 0.14 in 18-49 (183,000 viewers), only up slightly from last week’s third lowest number in the history of the show. AEW was fourth in Males 18-49, behind both NBA games (the game head-to-head on ESPN did 990,000 viewers and 0.32; the late game after wrestling was over did 1,006,000 viewer and 0.38) and Challenge Double Agent. The NHL game on NBC Sports Network did 449,000 viewers and 0.16. In 18-34, AEW was ninth. In Males 12-34, AEW was sixth. AEW was down 1.4 percent in viewers from last week but up 6.1 percent in 18-49 and down 6.2 percent in 18-34. After the great show last week with the Britt Baker vs. Thunder Rosa bloodbath, they were way down with teenagers in particular, but up with both men and women 35-49 and down in 18-34. NXT was up 13.2 percent in viewers, up 11.6 percent in 18-49 and up 7.3 percent in 18-34. As compared to last year on the same week, AEW was down 7.6 percent in viewers, down 13.5 percent in 18-49 and down 27.8 percent in 18-34, so unlike in previous comparisons, this week was an older audience as well as smaller across the board. NXT was up 9.2 percent in viewers but down 27.7 percent in 18-49 and down 47.3 percent in 18-34. AEW won in every demo but was still weak with women, and only doubled NXT in men 35-49. In the main event segment, AEW did 817,000 viewers and 412,000 in 18-49 for Darby Allin vs. John Silver for the TNT title, a huge success based on most final quarters this year. It was AEW’s peak for total viewers, 18-49 viewers and men 18-49. Allin has had success in the past as a draw but this was a real success for Silver. NXT did 640,000 viewers and 174,000 in 18-49 for Kushida vs. Jordan Devlin. NXT’s actual final segment which started right at 10 p.m. was the Adam Cole/Kyle O’Reilly contract signing. Even though AEW was off the air, it only increased to 679,000 viewers and 197,000 in 18-49, which was shockingly little growth. AEW did 56,000 viewers in men 18-34 (down 5.1 percent from last week) to 33,000 for NXT (up 37.5 percent). AEW did 35,000 in women 18-34 (down 7.9 percent) to 26,000 for NXT (down 16.1 percent). AEW did 217,000 viewers in men 35-49 (up 5.3 percent) to 76,000 for NXT (up 24.6 percent). AEW did 76,000 in women 35-49 (up 18.8 percent) to 48,000 for NXT (the same as the previous week). NXT did win the third quarter in total viewers. The amazing thing is that even though NXT had more viewers, in that same third quarter, AEW doubled NXT in 18-49. AEW doubled NXT in 18-49 the entire first hour of te show and in six of the eight quarters with the biggest gap being for the main event. AEW opened with 807,000 viewers and 392,000 in 18-49 for Kenny Omega vs. Matt Sydal. NXT had 730,000 viewers and 183,000 in 18-49 for Raquel Gonzalez & Dakota Kai vs. Io Shirai & Zoey Stark. With the big lead-in, this was NXT’s peak in total viewers and in women 18-49. In the second quarter, AEW did 740,000 viewers and 383,000 in 18-49 for Adam Page vs. Cezar Bononi, plus interviews with Lance Archer, Thunder Rosa and Britt Baker. This tied AEW’s peak for women 18-49. NXT did 701,000 viewers and 174,000 in 18-49 for the end of Gonzalez & Kai vs. Shirai & Stark, the post-match, Adam Cole & Kyle O’Reilly at a BJJ school,, promos of LA Knight and Jordan Devlin and the start of Knight vs. Bronson Reed. The third quarter saw AEW do 710,000 viewers and 373,000 in 18-49 for Christian, Griff Garrison, Brian Pillman Jr., Dante Martin and Frankie Kazarian and FTR & Shawn Spears vs. Garrison & Pillman & Martin. This tied AEW’s peak in women 18-49. NXT did 722,000 viewers and 185,000 in 18-49 for Reed vs. Knight. The fourth quarter saw AEW do 727,000 viewers and 367,000 in 18-49 for The Pinnacle promo, Team Taz promo, Cody Rhodes & QT Marshall and the start of the Young Bucks & Brandon Cutler vs. Penta & Fenix & Laredo Kid. NXT did 650,000 viewers and 170,000 in 18-49 for Karrion Kross vs. Oney Lorcan. This was NXT’s peak in men 18-49. The fifth quarter saw AEW do 765,000 viewers and 381,000 in 18-49 for Bucks & Cutler vs Penta & Fenix & Kid and the post-match with Omega. NXT did 685,000 viewers and 194,000 in 18-49 for a Finn Balor & Kross promo, a William Regal announcement and Walter vs. Drake Maverick. This was the NXT peak in 18-49. The sixth quarter saw AEW do 742,000 viewers and 381,000 in 18-49 for Jade Cargill package, the reality show announcement, an Eddie Kingston & Jon Moxley promo and the start of Tay Conti vs. Nyla Rose. NXT did 661,000 viewers and 188,000 in 18-49 for the angle with Tommaso Ciampa and Imperium laying him out, Johnny Gargano with Regal and Ember Moon & Shotzi Blackheart defending against Mercedes Martinez & Aliyah. The seventh quarter saw AEW do 749,000 viewers and 380,000 in 18-49 for Rose vs. Conti, the post-match with Shida and Bunny and Miro & Penelope Ford & Kip Sabian. NXT did 635,000 viewers and 188,000 in 18-49 for Cameron Grimes & Roderick Strong, Moon & Blackheart with Candice LeRae & Indi Hartwell and the beginning of Devlin vs. Kushida. The eighth quarter saw AEW gain 68,000 viewers and 32,000 in 18-49 for Allin vs. Silver. NXT gained 5,000 viewers but lost 14,000 in 18-49 for Kushida vs. Devlin.

