MoS

Excellent match and excellent finish. I think they pull the trigger on Darby when he faces Cody. They are either phasing out Damascus or acting like it's a split personality thing with Matt Hardy and I am in favour of it. AEW shows it listens to fans and Matt Hardy is a good promo without being a crazy dude. I liked this video from Matt.

Darby-Sammy 2 has been really good so far. These two will headline against each other for years.

Clearly an attempt to show solidarity for Brodie Lee and Eric Rowan

So, Hunter seems to have aged about 25 years. Reminds me of how his hero Flair looked really good until 2002 and then all of a sudden looked 10 years older than he was

Maybe not, but it was a clear botch and if Kairi is not hurt, that's pure luck. There's also a video going around Twitter where Kairi audibly says she is not ready/set up but Nia gives her the move anyway.

True, and the business was far more brutal then. But I also think such behaviour would have turned off a lot of legit athletes from other sports who would otherwise have been interested and would have done well. And I have to think insecurity was a huge reason behind this conduct as well. I always think back to how the New Japan dojo was notorious for hazing rookies, but no one pulled any shit with Bad News Brown because he would have fucked them up.

I wish I could still like comments

Surely there was a way to get legit guys other than making rookies run 10 miles, do 500 Hindu squats, and then breaking their orbital bones while stretching them to within an inch of their lives. Stipe Miocic would kill any pro wrestler on the planet in an actual fight, but if you make him expend all his energy doing brutal workouts, then even Seth Rollins would probably kick his ass. I really think such a system turned off far more talent than it attracted.

Yeah, I remember old-timers beaming with pride as they would talk about the number of rookies Danny Hodge would beat up, leaving them bloody and often with broken bones.

Related to that, Stu Hart used to take a shit ton of liberties with rookies in his dungeon to show off - under the guise of weeding out the weak or just having fun of course - but I don't think Bret, or anyone in the Hart family, ever criticised him for that.

Given his gimmick, he might very well be working.

I give him credit for making Sable a huge ratings draw

I am not going to go into the details, because I don't know enough about the off-screen dealings of RoH, but it is very illuminating when the standard defence by people like Cornette and Bischoff against "popular narratives" mostly is "I never had that much power this was not on me!!!" But the same people never have issues claiming credit for all the creatively acclaimed things that did happen in that time period. It makes them look hypocritical. (Not at all a shot at you, but at wrestling people who put themselves over in shoot interviews.) Cornette is an all-time great mic worker, so even I myself would believe him a lot more than I would ever believe, say, Russo. But it is fundamentally the same kind of defence imo. Cornette could have had a bunch of reasons for not booking Steen and Generico as much as he should have - and it is clear by the way you talk about Generico that you completely agree with his reasons. I don't care if the reason he did not book them was not that he did not like them. His motivations are irrelevant to me, as is the Bucks thinking Corny is devil incarnate. Fact is they were over enough to warrant a more prominent push, and that did not happen. Yes, you can argue that Generico should have unmasked and started cutting promos cuz he could talk his ass off. It does not change the fact that with his mask on and without talking, he built a fan following that, as you yourself say, the likes of Michael Elgin did not. Yes, you can argue that Steen should have lost weight. Dusty gained quite a bit of weight in his legendary 80s run compared to his 70s Florida run, when he looked more like a big athlete. He was still effective. (Not for a second am I trying to argue that Steen was as talented as Dusty, but what someone can be should not become an enemy of what someone already is.) Cornette himself has said that Bill Watts always taught him that the only hard rule in wrestling is what gets over and draws money is the correct approach. He became blind to that in RoH. It's unfortunate because he showed in OVW that he could be a lot more flexible. But by the late 2000s, he had a gimmick and an image to protect and nurture as well. Baba was always disappointed with Taue because Taue was the most naturally talented of the 4 pillars and yet he would not train hard the way others would. That did not stop him from pushing him prominently and making him a pillar. Hell, he was more flexible in his SMW days. My thought has always been that he is an excellent producer and an all-time great at producing coherent formats (not scripts, cuz that would drive him crazy) for television shows that look good on camera and logically and competently execute a vision or an idea. But he is narrow-minded and not the greatest at actually thinking of a grand idea or vision. My argument - and I am open to being corrected - is that his general vision of what RoH "should" be was counter-productive and overshadowed some really good individual booking programs that he came up with. It's a pity that he is as deep in his own hole as he is, cuz when I watch Dynamite, I often feel they would benefit greatly from someone like Cornette, who has a ton of experience booking wrestling TV for international cable and who is good at logical A to B to C booking, to complement the general idea/vision that Tony Khan and the promoters have.

