offical wwe thread

[Lee_Rekka]

If Muto had to close his own promotion down and sign with NOAH, it stands to reason that he needs NOAH more than NOAH needs him.

Mutoh couldn't wrestle for his promotion for a while because of his bad knees, so his promotion died without him, because his shit roster couldn't draw without him, not unlike Noah's roster outside of a couple guys. That being said I could give a fuck either way about Wrestle-1 or Noah today. I just know they wouldn't be able to hold a Budokan show without him. The last time Noah held a Budokan show was in 2013, and he was the headliner again, with Kobashi and Kensuke.

Basically there are no new talent draws in Japan besides Okada. That is a pretty grim sign for the state of wrestling in Japan.

 

[famicommander]

Wrasslin TV this week versus this week last year:
Smackdown: 0.57, 1.99 million viewers (18.6% decline in rating, 19.2% decline in viewers versus last year)
Raw: 0.49, 1.715 million viewers (38.8% decline in rating, 26.6% decline in viewers versus last year)
AEW: 0.29, 741,000 viewers (3.3% decline in rating, 9.3% decline in viewers versus last year)
NXT: 0.12, 558,000 viewers (50% decline in rating, 26.3% decline in viewers versus last year)
Impact: 0.04, 153,000 viewers (13% decline in viewers versus last year; last year's demo rating isn't available)

MLW's home network is too small to be tracked and ROH airs on a composite of different networks in different timeslots and markets so their numbers are rarely posted. Consensus places them in between NXT and Impact somewhere. MLW is probably barely drawing a 5 digit number on TV but then they also air on Fubo, DAZN, and Youtube. And of course international numbers aren't included for any of the five promotions.

What stands out is how much better AEW is doing relative to the same week last year. The reason for it is the much younger, much more engaged fanbase. Notice how NXT does about 75% of AEW's viewership but only 41% of AEW's rating. That means that a much, much larger percentage of NXT's audience is over 50 years old and no longer relevant to the ratings.

 

[norton9478]

2 million viewers on network TV on a Friday night.

And they are paying $4 million dollars an episode.

 

[famicommander]

2 million viewers on network TV on a Friday night.

And they are paying $4 million dollars an episode.

Network TV doesn't give a rat's ass about total viewership. They care about the rating. Smackdown was #3 in the ratings, being beaten by ABC's Shark Tank and 20/20. But they beat everything that aired on NBC, CBS, or The CW. 4 million dollars is pretty cheap compared to most broadcast shows, especially since Smackdown covers 120 minutes of airtime, and Smackdown covers 52 weeks instead of the standard 13-26 episode seasons and 30-60 minute runtimes of broadcast shows.

Cable cares a little bit more than network TV does about total viewership since the network is usually getting some kind of a kickback in subscriber fees based on viewers, but they also make the bulk of their cash on the demo rating.

That's WWE's game at this point. Quantity. 3 hours of Raw, 2 hours of Smackdown, 2 hours of NXT, 1 hour of NXT UK, 1 hour of 205 Live, and 1 hour of Main Event x 52 weeks per year to sell to TV networks and streaming services. NXT is coming to India and Mexico soon too, so expect two more hours of boring garbage to be added. And they tried to buy NOAH and STARDOM to establish NXT Japan, but other Japanese promotions scooped them up to prevent it. NBC paid a billion dollars to put WWE Network on Peacock for 5 years.

 

[famicommander]

Teddy Hart has been arrested again.

For injuring the elderly/disabled/children. Again. This is the second time since October he's been arrested on those charges. This time he added some drug charges and evading arrest on top of them.

There is a Twitter account that updates daily on whether or not Teddy Hart is in jail:
https://twitter.com/IsTeddyInJail

Sometimes he is sentenced to more jail for separate crimes than the ones he is in jail for at the time.

Gotta wonder why they keep letting him out. He has had multiple DUIs, multiple rape charges in Canada, an ex-girlfriend who disappeared and was never found, several domestic violence incidents, several drug charges, and now apparently several charges of assaulting the elderly/disabled/children. And he's a crazy cat person. Dude has like 40 cats.

 

[norton9478]

He's trying to make for the craziest "Dark Side of the Ring" episode.

 

[famicommander]

WWE is about to debut another new NXT show called NXT Evolve. It is described as "NXT for NXT".

Yo dawg, I heard you liked developmental so I put developmental in your developmental so you can develop talent while you develop talent

 

[wataru330]

 

[norton9478]

The worst thing is that WWE has all of these shows and they all are more or less the same.

 

[famicommander]

In AAA being AAA news:
-On last week's episode of MLW Fusion, MLW Middleweight Champion Lio Rush beat Laredo Kid to win the AAA World Cruiserweight Championship.
-This match was taped way back in October, but Laredo continued to carry the belt until it actually aired on television
-It aired between Wednesday and Saturday depending on where you live and where you watch
-AAA officially recognized Lio Rush as champion on February 10, last Wednesday
-Laredo Kid then, for some reason, defended the title successfully at a live event on the following Saturday
-It now seems that AAA may not even be allowed to promote the title outside Mexico in the first place because, as we've established, their US operations are suing their Mexican operations. This may be why Omega and the Lucha Bros don't carry their respective AAA Mega and World Tag Team belts around on AEW TV much.

So we really have no idea what this means for Lio Rush.

