El-P

I do think that ship has sailed some time ago already. Speaking of Roman, how much money one really need ? The guy is pretty much already set for life. If I was him, I'd say fuck this bullshit and call Harold Meij. 4 matches, big paydays. WK 21 : vs Suzuki. Roman wins. Dominion 21 : vs Okada. Roman loses. MSG 21: vs Tanahashi. Roman wins. WK 22 : vs Mox. Whoever wins. and then... Double of Nothing 22 : Roman Invasion, return match against Mox. And I am by no mean a Roman fan (but interested in what he would look like outside the machine). But there you go. Book it.

Because NXT worked in a bubble. For all the talk about AEW "not trying to expand their core audience", NXT was always the pseudo-indy WWE show, filmed at the same place with the same crowd. Full Sail is the modern version of the IMPACT zone. He never had to make people think "I've gotta see this" because he was preaching to a choir in a bubble. Going head to head with AEW they probably thought that the WWE brand was enough to kill the other guys even with their secondary brand. And it failed miserably. On paper, AEW should have been squashed like a TNA bug...

And that was part of the illusion of HHH being this great booker. He never had to care about long term. And from the point they had to work long term, well, the magic trick was exposed.

Best empty arena show since the beginning of the thing. The last few weeks really have been carried by Jericho & Schiavone's awesome announcing, but this week had three really good matches and some terrific vignettes to boot. Darby vs Cody was very good. Nice finish, straight out of a Bret Hart match from 1995 (which is great). The right guy won. Cody needs to be the first TNT champ, as the man makes the belt first, and they need to make it such as Shane Douglas made the ECW TV title as important as the World Title back then. Darby will be fine, he's just improving by leaps and bounds. Loved the garbage tag team match and to me Havoc (whom I wasn't a fan of at all when I was watching him in MLW) was the star of the match with his timing and screwed up charisma. The fact he reminds me (facially) of an old friend never cease to be odd to me. Orange & Penelope as always got their cool shit in but I thought the whole thing was fun. That footstomp thingy looked brutal. Terrific main event. Archer carrying on the Suzuki-Gun tradition of killing a ransom jabrone on the way to the ring is cool. The way he was countering every Dustin signature spot early on was a very nice touch. Archer was one of the highlight of last year NJPW's Climax, and considering it was the greatest pro-wrestling event, like, ever, it says a whole lot. He's not gonna have the "crazy gaijin" appeal, but he's got the looks, the work and a manager who can cut promos. Yeah, Archer is a terrific catch for AEW. Loved the ending, just perfect booking. I'm glad Brandy is back managing too, she's so good at it (although she'd be ever better as a heel but unless Cody turns, and it won't and shouldn't happen, there's no way we get any of that anytime soon). Speaking of monsters, next too Archer and Brodie Lee, Wardlow's presentation really comes off cookie-cutter like. Apart from the lack of tribal tattoo and very, VERY late 2010's haircut, everything about him reeks of mid-00's WWE monster guy. There's plenty of time to evolve, but for now, he's just there. Someone who isn't, however, is Britt Baker. She almost stole the show with a single vignette. What an awesome character she has turned into. Line of the night : "He was twerking ! He was twerking !". Tony Schiavone, 2020.

Because she seemingly jumpstarted the "writers" era when she worked in creative. Because of the 9/11 promo. Because "charity is the new PR". Because she made herself mother hen of all thing female pro-wrestling, scratch that, female pro-sports. Because she's been castrating every babyface on screen for 15 years. Yeah, she was at one time a good performer as a valet (like, in 2001 or so) and had some really fun (overrated because of the context and pendulum effect) performances at Mania alongside the King of King of Kings, but she has been mostly a detriment to the product as a whole forever now. Shane O gets a pass because he's seen as the "cool" McMahon despite the fact he's always had ego-driven performances (going toe-to-toe on the mat with Kurt Angle anyone ?) and that he's a terrible, TERRIBLE worker whose stuff looks like complete shit (never understood why he got a pass on that, really, even from the MOVEZ-hating crowd, I mean come on now at some point when everything you do looks godawful you gotta call a spade a spade).

Indeed. You forgot the part where Cornette says he'd want to murder Omega with his bare hands though.

Eddie Guerrero vs Dean Malenko, ECW, 1995. The Eddilenko pinning sequence (you know the one, which they got from Tiger Mask vs Dynamite anyway I believe) which ended up everywhere after they did it. The pure workrate approach which was mind-blowing in context of the dull-ass and super mediocre (in term of in-ring work) mid-90's. The pretty much non-character driven aspect of the match which came right from their NJPW tours work, again a stark contrast with WWF and WCW at the time, which were at their all-time low in term of shitty gimmicks. One of the most influencial match(es) of the last 30 years, when you think about it.

