Daily Update: ESPY Awards, WWE SmackDown, Stephanie Vaquer

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This Week’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter

The new issue of the Observer is up on the site now.  Among the stories covered are:

  • Lots of news on John Cena’s retirement tour
  • What plans are made and what are yet to be made
  • WWE marketing of Cena
  • The Ric Flair and Lou Thesz records
  • Who actually held the most world title reigns
  • The 15 biggest drawing cards in North American history
  • Cena’s early career
  • The Stephanie Vaquer timeline and why everything happened the way it did
  • SummerSlam top seven matches
  • Money in the Bank coverage
  • Unique poll result
  • Business notes on the show
  • PPV updates on Money in the Bank,  Forbidden Door, Double or Nothing and Diaz vs. Masvidal
  • Dana White talks about two giant deals from the past and why they fell through at the last minute
  • NXT Heatwave coverage  
  • All In update and business notes
  • Explaining the decline in cable television and how AEW compares to that
  • The most detailed look at  the TV ratings for all wrestling and MMA shows including competition, one-year comparisons and segment-by-segment.
  • Weekly TV placings for the top wrestling shows
  • Mistico  vs. Chris Jericho
  • G-1 updates
  • Oldest still-living major world champion agrees to come back for one last match
  • Notes on the Marigold PV show
  • Update on Kevin Sullivan
  • Second oldest living wrestler passes away, career dates back to the 1940s
  • Historical wrestling landmark about to be torn down
  • Major matches in Europe
  • Update on AEW TV negotiations
  • Lots of health updates on WWE stars
  • International TV ratings and streaming numbers and what wrestler in main events makes a 31% positive difference in AEW international numbers
  • Studying the changes in submissions in UFC by the decade
  • Ronda Rousey praises Dana White and Paul Heyman
  • WWE talking new belts update

This Week’s Wresting Observer Newsletter Back Issue

Friday Update

  • Garrett and I recorded today’s Observer Radio show earlier today, talking about John Cena, WWE house shows, AEW Decision making, Stephanie Vaquer, Dynamite & NXT ratings, Mistico vs. Jericho and even NFL football rights. Bryan and I will be back over the weekend with tons of shows from around the world to talk about.
  • Sean O’Malley got the  ESPY award announced last night for Best UFC Fighter, beating out Alex Peeira, Islam Makhachev and Zhang Weili. ESPN dropped the WWE awards from the program this year. It was kind of cringe having them but it was cool for WWE to be on that platform.
  • Smackdown tonight in Worcester, MA has Tiffany Stratton celebrating her Money in the Bank win, Johnny Gargano & Tommaso Ciampa defend the WWE tag titles against Grayson Waller & Austin Theory, Nia Jax vs. Michin and Apollo Crews & Baron Corbin vs. Angel & Berto. They had 9,100 tickets out as of this morning. A sellout in that arena for a TV configuration legit would be about 10,400 so they will be close to if not sold out.
  • As noted elsewhere, WWE will be debuting Stephanie Vaquer at tomorrow night’s Arena Ciudad show. This could change but as of today, WWE is not planning on changing her name.
  • Rampage at 10 p.m. Eastern on TNT tonight:
  • Shane Taylor & Lee Moriarty & Anthony Ogogo vs. Top Flight & Action Andretti
  • Roderick Strong vs. Ben Bishop
  • Komander vs. Rey Fenix vs. AR Fox vs. Angelico
  • Thunder Rose vs. Rachael Ellering
  • Malakai Black & Brody King vs. Tony Nese & Ariya Daivari

We’re looking for reports on these weekend shows:
*Smackdown in Worcester, MA (dark matches only)
*MLW tonight in St. Petersburg FL
*NXT tonight in Sebring, FL
*WWE tomorrow night at Arena Ciudad in Mexico City  
*NOAH tomorrow at  Budokan  Hall
*Marigold tomorrow at Sumo Hall
*WWE Sunday at Arena Monterrey
We’re looking for results, finishes and highlights to dave@wrestlingobserver.com

