[Emperor Smeat]

The Sheets (Observer Newsletter Edition):

After five months down, Ring of Honor will be returning to action with television tapings, believed to be from Baltimore, later this month. ROH sent out a release noting they would be producing new wrestling shows in August from Maryland, working with the Maryland State Athletic Commission ... No date has been publicly announced but talent has been told to do a 14-day quarantine before the date and that may mean several people being pulled from independent dates that they were booked on. ROH got a lot of praise within pro wrestling for how it has handled the crisis regarding talent. All talent under contract was paid in full even with no shows, which essentially they had to do or breach the contract. But they also paid non-contracted talent for any dates that were booked that didn’t happen, as well as all officials and extras that were originally booked for canceled shows in full. We were told that there is a new concept for television described as unlike anything currently done in pro wrestling, described as not cinematic, not goofy, nothing whatsoever done out of the range of reality but also keeping kayfabe. The goal is for the new ROH to try and fill a void that hardcore fans have asked for. The tapings will be a tournament concept, with eight shows being taped at the tapings this month. The new shows will start airing in September. With no fans in attendance, the results of the shows would be kept confidential until they air on television and streaming platforms. The protocol running the shows has been said to be very strict as well, including consulting with people involved in setting up some of the Nevada procedures for the return of MMA in that state. Hunter Johnston (Delirious) is back as the head of creative. Marty Scurll, who had been head booker, is technically on hiatus with no ROH responsibilities pending a human resources investigation of the claims made against him. Johnston has been the sole creative force as far as formatting, producing and organizing television since the investigation started.

In news that doesn’t directly relate to New Japan just yet, but has to be considered scary, the Tokyo Dome canceled its annual multi-date event, Furusato Matsuri, which takes place in January, due to COVID-19 concerns ... Pro wrestling has started having COVID issues, not close to the U.S., but the 8/13 New Japan show in Uwajima and a number of women’s wrestling shows from different companies were canceled this week. The New Japan crew was in Uwajima for a sold out house show (30 percent capacity usage). A lot of fans were already in the building when one of the wrestlers felt ill backstage and had a fever. Because of the risk involved regarding spreading to both the other wrestlers and perhaps the audience, the decision, based on the company’s guidelines, was to cancel the show and send everyone home with refunds. The wrestler was removed from the arena and two staff members drove him home to Tokyo with them putting up a plastic sheet in the car where he was to be taken to a COVID testing facility for a series of tests ... New Japan released a statement regarding the cancellation stating, “Unfortunately, one of the wrestlers scheduled to appear had developed a fever. The wrestler immediately undertook additional COVID-19 testing, but New Japan Pro-Wrestling is still awaiting results. Under NJPW’s Coronavirus guidelines, and acting in the best interests of health and safety for other wrestlers and fans in attendance, the decision was made to cancel tonight’s event.” The women’s shows were canceled due to Yuki Miyazaki, a woman wrestling with Pro Wrestling Wave, testing positive and she had appeared on a show this past weekend. Wave then postponed all of its upcoming shows including the 8/16 card at Korakuen Hall. The 8/9 Oz Academy show was canceled because Hiroyo Matsumoto, Yumi Ohka and Hiro’e, all scheduled, were on the Wave show. Hiro’e has appeared for a few groups in recent weeks but her retirement show was one of the cards Wave was running that has been canceled. Other promotions that had booked wrestlers who appeared on the Wave show that Miyazaki appeared on before she tested positive have also canceled dates. It should be noted how well, in comparison, Japanese groups including New Japan have been when it comes to transparency. When talent was even on a television show where somebody tested positive, they were held off even with no symptoms and the public was told immediately, and also informed the public of their testing process and that nobody would be allowed to perform until passing three different tests. On the women’s side, multiple shows this week were canceled because of talent appearing on a show where somebody tested positive, even if nobody on the shows themselves tested positive. Contrast that to the U.S. where you have far less transparency, and certainly no shows canceled based on the fact people were in contact with people who tested positive.

After a number of starts and stops that date back many years since the deals to purchase the tape libraries from companies like Evolve, ICW, Progress and wXw were done, content from those companies will start appearing on the WWE Network. Aside from a one-time live Evolve show in July 2019, “coincidentally” head-to-head with a live AEW show on B/R Live, WWE has not aired full shows based on the various tape libraries they had purchased. The original idea was to use the tape library and future shows from the promotions on a more expensive network premium tier that would be priced at $14.95. WWE had talked for years about it being imminent, but the decision was finally made this year to drop the idea, and instead launch a free tier, designed to get people to buy the regular $9.99 tier. Thus far, the marketing has proven to be a big success with paid subscribers up as much as 195,000 from the level they likely would have had if the free tier not been launched, hitting 1,690,000 on 6/30 ... CHIKARA was somewhat close to a deal to sell its library to the WWE but the talks ended in recent months.

