DAILY UPDATE
Latest News:
MLW Underground video & results: Ikuto Hidaka vs. Amazing Red
Tonight on Twitch: SummerSlam post-show with Bryan & Vinny
WWE Main Event results: Murphy vs. Carrillo, Belair vs. Kay
WWE Network notes: Chronicle, Day Of, Broken Skull Sessions
AEW Dynamite video highlights: New TNT Champion crowned
Breezango become number one contenders to NXT Tag Team titles
Jericho vs. Cassidy Mimosa Mayhem match set for AEW All Out
Karrion Kross wins NXT title, suffers shoulder injury
Tommaso Ciampa returning to NXT TV
AEW reveals lineup for next week’s Dynamite
Latest Audio:
DragonKing Dark: Distrust of government and each other 8/23
WOR: Smackdown, Takeover, AEW TV, ratings, tons more! 8/23
WON NEWSLETTER: August 24, 2020 Observer Newsletter: UFC 252 review, Sonya Deville stalker incident, more
A big week of changes in the industry is looked at in the new issue of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, including the first look at what AEW television fans would do regarding NXT if there was no AEW and which fan base is more likely to watch and which fan base passed on the show.
Our lead story looks at Daniel Cormier vs. Stipe Miocic and UFC 252. We look at the key moments of the fight, the scoring, Jon Jones, the greatest heavyweight of all-time, PPV numbers, television ratings, Sean O’Malley, match-by-match coverage with poll results and more.
Also in this issue:
The history of Phillip Thomas and his attempt to kidnap Daria Berenato (Sonya Deville), his obsession, and full details as to what happened in a scary story.
Multiple shows benig canceled due to COVID, as well as updating the situation in Japan and Mexico and how each country has handled it differently.
WWE moving into the Amway Center, renaming it the Thunderdome for all television, how the idea happened and comments regarding the new location.
The reality of numbers, as well as a look at this week’s major WWE shows.
Renee Young leaving WWE, how she first got into wrestling, her past and hat looks to be her future.
AEW selling tickets for its television tapings, the current schedule, live vs. tape on ratings and what shows Tony Khan studied for ideas on hwo to open.
Next round of New Japan major shows including the King of Pro Wrestling champinoship tournament.
WWE talks, Goldberg and Mysterio contracts, a discussion of the Patrick Clark situation, why NXT isn’t at the Amway Center, why WWE removed a number of documentaries off the WWE Network, update on WWE creative, international TV ratings, WWE star places in fitness competition, how a new law could affect classificiation ofWWE employees and what it means, WWE star looking to at doing a new TV show, most-watched shows on the WWE Network and market value of the WWE right now.
A feature on the life of John “Xavier” Bedoya, the second ROH champion, including the early days of ROH, his comebacks wth the group, post ROH career and his attempts to get into MMA.
CMLL’s opening in September and plans for its anniversary show including what seven championshps wil be on the line.
Ratings of all the major shows, the key demos and quarters for AEW and WWE, what happened head-to-head and what can be learned from them.
Results of all the major pro wrestling events around the world over the past week.
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SUNDAY NEWS UPDATE
Bryan and I have a show from last night covering NXT and AEW and have another show tonight covering NXT and SummerSlam. Garrett Gonzalez and I have a new 100 minute interview with Jon Moxley that people have been very happy with also on the site.
Dana White will be speaking Thursday at the Republican National Convention.
The deal with Thunder Rosa, the NWA women’s champion, challenging Hikaru Shida for the AEW title on the 9/5 PPV was a deal that Tony Khan worked out with Billy Corgan, so it’s not an indication of anything more and the NWA is still targeting a weekly iPPV schedule with FITE TV.
SummerSlam for tonight with a 6 p.m. pre show and 7 p.m. main show on the WWE Network. Don’t forget we’ve got polls for both SummerSlam & Takeover last night, thumbs up, down or middle, best & worst match to [email protected]
Some late changes to the show are Braun Strowman vs. Bray Wyatt is now falls count anywhere and Mandy Rose vs. Sonya Deville has changed from hair vs. hair to loser leaves town.
Drew McIntyre vs. Randy Orton for WWE title – There has been talk in both directions regarding the finish here. The two should have an excellent match. Orton is -210 to come out the winner.
Strowman vs. Wyatt for Universal title – Wyatt is a -280 favorite. Thus far the matches with these two have not been good, but with falls count anywhere they have far more latitude so it should be the best of them thus far.
Sasha Banks vs. Asuka for Raw women’s title – Depending on the match story and atmosphere, this has a chance to be great. Asuka is a -140 favorite to win since they’ve been teasing Asuka vs. Shayna Baszler for the title.
Bayley vs. Asuka for Smackdown women’s title – This match goes first of the two women’s title matches. Should be good. Bayley is right now listed as a slight -130 favorite.
Rose vs. Deville loser leaves town – Rose is a -540 favorite to win since Deville has had the edge in most of the stories.
Dominik Mysterio vs. Seth Rollins in a street fight with Rey and Murphy in the corners. Real big test for Mysterio in his first pro wrestling match being in such a high profile bout. Rollins is the -175 favorite to win.
Apollo Crews vs. MVP for U.S. title – Crews is a -175 favorite to retain. It appears they are building toward Crews vs. Lashley.
Street Profits vs. Angel Garza & Andrade for tag titles – Andrade & Garza are -210 to win the titles. When the program was first set up, that was the plan.
