[Emperor Smeat]

Dirtsheets sponsored by The Villain's Disapproval of the length of tonight's sheet news:

SPOILER: show

Rumor goign around the net involves WWE currently considering two options for Kurt Angle at Mania. One involves him & Ronda vs Triple H & Steph while the other option is Angle vs Rollins. In regards to the mixed tag match, Strowman is currently considered as the backup option if Rock is unable to be at Mania and WWE still wants the match done.

In regards to post-Mania plans, Observer reported WWE is seriously considering the idea of pairing Paul Heyman with Reigns. The idea would be for Heyman to cover for Reigns; lack of promo skills as a top star and as a backup in case Lesnar really does leave for MMA again.

Another post-Mania rumor involves Heyman being paired with Ronda Rousey to help with her promos and as a backup plan for Lesnar

Originally Posted by Observer There have been reports going around about Jeff Jarrett being offered a spot in this year’s WWE Hall of Fame. While not confirmed, there was a list of names a few weeks ago under consideration and he was on the list.

Spoiler tag used since its related to potential Mania plans & Rumors regarding a potential member of this year's Hall of Fame.

Originally Posted by Observer After Kazuchika Okada made the challenge and Will Ospreay accepted last weekend, the main event for New Japan Pro Wrestling's 46th anniversary show is now official. It will be Okada (the IWGP Heavyweight Champion) vs. Ospreay (the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Champion) in a non-title match. Okada mentioned there being a history of the Heavyweight Champion facing the Junior Heavyweight Champion when he made the challenge for the anniversary show.

More details and card for the event: https://www.f4wonline.com/japan/okad...-lineup-251776

Originally Posted by Observer Impact announced that its 4/22 Redemption PPV will be in Orlando at the Impact Zone. The original plan was Toronto but they couldn't find a venue that made it work. Impact will also be airing their 4/7 show in New Orleans at the Sugar Mill live on Twitch. Aaron Frobel (Michael Elgin) filed a suit against "Moses Malone" (a pseudonym) in Circuit Court in Warren County, Missouri, claiming she wrongly associated his name with men who sexually assault women. Pro Wrestling Revolver announced a 4/7 Pancakes and Piledrivers show at WrestleCon with Jessicka Havok vs. Meiko Satomura, Penta 0M & Rey Fenix vs. Teddy Hart & Jack Evans and Colt Cabana & Marty DaRosa vs. Joey Ryan & Session Moth Martina.

Originally Posted by Observer Xavier Woods noted that his car was broken into last night. He said he doesn't keep anything valuable in there so he wasn't that upset, but that the people who broke in left it a mess, smoked cigarettes in the car and spilled Polynesian sauce.

Link: https://twitter.com/XavierWoodsPhD/s...42430839812099

Originally Posted by PWI Rich Swann has already been added to the 3/10 Big Event in Queens, NY and will be signing and taking photos at the convention.

Originally Posted by PWI This afternoon, it was officially announced that the original lineup of The Smashing Pumpkins will be reuniting and touring. Obviously, NWA owner Billy Corgan is the centerpiece of that legendary musical act so the financial riches that will come with that reunion will certainly be a positive for the National Wrestling Alliance at some point. Meanwhile, the NWA officially released James Ellsworth's challenge of NWA champion Nick Aldis, which was filmed on Sunday at Championship Wrestling from Hollywood:

Seems Corgan is running out of money again which is why the Smashing Pumpkins reunion is happening according to the band's original bassist. Link to the NWA title match: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJ2qW4tMGQs

Originally Posted by PWI As of this morning, the WWE roster has not been informed of any plans to go forward with dual-branding of PPV events. Although I have not yet confirmed his role, WWE Hall of Famer Diamond Dallas Page is slated to be at this Monday's Raw in Phoenix, Arizona. Will Ospreay, while on Chris Jericho's podcast this week, noted that he's been approached by WWE about signing but turned down the idea immediately, wanting to stay with New Japan, citing the insanity of the WWE schedule for talents. WWE Network has been adding new episodes of World Class Championship Wrestling in an effort to fill gaps that exist in the current run of episodes. WWE has at times sought out private collectors to track down content that was missing from the actual library they acquired.

Originally Posted by Observer For the year, WWE grossed $800,959,000, by far its record year, up 9.6 percent from last year. Profits were $32,116,000. In 2016, the company grossed $729,216,000 and the profits were $33,725,000. However, the decline of profits is misleading as there was an $11,284,000 charge, a one-time payment arising from the enactment of the new tax law, of which $10,878,000 was a charge due to the re-measurement of deferred tax assets and $406,000 associated with reparation of foreign earnings. So normalized, the profit margin would have been $43.4 million, the best since 2010, about the time WWE started spending money to start the network. It has come slower than expected, and the growth in profits wasn’t because of the network, as predicted eight years ago. The original predictions of $150 million to $250 million in profits and three to four million subscribers by this point aren’t close to happening and the latter won’t happen for decades, if ever. For the year, profits on the WWE Network rose from $36.9 million to $57.3 million. The company profits about $3.12 per month per paid subscriber, up from $2.17 in 2016. The increase has been cutting back when it comes to some programming as well as cutting back on the number of PPV shows. Those numbers are actually not completely accurate, because the network division includes actual PPV revenue. In 2017, the company took in $14.2 million from traditional PPV on 16 shows (about 950,000 buys for the year), up from $12.6 million the prior year on 15 shows (about 850,000 buys for the year).

