NXT weekly TV is on Wednesdays, but the Takeover on WM weekend was typically on the Friday or Saturday.
If memory serves me right, before SD moved to Fridays it was:
Friday- HOF
Saturday - Takeover
Sunday - WM
Monday - Raw
Tuesday - SD
Oh, I see.
Sorry for the oversight.
I’m 100% confident they will be going limited capacity this year. Raptors basketball games in Tampa just started disallowing fans to attend because of the spike in cases. I’m not sure what the Bucs are doing right now but I would bet it will be similar to their attendance.
Here’s the video if you haven’t seen it:
That was actually…Good?!
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I’m sure some will hate it, but I thought that was pretty funny.
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That Roman Reigns scene was fucking brilliant. Dude’s not a heel, he’s a damn mafia don.
The whole video reminds me of how I felt watching the Wrestlemania 21 “goes Hollywood” commercials. Fun! This is silly, campy, funny, fun.
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100% agree, that was my favourite part. I wonder if they will go full Soprano’s and when Jimmy comes back with Roman telling Jey he needs to take Jimmy out. Similar to something Tony would do.
Who would have thought a year ago that in January 2021 the hottest character in wrestling would be Roman Reigns.
If you eschew the “Takeover” branding (and thus, not needing to do it on the network/weekend), you can pretty easily stretch a Wrestlemania week out of two nights of Wrestlemania without a problem while giving them that Wednesday pop they’re often looking for:
Wednesday - NXT Special - World’s Collide
Thursday - Hall of Fame
Friday - Smackdown
Saturday - WM
Sunday - WM
Monday - Raw
And if they really want to stretch it to 7 days, they could send Baron Corbin to Impact or something.
See I don’t think that works. I have to imagine that the majority of fans going to the host city are going to be there for mania. By having takeover on Wednesday you are asking fans to stay in the host city for at least 5 nights if they want to do takeover and mania night 2. I mean, you could, but that’s asking a lot. I’d just move the HOF to Summerslam weekend.
I actually prefer mania over two days. Rather have two four hour shows than one eight hour slog.
I mean, Wrestlemania used to be a single day. You’re up to 4 days anyway. Two more days and starting off with with a banger of an event is not going to be too much more of an ask - especially for people who fly from really far away (the charm of adding the UK element to the Wednesday). And honestly, after the year we’ve had, there’s going to be a hell of a demand to go to these things and Indys will love having even more time for fans to be in town. Maybe fans drop off by Monday but not having to do much moving won’t cost WWE more to stay in town a while and if you see a bit of a drop off by Raw, I think that’s the price you pay (though we’re talking about 100K stadiums for the next two Manias…so you’re just hoping 15-20% of that crowd makes it to the NXT and a different group of that percent gets to Monday. If they’re gonna be doing an NXT they want to rate well anyway, it doesn’t make any sense to pull it away from big weekend.
I think you may have misinterpreted my comments, I never advocated to pull NXT from the weekend, I advocated moving the HOF to Summerslam weekend where that particular event would likely sellout out on the Saturday.
You’re probably not wrong when it comes to the first WM weekend that fans can attend in droves again, but my proposal is geared more towards the long term planning of WM weekend. You even say it in your post, by going 6 nights, you probably damage attendance at Raw, not worth it in my opinion.
With that said, its easy for me to complain, here is what I would do.
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Tape Friday Night Smackdown on the previous Tuesday in the same city you tape Raw or in a nearby city (ie. a Detroit/Grand Rapids kind of deal)
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Air NXT on its normal Wed time slot
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Friday film TX Takeover (therefore maximizing your gate) and air it after SD with a replay on Saturday afternoon (its the network so ratings dont matter)
Then you do WM night one Saturday, WM night two on Sunday, and Raw on Monday.
Just my two cents.
Not a bad idea, all makes sense…only thing is I just don’t see any scenario where they sacrifice a live gate/rating for their A show on Friday for the sake of anything NXT, especially something that is only on the network.
That said, the Dallas Takeover (Balor/Joe), if I remember correctly, started at 10pm EST, so perhaps since they’ll be there next year (and LA the following year where the time zones will make it work) they can figure out a secondary venue to do NXT in (Kay Bailey again, perhaps) and latch onto the audience watching Smackdown to add more buys/viewers to the network right afterwards doing a Takeover then just as you had stated.
Locations all make sense from a business standpoint. No really way of knowing how the crowds will respond, but I think they’ve positioned themselves for financial success as best as possible.
Florida in 2021: Local to their current operation and the state with probably the best chance of being allowed to have fans
Dallas in 2022: Even limited to half capacity, that’s a legit 40,000+ fans
LA in 2023: Really, really hope we’re back to normal attendance policies by then
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I guess you could do takeover on Friday after SD, I wouldn’t be opposed to that either. With the network it’s not like fans need to watch it live anyways.
Doing Takeover on USA on Wednesday makes a lot of sense to me. It’s a good lead-in to promote the biggest weekend of the year (maybe do some kind of angle that leads to a match at Mania?). And as a bonus for them, it presumably does a decent number vs. AEW.
Two big questions:
What will the live crowd situation be like by April, and is it worth their while to do a huge “PPV-esque” show vs. a Takeover on USA?
How much would not having NXT on the WWE Network hurt their jump in subscriptions? While the number will likely be lower than usual due to the elimination of the “free trial” month, I’m sure they’re still counting on some kind of financial boost from the “Rumble-to-Mania” crowd.
For Tampa Bay Buccaneers home games they averaged 14,483 fans at their 8 home games. So the bare minimum for Wrestlemania is probably at least 15,000 fans which is 20% of their maximum capacity. I can certainly see how 15,000 fans sounds a lot better than no fans after doing no-crowd shows for almost a year at that point.
Could the new Administration step in and take over the running of certain states if they deem it necessary if they feel that the infection rate is far too high.
It’s certainly something Florida has been criticized for
It’s all depends on which data points you focus on, but I don’t think Florida would be at the top of that list.
The answer is no. I don’t think federal authority would be able to put State or Local jurisdictions under lockdown or limit gatherings. And if they tried to it would immediately be pushed back on and end up in court. Where the administration would probably lose.
The new Biden Administration could do other things to try to help certain states like provide more federal funding for testing sites and direct vaccine shipments to the state.