Daily Update: WWE Evolution, fallout from AEW All In & SNME

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This Week’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter

  • The big weekend,matches, booking,business, favorites and strategies
  • The life and times of Cowboy Bob Ellis, one of the great babyfaces of his era.  A long career as a star all over the world, defining the wrestling cowboy character, the bulldog headlock, wars with Dick the Bruiser and why he had a long career but his top ten drawing days were only a few years.
  • Donald Trump wants a UFC show at the White House on July 4, 2026
  • Preview of the G-1 Climax tournament
  • The most in depth look at the ratings for all the TV shows, including quarters, competition, people watching together, year over year and week over week comparisons and all the little details you won’t get anywhere else on the shows.
  • The Arena Mexico business milestone and comparisons to 2006 and 1991 boom periods and CMLL sells out three shows this past week.
  • AAA has one of its big shows of the year this week
  • Details over the attempt to trademark a major name as part of a fight between wrestler and promoter
  • Stardom star taking a temporary leave
  • Dragon Gat’s biggest show of the year
  • Tiger Mask retires in 2026
  • Notes on Tanahashi Jam
  • Updates on Ric Flair and Wendi Richter
  • Highest ratings for a woman’s main event in American television history
  • Tons of major indie shows coming up
  • Maple Leaf Wrestling coverage
  • Grandson of legend about to start out
  • Kim Wood, the architect of the Brian Pillman storyline, turns 80
  • TNA attempts to upgrade its U.S. TV situation
  • Ticket sales for upcoming WWE, AEW and TNA shows
  • Kenny Omega talks, taking risks, career, match philosophy and future
  • Tony Khan talks more stadium shows, Britt Baker,  U.S. record gate ad Unified title
  • How much is the Khan sports empire worth, the TKO sports empire and where both trank in the world standins
  • New contract signings
  • AEW quarter two television final numbers and explaining what the numbers mean
  • Jim Ross update
  • Lots of business updates
  • Phil Davis talks attempt to legally change the foundation of MMA to make it like a real sport
  • Randy Couture update
  • A $25 million tournament announced
  • Update on Janel Grant case
  • WWE stars in acting roles and a movie that will a top name from both WWE & NJPW
  • Wrestlers who get harassed the most in social media

This Week’s Back Issue

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Sunday Update

Goldberg
Goldberg

[email protected]

— Bryan and I did a show last night covering AEW, ROH, WWE and NXT big shows over the weekend and will be back tonight covering WWE Evolution.

— We are doing polls on these four weekend shows:

  • ROH Supercard of Honor
  • AEW All In Texas
  • NXT Great American Bash
  • WWE Evolution

You can leave a thumbs up, thumbs down or thumbs in the middle along with a best and worst match for each show to [email protected]

— WWE Evolution starts at 7 p.m. Eastern from the State Farm Arena in Atlanta. As of this morning there were 7,301 tickets out.

  • Iyo Sky vs. Rhea Ripley for the World title
  • Tiffany Stratton vs. Trish Stratus for the WWE title
  • Becky Lynch vs. Bayley vs. Lyra Valkyria for the IC title
  • Roxanne Perez & Raquel Rodriguez defend the tag titles against Charlotte Flair & Alexa Bliss, Zaria & Sol Ruca and Asuka & Kairi Sane
  • Jacy Jayne vs. Jordynne Grace for the NXT title
  • Jade Cargill vs. Naomi no holds barred with Bianca Belair as referee
  • Battle Royal with Nikki Bella, Stephanie Vaquer, Ivy Nile, Natalya. Maxxine Dupri, Kelani Jordan, Jaida Parker, Lola Vice, Lash Legend, Izzy  Dame, Tatum Paxley, Zelina Vega, Sol Ruca and Candice LeRae. Torrie Wilson is scheduled at the show.

— Sting and Wardlow were backstage at the AEW show yesterday. Wardlow is back from filming American Gladiators in England.

— For major match recommendations, the only matches aside from the All In matches that people have brought up to me are Kazusada Higuchi vs. Harashima from DDT and Bandido vs. Konosuke Takeshita from the ROH show. I haven’t gotten any reports on today’s Dragon Gate show as far as quality of matches or anything.

— The 8/24 NXT Heatwave PLE from Lowell, MA booked the same day as AEW’s Forbidden Door in London, is listing a 6:30 p.m. local start time meaning they are looking at 7-9:30 p.m. It’s notable that the AEW show will probably have the first match at 2 p.m., the main PPV card at 3 p.m. and I believe in London they have to end due to curfew at 7 p.m. Eastern time. So they have to be over before the ROH show starts. It’s surprising WWE would do this because if anything, they aren’t going to hurt the AEW show by not going head-to-head (whether they would even doing so is a debatable point) but they put  themselves in a disadvantageous position on the day being the second show after a long first show.

— Wrestletix listed attendance for All in at 26,153 and I’d expect at least 2,500 were comps. Tony Khan said close to 29,000 at the press conference but he didn’t have the final total. We heard they had topped 28,500 for a combination of paid and paper at about 2 p.m. so maybe if that’s accurate that 29,000 is possible with another hour before the main show started.

Khan also said at the press conference it was the highest advanced orders for a PPV they have done. I can’t confirm that but advanced orders are a small percentage of total orders. We did hear only that Amazon Prime had its highest number, but that’s a given as they’ve only done a few shows and if this show wasn’t the biggest so far this year that would be a major disappointment.

— Charles Robinson was chosen to referee last night’s Bill Goldberg vs. Gunther match because he was the referee of the 1998 Hulk Hogan vs. Goldberg match at the Georgia Dome.

