January 2022 Discussion of Wrestling

[Unnatural]

Maki Itoh gave her approval (granted this was months back, but if we can resurrect months old tweets)

 

Now I need KB, Sonny Kiss and Jamie Senegal doing The Beautiful People entrance

(Busanetico settling down)

 

 

Perfect setting for a 3 Faces of Foley deal with another gimmick thrown in down the road maybe

Edited January 28, 2022 by Hayabusa

[(BP)]

11 minutes ago, Tarheel Moneghetti said:

 The only reason anyone thinks this is ok is some of you hate Vince so much, you'll rationalize anything with "he deserves it".

It’s not good behavior and it’s especially classless since Jeff’s gotten so many last chances and repeated outpourings of support about his addiction issues.

Vince has had worse done to him and certainly has done worse to others. Deserves got nothing to do with it. 
 

[LoneWolf&Subs]

Ehhh… It’s not like they really wanted to do anything with him at this point, and if he asked for his release they would’ve if he agreed to not do a Hardy’s reunion for AEW. I think swerving them was his best play to get out of a contract Scott free without having to jump through too many hoops.

They’ll call him back anyway eventually.

Funny thing is, Jeff will never admit this is what he did. So he’ll constantly play coy with it.

Edited January 28, 2022 by LoneWolf&Subs

[(BP)]

It’s less about WWE personnel’s feelings  and more that he freaked out a lot of fans and people that know him personally. He’s had a lot of public backslides with addiction, and this fit a pattern of behavior we’ve seen from other wrestlers shortly before they overdosed and died. It would be different if he’d worked WWE backstage and hadn’t made it such a spectacle. 

[HarryArchieGus]

Interesting note from an MVP interview on Red Velvet's awful hand me down finisher:

Quote

On the reason he hated his Playmaker finishing move: “I hated that finishing move. It was given to me. If you remember, like three or four different people had it before me. They were all able to somehow get out of using it. And I got stuck with it. So I tried to make it look like a Heisman pose. What I hated about it was it relied a lot on the other guy to look good. So I wasn’t really a fan of the Playmaker and I can’t even tell you who I enjoyed hitting it on. Matt Hardy made it look great. Rey Mysterio. There were so many guys who made it look good. 

 

[LoneWolf&Subs]

I’m reading speculation that they jumped the gun, and fired him before test results came in. So maybe it’s a simple “He swerved them” situation.

[Technico Support]

On one hand, I get what @(BP) is saying regarding it's more about how Jeff scared a lot of good people.  On the other hand, anything labor can do to take some power back, especially in one-sided working relationships, is fine by me.  WWE can hang on to people who don't want to be there but also reserves the right to fire anyone, any time.  Seeing someone screw them for once is nice.

[Curt McGirt]

Yeah, I'm in the "turnabout is fair play" camp. They still didn't give his results back for six weeks. Fuck 'em. 

If either the brothers or the company think they're gonna be a big deal in AEW though, they probably got another thing coming. 

[(BP)]

My idea: Jeff Hardy is part of the Hardy Back Office. He’s got one of those green visors, a big accountant calculator, an abacus, and he has no idea what he’s doing.

[Kang]

https://www.wrestlinginc.com/news/2022/01/triple-h-reportedly-not-returning-to-wwe-nxt-anytime-soon-big-praise-for-shawn-michaels/

Vince McMahon is high on Shawn and the new system for NXT 2.0, certainly moreso over the previous indy smark darling project. On the other hand probably expect more changes over time for NXT 2.0., I don't think they're done with removing certain people.

Edited January 28, 2022 by Blue Dragon

[Infinit]

I think the only way to get WWE to drop you from this point forward is to push the "WE NEED TO UNIONIZE" narrative consistently.

[SirSmUgly]

14 hours ago, odessasteps said:

Peacock has Premier League, the Olympics and did have the NHL

They also carry two of the three major European cycling events and rugby. 

Basically, if you like European sports, it's worth the money per month. But yeah, gotta be either into the WWE catalog or into Euro sports for Peacock to be worthwhile.

RE: A couple of things @Cobra Commandersaid, for some idiotic reason, NBC put most of their streamable and replayable events for the Summer Olympics on NBCOlympics.com. I don't think you could even watch some of the more popular events, like Men's Basketball, live on Peacock. It had an extremely limited selection. I ended up watching most of the Olympics on a computer monitor rather than on TV because it was just easier to watch directly through a browser. I get that some of the stuff, they wanted to save for primetime, but making it hard to stream everything, even delayed, through Peacock and using a whole other site to do it was weird.

Second, we were just talking about how the Ultimate Warrior's reign was sunk by not having enough big-time heel opponents to face, and that goes for Ron Simmons as well, who funny enough actually needed to face Rick Rude (except be booked to win) rather than not. He also maybe needed a return feud with Vader that he won decisively instead of the Barbarian/Cactus Jack-level opponents that he did get. 

