Loss

It's probably also safe to say based on the last week that when AEW references a Hall of Fame, they are referencing the WON Hall of Fame. This means that it's likely someone who hasn't been inducted.

I think that's a fair point. Jim Ross and Tony Schiavone haven't given any hint that they watch it, and they are the ones primarily responsible for selling AEW to the masses. So if they don't care, why should I?

Ok everyone, pro wrestling, which I've enjoyed for 30+ years, have a message board dedicated to, and talk about all the time, is not for me. I'm just nitpicking because I didn't like something that everyone else did. I wish we could get back to the idea that it's possible to like and dislike things regardless of if others like and dislike them, and regardless of whether or not they are successful. I tried really hard to make a distinction between stuff that would "matter" and stuff that wouldn't, but I guess that wasn't enough. If I think it could be better, wrestling's not for me.

I wasn't crazy about Dynamite tonight. -- I don't like it when anyone, no matter who they are, has their first wrestling match and just manhandles a seasoned pro in the first exchange. It makes it look like pro wrestling is something anybody can do. You get to the same end result if Cody gets in a cheapshot and ducks and runs a couple of times until Shaq finally gets his hands on him after the third lockup or something, with Cody getting all of these tiny victories first. Also, not sure I get doing a test of strength 10 minutes into a match. There was a no-sold powerbomb, the table spot was really poorly set up and telegraphed ... I just didn't get the praise for this one. The match was designed to make highlight reels and the table spot will get some non-wrestling coverage, so in that sense, it was a success. The match worked for what it was intended. I just kept thinking it could have been better. -- Next segment with Jericho and the Bucks. So last week, the heels beat up the Bucks' dad. This week, their response is to come out and cut a witty promo about Jericho jerking the curtain at the Performance Center? They did convey (sort of) that they were pissed off, but I kept thinking imagine if they hit the ring and did the physical part first and THEN cut the promo? It would have felt more convincing. As it was, it all felt too cute. Not to mention, we're two segments into the show and both have had table spots? The one in this segment, the announcers don't even put over. They just calmly move on to the video where they assume everyone alive knows who Atsushi Onita is. Okay. -- FTR-Tully vs Jurassic Express was really fun and I loved the commentary. I also really liked Ricky Starks getting promo time. I don't know if they know it quite yet, but I think he's the real future of their company. -- The rest of the show, I could take or leave. -- Ultimately, the stuff I didn't like about the show wasn't the type of thing that was going to hurt their growth or anything like that. In fact, between Shaq wrestling and all the angles and Paul Wight's big signing tease, this is probably going to do a great rating. I just don't like it when wrestling companies decide that if certain details don't matter to their bottom line, they don't have to care about them. And that's what I get from AEW sometimes that I wish was there: the desire to tighten everything up and make sure that there's a good reason to do pretty much everything they are doing.

Sek basically said it. On the WWF side, Vince had everyone believing that Ted Turner was genuinely out to bankrupt Vince and put him out of business because of a personal vendetta. Everyone thought WCW's purpose was to make it impossible for them to earn a living.

Indeed. They have just been continuing to iterate on that arena look ever since.

Vince absolutely played dirty with Jim Crockett. Building lockouts, sabotaging PPV attempts ... that's where I see the dirty tactics first and foremost. A lot of his behavior is probably illegal under antitrust law, but antitrust is often not enforced at the level it should be.

As much as Vince McMahon promotes a style of wrestling that I don't always enjoy and has never been my favorite, it's hard for me to see him as anything less than the greatest promoter of all time who at his best is able to create a pro wrestling presentation that looks and feels like absolutely nothing else ever has. We don't get the best of Vince very much these days, but I can't deny his accomplishments. He played very dirty to make it to the top, but he was also taking on a terribly corrupt system so we'll call that a wash. As for his father, he created Bruno Sammartino and Andre the Giant, two of the biggest and most successful stars in wrestling history, and I also can't dispute that he ran a successful money-making business for a long time. At the same time, it's hard for me to figure out where his genius begins and where the good luck of promoting in major population centers like New York, Philadelphia and Boston ends.

It doesn't help that current popular culture isn't all that defined except that it is significantly more overtly political. You go all in on that direction and you're going to lose half the audience unless everyone absolutely believes the company itself is a neutral arbiter, which I don't think anyone would.

