EARLY ACCESS: The Written List

With JV home with pneumonia and no List & Ya Boy podcast this week, JV instead took his List notes and put them into article form.  Enjoy!

Anthem Sports/AXS TV Deal

When there were first rumors of a sale, my first thought was, with what money? Anthem Sports is not a huge company and in terms of overhead, AXS TV was actually larger. Who would have known that Steve Harvey would offer some investment, plus if you’re familiar with the background of Anthem founder Leonard Asper – who took on debt by way of loans used to finance acquisitions when running the Canwest media empire (founded by his dad) and bankrupted Canwest in the process – it’s probably not too hard to see where they found the money.

It’s important to note that the headline in the press release is not “Impact Wrestling Acquires AXS TV”. Anthem didn’t buy AXS for Impact. In fact, Impact isn’t top priority to Anthem which is why it’s on a shoe-string budget with an executive in charge who was placed there because well, somebody had to do it. Anthem acquired AXS to finally give them a U.S. footprint. They’d hoped to score a U.S. cable carriage deal for their Fight Network or their GameTV or their FNTSY Sports Network (which they exited when U.S. carriage fees never came) but the best they’ve gotten up to this point are deals with streaming services like Amazon Fire, Roku or Apple TV. I expect that Impact will air on AXS because that makes sense, but I also expect that AXS (if they even keep that brand) will serve as a distribution outlet for other Anthem shows on their stations. And while AXS isn’t USA or TNT, it’s a huge step up from Pursuit. Of course Impact’s financial situation doesn’t change here since their parent owns the channel and so no rights fees, but the difference in exposure for the show and the talent should be pretty significant.

Of course in any company acquisition, the first thing the buyer does is look at the teams of the company they’re buying to look for redundancies, and so it came as no surprise when TheWrap reported that at least 40 people from AXS were laid off almost immediately after the deal was announced. It’s an unfortunate reality of business. SRS sent a Tweet to Mark Cuban after the sale was announced asking him to help ensure that good people don’t lose their jobs, since Sean had a great relationship with the AXS PR team, several of which were let go. I explained to Sean that they’re not Cuban’s people anymore. Sure he maintains some equity and he has a seat on the board, but he gave up operational control. His priorities as a member of the board will be more high level and “dollars and cents” related at this point. Anthem has a relationship with their own people, and those are the people that they know. It doesn’t matter of PR person #1 from AXS is better at their job than PR person #1 from Anthem, at least it doesn’t matter to Anthem. They don’t know the AXS people, they know their own people and so they will stick with their own people. And if I was in Anthem’s shoes I’d do the same thing. I’ve got 45 employees; I recruited most of them myself, and they’re who I know. If I buy a similar company, why would I choose to keep someone I don’t know over my own people? In a perfect world everybody would keep their jobs but again this is the unfortunate reality of business in this scenario.

Speaking of Impact… Killer Kross

Kross publicly confirmed rumors that Impact asked AAA to pull his booking from the upcoming NY show. I think Impact should cut their losses and let him go. They’ve gotten so much bad PR as it is here. As I always say, wrestling fans in this era know. They read the Internet, they follow what’s going on behind the scenes. Impact has developed such a negative reputation from a corporate perspective over the last two years even though creatively and talent wise they’re the best they’ve been in a long time. The AXS layoffs aren’t helping, so the least they can do is let Kross go and salvage some respect from wrestling fans.

Michael Cole

When Steve Austin came out to start Raw this week, Cole said, “All is right in the world again.” What was that supposed to mean? Does the world suck in a typical week when WWE isn’t able to peddle another legend from the past to try to pop a rating? I *hate* it when WWE blatantly reminds us through booking and commentary like that how much better the Attitude Era was than this era.

Cedric Alexander

I hate to keep picking on him because he’s a great athlete and great in the ring (the finish on Raw where he caught AJ Styles on the forearm attempt with his finish was good stuff), but Cedric’s overselling and overly animated facials are killing me. When he pinned AJ, he made like he’d just won half a billion in the Powerball lottery with his eyes the size of saucers, his mouth wide open, etc. STOP IT. Act like you expect to win, not like it’s a massive surprise every time you do. Or, act like an underdog and be perceived like an underdog.

Charlotte Flair

Again she was a highlight for me on WWE TV this week. Her presence, and the little things like pressing her forearm against the side of Bayley’s head when she pinned her. Then after the pin she had this confident look on her face that said “you damned right”. She is the greatest heel in WWE right now male or female, and the greatest overall women’s performer in the business, period. Athletically there might be other girls at her level but in terms of presence and presentation, she’s a cut above the rest and it’s not close. Aside from Becky Lynch, Tessa Blanchard is Charlotte’s closest comparison in that regard and how ironic is it that both are the daughters of two of the original Four Horsemen? Talk about great genetics and training.

