Yesterday (March 10), Post Wrestling’s John Pollock and Brandon Thurston corroborated an item reported by Dave Meltzer in a recent Wrestling Observer Newsletter. The WON item reported that “someone on the WWE side” got ESPN to drop letter grades from its online reviews of WWE premium live events after the website gave Wrestlepalooza — the first event of a five-year, $1.6 billion deal that made ESPN’s subscription service the exclusive U.S. home of WWE PLEs — a C grade. Pollock and Thurston spoke to “multiple sources familiar with the matter” who told them the same thing.
Post reached out to ESPN, WWE, and the writer of ESPN.com’s WWE PLE reviews, combat sports reporter Andreas Hale. None offered official comment. A Post source “with knowledge of ESPN’s approach” said the decision was ESPN’s alone, but when asked “to explain the reasoning for the removal of grades and whether WWE took issue with the reviews”, that source stopped responding to Pollock and Thurston.
They note that while Hale has continued to review WWE PLEs since Wrestlepalooza, none have had a letter grade since Crown Jewel. Hale also reviews UFC events for ESPN, which have always had letter grades. That was the case when UFC PPVs were exclusive to ESPN, and its remained true since UFC moved to Paramount+.
It’s not the first sign of trouble in the WWE/ESPN relationship. ESPN was shooting down reports they’d made a financial blunder a month into the deal. There’s a class action lawsuit that claims WWE mislead its customers pending in Federal Court. Mark Shapiro, the president of UFC parent company TKO, made sure to bring up the issues ESPN parent Disney’s had getting its cable subscribers on its new platform during a recent talk — something he probably wouldn’t do if PLE numbers were particularly impressive. Twitter talk from insiders saying the two sides are a “DNA mismatch” isn’t verifiable, but you need only see one awkward SportsCenter plug for Royal Rumble to figure there’s probably some smoke to this fire.
Post’s report also includes this, which if it isn’t a wild coincidence seems very petty. And if you’ve followed the history of WWE, you know that isn’t entirely off-brand:
Hale authored a piece with original comments from Seth Rollins, which ran on September 18, two days before Wrestlepalooza: the event Hale gave a mixed review. Since then, ESPN’s digital reporters, who previously had frequent access to WWE talent, haven’t had a new story with original comments from WWE talent. An ESPN spokesperson did not respond to a question about whether ESPN reporters on the editorial side have recently had difficulty getting access to WWE talent. The source with knowledge of ESPN’s approach contended there have been no issues with access, pointing to WWE talent appearing on ESPN’s televised broadcasts. However, the source did not provide — and we could not find any — example of recent access grant to ESPN’s digital editorial staff for original reporting or interviews since September.
Maybe WWE’s seen some of those resentful plugs for their products from the “it’s not a real sport” crowd on ESPN broadcasts and decided the less they’re talked about by their partner, the better.
How do you think the WWE/ESPN partnership is going? Will they work things out over the next four years, or will the relationship get frostier? Let us know what you think below, Cagesiders.
