Super Fraud: June 4, 2023 News and Notes

Sunday, June 4, 2023

Today is the fourth and final day of Fremantle Media's "National Game Show Day" event on the BUZZR streaming service. A poll was held between three sets of shows: A set honoring the channel's origins, a set of Bob Eubanks shows, and a set of show debuts/closings. The third won, called "One and Done".
New Japan Pro Wrestling held it's Dominion late-spring supercard today.

Will Ospreay won the final of a tournament to become the #1 contender for the IWGP United States Championship.
Francesco Akira and TJP became the 72nd IWGP Junior Tag Team Champions.
Zack Sabre Jr. defended his IWGP World Television Championship over Jeff Cobb -- his ninth successful title defense of the first reign of the new belt. And that is actually the (IWGP World) Television Championship, in the name of their streaming service, IWGP World.
A unification match saw Hirooki Goto and YOSHI-HASHI become undisputed IWGP Tag Team Champions (at least temporarily unifying the Heavyweight Tag Team belts and the US-based IWGP Strong Tag Team belts)

As is tradition, at Dominion, the beginnings of Wrestle Kingdom 2024 began to take shape, as the announcement of the field for the 2023 G1 Climax, the winner to get a rights certificate (to be defended against anyone who defeated him during the group phase of the tournament, etc.)

David Finlay defended the NEVER Openweight Championship for the first time, just after he too was announced into the G1 Climax.
Hiroshi Takahashi defended the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship for the 5th time in his latest reign.
The Super Team of Kazuchka Okada, Hiroshi Tanahashi, and Tomohiro Ishii made their first defense of the NEVER Openweight Six-Man Championship with a win over AEW visitors Jon Moxley and Claudio Castagnoli, with their partner, Shota Umino (who took the fall).
And, in the main event: SANADA retained the IWGP World Heavyweight Championship by defeating Yota Tsuji. Even though Tsuji did not win the World Heavyweight Championship, it is a huge honor for a 29-year-old in New Japan, just two years removed from being a Young Lion, to be placed into a major-event main event World Championship match.

Summer Games Done Quick came to a merciful end Sunday morning about 7 AM Eastern time.

The good news: A lot of good money was raised: They left the air with $2,241,723.
Three pieces of bad news:

The annual Twitch Dump (a massive donation to account for all the subscriptions and cheering bits submitted during the show) was de-emphasized this marathon, because it was believed that some of the money had to go to cover the costs of putting on the marathon. As a result, a dump that was about a quarter of a million dollars last year never occurred.
A $155,000 sponsorship donation did help the total a bit.
And that was operating off a total last year of $3,053,827 -- meaning the summer event dropped over $810,000 year over year after a $770,000 hit for AGDQ 2023.

Perhaps the most flagrant mess of the entire event was the donation incentive Saturday night for a The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild blindfolded run. Since, when the last run before it ended, the total needed was short by $140,000, the show basically stopped for an entire hour for the viewers to be badgered to cough up the cash.

The $1 million winner-take-all The Soccer Tournament was held this weekend. Former US National Amateur Cup winners and US Open Cup qualifiers won the million by defeating Sports League Canada FC 2-1.

The team from Wrexham FC lost in the Round of 16 to a team led by former USMNT members Jimmy Conrad and DeMarcus Beasley.
A team from West Ham FC left the tournament after a racist incident with an amateur team from Dallas. See above article.

7-5 win for Miami today. A's now 12-49. 12,507 in Miami for that one. 10,649 for Saturday's Marlins win.

Super Fraud