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OCTOBER 2020 WRESTLING TALK


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Man, I shouldn't be surprised that Vince really did double down on basically treating the wrestlers like slaves, but I'm surprised. I'm especially surprised because a few weeks ago or whatever when this first came up it seemed like they did an about face because of how poorly received that mandate was.

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1 hour ago, Casey said:

Stephanie McMahon's 2013 contract is on the SEC website and it plainly states that WWE owns their legal name for the duration of the contract.

What agent would advise his client to sign a contract like that? And would that even hold up in court?

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Maybe Vince really wants to kill the company. It drives him nuts that he will have to step down someday and someone could in theory make the company bigger and grander than he ever did. None of this can possibly be legal, but he knows no one will dare challenge it because McDivitt will have them in court forever.

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Unlike the class action lawsuit from a while back regarding former talent and concussions, you can't help but think that if such a lawsuit fighting these bullshit contracts made it to courts that it wouldn't be a slam dunk for the talent. Honestly I was hoping somebody like Miro would go for it considering how he felt about WWE and the business, but I truly wish that some of these men and women lawyer up and fight the hell out of this because nothing will change otherwise.

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What gets me is when let's say Bryan Danielson comes in he changes to Daniel Bryan.  That's on the assumption that he can't use the latter if he leaves WWE but can use the former.  So going by that I would assume they don't own Bryan's real name.  That's how it's been for the longest time and there's been many examples of this type of situation happening.  So for that reason I call bullshit on talent signing a contract stating WWE owns their real names.  The one bit of gray area would be people who didn't change their real names going into the company though not sure at the moment who that would be.

As far as folks like Stephanie she never had reason to change her name and her real name is used for licensing.  So it would make sense in that case why that would be in her contract.  Same goes for Vince, Shane, and even HHH/Paul Levesque since both are used at least on TV if not elsewhere.  But then it makes me wonder what if somebody does a Twitch under a new fake name?  If they do that then how can WWE say they own that name?  The whole thing is scummy as hell but I'm just trying to make sense of it all.  Either way shame on WWE and not spending a dime on them is one of the best things I've done this year.

Edited by NikoBaltimore
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59 minutes ago, christopher.annino said:

Unlike the class action lawsuit from a while back regarding former talent and concussions, you can't help but think that if such a lawsuit fighting these bullshit contracts made it to courts that it wouldn't be a slam dunk for the talent. Honestly I was hoping somebody like Miro would go for it considering how he felt about WWE and the business, but I truly wish that some of these men and women lawyer up and fight the hell out of this because nothing will change otherwise.

IIRC, I think Raven and Buff Bagwell's lawsuit over copyright issues, the independent contractor designation and royalties actually did have legs and they likely would've won but the statute of limitations had run out. If someone more current brought up the same issues, there's a good chance they'd win.

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14 hours ago, Casey said:

WWE is taking over the Twitch accounts of anyone in the company, and the talent will receive a percentage of any revenue from those channels - and it will count against their downside guarantee. 

Every single decision regarding labor in WWE comes down to, "what's the most evil thing we can do?  Do that!"

At this rate, why wouldn't every wrestler just shut down their Twitch?

 

8 hours ago, sabremike said:

What agent would advise his client to sign a contract like that? And would that even hold up in court?

Court doesn't matter.  The US legal system is so broken that, as @Phantom Lordalluded to, even if you're right and have a great chance of winning, you'd lose your ass in legal fees. 

2021 is going to be crazy if Biden wins and Yang is put into a position where he can go after WWE for this kind of shit.

Edited by Technico Support
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1 hour ago, NikoBaltimore said:

What gets me is when let's say Bryan Danielson comes in he changes to Daniel Bryan.  That's on the assumption that he can't use the latter if he leaves WWE but can use the former.  So going by that I would assume they don't own Bryan's real name.  That's how it's been for the longest time and there's been many examples of this type of situation happening.  So for that reason I call bullshit on talent signing a contract stating WWE owns their real names.  The one bit of gray area would be people who didn't change their real names going into the company though not sure at the moment who that would be.

