WWE: WWE Announces Head-to-Head Live Event for 12/28 in Orlando Against AEW Worlds End 2024, More on NXT Aug. 13, 2024 Viewership, More News

WWE Announces New Live Event for This December on Same Date & City as AEW’s Worlds End 2024 Event

WWE recently announced that they will be holding a new WWE Live Event house show on December 28th at the Kia Center in Orlando, Florida.

It was also announced that tickets for this upcoming event officially went on sale on Friday.

JUST ANNOUNCED 📣 | All of your favorite Superstars will be back in Orlando December 28 for the WWE Live Holiday Tour! 🙌

🎟️ https://t.co/Z0hJ3Nbz4x pic.twitter.com/T57ZUfrkOu

— Kia Center (@TheKiaCenter) August 17, 2024

This is the same date and city as AEW’s upcoming Worlds End 2024 event, which is taking place at the Addition Financial Arena. In an interesting note, the Kia Center is located only 16 miles away from the Addition Financial Area.

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More on NXT Viewership for August 13, 2024

The August 13th episode of WWE NXT saw NXT gain a very large increase in overall viewership and a slight increase in key demographic ratings. This week’s show was notable for NXT returning to USA Network following the prior two weeks shows airing on SYFY due to USA Network’s commitments with the 2024 Summer Olympics on their network.

NXT drew 617,000 viewers and a 0.17 key demographic rating on SYFY. NXT’s key demographic ranking for the night was 3rd place.

Detailed key demographic viewership breakdowns were not available in this week’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter.

Dave Meltzer reported that the main reason for NXT’s increases this week was due to a combination of NXT returning back to USA Network and the large increase from their Over 50 demographic viewership group, which its percentage was not given.

In terms of head-to-head competition, the MLB game of Los Angeles Dodgers vs. Milwaukee Brewers drew 352,000 viewers on TBS, Deadliest Catch drew 812,000 viewers on Discovery Channel, Love & Hip Hop Atlanta drew 308,000 viewers on MTV, Neighborhood Wars drew 501,000 viewers on A&E, and My Big Fat Fabulous Life drew 544,000 viewers on TLC.

In terms of peak viewership, NXT’s peak overall viewership was at 666,000 viewers for the quarter hour featuring the ending of the NXT Heritage Cup Championship match of Charlie Dempsey vs. Tony D’Angelo (c) and the Lexis King vs. Eddy Thorpe match. NXT’s peak key demographic viewership was at 250,000 viewers for the same quarter hour. NXT’s overrun reportedly was 590,000 overall viewers and 225,000 key demo viewers for the NXT Tag Team Championship match of Chase U vs. Axiom & Nathan Frazer (c).

In terms of key demographic viewership, NXT had 231,000 viewers. Meltzer reported that NXT’s male/female viewership skew was 68,6% in favor of males.

In terms of yearly comparisons, NXT was down 9.3% in overall viewership and down 7.2% in key demographic viewership.

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WWE News & Notes

As noted before, Bobby Lashley and MVP’s contracts with WWE expired earlier this month and their profiles were moved over to the Alumni section on WWE’s official roster page. Fightful Select reported that their sources confirmed that Lashley’s contract had expired and he is currently a free agent. It was reported that those close to Lashley stated that he plans on continuing his wrestling career and currently has interest from both top wrestling companies around the world and also from combat sports companies.

WWE CCO Paul “Triple H” Levesque recently announced on Twitter that “RATATATA” by BABYMETAL and Electric Callboy is the official theme song of WWE Bash In Berlin.

WWE recently announced that they have signed a new partnership deal with the NCAA for the release of new collegiate WWE Legacy championship belts. It was also announced that these new Legacy belts feature the “official branding and colors of select schools from the Southeastern Conference, Big Ten Conference, Big 12 Conference and Atlantic Coast Conference, including Georgia, Alabama, Texas, Michigan, Ohio State, Notre Dame and Colorado.”

This past Monday’s WWE RAW show in Austin, Texas featured R-Truth being involved in a storyline injury angle at the hands of Bronson Reed. Dave Meltzer reported in this week’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter that his sources stated that unlike with Seth Rollins, R-Truth injury was only for storyline reasons and not due to any legitimate injury. Those spoken to stated that WWE officials simply wanted to build up more heat on Bronson Reed for Rollins’ eventual return and feud.

WWE’s SummerSlam 2024 event last Saturday reportedly generated around 13,100 pay-per-view buys based on updated late buys purchases, according to the Wrestling Observer Newsletter. Meltzer reported that SummerSlam 2024’s buys are currently up 90.9% compared to this past July’s Money in the Bank 2024 event based on the same number of days after the event.

