Wrestling Observer Newsletter

PO Box 1228, Campbell, CA 95009-1228 ISSN10839593 May 6, 2019

 

IMPACT REBELLION POLL RESULTS

Thumbs up 72 (100.0%)

Thumbs down 0 (00.0%)

In the middle 0 (00.0%)

 

BEST MATCH POLL

LAX vs. Pentagon Jr. & Fenix 45

Tessa Blanchard vs. Gail Kim 27

 

WORST MATCH POLL

Scarlett Bordeaux vs. Rohit Raju 55

Brian Cage vs. Johnny Impact 12

Based on e-mails and phone calls to the Observer as of Tuesday, 4/30.

 

Before the 4/25 WWE earnings report, analysts who, for average, pegged the stock value at $105 or greater per share, noted that the company would likely lose money in the first quarter and it was nothing to worry about given the new TV contracts and huge profits coming in October.

So what happened?

First, the company greatly missed on analysts predictions, falling $15 million to $17 million short on revenue, and losing about $8.4 million during the quarter as opposed to the $700,000 to $800,000 loss number that was projected.

The stock, which earlier in the week topped the magic $100 per share mark, closed on 5/1 at $82.63 per share. It had a big decline after the telling results of the quarter, which continued for a few days. It started coming back but then fell another $1.22 per share on 5/1 after the announcement of the Saudi Arabia show. It left the company with a market value of $6.449 billion.

Still, the company’s long-term economics are no different today than they were a few weeks ago. But for the first time, the stock market analysts did start to notice what fans have noted for years, that the real economic engagement metrics and metrics of paying popularity are declining at a significant rate, and getting worse.

The problem is that, while fans know there are issues with the company, when it comes to creative, creating stars and connecting with a very unique audience, many others have been buffaloed for years with the fake stats that, quite frankly, a lot of investors are buffaloed by. But in this case reality hit. All those billions of social media followers and trillions of YouTube views, yet all that does is expose how meaningless those numbers are when every single aspect of consumer spending on business was way down even without figures in those categories comparing favorably to even people like the NFL and NBA.

To some, WWE’s explanation that it was an unusual quarter due to so many injuries, but that everyone is now back, holds little water. Injuries are common and there will always be them. Largely because, with the absence of John Cena, who has largely moved on, nobody else who is a significant player wasn’t there this quarter. Roman Reigns returned late in the quarter and business fell further behind last year after his very brief return. Seth Rollins was injured but the audience was never told, he was still featured on all but a few TV shows and advertised for all the house shows. They put over that things are changing because they’ve brought up so many new people from NXT who are just starting, except they’ve already squandered almost all of them. The only two they’ve gotten behind were Lars Sullivan and Lacey Evans, which says where the mentality about new stars is, exactly like 30 years ago, a freakish body in guys and below average work and above average looks for women. And to Evans’ credit, she does carry herself like a star, but with the quality of the consistent in-ring level so high (by WWE standards, not world standards obviously), is there an audience that wants to see nice looking woman do average or below average wrestling matches in spotlight positions?

The company, due to the TV deals that start paying off in October, is still completely idiot proof . Despite confidently saying they knew the answer of how to fix the problems, this quarter showed the opposite, with significant declines in ratings, attendance and merchandise sales, and for the first time, a small decline in network subscriptions.

The key is the biggest time period of the year, the lead to WrestleMania, resulted in far less interest across the board than any year in recent memory. Even some artificial things, such as running a stadium instead of an arena for Royal Rumble, and doing less house shows, so the better attended television should make for a higher average, still couldn’t come close to camouflaging the decline.

The declines were such that the company had to address it. The previous story was that they were down, but they were going to redo the arena business, knew the problems and knew the solutions.

Here we are, and the arena business hasn’t improved, even its most favorable time of the year, and the declines in all aspects were the most significant to date.

If you throw out the Rumble, live events were down to a 4,422 per show average. The Raws leading to WrestleMania, even in markets like Boston and Chicago, failed to sell out.

Vince McMahon opened the call getting right to the subject everyone wanted answers for, but his answer should have been far more concerning.

“We had a very unusual situation in terms of top talents as well as mid-card talent being out, some 15 talents, of course, in that period. When you don’t have talent, you don’t have storylines, you’re not going to do that well in terms of live events , in terms of television ratings, it was like a cascade of things that happened. I’m happy to say, we have all those challenges. But in addition to that, we have new challenges coming in.

“And during that period of time, when top talent was out, we made new talent, and just to belabor the point in terms of where we are with the quarter, but the future, and when you look at that and I’m not trying to pull the future for you guys, except to tell you what it’s going t be like. We’ve hired new people on the writing team that are going to help us out in terms of television ratings and digital, social, all that sort of stuff. We’ve got a new team in terms of live events that have just started now. So we’ll see the live events are going to continue on an upward trend.”

Co-President George Barrios also used the injury excuse to explain the first quarter declines.

“As Vince mentioned last quarter, we discussed the absence of several talent and our belief is these absences had a negative impact on our engagement metrics. Q1 saw a continuation of these trends, as domestic ratings for Raw and Smackdown declined approximately 14 percent and 13 percent respectively and average attendance at our North American events declined 11 percent. On a positive note, network average paid subscribers increased two percent and digital video consumption increased 23 percent. Looking to the future, we believe our engagement metrics will improve with the return of our talent, the emergence of new storylines and new superstars and as well as launch our new season following a successful WrestleMania.”

The network average number for the quarter being up is misleading, because it was up above last year in December and January, but declined from last year in February and March to the point the end number was down.

So the excuse for the decline was injuries. This has been, at least the ticket sales and merchandise end of the business, one that is star driven. But who was really out? John Cena was gone, and it’s clear that hurts a lot, particularly to swing fans. But he’s largely moved on and can’t be the face of the company any longer. And that’s not something they can tell investors, who think all the money they spend on developmental should lead to all kinds of new superstars and that you can handpick the next Cena, which isn’t the case.

Roman Reigns has been pushed as the new top star, and he was out of action until 2/25, but he was back for nearly half the quarter, and the important half. Braun Strowman was injured, but he also returned. The reality is the declines increased after Reigns, Rollins, Strowman, Owens and Zayn returned. Becky Lynch did an injury angle and didn’t wrestle on house shows, but he was front and center on television on both brands, and only missed a few shows in selling injuries and a suspension. But that was all storyline, so the company can’t use the excuse of bad luck with her since they scripted it all themselves.

McMahon pushed that everything changes in the fall, when the FOX deal comes into play.

“We’re going to have, it’s almost like, it’s not quite a metamorphosis, but we’re going to have a whole new beginning,” he said. “We’re going, the promotional value alone notwithstanding rights fees and what have you, promotional value in terms of FOX, in terms of commitments from NBCU, is something we’ve never seen before, not even close.”

“It’s going to kick us into again, an element we’ve never seen before in terms of promotion with everything, WWE talent, storylines, you name it. So it’s a rising tide situation that we’re really looking forward to and having that carry on throughout the year.”

Everything does change. And all the reasons the stock was skyrocketing, the U.S. deals, the promise of a huge increase in rights in India, and the idea of doing a third hour of Smackdown and giving them more content to sell for big money, plus having the new weekly talk show on FS 1 in theory should increase visibility and popularity. It will generate more money.

WWE has been analyzing data, doing surveys, hiring companies to do market research and get ideas for changes and trying to find out from fans and others presenting ideas on what is wrong and what can make it right.

McMahon also said that new hires in the house show department would help get things turned around. The new hires are Jules Rice and Stefanie Stephens. Rice comes from the Houston Sports Authority and will be the rep in the Midwest. Stephens comes from Cirque du Soleil and Crickett Wireless and will be the rep in the Southeast.

Given the decline came at a time when women were pushed as headliners, that’s now led to the second guessing of women in the main event at WrestleMania. That may be unfair, in the sense that Rousey and Lynch were both strong quarter hour draws, but it is true that during the Mania build, shows that were built around women at the end of the show declined during the show at a faster rate than those with men in the climax position, and that’s with Rousey, Lynch and Charlotte Flair in the most pushed match during the quarter.

In addition, while WrestleMania would have sold out no matter what the main event was, as far as the live event went, it was the single most in-demand event on the secondary market in pro wrestling history. So while ratings were down leading to Mania, as was live attendance and the network numbers fell year-to-year for the first time in history, the secondary market demand, which is based on how many people wanted to see the show, indicates the women’s main event, or the show itself, was actually a huge success as far as not just people buying tickets before the card came out, but even more after the card came out. And that is about the main events, and the most promoted was the women.

However, Raw episodes where women have headlined this year have seen the audience decline at a faster rate than men, with men averaging a 12 percent first-to-third drop while women average a 20 percent drop. Every drop of less than ten percent has been with a male main event. In fact, of the five shows who held their audience the best, four have been shows headlined by Drew McIntyre and three by Rollins.

Of the five biggest drops, three were with women, all of which involved Rousey. There are mitigating reasons for this.

Of the men’s shows that lowered the average, one was a rare Cena main event match; one was a Rollins-Lesnar confrontation, again rare since Lesnar is a special character, one was McIntyre vs. Dean Ambrose falls count anywhere which was promoted as one of Ambrose’s last television match, one was McIntyre vs. Rollins and one was Reigns & Rollins and the promise of a major mystery partner (Styles) vs. Corbin & Lashley & McIntyre.

The main events that did the worst, mostly women, were more that they put women like Bayley, Ruby Riott and others in main events when all year they were presented as prelim. It would be like if they put McIntyre vs. Bobby Roode or Jinder Mahal in the main event position, the numbers would also plummet for the third hour.

The worst stuff was Rollins vs. Ambrose falls count anywhere, which had to do with the Ambrose heel turn being a disaster, Bayley & Sasha Banks vs. Rousey & Natalya which featured three women who weren’t seriously pushed all year and then were put in a main event spot, Rousey vs. Riott which was a long match (and one changed at the last minute from a short Rousey vs. Alexa Bliss match because there were issues and they needed a long match from Rousey, itself a bad idea for television, and felt Riott would be a good opponent, which she was, but she was never presented nor did people see her as a main eventer), and a Styles vs. Corbin match for a title shot. But there was a go-home segment with Rousey, Lynch and Charlotte Flair that didn’t do well, and the other worst in holding the audience was the Rollins vs. Kofi Kingston unification match.

Over the last several months, the drops for shows headlined by Rousey, Flair and Lynch in some combination were equal to the men, but if Bayley and Banks were in the final segment, it would go way down. Again, that’s not men vs. women as much as Bayley and Banks haven’t been presented as main eventers, so if you put them in a main event, they are going to end up with lots of people tuning out. It would be like right now, without a prolonged push, having Chad Gable or Bobby Roode or the Revival go on last. They wouldn’t do it, and if they were promoted in the main spot, the third hour would die. And that’s not that they don’t deserve it or aren’t good enough, but in most cases, you are viewed to a degree how you are presented, particularly when it comes to final segment positioning.

The theory is the greater exposure should lead to a new boom period of a reinvention of the product. FOX will, as long as the show stays on the network, put WWE weekly into about 115 million potential homes every Friday. That’s a big increase over the 89 million homes that have the USA Network available.

McMahon was directly asked if the decline in ratings is based on talent aging or fans getting tired of the talent. He was asked how long it takes to build another Cena or Reigns.

Paul Levesque answered with a very controversial one, saying that there is no direct timing. The reality is you can’t just make a star at that level. You have to luck into them, and then not ruin them before they make it.

“First of all, we don’t bring in superstars, we create them,” he said, which is notable since developmental has been all about bringing in established stars that are over the moment they arrive to the NXT audience, as opposed to building from scratch in most cases, and then having their creative almost always botched upon call-up. The last Takeover only had three people that WWE can claim credit in making stars, Velveteen Dream, Shayna Baszler and Bianca Belair, and really, Belair isn’t a real star yet.

As noted constantly, the fall brings with it new opportunities, but also new challenges and risks. The declining numbers increase the chance of an eventual failure on Friday.

While Smackdown, in theory, should gain 29 percent in viewers by being in 29 percent more homes, the reality is the wrestling fan base is far, far more likely to have cable and not be in that 26 million homes not serviced by cable. The move from Tuesday to Friday will cost probably 20 percent in popularity, based on the last time the show moved to Friday. But there is value in the inherent baseline numbers and potential for a show on FOX, not to mention when it starts, being promoted heavily on NFL Thursday telecasts and College and Pro Football on Saturday and Sunday. Still, even if they do get a big boost from promotion in October, and they will at first, unless the product is enticing, they won’t keep those new viewers.

Barrios was strong regarding all the promotion they expect to get from FOX and it being a turning point for the company’s business across the board.

“I actually think they’re going to overdeliver because it’s going to be good for them and us. I also think that may create kind of a rising tide with our partners at USA as well.”

“What that means for us and our business, both short-term and long-term, it’s a little bit harder. But certainly the number seen to, the numbers that we do know are in our favor.”

Another factor nobody is talking about is the time slot. If Smackdown is presented as sport, and those at FOX have told us that is the plan, that means it goes live. One of the things that greatly helps the ratings now of Raw and Smackdown is that it airs on three-hour delay, in prime time, on the West Coast. Smackdown’s West Coast numbers will take a huge hit if it airs on local stations from 5-7 p.m. on Fridays. It’s also not going to make local affiliates happy if their 6 p.m. news shows get moved every Friday on the West Coast. It’s one thing on Thursday night having to move for the NFL, but moving for pro wrestling is an entirely different matter, particularly if there are ratings issues and it badly hurts what has been strong Friday nights of late for FOX.

Regarding a third hour of Smackdown on FS 1, Barrios didn’t directly answer it, because he can’t, but did say, they are looking at six hours of live wrestling content being taped per week.

“Today that sixth hour (205 Live) is primarily being used on the network and we’ll figure our here over the next several months what we think the best use of (it), nothing to update now.”

Co-President Michelle Wilson confirmed our reports that Smackdown will be positioned and produced with a more sports-oriented feel, noting Raw on USA is on a general entertainment network but FOX is leaning toward the sports side.

“While it’s still the same product, we do believe that they will bring us to a new advertising base and position us with a slight tweak,” said Wilson. “ I wouldn’t say it is entirely different. But important to note that we will be promoted in all FOX programming, their entertainment programming, but specifically the NFL on Thursday night, major league baseball, NASCAR, as George mentioned.”

But the key is this. There can be no denying that WWE is significantly losing popularity. There were the prior excuses that the ratings drop was not indicative because people watch in other ways. The other thing that has been espoused is with the high social media numbers, that keep growing, that leads to money. The best you can say is that the huge social media numbers have helped keep what would have been a gigantic drop to only a bad drop, but it’s not significantly boosting anything. At worst, you can say it has minimal impact at all to creating new fans.

But the more important thing is what does this mean to the industry as a whole. Since probably 1999, the doctrine in North America has been, how the WWE goes, so goes the industry. And we’ve had 20 years of that, a complete generation, who largely believes that WWE is the major league and only “real” product, just like the NFL is the “real” pro football product and as popular as football is, everyone trying a secondary league flops.

The reality from a talent standpoint is it’s closer to soccer, with leagues around the world which often have better players than the U.S., but soccer fans also know this, where most wrestling fans don’t.

So the question for 2019 and 2020, which are going to be the most important years for the industry in the last 20, is this:

Are there wrestling fans who have been turned off by the WWE product in recent years who want to watch wrestling and will come back, or are there less people interested in wrestling than any time since the mid-90s?

In the mid-90s, before the Monday Night Wars, the feeling was the television audience was lower than before and a head-to-head battle would split an already small audience. Instead, it grew the audience greatly. But the difference is, you had two different existing audiences. WCW neither was starting from scratch, and they had bonafide huge stars that existed, and then raided WWF for legends of the previous decade. Then they fell apart due to creative.

AEW may present a better quality of wrestling, in fact, most likely will, although until we actually see it, we don’t know. AEW has pushed they are going to be closer to sports, with matchmaking based on winning and losing mattering in the storylines. But they also are bringing in at least a few gimmick oriented performers, some announced like Michael Nakazawa, and some not. And you can do both, as Toru Yano shows in New Japan, and in a two-hour show, you want to present a variety, because nothing but four star matches on television for two hours every week will make them all two star matches. But that’s always been a minor piece of the puzzle, although I do believe because I saw so many casual people who mentioned it, that presenting the better wrestlers and more divergent style did help WCW during its period on top.

But AEW won’t have the star power going on to the mainstream of WCW. If people are tired of wrestling, they aren’t going to be apt to sample a new product. If people are tired of WWE but want to like wrestling, perhaps the different approach of AEW will bring lapsed fans back. The rise of WCW did that, but it was because they had Hulk Hogan, Roddy Piper, Randy Savage and Ric Flair and others from the lapsed fan generation. From a star power standpoint, that’s a lot more than Chris Jericho. And yes, The Young Bucks and Kenny Omega, and Cody, are money drawing stars to a fan base that will buy merch and fly to shows. There is no indication how many they are when it comes to the ability to draw a competitive number on a top ten cable station. The fact that nothing AEW does have ever trended on Google, where even Bellator does, tells us their number are not large. That also doesn’t mean if they have exposure on a strong station that they can make new fans. Literally, that’s what every successful company breaking into a new market historically has done. But just having television doesn’t mean what it used to mean, event though television is still by far the most important medium to create new fans as opposed to the other mediums who really just enhance existing fans, as shown by WWE’s lack of growth with all of that exposure everywhere.

The other problem, is that when AEW was first in what I’d call serious talks, it was November and while WWE ratings weren’t good, they also weren’t collapsing fast like the last month. Stations that were interested in AEW saw wrestling as a steady product with a loyal weekly audience, that was worth a lot of money because it’s 52 weeks a year, and is also valuable because of live sports being a key to building sports streaming networks. WWE doing badly at this point in time, if it causes television executives at stations considering AEW to think wrestling is collapsing or yesterday’s news, as opposed to thinking WWE is faltering and maybe this is the time for an alternative, could be unexpected bad news. There is no indication today that is the case at this point in any of the deals, but it is something that has been discussed in the past few days in the television industry. Television is very much a jump on and jump off the bandwagon business, and the perception of WWE, and pro wrestling, ha changed in the last two weeks. But we don’t know if interest in wrestling is dropping fast, or interest in WWE is dropping fast, or, if at this point, they’ve been wrestling for so long in this country that they are inherently one and the same. In fact, the biggest part of the AEW gamble is based on the idea they are not.

So there are two realities to consider. Reality No. 1, which until AEW signs and starts is the more important reality, is how do television executives view the WWE collapse.

Reality no. 2, which, if and after AEW signs a deal, becomes the only important reality going forward, is what is reality. Is it that people are jumping off WWE because they don’t like WWE, or are they jumping off wrestling for good because they don’t like WWE. Having lived through this from 1992-95, it was considered an unending downward trend. Yet this followed with th greatest years of mainstream popularity for the industry dating back to the early 1950s. But that period was very different because you had an established alternate product drawing a weekly audience, even if they couldn’t draw. And you were coming ten years off the 80s, another mainstream boom period, with a plethora of legends who could still look the part and get over. Being 17 years since the boom is too long to bring back the stars of that boom as anything but short-term nostalgia. There’s no Hogan, Flair, Piper or Savage underutilized, and even though AEW has a wealthy backer, they have been strategic in signings and are not willing to set the salary structure of the business into a new stratospheres by offering $5 million and fewer dates to a number of WWE top guys to get them to jump.

For the first three months of 2019, WWE generated $182,448,000 in revenue, and ended up with $8,396,000 in losses. The same three month period last year generated $187,721,000 in revenue, but posted a $14,835,000 profit.

There are a few things notable in these numbers. The first is that taxes make the gap between the two years seem closer than they really are in profit/loss. The company’s net, before taxes, this year was a loss of $11,349,000, but the company received $2,953,000 from the government due to the losses when it came to taxes. And the losses were actually due to $12,828,000 in senior management compensation due to bonuses paid this quarter based on meeting performance levels in 2018. Last year the executive bonuses were $7,073,000.

There’s something totally legal but amazingly unsettling when you think about the tax implications in this first quarter, a company that paid nearly $13 million in bonuses and got a $3 million tax break to cover a percentage of losses both in the same quarter.

But due to increased spending, even factoring that out, profits were way down.

Last year, the actual pre-tax profit was $20,052,000, but they paid $5,217,000 in taxes.

On 12/31, the company had $359,143,000 in tax and tax equivalents, although a large percentage of that money came from loans taken out earlier. On 3/31, that figure was $338,208,000 representing the decline in cash itself taken out in the quarter.

Besides the actual money losses, why this figure declined even more than the losses is because it would also factor in the $9,364,800 paid in dividends this quarter.

In a chart comparing the profit margins in each sector, in millions, for the first three months of the year:

 

2019 2018

Media (Network, PPV, TV) $16.3 $35.9

Live events $-0.2 $2.9

Consumer products $5.0 $6.0

 

In the media division, actual revenue was slightly up even though profits were down. Network plus PPV was $47,013,000, up from last year’s$46,752,000.

The WWE Network on 12/31 had 1,528,000 subscribers, which were 1,116,000 in the U.S. and 412,000 outside the U.S. They also on that day had 35,000 free subscribers.

On 3/31, they had 1,596,900 subscribers, made up of 1,171,500 in the U.S. and 425,400 outside the U.S., with another 46,000 free subscribers.

So the total paid growth was 69,000 for those three months, which was 46,000 in the U.S. and 23,000 outside the U.S. That growth was the lowest, by far, for the first three months of the year.

Last year’s growth during the same three months was 153,000, with 125,000 in the U.S. and 28,000 outside the U.S. The December 31, 2017 numbers were 1,065,000 in the U.S. and 406,000 outside. The March 31, 2018 numbers were 1,190,200 in the U.S. and 433,600 outside for 1,623,800.

Because it started higher, they were over last year in January but last year overtook this year in March and for the first time in history, the numbers were lower in March than the same period the previous year.

The total revenue is up slightly, but we don’t know how actual PPV fared and how many of last year’s orders were at a reduced rate.

The average for the month, which generally means about where things stood around 2/14, was 1,584,100 this year and 1,558,100 last year.

So last eight weeks till Mania saw a growth of 183,000 this year and 242,000 last year, which overall says the actual creative when it comes to making you want to pay to see Mania over the last two months was 24.4 percent down in effectiveness this year.

There are two reasons for that. One is, like everything else, there is less interest in the product. The other is that last year there was some artificial increase by having a lot of subscribers on three month deals at 99 cents or $3 so the paid number was increased. They did less of those type of specials this year.

On the day after WrestleMania, there were 1,767,000 paid subscribers and 233,000 free subscribers. The day after WrestleMania last year had 1,808,000 paid subscribers and 316,000 free subscribers.

So from 3/31 to WrestleMania last year saw 184,000 signup as paid subscribers and 259,000 sign up and get WrestleMania for free. This year those numbers were 170,000 new paid subscribers and 187,000 new free subscribers. So the total last week gain was down 27.8 percent, although paid decline growth was down 7.6 percent over the last week, as compared to 24.4 percent over the last week and 55 percent over the quarter. So things, while continuing to decline, it was the Rumble period that really hurt the worst, but February and March continued bad and the last week of Mania angles ended up with interest at least closer to last year in the final week than during the rest of the quarter.

Basically that says while there was a decline in people signing up for Mania from last year, the decline was actually far stronger than the decline in ratings, meaning of the viewers still there, they didn’t do anywhere close to as good a job in converting them to customers. In theory, that should be dependent largely on how interesting WrestleMania was to viewers as compared to last year. The only other explanation would be people who are hit and miss and sign up for the first three months may have also skewed to people who saw the company in a negative light due to the Saudi Arabia shows and simply not signed back up like maybe they would have otherwise, or those who would be there had canceled and didn’t come back.

The doctrine that viewership is the lowest its been but those viewers are more willing to spend more money than ever before, that has been the case for years, has now changed. Viewership is low, and now fewer of those viewers are willing to spend money on the product, with one exception, and that’s actually going to WrestleMania live, where fan interest in getting a ticket was the highest in history.

The decline in casual interest, people looking to get a month free, was way down from last year.

Another bad thing about the ratings that would concern analysts, but they don’t know, is that the decline skews very young. The lost viewers to WWE are far stronger under 35, the future fans, with the declines less over 35, which is a fan base that is less the future.

The expectation is that the decline will continue. George Barrios estimated 1.70 million average subscribers in quarter two, which is down from the 1.80 million average for last year’s second quarter. So essentially we go from 3.9 percent up on 12/31, 1.7 percent decline on 3/31, 2.3 percent down on Mania Sunday and 5.5 percent down on 5/15.

WWE Network subscribers averaged 11 hours and 36 minutes of viewing over WrestleMania week. Last year’s average was 11 hours and 52 minutes, or similar. But keep in mind this year’s Takeover was an hour longer, and this year’s Mania was a half hour longer, so that number should have increased. Two years ago it was 11 hours and 33 minutes with a shorter Mania and significantly shorter Takeover from either of the past two years.

Once again they talked about revamping the network, likely with a tiered price plan.

“As far as the launch, and we’re really excited, it’s something the team has been working on for over a year on the design and the build of the new platform,” said Barrios.

“It will give us the platform to move forward and bring a lot of features and functionality that our fans have been asking for, give us flexibility in other languages if we so choose. All this obviously doesn’t happen on day one. But it creates the underpinnings of us being able to do a lot that we think can accelerate growth. Again, not sure that’s a 2019 event, given that the launch only happened in 2019, but as we look at the next several years, we’re excited about what that’ll do for us.”

Barrios wouldn’t give a date for the launch, but said it would be later this year.

Television rights fees for wrestling shows were $68,096,000 for the quarter, up from $65,505,000 last year. Advertising and sponsorship revenue declined from $12,232,000 to $10,873,000. Other television revenues, which have to do with the variously reality shows, in-ring programming geared for other markets, and the movie division increased from $8,884,000 last year to $9,465,000 this year.

The profit decline in the media sector had to do with $4.7 million more this year than last year taken out of that division for executive stock bonuses. The rest was the result of increased spending. The spending increases are because the company knows they can afford that with the new guaranteed money coming in.

In addition, they spent $5.2 million more this quarter on producing reality shows and producing content for the WWE Network. They also increased the marketing budget for television, PPV and WWE Network from $14.5 million to $17.8 million.

Live viewing of Raw was down 16.5 percent, but with DVR viewership it was down 14.2 percent. But the whole idea behind the rights fees is that Raw and Smackdown are live sports and DVR proof. That is, of course, a fallacy that is shown every quarter, and it’s getting worse.

Similarly, Smackdown was down 15.4 percent live and 13.2 percent factoring in DVR viewership.

Raw has gone from 76.7 percent live in the first quarter of 2018 to 74.7 percent in 2019.

Smackdown has gone from 76.5 percent live to 74.6 percent live in 2019.

The USA Network has a whole has gone from 76.6 percent live last year to 74.5 percent this year. So WWE is viewed almost identically between live and DVR as USA network prime time entertainment programming even though it airs live. Sports are usually expected to be 90-95 percent live. Fox went big on theoreticals. It’s live sports so therefore it’s DVR-proof, when the reality is that not only is it not, but the viewers who DVR it rather than watch it live increases significantly each year, as it wasn’t that many years when it was as FOX wants it to be, in the 92 to 95 percent live category.

USA as a whole is down 14.1 percent. The top 25 cable networks as a whole are down 4.3 percent.

For the second of the last three quarters, the company actually lost money in producing live events. But that’s actually misleading. The company really profited $794,000 for the quarter on 99 live events, admittedly a small number, due to the attendance decreases. But $1 million from this division was also earmarked for executive bonuses.

However, considering how little the actual profit is on the house shows, and how high the injury rate is, and how the many coming in is largely television based, it actually makes no sense now, and will make far less sense in October, to continue to tour the way they do it. WWE does it because that’s how it’s always been done, and when the revenue was based heavily on live events, that model made sense. It makes no sense at all today.

Last year the $2.9 million profit was after $700,000 was earmarked for executive bonuses.

Revenue from live events, including merchandise at live events, was $36,621,000 last year and $30,996,000 this year, a decline of 15.4 percent.

North American ticket revenue declined 18.9 percent, from $29,802,000 to $24,160,000. But that’s a little misleading because it’s gross revenue on 99 shows last year and 90 this year. On the other hand, Royal Rumble likely grossed about $3 million this year at the Chase Field in Phoenix and probably closer to $1 million last year, so factoring that out the decline actually looks worse.

If you factor out Royal Rumble, the live events averaged $236,000 in ticket sales this quarter and $279,000 last quarter, or a decline of 15.4 percent based on lower paid attendance.

Average attendance per show dropped from 5,415 (536,100 tickets sold in 99 shows; $286,345 gate; $56,316 in merchandise) to 4,762 (428,600 tickets sold to 90 shows; $249,436; $45,287 in merchandise), or a decline of 12.1 percent in attendance, 12.9 percent down in live gate and 19.6 percent down in merchandise). Keep in mind the fewer house shows and the stadium Rumble actually mean the drops are more severe than indicated.

Merchandise per head dropped from $10.40 last year to $9.51 his year. Merch numbers are the usual indication of the marketability of your top acts, so that is down. The king of merchandise has been John Cena, and he was rarely around, so some of all the declines are no Cena, and some of the declines are the company’s inability to create stars and programs that make people want to pay to see them and buy their merchandise.

