Daily Update: AEW Revolution, WWE & Saudi Arabia, Dave Newhouse

AEW Revolution 2026 logo (Image credit: via AEW.com)

Daily Update

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This Week’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter

Among the topics covered:

  • Preview and business notes on AEW Revolution
  • Updates on WrestleMania, how we got to Rhodes vs. Orton and feuds that are starting
  • A look at the UFC White House show and how we got here
  • Full UFC 326 coverage including the most viewers of a TV UFC show since Paige Van Zant vs. Michelle Waterson
  • A look at the new AEW streaming service
  • NXT Vengeance Day coverage and poll results
  • Odds on upcoming pro wrestling matches
  • Logan Paul’s grandstand challenge to football players gets several takers, including some big names, but nothing can transpire and how it ended
  • Full coverage of the 16 Carat Gold tournament in German featuring many of the best independent wrestlers in the world
  • A complete look at the TV ratings from all the pro wrestling shows over the past week, including breakdowns in various categories, placings, how Raw did on Netflix, competition and more
  • CMLL’s lineup for its No. 2 show of the year next week
  • Full rundown of the CMLL all women’s show onFriday
  • Konnan news
  • Behnid the Nino Hamburguesa firing
  • Rey de Reyes notes
  • Stardom Cinderella tournament news
  • New Japan Cup and anniversary show news
  • Pro wrestler and MMA star looks back at a fixed fight and more comments including the Japanese attempt to get a major WWE star to job in an MMA match to theri guy
  • Notes on a new promotion debuting
  • Attendance updates for future WWE, AEW, TNA and other shows including Ronda Rousey vs. Gina Carano.
  • Giant weekend in Europe including the two big Eve shows and the controversy
  • TNA future direction
  • Notes from the Tony Khan media call
  • Putting recent Collision numbers into perspective
  • How Zuffa boxing’s biggest show did
  • Rousey vs. Carano and Rousey’s promotional tactics as well as responses from other fighters
  • Lots of new UFC fights
  • Jake Paul’s women’s boxing group makes ESPN deal
  • Changes to the WWE writing team
  • ESPN reporting side does exactly what they said they wouldn’t do regarding pro wrestling
  • More vacant WWE titles

This Week’s Back Issue

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Sunday Update

WrestleMania 43 logo
WrestleMania 43 logo

— Bryan and I will be up tonight talking about AEW Revolution as well as the rest of the weekend news including SmackDown, New Japan Cup, Rey de Reyes, CMLL, Al Snow, and other news topics of the weekend.

— Regarding WWE and Saudi Arabia, while nothing has been said officially nor decided 100 percent, most are of the impression the July PPV there is unlikely to happen. Unless things change in the world, WWE won’t be going there due to the risk. There were two more shows scheduled this year plus Mania next year. All are contingent on the situation changing as right now big events scheduled for the country are not happening, wheter it be Formula 1, UFC, boxing or WWE. For WWE, it’s a significant loss of expected income.

— I want to make mention here of the death of Dave Newhouse, who was a major name in Bay Area sports dating back to his starting with the Oakland Tribune in 1964. Newhouse passed away yesterday at the age of 87. For decades he was the star sports columnist with the Tribune and among the most influential figures in Bay Area sports media for decades. He was a great writer and was one of the great sports historians when it came to the Bay Area sports scene. I worked with NIewhouse in the sports section from 1980-1985 and he was a guy who was a great influence on me because of how well he treated everyone. I think because we both went to San Jose State that he was very encouraging to me in this profession from the sport, even though he always encouraged me not to go into wrestling. I hadn’t seen him since we sat together at the second Strikeforce MMA show in San Jose in 2006. I can only recall once being a guest on his Sportsphone 68 radio show on KNBR. He wrote 19 books on sports, from boxing, baseball, basketball, football and track.

— Davey Coates, who was the International Tour Manager for WWE events in Europe, passed away yesterday. He had been batling cancer.

— AEW Revolution takes place tonight from the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles and it feels to me this show has the most interest of any AEW show since All In Texas. It has a strong match lineup in the sense that a number of different bouts have a shot at being match of the year place winning contenders (I’m going with the idea that no matches in all of 2026 have the potential to actually win match of the year as that race looks to be over). At press time there are 12,458 tickets out. It will be called a sellout. Not sure of stage size but WWE’s sellouts with full staging have been 14,000 and I originally saw 13,800 potential tickets. It’s a good number.

Zero Hour on YouTube and HBO MAX at 7 p.m.