WWE reportedly drew an attendance of 10,686 for their Aug. 9th SmackDown show in Tulsa, OK and 12,269 for their Aug. 12th RAW show in Austin, TX, according to the Wrestling Observer Newsletter.

In a recent interview with the Impaulsive podcast, Dominik Mysterio gave his thoughts about WWE had planned at one point to have him be suspended over the ring for the Eddie Guerrero vs. Rey Mysetrio Custody match at SummerSlam 2005. Mysterio stated “There was part of me that…I knew the differences, but there are certain points where it was hard to find the difference. Especially when Eddie was in the ring. I was one of those fortunate people who can say I got to step in the ring with Eddie Guerrero. There was one point in the match where I slid in, I went to shake the ladder, and he turns around from up top and starts shaking his finger. As he’s coming down, I don’t remember what was planned, but I remember he backing me up into the corner, veiny red, screaming his lungs out at me. ‘I’m going to teach you how to be a Guerrero.’ I don’t remember any of this as a kid as far as us going over what was going to happen. I just remember being backed up into this corner by Eddie, him raising his hand. My deadbeat comes out of nowhere, turns him around, and they get into the match. I’m so frozen. You see the ref Charles Robinson, he pulls me from under the ring. ‘Let’s go.’ I’m frozen.” (Transcript h/t: Fightful.com)

In a recent interview with the Gabby AF podcast, TNA Wrestling producer Gail Kim stated that she has been in attendance backstage weekly at WWE’s NXT shows as a TNA representative. Kim stated “So, I got to produce her (Roxanne Perez) one match. When she was in TNA, she did the ROH Women’s Title against Deonna (Purrazzo) in the main event for IMPACT and that match in itself, woah… I got goosebumps just thinking about it and I actually saw her last night because I go to NXT because we have talent there and I have to drive up every week just to be there as a TNA representative and I saw her last night and I never really got to talk to her since I saw her match at Great American Bash two weeks ago and they (Perez & Thea Hail) were the main event and they just killed it and I just told her, I was like, ‘That match…’ Chef’s kiss, you know? I just, obviously, love women’s wrestling and those two, they laid it all out there. They had match of the night to me, 100 percent.” Kim also gave her thoughts about a recent talk she had with NXT talent Wendy Choo backstage at a NXT taping and being interested in having Choo wrestle for TNA. Kim stated “Love to see a bunch of them (members of NXT women’s division) mix it up with the Knockouts. Yeah, we’ve had a couple, a couple of them come by. Izzi (Dame) came by, Tatum (Paxley). Tatum and Jordynne (Grace) had a killer match. When they wrestled each other, that was — I really like her. Just a lot of potential there. I was talking to Wendy Choo the other day. I was like, ‘I would love to have Wendy Choo come over,’ so we have a little match with Rosemary. A little dark character and dark character. That would be cool. Listen, we’re very open. I think fans get excited when they can see a little bit of possibility of these little dream matches that, you know, we couldn’t have before in the past before this relationship so it’s exciting.” (Transcript h/t: PostWrestling.com)

As noted before, The Hardys’ Matt & Jeff Hardy had a meeting with WWE officials earlier this month in Cleveland, Ohio. In a recent episode of The Extreme Life of Matt Hardy podcast, co-host Matt Hardy confirmed that he and his brother Jeff did have recent talks with WWE. Hardy stated “We get on that plane, we get to Cleveland, as soon as we get to Cleveland, we were met by a WWE driver who picked us up to take us to the WWE TV hotel where we went and recorded some media, some digital for those guys which is going to air on some of their platforms coming up in the future. It was very cool, it was very cool to interact with a lot of the guys. We walked in, very first person we saw was Jey Uso which was cool. Saw a couple of the other boys, saw some of the office. We got some really neat stuff that’s going to be coming out on WWE digital over the course of probably the next three, four, five months. I like to describe it as a friendly visit. Something where we spoke to people in production and they said they would like to do more of this going forward and I said we’d love to as well. I think for Jeff, it was a real big deal to be there and talk to some of the people because he felt real bad about the way he left, he felt real bad about stuff he had done in AEW when he got in trouble. Just to kind of clear the air and see where he’s at in life right now, that was a big deal to him I think. It was really cool and I was really happy that he got that, but it was great. We had a great time there. We left on great terms and everything was cool. We told them we’ll talk to them [production] in the future and do something a little bit later down the road.” (Transcript h/t: Fightful.com)