Impact Wrestling drew 304,000 viewers for their most recent episode, after six episodes below the 300,000 mark. Hopefully things improve for them going forward.
ROH has released a "Legends in ROH" three DVD set, featuring among others Eddie Guerrero, Ken Shamrock, Abdullah the Butcher, Dusty Rhodes, the Hardy Boys, C.M. Punk, Raven, Terry Funk, The Great Muta, Ricky "The Dragon" Steamboat, Jushin "Thunder" Liger, Bobby Heenan, Jim Cornette, Mick Foley, Christian, Bruno Sammartino, Ric Flair, Jerry Lynn, Fit Finlay, Shinsuke Nakamura, Steve Corino, Alberto El Patron, Bully Ray, and Bushwhacker Luke.
'Table for 3" after Raw will feature Trish Stratus, Lita, and Alexa Bliss. It's cool Alexa's already being considered in their league.
"WWE Marquee Matches" Tuesday will look back at C.M. Punk vs. Chris Jericho from Extreme Rules 2012. It's wild seeing WWE promote that match.
- Wednesday's edition will feature Roman Reigns vs. AJ Styles from Extreme Rules 2016, and Thursday's edition will feature Samoa Joe vs. Finn Balor vs. Seth Rollins vs. Bray Wyatt vs. Roman Reigns from Extreme Rules 2017.
Extreme Rules will have a post-show on WWE Network.
NJPW announced a September 30 show back in Long Beach called Fighting Spirit Unleashed. That's big just a few weeks after All In.
- NJPW also announced two shows for CharaExpo USA on November 10 and November 11, debuting the Lion's Break brand, a U.S. sibling to Lion's Gate in NJPW featuring "the next generation of NJPW talent." So it sounds like this is something akin to a U.S. developmental brand. It will be interesting to see how that project goes, as CharaExpo focuses on anime and gaming. At any rate, it will be good for those names to get some experience.
The Undertaker's MSG return got special edition merchandise, which makes sense. I understand WWE continuing to use him as an attraction.
Madison Square Garden will hold a Smackdown Live event on Wednesday, December 26. AJ Styles vs. Samoa Joe for the WWE Championship and Daniel Bryan vs. The Miz were announced, although Bryan has not signed a new contract yet.
The Undertaker scored the pinfall at Raw's Madison Square Garden show, leading Roman Reigns and Braun Strowman to a win over Kevin Owens, Elias, and Baron Corbin.
For my take on yesterday's PWInsider.com questions:
1. If NXT's goal is to prepare people for Raw and Smackdown Live (as it should be), everyone from the workers to production should adapt what they're doing to a TV format. Especially if they'll make more money with the show on FS1 than trying to use it to sell subscriptions. Time to take the training wheels off and see if the brand can be more than a cult success. As for ECW, The Zombie appeared one time to get caned by The Sandman. The brand continued for years after both acts were gone. Before it ended, WWE ECW allowed quite a score of talents to be rebooted or introduced to the WWE audience when coming up from developmental. Obviously it wasn't what it could have been, but it was hardly the disaster it's portrayed as.
2. I'm not following the case, since she's not part of the wrestling world anymore.
3. Basically WWE has so much momentum and money now that no one's going to get anywhere close to them anytime soon. Honestly, the best chance of there being competition for WWE (and this is still very unlikely) would be if somehow certain key personnel from the company split off to found their own company and took a lot of talents and cash with them. It would take a huge amount of resources to even attempt to compete with WWE in the U.S. or worldwide.
4. Well, there's a ring and referees, so it's wrestling in a sense. And there's enough of a fan base for the genre to warrant some coverage.
More wrestling tomorrow.
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