  • Blackjack Battle Royal for National title: Ricochet, Tommaso Ciamap, Jack Perry, Rocky Romero, Trent Baretta, Rush, Dralistico, Scorpio Sky, Daniel Garcia, Anthony Bowens, Hook, Katsuyori Shibata, Juice Robinson, Austin Gunn, Ace Austin and six others
  • Big Boom AJ & QT Marshall vs Carlie Bravo & Shawn Dean
  • Willow Nightingale vs. Lena Kross for the TBS title

PPV at 8 p.m.
• Darby Allin & Orange Cassidy & Roderick Strong vs. Gabe Kidd & Clark Connors & David Finlay
• Willow Nightingale & Harley Cameron vs. Megan Bayne & Lena Kross for AEW tag team titels
• Toni Storm vs. Marina Shafir everyone banned from ringside
• Kazuchika Okada & Kyle Fletcher & Mark Davis vs. Mistico & Kevin Knight & Mike Bailey for trios titles
• Thekla vs. Kris Statlander 2/3 falls for AEW title
• Swerve Strickland vs . Brody King
• Andrade vs. Bandido
• Jon Moxley vs. KonosukeTakeshita no time limit for the Continental title, everyone banned from ringside
• FTR vs, Yung Bucks for tag team titles
• MJF vs. Adam Page for AEW title in a Texas death match. If Pager loses he can never get another shot at the AEW title for the rest of his career

— It’s a very tough night for business with the Academy Awards tonight, which last year drew more than 20 million viewers and was the most watched television show of 225 in the U.S.that was not a major football game. In addition, the U.S vs. Dominican Republic baseball game is expected to do a large audience, and both the NCAA men’s and women’s basketball championship brackets are being announced, with the men at 6 p.m. (just before the show starts) and women at 8 p.m.

— Looking for your thoughts on the show, so you can leave a thumbs up, thumbs down or thumbs in the middle along with a best and worst match to [email protected]

— Marissa McMahon, the wife of Shane McMahon, was involved with the movie “Train Dreams” which is up for several Academy Awards tonight, including Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Cinematography. She was one of the producers of the movie.

— NXT will not be airing live in Chicago this week either. They have an election there so it will be news coverage of WGN. NXT is scheduled for 10:30 p.m. but culd start laer than that (thanks to Lance LeVine)

— Mila Smidt beat Mercedes Mone to win the EWA tite on Saturday.

— Missy Hyatt noted to us that her account has been hacked with people trying to push Bitcoin, and that her new Twitter account is @RealMissyHyatt

— This was a big weekend for great matches already. I did not see the AAA show yet, but New Japan tournament bouts of Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Ryohei Oiwa (best I’ve seen in the tournament so far) and Yuya Uemura vs. Shingo Takagi, the Claudio Castagnoli vs. Ultimo Guerrero match where Castagnoli retained Friday at a sold out Arena Mexico, Andrade vs. Mascara Dorada aired last night (taped Wednesday) and every bit as good as these were a match last night in San Jose with Festuz vs. Rayo Star. The latter match reminded me of Will Ospreay Best of the Super Juniors matches of the 2010s. It was that good. Top tier if it was on a PWG show. I also heard the Rey de Reyes final from last night’s AAA show was great.

— Nattie vs Maxxine has been added to Raw tomorrow.

— New Japan Cup today in Yamanashi had quarterfinals with Oleg Boltin over Ren Narita and Yuya Uemura over Shingo Takagi in what I was told was a great match. Boltin vs. Uemura will be a semifinal match on Friday in Nagaoka.

— I was at last night’s Pro Wrestling Revolucion show in San Jose, CA which sold out with about 1,200 fans. The atmosphere at this show was completely different from any show I’ve seen in the Bay Area before. The closest is AAA shows in the early 90s here when they were loaded with talent. Mistico as a lead star is very different from anyone else today and quite different from seeing Blue Demon or Mil Mascaras as well. Maybe Perro Aguayo was the best comparison. More Bruno Sammartino than a Hulk Hogan or Rock or Roman Reigns. Mistico beat Misterioso to win the PWR title in the main event in 21:00 of a match with super crowd reactions, total face vs. heel with a heel ref in Sparky Ballard dressed up like Tirantes and totally over the top. It worked in this situation based on where they were going with all the slow counts as Mistico had it won via pin until he hit La Mistica and got the submission. Cucuy won a four-way over Esfinge, Mascara Dorada and Capitan Suicde whcih was great but short. Los Espantapajaros vs La Cruz Negra & Necrosis was also a great match. All four were trained at the PWR school in San Jose.

