Daily Update: Royal Rumble fallout, Alexa Bliss, Drew McIntyre

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This Week’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter

The new issue of the Observer is up on the site today:

  • All-time records for WWE business that will be broken at the Royal Rumble
  • What 38 years old company attendance mark goes down this week
  • Rumble favorites and news on the show
  • Things AEW should look to do regarding the creative on Dynamite to avoid things like redundancy, not getting key people over, and examining what the actual purposes of angles are and making them work
  • Full coverage of Saturday Night’s Main Event from this past week, business numbers and what they  mean, Dory Funk Jr., Jesse Ventura and match-by-match coverage.
  • Paul Levesque goes into the Paul Levesque picked WWE Hall of Fame
  • One of the most notable pro wrestling arenas in the world closes this year after nearly 50 years of running major shows. A look at some of the biggest matches held there including Inoki, Jack Brisco, Hogan, Andre, Monsoon, Hansen, Dusty Rhodes, Backlund, Volk Han, Nobuhiko Takada and even the Crush Gals.
  • The life and times of Ed Wiskoski aka Col DeBeers. A look at a 25 year career that went all over the world with a variety of gimmicks, including rises and falls of major territories, the making of his most famous gimmick and its controversial nature.
  • The GFL draft is basically admitted to be a fraud as to how it was presented and all the major names from the past part of the new team-based promotion.
  • Bryce Mitchell says some of the dumbest things possible and Dana White counters. But should the company cut ties with him.
  • The life and times of 50s and 60s star Bill Melby, including the angle that put the Cow Palace on the map as a regular wrestling building, and the most accomplished wrestler/bodybuilders.
  • The most detailed look at the ratings for all the television shows, as well as WWE shows on Netflix.  Quarters, year-to-year comparisons and more. Plus competition and demo numbers
  • CMLL’s second biggest show of the year coming
  • Hot Arena Mexico main event
  • Announcer leaves promotion after 30 years
  • TripleMania news for 2025
  • Stardom awards
  • Dark Side of the Ring 2025 notes
  • How the major TV cable stations are doing
  • Former WCW star in jail
  • AEW international TV notes
  • Lots of notes on AEW Grand Slam Australia
  • International TV numbers
  • Christopher Daniels talks the end of his career
  • AEW star wants to box and do MMA
  • Giant fight talked about is for sure not happening
  • Death of legendary sportswriter Michael Katz
  • WWE star in one of the top box office movies of all-time
  • Jordynne Grace talks leaving TNA
  • WWE injury notes and thoughts about the policy of not stopping matches
  • Top YouTube numbers for the week

This Week’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter Back Issue

Sunday Update

— Both of our weekend shows are up on the site right now. The Friday show with Garrett Gonzales talks about the news of the past week and the Observer notes from the week. Last night’s show with Bryan goes heavily into both the Royal Rumble and the Janel Grant lawsuit filing and the new claims, the arguments against arbitration, and more. All the stuff on the Rumble, the Alexa Bliss story, the Drew McIntyre story and more are covered on the show.

— The Rumble attendance ended up funny with a graphic saying 65,407 and then on the air claiming 70,347 and then, the graphic being up with one number and Paul Levesque at the same time claiming the higher number. Either way the number is gigantic. We hope to get an actual real number in the next few weeks but even the smaller number breaks the Hogan-Orndorff 1986 record for the largest non-Mania crowd in North American history. The gate of about $17 million was the third largest in history behind only the two days from last year’s WrestleMania, although it will be fifth place after the two days of this year’s Mania. It’s really a testament of how many people are willing to pay such high prices for major show wrestling tickets. There has never been anything like this in pro wrestling history, adjusted for inflation or not, when it comes to fan willingness in giant numbers to spend so much on tickets when it comes to the major shows.

— The Men’s Rumble match went 80:04. They spaced more time between entrances this year in both Rumbles than any year in history. While there was an August 22, 1964, match in Madison Square Garden with Bruno Sammartino vs. Waldo Von Erich being listed as an 81:00 draw, in those days, they always made up the times of the longest matches and exaggerated them. I don’t know if anyone alive has a real time of that match but I’d be pretty sure it wasn’t nearly that long.  Last night was likely the longest match in WWWF/WWF/WWE history.

— The belief right now is Cody Rhodes vs. John Cena and Gunther vs. Jey Uso as the two men’s main events. They teased Seth Rollins vs. Roman Reigns vs. CM Punk, but with the Elimination Chamber coming up, I’d think they would all be in the Chamber and this was just to set up the chamber.

— They are doing chamber qualifying matches starting with Raw tomorrow. Paul Levesque said that because of all John Cena has done, he doesn’t need to qualify and he’s in the men’s match.  Cena said he was going to Hungary to film a movie and won’t be back until the Chamber match.

— Jackie Redmond announced Cody Rhodes was injured and they didn’t know how severe.  Levesque minutes later said there were no serious injuries. Nobody has said anything about a Rhodes injury since then. IShowSpeed had a nasty looking bruise on his calf but was moving around fine after taking a killer spear from Bron Breakker.  