Hell, they even took the boos as a sign that the Reigns push was working! That's how broken things became. You started hearing the argument that a universally cheered babyface just wasn't possible anymore, despite that Daniel Bryan was a universally cheered babyface just a year earlier.

If you base it on people who were getting organic reactions where fans seemed ready for them to take the next step, their biggest chances to make other stars at that level while Cena was the guy were probably: - Jeff Hardy - Rey Mysterio - CM Punk - Ryback - Daniel Bryan It's hard to think of Cena doing anything hindering their ability to get any of them over. In every case except Ryback, it's an issue of Vince not wanting to make smaller guys stars. Cena vs Johnny Ace headlining over the Punk-Bryan title match is pretty inexcusable. In terms of pet projects that didn't materialize as long-term headliners, their biggest chances were probably: - Alberto Del Rio - Sheamus - Drew McIntyre I don't see it there either. In terms of cases where people showed real talent and the fans were expecting something more to come out of it, you have, off the top of my head: - Cesaro, who I think Cena helped with their matches - Kevin Owens, who was never going to replace Cena but showed signs of boosting business early on, only for it to end when Cena repeatedly beat him (and to be clear, I'm not aware of any story of Owens being booked to go over him and Cena going back and changing it) The cases where there probably is something to the criticism, even though I still wouldn't put it all on Cena: - Wade Barrett/Nexus - Rusev Cena beat Rusev way too many times and basically destroyed what they spent a year building in the process. Even there, the issue seemed to be that Vince was treating him as a heel to be cycled up and down the way the company had treated monster heels going back to the 1970s. I do think the Nexus critique is fair.

I stand corrected. He got an offensive move. Does this negate the point? I think it's a ridiculous standard to say that in order for someone to be the "most unselfish ever", there can never be a single instance of them doing something selfish.

"Playing the race card" is a dogwhistle that never means anything good. I'm sorry, but that's it for you on this board.

It's an impressive number that suggests WWE is at least on the radar of more people than we see reflected in television ratings, to be sure. However, it's unclear to me how this is valuable to the company at the moment as anything other than a stat that they can brag about. I guess they could use it to make the case about their reach to a TV exec who might be looking solely at week-to-week ratings, and of course it will matter a lot if Facebook and YouTube ever start paying $1B for original content. We don't seem to have crossed that line yet.

It's the average age of the television audience, but that also means it's the average age of the audience. The only wrestling audience that exists now is the television audience, so if television viewers are aging, the wrestling fan is aging. That's my point. Their social media engagement is not meaningless, but it also doesn't do anything to drive big profits, so it doesn't matter a ton unless it's translating to people tuning in as a result of what they see on social media.

There isn't any other evidence, but I'm not sure other evidence matters either. Wrestling is entirely a television business now. They sell content to distributors. The #2 company in the U.S. doesn't even run house shows, unfortunately.

It's not really a matter of opinion, though. Television ratings in 18-49 tell the story. The average WWE viewer is now in their 50s.

With regard to the awards, this strain has always existed among WWE fans. This disbelief and resentment that people are capable of enjoying some wrestling more than they enjoy WWE. For 35+ years, WWE has trained its fans to think like this and has operated its company this way. It reminds me of how in the late 90s, the wrestlers on the WWF side saw the competition with WCW as "real" while on the WCW side, it was just business and nothing more. It becomes real for fans too, which is dumb in a lot of ways, because everyone is expected to pick a side and stay loyal to that side instead of just taking good wrestling as they find it, wherever they find it.

I think Allan (who posts as cheapshot here) does a great service when he posts historical GIFs. I swear, there are always at least some people who are surprised that wrestling before the 90s featured moves other than headlocks! But it serves as a great teaser, and even if only a few want to dig in more, that's still a few who do!

Do they have any library to speak of?

I don't remember the Swagger story at all! Rock was definitely selfless in doing jobs in matches. It worked because he never did a job in a promo. You never saw someone else, at least not that I can recall, get the last word, and end the segment with their music playing instead of his.

I don't know if YouTube has demos for its viewers.

My answer, by the way, is John Cena. Lost to every Johnny-come-lately that came through the company that they were momentarily high on during his run. Was willing to lose to Brock Lesnar in a match where had literally zero offensive moves. Lost to the Undertaker in less than 3 minutes at a Wrestlemania. It puts in perspective how bad Kennedy was, because I think he's the only person Cena ever had a problem with.

I continue to be fascinated by the portrayal of Ric Flair as a simultaneous babyface and heel.