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4 
5NOVEMBER 9, 2015 WRESTLING OBSERVER NEWSLETTER: 2015 HALL OF FAME ISSUE
6BY OBSERVER STAFF | STAFF@WRESTINGOBSERVER.COM | @WONF4W
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9Wrestling Observer Newsletter
10PO Box 1228, Campbell, CA 95009-1228 ISSN10839593	November 9, 2015
11
12A mix of old and new headlines the biggest Hall of Fame class since 2004.
13
14The newcomers to the Hall of Fame are Brock Lesnar, arguably the biggest current pro wrestling star in the world, Shinsuke Nakamura, last year's Wrestler of the Year, the recently deceased Perro Aguayo Jr., one of the best tag teams of the 60s in the Masked Assassins of Jody Hamilton & Tom Renesto, Ivan Koloff, one of the top three heels of the 1970s, Puerto Rico's all-time biggest star Carlos Colon, and former Montreal promoter Eddie Quinn.
15
16Nakamura, the current IWGP Intercontinental champion, joined the rare class of first ballot Hall of Famers. He's only the third first balloter of the last decade, after The Rock in 2007 and John Cena in 2012.
17
18The Assassins, Koloff and Colon have been on the ballot for years, and have all been high in the running for years, with Colon and The Assassins coming very close.
19
20To get into the Hall of Fame, you have to get 60 percent of the vote from various geographical regions. If a wrestler fails to get elected 15 years after being put on the ballot, he or she must garner 50 percent of the votes, or be removed fromthe ballot. A person who gets less than 10 percent of the vote any year is also eliminated from the ballot.
21
22A wrestler is eligible for the ballot 15 years after the start of their major league career, or turns 35 and has been an active pro wrestler for at least ten years.
23
24Wrestlers are supposed to be judged based on four major criteria: positive historical influence on the business, drawing power, in-ring ability, as well as longevity. A wrestler inducted should have all of those, but if they were among the true dominant standout players of their era in one or two of those categories, they should also be put in. But longevity, without being a draw or a great worker, or being a major historical figure, should be seen as meaningless. For non-wrestlers, they need to be the absolute elite of their era or of all-time.
25
26Lesnar, 38, had come close last year coming off both beating The Undertaker at WrestleMania and ending the streak, and also capturing the WWE title from John Cena. But 2015 was another year of being the person WWE built its biggest shows around, including being in the main event of WrestleMania against Roman Reigns. That put him way over the top, as the leading vote getter.
27
28Lesnar had been an interesting candidate. While a pushed pro wrestling headliner from the day he was brought to the main WWE roster in 2002, he only had a short first run, lasting less than two years. It appeared his career was then over, but he gained even more fame as UFC heavyweight champion than he did as WWE's big project in 2002 and 2003. But upon his return, signing an unprecedented multi-million dollar per year for limited dates contract, he was immediately one of WWE's two biggest stars along with John Cena. Over the past year, he clearly had eclipsed Cena, and became the headliner on almost every major show, as well as the person network specials were built around.
29
30Lesnar had an unprecedented quadruple crown that is likely to never be duplicated, winning the NCAA heavyweight championship in 2000, the WWE championship three times, including at one time being the youngest man ever to hold the title (Randy Orton later became the youngest), the IWGP heavyweight championship and the UFC heavyweight championship. He was also the only person in history to be the biggest star in both UFC and pro wrestling, and there is an argument that during the UFC tenure, he actually was the biggest star in both at the same time, given more wrestling fans bought his UFC PPVs than all but the biggest pro wrestling PPVs of that era.
31
32Nakamura, 35, was the youngest IWGP champion in history, winning the title from Hiroyoshi Tenzan on December 9, 2003, at the age of 23. He's since held the title three times, as well as held the IC title five times. In fact, he's the person who took the IC title, a basic secondary title with no interest, and built it up to where it could headline sold out shows and work as the title on the line in the main event on PPV shows.
33
34He's also headlined the Tokyo Dome eight times, tying Keiji Muto for the second most in history. He worked in the main event against Hiroshi Tanahashi three times, Yoshihiro Takayama twice, as well as Lesnar, Bob Sapp and once in a ten-man tag team elimination match.
35
36Aguayo Jr., born Pedro Aguayo Jr., was the son of probably the biggest non-masked pro wrestling star ever in Mexico, the original Pedro "Perro" Aguayo. Because of who his father is, he started out as a star from his first match at the age of 15. He was main eventing quickly after that, including holding the Mexican national tag team titles with his father at the age of 18.
37
38Because of who his father was, he was a natural babyface at the start. But he gained his greatest fame as the top rudo in Mexico for more than a decade. He was one of AAA's biggest stars for years, before going to CMLL in 2003, where he quickly became the best drawing heel in the country, facing such stars as Mistico and El Hijo del Santo. He formed Los Perros Del Mal, a heel group with Damian 666, Halloween and Hector Garza, whose T-shirt became the best selling pro wrestling shirt ever in that country.
39
40He left CMLL in 2008 to try and start his own promotion, which didn't do well. He joined AAA in 2010 as its top heel, and was set to feud with Rey Mysterio Jr., including headlining this year's TripleMania, when he passed away on March 20, 2015, at the age of 35.
41
42There is no argument that his death is what led to him being voted in, but when studying his career, he was very clearly a Hall of Fame talent and draw, even though at times his personal issues threatened to derail him from truly reaching his potential. Realistically, only at times did he even come close to reaching it, and was really starting to hit a new peak as a star at the time of his death, as the program with Mysterio Jr. would have been one of the hottest of his career. Like his father, he was destined to be one of the most beloved stars when he got older and turned.
43
44The Assassins, as in the original team of Joe Hamilton and Tom Renesto, started out as a tag team in Georgia in 1961. Renesto, wrestling as The Great Bolo, had held the Southern tag team titles for Jim Crockett Sr. twice, in 1959 and 1960, with Hamilton's older brother Larry, who would go on to be better known as The Missouri Mauler.
45
46While legend sometimes had it that they took their names after John F. Kennedy was assassinated, that isn't true at all, since The Assassins tag team started two years earlier, and they were already a headline act before the president was killed. The two remained together as a masked team through 1972, and had the reputation of being, with the exception of Ray Stevens & Pat Patterson, whose tenure together was much shorter, as the best heel tag team of the era.
47
48They were top draws in most places they went, including setting the attendance record in Charlotte during a feud with The Kentuckians (Luke Brown & Grizzly Smith), as well as packing buildings for Leroy McGuirk with the same program. The Kentuckians were huge but very limited babyfaces playing giant hillbilly scufflers, and The Assassins were good enough workers to hide their limitations and get good matches out of them, in the sense they were matches that led fans to continue to come back and see them week after the week. When Haystacks Calhoun, a traveling attraction, would come into the territories they were in, he'd often team with The Kentuckians against The Assassins and different partner, often the Mauler.
49
50As a team, the two held versions of the NWA world tag team title twice in Georgia, once in Tennessee and once in British Columbia, the WWA world tag team title in California twice, the IWA world tag team title in Australia, the North American tag team title in Puerto Rico, the United States tag team title three times, the Canadian Open tag team title twice, the Georgia tag team title 12 times, the Southeastern tag team title four times and the Southern tag team titles.
51
52Renesto was the senior member of the team, breaking into wrestling in the late 1940s. He started working under a mask in the early 50s in California. He was 33 years old when the team was first together in Georgia.
53
54Hamilton, now 77, followed his brother into wrestling, starting at the age of 16 in the Central States. At 18, Joe & Larry Hamilton were a regular tag team. Joe Hamilton was only 19 when the Hamilton Brothers faced Argentina Rocca & Miguel Perez in the main event of the May 24, 1958, show in Madison Square Garden, which drew an overflow crowd 20,335 fans, the largest crowd in the Garden in 27 years. One would think there would be rematches galore, given the crowd they drew, but in fact, Joe was out of the territory immediately after the one-and-done loss in the main event. Joe remains to this day the second youngest wrestler ever to main event Madison Square Garden (the youngest was Tonga Kid, who was 18 when he headlined a show against Roddy Piper).
55
56After the two started working as single wrestlers, Joe went to Georgia in 1961. The plan was to go as a masked Russian, but it was changed to being The Masked Assassin. A few months later, Renesto came into the territory and the tag team of The Assassins were born. Even though Renesto & Larry Hamilton were a team, Renesto & Joe Hamilton never met before they became a team.
57
58Even though Hamilton was the first Assassin, during the heyday, generally Renesto was known as Assassin #1 and Hamilton as #2, except in Japan where Renesto was Assassin A and Hamilton was Assassin B. But they were always considered equals, and would sometimes say there was no #1 or #2.
59
60Renesto had become the booker in Georgia, and then when the big split came in November 1972, the two, along with virtually the entire promotion, left the NWA promotion to go with Ann Gunkel's All South Wrestling.
61
62With the promotional war going on, Renesto booked the split of the team. Renesto unmasked voluntarily, turning himself babyface. There is some belief that he did this because he thought the NWA promotion was going to publish photos of him without his mask, since the plan was for him to make himself top babyface after the split, so he did it on his own. This led to him feuding with Hamilton, who in storyline was mad that he unmasked.
63
64After All South lost the promotional war in 1974, The Assassins had one last run as a masked team in Puerto Rico later that year, including a four month run as WWC North American tag team champions, beating Perez & Carlos Colon.
65
66Renesto was 47 at the time and retired from the ring, and became a booker in a number of territories over the next decade or so. His sons became wrestlers, and Tom Renesto Jr. worked as The Assassin in California, Roberto Renesto in Texas, Tom Renesto Jr., and Tom Branch in other places before fading away from the business in 1989. Son Tim worked as Tim Tall Tree, Tim Renesto, Speed Manson and Speedy Tall Tree, doing a Native American gimmick through 1990. He may be the last guy ever to work the California territory that is still active today in the U.S., working Tennessee indies.
67
68Tom Renesto suffered a stroke in the 90s and passed away in 2000 at the age of 72.
69
70Hamilton had a second career as a major singles star, mostly in the Southeast. He was best known in Georgia for a never-ending feud with Mr. Wrestling II, and strong programs with Dusty Rhodes and Jack Brisco in Florida, Bob Armstrong in the Gulf Coast and Danny Hodge in the Tri-States. While at first, he was not a good talker, The Assassins in their heyday were known for their strong promos, and after the original team broke up, few could deliver as menacing and scary a heel promo as Hamilton, known just as The Assassin.
71
72When he was older, Hamilton took on various new partners, including Randy Colley and Roger Smith, as new versions of The Assassins, but the replacement teams weren't nearly as good as the originals.
73
74He remained a top star for another decade in major promotions, working regularly through 1985, including his last major run as part of an Assassins tag team, with Hercules Hernandez in the Carolinas, often working against people like Jimmy Valiant, Rufus Jones and Bugsy McGraw, popular babyfaces who were limited in the ring.
75
76Hamilton & Smith also formed a tag team called Fire & Flame. He formed an outlaw promotion, Deep South Wrestling, that had local television, and built it around feuding with Mr. Wrestling II once again, but by this point it was a nostalgia act since Wrestling II was ruined by WWF turning him into a jobber. After breaking his back taking a bump in 1988, he retired.
77
78He worked behind the scenes for World Championship Wrestling for years, including running the Power Plant, and also reformed Deep South Wrestling after WCW folded and it became a WWE developmental territory, before WWE pulled the plug on him. Hamilton's son Nick, who went by the name Nick Patrick, became a wrestler, but was far better known as a longtime referee in various Southern promotions, WCW and later WWF. He's probably best known for double-crossing boss Eric Bischoff and Sting through the prodding of Hulk Hogan, and when he was supposed to deliver a super fast count in the Hogan vs. Sting match, to lead to Bret Hart taking over, he delivered a normal count, flattening Hart's debut in WCW and Sting's big coronation as WCW's biggest star.
79
80Ivan Koloff, 73, born Oreal Perras on August 25, 1942, was a lifelong wrestling fan who grew up idolizing Bruno Sammartino. He started as Irish wrestler Red McNulty in 1961. While wrestling under his real name, he got a television match against Sammartino on November 27, 1965, in Pittsburgh. He had little success until being christened Ivan Koloff, the Russian Bear, in 1967, in Montreal. He became a big heel draw, feuding with the Rougeaus, and winning the IWA championship, drawing big crowds on top.
81
82His success in Montreal led to runs as a headliner in Toronto, and a high-card star in St. Louis. On December 8, 1969, the powerhouse Koloff was brought in as a protégé of manager Tony Angelo, as the latest foreign menace, to face Sammartino for the WWWF title in Madison Square Garden.
83
84Sammartino at the time was largely facing foreigners such as The Sheik, Killer Kowalski, Toru Tanaka and Waldo Von Erich, when Koloff came around. Business was struggling, but after Koloff beat Sammartino when the match was stopped due to Sammartino's excessive bleeding, the rematch six weeks later drew 16,858 fans, the largest wrestling crowd in the Northeast in three years. Sammartino won the rematch, but he impressed Sammartino and the promotion so much that when Sammartino decided to give up the championship, Koloff was chosen as the transition champion.
85
86The January 18, 1971, match was easily the most famous pro wrestling match of that era. Sammartino had been champion since 1963 and fans in the Northeast, as well as in other parts of the world, considered him unbeatable. Because of his stature as champion for eight years, and the fact he held so many wins over Gene Kiniski, who was NWA champion from 1966 to 1969, he was easily the biggest star in the world.
87
88Koloff at this point was managed by Lou Albano. The storyline is that Angelo didn't know how to correctly train Koloff, and with his change in training, he scored wins over Big Bill Miller, Gorilla Monsoon and Tony Marino on the three previous shows.
89
90Albano's mouth and Koloff, as a somewhat short, but quick and relentless aggressor, was a combination that drew a sellout of 21,166 fans, the biggest crowd Sammartino had ever drawn in Madison Square Garden and setting a record for the Northeast with an $85,554 gate. Koloff shocked the world in pinning Sammartino at 14:55 with a kneedrop off the top rope, clean in the middle, with no controversy. The only modern equivalent to this match was Undertaker's loss to Brock Lesnar at WrestleMania.
91
92That win, covered as the biggest story in years in every wrestling publication, and even the biggest boxing publications, made Koloff an international superstar, and a main eventer everywhere he went for most of the next 15 years. Koloff was only to be a transitional champion. He only had a few title matches, and no big matches in any major arena, before losing on the next Madison Square Garden show on February 8, 1971, to Pedro Morales. Morales, who had just arrived in the promotion billed as the WWWF United States champion, the Puerto Rican hope going after the man who cleanly defeated Sammartino, overflowed the building with 21,812 fans and broke the record set just three weeks earlier at $86,885. Koloff held Morales in a full nelson when Morales climbed the ropes, kicked off, and with Koloff still holding the full nelson, both men's shoulders were down but Morales got his up at the count of three.
93
94Even though Koloff was on fire, Vince McMahon had decided it was best to get him out of the territory. First, there was so much heat on him for beating Sammartino, who was so passionately loved, that there was fear physical harm could come to him.
95
96During the three weeks he was champion, he was mostly booked in small towns. When there were major arenas booked, he was used mostly in prelims, didn't bring in the belt, and would beat enhancement guys quickly while tag champs The Mongols would headline against Sammartino and a partner. After losing to Morales, he only worked one more week in the territory, putting over Chief Jay Strongbow in Philadelphia and Bobo Brazil in Washington, D.C., on the way out. He moved to the Pittsburgh territory to feud with Sammartino, with the grudge feud doing big business, climaxing with Sammartino winning a Texas death match.
97
98He worked in a few places before settling in the AWA in 1971. He worked there as a main event heel through early 1974, best remembered for his tag team with Superstar Billy Graham, working with all the top babyfaces of the time.
99
100As a singles star, or in tag teams with the likes of Pat Patterson or Masa Saito, Koloff remained on top. When he was brought back to the WWWF in 1975, Sammartino looking to avenge that loss drew three straight Madison Square Garden sellouts in title matches, and a fourth in a tag team match. In 1978, when he was brought back again, he was a key part of the storyline of building Bob Backlund to where he'd be accepted as the new man on top, with the idea of bringing back some of Sammartino's most legendary opponents, Ken Patera, Spyros Arion, George Steele, Koloff and Ernie Ladd.
101
102The first Backlund vs. Koloff match on August 28, 1978, was a double sellout of both Madison Square Garden, and the Felt Forum for closed circuit, with more than 24,000 fans, as part of a double main event with Graham vs. Dusty Rhodes in a bullrope match, even though the match aired live on local cable.
103
104Shortly after that, Koloff & Ole Anderson became the hottest heel tag team in the country during the period that Georgia Championship Wrestling was the hottest show on the SuperStation, in their feud with Rhodes and various partners.
105
106In the 80s, Koloff settled down in the Carolinas, with his last memorable run being as the mentor of his nephew, Nikita Koloff. The Russians, which also included Barry Darsow as Khrusher Khruschev, before he left to become part of Demolition in the WWF, had a big program with the Road Warriors. Later, Nikita turned on Ivan, who became a babyface.
107
108Slowed down by age and injuries, his career in the major leagues ended shortly after Turner Broadcasting bought Jim Crockett Promotions. Koloff continued to wrestle on independents in the Carolinas for many years, before he became a traveling preacher at churches, where he'd talk about battling drug addiction during his years in the ring.
109
110Colon, 67, has been a regular on the ballot and has come close for years. Colon's case is pretty simple. He was the biggest star in the history of pro wrestling in Puerto Rico. Unlike other local legends, his stardom enabled him to draw big crowds at baseball stadiums and for wrestling to be a huge part of the culture. There is not a question from a pure drawing power standpoint, that Colon has both the numbers and longevity.
111
112The knock is that he was only able to be a business mover in a territory that he was part-owner of. While everyone that traveled had their places they did better than others in, Colon didn't get over anywhere in the mainland U.S. and was a prelim wrestler on his tours of Japan, even in the late 80s when he'd been featured in the Japanese magazines for his main events in Puerto Rico against Japanese legends.
113
114In 1984, because Colon was the big star in Puerto Rico, when Jim Crockett Promotions and Georgia Championship Wrestling promoted its first show at the Meadowlands Arena, since their television was on a Spanish station, the television promotion was built around Tully Blanchard delivering racial taunts to the Puerto Rican hero Colon, and tapes shown of Colon's bloodbaths in Puerto Rico. But while the show did okay, it was clear the fans came to see the stars like Ric Flair, Dusty Rhodes, The Road Warriors and Ricky Steamboat. All mentions of Colon were booed, his match with Blanchard was rejected by the audience, and the audience was distinctly lacking the Puerto Rican fan base that they expected to carry them.
115
116Wrestling remained strong in Puerto Rico longer than in most places, because WWE didn't have television for a long time, and after an early failed attempt to draw, gave up on the island. When they came back, WWC had the same problems everyone else had. Another issue was the death of Bruiser Brody in the WWC dressing room. Brody was stabbed with a knife by booker Invader #1 in the bathroom, and WWC television tried to babyface Invader before a controversial trial where he was acquitted. Invader was then brought back as booker, and remained a major star with the company. But WWC fell at the time due to many of the top American stars no longer being willing to go there.
117
118Still, in the early 80s, it was a super hot promotion and Colon's was the top star from 1974, when he was booked to take over the top spot from Miguel Perez Jr., through numerous retirements and comebacks, as well as for years the promotion being carried by the feud with his son, Carly Colon, now known as Carlito, and rival Ray Gonzalez.
119
120While born in Santa Isabela, PR, Colon grew up in New York and was a big fan of Argentina Rocca & Miguel Perez, the area's top babyface tag team. He started wrestling in 1966. He worked some small circuits for a few years, and then as a prelim wrestler in the WWWF.
121
122He achieved some success when moving to Canada in 1970, where he worked throughout the country as well as in Oregon, using the name Carlos Belafonte. His biggest success was in Stampede Wrestling, where he worked as a headliner, a fiery young babyface with good charisma. He did headline two big shows for the UWA in 1982, teaming with Canek and with Ray Mendoza in a two week program against Perro Aguayo & Abdullah. And on nearby islands like Trinidad/Tobago, Barbados, Santo Domingo and other places in the Caribbean where the WWC television ran, he came in for special shows when those areas had short popularity peaks.
123
124In 1974, Capitol Sports was formed as a full-time promotion in Puerto Rico. They struggled early, but by using Perez, the area's legend from the 50s, they started gaining traction. Colon was the young babyface, who, as part of the promotion, was earmarked as the top star. On June 22, 1974, he captured the North American title from top heel Gil Hayes, and pretty much everything was built around him for the next two plus decades.
125
126The first major stadium show, at Juan Loubriel Stadium in Bayamon, was February 1, 1975, drawing 18,000 fans as Colon & El Santo beat Barrabas & Rebelde Rojo in the main event of a match that was also filmed for one of Santo's last movies. Business had its ups and downs, but really picked up in late 1978, and remained strong until the Brody murder in 1988. There were still big crowds drawn after that point, for anniversary shows and a few others, but the boom period was over. The WWC by the 90s had bad reputation when it came to paying foreign talent, and really was almost considered a last resort, where talent would go for the experience. It was very much a buyer beware after that point.
127
128During the heyday, Colon would battle various heels, some major stars in North America, some created stars in Puerto Rico. His biggest rival was Abdullah the Butcher, who he also teamed with in some of his biggest matches, most notably the three match Colon & Abdullah the Butcher vs. Bruiser Brody & Stan Hansen series in 1984. Over a short period of time, that tag team feud drew stadium crowds of 20,000, 15,000 and a sellout of 28,000 (announced at 34,283), the blow-off cage match being the island's all-time record setting event.
129
130The territory was known for violent and dangerous fans with heavy security at the matches, and bloody brawls. The crazy heels, as best exemplified by Abdullah, who were willing bleeders, usually were Colon's most effective rivals. But he also drew big in matches with the likes of Dory Funk Jr., Harley Race and Ric Flair with championships being the main goal.
131
132Colon's rivals in big matches started with Gil Hayes, and continued with the likes of Ernie Ladd, Pierre Martel, The Spoiler (Don Jardine), Cowboy Bob Ellis, The Sheik, Eric the Red, Hartford Love, Gorilla Monsoon, Killer Karl Krupp, Terry Funk, Iron Sheik, Invader #1, Ox Baker, boxing legend Joe Frazier, Pampero Firpo, Brody, Hansen, TNT (Savio Vega), The Mongolian Stomper, Hercules Ayala, Ron Garvin, Steve Strong (Steve DiSalvo), Dick Murdoch, Leo Burke, Dutch Mantell, El Bronco, Greg Valentine and eventually Ray Gonzalez.
133
134Colon chasing the NWA title became a big program during the reign of Harley Race, including drawing two crowds of more than 20,000 fans at Hiram Bithorn Stadium in San Juan in 1981.
135
136Even though the WWC was part of the NWA, they created their own WWC world championship in 1982, with Abdullah arriving as champion, and losing to Colon on July 24, 1982.
137
138Colon wrestled Flair a few times in NWA title matches, failing to win the title. Then, on October 16, 1982, Flair came in as the challenger for Colon's WWC title, and drew a sellout of 24,000 fans at Hiram Bithorn Stadium in a match Colon won with a backslide, that was described as reminiscent of the more famous 1984 Flair backslide loss to Kerry Von Erich in Texas Stadium.
139
140At that point, Colon's WWC world title became the WWC Universal title, with the idea the Universe was bigger than the world.
141
142After Race beat Flair to win the NWA title, Race came in for a title vs. title match on September 17, 1983, which drew another crowd of more than 25,000 fans, and ended with Colon winning via DQ. After Flair got the NWA title back at Starrcade that year, a cage match with Flair, on December 18, 1983, this time with only the Universal title at stake, saw Colon crawl out of the cage to win before 25,000 fans.
143
144It was portrayed in Puerto Rico at first like it was the biggest championship in pro wrestling since Colon beat Flair in two WWC title matches. The Universal title vs. NWA world title showdown for both belts took place on January 6 , 1983, which drew a sellout of 23,000 fans to the Stadium, which Colon won.
145
146Flair left Puerto Rico with the belt and this result was never acknowledged outside of Puerto Rico. In Puerto Rico, it was announced Flair had regained the title two weeks later, beating Colon, although no such match ever took place.
147
148This was an interesting ballot because it was the first after implementing the 15 year rule, which is if someone doesn't get elected within 15 years, and can't maintain at least 50 percent of the vote, they are eliminated from the ballot. With so many candidates added and few subtracted, it had created a logjam in recent years.
149
150It also created a lot of big jumps of those who didn't get in, but came close, such as Gene Okerlund, Jim Crockett Sr., the trio of Los Misioneros de la Muerte (El Signo & El Texano & Negro Navarro, who popularized trios wrestling in Mexico in the last great feud of El Santo), Villano III, Sting and Gary Hart.
151
152With the exception of Yuji Nagata, there were no significant drops. Nagata was hurt by spending a year working in prelims as he's at the tail end of his career, although he did get a nostalgia main event with Nakamura.
153
154Lesnar was among the leading vote getters in every category, placing sixth among reporters, third among historians and ninth among active wrestlers, but was well down the list with former wrestlers. Nakamura finished top ten in the ballot in every single group, which is extremely rare, being third among reporters, fourth among historians, seventh among former wrestlers and eight among current wrestlers. Aguayo Jr. was fifth among reporters, tenth among historians, and fourth among active wrestlers.
155
156The Assassins were first among reporters and third among active wrestlers, but didn't do nearly as well with their contemporaries, the historians and the former wrestlers. For a number of reasons, they did far better among people who never saw their heyday than among those who did. In most cases, that would be because people weren't that good but had big reps, but in this case they were very good, but they were really not the level of stars or draws as most Hall of Famers. The original team only had short big-territory runs, mostly Australia and Los Angeles, but were never featured in St. Louis, even though Hamilton came out of St. Joseph, MO, and had a big late 70s run in the Central States.
157
158Koloff placed second with historians which really carried him, although he took 12th with reporters as well as former wrestlers. Colon placed ninth with reporters, 14th with historians, 15th with former wrestlers (his peer group) and second with active wrestlers.
159
160Those coming the closest to getting in were Okerlund (eight votes short), Crockett Sr. (Six votes short), Los Misioneros de la Muerte (six votes short) and Villano III (seven votes short).
161
162Many expected Daniel Bryan to make it on the first ballot, given all of his Observer awards for Most Outstanding for many years in a row as well as Best Technical Wrestler. His situation was notable because he placed second on the ballot with reporters, but did not fare well among any of the other groups. The most notable is that he only received 12 percent of the vote among current wrestlers.
163
164Nobody will be removed from next year's ballot based on the 15 year/50 percent rule, as those on the line this year were Colon, who got in, and Villano III, Cien Caras and Volk Han, who all got more than 50 percent. Next year they will be joined by Blue Panther.
165
166Bob Geigel, Big Show, A.J. Styles and Hector Garza will all be dropped for failing to get ten percent of the vote.
167
168In the case of Styles, if he continues to be able to perform at the pace he has the past two years, he will be back on the ballot in 2017. One change is that unless things change with him, there is a good chance he at that time would be put in the Japanese section, because his strongest Hall of Fame candidacy is in Japan, not North America.