Finally, @Tarheel Moneghetti, there's no need for you or anybody else to cape for Vince McMahon of all people. It's not so much a rationalization as it is an acceptance of the situation. Vince has done more than his share of shitting on and screwing over workers. Jeff Hardy doing this to him is a perfect example of reaping what he has sown. It is what it is.

Edited January 28, 2022 by SirSmellingtonofCascadia

[Ultimo Necro]

1 hour ago, (BP) said:

My idea: Jeff Hardy is part of the Hardy Back Office. He’s got one of those green visors, a big accountant calculator, an abacus, and he has no idea what he’s doing.

Hardy back office needs to be a thing, where AEW wrestlers go for the last 6 months of their contract.  We get the occasional skit where Peter Avalon and Joey Janela are arguing over Post-IT notes

[JohnnyJ]

My recollection is prior to rejoining WWE, Jeff Hardy didn't want to take on a full time schedule again. Yet at 44, he ended up wrestling 50 matches last year. That's a lot for someone over 25 years in. I'm sure in AEW he sees a place where he can work a few times a year and take some independent bookings. 

Now that that Hardys and Briscoes are floating around, I would love to see a tag team tournament leading to a ppv.   

[Teflon Turtle]

I don't know what everybody's problem is; Peacock has a bunch of episodes of the original Iron Chef on it. Good enough for me.

Also - I'm not sure if this comes from a decades-long wrestling fandom, but I often need to remind myself what a bizarre subculture pro-wrestling is or can be. Along with that, we all know it's one of the carny-est businesses...pretty much ever? So even if what Jeff Hardy did is morally questionable, I can't entirely fault him for possibly pulling a fast one and getting away with it. "They're a pro-wrestler, they just operate in different spheres" is a pretty crummy defense for a lot of things, but in a case like this...just kinda seems like the nature of the beast.

Edited January 28, 2022 by Teflon Turtle

[SirSmUgly]

1 minute ago, Teflon Turtle said:

I don't know what everybody's problem is; Peacock has a bunch of episodes of the original Iron Chef on it. Good enough for me.

Also - I'm not sure if this comes from a decades-long wrestling fandom, but I often need to remind myself what a bizarre subculture pro-wrestling is or can be. Along with that, we all know it's one of the carny-est business...pretty much ever? So even if what Jeff Hardy did is morally questionable, I can't entirely fault him for possibly pulling a fast one and getting away with it. "They're a pro-wrestler, they just operate in different spheres" is a pretty crummy defense for a lot of things, but in a case like this...just kinda seems like the nature of the beast.

I'm kind of at the point where, much like Congress, I don't care about the scummy business of pro wrestling. The workers and the ownership seem to agree that working one another is fair game, so, uh, I don't know, go for it, I guess?

I would love to see a healthier workplace for pro wrestlers, but it doesn't seem like enough people are invested in making that happen within the business itself, so good luck, I guess. 

It's also why I have little sympathy for workers who go online to whine about their position within WWE specifically. You knew what company you were signing up to and what type of contract that you were signing. 

[Technico Support]

Another aspect of Peacock not being anywhere near profitable: isn't it free if you have Comcast as your cable provider?  That's a huge amount of giveaways right there.

[SirSmUgly]

2 minutes ago, Technico Support said:

Another aspect of Peacock not being anywhere near profitable: isn't it free if you have Comcast as your cable provider?  That's a huge amount of giveaways right there.

Yes, and about seven million of their subs are already paying for cable via Comcast. They have about nine million paying customers apart from that. 

[Technico Support]

At first I wondered if it was about luring people to Comcast via Peacock like how offering free Netflix might push you over the top if you're on the fence about joining T-Mobile, for example.  But nobody's going to change their ISP just to get a largely unknown streaming service for free.  It's likely more about artificially inflating the user base for stockholders.  Pure WWE move, there.  Profits are up?  Talk about how much money you're making.  Profits are down?  Talk about how huge the subscriber base is and hope they don't ask how many are actually paying or how many got 3 months for $1.

Edited January 28, 2022 by Technico Support

[NoFistsJustFlips]

This Jeff Hardy stuff is just hand wringing for the sake of hand wringing. It's very unlikely Jeff faked anything. The situation how I understand it is Jeff had been drinking. He started feeling shitty mid match and bounced. Because of his history WWE drug tested him (thinking it was recreational drugs), They released him regardless of the results because working while buzzed or drunk is not okay anymore. Jeff was offended by the optics of taking a drug test he knows he didn't fail, and still being released. It's wayyyyyyy less nefarious than people are speculating on. Jeff didn't trick anyone.

