DECEMBER 16, 2019 OBSERVER NEWSLETTER: 10 HALL OF FAME INDUCTEES, MORE
BY OBSERVER STAFF | STAFF@WRESTLINGOBSERVER.COM | @WONF4W
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Wrestling Observer Newsletter

PO Box 1228, Campbell, CA 95009-1228 ISSN10839593 December 16, 2019



The largest new class in more than two decades, with ten different wrestlers, was inducted into the Wrestling Observer Hall of Fame in the 2019 voting.

Leading the charge are Los Misioneros de la Muerte, sometimes known by the English version of that term, The Death Missionaries. They were the original top heel trio in Mexico from the 1980s, consisting of El Signo, El Texano and Negro Navarro.

Joining them are three other wrestlers from Mexico, Ultimo Guerrero, the longtime top rudo headliner for CMLL at Arena Mexico, Villano III, one of the top singles stars of the UWA heyday in the late 70s and into the 80s and early 90s, and Dr. Wagner Jr. The latter two are the eighth and ninth sons of Hall of Famers to be inducted in history. Villano III is the son of Rey Mendoza while Wagner Jr., obviously, is the son of Dr. Wagner.

They join previous father-and-son combinations inducted, of Perro Aguayo and El Hijo de Perro Aguayo, Dory Funk Sr. and sons Dory Jr. and Terry, Salvador “Gori” Guerrero and son Eddy, Stu and Bret Hart, Vincent James McMahon and Vincent Kennedy McMahon and El Santo and El Hijo del Santo.

Also voted in, was a first ballot Hall of Famer in Gedo, the current booker of New Japan Pro Wrestling, who was the architect of the company’s return to prominence and played a major part in the decision making that created huge stars of Kazuchika Okada, Kenny Omega, Jay White, Will Ospreay and Hiromu Takahashi. Of all the names on this year’s list, he was probably the favorite and most obvious because there’s really no argument you can make of any value against him.

“Big” Jim Crockett, later known as Jim Crockett Sr., who ran pro wrestling and promoted other sports in the Carolinas from 1935 to his death in 1973 was also voted in.

The final wrestler voted in was Edward “Bearcat” Wright Jr., the son of a notable boxer, who was the first major world heavyweight champion of African-American ethnicity, was the WWA world champion in California in 1963, and later had two runs as IWA world champion in Australia when that was the biggest money promotion in the world.

Also inducted this year is Paul Pons of France as an overlooked historical figure.

To be inducted into the Hall of Fame via voting, one must get at least 60 percent of the vote from the different regions, which are U.S. and Canada historical (full-time careers ending 1989 or earlier), U.S. and Canada modern, Japan, Mexico and the rest of the world.

Los Misioneros, Guerrero, Villano III and Wagner Jr. were on the Mexico ballot. Gedo was on the non-wrestler ballot, chosen for his booking work, but in Japan. Crockett Sr. and Wright were from the U.S. and Canada historical group, Wright as a wrestler and Crockett as a non-wrestler.

There were also four very close calls this year. Don Owen, the longtime promoter in the Pacific Northwest, came two votes shy. Stanley Weston, a wrestling magazine publisher, also came two votes shy. Jun Akiyama, a pro wrestler with All Japan Pro Wrestling and former President of the company, and one of the best heavyweight technicians of the last 25 years, came three votes shy. Sputnik Monroe, a journeyman wrestler whose main claim to fame is helping integrate public buildings in Memphis, came four votes shy.

Wrestlers are supposed to be judged on four major criteria, positive historical influence on the business, drawing power, in-ring ability as it pertains to having outstanding matches, and longevity. A Hall of Famer should be strong in all four of those categories, but if they were one of the dominant standouts of their era in the ring, or as a draw, they should be voted regardless of the other categories. Longevity without having any major positive historical impact, significant drawing power or a career filled with great matches, should be viewed as meaningless.

For non-wrestlers, they should be among the elite historically in their respective roles.

Voters are generally broken down into categories of historians,

WRESTLING OBSERVER



HALL OF FAME BALLOTING RESULTS



Votes needed for induction into the Hall of Fame: U.S. and Canada modern 180; U.S. and Canada historical 130; Japan 139; Mexico 103; Rest of the world 101



PERFORMER	VOTES	PCT	2018
LOS MISIONEROS DE LA MUERTE	122	71%	57%
ULTIMO GUERRERO	116	68%	55%
GEDO	155	67%	----
VILLANO III	109	64%	55%
DR. WAGNER JR.	108	63%	49%
JIM CROCKETT SR.	136	63%	50%
BEARCAT WRIGHT	132	61%	48%
Don Owen	178	59%	37%
Stanley Weston	128	59%	32%
Jun Akiyama	136	59%	55%
Sputnik Monroe	126	58%	47%
Kenny Omega	122	53%	49%
Sgt. Slaughter	152	51%	50%
Karloff  Lagarde	86	50%	47%
Blanchard/Anderson w/Dillon	146	49%	43%
Johnny Saint	80	48%	44%
Ted Turner	143	48%	----
Larry Matysik	99	46%	35%
Junkyard Dog	135	45%	48%
Big Daddy	75	45%	35%
Enrique Torres	93	43%	37%
Edge	125	42%	50%
Kota Ibushi	98	42%	16%
Akira Taue	94	41%	52%
Tetsuya Naito	83	36%	21%
Los Brazos	61	36%	25%
Johnny Rougeau	75	35%	33%
Rollerball Mark Rocco	59	35%	27%
Jim Crockett Jr.	74	34%	29%
Grand Wizard/Abdullah Farouk	73	34%	----
James Melby	71	33%	----
Jackie Pallo	53	32%	25%
Dave Brown	94	31%	22%
Jim Johnston	93	31%	----
Morris Sigel	63	29%	----
June Byers	62	29%	26%
Ricki Starr	48	29%	12%
Yoshiaki Fujiwara	64	28%	38%
Randy Orton	80	27%	35%
Blackjack Mulligan	56	26%	13%
Cima	60	26%	24%
George Kidd	43	26%	----
Matt & Jeff Hardy	74	25%	----
Bob Caudle	76	25%	----
Caristico	41	24%	18%
Tomohiro Ishii	56	24%	----
Rocky Johnson	50	23%	17%
Hayabusa	53	23%	32%
Cowboy Bob Ellis	47	22%	18%
Bill Goldberg	67	22%	31%
Wild Bull Curry	46	21%	16%
Otto Wanz	35	21%	16%
Lord James Blears	44	20%	12%
Archie “Mongolian Stomper” Gouldie	44	20%	23%
C.M. Punk	59	20%	12%
George Scott	41	19%	30%
Von Brauners w/Weingeroff	41	19%	21%
Rick Martel	56	19%	15%
Huracan Ramirez	33	19%	16%
Chavo Guerrero Sr.	38	18%	19%
Kerry Von Erich	55	18%	19%
Spyros Arion	30	18%	11%
Satoshi Kojima & Hiroyoshi Tenzan	40	17%	17%
Billy Joyce	29	17%	15%
Killer Karl Kox	29	17%	22%
Dominic DeNucci	27	16%	15%
Kendo Nagasaki	27	16%	13%
Trish Stratus	46	15%	20%
Ultimate Warrior	42	14%	14%
Meiko Satomura	33	14%	----
Mario Milano	24	14%	12%
Jimmy & Johnny Valiant	25	12%	----
Stephanie McMahon	32	11%	----
Don Fargo	23	11%	11%


Less than 10% of all votes from region and dropped from next year’s ballot: Jose Lothario, Dick Slater, George Steele, Volador Jr., Naoki Sugabayashi



Dropped from next year’s ballot due to the 15 year/50 percent rule: None



Will be dropped next year if not getting at least 50 percent: Don Owen, Jun Akiyama, Sgt. Slaughter, Kerry Von Erich, Chavo Guerrero Sr.



Added to next year’s ballot: Ole Anderson, Kevin Nash, Scott Hall, Brian Pillman, Joe Higuchi, Takaaki Kidani

reporters, those current working in the business, and those formerly in the business.

Wrestlers are eligible for voting 15 years after their debut for a major promotion, or if they are 35 years old and it has been more than ten years since they started with a major promotion.

Wrestlers are removed from the ballot if they fail to get ten percent of the vote within their category. They can be put on the ballot again two years later if there are reasons to believe their situation has changed, or if 30 years had passed since the end of their full-time major league careers.

If someone has been on the ballot for 15 years without being voted in, they will be removed from the ballot unless they reach a 50 percent threshold in the voting. They can also be put back on two years later, but only if there is a meaningful change in their case.

With Los Misioneros, Gedo and Guerrero going in this year, the balloting is going to get interesting because so many getting in means very much a dilution in the quality going forward. Jun Akiyama is a solid candidate, but he’s also a guy who has been on the ballot forever and never got voted in, and until recently wasn’t even considered a strong candidate. Sputnik Monroe is unique, because he’s clearly getting votes as a social issue because his career as a wrestler shouldn’t even get him near the ballot since there are plenty of guys with stronger actual careers that aren’t even candidates.

Aside from Ted Turner, the rest of the ballot are guys who in years past were not even considered strong candidates. There are the modern New Japan candidates, Kenny Omega, Kota Ibushi and Tetsuya Naito who all have a strong shot down the line. They are probably still held back based on reluctance, perhaps feeling it’s too early, which for Omega and Naito it probably is. For Ibushi, there’s really no reason, other than the reason mentioned before, he looks ten years younger than he is and that makes people think he’s a young guy on he rise. Plus, most of his career was in DDT, and the history of smaller promotion stars making it is not good. It’s only been recent years where Ibushi started with New Japan. There will be another run of guys who are stars now, but aren’t yet eligible, but the only close to guaranteed person is Kazuchika Okada in his first ballot in 2021, who it would be hard to see wouldn’t get near record numbers.

Whether that means people voted in over the next several years will be few, or you can argue standards will decline because people will get votes, and people not considered strong candidates when they actually were in their era, will become strong candidates based on changing standards.

Plus, with so many scooped from the top, everyone who topped 50 percent looks like they have a good shot next year.

Los Misioneros placed second with historians, 11th with reporters, 13th with retired wrestlers and 9th with active wrestlers.

Guerrero placed 13th with historians, third with reporters, 18th with retired wrestlers and third with active wrestlers.

Gedo placed sixth with historians, fifth with reporters, did not place with retired wrestlers and was sixth with active wrestlers.

Villano III placed third with historians, 17th with reporters, but didn’t place among wrestlers.

Wagner Jr. placed 17th with historians, sixth with reporters, 14th with retired wrestlers and fourth with active wrestlers.

Crockett Sr. placed 21st with historians, first with reporters, seventh with retired wrestlers and seventh with active wrestlers.

Wright placed first with historians, 16th with reporters, didn’t place with retired wrestlers and placed 30th with active wrestlers.

Los Misioneros have had strong finishes on the ballot since 2015, including reaching 57 percent the past two years. They drew the highest percentage of votes last year without getting in and along with Gedo were the strongest favorites to go in this year.

Lucha Libre had usually been based around tag team main events for several decades, with such popular teams as El Santo & Gori Guerrero, Blue Demon & Black Shadow, and later Rene Guajardo & Karloff Lagarde. But in the 70s came the emergence of trios.

The UWA, headed by Francisco Flores, the most progressive promotion in Mexico at the time, put together three young stars, Antonio Sanchez, known as El Signo, Miguel Calderon, known as Negro Navarro (Navarro was his mother’s maiden name) and Juan Aguilar, known as El Texano.

When they first got together in 1977, Signo was 23, Navarro was 20 and Texano was 19. Originally, they were programmed against Los Brazos, a trio of brothers from the Alvarado family known as Brazo de Oro, Brazo de Plata (later Super Porky) and El Brazo. The matches got so much attention that both teams, as trios, were booked all over Mexico. Originally the teams were not used as main eventers, since those were mostly tag team matches, but within a few years their reputation for having great matches saw them used more and more as headliners, and both teams became enduring superstars.

The three, as the Death Missionaries, came to the U.S. in 1981. In Mexico, one of their biggest early matches was a three-way hair vs. hair match that they won over Kuniaki Kobayashi & George Takano & Hiro Saito. In another major match, all three Death Missionaries had to shave their heads in 1981 with a loss to the trio of Hamada & Kobayashi & Enrique Vera.

But the match that made them into household names in Mexico came in 1982, when they wrestled El Santo & Huracan Ramirez & Rayo de Jalisco, three aging legends, at El Toreo in Naucalpan. Santo, 64, probably the most-beloved wrestler in any culture in history, suffered a massive heart attack in the middle of the match and collapsed. The story is that his life was saved by the quick responding actions of Ramirez.

In an era where such an unfortunate turn of events would be thought of in ways to capitalize, they played off the match with the idea that the Death Missionaries nearly killed Santo. They immediately became the hottest heel act in the country, and with their quick, synchronized heel work, were part of speeding up the style of wrestling in Mexico. When Santo recovered, matches with Santo and various legendary partners against Los Misioneros de la Muerte were the biggest draws in the country. In one of the biggest matches in Mexican history, Los Misioneros teamed with Perro Aguayo in what was the retirement match of both Santo & Gori Guerrero, who teamed with Ramirez & El Solitario in what drew the biggest gate up to that point in time at a sold out El Toreo. They also went to Japan as undercard rivals in trios matches during the heyday of the original Tiger Mask.

In 1986, they went to CMLL, and beat Dandy & Talisman & Jerry Estrada in a triple-hair match, to build for that year’s anniversary show where they lost their hair to Ringo Mendoza & Americo Rocca & Tony Salazar.

The original trio lasted until a match with Los Villanos for the UWA trios titles, where Texano threw in the towel to protect Signo, causing Signo and Navarro to attack him after them match. The actual story behind it was that Texano had given notice and was leaving the promotion. Texano later became part of Mexico’s best tag team, and also one of the world’s beat at the time, with Silver King in the 90s, where they held both the UWA and CMLL tag team titles as well as tag titles in Japan.

Signo & Navarro joined with Black Power to keep the trio alive, and they had success, including winning the UWA trios titles for more than one year in 1992 and 1993. Later Black Power was replaced by Rocky Santana and they held the UWA trios titles in 1994 and they were champions when the promotion closed in 1995.

At that point the team broke up for the most part. They worked some in AAA and Navarro & Signo occasionally teamed after that. Navarro, who is still active and wrestled this past Friday at Arena Mexico. Navarro & Signo teamed up again in AAA with El Texano Jr., the son of Texano, to form another version of the team. But after the 2006 death of Texano, they agreed to never use the Misioneros de la Muerte name again. Signo retired due to injuries in 2010, but did come back for some matches in 2013. Navarro, now 62, suffered heart attack in recent years, but came back and is still known as one of Mexico’s best technical wrestlers, and in recent years would often work great legends matches with Solar.

All three members of the original trio now have sons in wrestling. Navarro’s two sons are Los Traumas, who work for The Crash and a number of other groups. Texano’s son, El Texano Jr., is one of the top stars with AAA and was also a featured star with Lucha Underground. Signo’s son, El Hijo del Signo, is an undercard CMLL wrestler.

Ultimo Guerrero, born Jose Gutierrez on March 1, 1972, has been a headliner for 20 years at Arena Mexico. He’s currently the CMLL world heavyweight champion for a second time, and in the decade of 2000 to 2009, his team with Rey Bucanero got more points than any other team during the decade in tag team of the year voting. He’s the top rudo and one of the biggest decision makers in CMLL, and has been a strong Hall of Fame candidate for a number of years.

Gutierrez, no relation to Rey Mysterio (Oscar Gutierrez), started his career in 1990 under the name Halcon Dorado. He worked for years on local shows in Durango before becoming Ultimo Guerrero in 1996 while working for Promo Azteca, a promotion that aired on TV Azteca. He and tag team partner Ultimo Rebelde were set to lose a mask vs. mask match in late 1997, but before the bout, made the move to CMLL, saving his mask loss until 17 years later when it set a record gate for a Mexican promotion against Atlantis.

CMLL from the start showed they had plans for him. In 1998, he was chosen to win the mask of Mr. Aguila on the Anniversary show. Aguila, who had signed with WWE and they had told him to unmask and he worked in the U.S. without a mask so it was just a question who the company would pick to beat him. In 1999, he teamed with Blue Panther to win the Gran Alternative tournament, which, in theory meant a move to main event status.

His next big break came when El Satanico wanted to remake Los Infernales, a major heel trio of the 80s with MS 1 and Masakre. Satanico, as the veteran, chose two younger wrestlers, Guerrero and Rey Bucanero. While Los Infernales as a trio didn’t last long, Guerrero & Bucanero became the signature CMLL heel tag team, holding their world tag team titles for most of a four-year period from 2000 to 2004, with their biggest program being with bouts against two of the company’s most legendary wrestlers, former rivals El Hijo del Santo & Negro Casas. They also feuded with Atlantis & Blue Panther, and even challenged Hiroshi Tanahashi & Shinsuke Nakamura for the IWGP tag team titles.

Guerrero & Bucanero turned on Satanico in 2000, leading to matches with various partners. This feud was blown off in a cage match at the 2001 Anniversary show where Satanico’s side, with Averno & Mephisto, won the rights to the Infernales name, while Guerrero & Bucanero & Tarzan Boy became Los Guerreros del Infierno.

Guerrero’s first major singles title win was in 2002, beating Shocker for the CMLL light heavyweight title. He held the title for three-and-a-half years. When wrestling in Mexico had its last true giant boom, about 14 year ago, Guerrero was one of the key people. Mistico, now Caristico, was the signature star, but his big rival was Guerrero, who helped carry him through main event matches. Crowds of 10,000 to 17,000 fans every Friday night were a regular thing, with Mistico, Santo, Guerrero, Wagner, Atlantis and later Perro Aguayo Jr. as the main attractions.

Guerrero & Bucanero split up in 2006, after Atlantis turned rudo and Guerrero & Atlantis became the headline team. Bucanero beat Guerrero in 2006 to end the long light heavyweight title reign.

In 2007, Guerrero formed a tag team with Dr. Wagner Jr., and they beat Mistico & Negro Casas to win the CMLL tag team titles, although they only held the title for one week. The quick alliance and title win was to set up a feud, leading to Wagner becoming a tecnico. The two were building challenges for a mask vs. mask match, but Wagner left the promotion.

On December 22, 2008, Guerrero defeated Dos Caras Jr. (Alberto Rodriguez, later to become Alberto Del Rio) to win the CMLL world heavyweight title for the first time. In 2009, Guerrero defeated Villano V in a

mask vs. mask match. His first heavyweight title run lasted until August 12, 2011, nearly three years, before his loss to Hector Garza.

Guerrero and Atlantis split up in 2011, and feuded, spending much of 2013 as the focal point of the promotion. Everyone expected this to culminate in a mask vs. mask match. As part of the feud, Guerrero introduced a younger brother, Gran Guerrero and they tore up Atlantis’ mask. It was rumored Gran Guerrero was actually his son because in 2008, he had introduced Ultimo Guerrero Jr., as his son, and the same person five years later was Gran Guerrero. But when he was Gran Guerrero, it was claimed he was Ultimo’s younger brother and that is believed by most today to be the case.

At the 2013 anniversary show, prices were jacked up for the first million dollar gate in CMLL history, for one of the most anticipated matches ever in Mexico. But it didn’t happen.

Instead, on September 13, 2013, it was announced that Atlantis & Guerrero would team against another set of major rivals, Volador Jr. & La Sombra. The winning team would then headline the biggest money show in company history.

While it was made clear it could be Atlantis vs. Guerrero in a mask vs. mask match, or Volador Jr. vs. La Sombra (Manuel Andrade, now in WWE), because of months of angles and an announcement of a match back in March, everyone expected Atlantis vs. Guerrero. Evidently CMLL figured they could get two million dollar gates out of the feud, as Volador & Sombra won.

Fans were furious. While Volador and Sombra had an absolutely spectacular match, fans turned on it, chanted fraud and basically ruined it. Volador lost his mask. One year later, on September 19, 2014, they advertised Atlantis vs. Guerrero directly in a mask vs. mask match before another sellout and million dollar gate–still the biggest gate in company history. Guerrero revealed his name as Jose Gutierrez Hernandez.

Guerrero’s second CMLL world heavyweight title reign came when he defeated Diamante Azul on October 16, 2018, and it’s now going on 14 months. He also holds the CMLL world trios titles with Gran Guerrero & Euforia, the fifth time he’s held those belts, to go along with six reigns as tag team champions, three with Bucanero, as well as with Wagner, Atlantis and Dragon Rojo Jr. He also won CMLL’s Universal title, the champion of champions tournament in both 2008 and 2014. He’s also become something of an iron man, having been on 19 of the last 21 anniversary shows (missing only 2001 and 2011), a record unprecedented in CMLL history, almost always in major matches. Those 19 shows include six championship matches and four main events with either his hair or mask up, with nine sellouts in those ten major shows.

In a sense, Gedo (Keiji Takayama, 50) is both a strange but obvious Hall of Fame pick.

Gedo was a journeyman pro wrestler, best known as part of an undercard junior heavyweight tag team with Jado. During his active career, he would be the last person anyone would think of for the Hall of Fame. Yet, on this year’s ballot for the first time, he was really a no-brainer for his work as the booker of New Japan Pro Wrestling.

Gedo took over as booker of the company, struggling badly, largely because none of the bigger stars wanted the position. The comeback of New Japan, to where it revived the Japanese wrestling scene that was considered nearly dead, can be traced to the promotional work of Bushiroad and Takaaki Kidani, the direction of Gedo as the booker, and the star power of Hiroshi Tanahashi as the top star during the comeback.

Gedo also masterminded the ascension of Kazuchika Okada, both as booker and as his manager, as the replacement for Tanahashi, preparing for the change while Tanahashi was still in his prime and arguably the best wrestler in the world, rather than waiting until it was too late and having to scramble. He then moved, with Okada firmly established as the top babyface, to Jay White as the new top heel with the company. He was also the key in putting together Bullet Club, an international merchandising phenomenon

Gedo & Jado, who handled the booking together, won Booker of the Year honors four straight years from 2011 to 2014, and after not winning in 2015, came back to win on his own from 2016 to 2018.

As a wrestler, Gedo & Jado won the Tokyo Sports tag team of the year award in 2001.

Gedo grew up as a huge fan of American territorial wrestling. Some of the more criticized aspects of his booking, particularly the referee bumps and constant heel interference, comes from that era. He grew up following it and studying the newsletters of the era to learn territorial booking in different places, and then had two decades as a pro wrestler in Japan with many different types of promotions, to add to his knowledge. During his run, New Japan’s business has grown nearly 500 percent to where it frequently sells out shows, sells out most of its big shows, did the first Tokyo Dome sellout in nearly 20 years this past January and brought the company to where they booked the Dome successive nights, an attempt at something even industry leader WWE has never tried.

Gedo debuted on the Japanese independent scene in 1989, just after his 20th birthday. He started with a group that included Jado, Monkey Magic Wakita (Super Delfin) and Masa Michinoku (Great Sasuke) as the Japanese rookies for the Universal Wrestling Association group in Japan.

He and Jado were pushed together as a team, winning their first tag team title for that promotion in 1991 over Silver King & El Texano. They went through various Japanese indie groups, notably WAR where they joined with Lion Do (Chris Jericho). The friendship from that period was a key aspect of Jericho now working major shows for the company.

His biggest accomplishment as a wrestler was probably going to the finals of the 1995 Super J Cup, losing to Jushin Liger. He reached the final four of the 1994 Super J Cup, along with Liger, Sasuke and eventual winner Wild Pegasus (Chris Benoit), when Pegasus beat him to reach the finals.

Gedo’s strengths as a booker was his ability to make distinctive stars, and establish a pecking order of a big four. The key was in 2016, when his most charismatic wrestler, Shinsuke Nakamura, and top foreigner, A.J. Styles, left with his best foreign tag team, Luke Gallows & Karl Anderson. But he immediately moved Tetsuya Naito and Kenny Omega into top singles roles and after a few tough months, business grew far stronger. Even with Omega leaving this year to form AEW, he moved White into the Omega spot. While it definitely hurt the company in its international expansion attempts losing Omega and The Young Bucks, business has stayed strong in Japan. Before Gedo, it’s doubtful a New Japan show could draw more than about 1,000 fans if they ran New York, but in 2019, they sold out Madison Square Garden immediately, although a lot of that was Omega and they couldn’t do it again, as evidenced by not even trying.

In addition, he strongly protected his world championship and created patterns to teach fans importance. A champion losing a tag team match almost always leads to the person beating him getting a title match. A champion losing in G-1 during the tournament usually sets up fall challengers for all the belts as well as the G-1 briefcase. The G-1 winner goes to the Tokyo Dome with a main event in January that fans expect dating back to August. Championship defenses are doled out sparingly, although the flip side is that the company recognizes too many secondary championships because they run so many more major shows with expansions.

But one can argue that because of how it is booked and taken care of, and that the champion is always the focal point of the company, that Gedo’s booking of the IWGP title makes it the most prestigious and respected title in pro wrestling, even though New Japan is far behind WWE as far as revenue, exposure and popularity.

Over the last nine years, ever since Tanahashi beat Satoshi Kojima at the January 4, 2011, Tokyo Dome show, the only people who have held the title have been Tanahashi, Okada, A.J. Styles, Tetsuya Naito, Kenny Omega and Jay White.

A ten year booking run with this kind of success has been rare in pro wrestling history and for that, he’s clearly a strong inductee. But the inevitable burnout that happens to bookers is something one has to look out for after so much time in the spot.

Villano III, born Arturo Diaz Mendoza, grew up the son of wrestling legend Rey Mendoza, who along with Perro Aguayo, was probably the biggest non-masked star in Lucha Libre history.

He was the third of five sons of Mendoza to break into pro wrestling and universally acknowledged as the best actual wrestler in the family.

He was born March 23, 1952. His two brothers started in 1969 and he started in 1970 as Ray Rosas. His brothers were a regular tag team, Villano I and Villano II, under masks starting in 1971. Arturo wrestled under a ton of different names for a few years, usually under a mask, to hide that he was Mendoza’s son. In 1973, Mendoza deemed him good enough to become Villano III, and live up to the Mendoza name.

Frustrated with a number of things, including money and that his sons weren’t getting the push he thought they deserved, Mendoza left CMLL and worked with Francisco Flores and Benjamin Mora to form the UWA in 1975, as competition. His brothers were usually a tag team, while Villano III became one of the top singles stars during a boom period, along with the likes of Canek, Dos Caras, Aguayo, Fishman and others. He won a tournament to become the UWA world welterweight champion on December 14, 1975 and got high praise for his work.

In 1981, he moved to the light heavyweight division and held both the UWA and WWF titles, and also made a tecnico turn as part of a huge feud where Los Tres Caballeros (Villano III & El Solitario & Anibal) battled Los Misioneros de la Muerte. During the 80s he had a huge singles feud with Aguayo over the WWF light heavyweight title, a belt recognized mostly in Mexico but also in New Japan Pro Wrestling, but never acknowledged in the WWF. Other major opponents for that title included Gran Hamada, Sangre Chicana, Owen Hart and Pegasus Kid (Chris Benoit).

From the mid-70s and through the 80s, El Toreo, the bullring in Naucalpan, was the biggest drawing wrestling arena in the country. Canek and Aguayo were the kings, and Mil Mascaras and El Solitario were legends who popped houses, but Villano III was right there as one of the biggest drawing cards. There were years where the two weekly shows at the building led to 1 million tickets sold, almost surely a record no arena in history has ever come close to. Keep in mind that today WWE running all over the world, with all its television, may draw 1.5 million paid customers over the course of a year. And the UWA did this before the television boom, by providing technical, fast bloody and flying matches



HISTORIANS

1. Bearcat Wright

2. Los Misioneros

3. Villano III

4. Don Owen

5. Larry Matysik

6. Gedo

7. Jun Akiyama

8. Karloff Lagarde

9. Enrique Torres

10. Akira Taue

11. Sputnik Monroe

12. Stanley Weston

13. Sgt. Slaughter

14. Ted Turner

15. Ultimo Guerrero

16. Kota Ibushi

17. Dr. Wagner Jr.

18. Blanchard/Anderson

19. Junkyard Dog

20. Dave Brown

21. Jim Crockett Sr.

22. Morris Sigel

23. Grand Wizard/Farouk

24. Spyros Arion

25. Killer Karl Kox

26. Ricki Starr

27. Yoshiaki Fujiwara

28. Kenny Omega

29. Lord James Blears

30. James Melby



REPORTERS

1. Jim Crockett Sr.

2. Big Daddy

3. Ultimo Guerrero

4. Stanley Weston

5. Gedo

6. Dr. Wagner Jr.

7. Larry Matysik

8. Jun Akiyama

9. Rollerball Mark Rocco

10. Edge

11. Los Misioneros

12. Jackie Pallo

13. Sgt. Slaughter

14. Ted Turner

15. Sputnik Monroe

16. Bearcat Wright

17. Villano III

18. Kenny Omega

19. Don Owen

20. Johnny Rougeau

21. Akira Taue

22. Tetsuya Naito

23. Anderson/Blanchard

24. Johnny Saint

25. Jim Johnston

26. Enrique Torres

27. Karloff Lagarde

28. James Melby

29. Junkyard Dog

30. Grand Wizard/Farouk



RETIRED WRESTLERS

1. Blanchard/Anderson

2. Kota Ibushi

3. Kenny Omega

4. Don Owen

5. Rocky Johnson

6. Junkyard Dog

7. Jim Crockett Sr.

8. Sputnik Monroe

9. Sgt. Slaughter

10. Kerry Von Erich

11. Los Brazos

12. Karloff Lagarde

13. Los Misioneros

14. Dr. Wagner Jr.

15. Ted Turner

16. Grand Wizard/Farouk

17. Akira Taue

18. Ultimo Guerrero

19. Mario Milano

20. Kendo Nagasaki

21. Johnny Saint

22. Ricki Starr

23. James Melby

24. Rick Martel

25. Archie “Stomper” Gouldie

26. Blackjack Mulligan

27. Dave Brown

28. Bob Caudle

29. Stanley Weston

30. Johnny Rougeau



ACTIVE WRESTLERS

1. Johnny Saint

2. Los Brazos

3. Ultimo Guerrero

4. Dr. Wagner Jr.

5. Kenny Omega

6. Gedo

7. Jim Crockett Sr.

8. Kota Ibushi

9. Los Misioneros

10. Rollerball Mark Rocco

11. Jun Akiyama

12. Tetsuya Naito

13. Don Owen

14. Sputnik Monroe

15. Junkyard Dog

16. Sgt. Slaughter

17. George Kidd

18. Kendo Nagasaki

19. Kojima & Tenzan

20. Matt & Jeff Hardy

21. Randy Orton

22. June Byers

23. Archie “Stomper” Gouldie

24. Blackjack Mulligan

25. Blanchard/Anderson

26. Edge

27. Big Daddy

28. Yoshiaki Fujiwara

29. Johnny Rougeau

30. Bearcat Wright

with an all-star cast of characters and international stars.



