Daily Update: Damian Priest, WWE Clash at the Castle, NJPW Soul

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This Week’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter

The new issue of the Observer:

• Updating the situation with Ricochet, the WWE angle, his legacy, future, comments by Will Ospreay and a look at his pre-WWE career.
• Preview of Clash at the Castle, the matches, thoughts on the bouts, attempt to set records and more.
• Conor McGregor vs. Michael Chandler falls apart, the quietness of the last two weeks, replacement fights and other pull-outs.
• Just how much money McGregor would have generated on this night
• New Japan Dominion coverage, Hikuleo leaving for WWE, Super Juniors finals, Forbidden Door angles, G-1, this week’s big show and more.
• NXT Battleground coverage, the Apex,  the bouts, the timing of the show.
• Final WrestleMania live business numbers from the Pennsylvania commission.  What was the real attendance for both nights, Raw, Smackdown and NXT.
• Huge story on part two of Who Killed WCW, company finances running a wrestling business then vs. now, what went wrong, Hogan vs. Goldberg and real story behind the lack of build, where the money was left on the table, Goldberg as champion, booking philosophy and more.
• Why WCW lost top stars under Jim Herd
• The most detailed look at the ratings for wrestling and MMA TV shows, including how close another MMA show came to UFC this past week, placings for the week, competition for the shows, segment-by-segment an more
• More on who CMLL talent is allowed to work with
• Lots of big matches coming to CMLL over the next week
• El Hijo del Vikingo update
• Notes on the movie about a current wrestling star released in Japan
• Next Stardom PPV and Five Star Grand Prix notes
• WWE & NOAH announcement coming
• Big NOAH match this week
• Despe Invitational show
• Iyo Sky comes to Marigold and how ticket sales went
• Mexican and Japanese group working together
• Bloodsport notes
• Sad Steve McMichael update
• Passing of Larry Santo
• One of pro wrestling’s all-time legends from way back is being honored in his home town next week
• Celebrity Wrestling show earmarked
• Lots of injury updates
• Forbidden Door update
• How the Arlington tapings for AEW are doing
• Advance ticket sales for WWE & AEW shows
• CMLL talent being booked for Dynamite at the last minute
• International TV ratings and top streaming numer
• Dana White asked to channel Andy Kaufman
• Consideration to changing MMA rules
• PFL tournament updates
• Manny Pacquiao coming to Rizin
• Drew McIntyre inducted into Scotland Hall of Fame
• Update on Vince McMahon legal action
• PPV updates
• More Dwayne Johnson projects

This week’s Wresting Observer Newsletter back issue

Sunday Update

– Bryan and I did our weekend show last night talking about Clash of  the Champions, all the details on Judge Richard Boulware not approving the settlement in the  Cung Le lawsuit and the rest of the weekend news. Bryan and I will be back tomorrow night after Raw.

– Regarding Damian Priest, while we won’t know for sure until he gets his knee checked out, the feeling last night after the show was that he dodged a bullet and it wasn’t as bad as it appeared.  He went to the press conference and before getting it looked at and said it feels like his knee was thrashed, but later that night we were told things were hopeful .  

– As far as the finish of the Priest vs. Drew McIntyre main event goes, I have mixed feelings. The idea of McIntyre getting beaten due to outside interference at two straight Clash of the Castles in his part of the country came off negative.  But I understand that Punk vs. McIntyre doesn’t  need a title to be a huge match while Priest vs. Gunther needs a title more. A lot of people have said that fans won’t come back, and perhaps charging the most expensive prices for an arena show in history made people expect a cleaner finish. Bookers often have heel wins with the idea of making fans unhappy, but I can get it with the live ticket prices you wouldn’t be happy with that finish but they are booking their long-term stories thinking of how to get the worldwide audience most interested.  

The idea was to make people unhappy or happy, but make them care about Punk vs. McIntyre.  We’ve been through this with Sami Zayn and Cody Rhodes, who were very over faces, and it didn’t hurt WWE popularity, and in most of the world Punk was the face and McIntyre the  heel.  Monday and Friday we’ll see how they portray it  on television but this isn’t going to hurt WWE’s popularity and business.  While part of me didn’t like that they essentially did the same finish (McIntyre being screwed by Punk leading to Priest winning) as WrestleMania, it was the correct finish to heat up Punk vs. McIntyre as a major feud and that was the priority.  But you certainly have the right to dislike it for the reasons given, and I do think most who disliked it did understand why it was done.

– A&E Biography is doing an episode on ECW tonight which naturally will heavily feature Paul Heyman.

– There were three title changes on today’s New Japan show in Sapporo. Hiroshi Tanahashi & Toru Yano & Oleg Boltin regained the trios titles they had lost last week to Yota Tsuji & Bushi & Hiromu Takahashi. Henare beat Shingo Takagi after all their wars to become Never champion in the biggest win of his career, Desperado beat Sho in a cage match to win the IWGP jr. title.  Douki challenged Desperado for a title match after. 

– Very sorry to hear about the death of Scott Hanson, who Bryan knew and was part of our community. We don’t know more about it but Bryan will talk about it on tomorrow’s show.

