Los Angeles is putting in a major bid for the 2021 Super Bowl. Since WWE likes to do WrestleManias in the same market as the Super Bowl, that immediately led to rumors about a 2020 WrestleMania there. What we know is that the city, which wasn’t happy about losing its regular SummerSlam gig to Brooklyn, is interested in a WrestleMania bid, although it may be looking at 2021 and not 2020.
Nakamura did an interview in Japan and when all the WWE injury issues were brought up, he mentioned that he thought the WWE rings and the way they were put together was part of the problem. Just to show how far that fake card in Honolulu got out, and it was notable that several guys in WWE thought it was real, Nakamura said nobody has told him he’s wrestling Cena in Hawaii but said he thought it would be great for him if it happened.
Naomi was checked up this past week on whether she would be cleared for a torn tendon in her ankle. She suffered the injury at the end of the European tour and has been out since 4/23.
Summer Rae suffered an injury at the end of the European tour. The word going around is it was a concussion but that wasn’t confirmed by WWE. But she hadn’t wrestled since 4/23 until returning over the weekend.
Banks was injured on the 5/15 house show in Charlottesville, VA. The injury was said to be the same thing, a concussion, and a significant one. And again the company didn’t confirm it. She was working a trios match with Lynch & Paige as her partners against Eva Marie & Brooke & Lana. I don’t know the circumstances that led up to it, but Darrick Moore, the referee, accidentally kneed her in the head hard. She missed the weekend house shows and was replaced by Summer Rae. Banks wasn’t booked for Raw or Smackdown in recent weeks having nothing to do with injuries, but that they aren’t focusing on her until the planned big push later in the summer but a match with Charlotte for the title at SummerSlam. It’s not certain the severity of the injury and whether that will affect those plans, plus with concussions, everyone responds differently as some are back in a few days and others are never the same, and they are going to be err on the side of caution after the Bryan Danielson situation. In the case of Banks, the injury was a fluke and not her fault. The bad part of this is Vince McMahon has on several occasions said he believes Banks only knows one speed and that’s all out, and even months ago was comparing her with Daniel Bryan, feeling she’s injury-prone. That label isn’t a kiss of death, but there does come a point where if there are too many injuries they can get leery and you never know when that point is since Vince has put the two in the same category.
Seth Rollins made his return to WWE at the end of the Extreme Rules PPV show, laying out Roman Reigns with a pedigree and setting that up as the main event for the 6/19 Money in the Bank show from the T-Mobile Center in Las Vegas.
The crowd in Newark, NJ, went nuts for his return, as everyone knew the fans would make him a babyface when he returned after reconstructive knee surgery. The problem is, WWE didn’t want him like that. So on Raw the next night in Baltimore, after he got another big reaction, he turned heel on the fans, telling them that all the fan mail that he got while recuperating he never opened, threw in the garbage and set it on fire. Even so, when Reigns then came out to confront him, the crowd still heavily booed Reigns.
Even though this is another example of the company fighting the crowd, which clearly wants Rollins as a face and Reigns as a heel, it’s very clear they believe Reigns is the only guy who can be the new face of the company. With Rollins, while he is a natural face, the sides remain unbalanced in WWE going forward. Reigns isn’t slated to turn no matter how the reaction has been. So you’ve got Reigns, Brock Lesnar and John Cena, who returns next week, as the stars on the face side going into SummerSlam, not to mention people like A.J. Styles, Sami Zayn who fans would like to see in that mix. I’d say Dean Ambrose but his star really fell in that Lesnar program. Similar booking could yield similar results for Styles, really, sooner than later if they aren’t careful.
The heel side really only had Kevin Owens, and to an extent Rusev and Chris Jericho, so Rollins on the face side would make things more imbalanced. It’s also the reason why the Wyatt Family turn that was shot before injuries took Wyatt and Luke Harper out of play is likely to be forgotten since they need Wyatt on that side.
