sek69

I guess techinically they do, but then you see in cases like Bayley where they clearly don't understand why the original gimmick worked so well in the first place. They took EC3, who's gimmick is he's the rich snob who tells you he's better than everyone, and make him basically a mute who is doing a discount Narcissist gimmick backstage.

They also need to learn the difference between "small room" gimmicks and "large room" ones. They're really good at coming up with ideas to get folks over at Full Sail that turn into career sinking anchors when they get called up and have to bring their gimmick to a large arena. Some of that is because of different creative teams for sure, I can just imagine Vince and/or the writing staff looking at things created in NXT as minor league or the old "we didn't come up with it therefore it sucks" mentality. It reminds me of when Jim Cornette was booking OVW and he would talk about his goal was to book guys like how WWE books people rather than how he would ideally, because going to WWE was the main goal so his job was to prepare them for how they do things. That's something NXT seems to fail at, which is kind of amazing considering it's in house and should be better at this shit by now. They want NXT to be a third brand but also their main feeder league, and they can't have it both ways. A feeder league by definition can't be a third brand, and a third brand with a unique style will inherently fail as a feeder league since it's not properly preparing people for how the main roster works.

I've been working on a theory that by re signing with WWE when he had options proved to the company (Vince) he's enough of a team player to trust loosening up the reigns on him a bit.

I think there was a little of column A, column B going on with Ibushi. He was always going to be featured just because of how good he was, but there was definately going to be a ceiling on how far he could go without being signed to a deal. He could do dream match tags with Kenny, but I just don't think they would have ever put a major title on him without signing first.

Kelly Klein, who they were building around, is married to BJ Whitmer who left to be a producer with AEW. She's probably going to join him since she recently dropped the title to continue their ongoing joshi fetish that seemed to consume their women division. (uh, spoiler I guess)

Dave actually mentioned this in today's WO show as the reason Brock keeps getting money to stay, Vince doesn't want to be seen as losing top stars.

I always kind of suspected that Rusev never gets pushed because Lana seems to rub a lot of people the wrong way. Lana herself kind of confirmed that by her reaction to being removed from Total Divas on Lilian Garcia's podcast where she went on a rant about how no one likes her.

When I started watching in the mid 80s he was still around as a JTTS type guy, and when I first got online in the early 90s I was floored to find out this guy was a huge draw. Like I knew he was a former WW(W)F champ since Gorilla would mention it, but in my young brain I thought it must have been a short transition run. It's amazing how someone who was so big for an extended period of time more or less got completely forgotten so fast.

I don't believe so, but he was very Bruno-eqsue in not liking the modering presentation of wrestling. His issue was more the reliance on gimmicks rather than Bruno's issues with drugs, but he was apparently pretty vocal about not following modern stuff. It's the reason he more or less fell off the face of the earth after the 90s.

It seems like Gedo just copy-pasted White's name in to all his booking plans that Omega was set for, and...yeah. He ain't Kenny.

Yeah, it's clear Bryan is given way more room to do his thing than nearly anyone else in the company right now. It helps that he's following the Stone Cold rule of making a good character by just amplifying his own personality too. As far as the Charlotte thing, I've made my peace with it. Yes, a singles match would be better, but if it's true Ronda wants to take some time off after Mania creating a #1 heel and a clear #1 babyface in the process is the best possible chicken salad they can make.

I wonder how they work Becky back in storyline wise. Maybe they go all in with Stone Cold Becky and have her hold Vince hostage and make him wet his pants.

You know, I could live with all the other stupid WWE language quirks if I never had to hear an announcer go on about how important momentum is.

LOL @ Steph and Hunter channeling their inner Marcellus Wallace "Night of the fight, you may feel a slight sting. That's pride fucking with you. Fuck pride! Pride only hurts, it never helps. You fight through that shit."

I think he would, and the AEW schedule is probably better for him at this stage than the WWE grind would be even as a part timer.

I hope the Becky segment will do better at making it clear the story is "Becky won't see the doctor because she believes the fix is in to keep her out of Mania" rather than it making it seem she's just being stubborn about not going.

Pro Wrestling Sheet reported that Big Dave has been talking to both WWE and AEW about making a return to wrestling. I don't really want to see him go to AEW, but at the same time I kind of do want to see it happen just for the meltdown that WWE will have over it.

Holy shit, that's something I'll never unsee now. I agree this seemed way too fast though. I was just starting to warm up to the idea of him as a main event level guy, and he beats Tanahashi for the title already? Not to mention Tana losing the belt after a little more than a month is like the New Japan equvalent to Kerry Von Erich losing the belt back 3 weeks after capping off an emotional storyline.

Wagner and Blue Demon out here having an old lucha man version of a Memphis brawl.

He also claimed to have survived a sucide attempt of taking a "bottle of Fentanyl" which would be something considering AFAIK it only comes in a patch or spray, not a pill.

Corey Graves is having another Twitter meltdown, ironically after just saying he was going to take a social media break the other day.

AAA is live on Twitch right now if anyone wants to catch it.

I started listening to Kenny's interview on the WO site and it's really interesting so far. Seems clear that WWE was the big money offer, AEW offered creative freedom (and working with his friends of course), and New Japan didn't seem all that excited to match either offer. Also another thing that's clear is regardless of how you feel about his matches, Kenny's a really smart guy who clearly has a passion for wrestling. He comes off as a little Pollyanna-ish in terms of hoping he can get promotions who historically don't like each other to suddenly get along for the love of wrestling, but having a promotion with an open door policy down to work with anyone would be a way to maybe get that to actually happen.

Hunter and Steph need to bring back J&J Security so Becky has some geeks to beat up every week without having to worry about needing to get anyone's heat back.

Maybe a run on Raw for a while, but I would wager they're going to front load SmackDown when it starts on Fox.