[Emperor Smeat]

The Sheets (Observer Newsletter Edition):

With the exception of the Blood & Guts match and a Kenny Omega promo, the rest of the show was taped on 4/22. However, there were no fans when they were taped and they were shown on the screen and the live audience of 1,600 fans–the company’s largest since the pandemic (more than 1,300 paid), were told ahead of time that it was their crowd reaction that would go on the air for those matches. The announcing was also done at the time the matches aired mixed with the legitimate Daily’s Place crowd reactions. The crowd reacted to the matches very well, and the atmosphere for the one live match was said to be incredible. Even though the show was advertised as far as ticket sales went as being one match, before the show started Tony Khan told the fans the situation. It was done this way because the time to set up the War Games cage wouldn’t work well with a live television show. The cage itself was set up in the building long before the show started. To make it appear authentic, on 4/22 they set up two rings side-by-side for the matches that would air on this show. Khan said that anyone unhappy could get a refund through 8:45 p.m. There were five refunds asked for. Still, they did hope to be able to get 2,500 at this show, and that didn’t happen.

Both nights of [NJPW Wrestling] Dontaku on 5/3 and 5/4 at the Fukuoka International Center Arena were essentially sellouts. The 5/4 show sold 2,367 tickets, all that they put on sale, on the first day, with only Ospreay vs. Takagi announced. The 5/3 show did 2,211 paid which was essentially sold out, but not in advance. The first night main event saw Jay White beat Hiroshi Tanahashi in 39:01 to win the Never openweight title. White and Tanahashi had a confrontation after their trios match the next night, but White talked about defending against Ryusuke Taguchi or David Finlay (who eliminated him from the New Japan Cup). He’s pushing the story that Tanahashi needs to retire, and that even at his best Tanahashi wasn’t as good as he is, and Tanahashi is far from at his best. The other big story involves COVID positives. Two wrestlers, who weren’t named, were showing symptoms of possible COVID, with a fever and not feeling well. One was either Gabriel Kidd or Yuya Uemura, since they said the wrestler had gotten sick after the 5/1 show in Beppu, and they were the only two on the Beppu show who didn’t work Fukuoka. The other was one of the wrestlers in a six-man tag team match on 5/3 with Okada & Sho & Yoh vs. Minoru Suzuki & Desperado & Yoshinobu Kanemaru. New Japan CEO Naoki Sugabayashi came out at the start of 5/4 and announced Okada, Sho, Yoh, Suzuki, Desperado and Kanemaru were off the show due to COVID protocols. One of the six was sick and the other five were pulled off the show because they were in close contract with him. Both of the wrestlers who had gotten sick were tested for COVID and in both cases the results came in positive. That eliminated the Desperado IWGP jr. title defense against Yoh on the 5/4 show. Whether they will be ready for the next major show, which is 5/15 at Yokohama Stadium, is unclear, but after that the big show is the Tokyo Dome. This cut the second night to five matches.

The biggest news coming out of Rey de Reyes was the beginning of the angle for a planned Kenny Omega vs. Andrade El Idolo AAA mega heavyweight championship match at TripleMania. No date or place was announced for the show. The date and location are scheduled to be announced by the end of the month at a press conference. It is known that from the time Andrade got his release that this match was in the planning stages, and that was why Andrade mentioned Omega’s name in every post-WWE interview. Andrade did an interview that aired at the end of the show saying that he was coming to AAA for two reasons, one was to have a singles match with Psycho Clown, but he said that was his secondary goal, and the other was to face Omega and bring the championship back to Mexico. The promo was in Spanish but we were told the promo was very effective in getting him and the proposed match over ... The other big story for TripleMania is that Deonna Purrazzo, the Impact woman’s champion, will be defending her title against the new AAA Reina de Reinas champion, Faby Apache. Purrazzo was brought in to do commentary in the elimination match for the title last held by Taya, that involved Apache, Lady Shani, Flammer, Chik Tormenta, Lady Maravilla and a new woman called Sexy Star. AAA owns the Sexy Star name so they want to create a new one. This stuff rarely works, as fans see the new person as a copy of someone more famous. You can argue the second Mistico worked, but the fans at first rejected him and it wasn’t until he was just so spectacular that the fans finally got behind him.

