sek69

Drew kinda made him look like a chump by telling him to shut up....and then he just shut up for the rest of the segment.

Ricochet over huge with the home crowd, good to see him get some shine . However it was such a WWE thing to have him in there with three of the tallest people possible and Alexa Bliss.

Michael Elgin showed up after the world title match to challenge new champ Brian Cage.

Those are usually sent in advance, so most likely that was a planned match.

Scott also had a running gag that when Jeff Hardy used to have different colored scarves/hankies in his back pocket that they stood for different kinds of sex fetishes.

That was a good read, Lanny always comes off as as one of the guys in wrestling who seems to bullshit the least. Not sure why he went so hard on poor Bam Bam though. The biggest takeaway here should be we could have had a Savage-Shawn match but Vince was too stubborn.

But the company can release them at any time they want. The wrestlers don't have that option, so let's not pretend it's a balanced situation. Plus there has to be some good faith on both sides. I don't expect many folks are signing their contracts thinking "man, I hope they pay me my downside while I sit in catering doing jack shit". When you have a de facto monopoly in an industry putting guys on ice just to keep them away from a potential competitor that hasn't even run a second show yet....that's some shit that wouldn't fly even in our current landscape if it was any other profession other than that dumb rasslin' stuff.

If he could prove he could make more money working elsewhere, but is being held hostage by bullshit contract language that would probably do it.

It's the perfect scheme. Something like trustbusting would require someone in government to give a shit, and even if there were such a person it would be a non starter when the owner of the company is BFFs with the President. I would think something like the Luke Harper situation would be ripe for legal action since it seems pretty easy to show how he's being handled differently (not to mention how the whole freezing an injured persons contract bullshit), but that would mean he would have to risk burning bridges he may not want to.

It did for Ty DIllinger. Dustin Rhodes didn't get his deal frozen despite being out when he got his knee surgeries. I can see why Luke thought if he asked professionally they would let him go since they were doing nothing with him. The irony is they see enough value in him to realize he has the potential to be a star elsewhere, but apparently not enough value to actually do something.

I would have thought Matt Hardy put in a good word for Borash since he was so involved in all the TNA Broken Universe stuff. He's not wrong here. I feel the company will absolutely make an example out of her if she doesn't decide to come back. If they feel Luke Harper is important enough to deny a release and extend his contract when they've barely done a thing with him, there's no way Sasha playing chicken with them is going to end well for her. Things like this are why it's vital for a company like AEW to succeed, the only way someone like Vince is going to not treat people like disposable playthings is if there's a market for them to ply their trade elsewhere in the US. They don't even have to beat WWE, as long as they are in the ballpark as a viable alternative the whole business will be improved.

They are planning on launching a tiered service at some point, details are sketchy on what that will mean.

Vince's hatred of certain words (and having them be replaced by word combinations no human being would say in real conversation) will always be the defining Vince Quirk to me.

IIRC they started doing the barf inducing zoomy-zoomy cam when the Shield debuted, during their beatdowns. At the time I thought it made the Shield stand out, but now they do it all the time and it's nauseating.

I think it's funny the latest WON mentions WWE made a run at Joey Ryan (basically just because he's the only regular on Being the Elite not signed to an exclusive AEW deal), but he turned them down because he makes more money doing indy shows than he would moving cross country. Then Robert Roode shows up on Raw looking like Discount Joey.

It's always been the kiss of death to think you're a star when WWE doesn't think you're a star. Because a wrestler being a star is apparently bad.

My take is that Eric is just as much of a trash human being as Russo, he just has that Ted Bundy "charismatic asshole" charm to him. Russo rightly gets bodied for his low opinion of women (it's how everyone figured out he was back in TNA, all the women started calling each other bitches again out of nowhere), but it seems like Eric is just as bad or worse but gets a pass because he can flash his million dollar smile. Eric has business hustle, no doubt. Dude scaled the corporate ladder at Turner like a boss and that's admirable. As a straight wrestling booker it's weird, he seems to get a pass because of general WCW related wackiness but so much of that was because he allowed it to happen. He wanted to be one of the boys instead of the boss, he let guys like Hogan and Nash run roughshod for years which alienated the midcard to the point where half of them left for the WWF. He comes off as a con man that didn't have an end game. He got to the top and it was like "well shit, now what do I do?

Vince has always thought things he comes up with/likes are better than what anyone else comes up with or likes. I'm willing to bet that's why he fights against the crowd so much.

Not sure if it was on one of these shows or not, but I saw on Twitter the other day Eric was talking about the issue at the heart of Missy Hyatt's workplace harrassment lawsuit (a photo of her having a nip slip was blown up and hung in the office) and his takeaway on the issue was that you can't sexually harass a slut. Just served as a reminder to me that Eric is basically just Vinny Ru without the Noo Yawk accent/bro speak who had a couple outside the box ideas.

Anyway, thought it was funny the reviewer took the time to bag Ronda's performance in particular. There's a reason most movies/games that use voice actors either go all professional voice actors or all celebrities for their voiceover work. When you mix and match it really makes the ones who don't do it for a living stand out in a not-good way.

The network version is said to be a few minutes longer than what's on Youtube so it doesn't seem to be that version.

It's weird, there's actually not any lootboxes in the game. There's stuff unlocked with currency earned in game, and right now the payouts for the things that earn those currencies are stupidly low at the moment. The only stuff you can actually buy that would be considered a microtransaction are the crystals used to buy the featured items in the shop.

So the reviews are out for Mortal Kombat 11 (it's good except for some single player grindy bullshit), but one review in particular complimented the voice over work "with the exception of former UFC fighter and current WWE wrestler Ronda Rousey". To be fair, I didn't think she was that bad. There was just a noticeable difference between her and professional voice actors. Her character had to hit some emotional beats that might have been a little above her acting range, but it showed she can deliver a good performance when not trying to work her way through a WWE word salad.

I could be convinced that Al Perez is a time traveler and he's currently Seth Rollins.

Once Kevin Dunn hears Ricochet's Kentucky-ass accent we'll be lucky he doesn't get a Hillbilly gimmick.