Leaderboard

Special shout out to whichever writer thinks Alexa Bliss, cocky mean girl heel, needs to be cutting promos about the fucking Visigoths

I'll be at SDL and Cass wont be. Today was a good day. And by the way, if you get me on the court, I'm trouble.

It's not. I know you're WWE's chief Fluffer here, but the TV product stinks. It's listless, boring, uninspired, played safe, no one is a superstar compaired to the real Superstars of yesteryear, everyone is on even keel, programs are rushed through, everything's overscripted. It's that it's live sports programming when live, unscripted programing is cheaper to produce. It's that WWE has become synomious with "Wrestling" in the US and it's the only game in town, with the power to have the most eyeballs on it, and it has ZERO competition. None. NJPW barely has a US presence, Impact downgraded into a Canadian Indy with 2 PPV's a year, and RoH will never, EVER, be bigger than they are. The only thing doing a number that would make WWE take any kind of notice is All In, and Vince has the means to keep another one from happening on a whim. What the WWE "Brand" became so valuable and huge is because at the end of the day, for all the shit we give her about her TV appearances, is that in her actual Corporate role, Stephanie Levesque is REALLY fucking good at her job. Under her tenure as Chief Brand Officer, the WWE has been 'legitimized' by ESPN, 2 different reality shows on E! with WWE talent all over it, deals with Make a Wish, the Be A Star program, the October deal with Komen, Konnor's Cure, the Warrior Award, a HUGE social media presence and leveraging, using specific terms on TV to set WWE apart from every other wrestling on the planet (Championship Oppurtunities, etc), and turning their big 4 PPV's into massive 4 day weekend events, so much that every other indy on the planet sponges off that crowd. It has fuckall to do with the product. When you're the only game in town, people are going to watch regardless. Fuck, I can go into multiple examples of Financially successful things that are absolutely shit creatively or otherwise, from movies to our Would-Be King. Financial Success <> Artistic Merit. What's worth several Billions of dollars right now, is the Brand.

All the agents ended up with food poisoning and Slaughter had to take over.

The best thing about this is that WWE will finally be able to pay the wrestlers benefits and a retirement plan and do away with the "independent contraction" nonsense. Right?

I'm going to get political as hell and if I get banned so be it. No one in this country that isn't in a high risk job like law enforcement needs a gun. I've made it to almost sixty-one years old with never firing one and I've worked in and hung out in some places that even the cops wouldn't go, I've had guns pulled on me twice and both times talked the guy down from doing something stupid. Unless you're a subsistence hunter (I have no use for trophy hunters, fuck them and the horse they rode in on), you simply have no need of a rifle of any kind. Semi-automatic weapons? Let's get real, the only reason they exist is to kill large numbers of people by unskilled marksmen. If you feel the need to have one you are at best a psychopath. Handguns? Now we get into an interesting area, other than the afore-mentioned law enforcement, I have no problem with someone in a dangerous situation who is properly trained owning and carrying a handgun. I'll include medical personnel on the graveyard shift, private security guards, cab drivers, I don't really care as long as you can (a.) prove qualified training and (b.) re-qualify every five years. Oh, and NO ONE needs more than one gun unless they are collecting pre-1900 firearms or black -powder weapons, I don't get the fascination, but it seems a fairly harmless hobby.

But he's not wrestling right? Good enough for me.

Next week Mojo Rawley cuts a promo referencing the Phrygian destruction of the Hittite empire.

It's amazing the lengths some people will go to to avoid giving Vince credit. A show with AJ Styles, Daniel Bryan, and Shinsuke Nakamura as the featured stars just inked a billion dollar tv contract. Let that sink in for a minute.

I really wish we could have had a Braun Stroman cameo on Married..with Children.

Meanwhile

BTW - in the kayfabe sense - Paige should be set for life In less than a month, she got SDL a billion dollar deal

Like I predicted, the Mets signed Jose Bautista. It gets better, he's batting 5th tonight.

I'm losing the narrative. Are these the refs that call the ticky tacky shit or are these the ones that won't let the Rockets shoot 50 freethrows so they can catch up?

Despy's the most underrated guy on the roster. Good to see him finally get a really-really-good-one on his resume when he's not obscured by Suzuki-gun tags.

Shit, I forgot the final SNME’s (or just the one?) aired on Fox with this...

It makes the brand more valuable, and noticed by mainstream, thus attracting more viewers to the TV show, which drives up ratings, which drives up ad rates, which makes the TV rights worth 1 Billion over 5 years. It isn't that hard to see FOX went after something that's already established to fill a slot that's guaranteed 3+ million viewers when they have about 3 shows total that beat that. It would've done that if they had Jinder, Orton, and Bray still at the top of the card instead of AJ, Nakamura, and Bryan. The parts are interchangible, as the WWE has gone through great lengths to ensure. Yeah, Bryan's over, but they'll live unharmed if he's gone. Nak barely registers after his intro. They lived before AJ, they'll live after. WWE stopped being about the talent a decade ago. Nothing is bigger than the WWE, no one.

