Loss

I can't argue that pick either.

I always thought it spoke volumes that the winner of the Royal Rumble doesn't win a shot at the championship? No, the winner of the Royal Rumble earns the right to main event Wrestlemania.

I sometimes think the heavy focus on kayfabe in the old days was less about protecting the business and more about having iron-grip control over labor, but that's a point of view I need to flesh out way more before I present it. The idea being that in the end, wrestling has benefited in an institutional way from the average person thinking that because the combat isn't real, the people involved in it aren't real either.

And that match always reminded me of a Lawler match. Therefore, Jerry Lawler invented the modern style.

Speaking of, it's rare now that we get completely intra-world stories like Mandy and Otis. Was 2011 the start of the trend where almost every promo is about the idea of making history, people complaining about their pushes, pointing to your foe's weaknesses for why they've never been successful, etc.

I was really struggling to think of something because most things that have changed wrestling haven't really been matches, but gordi nailed it with the Maeda tag. Within two years, the big two Japanese companies had to change their philosophy because they seemed behind the times.

Going back to the original point, I think there's really something to the idea that the biggest challenge with keeping wrestlers around for a long time is not letting them get stale. The old NXT model was great for ensuring that would never happen because a long run in NXT was about a year. Now they've had the same headliners since 2017 or 2018 for the most part, and they haven't picked up anyone new in a while either. To the extent NXT was like the territories, that was how -- wrestlers in and out, never overstaying their welcome. Gargano and Ciampa are now still having a feud that got a proper blowoff in 2018.

The best thing about Britt Baker is the relatable aspect. We all know the straight-A student who is "professional" and always says the right, pleasant things. Deep down, those types are often concealing so much rage and have a really nasty side. That's basically her character right now. Think Tracy Flick -- the overachieving perfectionist type with a certain entitlement about them.

I also think part of it is that he is skilled at putting on an aesthetically pleasing show, but we haven't seen him prove yet that he can really sell a match in a way that makes people think, "I've gotta see this!" At least on a huge level.

I don't know that I'd put all of NXT's problems on HHH, although he certainly has contributed. I think they messed up when they stopped thinking of NXT as "developmental". The best thing about NXT was that talent moved in and out quickly, so no one ever got stale. Now people stay there for years. That was conceived with the idea of actually supporting HHH when they decided to start making NXT competitive with ROH and on the European scene by giving him a more reliable group of talent, but it has just burned a lot of them out before they've really even done anything.

Vince quietly demoted HHH recently.

Because he doesn't trust that they can run it?

The original idea for Sami Zayn when he came up in 2016 was to make him a Daniel Bryan that they were fully controlling. We see how that worked out.

I don't know if I buy it either, but it would explain not making big hires to replace Barrios and Wilson. After getting rid of them and demoting HHH, it would be a logical conclusion that Vince would decide he has no obvious successor and think about cashing out. Doing the releases at a time they are making record profits would also make sense if this was true.

It's interesting how WWE knows how to get over monster heels, who end up getting cheered because they are so dominant and competently booked most of the time. They also know how to take people with real babyface potential and make people not like them and sort of get them over as meandering heels. They can't intentionally book an underdog babyface to save their lives.

Britt is not great in the ring, but she's competent and works hard. As a total act, she's got what she needs to be a star. I'm really happy for her. It would be great if they had one or two really great mechanics among their women that could make everyone else look great. She does need someone to put her over decisively in a great match at some point.

Dr. Britt Baker, DMD is number one and the greatest.

The value in Jimmy Havoc is in putting over other people, and they have to have some people there to eat losses. But yes, I'm not a fan at all. There are too many brooding characters on both shows.

That post is an amazing story.

The idea of someone going to Disney HR to complain about Vince is amazing, though.

Yes. I also tend to think that giant corporate acquisitions happening during a pandemic are gross and immoral, but that aspect wouldn't even be in the top five of worst things WWE has done in the last month. I don't know if this would require approval from the DOJ's antitrust division or not, but I'm guessing WWE is well-connected enough in the administration that that aspect wouldn't be a concern.

"ESPN and Fox" is how it's being worded on Twitter, which could mean a lot of things. Obviously they aren't going to both go in half and run the company together, but if there's anything to this, it could be an arrangement where Fox gets all of their TV content while Disney gets the company itself. I don't know if I believe it or not, but I do know it would explain a lot of the recent cost-cutting to make the earnings per share as favorable as possible. It would also potentially explain some of the recent corporate departures. A part of me also thinks that the story of Vince demoting Paul Levesque might be something we learn more about in coming weeks and months and be pretty significant. We'll see. But if something happened to make Vince think he no longer had an obvious heir apparent, it could have influenced his thinking.

The rumors of a sale have picked up a lot in the last few hours, for what it's worth.

I'm a firm believer that nothing in WWE happens by accident because everything, even the matches, are so micromanaged. If guys in the second match are working that way, it's probably because they have been told to do it.

The Miz is a great promo and I think his wrestling is underrated, but his mentality about wrestling tells me WWE is where he should always be. He could probably get over as a sports entertainment heel somewhere like AEW, but it would have a shelf life. Also worth noting that there has always been a huge difference in how effective Miz is when Maryse is around as his second vs when she isn't around. I see him as a borderline top guy or maybe even top guy when Maryse is with him, and a strong midcarder when she's not.