The most detailed look at the New Japan decision to make Hiroshi Tanahashi president and comments from many in the industry about it
Full details on the WWE’s biggest grossing U.S. house show in history on Tuesday in Madison Square Garden plus past history from the event
The Iron Claw, history of the Von Erichs, in a long detailed article regarding the rise and fall and the making of the movie
Preview of the Tokyo Dome show, advance ticket sales and Stardom PPV
How many tickets are comped at the usual AEW and WWE shows
2023 Awards ballot
Dragon Gate’s Final Gate show
The most detailed look at the ratings from the past week, placings for the night and week, competition, segment-by-segment, gains and losses from one year ago and more
Andrade heads to Mexico and a big business week
Another two Vikingo vs. Taurus matches
New Japan bodybuilding contest notes
Major shows for New Japan in the first three months of he year
One of the best trios matches in a long time
DDT tournament finals set
Notes on a book on wrestling history
New Scottish wrestling Hall of Famer
Chris Jericho and Stephen New
Tony Khan’s recent press call
Dynamite headed for tougher competition
Advance ticket sales for WWE & AEW shows
Streaming numbers for AEW & WWE
Amanda Huber talks anniversary of Jon Huber’s death
Bryan and I will be back tonight with Wrestling Observer Radio covering Raw and the rest of the news. We also did our show after Worlds End on Saturday night.
Raw is tonight in San Diego, as the Day 1 specially themed show. Seth Rollins vs. Drew McIntyre headlines for the world title, plus Rhea Ripley vs. Ivy Nile for the women’s title, Becky Lynch vs. Nia Jax and Tegan Nox & Natalya vs. Shayna Baszler & Zoey Stark have a match with the winners getting a shot at the women’s tag titles. The big thing is that a former WWE champion is supposed to appear on the show. It goes up against the ending of the Rose Bowl game most likely with No. 1 Michigan vs. No. 5 Alabama and then from about 8:45 p.m. on goes against the Sugar Bowl with No. 3 Texas vs No. 2 Washington. These are the college football semifinals with the finals next Monday against Raw. While these are major games, they won’t be doing NFL numbers and Raw should bounce back strong tonight in theory.
Dwayne Johnson and Nick Khan were both at the Rose Bowl game. They’ve been teasing a former WWE champion showing up tonight. The expectation was that Andrade, as a free agent, would be there tonight, but obviously Johnson could be as well. C.M. Punk is backstage so that would make him a favorite. He wasn’t advertised to return until next week’s show. Pasadena isn’t too far from San Diego, although if Johnson is staying for the entire game, probably the earliest he could be there would be late in the show. If he’s left at this point he’ll make it, and they could take a private flight and it’s a quick turnaround. It’s 135 miles and a two-and-a-half hour drive in rush hour traffic.
Big changes as well tonight as they are cutting back to two announcers on each show and obviously no Kevin Dunn directing and we’ll see what that means. No word on the announcing assignments. In the past when they’ve made changes they’ve given them ahead of time to some trades for press but have not as of this writing.
We’re looking for reports from San Diego tonight with any Main Event matches or stuff that happened after the show went off the air to [email protected]
We’re doing weekend polls on AEW Worlds End, as well as the Stardom Queendom show from Friday at Sumo Hall and yesterday’s All Japan show at Yoyogi Gym, so you can leave a thumbs up, thumbs down or thumbs in the middle along with the best and worst match on each of these shows to [email protected]
The 7.6 earthquake in Japan’s West Coast earlier today was felt in the Ishikawa and Nagano prefectures. The epicenter was 365 miles from Tokyo. It should not affect the wrestling shows in Tokyo all this week.
Keiji Muto said today, “I will say this though, even if it gets me heat–Sanada was at a certain end of year party I was at the other day and he was dead drunk…I’ll be honest, I’ve had some of my best matches hung over. Maybe not at The Dome though.” Sanada defends the IWGP world title against Tetsuya Naito late Wednesday night U.S. time at Wrestle Kingdom at the Tokyo Dome.
Fios has dropped AXS from its basic cable lineup which means that TNA and New Japan’s audience will probably drop by a considerable amount this year.
In catching up on the Wednesday numbers, the AEW show’s 0.31 was not only its biggest number since the Grand Slam show but it was even more impressive going against highly-rated college bowl games on both ABC and ESPN. It’s not close to NFL competition that the Saturday show has been going against, but it was by far the toughest Wednesday competition since the World Series. NBA is tough but that’s usually one game on national TV (granted you have lots of local games) and this was two games that each did much larger than NBA numbers. AEW was fourth for the day on cable, behind three bowl games and beat everything else. Currently the ratings are out through 12/28 and from Raw on 12/18 through at least 12/28, Dynamite was the highest rated entertainment show on cable. That will end tonight as the Raw number, even with the competition and the holiday, is expected to be very strong and way up for the first Raw not against the NFL.
