Last year WWE moved their premium live events to ESPN’s new streaming service and the partnership kicked off with WrestlePalooza back in September. Following the show ESPN combat sports reporter Andreas Hale posted a review of WrestlePalooza and gave the show a “C” grade. He later followed up with a “B” for Crown Jewel in October. The letter grades for the WWE premium live events got a lot of attention, but it seems that they’ve been quietly dropped.
POST Wrestling is reporting that ESPN put a stop to the letter grades for WWE premium live events due to objections from WWE according to multiple sources familiar with the matter. The change was first reported in the Wrestling Observer Newsletter last week which noted, “someone on the WWE side… had gotten [the use of letter grades] killed.”
According to the report one person with knowledge of ESPN’s approach maintained that the decision was ESPN’s alone, and that the change was not something WWE requested. When pressed further about the reasoning for the change, and whether WWE took issue with the reviews the source declined to respond further.
More recent reviews from Andreas Hale of ESPN have seen the letter grades removed from individual matches as well as the overall show. Hale’s reviews for UFC shows also used letter grades, and still do. Hale did not provide a comment when he was contacted.