NoFistsJustFlips

Who really knows at this point. They might throw one on there last minute. Speaking of, not digging how many matches are getting announced so close to the PPV. They normally have things setup a little sooner. Like MJF vs Wardlow has had the proper build for sure. HOB vs DT getting tossed on last night seems haphazard. As does Bucks vs Hardys getting announced only a week out. And the TBS Title match out of blue for Anna Jay with zero TV matches since what that hardcore women's street fight? Hell the Women's Owen Finals won't be set until two days before the PPV. Not sure why the timing on this one seems so thrown together. I'm still expecting a good show. But wasn't the point of fewer PPVs to really announce in advance and advertise and give everything that old school important feel? That isn't happening here.

Honestly I can't argue much of what you wrote here. I don't dislike Danhausen as much as you do tho. I like him a lot actually. I get what you're saying about why is he working out with Danhausen. But I just interpret that differently. In that vignette Hook is working out. He's going workout regardless because that's what Hook does. Danhausen admires him and tagged along and couldn't keep up. It's not like Hook was helping him Hogan & Mean Gene style in tiny shorts lol. I guess I just interpret it that he's not Danhausen's friend so much as he's just doing his thing and Danhausen is following him around and idolizing him because the curse didn't work on him. To me Hook isn't a babyface. He's just Hook. And he happens to be teaming with a face and fighting heels. But he still comes out of the heel tunnel. He hasn't changed any of his behavior. He didn't accept the gift of chips. He walked out on that. He's just a tweener doing his thing with a tag along.

I think your memory from that period is on point. By that point he had been used and abused by the office. He got over multiple times based purely on his work. By the time he was in ECW he was done trying to be a complete package and just went into coasting on spots. WGTT would have been tag team GOATs if they came up in the 80s. Imagine peak WGTT vs peak Steiners or Midnights or Rock n Rolls.

I can't help but think there is some real unrealistic views of Hook's place in the pecking order going on in this thread lol. There is something real and tangible with him, he is over and has a major value to the future. But he isn't even at the "pillar" level yet. Like he's clearly behind MJF, Jungleboy, Darby & Sammy in the pecking order. Being mad that he is with Danhausen and that it is ruining his aura is a bit of an overreach. Danhausen is very over. Hook is very over. Them together squashing low card dudes is going to be over. Hook isn't doing comedy spots. He's not doing the row boat spot or biting people's asses like Dink. He's still Hook doing Hook shit. He just has Danhausen standing there in the background now. To me (on a smaller level) they have that Rock & Sock thing going on. Two over acts on their own, that just have a fun chemistry together. Maybe a better analogy is Team Hell No. But by no means is this ruining Hook. Its giving him some meaningful stories to get his feet wet and learn and grow, without putting all of the weight on his shoulders. He just has to show up and keep wrecking dudes. Danhausen can carry the verbal stuff and Sterling / Neese are never going to be cool heels that get cheered over anyone. So this is good for his development. Outside of going full Goldberg with him, this is the best possible scenario to groom him for the future. And you can't go full Goldberg with him because of his look. You think we hear a lot of whining about Cole & The Bucks being tiny... imagine if Hook is out there no selling for Wardlow. This is good for Hook.

As Dolfan said the networks are big on keeping the brand extension a thing. But you could still merge all the needless titles and have champions work both brands. They can still have exclusive rosters. But just let the only world champion appear on both shows. Let the only men's tag champs appear on both shows. Merge the women's titles and do the same. The women's tags are already dual branded. You can keep the IC & US the show exclusive titles if you want. But with how they have paired down the roster there is no need for multiple men's tag champs or multiple world champs or multiple women's champs. All of that said, I'm sure they have a date in mind for a draft and one of the "networks" will just strip The Bloodline of half of their titles.

Fuck putting that in my house I want that on the hood of my car ?

Replica belt sales. Those merch sales for replicas are insane. I'm sure portions of which go to The Owen Hart Foundation as well which is good. Not much money in the replica trophy business from what I hear lol. Although for this specific instance I would have went with as close legally as I could get to a Slammy-like handheld trophy. Just feels right for an Owen Hart prize.

