Migs

I actually thought this week was pretty good for a filler episode. Pillman-Holliday had a cute finish. Ki's promo was good. Hammerstone looked better than expected in Japan.

Yes, there are highly paid independent contractors.

a) They weren't employees, either. b) WWE pays talent 8% of revenues. Estimates have treating the wrestlers as employees getting them up to about 12-13%. Major sports pay talent ~50% of revenues. Somehow I think they'll be fine.

Very interesting to see where that goes, particularly in terms of the relationship with New Japan. Given New Japan's US expansion, any US partner was going to be a VERY junior partner, something that ROH struggled with but Impact would readily accept. Glad, at the very least, that Impact will have solid coverage. This has been my main beef with Impact this year - while they do a nice job of building to the big shows, it's incredibly easy to skip the shows for months before the final build (especially given the length of them). They're just too thin to be compelling for two hours a week without a clear PPV direction.

The climaxes were usually on the house shows, although occasionally there'd be things that ended on TV (like the US Express winning the tag titles back from Volkoff/Sheik). The shows definitely referenced each other, quite frequently.

That makes sense to me and would be a match I'm interested in. I've been watching PCW Ultra's Youtube show, and it might be jumping MLW in the line for me... it's a very easy watch.

The Timelines are usually pretty good, assuming the subject has a decent memory (i.e. you'll get much more out of a Cornette one than the Sandman).

I'm not sure Lawlor is a great opponent for Fatu. Or maybe he's just a terrible underdog babyface. I'd be curious to see Fatu in a singles match with someone else (all the other stuff I've seen of his has been tag matches with Samael where he's basically the scarier John Kronus to Samael's New Jack in ECW-style brawls). The apparently are scraping another week out of the NYC taping before they show the War Games match, but at least there's a Hart Foundation match lined up. But I'm with you, they are very much on the edge of getting dropped for me. I have tickets to the next NYC show in December, so I might try and hang on until then. Struggling to see what they could put on PPV that would get me to part with even $20.

Indeed, that is where I saw it.

They also could have put some distance between the ladder match and the main event - Cody-Spears or Pac-Omega could have gone there, and kept the momentum going without needing to be as *spectacular* as the ladder match.

Management training is just a good idea in general - even for people experienced in corporate environments, management can be a very tricky skill to develop. The management training I got at a past job may have been the three most useful days of job training I've ever received.

What about the publicly available information would require a bullying investigation?

Why should they look into bullying? What about her departure would imply bullying? There's literally a million reasons people decide to leave wrestling. You even mentioning bullying implies that bullying (or a situation *like* bullying) is the cause, especially when the main guess on Twitter has been "undisclosed medical reasons" (a serious injury or illness that she'd rather not discuss publicly, for whatever reason).

Have seen hints that this week's shows might be the MTV specials from 1985.

See, I think he's the kind of guy they'd pull up to the main roster fast to do low card stuff, like they did with Drake Maverick (or maybe EC3 would be the better comparison).

Thought the show was good, not great. I think I'd say the ladder match was match of the night, although I feel like I've seen other Bucks ladder matches that were at least equivalent. Dug Cody-Spears but Spears just didn't have the juice to be taken seriously, glad Cody ended up winning. Main event and Kenny-Pac were good, although I don't think we'll be discussing them in the long-term. Had a couple of non-fans with us in the room tonight, and they had a lot of fun, although they were a bit skeeved out by some of the stuff in the three-way (mostly everything involving thumbtacks).

Probably a sign they were struggling to get a lot of guys cleared on visas. Can't imagine Impact promoting the show would shift too many tickets.

Yeah, he's perfectly serviceable and could fit fine doing mid-card semi-comedic stuff. He's over his head as a top guy, but that shouldn't obscure that he's a solid worker and character.

If I'm Taven, and there's any interest from WWE, now's definitely the time to strike while the iron is hot.

Yes. They sell more tickets in the markets they both run, and there's an overall energy to where the show is, even if they can be inconsistent, as frequently discussed in the MLW thread. And that last part is notable - there's a thread where people actually discuss the weekly MLW TV, which is far more engagement than ROH has at the moment.

30k is probably too high. You get cheap flights, venue rental could be a percentage of the gate. Ticket prices are usually higher than in the US and if you move a lot of merch, you could be either in the black or close enough that the brand value of being "international" would be worth taking a small loss.

I believe they did very well over there for a bit, but the summer tour last year didn't go great even with the Elite, and this one looks like a disaster. It should be noted, from a cost perspective, that they tend to use a good number of UK guys and limit the number of flyovers.

That they can't do, at least for the length of whatever contract he has with MLW. But they can probably prevent guys from taking random indies (Janela, for instance, is doing a farewell tour at the moment because he won't be doing indies after October).

They're in a bit of bind there, too. Full Sail is easy to fill and the crowd is energetic, but do they want to turn over a two hour live show every week to a small crowd that's as insular as the old TNA ones? But the flip side is that NXT has had pretty spotty success as a touring brand (the last Takeover was not a hot ticket), and unless the USA move significantly increases popularity, I'm not sure how well weekly TV would draw. It's going to be a fascinating time. Just hoping the quality of the wrestling programs lives up to how fun following the backstage drama will be.

In terms of MLW stuff, the only full match worth seeing is probably the title switch with Lawlor (and that episode I'm pretty sure had a highlight package with all the big spots from the attacks). July 6 episode of Fusion.