Is the empire crumbling before our eyes?

[Kadaveri]

On 8/19/2021 at 10:52 PM, MoS said:

Rollins is a dork, but he did get fucked bad by the Fiend so I think he gets a pass here. 

Pretty diplomatic way to say "I no sell your finisher 10 times and then I win" isn't gonna be a popular wrestling character for your opponents.

[Ryan Faulconer]

Nick Khan is maybe crowd sourcing new WWE slogans.  WWE:  Then. Now. Forever…just doesn’t fit WWE’s current creative direction.

WWE:  We’re Not Active

Yeah, that fits the current situation alright.

[strobogo]

I think Vince (or maybe it was Stephanie) himself said the same thing in regards to being open to listening to offers to sell if someone wants to make it in the past year

[Boss Rock]

I don't see them selling until Vince physically can't run the show anymore. He's not gonna retire or just act as a consultant.

[NintendoLogic]

I could see Vince selling if they make him an offer he can't refuse. As Dave has said, he's at the age where he has to think about the financial well-being of his grandchildren. Of course, they're set for life by any reasonable standard, but the McMahons (and most extremely wealthy people, for that matter) are far from reasonable. Also, being a billionaire on paper and having that much in liquid assets are two different things.

[Al]

Whether they sell or not, they’re clearly placing the company in prime position for a sale.

[KawadaSmile]

NXT actually being a developmental? Fucking SHOCKED

[Coffey]

Honestly, long term it's probably the best thing to do. NXT did give us some good matches as it basically just morphed into old Ring of Honor there for a few years. But the reality is, WWE got multiple big money main eventers out of OVW in the likes of John Cena, Batista, Brock Lesnar & Randy Orton. From Vince McMahon's perspective, I doubt NXT ever hit that same level of success. I can't imagine Vince McMahon thinking the likes of Adam Cole & Johnny Gargano are future Wrestlemania main event players.

Not that all of a sudden Cornette & Davis will be running NXT or anything, nor do they still have the likes of Brisco scouting but still.

[sek69]

Apparently per WWE sources Becky is considered to be a heel, which worked so well the last time it became their largest non-Bryan related fan rejection.

[Strummer]

Yup, PWI is reporting Becky is going to be the top heel in th women's division on Smackdown.

so yeah, there's no way she is getting booed, right? Fans love her

[Badlittlekitten]

Becky Lesnar? I'll take it.

[Blehschmidt]

Unless they align her with Rollins, this fails miserably.

If they align her with Rollins, it probably still fails miserably, and kills her momentum.

[Badlittlekitten]

I dunno. This isn't the screwed over babyface Becky from a few years ago. She's basically become Charlotte Flair. I think it could actually work. The Man thing had long lost steam and she plays a better heel anyway. And Bianca is resonating as a babyface.

[NintendoLogic]

Bianca was resonating until Becky squashed her like a bug. Top stars win matches in 30 seconds, not lose them. As for Becky, she would've been dead in the water eventually anyway since this company can't book babyfaces for shit. The fact that they had to turn Daniel Bryan heel says it all.

[Badlittlekitten]

I'm not gonna defend the WWE brain rot of squashing Bianca Belair, but it has galvanized her support. It's typical WWE though. Getting babyfaces over by beating them, screwing them over and putting heat on the company. 

People were with her when she addressed the Becky defeat last night at the house show.

[Strummer]

So it sounds like they are repeating the Daniel Bryan story yet again?

Bryan getting squashed in seconds at WM 28 by Sheamus. Although Bryan was a heel then and wouldn't officially turn face till that fall

[Rah]

Inbetween discussing WWE's terrible booking, please don't forget to pre-order the Sasha/Belair Summerslam match T-shirt for a match that was hyped to the moon but never delivered.

[KawadaSmile]

You guys seem to forget that Becky was an asshole even as a face. When she mocked Edge's neck injury, she was a face. She was easily one of the cockiest, most arrogant wrestlers around. Nothing really changes.

She showed up on Raw looking like this:

Her demeanor won't change in the slightest. It's just that they are positioning Bianca as the good gal here.

Of course, they can still fumble this, we know.

[Al]

Gina Linetti as a wrestling character. I like it.

[Jmare007]

The End of an Era, not even Nikki Bella is with their bullshit anymore

 

[Robert S]

19 minutes ago, Jmare007 said:

The End of an Era, not even Nikki Bella is with their bullshit anymore

 

I guess Total Divas is a thing of the past?

[NintendoLogic]

So is she denying that she's fine or that creative has nothing for her?

[strobogo]

The "failure" of NXT really should be seen as Vince ruining everything and less placed on HHH's head. It was all fine and dandy until Vince started calling people up not understanding what made them popular to begin with and consistently fucked so many of them up that eventually the people on the roster were publicly saying shit like they'd rather retire than get called up to Raw or Smackdown. Then forced them to go to 2 hours and compete with AEW when they were already in a cold and stale streak due to issues already stated. Not to mention all the times when Vince would go out of his way to fuck NXT over by pulling people in the middle of storylines just to do nothing with them, often right after winning championships, and then making people who were portrayed and accepted as big stars in NXT look like complete fucking goofs and losers consistently once they hit Raw or Smackdown.

 

Vince went out of his way to make sure people knew NXT was minor leagues and treated almost every talent as such for years on the main roster before "rebuilding them" to the point where the rest of the audience agreed and the NXT talent didn't want to work on Raw or Smackdown. And then put all the blame on HHH. Lol.

[cm funk]

Agreed on over talent being killed dead on the main roster killing fan enthusiasm.  It certainly killed mine.  I enjoyed a lot of the "super indy" era of NXT for what it was, but it rested on the idea that all along new talent is being developed, the top talent moves up to the main roster, and the cycle continues.....

The ironic thing is that this "new direction" is what NXT was always meant to be, especially once they got the PC up and running

They've been recruiting and signing athletes with no experience this entire time mind you, they just weren't getting the ring time to improve outside of the small Florida house show loop....but even then they didn't have enough spots for the 100+ people signed to developmental to actually work in front of fans.  Some dudes have been under contract for years and years just to keep in shape and "train" and "learn" and they never get anywhere.  It's mind blowing

Meanwhile this entire time they should have been farming out the green contracted talent to indy promoters around the country, send them on excursions etc.  All tried and true ways to get experience that they never did.  They sort of had it with Evolve, didn't utilize it enough, then they just swallowed them up without replacing them....

It's ironic to me that the whole move to the super indy phase and signing up so much talent began as a way to stop the progress of ROH/Sinclair, which they rightly viewed as a threat at the time, and it ends with getting decisively stomped by AEW, the first legit threat in 25 years

 

[strobogo]

When the hell was ROH even remotely a threat? ROH the same month they had their biggest crowd ever up to that point (Kenny vs Cody show was like 6200 people or something WM weekend) they drew something like 250 for their next taping. By the time ROH/NJPW ran MSG, the super indy phase of NXT had been going on for 4+ years already and that was a once in a life time event. There's zero chance ROH would have sold out MSG without NJPW, and if tickets hadn't gone on sale when they had all of the Elite guys who were expected to be there when the event was announced. 

 

It was very, very, immediately clear that the only draws for ROH were NJPW and The Elite for years and even when those relationships were still active, ROH was regularly drawing a couple hundred people to shows without them on the cards. ROH was never a threat because Sinclair has never given a shit about them to put any money into them to be any kind of threat to begin with. But also because ROH has been even worse than WWE for ages.