The Federacion Wrestling promotion, a new group where Rush appears to have major power and backed by a concert promotion, announced a debut PPV show on 6/19 featuring, as noted before, a lot of high-priced talent. They announced a six-match show, with a $20.25 price tag on PPV. No live location was announced nor was anything said about tickets to a live show. PPV has never worked in Mexico previously. The main event is listed as Andrade El Idolo & Bestia del Ring & Rush and a mystery partner facing Matt Taven & PJ Black and two mystery partners. Federacion is attempting to sign top talent from both AAA and CMLL to exclusive deals for far more money than the talent is being paid currently. The hold-up is that a lot of wrestlers are skeptical if this group will make it, and thus, afraid if they leave that, particularly with CMLL which has the reputation of if you leave you can’t return, that they are risking their careers knowing CMLL will book them forever and they’ll be able to make a living as long as they physically can perform ... At the 4/30 press conference, the big news was the announcement of Andrade, although we had reported his name as being with the promotion. The belief is that the top talent has not signed exclusively for Mexico. Running a PPV event with television in Mexico has never worked. The attempt here is to do it with no television promotion. The promotional video released introduced Damiana Vicenzoa as the storyline CEO.

NJPW: Kevin Kelly is in Japan right now under quarantine so he can do the Yokohama Stadium and Tokyo Dome shows live from ringside. He will be doing live English for all the shows from 5/15 to 6/6, including Dominion. He was in Japan for Dontaku but the commentary was not live because he was still in quarantine.

Hall of Famer Atsushi Onita, 63, announced he was starting yet another new wrestling company, this called Frontier Martial Arts-Wrestling Explosion. FMWE takes the name of the promotion that launched Onita into superstardom, the Frontier Martial Arts-Wrestling group (FMW) of the early 90s. The show will produce cards where the main events will all be explosive barbed wire death matches with the first show on 7/4 in Yokohama at the Tsurumi Fruit and Vegetable Market. Onita at the press conference said he came up with the idea for the new group after seeing the success from a business standpoint of the Kenny Omega vs. Jon Moxley match in AEW. The money behind the group is Hidetaka Kajiki, the owner of Kofu-Field Co. Ltd., a Japanese construction company. He claimed the promotion would get worldwide distribution

Tommy Dreamer, 50, noted that he’s been battling COVID-19 for the past three plus weeks. That’s why he wasn’t at the Impact PPV and tapings. On his podcast, he talked about getting sick while doing a tour of Alaska for the Wrestle Pro promotion. He said he took the booking because he had wrestled in 49 of the 50 states in the U.S., and Alaska was the one place he had never wrestled. He said when he got there and saw all the fans and few masks, he said he knew it was a mistake. He said that more than a dozen wrestlers on the tour ended up with COVID even though everyone was tested before leaving on the tour. He was really mad because both his wife and one of his daughters got it from him when he returned home. That explains why Matt Striker on the Rebellion PPV gave his best wishes to Tommy Dreamer & wife Beulah (her name is Trisa but they met in ECW and in wrestling she’s known from her gig there as Beulah McGillicutty who was a key person during the heyday of the company). Dreamer described his battle as saying that for 17 days he felt like he had a massive concussion, was suffering from chills and heavy sweating. He said one night he felt so bad he couldn’t walk or go the bathroom and said his hips and elbows felt like they were on fire and in so much pain he couldn’t use his arms. He said at other points laying in bed was so painful that he had to stand up against the wall. He said at times he felt like he was going to die, noted he had blood clots due to pain in his legs and fears the disease would cause him long-term health problems

