Daily Update: Kevin Dunn, Andrade El Idolo, AEW Worlds End fallout

Latest News

• AEW Battle of the Belts IX date & time revealed on TNT schedule
• Conor McGregor announces fight vs. Michael Chandler for June
• AEW Worlds End review: A company at a crossroads
• TNA Tag Team title match set for Hard to Kill
• Samoa Joe winning AEW title was ‘always the plan’ for Worlds End

Latest Audio

• Wrestling Observer Radio: AEW World's End, MJF, Jericho, Mercedes, Andrade, more

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This Week's Wrestling Observer Newsletter

• January 1, 2024 Observer Newsletter: AEW Worlds End preview, NJPW front office changes

• Match and performer of the week
• Notes on the recent AEW departures
• AEW financial notes for 2023
• Some rights fees thoughts
• Tony Khan talks the TV landscape
• A look at Worlds End
• The most detailed look at the New Japan decision to make Hiroshi Tanahashi president and comments from many in the industry about it
• Full details on the WWE's biggest grossing U.S. house show in history on Tuesday in Madison Square Garden plus past history from the event
• The Iron Claw, history of the Von Erichs, in a long detailed article regarding the rise and fall and the making of the movie
• Preview of the Tokyo Dome show, advance ticket sales and Stardom PPV
• How many tickets are comped at the usual AEW and WWE shows
• 2023 Awards ballot
• Dragon Gate's Final Gate show
• The most detailed look at the ratings from the past week, placings for the night and week, competition, segment-by-segment, gains and losses from one year ago and more
• Andrade heads to Mexico and a big business week
• Another two Vikingo vs. Taurus matches
• New Japan bodybuilding contest notes
• Major shows for New Japan in the first three months of he year
• One of the best trios matches in a long time
• DDT tournament finals set
• Notes on a book on wrestling history
• New Scottish wrestling Hall of Famer
• Chris Jericho and Stephen New
• Tony Khan's recent press call
• Dynamite headed for tougher competition
• Advance ticket sales for WWE & AEW shows
• Streaming numbers for AEW & WWE
• Amanda Huber talks anniversary of Jon Huber's death
• Dana White on UFC 300
• More on the MLW lawsuit settlement
• Changing an angle
• Return of a WWE tag team
• Injury return updates
• Longest running pro wrestling TV show in history
• Bill Goldberg speaks on Vince McMahon
• Rundown of the recent WWE house shows

This Week's Retro Observer Newsletter

• October 2, 2006 Observer Newsletter: Kurt Angle, Bound for Glory

Sunday Update

Happy New Year to everyone from here at the Observer family. Bryan and I did our weekend show last night talking a ridiculous amount of news including the fallout of last night's PPV show. We also did our news of the past week show with Garrett Gonzales on Thursday including a lot of talk on the Iron Claw movie, and a ton of AEW news in particular.

There are no shows tonight of note in the U.S. given it's New Year's Eve. The big house show tour ended last night in Los Angeles at the Forum.

Regarding the departure of Kevin Dunn from WWE, officially he, like several in AEW, will no longer be with the company as of midnight tonight. When Vince McMahon lost power, it was expected that he would retire or be retired as the new people in charge would put their own team together. As far as a replacement as Executive Producer of all the shows goes, I was told not to presume anything and multiple people in the company even threw the name Mike Mansury about as someone Paul Levesque would want, but I presume Mansury is under a long-term deal with AEW. Marty Miller's name was mentioned. He's the Director but what's something completely different and in particular, the aspect of Dunn's job dealing with budgets. At one point the attempt was to make Chris Kaiser the Executive Producer who would handle the budgets and Dunn as the guy handling the shows and making the final decisions. It could end up with Miller running the truck and Kaiser handling the budgets but that's all speculation at this point. I was told that this was known internally by a few, but not most as people I heard from last night were surprised, and they knew maybe a few weeks at most although the process goes back a couple of months and really has to do with Vince McMahon being out of power. Dunn has been in charge of production for decades and has 40 years with the company. He answered to nobody but Vince. So this is part of the change with Endeavor in control.

