Matt Sydal Talks Declining WWE Ratings, Woman Wins CHIKARA Title, Adam Cole, Garrett, Al Snow
- In the video above, Adam Cole talks about his match with Kyle O'Reilly at ROH Final Battle and says he'll make O'Reilly leave ROH.
- This past weekend at Chikara's Top Banana event, Kimber Lee made history by becoming the first woman to win the CHIKARA Grand Championship.
- Also this past weekend, Santana Garrett successfully retained the Wonder of Stardom and NWA World Women's Championship by defeating Shaniah Arlyana, Grace Storm, and MJ Knight in a 4-way elimination match at I Believe in Wrestling's BELIEVE 112 event at the Team Vision Dojo in Orlando, FL. Today marks 303 days for Garrett as the reigning NWA World Women's Champion, which beats Nikki Bella's 301 day reign as WWE Divas Champion. This Friday, Santana will be defending the SHINE Championship in Ybor City, FL, and her next NWA title defense is next Sunday in Chile versus Andrea.
- Al Snow is opening a full time wrestling academy in the U.K. headed by trainers from WWE, TNA and around Europe. You can get more details at AlSnowWrestling.com.
- Chris Featherstone interviewed former WWE Tag Team Champion Matt Sydal, f.k.a. Evan Bourne, on the Pancakes and Powerslams Show. During the interview, Sydal discussed the current state of professional wrestling, why he has no qualms about WWE letting him go from his contract last year and more. He also talked about WWE's declining ratings.
"I understand that ratings are important," Sydal said. "You have to realize WWE's contract. They're not getting paid from advertising money. USA makes that money. WWE gets paid by USA, they get paid a lot of money, and the money increases every year. Ratings aren't the most important thing to them. And, let's just be honest: ratings aren't as precise as internet clicks and time spent on the website. If you look at that, WWE is crushing everyone. So I think ratings might not be the best metric with which to rate wrestling in this day and age. But it does mean they've got big distribution.
"Let's face it: when we were crazy into wrestling, there were 20 million people on Monday nights watching wrestling. So what you have are 17 million lagged wrestling fans. People who connect to it somewhere, but haven't really found an inspiration or a cultural connection to it. That's been missing because wrestling's been dominated by one person. It's like if every song on the radio had to go through the same producer. You would say that this is always the same thing because it's always produced by the same place. What there should be is more middle ground. There's room for five or six of these federations because people love wrestling. People like you and I connect to it from a nostalgia view, from respecting the athleticism, and enjoying the characters and the story, and the live action production that is pro wrestling. It's a special form of entertainment, and I think people miss [the ability to] go to a show and have fun.
"It's more about the feeling and how you felt when it was going on. Were you laughing with your friends? Were you having a good time? That's what makes wrestling good. It's not the wrestling itself. It's the experience that people have. And I think we need to work on what kind of experience we're giving fans at these events, and what kind of experience they want. Are we looking for new fans?"
JC Twenty and Shashank contributed to this article.