— The Drew McIntyre story was legit. We were told that he was hot, although I believe everyone cooled down. But he was clearly mad when he came through the curtain after being eliminated.  We were told others were as well but weren’t as obvious about it. McIntyre and Damian Priest were to start an angle and they felt the momentum was lost when LA Knight got in the way as they were doing the Priest throwing out of McIntyre. The top guys want things to go smoothly and have their story come off as planned, and that mentality is why they’re top guys. I don’t know if that means McIntyre is also headed to Smackdown or not, but that’s a possibility. Bryan went into detail on last night’s show with how it went down.  

— We’re looking for your thoughts on the Rumble show itself, you can leave a thumbs up, thumbs down or thumbs in the middle along with a best and worst match to dave@wrestlingobserver.com

— We’re looking for reports from the Jericho Cruise matches the next few days, although I know from experience that Internet and cell service is not the best. The Cruise is probably why they taped Collision on Wednesday. Among those who wrestled there yesterday were Will Ospreay, Curry Man, MxM Collection, Big Bill, Bryan Keith, Harley Cameron, Billie Starkz, Nick Wayne, Daniel Garcia, Jay Lethal, Mark Briscoe, Bandido, The Outrunners, Thunder Rosa, Enzo, Tommy Billington, Elijah (Elias), Nyla Rose, Komander, Lance Archer, Konosuke Takeshita, Brian Cage and others. Curry Man announced that this was his last match.

— Regarding Bliss, those in the company say the thing was settled in the last day or two. My gut was that company worked its own people because of the T-shirt being released, but we were told the T-shirt was actually to be released on 1/13 when she was to debut in San Jose so that’s not proof of anything (unlike the Triple H Hall of Fame shirt being out the day of the announcement). I’m still skeptical as I’m sure everyone is. Mike Johnson actually reported Bliss being there on the show a before the show started so nobody knew the story (which was accurate with Punk in his return)  wasn’t actually the case. He had the same story multiple people in WWE told us about an impasse which two sources said had to do with Bliss having a child and we were told last night as others have reported that it was settled in the last 48 hours.  I’m very skeptical of that, thinking it was settled earlier and the company told its employees differently, based on the way it was handled on the show. She may have gotten the biggest pop of the night.

— It was noted that Wednesday’s Dynamite show, which airs on Friday night in the U.K. on ITV4, had the highest first-night audience in the history of the show. The number was 190,000 but that doesn’t include people watching after whenever the show aired and the final number in the U.K. doesn’t come out for more than a week as they include DVR numbers in their ratings. I’ve heard people say it had a beneficial lead-in from darts like the big Collision number a few weeks ago after the college football playoff game had, but AEW has been doing strong numbers all month.

— The only match from last night internationally we got a recommendation on was Leon Slater vs. Leon Cage from the RevPro  show in London which went 25:00. Cage is only 17 and Slater is 20.

— For Raw tomorrow they’ve announced the qualifying matches for the men and women’s Chambe shows on 3/1, plus appearances by Jey Uso and Charlotte Flair.

— Bryce Mitchell, who has been in the news the last few days (see the story in the last issue), has apologized, writing “I’m sorry I sounded insensitive. I definitely was not trying to offend anybody but I know I did. I know that a lot of people died in the Holocaust, and that’s a fact.  Hitler did a lot of evil things. I think we can agree on that. I’m definitely not a Nazi and definitely do not condone any of the evil things Hitler did.” That’s a real sore subject with me having multiple relatives killed in the Holocaust.

— Shara “Bullet” Magomedov, who lost his first pro fight yesterday at the UFC show in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia to Michael “Venom” Page claimed he was suffering from a health issue, saying, “I knew all the risks when stepping in with such a nightmarish health condition and preparation. I felt that despite everything I could still win–but it didn’t work out and that’s it.”

— There were a ton of items relating to combat sports this weekend on Google trends. The Rumble trended higher than any WWE event in years. It had 1 million searches with Charlotte Flair being the most-searched of any WWE topic. That’s the level of the last UFC PPV show and UFC shows usually do better than even the biggest WWE shows. Tons of people finished high, notably the David Benavidez vs. David Morrell boxing match at 200,000, the UFC show at 200,000, Elimination Chamber, Penn State Wrestling, Michael Venom Page and John Cena at 50,000 plus and among those at 20,000 plus included Bliss, Kevin Owens, Trish Stratus, Nikki Bella, IShowSpeed, Jordynne Grace, Israel Adesanya, Janel Grant, Pitbull Cruz, AJ Lee, Rey Mysterio and Sergei Pavlovich. I can’t recall a weekend with so many trending so high in years.  

— Stardom legit sold out Korakuen Hall today for the Saya Kamitani World of Stardom title defense over Suzu Suzuki. Actually it was an overflow crowd. This Stardom run booked by Taro Okada with no prior booking experience has been a real success these past several months, especially when the overall wrestling popularity in Japan is not that high.

— Deni Avdija of the Portland Trail Blazers has been doing the Cena “You can’t see me” deal when he scores or is fouled.

— RevPro Epic Encounter on 3/16 at the Hangar in Wolverhampton has Hechicero  vs. Zozaya.