If you take out each year’s Rumble, the decline was 5,333 to 4,422 or 17.1 percent and everything else would be down a corresponding amount. 4,422 is a very weak first quarter figure, as you’d generally get 6,000 or more as it’s historically the biggest quarter of the year.

In the first quarter of last year, there were 51 NXT events selling 34,100 tickets of 669 tickets per event for $26,733 average. This year also had 51 events, selling 36,200 tickets for a 710 average and $24,928. So even though attendance was up 6.1 percent, gates were down 6.8 percent due to people paying lower prices.

Sponsorships and ad revenue at live events increased from $152,000 to $405,000. Sale of travel packages and WWE’s cut from Stubhub ticket sales also increased from $816,000 to $1,481,000.

Live event merchandise declined from $5,851,000 to $4,757,000, a drop of 18.7 percent.

Licensed products, largely the video game revenue, increased from $9,267,000 to $9,428,000.

WWE Shop revenue fell from $8,460,000 to $6,577,000, due to fewer orders, a major drop of 22.3 percent in revenue.

WWE shop orders dropped from 2,029 per day at $45.99 per order to 1,569 orders per day at $46.50 per order.

Consumer profits were down largely due to a decline in merchandise sales, both on the WWE shop web site and also at arena events.

The movie division lost $198,000 in the quarter. Last year’s first quarter had a $925,000 loss.

The Tapout ownership and equity is still not a major factor. Last year the company made $36,000 on its share of ownership, while this year in the quarter was $71,000.

Even with the declines, and with the feeling that the company is not going to be that profitable until October when the new deal kicks in, the new deal is such that they are still expecting record profits this year, mostly in that quarter.

The expected OIBDA for the first six months of the year is $31 million to $36 million, but they expect at least $165 million for the last six months of the year, with more than$100 million expected in quarter four.

The added spending is, among other things, in spending money to sign more talent, opening new training centers, getting ready for changes (tiered pricing and new content) in the WWE Network and producing more market specific localized television content in new markets.

Dana White claimed on 4/30 that Brock Lesnar informed him that he was retiring from fighting and wouldn’t be taking the offered championship fight with Daniel Cormier.

Dana White told ESPN that they were looking at a Cormier vs. Stipe Miocic championship rematch at heavyweight next, saying the fight is close to being finalized for a PPV on 8/17 in Anaheim at the Honda Center.

The latest Lesnar retirement from fighting, shortly before his 42nd birthday, presumably ends the saga that has played out for several years of Lesnar leaving WWE for UFC, but the reality is very different.

Lesnar had a certain price he wanted guaranteed to do the Cormier fight. UFC, which, with its ESPN deal where the PPV money is guaranteed, didn’t meet the offer. Lesnar had a certain price he wanted that was worth it to him to go through a hard training camp at 42 and then get into the cage with an all-time great fighter and athlete in Cormier.

Plus, WWE has continued to offer Lesnar strong deals for limited dates, and on a Lesnar schedule, pro wrestling is far safer and offers considerably more longevity.

Lesnar went so far as to enter the USADA testing pool last year and was eligible to fight again in February. Lesnar also, in July, shot an angle where, after Cormier beat Miocic for the championship, Lesnar shoved him hard across the octagon. From all accounts, while Cormier immediately pegged it as an angle and was probably more happy than mad, it was not something the two set up and Cormier didn’t know it was coming. Cormier didn’t brace or anything instinctive like he would if he knew it was coming.

Exactly what the real story here was, only Lesnar and perhaps his closest friends know. I never bought that he would fight again, even after doing the angle with Cormier. It was amazing that UFC allowed that angle to play on their show without any kind of a deal with Lesnar to actually do the fight.

Either way, he had to enter the USADA program both to negotiate with both sides, because without entering into it, WWE would know he couldn’t fight for another six months and wasn’t truly serious about returning. Keep in mind that AEW wasn’t a thing this past summer, so UFC leverage was still the key thing.

Vince McMahon kept signing him to new deals at the last minute when Lesnar had given notice and claimed he was leaving. It became a thing where McMahon didn’t want to lose Lesnar, and with the Saudi Arabia money, could justify paying him similar money for what he would make in UFC. For Lesnar, it’s only logical to do pro wrestling on the limited schedule, sign short-term deals, and make it clear he could leave at anytime because of both the UFC money, and with the idea he still wanted to compete in the sport.

Either way, if Lesnar didn’t agree to the Cormier fight at this point, White had to go with the idea he never would make that deal, since they’ve been going round-and-round since early 2018.

There is no word whether Lesnar has pulled out of USADA testing. While he could always come back, it would be a six month delay if you wanted to fight again. My feeling is if he pulls out, he’s probably in his mind decided not to fight. If the doesn’t pull out, this is all a public negotiation by White looking to get Lesnar to lower his price because unlike virtually every other potential UFC fighter, Lesnar has no financial concerns and can play hardball and wait for them to come up with a deal he likes.

Lesnar fought in UFC from 2008 to 2011, but suffered two episodes of diverticulitis during that period and underwent one surgery. The diverticulitis robbed him of peak performance, some say, during the entire run as doctors said it was effecting him before he even knew about it with the bad flare up. Still, he defeated Randy Couture, an all-time legend, to win the heavyweight title and retained it against Shane Carwin, even at less than 100 percent athletically. He lost it to Cain Velasquez in a fight where he came out so fast, that it appears in hindsight he knew his conditioning wouldn’t hold up to a long fight and needed to get it done. Velasquez ended up finishing Lesnar in the first round.

In 2015, Lesnar teased returning to the UFC for several months, but instead signed a new WWE contract one week before WrestleMania.

He came back in 2016 for a big payday, which Vince McMahon approved, at UFC 200, and defeated Mark Hunt. He also failed the drug test for Clomiphene and was suspended for one year.

In 2018, the word again was that Lesnar would leave pro wrestling. This was played up as a storyline in wrestling as well. The last week before Mania McMahon signed him for a short-term few bout deal that ended at SummerSlam, which also led to Lesnar beating Roman Reigns at WrestleMania to surprise the audience, only to finally lose the title to him at SummerSlam. When Reigns was diagnosed with leukemia, McMahon brought Lesnar back to win the title, with the idea he’d eventually lose it to Seth Rollins at WrestleMania, with the idea the win over Lesnar would make Rollins. This was at a time when they needed to make a new top star because Reigns’ future was less than certain.

By that point Lesnar had already shot the angle with Cormier, which UFC allowed and encouraged, even without having Lesnar under contract.

Lesnar rejoined the testing pool, although took some time doing so, and has been eligible to fight since February. Lesnar was tested twice this year. White had again been pushing Cormier vs. Lesnar until recently. Ariel Helwani had even reported that the fight was close to happening, until White said recently that he’s had no talks and was more negative about it.

One can look back at the last seven years and largely come to the conclusion that Lesnar has made more money than probably any wrestler in history, or if not, very close to that, working a very limited schedule by playing both sides. He’s been in a unique position where everyone knows he could have made millions fighting.

If Lesnar truly wanted to be a fighter and win the championship, with the idea that UFC was unfinished business because he was never fully healthy the first time, he wouldn’t have waited until he was past 40. He wouldn’t have kept signing new WWE deals and wouldn’t have stayed past WrestleMania last year. He’d have taken a Chris Jericho hiatus for a couple of years, but the difference is, Jericho really loved being a rock star to the point he’d put it in front of his wrestling career. Lesnar is all abut the money, not proving to himself he could be a world champion in a real sport. Still, UFC clearly, by allowing him to do the angle and continually pushing that the fight would happen well into the early part of this year, had to have believed he was serious.

WWE even pushed that along, teasing at this year’s Mania in storyline about Lesnar going to Las Vegas, although by that point it seemed it was more to make sure the crowd would heavily boo Lesnar as being not loyal to wrestling and it would make Rollins a bigger babyface when he won. Lesnar isn’t announced right now for any pro wrestling matches, but the expectation was always he would be back for the next Saudi Arabia show, likely in a rematch with Rollins.

But there was also a big factor even if he was truly entertaining fighting at this point. Given the move from television PPV to streaming, with the corresponding expected major drop in PPV buys, Lesnar, like Jon Jones and Conor McGregor, have to sign deals based on guaranteed money rather than a percentage of the PPV. At the same time, UFC, with the ESPN deal, doesn’t have the financial pressure of needing to do so. UFC doesn’t need Lesnar back nearly as bad now as they would have when they were openly talking about it. If Lesnar was seriously considering coming back, and for Lesnar, every play is economics, the situation had changed significantly as far as the nature of the deal that would have to be offered.

WWE officially announced its third show in Saudi Arabia on 6/7 in Jeddah, the same city the second show was held at.

The shows, the company’s biggest of the year as far as dollar value goes, will feature the highest paid talent, in this case returns of Bill Goldberg, The Undertaker and Brock Lesnar.

Undertaker and Lesnar were known to be returning but Goldberg came out of the blue. It’s an announcement that to me, personally, is highly disappointing. Yet, in a sense, to say that, it would be hypocritical because there were no qualms in the past about anyone else, whether it be Chris Jericho or Shawn Michaels or Kane, who have all done similar shows, in the case of Michaels professing to be highly religious and with Kane being an elected mayor, who did the show with virtually no backlash.

Those in WWE say the company approached Goldberg, figuring he was the one guy left who could go to AEW and perhaps bring back lapsed fans, similar to how Vince McMahon, without the benefit of hindsight, left the door open to WCW for Hulk Hogan, Roddy Piper and Randy Savage in the 90s.

Only two performers, John Cena and Daniel Bryan, have refused to do shows. Both did the first show and then refused to do the second, even though both were advertised in key positions for those shows until the last week.

Sami Zayn was pulled from the first show because the government of Saudi Arabia didn’t want him in due to his Syrian ancestry. He was injured prior to the second show. It will be interesting to see if he’s allowed to be on this show. The entire deal is troublesome for obvious reasons, and the killing of Jamal Khashoggi is only a small but important one of them. Besides clearly establishing the promotion as incredibly sleazy for continuing to do business, it’s worse because while the money is significant, in the big picture, given the revenues from the new television deals, the company is in strong financial position without them. Many companies from the U.S. have pulled out of doing business, and Endeavor, the parent company of UFC, returned a $400 million investment by the Saudi government, a deal that required them to take out financing to do. Worse, the company has prided itself on being open minded, with the idea they are leaders in a so-called women’s revolution, as well as the idea they are open minded to other minority groups, whether they be race, sexual persuasion or ethnicity. But this deal clearly speaks that their money isn’t where their mouth is, because they are doing business with people who not only don’t share those beliefs, and every business does have to deal with that, but also don’t allow them, on their own show, to bring certain stars.

Obviously, there are going to be many active wrestlers who don’t want to go, just as there will be many who don’t care. There will be some who will just keep quiet, and those who won’t trying to play up the party line. That’s the nature of the beast. But realistically, none have the power except for the top few, to make the decision to not go without repercussions.

Cena obviously does. He has never talked about why he decided against going to the second show. Part of the deal with both he and Bryan was being asked not to publicly talk about it, or acknowledge not going before the show took place, because doing so would create a media story that would be unfavorable to the company. Even after the fact neither talked publicly about it.

Where Goldberg is different is that he’s not a company regular. Obviously he’ll be getting giant money on his new deal. A few performers have gotten seven figures for these shows and the fact Goldberg wrestles to sparingly tells you he’s not doing anything cheap, let alone this.

I guess the difference is Goldberg is, regardless of what you think of him as a performer, a good guy who does a lot of stuff wanting no credit for it. And unlike a performer on the main roster, he’s not in a position where there is pressure on him to do anything he doesn’t want to. Granted, there may be no single day paydays in his future at this level, and ultimately that’s the decision, but high school textbooks in Saudi Arabia promote anti-Semitism and doing the bidding of that kind of government is a real moral dilemma. This isn’t Paul Heyman who is under contract to the company and, like all but a few people, could be fired at whim for good or bad reasons at any time.

And it isn’t as if Goldberg couldn’t get huge money for limited appearances doing pro wrestling elsewhere should he want to go that route. Could he make seven figures in a day elsewhere? No. And at the end of the day, that’s your answer to the question. And there are people who would turn that, and more, down, in this circumstance. But they are the exceptions to the rule. He just happens not to be one of those exceptions.

Because of the show, the 6/8 Takeover in San Jose is off. At the 5/1 NXT taping, the wrestlers talked about Takeover, but never mentioned a location. The plan right now is for the show to be moved to 6/1. No location has been announced but cities thrown out have included Bridgeport, CT and Atlanta.

The WWE has firmed up most of the card for its next PPV, Money in the Bank, on 5/19 in Hartford.

The top matches are Seth Rollins vs. A.J. Styles for the Universal title and Kofi Kingston vs. Kevin Owens for the WWE championship.

The participants in the men’s Money In The Bank match are Ricochet, Braun Strowman, Drew McIntyre, Baron Corbin, Ali, Finn Balor, Andrade and Randy Orton.

Most notable is that Ricochet lost to Robert Roode last week on TV, and Roode was forgotten about completely this week, while Ricochet was put in a key match.

The women participants are Natalya, Dana Brooke, Alexa Bliss, Naomi, Ember Moon, Mandy Rose, Bayley and Carmella. There isn’t much to note about that. Brooke replaces Sasha Banks, who was originally earmarked for the match but has not agreed to return after asking for her release.

It’s been noted in that regard that nobody is going to be getting releases if they are thought to be able to help AEW, and they are attempting to sign everyone with big offers who is coming due, months before their contracts are due.

Other matches official are the two Becky Lynch title defenses, the Raw title against Lacey Evans and Smackdown title against Charlotte Flair, plus Roman Reigns vs. Elias and Shane McMahon vs. The Miz in a cage match.

Other teased programs are Samoa Joe vs. Rey Mysterio for the U.S. title, Tony Nese vs. Ariya Daivari for the cruiserweight title, Usos vs. The Revival, Lars Sullivan vs. Matt Hardy and/or R-Truth and Billie Kay & Peyton Royce vs. Kairi Sane & Asuka for the women’s tag title.

According to multiple sources, the reason, when the Hardys vacated the Smackdown tag team titles due to Jeff undergoing reconstructive surgery on his right knee this week. He will be out of action close to nine months. The reason nothing was said on how they were going to fill the void was because it was a decision that has yet to be made.

Currently there are only four teams in the Smackdown tag team division, which clearly needs either someone from Raw or calling up a team, as you’re left with one legit team, Shinsuke Nakamura & Rusev, a comedy team in Heavy Machinery who haven’t even been featured, and two enhancement teams, Bo Dallas & Curtis Axel and the Colon cousins.

Money in the Bank tickets seem to be strong. There were only about 780 tickets left on the secondary market and the lowest price was $103.55. For a comparison, Double or Nothing, one week later, in Las Vegas, has 1,390 secondary market tickets left with a low price of $50. Obviously Hartford, being close to the New York market and the big population base has an edge, because there is such a large local population and the secondary market is going to be far stronger at the end in those markets. A fly-in show will be weaker at the end because most people aren’t deciding to fly in at the last minute.

UFC report from Sunrise, Florida

by Ryan Frederick

Jack Hermansson firmly established himself as a title contender in the UFC middleweight division with a win over Ronaldo ‘Jacare’ Souza in the main event of UFC On ESPN+ 8 on 4/27 from Sunrise, FL.

Hermansson scored a unanimous decision victory on scores of 49-46, 48-47 and 48-47. It was his second win in 28 days after scoring a win over David Branch on the 3/30 show in Philadelphia. He was in control for the majority of the fight. He never really got tired, and definitively won at least three rounds, and in many eyes four rounds, with his lone bad round being the third where Souza could have finished him late, but it also came after a big second round where Hermansson almost submitted Souza.

He took the fight on short notice after taking no damage in the 49-second win over Branch. He replaced Souza’s original opponent, Yoel Romero, who pulled out of the fight after dealing with a case of pneumonia. Souza had to be talked into taking the fight as he didn’t want to fight a lower-ranked opponent, and claimed that he was promised a title shot with a win in order to get him to take the fight.

Souza said had he won, he would retire if he didn’t get a title shot. With the loss, he’s now back down the ladder, and with his 40th birthday coming up this year, he may never get that elusive shot at a UFC title. He could conceivably retire now with being out of the picture, though his manager told ESPN’s Ariel Helwani on Monday night that he wouldn’t be retiring. Hermansson now has four straight wins and a 7-2 record in the UFC, and he’s potentially one win away from a title shot. He wants some time off after the two fights in less than a month, and talked about returning in October as the UFC is supposed to debut in Copenhagen, Denmark, and Hermansson is from nearby Sweden. He mentioned being interested in fighting either Yoel Romero, Kelvin Gastelum, or Chris Weidman. They’re trying to book Romero against Paulo Costa for this summer, so he’s likely out of the picture there. I can see Gastelum over Weidman as an opponent as you could give either man a title shot off a win whereas Weidman, while a big name, has had a lot of losses lately.

The show was a very good night of fights in front of a crowd that showed up, and that can be hard to do in South Florida as the UFC has struggled to draw there.

The most talked about thing on the show was the second UFC fight for controversial former NFL player Greg Hardy. He got the win here, finishing Dmitrii Smoliakov in 2:15. The crowd loudly booed Hardy after the fight, not because of the fight itself (though it was a real nothing fight), but because the fans don’t want him to succeed because of his past. It goes without saying that it’s a bad look that he’s employed by the company, but they aren’t going to change their stance no matter what.

Dana White did bash the fight, and especially Smoliakov, wondering how he had won nine fights and why this particular fight was put together. It was put together because he was a hand-picked opponent to lose to Hardy. Smoliakov had fought in the UFC before, losing two fights where he looked like the worst heavyweight in the company, and that’s saying a lot. He was cut, got one win outside the company, was brought back for this fight, and will likely be cut again.

With White’s stance on how this fight went down, they’ve now put themselves in a position where Hardy could be difficult to book. They want to protect him, but now they have to match him up with someone already with the company. Bringing anyone from the outside in would be too obvious on what they’re trying to accomplish. And they’ve already tried to match him up with the bottom of the totem pole on the roster, and when he couldn’t win inside the first three minutes, he gassed himself out and got disqualified.

Many UFC heavyweights are chomping at the bits to fight Hardy. Whether it’s because they hate him for getting away with domestic violence, or they see how much money he's making since that has now become public record, or they see him as an easy fight and can make themselves into a name by not just beating him, but knocking him out, or all of the above, he’s not going to have an easy time navigating through the heavyweight roster. And while he does have the power, if he can’t finish an opponent quickly, he has a lot of trouble as he just doesn’t have the natural fight aptitude to make adjustments.

There were two very entertaining fights on the main card, one between Mike Perry and Alex Oliveira, and the other between Cory Sandhagen and John Lineker, won respectively by Perry and Sandhagen, and two other fights, the main event and a light heavyweight fight between Glover Teixeira and Ion Cutelaba, were very good as well.

Long-time veteran Jim Miller added to his list of UFC records. Miller submitted Jason Gonzalez in the first round in his 32nd UFC fight, adding to that record. It was also his 19th UFC win, fourth-most in history, his 18th win as a lightweight and also his eighth submission win, both lightweight records.

The show, held at the BB&T Center in Fort Lauderdale, drew 12,754 fans for a gate of $1,209,654. It was the second time the UFC ran an event at the arena, the first being a June 2012 show headlined by Demetrious Johnson vs. Ian McCall, which did half the attendance and about a quarter of the gate. It's hard to say whether the main event drew the crowd, or if most tickets were bought for the original Romero vs. Souza main event, but nonetheless, it was a much better showing this time around.

The main card aired on ESPN+, and that was a late change. When the first half of the 2019 scheduled was announced, this event's main card was supposed to be on ESPN, but was quietly changed two weeks ago, and after the main event was changed.

There was no reason given for the change, and if it was due to the change in the main event, that could be a bad sign because there are going to be lots of instances where main events fall apart, and there will be some big show main events that aren't huge fights, because that is just the nature of the sport. When the new television deal was announced, there were to be 10 main cards on ESPN, but there is currently only three on the schedule through June, which means seven coming in the second half of the year, unless terms were changed when they re-did the deal for the pay-per-view commitment.

The very early prelims, the first three fights, airing on ESPN2 from 5:30 to 7 eastern time, did 288,000 viewers. The next set of prelims, four fights in total, aired on ESPN from 7 to 9 eastern time, and did 720,000 viewers.

Saturday's UFC show from Sunrise, Fla., averaged 720,000 viewers for the prelims on ESPN and 288,000 for the first three fights on ESPN 2.

The prelims were the lowest rating for a UFC live event up to this point on ESPN, but not a bad number for prelims of a Fight Night. For a comparison, in a better 8-10 p.m. time slot, the most recent pay-per-view prelims, before UFC 236, did 893,000 viewers.

The show was fifth on cable during its 7-9 p.m. time slot. It was third for sports broadcasts on the night, trailing a Philadelphia 76ers vs. Toronto Raptors NBA playoff game that did 3,075,000 viewers and a Boston Bruins vs. Columbus Blue Jackets game on NBC that did 2,852,000 viewers.

For the ESPN portion, the highest rated major markets were Washington, DC, and the San Francisco Bay Area, which both did 0.8 ratings. The San Francisco number was most impressive since the show aired 4-6 p.m. on a Saturday afternoon. New York only did a 0.3, while Los Angeles and Chicago did 0.4 ratings.

The $50,000 bonuses went to Mike Perry and Alex Oliveira for Fight Of The Night, and Glover Teixeira and Jim Miller for Performance Of The Night.
1. Dhiego Lima (14-7) beat Court McGee (19-8) via split decision on scores of 30-27, 28-29 and 29-28 in a welterweight fight. This one was all on the feet as each man missed all of their takedown attempts. It was actually even on the striking stats, but Lima landed a higher percentage of his strikes and with more power. First round was McGee controlling the cage and throwing and missing and Lima would land hard counters. McGee had a cool judo throw to escape the clinch. Second round was more of the same but Lima started landing hard left hooks that were hurting McGee. Third round was more Lima landing hard punches but McGee did knock him down at the very end of the round, and had it gone longer, he could have stopped him. I had it 30-27 for Lima, but could see giving McGee the third round. I don't know how you could give two rounds to McGee, but one judge did. All media scores had it for Lima. Good fight. Lima got $34,000 for the win and McGee got $48,000 for the loss.

2. Angela Hill (9-6) beat Jodie Esquibel (6-5) via unanimous decision on scores of 29-28, 30-27 and 30-27 in a women's strawweight fight. Hill took this fight on short notice as a replacement for Jessica Penne, who is her teammate. Hill had just lost her last fight on 3/23. This might have been the best she's looked in her UFC career. First round was the closest of any round but still Hill's. She was mixing her punches and kicks and body shots well in the first and Esquibel just couldn't get inside her range. Second round Hill was landing way more and working the jab while mixing in body kicks that were slowing down Esquibel. Hill cut her open with an elbow in the third round but Esquibel did briefly drop her though Hill came back and was outlanding her. Esquibel only landed 19% of her strikes while Hill landed 49% of hers. I had it 30-27 for Hill. All media scores had it for Hill as well. Hill got $48,000 for the win and Esquibel got $10,000 for the loss.

3. Jim Miller (30-13 1 NC) beat Jason Gonzalez (11-5) in 2:12 in a lightweight fight. Miller got two takedowns and on the second one he got the back of Gonzalez, locked in a tight rear-naked choke and got Gonzalez to tap. Miller had his wife and four children in the front row, the first time his children had seen him fight live, and it came off as an incredible moment. Miller may never fight for a UFC title as he's had a long career, but he and the UFC records he's accomplished should put him in a good place in company history. Miller got $230,000 for the win with his performance bonus and Gonzalez got $12,000 for the loss.

4. Gilbert Burns (16-3) beat Mike Davis (7-2) in 4:15 in the second round in a lightweight fight. Davis took this fight on short notice. Both men were throwing wild bombs in the first round and it felt like someone was going to get knocked out. Burns got two takedowns and was landing on top as the round ended. Burns got an early takedown in the second and was working for a choke, got the back, locked in the rear-naked choke and got the tap to get the win. Burns got $88,000 for the win and Davis got $12,000 for the loss.

5. Carla Esparza (14-6) beat Virna Jandiroba (14-1) via unanimous decision on scores of 30-27, 29-28 and 29-28 in a women's strawweight fight. This was a battle of former Invicta champions, and Esparza is a former UFC champion. Esparza got two takedowns in the first and Jandiroba got one but Esparza did more with hers and landed more on the feet. Second round was even on the feet and both got a takedown, but Esparza missed five other takedown attempts. Jandiroba got the mount at one point and had a choke locked in. Esparza landed more in the third and got another takedown and escaped from the bottom when she was taken down. Good showing for Esparza. I had it 29-28 for Esparza. Media scores were 86% for Esparza and 14% for Jandiroba. Esparza got $90,000 for the win and Jandiroba got $12,000 for the loss.

6. Augusto Sakai (13-1-1) beat Andrei Arlovski (27-18 2 NC) via split decision on scores of 28-29, 29-28 and 29-28 in a heavyweight fight. This was a bad decision. Arlovski outstruck Sakai in every round, and by a good margin in the first and third rounds. It wasn't the most exciting fight. Arlovski was landing right hands in the first as Sakai kept walking into them. The second round was the closest as both men were landing but Sakai seemed to land harder, though Arlovski landed more. Not much happened in the third as they clinched a lot but Arlovski was landing more and coming forward more. I had it 29-28 for Arlovski, but it could easily have been 30-27 for him. There is no way Sakai won more than a round, but two judges gave him two rounds. A really bad decision. Every media member except for one had it for Arlovski, and that one who didn't had it as a draw. Sakai got $24,000 for the win and Arlovski got $300,000 for the loss.

7. Takashi Sato (15-2) beat Ben Saunders (22-12-2) in 1:18 in the second round in a welterweight fight. Saunders was using his length early on to land a lot of kicks in the first, and also some of his patented knees to the body, so Saunders got the first and outlanded Sato at a three-to-one ratio. Sato dropped Saunders with a left hand in the second and started landing hard elbows on the ground until the referee stopped it. Brutal finish by Sato. Sato got $24,000 for the win and Saunders got $35,000 for the loss.

8. Roosevelt Roberts (8-0) beat Thomas Gifford (17-8 2 NC) via unanimous decision on scores of 30-27, 30-27 and 30-27 in a lightweight fight. Roberts is a guy the company is trying to build for future stardom and he has something, plus a good story. He controlled this entire fight but Gifford had some decent moments. First round saw Roberts get a takedown and he was in control from the top almost the entire round. Second round Roberts was landing good shots early and Gifford tried to jump up for a guillotine but gave up top position and Roberts kept busy from the top. Gifford got a takedown in the third but didn't do anything with it and Roberts then got a takedown and landed lots of punches. I had it 30-27 for Roberts. All media scores were for him as well. Roberts got $24,000 for the win and Gifford got $10,000 for the loss.

9. Cory Sandhagen (11-1) beat John Lineker (31-9) via split decision on scores of 28-29, 29-28 and 29-28 in a bantamweight fight. This was a very exciting fight and intense as well. Sandhagen is very tall for 135 pounds, and Lineker is very short. Lineker was definitely looking to knock Sandhagen out but Sandhagen used his length to keep good distance. All three rounds were pretty close. Sandhagen landed more in the first but Lineker was landing harder. Sandhagen mixed his strikes well. It was a close first. Second round Lineker started working the body more but Sandhagen's movement was keeping him out of striking range. Both got takedowns in the second, and it was another close round. Third round was even striking but Lineker was landing his combinations better. Sandhagen was backing him up with flying knee attempts. Sandhagen got a late takedown but Lineker had a tight guillotine choke locked in and blood was flying out of the nose of Sandhagen. He was saved by the bell because he might have gone out if there had been another ten or more seconds left. Really great fight. I had it 29-28 for Lineker. Media scores were 41% for Sandhagen and 59% for Lineker. Sandhagen got $66,000 for the win and Lineker got $49,000 for the loss.

10. Glover Teixeira (29-7) beat Ion Cutelaba (14-4 1 NC) in 3:37 in the second round in a light heavyweight fight. This was another very entertaining fight. Cutelaba tore up a picture of Teixeira at the weigh-ins and was trying to get in Teixeira's head but Teixeira is too much of a veteran to fall for it and Cutelaba fought emotional. Cutelaba hurt Teixeira in the first round and dropped him with a spinning back fist. Cutelaba tried to land an illegal knee but missed. Cutelaba could have finished him on the ground but allowed Teixeira to gain his wits and he started to come back at the end. Teixeira hurt Cutelaba at the start of the second and Cutelaba tried to throw an illegal knee again. The first time looked like it could have been accidental, but this one looked deliberate. Cutelaba was tired and Teixeira threw him to the mat, got on top, eventually got the mount, and then Cutelaba gave up his back which allowed Teixeira to get a rear-naked choke for the submission. Great comeback for Teixeira and he withstood a young, powerful opponent. He called out Corey Anderson after the fight. With his performance bonus, Teixeira got $260,000 for the win and Cutelaba got $22,000 for the loss.

