[Emperor Smeat]

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Originally Posted by Observer For the third time in five weeks, SmackDown posted its lowest viewership total of the year, as this week's July 3 episode averaged 2.013 million viewers. That's actually the second-lowest number since the brand split, trailing only a November 2016 edition of the show that went up against coverage of the United States Presidential election ... Year-to-year, the show was down 14 percent from last year's July 4 edition of SmackDown (which featured a heavily-promoted return of John Cena), the third straight week the show has been down double digits. It also retained just 74 percent of the Raw audience from the night before, which was actually up from the previous week.

Originally Posted by Oserver If you are still feel patriotic following the 4th of July, this week’s Hidden Gem on the WWE Network has your back. This week’s upload pretty much has everything regarding Lex Luger’s big push in the summer of 1993: the “I’ll Be Your Hero” music video, footage of Luger touring the United States on the Lex Express bus, b-roll footage of Luger’s babyface turn on the USS Intrepid on July 4, 1993 where slammed Yokozuna and the WWE title match at that year's SummerSlam. The footage runs slightly over the three hour mark. The patriotic push came after Luger had an initial middling run as a heel, the Narcissist. The original plan was for him to defeat Yokozuna for the WWE title at SummerSlam 1993, but the win was pushed to WrestleMania X. By the time that show rolled around, plans changed again and ultimately Luger never got over in the way WWE was hoping for. Luger jumped to WCW in 1995 and won the WCW title once before the company folded in 2001.

Link: https://twitter.com/WWENetworkChron/...52348420739073

Originally Posted by Observer WWE will be announcing its second quarter business results on 7/26. Among the key items will be the value of the WWE Saudi Arabian deal, and how well network subscriptions held up after WrestleMania.

Originally Posted by Observer/PWI Indies Roundup: The two New Japan shows from the U.K. from the weekend are now up on both the Revolution Pro and New Japan World streaming sites. River City Wrestling tomorrow night in San Antonio at the Turner Club with Nick Aldis vs. Lance Hoyt for the NWA world title and Abyss vs. Joey Spector in Monster's Ball match for the River City title, and Rebel Tanea Brooks vs. Paige Turner. AAW on 7/21 in Merrionette Park, IL at 115 Bourbon Street has ACH & Davey Vega & Mat Fichett vs. David Starr & Eddie Kingston & Trevor Lee, Kimber Lee vs. Su Yung, Dave & Jake Crist vs. Brody King & Jimmy Jacobs, MJF vs. Ace Romero in a street fight and Rey Fenix vs. Dezmond Xavier. Deonna Purrazzo faces Kylie Rae at the Rise TV tapings on Sunday in Naperville, IL. Stardom announced there will be a Stardom & Rise tournament on 7/14 in Tokyo at Shinkiba First Ring. Two matches announced are Tam Nakano vs. Kikyo and Nasuko Tora vs. Britt Baker. The Bakersfield Dome, which has housed pro wrestling for decades, is being demolished and replaced with an immigration detention center. The ITV World of Sport wrestling show looks to be debuting on 7/21 in the 5 p.m. Saturday time slot. Due to a carriage charge dispute, El Rey at press time is off Sling TV.

The latest announced Impact special set for the company's Twitch.TV channel is Sunday 7/29 at 3 PM as North Carolina's AML will host an event featuring their regulars vs. Impact stars at the Triad in Greensboro, NC. Set for the event: *Moose vs. Jaxon Stone. *Eddie Edwards vs. Chris Payne. *AML Tag Team Champions The Extreme Horsemen vs. The Heavenly Bodies. *Matt Sydal vs. Caleb Konley. *Fallah Bahh vs. Zane Dawson with George South. *Suicide vs. Brandon Scott vs. Devin Driscoll vs. Sean Denny vs. Gifted One Yanya: Fan's Choice. *Eli Drake vs. Axton Ray. *Allie vs. Kristen Stadtlander.

Originally Posted by Post Wrestling Lavie Margolin, who is the author of “Trumpmania: Vince McMahon, WWE and the making of America’s 45th President”, has compiled data to assess Ring of Honor’s business at the mid-way point of 2018. The statistics were compiled through the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, Wrestling Data, and the Internet Wrestling Database. It compares the numbers in each category to the first six months of each year of Ring of Honor’s existence dating back to 2002. ROH’s average attendance for the first six months of 2018 is a record high 1,412 per show, greatly assisted by Supercard of Honor over WrestleMania weekend that drew ROH’s highest attendance in their history with approximately 6,000 people (Margolin has a figure of 5,879 for the show). The average is up 27.7% from the same period in 2017 and up 52% from 2016. In looking at the chart, one notable drop came in 2012. When the Sinclair purchase of the company went down in May 2011, they averaged 823 for the first six months of 2011 and one year later dropped to 671 per show. Total attendance for the first six months of 2018 is listed at 32,484 (it is listed as total attendance for the six months and not a breakdown of paid and free), which is a giant leap of 42% from the same period in 2017. Again, Supercard of Honor is a big factor for the jump as they drew 6,000 for their biggest card of all-time, which was a net gain of 2,500 from the Supercard of Honor event in 2017 in Orlando. That said, even if Supercard of Honor drew the identical number as 2017, you would still have a record attendance number this year by a substantial margin from the previous high of 24,307 in 2017.