If the argument is that Reigns should be turned since Rollins would be cheered more as a face, that’s not a wrong answer. But WWE has spent years on Reigns and any changing from the plan is an admission of being wrong. If the Cena return doesn’t see any changes in either next month, then we can safely say nobody individually is a big mover of traditional business. The return of Rollins at the end of a PPV meant zero for ratings for Raw the next night, and at that time he was a babyface to the fans.
Right now everything is geared to peak for SummerSlam. There is a top of the card in place, with Cena and Reigns matches apparently decided upon. Lesnar will also headline but there is no match finalized for him.
The next step is Money in the Bank. What is official on the show is Reigns vs. Rollins in the first of what is expected to be a series of title matches. The Money in the Bank match has six of the seven spots filled with Jericho, Zayn, Ambrose, Alberto Del Rio, Cesaro and Owens. Given that some figured Cena to return with Rusev, and it looks like somebody is putting Titus O’Neil in the U.S. title contender spot, that it would leave Cena without a top opponent and they do have the one MITB spot not filled. The other alternative would be having him in an IC title program with Miz. Miz has nothing earmarked for him with his top contenders, Owens, Zayn and Cesaro, all in Money in the Bank, while he won’t be.
Other programs that have been teased include Sheamus vs. Apollo Crews, Rusev vs. O’Neil for the U.S. title and Enzo & Cass vs. Dudleys.
There is a natural tag title situation with New Day vs. Karl Anderson & Luke Gallows, but that also could be saved for SummerSlam. Still, something with Styles and a partner against Anderson & Gallows should take place relatively soon.
With Reigns as champion, Owens would seem the right guy to win MITB. Owens also has the kind of a heel persona where his cashing in and winning the title with the idea he stole it from Reigns would work well. It would enable them to get Reigns back in the chase position without a clean loss. Granted, the crowd dynamic would likely be backwards since Owens, even more than Rollins, is super popular with the television fan base. The fact Rollins dropped Reigns with a pedigree is key, because as long as he’s using that move, it’s clearly designed to get to a match with HHH. While things changed multiple times last year, after Dwayne Johnson made it clear that for insurance reasons, he couldn’t work a real match at WrestleMania, HHH vs. Rollins became the plan until Rollins got hurt. Reigns at the time was scheduled to win the title from Rollins at Survivor Series, just weeks after the injury.
Overall Extreme Rules, on 5/22 at the Prudential Center in Newark, NJ, was a show that had two exceptional matches and the rest was just okay. The undercard was rushed and the Jericho vs. Ambrose match ended up going way long. The show drew a sellout of 12,500 fans.
It was an overall strong show due to two of the best WWE matches of the year, the four-way IC title match with Miz, Cesaro, Owens and Zayn, and the WWE title match with Reigns vs. A.J. Styles. In particular, Styles put on an insane performance when put in the main event spot for the second straight major show.
The Ambrose vs. Jericho match didn’t click after a strong match the month before. Charlotte vs. Natalya delivered huge in NXT 18 months ago and started to set the stage for the change in women’s wrestling, and they had a great match in Toronto. Last month they were handicapped with a bad finish. This time they weren’t given time, and the match was all about the introduction of Dana Brooke as Charlotte’s new partner, to eventually build to a big program against each other.
The next night on Raw, Charlotte got rid of Ric Flair, turning on him. She said she didn’t need him anymore and that she was a bigger star than he ever was. There is still some consideration of bringing Flair back to television in a program, but that could have been it for him as a regular.
The lone title change was putting the U.S. title on Rusev. They never committed to Kalisto, and with his size, there really were problems with pushing him too hard. Even though he’s about the same size as Rey Mysterio, and he’s crisp at what he does, it’s not the same. For one, he’s too much like Mysterio to where people see him as the replacement, and it’s rare when the replacement hits big. Also, when Mysterio broke in, he was a completely new act, far from the norm and there had been nobody like him on the U.S. big stage. Mysterio opened up the industry to much smaller guys if they have the talent. Kalisto is talented but he’s too much like Mysterio.
Other angles were the breakup of The Club, with Styles as a face and Karl Anderson & Luke Gallows as heels, although Styles came off as the heel the way it was put together.
