WWE: WWE’s Original Plans for Rhea Ripley & Crown Jewel 2024 Card, More on NXT Oct. 29, 2024 Viewership, More News

WWE’s Original Plans for Rhea Ripley & Crown Jewel 2024 Card

As noted before, Rhea Ripley is currently out of action for WWE due to her recently suffered a fractured orbital bone injury.

Dave Meltzer reported in this week’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter that his sources stated that WWE’s original plans for Ripley for their Crown Jewel 2024 event was for Ripley to compete in a match against Raquel Rodriguez on the show. This plan reportedly was dropped following Ripley suffering an orbital bone injury.

In regards to potential changes made to the card for Crown Jewel 2024, Meltzer reported that the Four-way tag team match of Damage CTRL vs. Meta-Four vs. Piper Niven & Chelsea Green vs. Jade Cargill & Bianca Belair for the WWE Women’s Tag Team Championship is currently believed to have been the replacement match for Ripley vs. Rodriguez. Meltzer reported that this match had not been originally scheduled for the event prior to Ripley’s injury.

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More on NXT Oct. 29, 2024 Viewership

The October 29th episode of WWE NXT saw NXT suffer a very large decline in overall viewership and a slight decline in key demographic ratings.

NXT drew 588,000 viewers and a 0.14 key demographic rating on The CW.

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

Dave Meltzer reported that the main reasons for NXT’s declines this week was due to a combination of stiff sports competition from the 2024 MLB World Series and the large decline from their younger key demographic viewership group, which was down 12.5% compared to last week’s show. Meltzer reported that NXT’s overall viewership was the lowest since the July 4th show and their key demographic viewership was the lowest since the July 4, 2023 show. Meltzer also reported that NXT’s viewership was also the lowest for a show since its move to The CW.

In terms of head-to-head competition, the 2024 MLB World Series Game 4 of Los Angeles Dodgers vs. New York Yankees drew 16,275,000 viewers on FOX and 419,000 viewers on FOX Deportes, the NBA game of Dallas Mavericks vs. Minnesota Timberwolves drew 1,068,000 viewers on TNT, the NHL game of New York Rangers vs. Washington Capitals drew 412,000 viewers on ESPN, Chopped drew 317,000 viewers on Food Network, Real Housewives of NYC drew 317,000 viewers on BRAVO, and 1000-LB Sisters drew 721,000 viewers on TLC.

In terms of key demographic viewership, NXT had 188,000 viewers. Meltzer reported that NXT’s male/female viewership skew was 66.7% in favor of males.

In terms of yearly comparisons, NXT was down 12.8% in overall viewership and down 26.6% in key demographic viewership. Meltzer reported that NXT’s 18-34 key demographic viewership was down 53.3% compared to the same week last year.

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WWE News & Notes

As noted before, Tegan Nox was among those released on Friday from WWE. Nox recently reflected on Twitter about her departure from WWE. Nox stated “Some things are just out of your control and you can only do as much as you can. Let’s clear one thing up though. I’m ready. Ive been ready. Just have to show people what they’ve missed.“

WWE announced one new segment for the card of next week’s WWE SmackDown shown on November 8th in Buffalo, New York. This is a Grayon Waller Effect segment with the Motor City Machine Guns (Alex Shelley & Chris Sabin).

Friday’s WWE Speed show on Twitter featured Akira Tozawa defeating Riley Osborne to advance to the next round of WWE’s newest #1 Contender’s tournament for the WWE Speed Championship. Tozawa will be facing off against Dragon Lee in the Semifinal Round of WWE’s current tournament.

The New York Times reported that an elderly man named Alfred Mancinelli who passed away this past Summer was recently discovered to have been scammed out of almost $1 million by an Alexa Bliss impersonator over teh course of several years. In the article, Mancinelli’s son Chris stated that his father had believed that he was in a relationship with the real Bliss. Chris Mancinelli also stated that he had tried to intervene to save his late father’s money from scammers only to be threatened with a lawsuit by his father over it. Chris Mancinelli also stated that his father was also the victim of other scamming incidents that resulted in almost all of his retirement savings being wiped out.