For those interested in the 2023 Observer awards, the ballot is in the current issue up on the site this week.
John Cena’s movie “Freelance” was destroyed by critics with seven percent positive reviews, making it one of the worst reviewed movies of the past few years, but the audience scores are 77 percent positive.
People continue to rave about yesterday’s Katsuhiko Nakajima vs. Kento Miyahara match on the All Japan show as the last match of the year candidate of 2023.
Brian Blair, 66, had emergency surgery on his lower back a few days ago. We want to send our best wishes to Brian, who does the thankless job of being President of the Cauliflower Alley Club and who keeps in touch with so many of the stars of the 70s and 80s. Brian had been a friend for decades.
Glory Pro Wrestling from Saturday night in St. Louis: Rohit Raju b Allie Katch-DQ to keep the Zero Gravity title, Tootie Lynn b Nixi XS, Mason St Goods b ATM, Camaro Jackson b Jabari King, Rahim de la Suede b Eff, Xavier Walker b Mike Outlaw, Campbell Myers & SK Bishop b Jake Bosche & Scott Stanley, Dak Draper won four-way over Dan the Dad, Kody Lane and Laynie Luck, tag champs Moses & Ethan Price d Philly C & Martino T (double pin draw) to keep the titles, Warhorse b Jake Something in a three stages of hell match (regular match, tables match and dog collar match) to win the Crown of Glory title (thanks to Patrick Brandmeyer)
After 40+ years of helping to build WWE and, hands down, the best production and media unit in the entire sports and entertainment business, Kevin Dunn, will be leaving our company as of today.
Before WrestleMania 1, Kevin joined Vince at WWF. Many of us remember a pre-WrestleMania WWF – a regional wrestling company that looked like a regional wrestling company. Then we experienced WrestleMania 1, whether live, on closed circuit or years later elsewhere. It was magic. A regional wrestling company had become a global sports entertainment juggernaut. Vince led the way, side by side with Kevin Dunn. When many of us were kids standing in line waiting to play Pac-Man, Kevin was already on the road breaking his back to help build our company.
When you see our product now, there is nothing that comes close to its look or feel – 52 weeks a year, three to four times a week. It is singular and truly special. No other company can or will do that, and that is because of Kevin and our media team’s hard work, smarts and determination.
We are forever grateful to Kevin. He will always be a part of the WWE family.
Our own Dave Meltzer posted to X that meetings are planned in San Diego ahead of tonight’s Raw that could be related to Dunn’s departure.
Nick Khan and Paul Levesque have a meeting Noon in San Diego with the media team and at 12:30 p.m Pacific with the talent. This may be related to Kevin Dunn leaving, who was gone as of midnight last night.
Meltzer addressed possible replacements for Dunn in yesterday’s Daily Update. He noted that Paul Levesque would want Mike Mansury to replace Dunn. However, Mansury is likely under a long-term contract with AEW. Other names mentioned for the Executive Producer role in WWE include Marty Miller and Chris Kaiser.
Meltzer also noted that Dunn’s WWE departure is related to Vince McMahon losing power in the company.
Meltzer wrote:
I was told that this was known internally by a few, but not most as people I heard from last night were surprised, and they knew maybe a few weeks at most although the process goes back a couple of months and really has to do with Vince McMahon being out of power. Dunn has been in charge of production for decades and has 40 years with the company. He answered to nobody but Vince. So this is part of the change with Endeavor in control.
The most detailed look at the New Japan decision to make Hiroshi Tanahashi president and comments from many in the industry about it
Full details on the WWE’s biggest grossing U.S. house show in history on Tuesday in Madison Square Garden plus past history from the event
The Iron Claw, history of the Von Erichs, in a long detailed article regarding the rise and fall and the making of the movie
Preview of the Tokyo Dome show, advance ticket sales and Stardom PPV
How many tickets are comped at the usual AEW and WWE shows
2023 Awards ballot
Dragon Gate’s Final Gate show
The most detailed look at the ratings from the past week, placings for the night and week, competition, segment-by-segment, gains and losses from one year ago and more
Andrade heads to Mexico and a big business week
Another two Vikingo vs. Taurus matches
New Japan bodybuilding contest notes
Major shows for New Japan in the first three months of he year
One of the best trios matches in a long time
DDT tournament finals set
Notes on a book on wrestling history
New Scottish wrestling Hall of Famer
Chris Jericho and Stephen New
Tony Khan’s recent press call
Dynamite headed for tougher competition
Advance ticket sales for WWE & AEW shows
Streaming numbers for AEW & WWE
Amanda Huber talks anniversary of Jon Huber’s death
There are no shows tonight of note in the U.S. given it’s New Year’s Eve. The big house show tour ended last night in Los Angeles at the Forum.
