WWE: Tournament Announced to Crown New NXT Women’s Champion, A&E WWE Ratings, More News

May 3, 2023

Indi Hartwell Relinquishes NXT Women’s Championship, Tournament to Crown New Champ

As noted before, Indi Hartwell suffered an ankle-related injury during her NXT Women’s Championship match against Tiffany Stratton and Roxanne Perez at last week’s NXT Spring Breakin 2023 show.

Tuesday’s NXT show featured a promo segment by Hartwell. During her promo, Hartwell stated that as a result of her being recently drafted to WWE’s RAW brand, she will be relinquishing her NXT Women’s Championship. Hartwell also stated that a tournament will be held to crown a new champion starting next week and the finals to take place at NXT’s Battleground event on May 28th in Lowell, Massachusetts.

BREAKING: Starting NEXT WEEK, a tournament will take place to crown a new NXT Women’s Champion, culminating at #NXTBattleground. #WWENXT pic.twitter.com/FveQbua94G
— WWE (@WWE) May 3, 2023

A&E WWE Programming Ratings – April 30, 2023

This past Sunday’s WWE’s Most Wanted Treasures episode drew 426,000 viewers on A&E. This episode also drew a 0.16 rating in the 18-49 demographic and a #17 ranking in the key demographic rankings. This was the season premiere for the second season of the series and featured WWE Hall of Famer Stone Cold Steve Austin as the guest.

This past Sunday’s Stone Cold Takes America episode drew 339,000 viewers on A&E. This episode also drew a 0.10 rating in the 18-49 demographic and a #36 ranking in the key demographic rankings. This was premiere episode of the series.

More Sunday ratings: ShowBuzz Daily

WWE News & Notes

As noted before, WWE recently ended their work-at-home option for all of their employees and ordered them to all return to full-time office work starting at the start of this month. PWInsider’s Mike Johnson reported that his sources stated that WWE officials delayed the start of this new mandatory order by one week to a new date of May 9th.

Gunther recently revealed on Twitter that he got married to former NXT UK talent Jinny this past weekend in London, England.

Nikki Cross announced on Twitter that she recently submitted her dissertation about women’s wrestling for her Master’s degree in History.

In a recent interview with ABC News, Carmella revealed that she and her husband Corey Graves are currently expecting the birth of their first child.

This past Monday’s episode of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon featured The Miz and Alexa Bliss among the guests.

This past Monday’s episode of That’s My Jam on NBC also featured guest appearances by The Miz and Alexa Bliss.

Former WWE talent Kristal Marshall reportedly was backstage at this past Monday’s RAW show in Fort Worth, Texas, according to PWInsider.

In a recent interview with the Comedy Store Wrestling podcast, Rocky Romero revealed that Finn Balor had contacted him several times in the past over the potential idea of Balor returning to New Japan Pro Wrestling for several appearances while under contract with WWE as a way to “reheat” his character. Romero stated “I’ve had a couple of fun conversations with him over the last couple of years of like him kind of fantasy booking, ‘I’m going to talk to Triple H and see if there’s an opportunity to come back.’ This was years ago. Just come back and do a couple of matches and re-heat himself up before going back to WWE. I definitely think there’s a value in that for somebody at that level who has been there for a few years, just heat them up by sending them out of the country and doing something really cool.” (Transcript h/t: Fightful.com)

In a recent interview with Fightful’s Overbooked’s In The Weeds podcast, WWE writer Dave Schilling stated that WWE officials had made the decision for Brock Lesnar to squash Kofi Kingston for his WWE Championship in 2019 within the weeks after Kingston winning the title at WrestleMania 35. Schilling stated “I was there in 2019, I was on the home team on SmackDown. The thing that we were the most concerned with and most involved with was KofiMania. That was a storyline that traded on a lot of attitudes about race and ideas about who should or shouldn’t be the champion. I never felt like that storyline was disrespectful. I never felt that storyline was treated in a way where Kofi came off as a ‘token champion.’ That was a great storyline and I’m very proud of the small part I had to play in that. We can debate how it turned out in the end, when he lost to Brock Lesnar, which I found out about in April. We were talking about, ‘the plan is first SmackDown on Fox, Brock is going to come in and win the title and it’s going to be a quick match.’ That’s exactly what happened after I left. That’s the way it turned out. The writers in the room with me, were always incredibly aware of what we were doing and why it was important.” (Transcript h/t: Fightful.com)

WWE recently announced a new match for the card of their NXT Battleground event on May 28th in Lowell, Massachusetts:

NXT Championship – Bron Breakker vs. Carmelo Hayes (c)