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Eric won't start until next week so his half of the reboot actually hasn't happened yet. Last week's Raw clearly had differences that prior ones did not have that didn't carry over to this week (except the follow up on the Maria stuff). What can be determined from that is up to the reader I supposed.

Sometimes I forget that there's an entire generation of wrestling fans who only know WWE as the only game in town and forget the grimy shit Vince (and every other promoter if we're being honest) would do to fuck over the competition. Then I see people get Very Mad Online at Dave for saying "of course WWE is doing the Evolve thing to counter program AEW", as if even the suggestion would sully Vince's character. Then I also saw a few of those people get their minds blown when Dave broke it to them that two of the Big Four WWF shows were invented just to mess with JCP's PPV money. To paraphrase my man Mark Henry, when it comes to how Vince deals with competition THATS WHAT HE DO.

WWE doesn't care enough about a guy like Rhyno going to a place like Impact basically. If it was someone like Randy Orton trying to show up on the first AEW TV show, they'd be counting his non compete down to the second.

Man, the whole Bayley/Nikki/Alexa feud is a mess. Nikki is basically a babyface people want to get behind even though she hasn't officially turned yet, like Rick Steiner before he turned on the Varsity Club, Bayley is supposed to be the babyface since what she's saying (Alexa is using Nikki) is correct, but she's been acting like an asshole the whole time. Alexa is the only one who's actually been portrayed as her character is supposed to be. It's really stunning how apparent it is how completely incapable they are to create storylines for the women. I mean, they have a hard enough problem writing for the men, but they come off as completely out to lunch with the women.

It is true apparently, he wasn't named (even though the crowd was chanting GORE and it was obvious who it was) and didn't participate in an actual match so it didn't break the rules of his non compete. (it was his non compete that ended July 17 not his actual contract, internet scoopsters strike again)

No wrestling during commercial breaks wouldn't be nearly as bad if they didn't have such convoluted reasons to stretch matches out. Just make Raw into Gringo CMLL and have everything be 2 out of 3 falls. It would actually differentiate the brands for once and they wouldn't have to come up with an excuse to interrupt every match.

Nothing like having smaller companies running a place that is supposedly too expensive for WWE to tape TV in to serve as a swift kick in the pants.

Still want to know where they are getting the money to pay anyone, Anthem doesn't strike me as the type of company that has infinite money.

Not surprised Johnny was finishing up, his promo they showed before his match was the most phoned-in, no-fucks-given thing I've seen since that time Kevin Nash drunk dialed his way on to Nitro.

I wonder if that Dos Caras mask was a shot at Alberto. Seems like the kind of petty thing WWE would do.

It's going to be weird if/when Raw starts to get markedly better, turning Heyman babyface with the crowd (since it's pretty much only the hardcores left) but his on screen character will still be the evil heel manager of Brock.

Only on that Reimagined show which is like a "What If" type thing.

Watching Dusty win the title made me wonder, is the match where Ric won it back available anywhere?

He would probably claim it is, but it would be a non sequitur in that context since it's never mentioned on TV that he has a kid.

Tessa is a superstar, hands down. Granted it wasn't a giant crowd, but that place was living and dying for her. Apparently they booked her to lose because they are afraid of her getting the Roman treatment from the fans thinking she's being pushed down people's throats. I think it was an overthink on the company's part IMO.

Just started watch a little bit ago, RVD-Moose was better than expected with RVD in 2019. The women's 4 way Monster's Ball was funny because the story of the match was how Taya was the pretty girl in there with three monsters (Su Yung, Havok, and Rosemary) and I'm over here thinking "well she should be the expert here, she works AAA all the time".

CMLL announced that Paco Alonso passed away yesterday, he was only 65. He was only the third person to run CMLL in its 86 year history after his father Salvador Lutteroth and his son Salvador (Chavo) Jr. His daughter Sophia has been more visible recently as the face of the company in terms of management, but Paco was always a hands off guy and there was no indication he was battling any health issues. Even the announcement of his death to the crowd at yesterday's show seemed to be kept secret, as the roster was in the ring for it and more than a couple seemed to react like they were hearing about it for the first time. It will be interesting to see how it changes the way CMLL operates, if at all. For all his aloofness, Paco was known as someone who'd hold grudges forever, and being on his shit list meant you'd never work for the company again. There was some noticeable change in that policy recent, with guys like LA Park showing up and having the Lucha Bros work both CMLL and AAA at the same time. Sophia just by appearing on CMLL shows is already seemingly more involved than her father was, so it will be interesting to see what comes next.