Villano III’s career was never the same after the UWA went downhill. He was in AAA from 1995 to 1998, but his body was not the same after 25 years of ring wars. His last real hurrah came when he returned to CMLL in 1999.

On November 22, 1999, Villano III, back as a rudo, beat Atlantis to win the CMLL world light heavyweight title. He followed on Christmas night beating Super Astro for his mask.

On March 17, 2000, at Arena Mexico, Atlantis beat Villano III in a mask vs. mask match. It is generally considered one of the dozen greatest matches in Lucha Libre history and is the only match that took place in Mexico that won the Observer’s Match of the Year award. It was probably the single most emotional Match of the Year winner. Super Luchas magazine ten years later called it the Match of the Decade.

Villano III dropped the light heavyweight title to Shocker on September 7, 2001, and he cut back on his schedule. Due to problems with his knees and eyes, he retired at the 2015 TripleMania match, but the Villanos vs. Psycho Circus match was voted worst match of that year. Villano III did work after that, as late at 2017.

Diaz and wife Luz Velarde, who wrestled as La Infernal, had two sons that are third generation wrestles, El Hijo del Villano III and Villano III Jr. El Hijo del Villano III, 20, works for CMLL and they are already pushing him for a career feud with Atlantis Jr., based on the legacy of the 1999-2000 feud of both men’s fathers. That alone shows how nearly two decades later, in Mexico, the legacy of that mask match. Villano III Jr., 21, who currently holds the AAA mixed tag team title with Lady Maravilla, is one of the company’s craziest daredevils and is expected to be a major star.

Villano III passed away on August 21, 2018 of a cerebral infarction from complications from a stroke several months earlier, at the age of 66.

Dr. Wagner Jr. was born Juan Manuel Gonzalez on August 12, 1965, but is mostly known as Manuel Gonzalez, the same name of his father, the original Dr. Wagner, who was one of Mexico’s biggest stars of the 60s and 70s. He wore the trademark white mask, the same as his father, for much of his career, taking a more colorful mask later before finally losing his mask at TripleMania on August 26, 2017, to Psycho Clown at Arena Ciudad in Mexico City.

In that loss, Wagner Jr. got the biggest single event payoff in Lucha Libre history, $250,000.

He started his career as El Invasor to get experience before his father would let him use the Wagner name.

He never teamed with his father, which was a tragic story. On April 27, 1986, he was scheduled to first use the Dr. Wagner Jr. name, and team with his father in a tag team match against Angel Blanco, his father’s long-time tag team partner who had turned on him, and Angel Blanco Jr. His father was driving to the show with Blanco (Jose Vargas), Solar, Mano Negra and Jungla Negra. One of the tires of the car exploded. Vargas was killed and Manuel Gonzalez Sr. suffered severe spinal damage that put him in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. It’s notable that it was huge news that Wagner and Blanco, in a bitter feud, were driving together, but that never hurt the wrestling business in Mexico.

With their father’s career over, Wagner Jr. and Blanco Jr. took over their feud. Wagner Jr. won his first singles title, the UWA world junior heavyweight championship from Astro de Oro on July 22, 1990. His first CMLL title came when he defeated Pierroth Jr. on April 2, 1993 to win the CMLL light heavyweight title. In a tournament with both UWA and CMLL talent, the UWA duo of Canek & Wagner Jr., became the first CMLL world tag team champions, beating Pierroth Jr. & Vampiro in the finals

Wagner Jr. & Gran Markus Jr. & El Hijo del Gladiador became one of CMLL’s top rudo trios, called La Nueva Ola Blanca, The new White Wave. The original White Wave in the late 60s and through the 70s was Dr . Wagner & Angel Blanco & El Solitario.

Long after the UWA folded, with Canek, the perennial heavyweight champion was still defending the title. He finally dropped it on June 18, 2004, to Wagner, within CMLL. Wagner defended the title for years and never lost it, but the title has not been brought up in a long time.

After the death of his father, CMLL turned him tecnico based on the timing and sympathy. The Atlantis rudo turn came partially because the Mexico City crowds were so behind Wagner as a rudo that they were booing Atlantis heavily. He was also a key figure in the Mistico boom period, both at times teaming with Mistico and at other times feuding with him.

Wagner and L.A. Park had years of bloody brawls, across every promotion in Mexico. For years they teased a mask vs. mask match, looking to have a promoter book a stadium and a big payoff, but nobody would ever go for it.

He and Park would show up in CMLL, crowds would go up, and then they would bleed, brawl in the crowd, and do something to get fired.

Wagner came to AAA in 2009, and defeated Mesias at that year’s TripleMania to win the AAA heavyweight championship. He formed the Wagnermaniacos with his brother, Silver King, Electroshock and Ultimo Gladiator. Eventually the Wagnermaniacos turned on him, making him a tecnico, and Wagner beat Eletroshock at the 2010 TripleMania to win the heavyweight title a second time. Wagner also feuded with his brother, Silver King, over the title. He lost that title to Zorro, and after Jeff Jarrett got the title, he had a feud with Jarrett. He also beat Rob Van Dam to became the first AAA Latin American champion, and feuded with Perro Aguayo Jr. and Park.

Wagner Jr. was also a well known junior heavyweight star in Japan, working for years as a regular with New Japan. His biggest and most famous match was in the finals of the 1998 Best of the Super Juniors tournament, where he lost to Koji Kanemoto.

Wagner had a falling out with AAA in 2013, returned to CMLL in 2015, drew big crowds but only lasted a few weeks before he quit after CMLL had fired Park.

In 2016, Wagner, back in AAA, turned rudo on Rey Misterio Jr. and started his feud with Psycho Clown. Over the past year, he returned and was a tecnico in a feud with Blue Demon Jr. to lead to the main event of this year’s TripleMania on August 3, 2019, also at Arena Ciudad. Demon won the mask vs. hair match, as everyone expected, with Wagner getting his hair extensions cut off. He had announced that if he lost he would retire, but they did an angle where the other tecnicos talked him out of retiring and that was all forgotten.

Wagner Jr. also has two sons wrestling, both from his marriage with former woman wrestling star Rossy Moreno. El Hijo de Dr. Wagner Jr., was doing a feud with him with the son as a heel when Konnan came in as booker and nixed it, feeling he wasn’t ready for that spot. The other, who is a teenager, but big for his age, is known as Galeno del Mal.

“Big Jim” Crockett was the architect of the vast pro wrestling territory that covered the Carolinas and the Virginias. As a childhood fan of Strangler Lewis and Joe Stecher, he made the connections with those in the business. Crockett was promoting concerts in North Carolina and owned both a movie theater and a restaurant, and in 1935, at the age of 25, he opened Eastern States Championship Wrestling.

Crockett built the territory and promoted many other activities other than pro wrestling. Because of his work promoting all kinds of events, he was believed to have been the most wealthy pro wrestling promoter in the country by the 1960s. He once made a failed attempt to take on Vince McMahon Sr., using Argentina Rocca, the biggest star in the Northeast, as his big drawing card after Rocca and McMahon had their falling out. But it was barely a footnote in history.

Crockett always had a rule about being a promoter, and that is to keep talent happy, never play big shot. He made sure to never drive a nicer car than the main event talent, for example. Once tag team wrestling became big in the 1950s, Eastern States Wrestling was known as a tag team territory, built first around the Southern tag team titles and babyfaces George & Bobby Becker.

George Becker was the top star, and booker, and perennial babyface tag team champion with partners like Jack Witzig, Dick Steinborn, Mike Clancy, Enrique Torres and Sandy Scott, before his mid-60s partnership with Johnny Weaver. Almost immediately, Weaver became his top babyface star.

But it was the tag teams who were headliners, from Kinji Shibuya & Mr. Moto, Leo & Chick Garibaldi, Ernie & Emil Dusek, Moto & Duke Keomuka, Fritz & Waldo Von Erich, Larry Hamilton & The Great Bolo, and Maurice & Paul Vachon as the big stars of the 50s.

The 60s brought out that era’s top heel teams like the original Von Brauners, John & Chris Tolos, The Bolos (who later became better known as The Masked Assassins in Georgia), Bronko Lubich & Aldo Bogni, and the two most well-known heel teams in that part of the country, Rip Hawk & Swede Hanson, and the Minnesota Wrecking Crew, first Gene & Lars Anderson, and later adding Ole Anderson to the mix.

They started featuring the Southern title in the mid-60s, for Weaver, who would be the frequent opponent of world champions like Gene Kiniski and Dory Funk Jr., and then the Eastern States title in the early 70s, built around Jerry Brisco.

Under Crockett, the company usually ran in smaller arenas, but with multiple touring crews, often three or four shows a night all over the region. There were the big successes, such as The Kentuckian feud with the Bolos in the 60s, Thanksgiving night every year at the Greensboro Coliseum, a tradition he started in 1961 that ended up copied by numerous other promoters, and the Dory Funk Jr. vs. Jack Brisco series in the early 70s. But they the territory really exploded to become the best per-capita territory in the country, taking the name Mid Atlantic Championship Wrestling, after his death and when his son took over and George Scott came in as booker and started booking more international stars as well as developed some of the best new talent in the business like Ric Flair and Ricky Steamboat.

As Crockett got older, he began grooming son-in-law John Ringley, who married daughter Frances, to run the business. Still, it was a shock when he passed away on April 1, 1973, of a heart attack at the age of 63.

Marriage issues between Ringley and Frances led to his oldest son, Jim Crockett Jr., who was 28 at the time of his father’s death, to takeover the company. A second son, David, worked under the name David Finlay as a prelim wrestler starting in 1971, but only did so for a few years. He became a television personality calling matches in the 70s and 80s when it was acknowledged he was David Crockett.

Crockett was honored after his death. The Southern Hockey League championship trophy is called the Jim Crockett Cup. In 1976, when the family purchased a minor league baseball team and brought it to Charlotte, and was successful enough that Frances Crockett was named Minor League Baseball Executive of the Year, they named their stadium Jim Crockett Memorial Park. In 1986, Jim Jr. created the Crockett Cup, a tag team tournament, since his father’s promotion was built around tag team matches.

We had previously done a look at the career of Bearcat Wright several weeks ago.

THE STORY OF PAUL PONS

By Patric Laprade

Pro wrestling has a long and rich history in France. It is believed to have started around 1830, wrestlers formed troupes and in 1848.

One of them, Jean Exbroyat, who was a solider under Napoleon’s army, created and named a new style called “flat hand wrestling”. That style of wrestling, also called “lutte francaise” (French wrestling) differentiated itself from the other forms in which closed fists were allowed. Exbroyat also created a set of rules, one of them being no holds below the waist, which would become the primary rule of the Greco-Roman style.

The biggest wrestling promoter at the time was an attorney from Lyon called Claude-Eugène Rossignol-Rollin. From 1852 to his death in 1873, he would tour with his troupes and this new style of wrestling. Therefore, in the late 19th and early 20th century, Paris, France became the center of French wrestling. When the style began to travel elsewhere in Europe, the name of that style changed to Greco-Roman wrestling. As a matter of fact, the name Greco-Roman was an invention from the rest of Europe who resented the French.

The very first French wrestler to make a name for himself was André Christol, who started as a teenager in the 1860s. Nicknamed the “French Demon”, Christol wrestled both in Europe and North America. He actually main evented the first show held at the Gilmore’s Garden, before it was renamed Madison Square Garden, in New York City in 1875.

Three years later, like many Frenchmen would do after him, he came to wrestle in Montreal, the biggest French-speaking city in North America. Credited with inventing the French hug, later dubbed the bear hug, the 5 foot 5, 150-pounder, won the World Greco-Roman title in 1875.

Around the time he retired, a young wrestler emerged on the scene.

Paul Pons was born Hyacinthe Pont in 1864 in Sorgues, France, a small town 400 miles south of Paris. His exact birthdate is unsure, as various reports have February 7, February 9, and June 23, 1864.

He grew up in a poor family, in a modest neighborhood. He started working as a blacksmith at the age of 14. He was once offered a job in Avignon, only six miles away from where he lived, but his mother, over-protective, didn’t let him go. Around that same time, he started gaining interest in local feats of strength and wrestling competitions. But again, his mother thought wrestling was fighting, therefore barbaric, and that her son would get hurt, so she didn’t allow him to perform in those, discouraging him every time he mentioned it.

As he got older, he finally entered a tournament in a town not too far from his home. His mother didn’t oppose this time. He was now 6 foot 4, 260 pounds and the years he spent working as a blacksmith helped him to bulk up and get stronger. Of the 17 amateur wrestlers, three, including Pons, had never wrestled before. But the level of competition was weak, and Pons finished second.

A short time after that, he entered and won a tournament, before going to Jonquieres, 10 miles from Sorgues, where the competition was said to be tougher. Before the wrestling event, Pons entered a feats of strength competition and won it. Then, he went on to win the wrestling tournament as well. After the event, he was approached by two men who wanted to train him: Pietro Dalmasso and Mr. Bernard, whose son Felix was also a wrestler.

Dalmasso was a wrestler born in Italy, who lived in France for so long that he was considered a local. In the early 1880s, he was wrestling regularly at the famous venue Les Folies-Bergere, had a very good reputation in the wrestling circles, and was considered by many as the best wrestler in Europe. The pair wanted to bring Pons to Bordeaux, which was one of France’s wrestling strongholds at the time, known to have the best wrestling facilities in the country.

But Pons had mixed feelings about leaving his parents alone, so he refused the offer. Going back to work the next day, he was told the forge he was working at was about to close. Seeing potential in Pons, Dalmasso and Bernard weren’t ready to give up, and they surprisingly showed up the next day in Sorgues to see if he had changed his mind.

He finally accepted the offer, but instead of telling his parents he was going to train to become a wrestler in Bordeaux, which is 300 miles west of Sorgues, he told them he would look for a forge in Marseilles, only 60 miles south of his parents’ home. He joined Dalmasso and Bernard in Avignon and left for Bordeaux, where Dalmasso took Pons under his wing.

His very first pro wrestling match was described by Pons himself, in a French sports magazine called “La Vie au Grand Air” (life in the outdoors) in 1907 and 1908. To celebrate Pons’ 20-year career, the magazine published Pons’ memoirs, 22 articles in total, all about his life and career. The description of his first professional match was very detailed, especially for that time.

In his memoirs, Pons went as far as writing that the outcome of the matches was predetermined, with a time limit, and that wrestlers were playing characters.

About his first match, Pons wrote that he was in Bordeaux in 1888 for promoter Mange-Matin. He was put in the crowd as a plant, with someone from the troupe to give Pons the signal. Mange-Martin, who also acted as the master of ceremony, the ring announcer if you will, was throwing gloves in the crowd to those who asked. When you were asking for a glove, you could be chosen by the master of ceremony and pick the wrestler you wanted to face. Pons was given the signal, raised his hand and challenged a wrestler called Cadit. “A glove for Cadit” said Mange-Martin. Pons put the more experienced wrestler over, explaining that when it was time, Cadit called for the finish. He was paid 2 francs and 80, $16 in today’s money.

The fans in attendance liked what Pons showed, and he got great reviews by wrestlers on the troupe as well. Therefore, the promoter started using him regularly. The following day, he was now one of the wrestlers being challenged by people in the crowd. But like any wrestling in the carnival days, not everyone was a plant. Pons’ opponent was well-known by the promoter and wasn’t an easy one. He told Pons to be very careful, as he would hate to see one of his wrestlers get beaten by that guy. Even if he was inexperienced, Pons won the bout. It’s after that match that Pons considered himself a pro wrestler.

He started training with Dalmasso and Felix Bernard. Bernard was one the Frenchmen who dominated the music halls scene.

Pons continued to wrestle in Bordeaux while working in a wine warehouse. In August 1890 he met a wrestler who was part of a troupe going to Marseille, so Pons joined them. In November, Pons and Auguste Robinet, who was already working for that troupe, left Marseille for Paris by train. Paris is the capital of France and the music halls scene was where the money was.

His first big break came soon after he arrived in Paris, when he wrestled twice against British wrestler Tom Cannon, the first time at the Nouveau Theatre and the second time at the Casino de Paris. Pons won the first encounter. Cannon was considered one of the great champions of his era and held the World Greco-Roman heavyweight title. Twelve years younger, Pons thought highly of Cannon, saying that Cannon had the ability to elevate wrestlers he was working with. It was one of Pons’ most important matches of his career.

Unfortunately for Pons, the timing was off, and the local scene had a down period between 1891 and 1895. Both fans and directors of the music halls lost interest in wrestling. It also marked a transition period between two generations of wrestlers. Pons continued to wrestle in festivals and fairs but wasn’t making much money.

He was getting tired of the road and wanted a more sedentary life. So, he managed to buy a small gym in the Montmartre district that he renamed Gymnase Pons and he started training young guys. His two best-known trainees became Constant Le Boucher (Constant Lavaux) and Raoul le Boucher (Raoul Musson), the latter being only 13 when he debuted with Pons.

It took the Turkish invasion to revive the local scene in France, when wrestler and promoter Joseph Doublier brought to France Kara Osman, Nurullah Hasan, and Yusuf Ismail, as well as Bulgarian wrestler Nikola Petroff. Pons’ feuded with the three Turks over the next several years. In 1895, Pons also made his debut in the U.K. He was billed at times as the World Greco-Roman champion, champion of France and even champion of Great Britain, although none of these claims were valid. Most probably, he was billing himself as such based on his win over Cannon from five years prior.

Pons and Cannon challenged each other in England’s newspapers, with Pons saying he threw Cannon twice in Paris, while Cannon stated that none of it was true. Nevertheless, his name began to travel, as newspapers in New York, Los Angeles and Montreal started to mention his name in their reports. Pons’ name was even more mentioned when Ernest Roeber, who was the Greco-Roman champion at the time, issued a challenge. However, the match didn’t materialize.

At the same time, another Frenchman, Pierre de Coubertain, lobbied to revive the Olympic Games, inspired by the Ancient Olympic Games in Greece. In the inaugural edition of the modern Olympics in 1896, Greco-Roman wrestling was one of the nine sports selected. Stunningly, France, although inventing the genre, didn’t have one single wrestler in the competition. Even more shocking, wrestling wasn’t part of the 1900 Olympics in Paris.

Coubertain believed the Ancient Olympics were all about amateurs competing, thus, not allowing professional into the mix. Therefore, Pons and his peers could not participate in it. That said, the 1900 Olympics were held during the Universal Exposition in Paris, where Pons wrestled against Petroff at the in a match fans still remembered years later. In the 1904 Olympics, wrestling came back for good, as freestyle wrestling and weight classes were added. It would still take the 1906 Intercalated Olympics in Greece to see France’s first wrestlers entered the competition. Nevertheless, in the following years, both pro wrestling and the Olympics contributed to make wrestling more popular in France and in Europe.

Two years after the first Olympics, another tournament was created, one that changed the landscape of professional wrestling in Europe.

In 1898, Andre de Lucenski, the director of "Le Journal des Sports", a sports newspaper, created the first World Greco-Roman Heavyweight Championship tournament at the Casino de Paris. At the time, the World Greco-Roman title was mostly defended in North America. Also, Lucenski’s newspaper was in competition with another sports newspaper, Le Vélo, and in order to spike interest for his publication, Lucenski went to Pons’ gym and told him about his idea to have a huge tournament at the Casino de Paris and to have Pons as the first wrestling champion of France.

Pons happily accepted. Over 30 wrestlers participated in the 10-day tournament, such as Favouet, Maurice Gambier, Robinet, and Constant le Boucher. In the tournament final, on December 27, 1898, Pons defeated Polish wrestler Ladislaus Pytlasinski. The event was so successful that they sold out the venue and turned away fans.

While it wasn’t the first tournament held in France or in Europe for that matter, it was the first one with that much publicity behind it and held in such a high-quality venue.

That marked the beginning of Pons’ legacy.

He wrote that the publicity made by the press over his championship solidified his reputation and changed his status. He started getting more offers to wrestle internationally and was ultimately forced to sell his gym because he didn’t have time for it anymore.

The year 1898 was his real first big one. Not only did he win the tournament in December, but he had wrestled in Sweden and Russia earlier that year. In fact, in April, he wrestled against a young George Hackenschmidt in St. Petersburg, in what was said to be Hack’s first notable match. He also defeated Ivan Poddubny in Russia as well. Pons had also wrestled in England, where he drew one of the biggest wrestling attendances of the year. On July 30 in Liverpool, a match against his long-time foe Tom Cannon drew 7,000 fans. Of the data available from that era, it was the biggest wrestling crowd in Europe that year, the third largest in the world. Only the Terrible Turk (Yusuf Ismail) drew more than that, in New York against Ernest Roeber and in Chicago against Evan “Strangler” Lewis.

The “Journal des Sports” tournament became the precursor of what the European wrestling scene would look like for the next two decades. During those years, the stages of the Montesquieu Theater, Casino de Paris, the Apollo, the Hippodrome and Les Follies-Bergère in France were the settings for some of the major European tournaments, featuring the greatest stars of the Greco-Roman wrestling world. Belgium, Italy, Russia, Poland, and Germany all had tournaments in 1899, and many more would in the following years. Pons won the one held in Italy. On October 1, 1899 Pons was defeated in Copenhagen, Denmark, by local champion Magnus Bech-Olsen. But more important than the defeat, the best-of-three-falls match, held at the Charlottenlund racecourse, drew a crowd between 10,000 and 12,000 fans, by far, the biggest crowd in wrestling that year.

A year after the biggest win of his career, Pons wasn’t part of the 1899 edition of the tournament in Paris held by “Le Journal des Sports”, nursing a leg injury. The tournament was won by Turkey’s Kara Ahmed, who was considered the best Greco-Roman wrestler among Turkish wrestlers. George Hackenschmidt was part of that tournament, as well as Pons’ trainer, Pietro Dalmasso.

A few days after Ahmed was proclaimed World Champion in Paris, a group of wrestlers, including Pons, healed from his injury, challenged Ahmed for the World Championship. “Le Journal des Sports” decided to start a second tournament on December 12 at Les Folies-Bergere. However, after several matches between Pons and Ahmed ended in draws, the tournament was stopped and cancelled, without any winner coming out of it.

The New York Times reported that they “have been wrestling regularly for several hours every day for the past week without arriving at any final result, and the public is beginning to see that there is a good deal of “chiqué”, to use an appropriate French slang word, in these international contests.” “Chiqué” means fake and was the word Pons used in his articles to talk about the behind-the-scenes aspect of pro wrestling.

At the same time, a third tournament was organized by “Le Journal des Sports”. That one was a five-day tournament starting on Christmas’ Eve at the Casino de Paris and included Pons, Pytlasinski, and Ahmed among others. Pons won that one.

At the end of 1899, it was reported that both Pons and Olsen would travel to North America the following year, to challenge who the Americans considered as the real World Greco-Roman champion, Ernest Roeber. However, only Olsen ended up going. On March 21, 1900, Olsen defeated Roeber in front of 12,000 fans at the Madison Square Garden in New York City to claim the title. Roeber was the champion since 1891 when he was awarded the title by William Muldoon. He had lost to Evan Lewis in 1893, in a mixed-style match, which saw Lewis solidifying his Catch-as-catch can title. Catch-as-catch can was becoming the new hip style of wrestling in North America, as opposed to Greco-Roman. But Roeber continued to be billed as Greco-Roman champion, and Olsen was the first one to take away that claim. The two had a rematch in Denmark in September 1900, which Roeber won to get the title back.

The new century brought even more tournaments. At the beginning of the year, Pons finished second in Paris behind Ahmed. In May, he won one in Germany. Then, on July 25, he defeated Ahmed in Vienna, Austria, to win a tournament that also featured Pytlasinski and Hackenschmidt. The following month, Pons finished second to Ahmed in Hamburg, Germany, in what would be his last European tournament until May 1901.

In the meantime, Hackenschmidt was beginning to be a household name in Europe, winning four tournaments before the 1900 ended. In December, the third edition of the big tournament in Paris was won by Laurent le Beaucairois, while Constant le Boucher, Pons’ trainee, finished second.

Pons didn’t attend that tournament because after a year of rumors, he had finally arrived in the United States in October 1900. He was accompanied by Emile Regnier, a former wrestler, who had worked in the United States before, who served as his manager and trainer. Pons was publicized a lot throughout the country, being dubbed “The Colossal”, “The European Giant” and more frequently “The French Giant”. He had a few warm-up bouts before finally getting a match against Ernest Roeber. The match was scheduled for February 6, 1901, at the Garden in New York.

It was the first wrestling match at the Garden since the Roeber-Olsen match of March 1900. Boxers Terry McGovern and John L. Sullivan, the latter who was considered the first lineal heavyweight boxing champion, served as timekeepers, while British boxer Charley White was the referee. A crowd of 7,000 people saw the match being stopped after a little over 60 minutes by the police inspector. The reason given was that it couldn’t go past midnight. An educated guess would be that they were building to a rematch, but that match never happened. Nevertheless, the match, held in a roped ring, was said to be very good. It was also the second biggest crowd of the year behind the match between Tom Jenkins and Tom Sharkey in Cleveland.

While in North America, Pons trained boxing great James J. Jefferies. In the story published, it was said that Jefferies wanted to learn how to wrestle. Either it was just a good old publicity stunt or it was a serious thing, we’ll never know, but professional boxing had been banned in Chicago a few weeks before, so perhaps there was some truth to it. The presence of McGovern, Sullivan, White, and Jefferies made Pons say years later that the Americans were more into boxing than wrestling.

Being from France, a stop had to be made in Montreal. Therefore, on March 11, Pons wrestled for the first time at Sohmer Park against George Little (Dan McLeod). In front of 4,000 spectators, Pons got defeated in a handicap match. Although he wasn’t pinned, he had agreed to throw his opponent five times in an hour but failed to do it once. Nevertheless, up to that point, it was the biggest wresting crowd in the history of Montreal. It would take Frank Gotch in 1904 to do bigger numbers.

The Montreal Gazette even wrote that it was one of the best wrestling matches ever held in Montreal. Strongmen Louis Cyr and giant Edouard Beaupre were among the thousands of fans in attendance. Two weeks later, they wrestled each other in the same venue, making Beaupre, at more than 8 feet, the tallest wrestler ever. Unable to have another match with Roeber, Pons left for France on March 15. Pons was disappointed and discouraged by the low payoffs he received in North America. Although it was rumored several times, he would never be back. Roeber retired as the World Greco-Roman champion on November 22, 1901. The title never had the same importance after that.

Upon returning to Europe, Pons finished third in a tournament won by Hackenschmidt in Vienna in May 1901. Pons lost against the “Russian Lion” in Berlin, Germany on July 3, finishing in second place. Pons then participated in smaller events throughout France, still winning six consecutive tournaments. His winning streak continued in Luxembourg in October. When the annual tournament started in December, Pons, for some reasons, continued his journey into France, wrestling in three other tournaments. Hackenschmidt benefitted from that, winning the biggest tournament in France for the first time, by defeating Constant le Boucher, in a match that also made Le Boucher famous in France.

Pons continued his domination throughout France in 1902. He also helped trained a young Emile Maupas, before the latter came to Montreal. After his career was over, Maupas became one of the best trainers in Quebec, training among others the greatest wrestler in the history of the province, Yvon Robert. In December, Pons won a big tournament held at Les Folies-Bergere called the Gold Belt tournament, and promoted by his old friend Auguste Robinet. The belt, who was in fact in silver, was sponsored by Dubonnet, a popular wine-based aperitif.

