All Elite Wrestling

[Coffey]

4 hours ago, Embrodak said:

What if it’s Tyrus

Funk is on a roll.

[NintendoLogic]

Has Jericho ever been on Fox News? Imagine the promos he and Tyrus could cut on each other on Gutfeld.

Speaking of Jericho:

Nice of him to provide us with something we can both laugh at and applaud.

[sek69]

To be fair, he has donated a lot to not only this but other fundraisers. Dude may have shit politics but he does have a heart.

[The Thread Killer]

Agreed. Chris Jericho is extremely generous with donations and fundraisers for injured or ill wrestlers, or other pro athletes. It’s hard to find fault in that.

[Dav'oh]

The future of marketing, indeed.

[Kadaveri]

What Bryan really should do is work the opener of Wrestle Kingdom and then get a flight straight back to Seattle to be on Dynamite. It's only a 9 hour flight and it's across the International Date Line so he'd actually arrive in local time "before" he left.

[Embrodak]

47 minutes ago, Kadaveri said:

What Bryan really should do is work the opener of Wrestle Kingdom and then get a flight straight back to Seattle to be on Dynamite. It's only a 9 hour flight and it's across the International Date Line so he'd actually arrive in local time "before" he left.

*Hulk Hogan Chronology Intensifies*

[Dav'oh]

7 hours ago, The Thread Killer said:

donations and fundraisers for...other pro athletes.

It's always a shame when that disadvantaged socio-economic group slips through the cracks in the welfare system. I'm glad someone's looking out for people getting by on only $2.5 million a year.

[The Thread Killer]

9 hours ago, The Thread Killer said:

Agreed. Chris Jericho is extremely generous with donations and fundraisers for injured or ill wrestlers, or other pro athletes. It’s hard to find fault in that.

Allow me to quantify my original statement.

It’s hard to find fault in that, unless you’re a needlessly contrarian smarmy whinging pedantic hipster.

[sek69]

Yeah, he's hardly donating money to millionaires. Every one I've seen was someone undergoing hard times and/or illness. 

[The Thread Killer]

The money Jericho donated in this particular case is going to Damar Hamlin’s charity for inner city kids.

THAT BASTARD.

[Dav'oh]

A cause close to his heart, I'm sure. *checks notes* $2500 donated in the last two years to that charity in toto.

Charities-du-jour shit me, yes. All of a sudden they've got $4 million and a) that causes problems of its own b) they don't necessarily need $4 million c) WHERE THE FUCK WAS THAT MONEY YESTERDAY? d) it furthers massive inequalities in the distribution of the charity pie.

A Chris Jericho makes sure everyone knows he gave (if only people could donate anonymously, amirite?) and lowers his taxable income. Altruism!

(Aside: Live Aid, the most famous of the celebrities have hearts of gold hogwash, raised $127 million for Efernopians. I'm still seeing ads for starving children, 37 years later. Bob Geldof gave $127 million to the same corrupt government agencies and officials that caused the famine...But it's always "Oooooh, what a good man Bob Geldof is" when he demonstrably did jack shit.)

So yeah, I hate cunts who give because a cause is "in" today. You should already be giving, not waiting for social media to tell you which charity bandwagon to jump on. No-one gave two fucks about Damar Hamlin's charity on Friday, (including you, @The Thread Killer), no-one will give two fucks next Friday, so we get a week of people suddenly pretending they give a shit.

" a needlessly contrarian smarmy whinging pedantic hipster." Zero from five, Thread Killer, but thanks for playing. I'm just glad I don't naively swallow attempts by the rich to reduce their taxable income and then ask for more, please.

[C.S.]

3 hours ago, The Thread Killer said:

It’s hard to find fault in that, unless you’re a needlessly contrarian smarmy whinging pedantic hipster.

I've always found it fascinating how you Europeans add an extra "g" to a word that does not need it.

3 hours ago, sek69 said:

Yeah, he's hardly donating money to millionaires. Every one I've seen was someone undergoing hard times and/or illness. 

Like Donald Trump, whose fiasco of a re-election campaign certainly qualifies as both hard times and (mental/cognitive) illness.

Seriously though, sincere kudos to Jericho for donating to a variety of wrestlers and other worthy causes. He's generous with his money, and he's a complicated guy politically (both in the Washington and wrestling sense) and otherwise. 

Not sure I buy brother @Dav'oh's tax break conspiracy though. Wouldn't it be cheaper to just, you know, not donate? 

Let's focus on what really matters here, people... Bryan having the type of AEW run that I - not him or Tony Khan - deem acceptable!  

 

[Jmare007]

I find it hilarious that the talk from this thread went from "you should appreciate Bryan Danielson while you can, no matter what he does" to "donating money to good causes is bullshit if you have money".

[Dav'oh]

Chris Jericho donates $5000 to a charity = good.

Chris Jericho realises his donation is under the name "Chrus Jericho." No big deal. They still got the money, Chris gets to feel all good inside. Wrong. 

Chris Jericho thinks "people might not realise that I, Chris Jericho, so valiantly and nobly donated money, because 'Chrus', so I'll donate again and make sure I got my own name right - that way there will be no doubt that indeed it was I, Chris Jericho, who donated money."

