Sean Liska

This was fantastic mainstream exposure for Mania. They spent 10 minutes on SportsCenter covering pro wrestling.

HHH tweeted that it's a multi-year deal.

I don't like their decision on the costumes thing as long as the fans aren't making a scene of themselves. I think it makes the show less fun. But it's not WWE declaring war on their fans' freedoms. They've always been sensitive about the front row right opposite the hard cam. Those fans can't bring big signs either.

You guys are making so much of this costume thing. I remember being at a Chicago show 7 years ago and seeing them make the clown super-fan guy move from opposite the hard-cam to front row on the other side of the ring. It's just a TV production thing and it's been this way for a long time. It has nothing to do with the Reality Era or Daniel Bryan or silencing fans or whatever. And the Daniel Bryan thing is so silly. Think this through. They told security to allow a certain number of Daniel Bryan signs and then cut it off after a point? Did they count to 50 signs? The way this stuff works is WWE tells security to confiscate anything with vulgarity and then anything with a key word like "TNA". They don't tell some security guy with no product knowledge to count the number of signs that say "Daniel Bryan" or "Yes" and cut it off after a certain number. My guess is the fans had too many signs in general and were told to get rid of some. People are so desperate to feel persecuted by this company. WWE didn't even alter the Rumble audio of Reigns getting destroyed by the crowd when they showed it on RAW the next night in front of 5 million people. There was a "We don't want Roman Reigns" sign opposite the hard cam during all of RAW.

Yeah, that's fair. If the next shows are at the ECW Arena, then that's only 2,000 seats for a show that will draw people from all over the Northeast, so that's an immediate sellout. May be a bit before we really know.

Last year NXT was something that mostly disinterested fans walked by at Axxess on the way to getting an Alicia Fox autograph. Now it's selling out a 4,000 seat building immediately. It's been a good year for them.

It does help. Generico and Steen never instantly sold 4,000 tickets for an ROH show, and they've been on top of Mania weekend ones.

People pay so they're priced correctly.

ROH charges $60 for front row and $40 for second. No reason NXT can't do that or even a little more.

The Cleveland show did a similar house to the Arnold show and also sold out right away, I would imagine that one was mostly local.

They sold out a 4,000 seat building today in a few hours for Mania weekend. Mike Johnson says several in the company were stunned. More and more, I'm thinking this is going to be the most interesting story to follow in 2015. Vince is going to see the financial possibilities of this brand and he's going to want to really exploit it. That could be good or really bad. Do you want to take a guy like Sami Zayn off the brand if he's capable of going on the road and drawing 2-3K a night? This could become complicated for them.

I'm pretty sure the "superkick party" stuff is just the usual Joey Styles crew screwing around and doing things management has no clue about - probably meant as a tribute.

Then why did they wait until after the ROH show was sold out to even announce it? Don't they need the indies to stick around to replenish NXT when NXT guys get called up?

The ROH show sold out a while ago. I just don't know why WWE would be out to destroy the indies when they barely made the effort to do anything predatory to TNA during the time TNA had lots of money and big stars.

Does Dave *really* hate Triple H? He thinks very highly of him as a worker. I thought Triple H got off very lightly in his Bill DeMott resignation coverage. I mean everything you needed to know was there, but you had to fill in the dots yourself. I don't know. NXT ran two sold out shows last week that people on Twitter were calling the best events they've ever been to. Dave's only comment on this big step for NXT was that it was funny the fans cheered for HHH since he doesn't respect them. Meanwhile, a PWG show in front of 400 people gets a big write-up. Feels like there might be some personal biases there. I don't know that NXT's touring is going to have to be saved by nebulous accounting. I guess it depends on the budget. With the talent they're signing, there's no reason they can't draw at least 1,500-2,000 in these markets. I expect both Arena shows to sell out quickly. The San Jose one is more interesting. It's a 5,000 seat venue. My guess is 3,000 with all the fans in town.

