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December 2021 Wrestling Discussion


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Cody wearing multiple weight belts to the ring + that stupid neck tattoo + the ridiculous HHH-style entrances is close to completing the cypher.

If he started playing air guitar to the ring on top of all that stuff, he'd be the greatest accidental heel ever.

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1 hour ago, Matt D said:

I keep thinking "Do not engage" on this one, but the ideal at this point should be like saying "What's the last movie/TV character you really hated and wanted to get his comeuppance?" like a Ramsey Bolton. I realize this contradicts some of what I said about Owens, but in an ideal world in 2021, pro wrestling should be able to get people invested in characters for what they do/say and not how they're portrayed. "I sure hate the way Iwan Rheon chooses to portray Ramsey Bolton. It's not at all how I'd want to see him portrayed to be a really great villain. I hope they kill off the character instead of using him prominently." is very different than "I hate the character and hope he fails for what he's done."

We don't get to choose though. A villain can't be a villain if they are limited to how we want them to be a villain. The Ramsey Bolton example is great. I agree the portrayal of that character has a whole list of issues,  but I can't argue with how effective of a villain he was. This is kind of like Kevin Owens deciding to stay with WWE. A lot of us wanted him to leave, because we would enjoy him in AEW more than we have in WWE. That's not our choice though,  it's his choice. He gets to choose what is best for him and his career.  We can disagree,  come here and argue about it,  and refuse to watch him in WWE, but we still only can judge what we are given.  MJF is the only person in wrestling right now who is getting intentional, non ironic heat with an audience hasn't given that kind of heat to any wrestler in almost 20 years. I get it,  it's not for everybody,  and I can respect that... but we should at least acknowledge his effectiveness. 

I get the criticism about him doing some sort of backwards,  self reverential, new age heel character, but that's not the entire act. He is a traditional wrestling heel, who behaves like a traditional heel. The issue is you can't get heat with traditional heel tactics alone. We're at the point where traditional heel tactics either are met with apathy or even worse cheers. In order to get people to boo heels unironically needs new tactics. He's the first person who has been able to come up with something that is working in a long ass time. We're talking about a 25-year-old, who is on his first run in a major company. He's still refining the character, but he's getting himself over as well as anyone in the world right now. 

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3 minutes ago, supremebve said:

This is kind of like Kevin Owens deciding to stay with WWE. A lot of us wanted him to leave, because we would enjoy him in AEW more than we have in WWE. That's not our choice though,  it's his choice. He gets to choose what is best for him and his career.  We can disagree,  come here and argue about it,  and refuse to watch him in WWE, but we still only can judge what we are given.

Hey, Kevin Owens didn't do anything like that. Kevin Yanick Steen did.

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4 hours ago, Technico Support said:

That's why these contracts are not worth the paper they're printed on.  You have a "three year deal" that they can cancel this very second.  So who cares how "long" the deal is for?  What exactly is the company being held to, aside from a pay rate?  

Practically speaking, Owens isn't going to be released from his new contract anytime soon.  Vince gave him a lucrative deal to keep him out of AEW.  Owens may not be kept around for the full three years, but odds are good he'll be around for a year or two before Vince decides to cut him. and probably longer than that.  In the meantime. he'll be making better money than he would elsewhere, so there's a reasonable chance he's no worse off.

Does AEW offer guaranteed contracts?  I've never heard that.  I'm guessing they do not.  Fairly hard to get a no-cut clause and guaranteed money in a high-contact sport of job without a powerful union behind you.  Very few NFL players get any guaranteed money, much less the full value of the contact.  I'd argue that guaranteed NBA & MLB contracts are bad for those sports.

From what I've heard of Owens in interviews, he seems reasonably intelligent and seems to know his own worth.  I would guess he's smart enough to understand the 90-day clause and take the risk he might get cut early into account.  Lol, I wouldn't be too surprised if the Owens->AEW thing was just a fake story useful for driving up Owens' value.  I feel like "Steen knows the Young Bucks.  Steen -> AEW" is the sports entertainment of "Nick Saban was born in West Virginia.  Saban's gonna go home and coach WVU."  Never going to happen, but nice for the fans to dream and useful if Saban ever needs to talk Alabama into tossing him a few extra dollars.

