sek69

Yeah, and in between him and Tomasso get seemingly called up to the main roster as a package deal despite them knowing Ciampa's neck could be turned to dust in a strong breeze. Despite that completely fucking up a years worth of NXT stories, they did it anyway and then sent Johnny back after a couple weeks. I still have no idea why that was done, in retrospect it almost seems like it was just Vince fucking with Hunter.

You're not wrong, but the NA title came out of having so many people on the roster there they needed something for them to fight for. The flaw in that logic is that since they only have the one hour of TV per week, you can't focus on that many people anyway. So in retrospect adding a secondary title was them trying to put a band-aid on a wound that needs stitches. Just furthers my theory that historians in 20-25 years will be looking at the hoarding of talent as one of WWE/NXT's biggest issues, just from the ripple effect it creates.

Not only was she there, she was in the shot when they did the stand-up thing with Steph in the front row. I doubt Steph was sitting there all night, so that had to have been done purposely on their part.

I believe Dave mentioned that when folks get called up, it starts a new three year WWE contract. I wouldn't be surprised to see more seemingly "random" callups happen to make sure the ones seen as particularly valuable are tied up as long as possible.

It's like a ROH show, nothing's terrible but it seems like everyone's kind of running in place.

You know, when I think of guys who could use a live rapping intro....Adam Cole never comes to mind.

Shanya's run reminds me of that era in New Japan when Inoki had a hard on over proving pro wrestling was strongest, only to have their guys get wrecked by shooters every time.

Honestly the joke got too self aware in season 2 IMO.

You know, the real annoying thing about Mauro is that he's actually pretty good when not forcing in pop culture references. Someone there has to be able to tell him to reign it in a little.

I remember first hearing reports that Patrick Clark was trying out some sort of Prince gimmick on the NXT houseshows, and thinking "wow that doesn't sound like something he would be able to pull off that well". Glad to have been wrong on that one.

Ford's the one married to Bianca BelAir, right? Dude's just winning at life on all fronts.

The Street Profits' ring jackets look like every 80s jobber who tried to look like Michael Jackson.

Yeah I never particularly care about Strong, but I always enjoy his matches. Riddle is just overflowing with charisma, he looks like a big playful puppy that also has 47 ways to choke out a bitch. Also lol @ Road Dogg having to escape to NXT because he got tired of Vince being Vince all the time.

Still trying to figure out Sam Roberts' angle on these preshows. If looking like homeless Dean Ambrose isn't enough, it seems his gimmick now is to just shit on people like how he was pointing out Tyler Breeze did precisely dick on the main roster. Which is true, but fuck, way to make Dream seem like he isn't going to accomplish much by beating a guy who's a loser.

He's trading wins with Cesaro, who's spent most of his time in a gatekeeper tag team. He shouldn't be losing in random ass Raw matches to guys the greater crowd sees as midcard 4 life. No one is saying he should be beating Brock or Roman, but it's nice wrestling bubble black-or-white thinking. There's tons of middle ground between that and not going 50-50 by month two.

There was an almost throwaway mention in the WON this week about how Ricochet's time on the main roster opened a lot of people's eyes in NXT. Seeing a guy that can't-miss in the process of being wasted seems to be cutting through whatever magic spells they weave down there.

So one thing I think everyone can agree on is AEW absolutely needs to devote some time to introduce characters once they get on TNT. They don't want to fall in the trap of thinking everyone watching knows who these people are, as while it may be true for All In or Double or Nothing type shows, a larger TV audience will need a primer on who folks are.

Yeah, but they were almost always heels where their effeminate mannerisms were designed to get heel heat. To think that people in 2019 aren't ready to accept an effeminate character as anything but a conduit for heel heat is honestly the same shit we get mad at advertisers for when they paint all wrestling fans as poor, dumb hicks.

The hoarding of talent is probably WWE's #2 problem now. Not only do they have more people signed than they know what to do with, it impedes the growth of the newbies at the PC. It's going to be hard for them to get any meaningful ring time when they have so many guys with large (for NXT) deals that need to justify the expense. Honestly, the answer would be to clear out a lot of the dead weight. There's a lot of folks on the main roster they are never going to have any serious plans for, and it would allow for them to break up the logjam in NXT. They won't, since they are afraid of anyone leaving to go to AEW, so now they're going to end up with a WCW-level roster full of folks being unused/under-used/not used at all. The funny part is there's probably a handful of folks at most AEW would be interested in signing anyway. They've given every indication they aren't looking to be another Impact and sign up every WWE castoff they can. Plus there's always the argument that if these folks were so valuable, why aren't they going anywhere in WWE? It seems like Vince thinks it's still the 90s and he doesn't want to be like WCW and cut someone like Steve Austin who goes and ends up being a megastar for the other side. That would probably be less of a problem if they hadn't decided the company and the BRANDS were the stars rather than the talent.

Right, but if WWE was being run similar to how NXT was, things would be in a much better place. There still might be acts that don't catch on with the larger audience, but at least it wouldn't be due to lack of trying like now.

Plus he calls Sonny Kiss a "transvestite", which on top on everything else isn't even correct. He's not trying to present as female. I suppose a generous defense would be that he was trying to come up with an analog to exotico type characters for American wrestling that hasn't really existed before, but he ended up sounding like a racist who used the wrong slur for the group he was trying to be racist at.

NXT has been far superior to the main roster for a while now, and they seem to give the people there more freedom to explore their characters. I know he was an oppressive bore more often than not as a wrestler, but the dude seems to know how to book a company. At least one on the scale of NXT. It's completely fair to question if he can do it on the scale of WWE, but one positive of him being a territory era mark is he seems to understand the importance of long term booking.

You know, it seems like the #1 problem facing WWE is that Vince seems to be surrounded by a wall of yes men so he never gets challenged on anything. I always got the impression when Pat Patterson was his #2 guy, he would push Vince at least somewhat. Now, everyone knows the golden path to job security is to placate Vince's every whim. I don't know if that's something that can be fixed easily, or at all. Especially since the latest move was to bring back Bruce Pritchard. Even if AEW starts whooping their asses, I don't know if that would be enough for real change to happen. The status quo is so entrenched it would take a near-total upheaval in upper management of the creative team to make any impactful difference. I guess the real story is, will Hunter be willing to be the Prince Charles of WWE and wait forever for his turn on the throne? Vince's mom is still alive at 98, so he's got the genes to be around for a long time still (despite spending the last 35 years running on cocaine and Ico Pro).

Term of endearment is in the eye of the beholder though. It's not "PC thought police" to consider what effect your words have on others, it's being a considerate human being. I get called things like "honey" and "sweetie" at my job sometimes and it's weird (and I'm a dude). It's using a term that implies endearment or closeness, and when there isn't any it comes off as weird and/or creepy. At least stuff like that can be explained away as a generational difference (it seems to be nearly always older folks who use terms like that). Getting into anything homophobic/transphobic is 100% STFU territory.

Wasn't one of the women in the match the little girl Omega wrestled years ago? That might have been the reason. I'd like to think even Cornette would enjoy watching Aja Kong killing fools though.