Is the empire crumbling before our eyes?

[El-P]

1 hour ago, MoS said:

I'm really not sure why beyond wrestling fans being creatures of habit.

Hum... People going out on Saturday night ?

[MoS]

10 hours ago, NintendoLogic said:

The Observer noted a while back that Nick Khan grew up in Vegas, which is a Saturday night town for sports and entertainment. He clearly doesn't give a shit about wrestling's time-honored traditions, and the rationale behind holding wrestling PPVs on a Sunday (to avoid going head-to-head with big boxing events) is no longer a relevant consideration for WWE in the Peacock era.

Wait, wasn't he childhood buds with Rock?

[SirEdger]

He is. In fact, Nick's sister is also co-executive producer of Young Rock.

[NintendoLogic]

8 hours ago, MoS said:

Wait, wasn't he childhood buds with Rock?

The only biographical info I could find on him is that he graduated from Vegas' Bonanza High School in 1992 and went on to attend UNLV. Rock said they were pals in Honolulu in the mid-80s, so I'm guessing Khan's family moved sometime in the mid-to-late 80s. People moving from Hawaii to Vegas is so commonplace it's often joked that the city is Hawaii's ninth island.

[Stiva]

On 1/21/2022 at 1:28 AM, KawadaSmile said:

"we have nothing for you... EXCEPT Mustafa bin Hassan!"

A handful of years earlier and WALTER would be headlining Mania. Or having A BEEFY match against Umaga (I miss him)

Umaga was who I was thinking about, actually. He was definitely the last of the monster heels built up for the WWE champion before they decided to run with shades-of-grey Cena on Raw and wink wink nudge nudge bullshit baby face HHH on Smackdown. Spare a thought for Big Daddy V

[sek69]

Apparently whoever runs the WWE twitter is blocking people who use #FreeAli

[KawadaSmile]

59 minutes ago, Stiva said:

Umaga was who I was thinking about, actually. He was definitely the last of the monster heels built up for the WWE champion before they decided to run with shades-of-grey Cena on Raw and wink wink nudge nudge bullshit baby face HHH on Smackdown. Spare a thought for Big Daddy V

Big Daddy V rocked. I enjoyed him so much in WWECW

[Ma Stump Puller]

Inokism Mabel > World's Largest Love Machine > Big Daddy Voodoo 

No dispute 

 

 

[ZThomas]

On 1/22/2022 at 8:53 PM, KawadaSmile said:

Big Daddy V rocked. I enjoyed him so much in WWECW

From mid 07 to 09 was really cool to see him get another run as a serious monster heel, especially at that stage in his career. Smackdown and ECW had a nice crew of big men and nonsters that  could go. Big Show, Undertaker even Kane. Mark Henry had finally reached his full potential a around then. All them were great opponents for Batista.

[sek69]

Having NXT Stand and Deliver as a afternoon matinee on day one of Wrestlemania is some real "tell me you've given up on NXT without telling me you've given up on NXT" energy.  No one is going to want to see a 2+hour show the day they are going to what will probably be a 4 hour show that night.

[Al]

That feels like something where the whole point is just to kneecap the other indie shows running that weekend.

[sek69]

18 minutes ago, Al said:

That feels like something where the whole point is just to kneecap the other indie shows running that weekend.

I'm sure that's probably the reason, but no one is going to skip any of the other shows running that afternoon to watch green NXT 2.0 folks. 

Funny thing is even if this does work the way WWE hopes, all it's going to do is burn out the crowd by the end of Mania. 

[Flyin' Brian]

Great that this is getting mainstream attention. #FreeAli is trending on Twitter. https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/mma_ufc/wwe-on-fox-mia-yim-involved-in-supernumberfreeali-trend/ar-AAT62xX

[sek69]

Astonishing (yet at the same time not) amount of WWE apologists on Twitter like "oh now you *want* WWE to release someone, I thought that was bad. Also I am very smart".

[Jesse Ewiak]

3 hours ago, sek69 said:

Astonishing (yet at the same time not) amount of WWE apologists on Twitter like "oh now you *want* WWE to release someone, I thought that was bad. Also I am very smart".

Am I a WWE apologist if I put Ali & Ben Simmons on the same level - people who willingly signed a contract, and are now upset about it? 

I think it's pretty clear, even before Ali signed that if you want creative freedom, you don't sign for the WWE, so I've got zero sympathy for wrestlers shocked they don't get to do what they want. 

[sek69]

3 minutes ago, Jesse Ewiak said:

Am I a WWE apologist if I put Ali & Ben Simmons on the same level - people who willingly signed a contract, and are now upset about it? 

I think it's pretty clear, even before Ali signed that if you want creative freedom, you don't sign for the WWE, so I've got zero sympathy for wrestlers shocked they don't get to do what they want. 