Originally Posted by Observer While WWE has not officially stated the end of brand-specific PPV shows, the belief internally is that is the case. WWE officials told us that an announcement regarding this would be made shortly, which would also indicate the end of them ... While again not official, within WWE the belief was that, because of having to fit the top stars of both brands, that the former B shows will be increased an hour with two match pre-shows and four hour PPV shows. They will have both shows specifically pushing the same PPV every month and all the top stars would be on it. The negative is a lot of the middle and lower card acts won’t be on PPV as much, if at all. And if they’re not on the PPV, they’ll be focused on less on television ... It also makes having separate champions in each brand feeling even sillier since the key title bouts will be on shows with the other brand’s title also defended. You’ll have two women’s title matches and two tag title matches on most shows, along with two world title and two secondary singles titles and a cruiserweight title (which is likely to almost never be on the main PPV shows). There will be title matches relegated to the pre-show, hurting their significance. There will be less place for non-championship matches, and to get the top stars on the show, likely more multiple-person matches. Also, there will likely be more matches on the shows meaning less time or more rushed matches. So there’s good with the bad. The biggest complaint on WWE PPV shows has been the length of the big shows, and now every show will be five hours long.

Supposedly WWE is considering those multi-man matches to be mainly for their big stars not in title matches. Would be another big hit for the undercard.

Originally Posted by Observer During 2017, there were 1,803,700 new subscribers and 1,735,300 canceled subscriptions. It would be logical to say that many of those are the same people.

That's actually really terrible for the net gain and a lock WWE is likely never hitting their lofty target goals they were expecting to have hit by now for subscribers.

Originally Posted by Observer Alberto El Patron said he was very close to returning to AAA, and hinted it would be for TripleMania in August. He said he and Dorian Roldan talked things out and reached a verbal agreement but wants it all put on paper

Originally Posted by Observer NJPW officially announced that their Los Angeles dojo would be opening in March. The prior Los Angeles dojo was the home of people like Bryan Danielson, Samoa Joe, Karl Anderson, Shinsuke Nakamura and Lyoto Machida among others Michael Elgin signed a two-year NJPW contract through the end of January of 2020

Originally Posted by Observer Miz, Rawley and Ziggler have all signed new contracts. They vary from two to four years but not sure which are which other than Miz was four years. So that should end any rumors of Ziggler going anywhere. There was never anything to that to begin with

In regards to Ziggy, his is rumored to be 2 years at $1.5 million per year. For some comparisons, he supposedly made $900k last year.

Originally Posted by Observer With the OIBDA for the year breaking $100 million, stock bonuses were given to many of the key executives. Among them, Stephanie Levesque (as she’s corporately listed even though she uses McMahon in public) received 46,963 shares worth $1,659,569 on 2/12, leaving her with 166,484 shares worth $5,886,874. Michelle Wilson got 42,770 shares ($1,512,347) and has 482,460 shares worth $17,059,785. Paul Levesque got 43,145 worth $1,525,607 and now has 164,455 shares worth $5,815,129. George Barrios received 42,349 shares worth $1,497,461 and now has 434,997 shares worth $15,381,493. Kevin Dunn got 52,062 shares worth $1,840,912 and now has 737,658 shares worth $26,083,586

Going to be really expensive to buy out Dunn from the company assuming Triple H & Steph get rid of him in the future.

Originally Posted by Observer Inside educated speculation is that Mysterio will sign some kind of a deal, maybe in 2019 if not this year, but it would be part-time. It’s possible he’d go to a term deal like Jericho where he’s with the company for a portion of time, and then has time off for his own projects or to work elsewhere. The thing with Jericho was that when he wasn’t wrestling, he’d be doing music or television but nobody thought he’d be doing pro wrestling since he’d made it clear he would never wrestle anywhere but WWE. Obviously that ended up changing because he saw the opportunity for the Omega match, but he had never wrestled anywhere but WWE and presumably was not going to do so, except there were flirtations with TNA many years ago according to those in TNA, but that’s the period he was gone for a long time and not the current period.

Originally Posted by Observer Vice did an article on Riddle where it brought up his issues with marijuana and it keeping him from WWE or New Japan. He said that if the money was right with WWE and they told him to quit smoking, he’d quit smoking. He said he would never bring weed to Japan. “I’m not an idiot,” he said. He said he knows there’s a lot of drinking in Japan so he’d go there and enjoy himself. With New Japan, he had a deal for last year’s tag team tournament, teaming with Jeff Cobb. But Bushiroad, the parent company, found out about his marijuana past, failing tests in UFC and being such an advocate for the drug, that, because marijuana is viewed very differently in Japan, they told New Japan not to bring him in. Riddle himself said that he’s having fun doing what he’s doing. “Honestly, right now I make six figures. I make my own merch. I’m the main or co-main event of every show I’m on. I get to be me and I get to wrestle like I want to. Can they promise me that? If not, why would I go to WWE to probably make less money and be gone more? By the time they do pick me up, if they decide to, I’ll be worth so much more.

Some other sheet news includes:

• FDA recently announced they have approved a new blood test meant to help diagnose concussions and their effects. More details: https://www.pwinsider.com/article/11...ncussions.html
• In a "WWE Did You Know" type fact, today is the 14th anniversary of Eddie Guerrero's first and only WWE Championship victory. Guerrero defeated then champion Brock Lesnar at No Way Out 2004 for the title.
• Recent episode of the X-Pac 12360 podcast show had Sean Waltman talk about Lucha Underground contacting him, memories of Curt Hennig, and being upset at past negative comments he made towards Ivory. http://www.wrestlinginc.com/wi/news/...ripping-ivory/
• Recent WWE media call with Rusev as a host included Rusev talking about the popularity of Rusev Day, showing personality on Total Divas and on TV, and Aiden English. http://www.wrestlinginc.com/wi/news/...glish-pairing/

Some stuff from TPWW Frontpage:

• Rich Swann No Longer With WWE
• WWE NXT Results – Feb. 14, 2018 – Moon vs. Baszler
• WWE Signs Former Impact Wrestler Mahabali Shera