I have an employment contract that spells out what my employer can fire me for without compensation and the like.  The contract actually favors me somewhat.  If I get let go for anything except a couple well-defined transgressions, the company has to pay me for however long is remaining on the contract, or at least come to agreement on a buyout,  If I quit, I can do whatever I like wherever I like with the exception of working for a couple firms in the same market.  My contract wouldn't prevent me from working in my field or anything else.  I can quit tonight if I feel like it.  Way I look at it, if I have that sort of flexibility, why shouldn't my employer have some protection.

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If Owens is cut, he gets 90 days worth of his contract, not "however long is remaining" on the contract. 

I mean, that's still good money if he's signed a 3/3M contract, but it's worse structure in general.

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8 minutes ago, Tarheel Moneghetti said:

Practically speaking, Owens isn't going to be released from his new contract anytime soon.  Vince gave him a lucrative deal to keep him out of AEW.  Owens may not be kept around for the full three years, but odds are good he'll be around for a year or two before Vince decides to cut him. and probably longer than that.  In the meantime. he'll be making better money than he would elsewhere, so there's a reasonable chance he's no worse off.

The Good Brothers say hello. They were giving significantly higher deals to stay and didn't make it 8 months into the 5 year deals. I'm not saying you're wrong about the likelihood of Owens staying the whole deal at all. I'm just saying we can't really predict the whims of a 75 year old sociopath lol. Owens will be there as long as Vince wakes up and wants him there. The day he wakes up and decides fuck this guy has too many grey hairs in his beard or whatever, he's gone. There's legitimately no logic to who stays and who goes beyond it's what Vince wants on any given day.

 

11 minutes ago, Tarheel Moneghetti said:

Does AEW offer guaranteed contracts?  I've never heard that.  I'm guessing they do not.  Fairly hard to get a no-cut clause and guaranteed money in a high-contact sport of job without a powerful union behind you.  Very few NFL players get any guaranteed money, much less the full value of the contact.  I'd argue that guaranteed NBA & MLB contracts are bad for those sports.

AEW hasn't publicly come out and said this, but the company stance is they don't release people. The notable exceptions are extreme behavior issues (speaking out), or wanting out of your deal for personal reasons (ala Kylie Rae). They adhere to the contracts they agree to thus far. There's no specific guarantee. But you are able to breathe a sigh of relief that you are going to get all the money owed to you as long as you want to be there and you keep your nose clean. You may not get used if you fall out of favor for whatever reason. But you're not going to get cut on a whim because you won't shave your sideburns Mr Burns style.

 

15 minutes ago, Tarheel Moneghetti said:

Lol, I wouldn't be too surprised if the Owens->AEW thing was just a fake story useful for driving up Owens' value.  I feel like "Steen knows the Young Bucks.  Steen -> AEW" is the sports entertainment of "Nick Saban was born in West Virginia.  Saban's gonna go home and coach WVU."  Never going to happen, but nice for the fans to dream and useful if Saban ever needs to talk Alabama into tossing him a few extra dollars.

This part is non-sense. Owens changed his location on Twitter to Mt. Rushmore (the name of his group with The Young Bucks & Adan Cole in PWG). He changed his bio to almost there. He's friends with them and clearly he himself entertained the idea of it. Now maybe he did it only to drive up his own price. But your fake story narrative dies a quick death because Owens himself was actively the one who started that story.

 

 

19 minutes ago, Tarheel Moneghetti said:

I have an employment contract that spells out what my employer can fire me for without compensation and the like.  The contract actually favors me somewhat.  If I get let go for anything except a couple well-defined transgressions, the company has to pay me for however long is remaining on the contract, or at least come to agreement on a buyout,  If I quit, I can do whatever I like wherever I like with the exception of working for a couple firms in the same market.  My contract wouldn't prevent me from working in my field or anything else.  I can quit tonight if I feel like it.  Way I look at it, if I have that sort of flexibility, why shouldn't my employer have some protection.

