Embrodak

Punk was going Full Cena, there, even more than his AEW Second Coming.

What’s funny to me is the person representing Huffman is Stephen P New, Cornette’s lawyer who he runs ads for on his podcast.

“Format your show competently or work with your broadcast partner to build in an overrun so people don’t have to do trickery to record it properly and see the whole thing” is a pretty low bar as far as expectations go, idk why Dave felt the need to be defensive about that. Kinda harms your objectivity as a journalist if you can’t even be antagonistic to the object of your coverage on something so trivial.

Is it? I thought part of the reason for the recent strikes was because companies were paying such a pittance for streaming residuals. Another thought - Peacock may not be as interested in taking the time to post and index the old stuff if nobody is really watching it that much.

The Lapsed Fan bit where Randy Savage berates Elizabeth from the basement of the Tokyo Dome is the funniest segment in wrestling podcast history.

The Iron Claw has Zac Efron and the guy from The Bear, I think it has a shot.

That was pre-Trump, when political consultants thought the public wanted some level of seriousness in their candidates.

I think there is a cost associated with having material on the server to be streamed. HBO took down a bunch of shows and movies recently, pissing off huge numbers of people in the entertainment industry, because I guess they calculated that it cost them more to have them there than they would actually fetch in subscription revenue.

Well it’s a Catch-22 because the identity that AEW had before they started signing all of these WWE guys was “2010s meta-and-cheeky-yet-heartfelt indie wrestling meets 2010s NJPW, but with a big budget”, which clearly has an audience and created a *ton* of loyalty but also has a cap in terms of its mainstream appeal. I think it probably looked like it made a ton of sense to hire certain WWE castoffs, but when you get to the point where you’re hiring fucking Edge, I think it’s pretty clear you’ve lost the plot.

The Rock becoming the guy who gets to push the “crimes against humanity” button absolutely feels like the reality we’re living in. There was a period where Zuckerberg was feeling out a presidential run, and his posts around that time felt like the robot versions of the “inspirational” stuff Rock is always posting on his Instagram. If that is in the cards, I genuinely hope Vince McMahon dies the day before he’s elected. That senile predator does not deserve the satisfaction of seeing something he made ascend to that level.

I mean that’s by far the biggest match they could put on that’s not Roman vs Rock, absolutely zero reason not to see if Austin is game. TKO and Nick Khan aren’t going to tolerate the weird McMahon-style psychological mind games where a talent has to be properly humbled and happy to be in a niche the Booker has deemed appropriate for them, and they’re paying Punk millions, which is a big investment to have to recoup in an era where the contribution of individual talents is always in question.

Look I hope you understood that as a jest. It’s generally been accepted here that snipes on the level of a promo are fine, and considering you started off with pretty open contempt and condescension for anybody who still find Punk interesting or entertaining, I think the fake Anglophone term of scorn for Frenchmen is frankly a pretty mild rebuke.

I think they’re probably going to have Seth say the shooty stuff as a twist. “You went somewhere else, talked shit about *this company* for years, and even *they* don’t want your sorry ass anymore!” Idk, I thought the promo was fine. Not standout, but did what it had to do. I think of it like a minor work from a major artist, still better than most people’s best output but not especially notable in their oeuvre. I think Punk has earned every one of his haters, but I’ll be damned if I let some Kenny-brained frog sit in judgment of the fact I think he’s still a very talented and skilled performer.

Idk if I believe that the firing was Danielson’s idea or decision, seems more like he was there to make the medicine go down more smoothly with the boys who were still friends with Punk, but either way, I have to imagine that Punk is low-key grateful to get to leave a place that he somehow hated more than WWE.

It was a fine promo, leaving room for both babyface or heel maneuvering, and I’m pretty sure the disingenuousness is at least partially intentional, especially if they’re gonna have Seth doing the Hangman “I stayed, you left and talked shit, I’m protecting this place from your two-faced opportunism” role. Gotta say, El-P, that’s a pretty vitriolic and nasty post.

So what really is the overlap between WWE and AEW fans? Everybody aware of Punk had a bad taste in their mouth around him just a few months ago, but the reaction to Punk returning has been overwhelmingly positive everywhere I’ve looked, even on Reddit.

Punk’s whole deal is that he’s from an underprivileged background and he “keeps it real”, unafraid to make enemies and hold grudges but the height of generosity and ecumenism with his friends. I think the contradictions and cracks and inconsistencies actually make him more endearing as a performer and personality, but it’s not hard to see why him being a hypocritical carny who signs up to work for a company he’s had nearly a decade of contempt for after having a falling out with the one company where he could have made a genuine, lasting difference over stuff that seems extremely petty from the outside would rub people the wrong way.

This doesn’t speak very well for Punk’s character or Lefty bona fides, but him being spiteful enough and still wanting to do Bret Hart tribute spots enough that he buried the hatchet with a company that gave him so many oral antibiotics for a staph infection he was required to work through that he shit his trunks in the ring certainly does add to how compelling I find him!

Damn, I got worked. What a great surprise, a true rarity in this day and age. Coach TK has to regret listening to his legal team right now.

I would love if Punk came back, but I see zero reason why he would. WWE are hot as fuck for 2023 right now, they don’t need him.

RKO outta nowhere is a trope that never gets old for me, happy to see Randall Keith coming back.

I quite like MJF as a worker, I think it’s probably better for him as a draw that he wrestles sparingly but I would like to see him against a wider variety of opponents. Really dislike MJF as a face, though. It’s over with the crowd, can’t deny that, but even as a “bad guy who is consciously trying to act like a babyface” postmodern meta thing, it’s forced.

I certainly like Ospreay more than Omega in the Kenny Omega role, I’ll say that much.

AEW should just give everybody a title, then have them all on the line in every match. Whoever has the most titles wins.

You’re way underestimating wrestling’s popularity in America prior to the WWF’s national expansion. This is an area where Corny’s cantankerous ass and copious quantity of preserved notes, financial statements, and other administrative ephemera is actually useful. Without a large and voracious audience, you simply do not have multiple territories sustaining independent, multi-decade, low- to no-merch operations over decently large geographic areas that required guys to drive many hours in their cars between gigs with no guaranteed money. The idea that it was some scummy thing with no profile is the self-promoting propaganda of Vince McMahon, not reality. The reason it has minimal mainstream media presence is it tended to be covered more in local news outlets than in national ones. If anything, it’s arguable that the WWF’s national expansion either caused or was emblematic of a decline in wrestling’s total popularity in America, though this is harder to assess given the territory promoters had zero reason to accurately track such things as long as it was overall profitable, lest the tax man discover how much they weren’t reporting.