Leaderboard

@Zimbra@Norwegian Rudothank you guys. Man, "Sinister Minister ruins NWA's TV deal (owned by Billy Corgan) by doing cocaine on PPV" is the kind of thing that would make someone's head explode if you told them that 5-15 years ago.

In most stations, infomercials or similar in-trade paid programming, which are profit generating for local affiliates. CBS would have to pay a rights fee to AEW to air their program, and tell their affiliates to give up something that makes their station money. That's how you lose affiliates (assuming they just don't decline to carry the network programming and air their infomercials anyway, which outside of prime coverage they can typically do). Not to mention that ad buys in that timeslot for anything not SNL are pretty paltry, so you're asking for a station to throw money away for... what exactly? If AEW wanted to leverage relationships and buy the time themselves, they could do that and get in-trade time to try and get the ad buys themselves, but they'd likely lose a lot of money in the process.

Shit, TBS still airs Marvel movies I can damn near guarantee they do not care about a conflict of interest with a wrestling show that airs on a d-tier network that they are minority owners of.

You know, the idea of Don Callis:Bobby Heenan::Kenny Omega:Hulk Hogan is actually pretty awesome. Fuck, build the TNT title back up by putting it on Kenny, and have Don as the evil mastermind bringing in a rotating cast of family members trying to take it from him.

I want the James Mitchell cocaine bit ruins NWA on CW and WWE snakes it away to be as true as anyone else but there is absolutely no way that happened. WWE and CW are both owned by publicly traded companies. The CW is 75 percent owned by Nextstar if you want to quibble and Nextstar is a soulless media company (and not some religious group.) Have you ever bought a house or a car? Do you remember how much insane work goes into all of it before you and the old owner come to an agreement on the price and who has to pay for what things need to be fixed while the real estate brokers and a bunch of other people are involved? NXT going on CW is going to be that but about 500 times more complicated. And, also, since both companies are on the stock exchange (publicly traded), there are also all kinds of regulations you have to tend to for these sorts of deals. If the rules aren’t followed it’s really easy to get sued. The announcement came out the same day TKO (the WWE’s corporate owner) made its first public statements telling everyone how much money they made the past few months. That is not an accident. Timing big announcements on the same day a company tells the public how it is doing financially (earnings call day) is pretty commonplace. It is a sign that this has been in the works for a really long time. Billy Corgan is an idiot. And a narcissist. Sure, I like a few songs on Gish and Siamese Dream like anyone else who went to high school in the 90s and had exposure to an alternative rock station. But he’s not a business owner. He is not an executive unless you count bossing around James Iha or seeing how much Zwan merchandise is left in the warehouse as an executive skill. My very strong hunch is that Corgan had a meeting with a CW executive who is a fan of his music, since the CW exec knows they want to get into sports and they had a possible thing going on with NXT, and they nodded and smiled and wished Corgan luck and since he is a maniac without any experience he went and told some wrestling journalist they had a deal in the works and whoever wrote up the article has no clue how any of this works (or how to call the Nextstar media relations team so they could say ‘this is not true’) and wrote it like it was fact and not some insane Billy Corgan delusion.

Henry’s fine but imagine Drake and Dutch together like Akeem and Bossman.

Damn, stop hating The Righteous. They are awesome.

Not going to lie, I want to see Flair strut while he’s doing Edward 40-hands.

Sydne Stampede would fit a few WWE naming habits 1) alliteration 2) not using your actual name so it can be trademarked 3) it's also sorta Bron Breakker-ish 4) it could be a reference to the Oklahoma Stampede

I'm not sure which freaks me out more.... Young Suzuki or that he's scarier than a literal tiger-headed man

This is a safe space, right? We're all friends, right? We can make embarrassing confessions, can't we? I had a crush on James Iha. In fairness, I was 13 and hadn't realized what a colossal dork Billy Corgan was yet, or how much more of a dork James Iha was to be bossed around by him, or how my tastes needed to develop, but... look we all make mistakes when we're 13, right?!

The week before All In at Wembley, Saraya appeared on a few UK morning shows, did a full media blitz for the British press and, along with Paul Wight, did a "compare UK and U.S. snacks" video for a YouTube page. Yes, Saraya is British, a good speaker and has the "riches to rock bottom and back" story that sells, but this is something AEW needs to be doing with their wrestlers regularly. The NHL airs on TNT -- why isn't Chris Jericho (son of an ex-NHL player) or even Anthony Bowens (whose father was "America's foremost hockey fight expert") dropping by the pre-game show to give predictions and whatnot? Why not make 1-2 AEW regulars part of a team of celeb prognosticators for March Madness (one could be a legend like Sting or Jericho, while the other could be MJF or Britt Baker)? Even if it's not TV, you could do something similar with the streaming crowd, those who watch everything on TikTok or YouTube.