11. Mike Perry (13-4) beat Alex Oliveira (20-6-1 2 NC) via unanimous decision on scores of 29-28, 29-28 and 29-28 in a welterweight fight. This was very exciting and it started early. Oliveira was dancing during his walkout, and then Perry started dancing to Oliveira's music inside the Octagon, so we had a dance-off before the fight. They were throwing heavy punches right off the bat. Oliveira landed some big right hands in the first and cut Perry open under the eye. Oliveira finished the first with a spinning back fist to get the round. The second round saw Perry hurt Oliveira with a left hook early, and then he picked Oliveira up and threw him to the mat. Perry then landed a right and went to the ground with Oliveira and was landing big punches from the top. Oliveira broke his toe on a kick at the end of the second. It was 1-1 heading into the third. Oliveira was hobbling and they were even early in the third until Perry landed a left hook that rocked him. Perry was landing combos late that had Oliveira sprinting away to reset. A real fun fight. I had it 29-28 for Perry as did all of the media scoring the fight. With their best fight bonus, Perry got $160,000 for the win and Oliveira got $114,000 for the loss.

12. Greg Hardy (4-1) beat Dmitrii Smoliakov (9-3) in 2:15 in a heavyweight fight. Hardy did look in better shape than he did in his first UFC fight. Smoliakov looked scared from the get-go and like he was just there to collect a paycheck. Smoliakov missed two takedown attempts and then Hardy dropped him with a right hand and finished it with hammer fists on the mat. Complete mismatch and not much of a fight, and was quite frankly embarrassing to be in the co-main event position. The crowd was booing loudly as they really want Hardy to lose. Hardy got $150,000 for the win and Smoliakov got $10,000 for the loss.

13. Jack Hermansson (20-4) beat Ronaldo Souza (26-7 1 NC) via unanimous decision on scores of 49-45, 48-47 and 48-47 in a middleweight fight. Hermansson looked in incredible shape, especially considering he had just fought four weeks ago. Souza didn't look like he executed his game plan. Hermansson outstruck Souza in the first as Souza looked like he was just loading up his punches looking for a knockout. Hermansson rocked Souza at one point and then locked in a tight guillotine that Souza had to fight hard to escape. That would have been something. So Hermansson got the first. He then got the second round after taking Souza down and keeping him planted on the mat. Souza is world class on the ground and he was unable to get out from the bottom, so that shows just how good Hermansson is on the ground. Hermansson outlanded Souza 107-10 in the second. It could have been a 10-8 round. Hermansson slowed in the third and it allowed Souza to mount a comeback. Souza started landing more to the body and then started to land to the head, including three big rights at the end. It has 2-1 Hermansson after three. Hermansson came back alive in the fourth as he hurt Souza with an uppercut and big right hands and was controlling the clinch. Souza has down big after three and needed a finish in the fifth. Hermansson got an early takedown in the fifth but Souza got up. Souza was landing to the body but couldn't find that big punch, and Hermansson was landing just as much, and even got a late takedown. Fifth round was close but not the finish Souza needed. I had it 49-46 for Hermansson, and all media scores had it for him. A real huge win for Hermansson to get himself into title contention, and a really good fight on top of it. Hermansson got $82,000 for the win and Souza got $210,000 for the loss.

Impact ran a strong Rebellion PPV show on 4/28 at the Rebel Complex in Toronto.

Running a PPV at a high price these days when there are so many major shows seems like a tough business. It’s one thing if you have the premium product, whether that be WWE, which doesn’t do it, or even AEW or New Japan who have the cult popularity. Still, we got a decent response back and those who saw the show were very positive.

The big news was that Brian Cage won the championship but also suffered a serious back injury. Michael Elgin showed up after the championship match to lay out Cage. Elgin also won a top contenders match the next day at television so it looks to be Cage vs. Elgin as the title direction.

They announced the next PPV as Slammiverary on 7/7 in Dallas. They didn’t give a building, but that will be one day after the New Japan G-1 Climax show. That would make sense if the New Japan show was a big tourist show but based on the advance, that isn’t the case. In the battle for local fan tickets, you have Raw on 7/1 at the American Airlines Center and New Japan on 7/6 in the same building. So that looks to be tough.

Elgin, who looked in tremendous cosmetic shape, quit New Japan recently after just being a guy on the card in recent months. Elgin was never even used by New Japan in the U.S., likely because at an AAW show the crowd reacted terribly bad for him in the wake of a story that claimed he somehow covered up a sexual assault, even though he clearly encouraged the alleged victim to go to the police, and it led to him suing the accuser.

It’s been long enough that, at least in the building in Toronto, there was no backlash. Impact had wanted to use Elgin probably since Don Callis started in a power position, since he knew him from New Japan, but also knew at the time it was a risk of a social media backlash if they were to use him. Later, Callis did want to use Elgin, Davey Boy Smith Jr., and perhaps others from New Japan, but New Japan told its contracted talent that they didn’t want them working for anyone that they saw as competition to ROH.

Since Elgin was going to be brought in for a top spot, he decided to leave New Japan. New Japan has said that if things don’t work out, that Elgin can return.

A bigger story took place in the title change. Brian Cage had cupping marks all over his mask. Cupping is a Japanese treatment for injuries that dates back to the 70s, but became popular in recent years around the world with athletes. There are those in Western medicine who claim it doesn’t work, but it became big story when cupping marks were on Olympic athletes in recent games. It’s nothing illegal or anything like that, just an attempt to relieve pain. It was prevalent among pro wrestlers in the 80s, but you don’t see modern wrestlers using it in Japan that much, but some of the older guys who broke in during the 90s still do.

During the match, Impact gave Cage a Spanish fly off the ramp and he landed on the floor, with the thin mats. He was clearly hurt and had trouble with the match from there. He had a hard time getting Impact up for the winning drill claw spot. Still, the match was good enough.

But after doing the angle with Elgin, he was barely able to walk and rushed to the hospital.

“I couldn’t wait to tear the roof off with John Hennigan (Impact) and steal the show,” wrote Cage. “I knew we had something special heading into it and I know we both couldn’t wait to show the world. And to stand tall after with that first time (as a world champion) feeling, jumping into the crowd, overjoyed with emotion and knowing I deserve this and finally its happened.. Getting to go backstage and rejoice with my peers, and share that moment of happy tears with my fiancé Melissa Santos and know this is my time. Doesn’t matter what people think about our business, that moment is very real, at least to me and has been since I was ten years old.

“But that’s not how it happened. After a hot start, John would end up giving me a Spanish fly off the stage and onto the floor. Instantly, my back lit up and my right leg went numb. I was terrified. And as feeling came back, I hoped the pain would subside. After pushing through it and trying to force it, I knew it wasn’t going away. The amount of pain I was in was unbearable. And the feeling or not having the strength or ability to move was disheartening, terrifying and emotionally devastating. I lied there looking up off the mat, telling myself, `This is it Brian. This is supposed to be your night. Everything you’ve worked for.’ I pushed myself through the pain t do what I could and make it happen. It’s not what or how I wanted and I knew my momentous occasion would be a letdown. I wanted tears of joy, not near of pain and what now.”

Cage later told us, “As beat up as I am and back destroyed, mentally I feel worse than physically. It just sucked that momentous moment for me and my career that I wanted to celebrate and be so happy about got plagued with what happened. And the match was nowhere near what we planned or wanted.”

The show featured two blow-offs of grudge matches. Tessa Blanchard wrestled Gail Kim, who at 42, said she was coming out of retirement for one last match. Kim had been working with the company as a producer for the women’s matches and the two had been building an angle for months. It ended up where Blanchard went to Kim’s husband’s, famous Chef Robert Irvine’s restaurant in Las Vegas. She harassed the customers, went backstage, threw food all over the workers and the chefs, etc.

The two had a strong match. Both Irvine and Tully Blanchard were at ringside. Blanchard was a strong heel throughout, but then after winning, hugged her father and it was one of those moments where both were in tears. Blanchard then offered Kim her hand and hugged Kim. Blanchard bowed to her while fans chanted “Thank you Gail.”

I’m not sure where Blanchard winds up, but she has an intensity that few women, and few men in this business have. Given her age, and granted there are reasons WWE never signed her, I can’t imagine she doesn’t end up with WWE or AEW before long.

The other was after LAX regained the tag titles from Pentagon Jr.& Fenix in a Full Metal Mayhem match (think TLC), Konnan got them all together and they did a group hug. The story is they went out there and destroyed each other, but the feud is over. At TV, they did a deal where Konnan was announced as representing both teams.

Then, the entire roster came out to clap for them, including Madison Rayne, who didn’t work the show, and former Impact wrestler Taylor Wilde. Wilde, who retired (Shantelle Malawski) back in 2011, but is only 32, was mentioned by name. But she didn’t work television the next day. Long-term we don’t know what the situation is with Pentagon Jr. & Fenix. Pentagon Jr. was injured legit the next night in a three-way match with Elgin and Impact. There was a spot where Impact was going to come off the top rope with a huracanrana onto Pentagon, on the apron. He missed completely and Pentagon still took a bump but not how he expected. It was a real mess. Pentagon hurt his leg on the landing on the floor.

Penta never got involved in the rest of the match which ended when Elgin pinned Impact. He called over for help in getting to the back. He couldn’t put any pressure on his leg but I was told he was feeling better on 4/30.

There was an early report he stretched a muscle in his leg. His leg has been all taped up since. I was told that based on the way he landed it was very lucky he didn’t break his neck.

Still, at press time we don’t know the injury, and obviously Pentagon is a key person in AAA, AEW and MLW as well as Impact. He was not scheduled for the next set of Impact tapings, but was booked for the Dallas PPV show.

The belief was that he and Fenix would end up signing a big money deal with AEW which would allow them to work AAA. Both had contracts with Lucha Underground which prevented them from signing with anyone in the U.S., and they were doing so well on the independent scene that there was no rush to sign anywhere. WWE also had interest. They’ve already finished up with CMLL. They haven’t officially finished with MLW, but MLW is going with the idea it could happen shortly. But they are definitely key free agents to watch.

The only other comment regarding the show I have regards Santos, who was doing backstage interviews. Santos to me was an outstanding ring announcer in Lucha Underground. I don’t like to necessarily say best in the business, but to me, she was unique in her delivery. If I was starting a company and could hire anyone, she and/or Justin Roberts would be my ring announcers. This isn’t a knock on her as an interviewer, and she could do both, but this role doesn’t play to her strengths at all.

1. Ace Austin won a six-way over Petey Williams, Aiden Prince, Jake Crist, Cousin Jake and Eddie Edwards in 5:17. Cousin Jake is the former Jake Something in the Midwest, who is also called Jake Deaner, the cousin of Cody. He’s a good sized guy, they say 6-foot-6 although he’s nowhere close to that, but he’s probably a 6-foot-2 275 pound thick powerlifter type in a match that was all about flying. They just did dive and big flying spot one after the other. The crowd didn’t get into it that much. The most memorable spot was Prince going for a tope onto everyone and while he flew, Crist did a diamond cutter out of where and they crashed into everyone on the floor. Williams did the Canadian Destroyer on Jake Deaner and then Austin cradled Williams for the pin. **1/4

2. Scarlett Bordeaux pinned Rohit Raju in 5:01. This wasn’t much. Raj Singh and Gama Singh were at ringside with Raju. Bordeaux did a plancha off the top to the floor on both. Raj Singh scooped her leg at one point. The finish saw Bordeaux win with a low blow and an Omori driver. *3/4

3. Josh Alexander & Ethan Page & Moose beat Dezmond Xavier & Zachary Wentz & Trey Miguel in 9:25. This was another match filled with big moves, but there was some stuff that missed and the crowd heat wasn’t that strong. It was entertaining with cool moves. Wentz did a shooting star off the ramp onto Page. Wentz did a run down the ramp and springboard into a diamond cutter on Moose. Miguel did a running flip dive onto Moose, who caught him and threw him into barricade. Xavier came off the ramp with a cannonball on Moose on the floor. The finish saw Alexander have Xavier in the torture rack, threw him to Page who gave him a spinebuster. Alexander & Page held Xavier and Moose gave him a running spear for the pin. ***

4. Taya Valkyrie beat Jordynne Grace to retain the Knockouts title in 8:59. Taya worked on the arm. Grace came back with power moves but couldn’t use full power because the arm had been worked on. After a series of near falls, Valkyrie retained with the Road to Valhalla. **1/4

5. Rich Swann beat Sami Callihan in 16:04 in an OVE rules match to keep the X title. OVE rules basically is a no DQ weapons match. The rule was that if the Crist Brothers or Mad Man Fulton interfered, they would be fired. Some really good stuff early. Then they traded staple gun shots. They used cookie sheet spots after Swann went for a tope and Callihan hit him in mid-air with the cookie sheet. Callihan used a piledriver on the apron. Callihan used an exploder on a chair. Swann hit Callihan hard in the head with the cookie sheet. Swann used a Lethal injection on the ramp. Callihan had set up a guard rail bridge between the ramp and the ring steps. Callihan used the iron claw to the groin (a move Fritz Von Erich popularized in the 70s in Texas death match) and piledrove Swann on the guard rail bridge. He then had a bag with a ton of Lego’s and poured them all over the ring. Swann gave Callihan a huracanrana off the top rope onto the legos. Callihan threw powder into Swann’s eyes and gave him a piledriver off the middle rope onto the Lego’s, but Swann kicked out.; That was kind of ridiculous to me. Callihan brought in a barbed wire bat. Swann used a claw to the groin, got the bat, hit Callihan with it and used a crossface with the bat for the submission. ***½

6. Tessa Blanchard beat Gail Kim in 13:00. This was the first match on the show that you could really take seriously as a match. Everything else was a spectacle and in some form overdone. Both women were great here. Blanchard is the one woman who has that intangible aggressiveness and intensity that Ronda Rousey brought to WWE, but is far more polished. Kim looked a level above almost all women wrestlers in this country. Kim did a plancha off the top to the floor. Blanchard did a tope and pulled Kim off the middle rope into a codebreaker. At one point Blanchard teased a half nelson German suplex on the ramp, but instead threw Kim off the stage and she landed on her face. They did a count out tease. Blanchard went for her father’s slingshot suplex, but Kim escaped. Blanchard won with the Magnum, named after her stepfather, which is an even more impressive version of Bushi’s MX, coming off the top rope with a codebreaker. Kim kicked out, but Blanchard got a version of an Anaconda Vise/crossface type of move for the submission. The match was Blanchard as super heel, but the post-match would be the classiest babyface turn ever, with hee hugging her dad, hugging Kim and bowing to her. We’ll see if that’s what this was. Fans chanted for Kim. If this was Kim’s last match, she really could say it was a great one, both the match and the story and the idea that she left by doing a passing of the torch moment that felt pretty real. ***3/4

7. Brian Cage beat Johnny Impact to win the Impact title in 13:16. Lance Storm was guest referee. He played it straight and really didn’t get involved in the match except for one spot thwarting the outside interference. Still, TNA had made a rep for the Jeff Jarrett style world title match, and while it’s a good match to get live crowd reactions, it got old. Cage hit the F-5 right away but Impact kicked out. Cage did power moves and even a standing moonsault. The big spot was Impact doing the Spanish fly off the ramp and that’s where Cage was legit hurt. Cage was bleeding and Impact was punching the cut. Impact did a double springboard spear for a near fall. Taya Valkyrie and John E. Bravo set up a table no the floor. Cage power bombed Impact through the table. Bravo jumped in the ring to interfere. Cage nailed him. Impact hit Cage with a belt shot and Impact gave Storm a sliding kick. Cage’s blood was all over Storm. Bravo threw the belt to Valkyrie. Cage power bombed Valkyrie. Impact hit Cage with a belt shot and threw the belt out of the ring. Bravo took off his shirt and was wearing a ref shirt as Impact hit Starship pain. The deal here is that Bravo had been Impact’s top referee but Impact bought him off and he helped Impact beat Cage in a recent match, got fired as ref and became Impact’s second. Announcer Don Callis noted that when Bravo started the count as Impact was pinning Cage, that the pin wouldn’t count. Cage kicked out anyway to a big pop. Storm recovered and superkicked Bravo. Cage superkicked Impact and hit a weak looking drill claw, since Cage was clearly hurting bad and didn’t have the power, for the pin. After the match, Cage’s celebration was broken up by Michael Elgin, who laid Cage out with an Elgin bomb. ***1/4

8. LAX regained the Impact tag titles from Pentagon Jr. & Fenix in a Full Metal Mayhem match in 20:49. This was just insane. Crowd was really with it as well. Pentagon and Fenix opened doing a double running flip dive that sent both members of LAX through tables on the floor. Actually I’m not sure that Pentagon and Fenix weren’t the ones who flew through the tables. They put a garbage can on Santana and gave him a double superkick. A similar spot was done in Swann-Callihan. Actually having this weapons match and Swann-Callihan as a weapons match on the same show seemed like overkill. But this match worked. Santana did a double foot stomp putting Fenix through two chairs. Santana threw Pentagon over the barricade into the second row. LAX brought in a ladder. All four sat on chairs and traded punches. Konnan handed LAX a fork. Yes, they used a fork and all hugged at the end, like copying Sting vs. HHH at Mania was a good thing. Everyone threw chairs at each other. Fenix did a double foot stomp off the top onto Santana, who Pentagon was giving a package piledriver to. Santana kicked out of that. Fenix did a ropewalk and then grabbed Ortiz, who was on a ladder, gave him a Spanish fly off the ladder over the top rope through a table. Pentagon did the Penta driver on Santana onto a chair. Pentagon brought out a ton of thumbtacks and put them on top of a table. Santana used the fork on Pentagon. Santana power bombed Pentagon off the ladder and through the table with all the thumbtacks on it for the pin. ****1/4

Bellator ran one of its big events on 4/27 in San Jose with plenty of controversy regarding the main event.

Rory MacDonald (20-5-1), the welterweight champion, was defending his title in what was also a first-round tournament match against Jon Fitch (32-7-2). MacDonald clearly won the second round. Fitch clearly won the third big and the fifth as well. The other two rounds were close, with MacDonald doing the better in the striking, but Fitch dominating positioning and had more advantage time. Both round were tough to call. In the first, MacDonald hurt Fitch with a punch and was getting the better of the stand-up. Fitch turned it into a grinding fight late in the round and got MacDonald down twice and kept him there, but didn’t hurt him bad. All three judges gave MacDonald that round. In the fourth, MacDonald had Fitch in the worst trouble at any point, landing good punches and blocking a takedown and lading on top. Then Fitch got it to the ground twice and controlled the rest of the round, landing constant body punches and knees to the butt and was really pounding on him. Two judges gave that round to MacDonald and one gave it to Fitch. All three judges gave Fitch a 10-8 in the third. So in the end, one judge had it 48-46 for Fitch and the other two had it 47-47, so it was a majority draw.

What was interesting is that all three judges gave Fitch a 10-8 third, but nobody in the media did. By the California rules, if you dominate the round from start-to-finish, and Fitch did, it was a 10-8. Fitch never came close to finishing. With no 10-8, nobody in the media had it as a draw and it was 56/44 in favor of MacDonald. In the arena, it was very clear everyone thought Fitch won it easily, with it either tied after four or Fitch up 39-37, and then Fitch clearly won the fifth.

Since MacDonald was champion and it was a draw, he retained. The rules of the tournament in most cases in the event of a draw were to go back to the judges who would then have to pick a winner, regardless of the points on their scorecard. But in this case, that didn’t happen. Because the tournament includes three title fights and MacDonald is champion, he advanced. The live crowd hated the decision and booed heavily.

MacDonald, after the fight, seemed to question fighting, saying he didn’t know if he had it in him to have that killer instinct. But later, he said that he was continuing in the tournament and a few days later Bellator made it official that MacDonald would defend on 6/14 in Madison Square Garden in a tournament semifinal against Neiman Gracie.

Gracie was so convinced that Fitch won the fight by a landslide that he got in the cage and congratulated Fitch for winning and went to challenge him, ignoring MacDonald.

Then Fitch at the press conference said it was probably his last fight. He said that three years ago, he was diagnosed with serious neck problems and got a concerning brain scan. He said that he promised himself he would retire after his next loss. Then he won five fights in a row. Even though he didn’t lose, at 41, he said he was in the tournament for the $1 million bonus that the winner would get, which was significant money. He said since he’s out of the tournament, even though he fought well and thought he won, he didn’t see putting himself through it again. Although he did say if he was put back in the tournament as an alternate in the event of an injury, he’d accept it.

MacDonald was listed as earning $200,000 for the win and Fitch was listed at earning $140,000 for the loss.

Ilima-lei Macfarlane (10-0) retained her flyweight title over Veta Arteaga (5-3). MacFarlane kept trying to take Arteaga down. Arteaga defended well and Macfarlane got really tired constantly driving for the takedown. She did get two takedowns but Arteaga got up from both and was winning the striking.

In the second round, with Macfarlane tired, Arteaga landed harder shots and had Macfarlane wobbled late.

In the third round, Macfarlane gt the takedown, then landed an elbow from the top that made a divot in Arteaga’s head. The cut was high in he forehead, but was wide and deep, so the point you could see the skull. Blood was flowing like crazy and once you could see a close-up of the cut, you knew it would have to be stopped.

Macfarlane said she knew nobody was happy with a blood stoppage and that Arteaga was a warrior who wanted to continue. She felt it wasn’t a decisive win and said she’d give Arteaga a rematch. Scott Coker talked like he wasn’t quite so sure about that.

Macfarlane was listed at getting $75,000 for the win and Arteaga got $40,000 for the loss.

Benson Henderson (27-8) won a split decision over local fighter Adam Piccolotti (11-3). This was a great fight but Piccolotti clearly won rounds one and three and should have gotten the upset. Media scores were 90 percent for Piccolotti and 10 percent a draw, with nobody for Henderson. Henderson was listed at getting $100,000 for the win and Piccolotti got $22,000 for the loss.

Phil Davis (20-5, 1 no contest) stopped Liam McGeary (13-4) at 4:11 of the third round. McGeary suffered a broken jaw in the second round and kept going. Davis won the first two rounds and did probably his best job of striking of his career as he was winning that battle against a 6-foot-6 striker using low kicks. Davis took him down in the third round twice and worked for a choke. He didn’t get it but McGeary tapped anyway. Apparently his working for a choke put so much pressure on McGeary’s broken jaw that he had to tap. Davis got $160,000 for the win and McGeary got $75,000 for the loss.

The show drew 9,000 fans to the SAP Center.

More legal action regarding Lucha Underground contracts, even though there is no sign the promotion will even continue, have led several performers including Jeff Cobb, Famous B and Sonny Kiss to get legal representation.

Lucha Underground sent cease and desist letters to ROH, regarding Cobb and the NWA regarding Willie Mack, who they claim are both under contract to them according to the web site SoCal Uncensored..

Kiss works for AEW but we haven’t heard of them getting a cease and desist, which would be tricky since AEW and AAA are working together and it’s Dorian Roldan who sent the letters.

The Cubs Fan noted that Mack, in particular, but Cobb as well, have worked for The Crash. AAA and The Crash are rivals in Tijuana and enemies right now, although AAA heavyweight champion Fenix is working this week for The Crash. So it’s possible that is the untold part of the story, especially the way it played out the next few days. To add to that, they noted that Mack was proposed a solution that if he jumped to AAA and left Crash, they’d call it off. Mack turned that down, but has since agreed to do so and will be working the AAA 5/31 show in Tijuana, the home base of The Crash.

Cobb was under the impression that he had a full release, which was promised him if he returned for season four, which featured the death of Matanza Cueto, the character that he played. It’s said that Cobb has since gotten a full release from Lucha Underground and there’s no more issue regarding him. All are now trying to follow the footsteps of Joey Ryan, El Hijo del Fantasma, Ivelisse Velez and Thunder Rosa, who had filed a suit against Bab-G Productions (The Lucha Underground parent company) and the El Rey Network for not paying them but also not releasing them, keeping them from being able to sign contracts at a time when there is a run for talent.

It was believed Cobb had been released, since he returned to Lucha Underground and they killed off his Matanza Cueto character. Cobb then signed a one-year contract with ROH which runs until the end of the year.

The letter to the NWA resulted in the NWA taking the National title off Mack and putting it on Colt Cabana.

As best we can tell, only NWA and ROH have been sent cease and desists, but the issue should be dead at this point.

Kento Miyahara, who is an old school sort of way, may be the best worker in the business right now, captured the All Japan Champion Carnival tournament by beating Jake Lee in the finals before a sellout of 1,698 fans at Korakuen Hall in Tokyo.

It is rare that the Triple Crown champion wins the Carnival, because it would seem not to make sense. The idea of the tournament in theory is to create a top contender who can challenge for the title.

But still, from an historical standpoint, in the original days of the World League and Champion Carnival, the singles champion frequently won, with the idea of booking a superstar. In addition, Miyahara has four Triple Crown title reigns, but had never won the Champion Carnival, one of the oldest traditions in pro wrestling, as it dates back to the World League in 1959.

Right now is the Miyahara era, and it may be the time to build him as strongly as possible as a dominant star. Miyahara won the A block with a 5-3 record, and in doing so did set up Shuji Ishikawa, Zeus and possibly Gianni Valletta as challengers by losing to them in the tournament. Ishikawa, who finished in a three-way tie in the A block for second place, will be getting the next title shot on 5/20.

Miyahara beat Yuji Okabayashi with his trademark shutdown German suplex t win the A block in 18:22 on 4/25 at Korakuen Hall before 1,209 fans. Lee defeated Naoya Nomura in 12:25 in a playoff to win the B block after both finished the round-robin tournament with 5-3 records.

Nomura had beaten Lee during the tournament, which is the usual tie-breaker, and I’m not sure why they did a playoff unless they’ve broken from the usual tournament traditions.

Miyahara’s match with Okabayashi and Lee, to me, were both ****3/4 matches. The Okabayashi match was a soft ****3/4, while the Lee match was a solid one, and one of the best matches so far this year.

There are a few things about Miyahara. The key to his game is that he’s an incredible seller. He sells in a way that engages the audience and his pacing is brilliant. More than any wrestler, he has the ability to make a 30 minute match feel like it’s maybe 18 minutes. While most considered Kenny Omega vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi to be the best match of the first week of the year in Japan, Miyahara’s title defense against Kai was right up there with anything else at the Tokyo Dome or the rest of that week. Omega vs. Tanahashi felt like a long match and was filled with spectacular moves. Miyahara, on the other hand, does all kinds of little things, very much like a Tanahashi, but with the exception of some of his head-butts, and granted that’s one of the worst moves for someone considered safe, ultimately he works matches with no spectacular high spots or big moves, dangerous spots or shows the kind of incredible athletic ability like an Okada or an Omega or an Ospreay.

It’s a style that dates back decades, and the uniqueness of his ability to feel like he’s time speeding (something everyone remarks about who sees him live and was the key thing talked about by Americans at the 1/3 show) is hard to explain. His offense is basic with chops, kicks and suplexes, the latter not overdone. He is able, in 2019, to make one engaged to a match as an athletic contest and pro wrestling style fight, as opposed to worked MMA, athletic spectacle or still style match. He’s very different from Tomohiro Ishii, but seems to kind of mix some of what makes Ishii good as far as making it a fight with the Tanahashi style of making every movement mean something.

In a sense, it’s the more you see him, the more you appreciate. As a live performer and company ace, he has the Tanahashi feel. He doesn’t have the star look of a Tanahashi, or even the cool moves Tanahashi was throwing in until recently when he’s had to adapt and change due to injuries.

He’s also a great show closer. I can’t speak for his promos given the language issue, but the reaction to his promos at the end of the show is similar to Tanahashi or, in the 90s, Atsushi Onita, where the promo also gets the incredible reaction.

It’s very different from a Zack Sabre Jr., who can do a safe match but his whole match is filled with cool, but not dangerous moves and spots. Miyahara is Ricky Morton, but less flashy than Morton, and with far more of a superstar aura.

The A block final night was 4/25 at Korakuen Hall before 1,209 fans. Ryoji Sai was upset by Yuma Aoyagi, losing in 11:43 to the end game. Dylan James, who was still alive, was eliminated by Atsushi Aoki in 9:04. Zeus still had a mathematical shot at winning, but he was eliminated by Ishikawa in 17:18 with a giant slam.

So, as expected, it came down to Okabayashi, with a 4-2-1 record, and Miyahara, with a 4-3 record, with the winner going to the finals. Miyahara won in 18:22 with a shutdown German suplex.

The final block standings were: 1. Miyahara 5-3; 2. James, Okabayashi and Ishikawa 4-3-1; 5. Zeus and Aoki 4-4; 7. Sai 3-4-1; 8. Aoyagi and Gianni Valletta 3-5.

The B block went into the final show on 4/28 with Lee, Nomura, Suwama, Yoshitatsu, Joe Doering and Daichi Hashimoto all with 4-3 records.

Hashimoto was up first, and he was pinned by Sam Adonis in 8:03 with a frog splash. Yoshitatsu was then eliminated by losing to Takashi Yoshida in 10:30 with the pineapple bomber. Lee advanced, beating Doering in 9:03 with a back suplex. This left Nomura vs. Suwama. Nomura got what would be a big win for him, since Suwama is an established star, winning in 22:31. The idea was that Nomura gave everything he had to beat Suwama, while Lee was rested and had a much shorter match. The tournament itself was huge for Nomura, with high quality matches and the Suwama win. They told a good story with him in nearly winning the block and upped him a rung as a contender.