169
170Another question for next year, after the induction of Colon, is on the "Rest of the World" category. The idea of the category in a sense was trying to be fair to Colon. The reality is, on the modern U.S. ballot, he was not getting in for all the geographic limitation reasons. So the idea of "Rest of the World" was a category where only the worldwide viewers of wrestling instead of the U.S. and Canadian viewers would vote. It was always weird, with guys from all over the world, but there are people who follow the entire world so in that sense it was a fair way to put it together. What ended up happening is that aside from the Australian candidates, Johnny Barend (a Hawaii wrestling legend of the 60s), and Colon, they all fell off the ballot.
171
172Whether I personally would have voted for Colon (I haven't thus far), not having that category wasn't fair to him based on the entire idea of making it fair to those outside the U.S. and Canada. He's in, and now I'm questioning the need for the category. The guys who would make up next year's "Rest of the World" category, Mark Lewin, Killer Karl Kox, Domenic DeNucci, Brute Bernard & Skull Murphy, Mario Milano and Barend all worked most of their careers in the U.S. & Canada. All probably achieved their greatest success outside North America (Lewin would be arguable because he was a major star wherever he went; and Bernard & Murphy were big in the Carolinas). But unless someone would make a good case, I don't see the need to put them in a separate category.
173
174Added to next year's ballot will be Luis Urive (Caristico/Myzteziz/Mistico/Sin Cara), who is probably the most interesting candidate in years, Kerry Von Erich, Fishman, Bearcat Wright and Pedro Morales.
175
176Caristico, as Mistico, had a few year run in CMLL that without a doubt was Hall of Fame worthy, particularly for people voting based on box office. And he was a good high flyer who got over in Japan, but then he went to WWE and flopped.
177
178Kerry Von Erich belongs on the ballot if Junkyard Dog is on it. Both were huge during the same time period. JYD had a little more longevity and was a genuine star in WWF. Von Erich was a drawing card everywhere the World Class show played, including internationally, and moved numbers to a greater extent in outside territories. Von Erich was also a far better wrestler. Both flamed out too early and didn't have the longevity, but both at their peak had at least short-term Hall of Fame runs just based on their drawing power.
179
180Fishman's drawing numbers during the heyday of UWA are Hall of Fame level. There are others from the same era who are not in, Villano III and Los Misioneros in particular, who would be ahead of him. I don't see Fishman anywhere near the candidate of Villano III, but his numbers are ballot worthy and he's never been on.
181
182Wright has been on the ballot before and fallen off. He's back because of multiple requests to get him back. Wright was a huge drawing card in the early 60s and was the first black world heavyweight champion, winning the WWA title in California and the IWA title in Australia. During the 60s he main evented and held titles in a number of major territories. He didn't have the longevity of Bobo Brazil, nor the charisma. He also ran afoul of a lot of promoters.
183
184In Los Angeles, he refused to drop the title and as a 6-foot-7 undefeated heavyweight boxer, it was hard to find somebody to get it from him. He supposedly agreed to lose to Fred Blassie, then changed course in the match and essentially beat him for real. The promotion then sent Gene LeBell after him, and when he saw LeBell, he left the ring, got in his car, and the next thing you know, he was working in the small-time Phoenix circuit. Still, his being totally unprofessional didn't trump the fact he had a proven drawing record, and he had many more years as a headliner in big promotions. But then he started threatening promoters with racial protests, and then people started getting leery of using him.
185
186Morales clearly has Hall of Fame numbers as a draw, and had a three-year run as WWWF champion. With the exception of Superstar Billy Graham, he had the best sellout percentage at Madison Square Garden of any champion in company history. He didn't do as well as Bruno Sammartino, Graham or Bob Backlund in the other markets, which led to him being replaced by Sammartino at the end of 1973. He had a second big run as the No. 2 babyface and IC champion under Bob Backlund in the early 80s, and was also WWA champion. Still, he's never come close in the past. His run in the Carolinas, where he was pushed as prelim level, didn't help. He got a good push after WWWF in the 70s based off the name and all the magazine exposure aside from the Carolinas, but he came across as a big name who was a disappointment. I think there's also the stigma of him being pushed as a Puerto Rican ethnic draw in New York, which worked, but him not doing as well elsewhere stigmatized him as a guy only good for the New York market. Even though that's the biggest market, does that make you a Hall of Famer? But his case will be revisited in the historical category.
187
188*****************************************************************
189
190
191WRESTLING OBSERVER HALL OF FAME BALLOTING RESULTS
192Votes needed for induction into the Hall of Fame: U.S. and Cana modern (234); U.S. and Canada historical (135); Japan (99); Mexico (92); Rest of the World (131); Europe (71).
193PERFORMER	VOTES	PCT	2014	
194PERFORMER	VOTES	PCT	2014
195BROCK LESNAR	297	76%	56%	Junkyard Dog	112	29%	16%
196SHINSUKE NAKAMURA	120	73%	----	L.A. Park	44	29%	24%
197PERRO AGUAYO JR.	110	72%	----	Otto Wanz	34	29%	25%
198THE ASSASSINS (Hamilton/Renesto)	147	65%	48%	Tim “Mr. Wrestling” Woods	64	28%	24%
199IVAN KOLOFF	237	61%	48%	Dr. Wagner Jr.	41	27%	24%
200CARLOS COLON	132	60%	56%	Domenic DeNucci	58	27%	21%
201Gene Okerlund	226	58%	36%	June Byers	59	26%	14%
202Jim Crockett Sr.	129	57%	44%	Larry Matysik	58	26%	16%
203Los Misioneros de la Muerte	86	56%	36%	Akira Taue	42	26%	16%
204Villano III	85	56%	33%	John Tolos	57	25%	13%
205Bryan Danielson/Daniel Bryan	209	54%	----	Billy Joyce	29	25%	27%
206Mike & Ben Sharpe	89	54%	46%	Cowboy Bob Ellis	55	24%	----
207Cien Caras	83	54%	54%	Horst Hoffman	28	24%	23%
208Volk Han	86	52%	51%	Sgt. Slaughter	91	23%	22%
209Bill Apter	204	52%	42%	Cima	38	23%	----
210Sting	197	51%	33%	Yuji Nagata	38	23%	37%
211Gary Hart	192	49%	33%	C.M. Punk	85	22%	19%
212Jerry Jarrett	187	48%	44%	Masahiko Kimura	37	22%	23%
213Edge	173	44%	36%	Kiyoshi Tamura	37	22%	23%
214Stanley Weston	98	44%	31%	Von Brauners w/Saul Weingeroff	50	22%	10%
215PERFORMER	VOTES	PCT	2014	PERFORMER	VOTES	PCT	2014
216Rollerball Mark Rocco	50	42%	32%	Ultimo Guerrero	32	21%	24%
217Howard Finkel	164	42%	29%	Kendo Nagasaki	23	20%	15%
218Karloff Lagarde	62	41%	48%	Jim Crockett Jr.	77	20%	23%
219Big Daddy	48	41%	43%	Kinji Shibuya	40	18%	14%
220Blue Panther	61	40%	28%	Dave Brown	71	18%	13%
221Jackie Pallo	47	40%	27%	George Gordienko	29	18%	25%
222Ricky Starr	46	39%	----	George Scott	68	17%	19%
223Enrique Torres	84	37%	25%	Brute Bernard & Skull Murphy	37	17%	12%
224Mark Lewin	80	37%	38%	Pepper Gomez	37	16%	10%
225Johnny “Wrestling II” Walker	80	36%	21%	Rocky Johnson	35	16%	----
226Minoru Suzuki	59	36%	22%	Jim Breaks	19	16%	14%
227Jimmy Hart	139	36%	36%	Dick Hutton	34	15%	13%
228Red Bastien	79	35%	34%	Randy Orton	59	15%	----
229Johnny Saint	41	35%	29%	Spyros Arion	32	15%	15%
230Jun Akiyama	55	33%	29%	Ultimate Warrior	52	13%	20%
231Killer Karl Kox	73	33%	32%	Hiroyoshi Tenzan & Satoshi Kojima	19	12%	17%
232Los Brazos	50	33%	16%	Vampiro	19	12%	11%
233Don Owen	129	33%	30%	Ron Wright	25	11%	----
234Huracan Ramirez	47	31%	27%	Mario Milano	25	11%	11%
235Curt Hennig	115	30%	23%	Johnny Barend	23	11%	10%
236Less than 10% of the votes from the region and dropped from next year’s ballot: Bob Geigel, Big Show, A.J. Styles, Hector Garza
237Dropped from next year’s ballot due to the 15 year/50% rule: Nobody
238Added to the ballot next year: Caristico, Kerry Von Erich, Fishman, Bearcat Wright, Pedro Morales
239Will be dropped after next year if not inducted or 50%: Cien Caras, Villano III, Volk Han, Blue Panther
240
241TOP AMONG DIFFERENT VOTING GROUPS
242REPORTERS	HISTORIANS	FORMER WRESTLERS	ACTIVE WRESTLERS
2431. The Assassins	1. Volk Han	1. Cien Caras	1. Jim Crockett Sr.
2442. Bryan Danielson	2. Ivan Koloff	2. Mike & Ben Sharpe	2. Carlos Colon
2453. Shinsuke Nakamura	3. Brock Lesnar	3. Bill Apter	3. The Assassins
2464. Stanley Weston	4. Shinsuke Nakamura	4. Gene Okerlund	4. Perro Aguayo Jr.
2475. Perro Aguayo Jr.	5. Gary Hart	5. John Tolos	5. Rollerball Mark Rocco
2486. Brock Lesnar	6. Enrique Torres	6. George Gordienko	6. Johnny Saint
2497. Jim Crockett Sr.	7. Los Misioneros de la Muerte	7. Shinsuke Nakamura	7. Gary Hart
2508. Gene Okerlund	8. Jerry Jarrett	8. Curt Hennig	8. Shinsuke Nakamura
2519. Carlos Colon	9. Villano III	9. Ricki Starr	9. Brock Lesnar
25210. Villano III	10. Perro Aguayo Jr.	10. Red Bastien	10. Villano III
25311. Mike & Ben Sharpe	11. Karloff Lagarde	11. Jim Crockett Sr.	11. Dr. Wagner Jr.
25412. Ivan Koloff	12. Blue Panther	12. Ivan Koloff	12. Johnny “Wrestling II” Walker
25513. Cien Caras	13. Bill Apter	13. Don Owen	13. Sting
25614. Edge	14. Carlos Colon	14. Killer Karl Kox	14. Gene Okerlund
25715. Big Daddy	15. Mark Lewin	15. Carlos Colon	15. Bill Apter
258REPORTERS	HISTORIANS	FORMER WRESTLERS	ACTIVE WRESTLERS
25916. Los Misioneros de la Muerte	16. Don Owen	16. Edge	16. Howard Finkel
26017. Sting	17. Sting	17. Domenic DeNucci	17. Yuji Nagata
26118. Jerry Jarrett	18. Bryan Danielson	18. Mark Lewin	18. Akira Taue
26219. Howard Finkel	19. Los Brazos	19. Jerry Jarrett	19. Ron Wright
26320. Minoru Suzuki	20. Cien Caras	20. Johnny “Wrestling II” Walker	20. Jimmy Hart
26421. Blue Panther	21. Howard Finkel	21. Perro Aguayo Jr.	21. Curt Hennig
26522. Jimmy Hart	22. The Assassins	22. Los Brazos	22. Ivan Koloff
26623. Volk Han	23. Jackie Pallo	23. Los Misioneros de la Muerte	23. June Byers
26724. Bill Apter	24. Jimmy Hart	24. The Assassins	24. Von Brauners w/Saul Weingeroff
26825. L.A. Park	25. Gene Okerlund	25. Jun Akiyama	25. Cowboy Bob Ellis
26926. Ultimo Guerrero	26. Stanley Weston	26. Brute Bernard & Skull Murphy	26. Tim “Mr. Wrestling” Woods
27027. Red Bastien	27. L.A. Park	27. Larry Matysik	27. Junkyard Dog
27128. June Byers	28. June Byers	28. Rollerball Mark Rocco	28. Jerry Jarrett
27229. Kiyoshi Tamura	29. Jim Crockett Sr.	29. Brock Lesnar	29. Edge
27330. Don Owen	30. Killer Karl Kox	30. Sting	30. Sgt. Slaughter
274*****************************************************************
275The following piece on Eddie Quinn was written by Montreal's foremost wrestling historian, Patric Laprade, who has written the definitive book on the history of wrestling in Quebec, "Mad Dog, Screw Jobs and Midgets: The Untold Story of how Montreal Shaped the World of Wrestling" and will have an English language version (a French language version has already been released) of a biography on the life of Mad Dog Vachon released in 2016.
276
277EDDIE QUINN: Without Eddie Quinn, one could wonder what would have happened with pro wrestling in Montreal.
278
279Coming to Montreal in 1939, he, alongside his superstar Yvon Robert, made it a millionaire territory. They pretty much had the same relation that Vince McMahon and Hulk Hogan would have 45 years later in the sense that it was a two-way street. As much as Robert benefited from Quinn, Quinn also benefited from Robert. In other words, Quinn created Robert, but Robert also created Quinn.
280
281"Robert and Quinn drew 9,000 spectators to the Montreal Forum every Wednesday night, brought wrestling to television and made it a millionaire industry," reported the CBC during their heyday.
282
283Now, 9,000 fans is an exaggerated number if you take the whole period of 1939 to 1963. But what is not exaggerated is the fact that the union between Robert and Quinn allowed Montreal to be the capital of pro wrestling in North America during some of those years.
284
285"Yvon knew a lot more about wrestling than Eddie Quinn, and Quinn was smart enough to know that without Yvon Robert it would never have been as big," confirms former area wrestler and promoter Gino Brito, who grew up around wrestling with his father in the business as well.
286
287Like many other promoters, television was also another huge aspect in Quinn's success in Montreal. Although he had some success without television in his first 13 years, his biggest sellouts came after 1953, when wrestling hit it big on Canadian television.
288
289The Forum win Montreal was to become, for more than 20 years, one of the Meccas of wrestling in North America.
290
291Eddie Quinn was brought to Montreal by Paul Bowser, known to be one of the most influential promoters of the time. Bowser, who turned Boston into the center of pro wrestling in North America behind names like Gus Sonnenberg and for a short period, Danno O'Mahoney, started promoting in Montreal in 1929.
292
293He almost always had a point man, who was in charge of promoting the town for him. French-Canadian Lucien Riopel was the first one to be that guy and then came Jack Ganson. After his wrestling career was over, Ganson, whose real name was John Karabinas, became a very successful promoter in San Francisco. He also served as a lieutenant for Bowser, until Bowser bought him out in 1935, and replaced him with Joe "Waffle Ears" Malciewicz, who ran the NWA outpost in Northern California until losing a promotional war to Roy Shire in the early 60s.
294
295After being replaced, Ganson threatened to break kayfabe in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle on December 10, 1935. Sometime later Bowser tried to make peace by offering Ganson the Montreal territory.
296
297At first, his new promotion presented solid scientific wrestling, drawing some of Montreal's biggest crowds ever with Robert main eventing. Just three years into his run, however, Ganson would find himself involved in the first of many situations that would ultimately cost him his job and that could have cost a lot more.
298
299On September 14, 1938, Robert defeated the Masked Marvel to regain his title in front of 13,000 fans. The fans were expecting the hooded wrestler to take off his mask following his defeat and reveal his identity. When he refused, a riot ensued.
300
301In the aftermath, the Montreal Athletic Commission (MAC) ordered the Masked Marvel to go back to Montreal and reveal his identity. On October 17, 1938, he revealed himself as Ted "King Kong" Cox. Three days later La Patrie mentioned that Ganson and the Canadians Arena Co., managed by Tommy Gorman — who had just won the Stanley Cup as the general manager of the Montreal Maroons and who would also become manager of the Montreal Canadiens — were at odds with each other because Gorman wanted Ganson to stop serving as a promoter for territories like Buffalo and Ottawa. Ganson had even closed his office at the Forum. After a month-long stalemate Ganson and Gorman made peace, and wrestling returned to the Forum on November 14, 1938.
302
303But things were never the same. The riot would prove to be his last big crowd.
304
305On November 28, Ganson put Robert against a wrestler making his return to Montreal, Cy Williams. The main event took place in front of a crowd of only 2,000, and the rest of the card was clearly subpar. As if the low attendance and the poor quality of the matches were not enough, the president of the Athletic Commission, Dave Rochon, was struck in the face by a fan who was unhappy with the events that saw Williams win two falls against Robert. On December 19 Williams defeated Robert in front of 5,000 at the Forum — and at the time sports writers regularly wrote about the dwindling popularity of wrestling.
306
307Even wrestling coach and Robert's mentor Emile Maupas wrote about it in La Patrie. Ganson was blamed for not offering fans an interesting spectacle and bringing the same wrestlers while presenting matches or, rather, match outcomes that people didn't really believe. Worse, Robert left for Europe at the end of December.
308
309The new champion, Williams, became fussy and refused to wrestle against former champions Sonnenberg and Cox. Ganson was forced to cancel a card scheduled for February 13, 1939. After more than two months, wrestling returned to the Forum. Sonnenberg main evented against Cox in a show that drew 3,000 people. The entire card only lasted 80 minutes. It probably wasn't the return Ganson was hoping for.
310
311He made other dubious choices, putting spot guys like the Red Shadow (Leo Numa), Jack Taylor, Jack Washburn and Don Evans in main events. None of them drew more than 4,000 fans. It took the return of Robert on May 30 to draw 5,000. Ganson promoted that show, stating he wanted to return to a more scientific, less aggressive style and that he was now banning contact with referees, eye-gouging and wrestling outside the ring.
312
313Then on June 27, Ganson made things worse, creating an entirely new set of rules that made his wrestling matches more like boxing bouts, forcing his wrestlers to adhere to what was called as the Ganson Rules.
314
315There were 10-minute rounds with one-minute breaks. Judges would score the rounds and, if need be, decide the winner. The show drew poorly. But it didn't stop Ganson from planning another show with these rules.
316
317On July 4, however, the day of the show, the Athletic Commission stepped in and refused to allow the Ganson Rules to stand. The show didn't draw 1,000 — even with Ed Don George facing Sonnenberg in the main event. After this, the Forum was booked for a full three weeks of Roller Derby and Ganson would never hold a show there again.
318
319Therefore, Bowser had to replace Ganson.
320
321Quinn was the logical choice. Born Edmund Regan Quinn in Waltham, MA, on May 22, 1906, he was the second child of John and Margaret Quinn. He had one brother, John, ten years older than him. Quinn, was working as a carpenter like his father, when a friend of his died falling from a scaffold.
322
323This scared Quinn to the point he never worked again in that field. He became a taxi driver, but having done some amateur boxing, he started promoting in his hometown for Bowser in the mid-1930s. He had also been Robert's manager for the last few years. Quinn knew that Robert would make Montreal successful again. All he'd need is his license.
324
325But the Montreal Athletic Commission wasn't too prompt at getting Quinn the proper papers, based on the actions Ganson caused. It took the help of Montreal Herald's sports editor Elmer Ferguson for them to accept, starting a lifelong friendship between the two.
326
327Quinn got his licence on July 27, 1939 and his first card was presented at the Forum on August 8. Stuck with a champion, Williams, who didn't want to come to Montreal to defend the title, Quinn held a tournament to name an interim champ.
328
329Ernie Dusek, part of the infamous Dusek Riot Squad, won it. La Patrie praised Quinn's first show, explaining that it had a good mix of scientific and rough matches. The newspaper reported that business was about to pick up if Quinn could present more cards like this.
330
331And that's just what Quinn did, although it wasn't success overnight. Dusek was awarded the actual title by the Athletic Commission on August 10, but he was just a transitional champion. Less than two months later, Robert won the first of his six-title reign under Quinn's guidance.
332
333With World War II starting less than a month later, Quinn's first year was relatively tough. It wasn't until a full year later that he would draw his first 10,000-plus crowd, for a match between Robert and Cox.
334
335The beginning of the 1940s weren't the best ones for Quinn and thankfully he could always count on Robert. Nevertheless, Quinn managed the Montreal territory with a master's hand. Even during World War II, Quinn managed to draw decent crowds and, more importantly, presented good wrestling cards.
336
337The feuds between Robert and Bill Longson and Robert and Bobby Managoff in 1942 and 1943 were box-office hits and the first time Quinn would get some consistent 10,000-plus crowds. With WWII done by 1945, the second part of the 40s was much better.
338
339He saw his first 15,000-plus crowds with not only Robert, but also with drawing acts like former boxer Primo Carnera and Gorgeous George.
340
341The turn of the decade saw Quinn being part of the National Wrestling Alliance. He was admitted to the organization on November 26, 1949, but wasn't officially a member before October 15, 1950, since he didn't submit the NWA fees before that and didn't get any objections from the other members.
342
343That year, the feud between Robert and Yukon Eric would draw back-to-back huge crowds, with 16,192 on July 18, 1950, and Quinn's first 20,000-plus crowd, with 20,461 on August 14, both at the Delorimier Stadium.
344
345Although he drew his biggest crowds at the stadium, Quinn never really liked the venue that also hosted the Brooklyn Dodgers' farm team, the Montreal Royals, made famous because it was where Jackie Robinson made his pro baseball debut.
346
347In August 1951, when rain cancelled the second show in a row at the stadium, with a main event of Robert and Buddy Rogers, Quinn told La Patrie that he would present his next card at the Forum.
348
349"It never rains at the Forum!" he added, with his colorful way of saying things.
350
3511951 was also the year Rogers started in Montreal, thanks to Quinn's friendship with Lou Thesz.
352
353"We were never what you would describe as friends, but I respected Rogers as an attraction, so I called Eddie Quinn in Montreal and arranged some bookings for him there. I owed Eddie, and I figured Rogers would be good for him. I was right, too, because Rogers was, as usual, an immediate hit," related Thesz in his autobiography.
354
355Rogers' first match in Montreal was on May 2, 1951 and he won the title the following week against Bobby Managoff. Although the NWA wanted to recognize only one world champion, Quinn received a special waiver from the NWA in 1952 for his operations in Quebec, the rare territory to get that.
356
357That same year, the Lortie brothers were the first ones to get a TV deal with Radio-Canada, the first TV station in Canada. But by January 1953, Quinn was able to get them out and put himself in, simply because he had all the big names and it was a much cooler thing to get wrestling from the Forum than wrestling from the Verdun Auditorium.
358
359Quinn's television contract was with his main sponsor, Dow Brewery, who sponsored many other sports in town. To be successful, a promoter needs good instincts, but sometimes a little bit of luck.
360
361An unfortunate incident ended up being a lucky charm for Quinn. In what became one of the most famous matches ever, on October 15, 1952, at the Forum, Wladek Kowalski went for his trademark knee drop from the top rope, but Yukon Eric moved a little and Kowalski hit Eric's cauliflower ear. The ear rolled in the ring like a foreign object, so much that referee Sammy Mack picked it up and put it in his pocket, thinking it was some garbage thrown by fans.
362
363"The match took place on a Wednesday. When I went to get my pay on Friday, the promoter Eddie Quinn compelled me to apologize to Eric," explained Kowalski about his visit.
364
365In his hospital bed, Eric's head was enveloped like a mummy in a Boris Karloff movie. He looked so ridiculous that Kowalski and Eric simply started laughing. Many interpretations of this exchange could have been reported. To the great joy of Quinn, the interpretation that made the local media was the one giving birth to the nickname Killer for Kowalski.
366
367"Kowalski visited Yukon Eric at the hospital to laugh at him!" the newspapers wrote the next day.
368
369At the next show a full house at the Forum was chanting, "Killer! Killer! Killer!"
370
371Thus Wladek Kowalski became Killer Kowalski for the rest of his days.
372
373Quinn booked the return match, on January 14, 1953, the same day as the first wrestling show from the Forum to be broadcast on live television, drawing 16,042 fans. The referee for the match was former boxer Jack Sharkey. During Quinn's era, fans in Montreal frequently saw former boxers as referees. Sharkey, Jack Dempsey, Rocky Marciano, Jersey Joe Walcott and Joe Louis were all used as special enforcers for a hot feud or when a "normal" referee wasn't enough. The next week, January 21, the same match drew another 14,443. The incident would help Kowalski draw bigger crowds than any other victory or defeat of his career.
374
375As good as 1952 and 1953 were, 1954 blew that away, with a level of consistency never seen before, especially that 4-month period from July to October, with attendance being rarely under 10,000 fans for weekly shows.
376
377Television had really helped Quinn. In fact, Quinn was quoted saying that as soon as five months after his TV debut, he had already done $60,000 more than the previous year. For Quinn, the key thing was to never show the main-event on TV, always leaving fans at home wanting more.
378
379Therefore, any reports or recollections from older wrestlers that Kowalski vs. Eric was the first main-event ever presented on Canadian television is false, as the TV main-event was in fact the Dusek Brothers against the team of Larry Moquin and Manuel Cortez.
380
381During Quinn's era, Robert was the perennial champion and the main local draw. Both of them were known to be very selective on which French-Canadians they would push.
382
383Moquin was aimed to be one of them at one point, but didn't fit Quinn's description of what a champion should be in and out the ring. Known to do a lot of comedy in the ring and a joker outside of, Moquin was even asked personally by Quinn to stop certain things. One of his favorite pranks was to show his butt to other cars when he was traveling.
384
385Quinn heard about it and asked him to stop, believing it wasn't acceptable behavior for a professional wrestler. Sometime later, however, on his way to Ottawa, Moquin saw a car coming toward him and decided to show his butt yet again. To his big surprise, the driver of that car was Quinn himself.
386
387Still, Moquin was mostly well used by Quinn, because he was somewhat popular with the crowd. Quinn knew Moquin pretty well, since he got into wrestling after seeing him play football at junior level, and knew he had a great mind for the business and made him his booker in the last years of his run.
388
389The other French speaking star that Quinn promoted to the roof was not a French-Canadian but a real Frenchman, Edouard Carpentier. Although Carpentier became one of his biggest stars, it wasn't love at first sight for Quinn.
390
391Local wrestler Frank Valois was wrestling a lot in France, where he also filmed some movies. He saw Carpentier wrestling there. Valois was so impressed with his style that he brought the good news to Quinn upon coming back to Montreal. Moquin, who had also wrestled in France, praised Carpentier a lot as well.
392
393Before bringing him into his territory, Quinn wanted to know what Carpentier could do. He sent Valois, Moquin and Robert to see him to get a better idea about Carpentier's potential. Moquin and Valois wrestled Robert and Carpentier and the latter did most of the match. Robert liked what he saw and offered him a contract for three months. So when Carpentier showed up at the office, Moquin made the presentations and Quinn's reaction was typical of him and his time.
394
395"Who's this fucking midget?" he said. Moquin and Robert told Quinn to wait and see how Carpentier worked out. Quinn's attitude inflamed Carpentier's passion.
396
397"I'm gonna show him what a fucking midget can do," reminisced Carpentier. And he kept his promise.