Very surprised @John from Cincinnati didn't pontificate about how she is graciously stepping away to make room for the new Chief Brandi Officer of WWE lol. Her taking time away could be just that, a little break. But this feels more significant to me. Time will tell. But Linda's been gone for awhile now. Shane is gone again. Triple H was gone for a bit (and is back but in a very limited capacity), & now Stephanie? Vince is the only day to day McMahon and he's almost 80? They really are getting ready to sell aren't they? All of the McMahons will get billion dollar payouts via stock buyouts. Someone's gonna get the company with Vince running it until the day he dies. And then Nick Khan taking over. /wild speculation

WWE had over 300 people under contract. What percentage of the business as a whole do you think that was? What percentage of people good at this does that account for? I understand your greater point but this isn't 2006 anymore. Signing 10 people (out of 15) that have been let go in a year is not the same as signing 10 people (out of 80) that have been let go in a year. This isn't TNA. I don't care what hangups people have on Cole or ORiley or Swerve or Keith Lee. All of them are fucking good at their job. Having them on your roster is a good thing not a strike against you. Where was this discourse in the 90s when WWE started pushing WCW jobbers? No one gave a shit that STEVE AUSTIN, CACTUS JACK, MEAN MARK, & JEAN PAUL LEVESQUE came in and were beating WWE guys. Just as it shouldn't be now. That's how the business works. You learn and grow and move on. Even back to the territory days. Dolph Ziggler being the same dude for 20 years taking up space is not a good thing. Movement and always improving your roster and change is good thing. I mean no offense to you personally. But this is a very dumb talking point.

According to Google local TV News people are members of SAG-AFTRA. Which means they have a union and collective bargaining at least. So unless Google failed me here, while their contracts may be similar... they still have way more rights and benefits than pro wrestlers. To your point, they may be able to be cut whenever and have no compete clauses like wrestlers, but they are still in a way better position than pro wrestlers are WRT benefits & financials.

Say no more, I understand your stance completely now. You see yourself as the Vince of your company so you empathize with his point of view here. The talking point of: ...is gross to me. Allow me to paraphrase here, but how I interpreter that is basically a POV of 'Well god damn pal you wouldn't be anything in this business if it wasn't for the letters WWE. You should be thankful we even pay you any money at all. You know how many people would do this job for free????' That is some toxic and manipulative shit. WWE the company has also been enriched by the talent here. Sasha main evented WM 37 Night 1. How much revenue did that bring WWE? My point here is the worker and the company mutually benefit, they both enrich each other. So to take the company stance that the worker is irrelevant to the equation and should just be thankful for having a job is ethically questionable and morally objectionable to me. I too will back away from this topic now because it's spiraling off topic. But take a second to consider WHY you're the only voice advocating for your POV in here. Could it be that maybe you're on the wrong side of this one? That maybe signing a contract to be a wrestler shouldn't entitle the company employing you to full liberty to use you & abuse you how they see fit? Just because I work somewhere and agree to a payment for my services doesn't mean that employer can send me out there to do stuff I don't agree with. Again if they want factory line workers, hire employees that get the same wage no matter what.

Couple notes on random things I saw mentioned... -They can't just throw out a Blood & Guts two weeks before a PPV. As two rings takes up way more seating than one ring, Blood & Guts will always be known ahead of time, even if it's not advertised yet... based solely on the format of the seating chart. They have to have a giant ringside area and the ramp area will not have as many rows. So people expecting to be surprised by this one day, sorry lol. -Mox's line was they wanted to kick the shit out of JAS in front of fans and that Stadium Stampede was lame because the fans weren't there live to see them get their ass kicked. Has nothing to do with the team format. So 10 man tag no DQ fits what he was saying just fine. -Think the post asking if Deeb was drunk is in poor taste since she was released from WWE for alcohol issues back in 2010. -100% agree Konosuke Takeshita is awesome. Put the ROH World Title on that man and let him become a big fucking star. -Loved Punk's shirt. I do wonder if that becomes a hindrance when it comes to ad sales down the line. If the Turner people see that and ask to tone it down. But fuck it, roll with it until you can't. -Johnny Nitro sucks. Sorry for the people that like him, but happy this will be a one and done. Pointing out to Joe where to stand on camera is pretty bad. They just did not click at all. -I called a Joe vs Cole final in the PPV thread and still think that's what we get. Thinking the women's final may end up being Ruby vs Toni now tho. -Itoh & Nitro as the jokers were fine. Not super sexy choices but enough star power to not be total letdowns. Itoh certainly has a place on this roster when she's available. But get Miz's sidekick the F outta here lol. -Pretty sure it's Hardys, Darby, & Sting vs Bucks & Dragons at The PPV. Which is such a random odd pairing of names that I wouldn't have believed if you told me that a year ago lol. -Da Meltz is saying Bryan getting his leg trapped after Rampage was him just fucking around with the crowd and not real or serious, thankfully.

Every contract can be canceled at any time by WWE. For budget cuts, or because you got an unapproved haircut, or because they sneezed in front of Vince. For any reason. They cut people all the time and have it in all contracts that it can be terminated at any time by WWE. The performers have no such rights. They are stuck in the deal once they sign it. There's like 2 or 3 people that have been able to negotiate a "no-cut" clause in the last few years. But of course those 2 or 3 are people WWE would never cut anyways. But outside of like Reigns & Orton & maybe Cody... anyone can be cut at anytime by WWE. And it's been that way since the Monday Night Wars when the contract structure changed to compete with WCW.

