SHOCKER:Dean Ambrose Leaving WWE

Dean Ambrose,WWE, wrestling, media,Shield

WWE is the Mecca for professional wrestlers, a 7 figure salary, travelling all around the world, and being on television every week, therefore it came as a surprise that one of WWE's biggest stars Dean Ambrose is leaving WWE. The news broke on online wrestling dirt sheet site Pro Wrestling Torch earlier this week, but in a unprecedented, surprising twist WWE, via their online website, confirmed that the rumours are true and Dean Ambrose is not renewing his WWE contract. Dean Ambrose's contract expires after Wrestlemania 35 and WWE has already offered him a very lucrative deal back in December but he turned it down.

It is easy to see why he is leaving, the wrestling industry is in a very interesting position in 2019, with the arrival of AEW and Ring of Honor and New Japan being good alternatives to WWE, performers do not have to stay in WWE if they are unhappy. Dean Ambrose has consistently been one of the best in ring performers in recent years, but his character and promo work has left a bad taste in fan's mouths with it being very hokey and embarrassing.

Where he will go to after WWE, we can only speculate, but it is not often you see a top performer leave WWE, and not only that, but WWE confirm via their website that he is leaving. Whether this leads to a creative rebirth of his character elsewhere or he leaves the business enitirely is anyone's guess.

WWE Uploads 35 years on post with controversial WWE Legend HULK HOGAN

Hulk Hogan, nWo,WWE,wrestling,star,sports,Gawker

 Hulk Hogan

A legend of the business no doubt, but a name that has been smeared in controversy due to his leaked sex tape and the racial slurs he used in it back in 2015 getting him fired from WWE.

Perhaps in a reflection of just how diminished his star power is due to his controversial sex tape and racial slurs, a WWE video clip of Hulk Hogan reflecting on his first title win 35 years ago on January 23rd 1984 has only garnered 63K views on Youtube.This reflects just how far his name value has fallen, this clip only got 63K views, where as a Rey Mysterio vs Andrade got 740K views on WWE's channel on Youtube.

This shows that WWE is willing to use Hulk Hogan in their company, having recently only returned to honour 'Mean' Gene Okerland on WWE Raw a few weeks ago, despite the controversial racial slurs he used back in 2015. This outlines that with time, despite your controversies, anyone can come to WWE.

#metoo,womens wrestling, television, GLOW, empowerment

Women of Wrestling, founded by David McClane, who previously founded GLOW(Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling) in the 1980's, which has a Netflix series based on it called GLOW, now has a new venture with Women of Wrestling. Women of Wrestling has been around for years with their tv program now going into its 5th season. They premiered on AXS TV this year which is a huge step for the promotion as they had been previously airing their programs exclusively online.

WOW is unique because like GLOW, it is an all female wrestling promotion which means that women get alot more time, compared to other wrestling promotions where it is men and women and women usually have one title, where as the men have many.
How will this help them become more exposed and mainstream in 2018? who knows, but with wrestling being as hot as it has ever been and there been a demand for live sports with the decline of regular tv program ratings, WOW is in a great position for upward growth due to its unique product and television deal.

Impact Wrestling on Twitch: Numbers

TNA,Impact,Spike,Destination America, Jeff Jarrett,Dixie Carter,Anthem

Impact Wrestling, owned by Anthem Sports, has now the most number of followers for a wrestling program on Twitch, currently standing at 69,764 followers and also has the distinction of the most watched wrestling program on Twitch. Although it makes for grim reading, watching the number of viewers they get on Twitch when you compare it to their former broadcast partner, POP, which they were getting consistently above 100K+ viewers each week and now they can only get 7,866 viewers for their Impact Wrestling program.

What does this mean for Impact Wrestling going forward? we can expect the ratings on Twitch the only indicators of their viewership due to the Pursuit chanel not being in the top 150 broadcasts in America due to low viewership and Impact unwilling to disclose their tv ratings. Twitch is still good from an exposure point of view as it allows people all around the world to watch Impact Wrestling for free as long as you have a streaming device and internet connection.

Women= Ratings?

tna,bra and panties,nude,sex,risque,RAW, WWE,

Women= Ratings??? 

 WWE does not have the best track record with regards to women's wrestling and treating it with respect. For years talented female competitors were labelled 'divas' and participated in various matches based on Sex Appeal rather than in ring talent such as the infamous 'Bra and Panties' match.

On the 14th and 15th January episodes of Monday night Raw and Tuesday Night Smackdown Live fans got a flashback to that era of womens wrestling in two similiar segments that aired. The one that aired on Monday night Raw had a stagehand interrupt Alexa Bliss while she was getting changed and she only had a top in her hand covering her upper body, the second segment had Mandy Rose wearing lingerie in a hotel room segment with WWE superstars Jimmy Uso. This was viewed as a surprise by most fans giving WWE's TV PG ratings and their emphasis on women's wrestling in recent years, holding their first all ever Women's pay per view back in October called 'Evolution'.

Regardless of the content, the content got alot of views, much more views than WWE content normally gets. Currently, the Mandy Rose segment has 3.4 Million views on Youtube and the Alexa Bliss segment has 6.2 Million views. Comparing this to WWE's other more conservative content, this got a lot more views than everything else, for comparison, the AJ Styles Daniel Bryan backstage brawl has 718 thousand views, much less than the women's risque segments.

Whether this means we will get a return where women will be rated more on their sex appeal in WWE rather than their in ring talent remains to be seen, but one thing is for sure, it gets viewers, who knew?.

