WON Notes- Austin, Albright, ratings, more
WWE Unforgiven, the 9/17 PPV show from Toronto that featured John Cena vs. Edge in a TLC match, HBK and HHH vs. Vince and Shane McMahon and Big Show in a Hell in a Cell, and the retirement match of Trish Stratus, had a first estimate of doing 290,000 buys. That would be about 170,000 buys in North America and 120,000 overseas, which Meltzer does not consider good for that line-up, even though it's way about the usual "B show" average buyrate. The last Hell in a Cell, which was December '05 for Smackdown with Orton vs. Undertaker (and little else in the undercard), did 340,000 worldwide buys, with 210,000 of them in North America, and that should hardly be outdrawing this lineup. Meltzer expected 310,000 as a first total and a 350,000 to 370,000 final number for a combination of a TLC and HIAC on the same show. Last year's Unforgiven, headlined by Cena vs. Angle, did a final number of 255,000 buys (158,000 domestic and 97,000 foreign).
Updated PPV buyrates for 2006:
Judgment Day (Mysterio vs. JBL): 240,000
Great American Bash (Mysterio vs. Booker): 228,000
ECW One Night Stand (Cena vs. RVD): 285,000
Vengeance (DX vs. Spirit Squad): 315,000
Summerslam (Cena vs. Edge): 525,000
Raw on 10/16 did a 3.67 rating and 4.77 million viewers, which has to be considered a good number considering the Bears vs. Cardinals game on MNF did a 11.74 rating and 14.23 million viewers.
In the segment-by-segment breakdown, the Cryme Tyme vs. Spirit Squad match lost 390,000 viewers, the Hardy vs. Shelton vs. Crazy vs. Masters match lost 260,000 viewers. The Kevin Federline segment with Cena did a 4.4 quarter rating and gained about 1,300,000 viewers, a huge number. Carlito vs. Conway lost about 1,050,000 viewers, the Jackass segment with Umaga only gained about 130,000 viewers, and HHH vs. Orton gained about 390,000 viewers to a 4.0 rating.
Smackdown on 10/13 did a 2.3 rating with 3.74 million viewers.
In the segment-by-segment breakdown, Benoit vs. Kennedy lost 104,000 viewers from start-to-finish, which isn't good for early in the show and Benoit's first match back. Vito vs. Regal gained 125,000 viewers, MVP vs. Kane gained 370,000 viewers, Mysterio vs. Noble gained 290,000 viewers, London and Kendrick and Yang vs. James and Stevens and Sylvan lost 489,000 viewers, and Lashley vs. Batista vs. Finlay gained 474,000 viewers.
The WWE signed a major DVD deal with Genius Products, a subsidiary of The Weinstein Company. Besides distributing the regular wrestling DVDs, the two companies will work together in doing direct-to-video movies, which The Weinstein Company will also help finance, minimizing the WWE risk. Genius will distribute roughly the same number of DVDs every year that Sony BMG had been releasing in a contract that just expired. The first two releases on the new deal will be a Piper DVD and a History of the AWA DVD that comes out in November.
The WWE is trying to change its positioning of ECW after the recent ratings declines. The belief espoused from Kevin Dunn is that the ratings have fallen because people don't realize that ECW is a WWE brand (Meltzer is bewildered as to how that is even possible) and thus won't watch it. Among the expected changes are eliminations of the terms Vixens and Extremists and replacing them with Divas and Superstars. They may remove the ECW logo from the screen during the show and replace it with the WWE logo. Kevin Dunn has been pushing for the change, but as of this weekend, Vince McMahon hasn't okayed it. The "extreme rules" match stipulation may be a thing of the past as well, as Vince has been negative to the idea stemming from the recent RVD vs. Test match. HHH was also against the "extreme rules" concept, which some noted was funny since his match on Raw with HBK against Cade and Murdoch had the big table spot and he uses a sledgehammer. HHH does use weapon and table spots, but they are usually one or two built up spots as opposed to the RVD vs. Test match where they were all over the place and the basis of the match was doing spots without builds, and after doing them, they just moved to another one. Vince has been telling people for a few weeks that they need to stop positioning ECW as a separate company but as a third WWE brand.
Steve Austin was at the show in Los Angeles on 10/15. WWE's web site even reported him being there, but he wasn't used in front of the camera. He and Vince were there to have a face-to-face meeting about getting together for some Wrestlemania plans. At least at this point, he's pretty adamant about not wrestling or doing anything that could endanger his health. Last year at Mania, when he was there to induct Bret Hart into the HOF, at the last minute, Vince came up with several different angles for both him and Hart to do on the show, but both turned them down.
Brent Albright, 27, was one of the top guys in OVW for a few years doing a Chris Benoit "shooter" gimmick. When he was brought up, he got bad reviewers from agents/producers, his push was dropped, and eventually he was sent back to OVW. He was buried in particular by Fit Finlay and Dean Malenko, who complained that Albright was stealing Benoit's moves and style (even as his gimmick in OVW was to pattern himself after Benoit, and his Smackdown gimmick was as Benoit's protege). Basically his problem is that Paul Heyman booking OVW pushed him to be a Benoit duplicate, and then he got fired for being too much like Benoit. He was sent back to OVW to change his style, and after time in OVW, they felt he hadn't changed enough.
James "Jimmy Jam Garvin" Williams quit on 10/13, so he lasted all of five days. It was his call to leave. The only thing he's said on it is that he realized he wasn't going to have as much time with his family as he wanted. It's a black eye for Michael Hayes, who had pushed hard for some time to hire his old friend from Dallas. Garvin signed what was believed to have been a very good contract, as well as a legends contract. Hayes came out of it with heat because of the feeling he gave the wrong guy his seal of approval--a drinking buddy getting a high paying job as opposed to someone who had been still following the business and its changes closely.
Tully Blanchard has now joined the WWE as an agent/producer, presumably in Garvin's place.
credit: Wrestling Observer Newsletter
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