Congrats? Not sure what this has to do with pro wrestling, because this is a significantly more beneficial contract that WWE offers. They can fire you for anything at anytime at any point in the contract and you get 90 days of pay. As my example above with The Good Brothers demonstrates a 5 year contract amounted to 11 months of pay (counting the 90 day no compete) vs you would get paid the full 5 years even if fired after 8 months. So what does you liking your contract have to do with WWE contracts? I'm really asking because maybe I'm being obtuse and missing an obvious correlation.

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Ultimately, if the wrestlers want more security, they can unionize. This is a boring post that many people have already made. 

I can't even get up in arms about WWE's contractual system because the wrestlers aren't up in arms enough to change it. If it's good enough for them, why should I care? 

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I’d argue most of the EVPs are hateable, both diegetically and non-diegetically, but that just be me.

i think Joffrey also real heat, but part of that was how good he was at playing him. 
 

Most of the MCU heels are tragically flawed, so hard to completely hate them. 

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@NoFistsJustFlips

Ya' know, you could have just said "I guess we'll have to disagree."  Would have been a lot less words and you could have put off carpal tunnel syndrome another day or three.

Question: The Good Brothers got released five months into a new contract.  I'm not really clear how they would have been better off not signing the deal and leaving WWE five months earlier.  I'm assuming they made more money working for Vince than they would have made in TNA during that span.  Probably a lot more.

 

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2 minutes ago, Tarheel Moneghetti said:

@NoFistsJustFlips

Ya' know, you could have just said "I guess we'll have to disagree."  Would have been a lot less words and you could have put off carpal tunnel syndrome another day or three.

Question: The Good Brothers got released five months into a new contract.  I'm not really clear how they would have been better off not signing the deal and leaving WWE five months earlier.  I'm assuming they made more money working for Vince than they would have made in TNA during that span.  Probably a lot more.

 

My wrists are looking real jacked baby so I'm good with all the extra typing lol.

Only quoting this to answer The Good Brothers question, because it adds context to my first posts. WWE signed them at a higher rate because they were in a bidding war with AEW. AEW actively wanted them to debut (with AJ) on the first Dynamite and form the group with Jericho that became the Inner Circle on the debut Dynamite. They even verbally agreed with AEW before WWE gave them crazy high money and they decided to stay with WWE. So they screwed themselves out of financial security by taking the higher WWE offer. AEW wouldn't have cut them 8 months in. They'd have gotten the slightly lower salary for a full 5 years vs the higher rate for 11 months.

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I would guess that the benefit of signing with WWE is that 90-day clause where you're still getting paid.

If I were a worker, I would guess that I would be fine with that if the dollar amount of the contract is high enough. 

If I sign a 5/10M and then am cut two years in, I made 2M on the downside plus another three months' worth of money to heal up before I sign elsewhere. On a contract like 5/10M, that works out to 500K to sit at home, enjoy my family, and rest up. That's a nice chunk of change. 

If you're KO-level where you're signing a contract that is 2M or more per year, it makes complete sense from a financial standpoint even without the no-cut clause. 

Re: The Good Brothers, if the AEW "no-cut" thing is a current philosophy, but not a contractual truth, then I'm not sure that it means very much. Maybe I'm just a distrusting type, haha.

If Vince threw, IDK, just speculating, 5/20M at them, they got 11 months of that deal including the ninety-day clause. That would be 4.3M~ if my math is correct. I'll take that shit to the bank any day and go sign my new contract after the ninety days are up. 

Edited by SirSmellingtonofCascadia
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1 minute ago, SirSmellingtonofCascadia said:

I would guess that the benefit of signing with WWE is that 90-day clause where you're still getting paid.

If I were a worker, I would guess that I would be fine with that if the dollar amount of the contract is high enough. 

