Mark it on your calendars – February 2nd, 2013 has been declared the first ever National Pro Wrestling Day. The organizers of National Pro Wrestling Day issued the following press release today:

National Pro Wrestling Day (2.2.13) will feature 24 wrestling organizations from across the United States, all working together as part of a day-long festival to celebrate the sport we all love! These 18 organizations have previously been announced to the public:

CHIKARA (PA)
Ring of Honor Wrestling (MD)
EVOLVE (NJ)
International Wrestling Cartel (PA)
Wrestling is Fun! (PA)
Women Superstars Uncensored (NJ)
Beyond Wrestling (RI)
Kaiju Big Battel (MA)
Wrestling is Awesome (VT)
CTWE (CT)
New York Wrestling Connection (NY)
Fighting Spirit Wrestling (NY)
QWEST (FL)
CWF Mid-Atlantic (NC)
Resistance Pro (IL)
School of Roc (IN)
Wrestling is Heart (IN)
Absolute Intense Wrestling (OH)

And today we are proud to reveal the final wave of participating organizations:
Anarchy Championship Wrestling (TX), AAW (IL), Wrestling is Art (MA), Metro Pro Wrestling (KS), St. Louis Anarchy (MO) and Wrestling is Respect (NJ)

Emerging details will be posted here: http://nationalprowrestlingday.com

The following is a spoiler-free preview for tonight’s episode of WWE SmackDown on Syfy:

* World Heavyweight Champion Big Show vs. Daniel Bryan.

* Sheamus vs. Alberto Del Rio.

* Randy Orton vs. Wade Barrett.

* Epico & Primo vs. Hornswoggle & Great Khali.

* Brodus Clay & The Usos vs. 3MB.

Also appearing are The Shield, US Champion Antonio Cesaro, IC Champion Kofi Kingston, R-Truth and more.

*SPOILERS* WWE SmackDown Tapings Results For Tonight

WWE NXT Tapings Results
Full Sail, Orlando Florida
December 6, 2012
Report by Andres Santiago & PWInsider.com

Dark Matches
– Oliver Gray vs Conor O’Brian
O’Brian won with a hogan-style leg drop.

– Alex Riley vs Wade Barrett
Barrett won with the Bull Hammer.

Episode 1
– Garrett Dylan vs Denton Blackwell
No Contest. The Shield attacked both men a minute or so into the match. This led to Dusty Rhodes coming out on stage and having a back and forth with them on the mic. Rhodes said he would strip Rollins of the title if he didn’t defend against Corey Graves tonight. Rollins agreed to the match and then Shield ended the segment by triple powerbombing Dylan.

– Bo Dallas vs Epico w/ Primo
Dallas won with a Spear.
After the match Michael McGillicutty saved Dallas from a two on one attack.

– Sasha Banks vs Tamina Snuka
Snuka won with the Superfly Splash.

– Kassius Ohno and Leo Kruger vs Tyson Kidd and Justin Gabriel
Ohno and Kruger won when Kruger hit the Kruger End on Gabriel.

NXT Championship Match – NXT Champion Seth Rollins vs Corey Graves
Graves won by disqualification. Shield attacked as Graves had Rollins in his submission. The babyface locker room all ran out and a brawl ensued. Shield took them all out and then triple powerbombed Dallas. Big E Langston’s music hit and slowly he walked out, leading Shield to retreat. Rhodes then made a title match for next episode of Rollins vs Langston.

Episode 2

The episode started with Shield confronting Rhodes in his office. Langston walked in to protect Rhodes, who then made the title match no DQ.

– Yoshi Tatsu and Percy Watson vs “The Family” Luke Harper and Rowan w/ Bray Wyatt

The Family won when Harper hit a discus clothesline on Tatsu.

Before the match Bray Wyatt cut a promo.

– Emma vs Paige

Paige won with the Paige Turner.

– Primo and Epico vs Bo Dallas and Michael McGillicutty

Primo and Epico won when Primo hit McGillicutty the Backstabber.

NXT Championship Match – NXT Champion Seth Rollins vs Big E Langston

Langston won with the Big End.

Shortly into the match, Shield came from the crowd and attacked Langston. They remained at ringside afterwards, but didn’t do anything until they attacked to keep Langston from hitting the Big End. The babyface roster stormed the ring again and fought Ambrose and Reigns to the back. This led to Rollins hitting a standing Shiranui that Langston kicked out of at two. When Rollins went to hit it a second time, Langston caught him during the flip and hit the Big End for the victory.

After the match the babyfaces all came back out to celebrate with Langston in the ring. When they cleared out, Rhodes and Triple H came out to raise his hand at the top of the stage.

Episode 3

Kevin Nash came out to say he was in charge tonight and he ran through the episode’s card. He was interrupted by Heath Slater, who got Jackknife Powerbombed to end the segment.

– Sakamoto vs Adrian Neville

Neville won with a twisting shooting star press.

– Leo Kruger vs Trent Barreta

Barreta won by disqualification. Ohno was doing commentary and came down to hit Barreta with a discus elbow on the outside. Kruger followed that up with the Kruger End and got the pinfall. Regal pulled Baretta out of the ring to avoid a two on one attack and the ref announced that the result was being reverse and that Barreta won by DQ.

– Big E Langston vs Camacho

Langston won with the Big End.