Although most newspapers reported that Pons came back to the United States in 1903, it was in fact French-Canadian wrestler Antoine Gonthier, working under the name of Carl Pons. In 1903, Pons continued to dominate in France. He was not traveling as much, but wrestled in Switzerland near the end of the year. Pons won for the second straight year the Gold Belt tournament in Paris in December. That tournament had officially replaced the “Journal des Sports” tournament. Pons finished ahead of Jess Pedersen, who had won a big tournament at the Casino de Paris during the summer. In 1904, he started to travel again, winning tournaments in Switzerland and Belgium, before finishing second in St. Petersburg, Russia in May, behind Ivan Poddubny. In December, he won the Gold Belt tournament for the third time.

Now 40 years old, Pons defeated his former student Raoul le Boucher to win the tournament one last time. Le Boucher spent the next year wrestling Pons, even going to Brazil with him, before he died from a flu in Nice, France, on February 13, 1907. He was only 24. Pons thought very highly of his protégé and thought he would have become of the greats if he hadn’t died in his prime.

Between 1904 and the spring of 1907, Pons traveled a lot in Brazil and stayed there for several months at the time, helping to develop wrestling in the country. When he was back in Europe, he competed and usually won the tournaments he was in, whether it was in France, Italy, Belgium, Romania or Portugal.

When he came back home for good in 1907, he won that year’s big December tournament in Paris (not called Gold belt anymore). The final between Pons and German champion and friend of Hackenschmidt, Jakob Koch, drew thousands and thousands of fans. Both wrestlers got a standing ovation at the end of the match. It was the last time Pons would win that tournament, almost 19 years after winning his first one. In 1908, he finished second to Jess Pedersen.

His last year with a busy schedule was in 1909, as Pons wrestled in France, Switzerland and Italy. His last tournament win happened that year, in Milan, Italy. In 1910, now 46 years old, he slowed down his pace. He kept working, but not because he needed the money. Pons had made enough money in his career, as well as some real estate investment. He continued because he had a true passion for wrestling.

He went back to South America, this time in Buenos Aires in Argentina, where he wrestled and lost against Constant le Marin (Henri Herd), 20 years his junior, in front of a reported crowd of 35,000 fans. That number was never proven though. Nevertheless, it was one of the most important matches in Le Marin’s career.

Born in Belgium, Herd was inspired by Pons’ trainee and countryman Constant le Boucher, who was also part of that tour, and that’s why he chose that name. Pons last tournament was, rightfully so, the big December tournament at the Casino de Paris. In the final, on December 4, he got defeated against Pedersen, his main opponent of the last two years.

While he never went back to North America, his name was often mentioned in newspapers, especially to establish the credibility of another wrestler. It still meant something if you had beaten the French champion Paul Pons.

That said, Pons name was also mentioned for a whole other reason: his death, or should we say, his fake death. In 1905, it was reported that Pons had died in Berlin. Pons, well alive, was quoted saying he was surprised by those reports. Seven years later, in 1912, he was again mistakenly reported dead, this time in Paris, following an operation for his appendicitis.

In reality, he had retired in the country, in the town of Agen, France. After he got married in 1901, he had bought a small house there.

In 1912, he published a 370-page book on the history of pro wrestling, including how to apply wrestling holds as well as wrestler profiles. He was somewhat critical of where wrestling was compared to his heyday. He was very high on Hackenschmidt, Poddubny, Pedersen and Frenchman Raoul le Boucher. He thought wrestlers had gained a lot from performing in music halls, but that the sport had lost a lot.

He loved haunting and fishing and that’s why he chose Agen, lost in the country and next to a river. One day, on April 14 (or April 13, depending on which report you read), he was gone fishing with his boat on the Garonne river, close to his home. Pons caught his fishing net on a rock and it dragged him from the boat. Even if he was an expert swimmer, he had tied the cord attached to the net to his wrist and even if he tried to escape, the current was too strong that day.

He was not able to free himself and drowned. He was 50 or 51 years old, depending on his birthdate. In the different obituaries written about him, the match mentioned the most was the 1898 tournament win in Paris.

Pons retired having won over 40 tournaments throughout Europe between 1898 and 1909. He won the December Paris tournament a record of six times. After his retirement, Greco-Roman tournament kept happening sporadically in France and through Europe until the end of the decade. However, by the early 1920’s, the World War and the resulting high taxes almost killed wrestling as a major sport in Paris. With Pons’ death in 1915, pro wrestling in France, more so the Greco-Roman style, pretty much suffered the same fate.

It took France first wresting Olympic gold medalists to revive pro wrestling, or catch as they started calling it, in France in 1933, when Henri Deglane came back home after working for many years in North America. When it did, the press made sure to mention that wrestling was becoming as popular as it once was when the late great Paul Pons was dominating the scene.

Pons was considered by many as the greatest Greco-Roman wrestler at the end of the 19th century. But more importantly, he was France first influential wrestler. Between 1898 and 1901, he was among the best drawing cards in pro wrestling, drawing thousands of fans in France at venues such as the Casino de Paris, but also abroad, like in England, Denmark, United States, and Canada.

And although he didn’t have the impact of a George Hackenschmidt in North America, he did fine in his two matches there.

In his native France, he gets some recognition still to this day. In 1928, a plate was installed in front of the house where he was born in Sorgues, stating that Paul Pons, world wrestling champion and owner of the Gold belt, was born there. Every year, the Paul-Pons trophy is awarded to the best sports organization in Sorgues. And finally, in 2003, more than a hundred years after his wrestling debut, he was voted in the France sports hall of fame, capping a tremendous career.

With the files of Jimmy Wheeler, Phil Lions, and Ronald Grobpietsch

New Japan Pro Wrestling announced the complete lineup for both its Tokyo Dome shows after the completion of the tag team tournament over the weekend.

In a sense, the shows were what was expected on top. But as far as depth, there is some disappointment in the sense that many of the biggest stars, like Hiroshi Tanahashi, Chris Jericho, Will Ospreay, Shingo Takagi, Evil, Tomohiro Ishii, Minoru Suzuki, Sho and Yoh are only on one show. Ospreay, Takagi and Ishii were three of the best in-ring performers in the world of 2019 and this would be their biggest showcase events and two of the three are only in multi-man filler matches, as are Evil and Suzuki. They had appeared to be building Suzuki vs. Takagi, but it’s possible that’s being saved for one of the big shows early in the year.

On the flip side, with fewer matches, it should be different from last year. Last year, with 13 matches in five hours, the show still felt rushed with only three matches getting more than 15:00. So while there will be less diversity of talent and far less total people booked, the big matches will likely have more time to be better, particularly on night two.

The 1/4 show starts at 5 p.m. local time, which means 3 a.m. on a Saturday morning on the East Coast. The 1/5 show starts at 3 p.m. on a Sunday afternoon, meaning 1 a.m. late Saturday night on the East Coast and 10 p.m. on the West Coast. One would expect the shows to be timed out at between four and five hours, particularly Sunday as the idea of it ending at 7 p.m. sounds early.

The 1/4 show opens with a Jushin Liger legend match, as Liger teams with Tatsumi Fujinami, 66, who was Liger’s childhood hero and headlined the Dome many times, as well as Great Sasuke & Tiger Mask, to face Naoki Sano, Liger’s first major rival, Shinjiro Otani & Tatsuhito Takaiwa & Ryusuke Taguchi. Otani and Takaiwa were regular partners with Liger years ago in the New Japan junior division. El Samurai, Liger’s regular tag team partner in the 90s, will be in his corner, while Kuniaki Kobayashi, who was Liger’s opponent at the 1989 Tokyo Dome show when Liger made his debut under the name, will be in the Sano corner.

From there, it’s Evil & Sanada & Takagi & Bushi vs. Suzuki & Zack

Sabre Jr. & Taichi & Desperado; Hirooki Goto & Ishii & Yoshi-Hashi & Toru Yano vs. KENTA & Bad Luck Fale & Yujiro Takahashi & Chase Owens, Tama Tonga & Tanga Loa defend the IWGP tag team titles against tournament winners Juice Robinson & David Finlay, a Texas death match for the U.S. title with Lance Archer vs. Jon Moxley, Ospreay vs. Hiromu Takahashi for the IWGP jr. title, Jay White vs. Tetsuya Naito for the IC title and Kazuchika Okada vs. Kota Ibushi for the IWGP title.

What the Texas death match rules will be are unknown. It is believed this is the first Texas death match in New Japan, and the only major one I can recall in the top Japanese promotion would date back to the early years of All Japan and Giant Baba vs. Fritz Von Erich.

The 1/5 show opens with Liger’s final match, teaming with Sano against Ryu Lee (formerly Dragon Lee) & Hiromu Takahashi. Yoshiaki Fujiwara will be in Liger’s corner. Originally this was announced as a Liger singles match against a major star he had never had a singles match with previously.

On the 12/8 show in Hiroshima, after Liger’s last match in his home city, a video played of Lee, saying his name was now Ryu Lee. Ryu does mean Dragon in Japanese, but that’s not the reason he took the name. When he was growing up, he and his older brother, Mistico loved The Street Fighter videogame. Mistico’s favorite character was Ken and Lee’s was Ryu.

Lee signed a one-year contract with New Japan after meeting with Naoki Sugabayashi and Tiger Hattori in secret when they were in Mexico. CMLL wasn’t aware of the meeting or that Lee was signed. CMLL has started informal talks about bringing Rush, Lee and Bestia del Ring back, but it hasn’t gone anywhere since Rush and Lee have no emotional ties to the people now running CMLL and both have good contracts elsewhere so they don’t need CMLL, and can work as much as they want for AAA and have more television exposure in Mexico.

Liger accepted the match, but then added he would like Takahashi in, so it sounded like a three-way. But then it turned into a tag. There is the symbolism, Liger team with Sano, who had he his first real Match of the Year contenders with when he first broke out as the best junior heavyweight in the world, representing the early 90s, against modern career rivals in Lee & Takahashi. But there is a natural Lee vs. Takahashi storyline since Lee broke Takahashi’s neck at the Cow Palace and they were already rivals. I see the concept of teaming them, but Sano is 54, and he’s not a Jushin Liger 54 but a real 54, and will take the match down a lot.

From there it’s Taiji Ishimori & El Phantasmo defending the IWGP jr. tag titles against tournament winners Sho & Yoh. Sabre Jr. defends the British heavyweight title against Sanada. The Archer/Moxley winner defends the U.S. title against Robinson. KENTA defends the Never Open weight title against Goto. There was no announcement regarding Katsuyori Shibata and if he will be in Goto’s corner. Shibata has not been cleared and the angle they shot with Shibata was designed not for KENTA vs. Shibata, but to make KENTA into a strong heel. Goto is KENTA’s natural opponent, not just by beating him in a tag match a few weeks ago, but because Goto and Shibata were best friends as kids when they were on the same high school wrestling team, and Shibata, whose father worked for New Japan, was able to get Goto’s foot in the door with New Japan.

The loser of the two major singles title matches the night before will have a singles match. The winner is expected to go for the double championship soon, the most likely date being 2/9 at Osaka Jo Hall.

After that is Jericho vs. Tanahashi, and the main event with the singles match winners from the night before to crown the first ever double IWGP & IC champion.

New Japan has three more dates this year, running 12/19, 12/20 and 12/21 at Korakuen Hall. Traditionally, you get the Super tag team match, such as last year with Okada & Ospreay vs. Tanahashi & Ibushi. But we don’t have quite that this year, with the dates built on 12/19 around Hiromu Takahashi’s first match back, and 12/21 as Liger’s last Korakuen Hall match. The closest approximation is a first-ever Tanahashi & Ibushi vs. Naito & Takagi match on 12/19.

All three shows are the usual 4:30 a.m. Eastern time.

12/19 has Liger & Tiger Mask & Yota Tsuji & Yuya Uemura vs. Togi Makabe & Tomoaki Honma & Taguchi & Rocky Romero, Robinson & Finlay & Toa Henare vs. Fale & Tonga & Loa, Evil & Sanada vs. Sabre Jr.& Taichi, Goto & Ishii & Sho & Yoh vs. KENTA & Yujiro Takahashi & Ishimori & Phantasmo, Tanahashi & Ibushi vs. Naito & Takagi, Okada & Yoshi-Hashi vs. White & Owens and Hiromu Takahashi & Bushi vs. Ospreay & Robbie Eagles.

12/20 has Henare vs. Tsuji, Makabe & Honma & Uemura vs. Fale & Ishimori & Phantasmo, Liger & Sho & Yoh vs. Tiger Mask & Taguchi & Romero, Sanada & Takagi vs. Sabre Jr. & Taichi, Goto & Ishii & Robinson & Finlay vs. KENTA & Yujiro Takahashi & Tonga & Loa, Tanahashi & Ibushi vs. White & Owens and Okada & Yoshi-Hashi & Ospreay & Eagles vs. Naito & Evil & Hiromu Takahashi & Bushi.

The final show has Makabe & Tiger Mask & Uemura vs. Honma & Taguchi & Tsuji, Sho & Yoh & Eagles vs. Yujiro Takahashi & Ishimori & Phantasmo, Sanada & Bushi vs. Sabre Jr. & Taichi, Goto & Robinson & Finlay Henare vs. KENTA & Fale & Tonga & Loa, Ospreay & Ishii vs. Evil & Hiromu Takahashi, Naito & Takagi vs. White & Owens and in Liger’s last ever match at Korakuen Hall, he teams with Tanahashi & Ibushi vs. Okada & Yoshi-Hashi & Romero.

Kazuchika Okada, 32, captured both of the major awards, one as expected, the other a surprise, in the 2019 Tokyo Sports awards.

The balloting of writers and photographers, always highly political, saw Okada, 32 become the fifth person to win four MVP awards. Okada had previously won in 2012, 2013 and 2015.

He joins Antonio Inoki (1974, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1980, 1981), Genichiro Tenryu (1986, 1987, 1988, 1993), Keiji Muto (1995,1999, 2001, 2008) and Hiroshi Tanahashi (2009, 2011, 2014, 2018) if the four-time winners club.

The five nominees were Okada, Ibushi, Ospreay, White and Kento Miyahara, with the 22 votes breaking down as 15 for Okada, four for Miyahara and three for Ibushi.

Okada’s October 14 IWGP title defense against Sanada at Sumo Hall was named match of the year. One of the keys is that the match always has to involve big names and it’s usually based on name value and significance, although work rate is thrown in. How this match figured in was the big question. Okada and Sanada wrestled several times and that was the weakest match. There were probably 50 matches this year in Japan that were better, got over better, and even higher profile, including many in the G-1 tournament, Tanahashi vs. Kenny Omega as the Tokyo Dome main event (there are the obvious political reasons why that couldn’t win) and the Will Ospreay vs. Shingo Takagi Best of the Super Juniors tournament winner.

Even if it had to be an Okada match, given this makes six straight years he’s won and seventh in the last eight (2012 with Tanahashi, 2014 with Shinsuke Nakamura, 2015 with Tenryu, 2016 with Naomichi Marufuji and 2017 and 2018 with Omega, the only year he missed winning was 2013 which was won by the Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Kota Ibushi match), there are many others such as bouts with Ibushi, Tanahashi, Jay White, other bouts with Sanada and Ospreay that were better and more impactful based on quality, significance and location. Okada’s seven wins in this category puts him behind Tenryu with nine and Kenta Kobashi with eight Other multiple winners were Jumbo Tsuruta with seven, Mitsuharu Misawa with five, Inoki with four, Giant Baba with four, Riki Choshu and Omega with three.

Suwama, 43, & Shuji Ishikawa, 44, the Violent Giants, coming off winning the All Japan tag team tournament, won their third straight Best Tag Team of the year award.

Kento Miyahara, 30, the Triple Crown champion from All Japan, won the Most Outstanding Wrestler for the second time, having previously won in 2016. This award is really for the MVP outside of New Japan and usually goes to second place in that voting.

Kaito Kiyomiya, 23, the GHC champion from Pro Wrestling NOAH, won the Fighting Spirit Award. Shingo Takagi was also under consideration.

Kota Ibushi, 37, won for Best Technique. Others considered were Ospreay, Sanada, Ben K, Daichi Hashimoto and Konosuke Takeshita.

Strong Machine J, the son of Junji Hirata, the original Super Strong Machine, part of Dragon Gate’s trios champions, the Strong Machines, captured the Rookie of the Year award.

Mayu Iwatani, 26, of Stardom, was the Women’s pro wrestling MVP.

Atsushi Aoki, who passed away on 6/3 after a motorcycle accident at the age of 41, was given a Lifetime Achievement Award. Aoki was a high school national champion in 2000, and an open national champion in 2005, and Wrestling Observer Rookie of the Year in 2006. He held the All Japan world jr. championship four times and was champion at the time of his death.

WWE’s final PPV of the year, Tables, Ladders and Chairs, which takes place on 12/15 at the Target Center in Minneapolis, has six matches official and four more expected to be announced later this week.

In a show where nothing was announced until 11 days out, neither the Universal, WWE, U.S., IC, or either women’s championship are on the show.

Brock Lesnar, the WWE champion, isn’t booked for a title defense until the Royal Rumble at this point. Bray Wyatt as The Fiend, was to defend against Daniel Bryan, but that’s been delayed for storyline reasons. The idea is to spend more time and deepen the story before doing the Fiend vs. Bryan rematch. Wyatt, not as The Fiend, is scheduled for a non-title match with The Miz.

Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Braun Strowman for the IC title was on the card last week. Presumably the angle was to be shot on the 12/5 Smackdown show, but Strowman was not medically cleared. The WWE’s official word was that it was a minor hip injury but that he was expected to be cleared shortly. Because of that, it is unknown whether an angle will be shot on 12/12 or if this will be added to the show.

The Smackdown women’s title with Bayley vs. Lacey Evans is also expected to be added to the show as it was on the scheduled lineup last week. There was also an angle involving the two on the 12/5 show, but the match hasn’t been announced yet.

Raw women’s champion Becky Lynch will be a challenger in a women’s tag team title match, teaming with Charlotte Flair to face Asuka & Kairi Sane. That will be one of two TLC matches on the show.

The most pushed match thus far, also a TLC match, has Roman Reigns vs. King Corbin.

Other matches officially announced at press time were Rusev vs. Bobby Lashley in a tables match, New Day vs. The Revival for the Smackdown tag team titles and Aleister Black vs. Buddy Murphy.

The Revival are replacing the originally planned Robert Roode & Dolph Ziggler. We’re not sure if this was switched because of Roode’s drug test failure and suspension or not. Last week, before the suspension was announced, it was listed on the schedule but even then we were told that it could change.

There was a tease for Viking Raiders vs. Luke Gallows & Karl Anderson for the Raw tag titles already. The match was on the schedule for the show last week, teased on Raw, and indications we were given is that it is still on the card. What has been announced is the Viking Raiders doing an open challenge for the titles, but with that match not a secret and teased, who knows if they will go with the original plans. A.J. Styles vs. Randy Orton, which also shot an angle on Raw on 12/9, was on last week’s lineup and logically it should be added.

Seth Rollins vs. Kevin Owens had an angle shot on Raw, and was a possibility last week. As of 12/10, it was not scheduled and at that point in time it was not expected to be added either. Rollins suffered a broken little finger in a 12/8 house show match with Erick Rowan, so he did not wrestle on Raw the next day. The injury isn’t serious and he was expected to be cleared by Sunday. But they shot an angle where Owens was beaten down by Rollins and AOP and he went out in an ambulance, so returning six days later seems premature. As far as an angle on the show or on Raw the next night, that would seem likely.

The advance for the show isn’t strong by current standards. Most of the upper deck, except sections in front of the hard camera, aren’t being sold. There are even sections in the lower bowl not being sold. There are 560 tickets on the secondary market with a $43.48 get-in price.

With Christmas off, both AEW and NXT are gearing for major final shows of 2019, with key matches on the 12/18 shows.

AEW, running out of Corpus Christi, is going with the 10:00 challenge where Chris Jericho has to beat Jungle Boy in less than 10:00 as the most pushed match. In addition, Frankie Kazarian & Scorpio Sky defend the tag titles against The Young Bucks. It’s probably time to get the belts on The Young Bucks. They have so many challengers around, including Pentagon Jr. & Rey Fenix, who beat them multiple times including for the AAA tag titles and in a rematch under TLC rules; Private Party, who beat them in the first round of the tournament, and Ortiz & Santana, who they have split matches with. The third match is Pentagon Jr.& Fenix vs. Kenny Omega & Adam Page, and they look like they are doing a slow tease of a feud between the latter two. There is always the chance of Omega & Page winning, and thus getting a title match, and then the split takes place in the title match. Britt Baker vs. Kris Statlander was also announced.

NXT has really the biggest male and female match they can deliver as far as ratings go. Adam Cole vs. Finn Balor for the NXT title matches the most well-known wrestler on the roster with the long-time champion. Shayna Baszler vs. Rhea Ripley is the biggest women’s title match they can put together, since Ripley has gotten a gigantic push. There have been rumors for some time of Baszler losing to Ripley and moving to the main roster for a feud with Becky Lynch, and what happened leading to Survivor Series and at Survivor Series certainly build that. The only question regards if they want to move top stars off NXT for the main roster, because that tells people NXT is lesser, a message they’ve been trying to tell the opposite of. Survivor Series itself was booked to tell people the opposite. But Baszler moving to the main roster has been planned for some time.

The WWE announced early its main eventers for the 2020 Class of the Hall of Fame, as well as officially confirmed the date.

As expected, the Hall of Fame ceremony will be on 4/2 at the Amalie Arena in Tampa, the Thursday of WrestleMania week. With Smackdown on Friday and Takeover on Saturday, the two choices were either Thursday or the following Tuesday, and of the two choices, Thursday was clearly the better date.

It will be part of six straight nights of WWE action in the area that starts on 4/1 with the live NXT show. It is not known if that will be at Full Sail University, or they will move to a larger building closer to Tampa since the ticket demand for the show will be so high.

Announced are Dave Bautista, 50, known as Batista, along with the NWO, in this case only the lead original foursome of Hulk Hogan, 66, Scott Hall, 61, Kevin Nash, 60, and Sean Waltman, 47 as over the years there were dozens of members.

Bautista spent his entire career with WWE. He wasn't picked up after a WCW tryout, which, given his look, tells you about their talent judgment, as he was basically given the let’s bully and run this big bodybuilder off routine.

Originally trained by Afa of the Wild Samoans, he debuted on October 30, 1999, and because of his size and look, was signed by WWF a few months later and sent to Louisville. Bautista was one of the four cornerstones of that era of OVW which developed arguably the four biggest stars of the next era at the same time, Bautista, John Cena, Randy Orton and Brock Lesnar.

He became an immediate favorite of Jim Cornette, who booked him as the monster Leviathan, billing him as 6-foot-8 and 340 pounds. Obviously that was quite the exaggeration. Batista is probably closer to 6-foot-3, but was always billed much larger. He was a gigantic bodybuilder type early he was limited in the ring, but later slimmed down and turned into a solid wrestler.

As it turned out, his WWE run was completely different from his Leviathan character, and he heavily credited Fit Finlay for his success and was later critical of OVW for making him a one-dimensional character that had nothing to do with what was coming up later for him.

After a failed debut as Deacon Batista in May 2002, as the sidekick for Devon (of the Dudleys) in a failed attempt to split up the team and play a minister, he was brought into Evolution at the start of 2003.

He became "The Animal" Batista, handpicked to be part of the group with Ric Flair, HHH and Orton. Mark Jindrak was planned to be in the group at first, at one point instead of Batista, but plans changed. Batista suffered his first torn triceps which led to surgery. He then tore it a second time while attempting to recover and didn’t return until October.

Given the injury, the actual time of Evolution together was short. Orton was already broken off after winning the WWF title from Chris Benoit at SummerSlam 2004. The tease for Batista going face started at the 2005 Royal Rumble.

The concept of Evolution was that Flair was a legend from the prior generation, HHH was a current legend, and Batista and Orton were groomed to carry the company in the future.

Batista always credited Flair and HHH over that period as his mentors. Batista and HHH did the turn angle with Batista going face. Batista was far more successful than Orton, and really, as far as a personal money drawing pro wrestling program, the Batista vs. HHH program was the most successful with the exception of John Cena vs. The Rock, and that was more due to two iconic figures and Rock being a top movie star coming out of retirement.

The Batista vs. HHH WrestleMania match drew what was at the time the most money of any pro wrestling event in history up to that point in time, and is still the fourth biggest PPV event in pro wrestling history, doing 1,090,000 total buys. Because of how the business has changed, as far as PPV goes, it would be the fourth biggest of all-time, and almost surely will always be the fourth biggest.

The other three were not as much drawn by pro wrestling angles as much as personalities, so this would have to be called the most successful pro wrestling angle dating back at least the past 18 years and one of the biggest of all-time.

Batista once told us the funny part is that the WWE writers, after the original turn, had booked he and HHH immediately for matches and HHH, who had power, was able to get it overturned, convincing Vince McMahon that they build the first match for months for WrestleMania. Had they have had a prior match or matches, the WrestleMania number wouldn’t have been close to as big. Batista won the WWE title for the first time at the April 3, 2005, WrestleMania.

The only shows historically that were bigger were the two Cena vs. The Rock matches, and the show that was built around either Vince McMahon or Donald Trump getting their heads shaved in the Battle of the Billionaires.

For several years, it was Batista and John Cena who were the top full-time stars, carrying their respective brands. Batista was clearly the bigger star at first, but Cena surpassed him.

Aside from periods out due to injury, Batista remained in that spot until retiring at first in May, 2010, saying he was unhappy with the direction of the company.

While he lived large and was making millions as a top WWE star, he gave it up for a very uncertain future as an actor. He was hardly expected to make it there and the feeling was he would come back.

He did a comeback run at the end of 2013, with the idea he would be a top babyface and beat Orton for the WWE title at WrestleMania. That was the year Daniel Bryan got hot and C.M. Punk walked out. Bryan was originally to wrestle Sheamus underneath and Punk was to wrestle HHH. The fans completely rejected Batista as a face, similar to Roman Reigns, largely because they wanted Bryan in that spot. This led to the Bryan WrestleMania where he first beat HHH to get in the title match, and then won the three-way over Batista and Orton to become champion. Batista left two months after WrestleMania of 2014.

But the Drax the Destroyer character in the 2014 Guardians of the Galaxy movie made his career and he was nominated for a number of Best Ensemble cast awards at various film festivals for the role. After that, he’s gotten regular work including appearing as Drax in Guardians of the Galaxy 2, Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: End Game, all gigantic hits.

There were teases of returns over the next few years until they set the build on October 16, 2018 for his retirement match with HHH at this past year’s WrestleMania. Batista did a tremendous job with the promos and they did a long brawling style match that got mixed reviews.

The NWO were the key heel group that led to the hottest period in WCW history from 1996-98. The Hogan heel character, with Hall & Nash with him, and later Waltman as the actual best in-ring worker to carry the matches, led to a period when WCW was the top pro wrestling company in the world.

The idea, copied from the type of stables New Japan did, with a twist of the outsiders angle in the New Japan vs. UWFI feud a few years earlier, was at first one of the most successful angles in history. The success wasn’t long-term and many mistakes were made. But from basically the onset of the angle until mid-1998, a two-year period, WCW was the most successful wrestling company in the world.

I can recall talking to Eric Bischoff in Los Angeles in 1996 and it was clear the angle, which was Bischoff turning the Billionaire Ted skits that McMahon put on television to bury Hogan and Randy Savage, against him, and he said to me he thought the angle could carry them through Starrcade 96. I thought it could carry them through Starrcade 97 and figured that show should be the blow-off with WCW beating the NWO and disbanding the group. In the end, there was never a blow-off and the angle just kept going until it was watered down, burned out, turned almost into a bad parody, and then would be brought back over-and-over until the company died in 2001. It was even brought back briefly in WWF in 2002. The WWF version was done all wrong since it was Vince McMahon bringing in the NWO, as McMahon refused to do a true outsider angle. The key to the angle is it was the fantasy that it was WWF stars banding together at first to take out WCW, but eventually the coolness of the NWO in the feud made WCW uncool, and did tremendous long-term damage since the WCW brand was the uncool brand booed on its own television shows. No doubt the NWO was the major part of the glory period of WCW, but the booking during that period also left the brand name tarnished and was a key part of the decline that finished the company.

The NWO itself spread to New Japan Pro Wrestling with Masahiro

Chono and Keiji Muto as the top stars.

Hall, Nash and Hogan were the original members. Waltman is generally remembered as the fourth, but Ted DiBiase, The Giant (Big Show) and NWO Sting (Jeff Farmer) actually preceded him. The number of NWO members never ended but among the bigger names also included Mike Jones as Vincent, a spoof on McMahon, Bischoff, which made no sense since he headed WCW but Bischoff clearly loved being part of the group and was a tremendous television performer in the role, Buff Bagwell, Scott Norton, Randy Savage, Konnan, Curt Hennig, Rick Rude, Dusty Rhodes, Louis Spicolli, Ed Leslie, Lex Luger, Sting, Torrie Wilson, Big Bubba Rogers (Ray Traylor aka Big Bossman), Bret Hart, Jeff Jarrett, Satoshi Kojima, Hiroyoshi Tenzan, Brian Adams, Horace Hogan, Michael Wallstreet (Mike Rotunda) and even Ric Flair, Shawn Michaels and Booker T briefly in the WWE versions.

