Migs

Look, it's certainly going to happen. Also, whenever it does, I will certainly avoid Twitter for like a month to not see the "discourse" between the stans of both promotions.

Higher ratings = better ad rates. That's how Turner would make money off the higher ratings. Which, to be fair, was a huge flip in how wrestling worked, business-wise. It's easy with hindsight to say that Scott missed the boat, but lots of smart people have gotten left behind, especially when that change had literally just taken hold. It's probably the best argument for him being a bit unfairly maligned.

Yeah, it's really only about 3 months. Ultimately, his terribleness in that run may be slightly overstated - really, the issue was that he was a bit behind on booking for a TV war when he underplayed Clash 6, and that was a mortal sin for the TV people he worked for. There was no retraining of the fans that was going to fix that WCW needed to draw TV ratings now and that the Clash opposite Wrestlemania was a big deal that needed to be promoted as such. Whether any of his other ideas were good or not almost became beside the point.

Yeah, not a fan. What are they going for with that shape?

Interestingly, this has become news and perhaps drawn some attention to WWE's past. The removal is getting coverage in the NY Times! https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/27/arts/television/wwe-peacock-nbc-streaming.html

Is there anywhere comprehensive to check the cards for the IWTV Mania weekend shows? Going to try and check out a bunch... life is too hectic to commit money to the Collective but I already have an IWTV subscription and will gladly enjoy some modern stuff instead of my usual diet of 2002 Jersey All Pro.

Right. I think a lot of the struggles of AEW, particularly relating to the main characters, has been about translating what worked for them in a different format (YouTube show + working big events) into a weekly TV product. It's unclear to me if there's someone in the process who can go "hey Bucks, I see what you're trying to do, but the characters are coming off a bit schizophrenic and wrecking the face/heel dynamic. Yeah, I hear ya, shades of grey, long-term storytelling. Oh, I saw BTE last week, it was great. But a million people watch the show and 200,000 watch BTE, and maybe we can tell the story in a way that's a little simpler and cleaner."

Maybe they'd be a good pair! Part of the difficulty here is that old school has changed. Paul Heyman is pretty old at this point! If you could team him up with younger talent, maybe that's the mythical Cornette/Russo pairing that would work.

The people who are heavily involved in producing the show. Tony Khan. Cody. The Young Bucks. Kenny Omega. Chris Jericho. They got ROH hotter from a business perspective than it had ever been with YouTube videos. They popped New Japan's biggest interest in the US ever. They parlayed all that into their own PPV and then their own major show with Khan's backing. These are very, very smart wrestling minds who looked at the landscape, applied their vision to it, and succeeded. Could AEW benefit from some tension between old and new school like you described above? Maybe. I'm just not sure who that would be who could come in and work productively (although, from the 1997 story, maybe it was impossible even then). The older guys mostly seem to be there as agents and characters - no one's pushing them to the side, but I don't think Arn is writing TV.

There are absolutely new generations of wrestling minds - the problem is that in the intervening 20 years, the Cornette "old school" side of the equation has gotten so cranky that they can't have a productive conversation with anyone. I don't know if JR has any role in AEW creative - I'd guess pretty minor - but even he really doesn't seem to be able to engage in conversations about modern wrestling, and he calls the shows!

I don't care if it brings new fans or not, the Cody/Brandi show is going to be fucking hilarious. They were great on that terrible WAGS Atlanta show and Cody has shown on BTE that he's got great timing. Might take a crack at getting my wife to watch it with me (she really liked Total Divas/Bellas for a while but I don't think it upped her wrestling consumption much at all).

Hangman is INCREDIBLY relatable. Anxious millennials with impostor syndrome and a drinking problem sounds like a really high percentage of my friends. Also, pretty sure everyone knows a video game nerd now.

If you're waiting for major television networks to own up to their hypocrisy, you'll be waiting a long time. I'm anti-censorship in general and would rather a disclaimer, but (a) the blackface stuff *in 1990* is pretty wild to modern eyes and (b) its not like there aren't a million cheap ways to acquire a copy of the match if one feels the need to see it.

I'm aware he can work them, but it obviously places limits on him, and from a narrative perspective "Joey's back on the indies!" could potentially be a big deal for him.

Not sure why there'd be any need to get rid of Cabana, who's been a mentor to a lot of the guys in the promotion, has good matches when needed on Dynamite, but mostly is in the background. Janela's an interesting case where he almost might be better off going back to the indies, unless he's involved in the backstage stuff and enjoys that. Feels like he's going nowhere but still has a huge fanbase and could headline indy shows at a time when they are starving for main eventers.

What's interesting in the comparison is that in 2014, WWE had an obvious metric that made them shift course - fan reaction. What's driving them to turn Edge this year? Ratings numbers? Social media engagement? (This assumes this wasn't planned all along, which I honestly have no idea on.)

I have used the Fire for exactly this purpose and found it be fine. It's not fancy but as long as you can get the app to work (see the post above), I think you'll be set, and for way less than iPad.

The idea here is that it was before the WWE PPV, so you could make a day of it and do a wrestling doubleheader. I'm not sure how effective an idea that was, but they're not nearly as stupid as you're making them out to be.

How's the interface? How is it to find stuff? I need to subscribe to Peacock at some point to catch up on a couple of shows - guess I'll have the Network for the first time in a while.

Spears is Paul Roma.

I don't think that match is ruined by the *ending*, it was ruined by the subsequent booking. The ending is actually an all-timer - the pop Rollins gets is insane - but of course, as is typical for WWE at this point, they killed time for months with Rollins when they needed to get the belt off him. It's interesting that WWE has gotten so obsessed with "Wrestlemania Moments" that they can barely book in between them at times. Instead of crowning Roman a few months later by getting his revenge on Seth and maybe doing a rematch with Brock the next year, Roman just had to be crowned at Mania, as if this was some prerequisite to him being over. You know who never won the WWE title at Wrestlemania? The Rock. He did okay.

I had never thought about Flair wearing only the robe in the WWF and never a suit. Was that a Vince hangup too? That if he wore a suit he'd look like an announcer or manager? The only WWF guy I can think of in the time frame wearing a suit was Dibiase, and that was only briefly at the beginning before he transitioned to the shiny faux tux.

Truly the main event we've all been waiting for. https://www.f4wonline.com/other-wrestling/aldis-vs-stevens-title-match-set-nwa-back-attack-335816 This is getting to AWA levels, where the last two guys left with any name value get to battle for the title.

They've only aired one, the Gino episode.

It's really the best of what wrestling can be.