Link: https://twitter.com/Laviemarg/status...81550016679937

Originally Posted by Observer The awareness locally isn’t there. Really, none of my friends who might be interested in the Cow Palace show had any awareness of such a show. There was a Japan Day festival in San Francisco on 7/1 and there was no presence of anything publicizing the show and that would have hit a huge audience. One of our readers went through Japan Town while there and said aside from postcards in a display rack off a side alley in one mall, a poster on bulletin wall outside a market and a full page ad on Japan weekly, there was no publicity for the show in San Francisco, and we’ve heard or seen nothing in San Jose. One of the Japanese video store owners who is a pro wrestling fan had no idea there was a show at the Cow Palace, and he knew about the Long Beach shows

Originally Posted by Observer Michael Elgin, who has done limited indie dates in months, was back doing a few dates in the U.S. this past weekend. Because of social media reaction to him, he has done very little U.S. wrestling this year. New Japan didn’t even book him on their U.S. shows with the idea of a fear of a social media backlash. Even a number of promoters who wanted him on shows, including one national office, saw the reaction and tried to steer clear of it. He had worked a few U.S. shows and several Canadian shows without any incident or crowd issues but they fell under the radar and weren’t shows pushed hard through regular social media channels

Originally Posted by Observer Regarding rumors of WWE buying Evolve and putting it on the network, there have been talks of that from the start of the relationship between the two brands. It could happen soon or it could never happen. WWE allowing them usage of Adam Cole, but not on the WWN streaming service, isn’t a signal of anything because they’ve done that before. Whether it’s ICW, Progress or Evolve, WWE will put some or all on the network as soon as Vince McMahon makes that call. He’s gone back-and-forth on it for close to two years, including many times where he said yes and then changed his mind. If you understand the mindset, what would have spurred it on is if Flo Slam was a success, because it was ITV talking about doing wrestling in the U.K. that spurred the deals there, and FloSlam when it kicked off may have sped things up, but ITV then cooled down after the first taping and seemingly disappeared, and Flo Slam didn’t get off to a big start and is no longer around

Originally Posted by Observer Rollins was interviewed by the Asbury Park Press for an upcoming show. He noted that the attempts for the full-fledged Shield reunion tour kept falling apart, first when Reigns got the mumps, injuries that changed around shows and most notably due to the Ambrose surgery for a torn triceps. “It started off great I thought. The reconciliation over the summer, myself and Ambrose winning the tag team titles, and then bringing Roman into the fold was really well done and a lot of fun and exciting. And then, the mumps happened, and there’s nothing you can really do about that, so that threw a real wrench into the plans. And Ambrose got hurt, so what can you do? That’s part of the business. That’s part of the game. One thing that’s exciting about it is I think it leaves us a lot of room for future Shield reunions, so that’s cool to see. If we get an opportunity to do that at some point down the road, that would be great. You know, we haven’t done it, and thrown it away and wasted it. It just stuff happens, you can’t predict those variables of people getting sick or injured.” He said he hoped that Ambrose would be back by the end of the year. He had surgery in December so one would think he should be back a lot sooner than that, as originally they estimated September and later I’d heard they were hoping for August

Originally Posted by Observer The top ten most-watched shows on the WWE Network for the past week were: 1. Ride Along with Rusev, English and Lana; 2. 2018 Money in the Bank; 3. NXT on 6/27; 4. UK from London second show; 5. UK from London first show; 6. Something Else to Wrestle with from 6/27 on Big Evil Undertaker; 7. The Hardys: Woken; 8. NXT Takeover Chicago; 9. 205 Live from 6/26; 10. WrestleMania 2018. I’m not sure why, if there was a podcast about it or a story, but the 1998 King of the Ring PPV cracked the top 20 and it’s rare for something in that era ever to do that

Some other stuff includes:

• Website DigitalSpy.com had a recent interview with Goldberg talking about his last run in the WWE. http://www.digitalspy.com/tv/wwe/int...-brock-lesnar/
• Rumor going around the net hints that Rey Mysterio has recently signed a 3-year deal with the WWE. Source of the rumor is a bit sketchy in terms of reliability.
• Also rumors of an official announcement regarding NXT going to FS1 were recently debunked by the Observer. According to Meltzer, the talks between FOX and WWE were only for Smackdown based on his sources close to the situation. He did hint it is possible future talks could result in a separate tv deal for NXT.
• According to the Observer, Toni Storm's WWE contract is only a WWE UK one and not also a NXT one due to her recently revealing her schedule for the rest of the year includes a lot of events in Germany.
• Recent episode of In This Corner podcast show had Bret Hart as the guest talking about CM Punk's recent defamation lawsuit and the time he punched Vince after the Montreal Screwjob incident occurred. http://www.wrestlinginc.com/wi/news/...vince-mcmahon/

Some stuff from TPWW Frontpage:

• Okada vs. Scurll and Three New Names Added to All In
• How Much Is WWE Paying Its NXT UK Wrestlers?
• Injury Updates: Nakamura, Wyatt, Riott, Lorcan, Sullivan
• Kenny Omega Says It’d Be “Missed Opportunity” if He Didn’t Wrestle in WWE