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So I have a friend who believes that Kairi Sane has been sloppy since she came back to WWE and blames her for Zoey's injury. Tonight seemed rather benign but now I gotta start watching closer.

I think what is lost is that if Cena were a face it'd likely also not be working, although perhaps it'd be going less badly? He seems done and while he'd be more comfortable on the mic as a face I think given his current quality he'd be starting to grate by now regardless. It sucks as generally you can go "this isn't working, try something else" but I'm sure every single date he has has been set up over half a year ago and you can't like pull him and reload, I think they're simply kinda stuck at this point.

Yeah I don't think they are gonna put the belt on him, it's not impossible but it feels like the less likely scenario. If it turns out I'm wrong feel free to quote this and call me a silly goose later.

So Meltz is saying that Private Party's contracts are up soon and might not be renewed and this whole last year or so of Private Party has just been baffling. I am actually fine with letting them walk as I was never really impressed with them but I cannot grasp how you have a team that has been their ages and always just sorta there that has a high chance of being let go once their contract expires and decide to strap them up (also had them be the first to try and get over what the Death Riders were confusingly going for). I saw the Bucks and someone else in AEW basically compare it to what happened with The Acclaimed and like the crowd got behind the Acclaimed because they liked them; they just wanted anybody to take the belts off the Bucks. Then as tag champs they were the team they always were, the dropped the belts to the Hurt Syndicate rather quickly and disappeared from tv for several months possibly to never return. You coulda done all that with a team with an actual future, you know?

While I have doubts it'll be good, Goldberg did seem to feel legitimately wronged in that Vince sorta screwed him out of a retirement match and I'm basically programmed to feel good when some shitty thing Vince did becomes undone so sure why not. Goldberg did have a couple memorable matches during his last WWE run (not always for good reasons >_> ) so fingers crossed he isn't around too much beforehand and something at least interesting or funny happens.

I think TNT will survive as long as cable survives, but this new company is basically gonna get all of the debt and people who know these things seem to openly wonder if they will be able to afford any of the sports rights moving forward. It could get sorted out by some future move, and again AEW is locked in for a number of years now so near/intermediate term I doubt it affects them much at all, but there are live odds that when it comes time to negotiate a new contract there no longer is a TNT sports.

Actually the early take is that this could be very bad for TNT sports, but AEW is only very technically under that heading so their fate won't be tied up with that either way.

Making Ron Killings drop having a comedy gimmick to go be serious at age 53 is certainly a way to make sure that the next time they let him go there won't be an outcry.

It's a big big deal... but not really for AEW right now. Down the road it'll affect them one way or another (Warner(s?) is a crazy company, I ain't gonna sit here and predict what they'll be like a few years down the road) but AEW's contracts are fresh and by all accounts won't be affected by all this in the immediate future.

Currently it is taking about 15ish seconds for any clicked on topic/page to load.

Yeah all the things everyone said, let me take just a sec to poor one out for my boy Mortos who is down to the designated guy who takes the fall in multiman tags. Gotta protect your Dralisticos and Action Andrettis

I think they did that once when Rampage and Collision ran back to back.

Yeah not for nothing as horrible as this crime is (and it is wretched and hateful) the reporting of it as "an argument" is such utter cowardly BS.

I do think it is worth acknowledging that both AEW and WWE have more talent on their rosters than they need or can even realistically handle. I am torn as I ain't gonna root against someone getting a solid paycheck unless they are a true asshole... but both companies would probably be better off with about 20% less people to juggle (and the indies could definitely use the boost in terms of names and talent). At some point people gotta go, I think as long as the contracts are respected and they are treated with respect on the way out I can live with it. ...I mean until it happens to one of my favorites, then I'm crying bloody murder and grabbing my pitchfork >_>

So I wanted to talk about something else today and then this R-Truth thing happened, and the two dovetail together rather well. Starting with Truth, I would have kept him around and I think not doing so on a short time deal may be a mistake, but it's a reasonable enough decision. He's 53, been there for ages, hell of a run and getting to work the SNMW match against Cena in his retirement run and then put over a fresh signing on SD is a rather good sendoff, better than most workers get anywhere. My issue is he's worked there ages and has been a good soldier that whole time, he deserved a heads up. He makes it sound like it was sprung on him and while I can understand the thinking that he had a long enough run treat people well, give them a heads up so they don't walk into a surprise and can prepare themselves when possible. Not doing so is bad form. ...Which brings me to Bear Bronson. His contract ran out, AEW chose not to re-sign him, I think that is sensible enough. If his longtime tag partner didn't decide to strangle his fiance (allegedly) I think they'd have likely not been re-signed as well, so in one sense he's out zero AEW money from this. That said he was working in ROH/occasionally AEW rather regularly right until his partner's charges came out... and not once since. He did nothing wrong, he was a good soldier for years, and he got discarded in a "we have no use for you now, go away" fashion as opposed to letting him at least get a few singles matches in ROH to see if there was anything there, or just let him continue to make the dates he was already gonna get before his partner fucked up. Instead he got tossed aside immediately as well and that is also bad form. I don't care about the quality of the shows or wrestling on them in these cases, I will always want to see people treated well even on the way out and while I wouldn't say that what WWE and AEW did in these cases was egregious it was definitely not good and could have easily been so with just the smallest bit of care. Both fell short and I shake my head at both of them.

I mean, Roxanne is immediately put in the mix with Dom, Liv and Balor, which basically is guaranteeing her tv time each week and to be in segments people will care about. I think she's gonna benefit from this fairly well.

On a positive note I'm sure it is giving the GCW promoter a heartly laugh.

I would say Rikishi? That is 100% a Vince special and it somehow took 3 nobodies (I liked the SST but those days were long gone by then for Fatu) and made them into one of the hottest acts in the hottest periods in company history. TBF was never a world champ but I'd consider that to be a wildly successful move.

Ah, I was going off this bit from an Observer daily update right before the shows:

FWIW I think the NXT event sold more tickets than one would have expected against the AEW ppv... but I also think they could be got as part of a package deal with either Raw or SNME so idk.

Well I'm glad Chad Gable isn't dead and can still walk.

I have to quote this just to pass on a story told to me almost literally decades back. An online friend of mine ended up working security for a WWE TV show and the main thing I remember is him telling me about MVP (probably a year or two after his debut) literally walking back and forth down a hallway trying to remember his lines. It wasn't even particularly long (it was just some walk to a door/enter/talk to someone deal) but he saw them have to tape it multiple times as he seemed to overrehearse it so much that he legit screwed himself up and just could not get it right (or at least give them what they wanted). So yes, he legit is not a fan of memorizing stuff, and for good reason.

I mean, they had Athena build up a multi year win streak that they ended with a non-title loss to Mone on a random tv show, I would not be surprised if they do the same thing with her as well. TBF I expect it to be to Storm rather than Hayter though.

Ospreay seems to be in the habit of defending creepy UK male wrestlers when they do or say something creepy so I think that's just who he is, sadly.