= people wonder why I'm cynical?

Chris Jericho gets called out and applauded, while the bulk of the people giving money go unmentioned.

35 minutes ago, Jmare007 said:

donating money to good causes is bullshit if you have money

No, 99% of the time the underlying motives are bullshit. 

[Embrodak]

Charity is bullshit altogether, but it’s what we have to address social problems, unfortunately. I don’t think Jericho is especially cynical, but I do think that it behooves us to understand that it’s not an accident that charitable donations are made by policy to align with the material self-interest of the wealthy. Jericho is not mega-rich nor a corporation, though. He’s making those donations on his phone, possibly drunk (Chrus Jericho is certainly a drunk dialing-type mistake). There’s no need to overthink it.

[NintendoLogic]

So rich people making charitable contributions is only acceptable if it's done for purely selfless reasons? Would it be better if they spent the money on luxury goods or whatever and the charities got nothing? Also, the impact of donating a few grand to a charity GoFundMe on a rich person's tax bill is negligible at best.

[Embrodak]

50 minutes ago, NintendoLogic said:

So rich people making charitable contributions is only acceptable if it's done for purely selfless reasons? Would it be better if they spent the money on luxury goods or whatever and the charities got nothing? Also, the impact of donating a few grand to a charity GoFundMe on a rich person's tax bill is negligible at best.

I think we’re fooling ourselves if we think charity is anything other than propaganda for the bourgeoisie *as a class, on the whole*, but I also think you drive yourself crazy trying to map group incentives onto individual motivations because they just don’t line up properly.

[Ricky Jackson]

Let's not lose sight of the real issue here...The Thread Killer isnt European, he's Canadian 

[The Thread Killer]

2 hours ago, Dav'oh said:

No, 99% of the time the underlying motives are bullshit. 

Here's the thing though...who cares? The money doesn't know where it comes from. I will take a celebrity like Jericho publicly giving money to make himself look good any day of the week, as opposed to somebody who won't give at all, or even worse...a total asswart of a human being like Steve Jobs who not only wouldn't give to charitable causes, he actively discouraged other from people doing it.

I am not talking through my ass on this topic, either.  I literally have an entire of career full of experience dealing with the charitable/non-profit sector. Granted, I spent the majority of my career working in the client care end of the field, but I was still intimately familiar with the financial and operational aspects of the charity sector.  Towards the end of my career, I did work in the Fund Development area of a major charity. Let me tell you something, if it wasn't for people donating money to charity in order to make themselves look good, or looking for a major tax break, then a lot of money wouldn't get donated. The majority of the big money, to be honest.

Once I got into the fundraising end of things, I learned some pretty horrifying truths. I was shocked at the number of obscenely wealthy people who either donated the bare minimum to charity throughout their entire lives, purely for tax purposes or even worse, they never donated at all, ever.  But then, they would die and leave a massive amount (or in a few cases, all) of their estate to charity.  Basically, these people would hoard their money until they were done with it, and discovering that science had not yet advanced to the point where they actually could take it with them, they left it all to charity.  Usually in the form of a foundation or so-called "legacy" project like the construction of a building or something.  And those donations usually came with naming rights stipulations.  They would only leave the money if it the building had their name on it.  Hell, there have actually been cases of rich families being shocked by posthumous charitable donations and trying to sue the estate in order to get the donation voided...all so the family could keep the money for themselves.

I will do you one better, I could tell you stories about what actually gets done with that money once it gets donated that would make even the most sunny optimist become cynical as hell.  A lot of charities, even some of the biggest ones, are almost a legal scam in a lot of cases.  For example, knowing what I know now, I would never donate a damn nickel to Mother's Against Drunk Driving, let me tell you that much.  Even in the most efficiently run charities with the best financial and operational oversights in place, only about 30 to 40 cents of every dollar donated actually end up getting put toward the actual charitable cause they are claiming to support.  In the majority of cases, it's less than 20. The majority of the money donated goes into operational expenses and publicity in order to perpetuate the constant fundraising cycle.  Whenever I give, you can get bet your ass I do a shit ton of research into where my money is going...but sadly a lot of the people asking you for your dollar are totally unaware of what will be done with the money donated. If you actually ask them for a copy of the audited financial statement from their most recent annual report, they will either turn ghost white or not even know what you are talking about.

My main passion at this point (after over 20 years of working with foolish mortal humans) is domestic animal rescue. In the end, I came to appreciate the donation of time and volunteer hours much more than money.  One time at the animal rescue a group of school kids raised cash and bought us a brand new washing machine, to clean the dogs and cats blankets and beds.  A incredibly kindhearted senior citizen bought us a brand new golf cart, so we could drive around the grounds of the rescue and feed all the animals.  I would take a donation like that of something "in kind" rather than in cash any day of the week...and you always know your donation is going exactly where you want it to. I sleep a hell of a lot better at night helping find adoptive homes for abandoned, abused and neglected dogs and cats, or cleaning up dog poop and scooping kitty litter at a rescue than I ever did begging rich old people for a cheque or asking them to leave money in their will after they die so they can get their name on a building.

