Seth Rollins Comments on His Goal to Build World Heavyweight Title to be as Big as Any Other Title in Wrestling
A recent episode of the Mark Andrews: My Love Letter to Wrestling featured Seth Rollins as the guest. One of the topics discussed included Rollins’ thoughts on his current goal to build up WWE’s new World Heavyweight Championship to make it as big as any other top title in wrestling.
“I think just kind of calling it the work-rate title is a little bit underselling it. At the end of the day, the title exists because our roster is so chock full of talent. There’s just too much to have one champion that’s not around very much, and so I think the fact that we had so many worthy contenders, people that could hold this championship, I think that is the reason the title exists. If we had a weak roster and things weren’t good and stuff wasn’t hot, it might be fine just to have one champion who wasn’t around, didn’t want to make live events, but that’s just not the case. We’re selling out left and right, we’re hot, from here to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, Paris, France, Mexico City, it doesn’t matter. We’re just selling out left and right, and we need to have a World Heavyweight Champion on the men’s side to represent that level of competition. So I think we’re going to put in the work to build this title to be as big as any championship in wrestling. We’re not naive and think that we don’t need to put that work. We know that it needs to happen. But we’ve got the roster, and the guys and the crew who are willing to put in the time to make it feel as big as it is.”
Transcript h/t: Fightful.com
Yulisa Leon Comments on Bianca Belair Being Inspiration for Her Own Wrestling Career
WWE NXT brand talent Yulisa Leon recently reflected on Instagram about Bianca Belair being the inspiration for her decision to pursue a career in wrestling.
“For years, the Nuevo León High Performance Center was my home and my entire life @inde.nl I remember that by the year 2018 after having mentioned it so much, my parents had already accepted that their daughter would become a Wrestler in the future.
In that year 2018, I perfectly remember I finished my training week at the “Parque Niños Héroes”. I arrived home tired with my backpacks and I saw my father sitting at the computer, when suddenly I hear him say “mijaaa come I want to show you a video of a wrestler I just found, her name is @biancabelairwwe and she fights in WWE, she reminds me so much of you and she even did a movement similar to weightlifting”… (I quickly threw my training bag and ran to the computer to see). WooW I just loved what I saw, her strength and charisma, her story… That moment and that video were a key and important part of my motivation to make my transition to wrestling. I had to leave my country and leave behind 15 years of working for the Olympic dream to become a Professional Wrestler…
The surprises that life gives are wonderful… If someone, at that moment when I was watching your video with great enthusiasm, had told me that I would meet her and have the opportunity to tell her this anecdote, I would never have believed it.
I hope one day life gives me the opportunity to face her… Bianca, thank you for inspiring many women, to me you will always be the champion.”
More on NXT Week 191 Viewership – June 6, 2023
The June 6th episode of WWE NXT saw NXT gain a slight increase in overall viewership but also suffered a slight decline in key demographic rankings.
NXT drew 615,000 viewers and a 0.17 key demographic rating on USA Network. NXT’s key demographic ranking for that night was 5th place.
Detailed viewership and key demographic breakdowns were not available in this week’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter.
Dave Meltzer reported that the main reason for NXT’s mised results this week was due to the small gains from their female key demographic viewership and older key demographic viewership groups, which were up 13.1% and 0.9% respectively compared to last week’s show. This reportedly mostly offset the declines from their male key demographic viewership, younger key demographic viewership, and Over 50 viewership groups, which were down 8.7%, 1.3%, and 3.2% respectively compared to last week’s show.
In terms of head-to-head competition, the MLB game of New York Mets vs. Atlanta Braves drew 275,000 viewers on TBS, the MLB simulcast games of Seattle vs. San Diego and Chicago Cubs vs. Los Angeles Angels drew 121,000 viewers on MLB Network, 7 Little Johnstons drew 666,000 viewers on TLC, Real Housewives of New Jersey drew 1,193,000 viewers on Bravo, Secret Skinwalker Ranch drew 1,741,000 viewers on History Channel, Deadliest Catch drew 871,000 viewers on Discovery Channel, and Chopped drew 619,000 viewers on Food Network.
In terms of key demographic viewership, NXT had 221,000 viewers. Meltzer reported that the male/female viewership split was 136,000 male viewers (down 8.7%) and 85,000 female viewers (up 13.1%) for a split of 61.5% in favor of males.
In terms of yearly comparisons, NXT was down 6.4% in overall viewership but up 20.8% in key demographic viewership. Meltzer reported that NXT’s 18-34 viewership was up 62.5% compared to the same week last year.