398
399After making his Montreal debut against Angelo Savoldi on April 18, 1956, Carpentier participated in his first main event only two weeks later, on May 2, 1956, wrestling Ernie Dusek at the Montreal Forum.
400
401Three months later, on July 18, 1956, Quinn presented his biggest show ever, with 23,227 spectators at Delorimier Stadium to watch Carpentier battled Argentina Rocca. It was the biggest crowd ever drawn in Montreal up to that point in time, and was the biggest crowd of the year in North America.
402
403The record wouldn't be broken in Montreal for 16 years, and even today, it's still the third-biggest crowd in the history of the province.
404
405Thanks to draws like Carpentier, Delorimier Stadium ranks second, behind only New York City's Madison Square Garden, for the number of times a venue has held the biggest wrestling crowd of any year in North America.
406
407On a worldwide level the stadium is fourth, behind Madison Square Garden, the Tokyo Dome and Chicago's Comiskey Park.
408
409Before the end of the summer Carpentier had headlined two other big houses of more than 20,000 fans. On both occasions he faced Kowalski. It was a level of consistent business unheard of in North America at that time, outside of the hottest periods of wrestling in New York, and the best in Montreal since 1954.
410
411Rain or not, Delorimier Stadium was a huge part of Quinn's big money gates. Those successes continued into 1957, but that year will be remembered for something else involving Carpentier and Quinn.
412
413In the fall of 1957, Thesz, then champion of the NWA, was planning a tour of Australia, Japan, Hawaii and Europe. In order to guarantee better gates, the NWA board of directors wanted to continue promoting a champion in North America. They were also scared that Thesz would drop the belt to Rikidozan in Japan on his own for a huge payoff.
414
415The NWA decided that Carpentier, give his drawing prowess not only in Montreal, but in the U.S. as well, should be the next champion, at least while Thesz was away.
416
417On June 14, 1957, in Chicago, Carpentier scored a victory in the third fall over Thesz, when the latter could no longer continue the match due to a back injury. Although it was in reality the referee stopped the match due to injury, the media, probably influenced by the promoters, used the term "disqualification" to describe the outcome.
418
419It was therefore announced that the NWA would have to analyze the result, to set up controversy to build for a series of Carpentier vs. Thesz title rematches.
420
421Carpentier was recognized as world champion in many territories at this point. Quinn, who booked Carpentier to the biggest markets, put a spoke in the wheel of the NWA.
422
423The champion of the NWA had to regularly visit the many territories that paid dues to the organization. If Carpentier had done that he would not have been in Montreal very often. Quinn wanted Carpentier to spend three days a week in his territory, thus considerably limiting the champion's traveling schedule.
424
425If one looks at the situation from Quinn's perspective, the money Quinn earned when Carpentier wrestled outside of Montreal was nothing compared to the money he earned when the star of the-then biggest North American territory was wrestling at home.
426
427Quinn quickly regretted allowing Carpentier to become NWA champion and was looking for a way out.
428
429On July 24, in a return match in Montreal, Carpentier was disqualified against Thesz for having hit the special referee, Robert. This was a golden opportunity for Quinn. The following day La Patrie announced, in bold letters, that Carpentier had lost his NWA title back to Thesz. Since the promoters controlled most of what was published in newspapers at the time, one can safely suppose that this was the story Quinn wanted printed.
430
431The situation became even more crazy when Sam Muchnick, the St. Louis promoter who was also president of the NWA, announced that Carpentier could not lose his NWA title because of a disqualification and that Carpentier was, accordingly, still the champion — even though he himself did not recognize the French wrestler as a champion in his own home city, as he, and much of the NWA, was still recognizing Thesz.
432
433On August 23, Muchnick invited Jack Pfefer, a controversial promoter considered by some as a sort of cancer in the business, to the annual NWA convention in St. Louis. It was the final straw for Quinn, who saw in this invitation the perfect reason to quit the NWA.
434
435Quinn sent a letter to Muchnick, stating his anger at the presence of Pfefer during the convention and asking him to return the $10,000 bond he had put up for Carpentier to win the title, and quitting the NWA.
436
437But the die was already cast. Thesz and Carpentier wrestled, and Thesz was announced as champion and Carpentier as the challenger for the title. Two days later the NWA announced that the wrestling match that took place in Chicago in June was ruled a disqualification, which meant that Thesz was still the champion. Consequently Carpentier's championship was erased from the history books.
438
439"I didn't know that the NWA wanted two champions," said Carpentier in the only interview he ever did about this issue. "They gave me a belt for the match that I had won. I was, however, aware of the letter that Quinn sent to Muchnick."
440
441This title switch has been contested by historians for decades, and this version of the story is the closest to what really happened in 1957.
442
443That title reign by Carpentier ultimately influenced the title history of three other territories, namely Boston, Los Angeles and Omaha, who decided to continue acknowledging Carpentier's championship, and he came to those cities to drop his title and created new world titles in the three markets. The Los Angeles title became the WWA belt, one of the major world titles of the 60s. The Omaha title was sometimes used as the foundation for the start of the AWA, but that would be reconstructing history in a way that never actually happened. But the Omaha title eventually was merged with the AWA title line out of Minneapolis.
444
445The match was certainly one of the most important in professional wrestling history, because it ultimately led to many of the biggest markets in the NWA leaving the organization.
446
447Thesz wound up going to Australia, Hawaii and Japan before returning to the United States to lose the belt to Dick Hutton, a belt he was not supposed to have. Then he left the NWA again and went on a European tour. Many promoters didn't want Hutton to be a champion and decided to simply resign from the organization.
448
449The Hutton title win left many in the NWA bitter. Years later Thesz and Muchnick remained vague about the issue and made it clear they preferred the idea that this chapter of their history never happened.
450
451Although we may never know for sure what actually occurred, it's highly probable that if Quinn had not acted the way he did, then a match opposing Thesz and Carpentier to unify both titles before Thesz's departure for Europe would have occurred, with Carpentier winning. Who knows what would have happened to the NWA and other promotions had this been the case.
452
453One thing is certain, after that event, Carpentier's relationship with Quinn deteriorated.
454
455"In September 1957, I wrestled for Vince McMahon Sr., Eddie Quinn received the check and gave me my share, $1,000. The second time, for the return match, McMahon himself gave me the check. The check was for $6,500. I told him that there must be a mistake, the first time I only got $1,000. He said, `No, the first time it was $6,500, as well,'" recalled Carpentier.
456
457Upon his return to Montreal, Quinn asked Carpentier to give him the $5,500. Carpentier refused to do so and quit Quinn's promotion.
458
459"Yvon Robert came to see me and told me that he was a shareholder in the territory and that he needed me. I went back, but I considered myself as working for Yvon Robert and not for Quinn," explained Carpentier, adding that from there Quinn was no longer his manager.
460
461Although he had the bigger stake in the promotion, Quinn had also made Robert a partner, thus guaranteeing his presence, as well as Managoff (who was often the booker and considered one of the best bookers of the era) and lawyer Louis Dezwirek.
462
463Quinn came back to the NWA two years later, in 1959, and kept his membership until his last year of promoting.
464
465"Quinn was not always nice to the boys," recalls Don Leo Jonathan. "He was not treating them well. He was being smugly with some of them, telling them that without him, they would have no work. He once called Larry Moquin a big baloney. He told Johnny Valentine once that he would ship him to the 1,000 islands and make sure he'd spend one full year on each of them. The only French-Canadian he liked was Yvon Robert!"
466
467The aftermath of the Carpentier saga saw the end of an era with the retirement of Robert in October 1957. With Quinn's fallout with Carpentier, he needed to find another local stud to replace Robert. Like many local boys, Quinn had found Johnny Rougeau to be too small. This offended Johnny. Being a man of integrity, when Quinn finally approached him to wrestle, Rougeau thought about it, then made Quinn wait many months for an answer, while still performing in the U.S.
468
469But when his wife had given birth to their first daughter, Rougeau wanted to be closer to his family and finally decided to settle down in Montreal. So the idea was to put Robert with Rougeau. Even so, at that point the territory was mainly based on Kowalski, Carpentier and Rogers, until pretty much the end of Quinn's era.
470
471Wrestling was so hot that even with Robert being gone from the ring and acting only as Rougeau's manager or as a referee, a survey conducted by Radio-Canada said that between November 1957 and February 1958, wrestling was one of the most watched shows on television, with an average of 1.5 million fans watching every week in Quebec alone. As a comparison, at the same time, the Montreal Canadiens were drawing 2.1 million. The entire population of Quebec at the time was 5 million people. Basically a third of the province was watching wrestling weekly on television at that time.
472
473Quinn was still getting many 10,000-plus crowds from 1958 to 1960, but house shows business was not as strong as it was a few years earlier. After Robert's retirement, Quinn was not into wrestling as much as he once was. He was a rich man since he had bought the territory from Bowser. He was going out with celebrities like Lili St-Cyr, a burlesque strip teaser who was the most famous woman in Montreal in the 50s. He was rumored by this time to have strong connections with the local mob, and wasn't even going to all of his own shows.
474
475Brito remembers Moquin running some shows in Ottawa and even at Delorimier Stadium because Quinn wasn't there. Sports writer Red Fisher reported, "The city's sleekest convertibles were Quinn's toys. Show business people were his passion. He knew and was friendly with people in high and low places. Many like Jackie Gleason, Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, Billy Daniels and Eartha Kitt worked for him at the El Morocco, a glitzy nightclub he owned on Closse Street, across from the Forum. He loved show people because in so many ways, Quinn was showbiz."
476
477The El Morocco was also part owned by Quinn. It became one of Montreal's most visited clubs in the 1940s and 1950s, with former hockey player Jimmy Orlando as its manager. Orlando was also used by Quinn as a special guest referee. Business was great in Montreal and elsewhere in the territory. Silk suits filled the closets of Quinn's fashionable Town of Mount Royal home. He was earning $350,000 a year in the 1950s, but the problem was, he was spending $360,000.
478
479Eventually, it would become more trouble to Quinn than he could actually handle.
480
481"Quinn enjoyed life more than any other sports character I ever knew," Fisher said. "Too much, really. Every warm weather Sunday afternoon, he would invite wrestlers and other friends to his Town of Mount Royal home where they frolicked in his swimming pool or played miniature golf on his front lawn. Chef Quinn's barbecued steaks were to die for. The money rolled in and rolled out for years. Easy come, easy go."
482
483His heart and money wasn't all in Montreal as Quinn had money invested in the Boston territory as well, and from June 1959 to August 1960, he tried in vain to put Chicago promoter Fred Kohler out of business in a promotional war. Quinn even presented a program on the local CBS affiliate, but after 19 shows in Chicago, many of which were presented at the Chicago Stadium (host of the Blackhawks hockey team), Quinn closed his promotion there.
484
485In Boston, he tried to run the territory after Bowser's death in 1960, but was out powered by none other than Pfefer and Tony Santos. Some years before, Quinn also had shares in the St. Louis wrestling office, partnering with Thesz, Bill Longson, Managoff and Frank Tunney, before the promotion merged with Sam Muchnick's group.
486
487Thesz was a very close friend of Eddie Quinn, so much so that upon his return to the ring in 1958, Quinn and Toronto's Frank Tunney would serve as his agents when promoters wanted to obtain his services.
488
489"Eddie was one of wrestling's great success stories," affirmed Thesz in his autobiography.
490
491Even if just two years before the ratings were tremendous, Quinn lost his main sponsor, Dow Brewery, in 1960 and therefore, Radio-Canada decided to cut the ties with Quinn and the last Wednesday night show was broadcast on September 22. After a two-month hiatus and some tough negotiations, Quinn's show was back on TV, but instead of being in prime time on Wednesday night, from November 11, it became a taped show on Friday nights at 11:30pm, a slap in the face in a way. Then, from March 2, 1961, it was on Thursday nights at 11:45p.m. and Radio-Canada put an end to all this in May with the last wrestling show ever presented there on May 11, 1961.
492
493But Quinn wasn't beaten yet. He approached channel 10, which began broadcasting in March 1961, and by September of that year he was back on TV. This time, however, he wasn't presenting new matches or live events. He gave the station a master tape of something like 20 to 25 hours of wrestling. This new program was broadcast in the same time slot that Radio-Canada used to present wrestling, on Wednesday nights.
494
495Quinn's program ran from September 1961 to September 1962, when it was cancelled. Then, in September 1963, after a full year without wrestling on TV, it came back, this time on Saturday afternoons. From September 1963 up until Johnny Rougeau had his own show in early 1966, the show was a mix between Quinn's taped wrestling and some Maple Leaf Wrestling footage from Toronto.
496
497By 1961, with no good TV spot, Quinn had to run the new Paul-Sauve Centre instead of the Forum on many occasions. His shows were sometimes even outdrawn by Sylvio Samson, a local promoter.
498
499Quinn's last big crowd was on July 20, 1961, 20,743 fans at Delorimier Stadium for a match between Carpentier and Hans Schmidt.
500
501Like many wrestling promoters at the time, Quinn also had a licence to promote boxing since the end of the 40s. He was the promoter for the famous Archie Moore vs. Yvon Durelle fight at the Forum in 1958, in which Moore was knocked down four times before he made a comeback and won the bout. It is still to this day one of the best boxing matches ever, although it was always rumored being fixed and that Durelle wasn't aware of it.
502
503Quinn's reputation took a big hit though in 1961 when he cancelled a bout opposing Moore and Robert Cleroux at the Forum the day of the event. That same day, December 5, he was admonished by Mayor Jean Drapeau, and the commission took away his boxing license. Ten days later, he'd also lose his wrestling license. Although it took him two years to get back a boxing promoter licence, he was to be given another wrestling promoter licence in February 1962.
504
505Quinn was never the same after he had lost his license. He was said to look old and tired. If it wasn't enough, in July 1962, the rumor was that Robert was going to create competition to Quinn, although in fact, that wouldn't happen before a year later, and that was after Quinn had stopped promoting himself.
506
507In 1963, a series of events lead him to sell his luxurious house in the Town of Mont-Royal and he moved back to New England, more precisely in Northampton, NH, where his wife, Gertrude, ran a nursing home bought by his son-in-law, Melvin Konweiser, who was married to his only daughter, Doris.
508
509He had suffered a mild-stroke, had no money left and hadn't paid his taxes. Only a year later, on December 14, 1964, he died of a cerebral hemorrhage in that same nursing home, at the age of 58.
510
511Fisher and former hockey player Tom Johnson were visiting him when he suffered that fatal stroke.
512
513Without Eddie Quinn, one could wonder what would have happened with pro wrestling in Montreal. History shows that Quinn drew nine out of the best 20 wrestling crowds in Montreal and in this regard he was the most successful promoter ever in the city, including Vince McMahon.
514
515He had such an important impact, probably more than his ego could have ever thought, and his accomplishments are making him on par with his contemporaries already part of the Hall of Fame such as Frank Tunney, Fred Kohler, Sam Muchnick and Paul Bowser.
516
517He came to Montreal completely unknown and as a poor man. He got rich, powerful, popular, living the life. And then he passed away, going full circle, ending his life without any money and his passing being just another column written in a newspaper.
518
519Without Quinn's promotional skills, Robert would have not become the icon he actually became. Without Quinn's success, we might have not seen the debut of so many Quebec wrestlers, such as Valois, Moquin, Schmidt, Don Eagle, Billy Two Rivers, Maurice and Paul Vachon, Rene Goulet, Brute Bernard, Paul Leduc, Tarzan Tyler, Stan Stasiak, Gino Brito, Terry Garvin, Ronnie Garvin and Johnny Rougeau, all influenced by the success professional wrestling was having in Montreal, who wanted to make a living out of it and who all debuted in what is now called the Quinn's era. Even though he never worked for Quinn, Pat Patterson grew up watching Quinn's wrestling and decided to make it his life's work.
520
521Without Quinn's legacy, the next golden age era in Montreal might have not existed. And without Quinn's work, Montreal would have not had the reputation and the rich history it now has.
522
523Maurice Vachon always said that Eddie Quinn was the best promoter Montreal ever had. And simply put, he was right.
524
525******************************************************
526PERRO AGUAYO JR.
527
528By Steve "Dr. Lucha" Sims
529
530Among the seven inducted into the Hall of Fame in the Class of 2015, the youngest is Pedro Aguayo Ramirez, El Hijo del Perro Aguayo. His untimely death early in the morning of March 21 of this year made his election this year likely, though the following review of his career would indicate that, were he still alive, he would be deserving of first-time-eligibility induction.
531
532Of the candidates from Mexico on the ballot this year, he was the strongest candidate even without the sad events of this year.
533
534Perro Jr. was given a big push from the day he debuted, and in many ways, worked on top or right next to it for almost the entire length of his nearly 20-year career. He became in Mexico one of the mainstream faces of wrestling, along with El Hijo del Santo, Latin Lover, and Mistico (these men had substantial crossover success inside Mexico), Rey Mysterio Jr., Eddy Guerrero, and, to a smaller extent, Alberto del Rio (the latter three being the Mexicans who succeeded in America).
535
536On that point, it is most interesting that to the mainstream Mexican wrestling fan, all these wrestlers but one were heroes, babyfaces, tecnicos; Perro Jr. was the only one who was primarily a heel.
537
538It would not be controversial at all to opine that Perro Sr. was one of the five to ten biggest stars in lucha libre ever, and, other than perhaps 1940s star Tarzan Lopez - who was the catalyst for lucha libre going from a tiny business to mainstream entertainment - Perro Sr. was the biggest name non-masked wrestler in 82-plus years of modern wrestling in Mexico.
539
540Borrowing a chestnut of a line from others who used it over the years, Perro Jr. would say during his in-ring promos as well as to the media, "people hate me, but they pay to hate me." The truth was closer to, people loved him exactly as he was, himself with the volume turned up to 11, a natural heel who even the tecnico fans would cheer, against the goody-goody Mistico or when matched up against other rudos, as happened with the Aguayo contra Hermanos Dinamita feud of the 2004-2005 period.
541
542Equally, for all his ability to handle things in the ring (by no means was he a legendary worker in terms of moves and holds and dives), it was his abilities on the microphone and in storylines and angles that made him the biggest heel star of his generation. He had a performance energy that others have noted frequently was much like that of Terry Funk, who may have been the all-time world-record holder in the phase of the game.
543
544Perro Jr. exuded so much charisma that he was one of only two people I have personally heard someone say about them, "he can strut while he's standing still" (FWIW the other is Dan Marino). He commandeered the scene whenever he turned his switch on, to the point where it was hard to take eyes and ears away from him and look at anyone else. Oddly, as father and son were two of the most charismatic Mexican wrestlers ever, you might think this is a trait both shared. But Perro Sr., especially in the second half of his career, wasn't even all that good on promos, as he mumbled and had a low guttural tone, neither of which was helped at all by the low-tech PA house systems used in most of the Mexican gyms and outdoor bullrings.
545
546But as a worker, as a heel, you can say that Perro Jr. got his character across beautifully, he made his opponents look good, and he made you care about the outcome. He knew what to do in the ring and his timing and positioning were always on target, one of the best of his era at that.
547
548His father had gotten over in the ring via brawling and fighting, bleeding and making comebacks-from-being-near-dead to overcoming his adversary. Perro Sr. gave the illusion of being so ferocious in the rings and going all out in his fighting. The nickname of Perro, the fierce cornered dog fighting for life and death, went from just a mispronunciation of his first name,. Pedro, to his actual persona. He was the longtime relentless top heel who gave it his all, and after years of seeing him bleed and work so hard, fans started to like him. He then became the most-loved wrestler of his era, surpassing the masked legends he had fought heel against for so long.
549
550Later in his career, Aguayo was the emblem of the working man fighting and overcoming all odds, the older wrestler who had fought wars but would never quit, dealing with cheating (or sometimes better) wrestlers to evil referees, to unlucky breaks.
551
552His son, by contrast, was almost always the evil genius a step ahead and prepared to "win if you can, lose if you must, but always cheat," just because it was his style, because he was better than you.
553
554Pedro Aguayo Ramirez (son of Pedro and Luz) was born in Mexico City on July 23, 1979, and was raised mostly in Mexico City, along with Monterrey, one of the two places in Mexico in the 1970s and 1980s that had parts of town that would not seem out of place in the first-world. He also lived part of his formative years in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico's second largest city about 50 miles southwest of the small village of Nochistlan de Mejia, Zacatecas, in which his father and grandfather were born. Nochistlan was and is a small town, un Pueblo Magico and a Music Town locally, but not well-off financially and about as unlike Las Lomas de Chapultepec as one would see.
555
556Billing Perro Sr. as "el Can de Nochistlan" was meant to reinforce the man-of-the-people image and the he's-like-one-of-us in that ring concept as well. Perro Sr. played that role as well as any wrestler who ever lived in any country, hence his legendary status. The common thinking is that he drew more money in Mexico than anyone except El Santo, and that he may have wrestled in front of more fans than perhaps anyone in Mexico. Working so many dates for so many years, it's possible over the course of his career he wrestled in front of more fans than any wrestler ever.
557
558That was not the style of the son, though. Unlike the great majority of "juniors" in Mexican lucha libre, Perro Jr. would forge his own separate identity. While still to a small degree triggering memories of his father's legend, he was indeed his own person and persona when he became the top star, particularly breaking from his father's shadow by cutting his hair, as Perro Sr.'s trademark was the long straight hair, and getting rid of his father's entrance music, a combination of a dog barking and circus music, and coming out to a more modern rap.
559
560His death is so recent (with many lengthy obituaries written in the past few months, including one in these pages on 3/30) and his career was entirely in the Internet age, so his basic bio is widely known and very familiar to most.
561
562Let me see if I can add some new comments and maybe a historian's perspective to the basic facts, which I'll review briefly in chronological fashion.
563
564We start with Perro Jr. debuting for AAA – at age 15 --as a babyface. He was wrestling in one of the triple TripleMania III shows of 1995, the middle one in Guadalajara, in an "amateur rules" wrestling match against the evil Juventud Guerrera. He was introduced to the public as Perro Aguayo's son, the teenage star amateur wrestler.
565
566The amateur rules gimmick was designed, in part, because they did not want to imply that a top rudo like Guerrera would have trouble with some 15-year-old rookie. Both men's fathers were seconds. The fathers started fighting, Perro Jr, looked away, Juventud fouled him, and beat him, and Perro Jr.'s career was off to a flying start.
567
568For the first few years, Perro Jr. was a tecnico. At 5-foot-5 and well under 200 pounds, he just did not have the size or enough of a history with fans to be constantly beating up on top tecnicos and putting them in danger of defeat. But he was far too valuable and charismatic to be a mid-card rudo, so for a while, he would have to be the smaller kid being bullied about by the bigger, older, meaner kids. This lasted a few years, when he could be the smarter young guy on the job being constantly cheated out of his due by the boss and older, meaner co-workers.
569
570WCW, and even WWE for a brief time, drafted away some of the top names in Mexico. AAA boss Antonio Pena, in 1993-1994 may have had the best talent roster in the world. But after the collapse of the peso meaning the biggest names could earn more money in the U.S., but in doing so, most became enhancement talent, Pena was left with a much smaller pool from which to draw. He ended up putting Perro Jr. (the fire and charisma), Latin Lover (a barely passable worker who had to be carried, but a former stripper who women loved and was on the verge of being used by Televisa as a mainstream TV star), Hector Garza, (as close as Mexico had then to the total package), and Heavy Metal (back then as good of an in-ring worker as the promotion had) in a series of bouts and angles. The big four did solid business around the horn, taking turns turning on each other.
571
572The Aguayo turn was the riskiest, because this was the son of Mexico's most loved wrestler of the generation, and the son that the public had seen grow up in front of their eyes.
573
574Pena was going with rudo gangs on top, the main one led by Cibernetico, and babyface Aguayo against a heel Cibernetico (awful in the ring, both on offense and as a base) wouldn't work athletically nor dramatically. It would expose the one weakness in Aguayo's game. Aguayo was given El Dandy to work with, culminating in a major hair match victory for Aguayo in a sellout at the now-defunct El Toreo bullring in Naucalpan that was one of the two major national lucha libre venues in Mexico of that era. That whole storyline and feud, ending in late 2002, took just a few months, and Perro Jr. was in need of new horizons.
575
576During the last couple of years prior to this, Perro Sr. had retired after a hair match with Universo 2000 at Arena Mexico. Perro Aguayo's record in hair matches from October 26, 1986, to March 30, 2001 was 28 wins and one loss. The loss was to Konnan in 1991. Konnan had to win this one, being the top drawing babyface who had just lost his mask to Aguayo six months earlier, and had lost his CMLL World Heavyweight Championship to Cien Caras.
577
578Aguayo's 28 wins included beating Mascara Ano Dos Mil (twice), Cien Caras, Konnan as noted above (in the first hair vs. mask match), Colosso Colosetti, Negro Navarro, Sangre Chicana (three times) Stuka (twice, and believe me in Guadalajara this was one huge feud), Babe Face, Ultraman, Scorpio, Adorable Rubi, Kato Kung Lee, Gran Markus, Cobarde, Bestia Salvaje, and Nikozuna (Sam Fatu/Tonga Kid) – major name after major name.
579
580Aguayo had announced that this would be his retirement match, and nobody expected Universo to win. So, to the genuine surprise of most everyone in attendance, Universo did, using a distracted referee to drop Aguayo in a martinete (tombstone pile driver). The finish, and post-match that included Aguayo being carted out on a stretcher, caused a riot at Arena Mexico, generally the safest of the CMLL arenas.
581
582Perro Sr. was gone. Perro Jr. worked for the competition, so there was no revenge to be had. At the time, it was thought the final-match-loss was just Aguayo doing the right thing for business, losing his last match and putting over someone to gain star power from beating Perro for his hair. But it turned into one of the hottest angles in Mexico of the last 15 years.
583
584In 2003, CMLL, with crowds down, did the so-far-as-we-know only audience research they have done in their 82 years. The feedback from the fans can be summarized as "we are tired of the same old people on top year after year after year."
585
586CMLL did two things to address this. They tried to create their own Rey Mysterio Jr. as a new top tecnico. The first, Sagrado, failed, as he froze under the pressure on the big stage after his 2003 debut. The second attempt, in June 2004, Mistico, was an overwhelming success. They also brought in the most charismatic youngster in the game in Perro Jr.
587
588Perro Jr. debuted as a face in CMLL. It took over a year before he turned, and the setting was perfect. In a tournament designed to honor the memory of El Santo, Perro won, and was handed the memorial plaque by El Hijo del Santo. He busted it over Santo's head.
589
590Aguayo and Santo tore it up for a while, but Santo would (and will) never lose the mask, and it was considered the wrong time for Aguayo to lose his hair.
591
592Los Hermanos Dinamita (Universo 2000, Mascara 2000, and Cien Caras) were still on top as legendary heels. Of course they were part of the same old faces that had been on top for 10-15 years. But there was still one good feud, one story of revenge and one story in which they would do what Perro Sr. had done. They would put someone over strong on their way out, or at least their way down the card, before they were moved out of the spotlight.