Styles delivered strongly, and his interviews have more than held up during the build for the two matches. But he’s not in the top two matches at MITB. Styles’ role was always as a place-holder, a guy for Reigns to beat as champion until Rollins and Cena returned.
In an attempt to revitalize the ratings on Smackdown in particular, the WWE has announced both a brand split and moving Smackdown live on the USA Network on Tuesday nights at 8 p.m. Eastern time.
Both SportsNet in Canada and Sky in the U.K. are also following suit. The new format begins on 7/19. The move in television has been to create as much live content as possible to make shows “DVR” proof, although Smackdown actually does a higher percentage of its viewers live, even being the taped show, than Raw.
The move will go back to the brand split of 2002 to 2011, where there were separate Raw and Smackdown rosters. From 2003 to early 2007, there were also separate PPVs. During that era, the major PPVs would be joint shows combining the stars from both brands, while the “B” shows became even more “B” oriented as they would alternate between Raw brand and Smackdown brand shows. During this period, PPV numbers for the “B” shows fell and thus after WrestleMania 23, the move was to put them together.
One of the first moves of the brand split was to create a second world title. Brock Lesnar was the WWE champion at the time of the split, and he was moved to the Smackdown brand. Eric Bischoff, the General Manager of the Raw brand then created the “World heavyweight title,” using a replica of the late 80s NWA world championship belt synonymous with Ric Flair which had a historical connotation. HHH was made the first champion. A few years later they switched with the “world champion” (Dave Bautista) moved to Smackdown and the WWE champion (John Cena) moved to Raw.
The key announcements were that Raw and Smackdown would have separate rosters and completely different storylines. While the writing crew has been separated to a degree with a Raw and Smackdown crew, they obviously have always worked together since they are doing the same storylines. With the move, the writing teams will be split and there will be internal competition.
The belief is that one show will feature Stephanie McMahon in charge and the other show will feature Shane McMahon in charge. While Vince McMahon and Paul Levesque will continue to run creative, the belief is that Ed Koskey and Ryan Ward, as head writers of Raw and Smackdown, will each end up with more power since the staffs will have more control and not have to work together on ideas. It appears that both McMahons will play babyface authority figure roles, at least at first, and the idea is that there will be television competition between the two of them. Behind the scenes, there very much will be competition pushed by Vince McMahon on the two writing teams.
The other belief is that John Cena will be the main star on one show and Roman Reigns on the other and because Brock Lesnar’s dates are worked out so far in advance that he would be on the Raw crew when he returns in August. But we’re told even Lesnar being on Raw is not a certainty.
The Raw crew will run house shows on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The Smackdown crew will run Saturday and Sunday. Since they will be on tour and not work Raw, it would make sense for WWE to return to Monday night house shows for Smackdown, so this will add new dates, and since house shows are profitable, increase profits. WWE has not confirmed the return of Monday house shows and all advertising for shows after 7/5 is being redone. That would require scheduling a new Monday date weekly, but I know of periods where the live events department has on more than one occasion, with no notice, had to rip apart and redo the schedule. But for talent on the road, it makes no sense for them to be away on Saturday and Sunday, and since they won’t be used on Raw, to sit around on Monday away from home to do nothing and wait for the Tuesday taping.
As things stand, the belief is there will be a draft show on 7/11 in Detroit. Talent will not be told (aside from perhaps a few key people) which show they will be on until that night. For the most part, talent is right now completely in the dark regarding what is happening, and most of the key decisions are leaning in directions but none are solidified.
It should be noted that the first time they did this in 2002, the idea was a brand split, but it got watered down quickly. If they had a major show, they’d want to put the strongest lineups on. If they played in a home city where there was a local star familiar to the community, they’d send him to the show regardless of brand. They’d sometimes have stars from the other brands on the other television show, or do cross-promotional matches, which actually in time will become bigger because they will be matches not done to death.
When it comes to booking, nothing is confirmed as far as the obvious questions. WWE has officially said that all the obvious questions will be answered over the next few weeks. The only news is that as of right now, the plan is to create two world championships, one for each brand, and that the IC and U.S. belts will be obviously split up between the brands. But even the one vs. two world titles, while being leaned toward right now, is not a lock. The tentative plan is for the women’s champion, Charlotte, to appear on both brands as champion and she would be the only person, with the exception of Roman Reigns or whoever the singles champion is.
