Zakk_Sabbath

You jest, but I am completely, unironically in for all of that 100%! I honestly wish I threw Platinum Satnum on my list earlier now. Danielson could pinball around for him for a bit, build the whole thing around being "the first" to take Singh off his feet - dropkick him or chop him down for a huge pop, get a few spots in with Sanjay, Lethal, and Double J while Singh sells being down for the first time. It doesn't have to be anything long or crazy. I could totally see this on TV My viewership/attention was spotty most of the time they would have overlapped- did Danielson ever wrestle The Great Khali at WWE??

Well said @Stefanie Sparkleface. I want to quickly add for clarity's sake: when I referred to the "Wait for the facts" crowd as insane in an earlier post today, I meant the folks burying their heads in the sand, saying it to mean "Wait for the facts on Vince" which is a position I absolutely cannot fathom. In the context you're using it here, I hard agree.

I'm crying rn thinking about this and I haven't seen it in probably 15+ years. "SuperBrawl???SuperBrawl Saturday??????????"

I'm not meaning to step on Gregg's toes or speak for him here at all, but I would say the idea is less whether anyone knew or didn't, but more the idea that speculating on who they are would be fruitless at best, and harmful at worst. If I have that wrong @Greggulatorl please correct me immediately

Well said, and this is the kind of thing I was also trying to caution against yesterday. It's not happening here, but I've seen some "Employee #4 is X and here's why"-type posts elsewhere, and it's just the absolute weirdest discourse possible to me. Again, I don't wanna sound like a high horse guy, but holy shit man, I did NOT expect folks to be, in essence, "fantasy booking" what happened in that office. Things like that, and the absolutely insane (no other word for it) "Let's wait for the facts" crowd, have been making me wildly uncomfortable the last ~48 hours.

Yikes. Anecdotally, I've been getting a lot of memes and that kinda thing sent to me from non/lapsed fan friends who are in the mode we all talked about on the earlier pages of the thread with regard to the general public ("Ah, there goes those scuzzy-ass wrestlers doing scuzzy-ass things again"). Most of it's just been tasteless shock humor about the exact aspects you'd think they'd be about, but some of it has had a little bit of that sort of Epstein or Trump-like "comeuppance" tonality to it, so I felt a little higher on my high horse chuckling at those in particular. But yeah, overall, most of the attempted "humor" out there on this has only made me feel even worse for the victim(s) which I didn't think was even possible. Glass half-fulling it, I guess this is a sign I've grown up at least a slight bit since lurking the sleaze thread as a teenager, as I'm sure a couple of us have.

Nm went entirely over my head

Yeah, totally understandable and I don't fault either guy for it. Like Riccaboni, its just a bummer cause I like hearing them call shows on a 'selfish' level- but I completely get it.

I'll second this, I always really, really enjoyed Hudson in the booth (particularly on the weekend shows) and in many ways, I think he suffered from being put in a series of impossible situations from '99-'01: 1) having to follow Schiavone - obviously there's plenty to be critical of Tony about when it comes to late era WCW, but he was (and is again!) the guy we all grew up with. So with that, Hudson started on Nitro behind the 8 ball to a degree from just a "who's the new guy?" perspective alone 2) Being put in a similar position as the aforementioned Schiavone in having to sell a lot of awful bullshit with a straight face. This was also made 1000x worse by his having to sit next to dickhead Mark Madden doing his "How do you do, fellow kids?" routine, making Jay & Silent Bob references in a fucking Hawaiian shirt and sunglasses. 3) His WWF 'Invasion'-era tryout with Arn on color was the Buff/Booker match from Tacoma in July, and we all know what happened there. Shit match, apathetic crowd, and while Arn's obviously an all-time promo, color wasn't his strong suit; he just really didn't give Hudson a lot to work with at all, so Hudson defaulted to a 'play by play' mode which, while I obviously think it's rad, its also historically the polar opposite of what WWF/E has wanted out of its lead announcers ('We tell stories!') So I think that was that. FWIW I saw an interview with him years and years ago and he said he's pretty happy and making good money doing some kind of forensic crime lab shit (Possibly for the FBI? I may be misremembering that last detail).

Honestly can't tell. From what I gather, there was a Wrestling Inc. article posted around noon that people ran with on socials saying that Brock was scheduled for it, and the PWInsider article was refuting that by stating he isn't there currently, and doesn't appear to be traveling there at the moment.

