Daily Update: Observer Hall of Fame, lineups for this week
Daily Update
Latest News
- Column: The slow death of WWE house shows and why ‘C & D’ towns still matter
- WWE announces new recruit for ID program
- Tony Khan believes Darby Allin will have ‘long and fruitful career’ despite high-risk style
- Rhea Ripley: WWE women have overcome a lot of obstacles
- Iron Survivor Challenge qualifying matches official for WWE NXT
- Juila Hart vignette airs on AEW Collision
Latest Audio
- Wrestling Observer Live: The Bloodline goes to war, AEW builds to Full Gear
- Wrestling Observer Live: WWE Smackdown recap, BJ Bethel with the latest on Grant/McMahon case
- Wrestling Observer Radio: AEW Dynamite vs. WWE NXT ratings analysis
Latest Free YouTube Video
This Week’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter
The new issue of the Wrestling Observer is up on the site right now. It was a huge news week as it’s the largest issue in some time:
- Full coverage of Crown Jewel with the matches, business and interest level
- Thoughts on the programs going forward
- TKO gives its quarterly business update
- Why profits are lower than usual.
- UFC’s media rights deal thoughts
- Talk about the future of Fight Pass
- Revenue for UFC & WWE in different categories
- Stock value
- How much debt TKO currently has
- How the Cung Le lawsuit factors into all this
- More on the show at Sphere
- Thoughts about Dana White and/or Nick Khan getting involved with boxing from Mark Shapiro
- More Netflix plans
- A look at the Wrestle Kingdom lineup
- Where New Japan’s business currently stands
- Upcoming New Japan tag team tournament notes
- Power Struggle coverage, great matches and angles
- NXT and AEW go head-to-head, the most detailed breakdown as to what happened and why
- Where AEW stood in the overall standings that night
- How every quarter did
- Coverage of the Conor McGregor trial going on
- Update on Full Gear, announced matches, other matches, ticket buying interest
- Notes on WWE cuts like Baron Corbin, Indi Hartwell and Tegan Nox.
- Dragon Gates runs a major show
- The most detailed look at the ratings for all the shows this past week, with standings for the night and week, segment-by-segment numbers, and all the competition.
- CMLL to fill the historical middleweight title vacancy by Mistico this week
- Arena Mexico draws the week’s largest crowd for themed show
- Update on El Hijo del Vikingo
- Stardom tag team tournament update
- King of Gate tournament update
- Davey Boy Smith Jr. wins Triple Crown and background of that
- Death of Scorpio Jr.
- Hall of Fame candidate health issue update
- The life of AWA’s Al DeRusha
- Can actual wrestling draw more than 40,000 each to six events over three days. 2028 we’ll get the chance to find out.
- Marko Stunt talks retirement
- Santo retirement tour noes
- Mike Mansury talks AEW production changes for 2025
- All the PPV business updates
- Ricochet talks leaving WWE
- International TV ratings and streaming numbers
- Jon Jones talks Tom Aspinall and why he’s not interested in that ight
- More on the Bruce Prichard and Michael Hayes leave of absences
- WWE scheduling updates
- Yoshhiki Inamura comes to NXT
- WWE signs former Olympic athletes
- Lots of WWE injury updates
- Notes from all the live arena events and the European tour
This Week’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter Back Issue
Sunday Update
- Our weekend show with Garrett Gonzales discussing all the news, including where AEW needs to improve for competition, Wednesday head-to-head, Tyson vs. Paul, and answering a lot of questions, is up. Bryan and I will be back tonight covering the weekend and Hall of Fame news.
- The Hall of Fame Observer issue will be out Thursday night. The issue will have a giant breakdown and story, with nine new inductees this year and notes on how they got in, favorites for next year, and more.
- A thought as I was writing up this issue. Although people will make their marks over the next few years, what current wrestlers who have never been on the ballot could be expected to be contenders or Hall of Famers? There’s the obvious one, but really only one. There is a second who I can see a case for. Usually, there would be a half dozen or more. You either have young guys who maybe in 5-10 years will break out or people who have already been on the ballot.