WWE and USA should both be concerned about the ratings

This was WWE’s first week back against the NFL on Monday nights and they averaged 2.13M viewers on USA Network, a drop of almost 400,000 viewers from last week, with Steve Austin and MSG as hooks. Some suggested that they should have kept Austin for later in the show but it doesn’t matter since again, you can’t use that “bag of tricks” every week. At this rate they will drop below 2M average viewers this season if not next week. And with the new TV contract kicking in in a few weeks, executives at USA can’t be happy with the situation.

RevPro UK

On August 30, Revolution Pro had a show called Summer Sizzler 2019 in London. One featured match was the finals of the Road to Royal Quest tag team tournament featuring Sha Samuels and Josh Bodom (the RevPro tag champs) vs. the Aussie Open. Referee Aaren Wilde made a three count that was supposed to be a kickout, counting out the champs who were scheduled to lose. Sha Samuels then improvised to try to cover for the obviously blown finish by picking up Wilde in a scoop slam, followed by Bodom laying a beating on Wilde on the ringside floor. Wilde posted the story on Twitter, saying he’d suffered neck and shoulder injuries and has to retire as a referee. Sha Samuels then posted that he was thinking on his feet when he did the slam and did it as safely as possible. He said he had his eyes opened and educated to the fact that regardless of how safe you are, you should never assume it’s okay to get physical with a non-wrestling member of the crew on the fly. RevPro then released a statement on Twitter that they’d parted ways with Bodom, as his story didn’t corroborate with others. Samuels remains with RevPro.

King of the Ring

The finals have been moved to Raw next week. Sure seems likely that Corbin is winning. Personally I’d rather see him lose and then disappear from TV for a couple of months because even though he’s improving in the ring, putting him over here would come too soon after his “Constable” stint that coincided with WWE’s massive, sudden ratings decline. He needs to take a break to remove that whole period from fans’ minds and then come back fresh with a new look. But the way they’ve presented Chad Gable as this flukey “golly gee” guy, he’d be a strange fit for the King gimmick.

Kevin Owens

He was “fired” by Shane McMahon on Smackdown and then hinted on Twitter that he’s headed to NXT. This would be a good move considering that NXT will need “names” to help draw an audience on USA and guys like Kevin Owens and Daniel Bryan can do that, plus they can go in the ring and would enjoy working with the guys coming up in NXT.

Speaking of NXT…

WWE announced that they’ve expanded their partnership with Full Sail in Orlando and NXT on USA will emanate from Full Sail live weekly on Wednesdays at least through 2019. To me this is a really bad long-term idea and I’d like to think that Triple H knows that. Call it the “Impact Effect”. You’ll get much of the same fans weekly who will get accustomed to the talent and react less, making for a pretty bland television presentation, while you’re going head-to-head with an AEW show in front of boisterous crowds in a new building every week. NXT will start to look second-rate real quick.

In other NXT news, Triple H did an interview with Newsweek and confirmed what had been speculated – NXT UK and 205 Live will both essentially be under the NXT brand as far as an organizational chart is concerned. He did *not* say that 205 Live will merge with NXT as some websites have suggested. But the 205 Live talent and the NXT UK talent will essentially be available to NXT for their USA broadcast.

Cody Rhodes

I hear there’s a little controversy over Cody getting advertised as challenging Chris Jericho for the AEW Title at Full Gear. He’s undefeated under the AEW banner and wins mean something in AEW so I understand it from that perspective. To me the only controversy is that he’s an EVP getting put over just about everybody else. He takes subtle shots at Triple H on AEW television and yet they’re not too dissimilar after all.

Frank Mir was backstage at the recent MLW tapings

I’m holding out hope for Brock Lesnar vs. Frank Mir and/or Brock Lesnar vs. Cain Velasquez in a WWE ring in 2020. What great stories they could tell in both programs, especially if they license the UFC footage. Cain will be on the AAA show in New York this weekend. And in other “former UFC star becomes pro wrestler” news, Stephan Bonnar worked the Impact tapings in Vegas last week. This whole thing is the reason that Fightful.com was created!

Another shake-up with WWE creative

Dave Meltzer reports that Ryan Ward is out as lead writer of Smackdown (he was Triple H’s guy in NXT who got called up). Ed Koskey has moved to SD to work under Eric Bischoff, and Jon Baeckstrom is now lead writer for Raw under Paul Heyman. Speaking of Bischoff, there is talk that he is struggling in his new role, with TheWrap.com reporting that Bischoff’s first SD hire, writer Stevie Long, was found asleep in the writers’ room on his first day on the road by Michael Hayes. Of course if Bischoff is struggling in that role, it’s no surprise to anyone except Vince McMahon.