Hiromu vs Despy is a must-watch and MOTY candidate for NJPW this year. Great hatefest.

If this means Kevin Dunn now has enough money to retire comfortably, I am FOR IT.

Guys, how are you not all stoked that Breezango is going to show up on Parker Lewis Can't Lose?

The 2nd amendment is aptly named in that it's the second worst idea America ever had.

You saw the last two minutes or something, man. The 3rd quarter was fire, with both teams stringing together great runs. Too much iso-ball from the Warriors tonight.

The match where Seth beat Roman for the belt was really good. The chemistry is there though its not Braun/Roman level.

Two asses got kicked on the episode of 83 Weeks this week. Bischoff kicked Russo's ass up and down and Conrad shut down Bischoff pretty hard when Bischoff tried dragging Meltzer's name through the mud. Bischoff did the same tired "Meltzer doesn't know anything because he's never run anything and has never run a wrestling promotion." Conrad brought up how Meltzer does run a podcast, website, newsletter, etc., but then also dropped a hammer on Bischoff saying, "apparently you don't know how to run a wrestling company either - you lost $80 million dollars!" and then he got Bischoff to concede that he basically didn't give a shit about WCW.

Fair

Because nobody cares about Aldis. The only time in his career I found him almost interesting is when he tagged with Joe.

I'm sure the entire writing team was required to do X hours of research on the Roman Empire after that became part of the Reigns gimmick and they've been sitting on that reference ever since

This is like watching my two kids fight.

It's just a devastating piece of storytelling. In the theater, when they part in the doctor's office came on, this woman in front of us started crying (got awful dusty in our seats, too) and her child didn't get it. She turned to her mom and says "Mommy, why is that woman on the screen crying? Why are you crying?" It was sweet and innocent and heartbreaking and awesome all rolled into one. Forget opening or closing scenes - that 5 or 6 minutes in "Up" is my favorite 5 or 6 minutes in any movie ever. Just...wow.

Weirdly our cats have never really slept with us. Dogs have been a completely different matter. For years our Australian Shepherd and Pit Bull would compete to see who could be a better Daniel Boone cap at night, and our Labrador would sleep on my wife's feet. Stormy nights were especially fun - our Great Pyrenees would get scared and end up sleeping right in the middle of the bed. Damn, I miss those dogs. I'd give just about anything to have to wrestle em for a spot in the bed right about now.

F- yeah, man! The pyro is coming back!

I know the contract isn't finalized, but I hope Vince signed some sort of paperwork before that Lashley segment aired. If that doesn't scare off Fox, nothing will.

Are we officially in the next boom period? Like the biggest and maybe the first since '99? But we're not noticing because we're paying attention to different things than the industry is? And if so, is this like that thing where metal heads all remember late 70s, early '80s Iron Maiden as the high point in their career, but if you ask the band themselves they're like "last year we played for 130,000 people in Buenos Aires and then 90,000 in Prague...this is the golden era of Iron Maiden, mate!"

"Not so fast, Breezy. I hear there's a 30-year-old paper boy who's still wearing horizontal stripes." "Let's roll."

"Now that we've taught Kubiac not to rely on cutoff sleeve flannels, this Fashion File is closed!"

Baseball is probably a decent—if somewhat superficial—comparison for WWE’s appeal in the current media landscape: a glut of live programming to provide constant content; has a very engaged (if somewhat niche) audience that only really penetrates mainstream awareness for one event a year; there’s a perpetual argument over a perceived lack of entertainment value while, somewhat paradoxically, the money just keeps increasing.

I like this new bit where Gunnar and Matthew are sitting around reporting ratings

My suggestion is that people find things to like, that they watch it on their terms and not WWE's. Don't watch a three hour Raw live religiously every week. Pick and choose. Watch house show fancams. Find stuff on the network you like. Get whatever joy you can from WWE while avoiding what grief you might have. Because they're set with or without you.

Per reports - Arizona will host Super Bowl LVII and New Orleans will host LVIII The list of awarded Super Bowls becomes 2019 (LIII) - Atlanta 2020 (LIV) - Miami 2021 (LV) - Tampa Bay 2022 (LVI) - LA 2023 (LVII) - Arizona 2024 (LVIII) - New Orleans The recent Supreme Court ruling probably means that the NFL will put 2025 in Vegas once they stop faking that they are upset

Can we still blame Doom and Marilyn Manson or are my references too dated? But seriously, it's been 19 FUCKING YEARS since Columbine and we still can't figure out how to solve this shit. More like "we still lack the will to solve this shit," I know. "Your dead kids don't trump my constitutional rights," indeed.

I take it you have not seen SANADA's Skull End?

Turns out the customer was diving out the window in an act of cowardice.

And that, if anything, is the biggest problem WWE has had in recent times. For all the issues WWE has, the biggest one is that they seemed to forget that "moments" can be fabricated, but any worthwhile storyline is guaranteed to pay off in a "MOMENT".