This is the gist of what I was trying to argue, except a lot more articulate and on the nose. Thanks, Loss!

If Corny pushed Richards solely because he was the biggest star in the company, surely he could have found ways to make Generico a centerpiece, despite not approving of his gimmick. Corny clearly had an issue with over acts who did not fit his vision of what wrestling should be. While WWF becoming edgier definitely was a big factor in starting a turnaround, what creative booking idea of Russo played an important role in WWF becoming hot? He was not there when Austin became hot and started feuding with Bret. The Bret heel turn where he would be a face internationally was McMahon's idea and Bret himself played a key role in executing it. Bringing Mike Tyson in was McMahon's idea. So what was Russo's idea? Austin stunning McMahon? The Austin-Dude Love feud in 1998 that really helped solidify Austin as a mega-draw after Tyson got him mainstream attention? Rock turning heel and becoming corporate champion? These are not rhetorical questions: Russo automatically gets credit for the Attitude Era, but what successful, instrumental angles and storylines was he a crucial contributor to, something that really helped make WWF hot or increase its hotness?

I don't know/remember the business dealings at that time, but I should have clarified: I meant booking-wise, the quality and appeal of the product went to the ground. It's more a comment on his booking. I also remember some Davey Richards matches that he pushed heavily that were terrible, with Richards doing a gimmick where he would tweet shit like "Wrestling is something I do between my MMA classes."

Cornette booked OVW in the early 2000s and did an excellent job both running a weekly circuit and developing future stars. That is a better record than anything Russo has been involved in that was not directly modified by Vince McMahon. Heyman took over after Corny got inevitably in trouble and he did not do a great job. Further, SMW was certainly not a financial catastrophe. It died because the wrestling industry was in terrible shape and no company could survive without television, but in its initial year or so it did decent business. IIRC, they were actually outdrawing WCW in the same areas. I have not watched RoH, but one of my best friends who is a huge indy fan says Cornette ran RoH into the ground with his terrible booking. So there definitely came a period when modern wrestling passed by Cornette and he could not adapt to it. But to pretend Vince Russo was more deserving of a spot in pro wrestling in 1997 than Corny cuz he was "creative" is more preposterous than Corny thinking Lawler's racist remark should not be criticised. Corny is the reason Kane STILL is an over character after almost 25 years. Creativity is terribly overrated because creativity for creativity's sake is awful. Like, I will renounce all worldly pleasures and live in the himalayas as a hermit level awful. And no one exemplifes this more than Vince Russo. "WOULDN'T IT BE AMAZING IF ROSS AND RACHEL GAVE BIRTH TO AN ELEPHANT" is also creative, but it is certainly not a solution to Friends seeing declining ratings. Creativity and innovation have also been used to criticise wrestlers like Bret and Cena, ignoring that formulae work because they make sense and connect with people. WWE's biggest problem is not a lack of creativity. They find plenty of creative ways to screw over their current talent. Their biggest problem is a lack of sensible booking that has consequences and stakes and result in actual progression of characters and stories. A lot of these stories and characters would progress on fairly predictable lines. Everyone knew Austin would stun the boss. Everyone knew Mandy would eventually side with Otis. Vince Russo would have probably got Otis to screw Mandy again and then form a gay couple with Dolph who hates women and would sabotage all heterosexual relationships. "No one would think of that, bro!! SWERVE, BRO!!!!"

This year has been a complete nightmare.

Hager is awful. Just awful. They are REALLY lucky WWE tempered expectations with Edge-Orton, because while I liked the amateur exchanges, it was really slow and that stuff drags really bad without a hot crowd.

God I hope they have learned from the WWE matches and this does not go too long.

AEW's insistence on pushing Shawn Spears is weird. He is a ratings flop and his matches are usually mediocre at best.

We clearly and obviously need The Bubbly Bunch give daily updates on everything

He did, Iirc. The name was the WBF announcer who made that allegation against Patterson was Murray Hodgson.

It will be interesting to see how big a paycheck cut Vince, Steph, Hunter and all the other executives take.