The final B block standings were: 1. Lee 6-3; 2. Nomura 5-4; 3. Suwama, Yoshitatsu, Doering, Yoshida and Hashimoto 4-4; 8. Joel Redman and Adonis 3-5.

WORLD LEAGUE/CHAMPION CARNIVAL HISTORY: 1959 -Rikidozan beat Jesse Ortega; 1960 - Rikidozan (2) beat Leo Nomellini via count out; 1961 - Rikidozan (3) beat Mr. X (Bill Miller) via DQ; 1962 - Rikidozan (4) beat Lou Thesz; 1963 - Rikidozan (5) beat Killer Kowalski; 1964 - Toyonobori beat Gene Kiniski via count out; 1965 - Giant Baba beat Freddie Blassie; 1966 - Giant Baba (2) beat Wilbur Snyder via count out; 1967 - Giant Baba (3) beat The Destroyer; 1968 - Giant Baba (4) beat Killer Kowalski; 1969 - Antonio Inoki beat Chris Markoff; 1970 - Giant Baba (5) beat Don Leo Jonathan; 1971 - Giant Baba (6) beat Abdullah the Butcher; 1972 - Giant Baba (7) beat Gorilla Monsoon; 1973 - Giant Baba (8) beat Mark Lewin; 1974 - Giant Baba (9) beat Mr. Wrestling (Tim Woods); 1975 - Giant Baba (10) won four-man playoff over Gene Kiniski, The Destroyer and Mr. Wrestling; 1976 - Abdullah the Butcher beat Giant Baba via DQ; 1977 - Giant Baba (11) beat Jumbo Tsuruta; 1978 - Giant Baba (12) beat Abdullah the Butcher via count out; 1979 - Abdullah the Butcher (2) beat Jumbo Tsuruta; 1980 - Jumbo Tsuruta beat Dick Slater; 1981 - Giant Baba (13) won via points over second place Jumbo Tsuruta; 1982 - Giant Baba (14) won via points over second place Bruiser Brody, Jumbo Tsuruta and Ted DiBiase; No tournament 1983-90; 1991 - Jumbo Tsuruta (2) beat Stan Hansen; 1992 - Stan Hansen beat Mitsuharu Misawa; 1993 - Stan Hansen (2) beat Mitsuharu Misawa; 1994 - Toshiaki Kawada beat Steve Williams; 1995 - Mitsuharu Misawa beat Akira Taue; 1996 - Akira Taue beat Steve Williams; 1997 - Toshiaki Kawada (2) won three-way playoff over Mitsuharu Misawa and Kenta Kobashi; 1998 - Mitsuharu Misawa (2) beat Jun Akiyama; 1999 - Vader beat Kenta Kobashi; 2000 - Kenta Kobashi beat Takao Omori; 2001 - Genichiro Tenryu beat Taiyo Kea; 2002 - Keiji Muto beat Mike Barton (Bart Gunn); 2003 - Satoshi Kojima beat Arashi; 2004 - Keiji Muto (2) beat Kensuke Sasaki; 2005 - Kensuke Sasaki beat Jamal (Umaga); 2006 - Taiyo Kea beat Suwama; 2007 - Keiji Muto (3) beat Toshiaki Kawada; 2008 - Suwama beat Hiroshi Tanahashi; 2009 - Minoru Suzuki beat Kaz Hayashi; 2010 - Minoru Suzuki (2) beat Masakatsu Funaki; 2011 - Yuji Nagata beat Seiya Sanada; 2012 - Taiyo Kea (2) beat Suwama; 2013 - Jun Akiyama beat Kai; 2014 - Takao Omori beat Jun Akiyama; 2015 - Akebono beat Suwama; 2016 - Daisuke Sekimoto beat Zeus; 2017 - Shuji Ishikawa beat Joe Doering; 2018 - Naomichi Marufuji beat Kent Miyahara

Billy Corgan’s NWA, in conjunction with ROH, brought a late 80s them, the Crockett Cup tag team tournament, to Honor Club with a show on 4/27 from the Cabarrus Arena in Concord, NC.

The idea was to make the show look like an old Jim Crockett Promotions event from the 80s. Crockett promoted three Crockett Cup tag team tournaments from 1986 to 1988. The first, in New Orleans, a joint promotion with Bill Watts’ UWF at the Superdome in New Orleans, featured teams from all over the world. The second, in Baltimore was a successful major event while the third, in Greenville, SC and Greensboro, NC, was less of a success.

There were throwbacks to the 80s, including Ricky Morton (62) and Robert Gibson (60) as the Rock & Roll Express, wrestling the Briscoes, plus Jim Cornette as an announcer and appearances from Nikita Koloff, Magnum T.A., Jackie and Frances Crockett and Tommy Young, the former Crockett head referee, among others.

The show drew 1,300 fans with 1,100 paid.

Corgan has talked about doing an NWA television show in the fall that would be distributed via Internet.

The show got strong reviews, particularly the Nick Aldis vs. Marty Scurll NWA title match. Due to a computer issue, I only saw the first half of the show. It was very easy to watch. Everyone worked hard. Jim Cornette is a fantastic remote control announcer, in the sense he has great delivery and can turn a million phrases and quickly make a story out of any situation as long as it’s not implausible. He was out there unfamiliar with most of the talent and still instinctively could in seconds figure out how to get it over.

1. Royce Isaacs & Thomas Latimer won the wild card Battle Royal to get into the Crockett Cup. The teams were The Boys from ROH, Will Ferrara & Rhett Titus from ROH, Isaacs & Latimer (the former Bram in TNA, also known for being the second husband of Charlotte Flair), Jay Bradley & Jocephus (who used to look like crazy Bruiser Brody and with his new haircut looks like San Antonio sportswriter Frank Goodish), Zane & Dave Dawson and several others. It was the Battle Royal finish that was once cool and is now overdone. The Boys threw out Jocephus and Bradley to apparently win, only to have Isaacs & Latimer enter the ring and throw them out. This came across like every indie Battle Royal except it was a tag team where you had to throw both members of the team out to eliminate them.

2. Flip Gordon & Bandido beat Stuka Jr. & Guerrero Maya Jr. This had a lot of missed spots and a lot of cool move. Gordon pinned Stuka with a TKO.

3. Isaacs & Latimer beat Crimson& Jax Dane. Latimer wrapped Crimson’s leg around the post and Isaacs pinned Crimson using the ropes. So-so.

4. Mark & Jay Briscoe beat Ricky Morton & Robert Gibson. It was short, but the crowd was into it. Really, it was far better than expected because Ricky Morton bled and sold great, and the people bought Gibson’s hot tag. Morton did a tope and a huracanrana. The finish saw Jay hit the Death Valley bomb on Morton and Mark pinned him with the elbow off the top rope.

5. Brody King & PCO beat Satoshi Kojima & Yuji Nagata when King pinned Kojima after a Michinoku drier. This was also a good match.

6. Allysin Kay pinned Santana Garrett to win the vacant NWA women’s title. Jazz vacated it due to personal reasons shortly before the show. Kay won with a spinning lariat.

7. Isaacs & Latimer beat Gordon & Bandido when Latimer pinned Gordon after a schoolboy. Nobody expected that.

8. King & PCO beat the Briscoes via DQ for usage of chairs.

9. Colt Cabana pinned Willie Mack in a short match to win the NWA national title. This was the title change coming from the Lucha Underground cease and desist. Cabana won with the Superman press. After the match, James Storm got in the ring, congratulated Cabana and then said how management is holding him down and they only want a certain type of person to be world champion and not a hell raiser like himself. He then challenged Cabana to a match.

10. Brody King & PCO beat Isaacs & Latimer to win the tournament. PCO pinned Latimer with a moonsault. Koloff and Magnum congratulated them and presented them with the Crockett Cup trophies and the NWA world tag team championships.

11. Nick Aldis beat Marty Scurll to keep the NWA title. By all accounts, this match was outstanding. Young gave both men their instructions, although due to injuries, he can’t referee matches any longer. They had a long match. Aldis bled and kept going for the scorpion deathlock and finally locked it on for the submission. The story is that these have been best friends for 15 years but Scurll wanted the title. The crowd loved the match. Scurll then said that Aldis helped him in the beginning of his career and helped him later as well. Aldis said that Scurll is the biggest self-made star in the business and mocked people who laughed at them trying to bring back the NWA.

THE DESTROYER TITLE MATCHES IN JAPAN:

5/19/63: def. Rikidozan via count out to retain WWA title in Osaka (12,000)

5/21/63: def. Great Togo to retain WWA title in Kanayama (8,000)

5/22/63: def. Giant Baba to retain WWA title in Shizuoka (8,000)

5/24/63: 61:00 draw with Rikidozan to retain WWA title in Tokyo (12,000)

12/2/63: lost to Rikidozan via count out for International title in Osaka (10,000)

12/4/63: double count out with Rikidozan for International title in Tokyo (12,000)

12/6/63: w/Buddy Austin 61:00 draw with All-Asia tag champions Rikidozan & Toyonobori in Kanayama (7,000)

12/4/64: lost WWA title to Toyonobori via DQ in Tokyo (12,000)

2/26/65: 61:00 draw with Toyonobori for WWA title in Tokyo (12,000)

6/3/65: w/Billy Red Lyons def. Giant Baba & Toyonobori in Sapporo to win All-Asia tag titles

6/22/65: w/Billy Red Lyons def. Giant Baba & Michiaki Yoshimura in Sendai to retain All-Asia tag titles

7/15/65: w/Billy Red Lyons lost All-Asia tag titles to Giant Baba & Toyonobori in Shizuoka

4/16/67: double count out with Giant Baba for International title in Osaka

5/1/67: w/Dan Miller lost to Giant Baba & Michiaki Yoshimura for All-Asia tag title in Hiroshima

5/17/67: lost to Giant Baba in World League final in Yokohama (7,000)

2/26/69: w/Apache Bull Ramos lost to International tag team champions Giant Baba & Antonio Inoki in Osaka

3/5/69: lost to Giant Baba for International title in Tokyo

9/27/69: drew Giant Baba over 60:00 for International title in Tokyo

9/28/69: w/Black Gordman lost to International tag team champion Giant Baba & Antonio Inoki in Osaka

10/27/69: double count out with Giant Baba for International title in Kumamoto

10/30/69: drew Giant Baba over 60:00 for International title in Gifu

11/1/69: w/Buddy Austin lost to International tag team champions Giant Baba & Antonio Inoki

12/14/72: def. Thunder Sugiyama to retain the U.S. title in Okayama

4/23/73: no contest with King Curtis Iaukea to retain U.S. title in Nagoya

4/24/73: 60:00 draw with Mark Lewin to retain U.S. title in Osaka

10/9/73: def. Mil Mascaras via count out to retain U.S. title in Tokyo

1/28/74: 60:00 draw with NWA champion Jack Brisco in Nagoya

5/13/74: def. Abdullah the Butcher via DQ in a U.S. title vs. British Empire title belt vs. belt match in Hachioje

7/25/74: def. Mil Mascaras to retain U.S. title in Tokyo

8/9/74: def. Masked Tornado (Dick Murdoch) via DQ to retain U.S. title and World Masked Man championship in Tokyo

10/5/74: def. Masked Avenger (Moose Morowski) to retain U.S. title and World Masked Man championship in Tokyo

10/10/74: def. Abdullah the Butcher via DQ to retain U.S. title in Osaka

12/6/74: def. Chris Markoff via DQ to retain U.S. title in Niigata

1/29/75: def. Caribbean Hurricane (Ciclon Negro) to retain U.S. title and World Masked Man championship in Tokyo

3/12/75: lost to NWA champion Jack Brisco in Fujinomiya

5/1/75: def. Mr. Wrestling (Tim Woods) to retain U.S. title and World Masked Man championship in Okayama

5/27/75: def. Black Devil (Manuel Soto) to retain U.S. title and World Masked Man championship in Hiroshima

7/19/75: def. The Spirit (Killer Karl Kox) via count out to retain U.S. title and World Masked Man championship in Osaka

7/25/75: def. The Spirit to retain U.S. title and World Masked Man championship in Tokyo

8/19/75: def. Black Devil to retain U.S. title and World Masked Man title in Sapporo

10/12/75: lost U.S. title to Abdullah the Butcher in Osaka

12/3/75: def. Abdullah the Butcher to win U.S. title in Kiryu

1/3/76: double count out with Mil Mascaras to retain U.S. title and World Masked Man championship in Tokyo

2/21/76: def. Blue Shark (Dan Miller) to retain U.S. title and World Masked Man championship in Tokyo

8/28/76: def. Super Destroyer (Don Jardine) to retain U.S. title and World Masked Man championship in Tokyo

10/10/76: no contest with Abdullah the Butcher for U.S. title in Osaka (title declared vacant after the match)

10/28/76: def. Abdullah the Butcher via DQ to win U.S. title in Tokyo

3/11/77: 60:00 draw with Mil Mascaras to retain U.S. title and World Masked Man championship in Tokyo

8/17/77: double count out with Mil Mascaras to retain U.S. title in Kobe

10/31/77: def. Bobo Brazil via count out to retain U.S. title in Nagano

8/18/78: lost U.S. title and World Masked Man championship to Mil Mascaras in Kagoshima

9/11/78: def. Mil Mascaras to win U.S. title and World Masked Man championship in Iwate

12/12/78: Lost to AWA champion Nick Bockwinkel in Sendai

6/12/79: w/Billy Red Lyons lost to International tag team champions Giant Baba & Jumbo Tsuruta in Iwate

When Destroyer moved back to Akron, NY in 1979 after six plus years living in Tokyo, the U.S. title and World Masked Man championships were retired due to his years as champion.

The tag team of Baba & Destroyer is considered one of the greatest and most famous tandems in Japanese wrestling history. The two teamed regularly from 1972 to 1979 in All Japan Pro Wrestling, although eventually Jumbo Tsuruta transitioned into becoming Baba’s main partner.

Destroyer worked full-time for All Japan from 1973 to 1979 and worked a few tours a year through 1982, when he took a full-time teaching job. He did one summer tour per year until his retirement in 1993, at the age of 63. He worked singles matches regularly after 1979, and never lost one, although he did not work singles matches with the top names like The Funks, Bruiser Brody, Stan Hansen (he did beat Hansen in a singles match but it was before Hansen before a huge star in New Japan), Terry Gordy, Steve Williams, Mitsuharu Misawa, Toshiaki Kawada, Kenta Kobashi and the like in the 80s and 90s.

He was still working main events at times through 1984, which included his last major win, when he and Billy Robinson beat Baba & Tsuruta. For the last decade, he worked prelim matches with mostly younger Japanese talent in a player/coach role.

In his 21 years with the promotion, he lost very few singles matches, 17 in total, and only for a reason, whether to build up a championship match, or a match where he would lose the title and regain it, or Champion Carnival matches.

His singles losses in All Japan: Baba (12/19/72 via count out to form the Baba & Destroyer team); Mark Lewin (4/14/73), Jumbo Tsuruta (5/2/74), Gene Kiniski (4/24/75), Giant Baba (4/26/75), Horst Hoffman (12/17/75), Abdullah the Butcher (12/18/75), Kintaro Oki (5/6/76), Tsuruta (4/20/77), Ken Patera (10/12/77), Curtis Iaukea (3/12/78), Tsuruta (3/13/78), Abdullah (3/14/78), Baba (3/31/78), Mascaras (8/18/78), Nick Bockwinkel (12/12/78), and Abdullah (3/27/79).

His noteworthy singles wins: Ripper Collins, Great Malenko, Apache Bull Ramos, Bill Miller, Mil Mascaras, The Beast, Dick Murdoch, Bobby Duncum, Ciclon Negro, Bob Geigel, Karl Von Steiger, Luke Graham, Dutch Savage, Mike Graham, Mike DuBois (Alexis Smirnoff), Rufus Jones, Kevin Sullivan, Mr. Fuji, Spyros Arion, Bob Backlund, Bob Roop, George Steele, Johnny Weaver, Dick Slater, John DaSilva, Dominic DeNucci, Mexico Grande (Ricky Romero), Blackjack Mulligan, Jimmy Snuka, The Barricuda (Mario Milano), Red Bastien, J.J. Dillon, Jose Gonzalez, Bulldog Bob Brown, Steve Keirn, Bob Orton Jr., Takachiho (Great Kabuki), Mr. Wrestling (Tim Woods), Chavo Guerrero, Jerry Brisco, Bob Remus (Sgt. Slaughter), Ricky Gibson, The Spirit (Killer Karl Kox), Tommy Gilbert, Bobby Jaggers, Larry Zbyszko, Stan Hansen, Ox Baker, Buddy Rose, Paul Perschmann (Buddy Rose), Tarzan Tyler, Lord Jonathan Boyd, Ray Stevens, Blue Shark (Dan Miller), Buddy Wolff, Johnny Valiant, Iron Sheik, Lord Al Hayes, Super Destroyer (Don Jardine), Ted DiBiase, Waldo Von Erich, Kim Duk, Leo Burke, Steve Strong, The Avenger (Moose Morowski), Crusader#1 (Missing Link), Crusader #2 (Billy “Red” Lyons), Jerry Blackwell, Horst Hoffman, Ed Wiskoski, Don Muraco, Swede Hanson, Jay Youngblood, Ken Patera, Bobo Brazil, Don Leo Jonathan, ,Gino Hernandez, Dick Blood (Tito Santana), Blackjack Lanza, Dos Caras, Miguel Perez, Goro Tsurumi, Giant Baba and Akira Taue.

Baba & Destroyer noteworthy tag team wins: Mark Lewin & Ciclon Negro, King Curtis Iaukea & Baron Mikel Scicluna, Iaukea & Mark Lewin, Dory Funk Jr.& Omar Atlas, Harley Race & Dan Miller, Race & Nick Kozak, Iaukea & Murdoch, Bruno Sammartino & Stan Pulaski, Fritz Von Erich & Bobby Duncum, Fritz Von Erich & Killer Kowalski, Terry Funk & Jerry Brisco, Terry Funk & Bob Geigel, Terry Funk & J.J. Dillon, Murdoch & Eddie Graham, Murdoch & Gene Kiniski, Bob Backlund & Bob Roop, Roop & George Steele, Terry Funk & Killer Karl Kox, Kox & Dick Slater, Blackjack Mulligan & Dominic DeNucci, Don Leo Jonathan & Mexico Grande (Ricky Romero), Murdoch & Mulligan, Jack Brisco & Ken Mantell (when they were NWA world heavyweight and NWA jr. heavyweight champions), Ciclon Negro & Barracuda, Red Bastien & Barracuda, Race & Bastien, Race & Dillon, Bobo Brazil & Nelson Royal, Sammartino & Mr. Wrestling, Bobo Brazil & Scott Casey, Brazil & Billy Francis, Brazil & Scott Casey, Duncum & Ricky Gibson, Duncum & Remus (Slaughter), Ox Baker & Stan Hansen, Abdullah the Butcher & Prince Pullins, Dory Funk Jr. & Don Leo Jonathan, Dory Funk Jr. & Jumbo Tsuruta, Abdullah the Butcher & Don Leo Jonathan, Ray Stevens & Tarzan Tyler, Mascaras & Tyler, The Royal Kangaroos (Jonathan Boyd & Norman Fredrich Charles III), Mascaras & Stevens, Lewin & Blue Shark, Verne Gagne & Wahoo McDaniel, Lewin & McDaniel, Iaukea & Barracuda, Abdullah & Buddy Wolff, Abdullah & Iaukea, Murdoch & Horst Hoffman, Terry Funk & Lord Al Hayes, Billy Robinson & The Avenger (Moose Morowski), Bobo Brazil & Super Destroyer, Brazil & Ted DiBiase, Murdoch & Spirit (Kox), Abdullah & Chris Taylor, The Crusaders (Dewey Robertson & Billy “Red” Lyons), Iaukea & Jerry Blackwell, Mascaras & Ron Bass, Slater & Bass, Robinson & Slater, Mascaras & Slater, Abdullah & Dillon, Abdullah & Super Destroyer, Abdullah & Bull Ramos, Hoffman & Milano, Hoffman & Baron Von Raschke, Mascaras & Swede Hanson, Duk & Lewin, Murdoch & Gino Hernandez, Murdoch & Duk, Robinson & Dick Blood (Tito Santana), Abdullah & Brazil, Brazil & Tor Kamata, Iaukea & Von Raschke, Fritz Von Erich & Von Raschke, Bruiser Brody & Iaukea, Slater & Milano, Slater & Dos Caras, Abdullah & Tor Kamata, Abdullah & Big Red Reese, Kintaro Oki & Tor Kamata, Gene Kiniski & Mike Sharpe Jr. and Murdoch & Frenchy Martin.

Baba & Destroyer’s only tag team losses: Jack Brisco & Terry Funk (1/22/74), Murdoch & Ken Mantell (11/25/74), Jack Brisco & Ken Mantell (12/8/74), Harley Race & Ciclon Negro (1/21/75), Dick Murdoch & Dusty Rhodes (11/19/75), Dick the Bruiser & The Crusher (1/24/76), Dick Murdoch & Ed Wiskoski (7/8/77), Bobo Brazil & Ken Patera (10/3/77), Abdullah the Butcher & The Sheik (12/2/78), Dory Funk Jr. & Terry Funk (12/11/78), Bruiser Brody & King Curtis Iaukea (1/5/79).

WWE ratings were disastrous this week, with both Raw doing its lowest non-holiday number in history and Smackdown doing its lowest number since moving to the USA Network.

Smackdown on 4/30 did a 1.38 rating 1,833,000 viewers (1.49 viewers per home), down 11.5 percent from the prior week. It broke the USA record low of 1,841,000 set on 2/5, but that was going against Donald Trump’s State of the Union speech.

Smackdown was hurt by the NBA and NHL playoffs, but the biggest game didn’t go against Smackdown except on the West Coast. The head-to-head NBA game, Milwaukee vs. Boston, did 4,404,000, while the 10:35 p.m. game, which went against Smackdown on the West Coast with the Golden State Warriors vs. Houston Rockets, did 6,073,000 viewers. Game four of both of those series’ will be going against Raw on Monday, so unless they’ve got a real hotshot up their sleeve, Raw will go down. Smackdown will also have competition from the NBA Playoffs.

Smackdown also went against the Columbus Blue Jackets (in the city Smackdown was coming from) vs. Boston Bruins NHL game that did 1,664,000 viewers, while on the West Coat, it went against the San Jose Sharks vs. Colorado Avalanche game that did 1,069,000 viewers.

Smackdown finished 15th on cable, one of its lowest rankings in recent memory. Still, it was third if you eliminate news shows and NBA related programming.

The show was down 24.8 percent from the show on the same week last year.

Worse, the decline from last week was mostly younger viewers. The show did a 0.34 in 12-17 (down 24.4 percent from last week), 0.38 in 18-34 (down 33.3 percent), 0.70 in 35-49 (down 17.6 percent) and 0.83 in 50+ (down 2.4 percent).

The audience was 67.9 percent male in 18-49 and 66.3 percent male in 12-27.

If you go back a year, this is the declines: 12-17 is down 38.2 percent, 18-34 is down is down 39.7 percent, 35-49 is down 23.1 percent and 50+ is down 17.0 percent.

Another bad sign is we are only in the second round of the playoffs. Last year, when we got to the finals, Smackdown dropped 12 percent from what it did the same week last year, while Raw dropped 18 percent. If you figure we will get identical drops this year (actually they shouldn’t be quite as bad because the NBA finals won’t have LeBron James in it, who is the biggest draw, but wrestling is also declining at a much faster level than in years), we would be in early June at 1,609,000 viewers for Smackdown and 1,763,000 viewers for Raw, and ratings of 1.21 and 1.27 respectively. And it gets worse during football season.

With the weaker lead-in, Miz and Mrs. dropped 10.6 percent from its record low set the week before to 840,000 viewers.

As far as retention from Smackdown, it was 60.0 percent in women 18-49, 47.3 percent in men 18-49, 33.6 percent in teenage girls, 30.3 percent in teenage boys and 39.8 percent in over 50.

Raw on 4/29 did the lowest non-holiday number in the history of the show with a 1.56 rating and 2,158,000 viewers (1.55 viewers per home), down nine percent in viewers and eight percent in ratings from last week’s out of football season lows of a 1.70 rating and 2,374,000 viewers.

The only two shows do to lower numbers were taped shows that aired on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve.

This is live, and only three weeks out from WrestleMania. Worse, historically the ratings will continue to drop until the NBA playoffs end in June.

The audience was down 29.4 percent in viewers and 27.1 in ratings (which is the more fair measure because ratings being a percentage of homes that get the station eliminates cord cutting from the equation) from the same week last year.

It was the largest year-to-year drop for a non-special show of this year. This was a combination of Raw opening low, with a first hour drop of 12.8 percent from last week, and a relatively large third hour drop, showing the hardcores still watching still didn’t last through the show.

The big competition was the NBA, which did 3,829,000 viewers for the game that was against most of Raw. The later game, which started at 10:35 p.m., did 3,638,000 viewers. The NBA first game was also down 18.3 percent from last year.

Still, Raw was eighth on cable for the night, trailing only the two NBA games and the usual news shows.

The biggest story on the demos is that under 35 was almost identical to last week. Identical to all-time lows isn’t good, but the drop in ratings was almost all due to a 28.5 percent drop in the 35-49 demo.

The first hour did 2,336,000 viewers. The second hour did 2,241,000 viewers. The third hour did 1,898,000 viewers. With the exception of Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve, the prior third hour low record was 2,048,000 for the 12/10 show.

With an expected Warriors vs. Houston series next, in theory, unless WWE has a great idea, things are likely to get significantly worse.

The show did a 0.42 in 12-17 (down 2.3 percent), 0.56 in 18-34 (up 1.8 percent), 0.88 in 35-49 (down 28.5 percent) and 0.92 in 50+ (down 5.2 percent).

The audience was 66.7 percent male in 18-49 and 57.7 percent male in 12-17.

As far as who tuned out, the first-to-third hour drops were 15.4 percent in Women 18-49, 19.2 percent in Men 18-49, 32.2 percent in girls 12-17, 29.4 percent in boys 12-17 and 18.2 percent in over 50.

The Viceland Dark Side of the Ring documentary on Bruiser Brody’s murder on, airing on 4/24, drew 214,000 viewers, which was an 18.2 percent increase over the Montreal screwjob episode. What makes that number more impressive is Viceland had put the documentary up on Youtube so anyone could watch it weeks ago. This series has increased numbers significantly each week. The most talked about episode of the series, on the Von Erichs, airs on 5/1.