If I sign a 5/10M and then am cut two years in, I made 2M on the downside plus another three months' worth of money to heal up before I sign elsewhere. On a contract like 5/10M, that works out to 500K to sit at home, enjoy my family, and rest up. That's a nice chunk of change. 

If you're KO-level where you're signing a contract that is 2M or more per year, it makes complete sense from a financial standpoint even without the no-cut clause. 

This is like the scenario of NFL players where it boggles our mind how they lose their fortune. It's a cost of living thing. If you're banking on a 3 million a year five year contract (250k a month) you probably purchase a home for your family that far exceeds what you can afford without that 250k per month. So 3 extra months of money is fine and all but not when you expect that rate going forward to sustain the cost of your current living situation. What kind of mortgage and financial security can the majority of WWE workers feel comfortable purchasing? Any of them outside of a handful can get cut whenever with ONLY 3 more months of pay.

You're thinking of it like current day you. Not the you that would be making $250k a month. You aren't gonna live in an $80,000 house if you make $3 million a year.

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3 minutes ago, SirSmellingtonofCascadia said:

I would guess that the benefit of signing with WWE is that 90-day clause where you're still getting paid.

We also overestimate how much the people within WWE think about WWE the way we think about WWE. They are working in the biggest, most successful company in their field and probably enjoy their jobs. Getting paid millions of dollars is a big part of it,  but this is also most likely their dream job. 

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7 minutes ago, SirSmellingtonofCascadia said:

Re: The Good Brothers, if the AEW "no-cut" thing is a current philosophy, but not a contractual truth, then I'm not sure that it means very much. Maybe I'm just a distrusting type, haha.

If Vince threw, IDK, just speculating, 5/20M at them, they got 11 months of that deal including the ninety-day clause. That would be 4.3M~ if my math is correct. I'll take that shit to the bank any day and go sign my new contract after the ninety days are up. 

It was reported they agreed to $800k a year deals. Thier original deals were $400k. So it doubled. But it's certainly not $4.3 mil they collected. They got roughly $530k. A large sum of money. But not the $4 millionover 5 years they signd for. It's about 11% of the total value they agreed to if my math is right.

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Just for emphasis, while clearly not apples to apples, how many people here would be happy if their place of employment only paid them 11% of the hourly rate you agreed to? Say you get hired at $20 an hour and your employer pays you $2.20 an hour instead, you cool with that? I get that our view on it changes when the numbers get significantly higher. But boil it down to your own situation. You cool with making 11% of what you were offered?

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9 minutes ago, NoFistsJustFlips said:

This is like the scenario of NFL players where it boggles our mind how they lose their fortune. It's a cost of living thing. If you're banking on a 3 million a year five year contract (250k a month) you probably purchase a home for your family that far exceeds what you can afford without that 250k per month. So 3 extra months of money is fine and all but not when you expect that rate going forward to sustain the cost of your current living situation. What kind of mortgage and financial security can the majority of WWE workers feel comfortable purchasing? Any of them outside of a handful can get cut whenever with ONLY 3 more months of pay.

You're thinking of it like current day you. Not the you that would be making $250k a month. You aren't gonna live in an $80,000 house if you make $3 million a year.

I mean, I would, but I wouldn't want anyone to know that I had money. People are out here slapping those Apple tracking devices on nice cars to follow them home and rob the joint. 

(I would almost certainly not live in a house worth 80K because I would live in a city, but I would probably live in a surreptitious condo and drive a regular, boring hybrid. Of course, that's what not-super-wealthy me says.)

I definitely understand your core point. I would suggest that the cost-benefit analysis is different for everyone, but at Owens money, it makes sense. However...

5 minutes ago, NoFistsJustFlips said:

It was reported they agreed to $800k a year deals. Thier original deals were $400k. So it doubled. But it's certainly not $4.3 mil they collected. They got roughly $530k. A large sum of money. But not the $4 millionover 5 years they signd for. It's about 11% of the total value they agreed to if my math is right.

...at this money, it doesn't, at least to me. I did state that it makes sense once you get into that KO 2M+/yr status to take the money. I assume he's getting something around there from the leaks this week, but of course, who knows for sure?

