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It's an upper breast and thigh business.

We can joke about the Brakkuses and the Renee Duprees but god damn, just look at the aforementioned Ryback and Braun Strowman. Both guys got big pushes (Strowman moreso), both main evented PPVs, and both were off the main roster 5-6 years after they started. It's just anecdotal and maybe other people here can give more examples or even contradicting ones, but if this is the track record with guys they build from the ground up, where they're trained, used up, and spit out in less than a decade, that just sucks and probably isn't worth it for whatever college football washouts or American Gladiators alternates they might be able to lure. Also, I'm still laughing over "we need people who can main event Wrestlemania!" Like motherfucker this shit is a work anybody can main event Wrestlemania.

… All you fat, out of shape, sesame street sweathogs …

keep the noise down while I tell you how to get to Sesame Street

Even better:

There would have to be Jaguars fans for that to happen

Ha, I thought about posting in this week's Dynamite thread "The crowd was pumped up from the last bout, so this match was seen as something of a letdown" about the main event, but wasn't sure if anyone would get it.

Can we stop talking about how much money someone made like it fucking matters? It doesn't. The reality is that the vast majority of everyone making that much money is really bad with money. If they're not bad with it then they think that income is always going to be there and they live like that. The more money you make, the more your expenses increase. Not everyone is a Punk or Foley where they never elevate their expenses.

He didn't steal it, it's a somewhat frequently used term. Not the most well known one but I've heard it many times in my life, and often times in corporate situations.

Rick Rude should have worn the Bird outfit when he was the WCW Phantom in 1991

Yeah, I'm worried Wight vs Marshall isn't going to get the time it deserves.

Pictured: three guys who really moved the needle

PWSpyware:

A school that doesn't exist playing a wholly-owned subsidiary of a talent agency that only exists to exploit unpaid teenagers is a nice microcosm of where "amateur" sports are in this country.

Cassie & Jessie are a package deal. Plus, it’s fitting for them. And, in some neighborhoods, there’s a Big Joker and a Little Joker in spades. I’m guessing TK has never played that version, though…

The insane executive director at my job says it and I immediately was triggered lol

This week's show is brought to you by the letters f and u and the numbers 6 and 9.

Did this version of big bird knock out Oscar the grouch with an open handed slap?

Mickie James and a fan.

Goddamn. If I wanted to see people direct that kind of thin-skinned hostility at their own fans, I'd watch Raw.

I GOT SOMETHING TO SAY KILLED YOUR TERRITORY TODAY, AND IT DOESN'T MATTER MUCH TO ME, AS LONG AS IT'S DEAD

I don’t think any of those guys, other than Hobbs & the Bears, would leave AEW unless they aren’t offered extensions. Why on earth would you go somewhere away from a friendly owner & locker room full of likeminded talent to go play Nicky Budgets’ Reindeer Games for a couple years before they cut you loose? None of those AEW stalwarts are going anywhere, and idk why people would think they are…

every deck of cards I've ever bought had two jokers in it.

#1 on cable so still a good number.. TNT is probably cool with that.

C'mon. Michigan is rising up in Jim Harbaugh's 7th year and looks poised to defeat Ohio....BWAHAHAHAHAHA. Who am I kidding.

That sure is a weird way to say "I should never be trusted with my tweets ever again"..

Nice to see they went back in time and signed young Baron Corbin.

WHAT IS RYANS81177 DOING HERE IN THE IMPACT ZONE?!

Has anyone besides Dax and Cash mentioned that his injury is severe enough to be career threatening? I mostly think, that if it were legit, Meltzer or Satin would be talking about it. For that matter, I half think Tony Khan would acknowledge it somehow and FTR's last match would be bumped to the PPV. Heels cutting a promo, basically, and saying "I'm to injured to wrestle. I have to retire - RIGHT AFTER NEXT WEEK'S MATCH (GET YOUR TICKETS EARLY)" smells a lot like some sort of of heel chicanery. I won't be too surprised if FTR does some sort of tribute to Bob Orton in the match. Cash comes down with his arm wrapped or braced somehow, then somehow uses the protective padding as a weapon or pulls a pair of bras knux out of it when the referee's back is turned.

Meltzer thinks plans for Danielson have changed and he'll debut at the PPV this weekend. Dave was previously told BD would debut at the NYC Grand Slam event. Have FTR even been under contract for a year? Maybe they've realized that the odds of both of them staying injury-free for more than 3 months at a stretch are slim and have decided to retire before a tree falls on them or one of them is struck by lightning.