From what I can tell, while WBD and CBS both own a 12.5% stake in the CW, they pretty much have no say in programming decisions. CBS pulled its CW affiliations on a few of its owned-and-operated stations earlier this year after the CW agreed to air LIV Golf (CBS has aired the PGA Tour for decades). Honestly, I would expect both WBD and CBS to sell the rest of their CW stake in Nexstar sooner rather than later. CW is aggressively picking up sports packaging -- they have deals for ACC football and basketball and will air NASCAR Xfinity races next year along with NXT. The CW of old, full of teen soaps and dramas, is long gone. Now it's a hodgepodge of reality fare, scripted imports, sports and "The Chosen." It's now the network for people who don't know what streaming is and how to use it. I'm not sure what NXT's ratings are now on USA, but I could actually see it fall once it moves to the CW.

the YouTube algorithm is a mysterious thing (that probably spies on your browser history) and sometimes stuff like that pops up when it's been on YouTube for 4 months. It's more mysterious than Twitter's trend algorithm that probably pushes "Jim Cornette" as a top trend to any users who follow wrestling accounts whenever Jim does something (today it was him chewing out Kane on gun control)

Now that MJF has learned the value of friendship I hope we get a training montage of him and caster

The CW is programmed by Nexstar, not WBD. WBD just has an ownership stake and has very little say in day to day operations, as far as I can recall. So rocking the boat would, in effect, be a great way to implode that relationship, I'd suspect.

Co-signed!

JMU and the Sun Belt have formally written the NCAA requesting "relief" from the bylaw that bans transitioning schools from a postseason bowl. We shall see what we shall see.

Feel you, but at the same time, that's kind of exactly the reason I'd rock the boat - if I'm WBD and I see one of my properties is struggling, my move shouldn't be to put their biggest competitor into 99% of American homes! It'd be like if they said "Well, that Justice League movie was the absolute shits huh - let's just pack it in and see if we can get Disney to let us put Spider-Man on Max"

See, I was wondering the same, and that's what's kind of hard for me to figure out - I remember when Punk was fired, it was reported somewhere that TNT was going to be fine with whatever the number was, as long as it did better than the movies they use to run in that time slot. But at the time, the show was still doing like 600K which was still usually good for a top 5-10 placement somewhere (don't quote me but IIRC it peaked at #3 some time in July, obviously prior to CFB/NBA season as you said). So all of this to say: I thiiiiiiink this was expected, but a showing like this makes it difficult not to have a little anticipatory worry about whether or not the goalposts are gonna be moved at some point by WBD. Edit: especially in concert with Dynamite falling by a similar # YOY, AND the fact it's contract season

Yeah, there were two huge games Saturday night too. But still trends are down, which feeds the vicious circle.

I have memories of malt liquor in plastic 2-liter bottles at the grocery store in NYC in the 80s but I can find no evidence online that this actually existed.

This wasn't unexpected given sports (College Football/NBA) coming back, right?

They were but apparently CW is getting cold feet on the deal because James Mitchell did cocaine on the last NWA PPV.

I had to slow down and carefully read that name four times to figure out if it's pronounced like "Cindy" or "Sydney." She won't even need to change it, since it fits perfectly with WWE's "we pick names from prep school yearbooks" naming conventions. R Kelly has entered the chat

Just want to be specific about the sticking point, from the Hollywood Reporter article. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/sag-aftra-ai-protections-for-high-earning-members-sticking-point-1235638247/ This wording doesn't mean they want to "Scan dead actors" and bring them back from the dead. It's about how they can re-use a scan after the performer, whom they paid to be scanned, has died. Example: I book a big series gig and they're going to pay me above scale, which makes me a Schedule F performer. (Sweet) They pay me extra to scan my appearance. (Sweet) I die after I finish shooting the episode. (Shit) There's no language suggesting that they have to compensate, or ask for permission from my family, when they use my likeness in a future episode that I wasn't booked for. Because I'm dead. (Shit) So it needs to have better language for sure.

Hey, Fight Forever got an update! Some of the cheese has been nerfed, some bugfixes, shadow characters added to CAW, all minigames unlocked (who read my post???), purchased teams (FTR) can now be added as a team with a button press instead of having to create them, etc. There have also been "Season 2" leaks online in the past few days, such as the addition of The Acclaimed and Tony Storm, possibly cage matches, new arenas like modern Dynamite, a new ladder-type mode like MK, and, I hope, more CAW stuff and other fixes people have been asking for. I'm really happy they haven't abandoned this game. I do wonder if we get more seasons like they said we would and if, eventually, people who have left AEW (Jade) or have been fired (Punk) will eventually be removed.