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RESULTS

 

4/24 Tokyo Korakuen Hall (New Japan - 1,660 sellout): Satoshi Kojima & Shota Umino & Ren Narita b Yuji Nagata & Yota Tsuji & Yuya Uemura, Zack Sabre Jr.& Taichi & Taka Michinoku b Yoshi-Hashi & Tomoaki Honma & Rocky Romero, Minoru Suzuki & Yoshinobu Kanemaru & Desperado b Jushin Liger & Ryusuke Taguchi & Tiger Mask, Juice Robinson & Dragon Lee & Mikey Nicholls b Chase Owens & Bad Luck Fale & Taiji Ishimori, Hirooki Goto & Togi Makabe & Toru Yano & Toa Henare b Jay White & Tama Tonga & Tanga Loa & Hikuleo, Tetsuya Naito & Evil & Bushi b Kota Ibushi & Tomohiro Ishii & Yoh, Seiya Sanada & Shingo Takagi b Kazuchika Okada & Sho

4/24 Nagaoka (All Japan Champion Carnival - 457): Yusuke Okada & Dan Tamura b Koji Iwamoto & Hokuto Omori, Takao Omori & Dylan James & Gianni Valletta & Black Menso-re b Jun Akiyama & Zeus & Naoya Nomura & Atsushi Maruyama, Joe Doering b Joel Redman, Jake Lee b Sam Adonis, Yuji Okabayashi b Atsushi Aoki, Suwama & Shuji Ishikawa b Yuma Aoyagi & Yoshitatsu, Kento Miyahara b Ryoji Sai

4/24 Kobe (Dragon Gate - 630): Kota Minoura b Mondai Ryu, Kagetora & Yosuke Santa Maria & U-T b Masato Yoshino & Dragon Kid & Jason Lee, Ryo Saito b Yasushi Kanda, Strong Machines b Masaaki Mochizuki & Yuki Yoshioka & Hyo Watanabe, Yamato & Kai b Naruki Doi & Kaito Ishida, Eita & Big R Shimizu & Ben K & Takashi Yoshida b Kzy & Susumu Yokosuka & Genki Horiguchi & Punch Tominaga

4/25 Ralston, NE (WWE NXT- 1,200): Punishment Martinez b Kona Reeves, Rachael Evers & Mia Yim b Aliyah & Vanessa Borne, Jaxson Ryker NC Raul Mendoza, Riddick Moss b Eric Bugenhagen, Shane Thorne b Denzel Dejournette, Adam Cole b Shane Thorne, Wesley Blake & Steve Cutler b Angelo Dawkins & Montez Ford, Women’s title: Shayna Baszler b Io Shirai, Velveteen Dream b Tyler Breeze

4/25 Orlando (WWE NXT - 350): Brennan Williams b Nick Comoroto, Jessamyn Duke & Marina Shafir b Xia Li & Karen Q, Jermaine Haley b Babatunde Aiyegbusi-COR, Keith Lee b Samuel Shaw, Albert Hardie Jr. b Trevor Lee, Deonna Purrazzo b Lacey Lane, Oney Lorcan & Danny Burch b Marcel Barthel & Fabian Aichner, Kushida b Roderick Strong

4/25 Tokyo Korakuen Hall (All Japan Champion Carnival - 1,209): Yusuke Okada & Hikaru Sato b Atsushi Maruyama & Dan Tamura, Takao Omori & Masa Fuchi & Black Menso-re b Jun Akiyama & Koji Iwamoto & Atsuki Aoyagi, Suwama & Jake Lee & Yoshitatsu & Sam Adonis b Naoya Nomura & Joe Doering & Gianni Valletta & Joel Redman, Yuma Aoyagi b Ryoji Sai, Atsushi Aoki b Dylan James, Shuji Ishikawa b Zeus, Kento Miyahara b Yuji Okabayashi

4/26 Davenport, IA (WWE NXT - 800): Riddick Moss b Eric Bugenhagen, Io Shirai & Rachael Evers b Vanessa Borne & Aliyah, Jaxson Ryker b Denzel Dejournette, Adam Cole b Punishment Martinez, Angelo Dawkins & Montez Ford b Shane Thorne & Kona Reeves, Women’s title: Shayna Baszler b Mia Yim, Velveteen Dream & Tyler Breeze b Wesley Blake & Steve Cutler

4/26 Daytona Beach, FL (WWE NXT - 300): Brennan Williams & Mansoor Al-Shehail b Jeff Parker & Matt Lee, Jessamyn Duke b Karen Q, Luke Menzies b Nick Comoroto, Lacey Lane b Reina Gonzalez, Kassius Ohno b Jeet Rama, Albert Hardie Jr. b Jermaine Haley, Bianca Belair b Deonna Purrazzo, Bobby Fish & Kyle O’Reilly b Danny Burch & Oney Lorcan

4/26 Hiroshima (New Japan - 2,034 sellout): Shota Umino & Ren Narita b Yota Tsuji & Yuya Uemura, Minoru Suzuki & Yoshinobu Kanemaru & Desperado b Yoshi-Hashi & Tiger Mask & Toa Henare, Togi Makabe & Toru Yano & Juice Robinson & Mikey Nicholls & Tomoaki Honma b Bad Luck Fale & Tama Tonga & Tanga Loa & Chase Owens & Jado, Jeff Cobb & Ryusuke Taguchi b Taichi & Taka Michinoku, Hirooki Goto & Will Ospreay & Dragon Lee b Jay White & Hikuleo & Taiji Ishimori, Tetsuya Naito & Evil & Seiya Sanada b Kazuchika Okada & Tomohiro Ishii & Kota Ibushi, IWGP jr. tag titles: Sho & Yoh b Bushi & Shingo Takagi

4/26 Mexico City Arena Mexico (CMLL - 8,000): Coyote & Grako b Sonic & Super Astro Jr., Kaho Kobayashi & Marcela & Tae Honma b Amapola & Comandante & Seductora-DQ, Atlantis & Atlantis Jr. & Triton b Mephisto & Ephesto & Luciferno, Valiente b Hechicero, Cuatrero & Forastero & Mascara Ano 2000 b Angel de Oro & Niebla Roja & Soberano Jr., Titan & Cavernario b Volador Jr. & Ultimo Guerrero

4/26 Mexicali, Mexico (AAA TV tapings - 6,500): Black Destiny won six-way over Skalibur, Fantastik, Rayo Star, Drake and Genio del Aire, Nino Hamburguesa & Big Mami b Jonathan & Lady Maravilla, El Hijo del Tirantes & Chik Tormenta b Faby Apache & Taya Valkyrie-DQ, El Hijo del Vikingo won four way over Golden Magic, Villano III Jr. and Flamita, Brian Cage & Laredo Kid b Killer Kross & Taurus, Tito Santana & Carta Brava Jr. & Mocho Cota Jr. b Jack Evans & Daga & Australian Suicide, La Parka & Psycho Clown & Puma King b Chessman & Rey Escorpion & El Texano Jr.

4/26 Tokyo Korakuen Hall (Dradition - 1,700 sellout): Nobuyuki Kurashima & Tamura b Sanchu Tsubakichi & Rionne Fujiwara, Yukio Sakaguchi & Super Tiger b Ryota Hama & Kennichiro Arai, Mitsuya Nagai & Masato Tanaka & Kazma Sakamoto b Kenso & Daisuke Sekimoto & Yamato, Tatsumi Fujinami & Shiro Koshinaka & Jushin Liger b Yoshiaki Fujiwara & Hiro Saito & Black Tiger

4/27 Milwaukee, WI (WWE NXT - 900 sellout): Wesley Blake & Steve Cutler b Montez Ford & Angelo Dawkins, Mia Yim & Rachael Evers b Aliyah & Vanessa Borne, Eric Bugenhagen b Riddick Moss, Tyler Breeze b Shane Thorne, Jaxson Ryker b Denzel Dejournette, Punishment Martinez b Kona Reeves, Women’s title: Shayna Baszler b Io Shirai, North American title: Velveteen Dream b Adam Cole

4/27 Dade City, FL (WWE NXT- 250): Jeet Rama b Adrian Jaoude, Deonna Purrazzo b Kavita Devi, Jeff Parker & Matt Lee b Rinku Singh & Saurav Gurjar, Cezar Bononi b Daniel Vidot, Kushida b Trevor Lee, Babatunde Aiyegbusi b Samuel Shaw, Marina Shafir b Xia Li, Bianca Belair b Jessamyn Duke, Keith Lee & Danny Burch & Oney Lorcan b Bobby Fish & Kyle O’Reilly & Roderick Strong

4/27 Shimonoseki (New Japan - 1,409 sellout): Ren Narita b Yuya Uemura, Tiger Mask & Shota Umino b Toa Henare & Yota Tsuji, Yoshinobu Kanemaru & Desperado b Ryusuke Taguchi & Rocky Romero, Togi Makabe & Toru Yano & Juice Robinson & Tomoaki Honma b Tama Tonga & Tanga Loa & Chase Owens & Hikuleo, Jeff Cobb & Yoshi-Hashi & Jushin Liger b Minoru Suzuki & Taichi & Taka Michinoku, Hirooki Goto & Will Ospreay & Mikey Nicholls & Dragon Lee b Jay White & Bad Luck Fale & Taiji Ishimori & Gedo, Tetsuya Naito & Evil & Seiya Sanada & Shingo Takagi & Bushi b Kazuchika Okada & Tomohiro Ishii & Kota Ibushi & Sho & Yoh

4/28 St. Paul, MN (WWE NXT - 1,000): Wesley Blake & Steve Cutler b Angelo Dawkins & Montez Ford, Punishment Martinez b Shane Thorne, Eric Bugenhagen b Riddick Moss, Rachael Evers & Io Shirai b Vanessa Borne & Aliyah, Jaxson Ryker b Denzel Dejournette, Tyler Breeze b Kona Reeves, Women’s title: Shayna Baszler b Mia Yim, North American title: Velveteen Dream b Adam Cole

4/28 Tokyo Korakuen Hall (All Japan Champion Carnival - 1,388): Takao Omori & Koji Iwamoto & Black Menso-re & Hokuto Omori b Jun Akiyama & Atsushi Maruyama & Atsuki Aoki & Dan Tamura, Shuji Ishikawa & Atsushi Aoki & Keisuke Okada b Gianni Valletta & Joel Redman & Tajiri, Zeus & Dylan James b Kento Miyahara & Yuma Aoyagi, Sam Adonis b Daichi Hashimoto, Takashi Yoshida b Yoshitatsu, Jake Lee b Joe Doering, Naoya Nomura b Suwama, B block finals: Jake Lee b Naoya Nomura

4/28 Nogales, Sonora (AAA TV tapings): Chik Tormenta won four-way over Hiedra, Faby Apache and Lady Maravilla, Jack Evans won four-way over Villano III Jr., Australian Suicide and Taurus, Carta Brava Jr. & Mocho Cota Jr. & Tito Santana b Flamita & Golden Magic & El Hijo del Vikingo, Killer Kross b Puma King, La Parka & Murder Clown & Nino Hamburguesa b Averno & Chessman & Dave the Clown, El Hijo del Vikingo & Laredo Kid & Psycho Clown b Rey Escorpion & El Texano Jr.

4/28 Fukuoka (Dragon Gate - 731 sellout): Hyo Watanabe b Mondai Ryu, Masaaki Mochizuki & Jason Lee & K-Ness b Genki Horiguchi & Yasshi & Shachihoko Boy, Ryo Saito b Yosuke Santa Maria, U-T b Yuki Yoshioka, Strong Machines b Kzy & Susumu Yokosuka & Punch Tominaga, Masato Yoshino & Naruki Doi & Dragon Kid & Kaito Ishida b Pac & Eita & Yasushi Kanda & Kazma Sakamoto, Open the Twin Gate titles: Yamato & Kai b Big R Shimizu & Ben K to win titles

4/28 Yamagata (Pro Wrestling NOAH - 413): Hi69 b Hitoshi Kumano, Takashi Sugiura & Nosawa b Atsushi Kotoge & Junta Miyawaki, Akitoshi Saito & Masao Inoue b Maybach Taniguchi & Yuji Hino, Yoshinari Ogawa & Kotaro Suzuki & Yo-Hey DCOR Daisuke Harada & Tadasuke & Hayata, Naomichi Marufuji & Mohammed Yone & Quiet Storm b Katsuhiko Nakajima & Go Shiozaki & Hajime Ohara, Kaito Kiyomiya & Kenou b Masa Kitamiya & Yoshiki Inamura

4/28 Mexico City Arena Mexico (CMLL): Akuma & Espanto Jr. b Arkalis & Halcon Suriano Jr., Magia Blanca & Robin & Stigma b Cancerbero & Raziel & Sangre Azteca, Vangellys b Tiger, Blue Panther Jr. & Esfinge & Kraneo b Dark Magic & Kawato San & Olimpico, Flyer & Stuka Jr. & Titan b Templario & Mephisto & Hechicero, Atlantis & Valiente & Volador Jr. b Cavernario & Rush & Bestia del Ring-DQ

4/29 Lexington, KY (WWE Raw/Main Event TV tapings - 10,000): Mojo Rawley b Heath Slater, Cedric Alexander b Cesaro, Non-title: Billie Kay & Peyton Royce b Tamina & Alicia Fox, Braun Strowman & Ricochet b Baron Corbin & Drew McIntyre, Usos b Karl Anderson & Luke Gallows, Bobby Lashley b The Miz, Viking Raiders b Gran Metalik & Kalisto, Naomi b Alexa Bliss, Non-title: Curt Hawkins & Zack Ryder b Scott Dawson & Dash Wilder, Non-title: Rey Mysterio b Samoa Joe

4/29 Huntington, WV (WWE Smackdown): Asuka & Kairi Sane b Sonya Deville & Mandy Rose, Ali b Buddy Murphy, Heavy Machinery b Bo Dallas & Curtis Axel, Matt Hardy & Apollo Crews b Shinsuke Nakamura & Rusev, Roman Reigns b Elias, Bayley b Charlotte Flair, Andrade b R-Truth, WWE title: Kofi Kingston b Kevin Owens

4/29 Toronto (Impact TV tapings): Trey Miguel b Jake Lander, Ace Austin b Petey Williams, Rosemary b Kiera Hogan-DQ, Fenix b Eddie Edwards, Michael Elgin b Johnny Impact, Non-title: LAX b Josh Alexander & Moose, Non-title: Madison Rayne b Taya Valkyrie, Killer Kross b Tyson Dux, Jordynne Grace b Alexia Nicole, Rohit Raju & Raj Singh won four-way over Jake & Cody Deaner, Dezmond Xavier & Zachary Wentz and Aiden Prince & Brent Banks, Rob Van Dam b Ethan Page, Dave & Jake Crist & Sami Callihan & Mad Man Fulton b Willie Mack & Rich Swann & Tommy Dreamer & Fallah Bahh

4/29 Kumamoto (New Japan - 2,702): Tomoaki Honma & Shota Umino & Ren Narita b Toa Henare & Yota Tsuji & Yuya Uemura, Jeff Cobb & Yoshi-Hashi & Jushin Liger & Tiger Mask & Ryusuke Taguchi b Minoru Suzuki & Taichi & Yoshinobu Kanemaru & Desperado & Taka Michinoku, Will Ospreay & Dragon Lee b Taiji Ishimori & Hikuleo, Bad Luck Fale b Mickey Nicholls, Non-title: Juice Robinson b Chase Owens, Tetsuya Naito & Evil & Seiya Sanada & Bushi & Shingo Takagi b Kazuchika Okada & Tomohiro Ishii & Rocky Romero & Sho & Yoh, IWGP tag titles: Tama Tonga & Tanga Loa b Togi Makabe & Toru Yano, Jay White b Hirooki Goto

4/29 Tokyo Korakuen Hall (All Japan Champion Carnival - 1,698 sellout): Hokuto Omori b Dan Tamura, Koji Iwamoto & Keiichi Sato b Hikaru Sato & Yusuke Okada, Takao Omori & Black Menso-re b Jun Akiyama & Atsuki Aoyagi, Joe Doering & Dylan James b Sam Adonis & Joel Redman, Ryoji Sai & Naoya Nomura b Yuma Aoyagi & Yoshitatsu, Suwama & Shuji Ishikawa & Atsushi Aoki & Takashi Yoshida b Zeus & Yuji Okabayashi & Daichi Hashimoto & Gianni Valletta, Finals: Kento Miyahara b Jake Lee

4/29 Hiroshima (Dragon Gate - 714): Masaaki Mochizuki & Hyo Watanabe b Susumu Yokosuka & Ryo Saito, Naruki Doi & Kaito Ishida b Kai & Yosuke Santa Maria, Strong Machines b Kzy & Yasshi & Punch Tominaga, Yamato & U-T b Big R Shimizu & Ben K, Pac & Eita & Yasushi Kanda b Masato Yoshino & Dragon Kid & Jason Lee

4/29 Yokohama (Pro Wrestling NOAH - 360 sellout): Quiet Storm won three-way over Seiya Morohashi and Junta Miyawaki, Daisuke Harada & Tadasuke & Hayata b Mohammed Yone & Hajime Ohara & Hitoshi Kumano, Masa Kitamiya & Yoshiki Inamura b Akitoshi Saito & Masao Inoue, Maybach Taniguchi & Yuji Hino b Atsushi Kotoge & Mitsuya Nagai, Kaito Kiyomiya & Kenou & Minoru Tanaka & Hi69 b Naomichi Marufuji & Shiro Koshinaka & Yoshinari Ogawa & Yo-Hey, Katsuhiko Nakajima & Go Shiozaki b Takashi Sugiura & Kazma Sakamoto

4/30 Columbus, OH (WWE Smackdown/205 Live TV tapings - 5,500): Aleister Black b Jinder Mahal, Non-title: Becky Lynch b Bayley, Asuka & Kairi Sane b ?, handicap match, Elias second referee: Roman Reigns b Bo Dallas & Curtis Axel, Finn Balor & Ali b Randy Orton & Andrade, Lince Dorado & Gran Metalik b Samir & Sunil Singh, Non-title: Tony Nese b Drew Gulak, Women’s title: Becky Lynch b Charlotte Flair

4/30 Sendai (New Japan - 3,140 sellout): Shota Umino b Yota Tsuji, Rocky Romero & Ren Narita b Tiger Mask & Yuya Uemura, Jushin Liger & Ryusuke Taguchi b Desperado & Taka Michinoku, Togi Makabe & Toru Yano & Mikey Nicholls & Tomoaki Honma b Bad Luck Fale & Tama Tonga & Tanga Loa & Hikuleo, Minoru Suzuki & Taichi & Yoshinobu Kanemaru b Jeff Cobb & Yoshi-Hashi & Toa Henare, Hirooki Goto & Will Ospreay & Juice Robinson & Dragon Lee b Jay White & Chase Owens & Taiji Ishimori & Gedo, Kazuchika Okada & Kota Ibushi & Tomohiro Ishii & Sho & Yoh b Tetsuya Naito & Evil & Seiya Sanada & Bushi & Shingo Takagi

4/30 Yokohama (Pro Wrestling NOAH - 360 sellout): Atsushi Kotoge & Mitsuya Nagai b Masa Kitamiya & Yoshiki Inamura, Yoshinari Ogawa & Yo-Hey b Hajime Ohara & Hitoshi Kumano, Naomichi Marufuji & Daisuke Harada & Tadasuke & Hayata b Shiro Koshinaka & Minoru Tanaka & Hi69 & Junta Miyawaki, Takashi Sugiura & Kazma Sakamoto b Mohammed Yone & Quiet Storm, Akitoshi Saito & Masao Inoue b Kaito Kiyomiya & Kenou, Katsuhiko Nakajima & Go Shiozaki b Maybach Taniguchi & Yuji Hino

4/30 Mexico City Arena Mexico (CMLL- 5,000): Apocalipsis & Espiritu Negro b Bengala & Sonic, Atomo & Gallito & Microman b Chamuel & Guapito & Perico Zacarias, Cancerbero & Raziel & Tiger b Drone & Pegasso & Star Jr., Ephesto & Felino & Luciferno b Black Panther & Blue Panther & Blue Panther Jr., Cuatrero & Forastero & Sanson b Atlantis & Soberano Jr. & Stuka Jr., Caristico b Ultimo Guerrero

5/1 Beppu (New Japan - 1,931): Tiger Mask & Shota Umino & Ren Narita b Toa Henare & Yota Tsuji & Yuya Uemura, Ryusuke Taguchi & Rocky Romero b Yoshinobu Kanemaru & Desperado, Togi Makabe & Toru Yano & Tomoaki Honma b Tama Tonga & Tanga Loa & Jado, Jeff Cobb & Yoshi-Hashi & Jushin Liger b Minoru Suzuki & Taichi & Taka Michinoku, Elimination match: Jay White & Bad Luck Fale & Chase Owens & Hikuleo & Taiji Ishimori b Hirooki Goto & Will Ospreay & Juice Robinson & Mikey Nicholls & Dragon Lee, Elimination match: Tetsuya Naito & Evil & Seiya Sanada & Bushi & Shingo Takagi b Kazuchika Okada & Kota Ibushi & Tomohiro Ishii & Sho & Yoh

CMLL: Titan & Cavernario beat Volador Jr. & Ultimo Guerrero to win the Parejas Increibles tournament on 4/26 at Arena Mexico. The show drew 8,000 fans. The match went just over 26:00. There were problems between Guerrero and Volador including a spot where Volador did a running fly dive and ended up hitting Guerrero, who caught him in mid-air and power bombed him on the floor. But it ended with Titan making Guerrero submit to an armbar, Volador then using a top rope Spanish fly on Titan to pin him, and then Cavernario immediately put Volador in La Cavernaria for the submission. I’d go **** for that one. Volador sold the finishing submission big, as they put him in a neck brace and put him on a stretcher. Guerrero then came back and put the boots to him before Guerrero was pulled off. The semi saw Mascara Ano 2000 team with Cuatrero & Forastero to beat Angel de Oro & Niebla Roja & Soberano Jr. when Mascara gave Roja a low blow. Valiente made Hechicero submit with 36 seconds left in the time limit in the lightning match. 

The 5/3 show is headlined by Caristico & Valiente & Volador Jr. vs. Rush & El Terrible & Bestia del ring, plus a heel battle with Ultimo Guerrero & Gran Guerrero & Euforia, the CMLL trios champs, in a non-title bout with Sanson & Cuatrero & Mascara Ano 2000, Angel de Oro & Niebla Roja vs Adam Brooks & Mecha Wolf 450, plus Soberano Jr. vs. Mephisto. On the live stream on 4/26, they pushed that the 5/3 show would be CMLL vs. The Crash, with the idea it would be a show of interpromotional bouts. Instead it was a normal show except for Brooks & Wolf from Crash.

 Disturbio vs. Metalico in a hair match will be on the 5/4 show at Arena Coliseo in Mexico City. The last time CMLL had a one on one hair vs. hair match in that building was 2008. . .

The Kids Day show at Arena Mexico on 4/30 did 5,000 fans, a great Tuesday night crowd, with Caristico beating Ultimo Guerrero in a hot singles match that ended with fans throwing money in. They brought in the micro wrestlers for kids day. 

The Box y Lucha commission has announced they will be helping veteran wrestlers who are in need of wheelchairs, canes, hearing aids, walkers and other devices based that are injury related.

AAA: They announced the lineup for the 5/2 tournament show, which is a TV taping for a two different one hour weekly taped shows on TV Azteca. The matches are Relampago vs. ? in the welterweight tournament, Ace Austin vs. Draztick Boy in the middleweight tournament, Averno vs. El Hijo de Pirata Morgan vs. ? in the light heavyweight tournament, Rey Escorpion & El Texano Jr. vs. Bengala & Puma King in the tag team tournament, Taurus vs. Pagano in the heavyweight tournament, Ciclon Ramirez Jr. vs. Villano III Jr. in the welterweight tournament, Imposible vs. Arez in the middleweight tournament, Golden Magic vs. Eddie Edwards in the light heavyweight tournament, Fenix & Pentagon Jr. vs. Dezmond Xavier & Zachary Wentz in the tag team tournament and L.A. Park vs. Jacob Fatu in the heavyweight tournament. There will be five tapings, held every other week, with these matches split into two shows. 

They officially announced Verano de Escandalo, one of their major events of the year, for 6/16 in Merida. That had come out already but it was announced this week for the first time on an AAA show. . . On 4/25, a house show called Merzamania, in Morelia, that drew more than 15,000 fans. They do a show there every year. Merza is a shopping center in Morelia which promotes the shows. If you buy about $30 worth of products at the shopping center you would get two free tickets. 

They taped television on 4/26 in Mexicali, outdoors at the bullring, drawing a reported 6,500 fans, although others have said it appeared lower. In the main event, La Parka & Psycho Clown & Puma King beat Chessman & Rey Escorpion & El Texano Jr. in a typical outside interference ending. Taurus interfered and speared Parka, who was taken out with an arm injury. Laredo Kid, El Hijo del Vikingo, Tito Santana, Mocho Cota Jr. and Carta Brava Jr. all interfered. Murder Clown then came out to be in the match as Parka’s replacement. Killer Kross then interfered and put Puma King through a table. Psych made Escorpion submit. Puma King wanted a singles match with Kross, but all the heels attacked Puma King. Taurus joined in and was announced as the newest member of Los Mercenarios, which is the lead heel faction. Earlier, Santana & Cota Jr. & Brava Jr. beat Jack Evans & Daga & Australian Suicide. Daga replaced Sammy Guevara who is touring on the other side of the world but was advertised anyway. Brian Cage & Laredo Kid beat Kross & Taurus due to the distraction of Santana, Cota and Brava. Vikingo had won a four-way over Golden Magic, Villano III Jr., and Flamita in an elimination match with the winner getting a shot at cruiserweight champion Laredo Kid. This match was said to be really good. Chik Tormeta and a mystery partner were to face Faby Apache & Taya Valkyrie. A lot of people thought this would be the debut of Tessa Blanchard, who is headed in and is working 5/31 in Tijuana. But instead, El Hijo del Tirantes came out wearing an Averno mask. He then acted like he was given a low blow even though he wasn’t and ref Copetes Salazar DQ’d Faby & Taya. 

They taped again on 4/28 in Nogales. The show didn’t draw well. The main event was said to be hot live. Vikingo & Laredo Kid & Psycho Clown beat Escorpion & Texano Jr. & Taurus. Laredo Kid & Psycho were fighting two-on-three until Vikingo evened up the odds. Laredo pinned Escorpion with a power bomb. There was a rudo beatdown after until Parka made the save. Parka & Murder Clown & Nino Hamburguesa beat Averno & Chessman & Dave the Clown when Hamburguesa splashed Dave. Chik Tormenta earned a shot at the Rey de Reyes title against Lady Shani. Tormenta won a four-way over Hiedra, Faby Apache and Lady Maravilla when Tormenta pinned Maravilla with a Styles clash.

DRAGON GATE: Yamato & Kai won the Open the Twin Gate tag titles from Ben K & Big R Shimizu in the main event of the 4/28 show in Fukuoka before a sellout of 731 fans.

PRO WRESTLING NOAH: Katsuhiko Nakajima & Go Shiozaki face Takashi Sugiura & Kazma Sakamoto in the finals of the Global League tag team tournament on 5/4 from Korakuen Hall. Since Shiozaki & Nakajima are the GHC tag champs, that probably makes Sugiura & Sakamoto the favorites to win and build up a title match. 

The final tournament standings were: 1. Nakajima & Shiozaki 5-1-1; Sugiura & Sakamoto 5-2; 3. Kaito Kiyomiya & Kenou 4-2-1; 4. Maybach Taniguchi & Yuji Hino 4-3; 5. Akitoshi Saito & masao Inoue 3-4; 6. Masa Kitamiya & Yoshiki Inamura, Mohammed Yone & Quiet Storm and Atsushi Kotoge & Mitsuya Nagai 2-5. One thing I’d have never guessed is a team with Masao Inoue getting three wins.

Storm returned to action this past week and finished up the tournament.

On 4/28 in Yamagata before 413 fans, Saito & Inoue beat Taniguchi & Hino in 15:32 when Saito pinned Taniguchi with a death sickle (enzuigiri) and Kiyomiya & Kenou beat Kitamiya & Inamura in 20:08 when Kiyomiya pinned Inamura with a Tiger supelx. 

4/29 at the Radiant Arena in Yokohama before a sellout of 360 saw Kitamiya & Inamura over Saito & Inoue in 14:18 when Inamura pinned Inoue after an Oklahoma Stampede; Taniguchi & Hino beat Kotoge & Nagai in 15:01 when Taniguchi pinned Kotoge with the Maybach bomb; and Nakajima & Shiozaki beat Sugiura & Sakamoto in 24:46 when Nakajima pinned Sakamoto after a brainbuster. 

4/30 at the Radiant Arena in Yokohama before another sellout of 360 saw Kotoge & Nagai over Kitamiya & Inamura when Nagai beat Inamura with a stretch plumb. Sugiura & Sakamoto beat Storm & Yone in 13:57 when Sakamoto pinned Storm after a running kneelift to keep Sugiura & Sakamoto alive. Saito & Inoue knocked Kiyomiya & Kenou out of the finals in a big upset in 19:49. At this point Sugiura & Sakamoto clinched a spot in the finals and would face the winner of Nakajima & Shiozaki vs. Taniguchi & Hino. Nakajima & Shiozaki won in 20:27 when Shiozaki pinned Taniguchi with a lariat.

NEW JAPAN: A real test to see exactly where things stand business-wise takes place this week with Wrestling Dontaku on 5/3 and 5/4 at the Fukuoka International Center Arena. For benchmarks, last year on the first night they drew 4,066 fans for a top three card of Kenny Omega vs. Hangman Page, Cody vs. Kota Ibushi and Kazuchika Okada & Will Ospreay vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi & Kushida. The second night last year drew a sellout of 6,307 for a top card of Okada vs. Tanahashi for the IWGP title, Ospreay vs. Kushida for the jr. title and Omega & Ibushi & Tama Tonga & Tanga Loa & Bad Luck Fale vs. Young Bucks & Marty Scurll & Cody & Page. 

This year the first show at 5 a.m. Eastern start has Tomoaki Honma & Shota Umino & Ren Narita vs. Toa Henare & Yota Tsuji & Yuya Uemura, Yoshi-Hashi & Jushin Liger & Tiger Mask & Ryusuke Taguchi vs. Minoru Suzuki & Yoshinobu Kanemaru & Desperado & Taka Michinoku, Togi Makabe & Toru Yano & Ospreay vs. Tonga & Loa & Hikuleo, Rocky Romero & Sho & Yoh vs. Tetsuya Naito & Bushi & Shingo Takagi, Hirooki Goto & Juice Robinson & Mikey Nicholls vs. Jay White & Fale & Chase Owens, Okada & Tomohiro Ishii vs. Evil & Sanada, Jeff Cobb vs. Taichi for the Never title and Dragon Lee vs. Taiji Ishimori for the jr. title. It’s a really ballsy move to run a big building with Lee vs. Ishimori on top. 

The second show is a 2 a.m. Eastern start with Umino & Narita vs. Tsuji & Uemura, Cobb & Yoshi-Hashi & Henare & Tiger Mask & Taguchi vs. Suzuki & Taichi & Kanemaru & Desperado & Michinoku, Makabe & Yano &Liger vs. Tonga & Loa & Gedo, Goto & Robinson & Nicholls & Honma vs. White & Fale & Owens & Hikuleo, Lee & Ospreay vs. Ishimori & X (expected to be the debut of El Phantasmo, but X will be the final participant in the upcoming Best of the Super Juniors tournament), Romero & Sho & Yoh vs. Naito & Bushi & Takagi, Ishii vs. Evil and Okada vs. Sanada for the IWGP title. 