6 minutes ago, supremebve said:

We also overestimate how much the people within WWE think about WWE the way we think about WWE. They are working in the biggest, most successful company in their field and probably enjoy their jobs. Getting paid millions of dollars is a big part of it,  but this is also most likely their dream job. 

Sure, fair point. He said that he feels comfortable there as well. That all counts for something.

Edited by SirSmellingtonofCascadia
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2 minutes ago, NoFistsJustFlips said:

Just for emphasis, while clearly not apples to apples, how many people here would be happy if their place of employment only paid them 11% of the hourly rate you agreed to? Say you get hired at $20 an hour and your employer pays you $2.20 an hour instead, you cool with that? I get that our view on it changes when the numbers get significantly higher. But boil it down to your own situation. You cool with making 11% of what you were offered?

This isn't the same thing. If my job fires me,  I don't get paid. If their job fires them they get 3 months of pay. The problem with WWE contracts are that they're one sided. The wrestlers have to honor the terms of the contract for the dustin of the contract,  but the WWE does not. With that said,  this is pretty much how nfl contracts work as well. 

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If talent isn’t name-dropping the Bucks and trying to gaslight Vince into believing AEW wants them  when their contracts expire, they really should be. That’s a fairly common negotiating tactic.  
 

i’m not sure the bidding war for the Good Bros was all that, but even if it was, the Good Bros knew what they might be getting into.  Vince changes his mind about talent on a daily basis and depushes and releases people based on a whim.  Very few wrestlers finish out their contracts.  GB gambled and it didn’t quite pay off for them.  If happens.  If they wanted job security, well, they had a deal with AEW worked out and decided to renege.

Edited by Mario
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51 minutes ago, NoFistsJustFlips said:

The Good Brothers say hello. They were giving significantly higher deals to stay and didn't make it 8 months into the 5 year deals. I'm not saying you're wrong about the likelihood of Owens staying the whole deal at all. I'm just saying we can't really predict the whims of a 75 year old sociopath lol. Owens will be there as long as Vince wakes up and wants him there. The day he wakes up and decides fuck this guy has too many grey hairs in his beard or whatever, he's gone. There's legitimately no logic to who stays and who goes beyond it's what Vince wants on any given day.

 

There's a big difference between Owens and the GB, though. Owens is a guy Vince clearly likes (Gave him a big debut win over Cena, gave him  lengthy title run, worked a program with himself (How many wrestlers still in the company have "Gotten one over" the way Owens did on Vince?!), even gave him a (ultimately aborted) run as the top face on SD working a pseudo Austin gimmick before WWE forgot how those works properly) while Vince never, on the other you have the GB (a guy Vince fired a couple times and another guy whose entire value seemed to be tied to AJ Styles, had limited tag title runs, couldn't really be split up, and one of them is a bit of a concern over social media/family concerns). Owens has been a guy who has been at or near the top of the card his entire WWE run, the Good Brothers were re-signed to be kept away from AEW but never really got any sort of high level run, even with Styles. I think Vince sees a lot of value in Owens in that wherever he wrestles, he gets good reactions and makes guys look good. I don't think he ever saw any value in the GB other than as it relates to keeping them away from others/linking them to Styles.

And to be perfectly honest, Owens fits WWE's style better than the Good Brothers ever did, got himself and others over more than the Good Brothers and does things in the ring and on the mic not easily replaceable by someone in NXT than the GBs. If you wanted to start a new AJ Styles group, you could just as easily bring up those two corny country bar guys in NXT (One is named Briggs...I can't remember or bother to look up the other) as AJ's lackeys and they would be, at minimum, about as good as the Good Brothers were at much less money, at a much younger age, with less baggage. I was pretty excited for Gallows/Anderson in WWE, but they were never given much to do, and never really did enough to force WWE's hand into giving them any more than they got, quite frankly.

tl;dr Vince clearly likes Owens, but never really cared for Gallows/Anderson

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