– The A.J. Styles vs. Naomichi Marufuji match will be part of NOAH’s show on 7/13 at Budokan Hall.  The show will air on Abema-Global.com as a PPV show.  The lineup is:

• Alejandro & Cristobol vs. Ninja Mack & Junta Miyawaki vs. Hajime Ohara & Super Crazy
• Manabu Soya & Masa Kitamiya & Daiki Inaba vs. Takashi Sugiura & Shuhei Taniguchi & Kazuyuki Fujita
• Akira & Shuji Kondo & Eita vs. Yoshinari Ogawa & Ryohei Oiwa & Yu Owada
• Kenoh vs.  Yuji Nagata
• Jake Lee & Yo-Hey & Tadasue vs. Jack Morris & Anthony Greene & LJ Cleary
• Hayata vs. Ulka Sasaki for the National title (Sasaki is a former UFC fighter)
• Daga vs. Amakusa for the GHC jr. title
• Alpha Wolf & Dragon Bane vs. El Hijo de Dr. Wagner Jr & Galeno del Mal
• Styles vs. Marufuji
• Kaito Kiyomiya vs. Yoichi (Yoshiki Inamura) returning from the U.K.

– We’re looking for your thoughts on the Clash at the Castle show, you can leave a thumbs up,  down or middle along with a best and worst match to dave@wrestlingobserver.com. We’re also looking for reports from last night’s TNA TV tapings.

– As far as the Google searches for the week, four things related to wrestling and combat sports made the list. For whatever reason, they listed the UFC show from the Apex on Friday as No. 4 for the day with 200,000, which is a good number for such a nothing show. Clash at the Castle was No. 7 at 100,000.  The prior PPV /PLE, King & Queen of the Ring didn’t do 20,000 so this was way up in interest level it appears. For Saturday, Gervonta Davis vs. Frank Martin was No. 1 with 500,000 searches, the David Benavidez vs. Oleksander Gvozdyk boxing match as No. 8 at 50,000 and No  10 was a story about boxer Cindy Ngabba. The latter two were out of the rankings hours later.

– An update on LuFisto from her Facebook page:

I posted a little something about it on my other social media accounts but to be more precise here and answer a few questions, my left leg started to turn a weird color yesterday so I called my US doctor and sent him pictures. He said it was an infection and immediately called my pharmacy for some antibiotics. They wouldn’t take his prescription because he is an American surgeon. I ended up at the emergency where I sat uncomfortably for so long that I fainted due to the excruciating pain. I was quickly moved to intensive care where after a bunch of tests, they found out that I had some sort of flesh-eating bacteria. (I can’t remember the name). It’s not something I got from the surgery but since I had wounds from it, it somehow got into my body in the past few days.

I’ve been on three strong antibiotics since and they keep a close eye on me. I’m also on strong morphine. I have my own room now but have no idea how long I’ll be here. If the disease was to spread, there is a surgeon on call to open my leg and get rid of all that bullshit.

So it is what it is. Another day in the life of Gen Goulet. To those who took the time to check on me, thank you. 

Today, she posted that they removed all the intravenous stuff. (thanks to Patric Laprade)

– Also looking for notes on the New Japan and NOAH show as far as what bouts were the highlights. NOAH’s show today saw Kaito Kiyomiya beat Gabe Kidd to keep the GHC title.

– It was announced on Thursday that Jamahal Hill pulled out of his UFC 303 match with Carlos Ulberg, at the time the semifinal on the show, due to injury. Hill said he had two tears in his meniscus, a sprained ACL, a Baker Cyst that leaked fluid in the back of his knee, and an infusion in some joints.

– There was an exhibition boxing match last night with Chael Sonnen vs. Anderson Silva that was ruled a draw since it wasn’t scored. Silva claimed as an exhibition he didn’t go for a knockout. The fight was described as looking more like a friendly sparring session than a serious fight.  MMA Fighting had it 50-45 for Silva if there had been judging. Naturally Sonnen after the fight said he won the first three rounds. Sonnen claims he is interested in boxing Jorge Masvidal next.

– Shota Umino missed today’s New Japan show due to a back injury that it is believed he suffered on Wednesday in AEW against Rocky Romero. We had been told the referee and Doc Samson were talking about an injury to Umino after the match, although Umino did walk out on his own.

– Northeast Wrestling from Friday night in Woodbridge CT: Love Doug & RJ Rude & Jaylen Bandyn & Traevon Jordan b Chris Battle & Stephan Azure & Steve Somerset & Rylie O’Neil, Brad Baylor b Jermaine Marbury Kerr Madan b Tiara James, Brett Ryan Gosselin b Landon Hale, KC Navarro b Brad Holister, Dan Maff b Matt Taven-DQ, Johnson won a Rumble match. This one of the weekend shows Matt Riddle missed due to his concussion in his Uber earlier in the day. It was the second straight NEW show he had missed.

– Rhino headlines for Pro Wrestling Phoenix on 7/6 in Omaha at the Waiting Room Lounge.

– GOUGE on 6/29 in Roxboro, NC at the Hitlab.