Does it seem like Dave's hatred of HHH is hindering us getting the real story on why WWE is all-in on creating an indie company? In the latest Observer he just says that HHH is doing it because he likes the compliments he gets on social media. But in another section he says that HHH has no respect for internet fans. So apparently all of the time and money being put into this is HHH fishing for compliments from people he has no use for. I feel like there's a bigger and more interesting story here than just HHH trying to cover up developmental's inadequacies. He wouldn't need to be going after Samoa Joe and the Briscoes and seemingly every indy guy out there. They think they can make money off of this. edit: beaten to the punch on the quote

They had a little kid cut promos for him in WCW. I didn't think it was that strange.

It feels like the WWE's relationship with the internet fans has evolved a bit. Like, at the Rumble, when the fans were still chanting for Daniel Bryan 10 minutes after he was eliminated, it would have been easy to have JBL say, "not surprising that this crowd of losers is still cheering for a guy who already lost." But they didn't take any shots or try to sugar coat things as Reigns was getting destroyed. They just acknowledged that the crowd wanted to see Bryan, Ziggler, or Ambrose win and were pissed off. They didn't edit out the boos the next night on RAW either, they confronted it. They're not as adversarial with us as they used to be. HHH's comments on the Austin podcast about the "new work" were interesting because it showed that they're aware of the internet fan dynamic they face nowadays. And the NXT house shows this week show that HHH is very aware of how to make internet fans happy. But they think that, big-picture, the money they're going to make with Reigns is worth the smart fan wrath right now.

I'm surprised so many people took offense to HHH's comments on RAW. He was a heel in front of a smarky New Jersey crowd getting heat. When he was on Austin's podcast, he didn't knock internet fans. And he's spearheading WWE's attempts to create a brand that appeals entirely to internet fans. Look at his introduction to the NXT Columbus show, he's 1995 Paul Heyman in front of that segment of internet fandom. I mean, I'm sure he gets annoyed with us because we're pretty goddamned annoying at times, but getting mad because a heel made fun of you is odd. He did a promo last year where he literally vowed to bury Daniel Bryan. They hyped the match by showing a highlight video of him going over guys like Booker and Steiner and Angle and Jericho. He loves using his rep to tweak fans and it works.

No one can force Vince out with the way they're set up. He has no hobbies except for working out. He doesn't do high-society socialite functions, he's not hanging out in Manhattan with other billionaires at fundraisers. He doesn't golf. He doesn't spend weekends in Santa Barbara or Martha's Vineyard. He doesn't vacation in Europe. All he does is lift weights and produce wrestling. He lives to fly to Dayton and yell at announcers during Smackdown. I can see him running things for 15 more years if he stays healthy.

As long as Vince has the final say in who gets paid, he'll have enough loyalty. But I think it is good experience for HHH to pretty much build his own promotion from the ground up into a legit touring brand. Vince can't send him off to run a territory, so this is the next best thing before he takes over some day.

I've been thinking about this. If this all works and they're touring and making money and selling merch, I can see Vince wanting to monetize it further by getting them a legit TV show. Which could be good and bad. It will help them sell more tickets, but lead to much more attention from management.

To me, watching ECW on the Network is like watching the network TV censored version of Pulp Fiction or Goodfellas. It's just not the same. Especially since you're not re-watching ECW to appreciate the workrate of a Pitbulls-Public Enemy match, it's all about the presentation. As an ECW fan, I love that so many people are enjoying watching the old TV shows but they're really missing out. The other thing is that it's not ECW without seeing all of the commercials for the home videos and the Hype Central plugs for upcoming house shows,

Yeah, I think some of the outrage is overblown just in the sense that modern WWE still features women more prominently than every other male-dominated wrestling promotion in history. It's not like internet faves like ROH and PWG and NJPW have thriving female wrestling scenes.

It's funny that HHH's progressiveness with regards to how he presents women in NXT has caused such a bunch of trouble for Vince. I know Rousey has changed the game to some degree, but I still don't think people would care much about the women being short-changed on time on RAW if it weren't for these matches at NXT specials.