The entire group becomes two-time Hall of Famers since Hogan, Hall and Nash went in individually, and Waltman went in as part of DX.

Juice Robinson & David Finlay upset Evil & Sanada, who had gone 13-1 in the round-robin tournament and had won the past two years, to capture New Japan’s annual World Tag League on 12/8 at the Hiroshima Green Arena.

The show was easy to watch, but was hurt by a quiet crowd. One of the most notable things was that Jushin Liger is from Hiroshima, and this was his last show ever in his home city. Liger got a nice reaction, but it wasn’t even close to the reaction he got for his last show in San Jose several weeks back. The card drew 4,383 fans, the largest in the city in more than four years.

The tournament just didn’t have major interest this year, perhaps because there were so many matches with 16 teams and one block that it was difficult to keep up with.

In addition, so many teams were out of the running early in a 16-team tournament so there were a lot more matches that felt like they had no meaning. It came down to three teams, Robinson & Finlay and tag champions Tama Tonga & Tanga Loa both went into the finals with 12-2 records. But Tomohiro Ishii & Yoshi-Hashi beat Tonga & Loa, eliminating them and making Robinson & Finlay vs. Evil & Sanada into the championship match. Evil & Sanada only needed a 30:00 draw, and they went 24:01 before Finlay surprised Evil, using the old Spike Dudley Acid drop for the pin.

The big surprise was the appearance of Jon Moxley. After Lance Archer & Minoru Suzuki had beaten KENTA & Yujiro Takahashi, a Moxley video played. Earlier in the show, after Hiroshi Tanahashi’s match, a video had played of Chris Jericho. But in this case, Moxley showed up and brawled around the arena with Archer before issuing a challenge for a Texas death match.

The final tournament standings were: 1. Robinson & Finlay 13-2 (won based on head-to-head match); 2. Evil & Sanada 13-2; 3. Tonga & Loa 12-3; 4. Ishii & Yoshi-Hashi 10-5; 5. Suzuki & Archer, Zack Sabre Jr. & Taichi and Colt Cabana & Toru Yano 9-6; 8. KENTA & Yujiro Takahashi and Jeff Cobb & Mikey Nicholls 8-7; 10. Shingo Takagi & El Terrible and Bad Luck Fale & Chase Owens 6-9; 12. Togi Makabe & Tomoaki Honma and Satoshi Kojima & Hiroyoshi Tenzan 4-11; 14. Hiroshi Tanahashi & Toa Henare and Hirooki Goto & Karl Fredericks 3-12; 16. Yuji Nagata & Manabu Nakanishi 2-13.

1. Nagata & Nakanishi beat Kojima & Tenzan in 9:49. Nakanishi was so slow. It kept moving but wasn’t very good. Nagata used a crossface submission on Tenzan. *3/4

2. Cabana & Yano beat Fale & Owens in 9:56. It was all comedy. Cabana & Yano attacked them with turnbuckle pads. Yano gave Owens a low blow and Cabana pinned him with a Superman press. *1/4

3. Cobb & Nicholls beat Takagi & Terrible in 9:31. Cobb broke his tooth the night before. Cobb was a highlight, with a leapfrog and dropkick spot and a great overhead suplex on Takagi. Nicholls pinned Terrible after a power bomb. **

4. Tanahashi & Henare beat Goto & Fredericks in 10:16. Fredericks was the star of the match. People have been raving about him the entire tour. He’s big, has a good look, great timing, solid work and great athletic ability. The only question is his level of charisma. Henare pinned Fredericks with a uranage called the Toa bottom. ***1/4

Jericho, with a group of people with him wearing KISS makeup, was on a video calling himself the Painmaker, the name he used when facing Okada, the rainmaker. He said that 1/5 would be one of the greatest matches of Tanahashi’s career, but would also be his last match. Tanahashi got the mic and said that he has no plans of quitting, and it may be Jericho’s last match.

5. Suzuki & Archer beat KENTA & Yujiro Takahashi in 11:24. Takahashi did a tope on Archer. Archer did a rope walk on two sides of the ring. Takahashi’s elbow was busted open. KENTA vs. Suzuki battling back-and-forth was the highlight. Suzuki had a cut on the jaw. Archer used the blackout on Takahashi, picked him up at two, and then put the claw on for the pin. ***1/4

The Moxley video played and he showed up walking through the crowd. Moxley hit Archer and Suzuki both with the death rider. Moxley grabbed the mic saying he wanted his belt back and asked for a Texas death match on 1/4. He and Archer continued to brawl afterwards all over the place.

6. Ibushi & Liger & Tiger Mask beat Okada & Sho & Yoh in 12:35. Ibushi attacked Okada right away. Okada went heel by pulling Liger off the apron to keep him from tagging in. Liger finally go the hot tag using the quebradora and Romero special on Yoh. Ibushi and Okada traded hot action. Liger hit Okada with a shote and Ibushi used a high kick and kamagoye to pin Sho. ***1/4

After the match, Okada rubbed the belt in Ibushi’s face. Ibushi then hit Okada with his briefcase and beat on him. Ibushi chased Okada to the back. Liger was left in the ring. Ryu Lee made the taped challenge and Liger said he also wanted Hiromu Takahashi in that mach. He talked about how there are people in the building who knew him from grade school and growing up and wanted to say goodbye.

7. Ishii & Yoshi-Hashi beat Tonga & Loa in 16:43. Tonga threw Ishii into the wall. The crowd was dead early. Ishii’s hot tag got a reaction. Ishii has a bad knee and you can really see the difference in him. But this was really good. Yoshi-Hashi kicked out of Tonga & Loa coming off the top with a splash and diving head-butt respectively. Yoshi-Hashi turned Loa’s super power bomb into a huracanrana. Yoshi-Hashi pinned Tonga with an inside cradle ***½

8. Robinson & Finlay beat Evil & Sanada in 24:01 to win the tournament. Usual spots like Sanada using the paradise lock on Finlay and Evil used the chair baseball bart swing on him. Finlay used a brainbuster on Sanada and Robinson splashed him off the top for a near fall. Sanada did the flip into the turnbuckles, landed on his feet on the apron and hit a springboard dropkick . Robinson tried pulp friction but Sanada turned it into skull end. Sanada tried a moonsault but Robinson got his knees up. Finlay got several near falls on Evil. Evil used the scorpion deathlock on Finlay and they used the magic killer on Robinson. Great Granby roll by Finlay on Evil for a near fall. Evil & Sanada did the magic killer on Finlay but Robinson saved. Sanada used a pescado on Robinson. Finally used Evil’s own It’s Evil finisher on Evil for a near fall. Robinson did the left hand punch on both and hit the pulp friction on Sanada while Finlay used the Acid drop on Evil. After the match, Robinson told Tonga, Loa and Jado to come out and challenged them for a title match. ****

UFC on ESPN 12/7 Washington, DC

By Ryan Frederick

If there was one thing Jair Rozenstruik proved, it was that he is still as dangerous in the 24th minute as he is in the first minute.

Rozenstruik knocked out Alistair Overeem at the 4:56 mark of the fifth round in the main event of the 12/7 UFC show in Washington, DC. It was a brutal knockout that took a chunk of Overeem’s lip off in the process, and he had to have plastic surgery right after the fight to fix it.

Rozenstruik was behind in the fight at the time of the finish. He was down 40-36, 39-37 and 39-37 on the judges’ scorecards after four rounds, and the fifth round was still up in the air. The only way Rozenstruik was going to win was by finish, and he did it in the most dramatic way possible. It was a vicious right hand that put Overeem on his butt, and he did the walk-off thinking the fight was over. Dan Miragliotta didn’t stop the fight immediately as Overeem was trying to get up, but once he stood he stumbled and Miragliotta decided then to stop it. Had that not happened, Overeem would have won the fight.

Rozenstruik did take this fight on short notice, coming just a little over a month after his last fight. He had been finishing opponents quickly, as his two fights before this lasted a combined 38 seconds. He didn’t look as sharp here as he has but that could be contributed to the lack of preparation time. Overeem was able to get him down a few times, and he isn't exactly an elite wrestler.

Overeem was much slower and more methodical than usual, and he was picking Rozenstruik apart. If anything, the win may have given Rozenstruik more confidence going forward, but there are lots of holes he will need to clear up.

Rozenstruik called for a fight against Francis Ngannou after the win. That may be a fight the company ends up making sometime in the first few months of 2020 as there really isn't much to do with Ngannou at the moment. He is in a holding pattern since Stipe Miocic and Daniel Cormier are fighting again for the heavyweight title. Ngannou has been looking for a fight and opponents aren't exactly lining up to go against him. With Rozenstruik itching to fight him, that is enough incentive for the company to book the fight. The one thing that may prevent it from happening, though, is that the Rozenstruik who fought here would get eaten alive by Ngannou and it would kill off a future contender.

Overeem, meanwhile, may be inching closer than ever towards retirement. This is the 14th time he's been knocked out in his career. He turns 40 next year and this loss may signal the end of any future chances at fighting for the title again. He is still skilled despite losing some speed, but the beatings will add up quicker now. He is still a name fighter who makes a lot of money and there will still be fights for him to take. Time will tell where he goes from here.

This was the final UFC event with the main card to air on ESPN in 2019. It was dubbed Fight Like Hell Night honoring late ESPN anchor Stuart Scott, who passed away from cancer in 2015. Scott was a big UFC supporter and trained in MMA while battling appendix cancer, and even did a lot of UFC-related content that aired on ESPN well before the company was broadcast on the network.

The show featured video packages on, and interviews with, several fighters whose lives have been affected by cancer, including Daniel Cormier, Tatiana Suarez, Joe Lauzon, Anthony Rocco Martin, Paul Felder and Tracy Cortez. It was a real emotional broadcast and was easily one of the better broadcasts the company has put on in its history. I can speak for myself as someone who has battled cancer and has a family history of it, the show got to me at several points and all of the outside the Octagon stuff felt more important than what was actually going on inside the Octagon.

There was a lot of action on the show with a lot of great finishes. Arguably the most-talked about fighter coming out of the show, outside of Rozenstruik, was featherweight Bryce Mitchell. Mitchell pulled off something that had only been done once before in UFC history when he submitted Matt Sayles with a body Twister in the first round. He was completely dominant in the quick fight before finding the submission, which had only been done by Chan Sung Jung on Leonard Garcia in 2011. Mitchell then cut a great post-fight promo, as well as a backstage interview and has a great charisma about him along with a perfect 12-0 record.

The show also had two draws on the night, something that has only happened twice before. The co-main event between Marina Rodriguez and Cynthia Calvillo, and the fight between Cody Stamann and Song Yadong were both ruled majority draws.

The Rodriguez and Calvillo fight had a lot going on surrounding it. Calvillo missed weight by 4.5 pounds at weigh-ins. Rodriguez had absolutely every right to turn down the fight because that is a huge miss, but she didn't. Rodriguez won the first two rounds fairly easily, but got taken down in the third and pounded on by Calvillo in what was scored a 10-8 round by two judges. Rodriguez said she could feel Calvillo's extra weight on top and was having trouble dealing with it, so there was a huge advantage for Calvillo by missing weight. Rodriguez and her camp were not happy before and after the fight feeling they not only won, but got taken advantage of the entire week. She also took the fight on short notice and if it was known Calvillo was going to miss that badly, it easily could have been made a catch weight fight.

In the Stamann and Yadong fight, Yadong had a point taken away in the first round after delivering an illegal knee to Stamann's head on the ground. Stamann was controlling a lot of the first on the mat but the striking was pretty even. The second was a clear Yadong round and the third was an even more clear Stamann round. The decision was met with a lot of raised eyebrows as most thought Stamann won the fight, so you could definitely say he was screwed in that one. What made it even worse is two of the judges, David Braslow and Steve Rados, had never judged a UFC event before. There was talk of Stamann appealing the decision.

The heavyweight fight between Stefan Struve and Ben Rothwell also had some craziness to it. Struve was hit with a hard low blow during the first and took the full five minutes to recover. The crowd reactions to this were something else as they would boo Struve every time he was taking his chances to recover, and cheer every time he was looking ready to fight. The same thing happened in the second round with Struve being kicked in the groin and going down again in pain.

The fight absolutely could have been stopped after the second groin strike. Rothwell did get a point taken away. Referee Dan Miragliotta, while checking on Struve, told him he thought he was winning both rounds, which is something a referee should never tell a fighter. It likely played a factor in Struve continuing when he really shouldn't have, because if he couldn't go on, it would be a no contest. Instead, Struve, in thinking he would win the fight if he continued, especially since Rothwell was docked a point, fought on. He ended up doing some damage to his leg after Rothwell checked a kick, and then Rothwell finished him late in the second with some big punches. Struve would have every right to appeal the decision if he chose to do so.

Calvillo wasn't the only fighter to have trouble at the scale on Friday. Sayles also missed weight for his bout against Mitchell, coming in at 148.5 pounds, 2.5 pounds over the featherweight limit. Both fighters were fined. Tim Means also had initially missed by half-a-pound, but made it on a second attempt during the two-hour window.

It was the second event the UFC held in Washington, DC, over eight years after the first show held in the same Capital One Arena building. This show drew 10,816 fans for a gate of $932,593.20. Both numbers were better than the first event in October 2011.

The main card and four preliminary card fights aired on ESPN against tough competition with college football conference championship games as competition. The main card was a long one, airing from 9 PM eastern until 1 AM and did 1,071,000 viewers. It peaked at 1,400,000 viewers for the main event. The prelims got a late start due to college football running long and did 696,000 viewers from 7:17 to 9 PM. The Ohio State vs. Wisconsin Big 10 championship game head-to-head did more 13,550,000 viewers on FOX while the ACC championship game with Virginia vs. Clemson on ABC did 3,970,000 viewers.

The main card was fourth on the day in the key demos and was the second-most watched program on ESPN on Saturday, and the prelims actually drew more viewers than the college football game that was the lead-in, though it was one of the weaker games on Saturday.

It was the third-best of the seven main card ESPN events of the year. For the top television markets, the show did a 0.7 in Los Angeles, Houston and Atlanta, a 0.6 in Philadelphia, a 0.5 in Dallas and San Francisco, a 0.4 in Chicago, and a 0.3 in New York and Washington, DC, the host market, which shows how much local interest there was. Google Searches for the event were just over 500,000 on the night, which is around what lower-end pay-per-view events usually do.

The $50,000 bonuses went to Rob Font and Ricky Simon for Fight Of The Night, while the Performance Of The Night bonuses went to Bryce Mitchell and Makhmud Muradov.

1. Makhmud Muradov (24-6) beat Trevor Smith (15-10) in 4:09 in the third round in a middleweight fight. The first round was slow early on and Muradov was landing more and had a nice final minute where he landed a big right hand before the round ended. Muradov had a controlling second round where he was landing more punches but Smith was trying to make a comeback. Muradov was ahead everywhere and got Smith down late and had the back and would have gotten a choke in but time ran out. Muradov was landing hard body shots and then hurt Smith by attacking the head with punches and kicks. Muradov landed a nice combo to the body and ended it with a vicious right hand that put Smith out cold on the canvas. This was an excellent showing for Muradov, who picked up his 13th straight win.
2. Virna Jandiroba (15-1) beat Mallory Martin (6-3) in 1:16 in the second round in a women's strawweight fight. Martin was making her UFC debut as a short-notice replacement. Jandiroba got a takedown in the first and had a deep arm-triangle locked in but Martin was able to escape. Jandiroba got another takedown and Martin went for a guillotine but it wasn't close and Jandiroba ended the round on top. Jandiroba got a takedown in the second and got the back and found a deep rear-naked choke and got Martin to tap.
3. Joe Solecki (9-2) beat Matt Wiman (16-9) via unanimous decision on scores of 30-26, 30-26 and 30-27 in a lightweight fight. Solecki was making his UFC debut. He got Wiman down early on. He was landing vicious shots from the top but Wiman was fighting through it. Solecki landed a lot of shots from the top and it could have been stopped several times but Wiman survived the round. A completely dominant first by Solecki. Solecki got a takedown to start the second and was working from the top. His pace slowed as he seemed content to control from the top but they got stood up. Solecki got another takedown before the second ended. Solecki got another takedown in the third and landed more from the top. He got the back of Wiman and was landing punches from the back. Wiman survived the fight. He is too tough for his own good but it was even more evident between this fight and his last one that over four years away from the sport was too much. I had it 30-25 for Solecki by giving him a 10-8 score in rounds one and three. All media scores were for Solecki.
4. Bryce Mitchell (12-0) beat Matt Sayles (8-3) in 4:20 in what was scheduled to be a featherweight fight. Sayles missed weight for this fight. Mitchell got an early takedown and was controlling the first from the top. Mitchell was making lots of smooth transitions looking for submissions and then got a Twister submission locked in and got Sayles to tap. That was only the second time in UFC history the Twister has been pulled off and it got a great reaction from the crowd.
5. Billy Quarantillo (13-2) beat Jacob Kilburn (8-3) in 3:18 in the second round in a featherweight fight. Both men were making their UFC debuts, Kilburn took this fight on short notice. Quarantillo had a deep D'arce choke locked on in the first minute but Kilburn escaped. Quarantillo was on top and landing massive punches and the fight could have been stopped a few times. Quarantillo had a deep rear-naked choke locked in and Kilburn escaped. The first round was one-sided for Quarantillo. Quarantillo got a takedown at the start of the second and was landing more brutal ground-and-pound from the top. Quarantillo then started hunting for submissions and finally locked in a triangle choke to get Kilburn to submit. This was a complete domination by Quarantillo.
6. Tim Means (29-11-1 1 NC) beat Thiago Alves (23-15) in 2:38 in a welterweight fight. Alves landed a hard body kick early that made a loud noise. They were trading and Means dropped Alves with a straight left hand. He swarmed with punches and then grabbed the neck and got a guillotine choke in to get Alves to tap. This was a nice showing for Means. This was the last fight on Alves' contract and he said he was going to test the market, so this may be the end for him with the UFC.
7. Rob Font (17-4) beat Ricky Simon (15-3) via unanimous decision on scores of 29-28, 29-28 and 30-27 in a bantamweight fight. Font got an early takedown but they got up and Font was landing some good punches. They were trading some good shots and Simon got a big takedown. They got up and Font landed a good combo. Simon got another late takedown. The first round was real fun. Font was landing more in the second and really using the jab well. Font was landing some hard punches as well as Simon kind of slowed down his pace. Simon got a late takedown but Font was able to escape up and landed a late flurry in the second. They were trading lots of punches in the third and Simon looked to hurt Font with some punches before getting a takedown. Font was able to get up and then landed some big punches on Simon. Font landed some good punches in the final minute. I had it 29-28 for Font with him winning the last two rounds. Media scores were 94% for Font and 6% for Simon. This was an excellent fight.
8. Cody Stamann (18-2-1) vs. Song Yadong (14-4-1 1 NC) ended in a majority draw on scores of 29-27, 28-28 and 28-28 in a bantamweight fight. They were feeling each other out and Stamann got a takedown. Yadong was looking for a guillotine choke and then landed a knee to Stamann's head while he had a knee on the ground, which is illegal. A point was taken away. Stamann got a late takedown in the first. Yadong was landing on his feet in the second and Stamann got a takedown but Yadong scrambled up. Stamann got another takedown but Yadong reversed and ended the round on top. Stamann got a takedown in the third and spent the majority of the round on top and in control. Yadong looked tired and couldn't get out from the bottom. Stamann got his back late and landed lots of punches late to put a stamp on the fight. This was such a bad decision. Stamann got real screwed there. I had the fight 29-27 for Stamann with him getting the 10-8 first with the point deduction and winning the third. The first was close but I'm not sure you could give it to Yadong. Yadong had a lot of momentum but showed he isn't quite ready for ranked foes. He is still 21 so there's a lot of time to improve. Media scores were 71% for Stamann and 29% scoring it a draw.
9. Aspen Ladd (9-1) beat Yana Kunitskaya (12-5 1 NC) in :33 in the third round in a women's bantamweight fight. Ladd made weight after her issues in her last fight. They clinched and were broken up after Kunitskaya grabbed the fence twice. Ladd got a takedown and was teeing off with punches late in the first and making lots of noise in doing so but Kunitskaya was never in much danger of being finished. There was clinching early in the second with not much going on. Ladd got a takedown and ended the round on top landing. Ladd dropped Kunitskaya with a left hand right at the start of the third and grabbed the back and was landing lots of punches and it was stopped. This was a statement win for Ladd and she might be next for whoever comes out of UFC 245 as the champion.
10. Ben Rothwell (37-12) beat Stefan Struve (29-12) in 4:57 in the second round in a heavyweight fight. Struve was returning from a brief retirement/break/rest from the sport. He was attacking with leg kicks early on. Struve rocked Rothwell with a head kick. Rothwell kicked Struve in the groin and he was down for a while. The crowd reaction was weird. They were booing Struve while he was recovering and would cheer when he would look recovered. He then wouldn't be ready and they would boo, and then cheer when he looked ready. He fought on and controlled the end of the first. The second was slow paced. Struve was outlanding and Rothwell was trying to clinch but never did much with them. Rothwell then kicked Struve in the groin again and Struve went down in even more pain. Rothwell got a point taken away. They got back to action and Rothwell was landing big punches. Struve landed a leg kick and Rothwell checked it and Struve's foot looked like it broke. He was retreating and Rothwell landed some punches that dropped him and then it was stopped. This was a real unfortunate loss for Struve as he was clearly hurt from the groin strikes and maybe should have been given the win after the second one. Dan Miragliotta did a bad job in telling Struve that he thought he was up two rounds and it may have factored into Struve continuing. This was Rothwell's first win since January 2016.
11. Marina Rodriguez (13-0-2) vs. Cynthia Calvillo (8-1-1) ended in a majority draw on scores of 29-28, 28-28 and 28-28 in what was scheduled to be a women's strawweight fight. Calvillo missed weight badly for this one. They traded early and Calvillo got a takedown and was working from the top. They got up and Rodriguez landed a flurry that hurt Calvillo. Rodriguez rocked Calvillo with some knees and kicks and Calvillo got a late takedown and ended the round with a flurry from the top. They were trading in the second and Rodriguez was getting the better of it. She really put it on Calvillo in the last minute of the round. Calvillo got a takedown in the third and was working for a guillotine choke. She got the back and was landing lots of punches looking to finish it. Rodriguez was covering up and made it to the end of the round but it was a big third round for Calvillo. I had it 29-28 for Rodriguez and there was a strong case for a 10-8 third for Calvillo, but I wasn't totally convinced because Rodriguez was doing well early in the third. Either way was how it really could have gone. Media scores were 21% for Rodriguez, 7% for Calvillo and 72% scoring it a draw.
12. Jair Rozenstruik (10-0) beat Alistair Overeem (45-18 1 NC) in 4:56 in the fifth round in a heavyweight fight. They were being patient early and Overeem got a takedown. Overeem was landing some short elbows from the top and did good at keeping Rozenstruik pinned to the mat. They clinched right up at the start of the second and Overeem kept him pinned against the fence. They broke and Rozenstruik landed a couple of good punches. They traded good late in the second. Overeem was working for a takedown in the third but it was defended. He then tagged Rozenstruik with a combo. Overeem got another takedown. He landed some big shots from the top at the end of the third. They were patient in the fourth and Rozenstruik landed a nice combo that had Overeem covering up but he didn't take advantage of it. He landed another flurry but stopped when he saw Overeem covering up again. The same thing happened in the last seconds of the fourth. Overeem was fighting very cautiously from range in the fifth and exploded for a takedown that he didn't complete. Rozenstruik wasn't doing much in the fifth. He did some late and was defending Overeem takedown attempts. Just when it looked like the fight was going to go to a disappointing decision Rozenstruik landed a massive right hand that knocked Overeem down. He started celebrating like it was over and Overeem got up and couldn't stand straight and Dan Miragliotta stopped it with four seconds left. It was a crazy finish. Overeem's lip was falling off of his face due to a nasty cut. It was the big finish many were expecting but came at the end of a boring fight, but a big win for Rozenstruik.

Andy Robin, who was best known as the trainer of Hercules the Bear, a major Scottish media personality, but was a champion pro wrestler during the 60s and 70s, passed away on 12/4 at the age of 84.

Robin’s heath had been in decline since suffering a stroke.

Robin, largely due to the fame of Hercules the Bear, was the biggest mainstream pro wrestling star in Scotland along with George Kidd. He was the second inductee in the Scottish Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame, in 2016, after Kidd. He was known for being able to get intense crowd reactions as a top babyface star, in a career that went from 1956 until the 90s. Locally, his death was covered by the BBC and ITV, and was a front page news story in Scotland.

Robin was a legitimate wrestler, competing in the Highland Games in Cumberland style wrestling, and winning the championship in that form of wrestling in 1955. He actually started training in boxing and gymnastics as a child, and switched to wrestling upon meeting pro wrestler Willie Bell.

At one point, after starting his pro wrestling career in the U.K., he traveled to North America as part of a Scottish team of athletes demonstrating traditional Celtic sports as part of a touring show called “The Wonderful World of Sport.”

While in Toronto, he met Frank Tunney, the area’s wrestling promoter. He started wrestling professionally in the U.K., including as a regular on World of Sport. He won the British Commonwealth mid-heavyweight championship in 1964 and spent two years based in Toronto, where he was a regular at Maple Leaf Gardens and worked around Ontario. He worked against many of the top stars of that era, such as The Tolos Brothers, Hans Schmidt, The Destroyer, Paul DeMarco and Johnny Powers. During that period, he suffered only two losses, both via count out, at Maple Leaf Gardens, both to Powers toward the end of his run. The highlight was his winning he Oshawa Tournament of Champions on July 20, 1965, winning a tournament over Sailor Art Thomas, The Destroyer, Duke Noble, Jerry London, Mike Valentino (Baron Mikel Scicluna), the Beast and DeMarco.

He was a significant name pro wrestler in the 60s and 70s in the U.K. He was a genuine draw as a babyface, particularly in Scotland. He played the role of a powerful lumberjack, with solid mat skills and a high level of charisma. His matches were, however, mostly brawls, and his finisher was The Power lock, a leg hold that was made famous in North America by Powers. In 1972, he captured the British Commonwealth middleweight title.

It was a 1965 match against Terrible Ted, the Wrestling Bear, in London, ONT, that changed his life. After going to a 15:00 draw, which few were able to do with bears, he became fascinated with them. With his active career seemingly winding down at the age of 40, he and wife Maggie adopted Hercules the Bear, a cub from the Highland Wildlife Park in Kingussie. The couple raised the bear as if it was their son.

The bear became a local, and later an international celebrity of sorts and was once named Scotland’s television personality of the year. He performed with Bob Hope, as well as did a fight scene with Roger Moore in the 1983 James Bond movie “Octopussy.

The Bond connection was notable since one of Robin’s biggest matches in Scotland was with Harold Sakata, a former Olympic silver medalist in weightlifting who was best known for playing Oddjob in the Sean Connery era of Bond movies.

The bear would attend elementary school birthday parties, do some pro wrestling, and did a number of television commercials. In 1980, the bear escaped while filming a toilet paper commercial for Kleenex, and it became an international news story. He was later found more than three weeks later. The bear, who was the subject of documentaries, passed away in 2001.

Robin was one of the key people used in a 1990 set of television tapings by the Scottish ITV franchise in Aberdeen.

His Hall of Fame induction on December 23, 2016, was held at a ceremony at Perth City Hall, the site of many of his biggest matches. It received television and newspaper coverage throughout Scotland. In 2017, he was the host of the 148th Gathering of the Blackford Highland Games as the figurehead Chieftain. This past summer he recorded interviews for an upcoming episode of The People’s History Show for STV, which was set for broadcast early next year.

Thanks to Scottish historian Bradley Craig for help on this feature

The 12/11 ratings war saw a tie with viewers at 778,000 each while AEW won the key demos for the 11th week in a row.

In the head-to-head two hours, NXT had 771,000 viewers.

AEW in the head-to-head won the first six quarters and the only reason it was close was because of how strongly NXT won the main event segment with the three-way with Finn Balor vs. Tommaso Ciampa vs. Keith Lee overwhelming the Young Bucks vs. Santana & Ortiz street fight by a 756,000 to 685,000 overall number, and then the overrun after AEW ended doing 881,000 viewers. Usually the overrun of late has been gaining 150,000 to 200,000 viewers and this week it was only 125,000, which says that people who normally would wait until AEW is over, switched over early to see the main event.

It was the younger viewers as the NXT audience went from a 54.6 median age before the main event to as low as 50.6 by the end of the main event. It’s basically a lesson that it’s not the quality of the match, but the ability to make the match seem important. The viewer switch occurred early so they didn’t even wait to compare the matches, so an argument of style vs. style doesn’t wash, it was just that enough of the AEW audience was interested in the NXT main event.

Even with that, AEW did win the main event battle head-to-head by a 342,000 to 316,000 margin in the 18-49 demo and took every quarter in that demo. NXT only won the main event segment with teenagers, which AEW did terrible with all night and women 18-34. AEW even won in 50-54, but NXT won big over 55.

Both shows opened with 17,000 teenagers, which is terrible, and a sign teenagers have lost interest. NXT drew to 32,000 for the main event while AEW fell to 7,000. With teenagers, AEW peaked withe Jericho/Moxley and NXT peaked with the main event.