MLW: As expected, Luis Fernandez Gil, who played Dario Cueto in Lucha Underground, made a cameo on the show and was revealed as El Jefe, which in theory was step one in the Azteca Underground project. Gil will be at the 2300 Arena for the 7/10 tapings which will be the first new shows on Vice. The announcement of Gil as the leader of the company that has purchased Promociones Dorado also means Salina de la Renta is no longer going to be part of the show The first show on Vice on 5/1 didn’t rank in the top 150 shows for the day, which went down to an 0.03 in 18-49 for No. 150 Throughout May and June, MLW will be doing a live open draft with “SuperCard: The Game” as the sponsor and Alicia Atout as the host. They will be adding newer and higher profile names through adding a larger budget through new media deals. It’s not been explained what the draft is past that their concept is that people who would have been called managers in old wrestling are referred to as promoters, like Cueto, Konnan, Col. Rob Parker (Robert Fuller) and there will be others added to the mix. They are also apparently going to mix in representatives from RevPro in the U.K. and Dragon Gate to the draft.

IMPACT: Slammiversary has been set for 7/17. The key to that date is that the recent WWE cuts 90 day non-competes end a few days earlier. Last year when WWE made cuts, they built Slammiverary around teasing which WWE stars would be debuting and did their best PPV number in several years (it was since broken with Rebellion)

Those at AEW note regarding the Revolution television PPV buys, that they won’t know the number until 60 days after the event, but they are not expecting the number to be in the 71,000 range

AEW: To quell rumors, at this point, and of course decisions like this could change in the future, but right now they are not close to signing Tessa Blanchard, or Daga for that matter and neither has even been made an offer. Everyone knows the situation. She could be one of the top stars in the company and of great value to the division, but her past has made it to where up to this point the decision has been made not to try and bring her in. There were reports of them signing, I guess stemming from our report that Daga was close to signing somewhere and that AAA expects by the late summer they could bring him back

The 5/7 Smackdown show will be some sort of a retro show. That’s part of a tie-in with a NASCAR race on FOX with a similar theme so that’s where it came from. So this appears to have been a FOX directive. Rollins vs. Cesaro is the only match announced so far

Ratings:

SPOILER: show

With the NFL draft and the big news numbers on Wednesday, Raw was No. 8 for the week on cable in 18-49 and AEW was No. 19. Raw on 5/3 rebounded from the weak number last week, doing 1,872,000 viewers, 0.53 (685,000 viewers) in 18-49 and 0.32 in 18-34. The most notable thing was the big rise in hour two, which did the peak numbers of 1,979,000 viewers and 0.57. The show was up 5.5 percent in total viewers from last week, 8.7 percent in 18-49 and 39.4 percent in 18-34. From the same week last year, when Raw was at the Performance Center and the same week hit the all-time viewership, the Thunderdome set up helped them increase 11.3 percent in viewers, 15.2 percent in 18-49 and 52.4 percent in 18-34. Raw was first for the night in 18-49, second in women 18-49, second in men 18-49 (to the late NBA game), second in 18-34, second in women 12-34 and third in men 12-34 (behind two NBA games). The show finished seventh in total viewers behind six news shows. The big competition was two NBA games on ESPN. The early game did 1,119,000 viewers and 0.34 and with the ESPN 2 simulcast it was 1,393,000 and 0.46, and the late game only on ESPN did 1,100,000 viewers and 0.43. The first hour did 1,891,000 viewers. The second hour did 1,979,000 viewers. The third hour did 1,746,000 viewers. As far as the first-to-third hour drops, women 18-49 dropped 13.3 percent, men 18-49 dropped 12.7 percent, teenage girls dropped 5.1 percent, teenage boys gained 21.8 percent and over 50 dropped 2.2 percent, which is much lower than usual. The show did a 0.24 in 12-17 (up 9.1 percent from last week), 0.32 in 18-34 (up 39.4 percent), 0.74 in 35-49 (down 1.7 percent) and 0.93 in 50+ (up 2.2 percent).

