Daily Update: Vince McMahon, WWE NXT, TNA Impact

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This Week’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter

Some highlights:

  • A full look at AEW Grand Slam in Brisbane, Australia.  The mentality behind the show, a look at the card, ratings, booking, business and more
  • NXT Vengeance Day coverage
  • The life and times of Gran Hamada, great wrestler, influential in history, including the glory days of LLI at El Toreo and his biggest matches and feuds, booking to make a star, biggest feuds, multiple world titles and far more huge crowds than people would ever realize. Plus the Tiger Mask heyday, matches of the year candidates in his late 40s, and the start of multiple different companies
  • A look at the next WWE & AEW  PPV shows
  • The most detailed look at TV ratings and streaming for RAW, including how every show has compared with a year ago, the weekly standings, demos, quarters, every wrestling show on Netflix and more.
  • CMLL announces its second biggest show of the year
  • Valentine’s Day at Arena Mexico
  • Big head-to-head battle in Mexico City on Saturday
  • Fantastica Mania starts’
  • More on the awards issue including multiple category placers
  • Lots of AEW business notes
  • WWE & AEW ticket sales for upcoming show including multiple PPVs
  • Lots of new UFC main events announced
  • Topuria vacates featherweight title
  • Aaron Pico on leaving PFL
  • Notes on Mania plans
  • Notes on Dwayne Johnson being back
  • Michelle McCool Hall of Fame story
  • Notes on Hall of Fame update
  • Trauma of leaving WWE
  • Ricky Starks
  • Sonya Deville talks being let go
  • Michael Cole on the Corey Grave story

This Week’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter Back Issue

Monday Update

  • Bryan and I will be back tonight talking Raw, the notes for the rest of the week and the other latest news with Wrestling Observer Radio. We also had our weekend show last night and week in review show with Garett Gonzales on Friday.
  • Wrestlenomics has an update on evidence regarding a series of lawsuits that were filed against WWE in November 2023 claiming the company didn’t get maximum shareholder value in the merger with UFC to form TKO and claimed there were more lucrative offers passed up because those offers didn’t include assurance that Vince McMahon would stay in place. As it turned out, McMahon was gone anyway due to the claims in the Janel Grant Lawsuit.  They also claimed the board’s investigation into the Grant case and McManon’s NDA’s was a sham. New information noted that certain board members, Man Jit Singh and Ignace Lahoud, were going to resign the day after the first Wall Street Journal story broke in 2022, but that Stephanie McMahon, who at the time was no longer working for the company but was still on the board, talked them into staying by leaving voicemails and sending emails to the other directors. Singh and Lahoud did end up resigning from the board six months later when Vince McMahon pushed himself back into power. The multiple suits have been combined into one suit, although the value of the company has gone way up since the suit was filed and with the merging with UFC.
  • Raw tonight is from Cicinnati with Bianca Belair & Naomi defending the women’s tag titles against Liv Morgan & Raquel Rodriguez, Lyra Valkyria defending the women’s IC title against Dakota Kai, Penta vs. Pete Dunn vs. Ludwig Kaiser, New Day vs. Cruz del Toro & Joaquin Wilde plus Rhea Ripley, Seth Rollins, Logan Paul, CM Punk and Gunther have interview time. they had more than 12,000 tickets out as of this afternoon, meaning 3,000 tickets sold in the last four days.  
  • NXT is going to be sold out tomorrow in Cincinnati with a smaller set up than AEW had in the same Brady Musical  Theater a few weeks ago.  Stephanie Vaquer vs. Karmen Petrovic for the North American title, Moose vs. Lexis King for the TNA X title, Hardys  return to WWE against Tavion Heights & Myles Borne and Ricky Saints & Je’Von Evans vs. Wes Lee & Ethan Page are announced.
  • Oba Femi & The Hardys vs.  The System will headline Thursday’s TNA show  plus Tessa Blanchrd wrestles, Spitfire vs. Ash & Heather by Elegance, Oro Mensah vs. Mike Santana, Mance Warner vs Sami Callian and Frankie Kazarian vs. Ace Austin.
  • Dark Side of the Cage had two great episodes that aired on 2/12 and 2/19 covering Pride Fighting Championships, especially the second one going into detail on how big the mob was into it and why the promotion died.  Wednesday night they have an episode on Ronda Rousey.
  • AEW Wednesday in Oceanside, CA has Will Ospreay vs. Bryan Keith, Harley Cameron vs. Deonna Purrazzo and Konosuke Takeshita vs. Orange Cassidy for  the International title.  Also announced for the show, taped for ROH, will be Blue Panther’s AEW debut teaming with his sons Blue Panther Jr. & Dark Panther vs. Valiente & CMLL heavyweight champion Gran Guerrero & Euforia, plus Athena defends the ROH title against Catalina.
  • At press time we haven’t seen Smackdown ratings for Friday in the U.S.  As noted yesterday, first day ratings in several countries were down, and some were up, not  the groundwell of up you’d expect with  Dwayne Johnson on the show.  However, the second day after the show numbers were up, as far as the standings went, in most of the key countries where Smackdown is on Netflix.
  • Mistico isn’t on the Friday show at Arena Mexico.  Because of the time difference it would be technically possible to work on a Friday night at Korakuen Hall and Friday night at Arena Mexico, but it’s in the real world next to impossible.  Since Mistico will be in the main event on Friday at Korakuen Hall, the show will end at 9 p.m. Japan time, which is 7 a.m. Central time (Mexico City).  If you could get to Narita and there was a flight leaving at 10:30 or 11 p.m. local time,you’d arrive in Mexico City at  9 p.m. and the main event at Arena Mexico usually starts at 10:30 p.m.  But there is no commercial flight leaving for Mexico City until the next morning, so that would be impossible without a charter flight.  The finals of the  Torneo de Esculas is Friday night and Konosuke Takeshita defends the Never Open weight title (but not the AEW International title for some reason, against Angel de Oro.  I guess because AEW is advertising the winner of Takeshita vs. Orange Cassidy facing Kenny Omega.  Mistico is flying the next morning to Mexico City, where he’ll then fly to San Francisco for the AEW show in Oakland on Saturday night.
  • UFC’s return to Mexico City on 3/29 with Brandon Moreno vs. Steve Erceg as the main event at Arena Ciudad has 18,000 tickets sold out of 20,000.
  • MLW announced the matches that didn’t air live on its Atlanta show will be released on 3/8 on beIN Sports and the MLW YouTube channel. Tom Lawlor & Matt Riddle vs. Contra Unit, Kushida vs  Neon, Matthew Justice vs. Bobby Fish vs. Paul Walter Hauser vs AKIRA for the national title, Bomaye Fight Club vs Andersons and Okumura vs. Ariel Dominguez.
  • James Drake of the Grizzled Young Veterans apparently suffered a knee injury over the weekend coming off the top rope.  He wrote, “This sucks. After 20 years an injury was bound to happen.  Sorry for everyone in attendance, I’ll make it up to you. I promise.”
  • UWN will be doing TV tapings tomorrow night in Irvine, CA with Danny Limelight vs. Kenny King for their world title, Zicky Dice vs QT Marshall for their TV title, Bad Dude Tito & Che Cabrera vs. The Infantry for the tag title, Scorpio Sky vs. Ice Williams plus Aaron Solo and Brandon Cutler from AEW are also on the show.
  • The Memphis Grizzlies basketball team has wrestling night for Saturday night’s game.