briantw

I think a lot of it was his substance abuse issues. They made him tough for companies to trust.

With Cross in particular it honestly seemed like deliberate sabotage. They took away his cool entrance and didn’t keep him paired with his wife, who was a big part of his gimmick and part of why he was so over.

My real question is why Vince is gift-wrapping performers like Lee and Moon to AEW. Moon in particular would be a huge boon to AEW’s very mediocre women’s division.

No doubt, but we’re at least a few years away from any chance of AEW going under, I’d think. And probably a lot longer since it’s Tony’s passion project.

The Khans have money to burn, though. I have to imagine that AEW is a drop in the bucket compared to what they make from owning an NFL team. Daddy Khan is worth almost nine billion. He could afford to piss away twenty years of AEW losses and it would be nothing to him.

I've found my favorite old fashioned recipe. 2oz Early Times Bottled in Bond .5oz demerara simple syrup 2 dashes 18.21 Havana & Hide Barrel Aged Bitters Add it all to a pint glass, add a handful of ice, stir for about twenty seconds, then strain into a rocks glass with a giant ice cube. Garnish with an orange peel that you express over the glass and run around the rim of the glass and a cocktail cherry. I prefer Luxardo. Early Times is a truly great purchase. A liter of pretty good bourbon for around twenty-five bucks. It's perfectly drinkable neat. Not spectacular, but nothing is at that price point. It stacks up nicely against similarly priced bottles, though, and meshes nicely in a cocktail. I highly recommend the 18.21 bitters if you like Wild Turkey / Russell's Reserve bourbons. It adds some nice leather and tobacco notes to the cocktail that I really enjoy. I've tried using Wild Turkey 101 in my old fashioneds, but for whatever reason I just don't like it as much as the Early Times version, even with different types of bitters.

Yeah, I think it’d be great if WWE didn’t suck. I only root for them to fail because I hate their business practices and I think Vince lost touch with what his viewers want a decade ago and often books o deliberately spite the fans. As for NXT, I’m not optimistic.

I’ve never understood why people give their allegiances to companies and blindly follow them regardless of the quality of their products. I love NXT, but it’s easy to see that main roster WWE has been creatively bankrupt for a decade now, and that they can’t effectively push more than two guys at a time. Right now, the only people that matter on Smackdown are Roman Reigns and whoever his next opponent is. Everyone else on the show isn’t worth a sack of shit, and that’s why their best performers are jumping ship.

I don’t know think it hit the highs of some of the best NXT shows the past six years or so, but that’s more or a testament to how great NXT has been. It was definitely a quality show top to bottom, and the two big debuts plus Punk’s return to in-ring action made it feel bigger than shows that I think were better from an in-ring standpoint.

So Daniel Bryan and Adam Cole both debuted at All Out on Sunday. I honestly think getting those guys is a bigger deal than Punk. Bryan was, by all indications, happy wrestling in WWE, but he left anyway. And reports are that they asked Cole, a 32 year old who has been one of the best performers in the entire WWE for the better part of the past four years, to be a manager on Smackdown, which is an outright slap in the face. Rumor has it that Bray Wyatt will debut in October as well, and both Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn are expected to have their contracts up in the next four months, meaning they could jump ship as well. Certainly exciting times ahead for AEW. WWE, on the other hand, is just hemorrhaging high end talent.

Yeah, I've been hearing that for years and I always thought that it's both probably true and also completely idiotic. If someone becomes big enough as a wrestler that they can piss off to Hollywood, that means they've elevated your show and brought more eyes to wrestling. WWE should strive to make more Rocks and Cenas, because that might mean they are actually relevant in the cultural zeitgeist again in a way they haven't been for over a decade.

Peacock is NBC's newish streaming service. No idea if it's US only though.

Yeah I still question the viability of the move but I guess I can kind of see it from the perspective that it's a brand new streaming service that probably not a lot of people are signed up for and they've suddenly snatched up a huge chunk of WWE Network subscriptions by offering those people the exact same amount of content they're already getting plus a whole lot more non-wrestling content for the same price, or even less with ads. They may also win back people who stopped their WWE subscriptions. Hell, I might sign up for the ad version if NXT Takeovers are still included. There are some other shows I like on Peacock like AP Bio that would make it worth it even though I don't watch much wrestling any more outside of NXT.

It says one billion for a five year deal, not per year.

Vince has always had an obsession with giant dudes who can't wrestle. He still does. If you're 6'6" or taller and can walk to the ring, you're probably going to be WWE champion at some point.

I said over a decade! I basically stopped watching right around the end of the Attitude Era and only started again within the past five years or so after signing up for the Network back when it was relatively new to watch old PPVs from my childhood. I heard some good things about NXT and happened to catch the Takeover where Kevin Owens debuted, Zayn won the NXT title, and then Owens obliterated him to close out the show. Hooked me in. A shame the main roster has been so goddamn terrible for so long, because NXT really shows how smart at least some people behind the scenes are, and how talented the wrestlers can be when allowed to just go out there and work instead of being fed godawful story lines by an seventy year old man who has completely lost touch with what modern fans want.

Literally for ten bucks a month you get not only new PPVs, but access to every WWE PPV, WCW PPV, and ECW PPV (there might be some omitted, but still) ever. Plus a shitload of other content like old Raw and Smackdown episodes, NXT episodes and Takeovers, and plenty of other stuff as well. As someone who isn't much of a WWE fan and thinks Vince has been running the company into the ground for over a decade, WWE Network is actually a really good deal if you like wrestling. I sign up for it sporadically when I'm feeling nostalgic, or just want to watch a particular modern PPV. Not currently signed up, but no doubt will be again in the future.

All indications are it was complete horse shit. Schefter said there's no legs to it and that OBJ is not on the block and the Browns themselves commented and said they have no intention of trading him. I think they literally just posted a video of him unboxing his new jersey on their Twitter. I also can't imagine them trading OBJ for way less than what Minnesota just got for Diggs when OBJ is better than Diggs.

I mean it's definitely a bad look for a billion dollar company to very publicly fire performers that many fans like in the midst of a pandemic. I don't think showing support for those people is a bad thing even if a lot of other non-famous people have lost their jobs too. Nobody should lose their jobs in a time like this and it's a massive failure of our government that so many people have and that a good chunk of them won't have their jobs back when this is all over.

Well, if your billion dollar company that is obviously not essential business donates 18 million to a pro-Trump super PAC and then is quickly deemed essential business, then you layoff a ton of employees immediately after that, you're gonna catch some shit.

I mean yeah he should have retired years ago, but if he's stubbornly going to refuse to do so and keep collecting checks, at least they found a way to make his matches entertaining. I'm not disagreeing that Styles should have won. He absolutely should have. But that match in a ring in an empty arena would have been hot garbage. Instead, they gave us something unique and enjoyable that reminded me a lot of Lucha Underground, which was an awesome show.

I thought it worked simply because it was undeniably better than any actual match Undertaker could work at this point in his career. He's been hot garbage in the ring for about five years now and shooting a match like that helped hide that fact.

He might be happy to hold it in an empty stadium so no one can boo Reigns.

That presumed Reigns/Goldberg match at Mania is going to get absolutely shat on by the crowd. Gonna be hilarious.

I've always wondered why WWE doesn't do more to make some of their matches have that "big fight" feel like UFC manages. I mean, it might not make sense for, say, the Fiend, because he's the sort of character that shouldn't be subjected to the sorts of things that make him seem normal. But for a match between, say, Brock Lesnar and Drew McIntyre it'd make a ton of sense.