Regarding the departure of Kevin Dunn from WWE, officially he, like several in AEW, will no longer be with the company as of midnight tonight. When Vince McMahon lost power, it was expected that he would retire or be retired as the new people in charge would put their own team together. As far as a replacement as Executive Producer of all the shows goes, I was told not to presume anything and multiple people in the company even threw the name Mike Mansury about as someone Paul Levesque would want, but I presume Mansury is under a long-term deal with AEW. Marty Miller’s name was mentioned. He’s the Director but what’s something completely different and in particular, the aspect of Dunn’s job dealing with budgets. At one point the attempt was to make Chris Kaiser the Executive Producer who would handle the budgets and Dunn as the guy handling the shows and making the final decisions. It could end up with Miller running the truck and Kaiser handling the budgets but that’s all speculation at this point. I was told that this was known internally by a few, but not most as people I heard from last night were surprised, and they knew maybe a few weeks at most although the process goes back a couple of months and really has to do with Vince McMahon being out of power. Dunn has been in charge of production for decades and has 40 years with the company. He answered to nobody but Vince. So this is part of the change with Endeavor in control.
Tony Khan brought up Andrade finishing up last night. I talked about this on the show and his booking in the Continental Classic and thoughts on it regarding Anrade and Daniel Garcia, if he was leaving. It also explains Andrade’s rush to go to Arena Mexico and saying that he needed to do it now because he may not get another chance if he was with WWE. The expectation is he’s the guy Paul Levesque referred to as the surprise for tomorrow. I do know those in WWE have talked about his returning shortly as something expected. To his credit, he worked really hard, finished up his business last night, lost via submission to Miro and worked very hard. The night before at Arena Mexico, he drew a sellout with Volador Jr. and drew way above usual everywhere he went this past week. The Volador match ended up being cut in time to 14:05 because the show was going long and he had a red-eye from Mexico City to New York right after the show so they basically cut the first 8-10 minutes out. They had a great match there as well.
The big match we’ve heard as the best of the weekend was today’s Katsuhiko Nakajima Triple Crown title defense, beating Kento Miyahara. Nakajima won via submission with an armbar. Nakajima will defend on 1/3 at Korakuen Hall against Charlie Dempsey, who won’t be on Tuesday’s NXT show because of this match.
Tony Khan praised Andrade, Rafael Morffi (last show in), Dana Massie and QT Marshall who all will be gone as of midnight tonight. He said that Andrade and Marshall would always be welcome back, and praised the other two for their work behind the scenes. He noted Morffi went out on a sellout and has on his resume being the promoter of the show with the largest paid attendance in history. He said that Massie was instrumental before AEW and that if she and Matt Jackson didn’t talk with him in 2018 that there would be no company today.
He also said that the PPV number based on streaming looks similar to Full Gear (which would be about 135,000 buys), which I would consider a huge success given the sports competition last night and coming just six weeks after Full Gear and with a lot of top people off the show and really only a few of what I’d call money matches. Keep in mind this is just estimates from streaming and really with the holiday, until the middle of next week I don’t know that we can definitively give a number yet. But it certainly comes across right now as a big positive for the build and value of the main event and main event angles, not what they did at the show but what they did to build the show. Khan said that the tournament success was a feather in the cap for those who have argued for a more sports-based presentation. But in fairness you can’t do a tournament like that more than six or seven weeks out of 52.
We ‘re looking for your thoughts on last night’s Worlds End show as well as Friday’s Stardom show from Sumo Hall and today’s All Japan show with Miyahara vs. Nakajima, you can leave a thumbs up, down or middle along with a best and worst match to [email protected]
Dwayne Johnson officially announced on FOX the merger of the USFL and XFL into the UFL, or United Football League. They will open on 3/30 with the USFL champion Birmingham Stallions vs. XFL champion Arlington Renegades. They will have TV deals this season with FOX, FS 1, ESPN and ABC.
Conor McGregor has said he will be facing Michael Chandler in a 185 pound class fight, which is 30 pounds up from what Chandler and McGregor have usually fought at, on June 29 as the main event for International Fight Week at the T Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. Evidently Chandler didn’t know this but said he was okay with the weight.
As far as Google trends for the week, earlier today the Fulham vs. Arsenal EPL game was No. 4 for today. Fulham is the team that Tony Khan and his father own. The only combat sports related thing that made the top 20 this week was Worlds End was No. 14 yesterday with 50,000 searches. This is the first AEW show to crack the top 20 in a while.
Bull Nakano will be making an appearance for West Coast Pro on 3/23 in San Francisco.
