sek69

The much bigger worry as far as TV goes would be the sports bubble bursting entirely, and based on how fast ESPN is shedding subscribers it's going to happen much sooner than everyone thinks. Basically ESPN set the tone for everyone getting higher TV rights fees by paying billions to the NFL, NBA, NCAA, et al. They're getting dangerously close to being at the point they won't have enough subscribers to cover the costs of the checks they wrote. When that particular shit hits the fan, it's going to trickle down to companies like WWE who are going to take a bath on their next contract talks. Every network is going to be able to claim poverty and lowball the hell out of everyone looking to negotiate a new deal. The cold truth is that they could be doing Attitude Era TV ratings and it probably wouldn't matter since the money most likely won't be there no matter what. If that in fact happens, Vince is going to look like a genius for having the Network to fall back on so the company would at least have a life raft to hold on to.

Yeah, it's not like we have 30+ years of them in the public eye to draw on or anything.

Another interesting point is in the breakdown of ownership, I believe Linda only owns 8% and Shane and Steph each own 2%. Vince's share is like 48% or so after the last sale he did, it could come down to how his estate divides his portion when the time comes. Wouldn't it just be the most Vince thing ever for him to spend the last years of his life grooming Steph to take over, only to will his entire ownership stake over to Shane?

The only guys who should be doing holds are guys like Jack Gallagher who's gimmick is being a technical wrestler. Otherwise it's just a third hour of regular WWE programming with purple ropes. The cruiserweights on Nitro were doing shit no one had seen before in 1996, and they had the benefit of being on a show main evented by guys who by and large hadn't left their feet in decades prior. A flippy guy show in an era of main event flippy guys is not going to wow anyone. And I'm saying that as someone who's a fan of most of said flippy guys.

I wonder if the issue with that episode was the "Lombardi Trophy" bit that ended up being a Brooklyn Brawler gag. The NFL is notoriously insane when it comes to anything even close to resembling their Super Bowl IP.

Watching it now, the Raw Bowl match itself isn't that bad in terms of how wacky 1996 WWF can be. The commentary with the endless forced football puns made me envious of the deaf though.

The brand split didn't help either. They had to fill rosters so now we have American Alpha on SD as complete nothingburgers every week instead of being stars on NXT. They had to fill 2 women's divisions so now we get too green for TV women's matches on NXT.

STOP THE PRESSES THE RAW BOWL (#141) IS FINALLY UP!

Shane (rightly) feels Hunter stole his legacy as the heir apparent and Hunter is the most insecure person possibly in the history of wrestling. I wouldn't be surprised to see a post Vince world end up being Steph/Hunter and Shane/Dunn running two separate companies. I just don't think they'd all be able to work under the same roof without Vince around to keep them from strangling each other.

Well it would be in the family regardless of who took over, but I'd wager Shane having boys to carry on the McMahon name means a lot to Vince.

No doubt Hunter sees Shane as a threat to all the effort he put in to making sure he's in control of the company post Vince.

This paragraph elicited a lol from me: Except of course for the times where Vince instructs his performers to do just that.

To be fair, you kind of have to grade on a sliding scale when you had guys who were open KKK members in those days. Casual n-word usage seems kind of tame by comparison. It all looks bad with 2016 optics, but there is a "element of their time" aspect to it as well.

I mean, I just don't see how anyone could look at Butch Reed (as good as he was) and think he'd be on the short list to be world champion unless it was a 2 week angle kind of deal.

Well she did tip off Pat Patterson that George Zahorian was "hot", which helped Vince beat the steroid rap. That helped their success a lot.

Well it would be interesting since she trumpets her role in growing the company if it came out how they kneecapped JCP by strongarming the cable companies into not airing their PPVs at the risk of not getting access to Wrestlemania. The pick absolutely deserves ridicule since the entire administration she's joining is the most woefully unqualified in history.

So the title match aired tonight, and the crowd seemed oddly dead the whole time. It was like they assumed it was just a regular houseshow match until the finish and there was a sense of "oh shit, that just happened".

Every Trump nominee facing more scrutiny than normal (does anyone even know who the current head of the SBA is?) doesn't bode well for WWE and their usual MO of their business practices sliding under the radar because "it's just that fake rasslin stuff".

The Miz continues to be excellent. I loved him coming out for the post PPV Miz TV segment and asking the crowd "no "You Deserve It" chants?".

Announced as the pick today. Deadspin already has an article up talking about how WWE benefits from their wrestlers being independent contractors, so this might end up causing a backlash.

My kid's four. I put him down as a 6 out of 10 since he doesn't really know what wrestling is either but he likes it when he sees it on the TV.

I'd love to see a breakdown of votes to see how many people view Total Divas/Bellas as must have programming. They always keep the viewing numbers close to the vest but it seems clear no one gives a shit about their wanna-be TV programming since none of their created series seem to last more than a season.

I got that survey, I can only wonder the troll responses that will come as a result with WWE thinking their most popular stars are James Ellsworth and Liv Morgan.

Either Dean needs glasses or he's really bad at setting up the ladder to make it obvious he's laying out the next spot instead of trying to get the belt.

4 people on commentary yet only Mauro and JBL ever say anything of substance.