WWE: Motor City Machine Guns on Making Their Official WWE In-Ring Debut, More on NXT Oct. 15, 2024 Viewership, More News

Motor City Machine Guns Comments on Making Their WWE In-Ring Debut

Friday’s WWE SmackDown show in Columbia, South Carolina featured The Motor City Machine Guns’ Alex Shelley & Chris Sabin making their official WWE in-ring debut. MCMG defeated Los Garzas and A-Town Down Under in a Triple Threat match for the WWE Tag Team Championship #1 Contender tournament.

Following the show, WWE’s SmackDown LowDown show featured MCMG discussing their thoughts about making their official WWE debut.

Chris Sabin – “It’s pretty surreal. I’d like to say it’s a dream come true, but it’s more than that. This is a goal accomplished for us. It might have taken over 20 years to get here, to get to this position, but being one match away from being number one contenders for the WWE Tag Team Championships? That’s pretty crazy. Just saying it out loud kinda blows my mind a little bit.

Alex Shelley – “We take things one step at a time, but DIY is exactly why we came to WWE. Exactly why we want to declare ourselves the best tag team on the planet, because we beat all the great tag teams that already exist in the WWE Universe. So I apologize to you in advance DIY, but you’re looking at the next WWE Tag Team Champions.”

Transcript h/t: Fightful.com

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More on NXT Oct. 15, 2024 Viewership

The October 15th episode of WWE NXT saw NXT suffer a very large decline in overall viewership and a large decline in key demographic ratings.

NXT drew 639,000 viewers and a 0.18 key demographic rating on The CW.

Dave Meltzer reported in this week’s wrestling Observer Newsletter that the main reasons for NXT’s declines this week was due to a combination of stiff sports competition from the 2024 MLB Playoffs and the lack of top main roster talent appearing on the show compared to the prior two week’s shows. Another reason reportedly was due to the large declines in their Over 50 viewership group, which its percentage was not given, and younger key demographic viewership group, which was down 31.3% compared to last week’s show. Meltzer reported that NXT’s viewership for this week likely is what regular NXT shows will end up settling around the same viewership level as the show had done on USA Network. Meltzer reported that while The CW is in 6% more homes than USA Network, USA is a higher rated station meaning no real added benefits for NXT on The CW. Meltzer also reported that NXT’s key demographic rating was the third highest for a show on The CW so far this year, only behind their first two week’s shows on the network.

In terms of head-to-head competition, the 2024 MLB Playoffs ALCS Game 2 of Cleveland Guardians vs. New York Yankees drew 5,398,000 viewers on TBS and 212,000 viewers on TruTV, the NHL game of Minnesota Wild vs. St. Louis Blues drew 417,000 viewers on ESPN, Deadliest Catch drew 750,000 viewers on Discovery Channel, Love & Hip Hop Atlanta drew 382,000 viewers on MTV, Chopped drew 311,000 viewers on Food Network, Real Housewives of NYC drew 321,000 viewers on BRAVO, and 1000-LB Sisters drew 780,000 viewers on TLC.

In terms of key demographic viewership, NXT had 248,000 viewers. Meltzer reported that NXT’s male/female viewership skew was 69.8% in favor of males.

In terms of peak viewership, NXT’s peak overall viewership was at 727,000 viewers for the first quarter featuring the Tony D’Angelo & Oba Femi in-ring promo segment and the Oro Mensah & Lexis King backstage segment. NXT’s peak key demographic viewership was 274,000 viewers for the same quarter hour. NXT’s eighth quarter drew 607,000 viewers and 233,000 key demographic viewers for the NXT Championship #1 Contender Triple Threat match of “All Ego” Ethan Page vs. Wes Lee vs. Je’Von Evans.

In terms of yearly comparisons, NXT was down 19.9% in overall viewership and down 71.9% in key demographic viewership. Meltzer reported that NXT’s 18-34 key demographic viewership was down 31.3% compared to the same week last year. Meltzer reported that the reason for the large declines was due to last year’s show featured many notable big name main roster talents being on the show.

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WWE News & Notes

WWE announced one new segment for the card of next week’s WWE RAW show on October 21st in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. This new segment was a Seth Rollins and Bronson Reed face-to-face promo segment.

WWE recently released two new videos to their WWE Vault channel on YouTube. The first new video was a singles match of Goldberg vs. Lex Luger from the October 18, 1999 episode of WCW Nitro. The second new video was a singles match of WALTER vs. Zack Sabre Jr. from EVOLVE’ EVOLVE 99 event from 2018.

Deep South Wrestling recently announced that WWE NXT talent Lexis King will be making an appearance for the company at their New Realm Brewing event on October 26th in Atlanta, Georgia. It was also announced that King will be competing in a singles match against Skrilla the Great at the event.

Fightful Select reported that despite the lack of an official announcement yet regarding WWE’s annual post-Chrismas live event at Madison Square Garden for this year, there is still hope within the company of the event taking place this year. Numerous talents spoken to reportedly stated that this show is still listed internally on their talent relations app despite the show not yet being officially announced.

Baron Corbin has been noticeably absent from WWE’s SmackDown brand in recent weeks. Fightful Select reported that their sources stated that the reason for Corbin’s current absence is not due to any injury or health-related reason and instead just WWE officials having no current creative plans for him. It was reported that Corbin has been in attendance backstage at recent SmackDown shows despite not being used.

WWE filed a trademark for “War Raiders” on October 17th for wrestling and entertainment-related purposes to the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

During this past Thursday’s Next Level Sports conference event for the University of Southern California in Inglewood, California, TKO President Mark Shapiro gave his thoughts about TKO’s pitch to Netflix for WWE’s new media rights deal with the streaming service. Shapiro stated “It’s up your alley. Why don’t you dip your toe in? It’s not really live sports. It’s scripted entertainment. It’s fictional. … It’s very serial in nature. It’s every single week. It’s shown on Peacock to not just be a huge driver for acquisition but incredible on the retention side of things, because it’s every single week, and therefore churn is reduced, at least given the WWE fans in universe.” (Transcript h/t: SportsBusinessJournal.com)

In a recent interview with the Piers Morgan Uncensored show, former WWE backstage interviewer Charly Caruso, real name Charly Arnolt, gave her thoughts about her experience working in WWE and being involved in instances where she could have gone to HR but didn’t because “if you do not have a thick skin, you do not belong working in WWE.” Caruso stated “What I’ve always said is, if you do not have a thick skin, you do not belong working in WWE. I do find that to be the case in a lot of areas in television. As a woman, you must have thick skin. Were there many instances where I probably could have gone to HR over something small or even something that probably had a little more ‘oomph’ to it? Yes. Was I the person to do that? No. I’m not saying I was mistreated in any sort of way, but there were definitely things that went on at WWE that if an outsider were to get a glimpse on the inside, they would say, ‘What is going on here? How are people working in these specific conditions?’ It’s one of those things that you kind of went with. You were working with WWE. I’m interviewing men who are wearing nothing but tiny little speedos. It’s kind of the job you sign up for.” (Transcript h/t: Fightful.com)