Embrodak

Would throw the “I’m trying to run a business” line in a different light if Punk is something like an informal/unofficial EVP. Punk vs Omega sounds terrible, tbh. Total clash of styles, and I don’t think either would either want or be able to modulate themselves to match the other.

I don’t watch NXT, what’s up with that Quincy Elliott dude? Was anybody clamoring for Mabel with a Goldust skin?

I don’t think Dave is as bad as some people say, but The Elite being the top dogs in AEW provides him with the most access and influence he’s ever had, after decades of people in the business mostly rolling their eyes at him and finding him an annoying gadfly who exposes the business without actually knowing how it works. I think it’s fair to say that there is at least a subconscious bias on his part.

And if a slow burn Punk heel turn wasn’t what was agreed to? Page could have just done a “I built this, I won’t let you take it away from me” kinda babyface vs babyface promo, but instead, he implied that Punk was secretly an asshole. Eddie clearly had longstanding heat with Punk and has venom toward almost literally everybody, and MJF is the most vile heel in the company and not to be taken at face value. Maybe having the top babyface champion come out and imply you’re a two-faced piece of shit was not actually the story they were supposed to do? I certainly remember the Page promo feeling odd and being bewildered at people who said it was some perfect continuity with the Eddie feud, and based on how mad it made him, it seems like Punk felt similarly. “Make your niche audience on the internet hate your top star” and all that.

I think Punk in MMA did what used to be called “stealing a house” in the territory days.

From everything I’ve read, Disney buying 21st Century Fox should also have been illegal, but here we are. In political economic terms, the rate of profit is so low that a lot of economic activity only becomes worth doing if it’s done at a truly vast scale.

Hope Tony has made some TV industry contacts if NBC Universal buys Warner Brothers Discovery.

I think there’s concern that Punk will walk if they fire Ace, and I don’t think Tony’s convinced he wants to do that yet. Also it may be that if Ace came in the room after everything started and thought his friend had gotten jumped by three guys, there’s some plausible deniability in terms of his mental state? I must admit I’m perplexed that the hammer hasn’t come down on him, myself.

Oh I don’t deny that Punk has been an asshole about all this, that much is clear to pretty much everybody.

I mean Punk was also trying to become a babyface champion, having the current babyface champion say you’re actually secretly a piece of shit hypocrite behind the scenes if that wasn’t an agreed-upon direction for Punk’s storyline is actually pretty unprofessional, even if the specifics don’t translate to anybody but Page and his goofy friends.

Omega also comes off as the oddest and most in his own head, too, though. The existence of someone in a wrestling locker room that has been in a Guy Maddin movie is somewhat bizarre to me.

Well, some of what we know about his treatment of Elizabeth is not great.

Didn’t last week drop from 1.2 to the start to 800,000 at the end?

Also Omega stood in the middle of the ring after his return and said “We’re not a tribute act” as a total non-sequitur, this whole thing may just be that The Elite and CMFTR don’t like each other.

W Morrissey is 80% of the height in AEW, it makes sense.

If Kenny really got up at the talent meeting and told them he wouldn’t have hired 8/10 of them, after the Bucks got up and put on a face of being congenial and open, and after he just got back from a long hiatus, then lol.

Look a single episode popping a good rating isn’t intrinsically noteworthy. Absent the context of the next few weeks, it’s just noise. If it stays up, then it says something, but no guarantee that will happen.

Meanwhile, Tony can’t get enough of Garcia and Yuta. Do Dark and Elevation actually generate any revenue for the company? Because they don’t seem to be doing a lot as developmental shows, and I was looking at the roster page and amazed at how many people seem to only wrestle there except for when Tony needs a squash match, like at least two million dollars of salary for YouTube shows that can’t be solvent from the ad revenue alone. I was also amazed how many people were on the roster page that I can’t imagine what they’d do with. For all the talk of bloat, I have to say that the number of people I can imagine them squeezing good television out of is actually pretty small. Even including people I don’t like, like Best Friends or Andrade, I’m left with the notion that Tony does need more wrestlers, once some of these contracts run out.

This is the problem with trying to get two guys over off of feuding with each other. Not only does one’s advantage necessarily come at the other one’s expense, but anything that gets bumped or shaved down for time screws with *both* of their pushes, instead of one. A major problem here is they don’t really have a lot of people in the Ziggler or Balor stratum (not talking about their booking here, just their position), where they are big enough that feuding with them could theoretically get a guy over, but not big enough that it’s leaving money on the table to do so. Who could Starks feud with other than Hobbs right now, fucking Jericho? How has *that* worked out for anybody? Archer? Andrade? I guess Sammy Guevara could be fun, but he’s not exactly securely over, himself. If Adam Cole were healthy, he’d be a good option, but I’m not confident Tony would have Starks go over in the end. Same for Hobbs, who’s he going to feud with? Orange Cassidy? Pac? Eddie Kingston could work, here, but he’s not as over as he was circa the Punk feud; he needs rehabbing, not being a stepping stone on someone else’s journey. Claudio is not a bad option, esp since Hobbs needs more improvement in the ring, but Claudio is not exactly a scintillating character you can have a blood feud with. Miro vs Hobbs would be fun if Miro were allowed to leave the timeout God has put him in more often - is he still hurt? People are shitting on Jay Lethal in the other thread, and I understand the “sex pest” concerns, but this is *exactly* where he and others like him could be insanely useful to this company right now. They need guys with some name value who can go both in the ring and on the mic, who can work with the younger talent and help them get over and learn how to be stars.

Theory’s accuser isn’t even online anymore. They either bought her off or determined it wasn’t credible.

Jay Lethal rules, haters can back off. If I have to see Best Friends, you have to see him. Quite liked MJF’s promo this week, was just the right amount of shooty, edgy content while being vicious and unrelenting.

Trips is also a JCP mark, though, and I can imagine him finding the story of Dusty’s son winning the title his father never did compelling.

We didn’t hear that Cody was a troublemaker per se, but we heard of personal falling outs and major creative differences, if I recall correctly. And we saw on the screen that Cody felt compelled to create a weird, hermetically sealed environment for himself, away from them. And depending on how one takes the word of Brian Last, he’s been claiming for a while that there’s a not-insignificant chunk of the locker room that’s been unhappy with the EVPs for a long time, well before Punk got there, but I imagine he has a smaller pool of people he’s getting info from, maybe even just FTR. But he did have scoops about the melee and fallout, so idk.

Punk *is* an asshole, but what we know about him suggests he needs fairly objective conditions to set him off, at least by my observation. Making him work with a staph infection, asking for way too much money for a legal defense, perceiving one as trying to turn a subset of the audience against him while he’s the top babyface, etc. We didn’t hear shit about Punk as a negative locker room influence until the false rumor of him trying to get Colt fired came out, and Meltz tried *incredibly* hard to bury him recently, with some dude on his staff saying that was a more important issue than the one summarizing Vince’s goddamn retirement. There is absolutely a tendency for entrenched interests to weaponize Punk’s undeniable assholishness to run cover for their own failings, whether it’s WWE pretending they didn’t compel him to work in a wildly unsafe state of health or the Elite trying to act like he’s the first big act they’ve had trouble with and a sui generis troublemaker when Cody was literally still there earlier this year, so some skepticism toward our own intuitions is warranted, here.

As of Double or Nothing, what we heard about Punk was that ESPN article where people went on and on about what a giving and valuable resource Punk was in the locker room. I’m sorry, but I’m pretty sure a lot of this “Punk was toxic and awful the whole time” stuff is ex post facto spin by people with an agenda.