Daily Update: Elimination Chamber fallout, Kaisei Takechi, ratings notes

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This Week’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter

One of the traditional biggest issues of the year, the 2023 awards issue, is out now. Between the awards and news, this is one of the largest issues in our history.

  • 2023 Awards, votes in all categories, placings, comments on the awards as well as a listing of every award winner since 1980.
  • More coverage of stories going back to WWE’s past, including the Paul Roma interview, what Jim Powers said about the claim, what Vince said when he fired Mel Phillips and Terry Garvin, the Pat Patterson situation, another former ring crew member comes forward, Ashley Massaro, John Cena and Randy Orton.
  • Both AEW & WWE establish ratings firsts this past week in a positive way. How WWE did so in a week that originally looked difficult, and how AEW’s record came out of the blue.
  • A look at Elimination Chamber and Revolution, lineups, ticket sales and more.
  • Full coverage of UFC 298, title change, what’s next for the winners and all the business notes including some telling numbers.
  • Wanderlei Silva in UFC Hall of Fame and a look back at pro wrestlers in MMA that faced him during the glory days of Pride, records Silva still owns, why Silva wasn’t the same fighter in UFC and more.
  • A study of people who buy pro wrestling PPVs from buyers from AEW, WWE and TNA including the best and worst state for each and what that does or doesn’t say about the fan base.
  • Michael Oku vs. Will Ospreay tops an incredible RevPro High Stakes card as well as Ospreay’s farewell to the promotion.
  • Notes on the major FantasticaMania shows.
  • The most detailed look at the ratings, including demos, competition, placing for the night and week and comparisons to one year ago.
  • Stardom PPV notes.
  • New Japan & Stardom financial info and how the business is doing.
  • Third generation of one of the biggest legends in history
  • More on NWA deal with CW
  • More on the attempted TNA purchase by Scott D’Amore
  • Notes on the hiring of Jennifer Pepperman by AEW
  • More on the proposed Ric Flair movie
  • Forbidden Door update
  • Notes on timing and taping changes for upcoming weeks and AEW
  • More on the AEW deal with CMLL
  • Update on Vikingo injury
  • Advance ticket sales for upcoming AEW & WWE major shows
  • International TV ratings and streaming numbers
  • Update on a major celebrity talked about for Mania
  • WWE injury updates
  • More on how the WrestleMania main event angle came into play

This Week’s Retro Observer Newsletter

Sunday Update

We did our weekend show last night talking about Elimination Chamber, Collision, New Japan and MMA on a busy Saturday as well as the Observer Awards. Garrett and I did a full Observer Awards show Friday covering all the categories with our different thoughts, agreements, disagreements and explanations.

Coming off the Chamber show, those at WWE have confirmed both bouts, AJ Styles vs. LA Knight and Logan Paul vs. Randy Orton, that yesterday’s show appeared to set up. Both are right now listed for Mania.

People were raving about the pro wrestling debut of Kaisei Takechi, part of the Rampage from Exile Tribe, a subgroup of Exile Tribe, a J-Pop song and dance group. He worked the DDT show at Korakuen Hall and drew the company’s biggest Korakuen Hall crowd in years. I haven’t seen it but was told this was among the best celebrity debuts ever in wrestling. Takechi has a great physique, a good look and is a great athlete, noted for great looking dropkicks and hurricanranas. He teamed with Yuki Ueno & Shunma Katsumata vs. Tetsuya Endo & Hideki Okatani & Takeshi Masada in the main event. Was told it was an excellent match going 20:19 and designed to make him look good. We were told by many both live and watching on streaming that the heat was incredible for him. (thanks to Gerard Di Trolio and others).

As far as weekend matches go, the stuff from Chamber and the Sammy Guevara vs. Powerhouse Hobbs match on Collision was the best stuff ‘ve seen so far. The DDT match and Suwama & Hideki Suzuki vs. Kento Miyahara & Yuma Aoyagi from All Japan and Daiki Inaba & Masa Kitamiya vs. Alpha Wolf & Dragon Bate from NOAH also got high praise to us.

We’ve got some ratings notes that because of holiday delays and such we didn’t get into the Observer this week. Dynamite on Wednesday at 0.29 and not only was first in cable, but TBS in the two hours beat every single television station except NBC for that period. It beat FOX outright (0.20), and both ABC and CBS did 0.28. Each beat Dynamite at times in the two hours, but not overall.

So from last week, Smackdown was the No. 1 network show of the week, Raw was the No. 1 show including network shows on Monday night, and NXT was third in cable in its time slot. So it was a huge week for wrestling on television overall.