Their next show will be 3/22 in San Francisco at the Chase CenterThrive City.

— For Google searches, Kevin Vallejos, who looked great in beating Josh Emmett in the UFC main event last night, was No. 42 for searches for the weekend with 50,000. Jim Ross was No. 249 for his saying that Steve Austin won’t be wrestling at this year’s WrestleMania. That had 10,000. Drew McIntyre had 5,000. The UFC show overall did 65,000.

— Roxanne Perez is back training after surgery to remove a benign growth in her back. the surgery took place last mnth.

— Many were calling yesterday’s UFC show as the best UFC event so far this year. Viewership on Pramount+ was only down five percent from last week’s show. It was the third most watched television show on Paramount + yesterday behind South Park and Yellowstone, and including Movies, No. 5 overall. It was No. 1 among TV shows in Mexico and most of South and Central America for the day yesterday. But it was only No. 8 for the day in the U.S.

— CMLL sold out Arena Mexico Friday with 16,000 and Arena Coliseo last night with 6,000. I heard Neon vs. Yutani last night was great.

— Claudio Castagnoli defends the CMLL world heavyweight title against Hechicero this coming Friday.

— There were a lot of rumors when Soberano Jr. didn’t wrestle on Friday night at Arena Mexico that he might be jumping, but he did a public appearance yesterday for CMLL and is booked on shows there this week. He said he was sick on Friday and he’s not going anywehre..

— AAA sold out Rey de Reyes in Puebla last night. Domiinik Mysterio retained the Mega title over El Hijo del Vikingo and Grande Americano Kaiser won Rey de Reyes, plus Flammer tjhe women’s title over Bayley. Right now AAA the last few weeks have been easily the best WWE television show.

— Natsupoi will be appearing on Lady Luck II on 4/19 in Las Vegas at Noon at the Hyper X Arena.

— Geza Salmani, the former Rezar, scored a second round knockout over Dan Curtin last night at a Bare Knuckle Fighting show.

— Warrior Wrestling from Friday night in Chicago: Trevor Outlaw b Sam Beale, Tootie Lynn b Masearati, Jason Hotch b Musata Ali in a great match, Janai Kai b Lili, Mad Dog Connellly b Tinmothy Thatcher in a dog collar match, both bleeding. In n a series of matches for the Lucha title, Mortos & Spider Fly & Vengadora & Gringo Loco b Electro & Noisy Boy & Rafael Quintero & Magico, Gringo Loco & Vengador b Mortos & Spider Fly, leading to Gringo Loco b Vengador to win a great match and the Lucha title (thanks to Lance LeVine)

— Hanan beat her sister Rina to win the Stardom Cinderella tournament earlier today at the Yokohama Budokan. Hanan beat Aya Sakura in one semifinal and Rina beat Miyu Amasaki. Hanan will challenge Wonder of Stardom champ Konami.

— Mercedes Mone will be on the TV show Bar Rescue tonight on Paramount at 10 p.m.

— Tokyo Joshi Pro announced 3/29 at Sumo Hall they would have Miu Watanabe defending the Princess of Princess title against Yuki Arai, a tag title match with Yuki Kamifuku & Waka Uehara vs. The Iinspiration, Mirai vs. Suzume and Konosuke Takeshita & Yuka Sakazaki vs. Hyper Misao & Super Sasadango Machine.

— MJF turns 30 today. JD McDonagh turns 36 today. Hall of Fame promoter Lou Daro was born on this day in 1884. Cowboy Bob Ellis was born on this day in 1929. The Iron Sheik was born on this day in 1942. Argentina Rocca, one of the top draws in U.S.history, died on this day 49 years ago at the ageo of 55. Jeff Gaylord was 64 when he died on this day three years ago. 70 years ago today was the famous match where Whipper Billy Watson beat Lou Thesz via count out at a sold out Maple Leaf Garden in Toronto with Jack Dempsey as referee to end the longest NWA world title reign in history of seven years. Lou told me he wanted a break from the schedule so dropped it to Watson, who Thesz won the title back from in November that year in St. Louis, also via count out. (thanks to Tony Richards)

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Dave Meltzer
Dave Meltzer

Dave Meltzer is the founder and lead writer on the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, the weekly constant when it comes to news and reviews in pro wrestling and mixed martial arts for more than 40 years. Dave also co-hosts Wrestling Observer Radio with Bryan Alvarez and had had bylines for The National, Yahoo Sports, MMA Fighting and others.