This is pretty much me when watching the weekly shows, especially if I'm woefully behind trying to catch up. For WWE I catch up on the promos and how the matches end but unless it's something that truly excites me I tend to skip them. Not because I don't like it but because it's just so damn much and the standard has seemed to have gone up over the years. And that was before AEW which means tons more to watch. And while I try to not skip matches if there's a lot going on the ones on Rampage and sometimes Collision tend to be skipped over. I feel like my time's a bit too divided between wrestling, games, non-wrestling media and also trying to be present in the moments with those around me. So while it's odd to say it's too much of a good thing I feel like it is and that's where recommendations help me go back to good shit I skipped over.

OC/Mox and Shida/Toni after MJF/White are the matches I want to see the most. I passed on Double or Nothing 2023 and I was going to do the same for All Out 2023 till the great WOM here. As it stands it'll be the second. Good spot on a Saturday show so it'll be in the early hours of Sunday morning which is preferable. The start times are insane over here. WWE RAW. 1am till 4:15am Tuesday morning. WWE NXT. 1am till 3am Wednesday morning. WWE Smackdown. 1am till 3am Saturday morning. WWE PPV. 1am till 4am Sunday morning or Monday morning. AEW Dynamite. 1am till 3am Thursday morning. AEW Rampage. 3am till 4am Saturday morning. AEW Collison. 1am till 3am Sunday morning. AEW PPV. 1am till 5am Sunday morning or Monday morning. UFC PPV Prelims. 1am till 3am Sunday morning. UFC PPV Main Card. 3am till 6am. Sunday morning.

I've gotta tell ya, I think OC/Mox and Shida/Toni are the matches selling me on this show most, but outside those and the big trios match, it's not a card that's really speaking to me (at least not yet) - that said, let me show a little self awareness: it feels like I've probably reposted this same thing before every PPV since FD in June, and they've all ended up being great for the most part (even All Out, which surprised the shit out of me just a week after Wembley - if I did this sort of thing, Hobbs/Miro would still be a MOTY contender for me with a month left to go in the year). TV is TV but these guys don't miss on PPV. Plus, it's finally back on a Saturday! Pretty much have to order based on that alone - I haven't been able to make PPV margaritas since Revolution dammit!

I know the Charges have good players, but I also know that none of them seem to ever play well at the same time.

I like this but I was thinking more that Ric just gets absolutely plastered at the game and when they ask for the signs a hungover Flair says “Brother their is only one hand sign you need to know” and proceeds to throw up the four fingers for the Horseman followed by a whooooo.

Haha, you get it - I'm obviously anti-early grave, but very pro-wide eyed nonsense promo. It's a delicate balance!

You all need to watch some Team Tremendous matches. Dan Barry and Bill Carr (before he became Dutch of The Righteous) as a comedy TV Detectives gimmick.

You know Cody's been wanting to do this forever:

I agree that Dutch has some redeeming qualities, and is held back trying to fit Vincent's gimmick. He'd probably be fine in another role, whereas Vincent would likely suck doing anything.

How far off are we from the Marvel Spotlight was a waste of money posts? We need to separate MCU and Marvel Spotlight completely. Feige bought it with no real plan for it. Marvel Spotlight needs to be the developmental brand. Get the Marvel Spotlight characters off of MCU TV. (For those that don't understand this post, he posts all these same things about TK in the AEW forum in regards to ROH) lol.

In other news... ICHIRO IS 50 GOD DAMNED YEARS OLD. I guarantee you, he could still hit above .250 in the majors if he really wanted to.

"My God, brother, this kid, you should've seen him, he could go an hour with Rufus Jones no problem, NO problem - 30 minutes in, he's just getting warmed up, and not just once, I'm talking EVERY night around the horn, brother..." "Ric, all I asked was how fast he ran the 40"

