Daily Update: State AGs sue to block Paramount-WBD merger, notes on WWE Raw & CMLL

Paramount Skydance
Paramount Skydance (Image credit: .)

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This Week’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter

Among the topics covered:

  • How with CM Punk and Kenny Omega title wins affect upcoming shows
  • A look at big shows with WWE & AEW with very little announced and only a few weeks to go
  • Updates on ticket sales to SummerSlam, All In, Redemption and more
  • The story of Conor McGregor, going through the drug testing issues, an amazing thing that seemed to come up, double and triple standards, the sexual assault cases and UFC covering up so much of his news. We go through a lot of fairness issues in UFC that others may not fully understand or won’t touch
  • We look at tomorrow’s UFC show
  • Sheamus leaves WWE, a look back at his run and where he goes next
  • Tiger Mask IV retires, and it’s all about the original Tiger Mask and the golden age
  • Notes on the ceremony
  • Dark Side of the Ring and TNA history, a look back and what was and wasn’t overed from the start of the promotion and the twists and turns
  • Tomoaki Honma announces retirement
  • The most complete look at the TV ratings for all the wrestling, boxing and MMA shows, details about who watched, the World Cup kills wrestling and more.
  • Wrestler leves promotion after 33 years
  • This week’s CMLL records being broken
  • Is CMLL overextending itself with the number of live events
  • World Grand Prix lineups
  • Vikingo update
  • AAA YouTube numbers
  • G-1 Climax first day notes
  • Notes on New Japan’s big show of the week in Japan
  • Ticket sales for all the major pro wrestling events in the U.S. for the next two months
  • Most watched YouTube segments for WWE and AEW
  • Notes from recent wrestler interviews
  • More notes from depositions reveal what the Board of Directors knew about Vince McMahon and Janel Grant long before the lawsuit was filed
  • Dwayne Johnson plays character based on his grandfather

This Week’s Back Issue

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Monday Update

CMLL logo
CMLL logo (Image credit: CMLL)

— Bryan and I will be back tonight talking Raw, Smackdown, Collision, other AEW notes, ratings, lawsuits, and all kinds of other news.

— As has been expected, attorney generals from at least 12 states have filed a suit to block the sale of WBD to Paramount/Skydance. Rob Bonta, the California Attorney General is spearheading the suit along with AG’s from Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, and Washington. Paramount may threaten to leave California as a way to get the suit dropped. The lawsuit claims the sale will stifle competition, reduce content variety, violates the Clayton Act by significantly reducing competition in three specific markets: wide-release theatrical distribution, “top-grossing” theatrical distribution, and basic cable licensing. They claim the combined mega-company would control nearly one-third of all theatrical motion pictures and basic cable programming. The lawsuit also raises concerns about further industry consolidation, massive job losses, and a combined debt burden of roughly $79 billion.

— A very interesting Raw tonight as far as Netflix goes. Netflix is heavily pushing Home Run Derby, which in the past did hurt Raw numbers noticeably. This may be the first time Netflix has run two live events at the same time. The show is in Dallas. They had 10,563 tickets out as of earlier today. They were hoping for a big walk up and a sellout due to the World Cup game tomorrow in Dallas, given how CMLL was able to do huge business with World Cup tourists in Mexico City. I guess we’ll find out what happened shortly. There will be a contract signing with Roman Reigns and Seth Rollins. It’s opening with Brock Lesnar, ,likely doing an angle with Oba Femi. Solo Sikoa is being pushed as part of an angle with Jacob Fatu. Iyo Sky faces Roxanne Perez. The key will be a gauntlet series of matches that should produce some great matches with Chad Gable, Je’Von Evnas, Dragon Lee, Joe Hendry, Dominik Mysterio, Rusev and Ethan Page. The winner faces Penta at SummerSlam for the IC title. The key story will be if a higher level sports event on the same service significantly impacts Raw numbers. We’ve never had this happen before.

— Reigns will be appearing on Saturday Night’s Main Event from Madison Square Garden on Saturday night. They are pushing Reigns appearing with Knicks superstar Jalen Brunson, a big WWE fan.

— Doug Stahl, who was Super Destroyer #2 in the early days of Tod Gordon’s ECW and along with his partner, Super Destroyer #1 (AJ Petrucci) were the first and third ECW tag team champions, passed away on Friday. He was 63. In 1978, hwas the Junior USA Golden Gloves champion as a youth boxer. He wrestled Northeast independence from 1989 to 2005. He was an auto dealer by trade. He was phased out when Paul Heyman took over as boker with his last match losing a mask vs. mask match with Petrucci after doing a split after losing the tag team titles.