The lineup and blocks for Super Juniors will be announced after ths show. There is some intrigue with the key participants to me being Ishimori, Ospreay, Lee, Phantasmo, Bandido, Sho and Takagi. Lee is the current champion getting his biggest push. Ishimori is the top Japanese guy from Bullet Club. Phantasmo and Bandido are newcomers and for both, this is probably a career highlight. We know it is for Bandido because one of the reasons he chose ROH over WWE and AEW, and it wasn’t the only reason, but was a key reason, was the idea of doing this tournament. Ospreay is being pushed as a star in the heavyweight division so he has to be protected here. Many years back, under similar circumstances with Prince Devitt, when they were moving him to the heavyweights, they booked a tournament that he dominated and won as opposed to the usual parity tournament. Sho is likely not to win, but to be the young Japanese guy highlighted, particularly if he’s booked in a single match with Takagi which ha been teased this entire tour in tags. Takagi has yet to drop a fall in the New Japan ring, and that will almost surely end in the tournament. But he’ll probably still get a strong showing because Takagi is a guy who can be put in the single title position, so winning or beating the champion in the tournament make sense for him.

There were a couple of somewhat important shows over the past week. The 4/26 show in Hiroshima before a sellout of 2,034 fans at the smaller Green Arena was a strong show. In the top bouts, Goto & Ospreay & Lee beat White & Ishimori & Hikuleo in 10:40 when Goto pinned Hikuleo with a GTR in a ***½ match. Naito & Evil & Sanada beat Okada & Ishii & Ibushi in 16:58 when Evil pinned Ishii with the STO in 16:58 of a **** match. This largely broke down into three singles, Naito vs. Ibushi, Okada vs. Sanada and Ishii vs. Evil, to tease upcoming bouts. All were good enough and hot enough that it made you want to see those bouts. I’ve got some worries about Naito’s physical condition the way he moves as all those neck bumps my be catching up with him. They almost surely will at some point, but he and Ibushi were great. Really, Ishii vs. Evil was the hottest of the three. Main event saw Sho & Yoh keep the IWGP jr. tag titles over Bushi & Takagi in 25:10 when Yoh pinned Bushi with a Dragon suplex in a ****½ match. This was just great, particularly Takagi vs. Sho. Takagi is another super worker who has the ability to make his opponents look even better than they are. 

Wrestling Hi No Kuni was 4/29 in Kumamoto before 2,702 fans. Tonga & Loa retained the IWGP tag titles over Makabe & Yano in 14:50 when Tonga cradled Makabe using the tights after distraction from Jado. This match was a mix between hard hitting with Makabe and heavy comedy from Yano. The main event saw White beat Goto with blade runner in 22:59 of a ****1/4 match. It was a strong singles win for White and may set him up for the Okada vs. Sanada winner at Dominion on 6/9. 

A show in Sendai on 4/30 drew a sellout 3,140 fans which is great for a house show on a Tuesday with a normal show. Okada & Ibushi & Ishii & Sho & Yoh beat Naito & Evil & Sanada & Bushi & Takagi in 17:31 when Ibushi pinned Bushi with the Kamagoye. . .

5/1 in Beppu before 1,931 fans had two ten man elimination matches. Bullet Club of White & Fale & Owens & Hikuleo & Ishimori beat Chaos of Goto & Ospreay & Nicholls & Robinson & Lee in 18:01. White was left with both Robinson and Goto and threw both over the top rope to win. Lee and Ishimori both went over the top together just 1:53 in. Ospreay and Fale and Owens and Nicholls also went out together. The second saw LIJ of Naito & Evil & Sanada & Bushi & Takagi over Chaos of Okada & Ibushi & Ishii & Sho & Yoh in 27:41. Naito and Ibushi went over the top together. It came down to Okada & Sho vs. Sanada & Takagi. Okada threw Takagi over the top, leaving Sanada against two guys. Sanada eliminated Okada by throwing him out, and Sanada beat Sho with skull end when they were the last two guys, which makes perfect sense with Sanada getting the title shot this week. Both matches were said to be really good, filled with hot spots involving the guys in the major programs. 

Tickets went on sale for the Australia shows on 6/29 in Melbourne (which is to be a major show) and 6/30 in Sydney. The only thing we know is Melbourne sold out all good tickets and 60 percent of the building (which would be between 2,000 and 2,300) in the first minute but wasn’t sold out after a few days. They are expecting it to sell out. Sydney is in a 2,200 seat building and sold more than 1,000 tickets at first and they are hoping for it to do well.

Gino Gambino from Australia did announcing with Kevin Kelly on the shows this past week. I thought as a first-timer he was better than most and the company and the talent liked his work so he’ll be back in the role. They rotate4 their announcers. 

There is still some belief, I’m not sure why, that Dallas will do really well in the end, even with the hugely disappointing advance, with the idea there will be a run once the matches are announced, which would be after Dominion. Lance Archer in particular has told the office that he is going to push hard locally to promote the event.

OTHER JAPAN NOTES: A correction from last week when mentioning the 6/26 Riki Choshu retirement match at Korakuen Hall being the first pro wrestling show in Japan to be airing live in movie theaters around the country since the Kenta Kobashi retirement show in on May 11, 2013. That’s not correct. There have been two events that were broadcast in movie theaters since, and one just recently. The other two were Genichiro Tenryu’s retirement match with Kazuchika Okada on November 15, 2015, and the recent New Japan/ROH on 4/6 from Madison Square Garden. 

The Dradition promotion ran 4/26 at Korakuen Hall with a sellout of 1,700 fans. Really, the big draw was Antonio Inoki and Tatsumi Fujinami in the ring talking about the glory days of New Japan Pro Wrestling. The main event match was a nostalgia battle with Fujinami & Shiro Koshinaka & Jushin Liger over Hiro Saito & Yoshiaki Fujiwara & Black Tiger. 

DDT on 4/28 at Korakuen Hall drew 1,130 fans with Tetsuya Endo retaining his KO-D title over Makoto Oishi in 28:19 with a shooting star press. Oishi is 40 and mostly does opening match comedy. They played it up like the Cinderella story of the prelim guy going for the title but it went too long and was nowhere near as hot as most of the matches on the show. Endo looks like they are trying to establish him as one of the top stars and he’s said to be good, but what they were trying to do in this match didn’t work. ONE MMA champion Shinya Aoki beat Konosuke Takeshita in 7:03 with a choke using his feet. This was all grappling until the end and said to be a **** match. The story was that Takeshita, with his 50 pound size edge, tried to grapple with him, but in the end turned to pro wrestling with a dropkick, German suplex and Boston crab, but Aoki got the foot choke. Daisuke Sasaki & Soma Takao retained the tag titles over Ricky Starks & Psycho Mike Rollins and Mao & Mike Bailey. Antonio Honda beat Harashima to win the extreme title. Akito challenged Honda after to a title match on 5/25. Yoshiaki Yatsu, at the age of 62, had his first match back with the promotion teaming with Yukio Sakaguchi (Seiji’s son) & Sanshiro Takagi (who runs the company) to beat Akita & Kazusada Higuchi & Hiroshi Yamato. Yatsu moved pretty well for his age, much better than Riki Choshu did in his recent DDT appearance. They played up Yatsu’s past as an Olympian, but he wasn’t as over as you’d expect a legend returning to be and it was noted that the 2019 DDT fan base probably doesn’t know 80s New Japan and All Japan. Kenta Kobashi was there promoting his next show.

DDT is having a six-woman’s match on 5/11 for the trios titles, which are belts usually held by men. Meiko Satomura & Dash Chisako & Chihiro Hashimoto won the belts from men, but will defend against Saki Akai & Asuka (not the WWE wrestler) & Hikaru Shida (who is signed by AEW and expected to be leaving soon). 

The King of DDT tournament opened n 4/29 in Itabashi with first round results of Higuchi over Kota Umeda in 13:03 with a doctor bomb; Soma Takao over Bailey in 10:08 with a reverse Gori especial bomb; Naomi Yoshimura over Kazuki Hirata in 9:42'; Daisuke Sasaki over Sakaguchi in11:37 using the ropes; Masahiro Takanashi over Mao in 2:17 with a backslide; Akito beat Harashima in 14:26 and Takeshita over Yuki Ueno in 20:45. The second round will be 5/6 in Sapporo with Sasaki vs. one of the losers in the first round picked to continue, Higuchi vs. Takanashi, Takao vs. Akito and Takeshita vs. Yoshimura. 

Stardom will have a series of shows for Golden Week at Noon. On 5/3, they’ll have a costume Battle Royal as well as Toni Storm vs. Tam Nakano. 5/4 has Kagetsu vs. Bea Priestley for the World of Stardom title and Storm vs. Momo Watanabe. There are also shows on 5/5 and 5/6, which has Storm vs. Konami. 

Stardom ran its Cinderella tournament on 4/29 at Korakuen Hall before 1,050 fans. Arisa Hoshiki beat Konami in the finals. Hoshiki beat Saki Kashima and Natsuko Tora to reach the finals. There was a funny story. You can be eliminated in the tournament for going over the top rope and Bea Priestley in her first match accidentally went over the top in her match with Hazuki, that she was supposed to win. Priestley was supposed to at least go to the final four but was not the scheduled winner. Hoshiki will next face Momo Watanabe for their title.

HERE AND THERE: I saw the Bloodsport match with Josh Barnett vs. Minoru Suzuki from Jersey City over Mania week that people raved about. I’d go ****½ , and that’s actually amazing for a number of reasons. First, they had no ropes in the match, and neither took any pro wrestling bumps. It was a simulated fight rather than what you would consider modern pro wrestling, yet the live crowd went crazy and it built tremendously. Suzuki has some of the best facial expressions in pro wrestling history and there are few men ever at the age of 50 who can touch him. It’s so hard to compare this will something like Will Ospreay vs. Bandido, Adam Cole vs. Johnny Gargano, Walter vs. Pete Dunne or Kazuchika Okada vs. Jay White for match of the week as all five were different in their own way. Cole vs. Gargano had the most heat. Okada vs. White felt like a world championship match. Really, Walter vs. Dunne did as well, more than Cole vs. Gargano which just felt like an awesome emotional story but not like a world title match. Ospreay and Bandido felt like two incredible talents having a great pro wrestling match with the most creativity and planned peaks and valleys that were incredible, because you thought they peaked in the first minute and were never getting back to that level, only for them to smash it in the final minutes. Barnett vs. Suzuki was like a good fight that you liked, and then all of a sudden it built to become a classic fight. 

Emmet “Snake” Brown, who wrestled as a television enhancement wrestler in the Southeast from 1979 to 1989, passed away on 4/29 at the age of 66. Brown suffered a heart attack while driving home from the grocery store. Brown, who lived in Buchanan, GA, because of his wild hair, which he still had, was one of the best known and recognizable enhancement wrestlers of the era. He played a colorful wildman like character and had enough charisma that he probably could have gotten a push if he was a little bigger in those days. The death was a surprise because he kept himself in great shape. Brown worked mostly on Georgia television, but also was brought in at times for enhancement work in Florida, the Carolinas and Alabama. He also worked WWF television in 1985 when they taped at the Techwood Drive studios in Atlanta a few times, putting over the likes of Jimmy Snuka, Tito Santana and Junkyard Dog, and once got a win in a prelim match on a WWE Birmingham house show. 

A few notes regarding Vicki Funk, who passed away on 3/29 at the age of 75. Vicki was the wife of Terry Funk for more than 54 years, with them being married while attending West Texas State University in 1964. Terry said that he was in love with Vicki from the fifth grade, that they were part of a group that hung out together from that point on. He said from the start he thought she was the cutest girl in the school and they were pretty much dating from eighth grade and a couple from that point on, until they had their marriage issues and broke up in the 70s. As noted in our story last month, Terry largely gave up the NWA world championship in 1977 to return home and win her back. The two were inseparable for decades. She had been very ill for some time with issues with her lungs as when she grew up, a lot of people smoked and she was a heavy smoker when she was young. She ended up quitting maybe ten or 15 years ago. She was always smiling and Terry noted about the in the 70s when working the old Amarillo territory that they’d get home from Lubbock at midnight and Vicki would cook meals for him and the other wrestlers that he was traveling with. He also noted that because of Terry’s local celebrity status, West Texas State would introduce the potential recruits for football to him and how he and Vicki would befriend them and get them to sign on with the college. She helped run the ranch and worked the ranch until they sold it years back and largely retired. It’s been a while since he’s been at any pro wrestling events, and didn’t go to Japan for the Giant Baba Memorial Show and Abdullah the Butcher retirement in February, and I think that was probably more not wanting to leave her side at that point. He had agreed to go to Starrcast but felt it was too soon as you can imagine how hard this period has been. 

Joey Ryan announced that he was leaving the indies and doing a farewell tour. He didn’t say where he’s going but there are obviously two choices. He wasn’t in this week’s Being the Elite after being one of the key characters in the show with the angle of him training to be a tough guy but still longing for Candice LeRae to return as his tag team partner. The LeRae thing was kind of weird because she’s in WWE and would have a year left on her deal which is an awful long time if they’re building a storyline, and at least for now, she and her husband are working together at the same place. 

Regarding the death of John Quinn, reader Mike Omansky noted he was at the May 4, 1968, riot in Newark, NJ, during a match with Bobo Brazil vs. The Kentucky Butcher (Quinn). Fans were trying to get to the ring when Butcher was beating down Brazil after being disqualified.

. International Wrestling Syndicate, a Montreal based promotion where Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn came from, signed both English and French language Canadian national television deals. The show will air in English on The Fight Network, the same station that is the parent company of Impact. The French version will air on RDS, which is Quebec’s version of ESPN. The show will start airing weekly in July with the first taping on 4/27 at Club Unity in Montreal, with LAX as headliners. 

Bo Nickal of Penn State won over teammate Jason Nolf in the balloting for the 2019 Hodge Trophy, named after pro wrestling legend Danny Hodge, which is college wrestling’s version of the Heisman Trophy. Nickal won the NCAA tournament at 197 pounds and had a 30-0 record as a senior. What won him the award during a season that had four undefeated NCAA Division I champions, is that he had 18 pins, three tech fall and six major decisions, meaning he had dominant wins in 27 of his 30 bouts. Nickal got 37 of the 51 first place votes to 10 for Nolf, who won his third NCAA title. Nolf had three titles and also won 87 percent of his matches in dominant form, and had 15 pins. Nickal also got the most votes on the WIN web site poll for the trophy, which counts as two first place votes.. It makes the third straight year that a Penn State wrestler has won, since Zain Retherford won in both 2017 and 2018. 

Olympic gold medalist Kyle Snyder was announced or the 5/6 Beat the Streets show at the Hulu Theater in Madison Square Garden. The show will be a number of men and women’s matches with the top amateur wrestlers in the country. Snyder will face Nishan Randhawa of Canada at 213 pounds. The big match on the show is gold medalist Jordan Burroughs against unbeaten UFC fighter Ben Askren at 163 pounds. 

The University of Iowa for the 11th straight year led the nation in attendance for college wrestling. Iowa averaged 8,526 paid per date, which is actually way more than WWE, but because of the difference in dates that isn’t a fair comparison. Still, that’s a great number for college wrestling. The rest of the top ten were Penn State (7,889), Ohio State (5,817), Oklahoma State (5,227), Rutgers (5,038), Iowa State (3,570), Minnesota (3,020), Virginia Teach (2,469), Fresno State (2,402) and Michigan (2,236). 

One of the biggest amateur wrestling events of the year is the Beat the Streets show in New York at the Hulu Theater on 5/6. J’den Cox, who won a bronze medal at the 2016 Olympics and 2018 world champion, will face Patrick Brucki of Princeton, who went 33-3 and placed fourth in the 2019 NCAA tournament. David Taylor, a 2018 world champion, faces 2019 NCAA champion Drew Foster. Nick Gwiazdowski, the super heavyweight who is expected to go to WWE at some point, and placed third in the world championships twice, faces Derek White, who placed second in the NCAA tournament. The main event is gold medalist Jordan Burroughs against undefeated MMA fighter and two-time Hodge Trophy winner Ben Askren. 2016 gold medalist Kyle Snyder faces two-time national champion Binshan Randhawa of Canada. There are also women’s bouts including with Sarah Hildebrandt, who placed second in the 2018 world championships, and another with Mallory Velte, who placed third.

Jerry Lawler reprised his role in the Andy Kaufman angle on 4/26 at a Northeast Wrestling show in Danbury, CT. Early in the show, Lawler & Keith Youngblood, managed by Ricky Steamboat, won the NEW tag titles from Anthony Battle & Daniel Evans. Later, Brian Anthony beat David Arquette. Arquette then turned heel on the crowd, leading to Lawler coming out and giving him a piledriver. 

There is an autobiography of Leon “Vader” White coming out. Supposedly in the book he say that UWFI was nearly a shoot. He said that they fought hard but that the endings were predetermined, but if you knocked a guy out and you weren’t supposed to win, you would win. At the time, Leon would tell me it was punches with 70 percent power and very close to real. . . The Lucha Memes promotion on 5/1 is doing their own version of the Battle of Los Angeles, called the Battle of Naucalpan tournament with first round matches of Aramis vs. Flamita, Laredo Kid vs. Arkangel Divino, Arez vs. Puma King and Steve Pain vs. Rey Horus. They also have two unique non-tournament singles matches with Virus, the CMLL ground specialist, facing Jonathan Gresham, and Bandido vs. Ultimo Guerrero, which is a student vs. teacher match and also a match that until recently couldn’t have been allowed because of CMLL vs. AAA, but Bandido is now ROH and New Japan.

. A fraud trial involving former pro wrestler Jimmy Deo ended on 4/23 when Reading, PA Judge Paul Yatron threw the trial out after the prosecution rested its case. Yatron acquitted James Eschbach on charges of bilking investors out of $350,000 to use their money to buy cars and resell them at a profit at his Jimmy Deo’s Auto Sales lot. Eschbach was charged with taking the money and never paying back any of the investors. The case was about to go to the jury when Yatron ended things by saying that the prosecution lacked evidence to prove its case and he was acquitting Eschbach.

EUROPE: The Progress Strong Style 16 tournament, which takes place 5/4 to 5/6 at the Alexandra Palace in London, has announced the bracketing for the tournament. The bracketing has Chris Brookes vs. Ilja Dragunov, Trevor Lee vs. Aerostar, Travis Banks vs. DJZ, Artemis Spencer (from Defy, and this is his real breakthough event) vs. David Starr, Kyle O’Reilly vs. Chris Ridgeway, Darby Allin vs. Paul Robinson and Kyle Fletcher vs. Daga. The 5/5 show also features a unification of the Progress world champion, Walter, against the Atlas champion, Trent Seven.

MLW: MJF and Jimmy Havoc will continue to work here and AEW when AEW gets going due to singing here first. Pentagon Jr. & Fenix are likely to sign an exclusive U.S. contract with AEW, as they’ve got a good money offer, and if they sign that, they will finish up here. Regarding Jacob Fatu, who can be a major star, he’s got an exclusive deal here but will be continuing to work indies. They aren’t against their talent working AEW or Impact since anything that gives their talent more television exposure they consider as a good thing, but AEW, once it gets going, is likely to mostly rely on their own people they’ve got exclusive deals with, and they are expected to be pulled from working elsewhere shortly after AEW gets going. 

They are pushing the 5/4 TV show as the first nationally broadcast American pro wrestling show with a latina (Salina de la Renta) as the Executive Producer.

ROH: Sinclair Broadcasting and Disney have reached an agreement for Sinclair to purchase the old Fox Sports Net stations for $10 billion. The deal is not competed according to FOX because they are looking for equity investors for the stations and it’s still possible Sinclair will be outbid. Most of the Sinclair offer was said t be in cash. Where this relates to ROH is that it would seem t open the door for ROH to be on a number of regional sports networks if Sinclair takes over as owners of those stations. Sinclair had reached an agreement to purchase YES, the New York regional sports network, from Disney, for $3.4 billion, in March.. 

Dragon Lee has been added to the 6/28 Best in the World PPV as well as the TV tapings on 6/29 in Philadelphia. 

The return to the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York will be on 7/20, as part of a weekend with Lowell, MA on 7/21. 

Enzo and Tama Tonga are doing a promo battle so it appears they’re trying to build something out of Tonga and New Japan being mad that they weren’t told about the angle. Anyway, Eric Arndt and Bill Morrissey have taken out trademarks for names nZo, CazXL and FREEagentZ. Tonga & Loa are at the ROH shows next week so one would figure if they are going to follow up it would be on one of the shows, probably Toronto or Chicago. 

Updated lineups for the War of the Worlds tour are that the 5/9 show in Toronto at the Ted Reeve Arena has Matt Taven vs. PCO for the ROH title, Mark & Jay Briscoe vs. Mark Haskins & Tracy Williams, Yuji Nagata vs. Silas Young, Jay Lethal vs. Satoshi Kojima, Jeff Cobb defending the ROH TV title against Brody King, Hirooki Goto and Shane Taylor, Rush vs. P.J. Black, Tama Tonga & Tanga Loa & Hikuleo vs. Alex Coughlin & Karl Fredericks & Clark Conners and Evil & Sanada vs. T.K. O’Ryan & Vinny Marseglia. For 5/11 in Grand Rapids, MI, it’s a ten man main event with Cobb & Goto & Kojima & Nagata & Lethal vs. Bully Ray & Shane Taylor & Silas Young & Briscoes, PCO vs. Haskins, Taven & Marseglia & O’Ryan vs. Tonga & Loa & Hikuleo, Rush vs. Williams vs. Black vs. Eli Isom winner gets an ROH title shot and Cheeseburger vs. Conners.

For 5/12 in Chicago, which will be a TV taping, they’ve announced Cobb vs. PCO vs. Rush vs. Lethal in a four-way elimination match, Tonga & Loa vs. Briscoes for the ROH tag titles, Evil & Sanada vs. Nagata & Kojima and Goto vs. Hikuleo.

IMPACT: On the PPV, they pushed the launch of Impact+, a new streaming service. It’s actually just rebranding the Global Wrestling Network that they’ve had out for a while. But they wanted to get rid of using the Global name. They were using the GWF name at one point when Jeff Jarrett was in charge, but Jarrett is both gone and suing them. 

They only taped one show after the PPV in Toronto on 4/29, because they are coming back with TV tapings from the 2300 Arena in Philadelphia and 5/3 and 5/4. They are pushing this as Rob Van Dam’s return to the arena. The first of the two nights has Van Dam vs. Tommy Dreamer, Rosemary vs. Su Yung in a Demon Collar match, LAX vs. Rich Swann & Willie Mack for the tag titles and a women’s Battle Royal.

They will also be taping 6/6 and 6/7 at the Melrose Ballroom in New York

Notes from the 4/29 tapings. Trey Miguel pinned Jake Lander in a squash for Xplosion. Impact opened with Michael Elgin taking credit for injuring Brian Cage. He said that Canadians are supposed to support Canadians and he left New Japan to win the Impact title. Johnny Impact came out and he took credit for injuring Cage and said you hurt one meathead and get another meathead. He made fun of Elgin being bald. Elgin said that at least his testicles are still on his body while Johnny’s are in his wife’s purse. Konnan came out and said that he’s now representing Pentagon Jr. & Fenix and that Pentagon deserves a shot at the world title. Elgin threatened Konnan and Pentagon came out and attacked Elgin. Elgin was throwing around security. Ace Austin pinned Petey Williams. Rosemary beat Kiera Hogan via DQ when the Undead Bridesmaids and Su Yung attacked Rosemary. Hogan teased at one point helping Rosemary but she didn’t. Fenix pinned Eddie Edwards when Edwards was distracted by Killer Kross. Van Dam came out. Ethan Page came out. Van Dam has been doing this cocky routine about since so many of the new stars are doing cool moves that how everyone grew up idolizing him as a face. It sounds heelish but it’s RVD so it goes over as a face. Page said he didn’t grow up idolizing RVD. This led to a brawl with Van Dam laying him out with the Van Daminator. Elgin beat Pentagon and Impact in a three-way for the next title shot at Cage with the Elgin bomb on Impact. Pentagon was helped to the back with a leg injury. The second show taped opened with LAX over Moose & Josh Alexander when Santana pinned Alexander. Madison Rayne beat Taya Valkyrie with a half crab submission in a non-title match, which obviously sets up a title match. Killer Kross beat Tyson Dux in a match for Xplosion. Jordynne Grace beat Alexia Nicole with a pump handle buster. The Desi Hit Squad of Rohit Raju & Raj Singh won a four-way over Aiden Prince & Brent Banks, Jake & Cody Deaner and Dezmond Xavier & Zachary Wentz. Von Dam pinned Page with the five star frog splash. The main event of the second show was Sami Callihan & Mad Man Fulton & Dave & Jake Crist (OVW) over Tommy Dreamer & Willie Mack & Rich Swann & Fallah Bahh when Callihan pinned Mack after a piledriver on Legos.

AEW: Cody did a great four-minute promo for his match with Dustin on The Road to Double or Nothing show. It was really more the delivery than anything, talking about being a kid and going to the Omni and how his all the girls liked his brother and his brother was his hero. He kept saying that he loved his brother and this match was about a generational battle and putting to bed the Attitude Era. He said that he’s tired of hearing how great it is, and while he was thankful for the guys who came before him and paved the road, that the stars of the Attitude Era refused to let the new style evolve because they couldn’t do it. He didn’t use those exact words, he talked about how they made wrestling had a 35 mile per hour speed limit and didn’t want anyone who could drive faster on top. He got his return dig at HHH from the Hall of Fame, talking about how the big star was a pissant bodybuilder who had to make all of his big matches no DQ and lumbered around the ring, and how he couldn’t compare with Omega vs. Okada. He said as great as Dwayne Johnson’s promos were, that they weren’t as good as the one with Punk sitting on the stage. Any reference of Punk coming the week after Punk did that run-in caused a lot of commotion but the flip side is that the rule of thumb with these guys is everything they say it thought out and their usual rule is to pay off all their storylines. The promos was one of the best promos building a match in a long time. 

 The announcement regarding PPV, streaming, or both of Double or Nothing will be announced soon, likely the next week or two. 

Since they are going through with the Tuesday Night Dynamite trademark. As of a month or two ago, the idea of a Tuesday night show was dead based on the stations being talked with having other programming, but it is back alive now.

 Dave Bautista was interviewed by Jimmy Alexander of the Jack Diamond Morning show in Washington, DC, and asked about AEW. He said that an offer was made and there were large numbers involved. We had noted the offer but that Bautista, who has retired as he wanted to end his career with one last match with HHH at WrestleMania, had said he was only interested in one last match and it had to be in WWE.

On BTE, they did bits where both Peter Avalon and Leva Bates, who were both announced as being The Librarian, each found out that there was another librarian. Cody kept making fun of Hangman Page’s dad bod. Kenny Omega was still spending money like crazy on the company card as a spoof that they’ve got Executive Vice Presidents who don’t know what they’re doing. The Young Bucks were doing all kinds of strength and conditioning work to get back into shape since they haven’ been wrestling regularly since the start of the year. Trent Baretta called and wanted to find out his spot on the card. He was told he’d be in the pre-show Battle Royal. He started freaking out about being in the pre-show again, like he was expecting something better, and they teased he was so upset he was starting to smoke. Then they showed Chuckie T smoking and saying he’s not doing the Battle Royal, as they made the announcement both were in the Battle Royal.

UFC: There is no confirmed number for UFC 236 PPV buys. With the bypassing of cable, the only people who have the number work at ESPN and UFC, and the agreement was that only ESPN could release the number. ESPN has chosen not to do so. There is talk that the fight did well under half of the 200,000 number that would be what one would have predicted the show to do had it been a television PPV. UFC 236 was headlined by Dustin Poirier vs. Max Holloway and Kelvin Gastelum vs. Israel Adesanya, both for interim titles. Well under half of 200,000 sounds disastrous. Still, we were told that it was not a lower number than expectations internally as they knew a lot of people wouldn’t order because it’s less simple, and a lot of people don’t have high speed Internet to where watching a PPV on the Internet would be worth the risk. Still, I was thinking you’d get at least 50 percent and closer to 70 percent of usual viewers and no way this show would have done much under 200,000. WWE made the switch work because of the low price, while UFC and ESPN are still charging the same price, but for less stable Internet streaming than television. The first event also led to a lot of issues with the PPV and having some refunds. My belief is that when there’s a really big show that people want to see, they’ll sign up to do so. Once they do, they won’t be to adverse to doing so in the future. But if this is anything close to accurate, we’re starting at a far lower level. I’d take this number with a grain of salt, because of how few people actually know. Those in the television PPV industry are talking of it like you would expect. ESPN is looking at this as a long-term deal. UFC is thrilled because they’re guaranteed their share of what would be considered a good PPV every month based on standards from a few years ago when business was stronger. Keep in mind that ESPN is looking at getting 70 to 100 percent of the PPV money while UFC is getting paid based off what they’d make for a lot smaller percentage of a bigger number. It looks like a very bad short-term deal for ESPN, but this was always about the long-term, since the contracts are in place for this until 2025 and everything about this UFC deal is based on using television to build the streaming service.

The company announced a five-year deal with the Department of Culture and Tourism in Abu Dhabi for annual shows, with the first being a 9/7 PPV show. While not announced, that’s the date planned for Khabib Nurmagomedov vs. Dustin Poirier for the lightweight title. Abu Dhabi isn’t Saudi Arabia, but it will be interesting to see if UFC books women on the show, and if they’ll be forced to cover up like WWE did when they ran the United Arab Emirates. Actually, UFC years back went there and used the ring girls in the same attire they always wear. Also, if UFC does book women on the show will they try and claim they’re changing the culture of he country like WWE claimed when they booked women there.