- NXT on Tuesday has Fallon Henley vs. Kelani Jordan, Cedric Alexander vs. Wes Lee, Cora Jade vs. Sol Ruca, and Adrianna Rizzo vs. Nikkita Lyons. Ava will also make an announcement about the NXT Tag Team titles. There will be Iron Survivor qualifiers on the show.
- AEW on Wednesday has Adam Page & Christian Cage vs. Jay White & Juice Robinson, Konosuke Takeshita vs. Adam Cole non-title, Roderick Strong vs. Lance Archer falls count anywhere, Swerve Strickland vs. Lio Rush, plus appearances by Jon Moxley, Will Ospreay, Bobby Lashley and Mina Shirakawa.
- Raw on Monday has Jade Cargill & Bianca Belair defending the tag titles against Liv Morgan & Raquel Rodriguez. They will also do an angle to set up Gunther vs. Damian Priest.
- Reinier de Ridder, who was a champion at both middleweight and light heavyweight at ONE, before leaving, debuted yesterday for UFC and submitted Gerald Meerschaert in the third round. He ripped on ONE after his fight, saying how stressful it was and how hard it was to get fights. He said he had some good years at the beginning but “Over the past couple of years, it’s been really bad.” He said, “This is something I feel I have to do for other fights. If you’re thinking of signing with ONE Championship, don’t .”
- The only heavily recommended matches to me the last few days are Gabe Kidd vs Kosei Fujita from Friday in Lowell, MA, which I heard was great, and Moose vs. Mike Bailey on the Thursday night TNA Impact show.
- Major League Wrestling’s big show from Chicago wasn’t able to be streamed live. MLW will be streaming the show tonight at 8 p.m.Eastern I heard the key CMLL bouts that you think would be good like Mistico vs. Titan vs. Averno were very good.
- We’re looking for reports from last night’s MLW show, as well as the Friday and Saturday night TNA tapings in Fayetteville, NC to dave@wrestlingobserver.com.
- TNA is offering a free month of TNA+ if you enter the code TNAFREE.
- Lisa Varon was on Svengoolie last night. If you didn’t know, Svengoolie (Rich Koz) is a big-time wrestling fan, and an Observer reader for decades.
- No update on Dragon Kid after his injury on Thursday past he didn’t appear this week. He’s not expected to wrestle next week but wasn’t hurt seriously.
- DDT vs. Defy from last night in Seattle: Gringo Loco b Yuni, Nick Wayne b Jack Cartwheel, Cody Chhun & Guillermo Rosas kept the Defy tag titles in a three-way over Bryan Keith & Shota and Eddie Pearl & Ricky Gibson, Marina Shafir b Dannika Della Rouge to keep the Def women’s title, The Bollywood Boz b Daisuke Sasaki & Artemis Spencer, Konosuke Takshita b Kohei Kinoshita, Miyu Yamashita won the DDT Universal title over champion Mao and Mike Bailey in a three-way.
- All Japan opened its tag team tournament yesterday at Korakuen Hall:
- B block: Kuroshio Tokyo Japan & Seigo Tachibana b Cyrus & Harley Jacksoni
- A block: Daisuke Sekimoto & Kengo Mashimo b Hokuto Omori & Kuma Arashi
- B block: Yuma Aoyagi & Fuminori Abe b Hikaru Sato & Yuko Miyamoto
- A block: Rei & Jun Saito b Makoto Oishi & Mike D Vecchio
- B block: Kento Miyahara & Davey Boy Smith Jr. b Suwama & Hideki Suzuki
- From the New Japan show on Friday, Ryohei Oiwa got a big win over KENTA to set up his shot at Gabe Kidd for the Strong title. Yota Tsuji did an angle to face Jack Perry on 1/5 at the Tokyo Dome. West Coast Wrecking Crew will be getting a shot at new Strong tag champs the Grizzled Young Vets soon The big story was the announcement of Konosuke Takeshita vs. Shingo Takagi on the 1/4 Tokyo Dome show, which is AEW International champion vs. Never champion and has a good shot at being a match of the year candidate.