593
594Perro Jr. as a main-event star, teamed with El Terrible, going for revenge for his father. They pulled what the fans at the time would have thought of as an upset of their own in a double hair match versus Cien Caras and Mascara Ano Dos Mil at a sold-out Dos Leyendas 2004. This established Perro Jr. as a serious main-eventer and left the Dinamitas now wanting their revenge.
595
596At Dos Leyendas 2005 (at the time the biggest gate in CMLL history), Perro Jr. called his father out of retirement, and, out of shape and wearing street clothes, Perro Sr., at 59 years old, returned.
597
598He protected his son by seeing a distracted referee and getting his five-year-old receipt. Perro Sr. delivered a low blow to Universo. It was going to be a martinete to get his own final revenge. Either Perro forgot, or they felt he wasn't in shape to do it, because it changed the night of the show.
599
600This led to Perro Jr. to, by himself, win the hair of Universo 2000, which took place at Dos Leyendas 2006 (another total sellout). The feud was done, justice prevailed, and Aguayo was on to new challenges.
601
602By now in March 2006, Mistico was on fire. Fans as well as the local promoters around Mexico who booked CMLL wrestlers wanted Mistico and Aguayo. CMLL ran with it, though not crazy so and almost always in trios matches, because they were protecting Mistico. Mistico almost never lost a fall unless it was a 3-on-1 and then only in an early fall in the best of three fall matches.
603
604Aguayo was also considered very valuable, and his losses were rare. They were done when needed, with the idea that Aguayo could get his heat back on the post-match promos. The two fed off each other well and were getting close to the peak business levels of 1990-1992 when CMLL had Mexico City on fire.
605
606Televisa noticed. Ratings that had been fine but nothing special for many years for weekend wrestling were increasing noticeably. Mistico was fine and they like him and all, but what really caught their eye was Aguayo.
607
608Mistico was an extremely charismatic wrestler. Aguayo was an extremely charismatic human being, like his father. The latter they could use elsewhere on their roster of shows.
609
610A sort of "Mexico's Got Talent," "Los 5 Magnificos" was a big prime-time Mexico reality TV show. It was presented as a contest between teams of five. The winners each season were predetermined, but nobody knew that. Aguayo was chosen for the 2007 season as the star of the Yellow Team. The main goal of that particular season's show was for Aguayo's team to win and to get Aguayo over as the biggest new TV star out of that season's contestants.
611
612CMLL was in a quandary now. Their top heel was going over in a mass-market venture (and presented as a complete babyface by the way, to the non-wrestling fans it was the son of all-time favorite Perro Aguayo). The good is that in a few weeks he became more well-known to the general public than most of the rest of the roster combined.
613
614The fear was that he could wind up like Dwayne Johnson, or El Santo, or at worst, Latin Lover, where his full-time wrestling career would be in the past tense.
615
616For the first time since his debuted, Mistico lost clean in fall three (in two separate Friday night matches) to Aguayo. To put it mildly, Aguayo's legion (and at the peak that might have been 7,000 to 8,000 fans out of the close to 15,000 every Friday when Mistico and Aguayo were booked against each other) of black-T-shirted heel male fans were in shock, seeing something happen before their eyes that they never really expected to see.
617
618Maybe CMLL was just trying for a short-term ratings boost? Maybe CMLL wanted to try to entice Aguayo to keep wrestling while he was a mainstream star? But beating Mistico cleanly started the ball rolling on the demise of his aura of invincibility and his popularity began to slide, slowly at first, but in hindsight, it's there to see.
619
620Aguayo, though, was all set to reach heights very few wrestlers ever reach in their country's modern culture. The TV show kept going. Team Yellow was almost eliminated, and for each of the final few weeks of the show, they would be the team on the bubble, such that if they did not win that week's voting and contests, they would be eliminated. The first two of these weeks, they snatched victory from the jaws of defeat.
621
622Then, in the final practice for the week of the semifinals, trying acrobatic moves, Aguayo broke his leg.
623
624Everything came to a screeching halt. He was replaced on the team by Mr. Aguila, a really bad choice, but Televisa needed someone very acrobatic on about one hour's notice. Though Team Yellow won, the air went totally out of that balloon. The unique thing that Televisa had captured was lost, and they never tried to recreate it with Perro Jr. As a side note, the TV show itself was never the same. The Aguayo season was the high-water mark for the show's ratings.
625
626Perro Jr. was crushed. He never attained again, as a wrestler, the level of popularity and notoriety he hit during that summer, though he remained a major star until his death. He was always a headliner and continued to do major business for his stipulation matches.
627
628For all the money he was making putting his body through a wrestlers' torture night after night, he was making almost as much (if not more many months) as a businessman, selling his gimmicks, especially T-shirts, with the logo of the heel faction he had formed, Los Perros del Mal. He saw that he could make a small fortune as an entrepreneur without having to take so many bumps and bruises.
629
630He also had learned what basically every wrestler eventually learns, that the one who makes the bulk of the money from wrestling is the one at the top. Having acquired enough capital from his merchandise sales, Perro started his own promotion, took in as talent the likes of El Hijo del Santo, Dr. Wagner Jr., L.A. Park, Blue Demon Jr., Cibernetico, Damian 666, Halloween, Intocable, and others. It was actually an amazingly good roster.
631
632But they only sold out one show over the next two years. They had no TV, which in 2009 meant they were doomed. They finally decided to gather some money, tape a house show, and buy an hour from Televisa. The video and production quality was so horrible it ended up being a sort of death knell for the promotion. The other thing that hurt them, although paled in importance to the lack of a quality television product, was constantly booking non-finishes in the main events, which was a byproduct of hiring a roster of people who didn't want to job.
633
634The merchandise kept selling, though. Aguayo even opened up a Perros del Mal-branded merchandise store in Mexico City. But he and the rest of his close group of wrestlers had nowhere to go.
635
636CMLL was off in other directions by 2010 and his own branded promotion had essentially collapsed, although it was kept on for a year or two for appearance' sake and so as not to admit failure.
637
638So, in an angle at the end of the L. A. Park vs. La Parka match at AAA's TripleMania XVIII, right at the finish, Aguayo arrived at the arena in a limousine like the capo de capos, a vignette designed to reintroduce the prodigal son, coming back home after seven years.
639
640The return got off to a solid start, but in 2010, there was knee surgery. Then, just as Perro Jr. returned in 2011, suddenly, well, weird things started coming out. Rumors started coming out that something had happened to Perro Jr. Some of the rumors were he was in rehab. In early April 2011, the story was floated to the press that Aguayo had just had surgery to remove a tumor from his stomach.
641
642After his release, Aguayo announced that the tumor was cancerous, and that he would be on chemotherapy. At that time, Aguayo showed a scar to the press in attendance. Then just six days after personally stating he was on chemotherapy, looking bloated but not very much the worse for wear, he started wrestling again.
643
644Damian 666 and Halloween, in the guise of front-office personnel of the Perros del Mal promotion, had to change their story on Aguayo more than once. Damian, at one time a very close friend of Perro Jr., was said to have been more than just a little unhappy, livid was the term told to me, at having to look bad in public with the shifting stories, especially when Perro started wrestling just days after saying he was on chemo.
645
646By the end of 2011, Damian left Perros del Mal and AAA, as did Halloween. Except for one solitary match in March 2012, Damian never wrestled with or against Aguayo again.
647
648As noted above, in the final AAA stint of his life, Perro was a good big match wrestler. He lost one of the very few mega-show singles matches of his career. But he wasn't averse to putting people over. Between March 2010 and March 2014 for AAA, he lost eight of his nine major singles matches. He lost to Mesias in 2012 in a match for the AAA Mega Title, but won the hair of Cibernetico at the 2013 TripleMania in one of the most textbook-prefect big-show promotional build-ups you will ever see.
649
650Perro Jr., now 36, with more than 20 years since his debut, was scheduled to finally to drop his hair in a match against Rey Mysterio Jr. at this year's TripleMania. Of course that never happened.
651
652What would have happened from there, who knows? It appeared at the time, and now it's even more apparent, how devastating his loss was to the promotion. While they did business with the big three the past several months, they have never been able to replace Aguayo on top as the charismatic heel.
653
654With his non-athletic skills so sharp, maybe the career arc as a luchador would have continued for many years. Maybe his business skills would have led him away from the ring and into other entrepreneurial ventures. Maybe his personal demons would have derailed everything, sooner or later. No one knows.
655
656What we do know is that he was at the top of his game, the best rudo of his era, a game-changer for merchandising of gimmicks, a performer with a zest and ability to entertain the likes of few that ever come along. He was a man that could make you feel what he felt and who could live out your life story and its struggles in the ring right before your eyes, and one of the top overall wrestlers of his time and place.
657
658****************************************************************
659WWE's business used to revolve around a combination of a number of different divisions, the key being the fixed contracted income from television, and the variances in the house show and pay-per-view business.
660
661Now it's very much about two numbers, the network subscription number and the television revenue.
662
663For the third quarter of 2015, from July through September, WWE generated $166,232,000 in revenue, and finished with $10,319,000 in profits. For the first time in a few years, the profits exceeded the dividend payout of $9,178,560.
664
665The profits are not at the level they were doing pre-network, but the company is healthier if you look beneath the surface, even with the signs of lessening actual popularity based on ratings and to a degree, live attendance.
666
667The company is spending significant money producing first-run programming for the network, even though the real driver of subscriptions is probably the live event specials and the wrestling library. They could cut back on that spending and have a higher profit margin, but the belief is that content can be used for years and will have long-term value. There's something to that, but the key is, they have the ability to be more profitable if need be.
668
669This is very much a network and television business. The major profits as compared to recent years was more a timing situation based on lower network spending. Even though the company projects the network subscription numbers to be pretty much identical in the fourth quarter, the projection is that the company will fall into the range of $1 million in profits to $3 million in losses based on spending more money on the network for original programming. For a comparison, the same quarter last year took in $120,183,000 in revenue and the company lost $6,119,000, but last year was expected to lose money with the network ramping up.
670
671On 9/30, the network had 1,233,100 subscribers, broken down as 990,200 in the United States and 242,900 in the rest of the world. There were also about 73,000 people getting the network free on that day based on being new subscribers getting the first month free.
672
673On 6/30, the network had 1,156,100 subscribers, broken down as 939,000 in the United States and 216,800 in the rest of the world. There were 71,000 people getting it free on that day based on new subscribers getting the first month free. The number peaked two days after WrestleMania with 1,327,000 subscribers.
674
675During the three month period, there were 452,800 new sign-ups and 375,800 who allowed their subscriptions to expire. Since its launch, there have been 2,300,000 people who have paid for the network at one point. Of those, with 1,233,100 subscribing on 9/30, 54% were subscribers at the end of September. That retention rate is still a concern, even though total numbers are slowly trickling up. Besides opening up in India and that part of the world, WWE Network gift cards are now available at WalMart, so the numbers could increase as Christmas presents.
676
677From last year and this year, it's pretty clear the network pattern is going to be big first quarter growth until WrestleMania, and then a decline during the second quarter, and perhaps some small increase or decrease until the Royal Rumble. But the declines are not that great.
678
679Some have noted that even though the 9/30 number was higher than the 6/30 number, that the second quarter averaged more subscribers (1,215,170 for the second quarter, 1,106,400 third quarter). That's because of the tail effect of WrestleMania, in the sense that people who signed up for the big show at the end of March for one month or two months and then canceled, their subscriptions would be valid in most of April in all cases, and longer in some cases, even if they failed to renew from that point and wouldn't have been subscribers on 6/30. That is an expected drop.
680
681The increase is through running a number of live events. Besides the regular monthly PPV shows, there was The Best in the East show, the NXT Takeover special from Brooklyn, Brock Lesnar headlining Battleground in July, SummerSlam in August with Lesnar vs. Undertaker, and Sting as the headliner in September. Plus, people may have signed up on 9/30 early for the early October NXT special and the 10/3 Madison Square Garden special.
682
683While revenues are based on the average number, to me, significant growth from the end of June through the end of September is a good thing. The network is nowhere close to projections, as they were projecting 1,750,000 subscribers at this point in the U.S. alone, and two million by the end of the year. Right now, they are a little more than half that. While they needed closer to 1.4 million to make up for the lost profits of PPV, the surprise is how well PPV itself is doing. Expected to be dead by this point, PPV is actually holding up well and even growing slightly on the domestic front.
684
685The company should be at record breaking profits with its new television deals paying so much more than before. After last year's $30.1 million in losses in getting the network going, this year was supposed to be a record setter. Instead, they are projecting at year's end, profits between $38 million and $42 million, below the level of every year from 1998 to 2010 except 2001 (the XFL fiasco), 2003 (The World Restaurant losses and a declining year for business), 2005 and 2006. But with the rise in television revenue and an increase in subscribers, profits should increase next year. The key factors going forward is at what level does the network peak and stop growing, if that happens, and the uncertain future of television and high rights fees. But there are also new options for revenue. As content creators with a worldwide following, that theoretically should have them primed for whatever new avenues for revenue open up.
686
687In looking at profits by division (in millions of dollars), for the quarter, this is the comparison with the last few years:
688
689
690
6912015	2014	2013	2012
692Live events (tickets & Merch)	$8.19	$5.48	$7.34	$7.60
693PPV/Network	$17.65	$2.32	$7.38	$10.00
694Television	$26.55	$20.71	$21.26	$15.70
695Licensing	$7.06	$5.83	$3.22	$5.30
696Home video	$1.34	$1.28	$1.94	$2.80
697Web Site (web/UTube/iPPV)	$4.30	$2.73	$3.67	$3.40
698WWE films	-$0.90	-$0.42	-$7.42	-$2.00
699This chart shows that every aspect of company business is doing better than it has in several years. Live attendance was even (the summer was good, but September was way down), but ticket prices were way up, as was profitability.
700
701The network profitability is sort of misleading, in the sense that there was $18.7 million in expenses during the quarter. The annual expenses are projected at being$120 million, so the programming expenses happened to be lower when it came to production of new shows and big shows this quarter as compared to the year average. If you pro-rate the $120 million in expenses per quarter, that subtract $11.7 million from profits in normalizing things. It would leave a more reliable profit comparison at closer to$6 million, which is below the profitability that PPV alone was generating. That also makes a significant difference when it comes to the overall quarterly profit looking good, to looking not nearly so good.
702
703At the press call, it was noted that next quarter would not be as good because of the inconsistent quarterly spending on the network. But as noted, you could spend less on first-run programming and I'd suspect the subscription numbers wouldn't decline and profits would go up.
704
705For television this quarter featured a full season of both Total Divas and Tough Enough, so that increased television profits from $21.2 million to $26.6 million. Total Divas is doing well enough in ratings that it looks to have legs for future seasons, while Tough Enough did far below the USA Network prime time average and its chances of renewal look bleak.
706
707The licensing increase is because last year's video game did the best in several years.
708
709Still, even with all this positivity, the stock tumbled as soon as the results were released, and while having ups and downs, continued to decline since then, closing at $16.96 per share at press time and leaving the company with a market value of $1.29 billion.
710
711The Madison Square Garden show on 10/3 was the most-watched network program in history besides the PPVs. Also near the top of the list was the Beast in the East live show and the Brooklyn Takeover show. The other most-watched shows are the Steve Austin podcasts and the show "Swerved." It should be noted that those are also the shows promoted on television.
712
713A key is that of all network viewing, 75 percent is watching taped pro wrestling. None of those individual old shows rank near the top, although people continue to watch WrestleMania and usually the most recent PPV a lot more than original programming on most days. 15 percent of viewing is watching the live specials, but that's only three hours per month, more if there's an NXT show or a second special. 10 percent of the viewing is first run programming.
714
715The funny part is of that 75 percent, that is not really even marketed on television past that you have access to it. What still seems like the obvious idea, particularly in trying to draw older fans to the network, is presenting the various territorial footage episodically, in order, once per week, at the same time. That's even more a key when the average age of a Raw viewer is 40 and a Smackdown viewer is 46. And that's not figuring in an audience that no longer watches the show that could have interest in the network. But even a 46 year old Smackdown viewer, if they started at the age of 10, that would mean their childhood years are 1979 to 1989, the period when WWE owns the territorial footage of AWA, Stampede Wrestling, Mid South/UWF, World Class, Florida, Crockett, Georgia and as well as WWF.
716
717Laura Martin, an analyst who historically has been beyond rosy with her comments, including thinking 4 million subscribers at a steady state for the network would be likely and doable, questioned the spending, noting if they are spending $10 to $20 million per quarter in producing new programming that only results in 10 percent of the total viewership, she questioned the return on expense.
718
719Vince McMahon responded by saying, "We always look at our data. We're getting more and more data as we progress in time, actually, through the network. I think, as George (Barrios) just mentioned, there is a long tail with a lot of our programming. So when you look at percentages, it's sort of misleading in that, you need to be able to drive viewers and subscribers in terms of our current live events, it brings more and more subscribers to the network.
720
721Once you're in it, it's so deep that, yes, once your in it, you go into all sort of VOD stuff. So, again, it's important to continue that extraordinary live event current programming, which garners all these other numbers as well."
722
723I think nobody is questioning the live pro wrestling events each month are the primary driver and the life blood of the network. It's the expenses of the non-wrestling programming that are the question. Barrios noted that for the quarter, the total expenses for the entire network segment, which includes PPV, was $23 million, so the non-wrestling programming costs for the quarter were less than $10 million.
724
725During the quarter, of the subscribers, roughly 10 percent never log in once during the month.
726
727In the fourth quarter, they will add about 90 hours of new programming, between the live shows, the television shows like NXT and Superstars, the "Breaking Ground" series, the NXT Takeover special from London, the Stone Cold Podcast, "WWE 24" and other shows.
728
729The network launched this week in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, Maldives and Afghanistan. It will be interesting to see how much that affects the international number in the fourth quarter. Plans are to launch in Germany and Japan in January and China, Thailand and The Philippines are targeted after that.
730
731The company once again projects the subscriber count on 12/31 to be 1.2 million, so they are projecting, even with the India launch, a very small decline overall, based on not having a major event this quarter at the level of SummerSlam this last quarter.
732
733WWE has also gone into partnership with ABG, and now have a five year deal in which WWE will have 50 percent ownership of the Tapout brand, with ABG owning the other 50 percent. The brand will be promoted heavily on WWE television starting in a few months. They own $14,275,000 in assets based on their investment into the company.
734
735As far as where the revenue comes from, here is the quarterly breakdowns from the past few years:
736
737
738
7392015	2014	2013	2012
740North America	75.8%	78.1%	77.1%	76.8%
741Europe/Middle East/Asia	13.7%	9.7%	9.9%	9.1%
742Asia Pacific	9.6%	11.4%	12.1%	12.7%
743Latin America	1.0%	0.8%	0.9%	1.4%
744For PPV, this is the updated charts, and keep in mind that the more the network grows, the more PPV, in theory, should decrease, these are the numbers. W represents the worldwide buys in thousands. D represents the domestic buys in thousands, which is defined as the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico. WrestleMania 2014 was the first show after the launch of the network.
745
746
747
74815W	15D	14W	14D	13W	13D
749Rumble	176	61	517	337	579	364
750Chamber/Fastlane	56	32	203	159	241	181
751Mania	370	147	684	420	1104	662
752Ex Rules	66	25	107	45	245	137
753Payback	64	22	66	29	209	108
754MITB	67	24	121	53	223	169
755Chamber	48	--	--	--	--	--
756Battlegd	80	25	116	36	119	84
757Sslam	121	36	169	74	332	207
758NOC	77	31	56	35	196	103
759TOTAL	1125	403	2039	1188	3248	2015
760Key notes from this chart have been increases in B show numbers both domestic and overseas that should be falling. The Extreme Rules, Payback and Money in the Bank shows were fairly consistent, but international numbers that ranged from 41,000 to 43,000 for those three shows increased to 48,000 for Elimination Chamber, 55,000 for Battleground (with Brock Lesnar) and 46,000 for Night of Champions (with Sting). In addition, Night of Champions, with Sting, did 31,000 domestic buys, the best B show number since Fastlane. And given solid 15 to 20 percent increases with late reporting consistent throughout this year, it should wind up at 36,000 to 37,000, making it the best domestic PPV performer since the 2014 Money in the Bank show. And that was at a time when network subscribers in the U.S. were 287,000 lower. The network itself being well under projections at this point, to a degree, is mitigated by the fact that, no matter how hard they seem to try in their television plus telling the audience how dumb they are for ordering PPVs, that the PPV isn't dying at all.
761
762The 2015 Elimination Chamber show was not available on PPV in the United States, so the 48,000 buys all represent international buyers.
763
764A note regarding PPV is that even though PPVs in the U.S. are priced at $54.95 for HD and $44.95 for SD, WWE only garnered $12.65 per PPV buy in the quarter. That's because so many of the buys were outside North America at a far lower average price point. Given the network is priced at $9.99, that would indicate that WWE actually will take in more money for an individual network subscriber outside the U.S. than from a PPV subscriber. In the U.S., and Canada, that would be completely different as they'd take in $22 to $27 per order on PPV and take in $8 to $9 per monthly network subscription.
765
766Television revenue increased from $42.2 million during the quarter last year to $65.2 million. The key differences were increased deals, plus 13 episodes of Total Divas (as compared to four in the same quarter last year) and eight episodes of Tough Enough. Taking that out, it would have been closer to $52 million.
767
768Factoring out Total Divas and Tough Enough, WWE television will bring in about $175 million in revenue in 2015, up from $130 million in 2014. That will increase to $190 million in 2016 and peak at $235 million in 2018, the final year of the company's deal with NBC Universal, as well as the end of several international deals. It's impossible to predict with any credibility how the television landscape will be in 2018 because of how quickly both viewer habits and technology are changing.
769
770The declining ratings came up only once in the conference call, as Brandon Ross asked if the declines were secular, a content issue or a mix of both, and what steps are you taking to improving ratings.
771
772"When we think about our brand, we don't think about one metric in isolation like ratings," said Chief Strategy and Financial Officer George Barrios. "We think about them together. So that's why we talk about social media engagements, not just followers, YouTube in video views, TV ratings. So we feel when you put all that together, we're bigger and more engaging with out audience globally than ever before. But you're right, we don't like to be down anywhere. We're down year-to-date. But back to your question, is it cyclical or secular, hard to tell. We certainly think the content is great, and our fans are enjoying it. But we do look at the totality of all those metrics as opposed to just one, because I think it just reflects the reality of the way people are consuming content."
773
774Yet, with all that greater exposure, while there are bright spots such as the video game (largely due to being available on more platforms this past year) and on-line merchandising, everything else is stagnant or down. The ratings are down more than anything, and a real key is also that the priority aspect is way down in the sense the 92-95% of viewers watching Raw and Smackdown live three years ago is now hovering at 77-85%. That decreases the value to sponsors, not to mention a key component of their selling pitch last year with the idea that their programming is viewed like sports, and thus, DVR proof.
775
776Home Entertainment revenue fell from $3.6 million to $3.0 million. Shipments of DVDs and Blu Rays for the quarter were down 14 percent, but the average price per unit increased by 27 percent.
777
778Live events increased from $21.8 million to $26.1 million due to higher ticket prices and five more events in the quarter. This quarter had 79 shows in North America and six overseas, as compared to 73 shows in North America and six overseas the prior quarter. Average attendance for the quarter was 5,100, the same as last year, but that was helped by the big weekend at the Barclays Center in August. For the quarter, they averaged $249,798 in live gates for North American shows, which figures in PPVs as well, and $53,397 in merchandise sales. Last year, with the same average attendance but lower ticket prices, the average gate was $227,460 and the average merchandise take was $49,419.
779
780For six international shows in the quarter, they averaged 8,900 and $754,097 as compared to 7,700 paid and $715,253 last year for six shows.
781
782Arena merchandise was up from $4.2 million to $4.9 million for the quarter due to the six more shows, as well as merchandise sales per head increasing from $9.69 per head to $10.47 per head.
783
784Licensing revenue was up from $10.0 million to $11.5 million due to a better performing video game, as well as the mobile video game Immortals and higher sales of downloadable content for WWE SuperCard.
785
786Web site revenue increased from $5.0 million to $5.8 million based on higher ad revenue.
787
788WWE shop revenue increased from $4.29 million to $6.00 million. This has remained a super strong growth segment in the company due to the increase in mobile phone orders. Web site orders went from 989 per day last year to 1,484 per day this year. The average price per order dropped from $47.70 last year to $44.47 this year.
789
790As of the end of September, the company had $99,570,000 in cash and cash equivalents. They also have $22.7 million in debt related to financing the company airplane. At the same time one year ago, that figure was $115,413,000 in assets and $25.9 million owed in the airplane purchase price.
791
792No revenue estimates are in for the 2015 movies. For the 2014 movies, "Scooby Doo! WrestleMania Mystery" turned a $1,600,000 profit; "Oculus" lost $1,900,000; "Road to Paloma" made $100,000; "Leprechaun: Origins" made $200,000; "See No Evil 2" made $100,000; and "Jingle All The Way 2" made $100,000. If you factor in administration costs, the studio is still a money loser, but not at the level it was a few years ago.
793
794****************************************************************
795The situation with Jose Alberto Rodriguez, better known as Alberto Del Rio, took a number of major turns this past week.
796
797Since last week's issue, WWE booked him for this week's television and the European tour which immediately followed, which meant that his bookings for AAA television on 11/7 in Nuevo Laredo and 11/15 in Ciudad Juarez were off. Those at AAA were told originally he'd be making the dates, but a lot of what AAA has been told on this story is in question, starting right out from Alberto telling Dorian Roldan and Konnan less than 24 hours before his appearance on Raw that he had just cut his deal when others have traced it back to mid-September.
798
799In addition, with Alberto not appearing on a scheduled Promociones Kdena show on 11/1 in Monterrey, the show was canceled the day before it was to take place since he was the big draw on the show.
800
801What happened is they were of the belief, like AAA was, that Alberto would work the date even after he had shown up with WWE. In fact, during the week they had changed advertising, billing him as WWE United States champion.
802
803A key to this story is there was no head-to-head conflict on that date but Alberto still didn't appear. Alberto did not have a WWE booking. A flight from San Antonio, where he lives, to Monterrey, is a little more than an hour. Monterrey to Denver, where Raw was on 11/2, would be a five hour plus flight, so it was clearly doable. Whether WWE didn't allow it because it's the day before Raw and he was in a city not that close, or he just decided not to do it, is unknown. WWE does like talent to get into the city of Raw on Sunday nights as often as possible. They do it to the point of booking late afternoon house shows on Sundays, usually within a few hours drive of the Raw location. They do this instead of Sunday nights, which would draw better, particularly in the summer and fall.
804
805So this brings into question if he'll be allowed to, or if he is willing to appear at any of his previously agreed upon and already advertised dates that don't have a WWE schedule conflict.
806
807The WWE's version of the story is that Del Rio's lawyer, who negotiated his deal with them, told the company he had no obligations left with any promotion. WWE said they were unaware of any commitments for him anywhere else, even though his commitments elsewhere was the biggest wrestling news story of the past week.