Tony Khan brought up Andrade finishing up last night. I talked about this on the show and his booking in the Continental Classic and thoughts on it regarding Anrade and Daniel Garcia, if he was leaving. It also explains Andrade's rush to go to Arena Mexico and saying that he needed to do it now because he may not get another chance if he was with WWE. The expectation is he's the guy Paul Levesque referred to as the surprise for tomorrow. I do know those in WWE have talked about his returning shortly as something expected. To his credit, he worked really hard, finished up his business last night, lost via submission to Miro and worked very hard. The night before at Arena Mexico, he drew a sellout with Volador Jr. and drew way above usual everywhere he went this past week. The Volador match ended up being cut in time to 14:05 because the show was going long and he had a red-eye from Mexico City to New York right after the show so they basically cut the first 8-10 minutes out. They had a great match there as well.

The big match we've heard as the best of the weekend was today's Katsuhiko Nakajima Triple Crown title defense, beating Kento Miyahara. Nakajima won via submission with an armbar. Nakajima will defend on 1/3 at Korakuen Hall against Charlie Dempsey, who won't be on Tuesday's NXT show because of this match.

Tony Khan praised Andrade, Rafael Morffi (last show in), Dana Massie and QT Marshall who all will be gone as of midnight tonight. He said that Andrade and Marshall would always be welcome back, and praised the other two for their work behind the scenes. He noted Morffi went out on a sellout and has on his resume being the promoter of the show with the largest paid attendance in history. He said that Massie was instrumental before AEW and that if she and Matt Jackson didn't talk with him in 2018 that there would be no company today.

He also said that the PPV number based on streaming looks similar to Full Gear (which would be about 135,000 buys), which I would consider a huge success given the sports competition last night and coming just six weeks after Full Gear and with a lot of top people off the show and really only a few of what I'd call money matches. Keep in mind this is just estimates from streaming and really with the holiday, until the middle of next week I don't know that we can definitively give a number yet. But it certainly comes across right now as a big positive for the build and value of the main event and main event angles, not what they did at the show but what they did to build the show. Khan said that the tournament success was a feather in the cap for those who have argued for a more sports-based presentation. But in fairness you can't do a tournament like that more than six or seven weeks out of 52.

We 're looking for your thoughts on last night's Worlds End show as well as Friday's Stardom show from Sumo Hall and today's All Japan show with Miyahara vs. Nakajima, you can leave a thumbs up, down or middle along with a best and worst match to dave@wrestlingobserver.com

Dwayne Johnson officially announced on FOX the merger of the USFL and XFL into the UFL, or United Football League. They will open on 3/30 with the USFL champion Birmingham Stallions vs. XFL champion Arlington Renegades. They will have TV deals this season with FOX, FS 1, ESPN and ABC.

Conor McGregor has said he will be facing Michael Chandler in a 185 pound class fight, which is 30 pounds up from what Chandler and McGregor have usually fought at, on June 29 as the main event for International Fight Week at the T Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. Evidently Chandler didn't know this but said he was okay with the weight.

As far as Google trends for the week, earlier today the Fulham vs. Arsenal EPL game was No. 4 for today. Fulham is the team that Tony Khan and his father own. The only combat sports related thing that made the top 20 this week was Worlds End was No. 14 yesterday with 50,000 searches. This is the first AEW show to crack the top 20 in a while.

Bull Nakano will be making an appearance for West Coast Pro on 3/23 in San Francisco.

WWE from last night at the Forum in Los Angeles which drew one of the biggest house show crowds of the year with a loaded lineup:

• LA Knight b Jimmy Uso in a cage match with the BFT
• Bianca Belair b Bayley with the KOD even though Iyo Sky interfered
• Kevin Owens b Solo Sikoa in a last man standing match by putting him through a table
• Jey Uso b Finn Balor with a spear
• Street Profits b Joaquin Wilde & Cruz Del Toro
• Seth Rollins b Drew McIntyre to keep the world title
• Becky Lynch b Zoey Stark with the man handle slam
• Kofi Kingston b Ludvig Kaiser
• Cody Rhodes b Shinsuke Nakamura in a street fight with Cross Rhodes