Smackdown on 4/30 did a 1.25 rating with 2,018,000 viewers (1.33 viewers per home) and 0.49 (631,000 viewers) in 18-49 and 0.30 in 18-34. On paper, this should have done the biggest number in a long time with Roman Reigns defending the title against Daniel Bryan where Bryan would have to leave Smackdown if he lost. Obviously the draft hurt it, but a title match with a contender that did three PPV matches including WrestleMania, with the leaving town stips should have done a monster number and even with football it should have done a good number. In 18-49, this was the lowest number the show has done since July 24, 2020. Aside from the month of July in 2020, it was the lowest number the show has done since moving to FOX. The message was loud and clear that nobody buys WWE stips, and after decades of not adhering to them, why should they? So it was the call wolf rating, because this time, the stip was real. Really, unless it’s a gimmick match, it appears extreme stipulations to modern fans are basically a waste of time since the idea is generally to increase viewership or sales. In this case, because of the situation with Bryan, there actually was a reason to do the storyline just to perhaps tie up loose ends but the fact it didn’t work and people didn’t buy it was sad. Technically Smackdown won the night among network shows with the 0.49, but that’s actually misleading since the draft blew it away, but the younger draft viewership was on ESPN and the ABC version only did a 0.47 in 18-49 and 0.28 in 18-34, so Smackdown also won in 18-34. Of the seven network shows, Smackdown was tied for fifth in women 18-49, was second in men 18-49 and last in over 50, as well as last in total viewers. The big decline was with males 35-49, which again tells you the draft was the reason. The show did 134,000 viewers in males 18-34 (up 3.1 percent from last week), 79,000 in women 18-34 (down 14.1 percent from last week), 223,000 in males 35-49 (down 23.1 percent from last week) and 195,000 in women 35-49 (up 2.6 percent). The audience was 56.6 percent male in 18-49. The show was down 2.3 percent in homes watching, 4.8 percent in viewers, 0.1 percent in 18-49 and 6.3 percent in 18-34. As compared to last year, the show was up 0.8 percent in homes, up 7.1 percent in viewers, down 1.3 percent in 18-49 and up 25.0 percent in 18-34. It was up from last year in the Performance Center but the 0.49 was the lowest the show has done since August. The show took a major hit from the second day of the NFL draft, which aired on ABC, ESPN and the NFL network and did a combined 5,489,000 viewers and 1.67 in 18-49 and 1.16 in 18-34.

NXT on 5/4 fell to No. 21 averaging 761,000 viewers but down to 0.18 (229,000 viewers) in 18-49 and 0.08 in 18-34. In the demo, they are down to around what they were doing on Wednesdays in 18-34 and almost as far down in 18-49. As compared to the week before, the show was up 2.3 percent in viewers, but down 22.6 percent in 18-49 and down 28.0 percent in 18-34. The show did 29,000 viewers in male 18-34 (down 34.1 percent from last week), 25,000 in women 18-34 (down 19.4 percent), 108,000 in male 35-49 (down 6.9 percent) and 67,000 in women 35-49 (down 25.6 percent). The major sports were NBA on TNT at 1,118,00 viewers and 0.38 and Baseball on ESPN at 740,000 and 0.18. As compared to last year this week, the show was up 15.1 percent in total viewers, but was even in 18-49 and down 20.0 percent in 18-34. The first quarter with Leon Ruff vs. Isaiah Scott did 712,000 viewers and 180,000 in 18-49. The second quarter with the Ruff vs. Scott finish, Johnny Gargano, William Regal, Scarlett and Austin Theory and Cameron Grimes vs. Asher Hale did 697,000 viewers and 203,000 in 18-49. The third quarter with Franky Monet, Kacy Catanzaro and Kayden Carter interview and Grizzled Young Veterans vs. Tommaso Ciampa & Timothy Thatcher did 719,000 viewers and 223,000 in 18-49. This was the show peak for women 35-49. The fourth quarter with the ending of Veterans vs. Ciampa & Thatcher and Regal with Gargano and Theory did 772,000 viewers and 244,000 in 18-49. The fifth quarter with Karrion Kross, Scarlett, Kyle O’Reilly, Pete Dunne and Finn Balor did 809,000 viewers and 265,000 in 18-49. This was the show peak for men 35-49 and overall 18-49. The sixth quarter with Sarray vs. Zeda Ramier, the Walter zoom pep talk, LA Knight vs. Jake Atlas and Candice LeRae and Indi Hartwell backstage did 763,000 viewers and 247,000 in 18-49. This was te show peak for women 18-34. The seventh quarter with interview segments with Toni Storm, Legado del Fantasma and Kushida and Raquel Gonzalez & Mercedes Martinez did 772,000 viewers and 237,000 in 18-49. The final quarter with the Grimes and Ted DiBiase segment plus the beginning of Shotzi Blackheart & Ember Moon vs. LeRae & Hartwell did 788,000 viewers and 239,000 in 18-49. The overrun eight minutes with the end of the tag title street fight did 859,000 viewers and 255,000 in 18-49. This was the show peak for males 18-34 and total viewers. The show did a 0.12 in 12-17 (up 9.1 percent), 0.08 in 18-34 (down 28.0 percent), 0.28 in 35-49 (down 15.0 percent) and 0.41 in 50+ (up 13.9 percent).

