[Emperor Smeat]

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Originally Posted by Observer Raw on Monday was up less than one percent from the previous week to 3.23 million viewers, but the change in viewing patterns due to Daylight Savings Time were felt immediately. The first hour, which had been the highest rated for months, was the lowest rated this past week. That is part of traditional patterns so you really can't read anything into it. Because of that, with viewers coming in late, the third hour decline was less than in previous weeks, although hour three was down four percent from hour two. Ratings were delayed by two days due to a power outage at Nielsen over the weekend and they have been playing catchup all week ... The three hours were: 8 p.m. 3.18 million viewers 9 p.m. 3.32 million viewers 10 p.m. 3.20 million viewers

Also had the rare occurrence of female viewers increasing every hour for this week.

Originally Posted by PWI The 3/14 edition of Smackdown Live brought in 2,628,0000, down from last week's 2,738,000 viewers.

Originally Posted by Observer We now know who will be inducting Kurt Angle into the WWE Hall of Fame. WWE announced on Thursday afternoon that John Cena would be doing the honors. Cena debuted in WWE against Angle by answering an open challenge on SmackDown in June 2002, where Cena was portrayed as putting up a good fight before losing to Angle. After it was announced that he would be headlining the 2017 Hall of Fame class, Angle spoke to Sports Illustrated's Justin Barrasso and called it a "no-brainer" for Steve Austin to induct him. Angle later appeared on Live Audio Wrestling with John Pollock, where he said the decision wasn't up to him but believed WWE would listen to his input. He mentioned Austin, The Undertaker, Brock Lesnar, and Cena as potential choices.

Originally Posted by Observer Right now the plan is for Nakamura to debut on the main roster very shortly. I’m not sure what date it will be, but the likely scenario is he loses to Bobby Roode at Takeover and starts immediately after, with Raw after WrestleMania being a good bet.

Originally Posted by Observer There were 80,709 fans through the turnstiles at AT&T Stadium for WrestleMania 32 says the Arlington, TX police department. Brandon Howard has a story.

Ends up being lower than previous estimates for the event's legit number which was 97k and 84k. Still breaks Mania III's legit number assumed to be 78k. Mania 33 still broke the gate revenue record mainly due to ticket prices being higher. Link with more details: http://www.fightful.com/exclusive-wr...ver-80000-fans

Originally Posted by Observer John Cena will be on the Tonight show on 3/22 to push WrestleMania.

"And I did get in touch with Vince recently. I wanted to be a producer. I thought the Network was phenomenal and a chance for me to go through all that old footage? Holy smokes, that'd been great. And I heard they needed a producer, but I never heard back from him. "I got in touch with them and Kevin Dunn called me and said, 'well, we have announcers. We don't need any other. Don't take this the wrong way, but we've got announcers that we want and they're younger guys.' And I said, 'I understand. Younger guys work for a lot less and you've got some good guys.' I said, 'Kevin,' and I can't remember who all I talked to, who all I sent texts to, I said, 'I don't want to announce wrestling anymore. I want to be a producer. I want to work on The Network.' "That's what I want to do. I want to produce. And he said, 'well, I'll get back in touch with you' and he never did. So that again tells me that… I don't know if you call that 'blacklisted' or not, but that's fine. But, again, to answer your question, I just don't know. I could probably do it again. My voice was going. It was I was screaming a lot, two hours and forty-five minutes on a pay-per-view, three hours on a Nitro, and then, taping a Thunder, about Wednesday, my voice was shot, so I don't know if I've got that in me anymore."

From a recent episode of Tony Schiavone's podcast show. http://www.wrestlinginc.com/wi/news/...on-wcw-demise/

Originally Posted by Observer Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson was announced today as the host of NBC's Saturday Night Live for the fifth time on May 20th. Johnson will join the "Five-Timers Club," a list of elite level celebrities that the show itself first started promoting in 1990. The club list at this point that Johnson will join consists of Ben Affleck, Alec Baldwin, Drew Barrymore, Candice Bergen, Chevy Chase, Danny DeVito, Tina Fey, John Goodman, Elliott Gould, Tom Hanks, Buck Henry, Scarlett Johansson, Steve Martin, Bill Murray, Paul Simon, Justin Timberlake, and Christopher Walken. Also noted is that the show itself is changing next month where it will air live nationwide. The West Coast since the inception of the show has gotten a feed to air at 11:30 p.m. local time after the news. However, SNL will move to 8:30 p.m. on the West Coast five weeks before Johnson hosts the show. The episode that Johnson is hosting will be the season finale.

Originally Posted by PWI As WWE announced yesterday, they will unleash the first ever edition of "Southpaw Regional Wrestling" on the WWE Network tomorrow. For those of you who have seen $5 Wrestling when it was being produced by Highspots.com, it's pretty obvious that this is at least somewhat inspired by that project. The idea is to do a take on old school Southern rassling in a comedic way. There was a pitch for Southpaw floating around within WWE as far back as September of last year. Luke Gallows will be reprising his "Sex Ferguson" character, which he portrayed on a few Highspots.com DVD releases, but the character will be rechristened "Tex Ferguson" on the Southpaw show.

