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Former TPWW Royalty
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Dirtsheets sponsored by the Man That Gravity Remembered:
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Originally Posted by ROH
At the Ring of Honor television taping in Philadelphia on Friday, September 21st , Ring of Honor and New >Japan Pro Wrestling management will be making a special announcement impacting their working relationship at 7:10 p.m. ET on http://www.rohwrestling.com/ROHUSTREAM
Ring of Honor is hosting New Japan wrestlers at two monumental events this weekend, beginning on August 21st in Philadelphia’s famed 2300 Arena for a spectacular television taping. One night later on August 22nd, ROH and NJPW will compete at Brooklyn’s own MCU Park, which will be available as a DVD and on VOD. Ring of Honor is incredibly honored to continue to host such fantastic matches with the stars of New Japan Pro Wrestling.
Additional information about this announcement will be made available on http://rohwrestling.com shortly after the live press conference. |
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Originally Posted by Observer
While they don’t have all the activities with Hollywood stars as in the past few years, by being in New York, and with the news of the sellouts, the perception is that wrestling is real hot again, which will lead to more mainstream media jumping on. It doesn’t matter that ratings are down or live attendance is mixed (it was down 10 percent for the second quarter, but the most recent month we have full records of, June, was up from recent years), the perception feeds upon itself. In fact, McMahon built his company in 1984 based on perception, as wrestling was on fire in 1983 in many parts of the country, but with Cyndi Lauper doing an angle on Vince McMahon’s television, there were all kinds of stories about wrestling becoming so hot that they sell out Madison Square Garden (which was actually pretty much a regular thing since 1970).
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Observer on the WWE trying desperately to be popular in the mainstream again in recent years and the reality of it not paying off.
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Originally Posted by Observer
Canyon Ceman and Ben Brown (who also works in talent relations) were at the 8/15 Evolve show in Deer Park, NY which started the rumors going about an Evolve/WWE relationship. What we do know is that discussions are going on, and that Sam Houmai, the owner of Evolve, and booker Gabe Sapolsky will be guests of WWE at the NXT show this week. We’re told that right now it looks like it’s going to be a long road and process before anything is official or if anything ever becomes official.
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Originally Posted by Observer
I’ve been asked this question regarding NXT pay. The NXT guys under developmental deals have not, thus far, been bonused based on working shows with bigger grosses outside Florida. I’m told, even those that worked San Jose were not given a gate percentage. Given that Brooklyn’s gate is probably going to be around $700,000, which is amazing when you think about it, you’d think that would change. Owens is not on a developmental deal so he’d probably be paid like the main event of a big grossing house show, and Balor should have a different deal than everyone else because he was an established star in a major league promotion. But for people like Banks and Bayley, particularly because the internal push claims this show is a double main event, a main event payoff on that kind of house would be huge compared to what the women are currently earning and I can’t come up with any kind of logical reason all the talent appearing on a show like that shouldn’t get comparable payoffs to the main roster talent on a sold out major market show. Banks may be on a main roster deal so it could be different. I’m told the internal reasoning is that NXT and developmental are overall big money losers, as developmental has to be considered to be, they are on guaranteed money contracts and overall the shows are losing money without paying a percentage to talent. NXT talent working in Florida have no road expenses and the feeling is they are being paid to learn. However, when NXT talent is brought to WWE road shows, they are paid for those shows and also have their road expenses covered, which isn’t the case for the contracted WWE talent.
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Originally Posted by Observer
Finn Balor said he doesn’t want to get called up to the main roster. “What we’re doing at NXT right now is groundbreaking. It’s revolutionary,” he said on the PodNasty podcast. “For me, it’s like a Renaissance period in wrestling, and I want to be involved in NXT. I don’t want to go to the, quote, unquote, main roster. I don’t want to get called up, so to speak, because I believe that we at NXT are building something together that is going to be looked back on in ten years the same way that we looked back on the ECW period as being revolutionary at that time. And this is something that I want to be involved in.”
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Originally Posted by Observer
It appears after the Jushin Liger to NXT incident, that things have been smoothed over and the relationship is now stronger than ever. New Japan gave them the impression that Liger working NXT was a combination of Liger wanting to work one match with WWE, since he never has, and he’s 50 years old, and doing a personal favor for William Regal. Liger did an interview this past week with the New Japan web site and said what happened was that he was in Northern California for the ROH show two nights before WrestleMania and found out that “Devi-chan,” (Fergal Devitt/Finn Balor) was wrestling the same night nearby. He said he wanted to see the show so someone contacted Matt Bloom, who he knows, and Bloom got him a ticket to the show. So Liger was in the audience at the NXT show in San Jose late in disguise (his disguise is that he was just a 50-year-old Japanese guy that nobody recognized) and he saw the Balor vs. Neville main event and talked with Balor after the match. Several weeks later, Balor, Bloom and Regal called New Japan and asked for Liger’s e-mail address. That’s interesting because that sounds like they were trying to avoid going through the promotion and contacting him directly. But they were told Liger doesn’t use a computer and that they would have to go through Tiger Hattori (who handles a lot of New Japan’s business in English speaking countries). They asked Hattori if Liger could work the NXT show as a one-time only deal and Hattori said Liger would do it if New Japan gave him permission. He noted Regal was a long-time friend. Liger said that he didn’t know Tyler Breeze, but said he must be really good if he learned his basics from Storm. The key of this is that New Japan absolutely was involved in the booking and it was not Liger on his own working without it going through the company.
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Originally Posted by Observer
Mike Tenay’s first podcast, which is a sports betting podcast that has nothing at all to do with pro wrestling, was one of the most downloaded shows in its first week, being just below the established top shows like Steve Austin’s.
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On Sportsmanship:
* Tanahashi vehemently not a hugger, apparently (re post match w/Nakamura)Also doesn't like handshakes in wrestling in general
* Tanahashi 'A post match handshake often undoes all the work and drama you've done in the match, it comes to nothing
* Tana relates an anecdote in ROH, match w/Redragon started with a handshake offered and he just kinda thought 'WTF is this
On AJ Styles:
* Tana ceaselessly puts over Styles, despite saying his hair makes him look like a 'student' and then 'one of the Beatles'
* Tana 'anyone, anywhere in the world can look at AJ and say "he's the best". He is the best in the world. I want to take that title for me'
* Tana puts over AJ's psychology over and above his move set, says he gives people a reason to invest even if there's no backstory to a match.
Elgin:
* They switch to Elgin, and praise his work here. Tana 'his Japanese performances have been way better than in 8 America'
* Tana 'my (ROH) match with Elgin really wasn't that good, and I was wondering whether it was my fault or his'
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From a recent podcast that had Tanahashi as a guest. Quotes of interview translated from Twitter. https://twitter.com/reasonjp
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Originally Posted by Observer
I’m not sure where things stand as far as contracts go, but Rich Swann and Biff Busick are said to be strongly on WWE's radar.
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During today's installment of Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer speculated that Kane will return at Sunday's SummerSlam event to cost Brock Lesnar his match against The Undertaker.
Meltzer mentioned that Kane would come back to seek revenge on Brock "breaking" his leg before he was written off WWE television to film an upcoming movie. He said that if Taker is going to play the heel role and get a victory over The Beast, this would be the way to book it
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Only being speculated as a possible idea if the goal was to bring back Kane in a meaningful way and have Taker turn heel. Scott Hall on Twitter also felt the same way in how the match might end. https://twitter.com/SCOTTHALLNWO/sta...45522238095360
Some other sheet news includes:
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