For this past week in Canada, Raw on 3/15 did 182,100 viewers with 93,100 in 25-54. Smackdown on 3/19 did 181,200 viewers and 96,100 in 25-54 in Canada. On 3/17, the No. 10 sports show did 119,400 viewers and neither NXT nor AEW made the top ten

So far, NXT has yet to chart ever since they moved to Wednesdays in Canada but it has been having the effect of causing AEW to no longer chart regularly. Before NXT used to chart reasonably well in Canada when it aired on Fridays and with Smackdown as the lead-in. So basically just like in the US, WWE damaged the popularity of their NXT brand just to hurt AEW's viewership in Canada.

The decline in AEW viewer numbers continues to point to what was its strength only a few weeks ago, women that watched with men, which led them to often being the youngest skewing sports show and almost always put them at or near the top in viewers per home. For the 3/17 show, they were down to 1.35 viewers per home. While still No. 1 in wrestling, they were below a ton of sports and barely beat Smackdown. UFC has become the show that is getting the most people to watch together, but in the case of UFC, it’s guys watching together. AEW’s numbers with men 18-49 are slightly above of late where they were months back, but that’s been offset by the big decline of women viewers. Some of that is The Challenge on MTV. As far as the women declines go, in asking around with women that are AEW fans, the one thing mentioned is the blood and the tables over-and-over. The Britt Baker vs. Thunder Rosa match was huge as far as drawing male viewers from NXT over, but not with women coming over from NXT. One longtime female fan who I’ve known since childhood who loves AEW surprised me saying that she didn’t like the match, and it was the blood and the weapons that were the reason why because she respected how hard they were working. Baker vs. Rosa is not the reason at all, just a point that was brought up, as my suspicion is the rise in that main event and corresponding fall with men that were watching NXT is that people may have tuned in at the commercial break to watch, and seeing that, there’s no way they were switching back until that match was over. But this has been a pattern for a few months now, as there was a period where AEW could beat Raw or Smackdown in women 18-34 and that is no longer the case. They still beat Raw & Smackdown in viewers watching together but it went from a huge difference to now when it’s so close with Smackdown that they were neck-and-neck this week.

Impact on 3/23 fell to 116,000 viewers, even with the announcement that Kenny Omega would be on the show, and did an 0.04 in 18-49. It was the lowest total audience number for Impact so far this year. The show was down 20.5 percent in viewers but even in 18-49 from last week.