— We’re looking for your thoughts on the first night of the G-1 Climax tournament in Chicago, so you can leave a thumbs up, thumbs down or thumbs in the middle along with a best and worst match to [email protected]

— Full details of Wednesday’s ratings for Dynamite with the MJF vs. Kenny Omega title change are here. I figured I’d get them up a day earlier. The Raw numbers for Sami Zayn vs. CM Punk going against the World Cup will be out tomorrow afternoon. The story is at https://www.f4wonline.com/news/aew/dave-meltzer-omega-vs-mjf-title-change-brings-largest-audience-in-years/

— We’re looking for reports on these shows:

  • Raw tonight in Dallas (any matches not on the live show)
  • WWE house show last night in Albuquerque, NM
  • NXT Friday night in Venice, FL

We’re looking for results, finishes and highlights to [email protected]

— CMLL sold out Arena Puebla this week after not selling out last week. Main event is Mistico & Neon & Mascara Dorada vs. Ultimo Guerreroo & Gran Guerrero & Stuka Jr. Those six can put on a great match in their sleep. It also has a non-title match with Angel de Oro & Niebla Roja vs. Xelhua & Templario, Star Black & Capitan Suicida vs. Los Calavera Jr. I & II and Valiente Jr. vs. Ikuro Kwon from MLW.

— The expansion of the CMLL schedule for the summer was clearly an overshot. After doing a poor road last Thursday for a second show of the week in Puebla, they’ve announced that this Thursday will be the last Thursday night show there and they are back to one show a week. They are running Arena Mexico both Tuesday and Wednesday this week, but no more Wednesday shows after this week. I will say this, I wrote that in the current issue last week about them doing too many shows in the same building and they realized it just as quickly.

— A new CMLL TV show on Fox Sports 2 in Mexico (not U.S.) will be airing for one hour, featuring big matches from the past. They will be airing the 2016 World Cup show in the premiere episode this week.

— Lance LeVine on the difference between watching the G-1 on streaming and being there live: “Lighting-as I told you initially, the place filled in decently. Upper deck was not sold whatsoever, so I figured they’d shoot it so that wouldn’t be visible, which they did. But the TV version is so dark-you really can’t see much of the crowd past the second row ringside. It wasn’t THAT bad! The TV version is pitch black by comparison.

Sound-huge difference. The crowd was by no means Road Warrior Pop level, but they were alive. Yuto Ice got a real good reaction live, but you wouldn’t know it on TV. The ZSJ match as well-but it was miked really badly. I heard a very faint This is Awesome during it, but crowd was very much alive for that match. And honestly, I can barely hear the two announcers at all. Once in a while, Walker shouts and that is clear, but man, Charlton is barely audible. It feels like NJ was super paranoid about the crowd size, so they turned everything down, thinking it was going to be an embarrassing broadcast.

And watching on NJPW, boy those first 4 matches were bad! I definitely liked them better live due to the live energy in the bldg.”

— Saturday’s UFC show set the company’s all-time record with eight first round finishes. The old record had been seven (thanks to Jed I Goodman

— Maple Leaf Wrestling has added Fight Nation, a French language streaming service, for French broadcasts primarily for Quebec. It will debut on Thursdays on Fight Nation in Canada and MyAEW outside Canada, after debuting on Wednesday nights at midnight on TSN 2.

— The first Maple Leaf Wrestling one hour show will have Stu Grayson vs. Jonathan Gresham for the men’s title, Gisele Shaw vs. Alice Crowley for the women’s title and the Grizzled Young Veteran vs. Jesse Bieber & Johnny DeLuca. MLP announced a 7/24 show in Chatham, ONT called Headlocks for Hospice with D-Lo Brown appearing. The next tapings are 8/7 and 8/8 in Windsor, ONT.

— A ton of people have recommended yesterday’s Veny vs. Chihiro Hashimoto Senadai Girls title match from yesterday. I will try to watch it but a few said it was better than Takeshita vs. Tsuji or Mike Bailey vs. Mark Davis on Saturday, which were both awesome matches.

— The tribute to the Rougeau family will air during the Zero Hour part of the 7/26 AEW Redemption show in Montreal.

— The NWA announced an all-women’s show called Empowerrrr on 8/28 in Sevierville, TN at the Civic Center. It will air live that night on YouTube.

— Jungle Kyona was announced for the RevPro Womens’ Grand Prix show on 7/25 at The Hangar in Wolverhampton.

— “Vietslam,” a documentary on the Vietnam based pro wrestling promotion Vietnam Pro Wrestling, will be released tomorrow on various streaming platforms. Carey Wess, a Canadian who moved to Vietnam started pro wrestling there from scratch. Chjis Jericho produced the documentary.

— The Toronto Blue Jays picked in the sixth round of the MLB draft,Gable Mitchell of the University of Iowa. Mitchell is the grandson of Dan Gable, one of the greatest American wrestlers of all-time and a 1972 Olympic gold medalist.

— The PFL announced multi-year partnership with ESPN in Brazil aws the home of all PFL shows starting with this coming Saturday’s show in Austin, TX.

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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.