If what we can assume from reading between the lines that he was most likely being asked to to some stereotypical and/or racist shit (his strong reaction seems to indicate that was the case as he was very vocal for a while that is something he would never do),  he should have the right to GTFO of a company who wants him to do that regardless of the power of the almighty contract.  Give him a 90 day non compete if you must,  but keeping someone who made it clear they don't want to be there just makes the company look bad and potentially damages morale when they see a co worker who by all accounts is a top level person get treated like that. 

That's not even including the discussion that WWE contracts wouldn't hold up for a second in court (Brock proved that) and WWE gets by on knowing the high end of the payroll has no reason to rock the boat and the mid/low end of the payroll can't afford a drawn out court battle to challenge it. 

 

[Reel]

Is there anything to back up this idea that they pitched Ali some racist gimmick? I haven't seen it. Just people speculating. 

Seems like it's a lot of people reading what they want to into the situation. Like when there were reports that Sami Zayn had heat with management and everyone on twitter thought he was starting a union. 

[sek69]

Sami is known to be kind of a pain in the ass, but at the same time his heart is in the right place so it seems like everyone just kind of got used to it.

As far as Ali goes, we don't know exactly what was pitched, but you look at how Ali was described as getting into a heated discussion with Vince and consider Vince's history and Ali's outspokenness on what kinds of characters he's willing to play as a Muslim.  It's not exactly a stretch to put two and two together and figure out what must have been discussed.

Also funny you mention Sami, he's a Muslim too and I'd love to know if he's ever been pitched any stereotypical gimmicks. I'd wager the answer is no, and no one probably stops to think why that is. 

[Reel]

1 hour ago, sek69 said:

It's not exactly a stretch to put two and two together and figure out what must have been discussed.

It is exactly a stretch, though. He wanted to be released, they had a meeting, he didn't like the pitch they made, he still wants to be released. There are a ton of reasons why he'd be pissed, mostly because he wants to be released and they don't want to release him. 

[sek69]

Well there's also the matter of everyone thinking he asked for time off when his kid was born, only to find out he only asked for that one week off and had been sitting around doing nothing. Clearly at some point he figured "well fuck it, if they don't have any use for me guess I'll ask for a release"  which led to the infamous meeting.  

No one (that I have seen at least) has disputed that the meeting was heated and also that Ali is not someone known to fly off the handle, which leads to the speculation it must have been something real bad to elicit that level of reaction. I just don't see him getting that upset if he was being pitched the usual dumb but harmless WWE gimmick. 

Now you are correct that we don't know exactly what was discussed, but considering what kind of characters he was very adamant he did not want to portray and the mindset of the people who were doing the pitching, I feel pretty comfortable in my working theory on what was probably discussed. 

But hey, I hope I'm wrong. If it turns out Vince just wanted him to be Aldo Montoya 2.0 and Ali told him to GFY then I'll take that L. The last 40 odd years have taught me if you expect the worst from WWE management you'll seldom be wrong. 

[El-P]

Wait, the idea that WWE would propose a stereotypical gimmick to a muslim named Mustafa Ali is a stretch now ? Of course we don't know, but come on, it's at the very least a very believable possibility.

Speaking of guys asking for their release, Brian Kendrick has asked for his too.

[strobogo]

I think it's more of a stretch to believe WWE DIDN'T pitch a wildly offensive terrorist, or at least just evil foreigner, gimmick to Ali. They already were edging towards that with Retribution.

[NintendoLogic]

My understanding of the chronology is as follows:

• Vince pitches a character change to Ali
• Ali turns it down
• Vince pulls Ali from TV
• Ali asks for his release

The request to be let go came after the gimmick pitch, not before. It's true that we can only speculate about what the pitch was, but I'm a firm believer in a principle I call McMahon's Razor: always assume the scummiest possible scenario that can be reconciled with the available facts. Given Ali's beliefs and Vince's track record, it's not hard to put two and two together. I suspect WWE never pitched a xenophobic gimmick to Sami Zayn mainly because he doesn't look like a stereotypical Arab.

[Reel]

I don't want to get into a back in forth about it, and if it was 1991 I'd absolutely believe they pitched him Sheik Ali or something, I just think that it is entirely reasonable that something other than that happened.

This entire thread has turned into: take a small bit of the information reported, extrapolate on it assuming the worst and dumbest possible thing, and then acting like it for sure happened. 

[El-P]

2 minutes ago, NintendoLogic said:

I suspect WWE never pitched a xenophobic gimmick to Sami Zayn mainly because he doesn't look like a stereotypical Arab.

Vince probably thinks Sami looks Irish.

1 minute ago, Reel said:

This entire thread has turned into: take a small it of the information reported, extrapolate on it assuming the worst and dumbest possible thing, and then acting like it for sure happened. 

That's WWE track record for you, since most of the time, it's actually what they do, when they actually don't do even dumber (just last week with Gunther. A simple Google search before trademarking it would have done the job)