sek69

It looks like the show was a big hit in terms of digital buys, more than the first TK produced ROH show, and was something like the #4 all time biggest attendance for a ROH show. Basically it was the biggest ROH crowd for a show not on a Mania weekend or in MSG.

Yeah it seems the most valid complaint one could make about AEW is that their Talent Relations department is dogshit.

I suppose the real question is how long do Steph/Hunter/Nick feel they need to keep things relatively status quo? I expect a lot of smaller changes that were directly tied to Vince quirks (like most of WWE Newspeak), but things like the general presentation to stay more or less the same for a little while longer.

Matches on NJ Strong occasionally from what I can gather.

I'd like to think we've all come to terms with your Mauro and Christian obessions at this point

Because dummies on Twitter think TK is a micromanager like Vince and personally oversees every department. Now you can (and probably should at this point) make the argument that he should have someone else running talent relations, but instead they just work under the impression that the owner of the company has to be on call for all the wrestlers at all times.

Also the plan apparently was always for Claudio to win the title, it's the reason TK initially signed him before Bryan got hurt. For Gresham to be surprised that it was actually going to happen seems a bit rich. I get the sense he tried a "that doesn't work for me brother" and it didn't work out the way he thought it would.

Rush asked Tony to have Dragon Lee as his opponent because he thought it would help his brother get signed, so that explains him putting in the work last night. Now him vs Mox will be interesting since Rush is very much a student of the LA Park School of Not Doing a Job. Gresham coming out for his match without his usual octopus getup sporting a boo boo face was hilarious. If you want to tell Tony to go fuck himself, fine, but don't go out to the ring all pouty like a child who was just told to eat his vegetables.

Rush vs Dragon Lee was crazy as expected since these two have probably been having this match since they were kids. Rush can very much be the Randy Orton of Lucha in the sense that you don't always get maximum effort, but when you do you're reminded why he's one of the best.

Pure matches aren't always my bag, but Yuta/Garcia was a banger, and Regal on commentary dropping knowledge made it that much better. I loved when Ian asked if it would be a concern if it went to the judges (one of them was Josh Woods, who Yuta beat for the belt) and Regal made it clear going to the judges was not acceptable like a stern dad

Six man was fun, I'm surprised Tony remembered ROH had six man titles. Daniel Garcia is so great trolling ROH fans, even sporting the Regal/Danielson maroon gear.

I was at work during the show, watching now, and I love how Regal was becoming excited at the ways Grisham was inflicting pain. He loved it even though it was his guy on the receiving end!

Vince's last act seems to have been removing him from the Maximum Male Models gimmick. Will that be overturned now? Maybe, but I'm sure Steph/Hunter/Bruce/whoever else is doing creative will have bigger fish to fry.

Bryan Danielson just announced he's cleared to return as of this morning and will be facing Daniel Garcia on Dynamite this week.

Apparently TK signed Claudio with plans to have him be a ROH guy before Bryan went down, so maybe that was the plan all along? I don't see it being a bad call no matter who wins, but it would be odd to have a guy who's part of one of the main AEW factions losing to a guy who has only been on TV a couple of times.

Maybe, but Old Man Vince was going around backstage 2 weeks ago saying FUCK EM, so clearly someone (Fox? USA? the Board of Directors?) stepped forward to tell him it was time to go. It's going to be something when the full details come out.

Pat's been allowed to break a lot of the weird verbiage rules since Vince loves him and is a mark for having a celebrity on his announce team, but there's been several times where Pat would say something and then be quiet for a while since Vince was in his headset. As for Dunn, it probably will come down to who ends up controlling creative. He'll be safe as long as Bruce is around, but Bruce's main talent was coming up with things Vince would enjoy so that makes him a third wheel now.

Rumors are that when Real Sports interviewed Vince for whatever their story will be, the questions he was asked showed HBO knew way more about everything than WWE/Vince realized and that's what prompted him to bail. We won't see huge changes overnight, but things that were 100% Vince quirks like strange verbiage and yelling in the announcers' headsets will be things that will no longer be happening. Dave pretty much outright said last night the announcing in WWE is going to improve immensely now that they will be able to talk like normal humans and not have to worry about getting screamed at all night. I also think Steph shouldn't necessarily be painted with the same brush as Vince, at least not yet. Yes that was what she was raised on, but since we've never seen WWE without Vince having final creative say, we really can't just assume she's going to just be Vince 2.0 only (hopefully) less horny.

Finding out that Maximum Male Models was a complete Vince idea he was interested in to the point he was in the ring producing segments is the least surprising Vince News of the week so far. Also puzzled that he had a specific idea in mind for how the Max Dupri character should be played, and that seems to be another piece of evidence he still doesn't watch NXT since Eli Drake/LA Knight/Max Dupri only has one style he can do.

Now I'm wondering if a WWE themed Resident Evil game would work.

As Dave pointed out last night, the plug for Smackdown at the end shows they meant for this to get out.

Bryan made a good point that in a situation where Vince didn't resign due to sexual allegations, having a guy with 40 years of experience promotion wrestling available as a consultant type role would be a good thing. However if whatever is coming down the road is bad enough to have the guy everyone expected would be doing this until he died actually step down, I don't see how he can come back unless there's a complete exoneration of all the charges.

Well it wasn't people on Twitter breathlessly reporting, it was people who have sources in the company all more or less saying the same thing. We've been too trained to yell FAKE NEWS when dealing with a company who made the phrase "plans change" famous.

It's quite the paradox that per the Stans, dirtsheets are always stupid and wrong and must be ignored....yet somehow every pro wrestling promotion spends their time coming up with elaborate works to trap them in.

As someone who owns a shillelagh I'm offended.