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Monday Update

  • Bryan and I will be back tonight talking tons of news including Raw, Hall of Fame, AEW Continental Classic, lots of injury updates, ratings, Wrestler of the Year and more with Wrestling Observer Radio tonight.
  • We have a Cyber Monday sale with web site subscriptions which include the archives of 30 years of Observers and 20 years of audio you can get a half price for the month. F4W50 is the code. The sale is good through midnight tonight.
  • Raw tonight will have the New Day ten year celebration.  Big E is at the show.  Most expect the breakup of Kofi Kingston and Xavier Woods given the last several weeks of television.  CM Punk will be on the show tonight.  The only matches announced are R-Truth vs. Pete Dunne and the start of the IC title tournament with Dakota Kai vs.  Katana Chance vs.  Shayna Baszler.  The first 30 minutes of the show will be commercial free.  WWE sent a notice to fans in Everett attending the show asking them to download an app called The  WWE Lightshow.  So they are going to be getting instructions to do things at the tapings.  Lilian Garcia will give them certain cues to do things with their camera phones at different times on the show.  The advance for the show in Everett, WA, was 7,900 earlier today and it was just shy at that point of a legit sellout, so it will be sold out with walk-up.  Cody Rhodes is at  Raw, although he will be at almost every Raw this month either on the show or usually doing the dark match main event for the title.   The NFL game tonight is Cleveland vs. Denver and it’s only on ESPN, not on ABC, meaning viewership will be much lower this week so in theory Raw should be up considering  this and coming off the PPV Saturday.
  • We’re looking for live reports on the shows, Main Event bouts, dark matches  results and highlights and anything else that wasn’t on the live TV show to dave@wrestlingobserver.com
  • We’re also looking for your thoughts on Survivor Series, so you can leave a thumbs up, down or middle along with a best and worst match to dave@wrestlingobserver.com
  • AEW Dynamite on Wednesday did 536 ,000 viewers and an 0.15 in 18-49.  It’s the lowest 18-49 number the show has done on a Wednesday.  Going 5 p.m. on the West Coast was going to knock it down 7 percent, but that hardly makes up the difference.  It was No. 14 for the day on cable and in the time slot was second, behind only the NBA, so it was the top entertainment show on cable for the night.  There were two FOX News shows in different time slots that beat it and the rest was NBA & College Basketball all day on ESPN.  It also doubled the NHL game head-to-head in both viewers and 18-49.  No other first-run entertainment show made the top 25, which goes down to 0.11.  It is still a bad number for the first night of the tournament.
  • Madison Square Garden has announced this for the 12/26 house show with C.M. Punk.  Also -announced is Seth Rollins vs. Bronson Reed in a cage match, Gunther vs. Damian Priest for the world title, Liv Morgan vs. Iyo Sky and they are advertising Drew McIntyre, Wyatt Sicks, Sami Zayn, LA Knight, Miz and Rey Mysterio.
  • To show how much WWE means to the USA Network, for the week of 11/18 to 11/24, the station averaged 503,000 viewers in prime time.  Without wrestling that average falls to 262,000.  Only with Smackdown (starting in January), it falls to 396,000.
  • Elimination Chamber pre-sale for the 3/1 show in Toronto starts on Wednesday with the public onsale Friday.
  • Shota Umino did wrestle at today’s New Japan show in Kochi after suffering an ankle injury on Friday.  Umino & Tomoaki Honma lost to KENTA & Chase Owens in the tag tournament.  Current standings for A block are: Hirooki Goto & Yoshi-Hashi, Shingo Takagi & Yota  Tsuji and Sanada & Gabe Kidd 4-2, Jeff Cobb & Callum Newman and KENTA & Owens 3-3, Zack Sabre Jr. & Ryohei Oiwa, Umino & Honma and Alex Zayne & Ryusuke Taguchi 2-4.
  • Bryce Remsburg, Wheeler Yuta and Anthony Bowens were at the ALS United Mid Atlantic Annual Celebration this past week.  The event was to honor the Philadelphia Phillies for their 40 years of work to strike out ALS and they contacted Remsburg knowing he was a Phillies fan and he brought Bowens and Yuta.  Organizers told us they gave a great raffle gift and met with patients. For more into you can go to www.alsmidatlantic.org
  • I saw episode four (yeah, way behind) of Queen of Villains last night.  Good lord, that fight scene reprise of the famous Chigusa vs. Dump first hair match (they had two) in Osaka was amazing, brutal, graphic and gripping. Thank God nobody was watching it with me though.  It’s not for everyone, but it was one of the most amazing fight scenes I’ve seen. Can’t come up with a wrestling one on television that was as sick. Of course portraying it as a shoot and that Dump went against the script is all bullshit.  The TV number with 25 million viewers was not. That’s how big they were in 1985, like I used to tell people, they were doing NFL numbers on weekend afternoons.
  • MLW on Thursday at the Melrose Center in New York has Mistico vs. Trevor Lee for the MLW middleweight title, Minoru Suzuki & Ikuro Kwon vs. Satoshi Kojima & Okumura for the MLW tag titles, Matt Riddle vs Donovan Dijak, Matthew Justice & ? vs. CW & Brock Anderson, Kojima vs. Ultimo  Guerrero for the MLW title, Tom Lawlor vs. Timothy Thatcher, Titan vs. Magnus and Minoru Suzuki vs. AKIRA. Eric Bischoff will be at the show as the guest authority figure.
  • CMLL’s Persephone has been added to the MLW on 1/11 in North Richland Hills, TX.  
  • Defy & Progress results from yesterday in Chicago:  Simon Miller b Jimmy Lloyd, Schaff & Russ Jones b Sunshine Machine to keep the AAW tag titles, Rhio b Vert Vixen to keep the Progress world women’s title, Cara Noir b Timothy Thatcher, Gringo Loco & Arez b Cody Chhun & Guillermo Rosas to win the Defy tag titles, Mustafa Ali b Kevini Knight, Luke Jacobs b Man Like DeRiess to  retain the Progress world title. Next Progress show is 12/29 at the Electric Ballroom in London and the next Defy show is 12/29 at Washington Hall in Seattle.
  • Insane Wrestling Revolution has its fifth anniversary show on 12/26 in Monroe, MI with Nic Nemeth & Tommy Dreamer vs. Silas Young & Jasoni Hotch and Rhino vs. Ryan Nemeth. Also announced is PCO, Jody Threat and Jake Something.