sek69

Agreed in the sense of it's clear he probably ran afoul of some WWE Locker Room Rules horseshit that no real adults care about, but I hate when wrestlers bash "the dirtsheets" in one sentence and then go on to basically confirm everything they said in the next. It's just adding to the annoying "fake news" narrative that people who actually do reporting have to deal with all the time.

Per Meltzer, Vince didn't want to let Dustin go either but Hunter talked him into allowing him to leave. As far as the business goes, everything else is just shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic without acknowledging that Vince is deep in "am I out of touch? No, it's the kids who are out of touch!" mode.

Miz sounded like an NFL scout describing a black QB prospect in that segment.

He went on to say it was no big deal, he always is looking for outside bookings. Since that's a thing WWE always allows their talent to do and all.

I can just imagine the boner Vince gets when he writes these Sami promos.

The Usos and the Good Brothers had a pretty nice tag team match, so there was that.

I love how "I'm a former..." is the new basic promo structure now.

Every time they show Kushida signing with NXT it looks like he has the "I made a huge mistake" face.

Can't imagine why the Revival haven't accepted that new deal yet.

Well that was a pleasant surprise to see him get the pin. I thought Drew damn near killed himself on that Claymore Kick on the floor though.

Drew kinda made him look like a chump by telling him to shut up....and then he just shut up for the rest of the segment.

Ricochet over huge with the home crowd, good to see him get some shine . However it was such a WWE thing to have him in there with three of the tallest people possible and Alexa Bliss.

Michael Elgin showed up after the world title match to challenge new champ Brian Cage.

Those are usually sent in advance, so most likely that was a planned match.

Scott also had a running gag that when Jeff Hardy used to have different colored scarves/hankies in his back pocket that they stood for different kinds of sex fetishes.

That was a good read, Lanny always comes off as as one of the guys in wrestling who seems to bullshit the least. Not sure why he went so hard on poor Bam Bam though. The biggest takeaway here should be we could have had a Savage-Shawn match but Vince was too stubborn.

But the company can release them at any time they want. The wrestlers don't have that option, so let's not pretend it's a balanced situation. Plus there has to be some good faith on both sides. I don't expect many folks are signing their contracts thinking "man, I hope they pay me my downside while I sit in catering doing jack shit". When you have a de facto monopoly in an industry putting guys on ice just to keep them away from a potential competitor that hasn't even run a second show yet....that's some shit that wouldn't fly even in our current landscape if it was any other profession other than that dumb rasslin' stuff.

If he could prove he could make more money working elsewhere, but is being held hostage by bullshit contract language that would probably do it.

It's the perfect scheme. Something like trustbusting would require someone in government to give a shit, and even if there were such a person it would be a non starter when the owner of the company is BFFs with the President. I would think something like the Luke Harper situation would be ripe for legal action since it seems pretty easy to show how he's being handled differently (not to mention how the whole freezing an injured persons contract bullshit), but that would mean he would have to risk burning bridges he may not want to.

It did for Ty DIllinger. Dustin Rhodes didn't get his deal frozen despite being out when he got his knee surgeries. I can see why Luke thought if he asked professionally they would let him go since they were doing nothing with him. The irony is they see enough value in him to realize he has the potential to be a star elsewhere, but apparently not enough value to actually do something.

I would have thought Matt Hardy put in a good word for Borash since he was so involved in all the TNA Broken Universe stuff. He's not wrong here. I feel the company will absolutely make an example out of her if she doesn't decide to come back. If they feel Luke Harper is important enough to deny a release and extend his contract when they've barely done a thing with him, there's no way Sasha playing chicken with them is going to end well for her. Things like this are why it's vital for a company like AEW to succeed, the only way someone like Vince is going to not treat people like disposable playthings is if there's a market for them to ply their trade elsewhere in the US. They don't even have to beat WWE, as long as they are in the ballpark as a viable alternative the whole business will be improved.

They are planning on launching a tiered service at some point, details are sketchy on what that will mean.

Vince's hatred of certain words (and having them be replaced by word combinations no human being would say in real conversation) will always be the defining Vince Quirk to me.

IIRC they started doing the barf inducing zoomy-zoomy cam when the Shield debuted, during their beatdowns. At the time I thought it made the Shield stand out, but now they do it all the time and it's nauseating.

I think it's funny the latest WON mentions WWE made a run at Joey Ryan (basically just because he's the only regular on Being the Elite not signed to an exclusive AEW deal), but he turned them down because he makes more money doing indy shows than he would moving cross country. Then Robert Roode shows up on Raw looking like Discount Joey.