strobogo

Everything about the Rock/WM stuff has been embarrassing for Dave. Dude has reported 5 different "this is the real story" updates, and it is so clear he's not clued in at all.

The nerfing of that outfit after the first time is a crime. Outside of respectfully shit, Skye Blue has improved dramatically over the past 6 months or so. Women's division has legit been very strong the past 2 months or so, after 3 years of mostly being an afterthought. Deonna coming in, the return of Deeb, Red Velvet and Queen Aminata looking great every appearance, Thunder Rosa being back, Julia Hart also improving a ton in the last year (I assume her injury is from that moonsault she did a show or two before she won the TBS title?, Toni Storm completely in her bag, whenever Riho and Shida (and Emi Sakura) pop up, always a fan of Willow and Stat. It's been a real highlight these past couple of months. Surely it is time for Brit to return. Hopefully Hayter can be back soon. Sasha has a lot to work with at this point. All the online negativity about AEW the past however many months baffles me. A rad AEW show fucking rules, and like 7/10, Dynamite and Collision rule. There is so much rad shit you can only get from AEW. It's like how DVDVR and probably here would overly hype up Saturday Night or whatever territory weeklies, but if those awesome on paper matches got more than 5 minutes. And a whole show of that. Even if AEW is half filling arenas, the crowds are almost always super hot and into whatever is going on, and the vibe on screen is everyone is having fun in ring and in crowd. I saw that tweet about new sets coming, hopefully it is smaller sets so they can run smaller venues that can sell out and be super hot like the first few months of Dynamite before Covid hit. Even those half arena Dynamite/Collision shows are so much more energetic than those years in the mid '10s where Raw and SD were empty on hard cam side.

I think that's been the line on the Bucks since the PWG days. Are they doing meta sports entertainment stuff, or just bad sports entertainmenting? I think they're actually better as faces if only because Matt in particular drives me nuts with his I AM ACTING AND EMOTING LIKE HBK and also some verbal ticks that make all of his promos not good. When they were heels the last time, I frequently said Matt especially seemed like a wrestler on a 90s sitcom, but Nick has an aloofness to him that it didn't seem to fit that way on him.

TK raided pretty much the entire non WWE industry but it is hard to say that has been a negative for the talent or industry as a whole. NJ seems to be a mess right now, Rocky has been with them for probably 20 years as a talent and liaison, so if they can't keep him (while also losing Okada and Ospreay and the president change), things do not bode well for the next 5-10 years of NJ.

Putting someone over Okada with such short notice and no story would be weird anyway. I don't think it would feel like some big torch passing thing at that point.

For sure. Billy Jack has sounded completely unhinged and deranged for 20+ years. I don't think it is flippant to think something like this was a long time coming. Sadly.

Big Business to me sounds like both Mercedes Mone and The Rainmaker. Anyway, show ruled. Main event tag was one of the better Darby/Sting matches as of late that have seemed like Sting was really taking it easy to make it to Revolution, but he really turned out this time. It's wild that fucking Big Cass is awesome and in a main event match with Sting in 2024. Need the Cass/Darby singles match immediately.

All part of the plan or hard pivot, the whole thing needlessly complicated a very straightforward clean story that would have satisfied everyone. This is just a stupid extra thing people probably will forget over the years, like Debra managing The Rock in the build up to WM 17.

They don't need Rock at WM. Or at all. WWE has been hotter than ever the past 2 years, constantly breaking every gate, attendance, and merch sales, doing legit sell outs for house shows. Probably haven't had as many over characters with fans invested in whatever they're doing since the Attitude Era. WM pretty much sells 60-70k tickets the first weekend of on sale, 6 months in advance, with nothing announced. Rock probably isn't going to hurt, although this story seems to have a whole lot more negative than positive reaction. But Seth isn't wrong in or out of kayfabe. WWE absolutely does not need The Rock in 2024.

I would imagine he's in a good position to get a very good offer from AEW and WWE.

I'm also pretty :what at the idea that Rock would need a WM main event and ownership of The Rock to join the TKO board like he hasn't been a dude doing everything possible to climb the corporate ladder for a decade and also spent much of the past 15 years trying to avoid The Rock moniker.

The new reports that they're trying to do a shitty booking in 2014 for Bryan thing to get Cody more over is lmao. Dude has far and away been the most over face since his return, and in about a decade. Shitty booking to get him more over when Cody and WWE is so hot right now is pure foot shooting nonsense.

Hook's hair looks completely silly now, too. There was a point during the Team Taz era where his hair was interesting and unique, but now he just looks like he has a bad bowl cut. Sure he can do suplexes and shit, but much of the most basic stuff in the ring he still looks extremely green. I know there was talk about Taz really wanting him to go to NXT and I think he's a guy that very much would benefit from training at the PC and doing his reps in NXT and random small Florida towns for a while. Also Tony Khan is a COWARD if he doesn't book a Kingston vs Scott Norton chopfest sprint at some point. I know that mf most likely is a member here and at least reads if not posts. Do a Norton vs Kingston triple crown man in Colorado you coward.