-Taya Valkyrie has signed with WWE despite still being AAA Reina de Reinas Champion. AAA has a working agreement with Impact and they were too stupid to have her drop the belt to one of Impact's talents on her way out of the company. So they will likely vacate the title upon Taya's official WWE debut. Even if they can't promote their titles now, they've known she was leaving for several months.

-Both AAA and CMLL have laid off pretty much everybody that isn't related to the owners from their office staffs.

-CMLL is clear to start running shows in Mexico City again but they haven't announced a show yet. They did run a charity event at their arena in Guadalajara but it wasn't branded as a CMLL show. They still have plenty of content pretaped to last for several months if need be.

-AAA has about 5 weeks worth of matches left if they keep airing them on TV at their current rate. The company is hoping to tape something in March but that's still a huge question mark.

 

[famicommander]

I'm 5 minutes into MLW Fusion and it's already the worst episode I've ever seen

 

[famicommander]

https://aztecaunderground.com

MLW is doing some kind of Lucha Underground rip off. Mil Muertes is already there and it looks like Dario Cueto is next.

 

[BanishingFlatsAC]

As a huge fan of LU, I sat down and watched MLW. Good fucking lord what a train wreck that show was. How do people watch this every week?

 

[famicommander]

As a huge fan of LU, I sat down and watched MLW. Good fucking lord what a train wreck that show was. How do people watch this every week?

It's not usually this bad. This was the worst episode I've ever seen, and I've seen them all including the MLW Underground episodes from 2002-2004. But this whole batch of post-COVID layoff tapings have been ridiculously bad. A few good matches scattered here and there, but mostly hot garbage.

Before COVID MLW was putting on good shows every week. I dunno what the fuck happened.

 

[BanishingFlatsAC]

It's not usually this bad. This was the worst episode I've ever seen, and I've seen them all including the MLW Underground episodes from 2002-2004. But this whole batch of post-COVID layoff tapings have been ridiculously bad. A few good matches scattered here and there, but mostly hot garbage.

Before COVID MLW was putting on good shows every week. I dunno what the fuck happened.

I’ve seen a lot of their big spots in compilations, so I was expecting more then this. If they really did buy the assets of LU from the El Rey fire sale for their Spanish language program, then I hope they have a different set of producers in it. King Mo vs Low Ki made the Moose vs Dreamer match from last nights Impact look like the match of the year.

 

[famicommander]

I’ve seen a lot of their big spots in compilations, so I was expecting more then this. If they really did buy the assets of LU from the El Rey fire sale for their Spanish language program, then I hope they have a different set of producers in it. King Mo vs Low Ki made the Moose vs Dreamer match from last nights Impact look like the match of the year.

I don't have hope for it to improve soon. They taped a ridiculous number of episodes at once which means it'll be a while before they can correct course.

Wrestling TV is a wasteland right now. WWE is WCW 2000 bad, AEW is hot garbage most weeks (this week's card looks great on paper, we'll see how they fuck it up), Impact is hot garbage, the once reliable MLW is now worse than late Hogan era TNA.

We'll see what NJPW posts for their Roku episode tomorrow. Last week they posted a whole Wrestle Kingdom show, which was rad, but it's not really what they advertised. Supposed to be a weekly show like the one they used to have on AXS. If they can start putting out a normal weekly show again that'll really help. There's always their US show NJPW Strong, but that's only on NJPW World or you can buy it per episode, but ain't nobody wanna do that. It would be nice if they could post that to Roku Channel too going forward.

Otherwise it's really just ROH right now as far as quality, English-language weekly shows.

 

[StevenK]

What makes the difference between a good show and a bad show? Educate me.

 

[famicommander]

What makes the difference between a good show and a bad show? Educate me.

Entertaining matches, entertaining characters, storylines that make you invest in said characters and the outcomes of said matches.

Pretty much the same things that make a kung fu movie good or bad. Except with wrestling the stunts are performed live.

 

[famicommander]

62 year old Sting taking powerbombs on Dynamite. Not good.

The women's match was ace though.

 

[famicommander]

JR refers to Omega as WWE champion

Then we get a cringeworthy segment with Kenny Omega reading a book to school kids

 

[StevenK]

Entertaining matches, entertaining characters, storylines that make you invest in said characters and the outcomes of said matches.

Pretty much the same things that make a kung fu movie good or bad. Except with wrestling the stunts are performed live.

Is there much attention paid to the writers? Does a particular writer coming on board suggest things might improve?

 

[famicommander]

Is there much attention paid to the writers? Does a particular writer coming on board suggest things might improve?

There's a difference between a writer and a booker.

The booker is the person who sets up the matches and chooses the general direction of the promotion as a whole. He sets up the guidelines and the major story points. Historically the specific storylines and actual match sequences are laid out by producers, generally former wrestlers, or the active wrestlers themselves.

Hiring actual creative writers only became a thing really in the mid 1990s and it mostly made things stupider. Right now I think WWE is the only major promotion that has a staff of writers.

Nobody gives a shit about writers but who the booker is can generally tell you how good a product is going to be. If you watch enough wrestling you know what to expect with the bookers that have been around forever.

 

[famicommander]

a god damn gender reveal party on a wrestling show

 

[StevenK]

What is your take on wrestling being a vehicle to make a total mockery of the depravity of combat "sports" and the lowlifes who enjoy watching people try to give each other concussions?

 

[famicommander]

What is your take on wrestling being a vehicle to make a total mockery of the depravity of combat "sports" and the lowlifes who enjoy watching people try to give each other concussions?

sounds like something that someone who makes their children dig trash out of dumpsters on their weekends would say