EVA

Normally, I’m 100% with you on that. But Miz is beyond wealthy between his 20-year WWE run and all his outside work. His family will not lack for food on the table. The college fund is secure. I feel comfortable joking about this!

Let’s all contribute to manifesting that, right now.

Carlito getting paid for 2 years off a hometown pop in Puerto Rico is just an incredible piece of business.

“Little Jimmy” is a real sliding doors moment for Truth’s career. I’d be really intrigued to see where his career might have gone if he’d been able to remain a somewhat serious wrestler for the past decade, because he clearly had some juice as a heel in early TNA, and even some good heel stuff early in that 2010’s Cena program. But once Vince & Co. decided “Ron is mentally handicapped” was the angle, that sealed his fate for the next decade-plus of embarrassing, often borderline racist, lowest common denominator humor. A fate which included staying employed as Vince’s court jester longer than most and making quite a bit of money in the process, granted. But what might have been.

Of course, he also publicly supported Vince post-Janel Grant, so kinda fuck him, too.

Based on longevity and the fact that he was a Vince favorite, I bet he’s on a way bigger deal than you’d expect someone in his spot to have.

TKO spreadsheets don’t get sentimental. I think this is going to be the norm going forward—long-term talent on hefty contracts getting cycled out more frequently in favor of cheaper NXT call-ups. We’ll see how that works out for them over time. Truth will make a killing on the indies and convention circuit, if he so chooses.

I noticed Gates of Agony are “in action” on Collision this week (i.e., squashing some dudes), so I assume they’re being built up to be Ricochet’s guys.

Yeah, she absolutely has to avoid going to Smackdown right now. Sending her to NXT would be about as silly as sending Starks there, but I’m sure they’ll do it.

I’ll just reiterate a version of what I said when those rumors first came up: Both sides extracted maximum value from this deal. Mariah took herself from a nobody in the US to a major TV star, and AEW got a an incredible, unique storyline that drove a lot of business for them and made Toni Storm an even bigger star than she already was. This ain’t a Ricky Starks situation where you’re left wondering what if. All the meat was off the bone. So much so, I’m not even sure what an Act 2 for Mariah in AEW would even look like. Even if she could still be useful in some other kind of role, I think it’s probably best for both sides to George Costanza this and move on.

Just when you thought the New Jack gimmick for AITA was played out, the arena started levitating when “Bodies” hit.

That’s what makes the bankrupt creative so frustrating. The people want to be into this! They’re not getting as much as they’re giving.

Cena taking every bump on his hip like late era Flair.

The Andor version of Rogue one would have had a 3-episode arc about Galen’s time on Eadu, actually seeing how he meticulously sneaks in the Death Star vulnerability, how he converts Bodhi, and his engineers would’ve become your favorite people on the show and break your heart when they get executed.

I just don’t think the first two-thirds of RO are good at all. You can tell it’s crudely stitched together from two different ideas of what the story is about. I’d just be delighted to see Gilroy and his team get a crack at treating the whole movie with the same precision that they handled ANDOR with. I am going to invest in an army of obnoxious GilroyVerse bots to astroturf this into reality.

Don’t think the Jeff Cobb presentation could’ve been much worse. The new name is NXT slop, and having him wrestle in street clothes just made him look small and unimpressive compared to LA Knight in his gear. Like, this was the weakest someone doing a bunch of power spots has ever looked.

Serious proposal: Disney should let Tony Gilroy remake ROGUE ONE. Like, fully make it the way he wants, not just Frankensteining his ideas into Gareth Edwards’ finished movie. I NEED to see that version.

I don’t see any way they don’t make it to Abby arriving at the theater. It would be insane narrative structure to introduce a major antagonist and then have them disappear for the rest of the season. Very little of narrative importance happens to Ellie on Day 3. It’s her finding a boat, piloting the boat to the marina, then doing the deal at the aquarium, followed immediately by the theater scene. You could skip/ffwd most of that and have plenty of episode to spare. It’s also worth noting that Tommy sniping Manny and the actual throwdown between Ellie & Dinah and Abby don’t happen until the second half of the game (The first half cuts to black shortly after they come face to face). Given how tightly the show has followed the structure of the game (in terms of sticking with Ellie’s POV), I don’t think we’ll see either of those things. Also Lev or Yara are at both of those events, and neither of those roles were cast this season, as far as we know.

I can’t post Twitter links anymore for some reason, but there’s a clip making the rounds of Cena running the classic drop down, leapfrog, tackle sequence, and he is moving SO BAD and has no snap on his bump for the tackle. They're gonna need to put him in cryosleep until Saudi.

Jeff Cobb is a solid in-ring dude but an absolute charisma vacuum. He was at his best under a mask as Matanza in Lucha Underground, but even then he was not as good as The Beast Mortos. He’s also going to compare poorly to Jacob Fatu in the “short thicc boi who does agility spots” category, as he is way more agile AND has a personality. He’ll do fine as cannon fodder for Solo’s group, but this is a Tama Tonga replacement level signing,

It’s funny how cyclical wrestling is. The bungling of this Cena heel turn can’t help but call to mind the WWF circa 2001–when coming off of one of their hottest boom periods, they decided to pull the trigger on a dream storyline (WWF vs. WCW) and turned it into a colossal fuck-up.

I dunno. They made it all the way through Day 1 in Seattle in that episode, and they’re clearly getting through Day 2 next week. They could knock out a day per episode the rest of the way and get to the showdown by the finale. Only question is if they break up Ellie’s story by doing a Joel/Ellie flashback episode (which I’m pretty sure they are) or do an Abby-centric episode (less certain about that now).

The thing is, the wrestler has to be smart enough to negotiate that for themselves. Years ago, Curt Stallion 100% signed over his gimmick name to WWE and then had to become Stallion Rogers after he was released

Days like yesterday make it extra-unfortunate that TNA has given up on being a competitive 3rd promotion in favor of being a WWE proxy. Used to be a solid landing spot for people WWE/AEW didn’t want, but now they’re slashing payroll and using NXT scabs to fill out their cards (presumably cleaning up their books for a sale). A lot of these releases are REALLY gonna have to hustle to make ends meet, if they can even stay in the business at all.

Not sure about where they’ll finish in the present action, but I would imagine the emotional climax of the season will be the flashback to Ellie learning the truth.