With another PPV in seven days, expect some major angle or finish or something out of one of the main bouts tonight. At least that would make sense
Regarding the Thursday AEW show that will have a paid attendance of around 500, as it sold out instantly, they are taping just one week (Dynamite & Dark). They have a huge security presence scheduled to enforce mask wearing in the audience and to make sure there are no situations where fans get out of their chairs if there is a brawl and congregate in a cluster to watch anything. Tony Khan studied both GCW and Warrior Wrestling and how they handled live crowds and both the red flags and how it was handled well. There is always a risk for any company running, even in a place like Japan or Australia, and obviously more in Florida. The attempt is by going outdoors and keeping groups apart with only 10 percent capacity and only seats in the 200s and 300s for fans to make it as safe as can be done. Every week is an experiment.
Karrion Kross’ injury from last night early in the match was a separated acromioclavicular joint in his right shoulder. In short, a shoulder separation. He is having an MRI on Monday to determine the damage and treatment.
UFC did officially announce the Colby Covington vs. Tyron Woodley fight that has been talked about for years. It is scheduled for 9/19, which is not a PPV.
WWE
Mauro Ranallo missed last night’s show due to a family issue.
There was a very interesting interchange on yesterday’s Talking Smack between Miz and Big E that we’ve written about for the next issue, having to do with E complaining about Kofi Kingston’s treatment since he lost to Brock Lesnar. Miz was a last-minute fill-in for Xavier Woods on the show.
There were some FOX affiliates that ran sports on Friday so the prelim Smackdown number will include that. The actual number won’t be out until Tuesday, but it’s a virtual certainty the number will be the best the show has done for months due to the Thunderdome curiosity. Even with very tough competition on Monday, the belief is Thunderdome plus being the day after SummerSlam will lead to the best Raw ratings in a while. .
NXT U.K. crew was brought together this week for training and a lot of tapings of the U.K. show at the BT Sport Studios so there will be new episodes done. The new episodes start airing on 9/17.
Steve Austin just taped a future episode of Broken Skull Sessions with Jerry Lawler.
UFC
Media scores for the Frankie Edgar vs. Pedro Munhoz fight were 86 percent for Munhoz, even though Edgar won a split decision with the three judges. It was a great fight and I had Munhoz winning by enough that I was generally shocked it was even a split decision, let alone Edgar winning. Derek Clearly gave Edgar rounds two, three and five. Eric Colon gave Edgar one, two and five. Sal D’Amato was the lone judge for Munhoz and only gave Edgar round two.
The planned Ovince Saint Preux vs. Alonzo Menifield semifinal last night was canceled when OSP tested positive for COVID-19. The positive test came back the day of the fight. There are reports he had another positive test earlier in the week but then his next test was negative. OSP was feeling fine all week.
MISCELLANEOUS
Daga and Tessa Blanchard were married over the weekend in Tijuana. Among those attending were Brian Cage, Melissa Santos and Taya Valkyrie.
There is no date either officially or unofficially for Kenny Omega vs. Tetsuya Endo or Jon Moxley vs. KENTA matches that the Japanese wrestlers challenged for this weekend. The promotions and wrestlers want those matches and neither is just a grandstand challenge, but the issue is the ability to make them happen given restrictions. The idea everyone is working with is that at some point they will happen, and were scheduled for a long time to happen this year, but it’s obviously been a weird year.
Inside the Ropes has announced the launch of a new pro wrestling magazine with Bill Apter, Findlay Martin, James Dixon, Keith Elliot Grenberg, Brian Elliot and more involved.
Last night’s UFC show did 100,000 searches and was No,. 5. Black Adam, the character Dwayne Johnson is going to play, was No. 11 also at 100,000. Nothing else made the top Google searches last night or even all week, meaning as far as general public interest, Thunderdome, NXT Takeover or yesterday’s AEW TV (regular wrestling TV shows very rarely make the list) for this past week did not crack the top 20.
A correction on the 8/24 Observer is the story on the death of Jose Ficca. Ficca did not wrestle in Australia as George Gouliovas. They were two different wrestlers. The misunderstand where people thought they were the same guy is that Ficca was Golden Hawk in 1974-75 in the U.S. and Gouliovas was Golden Hercules in Australia in 1975.. The two actually didn’t look similar; both were pretty powerful looking guys.
Just for a perspective of ratings of sports as compared to Smackdown, last night’s NBA playoff game on ABC did 2.97 million viewers on the overnights (not including West Coast and 1.1 in 18-49. The NHL came on NBC did 1.23 million and 0.3 and the boxing on FOX did 644,000 and 0.2. So Smackdown even at its lowest is well ahead of two of those three, and if AEW was on a network on Saturday night, it would easily beat two of those three in 18-49 and boxing for sure and NHL probably overall.
AIW on 9/6 in Indianapolis for a Noon show at White River State Park has Swoggle vs. Levi Everett, Erick Stevens vs. Lee Moriarty, Ethan Page vs. Tom Lawlor and more.
The premiere of “You Cannot Kill David Arquette, a documentary about his return to pro wrestling took place over the weekend at the Vineland Drive-In Theater in Los Angeles.
Black Label Pro from last night in Crown Point, IL: Josh Bishop b Gary Jay, Trey Miguel b Tre Lamar, Dan the Dad b Cabana Man Dan, Jake Manning and Colin Delaney, Effy b Gangrel, Jake Something b Chris Masters to keep BLP title, Billie Starza b Elayna Balck, Big Beef b Levi Everett, Kylie Rae b Blake Christian to keep Midwest title.
Daily Pro Wrestling History: CM Punk wins World title at SummerSlam 2009
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