We did get prelim notes on Collision and SmackDown, and both will be down from last week. Even though Elimination Chamber took place at a different time than Collision, we’ve seen the days of major WWE events, even when not head-to-head, hurt Collision numbers because once you’ve watched three plus hours of wrestling on a day, for a lot of people, that’s all the wrestling you want to see that day.

We’re looking for your thoughts on Elimination Chamber and both New Japan shows in Sapporo, so you can leave a thumbs up, thumbs down or thumbs in the middle along with a best and worst match to dave@wrestlingobserver.com

Regarding Google searches for the weekend, Elimination Chamber got 200,000 searches which is normal for a WWE non-big four show which indicates usual interest. It was in the Friday listing at No. 2. The UFC show was No. 5 yesterday with 100,000. The PFL vs,. Bellator event was No. 15 with 20,000 searches.

Expect more UFC and WWE crossover going forward. For example, besides Michael Chandler on Raw, Tai Tuivasa of UFC was shown on the WWE show in Australia and Rey Mysterio was shown on the UFC show in Mexico City. Both groups are working together more and more now.

The new season on A&E starts tonight with WWE Rivals at 8 p.m. on HHH vs. The Rock with Freddie Prinze Jr., Johnny Gargano, John Layfield and Kevin Owens interviewed. At 9 p.m. is WWE Biography on Randy Orton.

A note from the show last night when talking about the history of wrestling at the Greensboro Coliseum and how Sting’s sellout of the show this week will be his first Greensboro Coliseum sellout in the main event of his career, WCW never ran the building as they ran Winston-Salem. After Crockett Promotions sold, there were no shows in the building until WWE started running it in 1997 with Steve Austin and it was an exclusive WWF arena during the late 90s. (thanks to Bruce Buchanan).

Results are elsewhere on the site but Magnus and Rugido from CMLL wrestled last night in Springfield, MO for the Rampage show for this coming Friday. Rugido faces Claudio Castagnoli and Magnus faces Matt Sydal, plus Riho returns against Trish Adora. Was told there was a lot of good action for next week’s show.(thanks to Paul Dziuba)

Nic Nemeth defends the IWGP Global title on the 3/8 TNA Sacrifice show. He also wanted to defend against Hiroshi Tanahashi, even though Tanahashi is coming off the quick loss to Matt Riddle on Friday and suffered an ankle injury in that match. Nemeth said he was taking that title everywhere. Nemeth appears to be facing Steve Maclin based on TNA TV results from yesterday.

There was an angle at yesterday’s New Japan show where Jack Perry sent in a tape to challenge Shota Umino, who then accepted. I had figured that match for the Chicago show but that hasn’t been officially announced.

From last night’s show, it was Brandon Royval who beat Brandon Moreno via split decision, not the other way around. Royval is not likely to face Alexandre Pantoja for the flyweight title. Judge Michael Bell gave Royal rounds two through four. Judge Junichiro Kamiyo gave Moreno rounds one, two, three and five and had him up 49-46. Chris Lee was the deciding judge who gave Royal rounds one, two and four. The only rounds the judges were in unison were four for Royval and five for Moreno. 74 percent of the media scores were for Royval.

There was a crazy fight in the stands at yesterday’s UFC show in Mexico City. The issue was a fight started, it went a long time and no security was there breaking it up. Dana White said, “I mean, that never happens, literally never happens. It happened here in Mexico City. The crazy thing about that fight, when that fight broke out, it felt like it kept going forever. So I ran over there and I was watching it. Nobody stopped it. I was waiting for security to come in, and they just let them go until it was over.” He said he didn’t think it was a bad look for the UFC, that it happened and it was over.

UFC has officially announced UFC 303 on 6/29 in Las Vegas at the T-Mobile Arena, which is a date everyone has known for months. They also announced UFC 306 for 9/14 at the Sphere in Las Vegas, which I believe will be the first sports event in that arena. I believe it’s the most expensive arena in the country to book. Dana White had talked about running the building during Mexican Independence Day weekend for some time.

Grayson Waller did an interview with Fox Sports Australia.

Bodyslam Wrestling from yesterday in Copenhagen, Denmark before 500 fans: Peter Olisander b Michael Fynne, RandersPagne won over Sinners Cult, Toby Zane & Buster and Tank to become top contenders for the Bodyslam tag titles, Carlos Zamora b Pete Phoenix, Aliss Ink (who recently worked for Stardom) b Safire Reed to keep the Bodyslam singles and women’s title Sunshine Machine b Easy Loverz to keep the Bodyslam tag titles, Ender Kara b Jordan Oliver in 36:04 to keep the Big Japan jr. title (thanks to Kristian Buus Nielsen)