Daily Update: Heavy Machinery, Riddle ARRIVAL episode, AEW

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F4W NEWSLETTER: Figure Four Weekly: All Elite Wrestling becomes official

As the clock struck midnight and we entered 2019, All Elite Wrestling finally became official. Weeks of speculation culminated with AEW being formally announced at the end of a Being the Elite episode that was released at midnight Pacific time on January 1, 2019. With that came the announcement of Double or Nothing, which is the sequel to All In. While there are plenty of questions about what the roster for AEW will look like, the initial group of wrestlers has started to come into focus. 

WON NEWSLETTER (ONLINE ONLY): January 7, 2019 Observer Newsletter special: History of the Tokyo Dome – NO HARD COPY AVAILABLE

When the Tokyo Dome opened on March 17, 1988, the idea of pro wrestling there wasn’t even an idea.

The Dome was built to be the new modern home of two baseball teams, the Yomiuri Giants of the Central League, the team of Shigeo Nagashima and Sadaharu Oh years earlier, the unofficial national team that had all its games on NTV, and sold out every game. The Dome held 48,316 fans for baseball, but for years, every single Giants game announced the attendance as 56,000. The other team, the Nippon Ham Fighters of the Pacific League, which played there through the 2003 season, were the ones that the average person could get tickets to see.

The idea was baseball and concerts, the Rolling Stones (who have 19 Tokyo Dome sellouts), Michael Jackson (who sold 405,000 tickets for nine dates in December 1988), U2, Madonna and Japanese artists. But while it has housed numerous sporting events, including NFL and Major League Baseball, with the exception of baseball and concerts, it’s probably best known for pro wrestling.

Pro wrestling was still huge on television back then. All Japan, headed by Giant Baba, was a fixture on Nippon TV, one of the major networks. New Japan, on TV-Asahi, had matches airing in prime time. 

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WEDNESDAY NEWS UPDATE

WWE

  • Heavy Machinery worked a dark match after SmackDown in Jacksonville, Florida last night. They defeated The Colons. WWE has been hyping that Heavy Machinery will debut soon, and EC3 and Lacey Evans (who are also part of this group of NXT call-ups) also worked dark matches before Raw in Orlando on Monday.
  • AJ Styles defeated WWE Champion Daniel Bryan by DQ in another post-SmackDown dark match last night. Bryan got disqualified when he low blowed Styles, then Styles stood tall after the match.
  • Chris Jericho, who has signed with All Elite Wrestling, was removed from WWE’s intro video for this week’s SmackDown.
  • Episode five of the WWE Performance Center’s ARRIVAL video series on Matt Riddle focuses on Riddle’s NXT in-ring debut.
  • Samoa Joe launched a YouTube channel and posted a vlog from this week’s house show loop and SmackDown.
  • Carmella and R-Truth are visiting WWE headquarters in Stamford, Connecticut today. In storyline, Carmella and Truth received an “all-expenses paid vacation to anywhere in the world” for winning Mixed Match Challenge — and Truth picked WWE headquarters.
  • Meet and greets with Johnny Gargano, The Street Profits and Fabian Aichner will be available to purchase at EVOLVE 119 in Brooklyn, New York on January 18. Adam Cole and The Street Profits will also have meet and greets at EVOLVE 121 in Atlanta, Georgia on February 15 and EVOLVE 122 in Concord, North Carolina on February 16.
  • WWE uploaded last year’s women’s Royal Rumble match to their YouTube account.
  • The Mirror has an interview with Bobby Roode.
  • Poppy’s “X” is an official theme song for NXT TakeOver: Phoenix.

Pro Wrestling

UFC/MMA

Daily Pro Wrestling History: WWE New Year’s Revolution 2005

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