All that said, woof. The amount of corporate white washing here saying Jeff was the underhanded dirty one is gross. There's some hard core boot licking corporate sympathizers around these parts. WWE (the company as a whole not specifically "evil Vince") use these people up and spit them out. They don't treat them like human beings. They treat them like cattle. Nameless faceless warm bodies to hit stock price numbers and nothing more. Jeff would certainly not be the bad guy for tricking the corporate entity making him work 50 times a year when he agreed to a limited schedule.

I could rant for hours on that so I will finish with this... anyone siding with the corporate entity over real live human beings is a bad person.

Edited January 28, 2022 by NoFistsJustFlips

[Swift]

So what exactly is Hardy's contract situation then? As per the WON Rippa quoted - "Hardy is still under contract with WWE through 3/9 so AEW can’t make a legal offer to him, but the belief is that unless he goes back to WWE, which at this point doesn’t look like it will happen, he would be AEW bound"

Why can't WWE just demand that he show up for work if he's still under contract?

Was his contract always up to 3/9? If so, why even pull this stunt? Why not just work your dates til you're done?

[LoneWolf&Subs]

He was released. So it’s one of those 90 day no compete clause situations.

According to what the WWE reported to the sheets at the time, they claimed he “Refused rehab”, and that’s what they used to justify the release.

Edited January 28, 2022 by LoneWolf&Subs

[NoFistsJustFlips]

28 minutes ago, Swift said:

Why can't WWE just demand that he show up for work if he's still under contract?

Was his contract always up to 3/9? If so, why even pull this stunt? Why not just work your dates til you're done?

This is how WWE structure deals. They can fire you at anytime. When you're fired you are blocked from doing anything in the pro wrestling / combat sport world for 90 days. You continue to be paid for 90 days and are legally still under your original agreement. But in essence that original deal is terminated the second they release you. You have to fulfill the 90 day no compete (unless a legal agreement is worked out with WWE to avoid it), but they can't just go and say we messed up we don't want to terminate you. It's too late. They would need to renegotiate a new agreement with you.

The 90 day no compete is a way to stop you from making a deal and singing somewhere hot off being a news story. Being on Raw Monday, getting fired Tuesday, being on Dynamite Wednesday. It's shitty. But until it's challenged legally, it's just part of the business. No other company in the wrestling space can offer you a deal, nor negotiate one, until that 90 days is over.

[SirSmUgly]

39 minutes ago, Technico Support said:

At first I wondered if it was about luring people to Comcast via Peacock like how offering free Netflix might push you over the top if you're on the fence about joining T-Mobile, for example.  But nobody's going to change their ISP just to get a largely unknown streaming service for free.  It's likely more about artificially inflating the user base for stockholders.  Pure WWE move, there.  Profits are up?  Talk about how much money you're making.  Profits are down?  Talk about how huge the subscriber base is and hope they don't ask how many are actually paying or how many got 3 months for $1.

I'm not sure that the example strategy you mention using T-Mobile as an example would even work for Peacock. Mobile providers can compete with one another across the country. Cable providers have regional monopolies (or near-monopolies). I suppose they might think that offering Peacock could get people to pick up Comcast rather than cord-cutting, but that seems dubious because I'd rather just buy Peacock as part of the handful of streaming services that I subscribe to...and that's even though I have to go through them for internet service (fiber's not quite in my neighborhood). 

[Technico Support]

13 minutes ago, NoFistsJustFlips said:

This is how WWE structure deals. They can fire you at anytime. When you're fired you are blocked from doing anything in the pro wrestling / combat sport world for 90 days. You continue to be paid for 90 days and are legally still under your original agreement. But in essence that original deal is terminated the second they release you. You have to fulfill the 90 day no compete (unless a legal agreement is worked out with WWE to avoid it), but they can't just go and say we messed up we don't want to terminate you. It's too late. They would need to renegotiate a new agreement with you.

The 90 day no compete is a way to stop you from making a deal and singing somewhere hot off being a news story. Being on Raw Monday, getting fired Tuesday, being on Dynamite Wednesday. It's shitty. But until it's challenged legally, it's just part of the business. No other company in the wrestling space can offer you a deal, nor negotiate one, until that 90 days is over.

And the 90 day wouldn't hold up in damn near any court, but fighting it would probably take longer than 90 days and cost a ton of money, so it's pointless.

I remember Lesnar sued them over it and eventually won, but I believe the issue there is that they wanted to hold him to a non compete for the entire length of the contact they had originally signed before he "retired to pursue football" and not only wanted to keep him from wrestling, but also from MMA.  Come to think of it, they may have wanted to keep him from wrestling or fighting anywhere ever again if he ever "unretired."  Which is so scummy.

Edited January 28, 2022 by Technico Support