WWE Premiers Irish Wrestlers story on WWE Network

Ring of Honor, Ireland, Nigel Mcguinness,WWE, retired, WWE 24,

In 2014, WWE announced they were starting their own over the top(OTT) online streaming service like Netflix or Amazon Prime, called the WWE Network. A lot of fans were skeptical of this, because their is only so much wrestling content one can endure, however WWE turned this around and started airing WWE Network original series and documentaries much like Netflix and Amazon Prime does.
The latest in their WWE Network Original Documentaries was 'Chasing The Magic: The Nigel McGuinness Story' about a retired wrestler called Nigel McGuinness, who works in their NXT UK brand as a colour commentator, rise to become of the best non-WWE wrestlers in the world and his fall from grace.
This was great for wrestling fans because he never got to wrestle in WWE because by the time he debuted in WWE in 2018, he was a retired wrestler due to injury.
WWE have done similiar documentaries before like with their WWE 24 series where they documented the careers of: Ultimate Warrior, Booker T and Kurt Angle as well as the backstage event for Wrestlemania 31,32 and 33.
As always, given that this is a subscriber based service, this will only serve to boost their subscriber number as it is Wrestlemania season and last year they got a record breaking 2.1 Million subscribers in the first quarter of 2018.
If they keep producing original content like this, that number looks set to be broken this year.

IMPACT Wrestling Moving to Twitch

TNA,Spike TV, Impact,Anthem,Fight Network, Wrestling,WWE

IMPACT WRESTLING WEEKLY TV SHOW NOW AVAILABLE ON TWITCH!

The wrestling promotion IMPACT now has signed a deal with streaming service Twitch to broadcast their weekly television show Impact Wrestling. This is a good sign for the promotion as they have recently moved to The Pursuit Channel in America which is available in fewer homes than their previous broadcaster POP. This is viewed as a bad step for the promotion, at a time when WWE has signed a TV  deal with FOX worth 1 Billion Dollars, Impact had to sign a deal with a Online broadcaster that mainly broadcasts gaming streams, not wrestling shows and they could not even get on a TV broadcaster that isn't owned by Impact's parent company Anthem Sports, which owns The Pursuit Channel, which many speculate is the only reason Impact still have a TV deal.

The past few years has seen Impact Wrestlings ratings and viewers dwindle from their all time high in 2010 of 2 Million viewers on Spike TV to their lowest ever ratings the past 2 years, on their 20th December broadcast on POP they only got 116 thousand viewers. 

How is this media related? As i mentioned, Impact Wrestling is now going to broadcast on Twitch, an online streaming service, as well as that, Impact Wrestling regularly broadcasts the highlights of their weekly tv shows and sporadic pay per views to their Youtube channel which gets thousands of views and they even have their own streaming service called the 'Global Wrestling Network' which has an archive of old pay per views and TV broadcasts, which is online media.

New Media/wrestling Company founded by the Billionaire Khan family

Jacksonville Jaguars, Khan, AEW, All Elite Wrestling,Young Bucks,Cody Rhodes,Brandi Rhodes,WCW

BILLIONAIRE KHANS FUND NEW WRESTLING PROMOTION

The billionaire Khan family, who own the Jacksonville Jaguars and Fulham FC have announced they are starting a new wrestling promotion called All Elite Wrestling. It was announced on the Youtube channel 'Being The Elite' on New Year's Day by wrestlers Cody Rhodes, Nick Jackson and Matt Jackson. Being The Elite is a regular  weekly Youtube series by these wrestlers highlighting life on the road as a wrestler. Tony Khan will serve as president of the promotion. Interest around wrestling grew in 2018 due to the 1 Billion dollar FOX television deal with WWE and Cody Rhodes, Nick+Matt Jackson setting up the biggest independent wrestling event since the closure of WCW in 2001 called 'All IN' drawing 10 thousand fans into an arena. Which has now spurred a renewed interest from broadcasters into wrestling.

They held a rally outside the Jacksonville Jaguars stadium on January 8th announcing several key details like the signing of massive stars Chris Jericho and PAC(known as Neville in WWE) as well as their first event 'Double or Nothing' which will be broadcast on major streaming sevice FITE TV and will be held in the MGM Grand Arena in Las Vegas in May.Since the rally they have setup their social media accounts, of which they have 102K followers on Instagram alone and have even being wrote about by Forbes, FOX Sports and CBS Sports.

They are currently negotiating with several TV networks for a television show, which allegedly includes interest from former broadcaster of major wrestling promotion WCW, TNT. Whatever happens, WWE was the number 2 most viewed Youtube channel of 2018 so there is an interest in wrestling being broadcast and wrestling in general, but how much interest? we will soon find out.

How is this media related? Wrestling companies are as much media companies as wrestling companies nowadays, as their main source of revenue is from television+pay per view deals(media), not from live events, as WWE's 1 Billion Dollar deal with Fox suggests, wrestling is made for media and there now seems to be a renewed interest in wrestling from broadcasters due to WWE's new TV deal, ALL IN being a massive success (despite being non-WWE) and the new AEW, funded by the billionaire Khan family. They may have only been in business one week but already AEW merchandise is the number 1 top selling on Pro Wrestling Tees(online seller of wrestling merchandise). There is already a huge number of networks broadcasting wrestling: FITE TV broadcasts small independent promotions, Fight Network broadcasts IMPACT Wrestling and Smash Wrestling and Sinclair Broadcasting Group broadcasts Ring of Honor, wresting is made for media.So the future looks bright for AEW if they can get a major network TV deal, as demonstrated by WWE, wrestling can draw and the future looks bright for AEW.