The word is that Vince McMahon is really pumped about the new possibilities. Of course, Vince’s nature is to get pumped up by new challenges and usually about a month in, if they don’t click immediately, he loses interest and things end up reverting back to how they were. The key is balancing the talent, but having the McMahon stamp on both shows. On the flip side, while there is talk of Smackdown being more wrestling oriented (and no matter what you hear, nothing is definite on anything), it would likely mean with the live show that Vince McMahon would take a greater interest in the show. The key negative is that could lead to the overproducing of the announcers, which is really the standout thing on that show.
The idea of the split was decided upon in the last two weeks after talks between WWE, USA and its other key television partners, Sky and Sportsnet, had taken place. But there was serious talk about it dating back to just before WrestleMania and there were promotional materials that indicated a brand split that were being done before WrestleMania so there was a strong chance of it happening dating back at least ten weeks.
A lot of this is due to how much wrestling is propping up the USA Network. USA added Smackdown at the start of the year in an attempt to be the No. 1 network on cable, a status it had held for years. But with its non-wrestling programming falling off, it now has five hours of wrestling per week instead of two, but its overall standing has fallen greatly. The ratings were going to take a hit in the fall on both Monday and Thursday. For the week ending 5/15, USA was No. 6 in cable with an average of 1,395,000 viewers in prime time. Taking the wrestling out of the mix, that number would drop to 942,000, dropping them to 11th place.
One aspect is that when it comes to actual roster talent, if you include the NXT guys who are ready and the full rosters now, there is a ton of talent. Of course, from a talent standpoint, it’s not even close to the talent WCW had in the late 90s. Talent alone doesn’t guarantee success if you don’t have the creative that connects with the fans. But things look strong with the returns of Cena, Rollins, Randy Orton, Neville and Bray Wyatt combined with the existing talent and the talent ready for the main roster right now in NXT. But that isn’t taking into account that there will be constant injuries to top talent. With Raw not having to not have half the top talent inherently, a Cena or Reigns injury becomes an even stronger negative because you don’t have the other around to build around.
As far as tag team titles and the women, that is fluid. In the past they had two women’s titles and two sets of tag team champions, but in doing so, it devalued the titles. If you throw in NXT, that would be three different sets of belts and inherently devalue them. Even the world titles themselves seemed to mean less, because the feeling during that period was WWE had “two IC champions” instead of two world champions. Even the roster situation is not certain, as some are campaigning for a hard split of rosters, while others want a soft split, with key stars making guest appearances on the other shows and allowing for more unique top matches on television or PPV. There was at least talk of two tag team titles exclusive to shows, or tag team champions that would work both shows. There was also talk of women exclusive to one show. But women’s matches have been a staple to the house show programs, so it’s either two women’s titles, a champion who appears on both shows, or something unique, which would be one show featuring the women’s champion and the other featuring women’s tag team champions. But with the small number of women on the roster, having women and women’s tag team champions limited to one brand will create stale matchups very quickly.
The weakness of the split is that there are less players to play with on each side, although that can be rectified because there is a lot of talent in NXT that is main roster worthy and talent in places like New Japan, TNA and ROH that can be used to add depth. The plan is for more aggressively going after wrestlers. The one thing that kept some top talent in other groups without WWE aggressively going after them, the size and look issue that WWE long had, is still important. But it’s far less important than ever before given the type of talent that has gotten over in recent years. In particular, they are not only going to need anyone who can be a top guy on the main roster, meaning the key NXT talent that is ready should be brought up at that time, but they also have to do a balancing act to not kill off that brand. As noted last week, NXT shows vary from 100 to 400 without strong full cards to 1,000 to 3,000 when you have shows that include Shinsuke Nakamura, Samoa Joe, Bayley, Austin Aries, Finn Balor, Jason Jordan and Chad Gable all together. This also could lead to Bobby Roode and/or Eric Young debuting on the main roster instead of NXT. Bringing some of them up is a necessity, but bringing all of them up will kill NXT touring. The other byproduct of this is WWE, with three separate rosters to tour with, will be almost have to be more extensively going after the best talent in companies like New Japan, CMLL, AAA, ROH, Lucha Underground and TNA.
