Roman Reigns cancer defeat gets HUGE Social Media response!

WWE Wrestler Roman Reigns, who vacacted the WWE Universal title in October due to cancer

WWE has been struggling as of late, with sagging tv ratings and a lack of stars due to injury, WWE needed some good news, and we got that news with last night's edition of Monday night Raw.

Back in October 2018 Roman Reigns announced his Leukemia had returned and he was taking a leave of absence to go and fight it. That was all we heard from Roman Reigns, until last night.

Roman Reigns announced that, for the second time, he has beat Leukemia and he is returning to the ring soon. WWE's replay of this clip on twitter has got 12 thousand retweets and 39.7 thousand likes. A lot of people were delighted with this news and made it known on twitter. John Cena was one of the most high profile people tweeting about this, retweeing the tweet and telling Roman his time is 'Most certainly NOW!'. Sami Zayn simply tweeted.' Man, it's really great to see Roman Reigns again'.A lot more WWE superstars tweeted their delight that WWE's current top star is not only returning to the ring, but has beaten Leukemia for a second time.

A lot of mainstream online news outlets picked up the news story as well with sites like Unilad,BBC,Irish Sun,CNN, USA Today and IGN all announcing the story that Roman Reigns is returning to wrestling.

Whether this means Roman will lead to an increase in the ratings is uncertain, but he has helped capture alot of online mainstream coverage due to his real life fight and win against Leaukemia.

WWE Roman Reigns return gets HUGE social media response!!!

Vince McMahon proud of his top star coming back to the company to have a big announcement

WWE has always been known for a strong social media presence and using online media to further WWE's storylines and to get viewers to watch their television products. Vince McMahon(owner of WWE) announced via Twitter that Roman Reigns( The guy who they were positioning the company around till his Leukemia came back last year) will be addressing the status of his Leukemia on Monday Night Raw. This, seemingly, is the latest, in a number of tactics WWE is using to try get their TV ratings up, being the lowest they have been in 24 years. With their viewers at an all time low of just over 2 Million TV viewers for Monday Night Raw compared to back in 2000 when they were regularly getting over 6 million viewers week in, week out. WWE's ratings have been declining steadily the past few years, with a 3 hour product, stale storylines and no long term storylines, it is no wonder the viewership is dwindling, however when WWE Smackdown Live( their Tuesday night show) moves to FOX in September this year, they will be expecting a minimum of 3 million viewers per week, while at this current time, they struggle to stay at 2 million. 

Will this lead to Raw getting more viewers and fixing their ratings problem? who knows, but based on the social media response(Over 10 thousand retweets and 47 thousand favourites) it sure looks like people are paying attention.

WWE Brings back Bruce Prichard?!!?

Bruce Prichard, otherwise known as  Brother Love, is back in the WWE fold

One of the major woes these past few months has been WWE's creative decisions. After suffering their lowest television rating since 1996 back in December, WWE's McMahon family came back to television to promise a 'new era' to WWE fans and hit the reset button on alot of WWE's storylines including the fact they got rid of automatic rematches.

Despite this, WWE's ratings have continued to drop to a point where, last week, WWE hit the reset button again, and called up 4 of their top stars from their developmental territory NXT, debuting Ricochet, Johnny Gargano, Tommassa Ciampa and Aleister Black to freshen up the product.

To keep this freshening creative process going, WWE(according to online media reports) has re-hired Bruce Prichard to work on the creative team, whether this will lead to better received product is anyone's guess, it looks like WWE is in desperation mode to try make their product better, whether Prichard is out of touch or still has some creative genius in him remains to be seen, we will have to tune in to the product over the coming weeks to see if anything gets better.

AEW Sells out Double or Nothing in 4 minutes

AEW, All Elite Wrestling, a WWE rival sold out

Last year Cody Rhodes, with the help of fellow wrestlers the Young Bucks( Nick and Matt Jackson) sold out a 10 thousand seater arena in September for their smash hit event 'All In'. Since then, they have announced the creation of a new wrestling company funded by the billionaire Khan family called All Elite Wrestling(AEW).

When AEW Double or Nothing tickets went on general sale online on 13th February 2019, people did not expect them to sell out, or at least not to sell out as quickly as they did. They sold out their 12 thousand seat MGM Grand Arena in Las Vegas in the online sale, in 4 minutes.

This is monumental news for AEW as it shows that there is a high demand for their wrestling product, even if AEW has not put on one show yet. The hype and momentum for AEW is sky high at the minute and if Double or Nothing proves to be a success, both critically and commercially, we can expect they will get a bigger venue for their next event after Double or Nothing, due to the quick sellouts and high demand.

