Champagne

Seems they only switched it from Joe to Darby so that Allin would have a belt with him in Japan for the Muta Bye Bye show, sadly.

It can't be overstated how hard Cody worked to improve himself in virtually every aspect while he was away from the WWE and how much that has factored into him coming across like a star once he returned.

Believing that someone is being wasted because they are not the champion or in the main event is peak smark thinking.

If everyone is raving about the Bloodline angle, maybe let the people who've crafted the storyline determine where it goes instead of saying they've blown it and trying to insert your fantasy booking ideas.

Who decided main eventing Wrestlemania against Roman was the only acceptable outcome for Sami and anything else would be a waste?

How is Sami getting over not part of the WWE's own agenda? They've crafted the entire story and his role in it. I mean give the rigid, inflexible company some credit. Yeesh.

Liv 4 Brutality explodes!

Agreed on all points. Note that Cody's merchandise apparently sold out before the Royal Rumble.

I'm expecting Scrooge McDuck and Mr. Monopoly to be named as potential buyers at some point.

The track record of wrestling "journalists" "reporting" on WWE news is pretty abysmal, so I'm going to need to see this confirmed by legitimate business news sources before I believe it.

Stone Cold posted a workout pics and videos recently, so I think a Mania match might be in the cards. As for predictions: Roman vs. Rock Cena vs. Cody Lesner vs. Gunther Rollins vs. Theory Sami vs. Owens Usos vs. Banger Bros Rey vs. Dominik

Cody, Jericho, and Wardlow were forced to run a gauntlet to earn a match with MJF. Did Punk do so as well? I can't remember. Regardless, we've seen this story before, Tony.

HA! She should use star ratings if she really wants to cater to her audience.

Mandy's side hustle became a problem for WWE and advertisers when it veered into softcore porn with photos of her getting rammed from behind by her boyfriend, along with rating the dicks of her paid subscribers.

Yeah, how dare have a positive opinion of the guy he's previously thanked for saving his life. https://www.sportskeeda.com/wwe/news-vince-mcmahon-saved-life-wwe-veteran

KawadaSmile's description summed up it pretty well. I'm always aware that MJF is a character played by Maxwell Friedman. To be fair, I wouldn't have an issue with this if MJF wasn't hailed by so many as being a generational talent; I just don't think he lives up to the hype, unfortunately.

I find MJF's whole act to be very contrived and it takes me out of almost every segment he's in.

Here's Regal's exact quote: “I sometimes get that when I look around the building and I see people on their phones all day long when you’ve got one day a week to try to get better…I would be trying to get better. I would be asking or trying to learn something, right? You’ve got enough time on your own to chat with people or do something else on your other days that you’re not at work. You should be trying to get better. I don’t care one way or the other; it’s entirely up to you… My job, where I came from in NXT, I would politely go and talk to people, ‘Maybe you might want to invest a bit more time into this, and then maybe you’d be better at it instead of complaining about everything,’ right? This isn’t a fair job, so take all that out of it. Sometimes it works out — it doesn’t matter how good you are — sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn’t…99% of us who have got to anywhere in this job or had a career out of it have had to put a lot of time and hard work into figuring it out If you spend all your day messing about on your phone when you could be asking people and learning (from) people, that’s a problem to me. It is and it isn’t. It’s one of those things that I had to shut off in my brain…I’m gonna say this out loud: don’t come to me asking me just because you think you gotta ask, because I will see through you quicker than you wished I could, and now that I’ve said that out loud, in my old job, it was my job and I would help everybody… If I think you’re just asking me now, ‘I better go and pretend that I’m asking,’ don’t waste my time because I’d rather be helping somebody who cares…There was a point last year where one of the ladies who always asks questions and always tries to get better came up to myself, Samoa Joe, and Fit Finlay who were all (sitting) at a table, talking to each other. I looked around and she said, ‘Why don’t you go and instill some wisdom into somebody,’ to the three of us and I said, ‘I don’t want to interrupt their phone time.’… It’s about the priorities of you getting paid to get better at your job. Perhaps you should be getting better at your job, not trying to read about how good you are. Leave that until you get back to your room that night…I am open-minded and I am not like an old wrestler and do not want to go back to that, but you still got to put the time in to get there…”

BTW: total viewership was 870,000.

AEW had already set the precedent with Cody and the TNT belt, and Punk and the World title, so the optics would have been bad if Tony Khan hadn't done the same for the women's championship.

It doesn't matter how many veterans you have in the locker room if the younger guys refuse to take advantage of this experience. Some people have and will brush aside Adam Page's comments about not needing advice as an isolated thing, but Billy Gunn was on Road Dogg's podcast this week and says it's a company-wide problem. “We have a bunch of coaches that are best in the business. But nobody uses it."

Where Dynamite had Tucker and Hannity beat was the 18-49 demographic. Both had significantly more viewers than AEW overall (3.426 million and 2.98 million compared to 752 thousand).

I've long suspected that Jericho's contract with AEW includes roster usage requirements and at least a measure of creative control.

You mean AEW and ROH would become "some tab on a sh*tty, confusing app that's hard to navigate"? Punk might be happy to see both buried as such now; Funny how things have can change in a few months.

A masterstroke from Vince, really—recall his “I’m not so sure what their investments are as far as their talent is concerned... but perhaps we can give them some more.” comment. He knew Tony Khan wouldn't be able to resist adding WWE's castoffs to his roster and the negative effects the bloat would have on AEW.