sek69

I remember first hearing reports that Patrick Clark was trying out some sort of Prince gimmick on the NXT houseshows, and thinking "wow that doesn't sound like something he would be able to pull off that well". Glad to have been wrong on that one.

Ford's the one married to Bianca BelAir, right? Dude's just winning at life on all fronts.

The Street Profits' ring jackets look like every 80s jobber who tried to look like Michael Jackson.

Yeah I never particularly care about Strong, but I always enjoy his matches. Riddle is just overflowing with charisma, he looks like a big playful puppy that also has 47 ways to choke out a bitch. Also lol @ Road Dogg having to escape to NXT because he got tired of Vince being Vince all the time.

Still trying to figure out Sam Roberts' angle on these preshows. If looking like homeless Dean Ambrose isn't enough, it seems his gimmick now is to just shit on people like how he was pointing out Tyler Breeze did precisely dick on the main roster. Which is true, but fuck, way to make Dream seem like he isn't going to accomplish much by beating a guy who's a loser.

He's trading wins with Cesaro, who's spent most of his time in a gatekeeper tag team. He shouldn't be losing in random ass Raw matches to guys the greater crowd sees as midcard 4 life. No one is saying he should be beating Brock or Roman, but it's nice wrestling bubble black-or-white thinking. There's tons of middle ground between that and not going 50-50 by month two.

There was an almost throwaway mention in the WON this week about how Ricochet's time on the main roster opened a lot of people's eyes in NXT. Seeing a guy that can't-miss in the process of being wasted seems to be cutting through whatever magic spells they weave down there.

So one thing I think everyone can agree on is AEW absolutely needs to devote some time to introduce characters once they get on TNT. They don't want to fall in the trap of thinking everyone watching knows who these people are, as while it may be true for All In or Double or Nothing type shows, a larger TV audience will need a primer on who folks are.

Yeah, but they were almost always heels where their effeminate mannerisms were designed to get heel heat. To think that people in 2019 aren't ready to accept an effeminate character as anything but a conduit for heel heat is honestly the same shit we get mad at advertisers for when they paint all wrestling fans as poor, dumb hicks.

The hoarding of talent is probably WWE's #2 problem now. Not only do they have more people signed than they know what to do with, it impedes the growth of the newbies at the PC. It's going to be hard for them to get any meaningful ring time when they have so many guys with large (for NXT) deals that need to justify the expense. Honestly, the answer would be to clear out a lot of the dead weight. There's a lot of folks on the main roster they are never going to have any serious plans for, and it would allow for them to break up the logjam in NXT. They won't, since they are afraid of anyone leaving to go to AEW, so now they're going to end up with a WCW-level roster full of folks being unused/under-used/not used at all. The funny part is there's probably a handful of folks at most AEW would be interested in signing anyway. They've given every indication they aren't looking to be another Impact and sign up every WWE castoff they can. Plus there's always the argument that if these folks were so valuable, why aren't they going anywhere in WWE? It seems like Vince thinks it's still the 90s and he doesn't want to be like WCW and cut someone like Steve Austin who goes and ends up being a megastar for the other side. That would probably be less of a problem if they hadn't decided the company and the BRANDS were the stars rather than the talent.

Right, but if WWE was being run similar to how NXT was, things would be in a much better place. There still might be acts that don't catch on with the larger audience, but at least it wouldn't be due to lack of trying like now.

Plus he calls Sonny Kiss a "transvestite", which on top on everything else isn't even correct. He's not trying to present as female. I suppose a generous defense would be that he was trying to come up with an analog to exotico type characters for American wrestling that hasn't really existed before, but he ended up sounding like a racist who used the wrong slur for the group he was trying to be racist at.

NXT has been far superior to the main roster for a while now, and they seem to give the people there more freedom to explore their characters. I know he was an oppressive bore more often than not as a wrestler, but the dude seems to know how to book a company. At least one on the scale of NXT. It's completely fair to question if he can do it on the scale of WWE, but one positive of him being a territory era mark is he seems to understand the importance of long term booking.