808
809Another controversy is that the local promoters of the 11/2 tapings in Nuevo Laredo were still advertising Alberto as late as the day of the show. AAA even sent out a tweet the morning of the show with Alberto still listed on the card. On 10/31, when people on Facebook wrote that WWE had confirmed he would be in Denver, the local promoters claimed AAA had never told them of this. Still, Konnan on his podcast the day before the show confirmed the story we had reported earlier in the week, that he wouldn't be in Nuevo Laredo for the tapings.
810
811AAA needed something big, and were talking in different directions. They ended up bringing back Dr. Wagner Jr. as a surprise babyface return that night, even though the reaction in dealing with Wagner Jr. has always wound up negatively. Wagner Jr. had just quit CMLL a few weeks into his last run, and before the Anniversary show. Wagner Jr. replaced Alberto, teaming with Rey Mysterio Jr., to lose in the main event to Brian Cage & El Hijo del Fantasma when Wagner turned on Mysterio, theoretically starting a new program and giving Mysterio a big-name foe after Myzteziz left. But Wagner Jr. has always been very difficult to deal with.
812
813Another controversy came from our reporting of his downside guarantee of $1.45 million. WWE said that while he could very well make $1.45 million per year, his downside was significantly less, claiming it as under $500,000. Others who are close to him are insisting that's WWE trying to save face when the word got out. I tend to believe WWE on this one, because the negotiations started right after his Lucha Underground deal fell apart. The timing made me think he was going to them, not them to him, and if that's the case, the downside wouldn't be as high. But saying that contradicts people who had been kept abreast of the situation, who claim Paul Levesque called him first. I do know that it was an issue within WWE because the doctrine is that nobody gets more than a $1 million downside guarantee (although Brock Lesnar got far more, and guys like John Cena or possibly Undertaker may–but the belief is that the Randy Orton types are getting a $1 million downside, but end up earning far more than that).
814
815There are reasons such as no matter what the guarantee, without Lucha Underground's guaranteed money, he's not going to make the same on the outside as in WWE, although those with knowledge of his various deals estimated he would have made $600,000 through all sources in 2016 in working roughly half or a little more than half as many dates as he would even with a supposed 140 date max WWE contract. They were skeptical he'd take less guaranteed for roughly twice as many dates, particularly with his personal life situation where he wants to spend as much time at home with his kids. There is no little chance for him to make seven figures on the outside, and he could in WWE, and there is no uncertainty about the long-term future of the company.
816
817Another difference when it comes to treatment and net income is that on the indie scene, he was demanding and getting business class travel for every date, and his lodging was taken care of. He would get to keep either all of or a higher percentage of his merchandise money. So there is a huge difference in road expenses working for WWE.
818
819On the indie scene, at least outside of Mexico, with no Lucha Underground, he'd be living off his indie name and he'd get less "hot" the longer he was off television. Being on WWE television makes him hotter and does buy him a second "hot indie" run whenever he leaves WWE. In Mexico, that's not the same thing since more people watch AAA than WWE, although there is the prestige of WWE as "the big leagues" even in Mexico. Alberto was CMLL world heavyweight champion as Dos Caras Jr., for 18 months, but was a tons bigger drawing card, to the point there's no comparison, in Mexico, since having the WWE exposure. Others noted he was also so much better on promos this time around. It's a two-way street, as the original Mistico had to overcome the WWE exposure to start drawing in Mexico again.
820
821When the talk first started of Alberto going back, he was still telling the people he worked with that he never wanted to go back to WWE, even when in interviews he was more open about the idea of doing it after previously saying he'd never do it. As noted here weeks ago, he had also told people that he was probably going back next year, to be in WrestleMania in Dallas. The only real surprise was his going back last week, not his going back.
822
823There were people aware of him being the mystery guy more than a week out, and we're told the storyline was laid out a few weeks out. The Zeb Colter aspect was a surprise to almost everyone. There were no hints of that, although we'd heard his name mentioned a few weeks ago about him waiting for medical clearance to return.
824
825The one thing is with WWE, they are going to be around and you don't have to worry about last minute hassles with promoters on travel and all the things that a real independent contractor has to worry about when it comes to being paid what is promised, or agreeing to dates that fall apart. The debut he was promised was getting to pin Cena in a manner that nobody but Brock Lesnar has ever done, clean in the middle and quickly. With them badly wanting a bi-lingual speaking Mexican star (and they've been searching for one who is at least 6-foot-2), and haven't been able to find that person since he left (there is no bi-lingual Mexican who is 6-foot-2 with star power except him), that he'll likely be getting a big push. It makes sense after the Lucha Underground deal went down, and with the uncertainty of that group, and the uncertainty from TNA, that if he's looking for something solid, WWE and New Japan are the only place to be. He could make a one-shot big money in MMA. As recently as the past few weeks, Rizin offered him $250,000 for New Year's Eve. Virtually every MMA promotion was after him, but clearly that's not his interest.
826
827New Japan wasn't an option due to AAA, and ROH wasn't an option at all financially. Really, New Japan wouldn't have been an option financially either because their pay scale is not to break the bank for any one person, like a Japanese MMA group would, and Alberto is known there but would not be the difference maker at the level he would be for a Mexican group or a Lucha Underground.
828
829TNA was talking about a deal in the $300,000 range where he'd still be able to work Mexico and indies, but that was just talk, and TNA's future is hardly stable. They've pursued him in the past but the reality is he wouldn't be much of a difference maker at TNA.
830
831He was in this unique position because everyone is looking for a Mexican superstar right now. The population of those of Mexican ancestry in the U.S. continues to grow and Mexican Americans are far more apt to be wrestling fans than any demographic group. In theory, everyone wants that big Mexican star, and if Eddy Guerrero was 30, he'd have the world at his feet today, because of the awareness of the demographic shift. But that person doesn't exist. That's why Alberto, with his height and look, has such an edge over others who may be as good or better.
832
833WWE has been scouting Mexico looking for talent. They liked La Sombra, and there are others they have interest in. With Sombra, he'd have to greatly tweak his style and there could be language issues, which is another reason Alberto works so well for them.
834
835Right now it seems highly unlikely he'll return for any dates with AAA. Even if he does come in, he will not be dropping the AAA heavyweight title, at least not in a straight singles match. Whether they can get him for a date (unlikely) and book a three-way or four-way, where he doesn't lose the fall, is still unclear, but even AAA is not planning that way. Alberto had told the organization that Vince McMahon said that they just had him beat Cena clean and is the U.S. champion, and thus can't lose. WWE is portraying it that he told them he had no more commitments and thus it's a moot point. AAA's plans as of the weekend were trying to get him to return and physically vacate the title at a big show, likely Guerra de Titanes, by handing back the belt as opposed to losing it in the ring.
836
837It is notable that for all the talk of wins and losses not mattering in this day and age, clearly in certain situations they very much do.
838
839Konnan on his podcast said Alberto was willing to come back and lose the title, but was told by McMahon that he can't lose.
840
841As far as dates go, right now AAA was still hopeful of him working Guerra de Titanes on 12/5, their last big show of the year, and there's some hope of him doing some of the ZZ Inc. dates that don't conflict with WWE dates in November. Based on WWE's statement, that looks unlikely.
842
843The ZZ Inc. deal was a big one for AAA that is getting off to a bad start with Alberto and Myzteziz, two of the three biggest stars scheduled for those events, both out.
844
845Konnan was at Raw in San Diego and Alberto at the time told the promotion he'd do the two TV tapings on 11/7 and 11/15, only for those close to him to say two days later that he would be off both shows because of Raw and the European tour. The WWE later confirmed the Raw and European bookings and then started advertising him for those dates. Whether this was WWE making the changes after Monday and what he knew at the time is unclear, but it is the case that WWE didn't announce him for European dates or confirm him for Raw until a few days later. And WWE, if they felt they needed him, whatever dates he had agreed to prior wasn't going to be of their concern.
846
847Plus, he had been off the American mainstream radar, since the audience for Lucha Underground is small. The audience for TNA is also small, so it would be making short-term money without building a mainstream name, and TNA would fade his name value. Lucha Underground at least was a project that paid him excellently and he was on the ground floor of, but it has no certain future, and was making financial cutbacks for its second season, and he already had differences with them that caused him to want out. Lucha Underground portrayed his leaving as a mutual decision.
848
849The first year mentality was to produce this blow away new product, be the franchise show in building El Rey, getting on Univision in the U.S. and Televisa in Mexico and springboarding that to movies and merchandise deals. El Rey didn't take off and the other deals still haven't materialized. While Alberto was the biggest star they had, he wasn't necessary to the product and carried a huge price tag. The feeling from there is that they will have Rey Mysterio (who is still not officially announced), who is a bigger star, coming in at a lower price, and Mysterio's name as far as opening doors is stronger.
850
851Alberto had no contract with AAA. The reality is, AAA is learning the lesson that they have to sign the top guys to contracts, particularly when they are cutting marketing deals and making deals with outside companies. In his case, they may have figured that since he had a Lucha Underground deal, and that was the sister company, and he was adamant about not going to WWE and he couldn't go to CMLL with his Lucha Underground deal, that they were safe. But it was another lesson that you need contracts with top guys if you're going to play on the major league stage in 2015, and make outside deals with sponsors and companies promoting shows involving them.
852
853AAA has pulled advertising of him from the 11/15 show in Ciudad Juarez since, with him booked on 11/14 in Minehead, England and 11/16 in Greenville, SC, once he went on the European tour, that was out.
854
855Those at Combate Americas believed Del Rio was still with them as an announcer, but we've also seen how this went down with AAA. Campbell McLaren, who runs the promotion, said on 11/1 that Alberto had confirmed appearing with the group in his role as an announcer for their 12/16 show in Hollywood, FL.
856
857WWE's response to that was saying, "We are not aware of any commitments for Alberto Del Rio outside of WWE."
858
859Combate Americas has been running on Thursday nights, but McLaren said that NBC Universo is moving them to Wednesdays, because more men watch television on Wednesday nights than Thursday. WWE doesn't do house shows on Wednesday. But even as an announcer in MMA, I wonder about them allowing him on someone else's TV show.
860
861Alberto's story that he told AAA, as said by Konnan on his podcast, was that he was called by Paul Levesque, and they wanted him back, and he gave a money figure that Levesque thought was too high. Eventually McMahon got involved and they worked it out in the days before Los Angeles. As noted, the version we had was that his conversations were with Levesque, and the deal was worked in about a week or so from the first serious content, and creative was told in early October, and that's when the mystery opponent for Cena idea took form.
862
863Really, other than tell AAA the morning of the show, there isn't much difference between Alberto's leaving AAA and Myzteziz's leaving AAA. Alberto's leaving was far more damaging, because he was the bigger star, and because far more AAA business was built around him, not to mention him being world champion. Myzteziz was at least willing to come back and finish his advertised dates. Still there appears to be zero in the way of hard feelings for Alberto even now from AAA.
864
865Myzteziz was not close to the people at the top in AAA, and it was a business relationship. He was a headache to deal with. Alberto was always nice and friendly with all the key people in AAA, and easier to deal with. That isn't to say he was more or less demanding of what he would and wouldn't do, but kept great relations with creative and was politically astute enough in how he handled everything. Plus, he was at times willing to bleed to get opponents over on this run in AAA, something he hadn't ever done earlier in his career.
866
867He had very good relations with the key people in AAA, such as Dorian Roldan, Marisela Pena, Konnan, Mysterio and the top guys in the promotion like El Texano Jr., who he put over in matches and bled for to kick start their program which ended with Alberto getting the title. Konnan had also negotiated deals for him, and had been the point man on some deals that were brought to him.
868
869****************************************************************
870If the major league pro wrestling groups are limited to WWE, far and away No. 1, the second through fourth spot of New Japan, CMLL and AAA, the most successful non-major league group these days has to be Dragon Gate.
871
872The group that presents a fast-paced Lucha style with mostly smaller wrestlers, ran one of its biggest events of the year, The Gate of Destiny 2015 on 11/1 at the Edion Arena in Osaka. While the 7,150 announced sellout was an inflated number, the building was sold out with about 5,500. They are selling out the seating at their monthly Korakuen Hall shows in advance. What made that number impressive is that New Japan has its Power Struggle show in the same arena six days later, and Pro Wrestling NOAH ran the smaller 1,500 seat adjacent arena two days later.
873
874I haven't seen the entire show, but it's getting raves as one of the best shows of the year. The main event, which I did see, with Shingo Takagi retaining the Open the Dream Gate title against Masaaki Mochizuki was a match of the year candidate.
875
876What's notable is that from a live perspective, as great as the main event was, the fan base was not there to see a great action match, but to see Mochizuki win the title. The reaction was that Mochizuki put on a great performance, but he lost, and it was a somber atmosphere leaving the building. The crowd was also unhappy Kotoka won the Open the Dream Gate title, and more up at the end of the Twin Gate title match because Yamato & Doi won.
877
878Before the show started, Cima announced that his new group would be called The Over Generation. He said that's the name because it's the oldest and youngest generation. The idea is Cima and Gamma are mentoring the newcomers, Eita, Lindaman, Kaito Ishida and Takehiro Yamamura.
879
880The story is the Verserk group is starting to dominate with Takagi still as Open the Dream Gate champion, Kotoka winning the Open the Brave Gate title and Yamato & Naruki Doi holding the Twin Gate titles.
881
8821. Super Shisa & Shachihoko Boy beat Yosuke Santa Maria & U-T in 6:36 when Shisa pinned U-T with the Yoshitonic, which is the code red. This was a dark match before the show started but described as like a very good TNA X Division style match.
883
8842. Eita & Lindaman & Kaito Ishida beat Kzy & Big R Shimizu & Draztick Boy in 6:11 when Lindaman pinned Draztick Boy with three German suplexes. Dragon Gate is a faction promotion with ever changing members. Eita & Lindaman & newcomer Ishida are called The Over Generation. Lindaman vs. Draztick Boy were said to be excellent here.
885
8863. Cyber Kong & Mondai Ryu beat Punch Tominaga & Takehiro Yamamura in 6:41 when Kong pinned Yamamura after a power bomb. Kong played monster here.
887
8884. Dragon Kid & Flamita beat Genki Horiguchi & Jimmy Kanda in 8:07 when Flamita pinned Horiguchi. Lots of big moves here, particularly Flamita, who is one of the world's best flyers. It was described as falling a bit short.
889
8905. Kotoka captured the Open the Brave Gate title in a three-way over champion Akira Tozawa and Naoki Tanizaki in 18:05. This was elimination style, and Tozawa pinned Tanizaki in 13:00 with a German suplex. Kotoka then pinned Tozawa to win the title. Kotoka was said to be super entertaining. Kong distracted the ref and Tanizaki and Kotoka hit Tozawa with repeated unprotected chair shots to the head. In the second fall, Mondai Ryu and Kong interfered. There was a ref bump and more interference by Ryu and Kong to help Kotoka. Great near fall by Kotoka with a double foot stomp. Said to be great.
891
8926. Cima & Don Fujii & Gamma beat Jimmy Susumu & Jimmy K-Ness & Ryo Saito to retain the Open the Triangle Gate titles in 17:55 when Gamma pinned Saito after a sky twister. However, Cima & Fujii & Gamma vacated the titles after the match. They brawled all over the building including teasing throwing people off the balcony. Fujii said he was moving to work with the Jimmyz group which is also the sumo group and he's Sumo Fuji. Cima vacated the title, saying he and Gamma are now working with the Over Generation group.
893
8947. Yamato & Naruki Doi beat Masato Yoshino & T-Hawk in 21:48 to retain the Open the Twin Gate titles when Yamato beat Yoshino with Galleria, a facelock turned into a piledriver. Said to be an excellent match. Lots of super hard chops. Yoshino and Yamato did ridiculously fast high spots. Basically they do exactly what any U.S. teacher would tell you not to do regarding going so fast, but in this environment, it works. The argument that it beats up your body faster is a different issue. Yoshino did a moonsault off the top to the floor. Mondai Ryu threw powder at Yoshino and Yamato hit Galleria. Yoshino kicked out for a big pop, but Yamato hit Galleria a second time for the pin.
895
8968. Shingo Takagi beat Masaaki Mochizuki in 24:55 with the Last Falconry, a wrist clutch fisherman buster, to retain the Open the Dream Gate title. An incredible performance by Mochizuki in both his offense with his kicks, punches and staggering selling. The story here is that Takagi had been saying Mochizuki was too old to headline. This was a mix of high flying moves and an Ishii vs. Shibata or Suzuki vs. Sugiura level of just pounding on each other with ridiculously hard clotheslines, with some no sell stuff. Mochizuki did an Asai moonsault and a great plancha. Takagi finally weakened Mochizuki with clotheslines and finished him. Takagi insulted him more after the match saying it's dangerous for someone Mochizuki's age to be jumping around like that and it's time for him to retire. He made fun of Cima and Gamma, saying they are broken down and aren't going to be able to help the younger guys. Mochizuki said he did as much as his 46-year-old body could do, but it wasn't enough to take the title. He vowed to bounce back from the loss.
897
898****************************************************************
899Kota Ibushi, 33, who has been one of the best all-around performers in the business for the past several years, will be out of action for a lengthy period of time due to a herniated disc in his neck.
900
901Ibushi, who may be the only major wrestling star in the world under contract with two different companies in the same country, had to pull out of a challenge to Yukio Sakaguchi for the KO-D championship, the top title in DDT, on 10/25 at Korakuen Hall, due to what was reported as a high fever. However, during the week it became apparent he was in worse shape, and was suffering from numbness on the left side of his body, before the herniated disc was discovered.
902
903Ibushi is under contract to both DDT as his home promotion, and New Japan, where he works major events. DDT President Sanshiro Takagi announced Ibushi would vacate the KO-D tag team titles he holds with Daisuke Sasaki. He also announced that all of Ibushi's public appearances to promote the book he wrote that is coming out shortly were also canceled. There was no estimate as to when he could return, but it would be well into next year. That takes him out of the 1/4 Tokyo Dome show, where it was expected he would be facing Kazushi Sakuraba.
904
905New Japan President Naoki Sugabayashi noted that Ibushi's contract expires in January, but that New Japan will be keeping him under contract until he returns, and at that point they will start negotiations for a new deal.
906
907Ibushi & Hiroshi Tanahashi were scheduled to face Kazuchika Okada & Sakuraba in the No. 2 match on the 11/7 New Japan Power Struggle PPV from the Edion Arena in Osaka. Katsuyori Shibata will be replacing Ibushi. Whether Shibata replaces him in a singles match with Sakuraba at the Tokyo Dome is unclear.
908
909It is expected that New Japan will announce its tag team tournament, which takes place from 11/21 to 12/9, as well as most of the Tokyo Dome show over the next week, either during, or in the case of the Tokyo Dome, after Power Struggle, which is expected to feature several angles that will build matches for the show, including a surprise opponent for the IC title.
910
911The current Super Junior tag team tournament finals will also be on the show, with Rocky Romero & Trent Barreta facing Matt Sydal & Ricochet. Romero & Baretta defeated jr. tag champs Bobby Fish & Kyle O'Reilly, and Sydal & Ricochet beat The Young Bucks on the 11/1 show at Korakuen Hall. I suspect Ricochet & Sydal win to get them over for a title shot. Romero & Baretta got their "win back" after losing at the King of Pro Wrestling show. So the idea is to set up two challengers, both Romero & Baretta and Sydal & Ricochet, for Fish & O'Reilly.
912
913Power Struggle will be airing at 3 a.m. Eastern and midnight Pacific late Friday night/early Saturday morning, with a lineup of Jushin Liger & Tiger Mask & Ryusuke Taguchi & Mascara Dorada vs. Yohei Komatsu & Sho Tanaka & David Finlay & Jay White; Togi Makabe & Captain New Japan & Juice Robinson vs. Doc Gallows & Tama Tonga & Cody Hall; Hirooki Goto vs. Evil (Takaaki Watanabe), Alex Shelley & Kushida & Kyle O'Reilly & Bobby Fish vs. Young Bucks & Kenny Omega & Chase Owens; Sydal & Ricochet vs. Romero & Baretta in the tag tourney final; Toru Yano & Yoshi-Hashi vs. A.J. Styles & Bad Luck Fale; Tomohiro Ishii vs. Tomoaki Honma for the Never Open Weight title in a rematch of one of the best matches this year; Tanahashi & Shibata vs. Okada & Sakuraba; and Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Karl Anderson for the IC title.
914
915The 11/1 Korakuen Hall show, built around the tournament semifinals, drew a sellout of 1,739 paid and was a good show, with every match good and the tag team tournament matches peaking it at the end. It was the same predictable basic booking with solid in-ring work.
916
9171. Jushin Liger & Sho Tanaka & Yohei Komatsu beat Tiger Mask & Jay White & David Finlay in 7:16. Well wrestled good match but felt too short and like the talent had so much more to show. White, Komatsu and Tanaka all looked good, as they always do. After Tiger Mask used a tope on Liger, Finlay went for a suplex, but Komatsu escaped and put him in a Boston crab, and bent him way over for the submission. ***
918
9192. Hirooki Goto & Katsuyori Shibata & Mascara Dorada beat Togi Makabe & Captain New Japan & Juice Robinson in 8:33. Another good match. Dorada was the highlight performer near the end. Goto made Robinson submit to a reverse shoulder lock, the Shoryu Kekkai. Shibata and Makabe brawled after the match and had to be pulled apart, so unless Shibata goes into the Ibushi spot, he's probably going to be programmed with Makabe. ***
920
9213. Alex Shelley & Kushida beat Kenny Omega & Chase Owens in 11:06. Omega used a mop handed to him by Cody Hall because he's the cleaner. They worked on Shelley for several minutes. Shelley used a flying knee off the apron on Owens and Kushida used a Thesz press off the apron on Omega. Kushida was worked over including Omega power bombing him onto Owens' knees. A lot of near falls and saves ending when Shelley pinned Owens after Automatic Midnight, which is the same move as Sheamus' white noise. Kushida had Omega in the hoverboard lock at the same time. It felt like they were building Kushida for a jr. title shot at Omega. Omega attacked both Shelley and Kushida after the match. Owens was limping pretty bad, needing help from Hall to get to the back. ***
922
9234. Karl Anderson & Doc Gallows & Bad Luck Fale & Tama Tonga beat Shinsuke Nakamura & Toru Yano & Kazushi Sakuraba & Yoshi-Hashi in 12:10. Yano did a lot of comedy early. Sakuraba kicked Gallows low twice. They played it up like the errant MMA kick that accidentally nails someone, except when he did it the second time, it was made clear it wasn't "accidental." Later Gallows was choking Sakuraba with a bullrope. Anderson gave Nakamura a gunstun off the top rope and then hit Yoshi-Hashi with the gunstun for the pin. The idea was to make Anderson look strong for his PPV main event. Fale and Tonga threw the refs out of the ring and then threw Yoshi-Hashi out of the ring and they all celebrated. Nakamura was outside the ring selling the gunstun. **3/4
924
9255. Kazuchika Okada & Tomohiro Ishii & Gedo beat Hiroshi Tanahashi & Tomoaki Honma & Ryusuke Taguchi in 13:51. Okada and Tanahashi were the focal points. Okada slammed Tanahashi's head into his own 1/4 title match briefcase. Ishii and Honma did their usual hard hitting to build their match. Honma did a cool spear head-butt knocking Okada off the apron to the floor. Tanahashi used a plancha on Gedo while Taguchi was hip attacking everyone and then made fun of Okada's rainmaker pose. The finish saw Okada hit the dropkick on Taguchi and followed with an elbow drop off the top rope and the rainmaker. Honma and Ishii were face-to-face after to build up their Never title match. ***3/4
926
9276. Matt Sydal & Ricochet beat Young Bucks in 12:05 to advance to the finals of the Super Junior tournament. Cody Hall was at ringside and clotheslined Sydal & Ricochet before the match started. Hall at one time was holding Nick in his arms on the floor and daring Sydal to do something, so Sydal wiped him out with a plancha. They worked on Sydal, and then on Ricochet with all kinds of big moves. Matt went to power bomb Ricochet into Nick's kick, but Ricochet reversed it and Nick kicked Matt. Sydal used a huracanrana on Nick off the apron. Ricochet did a springboard 450 on Matt, but Nick pulled out the ref. Hall clotheslined Ricochet when the ref was down. Matt power bombed Ricochet into Nick's kick. Nick did a swanton on Ricochet while Matt held him up. Ricochet tagged out and Sydal gave both huracanranas at the same time. Ricochet did a crazy running flip dive over the top and over the post on Nick. They set up the Meltzer driver on Sydal, but Ricochet blocked it. The finish saw Sydal use a reverse huracanrana on Matt and Ricochet did the Benadryller on Nick. Sydal then used a shooting star press on Matt (the legal men) while Ricochet did a shooting star press on Nick. Excellent match. ****1/4
928
9297. Rocky Romero & Trent Barreta beat Bobby Fish & Kyle O'Reilly in 20:06 to advance to the finals of the Super Junior tournament. The crowd was so quiet the first part of the match. The wrestling was good but nobody was making noise. Fish & O'Reilly mostly worked no Barreta's knee. O'Reilly did a DDT into a German suplex by Fish onto Barreta, but he kicked out. O'Reilly put him in the scorpion deathlock and Fish used a guillotine on Romero, but Romero escaped. He kept punching O'Reilly but O'Reilly refused to break the scorpion. Barreta was selling it great and made the ropes. O'Reilly suplexed Barreta over the top and Romero used a running dive over the top on O'Reilly. Fish did a flip dive on Romero. O'Reilly did a dropkick off the apron knocking Romero out of the chair he was sitting in on the floor. Lots of good near falls. They got the crowd pretty hot at the end. The last few minutes were great and they built to a strong peak. Fish kicked out of the Dudebuster by Barreta. O'Reilly and Romero were trading hard slaps. Romero hit a jumping knee and O'Reilly did a great wobbly leg sell. Romero & Baretta then did a double jumping knee. Romero used a tope on O'Reilly and then they pinned Fish with Strong Zero, which is a dudebuster by Baretta combined with a missile dropkick by Fish. They did a great job following a great match and with a match that the people at first weren't accepting as a main event, and by the end the fans were reacting to it like it was the main event. ****
930
931***************************************************************
932Raw on 11/2 set yet another 18 year record low audience for the show, doing a 2.31 rating and averaging 3.24 million viewers (1.47 viewers per home). In this case, it was against a close NFL game with the Carolina Panthers vs. Indianapolis Colts, but the game did 12.40 million viewers which is normal levels for the season.
933
934The prior low was on 10/12 at 3.27 million. It was the second lowest rating, trailing a 2.20 on 10/19.
935
936The last two weeks were a little up, the 10/19 show because of having the star power and the 10/26 show being the day after the PPV. This week they had no John Cena or Brock Lesnar, nor are either in the storylines. Undertaker is in the storyline but didn't appear. Randy Orton is out of the picture, not that he's a ratings draw at this point, but it's still someone who has been pushed for more than a decade as a top star. This is really the Roman Reigns/Seth Rollins show. The first hour was unusually low, the second hour was the lowest second hour on record, while the third hour, with the Survivor Series style match, actually increased over hour two.
