WWE News and Notes 03/10

[cero2k]

Source: Wrestling Observer Newsletter

These are news and notes gathered from the Wrestling Observer Newsletter of the 03/10 week.

-- Plans for New Day's entrance for Wrestlamania 32: There has been a push for New Day doing a major entrance at Mania. What we are told is that they wanted to fly around the stadium on unicorns, but the company has not approved it and we’re told it’s less than 50 percent that it will be approved.

-- WWE has officially broken attendance record for Wrestlemania: The WWE has officially broken the company all-time attendance record at WrestleMania 32.

Tickets are almost sold out, and according to sources with access to the direct numbers, the number of tickets out was 84,000 as of 3/8. Unless they open up standing room tickets, the final real number will be very slightly over that amount.
The number breaks the actual real WWE company record of 79,127 tickets out for the August 29, 1992 SummerSlam show headlined by Bret Hart vs. Davey Boy Smith and Ultimate Warrior vs. Randy Savage at Wembley Stadium in London. WrestleMania III was the largest U.S. crowd in history with 78,000 as the legitimate attendance.

The company is guaranteed to announce a number greater than the mythical 93,173 that WrestleMania III from the Pontiac Silverdome was announced at. On Raw on 3/7, there was a brief clip of Vince McMahon on the phone talking about 93,000 and how they were going to break the record this year. Traditionally WWE exaggerates the WrestleMania attendance by 10,000 to 13,000 and it wouldn’t surprise me for the number to be announced as more than 100,000.

-- WWE preparing for another mass raid of signings?: WWE is expected to make another round of aggressive talent signings from Japan, Mexico and the U.K. over the next few months. The name we heard they are most interested in is Kazuchika Okada, as apparently the key people in charge just found out that he’s tall. New Japan has offered Okada a five-year contract. We don’t know if the deal has been executed and Okada has publicly said he’s loyal to New Japan. They are said to be looking past New Japan, which was their previous target, and now looking at talent in other Japanese groups. There is a top name from AAA and Lucha Underground they are after as well who has never worked for a mainstream U.S. promotion before and is unhappy with the Lucha Underground creative. Because of the weakness of the peso vs. the dollar, everyone who works Mexico is looking for as much American work as possible. There was a time where if you were a top wrestler in Mexico, you could earn more than in WWE unless you were a pushed guy in WWE, but now any kind of a decent WWE deal is going to pay better than a Mexican deal for just about anyone.

-- NXT Lead Writer Ryan Ward has been promoted to write Smackdown.

[Big Red Machine]

Source: Wrestling Observer Newsletter

These are news and notes gathered from the Wrestling Observer Newsletter of the 03/10 week.

-- Plans for New Day's entrance for Wrestlamania 32: There has been a push for New Day doing a major entrance at Mania. What we are told is that they wanted to fly around the stadium on unicorns, but the company has not approved it and we’re told it’s less than 50 percent that it will be approved.

The damn dirtsheets get it wrong again! Unicorns don't fly! Pegasuses fly. And obviously they can't do that as an entrance because could you imagine the lawsuit if one of the pegasuses craps on a fan? What they need to have the New Day do is just RIDE to the ring on unicorns like Lawler did on a horse a few times in Memphis.

Source: Wrestling Observer Newsletter
-- NXT Lead Writer Ryan Ward has been promoted to write Smackdown.

This is... interesting.

Lord knows that Ryan deserves the likely pay increase, but being the head of Smackdown seems empty if they don't let you do anything with it and your storylines are completely beholden to those of Raw and must change by the week because Raw changes by the week. My hope is that this is them giving him a trial run to see if he can handle the workload (and related stress) before moving him over to being the head writer for Raw.

Also... Jimmy Jacobs for head of NXT? (I assume he has already earned Hunter's trust because of their mutual love of the idea of pushing Tyler Black to the moon, so it'd be interesting to see them work together in this capacity.)