As far as folks like Stephanie she never had reason to change her name and her real name is used for licensing.  So it would make sense in that case why that would be in her contract.  Same goes for Vince, Shane, and even HHH/Paul Levesque since both are used at least on TV if not elsewhere.  But then it makes me wonder what if somebody does a Twitch under a new fake name?  If they do that then how can WWE say they own that name?  The whole thing is scummy as hell but I'm just trying to make sense of it all.  Either way shame on WWE and not spending a dime on them is one of the best things I've done this year.

Of course Bryan Danielson can go back to the indies or whatever post-WWE and use his real name. Same thing for Miro currently. It’s only within the length of the contract that they “own” their real name, I’d imagine. For all intents and purposes, WWE owns everything about you because your face and personality is closely linked to your on-screen gimmick. Even using your real name for other things, you’re entire being is swirled in with your public persona unfortunately.

”Brianna Danielson” can appear on YouTube or whatever, but someone sees her and she’s Brie Bella in their mind if they know wrestling. Claudio Castagnoli is an actual person, but he’s Cesaro to most people because he’s on TV all the time (lately). Austin Watson/Creed is Xavier Woods to MOST (not all) people watching his YouTube channel.

It’s shitty as fuck.

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It really comes down the the kayfabe vs real life weirdness of wrestling.  These are people playing roles on TV.  The producers of Breaking Bad never stopped Bryan Cranston from profiting off anything else while he was portraying Walter White.  But we don't refer to wrestlers as people playing characters, like if a wrestler appears on a mainstream TV show, they're not going by their real names.  We don't see, "on this episode of Entertainment Tonight, we have Joe Anoa', who plays the role of Roman Reigns on the popular TV show WWE Smackdown!"  Because wrestling was portrayed as real long past the point of all logic, we have this incredibly weird thing that's fake but not fake.

All this is to say that I can see wrestlers being forbidden from doing outside stuff while under contract because Joe Anoa'i does not exist outside Roman Reigns.  Wrestling is fucking weird.  The only thing I see wrong with it is that they're supposed to be independent contractors.  I can't tell the guy who fixed my HVAC that he can't make money on Twitch for fuck's sake.  If you want these guys to not profit from anything else, then give them a union, give them benefits, and call them employees.

On a side note, this weirdness where the real people are inseparable from the roles they play is a big part of why wrestling will never be taken seriously.

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52 minutes ago, BobbyWhioux said:

not here anyway

call my hotline at 1-900-909-9900 to get all the inside information

You know damn well that Gene would be like, "What WORLD LEADER has recently fallen ill? Find out tonight on the hotline after Nitro!" and then it would end up being that the mayor of Paducah has a regular ass cold. 

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17 minutes ago, nofuture said:

Sounds like Wrestlemania will be back in Tampa next year instead of in LA.  Make sense since California is a lot more restrict about holding events with audiences compared to Florida.

Cool.  Now I'm just hoping we get Kairi back so she can do whatever plans with the ship because that needs to happen.  Oh, and maybe Kevin Owens can jump off of whatever he planned on jumping off of over there as well.

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Following up on the earlier post (the original tweet is automatically included, so, sorry for the redundancy) because Andrew Yang isn't just commenting on wrestling, but has sourced scoops now. 

Edited by Beech27
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17 hours ago, AxB said:

So Serpentico was going to retire in March:

I'm fairly sure AEW neveractually announced he was signed. But if he's still unsigned, you wonder why they'd be featuring him so prominently.

Wow that sucks. He is so damn good and was involved in the first Hoodmark Lucha Libre match. 

Also just found out that one of the wrestlers on the Oct 10th BIW show in Brookhaven MS had to pull out of the show...But has been replaced by DAMIEN WAYNE!!!

 

Kinda sad that this news got announced and most of the replies were "Who is Damien Wayne?"

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1 hour ago, bobholly138 said:

Wow that sucks. He is so damn good and was involved in the first Hoodmark Lucha Libre match. 

Also just found out that one of the wrestlers on the Oct 10th BIW show in Brookhaven MS had to pull out of the show...But has been replaced by DAMIEN WAYNE!!!

 

Kinda sad that this news got announced and most of the replies were "Who is Damien Wayne?"

Thats Batman and Talia's son right? 

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3 hours ago, Curt McGirt said:

After Matt Hardy I think we can do with a moratorium on wrestlers jumping off anything higher than the top turnbuckle for awhile

and even that can be curtailed a little

Bret's Rope = Best Rope

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