Daily Update: WWE SNME & UFC fallout, Chris Jericho

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This Week’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter

  • The notes of just how much of the young audience AEW has lost
  • All In at Globe Life Field both realities and perception
  • History of famous promotional wars and how they turned out and why
  • Why the few incumbents that lost did
  • The rise and fall of WCW
  • The finances of AEW
  • The issue with all non-Raw and Smackdown shows in the U.S. market right now not involving AEW
  • History of Saturday Night’s Main Event
  • High water marks for the show in the 80s
  • The Hogan vs. Andre match
  • Why SNME went away and its return and why that didn’t work as well
  • Preview of tomorrow’s show and betting odds
  • AEW Worlds End notes and WWE’s head-to-head show in Orlando
  • Full coverage of NXT Deadline
  • Full coverage of UFC 310
  • Tokyo Sports Awards, including unique things Zack Sabre Jr. has done and the history of all 51 MVP winners since 1974
  • More on the new Global Fight League, which features tons of post-40 UFC champions and major stars, to be debuting soon
  • For those outside the U.S. where the WWE Network moves to Netflix, what non-live shows will Netflix be airing and how little it is as compared to the WWE Network
  • Preview of both Tokyo Dome shows in January
  • The death of Karloff Lagarde Jr.
  • The most detailed look at the ratings of all the U.S. TV shows, comparisons to one year ago, segment-by-segment and rankings for the night and week.
  • What CMLL star trained with the Olympic team only a few years ago
  • Pentagon Jr. update
  • Tag team tournament finals in Japan
  • Top star in Japanese group gets suspended
  • Another top star cutting down his schedule
  • International TV ratings
  • Ticket sales for upcoming WWE & AEW shows
  • Tag team getting a non-wrestling national television show
  • Wrestling legend getting a non-wrestling TV show
  • Notes on the new season of Dark Side of the Ring
  • Willie Mack situation in GCW
  • What wrestler was GCW hoping to get for the Hammerstein Ballroom
  • Tessa Blanchard update
  • Lots of notes about the AEW on sale in Texas
  • Update on Rey Fenix situation
  • Most viewed streaming segments of AEW & WWE this past month
  • Steroids in BJJ
  • MMA Awards
  • Mark Shapiro talks future in WWE, UFC and even boxing ideas*WWE injury updates
  • Lots of notes about WWE shows on A&E in 2025
  • Son of sports legend makes quiet WWE debut
  • Janel Grant case updates
  • Dwayne Johnson movie updates

