[Emperor Smeat]

Dirtsheets sponsored by Becky Lynch Appreciation Thursday:

This week's Wild Card Finals episode of WWE Smackdown Live garnered 2,885,000 viewers on the USA Network. This is up +247,000 viewers from the week prior and the first week ever that a first-run episode of Smackdown averaged more viewers than a first-run episode of WWE Raw. We saw it coming as Smackdown was closing the gap and with a strong episode loaded with the return of John Cena and multiple title matches, it officially dethroned Raw. In fact, only the first hour of this week's Raw (which averaged 2,974,000 viewers) did more viewers than the average of this week's episode for the blue brand.

Originally Posted by Observer "Right now when it comes to WrestleMania while there are a lot of rumors and directions being stated, there are only three matches locked in, which are Brock Lesnar vs. Bill Goldberg, HHH vs. Seth Rollins and Big Show vs. Shaquille O’Neal. John Cena vs. Undertaker is a probable, but Vince McMahon was not locked on it. Also probable was a multiple person women’s championship match on the Raw side. Right now when it comes to Undertaker, while it is likely Cena, the other opponent considered is Roman Reigns with the idea that Reigns is the future, Cena vs. Undertaker doesn’t build the future, and this may be Undertaker’s last match. If they don’t do Reigns this year, they may never be able to do it. Either way, if Cena and Reigns leave San Antonio as champions, it looks like Undertaker will challenge one of them in the main event."

Braun Strowman is also said to be a heavy favorite to win the Royal Rumble this year. Indicating that if Reigns is able to win the WWE Universal Championship and Braun the Rumble the two could be set for a collision at WrestleMania 33.

Originally Posted by PWI Some contract updates: Ring of Honor has come to terms with Jay Lethal for a new deal. While there were attempts to get Steve Corino to stay, all signs are he is gone as of 12/31 when his current deal expires. As of this writing, Kyle O'Reilly, Bobby Fish, War Machine and BJ Whitmer have not signed new deals. There has been a lot of talk of Whitmer being the new color commentator with Kevin Kelly ... If O'Reilly doesn't come to terms, I would be shocked if he retains the ROH title at the 1/4/17 Tokyo Dome event for New Japan, where he faces Adam Cole. Cole and Fish are both advertised for the 1/14/17 Atlanta TV taping, so they are going to be working with the company going forward.

Originally Posted by Observer One of the potentially biggest events, if it is a success and leads to a series, takes place 12/31 on ITV in the U.K. with a two-hour World of Sport wrestling special featuring some world title bouts, a ladder match, and talent including Grado, Dave Mastiff and Davey Boy Smith Jr., plus Jim Ross will be announcing the show.

Originally Posted by Observer AXS TV tomorrow night will air three hours from last year's Tokyo Dome show. Most of the top matches will air with the exception of the Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Kazuchika Okada match. The A.J. Styles vs. Shinsuke Nakamura match was edited so it wasn't nearly as good as the Japanese unedited version.

Originally Posted by PWI The current plan is for New Japan Pro Wrestling to run the first two nights of the 2017 G-1 Climax tournament in July at the Long Beach Convention Center in Long Beach, California. New Japan star Rocky Romero and George Carroll, a New England based independent wrestling personality who did some website work for Ring of Honor, were recently in Long Beach doing ground work for the dates. NJPW traditionally announces major dates for the year during the 1/4/17 Dome show.

Originally Posted by PWI Based on conversations with numerous sources, all signs are that Anthem Sports & Entertainment will officially become the owners of Impact Wrestling and its parent company, assets, etc. on 1/1/17, so expect some form of an official announcement then. It is expected there will be an official meeting of some sort with the locker room next week in Orlando. Anthem has continued to have conversations with Jeff Jarrett but there is no sign they have come to any form of a deal for him to return to the company in any official capacity. Jarrett's Global Force Wrestling promotion ran an event last night as part of a private function and Jarrett has been regularly going to Los Angeles for work on potential GFW broadcast deals. Anthem are also working on locking talents who's deals expire in early 2017, including The Hardy Boys and Drew Galloway to new deals.

Originally Posted by PWI TNA Knockout Sienna announced the following on social media: This Valentine's Day I will be running through freezing ass #Detroit in my skivvies to raise money for @childrenstumor - If you're still in the holiday spirit, now is a great time to donate to this worthy cause! The link is in my bio ???? #CupidsUndieRun #ImWithCupid #ChildrensTumorFoundation You can learn more on helping the cause by going here

Link to the fundraiser for those interested in donating: https://my.cupids.org/siennatna

Originally Posted by Observer While they haven’t made an official offer (or at least hadn’t as of last week), WWE is more open to Matt Riddle than a few months ago. Everyone knows he’s one of the best prospects to come along in the sense not many in modern history have ever gotten so good in so few matches. Riddle is under contract to Evolve, but that means nothing as Evolve’s policy is always to release guys if WWE wants them. I have no idea why New Japan doesn’t go after him now although it probably is inevitable than he’ll be in WWE and probably a major star, at some point.