“Southpaw Regional Wrestling is a concept of this … basically 1980s southern regional wrestling promotion or territory, and it’s a lot of stuff that the guys have been doing for years backstage to entertain each other. I know my character in particular has been an ongoing thing for the better part of a decade ... It was really us getting to kind of take the gloves off and use our… comedic style, if there is one. You’ll get the chance to judge for yourself, but you’ll see a lot of people step outside of the realm of what you’ve seen them do, character-wise, and as in-ring performers as a part of WWE. So it’s kind of a chance for everybody to let their hair down. I didn’t get to because I don’t have any, but everybody else. And we had a blast doing it, man. That thing drops tomorrow. I just watched the teaser myself, I was trying to get them to shoot me a link but they won’t do it.”

Recent interview Luke Gallows had with Fox Sports about this new parody wrestling show for the WWE. http://www.foxsports.com/wwe/gallery...ag-team-031617

Originally Posted by PWI Ric Flair's planned podcast return has been canceled.

Makes it the third podcast show that Ric Flair had to end.

Originally Posted by PWI There's been talk lately of Christy Olson, who does broadcasting for AfterbuzzTV getting looked at as a broadcaster.

Originally Posted by PWI The WWE digital album Uncaged II has been removed from its Amazon.com listing. The album was slated to be released tomorrow.

Originally Posted by PWI EVOLVE announced that Lio Rush would be working for the company over Wrestlemania weekend. Rush's ROH deal is up shortly and the word making the rounds is that he has given the company notice that he wasn't going to sign another exclusive deal.

Originally Posted by Observer Io Shirai (Masami Odate, 26), who is one of the two or three best woman wrestlers in the world right now, is in Orlando at this writing as part of a WWE tryout. In her case, this isn’t so much a tryout as her being there to do drills as WWE has been after her for months. But unlike the others at the tryout, the ball is in her court on whether to accept the offer or not. Unlike Kairi Hojo, who as noted last week has already signed her three-year contract, Shirai was invited to Orlando to check things out and then decide what she wanted to do. With Hojo leaving, if Shirai follows, and Mayu Iwatani retires, it would be a killer to Stardom, which had been the leading women’s pro wrestling organization in the world.

Originally Posted by Observer A lot of times people talk about how there’s no long-term planning but the WrestleMania 34 main event for April 8, 2018, which obviously could change, is set for Lesnar vs. Reigns for the Universal title. That doesn’t necessarily mean Reigns is beating Undertaker or that Lesnar will have a full one year run as champion, although both could happen. I have no idea of what the finish will be of Undertaker vs. Reigns. The goal is very much to make Reigns the next Cena, which was the plan for Santa Clara two years ago, until they decided to delay it based on fan reaction. The plan is to once again build for a year and have the big coronation at WrestleMania. The idea between now and then is for Reigns to be the face, not just when he wins the title, but to fully replace John Cena as the lead babyface of the company.

Would also fit previous reports by the Observer hinting the WWE had Reigns locked in a main event tier match for at least 4 Manias with Mania 31 as the start.

Originally Posted by PWMania WWE plans to hold another Draft sometime this year. However, it won’t be a full-fledged Draft like last year, but rather a series of trades to freshen up the WWE landscape. WWE plans on having Raw and SmackDown LIVE authority figures pick Superstars from the opposite brand, as well as NXT. Champions would not be eligible to be drafted, and Raw and SmackDown LIVE can “protect” certain Superstars. While there hasn’t been much discussion internally about which Superstars will switch brands in the next WWE Draft, AJ Styles to Raw and The New Day to SmackDown LIVE are two moves that Vince McMahon has brought up on multiple occasions during creative meetings.

Rollins also speculated to be moving to Smackdown as a potential trade.

Originally Posted by Observer Big Show vs. Shaquille O’Neal is off. It should be noted that O’Neal showed a photo of himself and he, in fact, was in great shape, so the idea that he hadn’t trained and was out of shape as Show had been saying wasn’t the case. It was very clearly a financial situation since negotiations had been continuing and they hadn’t agreed on a price. One would think that should have been done, and maybe it was done and one side or another changed, when they shot the angles for the match at last year’s WrestleMania and at the Espy Awards in 2016. But Show was confirmed as being in the Battle Royal.

Some other sheet news includes:

• According to the Observer, Mauro Ranallo didn't miss this week's Smackdown due to weather issues but implied it was something more serious instead. Speculation around the net involves Mauro suffering another mental illness since he has a history of it or being in the "dog house" by management.
• Recent episode of LAW podcast show had Kurt Angle as the guest. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLTg5Kcp2sY%C2%A0
• According to the Observer, WWE is considering extending Goldberg's contract beyond this year's Mania due to being very happy how successful his run has been for the company.