Embrodak

Well considering they’re maybe getting reamed for not disclosing those expenses because they provided a material benefit to the company, even if the money didn’t always come from the company coffers, I tend to think him being off the board doesn’t give him free license to make hush money payments, considering he was still the majority shareholder. Is it possible to characterize WWE as somewhat of a pump and dump scheme? Become a public company and get a bunch of outside investors bolstering the McMahon family’s personal fortunes on the basis of bloated media rights deals taking advantage of changes to the televisual marketplace in the wake of the rise of streaming and DVR, then sell it at a relative high point of its valuation just when it looks like the media rights fees are gonna take a big hit? That’s an extremely bloated sentence, but that story that Fox lost hundreds of millions of dollars broadcasting Smackdown was nuts to me.

There’s a lot to be said about patriarchal violence, but Benoit had as much brain degradation as an advanced Alzheimer’s patient when he died. I don’t think it’s weird or bad that people started to look at some of the stupid, unnecessary risks that were taken in the Attitude Era and post-WCW closure era and wonder whether all of that was really necessary when guys got over without that stuff for decades. I think we’re probably going to see someone like Darby or Sammy using a Walker at a young age in like 10-15 years and wonder something similar about the current working zeitgeist, tbh. Julia Hart almost got her neck broken doing an unnecessarily risky spot in a nothing angle, Big E got his neck actually broken (in a spot that could have left him a quadriplegic if it’d been worse) doing a Belly to Belly on the floor in a random TV match, Cody put himself through a burning table in a random, juiceless TV main event, it’s just so ridiculous.

If Danielson gets a good match out of Cage, he’s a true visionary. Cage isn’t Warrior bad, but he’s gotta be in the discussion for worst ratio of working ability to look.

First of all, that Garvin line is pretty fucking funny, in my opinion. Second of all, I didn’t say Corny never got cheap heat or said edgy shit, I said that it wasn’t some central facet of his performance style and probably wouldn’t be what he most encouraged in a performer like MJF if he were in regular contact with him, which again I am rather dubious of. (Unless we’re saying the whole premise of being a heel who goes out and does one-liners and roasts people is “cheap heel heat edginess”, which is not my understanding of what the general critique of MJF is.) Third, saying “flamboyant rich kid who is actually a coward and weakling” is a “thinly veiled gay stereotype” is a bit of a reductive characterization of his gimmick. Yeah, there’s stuff there that’s queer-coded, but basically none of it exclusively and unambiguously so.

Look I’m a Corny fan and mostly agree with him about the state of modern wrestling, but I think you’re deluding yourself if you think MJF is seeking advice from Corny. He apparently was pissed at FTR for going on Corny’s podcast when he’s been so critical of the company that is buttering all their bread, and he’s only used Corny references as a way to get heel heat thus far. Moreover, Corny has been critical of MJF’s lack of variation and vocabulary and overuse of repetitive affect, so I doubt this is true even on the terms you’re setting, as Corny was like the most verbally creative and least cheap heat-getter of the 80s.

Bryan is great, but the psychology of this is really weird. Going into the PPV as the face challenger to the dastardly heel by beating a series of babyfaces? Idk, something about it is off, even if it’s hard to complain about these excellent TV matches we’re getting. Top Flight versus Bucks was exactly what I expected it to be, but at the same time not to the umpteenth degree it could have been. Top Flight winning was nice, they’re both green but are really sympathetic babyfaces.

Always wear your seatbelt brothers. Anything that has ever peddled the notion of seatbelt use as unfreedom is death cult propaganda, do not listen to it.

It was a dim time for in-ring competence, but it really can’t be forgotten that in the wake of the Benoit situation, WWE had a lot of incentive to train guys to work the safest, most boring, least legally incriminating style they could get away with.

Train, eat your vitamins, and grab your e-meters, kids.

Extremely sad. I hope that his daughter's surgeries go well and that she is able to walk again.

Well that’s why I said “a year ago”. It was not at all clear to me that if Cody signed with WWE, they were gonna treat him as some massive star. There’s absolutely a world where he returns and is in the Dolph Ziggler “useful hand” position inside of a month.

Did anybody have Cody in the “who will dethrone Roman” pool a year ago? Dude has to feel like the biggest pimp in the world. To go from accidentally putting yourself through a flaming table for no reason in an unimportant match against Andrade to maybe winning the Royal Rumble and beating the most dominant champ in decades is an unbelievable upgrade.

A whole season of him making The Scorpion King would be a funny rib.

What’s weird is I didn’t originally perceive Bray as a *bad* wrestler, he was pretty quick for his size. Is he *genuinely* bad, or is he just so committed to the gimmick that any idea of good wrestling long ago exited his calculation of how to behave?

Julia Hart was inches away from paralysis, she’s incredibly lucky.

I feel bad that LA Knight is saddled with Bray. Dude deserves better.

I can’t compliment everything I saw, but I caught Impact over the holidays with my dad and must say, the women’s division is presented far better in Impact than it is in AEW, despite having worse workers overall.

Bringing back Kross in a context where you were gonna bring back Bray is utterly bizarre. Kross is Malt-O-Meal Wyatt but at least doesn’t have the stink of Bray’s various Wrestlecrap nonsense storylines on him, just have him be the spoopy guy and let Bray make movies.

Conversely, if the Saudis are genuinely motivated buyers, leaking this early might have been to let the brass see how much of a negative fan, employee, and press backlash they would engender.

It seems likely to me that the rumor came from the Wall Street side of things tbh, someone who heard something from someone, that kind of thing.

Disco was fine. People wouldn’t bury him if he didn’t opine like he had expertise to equal the greats as he buried the modern product.

TNA hadn’t happened and proved that “big name WWE guys appearing on your show” could look like desperate clout chasing.

Takeshita is just obviously talented and coming from a promotion with not a lot of hype or viewership in the West. I’d love to see a talented Japanese wrestler not broken in to the (imo) stale NJPW “big match” formula, so I’m willing to give Takeshita a shot.

As I said, the best indication that the Saudis are a real contender is that nobody else is *stupid* enough to buy a company that has been contracting in popularity for two decades and is basically coasting on the fact that live television has become more relatively lucrative to the declining industry of television production. The WWE network proved there weren’t enough interested subscribers to support the company just on streaming revenue, and let’s be real, by the time the savings they’d accrue not paying WWE media rights fees made up for the initial investment, we can probably anticipate that television advertising just isn’t going to be the cash cow that it is now. Advertising in general is frankly a snake oil industry due for a massive market correction at this point, but the proportion of the public that actually watches live television is only going to continue to shrink. NBC and Fox don’t want to be stuck figuring out how to make WWE a profitable live event company again as their relatively older fan base dies off, let’s be real. The Saudis are the only prospective buyers that are potentially removed enough from the Western media ecosystem not to be aware of these dynamics, and they’re also the only ones that can derive secondary and tertiary benefits from owning the WWE that have nothing to do with its profitability.

That’s what I’m talking about, brother. Anyway, Tony Khan has to have the shit-eating grin of the guy from the Extenz commercial constantly right now. Just a never ending rendition of Singin in the Rain in the offices of the Jaguars.