 USADA did make a statement to MMA Fighting regarding Tom Lawlor’s two-year suspension for Ostarine, saying that steroid testing is “more sensitive and able to detect far smaller quantities and new metabolites of PED’s than even just a few years ago. They said it can lead to more cheaters being caught but also some inadvertent positives, such as tests for tiny amounts of Ostarine that may have come from something ingested but were so low that it wouldn’t indicate an attempt to cheat. USADA communications director Adam Woullard said that if Lawlor’s case came out today, it’s possible he would have been eligible for a shorter suspension and would have been able to take the case to an independent arbitrator. The problem is that a fighter like Jon Jones has the money to do that, but most fighters don’t have that money. They noted that Lawlor’s two-year suspension was the way an Ostarine positive was treated in 2016 and when the suspension was final in early 2017. Lawlor said that he was told by Jeff Novitzky not to go to arbitration because he had no proof of a contaminated supplement to mitigate the two-year suspension. But the recent cases involving Sean O’Malley, Nicco Montano, Augusto Mendes and Marvin Vettori, who all tested positive for Ostarine and also had no proof of a tainted supplement, were met with six month suspensions instead of two years because the amount of Ostarine found was so low they concluded it was likely from a supplement and not intentional cheating. USADA wrote in announcing the four six month suspensions, that “as detection windows increase and the potential time between ingestion and detection lengthens, it has become more difficult for athletes to identify a contaminated product that may be the source of the positive test.” Lawlor told Marc Raimondi, “Perhaps the science and testing should be solidified first before people’s livelihoods are put at stake and people are unjustly punished.” Raimondi noted that in the last four years, there have been 14 fighters who have tested positive for Ostarine. Four, Lawlor, Zubaira Tukhugov, Ruslan Magomedov and Amanda Ribas got two year suspensions. Lawlor’s situation was the worst because he asked for a release to fight outside the U.S. and it was denied, and then, just before the suspension ended, UFC cut him from the roster without offering him a new fight. Diego Ferreira got a 17 month suspension. Guido Cannetti got a ten month suspension. Jim Wallhead got nine months. The four fighters who recently tested positive got six months. And Josh Barnett had his suspension lifted, but Barnett very quickly was able to identify the supplement that caused his positive test, and it took him more than a year and he spent the money for arbitration and the arbitrator ruled in his favor that he shouldn’t have been suspended, as USADA still wanted to suspend him.

Paulo Costa was given a six month suspension, that has ended, after using an IV, but taking nothing banned in the IV, to help replenish his weight from two different fights in 2017. He was also fined $4,000 for his fight on June 2, 2017 in Brazil, and $9,333.33 for his November 3, 2017 fight in New York, for violation of the rules.

 This week’s show is 5/4 in Ottawa with the entire show on ESPN+. The show starts at 5 p.m. Eastern. The lineup has Cole Smith (6-0) vs. Mitch Gagnon (12-4), Arjan Bhullar Singh (8-1) vs. Juan Adams (5-0), Matt Sayles (7-2) vs. Kyle Nelson (12-2), Nordine Taleb (14-6) vs. Kyle Propolec (12-5), Aiemann Zahabi (7-1) vs. Vince Morales (8-3), Sarah Moras (5-4) vs. Macy Chiasson (4-0), Andrew Sanchez (10-4) vs. Marc-Andre Barriault (11-1), Sergey Spivak (9-0) vs. Walt Harris (11-7), Brad Katona (8-0) vs. Merab Dvalishvili (8-4), Cub Swanson (25-10) vs. Shane Burgos (11-1), Elias Theodorou (16-2) vs. Derek Brunson (18-7) and headlined by Donald Cerrone (35-11) vs. Al Iaquinta (14-4-1). The main event looks great on paper and all the top tier lightweights are exciting fighters so it’s probably set up something big for the winner. Zahabi is the brother of Firas Zahabi, the famous trainer of Georges St-Pierre out of Montreal. Singh was a Canadian national team heavyweight wrestler.

Demian Maia returns on 6/29 in Minneapolis against Anthony Rocco Martin. That will be the next event where the main card airs on ESPN. Other new fights on the show are Roman Dolidze vs. Vinicius Moreira, Drew Dober vs. Marco Polo Reyes, Chas Skelly vs. Jordan Griffin, Paul Craig vs. Alonzo Menefield, Maurice Greene vs. Junior Albini and Justin Ledet vs. Daicha Lungiambula.

Sports Illustrated is working on a documentary on UFC 1, talking to a lot of the people involved in the first show.

Added to the 6/22 show in Greenville, SC are Allen Crowder vs. Jairinho Rozenstruik, Bevon Lewis vs. Darren Stewart, Syuri Kondo (a well-known Japanese woman pro wrestler) vs. Ashley Yoder, Alessio DiChirico vs. Kevin Holland and Andre Ewell vs. Anderson Dos Santos.

Felice Herrig suffered a torn ACL on 4/26 and needs surgery, so has to pull out of her 6/8 fight with Xia Xionan. Xionan will now face Angela Hill

Claudia Gadelha vs. Randa Markos is being looked at for 7/6 in Las Vegas.

BELLATOR: Scott Coker said that the company’s plans will be to run 50 shows per year within a few years. They will do major shows, and will also do regular market specific shows for the European market, as they already do, as well as for the Latin American market and the Asian market. The idea of those shows would be for them to air live on local television in prime time, concentrate on fighters from those regions and try and build regional drawing cards.

This may be some time away, but there are talks of trying to get MMA legalized in France (it is still banned there) and Viacom has apparently been talking with governmental affairs people trying to make that possible.

Darrion Caldwell vs. Kyoji Horiguchi for the featherweight title is official for Madison Square Garden on 6/14. Horiguchi beat Caldwell in a champion vs. champion match to retain the Rizin title on New Year’s Eve. Caldwell was significantly bigger and had the edge but Horiguchi came back to submit him. If Horiguchi wins and becomes a double champion he is contractually obligated to defend the title once over the next year in Bellator.

Bellator has a U.K. show on Ch. 5 in prime time on 5/4 from Birmingham, UK with Brent Primus vs. Tim Wilde, Derek Campos v. Pedro Carvahlo and Fabian Edwards vs. Falco Netro as the top fights. In the U.S., they were pushing the next show as a 5/11 DAZN exclusive from the Allstate Arena in Chicago with Michael Chandler defending the lightweight title against Patricio Pitbull Freire, the featherweight champion, plus Douglas Lima vs. Michael Venum Page in a semifinal of the welterweight tournament, A.J. McKee vs. Pat Curran and Jake Hager (Jack Swagger) in his second fight vs. T.J. Jones. All we know about Jones is that he’s only had one fight, he lost it via tapping to strikes in 46 seconds, and the fight was four years ago.

This went under the radar, but on the Bellator show in San Jose, Boris Novachkov of Bulgaria made his debut. Novachkov grew up in San Jose and was a two-time high school state champion in wrestling, two-time Pac 12 champion and placed second in the 2011 NCAA tournament and third in 2012. He also wrestled for Bulgaria in the last Olympics. This shows how far the sport and sport specifics have evolved because it used to be that an Olympic caliber wrestler or NCAA All-American would run through prelim competition and only have trouble when it came to name guys. But he lost his debut via split decision to Chris Inocencio, who was 0-1 coming in.

OTHER MMA: The Los Angeles Times reported that the Terrence Crawford vs. Amir Khan PPV numbers for their 4/20 fight in Madison Square Garden were about 150,000 buys, a figure that would be a huge disappointment. It wasn’t that big of a fight and with DAZN putting on PPV fights for a much lower price (this was a $75 show), DAZN’s push that PPV is dead may finally not be far from the case. Ironically it wasn’t the consumers who killed it, but streaming services giving outrageous guarantees and losing ridiculous money in the process. Bob Arum was asked about that number, since ESPN, which helped promote this fight as a television PPV rather than put it on its streaming service, and Top Rank never released numbers. He just said that the streaming buys were through the roof, which is the same code word Oscar de la Hoya gave when Chuck Liddell vs. Tito Ortiz bombed on PPV.

Ortiz, 44, signed with Combate Americas, coming out of his latest retirement. Ortiz came out and signed the contract during the 4/26 Combate Americas show in Los Angeles that aired on Univision. While it’s being said the Ortiz signing was to set up a match with Alberto El Patron, both men are denying that. Both have said the working idea is for Combate Americas to run a big show in October with both of them on it, but against different opponents. Alberto said that they have somebody else in mind for him. He said he’s been back training fr a couple of weeks and plans on leaving San Antonio when it comes time to start his fight camp. Ortiz said that he had fun training a fighting for his last two fights (wins over Chael Sonnen and Chuck Liddell) and thought it would be fun to fight one more time. It would be interesting how they would market it, as both fighting would make for an interesting curiosity show for television and Combate does strong ratings on Univision, often beating Bellator because of how strong Univision is as a station. 

The World MMA Award nominees were announced and they will have an event to announce them this summer in Las Vegas. The nominees for Fighter of the Year are Khabib Nurmagomedov, Gegard Mousasi, Dustin Poirier, Daniel Cormier and Aung La Nsang. Woman Fighter of the Year nominees were Valentina Shevchenko, Tatiana Suarez, Jessica Andrade, Ilimia-lei Macfarlane and Amanda Nunes. I mean, Nunes has to win this. Breakthrough fighter nominees were Thiago Santos, Israel Adesanya, Anthony Smith, A.J. McKee and Aaron Pico. International fighter nominees were Nurmagomedov, Kamaru Usman, Adesanya, Mousasi and Nsang. Fight of the Year nominees were Yoel Romero vs. Robert Whittaker, Thiago Santos vs. Jimi Manuwa, Douglas Lima vs. Rory MacDonald, Poirier vs. Justin Gaethje and Tony Ferguson vs. Anthony Pettis. MMAFighting, which I work for, has been nominated for best media source, and has won that award the best four years.

Lilian Garcia, 52, the former WWE ring announcer, has signed to be ring announcer with the PFL, which starts its season on 5/9. The PFL will have its events on ESPN 2 and ESPN+.

The PFL announced it has raised $30 million in new investment money. The money is to be used to expand its data and analytics and expand overseas as well as sign more fighters. Key people who have put money in are Beats Electronics billionaire Jimmy Iovine, Ted Segal of LS Power, Mark Leschly of Icona Ventures, Swan Ventures and Eysian Park Ventures, as well s Washington Wizards and Capitals owner Ted Leonsis, who has been a prime backer from the start. Ideas they are pushing for the new season are more data and analytics during the broadcast, second-screen experiences which will include speed of punches and force fighters hit the ground.

Jefferson Barata, the Uber driver who ran over former UFC fighter Rodrigo de Lima, was arrested and confessed to the hit-and-run incident on 4/20 in Belem, Brazil. Barata claimed he was punched by de Lima after asking him and his three friends to bring the tone of their voices down. Barata claimed after de Lima and his friends left the car, Barata drove away. He said that he decided that instead of reporting the attack to police, he would drive back and scare de Lima, but was not trying to kill him when he ran him over. Barata said he was teaching at a church and was to get married on 4/26, but he has to pay for what he did and regrets it deeply.

A very controversial situations that ONE sent out a release that the promotion has an agents certification program and that no fighters could have an unapproved agent. Think about how ridiculous that is. Chatri Sityodtong of ONE said that agents fraud has been a problem, and that is true, but there’s no way a promotion can certify agents and refuse to deal with agents they haven’t approved of. The promotion said that they can revoke or deny accrediting any agent. They also said that all agents for ONE competitors have to have no criminal record, no history of legal issues or current ongoing legal or lawsuit activity involving any athlete. They also have to hae at least ten years experience in the industry, a college degree and that all agents have to be living in Asia for a minimum of one year. Everything about this is ridiculous, but the idea that fighters in ONE, who come from all over the world, can only be represented by somebody who both lives in Asia and is approved by ONE is ridiculous.

WWE: Regarding the 2021 WrestleMania, this is the update. Los Angeles is the likely destination. The city has put in a bid for it for the new Los Angeles Stadium at Hollywood Park. The stadium will be the new home for the Rams and the Chargers, and will have a capacity of 80,240, but will be expanded to 100,000 for the 2022 Super Bowl, World Cup games, Olympic events and other major events. WWE wanted to go in 2022, after the Super Bowl, with the idea they would announce a number bigger than whatever the Super Bowl does and probably also announce a new attendance record for the company. But the city put in a bid for 2021, wanting to use WrestleMania, with so many out-of-town tourists, to kind of test everything out and remove the kinks before the Super Bowl comes the next February.

Ambrose put out a video of him like he was breaking out of a prison using the name “Mox,” short for his real name Jon Moxley. We have heard the story he’ll be on the indies starting sometime in June if not earlier. He’s supposed to have bookings with a number of different promotions which will be announced shortly. The only thing is on the indies he can probably command several thousand per match, do meet and greets for more if he wants, and work as much or as little as he wants to with almost complete control of everything. This will be interesting. The only thing I can think of is that WWE gave him such a strong sendoff that they believe he’s coming back at some point. I don’t believe they’d do that if they thought he was going to either NJPW or AEW, but his contract is up and he didn’t have to get a release, so he can do whatever he wants, and one would think NJPW and AEW would both be on the table. They kept throwing more and more money at him to get him to sign, and he kept turning it down to the point they realized he was determined to get out and they couldn’t stop him. The belief is that he wants a deal where he’s completely in control of his character and what he can do.

The update on Harper is that Vince McMahon, in writing, told him he wouldn’t release him. He was earmarked to work a program with Zayn after Mania, but the decision was made not to do it. One person close to the situation told us that he needs to get out because they made a call that they weren’t going to use him after Vince saw him in his return. Vince said that he didn’t “get him” and complained that he couldn’t even do a Southern accent (that was from them wanting him to do a Southern accent four years ago). He was regularly pitching ideas when he was out with an injury and they turned down every pitch. He wasn’t booked anywhere after being cleared but Fan Axxess, and then Vince McMahon out of the blue wanted to know why he wasn’t in the Battle Royal, so that’s why he was put in at the last minute. Apparently the end was a mess as Strowman forgot his spots, which is one of the reasons Strowman hasn’t done much since winning. He was booked to start the Zayn program the day after Mania, but was then told after Mania he wasn’t needed for TV. So he went home, but then was called to comeback on Tuesday for a match with EC 3. He was basically used as the opponent to test out the EC 3 and Maverick pairing as wrestler/manager. The agents set up a bunch of manager spots in the match. Vince then watched it and said he hated the manager spots. The creative meeting the day of the draft when it was asked about which brand Harper would be on, Vince said how the guy can’t even do a Southern accent, said the match with EC 3 was bad, so they didn’t put him with either brand and that’s when he asked for his release.

We don’t know what the issue was, but Bryan was at TV on 4/30 in Columbus, OH and medically cleared and will be written back into the storylines, perhaps as soon as next week. If this happened a week earlier, or for sure two weeks earlier, Owens wouldn’t have turned. Bryan is scheduled for the European tour, which starts after next week’s TVs, as the Smackdown current lineups are Kingston vs. Bryan vs. Owens for the title, Joe vs. Styles for the U.S. title, Lynch vs. Flair vs. Naomi for the women’s title, Usos vs. Rusev & Nakamura, Iiconics vs. Asuka & Sane for tag titles and Matt Hardy vs. Sullivan. The brand split usually takes effect as far as arenas shows go after the European tour. Ths year we’re told the European tour will actually be mixed as some people will be on the shows with their new brand and others won’t, but after Europe everyone will be on their new brand.

The Raw crew leaves on 5/6 from Cincinnati for Belfast on 5/8 and the Smackdown crew leaves on 5/7 from Louisville to Dublin on 5/9. Reigns and Bayley will be on the Raw shows, at least the first week. Styles, Joe and Lynch will be on the Smackdown shows the first week. Banks and Bryan were both being advertised for the tour, with Bryan advertised the first few dates but not the entire tour. Orton and Miz are advertised only for the second half of the tour. Lynch is advertised on the Smackdown tour on the later shows.

The TVs will be 5/13 and 5/14 in London from the O2 Arena and the tours both end on 5/17, and they’ll fly back for the PPV on 5/19.

Not that this won’t change 25 times in the next year, but the reason they are putting Lynch vs. Flair at Money in the Bank is that they have a different match planned for next year’s Mania for Lynch. The only thing we know is that she’s slotted to be the top woman on that show, and her opponent is not scheduled to be either Flair or Rousey at this point. If Rousey wants to return for that show, that match isn’t out of the question but it is not the planned match. Originally Lynch vs. Flair had been the lead idea for 2020 leading to this past year’s Mania and was part of the reason for the three-way. Another part was to try and use Mania to elevate two women, and not one, to true superstar status so each could carry a brand.

The show that was being called Backlash is getting a name change to WWE Stomping Grounds, and will be the show on 6/23 in Tacoma, that was originally set for 6/16 in San Diego but moved because WWE didn’t want PPV shows one week apart. They are advertising Reigns vs. Orton as the main event, but most likely that changes many times between then and now.

Cena is getting a huge movie career break as he will be in “Fast & Furious 9.” Vin Diesel announced this in an instagram video. This is notable because there was a falling out with the longstanding cast members of the franchise with Dwayne Johnson, over Johnson doing “Hobbs and Shaw,” a spinoff which comes out this year. The idea is Johnson did a movie based on their franchise character, but without the rest of the crew except Jason Statham. It delayed F&F 9 by a year. No word on whether Johnson will remain in the cast even with the bad blood, or if getting Cena involved is as a replacement for Johnson.

Dean Malenko (Dean Simon, 58), gave notice on 4/23. He had been working as a producer since retiring as a wrestler. He was then announced as appearing at Starrcast. He’s planning on retiring at this point.

Shane Helms, 44, who works here as a producer, had his last scheduled match on 4/27. He didn’t announce his retirement, but it was the last match had has booked.

 Stacey Ervin Jr., the gymnast who took quickly to pro wrestling, but had second thoughts about pursuing it after a concussion and problems coming back from it, officially was released this past week after making the decision pro wrestling wasn’t for him.

NXT referee Tom Castor and wrestler Raul Mendoza were injured on the 4/25 show in Ralston, NE. Mendoza was wrestling Jaxson Ryker when his left knee went out. The injury wasn’t believed to have been too bad, at least at first, with him thinking he’ll be back in a few weeks but he’s getting it looked at this week. The referee saw the injury and immediately stopped the match. With Castor, it was a different story. He took a superkick from Tyler Breeze in the main event where Breeze challenged Velveteen Dream for the North American title. When he took it his leg got caught on the mat and his ankle snapped. It was a horrible looking break, compared with the Sid Vicious break. Drake Wuertz ran out. The spot was for Wuertz to run out at that time, but he got there, saw Castor down and gave the “X” signal to stop the match. The wrestlers kept doing their spots and did a near fall, kick out, and Wuertz was then knocked out as planned. Dream used a Death Valley bomb and went for the pin. Castor made the count to three and then gave the X sign himself. After, Castor was asked why, with that injury, he rolled over and did the count, and he said that he loved the business. Castor was really popular among the NXT talent and with the company. He’s from Northern California and was extremely popular with everyone on the independent scene here as well. But all the talent wished him well and he received high marks from everyone for still making the count with the broken ankle.

A correction from last week. In the Finn Balor vs. Elias match in Moline on the WWE Network, the finish, after the botched looking sunset flip spot, was a la magistral cradle by Balor and not the coup de grace.

Lars Sullivan has not been banned from using the diving head-butt, but the decision from the top is that he should only use it for special occasions. Really, that makes sense. The move is impressive for a guy his size in particular, but you don’t want it to be something that fans expect you do in every match. Harley Race, who popularized the move in the 60s and 70s, has said he wished he never invented it because of the long-term neck damage it caused him. Of the other practitioners, Dynamite Kid ended up in a wheelchair before he was 40, although for him it was really back issues. But Chris Benoit and Daniel Bryan both had major neck problems. With Bryan it’s hard to tie it to the move but with Benoit it was generally believed the constant use of it was the key in his needing neck surgery. But the point is that it’s not a high-risk move that if you do it once it’s a big risk, but it’s a move that if you do it daily for years, it can catch up to you. So smarter and safer is to use it when necessary, in big matches or for angles where you’re trying to get something over, and the running Liger bomb, his new move, is more in line with being a powerhouse anyway. Of course, the Liger bomb is a lot harder on the opponent than the diving head-butt, which is pretty safe for the opponent.

Matt Riddle is out of action with an infection in his arm.

Fightful.com reported and the story is accurate that WWE offered The Revival a five-year deal at $500,000 per year and they turned it down. The belief is that Anderson & Gallows got an offer in the same region that they’ve also turned down. They’ve got 11 months left. WWE has made big offers to everyone whose contracts are coming due and the expectation is the Usos got a great deal to stay. The one thing with The Revival is it’s a lock they’ll be used better in AEW and will have a more conducive to family life schedule. WWE buried the hell out of them on the 4/29 television show.

Anderson & Gallows were switched from Smackdown to Raw. Smackdown was badly in need of a face tag team with the Hardys injured but unless they sign a new deal, Anderson & Gallows aren’t going to be getting any kind of a push now. Even if they do sign, it’s questionable if they’d get any push. This was not a change of mind as much as a change that they never bothered to announce.

Dave Schilling has been let go from creative. He was only on board for a very short period of time. New ads to creative are Michael Nelson, who comes from the NBC show “Off Their Rocker,” and Andrea Kail, from TruTV’s “Knockout.”

Nia Jax underwent double ACL reconstructive surgery this past week. She’ll likely be out of action six to nine months.

There was a poster going around which listed an NXT Money in the Bank match for the PPV. According to those in the know, not only is the poster a fake, but such a match has never been discussed.

 Lashley and Lio Rush were officially split up. Rush had complained about the role he was in, and said that he felt he should be a babyface and an inspirational character to people and a top guy and not a second fiddle act, so they decided to split them up. Rush was at Raw this week and is still with the company, although I’m certain that the heat he has will magnify because he did an interview complaining about pay. The company hates talent doing interviews on their own, but usually can’t handle anybody saying anything but the party line. In the past people have been fired for a lot less. Rush said in the interview he had no problems with Lashley and being with Lashley has helped both of them, and he’s gotten a lot of confidence in his speaking ability that he never had, because he was an in-ring worker and not a promo guy before coming to WWE. He said the issue wasn’t his role as much as he hasn’t been paid for merchandise with his catch phrase on, and that being on the road and paying for rental cars and hotels and travel expenses has been tough because he’s not making enough money on the road to pay his expenses, so he’s been broke while having a wife and two kids to support. Regarding a story in PW Insider where they said he had heat because he refused to bring water to the veterans on the last European tour like rookies are supposed to, he said that he feels the look of a black kid carrying waters and bags for the wrestler is a bad look, especially when he’s trying to carry himself as a superstar. He claimed there is somebody who works at WWE who hates him from when he worked in ROH who now also works in WWE who is spreading false stories to the office to get him fired. He said that you have to defend yourself. It’s not decided what to do with him. He could also be put on the 205 Live roster. The last we were told is that it’s possible Rush could be moved back to NXT, but nothing is certain. Everyone knows Rush has talent but he’s continually rubbed key people the wrong way. He also brought friends and relatives backstage that weren’t approved of. It’s more a lot of little things with him than a major miscue, but they’ve added up.

Breeze has also been moved off the main roster to NXT.

When the stock price dropped this past week, Stephen Mandel Jr., of Lone Pine Capital, purchased 2.9 percent of the company on the stock market with a purchase of 2,256,631 shares this past week. Mandel Jr., is said to be worth $2.4 billion.

 Trinity Fatu (Naomi) was be inducted into the 2019 Boys & Girl Club Alumni Hall of Fame on 5/1 in Houston.

For those keeping score, FOX on 4/26 averaged 2,103,000 viewers in prime time. That sounds bad, but that’s also with rerun programming. In fact their first hour with reruns beat what Smackdown did live on a Tuesday.

They had another tryout camp this past week in Orlando. The theme was big guys and football players for men and bikini contest women for women, so it’s like we’re going back in time. Going through some of the names, the biggest star was CFL star James Wilder Jr. (whose father was an NF star) of the Toronto Argonauts, who said he was going to come back for the next season even if WWE wanted him, but was open to going to WWE after his football career ended. Emily Andzulis was the first female champion on “Titan Games,” the Dwayne Johnson competition show, and also has fought in amateur MMA. Taiwan Markis Jones is a 25-year-old former linebacker at Michigan State. Jones played one month for the New York Jets in the 2016 season and was about to sign with the AAF when the league folded. Chris Martin, 6-foot-6 and 305 pounds, offensive tackle at the University of Central Florida from 2009 to 2013 and was in a number of NFL camps but never made a team, and was playing with the Orlando team in the AAF this season. Lance Anoa’i is the son of Samu and grandson of Afa. Jana Angel, 6-foot-3, played pro volleyball in France. Maritza Ayala wrestled as Danika Dalla Rouge in the Pacific Northwest. Nick Rodriguez, 22, who is 6-foot-3 and 230, competes in BJJ and wrestled in college. Ivelisse Velez was in developmental in 2011-2012 and became a star in Lucha Underground, and is finally out of that contract. Stephanie Ayala is a 25-year-old fitness model, who won a Miss Diva World bikini fitness competition. Andrea Benoit is a Canadian independent wrestler known as Nova. Jade Cargill, a 5-foot-10 starting forward/guard at Jacksonville University, gained a social media following for being a bikini model noted for super ripped abs and unusually large implants. Kristopher Craig, 29, at 6-foot-7 and 265 pounds, has trained at the Team 3-D Academy and also has trained with Billy Gunn. Michael Delbrey, 26, competed in Olympic weightlifting and has done independent pro wrestling. Donovan & Leandro Dongo are brothers. Donovan is 6-foot-5 and 330 pounds, a competition super heavyweight powerlifter and amateur wrestler, while Leandro is a 6-foot-6, 250 pound freestyle wrestler. Edgrin Stone, 6-foot-3 and 240 pounds, played tight end at Nicholls State University and wrestles for Wildkat Wrestling in Louisiana. Sierra Erny, 22, wrestles as Skyler Moore. She trains at the Team 3-D school and is a competitive dancer. Tony Eveland, is an independent wrestler. JXT, real name Joshua Fikret, is a high flying wrestler from Australia. Anthony Joseph Francis, 28, is a 6-foot-5, 330 pound nose tackle for the University of Maryland who bounced around the NFL from 2013-2018, mostly on practice squads did play in regular season games nine regular season games, all in 2015 and 2017, with the Miami Dolphins, Seattle Seahawks and Washington Redskins. He trains at the Team 3-D school and wrestles as Suga Bear. Aaron Gillis, 7-foot and 400 pounds, played college football at Slippery Rock University and wrestles on indies as Paxton Calloway. Alex Gracia, 26, who was trained by Booker T and wrestles on indies including Stardom, Shine, Shimmer and Rose. Mahmoud Fawzy Sebie, who we noted was just starting wrestling training at Pro Wrestling Revolution in California. He represented Egypt in Greco-Roman wrestling. Randy Kaufman, who was trained at OVW, wrestled at the University of Indianapolis at 197 pounds. Makini Manu is a 325-pounder who played football at the University of Utah. Patrick McAlpine, 22, was trained by WWE staffer Steve Corino, and wrestles as Patrick Scott. E.J. Nduka, 30, is a 6-foot-6, 265 pound pro bodybuilder who also trains in MMA. He played college football at Sam Houston State as a defensive end and outside linebacker. He played arena football in 2014 and competed in bodybuilding in 2015 and 2016 including winning the Jr. Nationals and Jr. Mr. USA contests. Kristjan Sokoli, 27, 6-foot-5, 295 pounds who looks like he could have been in the Wyatt Family, at that size has a 38 inch vertical jump. He was a defensive end at the University of Buffalo and a sixth round NFL draft choice in 2015. He played one NFL game in 2015 with the Seahawks and was in various camps through last season when he was in pre-season with the New York Giants and tore his ACL. Sidney Bateman, 27, is an acrobat with Cirque du Soleil. Well, at least that would be good if Pat Patterson saw him, since Pat Patterson watches modern wrestling and says it’s not wrestling, it’s Cirque du Soleil. Cadman Edward Turner, 6-foot-5, 265 pounds, trains at Santino Marella’s Battlarts Academy. Jeanette Horning, 28, both wrestled and was a place kicker in high school. Ana Kundzics, 27, is a dancer and actress. Florence Lortie, 24, wrestles as Flo Riley and has wrestled in Spain, Ireland and France. Lauren Regno competes in bikini contests and was in Titan Games this past season. Courtney Lynn Roselle played college basketball at the University of Scranton. Theresa Lee Schussler, who wrestles as Tesha Price. Bryce Wollman, 22, 6-foot-7 and 335 pounds, is a powerlifter who played Division II football at Augustana College in South Dakota. We know someone whose son played football with him and said Wollman was a huge Hulk Hogan fan but he has no prior wrestling experience. Rafik Youakeem, who wrestles as Alexander Zana Youakeem. And Jonathan Young, 6-foot-4 and 250 pounds, a swimmer at the University of Alabama who was trained by Lex Luger and holds some sort of record for most pullups in one minute while wearing a 100 pound backpack.

