sek69

It's so they can brag on investor calls that X amount of hours have been viewed on the WWE Network, that's it. It's one thing if it's just Mania going super long, it's the Super Bowl of wrestling and all, but not everything needs to go that long.

My intro to wrestling was the 6:05 shows that were usually 2 hours (give or take depending on Atlanta Braves games in the summer), then Prime Time Wrestling for the WWF. Flagship shows were always 2 hours for me, and it was only when Raw moved to 3+ hours did things become an unbearable slog. The bigger issue to me is that PPV events have gotten way too bloated nearly across the board. The downside to everyone going to streaming is that there's no more hard limits from PPV providers on how long a show can be and now it seems like every major show has to be a 4 hour endurance test.

Not able to watch until later, but Xavier Woods enjoying people sending him GIFs of Dash Wilder eating shit in his entrance was already more entertaining than Raw.

Yeah the criteria seems to be are they any of the following in descending order: 1. Someone who got mainstream attention outside wrestling and/or a celebrity who once did something wrestling related 2. A major WWF/E star 3. A major star who didn't spend any real time in WWF/E 4. Someone who was around in WWF/E forever and maybe had a notable moment they can put in a video package 5. Female 6. A minority of some sort

Yeah, the Connor's Cure stuff for example is pure "look at us doing good stuff" corporate grandstanding, but it does benefit Children's Hospital here in Pittsburgh so I can handle seeing all the masturbatory video packages knowing it helps kids in my town who are in bad situations. Honestly, it's why John Cena has my respect since he does tons of charity work with little to no publicity because he seems to be a good dude rather than to give WWE positive pub. When Troy Polamalu played for the Steelers there were always stories going around of him just randomly showing up to visit sick kids just to brighten their day and I always have a ton of respect for famous people who don't have to do that who do it just because they want to.

Viper/Piper Niven just tweeted earlier she had an attack of Bell's Palsy.

One thing that's been clear so far is NXT has trained folks to wait until the overrun to watch their main events.

Steph's biggest mistake was saying the quiet part out loud. Nearly everything any big company does is an organized PR move, they just don't have CEOs who's daughters spill the beans in public.

Finally justice for lucha, but honestly everyone who got in deserved it (admittedly I don't know Paul Pons but he seemed like a pretty important historical figure for French wrestling based on the writeup he got). When the worst you can say about it is "why'd it take so long" you know that's a pretty good HOF class.

JYD 100% is a HOF by any measure that's not 100% work based, it's just going to be amusing for me if/when he gets in since Dave spent most of the late 80s slagging on the guy. I know he wrote a great obit, but I can just imagine how badly Watts beat Dave's ear about JYD leaving him for Vince*. (*which was kinda bullshit since he did the 80s Vince Maneuver of leaving without notice and leaving advertised dates unfilled)

I could easily see Lana end up in one of those "work themselves into a shoot" scenarios with this. She seems pretty high maintenance IRL and I can see her getting shoot offended that a guy like Punk had her name in his mouth.

You pretty much nailed it. Penta is better when it comes to character and charisma, but Fenix is the better worker of the two.

I sense this is what is being built with Tully looking for a partner for Spears, they find someone then Tully turns on him.

Of course it's not there yet, but they have that same dynamic where both bring out the best in each other. Cody's been great on his own but the one thing a great hero needs is a great villain pushing him.

Cody and MJF really have that Hogan/Piper dynamic that should push both of them to be huge stars.

As soon as I saw that exchange my thought was "well I suppose this might show how beholden he is to WWE" since the normal grump Twitter Punk would just steamroll her.

Big Dave can get anything he wants: a Mania match with Hunter, Disney to bring back the director of Guardians of the Galaxy, Dana Brooke's DMs on Twitter. I'm sure he can get who he wants to induct him. Also there's the matter of Fit being an employee of the company whereas I'm certain Vince saw Lance Russell as just some old southern rasslin' guy.

Agreed, this is a much better use of Seth, I'm just not looking forward to the inevitable claim that his Twitter antics were just him working us dumb mizzarks the whole time.

This is like "Bret screwed Bret" but the whiny social media version. Also they just made Seth a taller Drake Maverick by putting him with AOP.

It would be funny if they did another Emma/Emmalina deal where they hype up a makeover and the payoff is her coming out exactly like before.

I don't see how this can't be a better balanced version of those weekends you have a really good NXT Takeover on a Saturday and a good WWE PPV on Sunday. At least you know New Japan shows won't be poorly paced slog fests.

It will be amusing to read Dave's HOF bio for the guy he spent years calling "The Junkfood Dog" if he in fact did get in. Also the dwindling amount of newer candidates emerging should hopefully allow there to be a few years (like this one seems to be) where the backlog of older names gets whittled down to manageable levels. Maybe after a couple of years like that wrestling will be back in a position of having multiple promotions offering up HOF worthy names. The Orton and Edge stuff is interesting. With Edge, there's always the thing with anyone who had to retire suddenly due to injury of "what if" that causes people to sell short what they actually did. You'd think he'd be a lock for being part of a defining era of tag team wrestling and for being a strong heel as a singles star. Orton on the other had always strikes me as the wrestling equivalent of the guy in real sports who racked up a ton of impressive stats because they played for a long time, rather than someone who was actually one of the greatest.

I get the feeling the only thing people will be talking about after Raw will be how Wrestlecrap this "Rusev and Lana finalize their divorce" segment ends up.

Does he suck that much to demand such a forceful response that he gets? He's not like a jobber you'd see on the old 6:05 show that didn't even know how to take the most basic of moves properly, his shtick doesn't click with some folks. The fact that he manages to get such a response from folks, even a negative one, seems to put him above the sea of people in wrestling I could give two shits about.

The only thing that qualifies someone to be pro wrestler is being paid by a promotion to get in their ring, that's really it. Now you probably should get some training and put in some work to not look like a complete schlub in there, but this is a genre of entertainment that was created by carnies to part people from their money. The only real qualifications for about 70 or so years was "I want to make money and in most cases be a complete shithead". Plus the matter of most training for pro wrestling for a long time was just beating people up and whoever kept coming back got to be a wrestler. As far as Joey goes, I think he'd be better suited in a creative role than an in ring one. If for no other reason he seems like a dude that's going to kill himself one day doing crazy stuff. But as stated, he's been a JTTS so far in AEW and I don't see a problem with him being used that way. I also don't get the level of hate the guy gets. It's like having massive levels of hate for someone like EY when he was part of Sanity. He's clearly going to be slotted at a certain level so there's no reason to get BIG MAD about it when he's on TV.