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Is the empire crumbling before our eyes?


flyonthewall2983

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On 9/7/2021 at 6:33 PM, C.S. said:

Rumors from Ringside News, so take them with a giant pitcher of salt:

https://www.cagesideseats.com/2021/9/7/22660023/rumor-roundup-sept-7-2021-vince-misses-raw-wwe-reacts-daniel-bryan-adam-cole-pitch-cody-bray-wyatt

If even remotely true, WWE's incompetence is staggering

FWIW Meltzer confirmed this.  Says they pitched the idea of Cole being in the Lio Rush role to Keith Lee's Bobby Lashley  *shrugs*

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6 minutes ago, Mad Dog said:

Cole isn't even that good of a talker. I am not even a Cole fan but it's like why even bother signing him if that's what you ultimately wanted to do with him? 

The whole situation sums up what a dead end NXT had devolved into when they decided to try to be a super-indy under the WWE umbrella.

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Interesting, Dave (who's been close to Danielson for a long time now) says that WWE was willing to let Dragon work New Japan in order to keep him.

As Danielson has stated since Sunday, the fact that he still chose AEW even with Vince bending backwards to keep him, just shows the momentum the promotion has. He basically couldn't resist the opportunities that are open to him. Seemed like a "now or never" type of decision.

And man, if Nick Khan would've pulled off that NJPW exclusivity deal....

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Still dying at the thought that was Vince's idea to keep Adam Cole in  the fold. Saw some WWE  Like he really came up with that and was like "goddamn pal, he won't be able to pass that up".

Also how awkward must the next  Danielson/Garcia family get together must be when it was Johnny Ace's job to keep Bryan and obviously that didn't happen. 

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4 hours ago, Mad Dog said:

Cole isn't even that good of a talker. I am not even a Cole fan but it's like why even bother signing him if that's what you ultimately wanted to do with him? 

Cole is a pretty good talker for himself. I don't see him being a manager type talker to hype his guy, nor did the world need the millionth version of them trying to recreate Shawn/Diesel.

But really, they had the guy doing 40 minute main event matches... what was the point if the goal was to make him a manager? Baffling.

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Also how telling is it that WWE clearly understands that these guys have value, (why bother hoarding them away from other promotions if they didn't?) but don't seem to have any interest in using that value themselves. 

"This guy is so talented, he'd be a huge star elsewhere and make another company a lot of money, so let's sign him and put him on a treadmill in Orlando for years and never generate any buzz for our own product" is such a silly business model it's actually amazing it lasted this long before they binned it. 

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In another one of those fun ironies, the WWE has also thrown huge money and cushy contracts with limited dates and main event booking to a whole bunch of guys well into their 40s over the past few years that the best time to leave the company would probably be in your mid-to-late 30s.

Based on recent history, at 40 years old, Daniel Bryan can have a great 3-4 year run in AEW and *still* come back, for even more money and even more favorable booking, when he's 45. 

Goldberg got booked stronger in the WWE after his 48th birthday than he did in his 30s. Edge is getting treated like a bigger star now than he was before his retirement. Obviously it goes without saying how much The Undertaker's been protected over his whole career, but I'm guessing Kane's one-night-return paydays over the years have been sizable. 

Danielson hasn't burnt any bridge. In fact,  he's arguably done the opposite, paving the bridge with gold for his eventual return and Hall of Fame induction. 
 

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Outside of Roman Reigns, there's few talent left in WWE that I would go out of my way to watch. If some how AEW could get a WALTER, WWE doesn't feel like they have a whole lot of people anymore that I really want to watch.

They've even really cooled off the women, which seems crazy to me. Bayley got hurt. Sasha is MIA. I think Asuka is hurt too? They squashed Bianca & rushed back Becky. Charlotte is wasting time with Nia. They've been pushing the awful Alexa stuff. Shayna is taking up space outside the ring instead of inside, for some reason. It's crazy. They gave Nikki that awful gimmick & now she's like Rhea's sidekick. None of it makes sense even if they were trying to book the show literally for children under the age of 12. I genuinely don't know what their gameplan or strategy is going forward. Everything just feels so directionless and... random. It feels random. Like they aren't thinking about things ahead of time. 

Like WTF is WWE going to do? Bring back The Undertaker again? Kane? Get Stone Cold to do a promo? They have no aces up their sleeves anymore. They even just blew John Cena & he's gone again already. Brock has come & gone several times and we've already seen him against Roman at least three times. Yeah, it's different this time, with Roman as the heel & Heyman with Roman but fuck, they've been to the same wells so many times.

Looks like WWE is going to put a lot of faith into Matt Riddle & Damian Priest.

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Just because The Rock is too big for them, they already shot their Cena load, and Austin, Foley, Undertaker, Kane, Hogan, Hall, Nash, Michaels, and Goldberg have been done to death doesn't mean anything!

Just look at Edge!

There has to be some other relic from the late 90's or early 2000's that they can dust off and try to push as relevant.

What's Heidenreich doing these days? 

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5 hours ago, Coffey said:

They've even really cooled off the women, which seems crazy to me. Bayley got hurt. Sasha is MIA. I think Asuka is hurt too? They squashed Bianca & rushed back Becky. Charlotte is wasting time with Nia. They've been pushing the awful Alexa stuff. Shayna is taking up space outside the ring instead of inside, for some reason. It's crazy. They gave Nikki that awful gimmick & now she's like Rhea's sidekick. None of it makes sense even if they were trying to book the show literally for children under the age of 12. I genuinely don't know what their gameplan or strategy is going forward. Everything just feels so directionless and... random. It feels random. Like they aren't thinking about things ahead of time. 

Most of the biggest issues are on the RAW side of things. On SD they seem to be having a storyline for Naomi (please let her join The Bloodline) and Liv is getting featured more often. They still have Tegan and Shotzi, that while not featured constantly, still got big wins.

Bianca, despite their Summerslam blunder, is still very fucking over, which is good if they are planning on continuing that Becky feud.

As for the rest... bad timing and bad luck. I don't mind the Rhea/Cross pairing, but what a surprise that the two last people Charlotte was feuding with vanished from the title picture...

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How they handle Gable Steveson will be so instructive about the apparent new direction for this company. In the old days, if you get an Olympic wrestler you push him to the moon immediately and if it were me, I would pair him up with a good manager and give him the Okada push to get the belt off Lashley. But I can easily see a world where this guy does three years of hip toss class and then is yucking it up on MizTV in an odd couple tag team with fucking Drake Maverick or something.

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