When you include DVR viewership, the USA Network is listing 4,011,000 viewers as the average for Raw so far this year and 2,674,000 viewers for Smackdown, and claims it makes USA No. 1 in entertainment programming on cable every Monday and Thursday. As a general rule, Raw will beat everything most weeks on cable except major sports, such as the NBA during playoff season or the NFL, or if there is a major news story and coverage of that event can beat Raw. Smackdown similarly will lose to major sports events, and even more so, major news events, and occasional entertainment shows.
Even with the strong ratings declines over the past year, the feeling is that Raw is something of a Monday night institution that won’t be hurt with less of a roster. The key is that they have to protect more people in booking and book smarter, because a three-hour Raw with less of a talent base will backfire greatly if stars aren’t protected better.
The theory for Smackdown is that going live will help, although historically that has in the past proven to be overrated. But what they are counting on is that there will be half the major stars that will only be seen on Smackdown, so if fans want to see them, they’ll have to watch on Tuesdays. Even though Smackdown is usually better than Raw, largely because of two hours vs. three hours and the better announcing crew, for a casual fan it is a totally skippable show.
On the flip side, this makes it more difficult to be a fan when it comes to time consumption. On PPV weekends, this would end up with roughly nine viewing hours of wrestling over three days. Essentially this will accentuate the key trend of the last few years–the creation of superfans where wrestling is a gigantic part of their life and those fans taking over from the declining casual fans that simply don’t have the time to put in to keep up with so much product. And ultimately, that has been a major part of the ratings decline.
The obvious major ramifications of the Tuesday move is that unless Pop TV moves TNA to Wednesday or Thursday (which they probably should consider doing although they should wait until the fall to do so), that TNA’s first hour will go head-to-head with WWE’s second hour. It is possible that with two million plus wrestling fans already watching from 8-10 p.m., while it will hurt TNA’s first hour, the second hour gain from wrestling fans already tuning in may end up benefitting them in the long run. So for that reason, I’d leave an experimental period to see what happens before making a decision.
The positive of moving from Thursday to Tuesday is with ratings falling, Smackdown in the fall going against the NFL as the “B” show was likely to take a tremendous hit. In the TV world, the feeling is that going live will increase ratings. But with Smackdown in the past, the times they had pushed live specials, it seemed to have no effect on the ratings. Given the NFL in the fall, Tuesday makes more a better night than Thursday, and it also has less other competition on television.
The negative is that with both TNA and WWE, every time the date of the show is moved, the audience gets smaller. The belief is that it may take a few weeks for people to get into the new time slots, and to a degree, that does happen. But the new nights have never gotten back the entire audience, even when Smackdown moved from the second worst night for television, Friday, to what is considered the best night, Thursday. But Tuesday avoids the NFL, and most major sports competition, and historically WWE is only hurt by major sports.
From a talent standpoint, there are those who have preferences, but the decisions are out of their hands. The feeling is that Raw will always be the “A” show, and was during the last brand extension, so there will be more money appearing on those house shows and more people watching you. Others feel Smackdown will be a better place because on that show there will be more opportunities for upward mobility.
In addition, the reason the brand extension was chipped away with, and eventually dumped, was because of continual declines in ratings because the key stars were only on half the shows. Vince McMahon’s original mentality in 2001 when he had the influx of talent due to the end of WCW and ECW was that it was beneficial for main talent to only appear on one television show per week, feeling two shows burned them out faster. But in practice, as time went on, he changed his view, as the feeling was the individual shows lacked the talent depth. But in recent years, with the rise of independent wrestling and higher level of that type of talent due to working at a high level more, there are more quality wrestlers around that at any time in a long time. Plus, there is more of an acceptance of international stars because of how well wrestlers from Japan and the U.K. have gotten over in the U.S. in recent years on indies, ROH and NXT.
