Daily Update: Ticket advances, UFC at the White House, Jelly Roll

AEW All In Texas logo

Daily Update

Latest Headlines

Latest Audio

Latest YouTube Video

This Week’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter

This Week’s Back Issue

FIRST TIME SUBSCRIBERS GET 50% OFF YOUR FIRST MONTH

Sunday Update

— Bryan and I will be back tonight talking about all the weekend news with Wrestling Observer Radio.

— Sorry about the problems with the issue this past week. We had a major computer glitch and it’s still not completely fixed but we were able to somehow get enough to do an issue at the last minute. We did get an interview with Kenny Omega up on the site on Friday to somewhat alleviate that. It’s one of the best interviews we’ve done as Omega was very often about his thoughts on his matches with Kazuchika Okada and Gabe Kidd, where he stands physically, his future and so many other topics including how Lucha Libre is affecting the rest of the American and Canadian wrestling scene.

— For this coming weekend, these are the ticket advances for the major wrestling shows:

  • ROH Supercard of Honor on Friday – unavailable but it’s at the Esports Arena in Arlington, TX, which is a small building.
  • AEW All Out at Globe Life Field – 20,636. Tony Khan did an interview where he talked about a potential $3 million gate, noting they’ve never done a $2 million show previously. They are probably hovering around the $2.7 million range, or could be slightly lower.
  • NXT Great American Bash at Center Stage – 593. The place holds 772. It will be sold out but the idea that they didn’t immediately sell out such a small building indicates doing three shows over the same weekend and two the same day in Atlanta was not a good idea. One would think on a different weekend in another city they would have done far better. But this show was always a suicide mission. They did charge very high ticket prices that may have kept people from attending.
  • WWE Saturday Night’s Main Event at State Farm Arena – 10,731. They are 1,700 shy of capacity. I would have thought Bill Goldbeg’s retirement match in Atlanta would be an instant sellout, but like the afternoon show, they will end up sold out.
  • WWE Women’ s Evolution at State Farm Arena – 4,804. This will end up as probably the lowest paid for a WWE PPV since since the 2019 Stomping Grounds show in Tacoma. I’m confident it would have been an easy sellout last week at the Mohegan Sun Casino as originally planned. It’s bad in a sense that it took years for WWE to do a show like this after the first one had a somewhat weak advance although it ended up fine and did low levels of viewership (it wasn’t the lowest PPV number but was lower than most). Now this not selling tickets may lead them to believe the concept doesn’t work. For years they didn’t do it based on the idea they believed the concept didn’t work, but with a larger overall start power for women, they did try again. Again, the decision to flood the market this coming weekend very much hurt WWE on the guise of hurting AEW. I guess we’ll know if all these shows do cut into the AEW buy rate, which was the goal of doing all these shows this coming week.

— Donald Trump announced Thursday that he wanted to hold a UFC event on the grounds of the White House in 2026 as part of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. He said he wanted 20,000 to 25,000 people there. We were told by people with knowledge of the area that getting that many would be impossible, but you know how that goes.  This is very serious. It’s not something he just said out of the blue and they are talking with UFC about it. Both Jon Jones and Conor McGregor have talked of wanting to be on such a show.  Jones, who just retired last week, put himself back into the UFC drug testing protocol after he had pulled out with his retirement announcement last week.

— I have a story up on the front page with the ratings details of the AEW shows I didn’t get into the issue.

— Regarding the Wrestlevotes story from a few days ago and Jelly Roll, WWE sources confirmed the report and said he is scheduled for Smackdown this Saturday and to do something at SummerSlam.

— Bayley will be putting up gear from a recent match for auction with all money going to the families impacted by the tragedy at Camp Mystic girls summer camp.

— There will be a fourth Takayamamania show on 9/3. Minoru Suzuki, Katsuyori Shibata, KENTA and Naomichi Marfufuji will be the main event. Yoshihiro Takayama will be there live and announce who teams with who in that tag match.

