Wrestling News & Rumours Thread ***NO CHAT***

RollieFingers

Orange Cassidy vs Minoru Suzuki announced for Spring Break 4, lovely clash of styles there, Suzuki will murder him.

PTH2009

https://www.ewrestlingnews.com/news/backstage-news-on-shane-mcmahons-status-with-wwe

Shane living off his millions then ??? Or does he have a role doing something else

Agent Coulson

Reading a raft of wellness failures are coming.

Chuck Noland

Agent Coulson wrote: »

Reading a raft of wellness failures are coming.

Recreational or Roids?

Agent Coulson

Chuck Noland wrote: »

Recreational or Roids?

Just saying Wellness Policy Violation Suspensions coming including top superstars.

Monokne

Samoa Joe was amongst those rumoured and WWE released a statement saying it is categorically untrue that Joe has been or will be suspended.

So the rumours are false in all likelihood.

sky88

https://twitter.com/WWENXT/status/1224926099328684032?s=20

J. Marston

If Kross and Scarlett are paired, Bordeaux will totally overshadow him.

PTH2009

Agree but sadly wont happen

https://www.ewrestlingnews.com/news/jordan-devlin-wants-wwe-to-hold-nxt-uk-takeover-in-ireland

RollieFingers

A UK takeover in Dublin just doesn't sound right.

OneEightSeven

Meltzer and Cornette having it out on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/davemeltzerWON/status/1225205229521489920

Davy05

OneEightSeven wrote: »

Meltzer and Cornette having it out on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/davemeltzerWON/status/1225205229521489920

What's that all about?

sky88

Davy05 wrote: »

What's that all about?

knowing them 2 absolutely nothing

montyrebel

PTH2009 wrote: »

Agree but sadly wont happen

https://www.ewrestlingnews.com/news/jordan-devlin-wants-wwe-to-hold-nxt-uk-takeover-in-ireland

Takeover Ireland? *justy impression* didnt the brits already do that

Monokne

Davy05 wrote: »

What's that all about?

Dave likes modern wrestling and is pals with the lads running AEW, Cornette hates them.

If you care to go on their twitters, it got pretty heated and went back and forth a while.

LineOfBeauty

WWE Q4 numbers have hit and it's all gone bit wrong! Everything is down aside form TV money. A disastrous quarter, but the product it presents is pretty disastrous most of the time too.

Monokne

LineOfBeauty wrote: »

WWE Q4 numbers have hit and it's all gone bit wrong! Everything is down aside form TV money. A disastrous quarter, but the product it presents is pretty disastrous most of the time too.

I probably sound like a broken record but I refer to this all the time. Every metric by which you measure popularity- ticket sales, online merch, at venue merch, ratings, youtube numbers, network subscribers is either moderately declining, plummeting, or at record lows.

It's a simple combination of oversaturation and bad creative. Vince's vision of wrestling appeals to less and less of his own audience each year and it doesn't create new viewers. To add to that, imagine you are not a wrestling fan and you happen across Raw and it piques your interest - are you going to commit to the 7 hours needed every Mon, Wed & Fri to watch all the WWE product? Probably not.

But the TV money is obscene so they are set and so is the pattern.

Monokne

Of note from the WWE investors call - Vince referred in vague terms to selling their content to a third party distributor - this likely means they may look at putting Takeover or PPV's on another service like DAZN, ESPN+ etc.

All those services massively overpay for content as they are trying to get ahead in the race to be the biggest company in the streaming business as the market becomes flooded with them. Bellator got a sweetheart deal from DAZN, for example.

Proof if ever you needed it that they really are in the content business now. Live event business is so unimportant by comparison.

sky88

The most shocking thing about reading these updates is theres a free tier of wwe network who they hell knew

LineOfBeauty

Monokne wrote: »

I probably sound like a broken record but I refer to this all the time. Every metric by which you measure popularity- ticket sales, online merch, at venue merch, ratings, youtube numbers, network subscribers is either moderately declining, plummeting, or at record lows.

It's a simple combination of oversaturation and bad creative. Vince's vision of wrestling appeals to less and less of his own audience each year and it doesn't create new viewers. To add to that, imagine you are not a wrestling fan and you happen across Raw and it piques your interest - are you going to commit to the 7 hours needed every Mon, Wed & Fri to watch all the WWE product? Probably not.

But the TV money is obscene so they are set and so is the pattern.

