WWE CFO Speaks Out, Chris Hero Tweets + WWE Deal

– ROH star Chris Hero tweeted the following today: "I don't think I will ever be 'done' with wrestling. Thank you for your continued support!" We reported yesterday here on the website that WWE had rescinded their contract offer to Ring of Honor star Chris Hero, allegedly due to results from his drug test showing elevated testosterone levels. More shortly.

– WWE CFO George Barrios recently spoke to Seeking Alpha about the company's social media presence and how important the company views it, basically equating it to the level of house show income, PPV buys and TV ratings in terms of looking at the overall health of WWE.

"Some of those metrics that we look at pretty intently is our live event attendance both in North America and overseas, our television ratings for the four to six hours that we will have on the air domestically at given time, which we also report," he said. "We also look at our rating globally...We always look at how we are trending in social media, primarily Facebook and Twitter. Google Trends and Google Analytics also gives us a sense of how the brand is trending from a search perspective. We look at our own unique and page views on our own site as well as the streams that we do – we do about 75 million video streams on YouTube every month. So, we track that."

Barrios also spoke about the UFC, dancing around the subject of whether it's viewed as competition. "I think we get a lot of questions about MMA, as I often say, it's because I think people see that the both are performers are wearing some form of spandex, so they think there must be some natural competition there. We don't view it that way," he said. "We tend to — we take the broader view, which is we are a pop culture entertainment brand, and anything that takes attention away from us is something that gets our attention. We don't really view UFC or MMA more broadly as a specific competitor, but you know they are part of entertainment landscape and they take eyeballs away from — or they soak up eyeballs, so we obviously have to be aware of them. But we don't view them as specific competitor. Barrios concluded, "I don't want to diminish them as a competitor but I also don't — we don't anyway elevate them as a specific competitor."