In women 18-34, AEW opened with 47,000 and ended with 33,000. NXT opened with 27,000 and ended with 47,000. AEW peaked with the first quarter and NXT peaked with the main event.

In women 35-49, AEW opened with 86,000 and ended with 59,000. NXT opened with 75,000 and ended with 44,000. Both shows peaked in the first quarter in this demo.

In males 18-34, AEW opened with 84,000 and ended with 85,000. NXT opened with 61,000 and ended with 76,000. AEW peaked with the Omega & Page tag team match. NXT peaked with Bianca Belair vs. Kayden Carter.

In male 35-49, AEW opened with 207,000 viewers and ended with 171,000. NXT opened with 157,000 and ended with 149,000. Both shows peaked in this demo in the first quarter.

AEW’s median viewer was 45.8 years old, its oldest to date. NXT’s median viewer was 54.5 years old.

AEW averaged 1.40 viewers per home, the highest of any pro wrestling show of the past week. NXT averaged 1.28 viewers per home.

The overall show demo numbers were closer but AEW still won in every key category except teenagers and over 50, with males 18-34 at 83,000 to 67,000, women 18-34 by 40,000 to 33,000, males 35-49 at 176,000 to 151,000 and females 35-49 at 66,000 to 55,000. But given the declines with no excuses past they were there, I’d consider it a loss for both sides.

The difference was such that AEW would have won without the Spectrum cable blackout of TNT in many markets, but that wasn’t enough to make up the difference when falling from last week.

But to view that as a positive for AEW is deluding yourself. AEW did a 0.28 in 18-49, the key number, down 12.5 percent from the prior week. NXT did a 0.24, down 17.2 percent from the prior week. Overall saw AEW down 8.6 percent and NXT down 7.9 percent with no explanation past viewer burnout and the reaction to last week’s show.

Aside from big gains over usual numbers by FOX News, there wasn’t a lot when it comes to competition to explain it. The NBA game on ESPN did 1,159,000 viewers and 0.48 in 18-49, down from 1,537,000 and 0.54 for a college basketball game ESPN had in the time slot the previous week.

So here are a few thoughts. I felt that neither show last week did a great job of hyping this week. NXT did push a three-way for a title shot, which to me was the strongest thing and in theory, with the push on Raw as well, gave them a slight edge. Even though the match itself was really good, Cody & QT Marshall vs. The Butcher & The Blade felt to me like a turnoff, and while Young Bucks vs. Ortiz & Santana in a street fight sounded great, the Young Bucks are still guys over big in the building but have yet to be made television stars. Even though NXT continues to do worse, the continued decline in 18-49, which was 0.39 just two weeks ago, for AEW, is a major concern. Generally the ratings are more a function of where you start that when you have on, and AEW had a strong show, but where you start is based on the hype for this week, which wasn’t strong, and the show last week, which clearly to the casual viewer had more negatives as far as similar heel group stories even with the strong in-ring. The declines for both are probably more a function of last week.

Next week both groups have loaded shows, with NXT having essentially two matches that would headline Takeovers, the biggest women’s match in a long time and the biggest ratings men’s match they can put on. AEW has a strong lineup as well. Both groups should show significant gains and in theory, NXT should win with overall viewers based on Finn Balor going for the title, and AEW with key demos because they always do and Balor’s match shouldn’t be enough to change that. But as far as who wins, that’s far less important because next week it’s about increasing in the key demos for each side, not winning. Another aspect is that both sides are feeling the effect of the burnout that simply can’t be avoided and will continue to hurt live gates and ratings. The declines will hit Wednesday first because it is not an established date, and doesn’t have the prestige of being on FOX and promoted so hard .

AEW went from bringing TNT the No. 2 or No. 3 slot in cable in 18-49, a huge success, to falling behind ESPN, MTV, Bravo, Fox News and BET.

Both sides really took their hits from women as opposed to men, with both having much lower skews for women than normal weeks.

AEW did a 0.11 in 12-17 (down 35.3 percent from last week), 0.18 in 18-34 (down 5.3 percent), 0.38 in 35-49 (down 15.6 percent) and 0.29 in 50+ (down 6.5 percent).

The audience was 71.4 percent male in 18-49 and 66.4 percent male in 12-17.

NXT did a 0.11 in 12-17 (down 8.3 percent from last week), 0.14 in 18-34 (down 30.0 percent), 0.34 in 35-49 (down 10.5 percent) and 0.38 in 50+ (identical to last week).

The audience was 70.8 percent male in 18-49 and 66.2 percent male in 12-17.

The first quarter saw AEW with Jon Moxley vs. Alex Reynolds and Chris Jericho recruiting Moxley doing 870,000 viewers and 424,000 in 18-49. NXT with Lio Rush vs. Angel Garza for the cruiserweight title did 840,000 viewers and 320,000 in 18-49.

The second quarter with AEW with Cody & QT Marshall vs. Butcher & Blade lost 48,000 total viewers and 59,000 in 18-49. NXT with the ending of Rush vs.; Garza and a Shayna Baszler video package lost 55,000 viewers overall and 24,000 in 18-49.

The third quarter with AEW with the MJF promo and a Dark Order vignette lost 8,000 overall viewers and 15,000 in 18-49. NXT had the Garza proposal and Raul Mendoza vs. Cameron Grimes and lost 26,000 overall viewers and 7,000 in 18-49.

The fourth quarter with AEW with Big Swole vs. Emi Sakura and a Pac promo lost 18,000 viewers and 21,000 in 18-49. NXT with Travis Banks vs. Jaxson Ryker and a Mia Yim package lost 36,000 viewers and 7,000 in 18-49.

The fifth quarter with AEW with Kenny Omega & Adam Page vs. Joey Janela & Shawn Spears lost 14,000 viewers but gained 3,000 in 18-49. NXT with Mia Yim vs. Dakota Kai gained 59,000 viewers and 29,000 in 18-49.

The sixth quarter with AEW with the ending of the Omega tag match and Sammy Guevara vs. Luchasaurus lost 10,000 overall viewers and gained 10,000 in 18-49. NXT with Tyler Breeze & Fandango vs. The Singh Brothers lost 40,000 viewers and lost 18,000 in 18-49.

The seventh quarter with AEW with the end of Guevara vs. Luchasaurus and the Jericho/Jungle Boy post-match angle lost 87,000 viewers and lost 30,000 in 18-49. NXT with Bianca Belair vs. Kayden Carter gained 41,000 viewers and 8,000 in 18-49. This looks to be people tuning out for the NXT main event.

The final quarter with AEW with Young Bucks vs. Santana & Ortiz lost 2,000 viewers and stayed even in 18-49, so as noted the viewers really left before this match even started. NXT with the Lee vs. Ciampa vs. Balor match lost 27,000 viewers but gained 15,000 in 18-49.

The overrun gained 125,000 views and 69,000 in 18-49.

WWE did a documentary on the first NXT Brooklyn Takeover show with the Bayley vs. Sasha Banks match that did 367,000 viewers and 0.09 in 18-49.

Total Divas on 12/10, for the season finale, drew 229,000 viewers, the second lowest in the history of the show and down 7.3 percent from the previous second lowest episode the prior week. This show was heavily promoted by the women in both the regular media and social media and for weeks on television pushing it around a Hawaii vacation and lots of bikini shots.

WWE Backstage on 12/10 with the second appearances of C.M. Punk did 127,000 viewers, down eight percent from the prior week’s show that didn’t have him and was built around Seth Rollins.

Raw on 12/9 did 2,149,000 viewers (1.36 viewers per home), down 2.6 percent from the prior week. The number was lower even though the NFL game between the New York Giants and Philadelphia Eagles was down 19 percent to 11,360,000 viewers.

The show started out much lower, but the audience held up better. Raw was 15th for the day in total viewers due to the impeachment hearings, but beat everything but NFL-related programming in the 18-49 demo. The audience was only down 2.1 percent from the same week last year, although at the time that week was the lowest number in modern history.

The first hour did 2,255,000 viewers. The second hour did 2,201,000 viewers. The third hour did 1,995,000 viewers.

The high pont of the show was the Lana/Rusev divorce which did 2,363,000 viewer. The low point was the spoof on Saturday Night Live’s weekend update with The Street Profits that did 1,864,000 viewers.

The median viewer age was 49.7 years old.

As far as the viewer swing, teenagers grew from 55,000 to 78,000 (35,000 to 52,000 boys) from the start of the show to the main event, but every other age group fell greatly during the show. Under five fell from 49,000 to 32,000, 6-11 from 82,000 to 56,000, 18-34 from 375,000 to 242,000, 35-49 from 678,000 to 456,000 and over 50 from 1,154,000 to 981,000.

The end of Lana/Rusev and brawl with Bobby Lashley and the intros of Matt Hardy vs. Drew McIntyre lost 171,000 viewers in a segment with two commercial breaks. Hardy vs. McIntyre and the Kevin Owens/Mojo Rawley backstage gained 20,000 viewers. Viking Raiders vs. Street Profits and the beginning of the Seth Rollins/Kevin Owens in-ring gained 41,000 viewers. The Owens/Sami Zayn/Rawley in-ring and the beginning of Aleister Black vs. Akira Tozawa lost 2,000 viewers. The end of Black vs. Tozawa and beginning of Humberto Carrillo vs. Andrade gained 21,000 viewers. Carrillo vs. Andrade lost 17,000 viewers. Zack Ryder vs. Buddy Murphy and the Rollins reveal and in-ring heel turn promo gained 71,000 viewers. Becky Lynch vs. Kabuki Warriors and post-match angles with the Kabuki Warriors involving that lost 162,000 viewers. The Weekend Update segment lost 200,000 viewers. That’s the problem with doing Events Centers. They do help sell the PPVs, but they hurt ratings. Rey Mysterio vs. A.J. Styles in the main event segment gained 10,000 viewers.

The show did a 0.37 in 12-17 (down 5.1 percent from last week), 0.42 in 18-34 (down 6.7 percent), 0.96 in 35-49 (up 3.2 percent) and 0.93 in 50+ (down 3.2 percent).

The audience was 68.1 percent male in 18-49 and 68.7 percent male in 12-17, both higher male skews than normal.

The 11/18 Raw show gained 19 percent in viewers and 23 percent in 18-49 viewers when you include DVR viewership.

Smackdown on 12/6 did a 1.53 rating and 2,452,000 viewers (1.33 viewers per home), up 5.5 percent from the prior week, and against tougher competition with the Pac-12 football championships on ABC.

It should have been up over Thanksgiving weekend, but it shows Smackdown is very steady and doing fine. It didn’t win in 18-49 as usual, doing a 0.7, behind the 1.5 in the demo and 5,856,000 viewers of the football game. It beat CBS (0.6) for second place in the demo among the networks and was third overall behind the NBA on ESPN, even with the big advantage of it being a network station and in 24 million more homes. It was also second in 18-34, tied for last with women 18-49, was second in men 18-49 and finished last by a wide margin in over-50 among the big four networks. Smackdown was the least watched show on the four major networks and the second worst was 3,632,000 viewers, beating them by more than one million.

Last year on the same weekend, FOX had 3,784,000 viewers and an 0.9 in 18-49, so down 35.2 percent in ratings and 22.2 percent in the key demo.

The show did a 1.8 rating in New York, 0.8 in Los Angeles, 1.8 in Chicago, 1.5 in Philadelphia, 2.8 in Dallas, 1.1 in San Francisco, 1.5 in DC, 1.3 in Houston and 1.8 in Atlanta.

In the segment-by-segment, based on the major markets, Alexa Bliss vs. Mandy Rose and all the Dana Brooke, Drake Maverick and Elias stuff gained 3.4 percent in viewers and 5.1 percent in 18-49. A Miz/Bray Wyatt angle, Tribute to the Troops footage and the beginning of the four-way for a tag title shot lost 0.6 percent in viewers and 10.7 percent in 18-49. The bulk of the four-way tag title match lost 9.8 percent with viewers and gained 8.7 percent in 18-49. This again seems to indicate the younger audience will grow for a hot match with guys not pushed but the overall audience doesn’t. The Lacey Evans squash and beginning of an angle with Bayley and Sasha Banks gained 2.9 percent in viewers and 14.0 percent in 18-49. The Evans/Banks back-and-forth lost 1.4 percent in viewers but gained 5.3 percent in 18-49 and it was the peak in that demo. Roman Reigns vs. Dolph Ziggler and the dog food angle after lost 0.7 percent with total viewers and 20.0 percent in 18-49.

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CMLL: There was a robbery on 12/10 when two people came to Arena Puebla, the company’s weekly Monday night stop, and were able to talk their way win, and then forced employees to hand then over the ticket revenue from the show the night before, which was about 230,000 pesos (a little over $12,000). They left before police arrived

Titan won the CMLL welterweight title that was vacated when Dragon Lee was fired, winning over lightweight champion Soberano Jr. on the 12/8 Arena Mexico show. Titan has been basically plugged into the position Lee was in

They have a special show on 1/1 at Arena Mexico which will have three singles main events. Dulce Gardenia faces Kawato San in a hair vs. hair match. Espiritu Negro faces Principe Diamante in a mask vs. mask match. And there will be a title match announced as well.

They held the annual legends show on 12/6 at Arena Mexico and drew 12,000 fans. As usual, the wrestling with so many guys in their 60s wasn’t good at all. The main event was Rayo de Jalisco Jr. & Tinieblas Jr. & Villano IV over Canek & Fuerza Guerrera & Mascara Ano 2000. It’s a weird thing because these legends main events in the past have drawn big crowds, usually bigger than this, and then die in front of the live crowd. Many of the legends they had been using like Dos Caras and Cien Caras and really retired now. This match ended up doing okay for the live crowd since Alushe, the tiny mascot of Tinieblas Jr., entertained the casual fan and tourists with his comedy with Guerrera. We were told the match would have been an embarrassment without those two. Canek gave Rayo a low blow for cheap ending which is funny since it’s not like these guys are coming back and you’re working a return. Canek was hurting so bad he used a child for assistance to hold onto as he walked to the ring and was immobile. Rayo is way overweight and can’t do much. El Satanico and Solar may have gotten a great reaction when they did a singles match a couple of months ago, but this fan base pretty much whistled and didn’t care. There were hardcore fans and older fans who remember them that were polite but most were disinterested and you could see people walking around during the match. Negro Navarro was said to have aged a lot in recent years. The Blue Panther & Negro Casas & Virus won over Mano Negra & Navarro & Super Astro was said to be said because the Casas team still works regularly. Navarro and Astro couldn’t do anything and even the Panther/Navarro matwork that would have been awesome a few years just wasn’t there as Panther was tired and Navarro simply couldn’t do it anymore. Casas was fine, but there is a big difference in him from a few years ago, but for 59, people still love him and he can get by. There was a Mano Negra retirement ceremony after his match. Satanico beat Solar via submission. The match with current guys in the semi saw Bandido’s first appearance since early in his career taming with Volador Jr. & Valiente to beat Ultimo Guerrero & Cuatrero & Forastero. Guerrero trained Bandido originally but Bandido left CMLL figuring he’s be stuck in prelims forever so decided to make a name on his own. Bandido isn’t back this week because of the ROH PPV, but will be back later this month

The 12/13 show has Caristico & Negro Casas & Valiente vs. Soberano Jr. & Euforia & Ultimo Guerrero. It’s mixed tecnicos and rudos with Soberano on the same side as his father. Angel de Oro & Diamante Azul & Niebla Roja vs. Gran Guerrero & Forastero & Cuatrero and Stuka Jr. vs. Felino

On the 12/7 show at Arena Coliseo, in a trios match, Caristico beat CMLL middleweight champion Cuatrero in two straight falls to set up a title match on 12/14. Caristico is the current NWA middleweight champion so he’s going for double world titles

Universo 2000 Jr. won the second block of the Copa Juniors on 12/10 at Arena Mexico. The order of elimination was Principe Odin Jr., Bengala, Halcon Suriano Jr., Magnus, Espanto Jr., Robin, Black Panther and Stigma. This left Universo and Esfinge with Universo winning. Universo faces the A block winner, Guerrero Maya Jr., on the 12/17 show.

AAA: This is Flamita’s explanation for being gone from AAA and not being on the 12/4 Mexico City final show of Lucha Capital. He said he missed TripleMania Regia on 12/1 in Monterrey due to a family situation and he was unable to tell the promotion all day. AAA believed he had left for CMLL. He said he was in Mexico City for his match on 12/4, but was told he was no longer being booked and had been taken off all future shows. He was offered a good contract by ROH and said he hoped he and Bandido could go after the tag team titles. With his new guaranteed money contract, his situation in Mexico isn’t as important, and this would also take him away from the U.S. indie scene. He has been pulled from his AAA bookings but he said that he wants to find a way to get back to AAA and that he’s not going to CMLL

I saw the Kenny Omega vs. Dragon Lee match which aired on televison in Monterrey over the weekend as apart of the deal for Multimedios to sponsor the show and that it couldn’t stream live. The match was excellent. The thing is that they were not doing Lucha Libre, but more an American or a little of a Japanese style version. I think if that match was on an AEW PPV or a New Japan card people would call it just below a match of the year, or maybe with the right crowd a match of the year contender. It was hard to gauge the crowd. They weren’t quiet, but it was an outdoor stadium and it wasn’t mic’d well, but it felt like a hot world title match and the crowd was more into Omega as an international star in Northern Mexico than in places farther from the border. Lee literally did everything he’d do in a major New Japan title match. Lee’s first tope and the only actual dive of the match believe it or not saw Omega do this great sell flipping over backwards over the barricade into the crowd. Omega blocked the first Lee fly over the top huracanrana to the floor and power bombed him on the apron. There was a great spot where Lee ducked a lariat into a Canadian Destroyer. The match story was Omega kept setting up the One Winged Angel and Lee kept escaping. Omega also did the Croyt’s Wrath from that position until finally hitting it on the sixth try for the pin in 19:24. I’d say ****½ on television but it looked like a match you’d go slightly higher live but the same match on an AEW PPV show based on how the crowd would react differently to the flow (non Lucha is always tough in Mexico) and it would be higher. The problem previously with Lee in AEW is that he was a New Japan/CMLL guy but that barrier isn’t there now, as I don’t think New Japan would stop him, although it is possible they might, and AEW works with AAA, so that channel should be open.

They did a show on 12/6 in Tijuana that drew about 2,000 fans built around the idea of Rush and Psycho Clown being on opposite sides. That wasn’t a special draw. Flamita was pulled as expected and Jake Atlas was advertised but not there.

DRAGON GATE: Final Gate, the company’s last major show, s 12/15, takes place at 3 a.m. Eastern from the Fukuoka International Center with the live English language commentary. The Dragon Gate big shows can be daunting for people who don’t follow the product, but I expect Larry Dallas and Lenny Leonard to give great explanations of who people are and storyline and their big shows are filled with good matches and great matches with charismatic characters, even if not international names. The lineup from the opener is Kai & Kagetora vs. Yuki Yoshioka & Keisuke Okuda, a 10 man Battle Royal, Kazma Sakamoto vs. Dragon Dia, Naomichi Marufuji from NOAH vs. Hollywood Stalker Ichikawa (comedy jobber), Ultimo Dragon & Ryo Saito & Yasushi Kanda vs. Masato Yoshino & Dragon Kid & Masaaki Mochizuki, Kaito Ishida defends the Open the Brave Gate title against Jason Lee, The Strong Machines defend the Open the Triangle Gate titles against Hyo & Takashi Yoshida & Diamante and Kzy & Susumu Yokosuka & Genki Horiguchi, Eita & Big R Shimizu defend the Open the Twin Gate titles against Yamato & BxB Hulk and Ben K defends the Open the Dream Gate title against Naruki Doi

Lee challenged Ishida after Ishida turned on MaxiMuM to join R.E.D

Shun Skywalker has taken a leave of absence after his 12/4 loss to Ben K and has been removed from the schedule

Kento Kobune and Taketo Kamei debut on12/22. Both have been in the ring at house shows doing training matches before the shows start and Kamei is said to be a standout

Dragon Gate expert Jae Church noted that the top candidates for Rookie of the Year in the Observer award from here are Dia and Strong Machine J. J, who debuted on 4/10, making him far more of a true rookie than most of this year’s candidates, was pushed from the start since the Strong Machines are doing an undefeated gimmick as trios champions, and he’s also said to already be one of the best promos in the company

12/18 at Korakuen Hall at 4:15 a.m. also goes live in English with Dallas solo. Main event is a four-way trios match with unusual partners drawn at random with Eita & Kota Minoura & Kzy vs. Yamato & Gamma & Horiguchi vs. Kagetora & Hyo & ? Vs. Ichikawa & Don Fujii & Yosuke Santa Maria.

ALL JAPAN: Suwama & Shuji Ishikawa won the 43rd year end Real World League tournament, beating Jake Lee & Naoya Nomura in a final match. Ishikawa pinned Nomura to win with a giant slam. They were the top two point getters, both going 6-3 in the round robin. The tournament ended on 12/9 at Korakuen Hall before a non-sellout of 1,399 fans when Ishikawa pinned Nomura in 19:45 with a giant slam. Lee & Nomura clinched the final spot beating Kento Miyahara & Yuma Aoyagi in 17:28 when Lee pinned Miyahara with a back suplex. They are really pushing the idea that Lee is getting on Miyahara’s level and will be his big rival in 2020 after failing to beat him thus far in Triple Crown matches. Miyahara will defend against Lee on 1/3 at Korakuen Hall. Lee is due for the big win and Miyahara is chasing an all-time title defense record so this is about as big a match as the company could put on right now, and Miyahara always delivers in these situations. Suwama & Ishikawa, based on winning the tournament, will get a world tag title shota at Zeus & Sai on Jan. 2 at Korakuen Hall. Going into the final day, Suwama & Ishikawa and Tajiri & Kai both had ten points, so the winner advanced to the finals, where Suwama had Tajiri in a choke and the ref stopped it only 2:24. So the storyline was that Suwama & Ishikawa were fresh while Lee & Nomura went into the finals after a war. The other tournament bouts on the show were Yoshitatsu & Joel Redman over Takashi Yoshida & Gianni Valletta and Zeus & Ryoji Sai over Parrow & Odinson

So after Suwama & Ishikawa had 7-3 with 14 points and Nomura & Lee at 6-4 and 12 points in the first two spots, the rest of the final standings were: 3. Tajiri & Kai and Joe Doering & Jun Akiyama with ten points; 5. Zeus & Sai with nine; 6. Yoshida & Valletta, Parrow & Odinson, Miyahara & Aoyagi and Yoshitatsu & Redman with eight; and 10. Daisuke Sekimoto & the Bodyguard with three after having to forfeit their last several bouts when Bodyguard tore his quadriceps

In the tournament, 12/7 in Kitamoto saw Tajiri & Kai beat Doering & Akiyama in 5:29 akiyama in 6:29 when Tajiri cradled Akiyama, and Zeus & Sai beat Suwama & Ishikawa in 20:13 when Sai pinned Ishikawa

Besides the tag title match, the Jan. 2 Korakuen Hall show has a Battle Royal and the semifinals of the jr. title tournament. 1/3 has Miyahara vs. Lee and the finals of the jr. title tournament.

PRO WRESTLING NOAH: A correction from last week. The NOAH 1/4 show card listed is an evening show that goes head-to-head with the Tokyo Dome card, and is still selling well. NOAH does have an afternoon show on 1/5 at Korakuen Hall before the Tokyo Dome show.

NEW JAPAN: They announced U.S. shows for 1/24 in St. Petersburg, 1/26 in Nashville, 1/27 in Raleigh, 1/30 in Miami and 2/1 in Atlanta. They are running 800 to 3,000 seat concert theaters like the Coca Cola Roxy in Atlanta and St. Petersburg Coliseum. No word on who will be there but these will be split crew shows meaning much of the top talent won’t be there, since the Japanese New Beginning tour stars 1/25

For Fantastica Mania, New Japan World will be running five live shows in 11 days. They air the 1/10 show from Osaka, only in Japanese, and then 1/16, 1/17, 1/19 and 1/20 at Korakuen Hall, all shows with 4:30 a.m. Eastern time starts

New Japan is copying the CMLL tradition with the first-ever New Japan bodybuilding contest on 12/20 before the show at Korakuen Hall. It’s funny with Vince McMahon and Paul Levesque being such bodybuilding fans that WWE never did it. They said Hiroshi Tanahashi, Taiji Ishimori, Sho, Yoh and Toa Henare would enter. Ishimori has won actual contests in the past and Sho has been in fitness contests where bodybuilding has been part of the contests, so in theory you’d favor them for first and second respectively. Henare is not a guy you would equate with bodybuilding, but he’s dropped weight on this tour and looks great

Many of the American Young Lions as well as Yoshinobu Kanemaru, Desperado, Taiji Ishimori, El Phantasmo, Rocky Romero and Ryusuke Taguchi worked on shows as part of the Chara Expo in Anaheim, CA on 12/7 and 12/8.

HERE AND THERE: Robert Bedard, who wrestled as Rene Goulet and Sgt. Jacques Goulet of the French Legionaries tag team, passed away back on 5/25 at the age of 86, but word just got out this past week after a report by Barry Rose, which was later confirmed with a death notice from that date. The WWE, where he worked as a road agent through 1997, was not even aware of this. Bedard started wrestling in 1957 in Quebec, but only had a few matches each year there. In 1962, he had one of his rare matches with Mad Dog Vachon, who told him he should go to the U.S. and start wrestling. He didn’t know where to go, so Vachon called up Wally Karbo and he started in the AWA in 1963, and worked there on-and-off through 1969, and again fairly regularly from 1972 through 1976, with the last few years as Sgt. Jacques Goulet of the French Legionaries . He was billed from Nice, France and worked all over the world. He worked mostly lower on cards or in the middle, but was the surprising winner of the 1981 MSG Tag Team tournament in Japan with Andre the Giant as his partner, beating Antonio Inoki & Tatsumi Fujinami in the finals. In a trivia note, he was in the first-ever WWF match on the USA Network, losing to Tito Santana. In 1972, he had Ric Flair’s second match. In 1974, he went to Indiana for Dick the Bruiser as part of the French Legionaries tag team with Sgt. Don Fargo. Fargo ended up leaving and Zarnoff LeBeouff, a bodybuilder from Quebec, replaced him. They held the tag titles there. He also held the WWWF world tag team titles for two months at the end of 1971 into early 1972 with Karl Gotch as his partner. They were the transition team between heels Luke Graham & Tarzan Tyler, the first champions, and King Curtis Iaukea & Baron Mikel Scicluna. That wasn’t the original plan, as when they beat Graham & Tyler, Vince McMahon Sr., told them they would be champions for one year. But Gotch then got an offer to work for New Japan Pro Wrestling when they started up in early 1972, so he gave notice. With the team broken up, Goulet stayed a few more months, but he was just working prelims, and went back to the AWA. He wrestled regularly through 1986, by which time he was being groomed for an agent position. He remained with the company another 11 years in that role

Bobby Fulton (James Hines, 59), best known as part of the tag team The Fantastics with Tommy Rogers, and later brother George (Jackie Fulton) in the 80s and 90s, was diagnosed this past week with throat cancer. The Fantastics were the most underrated working tag team of the era. In 1988, the feud between The Fantastics vs. The Midnight Express in Jim Crockett Promotions won feud of the year. The teams also feuded in Mid South and World Class. Fulton & Terry Taylor were originally put together in Georgia for a short-lived run as The Fantastic Ones, an attempted knock off of The Fabulous Ones, Stan Lane & Steve Keirn, who were big draws in Tennessee, when Bill Dundee came in from Tennessee to book Georgia cities when the Georgia main stars were touring other parts of the country. He and Rogers became The Fantastics in Mid South to feud with the Midnight Express after the Rock & Roll Express left the territory. While they were a great team, they couldn’t follow the Rock & Roll Express. In Dallas, where The Fantastics went before the Rock & Roll Express, they got over big and the Rock & Roll Express never got over as big and didn’t stay. For Crockett, they reprised the feud after Midnight vs. Rock & Roll. The Midnight vs. Rock & Roll feud did bigger business, but the matches with the Fantastics were actually better, even though by that point Stan Lane had replaced Dennis Condrey on the Midnight team

Britt McHenry, a FOX News personality, filed a lawsuit against both the network and George Murdoch, the pro wrestler known as Brodus Clay and Tyrus, who she at one time did a show with. She had claimed Murdoch sexually harassed her last year, with text messages that included threats of dick picture and comments about her butt and legs. Her story had gotten news play months ago, and Murdoch is still with FOX Sports. It’s notable considering they dumped Bill O’Reilly, the biggest drawing star in cable at the time. Murdoch does a streaming show which FOX advertises regularly during Smackdown. McHenry claimed FOX refused to investigate her claims, shunned, and refuse to allow her to appear as a guest on other FOX News shows. She said she went to Human Resources and management, but instead of getting rid of him, they gave him his own show. She said Murdoch showed investigators photos and texts of her cleavage and nearly bare breasts and text matches that showed her flirting with him but she said the photos and texts were doctored and not really her. She had filed a complaint two months ago to the New York State Division of Human Rights. Tom Clare, the lawyer for Murdoch said he would be filing a defamation lawsuit against her, claiming she has waged a smear campaign against him in the media. McHenry and Murdoch first met at a work dinner in August 2018 and were then put together as co-hosts of a show on the Fox Nation streaming platform called “Un-PC.” She claimed before the show started, in October 2018, he began sending her explicit text messages and started making inappropriate comments to her. One message was “I love pony tails and braids and you look amazing and it’s a real turn on.” She claimed when she brought her boyfriend to a taping on New Year’s Eve that Murdoch was hostile and aggressive toward him. She claimed she complained three times to management about him, and filed complaints about him to Executive Producer Jennifer Rauchet, including once when she claimed he cursed at her on-set and made her cry. According to the lawsuit, Rauchet did nothing and instead told McHenry to stop complaining and walked out on her conversation, telling her that she was replaceable and that FOX News had never wanted her to begin with. After a fourth complaint, Human Resources got back to her and an investigator asked her what she had done to provoke Murdoch, and that the text messages were not sexual harassment because there was no clear intent in the messages to have sex with her. Murdoch was pulled from the show and given her new show, “Nuff Said,” and he would get to promote it on popular FOX News shows while they stopped promoting her show. FOX hired an outside defense firm to investigate and they found no evidence of sexual harassment. She claimed an investigator told her that she was leading him on and said she had to realize she was really, really pretty. FOX lawyers found a text message from her with “nearly bare breasts shown” and that she had withheld them from FOX when she made the claims. She claimed the photos were doctored

Warrior Wrestling has one of the biggest independent shows of the year on 12/13 at Marian Catholic High School in Chicago with Brian Cage vs. El Phantasmo for their championship, Minoru Suzuki vs. Tom Lawlor, Will Ospreay & Amazing Red & Rocky Romero vs. Dezmond Xavier & Zachary Wentz & Trey Miguel, Ace Austin vs. Templario vs. Black Christian vs. Carlos Romo for the Impact X title, Aerostar vs. Taurus vs. Drago vs. Rey Horus vs. Gringo Loco, Michael Elgin vs. Sam Adonis, Lance Archer vs. Brian Pillman Jr., Holidead vs. Savanna Stone, Jake Atlas vs. Robert Anthony and an appearance by Kurt Angle. It will air as an iPPV on FITE TV.

