sek69

Everyone claims Dave is being paid by someone. New Japan is paying him to rate their matches higher, the Bucks are paying him to shill for AEW, I even saw someone state they felt the intital Twitter bet with Cody that prompted All In was a work and Dave was secretly on the payroll. Are the Bucks and Cody talking to him/bouncing ideas off him? Probably. If they are serious about starting their own company, why wouldn't you want to discuss it with the guy who's been covering the business longer than anyone? Are they paying him? I would be stunned if that was the case. I don't know how anyone could read anything Dave ever wrote about anything and not come away with a sense of how serious he takes being ethical in what he does.

They announced it on BTE at midnight PST, same time as Dave's show dropped. The "worst" thing I can imagine is that they asked him to not steal their thunder by announcing it before they did, which isn't something I think is journalistically terrible. It was just them confirming what was already public knowledge due to the trademark stuff so it's not as if they were asking him to squash a new detail. So yes, he's trying to have it both ways by saying it wasn't a big deal because there wasn't any new info but also Dave is ethically compromised because he agreed to hold off on his report until they made their offical announcement. ....and yes, you are better off not paying attention to Twitter. Especially wrestling news Twitter.

Another bonus for the industry: several reports seem to indicate NXT is upping their offers to free agents, so no more lowball offers where the dangling carrot of making it to main roster WWE is used as the primary compensation rather than actual cash money.

Of course no one is surprised, which is why it's annoying to see him going back and forth between "LOL THIS ISN'T NEWS" (because it's basically just confirming what was leaked when the trademark stuff came out a few weeks ago), and saying Dave is morally compromised because he timed his story to release with the BTE episode where they made the announcement. Also being weirdly offended that the Bucks were denying reports of AEW until today being some kind of expose' of them being lying conmen is baffling since IIRC they were still under ROH contract up to 12/31. Going around saying you were signed to a new promotion while technically still under contract to their old one would be a monumentally stupid thing for them to do. Personally, I can't wait to see the domino effect this will have for the buisness. I've longed for there to be a non TNA company out there with a national TV deal ever since WCW died, and this looks like the best chance since then to have a real solid contender. A company owned by someone not just a clueless money mark being run by creative people being allowed to do their own thing is what the industry badly needs.

Bix is an interesting case. He's normally an alright dude and a pretty good writer, but he gets hung up on things and doesn't realize how petty it makes him look. He worked with Bryan and even took over writing the Figure 4 Newsletter for a while (which people pointed out was odd since Bix used to blast Dave and Bryan on their board all the time), until they had some sort of falling out. I don't know the details, and he might have a legit beef with the guys, but ever since he's made sure to let everyone know he doesn't give money to the site and has been on a mission to prove Dave is somehow journalistically compromised because the Young Bucks call him Uncle Dave and named a move after him. In AEW news, it seems pretty clear Zack Ryder will be joining as soon as contractually possible. It will be interesting to see how many "creative has nothing for you" WWE guys make the jump since it seems like they'll let guys do their thing to get over.

Dave broke the news that AEW is a real boy, Tony Khan will be running the company. Cody is the first announced signee, others to be announced in the next few days (my read: guys probably want to finish up with New Japan before announcing so we'll probably hear more after Wrestle Kingdom/New Years Dash). Also stated there's no TV deal yet but they have multiple offers already. Selling out All In was apparently the eye opener to some folks in the TV biz that this thing might have some legs. Also mentioned specifically that Jericho hasn't signed but he wouldn't have been doing the things he's been doing on social media where he's palling around with Tony Khan if there wasn't something happening eventually. Another line was "everyone you'd think that would be talking to them are doing so" and ROH doesn't want to be seen as being bumped down to #3 which is the motivation for them going out and signing guys more aggresively. ROH guys are not going to be working with AEW, which combined with them making a big money offer for Bandido (who the Elite guys showcased at All In) seems to indicate that ROH realizes they just spent the last couple years as an incubator for the company that will leapfrog them the moment they get any halfway decent TV deal. Also Bix is being Extremely Not Mad on Twitter over Dave being the one to break the news since he's eternally jilted lover of all things WON/F4W related.