Well it's not the only issue, sure, but I would argue the main reason WWE can't create new stars is that everyone gets booked to 50/50 at best and a geek at worse. People want to cheer for folks who win all the time, and that rarely happens in WWE anymore. I can hear the argument someone's surely going to make, "what about everyone who got upset at Super Cena", and again there's a way to book a guy who wins all the time without the fans turning on it. It's a fine line at times, and one I don't think Vince especially knows how to manage anymore.

WWE keeps insisting wins and losses don't matter, also are confounded as to why Roman isn't seen as "the guy" despite being booked as constantly unable to win the big one.

Georgia Smith is joining the company in a "correspondent" role, sounds like they want to use her broadcasting background to make her their Mean Gene. Also it's apparently Court's plan to have every non Nattie member of the Hart clan working for him in some form.

I know I sound like the biggest Shawn Spears fanboy in this thread, but what did he ever do to warrant such hate? Dude was a stable hand forever to the point WWE wanted him to be the player coach to work with the noobs until he ended up with a gimmick that got over with the Full Sail crowd. People are acting like AEW is going to make him the champ when they're just acting on the most natural feud they can do with him, especially when Cody isn't going to be in the title picture immediately and would need something to do. Like it or not, part of what AEW (or any company looking to be competition) is going to need to do is take some of the underused WWE midcard types and give them the chance to prove themselves. Obviously the key is to not go full TNA and have all your main eventers be WWE cast-offs, but there is a balance than can be struck here.

To be fair to Cena, WWE pretty much stopped trying to create breakout stars after him and changed their business model to be THE BRAND above everything else. What we've seen is the same thing that happened after the Hulkamania Era was over, except the current way WWE is set up makes it way harder to luck into a Rock or Austin like they did to break out of the doldrums before. Today's WWE would have given up on both of them after the Blue Chipper/Ringmaster gimmicks flopped, and Austin 3:16 would have been a thing that got Steve in trouble for getting more over than he was "supposed" to instead of being the fuse that lit a boom period. It's a vicious cycle, how is anyone going to be the next company-carrying superstar when everyone has to learn to work/speak/act the exact same way? Will someone like Otis get the chance to be a Dusty-like charismatic big guy, or will Vince just think "haha, fat guy is funny" and make him a comedy figure for life? There's folks there that have huge superstar potential written all over them, but it's been a near unanimous opinion of everyone involved with the company that the man who pulls the trigger just doesn't get it anymore. I'm not entirely confident that the new creative arrangement will help matters. Bruce is just there to tell Vince what he wants to hear, and while Eric is probably going to be a plus when it comes to rubbing elbows with the suits at Fox, his track record doesn't inspire me. He seems to have a lot of excuses as to why his ideas don't pan out as opposed to coming up with actual ideas. I suppose Paul has the best chance since he's been in tune with the business and can think outside the box, but I agree with Cornette when he said Paul's likely the first one to get fed up and tell Vince to fuck off because he actually has a passion for this.

Well AAA is kind of famous for announcing cards full of matches that don't end up actually happening, but as of now that's the plan. It looked like the plan originally was going to be Cain vs Psycho Clown way back when it was first considered, but fortunately AAA seemed to realize that Cain would be super over in Mexico and it would be stupid to turn Psycho heel for this.

Dave already said the Trump on SD stuff was false. Probably created by someone who thinks Fox Broadcasting is the same as Fox News.

The Perros del Mal group put out a notice that Perro passed away at age 73. He has reportedly been battling dementia for a long time (I remember when his son died there were reports that they didn't even want to tell him at first) He was probably the biggest non-masked star ever in Mexico, and nearly everyone who does the lucha-brawler style owes him a debt of gratitude.