Hey! Stardom posted yesterday's matches on Youtube. I loved the Ice Ribbon roll-up section in the Natsupoi/ Darkness SLK match. It's so great to have Takumi Iroha back and Maika held up her end. The surprise for me was how good Rina was at 14 versus Unagi Sayaka. SAYAKA- CARRIER OF YOUTH! ======================= Toxin is the best wrestler on the free internet and probably the world. This match is overall NUTZ! but Toxin is the center of the craziest parts. He is sooo good. Everybody else in this match is also crazy and good. ================================ Dulce Tormenta, who is awesome, brings the strange micro-heat by sporting a UTEP t-shirt while wrestling in front a New Mexico St football crowd. "HEY! THAT'S THIRDISH LEVEL RIVAL! BOOOO!" So great. Lady Diamond is wrestled around.

If we're talking AEW themes for working out then might be worth checking Butcher and the Blade's theme. As it goes on it sounds like a proper metal tune that may or may not need vocals on it.

You did the Top 10 *just* to make the North Carolina joke, admit it.

All of this talk about whether we should be using Jindrak, Ryback or Mojo as an example... I mean, Luther Reigns is right there.

He brings his discarded pile of bricks everywhere he goes

I'm sure he learned it from watching this video. Although he prefers "Anti-Air Dropkick" to "Defensive Dropkick."

I haven't understood a word on this page.

Let's use someone else besides Mark Jindrak for these meathead comparisons from now on, because when my local Spanish language station carried CMLL, I for sure saw him have a bunch of bangers

I read the NXT comments a bit differently than most it seems. I may be off base, but I took it that WWE looked at NXT and went "we have way too many 'indie-type' wrestlers right now" so they aren't going to look to pick up any more of them because that niche beyond filled there right now. Basically if in their ideal NXT the split would be 50% indie guys and 50% athletic students they train up (the specific percents aren't important, pick your own if you'd like) and they see that it is currently 85% indie guys and 15% students they likely end up releasing some of the indie guys they are less sold on (which they've done) and likely hold off on hiring any more for the next bit while focusing on hiring for the latter group. I think it is more than likely once they are finished correcting what they see as an imbalance and the indie group thins out via call ups or releases you will see some hired from that talent pool once again. Or I'm wrong and they'll never hire an indie wrestler again, but that feels rather unlikely to me.

This is it. They can fire and hire and train whomever whenever, 6'10 or 5'3, indyrific or Brakkus 2.0; nothing's getting better as long as they maintain the same stale writing, start-and-stop booking, cutting off talent at the knees when they start to get over, and all-around refuse to let anybody get "too big" since for WWE the brand is all they want to truly push. To paraphrase Nova/Simon Dean, the wrestlers are doing their job, why not fire the fucking writers?

So if I'm reading the new NXT edict right, WWE's popularity has waned because people do too many drop kicks and 2 3/4 kick outs? If you can't create compelling characters involved in compelling stories, it really doesn't matter how tall/good looking the workers are.

Comparisons to the NJPW dojo are not totally on-base. Okada was trained by Ultimo Dragon in Mexico, Ibushi by MIKAMI in DDT, Shingo by CIMA and Animal Hamiguchi, Naito and EVIL both started out w/ Hamaguchi, hell, the last 1000% NJPW trueborn to hold the IWGP Championship that wasn't Tanahashi goes allll the way back to Togi Makabe. Even Satoshi Kojima was a Hamaguchi guy first. Which brings up a really good fuckin' point and something WWE is going to have to realize again when their current strategy fails/gets changed by the company being sold or Vince's heart exploding - they had it right before. Having affiliated trainers and further-reaching developmental strategies went really well for them. Not even the OVW days, but back when they had Dory Funk and Memphis getting guys into shape and figuring out their gimmicks. This is your Animal Hamaguchi. Then you send the guys to NXT. This is your dojo/Young Lion system/finishing school. Fuck, they already have this with EVOLVE and Sapolsky and they just forgot on account of COVID. There's also the other feeder fed they have, the one that never gets brought up. The money WWE is sitting on will be thrown at expiring AEW contracts. We don't know what WWE's strategy is going to look like outside of their instantaneous poaching of Ben Carter. Who's to say they won't be bloodthirsty? "No indy guys, we'll just overpay for talent Tony got TV-ready for us." And does WWE really think it's overpaying if it hurts a competitor?

Fuck, it's a Sunday PPV so midnight Monday UK time. Not the usual Saturday. AEW PPVs tend to be on a Saturday, UFC PPVs are nearly always on a Saturday so 1am for AEW and 3am for UFC on a Sunday. Seriously, a shout out to the Brits and the Europeans here who watch these in the early hours of the fucking morning. We're hardcore!