So apparently Floyd's RIZIN debut was a not very well disguised work. I would assume based on the fight being announced, un-announced, then announced again that the plan was probably for it to be at least somewhat legit at one point. Floyd probably kept insisting on more and more rules and restrictions until it ended up the farce that took place. (also insert joke about Floyd being functionally illiterate and then signing a deal with a Japanese company)

As great as the Rock was/is, one of the legacies he left is that he's largely the reason why WWE thinks 50/50 booking doesn't hurt people and that long promo segments are good. Because Rock was able to spin whatever shit he was given into gold, the company thinks anyone can do it. Just like they think it's fine that they can job half the roster every week and it won't damage anyone's heat because the Rock would put over damn near everyone and it never hurt him because he's THE ROCK.

Liger more or less pioneered the NJPW junior division when it could have just petered out after the Dynamite/Tiger Mask years. Kobashi certainly has the better body of work overall, but there's been very few non lucha guys able to be good to great for so long like Liger.

God dammit, the local ads a few weeks back didn't make it clear that tonight was an actual Smackown taping instead of a throw away house show and now I'm at work while Becky is in my town doing awesome Becky things.

Next Week's Gems:

I would say 100% Vince, USA is still at or near the top of the ratings and despite it being at record lows it's still probably the highest rated show on USA by far.

Yeah there was that period where no one was using it after Benoit and then Shawn started using it sporadically as a way to get everyone accustomed to seeing it again.

Cena's springboard Stunner that seemed like it was a matter of time before it went horribly wrong (yet never did).

I believe the cool kids don't want to say they like Kenny because Dave likes him or some other nonsense. Kobashi-Kawada is like asking what kid is your favorite, it's almost not a fair question. If I was forced to pick I would probably say Kobashi, just because I think his overall body of work is a little better. Styles over Tana for me, AJ spent so much time toiling in TNA that a big chunk of his career gets ignored/forgotten about which is sad. Tanahashi is like the Japanese equivalent of HBK. If you want someone to come through on a big card, he's your man. Kenny-Okada is another close one, but Kenny's had like 3 of the best tag matches in addition to his 47 star singles matches so I give him the edge there. Bryan over Akiyama, since as stated earlier Bryan's been one of the GOATs for seemingly forever. Nagata over Taue. I have a feeling Nagata's going to end up being remembered either as "that guy from WCW long ago" or as being in nearly every opening match on a NJPW card these days. He's kind of like AJ where his peak was during New Japan's dark period where it was at it's low point exposure wise.

He was done with the AWA after that, right? I only remember maybe a handful of rematches then he was gone (to Montreal I assume) until his WWF run.

It's funny how one typo can inadvertantly reveal how many sites use the same source. From what I can tell, Graham Cawthon's site has it listed as Jake instead of Buddy, and since nearly everyone uses his site as the go to for results they all ended up with the same mistake. Also one thing that always struck me as odd is how unusual it was for a babyface to lose a world title clean (more or less) by submission. I know that Martel was on his way out to the WWF, but a babyface champ submitting the title away is still something you rarely see and it's not like Stan needed to build credibility as a tough guy. I always wondered if it was just Verne being petty over losing another top guy to Vince.

Holy crap Rusev vs Nak was great.

Will Hunter even be ready for Mania? Not sure of the healing time for a torn pec on a 40 something year old.

Yeah, Dave mentioned that all the planning went to the women's gauntlet match that took place (last week but the same taping) and they had faith Nattie could go out there and wing it with her and have a good match since she's been the one doing most of Ronda's training. I always wondered, for all the stories of people being stretched and tortured in the Dungeon, Stu must have done a good job teaching match layout since everyone he had a hand in training ended up really good at it.

Interesting that they would decide a pre taped Christmas Eve show was the best time to announce they are creating Women's tag titles, but at least it's a thing that happened.

Shane Taylor announced he signed an exclusive contract for 2019 as well. Time will tell if it works, but at least ROH is making the effort to restock.

The whole PWUSA thing is so fascinating to me. Everyone always asks why didn't the other promotions band together to fight back against Vince, forgetting that they did and it kind of was working briefly before turning in to exactly what you'd expect to happen when old school promoters tried to work together.

Thats.....uhh......exactly what I said in my post. It continues to baffle me that everyone seems to be tripping over themselves to throw money at every B level obvious-front-for-a-money-laundering-scheme MMA league but smaller wrestling companies keep getting told to GTFO by networks.

So it was announced Impact is moving to something called the Pursuit Channel as of January 11. Sucks that apparently they couldn't get any interest at all since the channel is majority owned by Anthem. It's also going to mark the end of me watching it since only a handful of cable companies get the channel and mine's not watching them.