WWE from last night at the Forum in Los Angeles which drew one of the biggest house show crowds of the year with a loaded lineup:
LA Knight b Jimmy Uso in a cage match with the BFT
Bianca Belair b Bayley with the KOD even though Iyo Sky interfered
Kevin Owens b Solo Sikoa in a last man standing match by putting him through a table
Jey Uso b Finn Balor with a spear
CM Punk b Dominik Mysterio
Street Profits b Joaquin Wilde & Cruz Del Toro
Seth Rollins b Drew McIntyre to keep the world title
Becky Lynch b Zoey Stark with the man handle slam
Kofi Kingston b Ludvig Kaiser
Cody Rhodes b Shinsuke Nakamura in a street fight with Cross Rhodes
Kevin Dunn — one of the most familiar names in WWE front office history — reportedly gave his notice over the past week.
The news was first reported by PWInsider.
As the report goes, the company’s executive producer and chief of global TV distribution informed WWE he was leaving during Christmas week. They did not indicate what his final day would be.
Dunn has been with WWE for more than 30 years after being hired by Vince McMahon in 1984. He was promoted to executive producer of all WWE programming in 1993 when Raw first launched.
According to the report, the impetus for Dunn’s exit were changes made by TKO leadership post-merger. Since he has run production for so long, his preference was to not do things that were dictated to him.
“We are told this was not an issue of creative but two differing versions of how things should be run from a TV production perspective as WWE’s new owner seeks to cut costs,” the report stated.
TKO president Mark Shapiro recently talked about seeing an opportunity to make more cuts on the production end of things, making the following quip:
“I have been through all the song and dance with every producer who treats every tape machine and camera like it’s a baby and doesn’t want to give it up. We’re here to improve our margins. We’re going to scrutinize every dollar on production for every single event, every single one of these telecasts, and improve our savings,”
No immediate successor has been tabbed as the report states it is likely several people will share the various roles Dunn currently fills.
“Of late, we are told that Dunn has stepped back a bit and was allowing others to spread their wings and handle more responsibilities in the Endeavor era, so that may have been in advance of Dunn knowing he was planning to exit,” the report stated.
Even with a creative regime change, Kevin Dunn is expected to remain with WWE for now.
Fightful reported the news on Tuesday.
With Vince McMahon no longer in charge of creative, or with WWE at all, there was a belief (and assumption by some) that the longtime WWE executive producer might also be ending his near 40-year run.
From the Fightful report:
“We’ve also been told that WWE doesn’t believe they have anyone currently that could replace Dunn as the likeliest candidate was let go during a prior round of layoffs and a return isn’t likely based on how the exit went down.”
Dunn is WWE’s executive producer & chief of global television distribution and has also been a member of WWE’s Board of Directors since 2008. He was hired by McMahon in 1984 and worked his way up the corporate ladder. Despite the promotions, Dunn has remained in the line producer role for all live WWE TV shows since 1988.
Paul Levesque took over for McMahon as head of creative following his resignation from WWE last month.
This story was updated at 12:30 PM Eastern Wednesday.
In an interview with Barstool Sports, AEW’s Bryan Danielson said he wants to respect’s WWE’s intellectual property in his post-WWE career.
In an interview on Rasslin with Brandon Walker, Danielson said that respect is why he hasn’t led AEW fans in doing the “Yes!” chant while adding he hasn’t been threatened legally in any way for doing it.
“I’m not doing it myself because I respect WWE’s intellectual property,” Danielson said. “I don’t think anything legally…they haven’t threatened anything legally. So I had a great conversation with Kevin Dunn with WWE before I debuted with AEW. I was very upfront with WWE about, ‘Okay, I want to let you guys know I’m leaving. This is my debut date’ and all that kind of stuff. They asked me, politely, to respect their intellectual property, even some of the things that couldn’t be legally enforced. I’m trying my best to do that.”
He later clarified to Dave Meltzer that the conversation was mainly about music and not the chant.
Prior to his in-ring AEW debut Wednesday at Dynamite: Grand Slam, Danielson wrote an article that was posted on Player’s Tribune thanking WWE.
While the name Michael Mansury isn’t one known to most WWE fans, his work likely is as the Vice President of Global Television Production was the director for many WWE TV shows and pay-per-view events.
First reported by PWInsider and later confirmed by Dave Meltzer, Mansury is no longer with the company as of last week after giving his notice several months ago. The reasons for his departure are unknown.
Why this move is significant is that Mansury was seen by some as the eventual replacement for Vince McMahon right hand man and executive VP Kevin Dunn. PWInsider noted that with Mansury and Kerwin Silfies’ recent departures, Dunn and Marty Miller, also a WWE director, will be handling the broadcasts.
Mansury, a 2005 graduate of Hofstra University, had been with WWE since 2009 when he started as a production assistant and was named VP in March 2016. Prior to that, he spent a year as a PA for MTV3.