PW Insider reporting no Brock at the Rumble, for anyone interested in that

I can't see the link either but I'm 99% certain I remember this match for some insane verbal Luger selling in the corner at one point, even by his standards - GAH AH GOD OUGHHH

Save this for a few months to get some sweet March Madness cross-promotion. First Daily's show of spring, an ambulance pulls up to ringside, the doors burst open... 1) Angelico 2) Double J 3) Kommander 4) Matt Sydal (I don't think I got to post about this in time the other week before the TV thread closed but I really, really enjoyed that Jericho match on Rampage) 5) An oddball pick: depending on what he's looking like over at TNA (I've only seen a promo so far) it might be interesting to see a match with Nic Nemeth where "the governor is off" so to speak.

You may notice I've been SMASHING the trophy emote a lot on your (and others') more 'corporation-unfriendly' posts over the course of this thread the last day or so; ill give you three guesses what my day job is.

Had that thought as well. Without a house show circuit, I think it would behoove AEW to start using ROH for those de-facto, pre-TV, "shake the rust" matches. Not to be a jerk, but so few people probably watch anyway, that I don't think it would diminish any eventual return to AEW TV. Plus, if they're still taping ROH before the main shows, you have the added benefit of being able to advertise Rosa or whoever else to the local audience to bolster attendance

I completely unironically now want a 2023 Sonny run where he's angry at not getting credit for inventing the selfie, and his new charge takes it out on the world.

Haha first of all I love you for this, and secondly, I kinda realized how dumb it was once I typed it but it was the best example I could think of that wasn't some weird, parasocial-adjacent thing that essentially boiled down to "I think this person I've never met has decent morals because they seem like a nice guy in interviews."

Yup. I thought this was new at first too, but it's the same victim going after him because the NDA is essentially unenforceable - they touch on this in the suit itself, but what she signed is so broad she wouldn't even be able to ever say she worked there

I had this thought too, but if what we have read about H/Steph leading the investigation on this is true, then again, my hopes are not super high. I'm probably not even giving em my $80 for the game this year.

You actually caught me while I was in the middle of making an edit so I'm gonna just cancel it and reply it here: I think it's a perfectly reasonable question to ask of anyone in the office, given the content of the suit, and a perfectly reasonable question to ask of anyone in the 'former UFC star's' circle, but I'm hesitant to go down that road with anyone else until more comes out for the reason mentioned - ill use an example from a prior page: Bryan Danielson praises Vince at a presser, thanks him for teaching him so much about the business, has proximity to the situation via marriage; I find it hard to believe that a guy too nice to eat animals would be complicit in this type of behavior. But again, what's complicit? @piranesihad some excellent points on this yesterday. Hearing a whisper and not following up, is not the same as hearing a detailed description, is not the same as witnessing with your own eyes, or outright participating in the crime. Idk, it's complicated - my point is, it's just very difficult with so many varying degrees of complicitness possible to say "X guy had to know." Edit: and I should add, maybe it's wishful thinking! I don't watch WWE anymore, but I get the idea of tainted memories and things like that - I keep hearing "B__ BL___ C___" in the WHATAMANEUVER voice in my head, too - if it turns out every single WWE employee/contractor knows, I'll gladly, gladly eat every word of this post, I just want to give a slight bit of grace to people who needed the job, or weighed working for this guy against their lifelong dream, or whatever the case may be

I know it's been discussed ad nauseum now (I'm late to all this) but with some of Dana White's public behavior, and some of the things WME has allegedly been complicit with in Hollywood, I very seriously doubt it. That statement yesterday really gave off the vibe of "We weren't here, not our problem."

I had similar thoughts, especially on Mr. Adult In The Room. I wonder what Target's policies on gang rape are?

"Who knew what" is kind of a shitty game to play here because the thing about these kinds of abusers is that they're really good at hiding things and endearing themselves to non-would-be-victims specifically so it seems like a crazy idea that they would be capable of such crimes.

Exactly - it's not a terrible idea in theory, but I also think it would lead to a lot of repititiousness and folks' characters treading water, maybe even moreso than if they had to write people off with an angle every time. If anything, handle it like the "brand split" era of Collision: no hard/fast rules, just a sort of internal guideline/suggestion

Ha I caught that too, as well as two mentions of "AEW Superstars" - my man is in desperate need of deprogramming