  • We’re doing our only weekend poll for New Japan Fantastica Mania tomorrow night in San Jose, CA, 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
  • The NOAH show with A.J. Styles vs. Naoamichi Marufuji starts at 2 a.m. Eastern tonight and is on Abema Live PV for $31.
  • There was a horse that raced at the Meadowlands on Saturday called Captain Albano.
  • I just did a soundtrack for the re-release of the 1980 movie “Below the Belt” about mid-70s women wrestling. Not sure when it’ll be released but I basically went into a long history of the world of women’s wrestling, the history of women’s wrestling in the U.S. and Japan, Mildred Burke, Moolah, Mae Young, June Byers, Nell Stewart and more. Burke also had a role in the movie which had 70s arena clips with Bruno Sammartino and others.
  • Cyril Gane vs. Alexander Volkov was announced for the 10/26 UFC 308 PPV show.
  • Tracy Cortez missed weight by 0.5 pounds for her main event fight with Rose Namajunas tomorrow in Denver.  So she cut off 0.5 pounds of her hair and made weight.  The show runs from 7 p.m. to about 1 a.m. Eastern with all six hours on ESPN:
  • Even Elder (170) vs. Darrius Flowers (170)
  • Josh Fremd (186) vs. Andre Petrski (185.5)
  • Luana Santos (125) vs. Mariya Agaplva (125)
  • Montel Jacksoni (135) vs. Da’Mon Blackshear (135.5)
  • Jasmine Jasudavicius (125) vs. Fatima Kline (125)
  • Joshua Van (125) vs. Charles Johnson (125.5)
  • Abdul Razak Alhassan (185) vs. Cody Brundage (185.5)
  • Julian Erosa (145.5) vs. Christian Rodriguez (145.5)
  • Gabriel Bonfim (171) vs. Ange Loosa (170)
  • Drew Dober (155) vs. Jean Silva (155)
  • Santiago Ponzinibbio (171) vs. Muslim Salikhov (171)
  • Rose Namajunas (124.75) vs. Tracy Cortez (126)
  • Cody Rhodes has debuted a new talk show called “What Do You  Wanna Talk About?”  Bayley was his first guest.
  • A notable thing when WWE announced 15 new dates for October through December is that they announced no house shows, only shows on Mondays and Fridays.  There are only a few house shows on the schedule, most outside the U.S., between now and the end of the year.
  • Cena was one of many major stars including Kim Karashian,Khloe Karadashian, Nick Jonas, John Mulane, Olivia Munn, Priyanka Chopa, Tony Blair and others who were guests at the wedding of the son  of Asia’s richest man. The wedding cost  about $600 million which included $10 million to fly in Justin Beiber to sing.  (thanks to Barry Werner)
  • MLW from St. Petersburg,  FL, which was just about sold out earlier today will be on YouTube at 9 p.m. Eastern tonight:
  • Matt Riddle vs. Sami Callihan no ropes death match
  • Matthew Justice vs. Mads Krule Krugger in a three stages of destruction match
  • KENTA  vs. Bobby Fish in the Opera Cup tournament
  • Minoru Suzuki vs. AKIRA
  • Janai Kai vs. Gigi Rey for women’s featherweight title
  • Tom Lawlor vs. Jake Crist in the Opera  Cup tournament
  • Atlantis Jr vs. Okumura in the Opera Cup tournament
  • Jeff Cobb turned 42 yesterday.
  • A Ronda Rousey CBS Sports interview:
  • Ronda Rousey wrote a “martial arts romantic comedy” called ‘Expecting the Unexpected’
  • “It’s very autobiographical in a way. It’s the first thing that I ever wrote. It’s what got me into writing creatively… I was trying to write a part for myself. I was like, ‘Well, no one brought ‘Rocky’ to Sylvester Stallone. He went and wrote that.’ So I wrote a part that no one could play better than me. And I ended up writing a story that no one could have written except for me.
  • “It was right when me and my husband were trying to get pregnant the first time. I guess it was delving into the dilemma of bringing a child into a hostile world and I was getting pregnant during COVID and all this stuff. It’s a crazy act of optimism having a kid and bringing them into the world and believing that you can guide them through all of this that’s going on.
  • “It was something that was inside of me as a martial artist and hopeless romantic. It’s very much if you read it, it’s me and my husband and our relationship, but taken to the nth degree. What is more difficult than trying to have a baby and no one’s helping you? Oh, trying to have a baby and everyone’s trying to kill you, but not taking itself too seriously at all and doing a lot of it with a laugh and a wink and a cute little love story.”
  • Choreographing martial arts into the graphic novel: “Fight choreography in comics has not been done in this way before. You don’t often see grappling sequences and stuff like that. It’s a lot of, ‘punch, kick, energy beam!’ I love ‘Dragon Ball Z’ more than anyone, but I’m just saying that in this medium, the action has been limited in how it’s been shown. And so the action that we’ve done in this, I choreographed it, I performed it and I taped it.”