MLW: There are meetings going on this week that they are saying could have a major affect on the company’s future. We do know they’ve been in talks with a streaming service. It would make sense that the sports streaming services out there would consider pro wrestling, but with WWE having its own network and AEW with Turner, and New Japan having its own network as well (plus there are time slot issues with New Japan), nobody is big enough. Still, ESPN+ has PFL and DAZN has Combate Americas and MLW has the potential to be as high on the food chain as they are

Teddy Hart was quietly released. It was said to be an accumulation of things dating back to June, including a resistance to him wanting offered help and conduct issues including no-shows and crashing other shows. They had planned a Hart Foundation vs. Contra feud after a fireball angle with Hart scheduled to return in January. He asked for his release just before Thanksgiving, and then retracted the request. Then he asked for a release a second time. Ultimately the company decided on 12/5 to release him. Hart did threaten to show up to the show without being booked and evidently something happened with he and management where there were things said that led to Bauer saying he’d call the police if Hart came to the show because of concerns with what he had been saying. Hart didn’t come. There were on-line allegations regarding Hart relating to the disappearance of a women he once dated, although they had broken up and MLW officials said they talked with authorities who told them Hart was not a person of interest in the case so this wasn’t there issue and didn’t directly play into the release. He had lost his middleweight title to Myron Reed and wasn’t booked on the 12/5 show in New York to sell the fireball angle

With him gone, while there will be an affiliation when needed with Davey Boy Smith Jr. and Brian Pillman Jr., they will be mostly pushed as singles

The Opera Cup, which Stu Hart owned and was donated by Smith and Teddy Hart and the company paid to restore it using Betteridge Jewels of Greenwich, CT, will be used for an annual tournament. Pillman and Richard Holliday look to have been elevated coming off the 12/5 New York show

ACH started here on that show but has now announced his retirement from wrestling. According to those there, he seemed in a great mood, left happy and they were looking to push him because the guy does have real talent. Two days later, first thing in the morning, Albert Hardie Jr., wrote on Twitter: “I hate pro wrestling. I hae you shity (sic) fans that think you know it all! More importantly I hate the snakes in this industry. None of y’ll would never say anything about me to me. Al of y’all ca go screw yourselves. I’m canceling my shows and I’m quitting pro wrestling.” Those in the promotion noted to us their surprise, that it’s not an angle and that they are no longer booking him. WWE was planning on giving him a big push on television as one of its rising NXT stars, but a series of out-of-the ring incidents led to him being gone from Orlando. Before he came back he went crazy on the company over the T-shirt incident. The t-shirt complaint was very valid, never should have happened. The company did respond. He had the right to be upset. But everything since then publicly has been concerning and hopefully he can find his peace

Kevin Von Erich will be appearing regularly on the TV show next year. They shot stuff from him and will use him to cut promos for his sons when needed

Matt Ryan is working backstage as a producer and in the office. He had worked with ROH in the past

Cima, T-Hawk and Lindaman are scheduled for 2/1 in Philadelphia. L.A. Park will also be back on that show

Ikuro Kwon is out with a knee injury

David Sahadi is still working here. We reported his going to Impact, which he did, but he’s working for both companies right now.

MLW and Impact are going head-to-head in early January, with MLW doing a TV taping with the Von Erichs on 1/11 and Impact doing a PPV show with Sami Callihan vs. Tessa Blanchard the next night. MLW has announced Lawlor vs. Ross Von Erich and Jimmy Havoc vs. Mance Warner in a no rope barbed wire match

They did the Opera Cup tournament as the big thing on the 12/5 show at the Melrose Ballroom in New York before a sellout of 900 fans. Davey Boy Smith Jr. beat Brian Pillman Jr. to win it. I believe the Opera Cup they used was owned by Stu Hart. Dr. Tacks beat Maverick. Brian Pillman Jr. beat TJP in the first round of the Opera Cup. Smith Jr. beat Low Ki in another Opera Cup match, which was said to be the best match of the night. Timothy Thatcher advanced beating Richard Holliday. The final first round match saw Alexander Hammerstone beat MJF. They are usually tag partners in The Dynasty but Hammerstone was a big babyface to the crowd. Tom Lawlor, now a heel, beat a wrestler he brought out called Rip Von Erich. He ripped on both the fans and the Von Erichs. Lawlor claimed Rip was the son of Lance Von Erich, who was the fake Von Erich in the 80s. Lawler beat him quickly and then Ross & Marshall Von Erich came out to confront him. Mikey Mondo & Kenny Doane of the former Spirit Squad them jumped the Von Erichs. They joined with Lawlor and are now the Filthy Squad. Reed beat Lindaman to retain the middleweight title in what was said to be a fun match. Reed, Kotto Brazil and Jordan Oliver were in the ring. They’re called Injustice and played a video. They refused to leave the ring. King Mo Lawal came out to have them leave. They surrounded him until ACH ran in. This turned into a tag match with Lawal & ACH over Brazil & Oliver. Lawal won with a double kneebar submission. Pillman Jr. beat Thatcher in the first semifinal of the tournament. Smith Jr. beat Hammerstone in the other. They did a segment where all the managers were trying to recruit Gino Medina, who they are trying to make into a Gino Hernandez type star. It’s a gimmick WWF did in the 80s for both Randy Savage and later Bam Bam Bigelow. First Salina de la Renta came out. Konnan came out and accused de la Renta of trying to use sex to recruit him. But he said that Medina’s father and him had a relationship. Medina’s father was El Sanguinario who was a top heel in AAA in the 90s. MJF, Holliday and Hammerstone came out to recruit him saying they’re the only ones successful with MJF wearing his AEW diamond ring. Medina shook hands with Konnan, and then attacked him and joined The Dynasty, which is MJF”s group. Ross & Marshall Von Erich beat Mondo & Doane in a quick match. Jimmy Havoc beat Mance Warner in a blindfold match. These matches used to suck but today with fans into irony and silliness, this worked. Priscilla Kelly interfered and kicked Warner low leading to the win. Havoc and Kelly left together. Medina beat Savio Vega in a street fight due to distraction from the rest of The Dynasty. The Contra Unit of Jacob Fatu & Simon Gotch & Josef Samael beat Cima & Lindaman & Shigehiro Irie when Fatu pinned Cima after a moonsault in a short match. The final match saw Smith Jr. beat Pillman Jr. to win the Opera Cup. It was well wrestled but with two Hart Foundation guys facing each other it didn’t have a lot of heat.

ROH: Final Battle will be starting two hours earlier than usual, at 7 p.m. Eastern on 12/13. The first hour will air free and then the PPV portion will be from 8-11 p.m. Dalton Castle & Joe Hendry vs. Silas Young & Josh Woods and Kenny King vs. Rhett Titus have been added to that show. The rest of the card is Rush vs. PCO for the ROH title, Mark & Jay Briscoe vs. Jay Lethal & Jonathan Gresham for the tag titles, Shane Taylor vs. Dragon Lee for the TV title, Matt Taven vs. Vincent, Mark Haskins vs. Bully Ray street fight, Angelina Love vs. Maria Manic, Marty Scurll & Flip Gordon vs. Flamita & Bandido and Dan Maff vs. Jeff Cobb. Ticket sales are very weak for the event, only a few hundred were told at last look. That’s been the case everywhere but it’s a different story when it involves the biggest show of the year

They are in talks with Luke Guyett, better known as Slex on the Australian scene, to come in

Devon “Crowbar” Storm, 45, will be on the 12/15 show in Philadelphia. The lineup for that show is Cobb & Maff vs. PCO & Scurll, Kenny King vs. Rhett Titus, Alex Shelley vs. Jonathan Gresham, Rey Horus vs. Gordon, Bateman vs. Tracy Williams, Haskins vs. Hallowicked and Nicole Savoy vs. Sumie Sakai

Brody King, who suffered a knee injury in late October, is not expected to be ready at this point for Bound for Glory or Philadelphia

Regarding Scurll, obviously from the BTE tease (and some would say the Jericho tease although “Marty” in his list of guys he wouldn’t defend against could mean a number of different things), the betting line would be AEW. What we do know is that he’s agreed to at least one indie date that both sides have agreed to keep secret for now, but that deal would indicate right now he’s not planning on renewing here. He also posted a photo of himself with Luke Harper with the idea of them being the Villain Club. Scurll owns the rights to the Villain Club name. The indie group he’s working with would not be allowed generally speaking if he signed a new ROH contract, but he’d probably be able to do it for now with an AEW deal

Rush has a very ambitious travel schedule this week. He’s working 12/12 in Mexico City, 12/13 in Baltimore, 12/14 in Ciudad Madero and then 12/15 in Philadelphia. It’s going to be quite ambitious getting to Ciudad Madero and back to Philadelphia for an early Sunday show

Brian Zane debuts on the broadcast team handling interviews this week.

IMPACT: Added to the 1/12 Hard to Kill PPV in Dallas is Ethan Page & Josh Alexander defending the tag titles against Willie Mack & Rich Swann, and Michael Elgin vs. Eddie Edwards. They join Sami Callihan vs. Tessa Blanchard for the Impact title, Taya Valkyrie vs. Jordynne Grace vs. ODB for the Knockouts title, Ace Austin vs. Trey Miguel for the X title (I think they are doing an angle where Austin is trying to hit on Miguel’s mom) and RVD vs. Brian Cage

Larry D, an Ohio independent wrestler, has signed. Scott D’Amore offered D a contract on their FITE TV show on 12/7 after he lost to Elgin. The 12/7 was supposed to also air on the Impact Plus streaming service but there were technical issues. In the top matches, Jessicka Havok beat Knockouts champion Taya Valkyrie via DQ for a chair shot. Edwards beat X champion Ace Austin in a non-title match with a neckbreaker on the legs of an upside down table. Their storyline was based on Austin hitting on Edwards’ estranged wife Alisha, but Alisha hearing Austin brag to other wrestlers that he already slept with her (which he hadn’t) and was about to dump her, and her contacting her husband to destroy him when they were in a hotel room together with the idea they were about to have sex. This led to Eddie & Alisha getting back together. The main event saw Sami Callihan beat Swann after several piledrivers to keep the title. Since the show was in Ohio, Callihan was the big babyface

They had a Twitch show on 12/8 from Belleville, MI, where Austin pinned Dezmond Xavier in an X title match that was described as slower paced then you’d expect and heavy on the striking. Edwards beat Mad Man Fulton via DQ when The Crist Brothers interfered. This led to Edwards & Swann & Willie Mack (who made the save for Edwards) beating The Crist Brothers & Fulton when Edwards pinned Dave. Elgin beat Brian Cage in a mach people were raving about. Tons of near falls. Elgin was bleeding from the mouth. Cage wanted to shake hands after. I was told they really should show this match on their TV show. Callihan beat Rhino to keep the title in a street fight after throwing powder in his eyes and kicking him low. Lots of weapon usage including Callihan stapling Rhino in the chest and leg and Rhino stapling Callihan in the groin.

AEW: The next PPV will be 2/29, avoiding major competition, in Chicago at the Wintrust Arena, the home of DePaul University basketball, which with a PPV set up can probably hold about 8,000 fans. Chicago was chosen because much of the talent was already going to be part of the C2E2 Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo that weekend. AEW will have a major presence at the Expo. They seem to be doing very slow building top programs. Those are Chris Jericho vs. Jon Moxley for the AEW title, MJF vs. Cody and Kenny Omega vs. Adam Page. Where they stand right now is Jericho has asked Moxley to join the Inner Circle and on or around 1/1 Moxley will have an answer. On 1/1, in Jacksonville, MJF will list his stips to accept a match with Cody. Omega vs. Page has been very subtle with them now working as a tag team but having small spots where there are problems

There will be no AEW or NXT on Christmas. On 1/1, AEW is running from Jacksonville against major bowl games but NXT is taking the week off. Advance ticket sales for most of the shows are solid, with probably mostly the same 3,500 to 5,000 type crowds each week going forward, aside from 12/18 in Corpus Christi, 1/8 in Southhaven, MS (Memphis, five days after WWE runs a Smackdown show there) and Cleveland which are softer

Brandi Runnels will deliver a keynote speech at the NATPE convention on 1/22 in Miami, where all the major television executives attend and where people shop around their televison shows. Her speech is called “Building a Challenger Brand from the Ground up: The Rise of AEW.” The speech will be about how AEW plans to compete with WWE and will include a Q&A. Tony Schiavone will also be part of the presentation..

 Chris Jericho on his podcast this week talked about the forming of the Inner Circle. He said Tony Khan came up with a name for the group that he didn’t like, and he came up with then name FIST, thought it would make for cool merchandise, but Khan didn’t like that name. Jericho had used the term inner circle in a BTE episode so the Young Bucks came up with that name and Jericho liked it. They wanted Pentagon & Fenix in he group but Jericho thought they were too much like super heroes for Mexicans and wanted a more ruthless type of team, so Santana & Ortiz fit better. The company suggested Anthony Agogo, an Olympic medalist in boxing that they are training, for the enforcer role. Jericho said he wanted somebody physically bigger which was where Jake Hager fit in

Kris Statlander and Big Swole have signed officially for the women’s division. Swole (Heather Monroe) is the wife of Cedric Alexander

The top match on Dark this week, Omega vs. Kip Sabian, would be ****. This was Sabian doing everything he could to have his best match possible and having the advantage of working with Omega and his great timing of when to do what and a live crowd that sees Omega as a major superstar. It is notable that while he hasn’t done promos and while he had the great TV match with Pac, because Jericho and Cody have been the focal points of television, Omega doesn’t feel like a great TV star. But his in-building reactions are that of a major superstar

The reason the 12/11 show was booked in Dallas was because the NFL Owners meeting was in Dallas on that same day and Tony Khan had to attend the meeting on a Wednesday and still have a television show to run that same day

Alex Reynolds & John Silver have signed deals here. It looks like they are being groomed to join the Dark Order, or at least Reynolds is

BTE this week opened with a ratings spoof. Actually it was making fun of reporters who, after NXT had more viewers for two straight weeks (this was filmed before the ratings for 12/4 came in) wrote AEW off as dead. There were people who actually did that. Matt and Nick were racing and Matt was ahead and then he collapsed, went down and acted like he was dying, saying he was winning for seven straight laps and Nick passed him the last two and he was simply done and gave up. Just before he was about to die, he said, “we’re still winning in the key demos.” Kenny Omega then told him to get up, looked in the camera and said, this is not a sprint, it’s a marathon (actually Paul Levesque was the first to use that line) and said “This is a war.” Then as Matt got up to continue the race, Omega said “We’re dead aren’t we. We’re so dead. Game over. What were we thinking?” Jungle Boy was asked what hair care products he uses and he said whatever you get at Costco. Luchasaurus said that you should get sponsored. The Best Friends asked the Jurassic Experience not to hug anymore since that’s their gimmick. MJF and Scorpio Sky were talking about their new favorite TV show, “90 Day Fiancé.” They were discussing if the show was real or worked. MJF wanted Sky to kiss his ring. The show ended with Matt, Nick & Omega talking about how hot the crowd was last week in Champaign, IL, but it didn’t come across. Nick said it was a satellite issue in Atlanta. The feed that went to TNT, which TNT then sends all over the world, had sound problems but the actual building sound from their own production. Michael Nakazawa teased joining the Dark Order and then when the show ended, somebody took the Dark Order’s number so a mystery guy is joining the group. Earlier in the show, Nakazawa said he wanted to wrestle more on TV and there was a mention of all the TV time the women get. Omega said we’re looking for body guys so start lifting heavy. So he just started lifting and Hikaru Shida came up and was curling more weight than he was

AEW announced TV tapings on 2/5 in Huntsville, AL and 2/12 in Austin, TX

AEW is attempting to trademark the phrase “Join the Revolution.

Notes from the 12/11 Dynamite show. This was a strong show, with a great main event that almost didn’t happen. A big criticism has been seemingly unfocused booking, but that was clearly not the case here. The show drew more than 4,700 with 4,500 paid. There was a technical issue as some Spectrum customers in the Northeast were unable to access the show as the station went down in the early part which will very slightly hurt the rating. The big story was the main event. Nick Jackson had a bad case of the flu. He said that he went there, was shivering and had body aches all day. Others noted to us that he was laying on the ground really sick. Management told him to take the night off but he refused to do so because the match was advertised and a key part of a long-term storyline. Santana also had a jacked up back. You would have never had a clue as aside from looking a little thinner, he performed at his best and they had a ****½ street fight match doing nonstop big stuff that one person gave an NBA reference to it being like the famous Michael Jordan flu game. The crowd was super hot live all the way from the preshow match to the post show main event. The show started with a huge pop as Vickie Guerrero came out to do commentary for Dark and did the “Excuse me” to basically remind everyone who she was. The first match for Dark was Frankie Kazarian & Scorpio Sky over Private Party. Both teams were over as faces and said to be a fun all-action match with Kazarian the standout. Moxley pinned Alex Reynolds to open the show with the idea of setting an AEW record with a :12 win with the Paradigm shift. John Silver came in and he got the Paradigm Shift as well. The Inner Circle all came out. The fans were swearing at Jericho so a lot of this was cut out. Jericho told them to watch their language, which did get more heat but also resulted in more sound edits. Jericho told Moxley they weren’t going to jump him and talked about how Moxley is the other top guy here. He talked about helping Moxley ten years ago when Moxley asked him for advice on how to be a top star. He noted that they had beaten the hell out of each other in the past, that Moxley had stolen his things and he hit Moxley with a potted plant. He said he taught Moxley how to be a main event superstar. He said years later, Moxley was unhappy about how things were and called Jericho and how he navigated Moxley out of those waters and into AEW. He said Moxley repaid him by laying him out at Double or Nothing which showed him he still had a chip on his shoulder, but he’ll let that slide. He asked him to join the Inner Circle and not to make a snap decision. He said he’ll wait until after the holidays and make the decision then. He threw Moxley an Inner Circle T-shirt. He said with him in the Inner Circle, they would control everything as the Purveyor (making fun of the word Seth Rollins used) of Unscripted Violence and Le Champion together would be a true paradigm shift. Fans were chanting “no” through all of this. Butcher (Andy Williams) & Blade (Pepper Parks/Braxton Sutter) beat Cody & QT Marshall in 11:03. This match was much better than it had any right to be. The story was that Cody wanted them in a match so bad that he let them pick his partner. MJF did an inset promo calling Cody an idiot and saying letting them pick his partner means he picks the partner and he picked Marshall. The crowd was way into this match, and in particular got way behind Marshall. Blade did a flip dive on him. Cody did a moonsault block and an Oscutter on Blade. The Bunny (Allie) broke up Cody’s hot tag with an eye rake. Marshall tagged himself in and did one of the ugliest looking space flying tiger drops you’ll ever see, but the crowd loved just the idea he’d try a move like that. He also did a crossroads on Blade and Cody did a tope on Butcher. Butcher suplexed Marshall into a backstabber by Blade, called the full deck, for the pin. Cody was still selling the beating on the floor when Darby Allin came out and shook Cody’s hand, so it looks like Cody & Allin will become a tag team for now and continue this program. Later interviews online were pushing that Allin wanted to team with Cody in the tag match and also get a singles rematch against Cody and Cody agreed to it. MJF came out for an interview with Wardlow as his back-up. He called out one of the cable guys in production for laughing at him when Cody made fun of him. He intimidated him and made him kiss his ring. He did. Then MJF laid him out with crossroads. MJF then cut a promo, first using a line from his hero Roddy Piper that you don’t throw rocks at a man with a machine gun and when his mouth opens, his shots don’t miss. He said Cody called him fake, but when he thinks of fake, he thinks of Cody, fake blonde hair that looked like a cat pissed on it, shitty little lisp. He said he has a few stipulations before he’ll wrestle Cody but he’s not telling anyone them in Honkeyville, USA, and instead will in Jacksonville on 1/1. Alex Reynolds was sitting on his bed in his hotel room and on the television screen was a Dark Order recruiter telling him about hotel room service and stuff. The guy called him a jobber. John Silver came in as well. So it looks like they’re joining the Dark Order. Big Swole beat Emi Sakura in 10:31. This wasn’t good and went too long. Hikaru Shida was at ringside so it looked like they were building Swole (Heather Monroe) vs. Shida. To sell the power bomb from last week, ref Rick Knox had kiniseo tape on his neck. Some of the early stuff when Sakura was doing her moves like the rolling Romero special were good. When Swole was on offense, a lot of it didn’t look good at all. She’s very green and this went long enough that we could see it, but she also clearly has potential. Sakura brought in the mic stand. She put Swole in an abdominal stretch and was singing into the mic stand at the same time. Swole won with a forearm. Pac did an interview and wanted a third match with Omega and would go to any lengths to get it. Omega & Page beat Kip Sabian & Shawn Spears in 11:31. Tully Blanchard did a promo talking bout how he’s testing out Sabian and looking for a partner for Spears to be like he and Arn. Jim Ross then said that there’s never been a better tag team than Tully & Arn. The match had a few signs of issues with Omega & Page. Omega went to high ten him and Page wouldn’t do it. There was a funny spot where Sabian asked Justin Roberts to open the ropes for him and then Sabian jumped over the top into the ring instead. Blanchard wasn’t at ringside since they were doing an angle. Penelope Ford was at ringside. She blocked Omega from doing the Terminator dive. Ford did a huracanrana off the apron on Page and a handspring elbow. When she’s just sticking to her spots she’s great, but it doesn’t come across when she has to do a full match. But her stuff here was so good it’s almost like she’s a face. It’s too bad Joey Janela won’t do the obvious program because playing off real life is basic old school pro wrestling. The lights went out in the middle of the match and Janela brought out Blanchard in a chair all tied up with his mouth taped shut. Spears ran out of the match and attacked Janela so their program is continuing. Omega hit the snap dragon on Sabian and blew a kiss at Ford. Sabian was beaten but Page tagged himself in and hit the buckshot lariat for the pin. Omega acted perplexed, but not mad, nor did he get mad Page got the pin since they won the match. I always hate in these situations where you win and get mad if you are a face, and he didn’t get mad. Omega went to hug Page for winning and Page backed off. Brandi Rhodes did an interview. Melanie Cruise was with her with her new haircut. She made remarks about Riho and also said they still want Kris Statlander to join Nightmare Collective. Luchasaurus pinned Sammy Guevara in 6:27 with a tombstone pancake. Jericho was on commentary and put over his match with Jungle Boy. He mentioned his name was Jack Perry and he was the son of the great Luke Perry. Since that has never been said before, there must have been a lot of viewers who aren’t hardcore fans doing a double take on that one. Jake Hager and Chris Jericho came out to attack Luchasaurus. Jungle Boy made the save and used a huracanrana on Jericho and Marko Stunt counted a three count pin. Jericho got his mouth busted open in the brawl. Young Bucks beat Ortiz & Santana in 14:36 of a wild street fight with the winners getting a title shot. It’s weird because Private Party has beaten both of these teams. It would have made more sense if the Dark match was a title match so that covered that base. It opened with a wild brawl before the match with Guevara helping out Santana & Ortiz. Brandon Cutler helped out the Young Bucks. They beat Cutler down and threw him through the stage, the same bump Matt took a few weeks ago in his injury angle. Matt was thrown off the stage but his fall was blocked by some guys. Santana used the loaded sock on Nick. They did an Indy taker on the stage on Guevara to take him out. Matt put Ortiz on a table and Nick came off the top of the set with an Arena Mexico stage dive, but actually being a swanton through the table. Santana used the loaded sock on both. Matt put on a Dallas Cowboys helmet for an easy pop and speared both guys. Santana got the helmet, hit Matt with it and spit on the Cowboys helmet for easy heat. Matt gave Santana two Northern Lights suplexes and then did a third over the top rope and Santana went through a table. Ortiz then backdropped Matt over the top rope and he went through a table. Ortiz did a tope con giro on Nick and put him through a table. Matt did a plancha over the post on Santana. Nick did a 450 on a garbage can on Ortiz. He went for the pin but Hager pulled ref Rick Knox out of the ring. Given this was no DQ, this made more sense than when they do this spot (it was a WWF favorite when Rock was young but they dropped it except in no DQ matches because it made refs look stupid) usually here or in New Japan. Nick went to kick Hager, who moved, and kicked Knox, so no ref. Dustin Rhodes attacked Hager. Aubrey Edwards ran in to ref. They set up a Meltzer driver on Ortiz, but Santana knocked Nick off the top rope and he flew backwards and through another table. Matt’s triceps was all sliced up at this point. They did the street sweeper on Matt but Nick pulled Edwards out of the ring to stop the count. Ortiz hit Nick with four more shots with the sock. Matt pushed Santana off the top rope when they went for another street sweeper and Santana went through a table. Nick bulldogged Ortiz into two chairs. After a bunch of superkicks, including Nick superkicking a chair into Ortiz’s face, they got the pin with a Meltzer driver on a chair on Ortiz. The show ended with Kazarian & Scorpio Sky with the belts in a face-off with the Bucks. Dark continued with Britt Baker in a short match over local wrestler Machiko. They billed her from Tulsa to make her a heel. Quick squash ending with the mandible claw. This had the least reaction on the show. Statlander beat Bea Priestley with an axe kick. The crowd at first was quiet but we’re told it was really good and the crowd was doing the “This is awesome” chants. Statlander got over like a real star. Brandi, Awesome Kong and Cruise were in the crowd trying to recruit Statlander, whose gimmick is that she’s an alien. She does promos with the idea she’s from another galaxy. Main event saw Pac & Jack Evans & Angelico over Chuck Taylor & Trent & Orange Cassidy. Cassidy got one of the biggest reactions on the show. Everything he did was over live. Pac made Taylor submit to the brutalizer. Cody then came out with Taylor, Trent and Cassidy. They brought some kids into the ring. A kid was dressed up like Cassidy and Cody let the kid pin him. Another kid said his name was Brody. Cody said that Brody was now a free agent and “we should probably sign that guy.” He probably meant Brodie Lee, but he could have meant Brody King. And really, they should sign both. Cody spent 30 minutes after this taking photos and talking to fans before security finally wanted to shut down the show.

UFC: In what came across as a classless move, UFC informed Liz Carmouche’s manager on 12/5 that she was being released. Carmouche at the time was in Washington, DC, promoting this weekend’s show capitalizing on her military background. Why she was released is another question. Carmouche was ranked as the No. 4 contender in the flyweight division. She was coming off a loss to champion Valentina Shevchenko in what was a pretty bad fight, but she’s won four of her previous five fights. The story is that the UFC matchmakers who made the call didn’t realize she was doing P.R. work for the company at the time. Carmouche, who served in the Marines during the Iraqi War, was brought in for a number of media and promotional appearances along with a wreath-laying ceremony at Arlington National Ceremony. She told MMA Junkie that she was told she actually released prior to coming but she didn’t know that. She was visiting people in the hospital when she found out. She noted she took time off her regular job to do the appearance for UFC and said she had paid her own way to go to Washington, DC. What’s also tough for her is that normally a fighter like her would be able to hook up with Bellator. Current champion in her weight class, Ilima-lei Macfarlane said that her dream match would be against Carmouche. “I’m not planning on fighting forever,” Macfarlane told MMA Junkie. “If I’m going to lose the belt I want it to be to somebody who is my mentor and my main training partner and my coach through this entire journey. That’s who I would want to lose to. But don’t get me wrong, we would totally go out there to try to kill each other. It’s not like I’m just going to hand it over. People always ask me my dream fight, I’m like, `Liz. Hopefully she can come over.