The New Day and Bella Twins were part of WWE week on Nickelodeon from 4/22 to 4/25 on the show Double Dare. The audience for the show each day ranged from 568,000 to 715,000.

 We were asked this past week about WWE and TSN (Canada’s version of ESPN) and wrestling. A former TSN employee noted to us that WWE lost TSN when TSN got the rights to Monday Night Football, and WWE went to the secondary sports station in the country, The Score. WWE at one point bought a stake in The Score, which is now Rogers Sportsnet 360 when Rogers media purchased it. There were at least talks with WWE and TSN in 2014 because TSN now has five different channels instead of one, so there would be places to put the shows if there were other sports of higher value in the time slot. But WWE went with Rogers and the contract to the station is said to be through 2025. As far as AEW goes, we’ve heard nothing, no hints at all, regarding Canadian television. We’re told that TSN has never given an indication they were interested in wrestling in recent years outside of the airing of the Kenny Omega documentary in March. 

Notes from the 4/29 Raw show in Lexington. They had a big crowd of more than 10,000 fans. The crowd was better than most Raws of late because it was heavily promoted as the first time Raw was in Lexington in ten years. WWE wouldn’t run any TV or PPV shows in Kentucky because of a commission ruling where they would stop matches if there was bleeding. There was also outside drug testing by the commission and there was a time WWE didn’t want that either. The major buildings in Lexington and Louisville pushed for the changes They were okay with doing house shows that way but no PPVs or TV tapings. I thought the show was kind of boring and given the falling ratings, the idea of booking a show based around humiliating The Revival in multiple segments feels like the wrong priorities. There was no follow up on Robert Roode. Strowman vs. Joe seems to already be forgotten and they are going back to Joe vs. Mysterio–after Joe beat him in a minute at WrestleMania. Main Event opened with Rawley pinning Slater. Cedric Alexander pinned Cesaro. Cesaro went for the uppercut finish like last week but Alexander rolled him up. Alexander did a big flip dive. The Iiconics got a good reaction. They beat Tamina & Fox. Raw opened with Bliss out. She announced Strowman, Ricochet, McIntyre and Corbin as the MITB participants. They all argued with each other. Mostly it was Corbin making fun of how small Ricochet is. With these three guys who are 6-foot-5 and 6-foot-6, he’s going to look really small. McIntyre was mad that Corbin stole his win last week and cost him the match with Styles to get into the title match, but if he wins MITB, he’s in control. Corbin said the other three don’t have what it takes to stop him. Strowman said he’s going to be Mr. Monster in the Bank and stuck up for Ricochet and wanted a tag match. Strowman & Ricochet beat Corbin & McIntyre in 14:02. Ricochet did a moonsault off the middle rope to the floor onto Corbin. Corbin was running away from Strowman and McIntyre was waiting and laid Strowman out with a Claymore kick. Strowman was laid out for several minutes but he recovered. McIntyre finally punched Corbin and left. Strowman gave him a powerslam and Ricochet pinned Corbin with a shooting star press. The Usos came out and did a promo rapping and trying to get the fans to sing along. In time, they probably will, but the fans didn’t quite know that’s what they were supposed to do. Usos beat Gallows & Anderson in 11:19 with Jey hit a tope on Anderson and Jimmy came off the tope with a splash on Gallows. Match was fine. Gallows & Anderson were given more time and offense than I would have expected. The Usos did another promo and said they had filmed something earlier in the day. It was a video of Wilder & Dawson in the bathroom. Both were only wearing towels and Dawson had shaving cream all over his back and Wilder was shaving him. I will say they come up with unique ideas to bury talent that they have under contract for another year. The Revival came out. Dawson said that his arms and back are too big and he can’t reach that far back so he had his best friend shave him. The Usos just made fun of him. Next was Miz TV with Lashley, back having to talk for himself. Miz made fun of him for not reaching his full potential. Lashley talked and got the “What” treatment. Seriously, everyone should copy either Stephanie McMahon or Bryan Alvarez on how to stop that deal. Lashley said he’s been back a year and is already a two-time IC champion. Miz then listed all the titles he’s won. This was that fake title listing stuff that nobody in real life says. Please don’t make these guys do these robotic promos listing title reigns. Miz was pretty much begging for applause when he listed all his titles. Miz said he was an overachiever. “Have you seen my wife.” Miz said he won all those titles, and evidently attracted Maryse, without “a shred of your athletic ability.” Nothing like a star wrestler telling people he’s not at all athletic, especially since Miz actually is quite athletic (I think he took second or third out of 40 real athletes in the obstacle course when he did Tough Enough). Lashley brought up Shane beating him and hit old man, saying Shane punched his bake potato face father. Miz was supposed to kick Lashley and missed. This led to Miz vs. Lashley. Shane came out. Miz looked so bad in this match. His offense was a lot of kicks, and those lousy looking kicks are painful as a babyface. Plus that mechanical selling. Shane came out. The finish saw them put a photo of Miz’s father on the screen and Miz was distracted and Lashley speared him. Miz then took down Shane. Lashley gave Miz a spinebuster and Shane beat him down with awful looking punches. Miz had a big cut on his right elbow. Shane put Miz out with among the worst looking triangles ever. Shane claimed he was the best in the world and fans chanted for C.M. Punk. The Viking Raiders beat Metalik & Kalisto in 1:54. Metalik & Kalisto opened with a double dive spot. Ivar pinned Kalisto with a powerslam, which they call the Viking Experience. After the match they laid out Dorado with Ivar doing a springboard clothesline as Erik held him up. Bliss came out and announced the Raw women in MITB. Brooke claimed that Natalya has gotten every opportunity and she hasn’t gotten any. Naomi said how she’s a two-time Smackdown women’s champion. After Bliss announced herself as the fourth person in the match, Naomi wanted her in a singles match. Bliss at first said she didn’t want it as she wasn’t dressed for it and didn’t have wrestling boots. Naomi insulted Bliss. Bliss agreed to it at that point. Next was the Wyatt Firefly Fun House segment. It was very clear this is a dark heel character pretending to be a Mr. Rogers/Pee Wee Herman type character, as he drew a photo of a house set on fire. His witch puppet is named Abby, short for Abigail. Naomi pinned Bliss in 5:59 with the rear view and split legged moonsault. This was awful. The idea was that Bliss’ tennis shoes kept getting untied. She’d tie them up and they’d come undone. Somebody thought that was a good idea and it wasn’t. Mysterio came out and Dominick, his son, is back with him. Mysterio has, obviously, an angle set up with the idea of introducing Dominick as a wrestler. Mysterio said he let the universe down. Like all those people living in planets somewhere in the Big Dipper or something. He also let his friends, his family and his son down by losing to Joe in 1:00 at Mania. I promise, the people who are 3,000 light years away in 3,000 years monitoring our television are not still there during the second hour of Raw. WWE announced that they won two Cynopsis awards, one for their work with Make-a-Wish and one for Connor’s Cure. Lynch came out. Fans chanted “Becky 2 belts.” Lynch called Evans a tremendous athlete with a great right hand. But she said Evans is messing with someone who likes being punched. She took the mic from Caruso, and called her “Chuck.” She challenged Evans to come out. Evans showed up in a dress, as well as wearing wrestling boots and kneepads. They had a very good pull-apart. I will say Evans has done well in every promo and skit so far. They continued to go at it. We got a Sonjay Dutt sighting during this pull-apart. Ryder & Hawkins beat the Revival in 4:16 when Ryder pinned Dawson with a crucifix pin. It was basically clean. This makes perfect sense to lose clean to set up Usos vs. Revival. But the idea wins and losses matter or they book to make sense is so far gone at this point. Zayn came out. He had to come out, and they had to play his music for nearly five minutes while he stood in the ring during a commercial break. Like they could just do the break but they felt if people didn’t know Zayn was next they might tune out in hour three. Zayn talked about how beautiful his life is outside the toxic prison walls of WWE. He claimed the fans were guilty of Psychological entitlement. On the video screen it read that “Psychological entitlement refers to a general belief that one deserves more or is entitled to more than others.” He said that they’ve been fed the line that the customer is always right and that if you don’t get exactly what you want, when you want and how you want it you throw a tantrum. This is so directed at Twitter fans who want to see the babyfaces win every show and want to pick their babyfaces and, have them change at their whims and have no storyline build. Of course some of those fans get mad because they just want logical storylines, but they’re all lumped together. He said that three shoulder surgeries and 17 years of five-star matches (formerly banned term on WWE broadcasts until Arn Anderson brought that term into the agent reports) is over and now you get whatever I give you. He said that people say if you don’t like it here, quit. He said the fans want him to quit, it would be amazing to quit but it would be even more amazing holding all of you accountable for your actions and his gimmick is being the critic of the critics. As much as I’m entertained by Zayn’s character, this kind of a long promo in hour three is death. Mysterio pinned Joe in a non-title match. Like shouldn’t this be done before Mysterio got beat by Joe at two straight PPV shows, the second in a minute? Joe cut a promo and said Mysterio has a son who is ashamed of how quickly he put his father to sleep. He said that Mysterio should have gotten Dominick a mask so he could hide hi shame. Mysterio won in 7:17 with a cradle. Dominick was out for the finish. The long-term idea for Dominick is to use the ring name Prince Mysterio. The final segment was the Styles vs. Rollins contract signing. This stuff is so overdone now. It should be saved for maybe four or five times a year for only the biggest matches. Michael Cole was out and said that many believe these are the two best in-ring performers of their generation. Styles said he always liked Rollins, thinks he’s a good guy but he has something he wants. He aid if you want something bad enough you’ll do some unexpected things to get it. He said that winners find a way, and that Rollins is a winner, and said Rollins was stronger, faster and younger, but he will never be phenomenal. Styles was coming off from the start with his facials and delivery as a subtle heel, which is interesting because usually that’s the role of champion in face vs. face, and Bryan turned heel largely because he felt Styles had to be a babyface. Rollins said that he never wanted to be the next A.J. Styles, he wanted to be the first Seth freaking Rollins. That line was right out of “Fighting with my Family,” and would have worked a lot better if they didn’t play that line in the trailer 100 times this year. Styles said that Rollins went through hell at Mania and doesn’t think he’s got much left. Rollins said that he did one thing Styles could never do, and that’s beat Lesnar. Anyway, Styles offered his hand. Rollins held the belt up. Styles sucker punched Rollins and beat him down. Rollins came back with a tope, but it ended with Styles doing a phenomenal forearm putting Rollins through the contract signing table. After the show they sent down The Revival one more time to attack Rollins. Rollins laid both of them out with curb stomps to end the show.

Notes on the 4/30 Smackdown/205 Live tapings in Columbus, OH. Just a basic show largely build around Money in the Bank. The show drew 5,500 fans. The dark match opener saw Black beat Mahal in 2:52 with black mass. Smackdown opened with Kingston out. Kingston was throwing pancakes everywhere, which is part of the act but he sure doesn’t come across like a top guy doing it. It’s hard enough to take him seriously in the position as it is. And, naturally, Owens essentially gave the company line on that. Kingston said that in 11 year you’ll have your highs and lows, but you have to keep pushing and fighting through. That sounded like a scripted message for the people who want to leave. He said without the other members of the New Day, none of this happens. Without Ali getting hurt as well, but that’s a different issue. Cole said Kingston winning at Mania was magical and said that very few people in history have had that level of a WrestleMania moment. Cole went so far as to say Kingston winning the title may have been the greatest WrestleMania moment ever. Fans chanted “You deserve it.” Cole said that he did deserved it. Kingston said that aside from the birth of his kids and marrying his wife, that was the greatest moment of his life. He then said that the New Day believed in giving people second chances and know some people want to change, but at the end of the day, Owens is going to be Kevin Owens. He said if Owens wanted a title shot, all he had to do was ask and he’d have gladly giving him a shot. He announced he wanted Owens at MITB. It got a lukewarm reaction. Owens came out and accepted the challenge. Owens said that deep down, none of the fans really believe that he’s championship material and that Kingston himself doesn’t believe he is either. Owens said Kingston is way over his head. At this point Woods attacked Kingston from behind, but Owens got the better of it and superkicked him and ran off. We see 500 superkicks a week but Woods sold this huge and he was later in the trainers room. The explanation was that Woods was injured from the power bomb into the ring frame last week and had no business starting a fight. They showed Woods in the trainers room talking to Kingston. Kingston noted Woods had a bad back, that he needed to rest up and take care of himself and he’s got this. Lynch beat Bayley in 8:31. Good match. Bayley came off the top rope with the elbow, but Lynch got her knees up and Bayley sold the arm. Lynch put her in the disarm her for the submission. Flair ran in and laid out Lynch with a high kick and threw Bayley shoulder first into the post. Black did an interview. It was largely to get over the “Fade to Black” line. The Hardys came out. Jeff was on a crutch and noted that he’s needing surgery and will be out for a long time. They vacated the tag team titles. Jeff attributed the injury to Sullivan. Perhaps when he comes back they’ll remember that. In the 80s I’d say it was for sure. In the 70s for sure. Not it’s like 75 percent no. Jeff said after surgery he’ll be coming back better than ever and the Hardys will reign again. Sullivan came out. Matt jumped in his face to protect his brother and Sullivan threw him out of the ring like he was nobody. Matt came back in but Sullivan laid him out with the freak accident. Sullivan went after Jeff, who for some reason just didn’t get out of the ring. R-Truth then hit the ring and hit Sullivan with a chair to protect Jeff. Sullivan no sold the chair shot. R-Truth tried to hit him again with the chair but Sullivan punched the chair. A lot of guys have, for real, broken their hands doing that spot. Sullivan hit the freak accident and running Liger bomb on R-Truth to lay him out. Sane & Asuka won a match over two women who weren’t named. Well, one of them was jokingly called Sue Mack. The Iiconics were at ringside for this. Sane won with the elbow off the top in 2:06. Rose & Deville were backstage. They spent all those months ready to break them up before Mania. Then it was forgotten about. Now they’re best friends to the point it looks like they have to break up. Rose told Deville that they would be getting into Money in the Bank, but the bad part was that only one can get in. Rose offered the spot to Deville. Deville then said Rose should get the spot because she came close to winning the title already and she should finish the job. Rose was all happy Deville was so unselfish about it. Reigns did an interview. He said Smackdown was his yard now. Shane came out. Shane noted that last week he left Reigns laying. Reigns challenged him to try and do it on his own this time. To get heat, Shane said he was going to see Coach “Harboro” at Michigan. Jim Harbaugh is the Michigan coach. It was such a mess up that Corey Graves even joked that Coach Harboro was the assistant to Jim Harbaugh. Jim Harbaugh was the quarterback of the Bears and good friends with Brad Muster and I think Ric Flair as well. His brother John was Brian Pillman’s roommate in college. Shane said he was going to put Reigns in a handicap match against The B Team. Reigns joked that why don’t you just blindfold him and have him tie one hand around his back. Shane said he had a better idea, and that Elias would be the special enforcer referee at ringside. The one thing was that with Shane against him and stacking the odds against him, the fans this week got behind Reigns strongly. Reigns won, of course, in 10:43. Elias interfered freely including throwing him into the post. At another point, Reigns gave both Superman punches but Elias pulled the ref out of the rig so he couldn’t make the count. Axel hit the perfect plex on Reigns and Elias ran in to count but Reigns kicked out. Elias forgot to count fast. Reigns hit a Superman punch on Elias, and got the pin after a spear on Axel. This match did exactly what it was designed to do. Ali & Balor beat Orton & Andrade in 7:06. Ali and Balor did a double dive to start the match. Balor went to climb to the top but Vega stopped him from climbing. Balor kicked out of Andrade’s double knees. Ali pinned Andrade with a 450. After the match, Orton hit the RKO on Balor but Ali superkicked Orton out of the ring. The final segment was supposed to be The Kevin Owens show with Woods. But Woods never came out. So Owens brought out a Woods action figure and a Big E action figure and put them on the chair as guests. The Big E action figure had a big cast on his leg, since E just had knee surgery. Owens was ripping on them until Kingston came out and attacked him. They brawled. It ended when Kingston threw Owens over the announcers table and dropped a chair no him. 205 Live opened with Drew Gulak saying that he’s dominated Tony Nese in their previous matches, except in the No 1 contenders match, which he said was an outlier. David Otunga has been added to the commentary team, giving them a four-man booth with Vic Joseph, Nigel McGuinness, Otunga and Aiden English. The commentary was better when it was just Joseph and McGuinness. The Singh Brothers came out, dressed up in their old Bollywood Boyz outfits, and said that they were undefeated on 205 Live and would take the show into the future. English noted that they weren’t exactly lying, that they did do one match on 205 Live, won, and then never appeared on the show again. Well, that ended, as Lince Dorado & Gran Metalik beat the Singhs in 9:35. Dorado used a shooting star press on one of them for the pin. Drake Maverick told Humberto Carrillo to avoid Gulak. Jack Gallagher came in to see Maverick, and said that he wasn’t medically cleared now, but would be in two weeks when they will be tape in London. He asked for a match with Carrillo, saying he has nothing against him but just would like to test himself against him. Brian Kendrick came out for a match. Mike Kanellis attacked him on the stage. Akira Tozawa made the save for Kendrick. This ended with a Kanellis vs. Tozawa pull-apart. They announced Tozawa vs. Kanellis in a no DQ match next week. Nese won a non-title match over Gulak in 17:24. After trading near falls, Nese got the win with a German suplex into the corner and running knees. In the dark match, Lynch retained the Smackdown women’s title over Flair in 6:39 with the disarm her.

Notes from the 5/1 NXT tapings. Beth Phoenix has replaced Percy Watson as a commentator with Mauro Ranallo and Nigel McGuinness. Trevor Lee pinned Shane Strickland in a dark match. What appeared to be the first show opened with the Viking Raiders out. They said they came here to relinquish the tag titles since nobody I NXT came beat them. The Street Profits disagreed and made the challenge. William Regal agreed to the match as the first show main event. Keith Lee pinned Cezar Bononi with a power bomb. Lee got a great reaction. Kushida beat Kona Reeves. Drew Gulak was out scouting. Vanessa Borne, with Aliyah in her corner, beat Jessie Elaban with a neckbreaker in a first match. The Viking Raider vs. Street Profits was a no contest when both Oney Lorcan & Danny Burch and Wesley Blake & Steve Cutler ran in. When it was over, the Raiders left their belts in the ring and bowed to the crowd so this was their farewell. In what appeared to be a dark match, Xia Li beat Rachael Evers with a spin kick. The second hour opened with The Undisputed Era saying there is no dissension. Typically in wrestling that means there will be. Adam Cole wanted a title rematch with Johnny Gargano and Gargano accepted. Matt Riddle, who is apparently back from his infection, attacked the Undisputed Era. Mansoor Al-Shehail beat Sean Maluta. Velveteen Dream did an interview and Tyler Breeze came out. Fans chanted “Welcome home” at him. Dream said that things are different in NXT from when he left. He told Breeze that he would have to get to the back of the line. Dream wanted to take a selfie with Breeze and Breeze agreed and then sucker punched him. Fabian Aichner & Marcel Barthel beat Matt Lee & Jeff Parker. Candice LeRae beat Reina Gonzalez. After the match, Shayna Baszler, Jessamyn Duke and Marina Shafir all attacked LeRae. Io Shirai ran in with a kendo stick to make the save. Bobby Fish & Kyle O’Reilly beat Riddle & Gargano in the main event. Strong interfered and gave Riddle a backbreaker on the apron. Great match. The third show saw Mia Yim beat Bianca Belair. Yim used the eat defeat. Kushida beat Drew Gulak with a backslide. Lorcan & Burch vs. Cutler & Blake ended without a winner when The Street Profits and the Undisputed Era all ran in. Based on Cole’s interview, it looks like Gargano vs. Cole vs. Riddle may be the Takeover main event, and perhaps a ladder match for the vacant tag titles with Fish & O’Reilly, Lorcan & Burch, Cutler & Blake and The Street Profits. Those four teams are wrestling for the tag titles. Dream vs. Breeze for the North American title also looked possible. . . The NXT touring crew opened on 4/25 in Ralston, NE, which is just outside of Omaha, before 1,200 fans. It was noted that Matt Riddle, Roderick Strong, Bobby Fish, Kyle O’Reilly, War Raiders and Kairi Sane were all advertised for the show and not there. I just remember watching WCW’s killing house show business and advertising people not there was one of the key components. Even Vince McMahon used to talk in the 90s like that was the cardinal sin. Punishment Martinez pinned Kona Reeves. Martinez used this name and not Damien Priest, which was the name they told Sports Business Journal would be his new ring name. Rachael Evers & Mia Yim beat Aliyah & Vanessa Borne. Raul Mendoza vs. Jaxson Ryker ended when Mendoza suffered an injury and couldn’t continue. Riddick Moss pinned Eric Bugenhagen. Nobody knew Bugenhagen since he’s not been featured on the TV show. But the crowd loved his air guitar act. Moss won but fans chanted “encore” for Bugenhagen. Shane Thorne beat Denzel Dejournette. It’s a positive sign Dejournette was taken on a road tour this quickly into his career. They noted it was Dejournette’s birthday and the crowd sang “Happy Birthday” to him. Thorne got the pin with his feet on the ropes. Thorne then ran down Omaha, ran down his former tag team partner (New Japan’s Mikey Nicholls, who was Nick Miller here before he quit) and Adam Cole came out when Thorne threatened to give away the end of The Avengers. Cole challenged him to a match and beat him in two minutes. Cole was the most over guy on the show. Wesley Blake & Steve Cutler beat The Street Profits. Ford was over big. After the match, Blake & Cutler beat down on them until Martinez made the save and Ford hit his high frog splash. Shayna Baszler beat Io Shirai to keep the women’s title. Baszler was cheered. Evidently she’s from the Midwest was the reason. Great match. Shirai did a moonsault to the floor. Baszler won via choke. Main event saw Velveteen Dream beat Tyler Breeze to keep the North American title. This was the match where Tom Castor got hurt.

4/26 in Davenport, IA, drew 800 fans. It’s surprising they’d come to the same market just days after a Raw house show. Moss pinned Bugenhagen in 8:07. Fans loved the Bugenhagen rock star gimmick. The Forgotten Sons confronted Dream backstage. It was then announced there would be a tag match with Dream and a mystery partner against them. The problem was they were advertising Dream & Breeze ahead of time so fans knew who it would be. Evers & Shirai beat Borne & Aliyah in 9:34. Aliyah was out of position a lot. Ryker pinned Dejournette in 4:30 after a double hammer spot. In a surprise, since they were in his home town and he had the weekend off, Rollins came out. The place popped huge of course. He had the belt and talked about beating Lesnar. He talked about the last match of The Shield five days earlier. He said NXT was the future. Cole pinned Martinez in 12:07 with the last shot. Crowd was really into this one. Lots of near falls that the crowd was into. After the match, the crowd gave Martinez a big reaction. Street Profits beat Reeves & Thorne in 10:54 when Ford pinned Reeves after a frog splash. The crowd was really into this one as well. Baszler retained her title with a choke on Yim in 9:05. They worked hard and said to be really good. Breeze & Dream beat Blake & Cutler in 16:45. A lot of comedy early. The finish was Dream hit the elbow off the top rope onto both of them for the pin. Blake & Cutler & Ryker beat down Breeze & Dream after until The Street Profits and Dejournette made the save. Then it was everyone hitting famous finishes on the heels with Breeze doing a superkick, Montez doing a bronco buster, somebody did a rock bottom, Dream did a pedigree and it ended with Dream noting it was Dejournette’s birthday and Dejournette using a people’s elbow to end the show. 

4/27 in Milwaukee drew a sellout 900 fans. Blake & Cutler beat The Street Profits. The Street Profits were way over with the crowd and Forgotten Sons got plenty of heat. Ford lost after being rolled up with the tights. Yim & Evers beat Aliyah & Borne. Bugenhagen pinned Moss. Moss got over as a heel saying he was a great athlete from Minnesota, since there’s the Minnesota vs. Wisconsin rivalry, particularly running down the Green Bay Packers. He also called Brett Favre a Vikings legend, which is easy heat since he spent 16 years with the Packers where he’s one of the greatest players in team history and spent two years with the Vikings. Match was pure comedy. Bugenhagen is from Milwaukee and was really over. Breeze pinned Thorne. Mostly a comedy match. Ryker beat Dejournette. Dejournette looked green here. Blake & Cutler came out after and beat down Dejournette. The Street Profits and Bugenhagen made the save. It ended with an air guitar concert with Bugenhagen, Dejournette, Street Profits and ring announcer Alicia Taylor. Martinez pinned Reeves. Standard match. Baszler retained her title over Shirai with a choke. Said to be the best match on the show. Shirai was the crowd favorite but Baszler had a lot of fans. Dream pinned Cole to keep the North American title on top. Said to be a fun match. Dream came out wearing an Adam Cole T-shirt. There were several missed spots.

The tour ended on 4/28 in St. Paul before 1,000 fans. Blake & Cutler beat Street Profits in 6:32 in the opener. Martinez pinned Thorne in7:28. Bugenhagen beat Moss in 6:48. Moss is from Edina and was a linebacker at the University of Minnesota, plus his brother coaches for the Vikings. They still had him turn heel, cutting a promo about how the Vikings suck and that he’s a fan of Aaron Rogers and the Green Bay Packers. Evers & Shirai beat Borne & Aliyah in 8:25. Before the match, they aired a promo on the screen with Paul Ellering, who talked about how Evers is his daughter and how proud he is of her. If they’re going to acknowledge that, I have no idea why they had her pick a fake name. Ellering noted that his daughter was born in St. Paul so she’d get the hometown girl reaction. After the win, Evers cut a promo talking about how happy she was to be home. She started hugging family and friends at ringside. Finally Paul Ellering came out to give her a hug. They cut a promo together with Ellering talking about how proud he is that his daughter went into the same profession as him and how Hawk would be so proud. Hawk was like her uncle. At first, Ellering was dead set against his daughter getting into the business but she loved it when she started training in it. Ryker beat Dejournette. Cutler & Blake came out and attacked Dejournette after the match until the Street Profits made the save. Bugenhagen came out as well. Then Bugenhagen and The Street Profits had a jam session. Breeze pinned Reeves. Baszler retained over Yim in 9:39. Baszler got a mixed reaction. Her family was at the show driving in from Sioux Falls. Baszler won via choke. Main event saw Dream pin Cole in 15:38 in a super match to keep the North American title. A funny spot was when fans were cheering Cole, he yelled at them, “I don’t need any support” and the crowd chanted “We support you” at him.

 The Florida loop opened on 4/25 in Orlando before 350 fans. Brennan Williams beat Nick Comoroto. Jessamyn Duke & Marina Shafir beat Xia Li & Karen Q. Jermaine Haley, managed by Court Moore, beat Babatunde Aiyegbusi via count out. Keith Lee pinned Samuel Shaw, Albert Hardie Jr. beat Trevor Lee. Deonna Purrazzo beat Lacey Lane. Oney Lorcan & Danny Burch beat Marcel Barthel & Fabian Aichner. Main event saw Kushida beat Roderick Strong.

The 4/26 show in Daytona Beach drew 300 fans. Brennan Williams & Mansoor Al-Shehail beat the former Team 3.0 of Jeff Parker & Matt Lee. Jessamyn Duke pinned Karen Q. Luke Menzies pinned Nick Comoroto. Lacey Lane pinned Reina Gonzalez. Kassius Ohno pinned Jeet Rama. Albert Hardie Jr., beat Jermaine Haley, who was being managed by Court Moore. Bianca Belair beat Deonna Purrazzo. The main event saw Bobby Fish & Kyle O’Reilly beat Danny Burch & Oney Lorcan.

 The 4/27 show in Dade City, FL, drew 250 fans. Rama pinned Adrian Jaoude. Purrazzo beat Kavita Davi. Parker & Lee beat the Indian team of Rinku Singh & Saurav Gurjar. Cezar Bononi pinned Daniel Vidot. Kushida beat Trevor Lee. Babatunde Aiyegbusi beat Samuel Shaw. Marina Shafir, with Duke in her corner, beat Xia Li. Belair beat Duke. Main event saw Keith Lee team with Lorcan & Burch to go over Fish & O’Reilly & Roderick Strong.

There were no house shows this week because originally the talent was going to fly out after television for Saudi Arabia so they were given this past weekend off. When that show fell through, it was too late to add dates.

The only main roster house show was a Monday night Smackdown show on 4/29 in Huntington, WV. Asuka & Sane beat Rose & Deville. Ali pinned Murphy in a good match. Heavy Machinery beat Dallas & Axel. Matt Hardy & Crews beat Nakamura & Rusev. Matt announced that Jeff wasn’t medically cleared and that’s as far as it went. Reigns pinned Elias with a spear. Bayley pinned Flair which is a notable result because it shows they are strong on Bayley. The usual house show rule is that faces go over unless the heel is a significantly bigger star. Since Flair on the women’s side is, aside from Lynch, the most pushed woman on the Smackdown side, Bayley winning would indicate they still want to get her seen as someone significant. Andrade beat R-Truth. Main event saw Kingston beat Owens to keep the title.