— Maple Leaf Pro before about 2,500 in Laval, Quebec last night:  Stu Grayson & Evil Uno b  Sheldon Jean & Bryce Hanson, Rohan Taja b Hammerstone to keep the Grail Holder title, Thom Latimer b Matt Cardona to keep the NWA title, Michael Allen Richard Clark won scramble over TJP, Mike Bailey, Psycho Mike  Rollins, Jonathan Gresham and Bhupinder Gujjar, Doc Gallows & Karl Anderson b David Finlay & Drilla Moloney with the magic killer on Moloney, Gisele Shaw b Shotzi Blackheart to keep the women’s title (finish was messed up b the ref but match said to be good), Josh Alexander b  Ace Austin to keep the Canadian men’s title and PCO b Dan Maff in a House of Pain match with Billy Gunn as referee. People were raving about how amazing the crowd reaction to PCO was on the show.

— Among the matches people have raved to me about for this weekend include Alec Price & Jordan Oliver & Marcus Mathers vs. Billie Starkiz & Megan Bayne & Miyu Yamashita from the GCW show last night, Tomohiro Ishii vs. Taichi and El Desperado vs. Kosei Fujita from today’s New Japan show, and Hiroshi Tanahashi vs.Gabe Kidd from Friday’s New Japan show. I’d also recommend FTR vs. The Outunners which was great from last night’s Collision as was Kyle Fletcher vs. Daniel Garcia.

— New Japan and Stardom both sold out Korakuen Hall for shows today.

— In the gauntlet for the final spot in G-1 in the A block, replacing injured Hirooki Goto, Taichi advanced. They did a gauntlet today at Korakuen Hall.  Chase Owens first beat Satoshi Kojima.  Owens then faced Taichi, which Taichi won.  Taichi then beat Ishii in 17:33. Tanahashi beat Tiger Mask, who then announced his retirement for one year from now.  Sho & Douki beat Master Wato & Yoh to keep the IWGP jr. tag title and Desperado beat  Fujita to keep the IWGP jr. title/

— The A block adds Taichi to Tanahashi, Oleg Boltin, Yota Tsuji, Yuya Uemura, David Finlay, Evil, Sanada, Calllum Newman and Ryohei Oiwa.

— We didn’t get a crowd for Friday at Arena Mexico with Mortos in the main event, but the advance was very strong.

— Update for Raw tomorrow is Bron Breakker vs. Sami Zayn, Jey Uso vs. Bronson Reed, Kairi Sane vs. Roxanne Perez, Seth Rollins vs. Penta and Becky Lynch appearing.

— Bandido is now a double champion having ended Erik Ortiz’s two plus year reign as Riot champion last night in Monterrey.

— The Cauliflower Alley Club is spearheading donations for Wendi Richter, who lost her home and most of her possessions in a fire. You can go to califloweralleyclub.org/donations and put FOR WENDI RICHTER.

— Vincent James McMahon would have turned 111 today had he still been alive. He passed away 41 years ago of cancer.

— Irv Muchnick, who is writing a book about Rikidozan, wrote this to his family, the family of the legendary Sam Muchnick, after seeing Queen of the Ring this weekend:

“I got wind of a new movie called Queen of the Ring, streaming only. I watched last night on Prime. It’s the story of a pioneer woman pro wrestler, Mildred Burke. Review below.

In 1990, when he was running the short-lived daily sports newspaper The National, the late great Frank Deford published his piece about Burke, one of the all-time best sports longform articles. Frank was going to turn it into a book but didn’t have time, and a writer named Jeff Leen picked it up. Leen, investigations editor of the Washington Post, grew up in suburban St. Louis watching my uncle’s Wrestling at the Chase. His Burke bio, published in 2009, is serviceable, but not masterly like Deford. And Leen falls for the hype that the first women’s pro wrestling circuits were more than a backwater.

