Daily Update: AEW WrestleDream fallout, Paramount, Ace Steel

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This Week’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter

Notes from the new issue which apparently has been the talk of the social media wrestling world:
*Seth Rollins injury and how this will lead to numerous changes in  booking plans, including what was scheduled short and long-term for Rollins through Mania and after.
*Full coverage of Crown Jewel, business notes and match coverage
*The Media Ratings Council has questions about the new numbers
*Just how far Smackdown has dropped with younger viewers based on the new sampling and NXT isn’t much  different, nor is AEW
*Konosuke Takeshita beats Zack Sabre Jr. to win the IWGP title, a look at King of Prm Wrestling, WrestleKingdom, first thoughts on Aaron Wolf, and the angles on the show
*WrestleDream preview, business notes, as well as Saturday Night’s Main Event in Salt Lake City needs the entire show revamped
*Odds for upcoming big matches
*TNA Bound for Glory notes
*A detailed story on WWE cuts focusing on Ridge Holland and WEs Lee
*Pro  Wrestling NOAH at Sumo Hall
*A huge story on the 2025 Hall of Fame U.S. & Canada candidates
*What the awards voting over the last 45 years says about those who fare better not  in than those who are in.  
*The most detailed look at the ratings for all the wrestling shows of the past week
*It women’s month at Arena Mexico but one person is still the star, a look at  the recent main events
*A look at two PPV shows from Arena Mexico coming
*Who is the obvious choice for tag team of the year that nobody is talking about
*Best of the Super Juniors tournament
*Japanese referee dies in bear attack
*Update on Smashing Machine business
*They named a bridge after Stu Hart and more notes
*NFL star copying Ric Flair
*Fantastica Mania UK
*The Andrade situation
*Lots of background details on similar stories
*Kota Ibushi update
*Notes on Chris Jericho and Britt Baker
*Darby Allin talks about the cancers that used to be in AEW
*Update on  a training camp for AEW in Asheville, NC
*Rematch of a match of the year candidate coming to AEW show in Edinburg, TX
*Updates on YouTube numbers for September
*Debate over the new and old Ali Act
*Details on Zuffa Boxing deals
*How much UFC makes in profit per Saturday show
*New UFC fights
*Sad BJ Penn story
*Stories on fighters getting screwed by promoters
*Ticket demand for John Cena’s ast show
*New WWE hire, usage of AI for wrestling storylines and some are worried about their jobs
*AJ Styles talks retiring
*WWE injury updates

This Week’s Back Issue

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Sunday Update

— Both of our weekend shows are up on the site today. On Friday’s show we talked about all the news of the week from the Observer including AI booking and the future, card changes, WrestleDream as well as talked to James Dixon on his book about 1992 WWE and the fall of the company from its 1985-91 strong period, with Bret Hart as champion, steroid testing, Hulk Hogan leaving, Ultimate Warrior failing and more. Last night’s show talked about WrestleDream, WWE injury updates and more.

— There were three issues technically with last night’s WrestleDream show. It’s weird that it was three, from three different providers, none related to issues from AEW and three totally different problems. There were no problems with places like PPV.com, YouTube, Triller and other platforms.

The biggest problem was with Amazon Prime, which cut the show off at midnight, just a few minutes into the Jon Moxley vs. Darby Allin I Quit match. They had a power failure on their internal rebroadcast system which caused the outage and this also impacted other sports broadcasts that were going on. It also cut out during the Mercedes Mone vs. Mina Shirakawa match.  We heard from a number of people who complained and got refunds, so this is going to impact the PPV revenue negatively.

The other big problem was at the start of the show with Comcast. Apparently they configured the program wrong in their system so many people couldn’t buy the show. At least some homes on HBO MAX lost the sound during the pre-show. It was fine long before the PPV started.  

— There was not a time management issue as the show was booked for the FTR vs. Jet Speed match to end up mostly on the PPV. It was a new idea to make it unpredictable on pre-shows that you know the finish is coming before the top of the hour. It was the right match to test this out as they opened the match hot and then the show itself opened hot being mid-match. It helped a lot that they had a great match, because they could not do a slow build or normal style as they had to peak early and open the PPV portion at 4:00 into the match and it had to be very hot as well at that point.

— The reason the Mercedes Mone match wasn’t announced ahead of time is that they wanted to have her break the Ultimo Dragon record on the show last night, rather than tonight in Winnipeg.  But if they had pushed it prior to late Friday night, it would have given away that she wasn’t losing her CMLL women’s title to Persephone. Unlike WWE, which doesn’t concern itself with spoiling a finish to a show in Mexico, AEW does. But it led to adding a match with zero build at the last minute.

— I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a shot with three tag team matches of the quality of Brody King & Bandido vs. Konosuke Takeshita & Kazuchika Okada, Young Bucks vs. Jurassic Express and FTR vs. JetSpeed.

— They also announced for Wednesday in San Antonio that the Opps, now heels, face Bobby Lashley & Shelton Benjamin & MVP for the trios titles and Okada vs. Bandido for the Unified title.

— They did not have a strong walk up in St. Louis due to bad weather in the city. It was not sold out although for a U.S. show, the crowd response and heat through most of the show was excellent.

