sek69

Lawd, they're really going to do it.....

Nah, I'm a fan too. I won't try to claim it's the greatest angle ever or anything but it has me wanting to see what happens next which nothing on WWE TV (that doesn't involve Roman) has done in a while.

I would hope Alexa follows Bray if he gets drafted. It would be so on the nose for WWE to drop their angle just as they were about to make their big reveal as Harley Qunn and Mister J.

NXT was a pretty good show, but man do they seem snakebit right now. First they had another covid outbreak, then Finn broke his jaw in two places, and tonight Ridge Holland's leg exploded. Oh yea, Teagan got another ACL injury.

It's just backdrop for the angle, and if the cost of getting Jericho to help build the company up as a heel champ is to have Dr. Luther in a match on Dynamite....well I'd be okay with that.

SPINEBUSTER!

The Hammer in the house! Nice touch.

Speaking of Raw segments, I laughed at the Bucks watching TV backstage with their backs to the set and their heads turned around like an owl.

Well by all accounts getting rid of Harold Meij was a huge step in normalizing relations. He pissed off the Elite on their way out and him being the CEO was a major roadblock in the companies working together. I'm sure the rest of the New Japan brass realizes working with AEW will help them build up their US presence and it would be stupid to let one person get in the way of that.

Tanahashi popping up in the Jericho tribute videos will certainly get the rumor mill working overtime about a NJPW/AEW agreement.

Brother @KawadaSmile will appropriate them starting off with BIG MEN SLAPPING MEAT match.

You can get a N64 game shark to use as an adapter.

It was cute, and for once the babyface "won" and got the girl rather than get humiliated by the heel.

The Otis/Mandy deal got dropped because the writer involved got laid off due to coivd,

I would imagine they get tons of anti-union propaganda thrown at them non stop, all the usual "unions just take your money, the company can help with your workplace issues better than a union can" type stuff. Wal-Mart had an entire team that would swoop in to deprogram everyone if they caught wind of any unionizing attempts, one can only tremble at what a Vince-run company does.

It ended up that way, yes, but the MSG show was intended to follow up on All In and was supposed to be headlined by a Omega-Okada IWGP title match.

It just seems really unfair to hold it against modern WWE candidates that the company they work for discourages any single person being a draw as opposed to THE BRAND. Like, there's never really been a time in history where the industry leader actively works toward making sure no one gets over enough to be irreplaceable. How can you fairly judge anyone who's in that environment as opposed to someone from past eras where every company's #1 goal was to build the biggest stars.

British Brock coming out to drop off Adam Cole's corpse was not the ending I was expecting to the show.

I can't help but keep noticing they have to have randos sitting at the commentary table with Vic to try to hide that Beth and Barrett are not there in person.

They are both very adept at being examples of what said departments should't aim for.

So they remodeled the PC to make it like the Thunderdome and Full Sail had a weird baby. Walls of video screens and about 100 people in the crowd live. Naming it the Capitol Wrestling Center (and using an updated version of the CWC logo) is a good way to market it to the over 50 demo that is their most loyal audience I suppose.

Taker had a broken ankle or some other kind of serious leg injury going in to that match, so he had no business climbing to the top of a cage to begin with.

Not to mention it makes KO look stupid for putting himself in place for what should have been an obvious trap, especially since his character in particular tends to call those out.

A counterpoint, a lot of the wackiness and angles of olden times is seen through the rose colored glasses of nostalgia. Yes a lot of it was great, but there was a lot of shit back then too. I think a lot of it comes from everyone being used to the strictly scripted promo style where 80% of the people come off looking like wooden robots struggling to read verbiage no human being would use. Then you watch tapes of old stuff where folks who were considered third rate promos at the time come off sounding like the Rock since they are real people putting emotions into it.

I think it's a combination of several factors: 1: There hasn't been a company on the level of WWE in a generation, so someone telling Vince to GFY was potentially limiting their careers to the indy level unless they could latch on in Japan somehow. At the end of the day it still comes down to the talent to come together of course, but it should be noted there is a lot going against them from being in an industry accustomed to being a monopoly to almost certainly getting fed non stop anti unionization FUD on a regular basis. 2. By all accounts Vince is very good at convincing people to pledge their unyielding loyalty to him. We've seen several folks in the company flat out embarrass themselves on various platforms licking the company boots, and not all of them were low card folks doing it for understandable job security reasons. What stood out to me when it happens is how they all use the same verbiage in a matter that clearly shows there is an effort in the company to train people to be like this. Folks who've come up through the PC seem to have terminal Company Brain so clearly not all the time there is being spent on football drills and weightlifting. 3. People still having the "well that guy got fucked, but they wouldn't do that to *me*" mentality despite all the evidence to the contrary. I will say though some things do appear to be changing. For better or worse this era of talent is far more aware of the power you get from being successful on Twitch or YouTube. Meltzer has said many times his son and his friends know Xavier Woods and Kenny Omega as video game people more than wrestlers. Vince trying to horn in on anything built not using a WWE owned brand name might just be a line too far for some. Not to mention there appear to be a lot of folks venting to Andrew Yang, so clearly people are saying something. Dave got a lot of people talking to him when this first started too. I don't discount the possibility that if Yang ends up in a cabinet position (or as he said he's likely to be in contact with those who do if he's doesn't), folks might just start giving him the info he needs to make changes. After all, people will put up with a lot of bullshit but if you start messing with their money it's a different story.