You know, it seems like the #1 problem facing WWE is that Vince seems to be surrounded by a wall of yes men so he never gets challenged on anything. I always got the impression when Pat Patterson was his #2 guy, he would push Vince at least somewhat. Now, everyone knows the golden path to job security is to placate Vince's every whim. I don't know if that's something that can be fixed easily, or at all. Especially since the latest move was to bring back Bruce Pritchard. Even if AEW starts whooping their asses, I don't know if that would be enough for real change to happen. The status quo is so entrenched it would take a near-total upheaval in upper management of the creative team to make any impactful difference. I guess the real story is, will Hunter be willing to be the Prince Charles of WWE and wait forever for his turn on the throne? Vince's mom is still alive at 98, so he's got the genes to be around for a long time still (despite spending the last 35 years running on cocaine and Ico Pro).

Term of endearment is in the eye of the beholder though. It's not "PC thought police" to consider what effect your words have on others, it's being a considerate human being. I get called things like "honey" and "sweetie" at my job sometimes and it's weird (and I'm a dude). It's using a term that implies endearment or closeness, and when there isn't any it comes off as weird and/or creepy. At least stuff like that can be explained away as a generational difference (it seems to be nearly always older folks who use terms like that). Getting into anything homophobic/transphobic is 100% STFU territory.

Wasn't one of the women in the match the little girl Omega wrestled years ago? That might have been the reason. I'd like to think even Cornette would enjoy watching Aja Kong killing fools though.

Wasn't this Marvez's first gig? In that sense it wasn't bad for being thrown in to the deep end of the pool. JR was clearly way more in his element here than he was in New Japan. Him and Excalibur have the potential to be a great team.

Renee will be fine, even if WWE gets shitty with her she'd have a TV job by the next business day most likely. Plus you'd need to be caught mid-murder for WWE to fire anyone now. I did get the impression WWE thought Mox was just burnt out in wrestling and was just going to go away for a while. I don't think they would have done all they did if they had any idea what his plans were.I don't think he would have got the Revival treatment or anything had they known (he's still friends with two of their top stars and they wouldn't want to piss them off), but I'm sure had they known what he was planning he would have disappeared off the face of the Earth until his deal ended. Also do we know if his contract was extended to cover the injury time from his arm injury? Or is that just a move they pull when they are feeling especially petty toward someone?

Man, talk about one of the more forgotten fuck ups in history. Dude was set to get the rocket push leading up to a Mania match with Taker, only to get in a bar fight that led to lawsuits and WWE completely dropping everything.

Remember back in the Monday Night Wars era when word that Nitro scripts were being written as the show was going on was seen as one of WCW's death knells? Pepperidge Farms remembers. It's not as so-bad-it-ends-up -perversely-entertaining like end stage WCW was, but damn if there similarities aren't starting to add up. Death slog 3 hour main shows, nonsensical booking, cratering TV audience, falling live attendance, growing sense of frustration from talent. It's all looking awfully familiar.

FOMO is real. People don't want to feel like they missed out on something that ends up being discussed at the water cooler the next day.

Pretty sure most people on the inside *do* see it, but the guy at the top is the one who decides what goes on. They have to be hoping the new XFL can get even a little bit of success so it can be something to distract Vince, like shaking keys at a baby,

I love how the consensus I'm hearing is that Moxley's story is basically CM Punk's from the Cabana podcast minus the part where the doctor tried to kill him. Honestly, I don't get why anyone who cares about creativity would even consider going to WWE at this point. Unless you can work them into giving you an absolutely stupid money deal, your best possible outcome is to become an NXT darling before you get called up to chase R-Truth for the 24/7 title.

One thing I've learned from working a decade plus for a cable company is that Dave is right when he says people may complain about price, but if they want to watch a show they'll watch it. It happened with every Mayweather PPV fight, people would bitch nonstop leading up how expensive the show was and it would still end up setting record buys. Raising PPV prices were what pulled the WWF out of financial problems in 1997, and while I agree $50 was quite the ask for an unproven entity in 2019 I would say the near unanimous praise the show got probably increased the odds the next one will be the same price.

1989 comeback Studd maybe, but 90% of the roster wishes they were as over as Studd was in the early 80s teaming with Bundy.