— We’re 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 for WrestleDream to [email protected]

— We’re also looking for reports from the WWE shows this weekend in Tokyo and the RevPro Fantastica Mania shows from Wolverhampton, UK, and today’s Winnipeg Pro Wrestling show where Mone goes after her 12th belt when she faces WPW women’s champion Jody Threat.

— Bad news from an interest level is that WrestleDream did not place in the top few hundred searches. It used to regularly hit the top 20 and was not even top 500. The UFC show yesterday had 120,000 searches which isn’t bad  for a Fight Night only on ESPN. For the weekend, the only searches from combat sports in the top 100 were the death of Duke Ruogas at No. 55 and Brendan Allen, who won the UFC main event, at No. 96.

— On the UFC show, they did a tribute to Roufas with Paul Felder, who trained under Roufas.  Roufas, a former world champion kickboxer and brother of Rick “The Jet” Roufas, the top U.S. kickboxing star of his era, opened Roufasport in Milwaukee and trained and was a father figure to a open of Midwest fighters, notably Anthony & Sergio Pettis, Stephan Bonnar, Felder and he was also the trainer of CM Punk.

— The Seth Rollins situation and World title situation will be addressed at Raw tomorrow in Sacramento, CA. It will be back to an 8 p.m. start. There are 8,000 tickets out, lower than usual for a TV shoot in that market, but San Jose had a healthy walkup and came close to selling out Friday night. I think SOME of the weakness in advances as compared to the post-Zayn turning on Reigns period and Rhodes explosion are people waiting to buy late figuring they can get tickets at a better price. It’s the same reason the John Cena retirement show didn’t instantly sell  out even though the demand was there.  

— Paramount, under the ownership of Dvid Ellison, is expected to lay off between 2,000 and 3,000 employees in an attempt to cut $2 billion in costs. The job cuts are expected to be across the board. Part of the reason for the cuts is the $1.1 billion per year deal that Paramount signed with UFC. Another reason is they are expected to make a stronger bid to buy WBD.

— DDT will be running Ultimate Party 2025 on 11/3 at Sumo Hall. The top two matches have IWGP champion Konosuke Takeshita & celebrity Kaisei Takechi (he’s like Logan Paul in his ability to catch on to this) vs. Kazusada Higuchi & Takeshi Masada, Zack Sabre Jr. vs.  Chris Brookes in a dream match and a title vs. title match with KO-D champion Yuki Ueno facing Universal champion Minoru Suzuki.

— It was major news yesterday about the death of Sam Rivera, the bass guitar player for Limp Bizkit, who performed Undertaker’s theme at WrestleMania 19.

— 60s, 70s and 80s announcer Boyd Pierce would have turned 97 today.  

— British wrestling legend Kendo Nagasaki (Peter Thornlehy) turned either 79 or 84 today. I’m sure someone will let us know which one is accurate. Julia “Sweet Saraya” Bevis, the mother of Paige/Saraya, turns 54 today. Toni Storm turns 30 today. Mike Hegstrand/Road Warrior Hawk died 22 years ago today. Lia Maivia, the grandmother of Dwayne Johnson and former promoter in Hawaii passed away 17 years ago today. Mike Graham committed suicide 13 years ago today (thanks to Tony Richards)

— Regarding Ace Steel’s reaction to Tony Khan, while I would not compare Jon Moxley to Harley Race, the idea of being a multi-time world champion is similar. But what a freaking crazy overreaction when Steel said, “Count this as one of the dumbest and most blasphemous things I’ve ever read, utter crap, really infuriating zero comparison.” Steel was tight with Race and evidently not with Moxley. Then again, when I first saw the Young Bucks live as heels against Josh Alexander & Ethan Page, about five minutes into the match it was like just the way they worked, did big moves and controlled the crowd and made their opponents look so good, it was very clear they were like the Midnight Express in the mid to late 80s except using modern moves and a faster pacing. As you can imagine, many people blew gaskets even though a ton of top wrestlers who study both teams have told me the same thing. Hatred is not a good trait.

— Dungeon Wrestling from Friday night in Calgary before 450 fans: Michael Allen Richard Clarke b Bryce Hanson, Chris Knight b Scorpious, Ava Lawless & Kat Von Heez b Riley Rose & Sage Morin, Mo Jabari b Sheldon Jean to keep the Jericho Cruise Oceanic title, Rohan Raja b Tommy Billington (AEW) to keep the PW Grail title, Tiger Raj Singh b Harlow Abott, Raj Dhesi (Jinder Mahal) b Matt Riddle to retain the Stu Hart Heritage title. (thanks to Ross Hart)

— Boca Raton Championship Wrestling on 11/2 at the VIP Ballroom Ricky Morton vs. son Kerry Morton, plus Bull James, Cezar Bononi, Stallion Rogers, Matt Riddle, Bobby Fish, EJ Nduka, Lacey Lane and Jonny Fairplay.

— A documentary on Gama Singh of Stampede Wrestling fame debuted last night at the International Film Festival in Toronto. It debuts streaming on Crave on Monday.

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