For the first time in the history of the promotion, AEW placed first on cable with a combined live and taped Dynamite show on 5/5 built around “Blood and Guts,” essentially the closest thing in decades to the original War Games concept that Dusty Rhodes invented in 1987 ... The show did 1,090,000 viewers and 0.42 (548,000 viewers) in 18-49. The number is more impressive because it came on Cinco de Mayo, when the top entertainment shows on cable as a composite group were down 20.5 percent from the last “normal” Wednesday, two weeks ago, in the 18-49 demo. Last week’s numbers were 11.9 percent below usual for regular programming due to the President Biden speech. On a regular Wednesday this would have done a number unheard of for the company aside from week one, likely in the 0.55 range.. In particular, in Males 18-49, where AEW did 0.58, the combined rating viewership of the second and third biggest shows of the night with men was 0.50 (0.26 for a major league baseball game and 0.24 for Challenge, the show that has dominated the top spot on Wednesdays most weeks for the last several months). In overall 18-49, AEW also beat both ABC and CBS during the two-hour period. The promotion also set its all-time record in Canada, where Cinco de Mayo had no affect on the rating, with 160,900 viewers and 97,400 in 25-54 ... As expected with a bloodbath, you got two different reactions. Based on quarter hours, from the first 15 minutes to the last, men viewers increased 17 percent during the match while women dropped nine percent. Using minute-by-minutes those percentages would likely be higher. That’s exactly what you would expect from a bloodbath match and was known going in. But when you do that type of a match and call it blood & guts, since you aren’t delivering guts, you do have to deliver blood. The key is to not do this every week, and that won’t be happening. In these situations, doing it less means more, and doing it more will lead to declines in different demos. Still, the gains greatly outweighed the losses as the final quarter did 1,210,000 viewers and 614,000 in 18-49 (0.47).

