Makhai

Nothing Vince McMahon ever did got anyone emotionally invested. He made fart jokes, and buried guys. I don't know how you could watch anything between 2004 and now and think otherwise, I really can't. If you liked it, it was purely accidental.

NXT was better than most people claim. The Gargano era was literally the best wrestling produced in North America since the 1970s from a quality perspective. From Takeover: Philly to Takeover: Portland the quality of each of those events was off the charts. Between them and what NJPW was doing pre-pandemic it was unbelievable stuff. If we're resetting to that, on a primetime TV timeslot, with the full WWE production barrel behind it. And no body dysmorphic, rapey NYer around to body block it. That's the dream. When McMahon started to meddle with it during the pandemic it declined by a lot. But let's not whitewash what was NXT, even the Dusty era was dramatically better than the WWE. Bayley and Sasha still live off the fumes of that Ironman match. When they close their eyes at night they probably see that little Hugger mark crying. Give me that back, all day.

I mean, he's so far just using the Fall to re-assemble his crew. And undo MacMahon booking. I don't see the harm in it. And the product is way over performing atm. The MNF games have to actually be decent to affect them right now. Also, the shows are mostly watchable. Which is a goddamn miracle if you told me this 6mos ago I'd have never believed it. 2M .45s for 3hr RAW in MNF season? No way. But here we are. I can tolerate some tactical retconing, considering the situation.

Has been the case for me for multiple versions, and as long as I keep her off the belt, she usually is fine while I meddle her into a beneficial relationship and cross my fingers. These days though my girl Black Diamond becomes a star in every save. She's a cheat code.

It can be that. The advantage of it is that guys/girls can be significantly worse than what you would normally consider, but because they have this bonus, and because they have underlying traits and/or star power or something that makes them marketable, or menacing, this gives you a way of pushing them beyond what their base working stats would normally allow and with good booking and momentum management get them over. Eventually though, you will find people, or develop them into actual workers. And then this style actually becomes a small penalty which at the absolute endgame means you can't abuse slow build, which means they won't be putting on 90s which means they have a ceiling. This is why I book them the way I book them. They are incredibly nice to have early, meh mid-game, and a hard cap late.

Here's the QR code from tonight's Smackdown. So you don't have to get phone cooties. Seems like we're going split-personalities. WWE really wants to sell merch.

This. Just book them to squash everybody, and then when they get to your ME, keep them away from your title. When they max out momentum job them to someone you want to put over and transfer the momentum off. Rinse repeat.

The 21CW competitor is the AEW story, if you want an AEW story.

Matt Taven was a key player on that abomination of an MSG show, that killed ROH, it's relationship with NJPW, and paved the way for AEW. Other than that I'm clueless as to why this bloated company needs Taven + Hotwife and Cuck. Already have a zillion tag teams that don't get any camera time. A zillion better workers that can't get on TV, just an indefensible hire. I hope they are quickly jobbing out on Dark and they are not on 3+ year deals.

There is an AEW equivalent. It's ACPW. The only reason AEW exists now is because they were the ones who saw a nearly 2 decade market vacuum, got sick of ROH dropping the ball, and filled it. C-Verse doesn't have that vacuum. In fact, TCW's biggest problem is likely that it's just getting squeezed out by a massive USPW and SWF. Only so many eyeballs, only so much money in people's pockets.

She's the only female to graduate out of the DeColt Dojo. She's basically been the daughter George never had. Which is nothing like the Trish story of "Trashy blonde pin-up hired to be a valet and then be a homewrecker for Vince McMahon, takes out fake breasts and goes brunette after her run to become a generational-level worker." Mostly because, she still hasn't gotten over on a mainstream level, or worked for a big company at all. She is also an actual wrestler. In order for this comparison to work you've gotta literally go from zero to hero. Closest is probably Belle Bryden. But even as Wanda The Dish, she won the Femme 5 times and was an indie darling when she got her call. None of the BoSC girls made it, which is surprising, I was expecting Dharma Gregg to wind-up a big star and be this kind of character. But nope. Adam is too uptight to actually put over a "trash bag ho."

I was expecting this when her Oral Sessions podcast numbers fell off a cliff. But then she got the Bengals gig made me think she was gonna stick it out for a while longer. Seems like the end for Tony and JR though. We'll see.

I would prefer that the Firefly Funhouse was retired and this new gimmick was just let be what it is without having to shoehorn a bunch of his previous gimmicks into it to sell merch. I'm fine with the going through his previous gimmicks idea to pad out the reveal so the crowd got a full theatrical entrance. But that should be the long and the short of it. I don't want Bray Wyatt's greatest hits. I want a fresh act, in a gimmick he can actually work a real match in. For as wacky as The Fiend thing was, it couldn't go anywhere, it couldn't build up wrestling matches. It was just a stream of consciousness thing on TV that happened. Almost killed his career.

The Women's belt was the second biggest in the company until the TBS was minted and the deathmarch began.

Nothing devalues champions, like having a bunch of useless titles so you can fill out an event on your calendar. One of the refreshing things about this company was that there were like 3 belts, and they all meant something. Now there are 40, and I don't care about any of them.

I honestly can't think of anyone who has earned more justifiable backstage heat relative to card position in his career than this guy. Everyone says the exact same thing about him, it's been 5 years of hearing this. And Andrade was just a textbook example. He should not be in that company after the Andrade thing. Knowing the PR, and the state of the company after the Punk-EVP scandal. Just going to get worse to keep a mid-card flippy guy that you have 100 of on Dark right now.

It's pretty chill now, once you get the hang of how pop-feds function and skew towards big angles and not matches, so much. They actually have the talent to swim now. Back in like 2010... When it was a bunch of old guys, Nicky Champion who wasn't over yet, and an unbelievably expensive Enigma, all way under their pop. It was quite the struggle. I remember the literal only way I could do it was to book Sam to be in every angle possible.

While there's no way in hell I agree with the Hager thought, I will agree with the Sammy-Kip comparison. Go watch their opening level match from pre-TV era when they both were just signed. Tell me those two aren't the same goobers with different accents.

The one and only.

You mean that only smushing two underperforming companies together in Canada, not even attempting to make that make sense financially, and ignoring basically everything else for a decade even as half of it turns 40, leaves your game world stale? You don't say.

SIR! I'LL HAVE YOU KNOW HIS SON IS GOING TO CARRY THAT FED TO THE MOON! THE MOON, SIR! I WILL NOT HAVE YOU BISMERCH THE BEST FED IN THE GAME SIR! PFFT! I SPIT ON YOU! PFFT!

I have not been able to get into the C-Verse at all in 2020 because of how bad the retirement epidemic is, but EWA and 5SSW are my comfort picks. TCW has always been the best of the 3 big US companies to book, and USPW the hardest, despite the gameworld story of USPW building a tsunami that topples the SWF by beating it to streaming and taking an old-school product and beating everybody with a very new-school business model, SWF being completely caught in it's own internal crap to fight back and TCW being a dinosaur that is slowly crumbling under its relic of a style, waiting for the glory days to comeback. One of my biggest complaints with the C-Verse this year, is just how imba the game is in this regard. Stories are being told in bios, that are not reflected in the reality of the game world. This has always been the case, it's just not nearly as ignorable now.

You're being intentionally dishonest, it's not even arguable that Sammy and Jake were both more over after their time with Jericho then they were when they started with him. Those are the layup cases. Santana and Ortiz are the ones you can make an argument were worse off, but only because of an ACL injury just before, or just after, the group disbanded; both were in the tag title picture prior.

Mauro is locked down with Showtime/Bellator. He'll probably be doing the Paul-Silva fight this month.