When your champ is not available, have someone get an old belt somewhere and proclaim himself a champion of something. That's pro-wrestling 101. I can live with Moose as the "TNA World champ" during those tapings, leading to I guess a match against Tessa whenever they can. If Tessa is still signed (doesn't her contract run off sometime this summer ?). That main event was though though. Hernandez is a guy who never ever put things together and he looks just as clumsy as he did when he was a greenhorn. Homicide carried his ass for so long... A single Elgin vs Moose match would have been so much better. Really, the women had the only really good match again. A gimmick garbage match with actual characters with a story works so much better in those circumstances. Love Rosemary's new look too (she also looks to be in great shape).

I thought the same thing. It looks like an intern did that shit with Paint.

Trolling collective health disaster. Classy as fuck.

Long term selling.

I'm not really following what Disney does, as I'm not an avid huge blockbuster watcher anyway (I skipped the last Star Wars after all the terrible feedback), but I trust you on that. Hollywood is another level of fucked up I guess.

Well, there is that. Disney is not exactly better than WWE anyway.

If the company is sold, what happens to the Saudi deal ? It's one thing if your pro-wrestling company flying under the radar, but if you're ESPN, Fox or Disney, not the same focus from other media.

WWE really has turned into WCW.

How could I forget about the Miz ? well, pretty easy infact, but yes, him, of course. Total WWE product that would probably not translate elsewhere at all. This. With the monopoly of the last 20 years, it seems like time has stood still. Some of the guys on TV today has been there FOREVER at this point, without ever going away and doing other things. It would be very hard for those kind of guys to feel fresh ever again. It's no wonder why NXT was seen as hot and cool with all these guys from different background and hype to them showing up regularly. Dolph Ziggler can take a one year hiatus if he wants to. He's still gonna be Dolph Ziggler. He was on WWE TV in 2006 already. BTW, John Morrison being settled back with the Miz is truly a sign of the creative bankruptcy of this company. With all this guy did in-between, coming back as a much better promo and worker and it's straight back to 2007. Selfishly I really hope Taya never gets to WWE, what a gigantic waste that would be (considering they would look at her as "too old" anyway). She appears regularly on BTE lately, maybe she's tight with some of the boys there (from LU I guess), she would be a terrific addition to their roster once she's done with IMPACT (she really became a star there BTW, for those who are not watching, she's the total package at this point).

Yeah, this episode was surprisingly good considering this subject has been talked about to death and there really isn't that much to tell, really. I feel like Mansfield is full of shit when he talks about doing that "for the boys", but his point stands about taking care of a business that doesn't take care of you. I kinda chuckled when the "to increase benefits" line was dropped by Jericho. Yeah. Vince fired Dr. D. and took no responsibility whatsoever, but when he saw fit himself would "expose" the business for his own financial gain. What else is new. The fact Corny refers to the old days of pro-wrestling as like being in the mafia echoes the Bravo episode in an odd way. I thought Schultz came off really good and was the star of the show, while Stossel kinda came off like an asshole at points actually (the final "fuck you", although you wonder how much his this is actually him cutting a promo, the way he talked about his pain going away once he got paid). I'd be interested in knowing the historian's perspective on Mansfield though... Thus far S2 has been a whole lot better than S1.

He's living fast, dying young ?

Does that goes back to not being able to beat Cena at Mania 30 ? Then it seems it was all a downward spiral, with him being just a victim to post-streak Taker in a heatless match, the infamous "worm on the floor" match with Orton and awful cinematic match very poorly mimicking what Broken Matt Hardy was doing in IMPACT at the same time. Speaking of which Nah. IMPACT was doing fucked up cinematic shit better than WWE before they even tried. Bray Wyatt could show up in IMPACT's Undead Realm tomorrow and no one would blink. WWE's production is way overrated, people have been doing much more fun stuff with less budget. I won't even go into LU territory. But Bray seems like a WWE lifer, so it's a moot point.

That's hard to say when the guy never worked anywhere else. And he's been a proven failure on top, hurting everyone he ever worked against, having awful matches after awful matches, so yeah, he "found himself", but whatever he found hasn't been very good. He's still young enough that it would be interesting to watch him try his hands elsewhere. Until then, he's pretty much this generation's Randy Orton, a black hole (except he had a cool character on the surface).

Revival to AEW. As teased in BTE 201. Workers being better out of the WWE system, exhibit #426, soon to a TV near you.

Baron Corb... aww fuck. Nia Jaxx. Oh, you mean no people who are shit workers... Damn... Charlotte. I honestly don't see how she could be pushed more than she has been in WWE. Not to mention Cain wanted to do lucha libre more than he wanted to do "pro-wrestling". The funniest latest tidbit to me is Hijo de Fantasma speaking Spanish on NXT. So they got a mexican guy who's fluent in English. So they have him speak Spanish.

Company X made a better use of Wrestler Y than WWE is pretty much a constant. Has been forever now. Nothing surprising here.

They couldn't let AAA have him. And you gotta please the Saudis. Wait...