sek69

So I'm guessing Thread Killer went to the AEW Shop and bought all the Christopher Daniels merch after that "the Dark Order Sucks" video

Lance Archer in the house!

I was under the assumption that Kenny was like the modern day Pat Patterson where it was kind of an open secret he was gay or at least bi, but never talks about it and it's not a big deal. That made the stuff that Jim was saying seem more hurtful.

So based on Matt Hardy's videos, Being the Elite, and Evil Uno's twitter, this looks like the week we get the Exalted One showing up.

Setting aside the possiblity of him working (which as discussed I think he's gone past that point by now), it's been pointed out to him by many people including Dave himself that he's done a lot of the same comedy stuff he shits on guys today for doing. As far as I can tell he's never really had a proper response other than "well my silly shit was different that their silly shit" which ignores the concept that both were in fact silly shit. Also it's pretty underrated how Jim's rants on Kenny Omega nudge up to (and sometimes cross over) the border of being homophobic, and he's a guy who's gimmick was a sissy mama's boy who gets beat up by women managers.

Haven't they done that for years with WM though? They have their annual meet up and sell tickets to meet and greets and whatnot for everyone to go to?

Well yes, but pro wrestling is kind of above and beyond in terms of it being accepted that you're going to be lied to and it's just "workin' da boyz".

Well I'd wager most of us bathe so I wouldn't say that (see what I did there)

Bryan's been watching the Monday Night Wars shows for the retro shows with Vinny & Craig, which means he watches twice the WWE content most folks do. He's so done with their bullshit at at this point, he's way harsher on them. Dave is usually "it is what it is" when it comes to WWE and usually reserves his frustration for when they are being blatantly dishonest.

Because of course logically when there's a communicable disease on the loose, the first thing you want to do is go to a crowded store full of items everyone's had their fingers on. At this point I'm fairly certain coronavirus is just Darwinism leveled up. At least it made sense when I went to restock my hand santizer dispenser and all 8 billion sellers on Amazon were out of stock, I have no idea what TP is supposed to do to prevent you from getting sick.

Bix retweeted that the city of Tampa and the mayor are having talks about what to do with "events with large crowds" which would only seem to refer to Mania and I guess the XFL team (insert joke about them drawing a large crowd here).

AEW will probably add a secondary singles title when they get the extra show on TNT, that would be where Cedric would be slotted if he went there. Which at this point seems like more than he could ever hope will happen in WWE.

Is he failing at fact checking, or is he at the mercy of having sources in a carny business known to be full of liars? I honestly think it's a little of column A, a little of column B. I get the impression once Dave validates a source on a couple of stories he tends to rubber stamp anything he gets after that point.

My take, for what it matters, is that reporting on pro wrestling is probably the most difficult beat to work on for a journalist. You have to try to sort out what's true from people trying to bury others, make themselves look better, or just straight up lying carny assholes. I think Dave's more than a little bit jaded as well after doing this for so long, and that will sometimes come out in his interactions with others where he comes off looking not that great. He also has a fairly dry sense of humor that can easily be missed if you aren't used to it. The biggest thing I've noticed is his inability to let even the tiniest detail go uncorrected. He'll derail a show he's doing to correct a minor mistake he told in a throwaway story he told weeks ago, often a point no one would possibly care about or even notice if he didn't mention it. It's the source of a lot of his Twitter antics as well, dude just has to correct any wrong information he comes across, and as anyone who's ever been on Twitter can verify, it's pretty much non stop there. Knowing that is the way his brain operates, it leads me to believe that for example Dave would never bother to ask Eric about WCW since it's clear he would not believe anything he said about it. He's stated several times that between having a poor memory and now with his podcast gimmick, Eric would not be a reliable source of information about anything. There's also been several times where he's sat on stories he knew to be true (and ended up coming out later) because he was not able to get more that one source to verify the info he was told. That leads me to the other comparison mentioned. Popular doesn't validate his opinion, sure, but using the Fox News comparison begs one to consider some context. I 100% believe Dave attempts to get every story completely right. Does that always happen? Of course not. There's no way anyone could achieve that considering the nature of the business being covered and it's innate reflex to hide/obscure truth/flat out lie. Do I believe the attempt is made? I do. I don't necessarily believe Fox News for example is making that same attempt. On the other hand, I do think some people are looking too hard to see boogeymen when it comes to him. He's friends with the AEW guys, but I don't really see his overall opinion on their shows that much different than anyone else's I've seen. He was just as hard on them as anyone else during that period in December before Tony stepped in where the TV shows were a mess. No one batted an eye, but when he liked their PPV (as did everyone else), it's OMG BIASED MAN ON THE PAYROLL. I feel like I sometimes come off as a Dave Defender, and I suppose I am to some degree. I just think a lot (not all, but a fairly decent amount) of people being critical are not always doing so in good faith. WWE fanatics consider anyone slightly critical as a biased hater, as if there was no way anyone could ever be critical of WWE. Dave would be well served to stop giving in to his OCD-like need to correct the trolls. Not only does it not make him look good, it just validates them to their peers and makes it seem like they had legit points to begin with.

Wanted to include ThreadKiller's post from the AJPW Pillars thread here since it is very well thought out:

Yeah it's funny how they often fudge the time between entrances for the Rumble based on angles, but Shayna was left out there for two long "is someone ribbing her?" periods of time back to back.

Ironically Street Profits/Viking Raiders/KO vs Seth and the Messiah Minions would have made a good feud to build a War Games to if they did such things organically. rather than shoehorning it in to a gimmick PPV.

Edge out here stealing Jake Hager's finish and whatnot.

Asuka is the greatest

A little, but this gives them the chance to put their own label on it, all be it one designed to tweak WWE'S nose.

I thought for sure Nattie broke her jaw eating Sarah Logan's knee on that dive.

It's a thing that's happening. The Viking Raiders vs Ryder/Hawkins was added as a pre show match that should allay fears that D-Bry would end up there.

If they get a deal like UFC got with ESPN, who's to say it wouldn't be the same or worse though? Guaranteed money each month would certainly cause WWE to have even less motivation to spice up the booking. Plus it's been proven time and time again that the whole "PPV is a dying business" concept people were pushing so hard was clearly false. Boxing and UFC prove you can still get millions of buys if you put together a compelling show people want to watch. On a smaller scale, AEW able to break 100,000 was an unheard of number for a non WWE wrestling show until it happened. WWE saw falling PPV numbers and just decided "welp, no one buys PPV anymore, time to come up with a new business model" instead of considering the more likely answer of "we produce too many PPV shows a year and on average we're lucky if more than 3 or 4 are worth a shit".

UFC moving to ESPN+ and being able to have people pay for PPV in addition to paying for the streaming service made Vince realize he left money on the table.

I doubt it, maybe open the main show at worst. Unless there's some mega angle planned they absolutely need time for I don't see Bryan on the preshow.