• Wrestling News & Wrestling Rumors – WWE & TNA

- As previously reported UK ratings for WWE and TNA are a lot closer, with TNA getting a win every so often. They are however on at completely different time slots, with the live Raw being aired in the very early hours of the morning, meaning not everyone is awake to watch it. Here are some of the UK ratings from early September.

RAW September 8th: 69,000 viewers.
SMACKDOWN September 12th: 65,000 viewers.
IMPACT September 13th: 68,000 viewers.

RAW September 8th: 69,000 viewers.
SMACKDOWN September 12th: 65,000 viewers.
IMPACT September 13th: 68,000 viewers.

On the first week of October both Raw and Impact drew with 53,000 viewers.

In the future I’ll try to keep tabs on the UK ratings, although they tend to fluctuate a lot. (It must be noted UK and US ratings are calculated differently so don’t try to compare them).

- Speaking of the UK, although the upcoming UK tour in January will see the company perform in their biggest arenas yet. (They actually hold their highest attendance record for last Summer’s UK tour), there are no plans for the rumored UK PPV or Impact to take place this new year. However there is another tour set for September 2009 where I can confirm that there is at least an early plan in place to do a taping of Impact from Wembley Arena.

TNA was literally blown away by their reception and attendance in June last year and immediately booked the next tour that will see them reach crowds (if they do well) of over 10,000 at any given arena. If transitioned on TV, TNA would look as hot as WWE in the early 2000’s. Those fans were/are rabid.

However due to costs, these tours are barely profitable directly from ticket sales and due to obvious reasons (money, ego, being in their twilight years), guys like Sting, Kevin Nash and Mick Foley are not booked on the shows.

- Kurt Angle himself has been continuing to do the UK media rounds, talking to Fighting Spirit Magazine most recently. He said in regards to the UK “I’ll tell you this, and I’m being straight up completely honest; if it weren’t for England TNA would not exist today, in that they gave us a chance to go out internationally and now other countries are starting to take notice.”

In regards to his split for Karen he commented “I’m not sure what happened, I think it has a lot to do with the business. There is a curse in the business. I love Karen to death and don’t have anything bad to say about her.”

- However you look at it the UK is proving to be a good market for TNA. I just hope they quit insulting us by paying the Sun Newspaper to run kayfabe interviews. Then again it is the Sun Newspaper.