sek69

I mean, it's not as if the person who was the unofficial poster child for this wave of disgruntled independent contractors went and did two separate long form interviews on how he couldn't get the old man in charge of things to get past poop jokes long enough to listen to his ideas. It's going to be real cute when they try to cherry pick the obvious guys who don't read verbatim from scripts as if they are on the same level as the folks in NXT/Midcard WWE guys.

So it looks like WWE's new plan is to send guys like Road Dogg and Drew Mac out to do interviews saying the people not happy with their station in the company just weren't working hard enough to get what they want. That's a bold strategy Cotton, let's see if it pays off.

It wouldn't surprise me if Bryan had the inside word that this was coming, since it seems like the exact sort of thing he's geek out about.

The Demon-Wagner match is interesting. Normally Demon's at that level of "never losing the mask ever" status right below Santo, but there's been squabbles with the family enough where there's always that 1% chance he finally said fuck it and cashed out. Then again, you can tell from the mask-ripping spots that he's been doing that Demon is another Blue Panther where he'd look 100x older without the mask. You'd also think you want to save something like Wagner's first hair loss for someone on the come-up who can benefit from it, but that's sensible booking and you can't expect that from AAA very often.

Warrior basically calling his own death on Raw made him into a ready made PR bonanza ripe for the picking, and WWE jumping on that almost immediately was kind of icky even before all the other stuff happened.

AAA announced they will be running the LA Forum on 10/13, however they did it in the most AAA fashion possible by having a press conference without telling anyone.

WWE apologists really, really, *really* want to cast Tony as a Dixie 2.0 dumb fanboy money mark and will glom on to anything they think will reinforce that image. It's almost as if decades of Vince clearly hating being seen as a "rasslin' promoter" has trained WWE fans to look down on anyone in the business who legit enjoys professional wrestling.

I love his "Make Tag Teams Great Again" gimmick, it's a little too on the nose for a heel to go around pointing out how the tag division sucks. It's one thing to say it when it doesn't and he's a heel saying heel things, but it *does* suck so it just makes you agree with the bad guy.

Apparently the Dana Brooke-Sara Logan match at the Main Event tapings got stopped when Dana got a Dustin-level crimson mask from an knee.

Wow, I never knew I wanted to see that until right now. BOOK IT COURT!

In another era, Seth would have been an above average tag team guy. That kind of role would have accentuated his positives and hid a lot of the flaws in his game. Maybe even the Ricky Morton-esque "tag team guy who gets a shot at a singles title" role. Now he's another square peg in a round hole like babyface champ Tony Nese and flunkies-to-the-boss Revival.

Kross and Scarlett have been working in AAA, so hopefully that keeps their heads above water (and it might be a backdoor for AEW too).

Considering the state Tanahashi was in for Dominion, I fear what he's going to look like by the end of the G1.

Solid list but WCW Nash and Hall were just Diesel and Razor using their real names more or less.

On top of the normal Seth problems, it really is amazing how they are trying to make him the most unlikable babyface ever. Beating up EY was a straight up asshole move that probably would have been a heel turn in any other era.

FWIW, Dana is the reason none of Warrior's hate blogs are archived. She's put in work to make sure any record of his remarks survive on the internet. One of his blogs specifically mentioned wanting to make sure his kids shared his worldview, so it sure wasn't that. I'd be willing to assume Dana isn't as hateful as he was, but she did marry the guy and it's not like he kept his views hidden. Add that with her attempts to erase any record of the views he clearly felt strongly about leave me not really wanting to give her the benefit of any doubt. She's never said "what he stood for was wrong and I want to make it right", she wants to use his famous symbols for corporate PR and hope no one is able to find out how he really felt about it. Plus like Bix mentioned, WWE already did this when they named Connor the Crusher the first Warrior Award winner. Warrior said some pretty vile stuff about cancer patients when Bobby Heenan was sick, so having his name on an award being given to a pediatric cancer victim is like naming an award after David Duke and having the first recipient be a person of color. Yes there would be some irony in the Warrior symbol being turned into a pride icon, but WWE is basically trying to gaslight everyone by pretending his bigotry never existed. Luckily they did this as hamfisted as they do seemingly everything else so it ends up something we can point and laugh at them.

I love how the only thing they can come up with to get heat in LA is "LAKERS, AMIRIGHT?"........calling it lazy seems insulting to lazy people.

LOL AAA is learning, they wouldn't give Wagner a live mic after the match.

Also my goodness does Dr. Wagner's "I'm growing my hair out for the big hair vs mask match" hairstyle look ridiculous.

Lucha Bros won the titles back in a great match. Fans didn't seem to know/care about the Bucks at first (I did see one guy in a Young Bucks shirt when they brawled in the crowd), but they got 100% into it by the end with the finish getting a monster pop. Money was even thrown in after the match.

Plus they just did their big post-Elite rebuild around Lifeblood, and since then Teneille left and Juice reportedly told New Japan he doesn't want to go back to ROH since it diminishes the folks that are there.

He said on the radio show with Bryan that he thought it was a good match other than the horrifying head/neck bump spot, but he didn't want to give the match a rating and encourage anyone to copy it and/or do something worse. Also it happening around the anniversary of Misawa's death hit a nerve with him how Japanese promotions are starting to forget the lessons 90s All Japan taught.

They were always there, no one ever really made a full court press to get them back until now. Wrestling was able to support numerous territories and promotions for decades, yet when WCW died TV executives apparently believed all their fans got Thanos snapped out of existence.

They do, but then it comes off like some weird form of gaslighting when the talent is all "I chose my weird WWE name, the company didn't do it!" Yeah, but they asked you to change it in the first place though. Plus look at the way new signees react when people point out how silly their new names are on social media, the replies are so similar there's almost certainly a pat response they are expected to give. It completely sidesteps the point that in most cases, people are expected to stop using the name they built up on the indies (and presumably part of what got WWE's attention in the first place). It's OK though, one of Steph's talking points in her rally the troops speeches is how WWE is a place where you're able to really own your own brand!

If WWE decided to stop hoarding, the guys who didn't land in AEW would be bolstering places like ROH and MLW I'm sure. A lot of the lucha guys being wasted would go back to CMLL and/or AAA. Having a strong #2 promotion is a tide that rises all boats most of the time.