PeteF3

The people who need to be sold on the promotion the least are into it, yes. But it's a bad sign for how their TNT show is going to go. I'd rather they not play the, "Well, we can wait and change our presentation model when we have to" game and work on differentiating themselves and selling themselves to a new audience *now.*

Not having seen any BTE with absolutely zero plans ever to do so in the future, I'll go on doing something else with my time if I just can't handle the awesome post-modern meta-ironic booking of AEW, which all comes across remarkably like WWE Lite like another attempted competitor historically does. What purpose does it serve to put on something that, apparently, is intentionally dumb, like the Librarian? Can we have any promotion anywhere in the U.S. that doesn't want to turn itself heel?

The "self-awareness" almost made it worse. Contrived "hyuck hyuck, let's be WACKY!" bullshit instead of letting humor arise organically out of a situation like all good comedy comes from. My old acting teacher used to beat into our heads that actors in a comedy can't know they're in a comedy. "Self-awareness" is usually comedy death.

I liked the triple threat itself okay (though if they wanted to actually think outside the box as much as they want us to think they do, they'd can the idiotic first-pin rules) but this feels very WWE Lite despite the few token attempts at differentiating themselves. A completely useless 3-man announce booth more interested in bantering with each other than calling the match or explaining what's going on to a new audience, same general beats in the matches.

The Fyre references were cute for a little bit, but they're taking it too far in full WWE fashion, and why the fuck are we booking Kenny Omega to look like an incompetent dork?

Is Cornette making any money directly off of the podcast? His only sponsor is Stephen P. New and I'm pretty sure they're old friends, and I'm guessing that agreement isn't tied so directly to # of downloads. Of course there are Youtube views (for whatever that's worth nowadays) and indirect benefits like his book and merch sales, but it's not like he's getting a cut from Omaha steaks here.

I recall "Brawl to End It All" being in the Apter mags and PWI almanacs and such as well, so that's probably where it originated.

Here I always thought that "James E. Cornette" was a WWF invention--I think Bobby Heenan even takes credit for it in one of the Heenan/Cornette Straight Shootin's--but going through 1985 Mid-Atlantic, Cornette referred to himself as such in one of his first live appearances on the show.

His first Raw review (which wasn't really planned, but he wanted to watch Raw to see the Revival win the tag titles) did huge amounts of downloads, was talked about everywhere almost all positively, and was at least at one point their most-viewed YouTube video. They also got a lot of feedback encouraging him to review Smackdown, since this was when Road Dogg was still in charge (I think) and it was widely considered a far superior show. So that followed, more followed from that, and now they're milking the cow dry.

Sorrow's all about fun and good times and being chill until someone does it in a way he disapproves of, then the insults come out until he inevitably either slinks away or begs off with the "I was only funnin' ya" excuse.

No, I completely get what sek is saying--I've seen the Khan-Dixie Carter comparisons. I don't think that's fair to Tony at all, but there are some WWE loyalists who think it is. Dixie is on another level even from Charlie Ebersol.

No one is claiming that anyone who knows what they're talking about thinks Tony is dumb. That said...reading up on the demise of the AAF, it's not hard to see comparisons between Tony and Charlie Ebersol. Charlie was another son of a irch person saying all the right things, too, and then it turned out that the league was on the verge of folding in Week 2 before a temporary bailout. *That* said, I don't know if Charlie ever successfully ran a business on his own like Tony already apparently has.

I wonder if Suzuki just opted out this year. Dude's 51, can't take back bumps, and the G-1 is a grind he may just not want to be a part of anymore. The rest of the turnover is cool, though--all the new faces are welcome ones (even Taichi, who got the biggest crowd pop of any announced participant).

It doesn't, but there is another domed stadium in Atlanta in its place. Still...there's a difference between getting fly-in business to tourist-friendly cities and running weekly TV without necessarily all the big stars wrestling (which they shouldn't be--you can't have Omega doing his 25-minute Strong Style main event match every week). I'd try to stick to arenas under 10,000 for the most part and maybe some Manhattan Center-esque venues with hot crowds. They've proven they can sell out supercards, but for a weekly show that's not necessarily in Chicago or Vegas or New York? Could they sell arenas full of tickets for a standard episode of TV in Cleveland, or Houston, or Seattle, or Des Moines?

Dick Pound is also a real-life bigwig for WADA who was a rather infamous name in Canada for awhile, going back to the Ben Johnson doping scandal. Though supposedly the Principal gimmick was based on a teacher that Bruce didn't like. Other great Bruce Hart names: K.Y. Wakamatsu, Sodamn Insane, Frank Einstein (Carl Leduc doing a Frankenstein *and* grandson/great-grandson of Albert gimmick, seriously), Drago Zhivago, Ronald Trump, Ben Doon MacDonald, and dressing up then-young boy Junji Hirata as First Nation star Sonny Two Rivers. This has nothing to do with Stampede, I don't think, but while I was kicking around wrestlingdata looking at the careers of some of these Stampede lifers, I came across a result for High Impact Wrestling (2000s indy based I think in Saskatchewan) for someone wrestling as "Gordon Solie, Jr.," which made me laugh out loud.

Live and on the road is the plan.

Spitting at someone is legally classified as assault, so yeah, he could conceivably have grounds for something, even if it's just a nice settlement.

https://twitter.com/xiamhollywoodx/status/1135413375138009089?s=21 There's the story from the fan's perspective. He said some things that were slightly off-color, I guess, but nothing profane and a.) he was spat at first, and b.) Velvet Sky brought the sex stuff into it first by calling him a virgin. Basically it seems that she and Bully Ray were upset that she got clapped back on. And he was doing this to the heels!

Tony (and not Shad) also owns his own sports-analytics business.

A gimmick can still be a gimmick even if it's "real life." Punk's straight-edginess, Bryan's righteous liberalism, Boss Man's past as a prison guard, Paul Bearer's past as a mortician, Ricki Starr's ballet-dancing...these were all both gimmicks and "real."

Ricky Starr was one of the biggest babyfaces of his era, and that was in the 1960s. Adrian Street was a heel in the US more often than he was a babyface, but he was credibly pushed as a lead babyface in Alabama. Of course, having Linda with him probably changed the dynamic a bit, even for someone who looked and acted like Street. I get Cornette's criticism that Sonny Kiss wasn't properly explained by the announcers, but I absolutely think that Kiss can get over today.

The weirdest criticism of all wasn't any of the above...it was the idea of a woman officiating a match somehow ruins the "danger." I could see where he was coming from on almost everything else he said, but that was just plain bizarre. Wonder how he'd process Kim Winslow officiating UFC heavyweight fights, or Sarah Thomas officiating NFL games.

And some more Valentine just showed up in the JWA retrospectives that aired recently. There are some '70s Wahoo matches that are known to be out there in the hands of a few collectors but not really circulating (mostly revolving around Steve Yohe's long-in-limbo Destroyer comp).

Double or Nothing just got an in-game plug on TNT during the NBA playoffs. Aside from Marv Albert mispronouncing "Jericho," that was cool.