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2021 Post-Mania WWE Purge


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Well, even if all the shit that came out during Speaking Out didn't happen, the dude was so SOL anyway. Aside from an NXT title reign , what else was he going to accomplish? If he ever got demoted to the main roster, how far would Vince have gone with him? Not much of value was lost , even if it did seem otherwise a couple of years ago . 

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On 5/20/2021 at 8:54 AM, AxB said:

Meltz seems to be super high on Ezra Judge.

What Dave wrote in the WON about him

Quote

The final cut was Ezekwesiri Nduka Jr., 32, a former football player and bodybuilder who was billed at 6-foot-8 and 285 pounds (at the NFL combine in 2012 he was measured at 6-foot-6 ½ and 252 pounds–so in a company that loves monsters he’s legit slightly taller legit than Strowman with the competitive bodybuilder physique). Except for a guy like Montez Ford there aren’t 42 inch vertical guys, a legit number from the NFL combine, running around WWE.

Nduka Jr. was a college football player at Sam Houston State, which won the small college national championship in 2012, his senior year. He was rated the 36th best outside linebacker prospect in the 2013 NFL draft, but that wasn’t high enough to get drafted.

He bounced around NFL camps, played Arena Football through 2014, including briefly with the CFL’s Toronto Argonauts.

He then started competing in bodybuilding contests in 2016 winning the 2016 Jr. Nationals and 2016 Junior USA’s, and the 2015 Ronnie Coleman Classic. The former two wins got him his IFBB Pro card and he competed in 12 pro contests from 2016 to 2018.

Given his size, springs in his legs and pro bodybuilder look, to not make it in WWE meant either a perceived attitude issue or being really bad at progressing in the ring because the size, body and athletic ability is something they die for and a guy like that would get shot after shot until he either screws up or proves to them he’s got little hope. He’s only been in for 20 months, and guys like that even with limited progress will usually get far more chances than that.

The response we heard is people were shocked he was cut so there must be a story that wasn’t well known or something. His wrestling name was Ezra Judge but he never made it to NXT television. His lack of success also shows how much wrestling has changed because he would have had two months of training and been put in main events had he come along in the 80s. Think about this, he’s bigger than Lex Luger, a better athlete than Luger, better or the same body as Luger (Luger could have never won the contests he won) and Luger was spotted and was main eventing day one after weeks of training because that’s what they did with guys like that in the 80s.

 

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I'm trying so hard to not make a Better than Ezra joke so I'll pivot to hoping that AEW gives him a shot on Dark.  Would be a good way to see if he's worth keeping an eye on but with the way Meltz talked about him you never know.

Also count me among those glad to see Dream is gone.  As for the other shitheads it appears they're all doing something so it's gonna be hard to cut them at this point.  But it's a start.

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17 hours ago, alstein said:

Dream is prob gonna end up in Mexico or Japan.

 

 

With his rep for being a total arsehole backstage, wouldn’t MLW be the natural fit - the bridge-burner’s promotion of choice, if you wheel (apparently also the soon-to-be home to DVDVR favourite Davey Richards)

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2 hours ago, Custos said:

With his rep for being a total arsehole backstage, wouldn’t MLW be the natural fit - the bridge-burner’s promotion of choice, if you wheel (apparently also the soon-to-be home to DVDVR favourite Davey Richards)

 

I think even MLW would draw the line at someone widely believed to be a pedo. 

 

MLW gets the folks who are just assholes to deal with and say stupid shit.

 

 

Edited by alstein
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I thought Dream was ridiculously talented and entertaining. Allegations aside -- the guy had really good matches, was a great promo, had off-the-charts charisma and was so completely unique in his presentation. There was never anyone else like him. Everyone was stumping for him -- Cena talked him up bigtime. He was also in some of the best storyline in NXT history: His breakout "SAY MY NAME!" feud with Black, his "Anything you can do I can do" stuff with Richochet, the "drowning in the pool" thing against EC3 and his feud with Ciampa and the UEs. 

He definitely sounds like he was a major creep and has a lot of issues. But he has an incredible amount of talent.

