sek69

Not gonna lie, I wouldn't be mad if they kept doing the "Street Profits party with Ric and quickly realize they can't hang" interactions.

He was wearing braces after he knocked his teeth up into his jaw by hitting the ringpost, now I think he wears a mouthguard to keep that from happening again and also I'm sure Vince thinks it's hilarious to have him talk with it in.

Vic is actually pretty good. Hopefully he won't get it beaten out of him.

Smackdown won't get canceled. Worst case scenario it draws too low a rating for network TV and gets shunted to FS1. It would be a blow to their ego but it won't be the end of the world.

While I get the argument that Dave has made that running secondary venues makes you look second rate, Running mid-sized building that are full of people comes off much better than WWE having to tarp off the top level or two every week to keep up the illusion. If they were running in that venue next to the Jaguars' stadium every week that might come off as second rate, but it's as if everyone forgot what made Nitro the cool show to watch before the nWo showed up was that they would be in places the WWF wouldn't go to and in buildings they wouldn't run in. It looked different, and provided a visual hook to grab people who were flipping by.

Honestly if someone would just tell Mauro to stop trying to force pop culture references in every sentence, the annoyance factor for me (and probably everyone else here) would drop by at least 75%. It's like they are afraid to offer him any kind of production and just let him do whatever he wants out there. Which would make NXT on USA interesting, since there's no way Vince is going to allow any announcer on his TV go unproduced. For that matter, wonder how Hunter feels to see his baby get turned into another death march slog of a WWE TV show when it only got popular as the homegrown alternative to the main roster.

We all know Vince is just going to end up making King Corbin and we're all going to be upset we didn't realize it sooner, right?

Welp, looks like I'll be one of those chumps trying to get tickets for AEW when they go on sale. BTW, the Petersen Events Center is a great venue for them. It's in the city on the Pitt campus, it's a newer building, and it's one of those "not a bad seat in the house" kind of places.

There's apparently another significant bit of news in regards to the NXT to USA story to be announced tomorrow as well. As far as it being an end of an era, it's all but guaranteed Vince will be paying more attention if it's going to be their counter to AEW. I would expect a way more main roster style show than the NXT we've been used to. The bigger question is, NXT on USA means it will fall into the 30 day delay Raw and SD have in terms of the network. How will moving NXT off the network hurt subs?

Possibly that, but mostly it's because they got tired of getting cockblocked by ROH on all the lucha guys they tried to bring in. The Crash is kind of like a PWG of Mexico of sorts. Not on the workrate level, but it's more a collection of names and top indy guys in one place.

Memes are fun and all, but unless something changed I thought Eric didn't have any actual creative involvement?

Yeah there's a couple of the episodes that didn't make it. They said all the footage they have is uploaded so those must have been lost or didn't meet VQ quality standards. Angle wise, yes it's the beginning of the Jimmy Valiant/Paul Jones feud that went on for years. The Assassins (well #1 since he's the one who did the promos) would talk about their unfortunately-named-for-2019 "registry" of people they are out to get. Dusty was #1 on that list because of course he was, and when Jimmy came out to save him from a beatdown he became their main target. It built up to the mask vs hair match on this show, and then after another guy was brought in as Assassin #3 (which was weird since #2 was gone), then led to a side angle where Johnny Weaver stole #1's mask and started wearing it as the "Ultimate Assassin".

Conversely the basketball schedule wasn't a big deal since Wednesday wasn't considered a wrestling day until about a month ago. You can see the pattern: *AEW announces day* Vince: We gotta counterprogram! NXT's already on Wednesdays, put that on FS1! Fox: OK, but there's going to be a a 5 month gap while we show basketball. Vince: Goddammit! Get USA on the line!

NXT on FS1 was supposed to be bonus content to help their new TV partner since FS1 was basically the UFC Channel when Fox had them. Then it became the means to start Wrestling World War Two once AEW confirmed Wednesdays as their TV day. Now Vince is considering cuckolding them with USA because he doesn't even want his son-in-law's vanity fed to be seen as getting beat by the new guys. It's really interesting to see how this is playing out. Vince is still using his Territory/WCW playbook and is coming off as increasingly "gotten to" (as the kids say) that he can't just stomp them out like he did back in the day. Dave even mentioned that Vince was certain Kenny and the Bucks would take the big money deals WWE offered them and was flummoxed that they all turned them down.

Dave's reporting WWE is trying to put NXT on USA now, which to me seems to all but admit that WWE thinks AEW would beat them head to head if it was on FS1.

Watching the Boogie Jam show, and it's funny how Hercules managed to run the exact same angle twice in a row going from Assassin #2 here then directly going to Mid South to be Mr. Wrestling II's protege.

It was double ACL surgery, certainly a long recovery process but not normally something career ending unless some complications come up. She's been posting videos of her post surgery workouts and things seemed to be going well.

So apparently Nia Jax deleted her Twitter and took all WWE references off her Instagram while changing her display name to her real name on there. Then Alexa was sad-facing on her Twitter so I suppose either Nia took another leave of absence or they are trying to work another angle.

People accept that as fact, but was he really buried that bad? He lost the King of the Ring victory but he spent most of that year winning midcard feuds.

It was pretty clear KUSHIDA felt he did everything he could as a Junior and there were no plans to move him up, so he left. I wouldn't be surprised if he just used this time as like another overseas excursion like the Young Lions do. Most of the time they do jobs because the point is just to experience a new culture and style, so I could see him looking at this the same way. I'm sure he knows he won't be main eventing Mania.

Impact works with AAA, which is a partner with AEW. Maybe they can work something out that way.

I would assume Marty, Tessa, Pillman, and DBS will all get serious looks. Brody King should seriously consider it too (WWE already has a tattoo'd guy in Alistar Black and you know they wouldn't do anything with "another one"). Of course WWE is playing with Fox/Saudi money, but I think the tide's turned enough where just tossing cash at folks to sit in NXT collecting dust are nearing an end. Guys who want to actually show what they can do know they have an alternative.

Yeah that's what I was going for. Both terms are dumb but "Performance Fighter" somehow seems....less dumb? At least it describes what they do better than "Sports Entertainer" if you don't want to call them wrestlers. It's still funny that the biggest wrestling company in the world doesn't like to call its wrestlers "wrestlers" though.

That's one of those things that was a capsule of its time that seems odd now. At the time there was an anti Japanese trend since their economy was booming and they were buying/getting interest in traditionally American companies or landmarks. Matsuda "took over" control of the Horsemen in a wrestling version of that.

Speaking of USA, I wonder if they are going to be even more indebted to WWE since Todd Christley got indicted for tax fraud. Seemed like his show was the only one USA was pushing besides Raw.