Like you said, content is what they do. Hours of content, mind numbing, bland, detached from reality content. TV companies want as much content as possible, WWE are happy to provide that for huge money. The problem is that by spreading themselves so thin and overexposing their product so much they are driving people off in droves. It's nearly at the point where the sole thing keeping this company in the green is those big TV deals and being beholden to one master (or a couple of different TV Station masters) is a risky business.

But it's their own fault, WWE have created the situation. I challenge anyone to watch every single minute of content WWE pumps out across a number of platforms for a week, try seeking it all out 1st and then actually try sitting through it, it's impossible, you can't. It's what partially makes the product inaccessible, on top of the WWE speak and the embarrassing characters that you wouldn't want any sane person to know you watch on telly each week.

Monokne

Agree with that. I criticise them for the poor creative, however I am not sure how critical I can be regarding the sheer volume of product. Everything is going that way. UFC has suffered from the same thing. It is clear now and it was clear before this happened that too much product would drive people away, but look at the money they are being paid for it. They are more profitable than they have ever been at a time when their popularity is very low.

Just to add - Vince elaborated on the potential of selling their PPV's to a major distributor and noted the deal could be announced soon.

I am going to guess that any potential partner - ESPN+, DAZN, Amazon Prime, Netflix Disney+, etc etc - would want to launch with Wrestlemania.

J. Marston

I am looking forward to how they explain to fans PPVs going from $9.99 to $50/€25/£25.

Itssoeasy

They can **** right off if they mess up the network. Wasn't the selling point of the network the fact you could watch WWE ppvs for less than a tenner and to do otherwise was stupid(didn't michael cole say that on raw at one point that you'd be an idiot to not subscribe to the network ?)

Vince needs to go. He's senile at this stage.

Itssoeasy

J. Marston wrote: »

I am looking forward to how they explain to fans PPVs going from $9.99 to $50/€25/£25.

Yeah good luck with that and then vince will be confused as to why the money is dropping.

Lithium93_

I can't see WWE on Disney+, considering what they already have on the service, and what's coming down the line for them.

Itssoeasy

Lithium93_ wrote: »

I can't see WWE on Disney+, considering what they already have on the service, and what's coming down the line for them.

Then again, I could be very wrong.

Well lithium you are many things and all of them good but even you can't get in the mind of vince McMahon.

sky88

if i read comments right PPV's wouldnt be 25/50 it would be sold to another streaming platform such as the disney+ etc

but cant see it on Disney as lith said but DAZN or ESPN or even peacock with the close ties with NBC

Lithium93_

Itssoeasy wrote: »

Well lithium you are many things and all of them good but even you can't get in the mind of vince McMahon.

Thank you for the compliment.

It'd be interesting to peek into his head, see what's really ticking up there.

I just can't see Disney thinking yeah let's add some WWE to the service, especially when they've got Marvel & Star Wars under their umbrella.

But again, I could be very wrong.

sky88

Lithium93_ wrote: »

Thank you for the compliment.

It'd be interesting to peek into his head, see what's really ticking up there.

I just can't see Disney thinking yeah let's add some WWE to the service, especially when they've got Marvel & Star Wars under their umbrella.

But again, I could be very wrong.

i actually think theres a better chance of disney just buying wwe then putting it on their Disney +

On this Dazn supposedly paying Bellator a 9 figure sum i mean if bellator can get that id imagine wwe could double what ever that figure is

jface187

Monokne wrote: »

I probably sound like a broken record but I refer to this all the time. Every metric by which you measure popularity- ticket sales, online merch, at venue merch, ratings, youtube numbers, network subscribers is either moderately declining, plummeting, or at record lows.

It's a simple combination of oversaturation and bad creative. Vince's vision of wrestling appeals to less and less of his own audience each year and it doesn't create new viewers. To add to that, imagine you are not a wrestling fan and you happen across Raw and it piques your interest - are you going to commit to the 7 hours needed every Mon, Wed & Fri to watch all the WWE product? Probably not.

But the TV money is obscene so they are set and so is the pattern.

The WWE knows that no one is going to watch all 7 hours. They talked about this before and try to make out it's a different groups watch the shows. Of course that's not true and your just forcing your fans to pick one over the other or not care and give up on the shows. If Smackdown or Raw were different enough from each other you might pick up a different demo but there but the same show. I don't watch enough NXT to see if it's more of the same. I