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I always thought Dream was talented too. I just figured there was no way he was ever getting called up because Vince would never get the gimmick or if he did, he would make him go off the rails with the androgyny.  

Allegations aside, I think at some point he really started being The Velveteen Dream. Like he was living that gimmick 24/7 and at some point it stopped being a gimmick.

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4 hours ago, alstein said:

 

I think even MLW would draw the line at someone widely believed to be a pedo. 

 

MLW gets the folks who are just assholes to deal with and say stupid shit.

 

 

I can see MLW depending on how much stroke Lio Rush has in the promotion 

If he wants to work indies he will always have Maryland 

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In hindsight - I always wonder how much his "Call Me Up Vince" tights ended up slowing down his callup.

He was always reported to be on the call up list but never was and i just remember Triple H chuckling when asked about it and saying something like "there are some things people should ask for permission for first".

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Dream was a great promo?  News to me.  Competent on his best day and capable of being outright atrocious.  The one where he sang the National Anthem at Dijak is one of the WOAT NXT segments.

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I didn't see much of Dream until he started getting some buzz, and I just never got into him.  He struck me as being all-around fine, but not really exceptional in any one area.  Ok in the ring, ok on the mic, decent charisma.  I kinda feel like, without the gimmick, he'd have gotten lost in the shuffle.  On the other hand, as much as I liked the gimmick, I always wanted him to run with it more than he did.  WWE has always handed out a lot of over-the-top gimmicks.  The ones that tend to work on the main roster are the the ones where the wrestler can dial it up to 11 and really get into it.  DiBiase, Undertaker, Warrior, etc.  Dream kinda struck me as an indie guy playing at a great gimmick that would have worked better with someone else under the bandana.

On WO, Alvarez said that he thinks Dream's long absence from TV and release have little to do with the Me Too stuff.  He thinks that, if the company thought there was anything to the sex allegations, Dream would have been canned immediately,  Alvarez's line of thought is that there is a long list of other issues that made Dream expendable.  He didn't really get into specifics, but did say Dream has been a behavior problem everywhere he's been and his attitude and personal issues are why he would frequently disappear from tv for long stretches.

No clue how accurate his perception is, but it doesn't really matter.  Once the speaking out stuff came out, it was never going to go away.  Even if Dream was publicly exonerated in full, a lot of that crowd would never admit they had made a mistake, and the accusations and hostility would linger.  He always going to be a liability after that no matter how it played out.

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A few randoms on twitter have been alluding to stories about issues with hidden camera phones in bathrooms. Sean Ross Sapp replied that he's waiting for confirmation on that before he tells the story, so...

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1 hour ago, AxB said:

A few randoms on twitter have been alluding to stories about issues with hidden camera phones in bathrooms. Sean Ross Sapp replied that he's waiting for confirmation on that before he tells the story, so...

Guess he's confused Prince with Chuck Berry... Now that we've gotten rid of the confused emoji, can we add "?" ?

 

Edited by Zakk_Sabbath
Had to
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On 5/21/2021 at 11:59 AM, Goodear said:

I thought Impact was the isle of misfit toys and sexual allegations?

Released a bit sooner could have done Swann versus Velveteen winner gets to beat up Su Yung. 

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13 minutes ago, RRR said:

Released a bit sooner could have done Swann versus Velveteen winner gets to beat up Su Yung. 

This is gonna sound weird and bad, but I actually have some empathy toward Swann because of what I have heard him say about his childhood in shoot interview stuff - he's a victim of the cycle of abuse himself. If he's legitimately doing the work to improve as a person, and Su's standing by him (God bless her) who am I to say 'lets throw him in the trash' just because he had the absolute worst kind of shit modeled for him as a kid and did the statistically likely thing? Now, if he KEPT doing it, that's on him 100%, and that's a different conversation entirely.

Velveteen, on the other hand, instead of having any kind of remorse or doing any kind of self-reflection, seems to get worse the more we hear (grooming! Schamberger! Pee tapes??) Apples and oranges.

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On 5/20/2021 at 4:12 PM, hobo joe said:

Well, I felt bad for dude for losing Penelope, but sounds like he's doing just fine.

Brandi Lauren and Joey Janela have been broken up for a little bit now, apparently. 

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