That's the name I got Lexy mixed up with. As my point stated they are all interchangeable and generic so this is very on brand for my point lol.

I think there's a misunderstanding in the bold part. They are for longer durations, usually 3 years or 5 years. No one is on a monthly contract. Now some did used to have rollover clauses but they weren't month to month. It's like if the agreement expires without the talent giving verbal notice they are leaving when the contract ends, it rolls over for another term. Meaning a 3 year auto renews another three year contract. But that is more of the old way they did things in the early 90s. Bret forgot to give notice in 1992 that he was going to leave. So when he was wanting to go to WCW it had auto renewed for another three years and he couldn't go. Toni negotiated a full release somehow. Some people the office just likes and will allow them to leave like her & Andrade. Some people the office want to be punitive with like Brodie Lee & Pac. So they stay in purgatory until WWE feel like they taught them a lesson. If they showed up somewhere after 90 days it's irrelevant. As BD posed above, the verbiage in the contracts states the promoter can terminate with 90 day notice. The performers can not. I believe the crux of the Lesnar suit was a bit different. He had a 10 year no compete that they were also enforcing on MMA. And wanted it enforced world wide. If memory serves me the court ruled that the no compete would stay in tact in the US, but Lesnar was free to wrestle outside of North America. Eventually they made a settlement after two years where Lesnar was let out of that 10 year no compete. And that's when he went to UFC.

Where's Mike Tenay at? Can he grow a Mean Gene mustache? lol Yeah Marvez is terrible. And they only use him on pre taped inserts. They also have a woman named Mckenzie (who I think is DDP's daughter). But she seems too much like the generic rotating cast WWE has doing backstage interviews. I never understood how they decide who Tony, Marvez, or Mckenzie interview. Seems random and arbitrary. They need someone with a bit of gravitas to be their Mean Gene. That's why his segments were good. He had credibility and was a known quantity. Tony would be fine in that role if he wasn't also announcing. But doubling up gets a bit weird sometimes. Would be a great role for a Kevin Kelly or a Mike Tenay or maybe The Coach. Just someone with some TV equity that people buy into being more than a rotating nobody. The perfect fit isn't available because he's in WWE. But man would I love to see AEW lead interviewer Doc Hendrix ?

The current answer is no. Would that hold up legally? Not sure, it's never been argued in court. Essentially if someone quits while under contract, they are done in pro wrestling until WWE decide it's not worth paying them their downside anymore. Take Pac for example. He walked out. They could have argued breach of contract and not paid him anymore. But that would also free him up legally to go elsewhere. Instead they decided to punish him by keeping him under contract for over a year. Eventually they released him. But not until they decided. Toni Storm did walk out. But she negotiated a release from WWE on amicable terms (somehow). They let her out of her deal within a week of whatever happened to her. Yet they sent Ali home for 6 months and wouldn't let him go. He still got paid his downside but he was punished by not being able to wrestle elsewhere and not being able to make any bonus income. Eventually they brought him back. Long story short WWE has all the power and the wrestlers have zero. They can bail and go home. But they won't be wrestling anywhere until WWE decides they're allowed to by releasing them. Probably the most famous walk out, Punk was released almost six months after he walked out. On his wedding day. As a big fuck you to try and ruin his day. Because WWE is the most petty place on earth.

Joker guesses: Men's: Jay White. Just have a feeling we get a Jay White vs Adam Cole final that leads us into Undisputed Elite vs Bullet Club at Forbidden Door. Women's: Mickie James. A big win for Britt against a known women's star. A good surprise that would be out of left field but doesn't need to win or look strong because she isn't sticking around.

Yeah ratings only matter so far as how much you can charge for ads. Unfortunately wrestling is seen as low brow entertainment. So while their ratings are far higher than NHL games, they don't get to charge the corresponding ad rate. Companies just don't look fondly on the viewership of wrestling. So say they can charge $100k per every one million viewers for a normal show. Wrestling can't get that kind of rate. They have to drop down to charge like $70k per every one million viewers. It sucks because people are people so who cares what kind of people are watching ya know? But ad companies do big studies on who buys products and what demos buy what percentage of products shown and stuff. And the viewers of wrestling just don't buy things in the quantities that their ratings show. I won't go all into the weeds on it. But it gets even deeper. Like how they make even less money when they do picture in picture ads because they're not getting the full screen and such. It's kind of a bunch of bullshit, but it's backed up by lots of data. So NHL games with half the viewers are charging probably like double the ad rate of wrestling shows.