This Week’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter Back Issue

Sunday Update

  • We have both weekend shows up on the site. Our week in review show with Garrett Gonzales saw us get into detail with the problems with AEW, Rey Fenix, plus we talked about Saturday Night’s Main Event history and the rest of the news.
  • Bryan and I had a show last night covering Saturday Night’s Main Event, Collision, other big matches of the week and UFC from last night. Bryan and I will be back tomorrow night covering Raw.
  • For those in Canada who have been asking, the January 3 episode of Smackdown will be airing on the WWE YouTube channel only for Canada as Sportsnet is dropping it at the end of the year. Netflix picks it up on January 6. NXT on January 7 and Smackdown on January 10 will both be live on Netflix in Canada.
  • I know most know this, but the post-match attack after last night’s show where Kevin Owens attacked Cody Rhodes when he was doing his promo and gave him a package piledriver was exactly as it was supposed to have been. Some thought they had to cut away before the angle because the show went long, but that was not the case.
  • It was very interesting to see Paul Levesque’s approach last for a show aimed at people who would be new to the product. The so-called booking for casuals was fast paced matches with no slow spots, mostly wrestling and videos with a little nostalgia thrown in, and very few angles.  The idea was to keep it simple. I talked a lot on the show about the in-ring style because I found it so fascinating what type of style they went with.
  • At the UFC post-fight press conference last night Dana White said it is guaranteed that Jon Jones vs. Tom Aspinall for the heavyweight title unification will take place in 2025 and also said he expects the show to break records. He said it would be the biggest fight in heavyweight history. It is interesting that no PPV numbers have come out for Jones vs. Stipe Miocic in November, which was expected to do the biggest PPV numbers in more than a year. Aspinall also said he was told that the match would be taking place.
  • It was interesting that they didn’t book Hulk Hogan on last night’s show but Hogan did appear on the UFC show. Hogan was in Colby Covington’s corner with Chael Sonnen and Covington came out to “Real American.” Covington was hammered by Joaquin Buckley and lost via stoppage due to blood.  
  • The Chris Jericho deal last night at the GCW show in Los Angeles was not a detailed thing.  Basically Jericho was in Los Angeles last night already for Kuarantine at the Whisky and GCW was there and Jericho figured he could shoot an angle with Matt Cardona.  GCW wasn’t going to have any problem with a surprise appearance of Jericho on their show and laying out Effy just made sense for all concerned.
  • At last night’s UFC show they announced for 2/1 in Riyadh Saudi Arabia the main event will be Israel Adesanya vs.  Nassourdine Imavov and Michael Venom Page vs. Shara Magomedov.
  • Corey Anderson, who was announced to be fighting Vadim Nemkov on 1/25 in Abu Dhabi earlier in the week, on the PFL/Bellator show, said that he was told this morning that Nemkov refused to fight him.
  • For Sunday at Korakuen Hall, the final King of Pro Wrestling title match of the year at Korakuen Hall will be Great-O-Khan defending against Taichi. Fans will vote on the stips. O’Khan wants no DQ and falls count anywhere. Taichi wants a 2/3 fall match with the first fall being sumo style, the second fall has Yoshinobu Kanemaru as referee, and the third fall will be last man standing.
  • Matches I was told to go out of your way to see for this week were Sareee vs. Nanae Takahashi for the Marigold title and Flip Gordon vs. Rocky Romero for the Historic middleweight title at  Arena Mexico from Friday. I definitely would also recommend Kile Fletcher vs Mark Briscoe as the best match on U.S. television this weekend.
  • New Japan at 7:30 p.m. Eastern tonight on New Japan World
    • Matt Vandagriff vs. Zane Jay
    • Mina Shirakawa vs. Johnnie Robbie
    • Grizzled Young Veterans vs. Jorel Nelson & Royce Isaacs for Strong tag titles
    • Clark Connors vs.  Kushida vs. TJP vs. Kosei Fujita
    • Lio Rush vs. Hechicero
    • Titan & Hiromu Takahashi vs. Jacob Austin Young & Templario
    • Gabe Kidd vs. Ryohei Oiwa for the Strong title
    • Zack Sabre Jr. & Bad Dude Tito & Shane Haste vs. Shota Umino &  Jack Perry & Konoske Takeshita
    • Mercedes Mone vs. Hazuki for the Strong women’s title.
  • The UFC Fight Night on ESPN 2 last night did 200,000 Google searches. Saturday Night’s Main Event had 100,000. Both are high for TV shows.
  • Hank Walker & Tank Ledger won the tag team titles last night for Booker T’s Reality of Wrestling group.
  • Boca Raton Championship Wrestling today has a show with MJF vs. QT Marshall, Matt Riddle & Stallion Rogers vs. Anthony Greene & Matt Taven, Chris Masters vs. Madman Fulton, Colt Cabana vs. Bull James and Deonna Purrazzo vs. Chelsea Durden plus Missy Hyatt, Brutus Beefcake and Ricardo Rodriguez were there.
  • Kirk White’s Big Time Wrestling from Friday night in Newark, CA: Jeri Giggalow b Levi Shapiro, Ray Rico b Jiah Jewell, Beatrice Domino b Angie Savage, Starboy Charlie b Jack Cartwheel, Marcus Lewis b Zane Jay, Too Fresh b Lights Camera Action, Will Hobbs b Vinnie Massaro, Aaron Solo b Fred Rosser (thanks to Jim Davis and Johnny Poon)