Burke’s life story is legitimately captivating. Her business partner and husband on paper only, Billy Wolfe, abused her and ran a training and booking center in Columbus, Ohio, that was, for all intents and purposes, a prostitution ring. When Burke and Wolfe split and they eventually had to blend their competing companies, Burke fought June Byers for the “championship” in Atlanta in 1954 – likely the most recent full “shoot” or real match in pro wrestling.

Burke gets a quick mention in my upcoming Rikidozan book because she led a troop who entertained U.S. servicemen in Japan after World War II and helped set up and train the first women wrestlers there. From the 1980s onward, the women in Japan have lapped the athleticism of the men; indeed, they have their own promotions there for the simple reason that every time they do a single guest match on a main men’s promotion’s event, they steal the show and the men are afraid to invite them back. (Burke would like to have believed that the same thing happened in her day in the U.S. – dream on.)

I approached the Queen of the Ring movie with hope. The director-writer, Ash Avildsen, is the son of the late John G. Avildsen, who made the Academy Award-winning Rocky in 1977 and the iconic The Karate Kid in 1984.

Alas, despite pretty good cinematography on a small budget, and a game effort by lead actress Emily Bett Rickards with a predictably lame script, this is an all-time howler. It makes A24’s The Iron Claw look like Citizen Kane.

There are the expected Hollywood hype touches, with steroids. Burke is an avatar of feminism, and a big-time success. She has a house in the hills. When a hotel in the South refuses to give a room to one of her Black wrestlers, Burke buys up every room in the hotel. The Billy Wolfe character is as hapless as he is controlling and violent, in the way of Ike Turner in the Tina Turner biopic What’s Love Got to Do With It?

Some current women wrestlers have roles and of course do the stunt scenes – all with moves that assuredly were not in the repertoire of the 40s and 50s.

The National Wrestling Alliance features not Sam Muchnick, but a “commissioner” out of the “Manhattan” office, played by wrestling personality Jim Cornette. (Cue the bobsled sports organization weighing the Olympic credentials of the Jamaicans in Cool Runnings.) The father of today’s Vincent K. McMahon is there, and he remarks that his young son advises him to go with the lady wrestlers. Uh … Vince McMahon was maybe three years old at the time of that scene, living in a trailer park in North Carolina with Vincent J.’s first wife and her second husband, after he abandoned the family. Young Vince didn’t even know his father until he was a teenager years later.

And maybe the funniest thing of all: Walter Goggins of The White Lotus as Jack Pfeffer, a wrestling promoter. Pfeffer was an influential carny-type operator who developed the career of Buddy Rogers, the biggest box office of the 50s. Pfeffer also was an Eastern European immigrant who spoke with a thick Yiddish accent.”

— Episode three of the current season of WWE LFG is tonight on A&E at 10 p.m.

— AEW Dynamite on Wednesday from Garland,TX, has Samoa Joe vs. Wheeler Yuta, Megan Bayne vs. Tay Melo vs. Queen Aminat a vs. Thekla for the No. 2 spot in the  women’s Casino gauntlet, Jon Moxley & Claudio Castagnoli & Young Bucks vs. Adam Page & Will Ospreay & Powerhouse Hobba & Katsuyori Shibata plus confrontations with MJF and Mark Briscoe and Mercedes Mone and Toni Storm.  

— Mortos vs. Mistico will be on the live Collision show Thursday night.

— For the same reason as NXT and Dynamite being down a little, I expect much lower than usual rating for SmackDown on Friday and for Collision, the weekend is tough for last night plus it aired live on the West Coast, which always hurts numbers, especially since I don’t know if that was even publicized. It’s likely you’re just getting mostly DVR viewers when it comes to West Coast audiences. So whatever the number is, don’t take it seriously or overreact.

— Jazz was on Memphis Wrestling yesterday.

Google Icon

Exclusive access to podcasts and newsletters

Subscribe