The expectation was that New Japan would bring back its foreign stars for G-1, and that was the plan at one point. Right now plans are up in the air due to concern that the situation in the U.S. is worse than New Japan had expected, and with cases also rising in Japan, the question is how would the country take bringing Americans in. If Americans, or Will Ospreay, coming from the U.K., are in the tournament, they would have to arrive by 9/5 and do two weeks of quarantine. That also means they would have to be paid for six weeks rather than four weeks at a time when revenue will be cut back because it’s doubtful they’ll be allowed to run buildings at full capacity, and even if they can, the health restrictions for doing so will cost money.

CMLL announced on 8/12 that they were back to running shows starting on 9/4. The plan is to do weekly Friday night shows from Arena Mexico, that would stream as iPPVs on the Ticketmaster Live service, which is a new business Ticketmaster is getting into since it’s regular business is shut down with so few events. No price has been announced, but The Cubs Fan has reported other iPPVs on that site are ranging from 150 pesos ($6.75) to 400 pesos ($18.05). At this point, fans will not be allowed at the shows, but they are hoping for eventually being open at 30 percent capacity, which would be about 5,300 seats. But Mexico City has opened up movie theaters at 30 percent. The fourth show, on 9/25, will be the annual anniversary show. There will be no hair or mask matches on the show, because the income from the live gate will be small or non-existent, meaning it makes no sense for a big payoff to the loser of the hair or mask match. Instead the anniversary show is being built around all championship matches, with champions announced ahead of time as defending the titles, and then fans voting for who they want as challengers. They will be running more one fall singles matches, to go with tag team and trios matches.

Stardom founder and Executive Producer Hiroshi “Rossy” Ogawa, 63, was hospitalized this past week. It was said that he had a medical procedure which was said to be scheduled well in advance

Jimmy Havoc, Bea Priestley and Sadie Gibbs were all released on 8/13. AEW hasn’t been able to bring talent in from the U.K. due to quarantine and they’ve added a lot of new talent of late. Tony Khan said a few months ago that he didn’t want to release anyone during the pandemic but there would come a time that if people couldn’t get into the U.S., they would have to, plus at some point when you keep adding there would have to be cuts. Havoc was likely not being brought back for allegation reasons as he had been suspended. The other two were largely due to their inability to get into the country with nothing looking like that will change any time soon. Gibbs was brought in as a project, in the sense she wasn’t ready but she was a great athlete with a good look, and had only worked three matches for the company, none since October

Evil Uno will be doing two events this week to benefit the Canadian Cancer Society. Since the death of Phrank Morin, Capital City Championship Combat of Ottawa has done fund-raisers that have raised $270,000 for the Canadian Cancer society. This year they can’t run a benefit show, so Evil Uno, New Legacy Int. and IWTV Live will be doing an event on 8/15 with as live stream and Uno and some of his friends raising money. On 8/29 IWTV will be doing an all-day Fighting Back Marathon running shows from previous years and encouraging donations with 100 percent of all donations going to the Canadian Cancer Society

Fozzy will be doing a U.S. tour from 10/3 to 11/22. Right now the tour dates have no shows any Tuesday or Wednesday so it would fit around the Dynamite schedule. But there may need to be changes since when the original dates were put together, he’d fly into whatever city on Tuesday, do TV Wednesday, and fly back out Thursday. But now, tapings are Wednesday and Thursday every other week. After doing shows in Sturgis, SD and Minot, ND this past week, the Sturgis shows being scary because the Sturgis rally was thought to be a major risk of being the epicenter of COVID-19 spread. You had 250,000 people coming from all over the world, but mostly the U.S., the vast majority with the non-mask mentality and social distancing not existing, with the mess this country is in, it’s just not worth the risk, and then doing AEW days later. Jericho did isolation himself aside from performing and had to pass a COVID test (or tests) to just get into Daily’s Place to perform, but testing isn’t 100 percent accurate and really all talent in every promotion, for the sake of all other talent, because of the nature of the spread of the disease, should be as careful as possible because just flying in and being part of shows themselves has a risk factor, as is being shown constantly. Touring in October and November has its risks as well, as does everything, but Sturgis his past weekend looked to be a risk of a different level