Originally Posted by Observer The AAA television deal in Canada with The Fight Network is in trouble. They haven’t produced a new episode since June, so they’ve been replaying the same 12 episodes. FactoryMade Ventures was at one point going to produce new shows in Los Angeles when they took over the gig as the original shows were produced by Court Bauer, who stopped working with AAA in June.

Originally Posted by Observer The item noted last week regarding no Lucha Underground tapings until the fall of 2017 has led to a lot of frustration. The talent had kept weekend dates free starting in February, or if they had dates, many had canceled them, and now they have to get new bookings for February, March and April. The frustration is that after all these years, they haven’t broken out, it’s only seasonal work, but those seven season contracts which, except for a few people aren’t high dollar deals, are keeping everyone from exploring working in places like WWE, New Japan and ROH. There is top talent in Lucha Underground who are trying to see if they can legally get themselves free from the deals and explore working elsewhere. Most of the talent is still happy this company is still around because it’s a regular paycheck in season (with the exception of guys like Rey Mysterio who are on guaranteed annual big money deals, most talent is paid per television show they are on at the time the show is taped). But the hope was that by this point they’d be more of a force, be huge in the Hispanic community (in fact, they still don’t have a Spanish language outlet after having it in season one and thus are seen by far fewer than at the start of the promotion with the 200,000 to 250,000 viewers weekly in season one on Unimas), there would be house shows and people would be making merchandise money.

Originally Posted by Observer The wrestlers from the U.K. who just signed WWE contracts for the tournament on 1/14 and 1/15 in Blackpool, England, live on the WWE Network, signed one-year deals for 16,000 pounds or roughly $20,000 U.S. Several of the wrestlers that were signed told Wrestle Culture Pro Wrestling that they had been told they could no longer work for the promotion after 1/15. When William Regal came to the U.K., he specifically talked about no restrictions on where the talent could work, but we knew that the contracts specified the obvious like TNA or ROH, and there was no way the guys would be able to work for the ITV group, since, even though WWE says the opposite publicly, the key to this thing being done was an attempt to stop the ITV group. Wrestle Culture doesn’t have regular television. They have television tapings for an Internet show and have spent huge money for people like Kurt Angle, Jim Ross, Alberto El Patron and others. The promotions that Paul Levesque talked about when he was there that they would work with included Progress and Revolution Pro, and they sent Finn Balor to ICW and OTT, so there is a relationship there as well.

Originally Posted by Observer The WWE web site had a poll on who you want to be in the main event at WrestleMania. When the results went like this: 40% Styles, 12% Undertaker, 10% Balor, 7% Goldberg, 5% Cena, 4% Reigns, 3% Wyatt, Ambrose, Owens, Banks, Rollins, 1% Charlotte, Lesnar and Miz. The poll was then kiboshied.

Some other sheet news includes:

• WWE's website had a recent article about their Top 25 WWE matches of 2016. http://www.wwe.com/article/top-25-matches-of-2016
• According to PWI, recent updates to the TNA vs Audience of One production company lawsuit includes TNA and Aroluxe trying to get the case dismissed due to them claiming there was no conspiracy to remove AoO as TNA's production company nor purposely not paying them for work. AoO might be forced to refile their lawsuit due to the possibility of it being done in the wrong jurisdiction since they are based in Virginia while TNA is based in Tennessee. http://www.pwinsider.com/article/106...wsuit.html?p=1
• Recent episode of the Ross Report podcast show had Kenny Omega as its guest. http://podcastone.com/pg/jsp/program...19&pid=1697825
• According to reports, TNA once again is behind on paying talent/production with October's set of tapings still unpaid for.
• Current rumor going around the net involves Vince likely wanting American Alphas to be split up sooner regardless of Smackdown's Creative plans for the team. Supposedly he's still very high on the idea of a singles run for Jason Jordan.
• SPOILER: show

  According to reports and rumors, Kurt Angle has informed indie companies he is no longer taking bookings after February while supposedly has been contacted by the WWE in regards to a possible Rumble appearance.
  Spoiler tags used since its related to a possible big 2017 Rumble surprise entrant.
• According to the Observer, TNA is currently planning on holding a big tour for India next year in order to keep their tv deal active for the market.