Continuing down my Kim is the Walt of this show theory... (Episode 6 spoilers ahead) Her impetuous to pull this scheme with Jimmy is to get money to fully fund her pro bono work. Yet here she is, on her way to a meeting that would give her full funding to work on her pro bono work on the up & up, deciding that the scheme is more important than the meeting and bailing. Showing that this was never actually about the pro bono work. Kim isn't in the pro bono business, she's in the empire business. Just like Walt. She's addicted to the feeling of getting away with things she knows she shouldn't. And that's the appeal of dating Jimmy for her too. They sure are foreshadowing pretty heavily that whatever that is that they're gonna slip into Howard's drink is going to do more damage than expected. It sure feels like Howard is about to die and Kim will have to decide to do time or disappear. Or maybe it's all a brilliant misdirection. Either way I'm enjoying the ride. I do wish this last season had the pacing of Breaking Bad's last season. So much shit happened in just the first half of their last season. This show is not matching that. It's still gripping tv. But so far we've had one death, one gun hidden in a lab, and not much else happening.

Show me anywhere that any pro wrestler ever has signed up for any specific segment. Like Trish didn't sign up to bark like a dog. She happened to be okay with doing it. But if she wasn't is it your contention barking like a dog and being humiliated in public is part of the deal they signed up to? Sasha & Naomi had promises made to them by their boss. That boss then changed course and didn't hold up his end of the promise. You expect people to just swallow that shit? No way. Any person is well within their rights to say the stress and anxiety of dealing with this lying tyrant is too much on my mental health and I'm out. No one owns your life but you. I don't care what your job is. It doesn't own you. You can walk at any time during any circumstances if that's what you need to do for your own happiness. I'm curious what you do for a living. You don't have to answer if you're uncomfortable answering. But I think it would explain some context to why you are so pro heartless billion dollar corporation. It's gonna be hilarious if you're like an HR manager for Amazon warehouses or something like that.

Yeah that is basically a streamlined version of the red & black block logo they used in 2010ish (the same font FTR used on that set of gear). And I like it a lot. Much more sleek than the first logo they trademarked.

1) Fair enough, I will pull back on using that phrasing. My bad. 2) I believe that case was dismissed due to statute of limitations. So the court never ruled on the merits of the argument. They just ruled that you took too long to argue this case. 3) Could not agree more. Is wrestling just a sport? Not really. Is wrestling just acting? Not really. Do all pro sports and all actors have unions and CBAs? Yeap. Wrestling shouldn't be left out just because they are in the grey area between the two.

They do have contracts for a set time duration. But not for a set amount of money. There's all this funny math that is up to the discretion of WWE. As in sure they have a base number they get at worst, but there is no theoretical topside number. Meaning how they are portrayed creatively is very important to their earning potential. So it's 100% within their rights to refuse to do things that they feel will hurt their income. Again if WWE want sheep to sit on the conveyor belt of mediocrity, hire employees. Ones that get paid the same amount of money whether treated well on screen or not. And let's not act like this is some grand fuck you to the fans there last night. This match was literally announced at the beginning of Raw. No fan in attendance was bait and switched from an advertised match they were looking forward to. This company doesn't promote things like that ahead of time. That would be treating their contractors as stars and get fans attached to them. That's not what they want. They want a brand full of robots that will keep churning out content. They want the fans excited to come see WWE, not specific performers. Here's the thing about professional wrestlers. We're all human beings. Ones that want to feel valued and appreciated. The way WWE books is opposite of that. They don't treat very many performers as valuable. It's all interchangeable cogs outside of the top 6 or 7. So when the office tells you 'hey we're going to make you guys the tag champs and really get behind you and women's tag wrestling in general' and then gives you no tag team story for 2 months and now want you to put over the single's champs and make the tag titles worthless (again)... you're not being valued or appreciated. So it's time to walk away until they do value & appreciate you. And to answer your question, no I don't put a plumber on a retainer in the six figures. That's just fucking stupid right? Well welcome to the inherent hypocrisy of exclusive contracts for independent contractors. If someone is exclusive to you and your company, by definition they are no longer independent. Yet we all just sort of accept that this is okay. It's not.

I take issue with this. Remember they are not employees. They are independent contractors. They are 100% in the right legally due to their classification. If WWE want employees that will listen to every command, then hire and classify your talent as fucking employees you shady fucking tax dodging tax cheats. If I hire a plumber and tell him I want him to do all of his work while wearing a romper, he doesn't have to do it. He's an independent contractor. He's allowed to pick and choose how and why he does his work the way he wants to. And by definition that's why WWE wrestlers are. Independent contractors. So I get reallllllll annoyed when I see the corporate boot licking stance of 'do yer jobbb you unprofessional fuck' when the legal definition of their job says they don't have to do anything they don't want to. That's not on them, that's on WWE trying to save money not matching benefits pay ins and insurance and taxes and shit. See above. Yes they can legally. If WWE wants employees then hire employees.