Velveteen Dream returned on the 8/12 NXT show as the mystery man in the three-way. He had been off TV since more allegations were claimed about him regarding inappropriate behavior. WWE had kept him on television after the first set of allegations, which had what appeared to be audio proof of his voice, but those who made the allegations then disappeared from public view and it was thought to be a dead issue. Then a few weeks later, another person came out. WWE said nothing and Dream, in the middle of a main event program with Dexter Lumis against the Undisputed Era, disappeared and his name was never said again. He returned in a three-way match with Kushida and Cameron Grimes, where he neither won, nor got pinned, which leads him to a singles match with Finn Balor for next week. Dream after the match did a heel turn attacking Kushida after he had lost. Josh Fuller, who was the latter claim, said that he was disappointed when he saw Dream back on the show, and said that he came forward with his name and if there was a WWE investigation, he was never contacted

An interesting note from Brandon Thurston regarding the ten most searched WWE stars of 2020 on Google. This tells you all you need to know about Raw & Smackdown creating stars when the top ten, in order, are Cena, Undertaker, Reigns (off TV since March), Lesnar (off TV since WrestleMania), Big Show (likely more due to Netflix than WWE), Becky Lynch (off TV since April), Goldberg (off TV since April), Orton, Mysterio and Bliss

The key creative forces for 205 Live are said to be Adam Pearce and Dewey Foley, who is Mick’s son

WWE filed to trademark several names in recent weeks like Tony Nese, Drew Gulak, Jordan Devlin, Dexter Lumis, Pete Dunne, Mustache Mountain, James Drake, Zack Gibson, Indi Hartwell, Jake Atlas, Kacy Catanzaro, Karrion Kross, Pretty Deadly, The Hunt, Indus Sher, Rinku, Saurav, Grizzled Young Veterans, Imperium, Gallus and Legado del Fantasma. The Devlin name is notable because he was dropped by U.K. groups as part of the Speaking Out movement, and WWE dropped most of the same guys, but did not say anything about Devlin. This pretty much tells you they aren’t planning on dropping him. Devlin is still listed as co-cruiserweight champion even though his name hasn’t been mentioned on television in a long time and Santos Escobar has been referred to as champion with no mention of a co-champion

The most-watched shows on the WWE Network for this past week were: 1. WWE Timeline Daniel Bryan vs. Miz feud; 2. Rise and Fall of WCW; 3. SummerSlam 2019; 4. NXT for 8/5; 5. Best of Jeff Hardy; 6. The Horror Show at Extreme Rules 2020; 7. Raw Talk 8/10

WWE Ratings & AEW vs. NXT Ratings:

SPOILER: show

The 8/10 Raw was a mixed bag, as the viewer number stayed at the same range as last week and up from July, but in 18-49, the show did the third lowest number in its history. The show averaged 1,722,000 viewers and 0.47 in 18-49. Two episodes of Raw this year hit 0.46, which is the all-time record low. The total viewers were up 7,000 (0.4 percent) from last week, while 18-49 was down 7.8 percent. The basic story is told by the hours. The first hour did 1,811,000 viewers, the best first hour since 6/29. The second hour did 1,754,000 viewers, a nice hold, while hour three did 1,601,000 viewers. Hours two and three were both the third best since the start of July. The third hour dropped overall even with Bayley vs. Asuka, Raw Underground, Randy Orton vs. Kevin Owens and the Ric Flair/Orton angle. But men 12-49 and teenage women held well for all three hours. It’s better than usual. It was better than two weeks ago, when teenagers collapsed in hour three after the Asuka vs. Sasha Banks match, but not like last week when the Raw Underground boosted teenage interest in hour three by a huge amount. The drops from the first-to-third hours were 18.2 percent in women 18-49, 1.5 percent in men 18-49, 4.1 percent in teenage girls, there was an 8.0 percent gain in teenage boys and 12.4 percent over 50. The comparisons to last year look bad, but last year SummerSlam was two weeks earlier so this was the post-Summer Slam show we are comparing this with. The drop from last year same week was 36.9 percent overall, 48.9 percent in 18-49 and 66.7 percent in 18-34. Raw was fifth in 18-49