937
938The first hour did 3.38 million viewers, hour two did 3.18 million viewers and hour three did 3.19 million viewers.
939
940Smackdown on 10/29 did a 1.50 rating and 2.17 million viewers (1.54 viewers per home, a huge number for modern wrestling), which is a good number given The New England Patriots vs. Miami Dolphins game head-to-head did 17.53 million viewers (14.54 million on CBS, 2.99 million on the NFL Network), as well as going against both College Football (1.25 million viewers) and the NBA (1.40 million viewers).
941
942Impact on 10/28 did 266,000 viewers at 9 p.m., and another 98,000 viewers at midnight. The 9 p.m. was the third lowest first-run episode of the show, but that should have been expected going against the Republican debates (14.00 million viewers), the World Series (13.72 million viewers) and the NBA (2.76 million viewers). The midnight replay was up, probably because of the far greater than usual lead-in from ROH.
943
944ROH on 10/28 destroyed its all-time record with 227,000 viewers. The prior record was 175,000 set three weeks earlier, and was up 72 percent from the prior week. What killed TNA is probably what gave ROH its big number, in the sense so many more people were watching TV, and both the debate and baseball ended, with the game ending just as ROH started. But the numbers right now for both promotions are very important, since with Jane Latman just put in charge a few weeks ago of Destination America, and she's the one making the call and evaluating all programming, the current numbers are hugely important, particularly with ROH coming due in a month and TNA originally set to be pulled in January.
945
946UFC Tonight on 10/28 did 121,000 viewers.
947
948******************************************************************
949This is the third and final issue of the current set. If you've got a (1) on your address label, your subscription expires with this issue.
950
951Renewal rates for the printed Observer in the United States are $12 for four issues (which includes $4 for postage and handling), $22 for eight, $31 for 12, $40 for 16, $60 for 24, $80 for 32, $100 for 40, $130 for 52 up through $160 for 64 issues.
952
953For Canada and Mexico, the rates are $13.50 for four issues (which includes $6 for postage and handling), $24 for eight, $34 for 12, $44 for 16, $66 or 24, $88 for 32, $110 for 40 issues, $143 for 52 and $176 for 64.
954
955For Europe, you can get the fastest delivery and best rates by sending to Moonsault, P.O. Box 3075, Barnet, Herts EN4 9YR, England, or by sending e-mail orders to moonsault@mediaplusint.com. Rates are £9 per set of four issues. U.K. readers ordering at least six sets can get them for £8.50 per set.
956
957For the rest of the world, the rates are $15.50 for four issues (which includes $9 for postage and handling), $30 for eight, $43 for 12, $56 for 16, $70 for 20, $84 for 24, $98 for 28, $140 for 40 issues and $182 for 52 issues.
958
959You can also get the Observer on the web at www.wrestlingobserver.com for $10.99 per month for a premium membership that includes daily audio updates, Figure Four Weekly, special articles and a message board. If you are a premium member and still want hard copies of the Observer, you can get them for $8 per set in the U.S., $9 per set in Canada and $11.50 per set for the rest of the world.
960
961All subscription renewals should be sent to the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, P.O. Box 1228, Campbell, CA 95009-1228. You can also renew via Visa or MasterCard by sending your name, address, phone number, Visa or MasterCard number (and include the three or four digit security code on the card) and expiration date to Dave@wrestlingobserver.com or by fax to (408)244-3402. You can also renew at www.paypal.com using Dave@wrestlingobserver.com as the pay to address. For all credit card or paypal orders, please add a $1 processing fee. If there are any subscription problems, you can contact us and we will attempt to rectify them immediately, but please include with your name a full address as well a phone number you can be contacted at.
962
963All letters to the editor, reports from live shows and any other correspondence pertaining to this publication should also be sent to the above address.
964
965We also have copies of our latest book, "Tributes II," a 293-page hardcover full color book which features biographies right out of the pages of the Observer. Those featured are Wahoo McDaniel, Lou Thesz, Miss Elizabeth, Freddie Blassie, Road Warrior Hawk, Andre the Giant, Curt Hennig, Johnny Valentine, Davey Boy Smith, Terry Gordy, Owen Hart, Stu Hart, Gorilla Monsoon, The Sheik and Tim Woods. The book is available for $12.95 plus $3.50 for postage and handling in the U.S., $20 for postage and handling in Canada and $25 for postage and handling for the rest of the world.
966
967This publication is copyright material and no portion of the Observer may be reprinted without the expressed consent of publisher/writer Dave Meltzer or Chief legal counsel and deputy managing editor Scott Williams. The Observer is also produced by John F. Raad.
968
969Fax messages can be sent to the Observer 24 hours a day at (408) 244-3402. Phone messages can be left 24 hours a day at (408) 244-2455. E-mails can be sent to Dave@wrestlingobserver.com
970
971*****************************************************************
972
973CMLL
974There was a big angle on the 10/30 show at Arena Mexico, seemingly ending the long Volador Jr. vs. La Sombra program, and teasing a Sombra turn against Los Ingobernables. It also could be a swerve. This came in a match where Volador was defending the NWA Historic welterweight title against Sombra. The show drew 9,000 fans, more than double normal, for an iPPV show. The crowd was up more because of the Day of the Dead theme of the show than the main event. They did the theme again on the 11/1 show, and it drew 5,000 fans, about double the normal Sunday crowd. It was noted how the outdrew the Caristico return last week. Sombra sneak attacked Volador and won the first fall. Volador had the second fall won twice, but each time Rush pulled the ref out of the ring. Rush attacked Volador for the DQ, and the commission then threw out both Rush and Valiente (Volador's second). The third fall was said to be super, as you'd expect, with great heat. Sombra did the Kota Ibushi German suplex spot that he did in the Nakamura match where he stood on the second rope while Sombra was standing on the apron and German'd him into the ring. At the 24:00 mark, Sombra got cocky playing to the crowd, and Volador hit the back stabber and Volador spiral for a clean win. Sombra then grabbed the mic and said that he respected Volador. Rush & La Mascara then attacked Volador before Sombra finished his mic work. Sombra looked like he was mad, and refused to join in the beating. Rush pulled Sombra to tell him to attack Volador, but Sombra pulled away and they had a staredown before Mascara acted like the peacemaker. Rush & Mascara stole the belt and handed it to Sombra, but Sombra refused to take it. But before they left the ring, they made up and Sombra fist bumped them, so this was just a seed and not a turn. But it was the first time there had even been a seed planted in the group after 18 months together. Sombra then talked to reporters at the post-show press conference saying that Volador was a great opponent and earned his respect.
975
976Still, even with the in-ring make-up, the 11/6 show has Volador Jr. & Sombra vs. Mascara & Rush as the main event. Since breaking up Los Ingobernables to me is early, and even if after 18 months you don't think so, the break-up should be slow rather than sudden, this seems like a situation where Volador Jr. may end up massacred by all three when it's over. The semi has Mistico & Super Parka & Diamante Azul (who is back from France) vs. Negro Casas & Felino & Mr. Niebla.
977
978I believe the CMLL contract with Claro Sports has now expired so the Friday night shows are no longer being broadcast live.
979
980CMLL has a legends main event on 11/8 in Guadalajara with Negro Casas & Dandy vs. El Satanico & Fuerza Guerrera. Only Casas is a regular with CMLL. Rayman is going back to being called El Hijo de Rayo de Jalisco. He used that name as a rookie in 2001, when he won Rookie of the Year. He was getting over big with it until Rayo de Jalisco Jr. made him stop using it. He then went as El Hombre sin Nombre (The Man without a Name) before becoming Rayman.
981
982There was a special sponsored 10/28 show at Arena Mexico that got a lot of mainstream attention. The athletic apparel company PUMA promoted the show and Formula I superstar Lewis Hamilton got involved in the main event. Mistico vs. Mephisto was the main event and Hamilton helped Mephisto and actually used a crossbody off the top onto Mistico which got all kinds of viral coverage in Mexico. It was a promotion for Hamilton driving in the Mexican Grand Prix race over the weekend. Mistico was also mentioned on the race which aired on NBC in the U.S. He was shown with his mask in the pit crew of Hamilton and the NBC announcers said he was Mistico, a star from CMLL, a Mexican wrestling promotion.
983
984The second Lucha Libre Elite show headlined by Caristico was 11/1 in Guadalajara, as he teamed with Maximo to beat Rush & Sombra in the main event when Caristico made Sombra submit to La Mistica in the third fall. The second fall was a DQ when Rush unmasked Caristico. They drew 3,000 fans, which is a lot more than CMLL draws for its twice a week shows in the same building. Sombra & Rush did no tease of problems. There was also a legends match as El Satanico & Fuerza Guerrera beat Black Terry & Barbaro Cavernario (who substituted for Negro Casas, who was advertised here but worked Arena Mexico). They announced a return on 11/5, four days later with Caristico & Atlantis vs. Sombra & Ultimo Guerrero. They also announced the Panther family vs. Navarro family match would be on 11/8 at Arena Mexico with Blue Panther & The Panther & Blue Panther Jr. facing Negro Navarro and his two sons, Los Traumas I & II.
985
986Marco Corleone and ring card girl Miroslava Luna were married this past week.
987
988CMLL drew a surprising near sellout of 4,500 on 11/2 in Puebla for Negro Casas & Mr. Niebla & Barbaro Cavernario beating Mistico & Volador Jr. & Valiente in the main event.
989
990The CaraLucha promotion announced an interesting main event for 11/7, because it's something that should be politically impossible. There will be a four way with Caristico vs. Flamita vs. Hechicero vs. Cavernario Barbaro. Flamita is an AAA wrestler, although he's probably okay because he's yet to start with AAA. Cavernario and Hechicero are CMLL guys and Caristico is an independent wrestler.
991
992
993AAA
994Dr. Wagner Jr. returned at the 11/2 TV taping in Nuevo Laredo, and turned heel on Rey Mysterio Jr. as they were facing Brian Cage & El Hijo del Fantasma (replacing Johnny Mundo, no word on why) in the main event. The heels were in the ring and Fantasma, the leader of La Sociedad, was cutting an anti-AAA promo when Joaquin Roldan came out and said he had a big surprise. "Bad Medicine," played, which is Wagner's theme probably ever since that song first came out. Wagner got a good reaction, but not off the charts. Then Wagner turned and he, Cage and Fantasma were beating on Mysterio until Fenix, Psycho Clown, Drago, Jack Evans and Angelico made the save. Roldan came across so badly because he has, over the years, introduced Vampiro, Zorro, Electroshock and Cibernetico as surprises and then they all turned on him. With Wagner Jr. in, the speculation next regards L.A. Park, since he and Wagner Jr. stick together. Laredo Kid, who the night before was shown without his mask on WWE's "Breaking Ground" show, and the night before appeared for Lucha Libre Elite in Guadalajara, worked the undercard. The other top match at the taping saw Drago & La Parka & Speedball Mike Bailey beat The Hell Brothers of Cibernetico & Chessman & Averno. The crowd was far from full.
995
996After Averno has assured everyone he wasn't leaving, he was announced as appearing for the MDA promotion on 11/15 show in Monterrey which would feature Caristico (first Mistico) forming a tag team with Mistico (first time the two Mistico's will team) & Zumbi vs. Averno & Heavy Metal & Toscano. However, that all fell apart. Caristico then said he was false advertised for that date, and he's already booked that day for the Lucha Libre Elite show at Arena Mexico. Dandy on Facebook said he was booked on the card but the promoter didn't pay him his deposit ahead of time as promised. Later in the week, after Caristico went public saying he wouldn't be there, both he and Averno were pulled from the advertising. The promotion held a press conference with Tinieblas Jr. & Latin Lover there, and said the problems were it was impossible to get AAA and CMLL to let their talent appear on the same show. Well, that's not exactly news. They said CMLL pulled Caristico off the show, which probably confused people since Caristico hasn't worked for CMLL yet. They said they got suitable replacements for Caristico and Averno in Brazo de Plata and Rey Bucanero. The show is now a Fishman tribute show with a legends main event of Canek & Dos Caras & Rayo de Jalisco Jr. facing The original Los Hermanos Dinamita, Cien Caras & Mascara Ano 2000 & Universo 2000. It's notable that they are in the main events while Rush & La Sombra, CMLL's two biggest current stars, are fourth from the top. Dandy is still listed as teaming with old-timers Mano Negra & Scorpio Jr. against Atlantis & Mascara Sagrada (the 90s star in AAA) & Tinieblas Jr.
997
998People were confused because Averno had already been billed at the same time in the main event of the AAA tapings in Ciudad Juarez the same night, which now has Rey Mysterio Jr. & Psycho Clown & a mystery wrestler against Cibernetico & Chessman & Averno on top.
999
1000Low Ki did a video interview on the weekend TV show. They are doing a storyline that Low Ki is coming to Mexico to get at Rey Mysterio Jr., claiming Mysterio got him fired from WWE. They don't actually say WWE, but that's the implication. Brodus Clay was also introduced in a TV video.
1001
1002They have a TV taping on 11/6 in Xalapa with Mysterio Jr. & Psycho & Fenix vs. Low Ki & Johnny Mundo & Pentagon Jr. on top, plus Drago & Murder Clown & Speedball Mike Bailey vs. Brodus (Brodus Clay) & Mesias & Taurus and Jack Evans & Angelico & Garza Jr. vs. El Hijo de Fantasma & El Texano Jr. & Super Fly.
1003
1004There is a ZZInc. Show on 11/7 in Veracruz with top matches of Blue Demon Jr. & Wagner Jr. & Mysterio Jr. vs. Low Ki & Mundo & Roderick Strong (who is also unlikely to be back after this month as ROH is pulling its talent from AAA due to its New Japan relationship. Strong is also advertised that same night for a show in Quebec City); Garza Jr. & El Hijo de Dos Caras (the brother of Alberto) & Original Psicosis vs. Brodus & Mesias & Pentagon Jr., Fenix & Rey Horus vs. Mr. 450 Hammet & Seiya Sanada plus Australian Suicide & Fireball (Flamita) vs. Bailey & Willie Mack.
1005
1006
1007WRESTLE-1
1008Manabu Soya retained his Wrestle-1 title beating Ryota Hama in 15:06 in the main event of the 10/31 show at Korakuen Hall that drew 1,003 fans. There was a big spot in the match where Soya used a Samoan drop on Hama, who weighs close to 500 pounds.
1009
1010Tatsumi Fujinami and son Leona worked the show, beating Jiro Kuroshio & Seiki Yoshioka when Tatsumi used a dragon sleeper on Yoshioka in 14:35.
1011
1012
1013ALL JAPAN
1014Jun Akiyama beat Akebono to win the Triple Crown to headline the 11/1 show in Aomori before a sellout of 2,252 fans, which by today's standards is a great crowd for them. Akiyama captured the title for a second time, first winning it in 2011. One of the reasons for the title change is Rizin is looking at booking Akebono next month for a shoot match, and given his age and conditioning, he'll probably lose so they don't want him holding their world title. Even though Akiyama started his career in All Japan during the glory era, and was a headliner by the end, he never got the Triple Crown before leaving in 2000 to start Pro Wrestling NOAH. Akiyama got the win in 13:16 with a jumping knee. The other title match on the show saw Kotaro Suzuki retain the jr. title over Atsushi Aoki in 18:55 with a Tiger driver. They shot an angle for the 11/15 show at Sumo Hall that Genichiro Tenryu is putting on. Outsiders Masakatsu Funaki & Kendo Ka Shin beat Suwama & Hikaru Sato when Funaki pinned Sato. After the match, Kazuyuki Fujita attacked Suwama to build them meeting in a tag match on 11/15.
1015
1016
1017PRO WRESTLING NOAH
1018With one day left of the Global League tournament round-robin tournament, here are the standings: A block: 1. Naomichi Marufuji, Takashi Sugiura, Masato Tanaka and Chris Hero 4-2; 5. Satoshi Kojima 3-3; 6. Davey Boy Smith Jr. and Lance Archer 2-4; 8. Quiet Storm 1-5; B block: 1. Minoru Suzuki and Shelton Benjamin 5-0-1; 3. Katsuhiko Nakajima 4-2; 4. Colt Cabana and Maybach Taniguchi 3-3; 6. Mohammed Yone 2-4; 7. Mitsuhiro Kitamiya 1-5; 8. Takashi Iizuka 0-8.
1019
1020the final round-robin night is 11/6 in Niigata with Benjamin vs. Nakajima, Yone vs. Kitamiya, Taniguchi vs. Cabana, Suzuki vs. Iizuka, Storm vs. Kojima, Marufuji vs. Hero, Archer vs. Tanaka and Sugiura vs. Smith Jr. In the A block, I can see Smith and Archer being spoilers and knocking off Tanaka & Sugiura, leaving it coming down to Marufuji beating Hero. Sugiura just got his title shot at Suzuki and lost. They had an unreal match so him going to the finals and beating Suzuki is possible. To me, the most logical ending is Suzuki losing to Marufuji in the finals because the whole build of the tournament has been around Suzuki (the outsider heel) being unbeaten all year. The B block should have Suzuki go over Iizuka, because Benjamin in the finals would be flat, and Nakajima beating Benjamin would be a good win for him.
1021
102210/29 at Shinjuku Face in Tokyo drew a sellout 373 fans as Benjamin pinned Kitamiya with Paydirt in 9:02; Sugiura pinned Storm in 8:03 with an Olympic slam; Hero pinned Smith Jr. in 17:10 after an elbow (the big thing here is that Hero has pinned both Smith Jr. & Archer in the tournament, likely setting up he and a partner, whether it be Cabana or someone else, to challenge for the tag titles); Suzuki pinned Cabana in 11:16 with a Gotch piledriver; and Tanaka pinned Marufuji in 11:59 with the Sliding D.
1023
1024The other show this week was 11/3 at the smaller Edion Arena in Osaka before 640 fans, which has to be disappointing given the lineup. Kitamiya beat Iizuka via DQ for using the Iron fingers in 6:08; Cabana pinned Nakajima with the Chicago Skyline in 10:31 which knocked Nakajima out of the running to win the block; Archer pinned Sugiura with the blackout in 11:48; Suzuki drew Benjamin over 30:00; and Kojima pinned Marufuji in 11:27 with a lariat.
1025
1026
1027NEW JAPAN
1028CEO Naoki Sugabayashi did an interview with Weekly Pro Wrestling and said owner Takaaki Kidani wants to do a long Asia tour next year that would include Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore. Sugabayashi said that he'd like to run a New Japan show with CMLL in Mexico, similar to what CMLL does.
1029
1030An original on the books plan for the Tokyo Dome is a singles match with Jay Lethal vs. Michael Elgin, possibly with the ROH title at stake. This would be Lethal's introduction to New Japan as a star. Given that Elgin is now a free agent, that would mean if he inks a deal with WWE (or TNA), this could have to be changed.
1031
1032Atlantis and Bobby Z were the first two wrestlers announced for Fantastica Mania in January.
1033
1034Mascara Dorada will be leaving New Japan as a full-timer after that tour. He's really talented and with the exception of a hot match with Kenny Omega, they really did nothing with him and he really did the same three or four ropewalk spots in every match. There will be a new CMLL wrestler brought in for a year after that point.
1035
1036It is official that the last two shows of the year will be 12/18 and 12/19 at Korakuen Hall, which will be the final heat and angle set-ups for the Tokyo Dome. They are also doing the "Raw after Mania" show on 1/5 at Korakuen Hall, and a Fan Fest on 1/3 at Differ Ariake, just like last year.
1037
1038CMLL didn't even know that Tetsuya Naito was coming to Arena Mexico on 10/23 far ahead of time. He was in Mexico the past week but wasn't booked on any shows because they book everything two weeks out and don't change. So he was in Mexico doing nothing this past week as he's off New Japan until the tag team tournament.
1039
1040There were a couple of surprise wins on the 10/28 show in Akita. Yohei Komatsu & Sho Tanaka, who never win, unless against each other, beat Jushin Liger & David Finlay when Komatsu used the Boston crab on Finlay. Captain New Japan also scored a pin in a six-man teaming with Alex Shelley & Kushida over Ricochet & Matt Sydal & Juice Robinson when he pinned Robinson.
1041
1042Speaking of Tanaka, if you're wondering how he looks like that year-around, it's because he avoids carbs, which may be great for giving you year-around abs, but is not a fun way to live life.
1043
1044
1045HERE AND THERE
1046Jerry Jarrett, 73, has said that he is returning to pro wrestling. Jarrett, who promoted the Tennessee territory from 1977 until selling it in 1997, was also involved with TNA when it stated in 2002. He left when son Jeff chose Vince Russo ahead of him to be in charge of creative. The two didn't speak for years, but did make up this year. Jarrett wrote on Facebook: "I once stated that I would get back in the wrestling business when hell froze over. I'm feeling a chill in the air. It is a bit early to announce the plan, but the contracts are with the attorneys. If you wish for wrestling like it was, you will have a chance to tune in." What we know is that the group's working name is Classic Wrestling Revolution (CWR), and they are hopeful to start up business in early January. CWR is structured as a reality sports entertainment group that will focus on wrestling and action or contact sports and perhaps having an indoor skydiving component. This is believed to be a company based Las Vegas with Kevin Sullivan pegged to be the booker. Names like Joe Laurinaitis (Road Warrior Animal), Shane Douglas, Jake Roberts and even Terry Funk have at times been linked with it in some form. Right now everyone involved has signed nondisclosures and everything is confidential, so getting details is difficult. But a project involving Douglas as a key player based in Las Vegas has been talked about for several years, but hadn't transpired. They are supposed to have a strong financial backer. Given the necessity of television and difficulties getting it, it's hard to think, even with good financial backing, that you can make a go of it without a television deal in place. Jerry's son Jeff hasn't seemed to have any luck in the U.S. market after nearly two years, and TNA is searching. ROH has TV because they are owned by a network.
1047
1048Lehigh County (PA) judge Kelly Banach issued a gag order on 11/2 which covers key figures in the Jimmy Snuka murder case. Banach ruling bars the prosecution, the defense attorneys, Snuka, the family of Snuka, and the family of Argentino, from making any public comments on the case. Leigh Country Chief District Attorney Charles Gallagher III requested the gag order claiming that Snuka's defense team had made "blasphemous" statements last month. Gallagher also noted being contacted by NBC's "Dateline," which is working on a story on the case. "Dateline" is working on a story on the case, which is likely to question how it took them 32 years to prosecute. However, Irv Muchnick wrote that he can state for a fact that "Dateline" did not contact Gallagher. My feeling is the gag order seems more to keep national media coverage quiet because of the obvious question, because if the key people can't talk, the story becomes more difficult to tell. Robert Kirwan, who is representing Snuka, said that the Argentino family was added to the gag order because they had been working with NBC on the story, which actually wasn't the case at the time of the gag order. Kirwan is attempting a change of venue, outside Lehigh County, claiming Snuka would not be able to get a fair trial because of the rumors for three decades around town that he had killed Argentino and gotten away with it. He called the death an unfortunate accident, and not murder, and said Snuka is suffering from early dementia and post-concussion syndrome and claimed he may not be competent to stand trial. Snuka pleaded not guilty on charges of involuntary manslaughter and third degree murder. Banach spoke to Snuka, who said that he didn't know what the date was, what day of the week it was, nor the name of the city he was in, saying that he doesn't have a high school diploma and had never really been to school. Kirwan also said Snuka is taking a laundry list of medications for recovery from surgery that removed 75% of his stomach and lymph noted due to cancer.
1049
1050Doris Adkisson's funeral will be on 11/11 in Dallas and will be buried next to Jack and all of their sons. Even though the family all lives in Hawaii, she had made it clear she wanted to be buried at the same Texas cemetery as her children. Kevin Von Erich has decided to make the funeral public. Her granddaughter, Kristen, wrote, "I'm sure people feel sorry for her. The truth is, even mothers with broken hearts have to wake up early every morning, and she decided to make the most of the time she had left on this earth before being reunited with her boys."
1051
1052Andrew Everett re-injured the knee that he had surgery on last year. He may be out for a while.
1053
1054Dean Malenko will be appearing at Tommy Dreamer's House of Hardcore show on 11/13 at the 2300 Arena in Philadelphia to be put in the Hardcore Hall of Fame that includes a lot of the names from ECW's glory period.
1055
1056
1057LUCHA UNDERGROUND
1058For the new season, we're told the cost-cutting will not be so much cutting the production costs of the show itself, but taping fewer episodes of the show. The new season has 12 taping dates, and if they do two episodes per taping, as they were doing at the end of last season, that would be 24 shows, down from 39 the first season.
1059
1060It now appears Cheerleader Melissa's character will be a masked wrestler instead of the sister of Marty the Moth, and will be a focal point of the new season.
1061
1062Even though he has said he's not retiring, Rycklon Stephens (Big Ryck/Ezekiel Jackson) will not be back for the second season.
1063
1064
1065ROH
1066The Young Bucks deal was a one-year contract, which means that in about six to nine months we'll have all the rumors all over again about them going to WWE. Just for a clarification, the deal with ROH is exclusive for North America with the exception of PWG, so that means U.S., Canada and Mexico. New Japan strongly encouraged them to sign the deal because they knew how hard they were working on the indies and didn't want them to get hurt by working so many dates. Plus, since they work with ROH, both sides will be able to coordinate the dates. They are supposed to also do a ten week minimum with New Japan on a separate deal . Essentially, between the two, they are guaranteed more money than they've ever earned before and will be working considerably less dates. The PWG aspect of the deal was something they insisted on, and they also get to keep their merchandising rights and Pro Wrestling Tees business. Nobody else under ROH contract, even those with non-exclusive deals, are allowed to be affiliated with Pro Wrestling Tees. The similar exclusive to North America deals that ROH has signed with guys (Jay Lethal, Bobby Fish, Kyle O'Reilly, Adam Cole, Mark & Jay Briscoe and most recently ACH) do not allow them to work PWG or anywhere else. The deal Roderick Strong signed does allow him to work PWG, where he is the current champion. The funny part about that is the exclusive contracts started because ROH didn't want guys working PWG, because they didn't want their champions losing on somebody else's cards (unless it's worked out with New Japan) and more not getting hurt on somebody else's cards because of Cole getting hurt working in PWG in the first place. Those on the indie scene have remarked that this is a major landmark deal, because, among other things, it shows that Sinclair was willing to spend more money than ever before for talent. It'll be interesting to see the locker room reaction, as others under contract like the Briscoes mayb be looking for raises when their deals are up based on the new precedent set. Part of it may also be that ROH doesn't want to lay dead knowing that WWE is both coming after their current talent, and the word on the streets for upcoming talent is to go to Evolve and not ROH because it's the road to NXT. It's also a significant deal on the indie scene. While no major indie group except PWG relied on The Young Bucks, they were a strong special attraction that was more affordable to smaller groups than the bigger names out there, would boost attendance for most companies they worked for, and also have very good to blow away matches every night. There was no other act like that with that value at their price range, plus they worked a ton of dates so were more available than most on the indie scene.