In a recent Q&A article, PWInsider’s Mike Johnson reported that Shinsuke Nakamura was in attendance backstage during the October 25th double set of WWE SmackDown tapings in Brooklyn, New York.

WWE recently released one new video to their WWE Vault channel on YouTube. This new video was a Six-Man Tag Team match of The Shield (Seth Rollins, Dean Ambrose, & Roman Reigns) vs. Braun Strowman, Dolph Ziggler, & Drew McIntyre from WWE Super Shown-Down 2018.

As noted before, WWE’s RAW series will be officially premiering on Netflix on January 6, 2025 as part of WWE’s new media rights deal with the streaming service. Dave Meltzer reported in this week’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter that Nielsen will still be tracking the ratings for WWE RAW shows on Netflix but the domestic numbers for shows will be delayed by several weeks based on Nislsen’s current system for tracking streaming shows. For some comparisons, Meltzer reported that the second week of the Mr. McMahon docuseries drew 3,900,000 total views on Netflix while Nielsen’s rating for that week was 1,386,000 viewers for its U.S. rating.

During Saturday’s Crown Jewel Kickoff event in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, WWE CCO Paul “Triple H” Levesque gave his thoughts about the passion from fans at WWE’s Saudi events over the years. Levesque stated “WWE Experience is amazing. This is one of those things, I feel like for any true fan of WWE, you gotta come here at least once and experience this. It’s amazing. To go in and have ‘Taker make fun of you while you’re stuck in his maze over there is incredible. This whole place is off the chart. It all speaks to the vision of his excellency, of bringing us here. This is our twelfth time here, it’s an incredible experience every time, and it gets more and more incredible every year because of all of you. When we first started coming here, it was good, but every year, you get louder and louder, and your passion for WWE shines through, so thank you very much.” Levesque also asked the crowd if they wanted a NXT show in Saudi Arabia in the future. Levesque stated “Who wants to see NXT here in Saudi Arabia? [Crowd cheers] I’ll talk to Shawn [Michaels] and see what we can do.” (Transcript h/t: Fightful.com)

In a recent interview with WWE, Cody Rhodes gave his thoughts about the potential of having a post-in-ring wrestling career in WWE. Rhodes stated “There are some things that come with it that were surprising to me. It might sound cool, it might sound cheesy. There is an element of leadership involved that they don’t say, they just kind of plug you in. You’re attending corporate meetings and events that you would typically be out of your depth at, and you’re supposed to be there and be on. That’s something that has really excited me. In the past, I felt like when I had a leadership role in wrestling, I didn’t do well with it. I feel like I failed with it, but I knew why perhaps I failed with it. This has been an opportunity to plug back in. Maybe there is a future beyond the actual wrestling with WWE in a different setting. That’s something I’ve been thinking about lately.” (Transcript h/t: Fightful.com)

In a recent episode of the Off The Top podcast, WWE Hall of Famer Rikishi gave his thoughts about his sons Jimmy and Jey Uso reuniting together as a team on the October 25th WWE SmackDown show. Rikishi stated “What father wouldn’t be happy? I’ve always had confidence in the boys, [that] they’ll figure it out, they’re young men, they’ve been through the grind, they’ve been through the business. They’ve been through hard times, they’ve been through good times together. Sometimes you need to separate from each other to be able to grow. At the end of the day, okay, I got my fix on growing as a single wrestler, and Jey has gotten that. Jimmy hasn’t gotten that in my book yet, and I look forward to the day when they’re both about ready to hang it up and retire, I look forward to seeing Jimmy have a single run, just so he can experience what that is, to be able to get out there as a pro wrestler by himself, and to be able to carve his own footstep as a single performer. There’s nothing else they can do as a tag team. There’s nothing else they can do as a faction. They’ve been the top faction for how many years now, they’ve been the top tag team for how many years now, and Jey has been on a crazy ride for a year or so. So I think at the end of the day, the boys are good. Solo got his run, Jacob’s doing his thing, and you got Tama Tonga and Tonga Loa, so it’s good to see a good Polynesian vibe with the Samoans and the Tongans coming together to represent Polynesian, the islands in general.” (Transcript h/t: Fightful.com)