sek69

Isn't Roman a proven merch seller? I seem to recall that being a talking point that even if he doesn't pop huge ratings he at least moves the needle in other ways.

Dave mentioned a key point on the Friday WO radio show, Paco Alonso owned a lot of trademarks directly rather than CMLL so those would all go to Sofia now. If she were to leave and start her own deal she could feasibly bring a lot of CMLL guys under their current gimmicks. We'll see what happens, but what's known for sure is she's pissed that she got the rug pulled out from under her. She didn't even show up to the Anniversary show, which was significant even though the show was a dumpster fire.

Mauro's been way more bearable the last two weeks of NXT, I'm willing to chalk it up to him being too amped up for the USA debut. Cole is very good at the style WWE wants their announcers to do, and a two man booth in this company will always be better than a three man booth. Also being paired with Cole will keep Corey from being too.....Corey since he's not going to get too snarky at at someone he views as a mentor.

They build up Kofi's win as the culmination of a career and a major event, he didn't usher in the next boom period but he deserved a better end than getting goobered like that.

THATS GOTTA BE CAIN!

Wow, Kofi got SD Jones'd (there's a deep cut for you)

Fury vs Wilder is a big time money match in boxing, surprised his people would let him do any wrestling related stuff.

He's one of the heavyweight boxing champions, he's as well known as a boxer not Floyd or Manny is these days.

Jesus, Braun runs like he's had a 15 year NFL career.

You don't even have to get HHH involved, Shane annoying William Regal would be amazing.

Say what you will, but you have to respect Shane's willingness to die for his art.

Edge was the only one to get a 100% heel reaction against Cena when everyone was getting cheered.

Tried the FOX app instead of my provider, and I got in, yay!

Side effect of SD being on network TV I forgot about until now: Fox doesn't allow me to stream from my iPad unless I'm on my home network. Guess it will be the DVR when I get home from work for me!

He also started going with the wet hair look that only seems to highlight how thin it was getting around that time too.

Well they released that statement congratulating AEW and said the real winners are the fans so golly it couldn't be that!

Konnan dropped a bomb on his podcast that Sofia Alonso is possibly leaving CMLL to start a new promotion. This could end up being another "everyone leaves with Antonio Pena to start AAA" deal since nearly everyone is pissed at Chavo Lutteroth taking over and cutting everyone's pay.

Yeah it's weird that a guy who had to retire immediately or risk catastrophic injury suddenly is cleared. Maybe he got some of those magic Rey Misterio stem cells?

I heard a very prescient thing about the mindset of both companies that I think will go a long way in determining how things pan out. Both companies have plans laid out on how they want to proceed, but while AEW does a good job of getting the fans to buy in that the company is trying to give them what they want, WWE tells their fans they are getting what they are getting and to be happy with it. WWE gets so weirdly antagonistic towards their own fanbase it's created a mindset where the company is the top heel. When a heel does something dastardly, the heat is rarely on the individual but more "how dare the company make X do such a tasteless thing". One thing that was crystal clear on Wednesday is that the AEW fans *love* the company so far. They willed that show into something better than it would have been on paper. I got goosebumps when Cody came out to start the show, these people were so into their guy they view as the heart of the company. It was kind of shocking to see that level of engagement after decades of WWE crowds barely able to show any enthusiasm after having the rug pulled from people they got behind time after time. Now obviously no one can give the fans everything they want 100% of the time, but at one time it was Basic Wrestling 101. Every territory had a Jim Crockett Jr type who would represent the company and occasionally appear to right some wrong or punish a heel for something exceptionally heinous . When they had to punish a babyface it was usually because they crossed the line and did something that deserved it. Creating an atmosphere where the management is actively fighting the wishes of the fans is both weird and harmful to business.

Has anyone ever said Rey doesn't look like he could beat anyone up? It's just a weird argument that only seems to happen with people in non WWE promotions.

It's so weird that the "X doesn't look like he could beat someone up" is still a thing when there's like a million MMA promotions out there where the smaller guys generally put on the best fights, and guys like Floyd and Manny are the two greatest boxers of all time.

I recall pointing out that there is a big audience of wrestling fans who are not WWE fans that no one's really tried to cater to in 20 years. Everyone else tried to be WWE lite, which why would you bother with Dollar Store WWE when you can just watch actual WWE?

This is all true, and most rational people would be happy with those numbers. However we know WWE isn't run by rational people, and they clearly were expecting their mighty WWE peen to crush these upstarts. They wouldn't have made moves like no commercials for the first half hour, loading up on title matches, and adding an overrun just just for giggles. I'm sure they never thought for a second they would lose, even in week one.

WWE putting out a statement congratulating AEW is hilarious for many reasons. Mainly that the whole point of them counter programming with NXT was to damage any potential competition for their talent to work at, and also you know it really burns Vince's (and Hunter's) ass to lose like this.

Having the AEW world champ in a featured match on Wrestle Kingdom in front of a large dome crowd wouldn't be the worst thing. Coming up short against an all time great wouldn't be damaging to the title either. Despite everything I said above I don't think they'd do it since they don't even recognize that Moxley is the IWGP US champ.