1067
1068Not that there was much in the way of business that this relates to, but ROH is no longer allowing any contracted talent, whether they have exclusive or non-exclusive deals, to work for AAA. Roderick Strong and Moose were scheduled for some shows this month and I'm not clear if they'll be able to work those dates, but we should know in a few days since Strong is booked next week, or this regards only taking any new dates. Strong has an exclusive deal, while Moose doesn't, so in his case it is removing a place he can get work unless they open up CMLL and can send talent there. It's largely due to ROH, New Japan and CMLL trying to work out a three-way relationship. While New Japan didn't force the issue, they did make it clear they would prefer ROH doesn't work with AAA, and ROH is attempting to open up business with CMLL. It's harder for American promotions to work with CMLL, because Konnan at least is familiar with the U.S. talent and the U.S. landscape, while CMLL really isn't. After the Jushin Liger fiasco in August, ROH and New Japan have actually made a stronger bond. One Japanese source said they weren't forcing the issue, but if it came to A.J. Styles holding a title (and Styles is more a New Japan guy than an ROH guy anyway) that they wouldn't want him working for AAA. Another aspect is that if there is another World Cup, ROH wouldn't be able to send talent, or they couldn't bring in ROH talent for TripleMania. Most likely if they were going to bring in outside talent for anything but a World Cup, they'd go with the Americans in Lucha Underground.
1069
1070Michael Elgin's contract expired this past week. Because of the New Japan buzz and because NXT needs more guys who can get the niche brand over, WWE has shown interest in him. He's scheduled to team with Hiroshi Tanahashi in the upcoming New Japan tag team tournament, which tells you what New Japan thinks of him. Elgin's role, besides having good matches every night, is that if a job is needed, he'll be the guy getting pinned because it makes no sense to beat Tanahashi when he's the challenger in the world title match at the Tokyo Dome.
1071
1072The next shows are 11/13 in Milwaukee and 11/14 in Hopkins, MN, which is Survival of the Fittest weekend. Milwaukee has two main events, Styles & Young Bucks vs. Jay Lethal & Donovan Dijak & Joey Daddiego (formerly J Diesel) and a tag title match with Michael Bennett & Matt Taven vs. Fish & O'Reilly. The Survival of the Fittest qualifying matches are Matt Sydal vs. ACH (which is also the final match of the best-of-five series they were doing), Mark Briscoe vs. Christopher Daniels vs. Hanson vs. Kenny King, Jay Briscoe vs. Frankie Kazarian vs. Ray Rowe vs. Rhett Titus, Elgin vs. Cole vs. Moose, Dalton Castle vs. Silas Young vs. Adam Page and Roderick Strong vs. Cedric Alexander. The winners of all those six matches will go into a six-way on 11/14.
1073
1074New dates announced include 1/15 in Indianapolis at the State Fairgrounds, 1/16 in Collinsville, IL (St. Louis) at the Gateway Center and 1/22 in Fletcher, NC at the WNC Ag Center.
1075
1076
1077TNA
1078In a follow-up of Marc Etkind moving from Destination America as General Manager a few weeks ago, it was Etkind who made the call to drop TNA and it came after the alleged e-mail Dixie Carter accidentally sent to the head of the Discovery Network that was saying Etkind was an idiot in regard to not releasing the DVR ratings, like Spike often did, since TNA was doing 20 percent increases over its same night viewing when you add in those who watched over the next week on DVR. While there is no indication anything has changed in that regard, we were told that all programming decisions are now being evaluated. For what it's worth, it seems like those in TNA believe they are still done in January, while those in ROH say they are awaiting word of what their future on the station is.
1079
1080A note on last week with the commentary of Josh Matthews and The Pope and the suplex pronunciations. Pope's references were meant as a running gag, using the term "souffle," and not "su-play," which is the correct pronunciation, or at least the original pro wrestling pronunciation and the pronunciation of the word in amateur wrestling, of the term that in pro wrestling is a suplex.
1081
1082Another employee, Mike Krewson, who was the Director of Touring, resigned. He's leaving to take a job as the General Manager of Baylor's McLane Stadium. Director of Touring in TNA is a lonely job given they've run so few shows in the last year.
1083
1084TNA is looking into booking the Manhattan Center for TV tapings next year, which is a surprise given the expense of having to promote it in the New York market and the difficulty they had selling tickets to multiple dates the last time they came. And that was when the product was a lot more visible than it is now, and with bigger stars. As far as talent goes, they haven't even gotten any hints of anything except for the three days in India and the three days in the U.K.
1085
1086Taryn Terrell posted a Christian testimonial video this past week. She talked about being on the road with WWE living the party lifestyle with all the temptations. She said she lived in sin and wasn't a good person and is ashamed of who she was and the decisions she made.
1087
1088A few weeks ago when Matthews was reading tweets on the air, the tweets he mentioned came from Kenny Smith and Katherine Caskey. Both of them are TNA employees.
1089
1090Notes on the 10/28 TV show. It was the continuation of the all-tournament shows. EC 3 did an interview where he admitted using a low blow to beat Bobby Lashley last week, saying that you do what you've got to do.
1091
1092Matt Hardy pinned Robbie E with a side effect and twist of fate in 6:35. Hardy kicked out of Robbie's boom drop near the finish. Match was okay. Most of the wrestling was okay here and the crowd was usually not all that hot.
1093
1094Drew Galloway pinned Grado in 4:39 with a running kick. Grado was there doing comedy. His stuff seems way out of place in a world title tournament.
1095
1096Aiden O'Shea pinned Crazzy Steve with a running clothesline in 4:46. This was just bad. Steve worked on the hand but Steve, even more than Grado, made the match feel like it was a joke. It's one thing when you do comedy and the audience enjoys it, but when you're doing comedy wrestling and the crowd is sitting there, it's kind of painful.
1097
1098Grado did a comedy promo. He was acting like Galloway knocked him out. He didn't know where he was. He didn't know if he won the match. He then got into one of those carts backstage and thought it was his car and was looking for his keys to drive to the hotel.
1099
1100James Storm pinned Abyss in 10:53. Weird seeing Storm on NXT doing a babyface promo on the same night he's here doing his heel act. He started by telling Abyss that they are both among the few originals left from the start of TNA and told Abyss to leave and let him win via count out. Abyss grabbed the mic and refused. They laid out a lot of false finishes but it wasn't like the crowd was too into it. Abyss puled out Janice (a baseball bat with nails sticking out) and tried to use it, but Storm moved and it got stuck in the turnbuckle. The ref was trying to get rid of it and Storm used a codebreaker and a shot with the cowbell but Abyss kicked out. Storm did an elbow off the top and Abys kicked out. Abyss kicked out of the last call superkick. Storm kicked out of a choke slam. Storm then spit beer in Abyss' face and used two superkicks for the pin.
1101
1102Mahabili Shera talked about his match with Kenny King next week. They also pushed Eddie Edwards vs. Davey Richards, Brooke vs. Madison Rayne and a main event of Eric Young vs. Bobby Roode.
1103
1104DJ Zema Ion pinned Tigre Uno in 6:36 with a DDT after Uno missed a springboard split legged moonsault. Matthews talked about how Uno has now recovered from his shoulder injury at Bound for Glory. Granted, this match was taped months before that, but you have to do it since Uno was out there doing all the dives and his shoudler wasn't taped up. Ion is underrated and this was a good match.
1105
1106They pushed Gail Kim vs. Awesome Kong as the main event the entire show, talking about their long rivalry. Kim won in 11:21, turning a power bomb into a huracanrana. They were pushing the idea that TNA was progressive because Kim or Kong could end the tournament as world champion. Well, WCW did the same thing in a tournament under Russo 16 years ago and it wasn't progressive then. Granted, Grado and Crazzy Steve made the tournament a lot more of a joke that Kim or Kong do. They have to fill months of TV time so I get that, but this has made the title far less significant by diluting the tournament with 32 people on a roster that has only a handful of real contenders.
1107
1108
1109UFC
1110In a really interesting political note, the Teamsters Local 986 and Culinary Workers Union held a rally calling for a reform of the Nevada Athletic Commission outside the monthly meeting on 10/29. The two unions said they had sent a letter to Governor Brian Sandoval about the unfair treatment of Nick Diaz with a five year suspension and $165,000 fine due to the questionable nature of the marijuana testing. Diaz had two tests under the limit and one way over on the night of his 1/31 fight with Anderson Silva. The unions, that have been anti-UFC because of Station Casinos not being unionized, have attempted to unionize UFC fighters. UFC has sent two letters to its fighters on the subject but as best we can tell, there has been no strong momentum among the fighters to join with those unions. With the Reebok deal, there has been a very clear change in mood among the relationship between fighters and management in recent months.
1111
1112John Nash at Bloodyelbow.com had another article this week on the UFC business, focusing on its outstanding debt. After UFC had its big financial year in 2006, they took out a $325 million term loan. Some of the loan was the repayment of $75 million in expenses, of which about $60 million was believed to be for the Pride purchase that year. About $199 million was earmarked as a dividend payment for the owners (that would be, at the time, 45% of that to Lorenzo and Frank Fertitta and the other 10% to Dana White). Later, another $70 million in dividend payments have been taken out by the owners since 2006. Later, they took out another $185 million more in loans in 2009, 2010 and 2012. They then replaced the prior loans by getting a $450 million loan in 2013, and another $25 million was added in 2014. Based on various things written in the loan documents, the Strikeforce purchase in 2011 looks to have been for $34 million. At the time people very close to the purchase had told us the number was more than $30 million. Nash estimated $23 million per year is the interest on the loans, so UFC needs to earn $23 million in profits (a number they have greatly exceeded every year of late).
1113
1114This week's show is an FS 1 show from Sao Paulo, Brazil. The show starts at 6:30 p.m. on Fight Pass with Matheus Nicolau vs. Bruno Korea, Pedro Munhoz vs. Jimmie Rivera and Viscardi Andrade vs. Gasan Umalatov. Prelims at 8 p.m. have Chas Skelly vs. Kevin Souza, Clay Guida vs. Thiago Tavares (while Guida is long past his popularity prime, he's still a ranked featherweight and it's weird seeing him in the second match in prelims when you look at the names higher on the card), Yan Cabral vs. Johnny Case, Gleison Tibau vs. Abel Trujillo, Corey Anderson vs. Fabio Maldonado, Gilbert Burns vs. Rashid Magomedov, Piotr Hallman vs. Alex Oliveira, Thomas Almeida (a major prospect) vs. Anthony Birchak, Glover Teixiera vs. Patrick Cummins and the third meeting of Vitor Belfort vs. Dan Henderson.
1115
1116Miesha Tate has been turning down fights as well as media work asked by UFC because of how being pulled from her title shot with Ronda Rousey for Holly Holm was handled. It's not a secret she's very unhappy. "If it's clear there's no way for me to get a title shot as long as Ronda has the belt, then I don't know. I suppose I have to look at my options. And that's not saying I will retire, but it's something I'd have to think about." Tate has said that she's taking time off from fighting to re-evaluate her career. It's an interesting situation because Tate, could walk into Bellator and be the face of their women's division, but contractually she's stuck. She doesn't believe she can get a shot at the UFC title unless somebody beats Rousey, because she can't cut to 115. Tate said on the MMA Hour that she expects to sit down and talk to Dana White this month, and said that retirement is a viable option if UFC doesn't budge on several issues including pay and a shot at the title. Tate was mad that she found out Holly Holm was getting the title shot she was promised when Ronda Rousey announced it on "Good Morning America." Nobody gave her advance warning. "I think the handling of it stings more than anything." She said she's been a team player and company woman. She was also mad that Rousey made more than $6 million while she's making nothing close, claiming she's fought tougher fighters, and she feels that she usually has the biggest fan base on any card she's on except when she's on the same card as Rousey. Really, the one thing she can't do is compare her pay with that of Rousey. She also noted that UFC offered her a fight with Amanda Nunes that would have been on Fight Pass (I believe it was for the main event spot on 12/10) and she turned it down, saying she went from a PPV main event to Fight Pass, and said she already helped build Fight Pass with her fight with Rin Nakai. "It's either going to go up in flames or (Dana White) is going to say that I'm making some valid points and make some adjustments."
1117
1118Conor McGregor claimed in a Q&A that 14 weeks before his fight with Chad Mendes, that he tore 80 percent of his ACL. The belief is that McGregor was training with Rory MacDonald while doing media for the fight when the injury took place. He had said that he couldn't train much wrestling or kicking and had always claimed he was hurt worse than Jose Aldo was and he never pulled out.
1119
1120The 11/21 main event of an FS 1 show from Arena Monterrey in Monterrey, Mexico, with Matt Brown vs. Kelvin Gastelum is out as Brown suffered an ankle injury in training. Neil Magny will now face Gastelum, in taking the fight with basically enough time to get maybe a week-and-a-half of fight training in. Gastelum was the Mexican heritage main event star of the show.
1121
1122The Fox Network, and presumably this is for FS 1, is working on some sort of a documentary series on C.M. Punk and his training for his first fight. Punk started back in the gym in Milwaukee this past week after being pretty much out of the gym since August due to his shoulder injury.
1123
1124If Ronda Rousey hasn't enough drama leading to her 11/14 fight with Holly Holm, it came out this week that her coach Edmond Tarverdyan, filed for bankruptcy on 7/29, claiming to be $700,000 in debt. In his bankruptcy filing, Tarverdyan claimed to be unemployed, although he's coached Rousey and other fighters. Generally, coaches receive a percentage of what the fighters make, at least from fighting. Tarverdyan claimed he wasn't employed and earned $0 in income and listed his wife as earning less than $10,000 per year in income. The gym that he has been running for years, the former Glendale Fighting Club, is now known as GFC Fitness and he apparently transferred his ownership to another party. He claimed no income from 1/1 to 6/30 of this year. Rousey fought once during that period, which was her win over Cat Zingano. He also has apparently not filed for taxes in a few years. Urijah Faber did an interview where he mentioned in passing that she was looking for a new coach.
1125
1126Rousey hung up on a UFC conference call promoting the Holly Holm fight when Marc Raimondi of MMA Fighting asked if she was okay with Travis Browne announcing the two were in a relationship. When you're a public figure at the level she is, those kind of questions go with it.
1127
1128After Rousey last week talked about her goals after retiring from MMA include winning a world championship in boxing, a world championship in Jiu Jitsu, and winning the WWE Divas title, there was response, obviously, from boxing and WWE. WWE had Charlotte challenge her to a title match. Oscar De La Hoya said that he's already talked with Rousey about promoting her as a boxer. De La Hoya was the impetus of Rousey being on the cover of "The Ring," the boxing bible magazine this month, which has drawn a ton of controversy because she's not a boxer. Obviously part of it was selling magazines, but that's the boxing purist magazine. In addition, they've only once put a woman on the cover previously, so the feeling is because they've almost never put woman boxers on he cover, they shouldn't put a woman who isn't a boxer on the cover. That controversy brought more talk to the magazine than it's had in a long time. Of course WWE would love to have her. If she wants the Divas title in exchange for multiple appearances, it's a lock she's getting it.
1129
1130Daniel Cormier signed a new eight-fight contract.
1131
1132Khabib Nurmagomedov has pulled out of his 12/11 fight with Tony Ferguson due to a rib injury. He's becoming the lightweight Dominick Cruz, in the sense he's undefeated, has a win over the current champion Rafael dos Anjos, but due to two knee surgeries and this injury, hasn't fought since April 2014. He's clearly depressed and said, "I'm not sure if I will ever come back." Edson Barboza will be taking his place.
1133
1134Jon Anik of UFC has added to his work load and he began this past weekend doing college football play-by-play for FS 1.
1135
1136Caio Magalahes was suspended for six months and given 40 hours of community service as punishment at the 10/28 Nevada Athletic Commission meeting for spitting blood on opponent Josh Samman and referee John McCarthy after he had suffered a first round loss on the 7/12 show in Las Vegas. Magalahes was apologetic to both McCarthy and the commission for what he did and claimed at the hearing that he and Samman had dinner together and had buried the hatchet. Later that day, Samman, on Twitter, wrote, "Absolutely I did not have dinner with someone that spit blood on me. He approached me and apologized while I was eating LOL. If you call that having dinner together, then maybe." Magalahes begged not to be fined, claiming that out of his $20,000 purse for the fight, that his training camp and other expenses totaled $17,000. His community service will be spent teaching Jiu Jitsu classes to children.
1137
1138Ross Pearson vs. Francisco Trinaldo and Ilir Latifi vs. Sean O'Connell have been added to the 1/17 show in Boston.
1139
1140Lyman Good had to pull out of the 12/10 Las Vegas show. He was to face Omar Akhmedov. Sergio Moraes will now face Akhmedov.
1141
1142
1143BELLATOR
1144The last major show of the year is 11/6 in St. Louis with Patricio Pitbull Freire vs. Daniel Straus for the featherweight title, Will Brooks vs. Marcin Held for the lightweight title, Justin Lawrence vs. Emmanuel Sanchez, Michael Chandler vs. David Rickels and Bobby Lashley vs. James Thompson as the main card fights. To show the difference between Bellator and UFC, in UFC, if a guy wins twice, they aren't going to make a third match. Bellator, partially due to the lack of depth, they will. Pitbull has beaten Straus twice, although he was about to lose the second one on 1/16 when he got a late fourth round choke. Chandler beat Held via submission in 2011. Thompson beat Lashley via decision in a 2012 fight.
1145
1146Kimbo Slice will be fighting again on the company's first major show of next year, a 2/19 show at the Toyota Center in Houston. It's notable that they are going to a building that UFC regularly plays in. They've been holding their biggest shows at the Mohegan Sun Casino, that UFC doesn't run, San Jose, where UFC has stopped running, and St. Louis, which for whatever reason, UFC has never run a show in.
1147
1148
1149WWE
1150It is now official that Smackdown will continue to air on Thursday nights at 8 p.m. when it moves to the USA Network, with the debut episode on 1/7. There had been talk of moving to Tuesday. It is possible they could still go live, as announcer Jerry Lawler had hinted, but due to the nature of scheduling, it's far easier to tape Monday and Tuesday than Monday and Thursday. As noted, the company has been working on some significant changes to the show to coincide with the USA Network launch but it's unclear if those deals have been completed. Chris McCumber, the president of the USA Network confirmed that Smackdown will be used as a lead-in for the original series "Colony," that will air at 10 p.m. USA will be airing other new shows year-around in that time slot with the idea of trying to get the Smackdown audience to stick around, which historically has been difficult. With the exception of Ultimate Fighter on Spike, and for dramas that have WWE performers as special guests, nobody has been able to create a synergy to keep the WWE fan base watching after the show ends. With Raw, it's difficult to program an original show because it would have to start at 11:08 p.m. or so, but with Smackdown, you've got a 10 p.m. slot on a heavily watched night with a better than average lead-in.
1151
1152Because USA will now have five hours of wrestling to sell, they've pushed hard to break down the walls of advertiser resistance to wrestling. While adding Smackdown will help the USA Network ratings average, it was considered risky because many of the networks core advertisers won't touch wrestling. For the week ending 10/25, which was an unusual week because of the baseball playoffs, USA was No. 5 in prime time, averaging 1,511,000 viewers. Smackdown has been doing about 2.1 million viewers on Syfy, and the expectation is that number will increase significantly being moved to a stronger network. More important when it comes to the value of Raw, if you take Raw out of that week's ratings, the USA average for the week drops to 1,203,000 viewers, and would only be in 12th place, which would be considered disastrous for a network that for years was No. 1. That's why even with Raw's ratings decline this year, it is at this point more important for USA to keep Raw than it would have been two years ago when Raw's numbers were higher, because USA is dropping at a far greater pace than its competition. While Raw always helped, until two years ago, USA would have been No. 1 even without Raw. Now they aren't No. 1 even with three hours of Raw and would be an also-ran without it. Based on NBC Universal's push of wrestling as family friendly, 37 new advertisers came on board. Zenith signed on for this year, for example, citing the good ratings and it reaches a young audience. On the flip side, there are also advertisers shying away from USA because of having so many hours of wrestling programming in prime time next year. USA dropped 17 percent this year in ratings overall, far more than its competition. Raw's drop was 13 percent. Smackdown on Syfy dropped 16 percent.
1153
1154Whatever allotment for tickets they had for the first-day pre-sale sold out in about seven hours. The expectation is they will sell everything that is on sale when they go on sale to the public later in the week.
1155
1156For Survivor Series on 11/22 in Atlanta, the only matches official are Rollins vs. Reigns for the WWE title and Charlotte vs. Paige for the Divas title. Obviously The Wyatt Family will be in a match with Undertaker & Kane, probably elimination style. Unless Sting is able to wrestle, this looks now like a 2-on-4 type match since Reigns is accounted for, Ambrose looks to be facing Owens for the IC title, and Orton is injured. You could put Ryback in or Cesaro in. But Cesaro seems like he's programmed with Stardust. Bryan is always out there if he's cleared. The New Day's tag title opponents look to be the Lucha Dragons (who won the four-way for the shot last week but then got destroyed on Smackdown this week by the Wyatts) and/or the Usos (who returned and beat the New Day for two falls in an elimination match on Raw). Other matches probable are Ziggler vs. Breeze, and Del Rio vs. Swagger for the U.S. title.
1157
1158ESPN is happy thus far with the numbers they've been getting for the Tuesday night at 9 p.m. SportsCenter on ESPN News, which includes the WWE interview. The numbers are up from what that hour had been doing.
1159
1160The story we've gotten is WWE and Vince McMahon have signed off on allowing ESPN to use archival Flair footage for the 30 for 30 special they are currently working on. The special is supposed to cover Flair's entire career, the plane crash, personal life and financial issues, his son's death and everything else, with a focus on his heyday in the 80s. Flair was interviewed this past week for four hours for the special.
1161
1162The actual numbers for Hell in a Cell according to the Staples Center were 14,184, which was a sellout, and a $1,324,625 gate. That's a great number for a "B" PPV, but with ticket prices being raised, the gates across the board are up even with attendance the same.
1163
1164The 12/19 return to the Forum in Los Angeles is a high priority show, since Lesnar is booked. It has not been announced as a network special at this point, but given that every other Lesnar house show appearance has turned into one, and those shows are the most viewed of anything on the network except PPVs, it would make sense. The only issue is that it's only six days after the TLC PPV show from Boston, which seems too short a time to promote another show. Cena is also advertised locally for the card which is being billed as "WWE Super Show." What's interesting is that even though Cena and Lesnar are on the advertising locally, and Lesnar and Heyman have been confirmed for the show by WWE, the web site listing of the big three stars lists Reigns, Orton (who won't be there) and Rollins. WWE confirmed Lesnar but not Cena. As best I can remember, the last time WWE ran the Forum was December 27, 1994 (when a show headlined by Kevin Nash vs. Bob Backlund drew 2,500 fans), as they've run the Sports Arena, the Pond in Anaheim and Staples Center as their home bases since then. Lesnar's new deal calls for a few special house shows per year. The Forum has been completely renovated after being purchased by Madison Square Garden three years ago. Their goal has been to make it the Madison Square Garden of the West Coast and have started to get the big concerts away from the Staples Center. The acoustics are said to be amazing but the infrastructure is said to be nothing compared to the Staples Center.
1165
1166Orton will be undergoing surgery on his shoulder most likely. Orton had been working on a bad shoulder that was giving him some trouble, but it wasn't anything wrestlers don't work through. But three weeks ago, while taking out the garbage, the shoudler dislocated and it was out of its socket for several hours. He underwent an MRI a few weeks ago which came back that he has a Bankart lesion in his shoudler, some stretched ligaments, a dislocated shoulder and a partially torn rotator cuff. If he doesn't undergo surgery, he was told the shoulder would continue to dislocate easily. Orton has had shoulder problems since early in his career. If he has surgery, he would be out of action four to six months. If he gets the surgery soon he has a shot at being back for WrestleMania, but if it's delayed, then that window would start to close.
1167
1168WWE's plans with Tapout are to mirror the UFC model of opening up gyms and trying to create Tapout as WWE fitness brand. Tapout was a major UFC sponsor, that was once a hugely profitable company, built from the ground up by the late Charles "Mask" Lewis. In recent years the company had become a major loser. They were forced out of UFC by the Reebok exclusive deal, went to WWE, and WWE purchased a significant interest in the company. The plans are to open a chain of Tapout Fitness Centers backed by WWE promotion, including gyms in Brooklyn, Las Vegas, Portland, Phoenix, Los Angeles, Oakland, Houston and Stamford, CT. WWE talent would be appearing at the gym and WWE talent will be doing fitness videos and fitness seminars.
1169
1170The James Bond movie "Spectre," in which Dave Bautista plays Mr. Hinx, debuts on 11/5 in the U.S. after a record setting opening week in Europe. The movie did $80.4 million in five European countries, paced by $63.8 million in the U.K. and Ireland over its first week, breaking the record set by "Skyfall. It also set a record in the U.K. by averaging $110,000 per screen on IMAX, breaking the record set by "The Dark Knight" of $100,200. It also broke "Skyfall" records in Finland, Norway and Denmark.
1171
1172Bautista was asked by a TV station in Mexico City regarding what it would take to return to WWE. He said that he wouldn't be looking for big money or a limited schedule (with his acting career going the way it is, it's going to be limited schedule because wrestling isn't going to take priority at this stage of his life over acting). He said if he was to return, it would be the Jericho deal, where he only worked house shows and can just do his matches and not have to deal with the creative team and scripted interviews. Bautista did say how much he enjoyed the few house shows he did on the last run. The key was that he was cheered heavily at all the house shows while at the TVs, because people resented him for winning the Royal Rumble instead of Daniel Bryan, it turned that audience against him. Bautista said on the last run he was butting heads with creative. He wanted to come back as a heel because he thinks he's a terrible babyface (the irony being that at the house shows, like Jericho, as a star from the past on the show not tainted by television, he'll probably be cheered as much as anyone on the shows), but that the company wanted him as a babyface and the fans rejected him. He said he wasn't happy the creative team would send him out there to say the same crap every week.
1173
1174WWE announced that WrestleMania generated $139 million in total revenue for the San Jose region according to a study by the Enigma Research Corporation, the second largest in history (trailing the $142.2 million for the New Orleans show in 2014). This is revenue generated at the show, combined with revenue generated in the area from outside the area. The economic numbers were based on an online survey of 1,500 fans who came from outside the area to attend. For next year in Texas, WWE will be getting undisclosed millions of dollars of its cost paid by local and state tourism boards. The average tourist spent 3.3 nights and tourists spent $22 million on hotels and accommodations and $6.2 million at restaurants. Last year in New Orleans, people on average stayed longer (3.7 nights) even though there wasn't an NXT show, but the hotel room prices were a little lower overall, but that year's crowd ate far more heartily, spending $10.2 million in area restaurants. About 30 percent of the tourists to San Jose stayed five days or more in the area. Of the approximately 58,000 paid attendance (actual attendance was 67,000), about 12,800 were local attendees and 45,200 came from outside the area. There were 9,400 fans who came from outside the U.S. The New Orleans breakdown was, among paid attendance of 60,000, about 12,600 local attendees and 47,400 from outside the area. It's notable that when it comes to actual attendance of people from the area itself, that, likely due to the higher ticket prices, that more actual area fans would have attended the biggest historical shows in the market than Mania itself. In San Jose, that would mean big WWE house shows during the Attitude Era, as well as Battle Royals or glory period major events with Ray Stevens at the Cow Palace. The same would be said about Mid South events at the Superdome in the late 70s and through the mid-80s, which didn't draw tourists in, but among the locals, drew far more than WrestleMania did.