AEW'S Double or Nothing Rally Stream a smash hit!

AEW, All Elite Wrestling Rally with Cody Rhodes and the Young Bucks got plenty of viewers

AEW Double or Nothing Rally Stream a smash hit!

AEW Held a press conference on January 8th 2019 to announce upcoming matches for their Double or Nothing wrestling event in the MGM Grand arena in May. 

The stream peaked at 58 thousand viewers watching live on Youtube and 6 thousand viewers watching on Facebook.

They announced new signings, the biggest, being Japan megastar Kenny Omega. Other new signings included Aja Kong, Kylie Ray, The Lucha Brothers( Pentagon and Rey Fenix), Sammy Guevera,Nylie Rose and the tag team Best Friends( Trent Barretta and Chuckie T).

They also announced several big matches for the event, such as a rematch between Chris Jericho and Kenny Omega, The Lucha Brothers versus the Young Bucks(Nick+Matt Jackson) and Socal Uncensored(SCU) versus CIMA with 2 surprise tag team partners. More matches are expected to be announced in the coming weeks.

Regardless, the event looks nearly to be a sellout as it is, with the AEW website crashing during the stream due to the pre sale request of tickets happening, where you would be guaranteed a ticket if you booked online.

AEW will need to keep the momentum going in the next few weeks to keep hype going for their Double or Nothing event.

MAJOR WWE STARS TO AEW!!!!!??????

OUT OF NOWHERE! Randy Orton, a top WWE star, is thinking about leaving for AEW

 

EVERYBODY IS LEAVING FOR AEW!???

AEW is the biggest buzz in the wrestling world at the moment with rumours about it's tv deals and talent leaking the past few weeks. One persistent piece of news that keeps popping up about AEW is reports that stars from WWE are considering leaving for the new promotion due to the buzz and their dissatisfaction with their character and development in WWE.

Seemingly everybody and their grandmother seems to be signing with AEW. News has come out this week that 2 major stars have consider AEW for their next wrestling venture. WWE stars Brock Lesnar and Randy Orton are the rumoured superstars looking to departure according to various online news websites. Brock Lesnar is reportedly only considering AEW to drive WWE to increase his payment on his already lucrative WWE contract. Randy Orton seems to be different though, he signed a 10 year deal back in 2010 and that deal is due to be up next year. He isn't featured that heavily in main event programming when compared to years past, so a deal with AEW might be his ticket to a resurgence in his career.

Whether any of these rumours of WWE superstars come to fruition remains to be seen, one thing is clear, there is now an alernative for unhappy WWE wrestlers if they do not want to stay in WWE and WWE will need to start utilising it's roster better if it doesn't want it's talent to go to rival promotion AEW.

WWE's revived Halftime Heat draws low ratings

WWE NXT, run by Triple H, rebooted Halftime Heat this year

The Super Bowl is the biggest sporting event in the world, with over 100 Million people watching it every year. Due to the popularity of the Super Bowl every year with several celebrities willing to perform during halftime of the game, and major companies airing advertisements during it, which are often the highlight of the Super Bowl.

WWE capitalized on this period 20 years ago in January 1999 when they aired a special 'Halftime Heat' broadcast on the USA Network during the Super Bowl's usually boring and dull halftime. When WWE originally did this concept back in 1999 they got 11 million viewers, which was amazing for a wrestling telvision show.

WWE revived the concept this year and brought it back, not for their main roster brand, but for their 'developmental' brand NXT. Airing a 6 Man Tag Team match, it did not do amazing numbers with it peaking at 71 thousand viewers across Youtube, Facebook and Twitter. They additionally had the program broadcast on the WWE Network and WWE.com, but those viewership figures were not released.

It has to be noted, that since the time of writing their Youtube clip for 'Halftime Heat' and the 'NXT Marathon' does have 1.2 Million viewers, but those were viewers after Halftime Heat aired.It was also a different time back in 1999 as the WWE was in a Monday Night ratings war with now defunct rival WCW and their viewership and popularity was at an all time high due to the attitude era and stars like Steve Austin, The Rock, DX among others. This wasn't the main WWE brand either, this was only their 'developmental' brand, so it was still good exposure, for the future superstars of WWE, and as a concept it would benefit from being broadcast every year.

They should broadcast it on traditional networks next time such as the USA Network/FOX, if they want to get more viewers from it and make advertising revenue from it too, as well as use main roster talent, as the main roster would have a lot more recognizable stars than their NXT roster would.

As for the broadcast itself, it was an amazing 30 minutes of athletic action, hopefully WWE continue to do Halftime Heat every year to capitalise on the Super Bowl's boring halftime.