sek69

I know I keep banging on it, but lets not forget there was a whole generation of fans who grew up watching and liking non WWF/E wrestling and they didn't just cease to exist when WCW went away.

Best response I saw to those team names was "they have a strong sense of 'I forgot the assignment was due tomorrow' about them".

Also Bayley's still an asshole who's supposed to be a babyface. Dumping Charlotte out of her chair was such a dick move that made her look like a bigger bad guy than half the actual heel roster.

I mean, it's not hard to gauge what their audience is there for. It's why Cody did the throne smashing bit, it's why they do references to Vince's out of touch mindset on Being the Elite. It's why Cody has been doing everything to shape AEW as a modern-day update of NWA territorial wrestling. He would know better than most there were millions of wrestling fans in the past who weren't into the WWF/E product. He knows (and the ratings bear out) more and more people are tiring of current WWE. Obviously they weren't the first group to try to tap that market, but the stars aligned for them to be in the right place at the right time with a financial backer equal to Vince who actually has an understanding of the business.

It was a follow up to Shane fining him $100,000 for attacking an official (Elias), and KO was trying to reason with him to reconsider.

To be fair, I never thought the problem with Mike was his ability to have a good match. Dude just has the personality of a bag full of hammers.

As soon as NXT loses head to head, Vince is going to blame the small crowds (or anything but the obvious) and change everything he can.

Yeah but he's acting as if we're in a world where DVRs don't exist. I work Wednesdays and I'll be recording AEW to watch when I get home and catch NXT on the network the next day. He got USA to give them more money for NXT, so good on him for that at least. The idea that running live opposition means folks are locked in to only watching one or the other in 2019 might be the biggest "Vince is out of touch" moment so far, since it's feeding directly into the narrative he's trying to combat.

AEW: We're here to present an alternative to wrestling fans tired of WWE's product! WWE: *puts out even more product as a counter* I mean....I'm not going to claim I know more about professional wrestling than Vincent Kennedy McMahon, but how can he not see this plays directly into their hands? This isn't 1986 where you can burn out the market for a Crockett show by running a 6 hour Superstars taping the day before.

Ironic on a show where Dominic made an appearance they do an angle saying a deceased wrestler is in Hell.

Seth sucks for all the reasons we've mentioned before, but holy shit are they portraying him as the all time idiot babyface here. Braun might as well be wearing a shirt saying I'M GOING TO TURN ON YOU and he's all "you ready for our match big guy".

Sonya as Diesel to Mandy's HBK is everything.

Nikki still using her old Sanity theme whole teaming with Alexa is jarring.

Kofi with an all time RKO sell, it was like he dove headfirst into an empty swimming pool.

That segment was great.

It's really something that the official WWE video game looks like something made for the PS2. I suppose it's small consolation 2K Games hasn't turned it into a microtransaction filled cesspool like their NBA games, but yikes.

Not gonna lie, I wouldn't be mad if they kept doing the "Street Profits party with Ric and quickly realize they can't hang" interactions.

He was wearing braces after he knocked his teeth up into his jaw by hitting the ringpost, now I think he wears a mouthguard to keep that from happening again and also I'm sure Vince thinks it's hilarious to have him talk with it in.

Vic is actually pretty good. Hopefully he won't get it beaten out of him.

Smackdown won't get canceled. Worst case scenario it draws too low a rating for network TV and gets shunted to FS1. It would be a blow to their ego but it won't be the end of the world.

While I get the argument that Dave has made that running secondary venues makes you look second rate, Running mid-sized building that are full of people comes off much better than WWE having to tarp off the top level or two every week to keep up the illusion. If they were running in that venue next to the Jaguars' stadium every week that might come off as second rate, but it's as if everyone forgot what made Nitro the cool show to watch before the nWo showed up was that they would be in places the WWF wouldn't go to and in buildings they wouldn't run in. It looked different, and provided a visual hook to grab people who were flipping by.

Honestly if someone would just tell Mauro to stop trying to force pop culture references in every sentence, the annoyance factor for me (and probably everyone else here) would drop by at least 75%. It's like they are afraid to offer him any kind of production and just let him do whatever he wants out there. Which would make NXT on USA interesting, since there's no way Vince is going to allow any announcer on his TV go unproduced. For that matter, wonder how Hunter feels to see his baby get turned into another death march slog of a WWE TV show when it only got popular as the homegrown alternative to the main roster.

We all know Vince is just going to end up making King Corbin and we're all going to be upset we didn't realize it sooner, right?

Welp, looks like I'll be one of those chumps trying to get tickets for AEW when they go on sale. BTW, the Petersen Events Center is a great venue for them. It's in the city on the Pitt campus, it's a newer building, and it's one of those "not a bad seat in the house" kind of places.

There's apparently another significant bit of news in regards to the NXT to USA story to be announced tomorrow as well. As far as it being an end of an era, it's all but guaranteed Vince will be paying more attention if it's going to be their counter to AEW. I would expect a way more main roster style show than the NXT we've been used to. The bigger question is, NXT on USA means it will fall into the 30 day delay Raw and SD have in terms of the network. How will moving NXT off the network hurt subs?