Before the match Langston was going to give a promo about winning the championship, but Camacho interrupted him. After the match, Langston did his usual post-match schtick.

– Tyson Kidd and Justin Gabriel vs Damian Sandow and Antonio Cesaro

Kidd and Gabriel won when Sandow was hit with a Lionsault by Gabriel and then a Springboard Elbow by Kidd.

Before the match Sandow cut a promo to try and turn the crowd against him. He ended with what he claimed was “a soon to be famous quote” by himself, “He who seeks the admiration of idiots, is himself an idiot.”

Notes

– “HBK” Shawn Michaels was announced for the next taping, on January 10, 2013.

– Adrian Neville is the former PAC.

– At one point Nash called Langston the “WXT Champion”, which led to a loud NXT chant. Slater made fun of this during his promo by emphasizing the letters NXT when talking about the impact he has made there.

WWE Chief Financial Officer George Barrios made a presentation at the recent UBS 40th Annual Global Media and Communications Conference and spoke at length about why WWE is continuing with 3-hour RAWs each week, WWE’s movie division, WWE’s relationship with NBC Universal and more. Here are some highlights from the presentation, transcribed by SeekingAlpha.com:

The Success Of Adding A Third Hour To RAW: Also really important is that that content id delivering for our network partners. So the third hour of Raw is up 35% versus what it replaced for USA. So they are very happy with that. ION’s main event is up about 15% from the show it replaced. So they are also very happy with that. Our morning show on Saturday mornings with the CW on their Vortex platform is up 50% over the show it replaced. So that’s really, we consider ourselves to be really good partners and like to put ourselves in the shoes of our partners. We know what is important to them and we get really focused operationally in delivering for them and I think in all three cases we have very happy partners for those shows and economically it puts us back to where to were in 2009, 2010 in terms of number of domestic hours that we monetize.

WWE Network: We just believe there is too much there potentially not to keep pushing at it. The drag on earnings is painful. It’s painful to investors. It’s painful to us but we just believe payoff could be too large so we are going to continue to push on that

Wherever the video is being monetized, we see that the real opportunity. We see growth there. Very high operating margins because we create our content once and then monetize it in a variety of those different platforms and also we have the ability to mine a significant library

There will be powerful, compelling exclusive original content that will be the core because otherwise people aren’t going to either watch it in the numbers you want or pay for it if you go that model,” he said. “But we can wrap around some very fresh, compelling content that’s created from our 100,000 hour library. So for example, one of the shows that’s in production right now and it’s tested really, really well in our focus group is the Monday Night Wars. It will be an episodic series, number of episodes be determined but somewhere between 10 to 15 episodes that looks at the year 2000 and 2001 battle between Ted Turner and Vince McMahon when they were on competing networks fighting for audience.

WWE Studios: The film business has morphed in strategy and execution over the last few years. WWE launched its film business in late ’05. Early ’06 and essentially we produced six film, invested roughly $100 million dollars gross, up $75 million net of tax credits. We produced these films generally in localities where there is 20% to 30% and in tax credits but gross of about $100 million, and right now the projected return on and ultimate basis and now these are fairly long-lived films. So we feel pretty good about the productions. It is essentially just above breakeven in cash-on-cash return. That model was characterized by partnership. Each of those movies were co-produced, co-financed, for the most part and co-distributed with different partners, Fox and Lionsgate, to name a couple. We thought we could do better by going it alone and we invested roughly $50 million in producing, financing and very importantly, distributing. So having all of the distribution execution on us on eight films. There was a series of impairments that we are taken in 2011 on those films and today we think the expected cash-on-cash return which with those impairments, the P&L impact has been felt pretty significantly but on a cash-on-cash basis roughly a 30% loss. So by any measure it was a strategy that was poorly executed. We have gone back essentially wiped that entire operationally the internal operations, wiped that clean, brought somebody else in to run our film business. A gentleman named Michael Luisi, long career at Miramax. It’s really the first time we have had anyone running the film business with significant commercial experience. We had creative folks in those roles before. But Mike brings a significant level of commercial experience and he has been retooling the model.

Maximizing Sales To Their Most Loyal Customers” About maximizing sales to their most loyal customers: There is also some structural changes in the home entertainment business. WWE as these change is taking place has actually weathered it pretty well if you looked at over the last four or five years. We certainly have felt some pain in that business, but if you looked at the industry as a whole, we have actually outperformed it. One of the reasons is because our fan base is very collector centric and they like collectibles. They like the physical product which is one of the reasons our home entertainment business, we believe, has weathered that change a little bit better but we all know where it is going. Optical disk drive are going by the wayside over time and we need to manage that transition. Higher margins because of the lower distribution costs but the price point becomes the issue and that’s something that we will have to, like a lot of our collagen content business, we will have to manage through.

WWE’s Future on USA & CW: We also, over the next few years have some significant commercial agreements. We have delivered significant value to our partners. So we feel very good that those agreements are coming up. Our agreement with the USA on Raw, our agreement with Smackdown on SciFi, our agreement with BSkyB in the U.K., our agreement Taj TV in India and our agreement with Mattel. In all five of those cases, we believe we have performed in exemplary fashion. So we feel good that those agreements are going to come up in the next few years. We look forward to seeing economic growth in that.