Smackdown on 8/7 did a 1.20 rating and 1,962,000 viewers (1.36 viewers per home, a better than usual number) and 0.49 in 18-49 (637,000 viewers) , up 3.6 percent in viewers, 1.7 percent in households and was down 1.1 percent in 18-49, as well as declined from 0.3 to 0.2 in 18-34. Smackdown was last in viewers, even though all the other networks had reruns, but first in 18-49 and tied for first in 18-34 ... On the network scoreboard, they were second in women 18-49, first in men 18-49 and last in 50+. The median viewer age was 54.5 years old. FOX as a network averaged 1,953,000 viewers and 0.5 in 18-49 in the same time slot last year, but that’s unique. They aired rerun programming, including an episode of BH90210 that had aired just a few days earlier. But the regular FOX programming did 1,181,000 viewers in the markets it aired and the other 772,000 viewers were from other sports events that played in selected local markets. In the half hours, the Firefly Fun house and Sheamus vs. Matt Riddle opened at 1.97 million viewers. The Dirt Sheet with Miz, John Morrison and Sonya Deville plus Cesaro vs. Lince Dorado did 1.87 million viewers. The Bray Wyatt, Alexa Bliss, Braun Strowman segment, Jeff Hardy vs King Corbin and Corbin vs. Sheamus did 2.00 million viewers. Stephanie McMahon with Bayley and Sasha Banks, Heavy Machinery vs. Miz & Morrison and the Retribution deal did 1.97 million viewers. That actually held up in the fourth half hour better than the show usually does.

The 8/12 numbers, across the board, had huge declines from last week’s high points. Every show was down with younger viewers, whether they be news or sports, and both wrestling shows took a hit. AEW did 792,000 viewers and an 0.32 in 18-49 (417,000 viewers), numbers that would be considered very good until last week’s huge numbers, but there were thoughts with the lineup and the Chris Jericho vs. Orange Cassidy match that there would be another increase. In particular, the 18-34 demo, which AEW won last week, dropped 37.8 percent, and fell below Raw, which it had beaten the week before and was favored to beat again with the strong lineup and Raw’s low number, with most of the drop being male, which points to going head-to-head with the NBA and NHL. AEW fell from No. 5 for the night in 18-49 ... This week it was No. 9, actually beating one NBA game and all four NHL playoff games, but losing to Real Housewives, the late NBA game, three news shows and two Discovery Network specials. Until the 9:19 p.m. second game start time, AEW beat both the early NBA game and NHL playoffs head-to-head in both overall viewers and 18-49. However, it was likely that level of competition played a factor in a comparison from last week. Overall AEW was down 12.1 percent in viewers and 9.5 percent in 18-49, but the big drop was in its best demo, 18-34. The news was worse for NXT, which dropped to No. 65 on the charts, doing 619,000 viewers and a 0.16 in 18-49 (206,000 viewers). That was a drop of 17.8 percent in viewers and 19.2 percent in 18-49. It was the fifth lowest viewer number of the year and tied for fifth lowest in 18-49. Because it finished out of the top 50, we don’t have the usual details in the breakdowns. In 18-49, AEW more than doubled NXT, doing almost triple in women 18-34 and also more than double in women 35-49. AEW did 65,000 viewers in Men 18-34 (down 39.8 percent from last week) to 39,000 for NXT (same as last week). In Women 18-34, AEW did 60,000 viewers (down 27.7 percent from last week) and NXT did 21,000 viewers (down 41.7 percent from last week). In Men 35-49, AEW did 182,000 viewers (down 0.5 percent from last week) and NXT did 98,000 viewers (down 19.0 percent from last week). In Women 35-49, AEW did 110,000 viewers (up 26.4 percent from last week) and NXT did 48,000 (down 18.6 percent) ... AEW did a 0.14 in 12-17 (down 30.0 percent), 0.18 in 18-34 (down 34.6 percent), 0.46 in 35-49 (up 8.1 percent) and 0.26 in 50+ (down 21.2 percent). The audience was 59.2 percent male in 18-49 and 54.2 percent male in 12-17, so the drops were more heavily male, pointing again to competing ports as the likely key culprit. Compared to the other sports on television, AEW was No. 2 in 18-49. The late night ESPN NBA game did 1,240,000 viewers and 0.48. The prime time NHL game on NBC Sports Network did 764,000 viewers and 0.31. The early NBA game, which went against the first 79 minutes of AEW, did 674,000 viewers and 0.26, so they beat the NBA in hour one. An earlier NHL game on NBC Sports Network did 626,000 viewers and 0.26. The late-night NHL game did 464,000 viewers and 0.20 on NBC Sports Network. An afternoon NHL game did 459,000 viewers and 0.18 in 18-49.

Regarding the 8/5 show, there were five minutes total of the 12-man tag that topped 1 million viewers, peaking at 1,050,000. From 8:09 to 8:19 p.m. during that match they were above 500,000 in 18-49, peaking at 554,000. The Jon Moxley interview did 1,012,000 viewers. The first minute of the Matt Cardona & Cody ring entrance did 1,024,000. Four minutes of Jericho-Orange Cassidy topped 500,000 in 18-49 and two minutes topped one million. The high point of the show, which was the attack on Cassidy, did 1,054,000