Daily Update: WWE sale, Randy Orton, WrestleMania 39

Daily Update

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This Week’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter:

Highlights include:

  • Records that will be set during WrestleMania weekend
  • Match by match previews, odds, and what are the goals of the matches
  • Ticket sales for the six major shows in Los Angeles this week
  • Notes on NXT and AEW doing major shows on the same day on 5/28 and background of that story
  • A look at the career of Tim White, going into the Hall of Fame
  • Stand & Deliver and Supercard of Honor previews
  • Secondary market interest in all of the shows
  • Update on WWE sale
  • Update on Vince McMahon as it pertains to WrestleMania and the sale
  • A look at the careers of Anderson Silva and Donald Cerrone as they go into the UFC Hall of Fame
  • Full coverage of this past week’s UFC show, business notes, problems that seem to always be there in Texas and why
  • Notes on the first AAA TripleMania show of 2023 and the AEW relationship, the tag team tournament that will lead to a mask or hair being cut, another mask match, a celebrity match that has gotten mainstream news in Mexico and a funny story behind it, and more.
  • How many homes are the major stations that carry wrestling and MMA in as compared to the peak
  • The most detailed look at the ratings for the past week’s shows, competition, quarter hours, the weekly standings and more
  • 80th anniversary of pro wrestling in one of the major arenas in the world coming up this weekend
  • Wrestler whose matches are now not being put up new on YouTube and why
  • Kairi talks AEW & WWE talent she’d like to work with
  • Stardom Cinderella tournament news and new major matches
  • Lots of injuries to major stars being talked about
  • Konosuke Takeshita returns to Japan this past week to team with former WWE star
  • Mark Hitchock Memorial show with top matches
  • XPW returns
  • RevPro York Hall big show notes
  • Bloodsport notes including the first match back of Kota Ibushi
  • Impact dealing with key injuries and crowning one or two new champions
  • Impact star competing in a bodybuilding contest this week
  • Impact uses former NHL star who has been doing indie shows
  • Tons of AEW news including Jon Moxley’s podcast interview, C.M. Punk’s potential return, next PPV show
  • Don Callis injury update
  • Notes on timing of a major return
  • Tony Khan’s view of ROH compared to AEW and who ROH is aimed for
  • Honor Club update
  • AEW All Access first episode looked at
  • AEW’s top merchandise sellers
  • Tony Khan on MJF as a babyface
  • Vickie Guerrero talks leaving AEW
  • International TV ratings and streaming numbers
  • New UFC main events
  • Fighter attempts to win title in third weight class
  • Benavidez vs. Plant boxing numbers and what percentage of AEW & WWE big show buyers purchased that PPV
  • MMA stars in major boxing event this week
  • Promotion with its own unique audience with 91 percent of TV viewers not watching any rival promotion on TV
  • Nick Khan talks TV rights
  • What Nick Khan says are the most important things to WWE
  • Rey Mysterio’s future and how long he wants to wrestle
  • Update on Dominik Mysterio
  • Interesting note on Rey Mysterio’s career
  • Ronda Rousey talks creative and not in flattering way
  • A look at new WWE recruits

This Week’s Retro Observer Newsletter:

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Sunday Update

Bryan and I will be back tonight covering night two of WrestleMania. We did shows Friday night covering the TV shows and ROH Supercard of Honor, and last night covering the latest news and WrestleMania night one, previewed night two and NXT Stand & Deliver. We’ll also be up after Raw tomorrow.

There are multiple reports out that it will be announced tomorrow that Endeavor has purchased the majority interest in WWE. This CNBC story that just broke said that Endeavor would spin WWE & UFC into a separate publicly traded company, which would allow both the UFC and WWE profits to pay the interest and that this deal could be announced as early as tomorrow. The story is that Endeavor would create a joint company composed of both UFC and WWE. They would have people in place in the company which would enable them to cut duplicate jobs if necessary, lowering costs, plus negotiate deals either together or separately with using the power of owning both brands. The idea is through owning both brands they could use that leverage to get higher rights fees for both properties. The rest of Endeavor would become a separate company. Notable in that is that the UFC profits have been valuable in the old Endeavor company in carrying it. Ari Emanuel would run both companies. Vince McMahon and Mark Shapiro would be Executive Chairmans of the new company while Nick Khan would remain president of WWE and Dana White would remain president of UFC. Essentially that gives McMahon even greater power in the sense he would be co-chair of both WWE and UFC if the story is accurate. Emanuel had said multiple times of late that he wasn’t interested in buying WWE and they were trying to lower the company debt. The new company would theoretically pick up the UFC and WWE purchase debt.