The point is, you would have to look pretty long and hard to find somebody who is more cynical than I am when it comes to charity and charitable giving.  Over 20 years in the non-profit sector turned me from a cheerful college kid happily regurgitating poorly thought out and in most cases unrealistic and impractical left wing talking points, into a bitter old cranky libertarian with a deep seeded distrust and dislike for the government, social service agencies and most of all, the majority of human beings in general.  Believe you me, I saw some of the most heinous shit you couldn't even possibly imagine. Stuff people did to each other and it many cases, innocent children that haunts me to this day and did serious permanent damage to my mental health.

As a rule, human beings suck.  No, we're not getting better and no, we're never going to join hands to sing and work together to save the planet and come to a deeper understanding of one another. Hippies actually believed that during the 60's, and look where we ended up.

Having said that...

Once in a while, people are capable of doing good things.  Even bad people. When Damar Hamlin went down, it was pretty horrifying to watch.  Some people (a depressingly large number of people) decided to immediately jump on Twitter and blame the COVID vaccine, because of course they did. Some others managed to do an impressive feat of mental gymnastics and point to this injury as an example of the systematic racism in the NFL.

But some others just offered up the standard "thoughts and prayers" mantra which seems to be standard in situations like this.  Then somebody found out that Hamlin had a charity toy drive, and they wanted to send him a message that they were supporting him, and his charity...so they donated. And it snowballed, and here we are well over 4 million dollars raised, apparently. I cannot and will not believe that those funds were raised with anything other than the purest of motives. Yeah, off the top of my head I could probably name you at least five charitable causes that could use that kind of money desperately, where that money could do some serious good. But that wasn't the point. It is my hope that Damar Hamlin totally recovers from this injury and he sees the gesture for what it was...an entire country taking a minute to do whatever they could to try and support him when it looked like he was about to die. I also hope he gets some good advice, surrounds himself with smart (and more importantly experienced) people and that all that money gets put to a good use and ends up going where it needs to go. But honestly, even if it doesn't...the actual act of giving the money was a rare example of a whole bunch of people coming together trying to do something good after something bad.

Yeah, Chris Jericho is clearly an egomaniac.  I have listened to enough of his podcasts to understand clearly this is a man who absolutely loves the smell of his own farts.  He frequently refers to himself in the third person, which is always a sign of douchebaggery of the highest order.  He donated money to Trump.  His wife was at the January 6 riot at the capital. I don't much care for what I know about Chris Jericho.  Hell, we shouldn't forget that the dude is a millionaire, so a $10,000 donation from him is probably like a $100 donation from one of us. But once again...so what? He could have done nothing.  Or he could have done worse...he could have been like those people who tried to use this situation to further their own political talking points, or conspiracy theories.  But he didn't.  He threw a few bucks at the problem. Believe you me, there are much worse things.

[The Thread Killer]

8 hours ago, C.S. said:

I've always found it fascinating how you Europeans add an extra "g" to a word that does not need it.

As Good Bubba @Ricky Jackson pointed out, I am CANADIAN, dammit. The only thing European about me is my bikini area.

For the record:

"Whinging" is defined as complaining about something in an irritating way.

"Whining" is what @C.S. does when Tony Nese gets booked on TV.

[C.S.]

5 hours ago, Dav'oh said:

Chris Jericho donates $5000 to a charity = good.

Chris Jericho realises his donation is under the name "Chrus Jericho." No big deal. They still got the money, Chris gets to feel all good inside. Wrong. 

Chris Jericho thinks "people might not realise that I, Chris Jericho, so valiantly and nobly donated money, because 'Chrus', so I'll donate again and make sure I got my own name right - that way there will be no doubt that indeed it was I, Chris Jericho, who donated money."

I mean, if a typo got me an extra 5k from Jericho, I wouldn't really care what his motives were.

Also, I believe there's a $5000 donation limit on that site (I could be wrong), so it may have been purposeful so he could donate more.

2 hours ago, The Thread Killer said:

As Good Bubba @Ricky Jackson pointed out, I am CANADIAN, dammit. The only thing European about me is my bikini area.

The Queen is on your currency. 

2 hours ago, The Thread Killer said:

For the record:

"Whinging" is defined as complaining about something in an irritating way.

"Whining" is what @C.S. does when Tony Nese gets booked on TV.

And how Bryan is used in AEW, especially against Nese.

[Blehschmidt]

4 hours ago, C.S. said:

Also, I believe there's a $5000 donation limit on that site (I could be wrong), so it may have been purposeful so he could donate more.

This is the story I saw being floated, but there is no proof of that, so I hesitated to say anything until someone else pointed it out, cause I didn't care enough to get involved in the shit show that has been the last several pages of this thread.

[Embrodak]

Gotta say, the fact that every promotion has been scrambling to get their titles of FTR all at once at a minimum suggests that FTR is playing hardball with Tony Khan, whatever Dax is saying on his podcast. I guess it could just be booking happenstance, but I’m skeptical.

[Dav'oh]

@The Thread KillerAwesome post. Thank-you.