Stefanie Sparkleface

Anyway, I just want Zaria and Sol Ruca to be buddies forever and I know my heart's going to be broken eventually.

Spears returned in February 2024, and he won the North American title in March 2025. That's not exactly two weeks.

I mean, AEW and WWE have been trading barbs at each other ever since AEW was founded, as would be expected from companies in direct competition with each other, so I'm not sure how any of this is a surprise. Plenty of companies across the world bring in talent from a competitor, hype them up as getting a fair shot for whatever reason, and rocket-push them over talent that has been there for a while. Is it bad because it's a bad practice, or is it bad because it's WWE being perceived as picking on AEW?

Those shades of blue and pink just work together so well.

This is so weird to me. People used to say WWE would bury guys for coming in from other companies by making them do jobs to prove that WWE was superior, now the argument is that putting titles on guys who came from other companies is somehow attacking that company. I need someone to explain this to me, because I don’t see what the argument is here at all. What am I missing? If it’s the shots that Starks burned his bridges elsewhere, okay, I guess, but I legitimately don’t understand how putting titles on people who came from AEW is supposed to make AEW look bad.

TBS was getting new episodes as first-runs.

Yeah, I'm going to put you on ignore now as you figure out how to put together how you're lecturing someone about racism with a caricature of an Indigenous person as your avatar, while at the same time finger-wagging at them for not being sufficiently scoldy enough of a queer person for you.

Could very well be both. I suppose it depends on where Nintendo's doing their manufacturing these days.

So Carmelo Hayes is the regular dark match opponent for Cody Rhodes, and Montez Ford just got the tag belts put on him. I don't think those are spots they're going to give to people who they don't think have value. As far as AEW refusing to book Ethan Page and Ricky Starks, I dunno, take it up with Tony Khan. I doubt Tony D'Angelo and Andre Chase care. I also wonder why you care so much about a show you don't watch, but then again, you've admitted in the past you only post in this forum to troll, so... there you go.

That's also, now that things have been announced, probably why the Japan-only price is drastically lower compared to everywhere else.

It was, but that's because services were fudging numbers to prevent writers from being paid accordingly, not because the numbers are impossible to get. Shocking, I know, that people wanted to keep a larger slice of the pie for themselves by screwing people over! I've built platforms and can tell you that you can get numbers to the second. I've also worked with platforms and gotten my analytics on those platforms, again, to the second. The numbers exist; there's just no reason to release them unless you want to make money from them.

I mean, Oba Femi is a beast and should be pushed. As far as the rest, not sure why it matters. Folks like Starks and Page are on their team now; I'm sure they're happy to have more vets to work with and learn from.

So with streaming there is the possibility to get accurate numbers, but the companies are under no incentive to make that information public unless advertisers push for some form of government regulation, which 1) HA! and 2) would get quickly obfuscated considering how the TV ratings were always estimations than actual numbers and there was never a push to clarify those. Unless you're a stockholder of an involved company (either a streamer, an advertiser, or a content provider), the data is really of little use anyway outside of giving analyst nerds something to talk about on their podcasts and perceived dunk lines about why Brand X is better than Brand Y.

I’d agree with that completely. I can’t think of any other reason why they’d do that outside of shutting down the resellers.

It reminds me of how Amazon was handling PS5 stock for a while, where you had to sign up for the model you want and they’ll notify you if there are ones available for you. I don’t expect supply to meet demand, but this reads to me as trying to shut out resellers for sure. Whether those resellers just won’t try to wipe out Amazon or Best Buy is a different story.

A little from that column, a little from the “trying to make sure it ends up in the hands of actual users and not scalpers/resellers” column.

I want that new Donkey Kong game more than I want air to breathe.

Most streamers, when it comes to events like wrestling or sports, care more about retention than bulk of viewers. Meaning how many are watching week-to-week and is that audience being retained (or better, growing), and how much of the event is actually being watched. In other words, their per-week metrics aren't as important as whether or not they have a high retention of their viewership watching most (if not all) of their show. If segments are being skipped or people are skipping weeks if not outright dropping the show, that's more of a cause for concern.

It's not blue anymore.

Those sleeves covering her knee braces are doing her more favors than she deserves.

Body dysmorphia is one of the worst mental disorders someone can have, because it's so difficult to get people to understand that it doesn't matter how they see you, it's how you see you, and far too many unscrupulous surgeons and marketers are willing to cash in on people who genuinely need help that can't be sold with a scalpel or a photo filter.

I could have sworn I saw WWE give a lower third graphic to a referee for a title match a few months ago and I thought “that sure is a change”, but I did have the flu so someone else will have to confirm

That’s not what I’m saying (though Stan Hansen and Abdullah the Butcher would disagree with you). Here’s an example of what I mean. The other day I was watching old Demolition matches, and they were facing the Young Stallions. Jim Powers was charging at Ax in the corner, and Ax leveled Powers with a clothesline that knocked him cold. Paul Roma was so shocked by it that he didn’t try to make the save. That’s what I’m talking about. It was well-placed and at the right time, so it won the match. To go off the earlier point about cheating winning matches, an elbowdrop or a kneedrop that suspiciously comes close to the throat could win a match too, as long as it looks good (and the person that took the elbowdrop does a post-match promo with a raspy voice or something).

There's something to be said for the standby match.

This is the sort of thing companies like Filmrise thrive in, getting the rights to content that would otherwise not draw much interest in terms of rights fees and making it available on platforms like YouTube, Pluto, and Tubi in exchange for the ad revenue. There's a lot of things folks would watch for free but wouldn't if it was paywalled, and WCW or old Coliseum Video output is at just the right age to hit that niche. Rather than bundle it in with the main WWE package and have it be buried under tons of active content, give it its own YouTube channel, let them do the hosting, and make your money via the ads in exchange for a cut to YouTube.