Regarding Randy Orton, on Friday we were told by WWE and actually asked to put out that he was not ready to return for a while due to his recovery from injuries and were told they wanted that out with the idea people shouldn’t get their hopes up for an appearance. The only reason I’m bringing that up is because Nick Khan did say in an interview this week that Pat McAfee would not be part of WrestleMania this year (which was kept secret from everyone) and there he was last night. When asking others nobody knew of plans for Orton for tonight but that would likely be a secret if there were.

The WrestleMania match order as of a few hours ago was:

  • Brock Lesnar vs. Omos
  • Shayna Baszler & Ronda Rousey vs. Liv Morgan & Raquel Rodriguez vs. Sonya Deville & Chelsea Green vs. Natalya & Shotzi
  • Gunther vs. Sheamus vs. Drew McIntyre for the IC title
  • Bianca Belair vs. Asuka for the Raw Women’s title
  • Edge vs. Finn Balor Hell in a Cell
  • Roman Reigns vs. Cody Rhodes for the Undisputed title

There will be major ring entrances of course like last night including for Edge and Finn Balor. Everything points to Brood Edge as part of the presentation and it’s already been announced Demon Balor. There is the Hall of Fame announcement later in the show. Bobby Lashley has been saying he will issue an open challenge. 

As of this morning there were 67,134 tickets out for tonight’s show and 88 remaining plus 1,522 secondary market tickets that were purchased but not yet sold (which is not unusual at all). There will probably be some tickets opened up late like happened yesterday.

There were a lot of chants for LA Knight when they talked about The Miz open challenge last night and “Yeahs.” Fans were after clearly wanting Knight to be the guy Lashley faces tonight. Houston Mitchell of the LA Times said he’s been going to wrestling for over 40 years and has rarely seen a groundswell of support for a guy out of nowhere like that and can’t believe it’s just because his name is LA.

Dustin Rhodes is in Los Angeles

Dante Martin was released from the hospital and was with Tony Khan. There is no update regarding the medical procedure.

MJF will be getting a key to the city of Oyster Bay on Long Island tomorrow at 2 p.m.. at Oyster Bay Town Hall. 

For the weekend we are dong polls on ROH Supercard of Honor, NXT Stand & Deliver and both nights of WrestleMania. You can leave a thumbs up, thumbs down or thumbs in the middle along with a best and worst match from all four shows to dave@wrestlingobserver.com

We are also looking for reports from the GCW Hall of Fame ceremony today as well as any of the Los Angeles non-WWE/ROH shows the last two days to dave@wrestlingobserver.com

As far as Google searches go for the week, WrestleMania had 500,000 thus far for Friday/Saturday and was second behind the Final Four for the week. Snoop Dogg was No. 18 yesterday although that was at least partially not due to WrestleMania and the lead story on him wasn’t Mania related. Nothing from MMA made the list with no UFC shows. But ROH and NXT didn’t nor would they be expected to crack the top 20. Anthony Joshua was No 10 yesterday with 50,000 and Roy Jones Jr., who boxed MMA star Anthony Pettis last night in Milwaukee, was No; 15 with 20,000.

Pettis beat the 54-year-old Jones via decision in a boxing match in Milwaukee last night via eight round decision. Vitor Belfort also knocked down Jacare Souza three times in winning a decision on the show, while Jose Aldo went to a draw on that show with Jeremy Stephens. Aldo in his post-fight interview went hard on Conor McGregor claiming McGregor turned down a rematch with him. McGregor responded of course saying that the two of them should box.