  • Ronda currently trains one student and has plans to open a dojo.: “I’m actually teaching a little bit. I have one student. My student Ricky Liddell was actually cornering against me when I was fighting, but he was my husband’s coach for a while and now he trains the Navy Seals. So I like to say I by proxy I train the Navy Seals now and that’s what I do in my free time… I’ve really started to fall in love with teaching because when you’re a fighter, it’s like, ‘Ooh, this is something genius. This is awesome. This is going in my pocket and I will tell no one until I catch somebody with it.’ Now it’s a different time in my life where I’m really excited to share these things and teach. My husband and I, when our boys graduate from high school in a couple of years, want to move to Hawaii and open a little dojo and have all the local kids come and train for free.”
  • Ronda would approach everything in her career, including how she communicated with fans and the media, differently if concussions weren’t such a big issue.: “If the concussions weren’t an issue, things would’ve happened completely differently. Accumulative neurological injury is something that people don’t talk about in MMA. It’s something that everybody is dealing with at a different pace. I started dealing with it at six years old. I started getting concussions much earlier on in swimming. Two kids doing a backstroke in the other direction crack heads or hit the wall doing the backstroke. I started doing judo at a young age and kept getting concussions regularly and multiple times a year and not being allowed to speak up or say anything about it. As a fighter, you’re not supposed to show any weakness or talk about things like that or the inevitable neurological decline that comes with taking headshots. A lot of people talk about it as if it’s making excuses or weakness.”
  • “I have a whole list for my life to think about, and you’ll never know when you take one hit too many until many decades later. But I also don’t think I would be serving the sport or the division the right way if I stuck around too long. I got to a point where I knew that I literally could not be taking those head impacts and continue to compete at that same level. It doesn’t do the sport any favor. It’s a bad look on women’s MMA in general. I am the representative of that sport.”
  • Rousey’s concern for overall fighter health: “You see that happen to a lot of fighters as they age. It takes less and less and less to be able to hurt them and for them to get knocked out. It’s not just them losing matches. Their brains get injured. That is going to hurt them later on in their life and they end up getting punch drunk or slurring or in wheelchairs and all this stuff and nobody talks about it. Fine, but I wanted to move on to another realm that also had a lot of stigma with concussions and neurological injury. Because I wanted to be able to move on to do something else, it also forced my silence on the subject until I was done with that. Then finally, when I was able to put all that behind me, I could open up about it.”
  • “I wish more people would because the longevity of our fighters is at stake. I want all of these fighters to get old gracefully and hold their grandkids and stuff like that, and not to be another one of those cautionary tales.”
  • Paul Heyman spoke at the Variety & Sportco Sports & Entertainment Summit in Los Angeles earlier today.
  • Jeannie Clarka, the former Lady Blossom, canceled her appearance at The Gathering in Charlotte, NC, due to a serious ankle injury.
  • Arena Mexico tonight has a double main event of a Leyenda de Plata elimination match with Volador Jr., Mascara Dorada, Angel de Oro, Flip Gordon, Brillante Jr., Futuro, Villano III Jr., and Stigma plus Ultimo Guerrero vs. Templario.
  • On Jeopardy last night there was a category “1980s Amateur Wrestling” and the question was:  “Rick and Scott Steiner were 1980s NCAA stars at Michigan before winning seven WCW titles in this event where partners touch and take turns.”  The contestant correctly answered “What is tag team wrestling?” (thanks to Brian Henke)
  • ONE has announced an 11/8 show in Atlanta at the State Farm Arena with Christian Lee defending his lightweight title against Alibeg Rasualov of Turkey.
  • The NWA announced the signing of Kratos & Odinson as a tag team.
  • Ricardo Rodriguez will debut for ESW on 7/20 at the Buffalo Riverworks.  He will be in a 25 man Rumble.