Just on my way back from Power Struggle in Osaka. It was one of the very best pro wrestling shows I have been to live, both in terms of match quality and atmosphere. My only complaint was it was a.very long show. The Frontier match, featuring Mochizuki's kid, Mochizuki Jr. started at 4:30. Meanwhile, the Japan World Series Tigers vs Orix game started at 6:30. The baseball game was finished before the wrestling show was! I love Hiromu, but I was burned out by the time the semi-main started. Main event 100% brought me back into it, though. It was a GREAT match, certainly for everyone there live. You can hear how hawt the crowd was. Hope the microphones picked that up well. Hope the energy and drama come across watching it on a screen. At the start of the match, the crowd was at least 80% pro-Ospreay, which genuinely surprised me. There were several little Japanese kids who screamed "AWE-SOO-POO-REYYYYY!!!" over and over again for the ENTIRE 40 minute and sixteen seconds. To the point where I was literally laughing out loud. But for the last third of the match the crowd was SOLIDLY behind young Shota. So, to me, that is GREAT crowd work, from both guys. And that table spot was far from the #1 highlight. There was a double cut-off spot that got the greatest double-pop that I have ever been a part of. The trios match was also excellent, in that "everyone slotted into the perfect role" way New Japan sometimes nails. Mox vs O-Khan made me lose my mind! I ran down to the railing and sat on the floor to watch it. OK. Home now. What else? Naito gets so much more love than Sanada, in Osaka. It is funny in a kind of cruel way. Even Tsuji gets WAY more love than the champ. Mochizuki Junior looks like a blonde Japanese Hook-style dangerous cutie and... There were a TON of cool and good things set up for Wrestle Kingdom. The best of which was an AEW favourite doing a video to challenge Okada after which the crowd... But... THE ATMOSPHERE was even better. It was my friend - who, a few years back, got me to pull my head out of my ass w/r/t Kenny & The Bucks & Modern New Japan, thus opening the door for me to get right into early AEW - who got me the ticket. More specifically, his new girlfriend got three tickets and suggested he invite me. She is really nice! My good friend has a really nice girlfriend who likes wrestling! I am happy for him. Also, I am happy for her because he is a great guy. On the train there I saw a guy around my age wearing a Desperado t-shirt. We got to talking. Ended up walking to the arena together and drinking beer outside the venue together, while waiting for my friends (and his son) to show up. I like getting there early. Soak up THE ATMOSPHERE. SO MANY people wearing New Japan gear. Particularly LIJ, but by no means exclusively. (Almost) Everyone is friendly, because we all have the same weird hobby. Best was a very tall and muscular Japanese guy wearing a BCC t-shirt. I said "Nice t-shirt!" at the same time he said " Nice jacket! " while pointing at my AEW hoodie. We laughed and fist bumped. Also met up with an internet friend of a friend who is touring Japan. We went for yakitori after the show. Pretty good day. That's Kazu, the nice guy from the train. (I'll post a buncha pictures now) By showtime, Edion Arena/Furitsu was PACKED. It was a GREAT crowd, even by Osaka standards. Reacted to EVERYTHING for FIVE HOURS. Friend of a friend. So, basically, a friend. Losing my mind during Mox vs O-Khan Mochizuku Junior. He seems like a super nice young man. One of his tag partners was dressed like a Machine. Like Super Strong Machine, I mean.

being available and being popular are two different things Here's the viewership totals for the CW last Tuesday Inside the NFL: 285k The Swarm: 301k So I could see the CW believing that NXT, which had 674k people watching last week, could double their ratings on some night of the week. But wrestling fans are creatures of habit. Not all of them are in markets where the CW is Channel 2 (like my market). Just because it's available doesn't mean they'll actually watch it. Switching networks has shown itself to be a problematic thing for wrestling shows. Like how switching from USA to TNN kicked off a dip in WWF ratings long ago. The cycle next September is probably gonna be.. big first show, big first rating, high hopes, and then ratings that will be the best on the CW, but still not impress network people enough. Smackdown got dropped by multiple networks despite high ratings for those networks for similar reasons. Googling a little bit and 2012-14 feels like an eternity ago if they were pulling over a million viewers for a show on Ion. Which wasn't actually good enough and they got bounced anyways.

A Quad 1 win? In my Bradley? It's more likely than you think!

Skye has been with Kyle Fletcher for a few months now.

dmg had 58 - FIFTY EIGHT - shards

Based on last week's TV, I think there's a decent chance we get Golden Jets/Young Bucks, HOB/FTR, and Miro/Andrade. I wouldn't be surprised if Penta takes that AAA belt off QT on the preshow either. I'd be surprised if the TBS title is left off the show, and a Stat/Willow/Julia/Skye 4-way seems reasonable. Oh and MJF's mystery partner has to be Caster, right? Fills the comedy niche left by Cole and and should balance whatever the serious angle is with the devil payoff.

He’s 17 he can handle it! Lawful Jr is NOT the author.

If Athena wasn’t on ROH, she’d be facing QT Marshall on Rampage every week.

Also this lady can go fuck herself, but this is a genuinely good shirt:

Tony Atlas approved ;).

Well you should probably start with the best.