WWE: Kevin Owens Revealed His Mother Has Been Hospitalized, A&E WWE Ratings, More on NXT July 2, 2024 Viewership, More News

Jul 6, 2024

Kevin Owens Reveals His Mother has Been Hospitalized at Friday’s WWE SmackDown Show

Friday’s WWE SmackDown show at the Scotiabank Arena in Toronto, Ontario, Canada featured Kevin Owens revealing that his mother is currently dealing with serious health issues and has been hospitalized.

During the show, Cody Rhodes, Randy Orton, and Owens came out to the ring to talk about their upcoming match against The Bloodline at Money in the Bank 2024 event. During his portion of the promo, Owens publicly revealed that his mother has been hospitalized for the past four days. Owens stated that he had the option of not appearing on the show but he knows his mother would have been upset with him if she learned that she was the reason he missed the show in Canada. Owens stated that he promises to do what his mom has wanted him to do for the last four years, which he revealed to be “beat The Bloodline’s asses worse than ever before.”

This #MITB weekend just means a little more for @FightOwensFight 🥹#SmackDown pic.twitter.com/oulcDhwGJQ
— WWE (@WWE) July 6, 2024

A&E WWE Programming Ratings – June 30, 2024

This past Sunday’s Biography: WWE Legends episode drew 221,000 viewers on A&E. This episode also drew a 0.03 rating in the 18-49 demographic.

This was down compared to last week’s episode’s 229,000 viewers and 0.07 rating.

This episode focused on the Steiner Brothers.

Source: Programming Insider

More on NXT Viewership for July 2, 2024

The July 2nd episode of WWE NXT saw NXT suffer a very large decline in overall viewership and a small decline in key demographic ratings.

NXT drew 542,000 viewers and a 0.15 key demographic rating on USA Network. NXT’s key demographic ranking is currently not known.

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 the July 4 Week holiday and the large decline from their overall key demographic viewership group, which was down 18.1% compared to last week’s show. Meltzer reported that NXT’s overall viewership was its lowest since the July 4, 2023 show while their key demographic viewership was its lowest since the April 30th episode.

In terms of notable head-to-head competition, the WNBA game of Chicago Sky vs. Atlanta Dream drew 1,450,000 viewers on ESPN.

In terms of key demographic viewership, NXT had 194,000 viewers.

In terms of yearly comparisons, NXT was up 6.7% in overall viewership and up 16.9% in key demographic viewership. Meltzer reported that the reason for the increases was due to last year’s show took place on the July 4th holiday.

WWE News & Notes

WWE reportedly has sold and distributed around 17,432 tickets for Saturday’s Money In The Bank 2024 event at the Scotiabank Arena in Toronto, Ontario, Canada as of this morning, according to WrestleTix.

WWE and Cody Rhodes recently helped a fan who was initially denied wheelchair accessible tickets for Saturday’s Money in the Bank 2024 event. CBC News reported that this fan, Mike Ashkewe, had won tickets to the event through a contest run by Toys ‘R’ Us Canada only to be informed by those in charge of the contest that they were unable to exchange his tickets for wheelchair accessible ones due to those tickets had been sold out. It was reported that Ashkewe was offered the cash value of the tickets instead as a result. WWE officials reportedly found out about the situation this past Wednesday and secured accessible space for him this past Thursday morning. WWE also apologized to Ashkewe over the incident and arranged for Cody Rhodes to call him. It was reported that in his phone call, Rhodes told Ashkewe that “I’m so sorry. The cool thing here is that we do have some tickets that are for you. Not only that, we’re going to pay for your transportation to come to Money in the Bank. We can’t have a fan like you sitting on the sidelines.”

WWE Hall of Famer Trish Stratus and former WWE referee Jimmy Korderas reportedly were in attendance backstage at Friday’s WWE SmackDown show in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, according to PWInsider.

Friday’s WWE Speed show on Twitter featured Andrade defeating Xavier Woods to retain the WWE Speed Championship.

WWE filed trademarks for “King Corbin,” “The Match Beyond,” and “New Blood Rising” on July 3rd for wrestling and entertainment-related purposes to the United States Patent and Trademark Office. WWE also filed a trademark for “Yeet” on the same day for merchandise-related purposes.

In a recent interview with The Ringer’s The Masked Man Show podcast, Bron Breakker gave his thoughts about his time working with Baron Corbin as a tag team in NXT. Breakker stated “Baron and I had hit it off from the get-go. As soon as he came down to NXT, we hit it off immediately. It was really cool for me to be able to get to work with him because obviously, it brought out a different side of me where I was being a little bit more entertaining, just being funny, just goofing off. We both were just loving it and having a great time.” (Transcript h/t: Fightful.com)

As noted before, Tiffany Stratton was involved in an online controversy this past May that revolved around a video tweet that Stratton had posted and then quickly deleted that was targeted at Jade Cargill. This video featured a clip from a match between Strattong and Jade Cargill which involved Stratton slapping Cargill and a dubbed voiceover calling Cargill a “black bitch” and a laughing emoji. In a recent interview with Adrian Hernandez, Stratton gave her thoughts about her controversial deleted video post. Stratton stated “It was an honest mistake. I didn’t hear the audio. I had it up for maybe 20 seconds and I deleted it instantly as soon as I heard the audio. It was an honest mistake.” (Transcript h/t: Fightful.com)

In a recent interview with SHAK Wrestling, Carmelo Hayes gave his thoughts about NXT talent Lexis King using his barber and criticisms directed towards him and his barber over issues with the quality of King’s hair and beard style since joining WWE’s NXT brand. Hayes stated “Yeah, well, he’s not my barber. It’s funny, I’ve been getting heat for that. He hit me up when he was coming in. He’s like, ‘Hey, I need a barber.’ I said, ‘Hey, here’s a guy.’ You need to put respect on this barber’s name because he owns a lot of shops in Orlando. He’s a very renowned barber, so he gets a lot of flak for that. I mean, that was a choice. That beard is a choice. But I did hook him up. But Trick, myself, we’ve all gone to this guy. He’s never done any of us dirty like he did Lexis [laughs]. I mean, I respected it. I respected the commitment. I think it was kind of outrageous, but like I said, he committed to the look, and you can’t knock him for that. It’s working for him, and people hate it, and that’s kind of what you want, right?” (Transcript h/t: Fightful.com)

In a recent interview with The Pivot Podcast, Cody Rhodes gave his thoughts about if he was ever “cool” with the idea of stepping aside from his main event spot at WrestleMania 40 for The Rock. Rhodes stated “I grew up a huge fan of The Rock. I have a lot of respect for The Rock. Maybe more than anybody in any locker room. When I made eye contact with The Rock for the very first piece of business we ever did, I got an instant understanding of who he is. He’s not a movie star. He’s not a potential Presidential nominee, which would be great at this point. He’s not a businessman with all these partnerships. When I looked at him in the eyes, I saw exactly what he is. He’s a pro wrestler. He’s a pro wrestler who understands the nature, ‘I like this crowd. I’m going to get them really excited. Then really upset. Then as excited as they’ve ever been. Then I’m going to get them to tell their friends to come back.’ At that moment, I had the utmost respect for him because in my heart, that’s how I feel. I could do a bazillion other things, but I’m a wrestler. To see that from the biggest movie star on the planet, it’s a lot of respect.” (Transcript h/t: Fightful.com)