1175
1176Regarding the double juice in the Lesnar vs. Undertaker match, Jim Ross wrote that he was highly skeptical that Vince McMahon hadn't okayed it, saying there's no way he believes the two went into business for themselves. While that is just his speculation, he is close with Undertaker and his opinion on the subject makes the most sense. The fact there were no fines would also seem to indicate that. He didn't speculate on whether it was hard way blood or blading, specifically saying that doesn't speak to the idea of how the blood happened. Whatever it was, it was clearly not accidental. The position of the Undertaker's cut would make it unlikely to be hard way. As for Lesnar, some are saying the nine staples he received would indicate he rammed his own head into the post hard to get the color. As noted, if the intention is to get blood, blading is a lot safer way to go about it. Nine staples from a gig cut is highly unusual. Whether it's impossible, well, in wrestling, nothing is impossible, but the staples did make at least some feel that one was hard way. That would indicate Ross believes Vince McMahon's actions at Gorilla (which were not over the top, but he was acting like he wasn't happy about it, and even more unhappy when Lesnar shoved the doctor), were putting on a show working everyone around him, which is certainly not out of the realm of possibility. When it comes to the blood in this match, very clearly, there is a ton of working going on and it's impossible to decipher where it begins and ends. The doctor spot was awkward but I watched the show with a wrestling booker who is really good at spotting works and at first we thought the doctor was in there to stop the bleeding, and then, a few seconds before the shove, he said, "the doctor's a work," and then the shove came. In wrestling, when in doubt, you have to go with the idea it's worked and you'll be right most of the time, but not all of the time. In this case WWE was denying it was anything but accidental, and that's difficult to buy.
1177
1178Coming on the heels of TNA's announcement of going to India, WWE has announced shows on 1/15 and 1/16 at the Gandhi Indoor Stadium in New Dehli, headlined by Cena. Daniel Bryan was sent to India to make the announcement. The last time WWE went to India, in 2002, it was a disaster in the sense payoffs were horrible because the profit margin was low and several guys claimed at the time they'd quit the company rather than go back because so many people got sick. Regal got terribly sick. When media asked officials if Khali would be there (he's now affiliated with TNA), Rajesh Sethi of Ten Sports Network, which is bringing them in, started talking about how big the Big Show is and that he would be there.
1179
1180Austin has made a deal for his own Steve Austin Broken Skull IPA Beer through El Segundo Brewery. The beer will debut on 11/13.
1181
1182Austin, in an interview with Brian Fritz, didn't appear all that thrilled with his 10/19 appearance at the Raw show in Dallas. He had denied that he was going to be on the show, even though it was advertised for a month locally that he would be. He said he was not going to be on the show, only interview Lesnar for the WWE Network after, but WWE texted him that morning. "It was what it was. It was short, brief. I had four announcements to make. I got handed a piece of paper. `Yeah, I'll be ready for Raw, yeah, I'll be ready for (WrestleMania) 32 in Dallas. I've got Brock Lesnar coming up in a couple of hours and I'm going to introduce The Undertaker right now.' So when you ain't been on TV for four years and you'd really like to go out there and uncork a promo and just raise hell for my six to ten minutes, it left a lot to be desired for my part, but it was doing a favor for WWE." When asked about wrestling again, he said, "I think 99.9 percent I've had my last match. If I felt like it, could I? Yeah. Would I? In a dream world. Possibly." He said he considered wrestling Lesnar "for just a brief moment" but compared wrestling with an addiction and said he's over the addiction. He also said the current system is too restrictive for him, saying he feels for the current group of guys because he had a lot more creative freedom. He also complained about 50/50 booking and lack of personal issues. He said he loves what Rollins does but he said you can't beat someone like a drum and then expect them to be able to draw.
1183
1184Nikki Bella will be out of action for an as yet unspecified period of time. The official WWE word is that she's resting a sore back. She posted photos with a neck collar on talking about rehabbing a neck injury. She had hinted of taking time off on Twitter a week ago, but did Raw in San Diego after that and was still being advertised for the European tour. She's been working hurt for a long time.
1185
1186There is talk and a petition going around in the city with the idea of naming the Calgary International Airport the Stu Hart International Airport. The city is looking to name the airport after someone famous from Calgary. Canadian prime minister Steve Harper, from Calgary, would have to be the heavy favorite. Hart is apparently the other candidate.
1187
1188Bret Hart recently sold his home in Kona for $705,000. He purchased the house in 2004 for $675,000.
1189
1190WWE has applied for a trademark for "WWE Champions" as a video game.
1191
1192Regal underwent a laminectomy in the back of the neck on 10/28 done by Dr. Joseph Maroon, the WWE's head medical doctor, in Pittsburgh. Maroon removed a portion of the bone of the vertebrae, called the lamina. The back muscles were pushed aside rather than cut and the vertebrae adjacent were left intact. It's a fairly quick recovery operation, but he won't be able to fly to England for the tour this week. He will be recovered enough to go on the December NXT tour of the U.K. He can't wrestle on the tour but that was never the plan. Regal had neck fusion surgery in 2014 and was feeling good, but had a CAT scan done on his neck six weeks ago, as he was hoping to be able to get back in the ring for hands on training with the talent in Orlando. But the CAT scan showed damage to the back of his neck that needed to be taken care of as quickly as possible. The first operation was to the front of the neck and this operation was to the back of the neck. Regal, 47, hasn't wrestled in two years and it's unclear if he'll wrestle again.
1193
1194With Cena and Orton out, from a talent name and depth standpoint, it is the weakest European tour on record, but the brand should draw since the spring tour was up from recent years and that wasn't loaded with name talent either. The Rollins tour opens on 11/4 in Dublin, with Rollins vs. Kane, Balor vs. Sheamus and New Day vs. Dudleys plus Flair will be on the tour, probably as the authority figure. The Reigns tour will start 11/5 in Glasgow with Reigns vs. Wyatt, Ambrose & The Usos vs. Strowman & Harper & Rowan, Owens vs. Ryback, Breeze vs. Ziggler (these were originally supposed to be Breeze vs. Ziggler vs. Rusev in three-ways) and Del Rio will be on that tour.
1195
1196The 11/5 show in Cardiff, Wales is sold out, and 11/6 in Glasgow was about 100 tickets shy of being sold out. The NXT show in the same building on 12/11 is also nearly sold out, although NXT buildings in most cases were booked for half arenas or less.
1197
1198Rusev suffered a ruptured biceps tendon in his match with Neville on 10/27. Apparently it's not that serious because he's not having surgery and is expected back in action in three or so weeks. Surgery actually may have been better because he'd come back fresh, and whatever heat there is would be long forgotten in six months. Plus they'd be looking for a hot new character and he could be it.
1199
1200With his time off, Cena, at 38, established his all-time personal record in the squat this past week, doing 611 pounds.
1201
1202The idea of Undertaker & Kane reforming their tag team this year has been on the books for a while. There were plans dating back to the summer, but those original plans were not in this format for Survivor Series, and were actually for early next year.
1203
1204Lawler was in a head-on accident coming back from dinner on Halloween night. His car was totaled, but he didn't have a scratch on him. His girlfriend, Lauryn Laine McBride had to spent four hours in the emergency room with injuries to her face and knee. McBride wrote that they were coming back from dinner and a girl ran a red light and hit them. The airbag deployed, hitting her in the face and leaving her with facial swelling. Lawler said she was really swollen on the left side of her face. She also wrote that she'd need crutches and a knee brace due to injuries from the crash. She said that Jerry tried to cover her when the airbag deployed. Lawler said that the two were lucky. Lawler thought that McBride likely suffered a concussion because when she woke up the next morning, she got up, fell down and said she was seeing black spots. McBride noted how happy she was that her daughter was not in the car with them.
1205
1206Big Show has national print ad for "Rolaids" which is also on public buses in California.
1207
1208Superstar Billy Graham, 72, has just signed a legends deal with WWE.
1209
1210While they split up long ago, the divorce between Ashley Fliehr (Charlotte) and Thomas Latimer (Bram in TNA) was finalized on 10/29.
1211
1212The pre-WrestleMania party takes place on 11/5 at AT&T Stadium, the day before tickets go on sale to the public. I went to the similar one in Santa Clara last year, and they gave a code to get presale tickets. Austin, Lita, Booker T, Lana, Mark Henry and a lot of NXT talent is scheduled to appear. What's notable is that of all the people being sent to the presale, with the exception of Henry possibly being in a Battle Royal, none of them are likely to be wrestling on the show.
1213
1214Raw on 11/9 is one of the rare taped shows, from Manchester, England. The Raw show was sold out in advance but Smackdown wasn't selling as well which is why they started advertising that show around Undertaker being there.
1215
1216Notes from the 11/2 Raw in Denver. The show drew 8,400 fans. It was mixed. At times they were hot and at times they were cold. With the exception of the return of the Usos as a surprise in the main event, it was an uneventful show, with really the only highlights being a good women's match and a solid elimination match main event that went more than 30:00.
1217
1218For Superstars, Neville pinned Slater with the red arrow. Dallas pinned Ryder with a neckbreaker off the top rope.
1219
1220Raw opened with Reigns out. The announcers were pushing "What an ovation" when he came out. It was good, better than he's been getting until recent weeks, but not the level that you'd want for the guy to build the company around. He pushed being in Denver for the easy pop. He said that Rollins was good at brown nosing and kissing The Authority's ass. Aren't those the same things? Reigns said that he didn't like people who lie to his face, stab people in the back and he doesn't like weasels. He said there's not a force on Earth that can stop him from beating Rollins and winning the title. To me, you've got two choices. Reigns is as hot as he's been in a long time, so you go with the title change now, or you have Ambrose screw him and do a battle of The Shield members at Mania for the title with Reigns getting sidetracked with Ambrose until the Rumble. Either way, both sides look very limited as Rollins has pretty much faced all the faces unless they want to go back to Lesnar, or Cena. If Reigns wins, past Rollins, the Wyatt thing has played out, Strowman is being set up for a top program but he's very green to be a title match headliner, Owens has the chops to do it but has been downplayed of late. They could go with Cena & Lesnar as opponents next year, since Reigns vs. Lesnar is one of the matches many have speculated about for Mania since last year had no conclusion. They didn't give Reigns much time to talk, which was smart, and then Rollins came out. Rollins said Reigns was very good, because he recruited him for The Shield. He noted Reigns stood toe-to-toe with Lesnar. But he said Reigns will always be second best and people will always remember him as the guy who used to carry his bags. Reigns challenged him, and Rollins walked to the ring. HHH and Stephanie came out and Stephanie grabbed the mic and asked the fans if they wanted to see Rollins vs. Reigns, and then if they wanted to see it for the title. The crowd cheered, and she said "You're gonna get it, just not tonight." "Do you think we'd give away a match of this caliber in Denver." They announced a main event of a five-on-five Survivor Series elimination match with Reigns and Rollins each picking and captaining teams.
1221
1222Owens pinned Ziggler in a non-title match in 10:59. Owens mostly worked over the left knee, that Breeze injured in the angle with Ziggler. Breeze & Summer Rae came out, sitting in a couch drinking drinks at ringside. The gimmick is they are in the VIP area. Ziggler was distracted by Breeze and turned around into a pop up power bomb for the pin. Match was good. Breeze and Summer hit the ring to taunt Ziggler, who sucker punched Breeze, but Breeze took over on him and laid him out with the beauty shot. Breeze and Summer posed for a selfie over Ziggler's laid out prone body.
1223
1224Backstage, Rollins talked to Owens. He asked him about facing him for the title at WrestleMania. Owens liked the idea. Rollins then asked him to team with him in the main event. Owens agreed but said "You owe me one."
1225
1226Lynch did a promo and Brie Bella came out. Brie called Lynch "Charlotte's wacky sidekick." She called Brie, "Nikki Bella's pathetic doormat of a sister."
1227
1228Cesaro beat Miz in 4:42 with a 21 rep giant swing and the sharpshooter submission. Cesaro did this spot with nip up after nip up ala 70s star Steve Wright (Alex's father), who was a big star in Germany, Japan, California and Mexico. Stardust and The Ascension were at ringside in the Stardust section. Cesaro is far more popular than his push.
1229
1230They did a video thanking the fans. WWE does a great job on videos of this type.
1231
1232Wyatt did an interview. He talked about carrying Undertaker and Kane out. He said they were never looking at taking over their bodies, because bodies are temporary, disposable and completely useless, but a soul lives forever. He said he now has taken their power, so he's a higher power. We could have used him in that 90s angle. He's harvested the souls of Undertaker and Kane and their power is surging through his veins.
1233
1234They then played an Undertaker & Kane video. There was nothing on the show where anyone teased the idea of being their partners.
1235
1236Lucha Dragons beat Barrett & Sheamus in 13:17. This was a good match. The finish saw Barrett set up the bull hammer on Kalisto, who ducked, and hit Salida del Sol for the pin. The crowd reacted very big for this as I don't think anyone expected the Lucha Dragons to win, even though it is what made sense if they're getting a title shot.
1237
1238Zeb was backstage with Swagger, who wantrf to know why he's forming a new nation. Zeb said it was about breaking down the walls, that Mexico and the U.S. have good people, so he's forming Mexamerica. He said he'd invite the Canadians to join if they weren't so simple-minded. Swagger wasn't buying what he was selling. Del Rio then walked in and played total heel, calling Swagger "Little Jackie," and telling Swagger to stay away from Zeb.
1239
1240Del Rio pinned R-Truth in 3:21 with a double foot stomp off the top rope. The crowd was dead quiet for this, and it's only Del Rio's second week in.
1241
1242Rollins recruited The New Day to be the rest of his team. At first he thought he'd have to get one more member but then Woods showed up, all healed up from his wedding.
1243
1244JoJo interviewed Banks about the women's match. Paige won the four-way over Banks, Lynch and Brie Bella to earn the title shot at Charlotte. They banned everyone who wasn't in the match from ringside, so no outside cheerleading. Match was going along fine until they did a tower of doom spot in the corner with Lynch power bombing the other three out of the corner. The crowd did the "This is awesome" stuff from there. They were into the rest of the match, as much as any of the women's TV matches in a long time. Lynch was given the shine most of the way, since she was doing the job at the end. She used the disarmer (Fujiwara armbar) on Brie, but Banks saved. Banks used the backstabber and bank statement on Lynch, but Paige saved and then Paige threw Banks into the post and laid out Lynch with the Rampage in 13:16. Paige did an in-ring UFC style post-fight promo calling the other three women in the match "losers" and that if fans cheer them, they're losers as well, and if you cheer Charlotte, you're a loser.
1245
1246During the show they aired historical clips from past Survivor Series, and pushed that this month's show is the 29th version. When showing last year's show, they aired clips from the main event. Two things were weird. The first is, that match was with the stip that if Cena's team won, The Authority would be gone, except they were back a few weeks later it seemed weird to remind people they ripped them off on the stipulation they built last year's show around. Second, the big pop in that show was Sting's arrival. And that was completely erased from the history for no apparent reason.
1247
1248Charlotte did a promo. She talked about Paige. She said that everyone who says she's where she is because she's Ric Flair's daughter only makes her work that much harder. She's not good with the scripted promos.
1249
1250Main event saw Team Reigns, of Reigns & Ambrose & Ryback & Usos, over Team Rollins, of Rollins & New Day & Owens, via DQ in 30:06. Good match. It's too bad they've beaten Rollins so much, because the perfect finish of this match would be Reigns pinning Rollins rather than the DQ. But they probably figure they've beaten Rollins so much they need to protect him. Jimmy Uso superkicked Woods and Jey pinned him with a splash off the top in :31. JBL during the next fall said Big E reminded him of Rick Rude. Actually he meant it because Big E was doing a Rick Rude gyration, not that they looked alike. Cole gave him crap over the idea that Big E should remind him of Rude. The Usos did a double dive on E and Kingston. Jimmy did a splash off the top and pinned Kingston in 7:45. There was no pointing out that the Usos had just beaten two members of the tag team champions. E then pinned Jey in 8:31 with the Big Ending. Jey was on the top rope when Owens scooped his leg and he fell into the ring. Owens followed pinning Jimmy Uso in 9:00 with the pop up power bomb. When Reigns and Owens squared off, the crowd popped pretty big. Mostly it was for Reigns getting the hot tag. Ambrose hit Rollins with a tope. Reigns and Rollins went at it and the crowd wasn't as hot for them as for Reigns vs. Owens. Ryback eliminated Big E in 21:32 with shell shock. Rollins then immediately pinned Ryback in 21:48 with the pedigree. Owens and Ambrose did some hot spots together. Rollins went for his flying knee off the top on Ambrose, who moved, and hit Owens. Ambrose pinned him with Dirty Deeds, which hopefully starts those two off in an IC title program, in 27:36. This left Reigns & Ambrose vs. Rollins. Rollins kept trying to run away, whether to the dressing room, or hopping the barricade into the crowd. Reigns and Ambrose kept stopping him. Reigns nailed the drive by on Rollins on the announcers table. Rollins hit Ambrose with a chair for the DQ, and then hit Reigns in the back with a chair as well. Rollins was beating both guys down until Reigns made a comeback with the Superman punch, and Rollins rolled out of the ring. Nothing of any note happened after the show ended.
1251
1252Notes from the 11/3 Smackdown tapings in Colorado Springs. Half the crew flew to Dublin after Raw, so this was a skeleton crew taping. What's weird is that Reigns was in Colorado Springs and never appeared on the Smackdown show, unless it's a pre-tape segment that the live crowd didn't see.
1253
1254It opened with Main Event, as Rose pinned Fandango. Ryder pinned Slater. Swagger beat Stardust with the Patriot lock.
1255
1256Smackdown opened with Del Rio & Colter doing a promo talking about Mexamerica.
1257
1258Del Rio beat Neville. He kept the beating up after the match until Swagger made the save.
1259
1260Usos beat The Ascension.
1261
1262The Wyatt Family of Wyatt & Harper & Rowan & Strowman won four straight falls over The Lucha Dragons & Prime Time Players in a Survivor Series rules match. Young was counted out in the first fall. Harper pinned Sin Cara in the second fall. Rowan pinned Kalisto in the third fall. O'Neil ended up against all four, and was pinned by Wyatt.
1263
1264Ryback pinned Barrett with the shell shock.
1265
1266Natalya beat Tamina quickly.
1267
1268Owens beat Ambrose via DQ in the main event in a CMLL special. Owens went down, selling a low blow that Ambrose never delivered. The ref bought it and DQ'd Ambrose. Ambrose attacked Owens after the match. Owens ran into the stands to escape. After the show went off the air, The Wyatts came out to attack Ambrose, but Reigns made the save.
1269
1270Notes from the 10/28 NXT TV show. This was the best NXT show in a long time. The show flew by, and the secret seems to be short promos, great video packages and solid wrestling, and this show had exactly one angle. Granted, filling one hour, it's a different ball game.
1271
1272Emma beat Shazza (McKenzie) in 4:18. Fans were chanting "Ozzy, Ozzy, Ozzy," since they both were from Australia and had wrestled each other in the past. Emma used a curb stomp, but a more subtle version and they sure didn't call it that, and then the Emmalock. Emma looked real good here. She came across like she had more star quality than in the past. They were pushing Emma vs. Asuka, so that may be at Takeover.
1273
1274They showed a video of the James Storm debut. They said he was part of NXT, which makes it a surprise he wasn't at the last taping. He came out and did a good babyface promo, with the same character as when he played the good old boy cowboy in TNA.
1275
1276They did a video showing little kids (including Izzy) and some adults saying why they loved Finn Balor. This led to a great Balor video package. Balor in presentation came across as a guy you wanted to see become a superstar.
1277
1278Jason Jordan & Chad Gable beat Tommaso Ciampa & Johnny Gargano in 11:59. Gable is unreal good. When you consider his major league experience level and how good he is, he's a guy who in a few years could be one of the best wrestlers in the world. The team should be on the main roster right now working against New Day. Fans love them and they complement each other so well. Ciampa & Gargano were perfect opponents because they're better at working this style of match than most of the NXT crew. Jordan did some great athletic moves on his comeback, particularly his dropkick and overhead belly-to-belly suplex. Gable pinned Gargano when Jordan back suplexed Gargano into Gable who finished the back suplex and won with a bridging Nagata style pin in a ***½ match.
1279
1280Bayley did a promo talking about Alexa Bliss. Just a basic short face promo.
1281
1282Nia Jax pinned Kay Lee Ray in 2:36. They were pushing Jax as the cousin of The Rock. She won with a sidewalk slam and legdrop. Ray seemed like she was good, but this wasn't a match to show it since her job was to get squashed. Jax was always smiling and felt like the babyface, and felt miscast because she's a natural heel. It wasn't obvious if she was a face or heel, but for a wrestler breaking in on TV, that's not a good thing for them to be ambiguous. With a face champion, Jax really should be a heel.
1283
1284A match with Enzo & Cass vs. Dash Wilder & Scott Dawson never got started. They took out Enzo, and then double-teamed Cass. This was the injury angle. It was a basic injury angle, shot well. They worked over Cass' leg and then Wilder put Cass in a cloverleaf and Dawson came off the middle rope with a stomp to the knee.
1285
1286Bliss came out with Blake & Murphy. Bliss challenged Bayley to a six-person tag and then laughed to Blake & Murphy about how Bayley's biggest challenge would be to find two losers who would even want to team with him.
1287
1288They did a video package for Apollo Crews, also well done.
1289
1290Main event saw Samoa Joe beat Tyler Breeze in 9:02 with a choke. Good match. Joe hit a tope early. Breeze used a twisting back suplex. Joe kicked out of the super model kick. This was taped before the Joe turn. Although the Joe turn hasn't aired yet, Joe did work the weekend shows as a heel.
1291
1292The show ended with Balor doing a nice guy babyface promo saying that Crews, who he meets on TV next week, is very good and will be a champion some day, but not next week.
1293
1294The 10/29 show in Citrus Springs, FL drew 175 fans, not full at all. They had a few matches that were to start getting ready for the Takeover show in London. Bull Dempsey pinned Tino Sabbatelli with the seated splash off the top. Asuka beat Peyton Royce with the Asuka lock. Royce called herself the "Venus Flytrap of NXT." Even in a small town with few of the usual fans, Asuka got over like a star. Riddick Moss pinned Levis Valenzuela Jr. They are testing out a new Indian trio, which is Sunny Dhinsa (Canadian amateur wrestling champion who was their big hope for the 2016 Olympics until he decided to come here), Gzim Selmani (the MMA fighter we wrote about last week) and Loveprett Sangha. They called themselves the Tribe and they are doing the gimmick where they come from a rich oil family, or at least one of them does. Tye Dillinger pinned Hugo Knox. Dillinger is supposed to be a heel but the crowd has gotten into his "Perfect 10" gimmick at the house shows. Dawson & Wilder kept the tag titles over Jordan & Gable with the double-team codebreaker in a very good match. Dawson & Wilder beat Jordan & Gable down after the match until Enzo Amore ran in. Amore said that Cass would be back soon (he actually was wrestling last weekend) and they were going after the belts. So they'll be doing the title program before Jordan & Gable get their chance. Crews pinned Baron Corbin with a blue thunder bomb. They worked it to where it felt like a fight. Bayley & Gionna Daddio & Adrien Reese beat Emma & Billie Kay & Aliyah (Nhooph Al-Areebi, formerly Jasmin) with Bayley hitting the Belly-to-Bayley on Aliyah. Daddio used the name Marley at TV, but was back to benig Daddio here. Bayley was the most popular wrestler on the show. Balor pinned Joe with the double foot stomp to keep the NXT title. Joe came out and insulted the fans and called Citrus Heights a "podunk town" to make sure people knew he was the heel. Joe tried a belt shot after a ref bump, but Balor ducked it, hit a running dropkick to the corner before the finish. Good main event.
1295
1296The 10/30 show was a Halloween special in Gainesville, FL, before a sellout of 400 fans. They opened with a Halloween Rumble, with everyone in costume, and the winner would become commissioner for the show. Lego Man won, and then unmasked as Bayley. Rich Swann debuted in this match. Aiden English's costume was that he was Kevin Owens. They taped a Tye Dillinger vs. Tino Sabbatelli match, with Dillinger winning, for Breaking Ground. They did an angle early in the show where Amore cut a promo on Dawson & Wilder for injuring Cass. They double-teamed him until Balor made the save, setting up the main event. Enzo & Balor won via DQ when the ref was pulled out of the ring during a pin. They ran off, but Bayley ordered them back into the ring. They threatened her, until the entire locker room, dressed up in Halloween costumes, forced them back into the ring. Enzo & Balor beat them down, put one on top of the other and Balor came off the top with a double foot stomp on them.
1297
1298With the European tour coming this week, they only ran small market house shows this weekend headlined by Reigns with a 10/31 show in Billings, MT, that drew 5,000 fans, and an 11/1 show in Casper, WY, that drew 2,000 fans. As best we can tell, the last time WWE was in Billings was in 2003, and the last time WWE was in Casper was 2002.
1299
1300Billings opened with R-Truth pinning Dallas with a roll-up. Sandow & Axel & Ryder beat Fandango & The Ascension. Fandango and The Ascension didn't get along, as Fandango, even though he's never on TV, is still on the face side. He turned on the Ascension at the end which led to the finish. Sheamus pinned Swagger with a Brogue kick. Sheamus when he came out was cheered more than anyone up to that point on the show, so he got on the mic and insulted the people and they turned on him. Sheamus got the pin with a Brogue kick. New Day kept the tag titles over the Prime Time Players. Charlotte & Lynch beat Banks & Tamina when Charlotte pinned Tamina with Natural Selection. Ziggler pinned Breeze in their first match of their program. Ziggler won with the Zig Zag after Summer was booted out for using her shoe on Ziggler. Best match on the show. Main event saw Reigns & Ambrose over Wyatt & Strowman in a street fight when Reigns pinned Wyatt after a spear. Reigns ended up getting the biggest reaction of the night by far, so as far as small cities go, his push took and they drew well here.
1301
1302Casper was almost the same show, although not drawing as well. The only difference is Slater joined the tour and that changed a few things around on the undercard. R-Truth pinned Dallas in about a minute. Dallas then did the routine that he wasn't leaving the ring, that he wasn't ready. He vowed that if anyone could beat him, he'd never return to Casper. Given how frequently WWE comes to Casper (the last time was 2002 and with this sized crowd, it may be a long time before they come again), he's probably right either way. Swagger came out and immediately put him in the Patriot lock. Slater replaced Fandango in the six-man, teaming with The Ascension to lose to Sandow & Axel & Ryder. Fandango replaced Swagger and was pinned by Sheamus. Everything else was the same. Main event with Reigns & Ambrose over Wyatt & Strowman was the best match.
1303
1304
1305 
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