sek69

The only thing that would have made this better is if it was closing the show so Tony could hit us with a WE"RE OUTTA TIME

They used JJ's shoe as a weapon, this is officially the best Dynamite episode ever.

JJ!

lol at Conrad making an appearance on Dynamite

Yeah I was in the "as good as it could have been" camp. It was never going to be a five star classic, but it was better than I expected considering it was Cody + three people with little to no experience.

I'm just here for the return of the GOAT Tully Blanchard,

This caused a mental image for me that was both hilarious and horrifying at the same time.

Don Leo IIRC was pretty mobile for a big guy, so I assume Vince Sr didn't want to book him against an Andre who was slowing down almost daily even by the mid 70s.

A million times this. A true training facility would do a better job preparing people for life in WWE (as best anyone could be trained for such a thing) rather than getting them used to life in NXT. All the football drills and shoulder-busting weight training won't help if Vince thinks you're a geek on day one. Speaking of, you think Vince has ever had a conversation with Hunter like "goddammit Paul, why are all the people you sending me such worthless geeks? where's the MUSCLE MEN at? Of course having said that, Vince clearly doesn't follow NXT since he seems to have no idea who these people are when they arrive, so perhaps a little bit more interest in it beyond "tool I used to destroy AEW" would be benefical.

Yeah this whole battle has been a series of self-owns from WWE. From playing in to AEW's hands by acting exactly like the bully an upstart company and their fans can rally against (like ECW did back in the day) to making it clear any investment in NXT would be a waste once you see your favorites get called up and wasted on the main roster, all AEW had to do was not be a WCW/LOLTNA level of fuck up to succeed. They not only did that, they made sure they listened to their fans to not only make sure the wrestlers they got behind would be featured, but to not stubbornly keep going with things that clearly weren't working like Dark Order version 1.0 and Evil Brandi.

I don't know if it was intentional or not (I'm suspecting it was) but it does appear Vince Sr avoided booking other giants to keep Andre unique. Once Andre became a established draw, you didn't really see a lot of other giants around. Didn't Vince Sr have a bunch of rules other promoters booking Andre had to follow? He clearly knew how to keep him special, and it worked considering how long he was a draw as an attraction.

Is NXT really developmental though? I mean on paper, yes, but most of the talent being featured on NXT TV were either established indy stars or folks who were plying their trade elsewhere. Once they moved to USA, Vince was clearly trying to load it up as a third brand to destroy the new guys. Once it was clear it wasn't going to work that way, suddenly they were back on the "well, it's developmental" train to explain away the ass kickings they were getting. AEW definitely should be proud, they had the biggest company in their business take aim at them and they largely came out ahead. I think pre COVID there certainly was a boom period in the making for indy wrestling, there were more groups running shows than there had been probably in 20 years. The issue is people look at WWE's declining ratings as proof against that when it seems it just indicates people are not as interested in what WWE puts out as opposed to not being interested in wrestling in general. Will that come back when shows can run again? Who knows, but it certainly seemed the appetite for non WWE wrestling was stronger than it's been for a long long time.

Impact being dumb enough to go against Raw was 1000% more pathetic, NXT's blips of competitiveness would have been like winning the Super Bowl for them.

I love when someone outside of the WWE bubble accidentally reveals how programmed these people are. Anyway, as always Big E had the correct take on this by saying if wrestler vs rapper feuds lead to a new Def Jam Vendetta game then he's all for it.

This is all correct, but Hunter was on one of those conference calls saying how NXT was staying on Wednesdays for the long haul so the announcement of them moving is going to be one of those "the Leader told us this wouldn't happen but it did" moments. Lord knows the last few years have taught us people deep in the Kool Aid don't handle those particularly well.

A lot of people in the WWF were seriously believing the "WCW wants to run our little family company out of business" while for the most part guys in WCW were just looking to cash those Billionaire Ted checks and didn't really give two shits about the WWF. Like I legit believe Vince was under the impression Turner spent every waking hour trying to destroy him personally, when Ted just had a soft spot for rasslin' because it helped create his TV empire.

On the flip side, my Xbox One and now my new Xbox Series S have become my defacto New Japan streaming boxes since I can just access the site from the built in browser.

It probably wouldn't even need to be that much money, wrestling tends to get flagged as not advertiser friendly which makes it hard to make money at times. I'm just wondering who they will get to be on these shows, maybe AEW folks show up? I could see Tony being a homie and letting his people go there since the NWA has had their people on his show.

Yeah the show got canceled and the charity did the old "people were offended so we shut it down" tweet, without acknowledging it was being organized by a serial assaulter who's trying to use the legal system to bankrupt his accusers.

I mean....Bobby is pretty much everything Vince wants in a top guy except for...well you know.

Gonna be real fun to see the WWE drones spin this one, and by fun I mean denying all reality and somehow claiming this is s a victory in the Wednesday Night Wars despite only winning like one or two times (and a handful of weeks were it was basically a tie) and getting their asses beat the rest of the time.

If Brandi Rhodes is going to get called out for code switching, it should be mentioned how Randy's getting real gangsta in his tweets toward Soulja Boy. He's really bringing the "white kid listens to Ice Cube one time and suddenly thinks he's from the hood" vibes.

This is a remarkable thread so far, I really have nothing to add other than I found this and thought it would be a good addtion:

Miz is a top guy in terms of someone who does all the work the company expects from a top guy (media, press junkets, gigs hosting other TV shows) all while never moving any numbers a top guy should do. It's weird.....I don't want to say he's "cosplaying" a top guy, but he's been largely kept safely in the mid card in comedy or comedy-adjacent roles and can be temporarily be stuck in a top guy role when needed. He's never been seriously pushed as a credible main eventer though, even both his title runs were notable for just being set dressing for the real main event guys. Funny thing is, I'm confident he could be a very capable top level guy if his career wasn't hamstrung in the beginning by idiots jealous he was a TV star before entering THA BIZ and didn't do the proper amount of bowing and genuflection before entering the locker room. So I guess I'm kind of saying "not a top guy" but for reasons largely out of his control. I would love to see an alternate timeline where WWE wasn't a monopoly for an entire generation and he was able to have started off in a company that doesn't handcuff young talent due to their weird hangups.

I'm of the opinion Sr only sold (or whatever) to Jr because of his declining health, so he probably wasn't in much of a position to do much. But I do think having dad around kept VKM's more wacky inclinations at bay.