AEW Dynamite did a great number on a bad night for cable with 1,090,000 viewers and an 0.42 (548,000 viewers) in 18-49 and 0.19 in 18-34. Besides being the first time in the history of the show that it was No. 1 for the night on cable, beat two of the four networks in 18-49, it’s also the fist week in history where it won males 35-49, with 279,000 viewers to 264,000 for Raw and 223,000 for Smackdown. The show finished fourth in women 18-49 for the night, doubled everything in men 18-49, was third in 18-34, eighth in women 12-34, first in men 12-34 and first by a wide margin in 25-54. The entire Blood & Guts presentation was 45 minutes and averaged 1,171,000 viewers and 584,000 in 18-49, which was 105,000 in men 18-34, 47,000 in women 18-34, 303,000 in men 35-49 and 129,000 in women 35-49. From the first 15 minutes of Blood & Guts, before the bleeding, to the end, men 18-49 gained 383,000 to 447,000 while women fell from 184,000 to 167,000. But aside from women 35-49, everything was overall way up during the match than from the rest of the show. The show did 92,000 in men 18-34 (up 58.6 percent from last week), 39,000 in women 18-34 (down 23.5 percent), 279,000 in men 35-49 (up 28,0 percent) and 138,000 in women 35-49 (up 36.6 percent). From last week, the show was up 22.6 percent in viewers, 27.8 percent in 18-49 and 20.2 percent in 18-34. As compared to the same week one year ago, the show was up 48.9 percent in viewers, 50.0 percent in 18-49 and 11.8 percent in 18-34. The first quarter with Kenny Omega & Michael Nakazawa vs. Jon Moxley & Eddie Kingston, plus the Young Bucks & Doc Gallows & Karl Anderson post-match attack did 1,093,000 viewers and 551,000 in 18-49. The second quarter with Cody Rhodes vs. QT Marshall did 1,014,000 viewers and 524,000 in 18-49. The third quarter with Rhodes vs. Marshall, the post-match, a vignette with Ethan Page, Scorpio Sky and Darby Allin and Britt Baker vs. Julia Hart did 1,081,000 viewers and 547,000 in 18-49. This was the high point with women 35-49. In quarter four, Taz’s interview on Christian and the SCU vs. Jurassic Express vs. Acclaimed vs. Brian Pillman Jr. & Griff Garrison tag title match for a title shot did 983,000 viewers and 487,000 in 18-49. The fifth quarter, with the Kenny Omega & Orange Cassidy segment, the Miro interview and the Moxley vs. Yuji Nagata package did 1,031,000 viewers and 517,000 in 18-49. The sixth quarter with Blood & Guts did 1,144,000 viewers and 567,000 in 18-49. This was the high point with women 18-34. The seventh quarter with Blood & Guts did 1,156,000 viewers and 572,000 in 18-49. The eighth quarter with Blood & Guts did 1,210,000 viewers and 614,000 in 18-49. This was the high point with males 18-34 and males 35-49, total viewers and overall 18-49. The show did a 0.13 in 12-17 (up 30.0 percent from last week), 0.19 in 18-34 (up 20.2 percent), 0.75 in 35-49 (up 30.7 percent) and 0.43 in 50+ (up 16.2 percent).

Impact on 4/29 for the first show after Rebellion fell to 120,000 viewers but did an 0.05 in 18-49. The ratings for shows with Kenny Omega are not necessarily all that different aside from week one and one other week, but the 18-49 numbers and makeup of the audience is. With Omega on the show, they skew much younger. Previously they were the oldest skewing wrestling show and this past week they were the youngest skewing. They are way down in over 50 but up in 18-49 from what they were doing last year. The viewership was down 17.2 percent from last week’s go-home show, likely as much due to the draft, but 18-49 was the same.

For the week of 4/26 to 5/2, and these are actual numbers from a system that monitors and not Nielsen ratings so these are exact numbers based on a sample of millions of homes, as of the end of 5/4, AEW did 57 percent of its viewers live for the 4/28 show, 34 percent on DVR and 9 percent on video-on-demand. Keep in mind this would be DVR+7. Impact was 73 percent live, 24 percent DVR and 3 percent VOD and that would be DVR+6. ROH would have been 90 percent live, 9 percent DVR and 1 percent VOD and that would be for the most part DVR+3 (the time slot varies depending on the city but most markets show it on Saturday). Raw would be 75 percent live, 21 percent DVR and 4 percent VOD and that’s DVR+7. NXT would be 72 percent live, 24 percent and 4 percent VOD and that would be DVR+7. Smackdown was 67 percent live, 25 percent DVD (which would be +4) and 8 percent VOD. For the average viewer of the shows last week, AEW’s average viewer watched 70 percent of the show. NXT’s average viewer watched 50 percent. Raw’s average viewer watched 60 percent. Smackdown’s average viewer watched 55 percent. Impact’s average viewer watched 50 percent. And ROH’s average viewer watched 62 percent. What that translates into is that including all forms of viewing, the average minute of AEW last week did 1,556,000 viewers, Impact 164,000, Raw was 2,365,000, NXT is 1,034,000 and Smackdown is 3,057,000. The actual total number of individual viewers during the show over a one week period between live, VOD and DVR viewing (air date up through 5/4) who tuned in at some point was 2,224,000 for AEW, 328,000 for Impact, 3,942,000 for RAW, 2,068,000 for NXT and 5,558,000 for Smackdown.