sek69

I figured that would happen since California is cracking down again with their pandemic restrictions (the San Francisco 49ers aren't even allowed to play home games for the next few weeks).

I would imagine most of Zack's figures are ones he's collected along the way so he probably didn't spend *that* much unless he went chasing after a rare variant or something like that. Karl signed a big money deal to get him to leave New Japan so I'm sure he could afford a nice house. Also WWE has a history of co signing on mortgages on talent so they have something to hold against them if they try to leave the company at some point. It is 100% correct that the PC level and anyone in NXT who didn't have a name on the indies first are the ones getting fucked the most. They have to deal with all the bullshit and the only hope they can cling to is getting called up to the main roster so they can make money (with the tradeoff being their careers will probably be dead-ended in the process).

It should be noted Lana is only making that kind of money because she signed one of those "please don't go to AEW" deals and should not be considered the norm. Also it's bullshit anyone working for WWE should have to spend a penny on their own gear. It's another "independent contractor" loophole the company is abusing like how everyone has to pay for their own rental cars and whatnot.

I saw that Tony Khan mentioned he is considering breaking up Dark into a couple of development type shows, which seems like a decent idea to give them some purpose.

Also nice to see Big Bob doing the lord's work and taking out that sex pest Riddle.

It's so WWE that the only babyface who can seemingly get revenge when wronged is....*checks notes*... Dana Brooke?

Asuka as Lana's motivational coach is so stupid it goes all the way around to being awesome.

Yes, it certainly is a puzzle that indies who survive on selling tickets had an issue surviving without ticket sales. You can probably make an argument that too many companies put their eggs in the Wrestlemania Weekend basket, but I can't really fault anyone who didn't take into account "worldwide pandemic shutting down live events" in their business plans.

It's not even the first time either. There's several documentaries with talent talking about the struggle they had with trying to not be forgotten about.

Main Event started out on Ion TV and WWE wanted to have main event guys to show the network it wasn't going to be a throwaway show, which lasted like a month if that IIRC.

So they had a Jeff Hardy vs Ricochet match on f'n MAIN EVENT of all things this week. Imagine having a current high flyer face off with a legendary high flyer and the best you can do is put it on the D show no one watches instead of doing a PPV build. WWE really sucks at wrestling.

People were trying to say that just because Papa John's business is down (largely because the founder was revealed to be a sweaty, drunken racist) it doesn't mean the pizza business in general is down. The argument people were making that because WWE is down from its popularity in the 90s, it means no one is interested in wrestling at all. Dave was pointing out that interest in non WWE wrestling was higher than it's been in ages before the pandemic hit. He mentioned several non WWE companies doing record business and indies in general running more shows than ever, which would fly in the face of the "no one cares about wrestling" argument. tl;dr, WWE centric people try to argue the declining interest in WWE means people no longer care about any kind of wrestling.

It's the Unbeatable Superhero gimmick. It absolutely worked for Hogan in the 80s, but after a while it ran its course and wasn't "cool" anymore. The backlash against Cena largely went away when he wasn't being pushed as the Unbeatable Superhero anymore, his kiddy humor and questionable offense wasn't as objectionable when he wasn't being pushed as the guy who always wins.

Funny thing, Lawler did run for mayor in Memphis, and I believe he only got like 11% of the vote.

They should have the title match at the top of the second hour just to create the idea it *could* go an hour and plant the seed in people's minds. Then have whoever is going to win do so as clean as future plans allow. It will give everyone what they want, which is kind of what AEW has been good at.

I would wager there's way more people in general with ballots than we're aware of. It also wouldn't surprise me if the amount of women with ballots are a smaller number than that should be just due to how the business works, but yeah 1% seems, as Gorilla would say, Highly Unlikely.

I think the whole deal with the Kenny stuff is that Jim apparently is completely incapable of believing anyone thinks he's not the worst thing ever to happen in wrestling so it must be due to Dave putting his thumb on the scales. The idea that people could like Kenny and think he's great seems to be a completely alien concept to him. It's seemed to completely break his brain that a company where 3 of the 4 VPs are people he hates has been successful after he was on the record stating it would fail. At this point even if AEW isn't your jam if you can't admit it's been a major success even having to deal with a global pandemic, you're just being willfully ignorant.

Boa and XIa bout to get murdered by the old dude from Kung Fu.

I made myself giddy at the thought of Jake and Eddie battling each other on promos. Glad to see Abadon recovered from having her throat caved in, I love her gimmick so much. Wrestling is best when you have those characters that make you stop what you're doing all "what the hell was THAT"

It's refreshing to see a major promotion feature young guys and put them in positions to make them look good instead of having them waste away for years doing football drills and learning how to lift weight properly (I'm watching on delay and the Top Flight match is up now). Like AEW has a bunch of guys who can potentially be huge stars in 5-6 years when the competition will still be going with guys who were on top decades ago.

I popped for WIll Hobbs looking like 1993 era Tazmaniac .

My favorite example was how the producers of the Mandolorian discovered Sasha Banks from her appearing on Hot Ones eating peppers rather than anything WWE related.

real recognize real

British tabloids are the biggest trash piles in the world, so I'd consider them hating as a badge of honor.

You can't really get too mad when you get beat by a GOAT.