— Due to timing issues, they went off the air just seconds into Goldberg’s speech. We heard it was a tremendous speech, and it can be found here. He talked about the flood victims 30 miles from his house in Texas and said all his neighbors dropped everything to lend a helping hand to those who needed a helping hand. His father-in-law just passed away last week.

The show ended with Cody Rhodes giving a speech thanking Goldberg saying you made the table that we can eat off now and we are eating very good. He said Goldberg was Georgia royalty and Atlanta royalty and told fans to chant Goldberg for him.

Goldberg’s walk-out entourage last night was Ernest Miller, Diamond Dallas Page, Josh Barnett, Doug Dillenger, Chuck Zito and Gage Goldberg.  

— Dana White said after yesterday’s show that everyone wants to be on the July 4, 2026, show at the White House. White said it will be a PPV card and will be the best card they could possibly put together during the summer of 2026. The cage will be on the South lawn and the visual will be the White House on one side and behind will be the Washington Monument. White had previously said the crowd would be those invited and tickets would not be put on sale for the live event.

— Dragon Gate had its biggest show of the year today with Shun Skywalker beating Yamato for the Open the Dream Gate title. Hiroshi Tanahashi was there and met with Yuki Yoshioka and basically told him he wanted Yoshioka’s splash off the top to be called the high fly flow.  Tanahashi & Dragon Kid beat Yoshioka & Dragon Dia.  

— Tanahashi will also work on the 8/31 DDT show at Korakuen Hall. Zack Sabre Jr. & Kosei Fujita face Chris Brookes & Takeshi Masadsa on 8/30.

— Merab Dvalishvili was voted the 2025 ESPY Fighter of the Year. The nominees were Kayla Harrison, Dricus du Plessis, Dvalishvili and Islam Makhachev.

— My highest recommendations to the Players Tribune documentary on Mark Briscoe that was released on Thursday.  It talked with Mark’s parents, Mark, as well as Jay’s wife and Jay’s three children and had lots of footage of Mark & Jay growing up.  Wrestling was certainly part of it but it was not a wrestling doc, but a family doc. Still  if you’re voting in the 2025 awards you really should see it.

— No update on Adam Cole or Seth Rollins past what has already been talked about. Rollins was not scheduled to cash in the briefcase on Bill Goldberg or Gunther. I presume Gunther is facing CM Punk for the title at SummerSlam but that would likely be made official tomorrow or at least heavily teased.

— SmackDown numbers on Friday night on Netflix vs. Amanda Serrano vs. Katie Taylor, the boxing match promoted by MVP Promotions and Jake Paul:

  • In Canada, SmackDown was in first place for Netflix English language television show (movies are a separate category as is non-English programming) viewing and Taylor vs. Serrano was second.
  • In Australia, Taylor vs. Serrano was first and SmackDown was second.
  • In India, SmackDown was No. 3 and Taylor vs. Serrano didn’t crack the top ten
  • In New Zealand, SmackDown was No. 3 and Taylor vs. Serrano was No. 1.
  • In Saudi Arabia SmackDown was No. 2 and Taylor vs. Serrano didn’t crack the top ten.
  • In the U.K., SmackDown was No. 1 and Taylor vs. Serrano was No. 2
  • In the U.S., Taylor vs. Serrano was No. 1 and Smackdown aired on USA and not Netflix.

— CMLL promoter Salvador Lutteroth was in Dallas this week. A number of readers noted to us they said high and we were told he absolutely loved the Young Bucks match with Swerve Strickland & Will Ospreay.

For weekend Google searches in the U.S.:

  • Adam Cole and Seth Rollins both had 100,000 searches
  • Taylor vs. Serrano had 200,000
  • All In Texas and Saturday Night’s Main Event had 50,000
  • Bill Goldberg had 50,000
  • The UFC show last night had 140,000
  • Taylor vs. Serrano had 200,000

I didn’t see anything on the Great American Bash and I saw numbers as low as 500.

— Alex Windsor was the only surprising name on the search list at around 500.

— Overall for yesterday, AEW searches were 1.8 times higher than those for WWE in total which is very rare. But like with PPV numbers, it really won’t be until mid week we can get an accurate read on them and what they really mean in the big picture. A typical day WWE is 2.1 to 2.5 times that of AEW but AEW on a PPV day will be higher. To me the real comparison is the AEW show vs. WWE recent PPV shows and we don’t have that yet.

— It appears All in Texas will air free in the U.K. on Thursday night from 9 p.m. to 2 a.m. on ITV 4. (thanks to Bob Magee)

— House of Glory and GCW both sold out on Friday night in the Dallas area. ROH sold out far in advance (only 1,300 or so) so a lot of people in the area went to the other shows:

— House of Glory results: Infamous b Danny Orion to keep the cruiserweight title, Midas Black & Jay Lyon b Zack Zilla & Warren J, La Sombra (no relation to Andrade) b Brick Savage, JJ Doze won over LC Mox, Eddie Martinez, LVJ, Bam Bam Balone and Matty Ight, JD Griffey b Amazing Red, Indi Hartwell b Hyan (Shotzi Blackheart attacked Hartwell after the match), Zilla Fatu b Chrles Mason via low blow DQ.  Next show is 8/1 in New York with Ricochet vs. Amazing Red, Hartwell vs. Priscilla Kelly and Carlito. (thanks to Samuel Rosenthal).

— Paul Walter Hauser debuts in the U.K. for Progress Wrestling on 8/25, the day after Forbidden Door, in London. Hauser won the Proteus title for the promotion over Mania week in London.

— Josh Matthews was on the AEW Zero Hour show last night. He’s been with the company backstage for some time.

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