Nothing is forever, but Carmouche also more than deserved the benefit of the doubt in such decisions since she had worked so hard in promoting the first Ronda Rousey fight which was no successful on PPV that it led to women being a regular part of UFC. But that was under different management and anything pre-2016 means nothing to this management. Carmouche was on Ariel Helwani’s show and said she was in a car with UFC officials after having left a children’s hospital when she was told she was cut. She said UFC told her that they are trying to make new stars in the 125 pound division and that she’s beaten all the new stars they are trying to make, so they said for the best of the division, they had to cut me because that’s the only way she’d be able to get good fights. Okay, I do understand you wouldn’t put Carmouche against someone being built for a title shot, but she’s still a name who can be used to see if people who you aren’t sure about have got it. There are people like that in every division and it’s not like Carmouche is so dominant like say a Joseph Benavidez for all those years at flyweight where he beats everyone but the champ and they don’t want to give him another title shot. So, this still makes no sense

Former dominant bantamweight champion Renan Barao, who was never the same after his title loss to T.J. Dillashaw, was cut this past week after his fifth straight loss. Barao had an amazing 32 fight winning streak, which is pretty much unheard of in this business, lasting from May 2005 until May 2014. At that point he was considered an all-time great, and maybe the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world. Dillashaw beating him at the time ranked with Matt Serra’s win over GSP and Holly Holm’s win over Ronda Rousey as the biggest title upsets in history. But he never recovered from it. He had issues making 135, but simply was too small at 145. After losing his title, he went 2-7

After Mark Hunt’s lawsuit against the company was thrown out, UFC filed against Hunt for reimbursement of expenses for a frivolous suit, claiming they had spent $302,000 in legal costas and $86,000 in other costs to defend themselves in the case

Dana White said, which is really kind of the obvious, that if Conor McGregor beats Donald Cerrone on 1/18, and Khabib Nurmagomedov beats Tony Ferguson that he’ll be trying to make a Nurmagomedov vs. McGregor lightweight title match next

The prelims before the 12/14 PPV show are on ESPN 2 rather than ESPN, because ESPN will be airing the Heisman Trophy presentation against he first hour, and Top Ranked boxing from Madison Square Garden, headlined by Terrence Crawford vs. Mean Machine Egidijus Kavaliauskas for the WBO welterweight title against the second hour

What is the deepest UFC show of the year is a PPV show on 12/14 from Las Vegas at the T Mobile Arena. Tickets are not sold out, but the secondary market price to get in is $123.50, so that’s a good demand price. The 13-fight show starts at 6:15 p.m. Eastern on ESPN+ with Punahele Soriano (6-0) vs. Oskar Piechota (11-2-1), Viviane Araujo (8-1) vs. Jessica Eye (14-7), Brandon Moreno (15-5-1) vs. Ka Kara France (20-7) and Chase Hooper (8-0-1) vs. Daniel Teymur (7-3). ESPN 2 will have the prelims at 8 p.m., with Matt Brown (21-16) coming out of retirement against Ben Saunders (22-12-2), Ian Henisch (13-2) vs. Omari Akhmedov (19-4-1), Ketlen Vieira (10-0) vs. Irene Aldana (11-5) and Geoff Neal (12-2) vs. Mike Perry (13-5). The PPV at 10 p.m has Petr Yan (13-1) vs. Urijah Faber (35-10), Marlon Moraes (22-6-1) vs. Jose Aldo (28-5), Amanda Nunes (18-4) defends the women’s bantamweight title against Germaine de Randamie (9-3), Max Holloway (21-4) defends the featherweight title against Alexander Volkanovski (20-1) and Kamaru Usman (15-1) defends he welterweight title against Colby Covington (15-1). There are endless stories on this one. Usman vs. Covington matches two wrestlers with fantastic cardio. Nobody, not even Tyron Woodley, has been able to stop Usman’s wrestling. Covington is a big talker and this is a legit grudge match. Ultimately it’ll come down to conditioning and probably will not end quickly. Holloway vs. Volkanovski is a real top tier champion vs. legit No. 1 contender fight. Nunes is pretty much now considered the greatest female fighter of all-time, given her knockouts of Ronda Rousey, Miesha Tate, Holly Holm and Cris Cyborg, all in the first round, and two wins over Valentina Shevchenko. She hasn’t lost in five years and knocked out de Randamie in the first round in 2013. Aldo is moving to 135 and he used to have trouble cutting to 145. He looks very small and old in photos, while Moraes is one of those guys who is a killer early in the fight, and is the most dangerous finisher as a bantamweight. Yan would be heavily favored against Faber, but this would be a fight that if somehow Faber could win, it’ll turn his comeback into an amazing story. Neal vs. Perry is a fight that looks great on paper. Vieira, if she beats Aldana, should be Nunes’ next opponent. Araujo can be a player at 125 with a win over Eye. Brown, who is almost 39, comes off a two-year retirement and he was one of the more popular undercard fighters of several years back with his aggressive style and attitude

Diego Sanchez returns with a 2/15 fight against Michel Pereira, who has gone 1-1 in two UFC fights

Marlon Vera vs. Jimmie Rivera, Lauren Murphy vs. Andrea Lee (No. 6 vs. No. 8 at women’s flyweight) and Mirsad Bektic vs. Dan Ige have has been added to the 2/8 show in Houston, which is the Jon Jones vs. Dominic Reyes PPV show

Karolina Kowalkiewicz vs. Yan Xiaonan has been added to the 2/22 show in Auckland, New Zealand. Xiaonan has won her first four UFC fights while Kowalkiewicz has lost her last three, but is the toughest test thus far for Xiaonan of China.

OTHER MMA: DAZN reported that the Anthony Joshua vs. Eddie Ruiz rematch on 12/7 had 1.8 million streams out of their roughly eight million worldwide subscribers, which is believed to be the all-time record for the service. They signed up 200,000 subscribers worldwide the day of, with the key market being in the U.S. It also did 1.6 million PPV buys in the U.K., which is record levels for that market, and this is come just a few weeks after the monster number Logan Paul vs. KSI did in the U.K

Tito Ortiz beat Alberto El Patron in 3:10 in their PPV main event on the 12/7 Combate Americas show in McAllen, TX. It couldn’t have done any business and we got virtually no feedback and even though Ortiz vs. Chuck Liddell did 200,000 searches, they only did 40,000 buys and this didn’t even do 50,000 searches. Ortiz took him down, got his back and choked him out. There were no significant punches thrown. The match went almost exactly as you would think. The other pro wrestler fighting on the show, Dulce Garcia, formerly Sexy Star, went to 2-0 beating Anmali Lopez with a guillotine in 2:47. It was Lopez’s first MMA fight. The show aired on network television in Mexico so there is a chance it did big television numbers in that country.

WWE: In a strange one, especially given no wellness test failures in seemingly forever (none have been announced since 2016 but there have been failures in NXT that were not announced since then), WWE announced on 12/10 that Robert Roode, 42, and Primo Colon, 36, were suspended for test failures. Colon hasn’t even worked a show for the company since February and it wasn’t even clear if he was still under contract as he’s been working for WWC in Puerto Rico. It’s possible Roode’s failure was discovered a few weeks back, since they did the angle with Reigns on the 11/29 Smackdown where he was injured and went out on a stretcher. But Roode was still tentatively booked for TLC a week ago and I’m guessing that changed because of the suspension being known. But it’s hard to say because when it comes to failures and suspensions, even if management times them, literally nobody is told about them besides the talent, Vince, maybe Paul Levesque but the creative team has never known about them in advance in the past. Both are first violations and are 30 day suspensions without pay. It is hard to believe that nobody could fail on the main roster in more than three years and then two do essentially at the same time, especially when we have so many failures in UFC, where bodies aren’t nearly as important and when you face two year suspensions and not 30 days on the first offense. A key difference is that in many real sports, and UFC being one of them, TUE’s for testosterone are not allowed while in WWE they are, so often when you see guys who you look at and think they have to be on something (and there’s not a lock they are as there are people who have the right genetics and are very disciplined) they may have TUE’s for testosterone, essentially giving them free reign for at least testosterone use and that’s the base of most cycles. At one point about a dozen years ago we were told only a few were approved and nobody new would be, but talent there says TUE’s are plentiful so that doctrine is no longer the case. Obviously WWE isn’t completely serious with the policy as compared to UFC, and there’s an argument that as not a real sport they don’t need to be. When Lesnar failed in UFC, it came out that Lesnar’s contract specifically didn’t allow WWE to test him or discipline him over test failures, and he’s arguably the biggest overall star and the highest paid talent in the company. On the flip side, the reason Billy Gunn got fired years ago, and he was just a coach, not a talent, was the company found out he was suspended from the sport of powerlifting, which he was competing in at the time, for failing a test for highly elevated testosterone levels

. In what was something of a surprise, and came out of nowhere with the parties not knowing ahead of time it was happening, WWE released The Ascension, Harper and Sin Cara on 12/8. Harper and Sin Cara had publicly asked to be released and had been turned down. Harper asked back in April. We don’t know what the situation was with The Ascension, but they haven’t worked a match since April. Sin Cara came back from an injury, worked a few TV matches with Andrade, looked really good in the first one, but then asked for his release. Harper wasn’t used at all since April, but when the Bryan vs. Reigns program was dropped and turned into Bryan & Reigns both feuding with Rowan, Harper was brought back for a tag team match and build for such on PPV. But then Rowan was moved to Raw, ending that program quickly and Harper stopped being used again. The Ascension, Konnor, real name Ryan Parmeter, 39, was in WWE developmental from 2005 to 2007, then released, but brought back in 2010. The first Ascension group was formed in 2011 in Florida, which was Parameter as Connor O’Brien, and later Konnor, along with Kenneth Cameron (Thomas “Bram” Latimer), Orlando Colon and Raquel Diaz (Shaul Guerrero, the wife of Aiden English and daughter of Eddy and Vickie). That group had some starts and stops and changes. Eric Thompson, then known as Rick Victor, 39, and later Viktor, joined Konnor for this version of The Ascension in 2013, and they went to the main roster in 2014. Parmeter’s thing he had going for him was he was 6-foot-4 and 280 pounds, a big guy, in an era where just being big and powerful didn’t get over. Viktor was the worker of the team, but never showed any special charisma and they spent years on the main roster doing nothing. Sin Cara, real name Jorge Arias, is 42. He wrestled as Mystico in Texas and Northern Mexico before the more famous Mistico started in CMLL. He worked in TNA from 2004 to 2006 as Incognito, and came to WWF in 2009, and was called Hunico. When the famous Mistico, who was the original Sin Cara, was fired, Hunico was given the name and gimmick. Harper, real name Jonathan Huber, turns 40 next week. He’s a talented big guy who signed in 2012 with WWE. He asked to leave and one would think with his working ability that he’d be someone who would be a good fit for AEW, but there has been no direct contact and can’t be for some time. His situation is notable because his contract would have already expired, but they added time to it because of the time he was out after wrist surgery. Huber’s deal was up on 3/25, so even if not released, he was free to work anywhere after that date. With the non-compete period, all four can’t work anywhere as far as wrestling on televison until 3/8, but will continue to be paid their down side. They probably can work certain independents, but nobody with television, prior to that period and can do autograph signings prior to that period. But for Harper, the release was basically almost like a formality since they can say they were nice and released him early, but he was going to be a free agent anyway 17 days later. He had already trademarked his old ring name Brodie Lee, and that is believed the name he will go back to using. For Arias, he’s probably be a different name, maybe Incognito. There was talk of him wanting to do MMA with Combate Americas, but starting in that sport at 42, whether he’s a tough guy and a real street fighter, is not the best of ideas. He was at the Combate show with the Tito Ortiz vs. Alberto El Patron fight over the weekend

The next season of Miz & Mrs. on USA will debut on 1/29. It will air on Wednesdays at 10 p.m., after NXT. That may mean an end to the overrun. Another key is how the ratings hold up as Miz & Mrs. popularity was from following Smackdown and a wrestling audience of 2.1 million, as opposed to NXT with an audience of maybe 35 percent of that

Matt Hardy, whose contract is up in February, certainly gave hints of leaving. He wrote on Twitter, “I needed to return to WWE to finish in the right way. I didn’t want 2010 to be my finale. I returned in the most epic way and repaid my debt. I waved the WWE flag with pride and worked hard to be a model employee. My conscience is clear and I am at peace.” Hardy wanted to do his Broken character but WWE watered it down and it didn’t really click. He personally owns the rights to it and one would think he’d want to do that somewhere else. He and Ed Nordholm left Impact with bad terms but it’s been years, while the Young Bucks vs. Broken Hardys program in ROH was rushed and they had plans for a year which would have included Bucks in Impact and Hardys in ROH before the Hardys went to WWE. But if Matt leaves, that doesn’t mean Jeff will, although their contracts would expire at the same time

In Canada, Raw on 12/9 did 215,400 viewers while Smackdown on12/6 did 152,400 viewers. NXT failed to crack the top ten, meaning less than 82,000 viewers

After attempting and failing to get a release and some digs at management, Chris Girard, 33, (Oney Lorcan) has agreed to return to the company. Girard noted on Twitter that he had signed a new deal. At the time he posted it, according to those with knowledge of the situation, the contract had not been signed, but his actual wording was he had agreed to a new deal, which was confirmed to us that the WWE side was confident that they had an agreement and he was staying. Whether WWE would have released him is unknown. He had stopped working for the company and his contract had been frozen. Unless he came back, they could have frozen him out pretty much forever. With Sin Cara and Harper, they were willing to work but wanted to leave, so they couldn’t be frozen and with Harper, give the 90 days, it all ended up the same either way. The other key, and this is a feather in management’s cap and Paul Levesque in particular. A lot of managers, be it of wrestling companies or sports teams, it’s one thing if a superstar complains publicly, but if it’s a non-starter type, to go and renegotiate a deal to make him happy after he publicly dissed you, that says a lot. If nothing else, you can see Levesque has checked his ego at the door in this role and is just about business and not personal. But I could see a ton of people in management just having him sit with his old deal, and do nothing with him for dissing Levesque on Twitter. The key is, and this happened with the Revival and Gallows & Anderson as well, is that if you tell them you are unhappy, it may not make management happy at all that it gets out, but they won’t release you for it. Not only that, but they will change things, whether it’s money or push or allowing you to work longer matches on house shows, to try and keep you happy while you are there, although not in all cases as noted with the Harper and Sin Cara releases. The difference is that both of them went public asking for their release while Girard never went public on that subject, only said that Levesque’s comments that talent shouldn’t be going public and that it isn’t good business to play that way also meant Levesque never should have gone public in a media interview on that subject. Although in the case of Levesque, he never mentioned anyone by name. Another key is that while AEW is paying non-WWE guys far more than they were making elsewhere for the most part, with the exception of the key people they wanted as the nucleus, they are not sitting there trying to outbid WWE and offer Orton $5 million a year the way WCW did (when money figures were a lot less) in the last war

As noted, Mike Bennett has been doing everything asked of him, although it’s still unclear where he’s going, but he did manage to kill dead that “who is the father” angle on Raw. Then again, the last thing they needed was another angle like that when Rusev and Lana has been such a major part of the television

Regarding releases, within the company the belief is that there are more coming. But these things change rapidly, as for so long it was nobody getting released, then it was if they aren’t happy let them go, and then still, nobody was getting released. It is notable that everyone released was 39 or older except for Albert Hardie Jr. (ACH/Jordan Myles)

The new Jumanji: The Next Level movie starring Dwayne Johnson is out this coming weekend. The 2017 Jumanji movie grossed $962 million worldwide. In other Johnson news, he and Dany Garcia, his business partner and ex-wife, have invested money in a 20-location ice cream franchise called Salt & Straw, based in Portland, OR. They will also be creative partners and strategic advisors for the brand. Johnson pushed on instagram that his favorite cheat meal is a stack of pancakes and three pints of Salt & Straw ice cream,. The company is also adding a Dwanta Claus flavors inspired by Johnson

The annual Tribute to the Troops show took place on 12/7 at the Camp Lejeune Marine Corps base in Jacksonville, NC, near Fayetteville where Smackdown ran that night. Talent from both Raw and Smackdown appeared. It was just a local event and there won’t be a television show this year and as far as I know it won’t be on the network either as the talent was told it wasn’t being taped for that type of use and the company confirmed that. I’m not sure why, but the plan is for more and higher profile events like this down the line so it isn’t as if they were giving up the concept. There were about 2,000 serviceman and families able to get in. The first match was Owens & Carrillo vs. McIntyre & Andrade. They did another Rusev & Lana & Lashley angle. They announced the Rusev vs. Lashley match was canceled due to Lana getting a restraining order. Lana said that Lashley was hotter and manlier than any Marines. For this angle, it made no sense to bring up Lashley’s own military background. Rusev then came out of the crowd and attacked Lashley which they loved. Natalya & Logan wrestled the Kabuki Warriors in a tag title match that the Warriors went over in. Rollins beat Rowan in weapons style main event

The NXT U.K. belt was stolen on 12/7 when a rental car that Walter and Timothy Thatcher were using over the weekend working for Evolve was broken into. Walter’s title belt, passport and some of his ring gear was stolen, and he ended up working the show in Chicago bare-footed. Thatcher also had some of his things stolen. There have been a rash of break-ins in the Logan Square section of Chicago, where the auditorium the show was in took place

Austin’s second Broken Skull Sessions show on the WWE Network debuts on 12/15 after the TLC PPV show, with Goldberg as his guest

Catherine Joy Perry (Lana) told ComicBook.com that she’s gotten death threats from fans on social media doing her current storyline. “I personally have received a lot of death threats, I've gotten calls from like WWE and the FBI, people actually threatening WWE. Having death threats on me and the FBI has had to call me and protect me. And I get death threats on my comments on Instagram, on Twitter. I mean, people are bullies. I mean today I opened my email account and I had this death threat on my email.... But it was just like the names that people call are just, it's just appalling. It's absolutely appalling. You know, cyber-bullying is a big cause of suicide. And I just wanna speak out on it, as like, that is really, really, really wrong. It's completely wrong. {eople really need to think before they comment. Because all they're doing is they're hiding behind a screen and they're just, they're being mean. And you know, do people want to be responsible for people killing themselves? I'm going to continue to strongly speak out about it because I think that there's a lot, a lot of people that are victims of cyber-bullying and it really effects their entire life and it's wrong and it needs to stop.

In promoting the final episode of the season of Total Divas to People, Rousey said this about returning to wrestling. “I think I need to figure out a different way of doing it. To be able to not have to choose career over family or family over career and kind of find that happy medium. Right now, I think my family needs my undivided attention. I’m happy to give them that. But I’m trying to figure out a way or a system or somehow that I could give both my family and WWE the best of me and not be half ass in both.” Rousey said she was leery about doing Total Divas because she didn’t have a good experience in another reality show (the season of Ultimate Fighter where she was a coach and she didn’t come across well in a lot of ways) but was very happy she did this one

John Hennigan (Morrison) was at the Performance Center this past week being filmed for things related to his return

In last week’s issue, covering the Mexico City show, we mentioned Velasquez wrestling, but didn’t list his match in the news section (it was in the results). Velasquez’s second WWE match saw him team with Carrillo to beat Anderson & Gallows

A correction in the Starrcade piece. The September 17, 1981, Ric Flair NWA title win, his first, was over Dusty Rhodes, not Harley Race as was listed

Jax is back in the ring training for a return

Lars Sullivan sent out an Instagram photo of himself training, but he’s still around the midway point in recovery from his reconstructive knee surgery so he has months left to go

The current card for 12/26 in Madison Square Garden is Rollins vs. Owens, Asuka & Sane vs. Flair & Lynch in a cage match for the women’s tag titles, Mysterio vs. Andrade for the U.S. title, Orton vs. Styles, Rusev vs. Lashley no holds barred and more. That’s the basic framework for all the Raw post-Christmas holiday shows. The Smackdown lineups are Wyatt vs. Bryan vs. Miz in the Universal title match, Reigns vs. Corbin (cage match, street fight, basic weapons match), Nakamura vs. Strowman for the IC title, and Bayley vs. Evans for the women’s title (Bliss as referee in some cites

. Maria Menounos teased the idea of doing something with wrestling, thanking Sean Waltman, Rikishi (who has a Southern California wrestling school) and Deville (who worked for Menounos and that affiliation got her on Tough Enough which led to her WWE signing) for the ring training

Some notes on the WWE tryouts this past week. While there are some independent wrestlers, you can see with guys they are back to focusing on big guys, with a lot of college football players. While their track record with the big football players hasn’t been the best, the reality is they are loaded with smaller guys who can work and the independents will continue to turn these guys out. On the women’s side, there are some models but the focus, unlike years ago, is on higher level legitimate athletes including legitimate top tier track, basketball and volleyball players as well as the MMA and kickboxer types. I think the success of Bianca Belair as a home grown star that the feeling is those type of people can do well at this. Before it was always about looks first, the ability to pose in bikinis and hopefully some athletic background to go with it

Besides Arissa LeBrock as mentioned last week, others at the WWE tryout this past week included Zack Carpinello, who was in the gossip pages at the same time as his tryout with the word he had gotten back together with J-Woww of Jersey Shore fame. Carpinello was on the show as her boyfriend, but then the two broke up after an episode aired that showed him hitting on Angelina Pivarnick, of the show. But how they are back together. Also at the tryout was Will Brooks, the former Bellator lightweight champion, in 2014 and 2015, who beat Michael Chandler twice, but vacated the title in 2017 and then went to UFC where he was 1-3. He fought in the PFL tournament for $1 million in 2018 but didn’t make the finals. Brooks called the camp “one of the hardest things I’ve done in my life.” Steven and brother Tome Filiposki from Australia, better known as Steve & Tome Filip, are known independent stars in that country. They had impressed New Japan officials so much after the Southern Showdown card that they were invited to become Young Lions and move to Tokyo, and New Japan has a rep for not training a lot of guys, but the ones they do take in, the track record of success is very high. The number of people who get NJPW offer like that and turn them down is very small. They were expected to go but then turned down the offer because their childhood dream was WWE. We’re told Stevie has outstanding potential and has a chance to be a big star as he’s acrobatic in the Will Ospreay way but needs more ring time and polish. Khashayar Mizaei, better known as King Khash, a 20-year old Iranian native who wrestles independently out of Washington and has worked for Zero-1 in Japan as well as works for Defy and ECCW and once was in a squash on a WWE televison in 2016 at 17; Others include: Anthony Henry, a regular pushed star with Evolve; Brandon & Brent Tate, known as The Tate Twins, who are identical twins who wrestled as The Boys with Dalton Castle in ROH; Michael Evans, 26, who is 6-foot-5 and 247 pounds and was on season one of Dwayne Johnson’s Titan Games TV show; Stephen Gerard, the Midwest independent wrestler known as Stephen Wolf; Nicholas Harmon, who works as Nick Cutler; Gary Jones, who works as Ganon Jones Jr; Lauren Jones, who wrestles indies as Palmer Cruise and did a 205 Live squash once for Brian Kendrick; Irene Janjic, a protégé of Lance Storm who has wrestled for Stardom and Sendai Girls in Japan; Rebeca Janjigian, the independent woman wrestler better known as Christi Jaynes; Kara Lazauskas, who also competed on Titan Games; Pierre Bouquiaux, a 6-foot-8, 265 pound bodybuilder from Belgium who competed in the past two years in amateur competitions in Luxemburg and Portugal, although didn’t place top five in either contest; Jessie Bush, a referee out of Wisconsin; Anthony Catena of Florida of Chaotic Wrestling; Nigel Cawthorn, 25, a 6-foot-5, 295 pound starting defensive lineman at Hampton University who started most games during his junior and senior years and was heavyweight state champion in high school in Virginia in 2012, where at one point he was ranked No. 10 in the nation; Michael Crandle, who played defensive end for Robert Morris University and has wrestled independently as Duke Davis; Steve Felger from Florida, who has been used as a referee on a number of Gabe Sapolsky WWN shows; Clifford Fortune, a 270-pound former defensive lineman at Norfolk State University who is also a powerlifter; Khambrell Gomez, who was listed at 6-foot-4 ½ and 304 pounds as a lineman for Adams State University who holds the national record in the shot put and discus for Belize. He competed in football and track at Pasadena City College in California; Miles Grooms, 27, listed at 6-foot-3 and 250 pounds, who played college football at Hampton University and was a first-team All-MEAC defensive lineman; Christopher Heyward III, a 354-pounder who wrestled as Calvin Tankman; Matthew Knotts, a 300-pounder who trained under Billy Gunn and the Dudleys; Ariel Levy, an independent wrestler from Chile; Pingi Moli, 30, a 6-foot-4, 280 pound former football player at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas who has since worked as a stuntman in Hollywood best known for being in the movie Fast & Furious: Hobbs & Shaw; Olumide Ogunnake, a 250-pound bodybuilder from Cleveland; Roman Rozell, 35, a former Green Beret who wrestled at Arizona State; Victoria Andreola of New Jersey, who does independents in the New Jersey area as Vicious Vicki; Jennifer Cantu, 23, an Olympic weightlifter from Mexico who competed at 139 pounds in the Junior World championships; Chanice Chase-Taylor, 26, who went to the Olympics in 2016 as a hurdler for Canada and was an All-American in track in several events for Louisiana State; Lauren Dodds, 21, a competition bikini fitness competitor from Qatar; Christine Hartman, who was an honorable mention on the All-American team as a setter in volleyball for the University of Kentucky; Anriel Howard, 22, a 5-foot-11 forward who holds the Texas A&M career record for most rebounds and set an NCAA tournament record with 27 rebounds in one game, who also ran track and was the 24th pick in the WNBA draft and played early season games before being cut; Alexandra Mozelski,25, a bodybuilder who has worked as Alyx Sky in ndies; Lainey Nations an MMA fighter with a 4-1 record as an amateur; Rachael O’Leary, who has competed in Muay Thai and kickboxing; Ebony Payne, a firefighter; Jessica Roden, a model who has trained for pro wrestling in Southern California; Elaine Simon, 32, a Florida independent wrestler who has used the name Layne Rosario and Derby Doll and Aja Smith, who works as Aja Perera

Evolve ran two shows this weekend. On 12/6 in Livonia, MI, Davey Vega & Mat Fitchett beat Adrian Alanis & Liam Grey to become top contenders for the tag titles. Brandan Vink of NXT beat Colby Corino. In a battle of NXT talent, Reina Gonzalez beat Shotzi Blackheart via DQ for Blackheart hitting Gonzalez with her own cowbell. Tag champs AR Fox & Leon Ruff beat Matt Sydal & Andrew Everett. Babatunde & Arturo Ruas of NXT teamed with Anthony Gutierrez t lose to Eddie Kingston & Sean Maluta & Joe Gacy. Evolve champ Josh Briggs beat JD Drake and Walter beat Timothy Thatcher

In Chicago, it was Anthony Greene & Harlem Bravado over Briggs & Babatunde via DQ. Vink beat Alanis. Ruas beat Thatcher via armbar submission. Gonzalez beat Blackheart in a no DQ match. Curt Stallion pinned Sydal. Vega & Fitchett beat Fox & Ruff to win the Evolve tag titles and Water beat Briggs in a non-title main event



Another example of the struggle of what fans were encouraged to do in the past being obnoxious in the present took place on the 12/8 show in Daytona Beach. Zayn came out and cut a pro-Canada anti-America promo. He was talking around ringside prior to a Wyatt vs. Nakamura cage match for the Universal title. A fan called him a Canadian f*****, a homophobic slur. Zayn got in his face. The fan ended up calling him that three times and asked Zayn if he wanted to fight. Ref Danilo Anfibio came over to try and calm things down. Zayn dared the fan to touch him and then Keith Burgdoff of WWE security came out to try and calm things down. The fan used a gay slur again, Zayn called him a homophobic bitch, and security ejected the fan. I will grant you wrestling encouraged that reaction for decades. It was commonplace nightly but things like this are not acceptable today. Other fans don’t want to attend shows with people acting like that and it is not acceptable to most of the current wrestlers performing

WWE stock closed on 12/11 at $62.86 per share, giving the company a $4.900 billion market value

The most-watched shows of the past week on WWE Network were: 1. NXT on 12/5; 2. WWE Day of: Survivor Series; 3. Survivor Series; 4. Starrcade from Atlanta; 5. Table for 3 with Jeff Jarrett, A.J. Styles and Sting; 6. Steve Austin interviews Undertaker; 7. NXT Takeover War Games

