Joe vs the Algorithm

Yeah, it’s gross but not unexpected. lol, it’s early in the day. Check back later. The comments will probably be even more disgusting. I’m not a Hogan fan but I didn’t know him so I don’t think it’s fair to judge him based on a few stories that are admittedly tough to defend. People change, stories in the press get exaggerated, no one is all bad or all good. etc. Even if I was feeling judgmental, I think most everyone deserves respect when they die. It’s not going to cost me anything to behave with some class and keep my personal dislikes to myself. Apparently, that”s asking too much of this group. RiP Hogan. You entertained a lot of people and inspired a lot of kids.

The cool thing about conspiracy theories is that they’re a cool way to dismiss all criticisms - including legitimate ones. - without doing any real work.

What’s the deal with Hook? Going from overpushed to almost immediately replaced in his faction and completely off tv is kinda odd. Legit injury?

I mean,, it’s going to get more eyeballs on the product and get at least a few people into WWE system. TNA has probably had 15 different “identities” and a dozen regime changes over the years, so worrying overmuch about their identity seems silly to me. There’s really not much left of their brand or legacy to protect at this point. The point of it all is ultimately to make money while entertaining people and TNA finally seems like they might do that. That said, it feels like they are risking waiting too long to pull the trigger on Santana. I think he finally gets the big singles win over Trick at the next ppv, but the crowd seems ready for a Santana title run sooner instead of later. I think he’s the wrong guy for this spot at this time and Joe Hendry should be getting the title push instead but Santana is the one the crowds seem to want. I didn’t have “Jacy Jayne - Belt Hunter” on my 2025 bingo card, but here we are. Wondering if someone in WWE suddenly sees main roster potential in here, because otherwise her megapush seems really random.

Hopefully. We’re far away from the era when Carson, Letterman, Leno made tv for everyone and tied to entertain people. Late night tv has turned into a fairly divisive beast that chases away half the country. I dunno why we need that. Also, late night talk shows seem irrvelantvin the era of 500 channels and streaming. Too many other options. My wife and I usually have the tv on at 11:30. The last time we thought about turning on Fallon, Colbert, etc. was probably 2013 or so.

CBS has supposedly been considering canceling Colbert for several years. According to the New York Times, the show has been losing millions for at least the past several years and lost about $40 million in the most recent fiscal year.

Melter and Alvarez both say people in the company told them about Seth’s injury before it happened. Alvarez’ theory is that Seth has a minor injury he maybe needs surgery for, so WWE did the SNME angle to cover for that and make people think he’s out long-term. The endgame would apparently be to “surprise” people when Seth returns sooner instead of later and cashes in. Don’t quite buy it, but also wouldn’t be surprised if Seth returns at Summer Slam and cashes in after Punk beats Gunther. Working a match on a bad knee and doing flippy springboard moonsaults seems like a terrible idea, so it’s definitely something wrestlers would agree to.

Per Meltzer, he was still scheduled to wrestle as late as Friday night, but things changed after he talked to Tony Khan a few times. I guess Khan said that in the post-event press conference. So, yeah, concussion seems the most likely issue. I guess the speech he gave before the match hinted at retirement? Though I’m not sure why anyone would believe that being that Bryan Danielson appeared later in the night. Lol, these guys usually seem to need show biz too much to prioritize health or family. Anyway, my initial guess after I heard he was out of the match was that a rabid Britt Baker jumped him in catering (her natural habitat these days). Guess not. Is Britt Baker still practicing dentistry?

Yes. I thought she has been released several years ago, but apparently not. It was mentioned on Twitter recently that her most recent match took place on early 2023. lol, I figured that couldn’t be right, so I looked it up on Cagematch. It’s correct.

Good point. Brain cramp. Though I just generally meant “ancient, vaguely feudal version of Asia. There have been quite a few of those lately. Assassin’s Creed: Shadows, Black Myth Wukong, Where the Winds Meet, WUCHANG: Fallen Feather, Lost Soul Aside and Phantom Blade Zero, etc.

Ghost of Yotei looks good so far, but I think I’d be more interested if someone besides Sucker Punch was developing it. I’m a bit of a mark for the “games set in ancient China/Japan/Asia” genre right now and Tsushima is one of my favorite PS4 games. But I’m not a sequel guy in most cases and Yotei doesn’t quite look like its own thing, even with a new story. More like Ghost of Tsushima 1.5. Still near the top of my want list, but right now I’m not too excited. Hopefully, that changes after reviews come in. If not, welp, plenty of other games to play. For all the pessimism about the industry, this looks like it may shake up as my favorite year for new games in a good while. Hopefully, that’a the case. I recently bought the PS5 Pro 30th Anniversary Edition from a scalper, so I’ve got a few thousand reasons to play PS5 right now.

Out of curiosity, what is the preferred wrestling of well-heeled geniuses such as yourself? I guess they put AEW on at whatever think tank you work for?

The D’Angelo feud is terrible, imo. It doesn’t help that you have three people fighting for control of a “family” that has four people in it. They show some nameless grunts once in a while, but the D’Angelos seem to be the least well-connected mafioso family ever. I’m kinda surprised Tony D is still in NXT. When he first showed up on tv, he seemed like a guy that would advance fairly quickly. He’a been treading water for awhile now. In general. my interest in NXT is low right now. It’a been the only wrestling show I watch even semi-regularly the past several years, but my interest has really waned the past few months. I can understand wanting to get new faces in the pipeline and on tv, but I feel like the last batch of callupa really left the roster thin.

Bought WWE 2K25 last night. I guess there are only 100 CAW slots? Is there any way to get around that? Multiple game saves or profiles or something? Last wrestling games I bought were WWE vs. SVR 06 and Fire Pro Returns. Those games both had caw limits, but you could get around that somewhat by swapping multiple memory cards. Anything similar for 2K25?

Maybe it’s a bad idea to work on a game for seven years and not have much to show for it? I mean, the development cost for PD had to be exorbitant and Xbox just deciding to cancel it most likely means it had a long way (and a lot of cash) to go. i’m actually curious about what the Initiative was actually doing. They don’t seem to have had any other projects greenlit and a lot of PD’s development was supposedly being farmed out to Crystal Dynamics, so… Xbox seems aimless right now. Third-party publishing seems like a short-term solution, but they need more than that if they’re going to try to stick as a hardware maker. I’m scratching my head over the “add Steam to our next gen consoles and handhelds” stuff. Sounds cool, but if I can can get Steam on my Xbox, what is my incentive to buy games from Xbox? For that matter, what is the incentive of third-party publishers to publish games for Xox consoles. Why not just train Xbox customers to download the PC version via Steam? LOL, if you take that idea far enough, what is Xbox’s incentive going to be to keep publishing games for their next console when they could just sell people the PC version? Play Anywhere seems like a good idea, but unless people can play all/most of their libraries anywhere, it probably won’t be a draw. We seem a long way away from being able to play all of our Xbox libraries anywhere.