WWE News: ESPN, World Wrestling Entertainment Strike Deal, Check Details Here
In Tuesday's ESPN News, former WWE personnel and current ESPN anchor Jonathan Coachman announced that the WWE and ESPN will be having a weekly segment featuring the top moments in the WWE Universe as well as WWE Superstars making appearances, as reported by Wrestling Inc.
The SportsCenter segment will air every Tuesday at 9 p.m. EST and is part of the new partnership between the biggest sports-entertainment company and the worldwide leader in sports.
In the first episode of the season, the top moments from latest episode of Monday Night Raw in Chicago was shown, including "Demon" Kane's tombstone piledriver on WWE champion Seth Rollins, Roman Reigns' Drive-By on Braun Strowman and Naomi making a suicide dive over the ropes into the Divas outside.
Wrestling Inc. noted that Coachman mentioned during the SportsCenter segment the Top Match Award that went to John Cena against Dolph Ziggler, The One-Liner Award to Xavier Woods of The New Day and the Top Move Award to Roman Reigns' Superman Punch.
WWE champ Seth Rollins then made an appearance via satellite as the first WWE superstar for the new segment. He first asked Coach why he was not featured in the highlights, but they eventually talked about his feud with Kane, with Rollins calling himself the New England Patriots and Tom Brady of the WWE, per Wrestle Zone.
They also talked about how the WWE champion made fun of Cleveland and Johnny Manziel during an episode of Raw. Coachman and Rollins also discussed other sports-related topics like age requirement in professional wrestling, Chase Utley's controversial take-out slide that broke Ruben Tejada's leg and him breaking John Cena's nose.
Forbes reports that the partnership between the two companies is a great move for both sides as WWE and ESPN are having problems with their declining subscribers and falling ratings. The dip in those ratings has been attributed to Monday Night Football for WWE while ESPN struggles with the popularity of Netflix.
The report also added that ESPN's pairing with the WWE has drawn criticism from sports journalists as professional wrestling has the aspect of entertainment. As for the potential partnership, Forbes points out that WWE will have more mainstream attention while ESPN can bring its ratings up, much like what Raw did with the USA Network, which is the number one cable network in total viewership for nine straight years.
This is not the first time that the two companies will collaborate on projects. WWE has been previously featured on SportsCenter commercials and E:60. Superstars like Roman Reigns and Brock Lesnar have also appeared on ESPN programs, as per Bleacher Report.
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