Rock joining the TKO board and immediately heavily pushing for and getting the WM main event with Roman screams of the same attempted takeover of the DCEU he thought he could do and ended up burning most of his good will in Hollywood. And now he's doing the same thing in the wrestling world. Really fascinating so see Rock just flop with everything all at once after the last 7 or 8 years.

Has there ever been a crowd so loud and hot in a half empty arena on television before? My goodness was that a great crowd.

Rough shape for the past decade is pretty generous. He's been a wreck since 1999 at least. Perhaps he could do a smoke and mirrors hardcore match at this point, but that's the kind of thing that would need to be on a Joey Janella Spring Break show at best.

I'm not going to be bummed if/when Buddy and Black go back to WWE, nor do I particularly care about people not wanting to do jobs (what happened to supporting worker's rights), but they've been involved in a bangers in AEW. Buddy in particular has really shined since Collision started.

I get the point you are making, but there is frankly a staggering amount of predators and scam artists that Oprah platformed over the years. As far of people having to know, basically all these dudes who got swept up in the past however many years were known creeps and people did talk about it, just not loud and serious enough to get traction. Comedians were talking about Cosby on podcasts for years before Hannibal went at him. There are Weinstein jokes in a bunch of sitcoms over the years, at awards shows, even blatant Weinstein expies in a few Weinstein/Miramax movies. There had been talk about Kevin Spacey for 25 years. In the case of someone like Jimmy Savile, that dude seemed to be pretty blatant about what he was doing and people around him knew and kept it going for some side action themselves. When it comes to Vince and Johnny Ace, rumors have been flying around about them for decades, too. To the extent of what is in the filing, no, but Vince does have a rape charge, a couple of indecent exposure charges, was very open about all the affairs he had and extremely weird sexual desires. Johnny Ace has those rumors that he was banging Mrs. Baba in the 90s and his entire tenure of working with women in WWE is about him being a creepy asshole. But when you see the filing and then track what Vince himself was doing on TV for so many years: Forcing himself on nearly every woman on the roster, who on screen and off were his employees, frequently directly in front of his wife, humiliating many of said women and holding his position of power over them to keep them sexually pleasing him, angles with Stephanie where it is implied he let or was going to let Taker rape and marry her, then during the feud with Stephanie she had that promo about him pimping her out to his business friends as a teenager, also straight up fighting her (days before her wedding no less), wanting either Shane or himself be the father of Stephanie's baby on screen. Not to mention the shit humor for 30 years, forcing men to kiss his ass, cuck angles, at least one actual rape angle (Kane/Lita, potentially Heidnreich/Cole as well). Now sure, circumstantial, artists can have things in their art they do not condone or engage in, but Cosby had a date rape joke in the 60s, Weinstein had movies he produced with scumbag producers sexually harassing women, Luc Besson and Woody Allen both wrote movies about dating or being in love with teenagers, and so on and so on. I think it would be impossible for more than a handful of people not knowing what was going on if the filing and Vince's own texts are anything to go by. Double raping on the conference room desk during work hours? No one on the floor noticed that?

I don't take personal joy in Punk being injured, but do find it funny that he gets injured his first TV match back in WWE, in a Rumble match where only the last 5 minutes was anything like an actual match. Dude is absolutely destined to never main event WM. One might say....it was written in the stars.

Jordyn Grace was by far the workhorse of the Rumble. Maybe Kevin Dunn was onto something with his camera bullshit, because I can't recall seeing so many completely whiffed spots and basic strikes in WWE ever than on this show. Seemed like cameras caught every single one of them in every match.

lmao record time

Burying talent on the way out always seemed counter productive to me anyway. Trying to lower a talent's value before they move on is damaging to the industry as a whole, which requires a healthy market for everyone to thrive. It also seems petty and something that could impact people wanting to work for you from other companies. I don't think it is much of a thing anymore to be worried about people leaving going over. Lose the last match, but no need to start booking people weak because they're on the way out. Andrade was known to be leaving, he was heavily featured in the CC and even got a win over Bryan. It didn't hurt anything.

HHH just said he only wants to focus on the positives of the past week to two different questions. Cody at least acknowledged the reports and filing and how everyone here read it at the same time as everyone else, but then talked about how the locker room is such a family now and he's never experienced that in his career. HHH was asked at least two direct questions about the Vince stuff and both times he just said shit like "I'm just focusing on the positives in the past week".

Lmao that Cody made a better statement about Vince stuff than HHH when directly asked.

I can appreciate that WWE is super hot, but man, every PPV I've tuned into in the past 6 months or so has mostly sucked and this was no different. The hottest things on this show were Jade debuting, Jordyn Grace being the workhorse of the Rumble, and Punk vs Cody while trying not to acknowledge AEW.