After Raw, Ryback, Dolph Ziggler, and R-Truth evened things up following The Authority's beatdown on Ambrose and Reigns. The babyfaces hit their finishers to end the night.
Finn Balor was at WWE TV this week, which isn't shocking since he's a part of the upcoming tour. July 4 should be a special night!
Linda McMahon was also at Raw. I wonder if Vince is as intense is his marriage as he is in his business life.
Jeff Jarrett spoke with Mike Tenay about the future between TNA and GFW. That will be played in parts on upcoming episodes of Impact. I'm interested to see how this all plays out.
Everything else from yesterday is after the break.
Magnus thanked everyone in TNA after his Slammiversary match. He'll be using his real name of Nick Aldis in GFW.
Raw dropped sharply to 3.46 million viewers Monday night. That's the lowest non-holiday number in 2 1/2 years. Hopefully that's an incentive to finish up The Authority angle sooner rather than later.
Update: WWE is definitely aware of the rating. I hope we're not in for something like Vince giving away money again to try to spark things.
The current owner of Monster Factory responded to Big Show's recent claims on Chris Jericho's podcast. It was 20 years ago, so it doesn't mean much either way now.
Sheamus celebrated his sixth anniversary in WWE. That's hardly long enough to declare him too stale to be holding MITB.
For my take on yesterday's PWInsider.com questions:
1. It's worth noting WWE has millions of dollars to fall back on when doing something as expansive and ambitious as the Network, that hasn't turned a profit yet if I'm not mistaken due to its big start-up costs. If TNA had millions of dollars to play around with, they could advertise more, keep people under contract, and that kind of thing. Since they don't, there's only so much the company can do.
Rebranding under a new name would cost money, and wouldn't reach that large of an audience because they don't have as big of a footprint as they did even in the tail-end of the Spike days. If the PPVs and Xplosion aren't pulling in enough money to continue making them, they should try to negotiate their contracts so they get out of those agreements.
This has been said for years, but they need to look at every name on the roster, how much they're getting paid, and how much they're worth now and in the future. They should probably apply that logic to Management as well, but I don't see that happening.
If they're not reaching certain demographics that ad companies will pay DA for air time to target during their show, that's something they need to find a way to change. It doesn't matter how many "four-star" matches they put on TV if the fans who want to see those just pirate the show the next day and would never see an ad anyway. People connect with characters and narratives. The appeal of three fairly indistinguishable athletes with very little in the way of backstory doing cool moves in rapid succession is limited.
There's probably more, but I'm not trying to write a book here. It's a lot more complicated than "oh just book the X-Division and Knockouts better." and "be different from WWE." WWE has more than 3.5 million viewers each week. Even getting 10% of them to watch TNA would be a big step up.
2. RESPECT the Legend of IRON SHEIK. He's the REAL, not the bleach blond jabroni Hulk Hogan. As was alluded to, WWE is a family company. They don't want to talk about something from the seedy underbelly of when wrestling was less savory.
3. The argument would be that while Kevin Steen wrestled all over the world, Kevin Owens is pretty new to the game. I'd say a good 85-90% of the WWE audience never saw him before he appeared in the company. The indies are indie for a reason. I do like them acknowledging wrestlers' successes elsewhere, but that probably doesn't mean much for most people watching.
4. Putting the outcome of Battleground in doubt is why they kept The Authority together as a force against Brock. I say Rollins escapes by the skin of his teeth to set up Rollins vs. Brock vs. Reigns at Summerslam. It's possible Ambrose is in that mix, but I wouldn't get my hopes up there.
5. Booking babyfaces in a way to try to garner sympathy for them is pretty much Wrestling 101. According to the vocal minority, you're apparently either getting buried or shoved down people's throats, so I guess him being a focal point means he's in the latter camp. Would people rather have seen him defending the WWE Title against Bray at this point after beating Brock at WM? This is a compromise on WWE's part.
More wrestling tomorrow.
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