Notes from the 12/5 Smackdown tapings in Fayetteville. They had a hot sellout crowd of 7,000 fans, which is the first sold out television taping for the main roster in a long time. They even started setting up PPV matches which is a novel approach more than a few days out. There are some changes made. Bryan is now missing with the idea we don’t know if all his hair was pulled out or not, so Miz was put in his place. Strowman was out of action so they didn’t do anything with he and Nakamura. The big thing was the angle where Ziggler and Corbin poured dog food all over Reigns. This has worked in the sense Reigns is getting completely cheered now because Corbin is not a heel people like. The show opened with Miz saying that it was supposed to be Miz TV with Bryan, but Bryan has disappeared. Miz kept saying how he wasn’t friends with Bryan but that the WWE fans love Bryan and he’s important to Smackdown so he would get to the bottom of this. Wyatt was on the screen and hung a photo of Bryan on the wall behind him of Fiend’s victims. Wyatt said Bryan won’t be at TLC and maybe Miz would like to play with him at TLC. Wyatt said he used to have a family, with a quick clip of the Wyatt Family, which Bryan was a member of for like two weeks. Then he showed a photo of Miz’s family. Miz was furious and ran backstage. Next Miz was shown calling Maryse. He told her to lock the doors and set the alarm and he’s flying home right now. Didn’t we do this with Styles and Joe. Bliss beat Rose in 4:16. The wrestling wasn’t good but the two have a dynamic that worked for the crowd. The big angle was that Rose ripped off Bliss’ eye-lashes. Deville tried to distract Bliss, but Cross came off the steps with a crossbody on her. Bliss did a move that was supposed to be a DDT, and came close to being one, followed by twisted bliss for the pin. The crowd was into this one. Next we had one of those segments clearly written for Vince and not the audience. Maverick was hitting on Brooke again. He brought up her going out with Batista and asked what Batista has that he doesn’t have. Elias showed up and said that Batista was a millionaire and he’s tall. The idea is that Maverick is too short to get a really hot girl like Brooke, which is even funnier when you consider what the woman he married looked like. They did the same thing with Bryan a few years ago with the Bellas, making fun of the idea that he was dating a so-so attractive Gail Kim (imagine that mentality) so the real hot girls (Bella Twins) were looking to steal him away just for fun but not like they’d ever really go for him. It’s so weird how life turns out. Elias started singing a song about how Maverick’s wife woke up in Elias’ bed and said he was the best she’d ever had. Maverick slapped him. Then Brooke asked if that was true, and Maverick admitted he made it up. In the McMahon mind, that made him the babyface. Maverick was in the ring and said how everyone thinks his life is a joke. He called out Elias. He wanted to fight Elias. Elias came out with Brooke. They did some short guy comedy spots where Maverick was not just too small to beat up Elias, but Elias with one hand held him out of his reach while Maverick was throwing crazy punches that came nowhere close. All the while, Brooke was laughing at him. I think I’ve seen 50 movies based on this, but only in WWE is the hot girl and the bully making fun the babyfaces. Now granted, this started when the married guy was hitting on Brooke. Elias kicked his ass and he finally ran off like a baby, but Brooke then threw him back in the ring where Elias hit draft away. Thank God it was over. Miz was looking for Wyatt’s Fun House room. Evidently Miz knows where it is, because he went in the room, but nobody was in there. However, the photo of Miz, Maryse and his daughters was there. Wyatt then attacked Miz from behind in the dark, gave him Sister Abigail and then put the photo on him and laughed. Then, in the best match on Smackdown in sometime, The Revival earned a tag title shot in an elimination match over Lince Dorado & Gran Metalik, Heavy Machinery and Shorty G & Ali in 17:39. I’d go ****1/4 for this one. G looked great as always but he’s even better when in with the Revival. Ali vs. Metalik had good spots. Dorado & Metalik did simultaneous Asai moonsaults. But the Lucha House party was eliminated when Machinery used the compact on Metalik and Tucker pinned him in 3:26. The crowd was really into Otis and he was running wild, taking his shirt off, all those good or bad things. He did the caterpillar on Dawson. Wilder tried a sunset flip but Otis blocked. Dawson then used an up-kick on Otis and Wilder pinned him using the trunks in 9:44. This left G & Ali vs. The Revival, which is a perfect style match-up. G did a German suplex on both at the same time. Then he did a German suplex into a jackknife pin by Ali. Ali did a crossbody that Wilder turned into a powerslam for a near fall. Ali did a tope but The Revival caught him on the floor and threw him into the timekeepers area. G did a moonsault, landed on his feet and grabbed an ankle lock on Dawson. It ended with the Shatter Machine on G for the pin. Reigns did an interview and said Corbin will embarrass himself at Hell in a Cell. Sheamus did an interview and said that you can go home again. Evans beat Haley Jones with the women’s right in 1:11. Jones’ offense didn’t look good at all even in this brief clip. Banks then came out and said she was the leader of the women’s division. Then she said that Evans was a terrible role model to her six-year-old. So Evans is now a babyface as a woman with a daughter who served in the military. Of course Fayetteville is a military city that it was a lock she’d get a big pop talking about being a former marine. She even got the crowd to chant “nasties” at Banks. Evans wanted to fight. Banks got in her face. Evans went for the punch and Banks ducked, cowered away and nearly cried. So the idea they are trying to get over is that Banks and Bayley are afraid of her. Evans was chasing Banks to the back when Bayley attacked Evans from behind. Reigns pinned Ziggler in 17:42. This was a good match with a lot of heat. Corbin was carried out in a throne by a bunch of extras. This entrance was set up for several minutes in front of the crowd. He ended up at ringside. Reigns hit Corbin with a Superman punch as he tried to interfere. Reigns got the pin on Ziggler after a spear. The extras all attacked Reigns and of course he laid out all of them. He gave one of them a really nasty looking kick that shook the guy up legit. Corbin attacked Reigns and posted him. Reigns came back until he was tripped by somebody from under the ring (this could turn out to be Maverick since the plan was to make Maverick the manager of Corbin as the top heel pairing starting in a few weeks) until all the extras swarmed and held him for Ziggler to use a superkick. Ziggler, Corbin and the extras then got handcuffs on both of Reigns’ hands and handcuffed his hands behind him while he was trapped on the post. Corbin kept beating him down until Ziggler and Corbin poured several cans of dog food all over him. For 205 Live, Angel Garza beat Raul Mendoza using the wing clipper. Really good match. A lot of the crowd left during this show and with the exception of Rush, nobody on the show got any real reaction. The Singh Brothers played rock, paper, scissors on who got to face Trent Newman next. But Tony Nese showed up and he wanted the match. Nese won quickly. The Singh Brothers then laid out Newman after the match and started dancing. Lio Rush beat Danny Burch via DQ. Slow match and the crowd wasn’t into it. Garza attacked Rush for the DQ. He also attacked Burch and hit the wing clipper on Rush. He then grabbed the cruiserweight belt to help build the Rush vs. Garza title match later in the week. The dark match was Fiend over Miz to keep the Universal title. Miz did all of his offensive moves and Fiend mostly no-sold them. Miz finally countered a Sister Abigail into the skull crushing finale. Fiend got up, used the mandible claw and Sister Abigail for the pin in less than 5:00. It was noted that fans were sent out e-mails and the arena’s web site listed the show as having Reigns vs. Corbin and Fiend vs. Bryan for the title, neither of which took place. There was little reaction during a break when they announced Miz vs. Fiend as the main event

Notes from the 12/9 Raw show from Greenville. The show finally set up several PPV matches and completed the Rollins turn, linking him with the AOP. You can also really see the attempt to get new people over this week with AOP, Black, Murphy and Carrillo who are all Heyman projects as are The Street Profits and Vikings. The other project, Ricochet, was on Main Event but he doesn’t have a PPV match. The show had a couple of timing issues. The opening segment went way long as did a few other things early. So they were cutting back on time and the make-up was Vikings vs. Street Profits who were supposed to have a 15:00 competitive match and were cut to 3:00 with no time to tell the story of the Street Profits hanging with the tag champs, coming close and the respect endorsement from the champs at the end. That match was not on the original schedule but was a replacement for a planned Rollins vs. Alexander match that was pulled due to Rollins’ injury. The end of the show was also an issue. Styles and Mysterio were having a great match, well, as good as it was going to be because Greenville was such a tough crowd. Styles was supposed to block a top rope huracanrana and turn it into the middle rope Styles clash, playing off Styles beating Ricochet in the six-man tag with that move. But they just botched it and fell off the ropes. There was little time left and they had to rebuild the planned finish where Mysterio won via Orton distraction and may have gone over by a few seconds and cut away right at the three count. The show drew 5,500 fans. For Main Event, Eric Young pinned No Way Jose and Ricochet beat Alexander. Raw opened with the divorce of Rusev and Lana. Lawler presided over it and said he tried to push for a reconciliation but that didn’t work out. Lana came out with a lawyer. She said she had waived the part of the restraining order regarding him being able to come near her but not the other stipulations. Rusev looked really happy wearing a Donald Duck T-shirt and tennis shoes while she wore a dress that didn’t make it easy for her to get booed. She played her role great, saying how Rusev thinks it’s all about him, with the idea that we all know she’s acting like it’s all about her. She said when Rusev got famous, it went to his head, when the idea is that when she got famous, it went to her head. She said it was the fans fault for ruining their marriage. That was the theme of the show. The fans ruin everything. She said she was the most ravishing woman in the world and Rusev will never get anyone who compares with her. Anyway, the segment went really long and got bad. She started crying. He was all happy about signing. Then they argued over who got the dog. He claimed she gave the dog to him as a present and you can’t take back presents. He said he would sign but wanted a match with Lashley. I’m not sure if you can not request a wrestling match as a stipulation for signing a divorce but wrestling writing has creative liberties. Lashley came out and said that when they get divorced, he’s going to ask Lana to marry him. Rusev said, “She’s all yours, take her, run away to Las Vegas.” The tweaking of the character where it’s clear Rusev wants her gone and doesn’t care has turned him back babyface because when this started, it was death for him as this guy completely being mistreated by a hot girl and he still wants her back. That is not a babyface to this audience. Lashley attacked Rusev, but Rusev made a comeback and gave Lashley a belly-to-belly through a table. Owens said that AOP attacked him because Rollins told them to. He said Rollins can deny it, but everyone knows and he’s full of crap. He said he was looking for AOP. As he went backstage, Mysterio told him he had his back. Owens said he didn’t need the help. That was on the stupid end, you’re fighting two guys and you don’t want help. Mysterio then handed him a pipe as an equalizer. McIntyre pinned Matt Hardy in 2:15 with a Claymore kick. McIntyre first talked about Hardy’s kids (his wife just gave birth) and said the kid was cross-eyed so you know it was Matt’s. McIntyre said that Matt reproducing isn’t the best idea because what if they follow in his footsteps. He told Matt he’ll allow him to walk out of the ring with his tail between his legs to fight another day. Matt attacked him and gave him a twist of fate. Then they started the match and McIntyre quickly won. Flair was with Lynch. Flair noted that she didn’t like her but asked her if she wanted to be Becky two belts again and have them face the Kabuki Warriors. Lynch said she wanted to face both of them by herself instead. Owens was looking for the AOP. He asked Rawley where they were. Rawley tried to make fun of him pointing him in opposite directions. Owens slapped Rawley in the face. The Viking Raiders were looking for opponents and Erik issued an open challenge. The Street Profits came out. Ford did a flip dive on Ivar and a splash off the top but didn’t get it done. Ford ended up pinned in 3:08 with the Viking Experience. I was very surprised how this went down. They touched forearms to show respect for The Street Profits after. Rollins came out. He wanted to talk and wanted them to stick around. They acted like he was rude and all four left. Rollins said he wanted to fight the AOP one-on-two. Owens came out and Rollins didn’t want Owens hitting him with the pipe. Owens said there’s no need to use it yet. He asked where they are and when they are coming, saying he knows they were going to beat him up three-on-one. They arrived. Rollins said he had no association with them. Owens didn’t believe him. Rollins left. Owens said when he was done with AOP he was coming for Rollins. He again called out AOP. Zayn came out with Rawley. Zayn said that he got a managers license and that means he can be on both shows. So at least somebody tried to come up with a reason why a Smackdown guy would be on the show. Zayn wanted Owens to apologize to Rawley. Rawley made fun of Owens acting tough while holding a pipe. So Owens threw the pipe to him, but then gave Rawley a stunner and started beating on him with the pipe. Black pinned Tozawa in 3:33 with black mess. The highlight was Tozawa doing a tope into a knee. Black won with black mass. Tozawa is great as an enhancement guy. Charly Caruso pushed that Carrillo is a super rookie. That tells you Heyman has big plans, because the previous two times he pushed that idea were Rhino in ECW when he went to pushy him for the title and Cena after he called Cena up from OVW. Vega and Andrade yelled at Carrillo in Spanish. It didn’t have great heat, but nothing on this show did. Carrillo pinned Andrade in 11:00 with a victory roll. This was really good, best match on the show. Lawler in passing mentioned Liv Morgan was returning. Carrillo did a moonsault off the top of the post to the floor. Andrade and Vega argued after the match. Mysterio did a promo and he noted defending against Styles later. He said the U.S. title represents to him his journey back to regain his confidence. Murphy pinned Ryder in 1:58 with a V trigger and Murphy’s law. Owens used the pipe to destroy AOP’s van, busted up with windows and the hood. AOP jumped him. They smashed the door of the trunk on his head. They opened the back door and Rollins was in the back with a hood covering his face. Rollins then curb stomped Owens on the ground. Rollins then did his Bret Hart explanation. He blamed everything on the fans, just like Lana. He claimed he had nothing to do with AOP attacking Owens last week, or even this week. Of course that was as plausible as the 17 different Saudi Arabia stories. He said he carried the company, worked hurt, beat Lesnar twice so they would have a champion there every week, but it was never good enough. He said that the fans naivete made his stand with AOP. They took Owens out in an ambulance. Lynch beat Asuka & Sane via DQ in a handicap match in 12:53. This wasn’t as good, or as heated as the same match with Flair lat week. Lynch got each in the disarm her but the other would make the save. Asuka hit Lynch with a chair shot for the DQ. Asuka pulled out a table, put Lynch on it, and Sane came off the top rope with an elbow drop putting Lynch threw the table. It should be noted that we had months of Lynch as Rollins girlfriend and it’s all been forgotten, he turns heel, the very next thing we see is her acting unconcerned. Styles, Gallows & Anderson were backstage. Styles said that Gallows & Anderson will get a tag title match sooner than later. He also said that if Orton gets involved in his match with Mysterio, maybe they’ll ed his career for ever, or for life. Lynch was in the trainers room. She got put through a table from a woman flying off the top to the floor and had one ice bag on her. Flair showed up. They didn’t agree to team. Flair left the room and Asuka & Sane beat her down with multiple chair shots. Rowan pinned Tracer X, whose name was never once mentioned, in 1:19. This was notable because X grabbed Rowan’s bag and sprinted to the entrance area. He put it down and then ran to the ring. Rowan got it. X told the ref to start his count since the bell had already rung. Imagine how awkward it was to call all this when you aren’t allowed to mention the guy’s name? Rowan realized he was a about to get counted out and ran back in just beating the ten. He then gave Tracer two claw slams. He went for a third, but the ref stopped the match. Rowan gave him another one and then talked to the box and said “I took care of him.” Caruso talked to Asuka & Sane. They cut a promo in Japanese. Caruso said she didn’t’ know Japanese and to talk in English. Asuka & Sane challenged Flair & Lynch to a title match. Flair & Lynch were together and agreed to it but Lynch wanted it a TLC match The Street Profits did a spoof on the Saturday Night Live weekend update. It was actually a way to run down the PPV card like an Events Center, but add in comedy touches. Put they put in a laugh track which made it so uncool as they are doing comedy, you’re hearing the most fake laugh track and nobody in the audience is laughing. They made jokes about Baby Yoda, said they watch Disney Plus all day, said the USA Network may have to do a new reality show called The Fiend & Mrs. Dawkins said that he thought Corbin had a Napoleon complex. Ford said that he’s bigger than both of them, but Dawkins said “not where it counts.” Mysterio pinned Styles in 14:11 to keep the U.S. title in the main event. The match was real good, but even this match lacked heat, until the botched finish. Mysterio did an Asai moonsault. Gallows & Anderson came out. Mysterio was distracted and Styles threw his shoulder into the spot. Mysterio did a dive out of the ring into a sunset flip on Styles ont he floor into the barricade. They were finally able to get the crowd into this. Mysterio went for the 619 but Gallows protected Styles. Mysterio took out Gallows & Anderson but that allowed Styles to hit the ushigoroshi on him. Next was the botched spot. So it ended with Styles hitting a power bomb and Styles clash when Orton distracted him. Mysterio then got the pin with a small package

Notes from the 12/11 NXT tapings. It opened with Roderick Strong retaining the North American title over Austin Theory. This match may have been taped for a later air date. Shane Thorne pinned Sean Maluta. The live show opened with Adam Cole doing a promo saying that whoever wins the Triple Threat match punches a ticket to lose to him next week, and that is undisputed. Angel Garza beat Lio Rush in 15:16 to win the cruiserweight title. They had another great match, this very different from the first one. It started out really fast and intense, trying to get the real fight vibe. Then they did fast spots. They did a double Flair flop and with both down, were going for the “This is awesome” chants but got “NXT” chants. Rush used Garza’s wing clipper for a near fall. Rush bounced off the ropes into a stunner for a near fall. Rush did a frog splash but Garza rolled out of the ring. As he was getting out of the ring, Rush grabbed Garza’s pants. He’d already loosened them earlier to tear them up but Rush stopped him. Rush did a frog splash off the top rope to the floor but Garza got his knees up. Garza hit the wing clipper but Rush kicked out. Garza then used a reverse full nelson and Rush tapped out. I’d go **** for this. Shayna Baszler did a vignette comparing herself to her car, which is a 1969 Mustang. I hope that isn’t to mean she just turned 50. She said everyone else wants to be a Tesla, She talked about beating Moon, Dakota Kai, Cross, Bianca Belair, Io Shirai, Mia Yim, Candice LeRae and then Bayley and Lynch on the same night. After Garza won, he brought his girlfriend, Zaide Lozano, into the ring and asked her to marry him. She said yes. This aired on tape delay, I guess since they may not have scripted her girlfriend’s reactions closely enough and maybe they didn’t want to risk this to go wrong on live television. Not sure this fit his character. Well, it didn’t fit last week’s character of an arrogant good looking guy who said he was the best looking guy in the world and took his pants off in front of Rush’s wife. This week he’s a total babyface young Mexican champion loyal to his girlfriend. I have no idea what he’ll be next week. His mother was there and the story goes she flew up to see him, and had no idea he was winning the title and no idea he was proposing, and it was just a fluke she scheduled her trip and was there to see both. Raul Mendoza pinned Cameron Grimes in 1:10. Mendoza did a springboard tornillo. Kushida came out to distract Grimes and Mendoza used a huracanrana for the pin. Kushida then took Grimes’ hat, put it on his head, and then left. Yes, that does make him a thief. They aired a taped Travis Banks promo. Banks then pinned Jaxson Ryker in 2:46 with a missile dropkick and an enzuigiri off the middle ropes called a lice of heaven. Banks’ eye was busted open bad. Hopefully Vince wasn’t watching or he’ll demand a name change pronto. Dakota Kai pinned Mia Yim in 9:57. They tried hard and did a lot of stuff and it was a grudge match and all, but it was weak in spots as well. Kai undid the turnbuckle pad and put Yim’s head into it and pinned her with a schoolboy. Yim attacked Kai after the match and they brawled onto the platform the announcers are on. Yim then gave Kai a Saito suplex off the platform and through a table on he floor. Kai hit her head on the other table and maybe on the floor as well. She wasn’t hurt badly but her head was split open and she needed eight staples to close the cut. They put the spot over big so at least it meant something. There was a Keith Lee video. Breeze & Fandango beat the Singh Brothers in 4:16. Breeze & Fandango came out as doctors with two women, Evolve’s Brandi Lauren (a frequent extra when a skit needs a hot girl) and Avery Taylor was the other woman. There was a mention of Fandango being trained by Killer Kowalski. Mauro Ranallo then made a reference to Fandango treating one of the Singh Brothers like Yukon Eric’s ear. For everyone who didn’t recognize that reference, in 1952, in Montreal Kowalski came off the top rope with a kneedrop which sliced off Eric’s ear. He later visited Eric in the hospital and there was a reporter there so Kowalski kayfabe’d and the reporter was so mad at seeing Kowalski insult him in real life after kneedropping off his ear that he called him Killer Kowalski. He may have been called that earlier, but was generally Tarzan Kowalski before that. Kowalski vs. Eric ended up being a legendary feud coming off that which drew all over North America. Fandango did a sick power bomb on the apron and then did he old Demolition finish on he floor on the other brother. Fandango pinned one of them with a leg drop off the top rope. Fandango may have injured his left shoulder when he did the move to the floor. He got up and it was hurting, and is was immobile for the next minute, but he was moving it after the match. Belair beat Kayden Carter in 4:52 with a torture rack into the KOD. Not much. Carter is a small woman who played college basketball, and that would indicate she’s a hell of an athlete. But she’s still very green at American style, as she learned Lucha. Belair did other generation finishers like the Bruno backbreaker and Tully Blanchard slingshot suplex. Main event saw Balor win over Lee and Tommaso Ciampa in 18:10. This was very good as well, at ***3/4. Ciampa hit both with draping DDTs at the same time. Ciampa gave Balor an Air Raid crash on tp of Lee but couldn’t pin either of them. Balor did double foot stomps on both after takedowns. Lee did Northern Lights suplexes on both at the same time with no bridge. Both did a double-team middle rope Russian leg sweep on Lee. Ciampa tried an Air Raid crash on Balor off he middle rope, but Lee got underneath them and gave them a double Samoan drop. Lee did jackhammers on both but Balor cradled him for a near fall. Lee went for a spirit bomb but Balor turned it into a double foot stomp for a near fall. After a few more near falls Lee hit a spirit bomb on Ciampa but Balor came off the top rope on Lee just as he landed with the coup de gras and pinned Lee. I thought with Lee’s momentum that he should have won here since it was his time. But next week is a war and for ratings for one week, the right opponent is Balor. He’s not the hottest to the insiders, but he is the bigger name. Cole came out with the Undisputed Era holding all their belts staring down Balor when it was over

The company’s first-ever all-women’s NXT brand show took place on 12/5 in Jacksonville. They drew 400 fans, up from the usual crowd although they have at times had bigger crowds and this was heavily promoted as a special event. Kayden Carter beat Deonna Purrazzo with an inverted leglock submission. Vanessa Borne pinned Samantha DeMartin from Australia, who was formerly Indi Hartwell. Io Shirai beat Santana Garrett via submission. Taynara & Briana Brandy beat Catalina Garcia & Rita Reis when Taynara pinned Garcia after a kick. Garcia was the second, Carolina, that Sin Cara used for two weeks on Raw. Brandy and Reis were making their WWE debuts. Brandy has trained in martial arts and done hip hop. Reis has done judo and Jiu Jitsu and is from Brazil. Rhea Ripley & Candice LeRae & Mia Yim beat Dakota Kai & Marina Shafir & Jessamyn Duke. Good match focused to Ripley who won with the Riptide. Bianca Belair beat MJ Jenkins with the KOD. Karen Q still in walking boot after suffering a broke leg, came out for a promo. Jessi Kamea interrupted but Xia Li came out for the save. This led to a match where Li, with Q in her corner, beat Kamea. Chelsea Green beat Shotzi Blackheart with the unprettier. This was Blackheart’s WWE debut. Main event saw Shayna Baszler retain the title over Reina Gonzalez with the kirafuda clutch. Baszler wouldn’t release the choke after the match until Ripley ran in. Baszler ran off and then Ripley and all the babyface women came out for a celebration after the show

12/6 in Dade City, FL, drew 150 fans. This was said to be a bad crowd because it went head-to-head with the city’s Christmas Parade and everyone in town went to that, plus it shut down the main road and it was a nightmare getting to the building or finding any parking. Isaiah Scott beat Ridge Holland with the killshot kick. Scott got over to the crowd. Nicholas Ogarelli beat Rinku Singh in a bad match. Catalina Garcia & Rita Reis beat Taynara & Briana Brandy when Garcia rolled up Taynara in a surprise ending. Reis and Taynara traded super hard judo throws and their offense with each other looked more realistic than most of what you see in modern pro wrestling. Denzel Dejournette beat Daniel Vidot with a belly-to-belly. Dejournette dropped his Fresh Prince of Bel-Air type gimmick and is now playing serious amateur wrestler. He’s said to be an athletic freak making great progress. Vidot has a great look, and they are looking for an Australian star, but he’s got long way to go. Mansoor pinned Austin Theory. Theory was the most over heel on the show and has a great look. If he gets the wrestling down, he’ll be a superstar. Mansoor won with the neckbreaker from the apron into the ring. Kushida beat Dexter Lumis with the hoverboard lock. Good mix of comedy and wrestling, well above the level you usually see on these shows. Lumis got mad and challenged anyone in the back. Jordan Omogbehin came out and gave Lumis a Khali chop and left. Kayden Carter & Xia Li beat Chelsea Green & Deonna Purrazzo when Li pinned Green with the Robinson special kick that Will Ospreay uses. Matt Riddle & Keith Lee & Dominik Dijakovic beat Killian Dain & Cameron Grimes & Doran Mak. Lots of stalling early. Riddle used the floating bro to pin Mak. Lots of comedy but a fun main event

The other weekend NXT show was 12/7 in Tampa before 250 fans. Isaiah Scott & Mansoor beat Wesley Blake & Steve Cutler. Dijakovic beat Jaxson Ryker. MJ Jenkins beat Rita Reis. Pete Dunne beat Kona Reeves. Riddle & Ripley beat the husband-and-wife team of Roderick Strong & Marina Shafir. WWE rarely does mixed tag matches and this was WWE rules were no men on women physicality. Dexter Lumis beat Omari. Keith Lee won a four-way over Ridge Holland, Marcel Barthel and Danny Burch with it being announced that the winner would face Adam Cole for the title on the 2/14 return to Tampa

On 12/7 they only had one house show, a Super show in Jacksonville, noteworthy because they ran the all women’s show in the same city two days earlier. The show drew 3,700 fans

The 12/8 Raw show in Augusta, GA drew 2,000

The 12/8 Smackdown show in Daytona Beach drew 2,000 fans

In Jacksonville, the show opened with Sarah Schreiber announcing that the Fiend vs. Strowman cage match for the title wasn’t happening due to Strowman not being medically cleared. McIntyre then came out to challenge The Fiend for the title in his place. They opened with Rollins, as a babyface, pinning Rowan with a curb stomp. Rollins was a complete babyface and nobody booed him at all. Lynch and Flair were having a great match for the Raw women’s title. Flair had Lynch in the figure eight when Asuka and Sane attacked both of them for a no contest. Lynch said that she wanted a second belt anyway so it turned into a tag match. Based on her interview, everyone assumed it was a title match and went crazy when Lynch made Sane submit to the disarm her. But then it was not announced as a title change and the crowd was confused. New Day retained the Smackdown tag titles over The Revival. Lots of stalling and comedy early, but it ended up as the most entertaining match on the show. Carrillo rolled-up Andrade in a short match. Vega then cut a promo blaming the ref for screwing things up and challenged anyone in the back. Owens came out. Owens and Vega went back-and-forth on the mic until Owens hit the stunner on Andrade. Fiend beat McIntyre in the cage match in 10:00. Fiend used the mandible claw and went to walk out. But then he came back in and gave McIntyre a uranage through a table and then walked out to the floor to win. Wyatt was cheered more than anyone on the show during his entrance and also after the match. But the crowd didn’t react much during the match. Children were freaked out by him and they were cheering McIntyre. Bayley & Banks beat Carmella & Cross. Murphy came out and cut a promo on Black. Black came out and beat Murphy with black mass. Ths was said to be the best worked match on the show. Ricochet & Viking Raiders beat Styles & Gallows & Anderson when Ricochet pinned Styles clean with the recoil. Ricochet was really over. Reigns pinned Corbin with a spear in the main event. Corbin got lots of heat

In Augusta, it was a lot of the same Raw stuff as the night before. Same Lynch vs. Flair singles title match leading into the tag team title match that ended up not being a title match with Asuka & Sane. Black again pinned Murphy with black mass. The Street Profits beat Hawkins & Ryder. Carrillo & Owens beat McIntyre & andrade. R-Truth kept the 24/7 title over the Singh Brothers. Same Viking Raiders & Ricochet over Styles & Gallows & Anderson match. Main event saw Rollins beat Rowan in a street fight with the curb stomp

In Daytona Beach, the main event was also scheduled as Wyatt vs. Strowman in a cage match for the title. Here there was no announcement about Strowman not being there. The show opened with New Day retaining the tag titles in a three-way over Heavy Machinery and The Revival. This was an elimination match. Lots of comedy. Otis was very popular. Dawson pinned Tucker using the tights to eliminate them. New Day then won with a Hart Attack and a trouble in paradise on Dawson. Cross pinned Banks. The fans didn’t boo Banks. Ali pinned Cesaro with a spinning DDT. The crowd didn’t really care about this. In a rare Universal champion defending against the IC champion match, Wyatt pinned Nakamura in the cage after Sister Abigail. Zayn ran into the cage after the match and Wyatt put him through a table with a uranage. Wyatt’s ring entrance was over but the crowd was dead for the match itself, but popped for Zayn being put through the table or whenever Zayn would talk. Shorty G beat Gulak with the ankle lock. Crowd was dead. Bayley pinned Carmella with her feet on the ropes to keep the women’s title. Bayley was chanted for and cheered by the younger girls. Reigns pinned Corbin with a spear in the main event. The same match they always do.