The Official WWE / NXT Discussion Thread *May Contain Spoilers*

[milamber]

Good NXT show. Loved all the promos videos. Just like with AEW the tournament has given the show focus and the matches more importance. Even better that it's round robin.

[Arlie Rahn]

Quarantine alert - FS1 is showing “WWE best of” all night here in the US. Shawn Michaels is on now.

[milamber]

- Swerve vs El Phantasma was good.

- I like The Poison Pixie's new theme and finisher. Johnny supporting Candice makes them feel more like equals for a change. Yay, Kacy's back. Fun match.

- I bet this wasn't what Thatcher had in mind when he signed up. His reactions were pretty funny, though. Byron was perfect as the cheesy game show host. A Laundromat match would be fun.

- NXT Charlotte > Raw Charlotte. It's good to see her against different opponents and working stiffer.

- New look for Thorne but he's still boring compared to a guy like Lumis.

- Drake made Nese look really strong before he won. He's still going to lose to KUSHIDA but he's got the best story of the tournament.

- Priest vs Lee was probably good but it was their 5th match already this year so I fast-forwarded to the finish.

 

Good show.

 

[milamber]

Next week's card is stacked:

 

Killer Kross debut

Gargano vs Dijakovic

Cole © vs Dream (NXT Championship Match)

Charlotte © vs Io (NXT Women's Championship Match)

[Blackman]

<blockquote data-ipsquote="" class="ipsQuote" data-ipsquote-username="milamber" data-cite="milamber" data-ipsquote-contentapp="forums" data-ipsquote-contenttype="forums" data-ipsquote-contentid="25169" data-ipsquote-contentclass="forums_Topic"><div>Johnny supporting Candice makes them feel more like equals for a change. <p> </p><p> Byron was perfect as the cheesy game show host. A Laundromat match would be fun.</p><p> </p><p> - NXT Charlotte > Raw Charlotte. It's good to see her against different opponents and working stiffer.</p></div></blockquote><p> </p><p> I agree with most of your points but not a fan of Candice in general and standing next to Johnny acing everything he does makes her look worse imo. At least her bland look has improved. I hope she grows into this gimmick and develops more confidence with Gargano always present. The finisher does look good and the match was ok.</p><p> </p><p> Props to Byron indeed for a surprisingly good performance I did not expect. <img alt=":p" data-src="//content.invisioncic.com/g322608/emoticons/tongue.png.ceb643b2956793497cef30b0e944be28.png" src="<___base_url___>/applications/core/interface/js/spacer.png" /></p><p> </p><p> And I hope Charlotte sticks around some more. As mentioned after Mania the only likely scenario is that she puts over someone else, but I'm scratching my head to think of who that might be? Probably a title rematch at a TakeOver.</p><p> </p><p> As for WWE making some profits: not surprising. Many probably just kept their subscription, where a lot of UFC-subscribers probably cancelled theirs due to a lack of new content.</p>

[tormyb]

Bit of a weird question here.

 

I was wondering if anyone remembers a WWE dynasty that someone did years ago on one of the old TEW games (pre 16, can't remember which). It was called something like WWE Bizarro, or Bizarro-verse (or maybe something completely different - it was a long time ago).

 

Anyway, the premise of the diary was that Vince McMahon stopped caring, and started doing crazy stuff with the product and behind the scenes. I wanted to look it up because: 1) it was crazy, and 2) I'm pretty sure everything that happened in it has come true, and I wanted to check if my memory served correctly.

 

I can't seem to find it on any of the old forums, so if anyone remembered it and was able to point me in the right direction, that would be awesome.

 

Please and thank you (and sorry if I've posted in the wrong place).

[Mootinie]

Bit of a weird question here.

 

I was wondering if anyone remembers a WWE dynasty that someone did years ago on one of the old TEW games (pre 16, can't remember which). It was called something like WWE Bizarro, or Bizarro-verse (or maybe something completely different - it was a long time ago).

 

Anyway, the premise of the diary was that Vince McMahon stopped caring, and started doing crazy stuff with the product and behind the scenes. I wanted to look it up because: 1) it was crazy, and 2) I'm pretty sure everything that happened in it has come true, and I wanted to check if my memory served correctly.

 

I can't seem to find it on any of the old forums, so if anyone remembered it and was able to point me in the right direction, that would be awesome.

 

Please and thank you (and sorry if I've posted in the wrong place).

Hi mate. I think you're looking for Captain2's WWE 2014: What did I just watch? or maybe The Hitchhiker's Guide to the WWE Universe?

[tormyb]

Hi mate. I think you're looking for Captain2's WWE 2014: What did I just watch? or maybe The Hitchhiker's Guide to the WWE Universe?

 

Thanks dude. It wasn't either of them, but they look similar.

 

I think it was an even older one - maybe it was TEW 10. I wish my memory worked better. Maybe I just hallucinated the whole thing, or maybe it was on EWR and I just think it was more recently because...God I'm getting old!

 

I'm sure it had the word "bizarre" in the title somehow.

 

Thanks again.

 

........................................................................

 

Edit:

I think I've sort of found it. I believe it was called WWE Bizarro by Rhudipoo, but it seems to have been deleted.

[Mootinie]

<p>I just listened to The Revolt, previously known as The Revival, on Jericho's podcast. I recommend giving it a listen. They come across as really down to earth guys who love wrestling and just want to give as much to the business as they feel the business has given them.</p><p> </p><p>

Some key points:</p><p>

- The <a href="https://i.imgur.com/QhKaXgg.jpg" rel="external nofollow">leaked images</a> of those comedy costumes and the supposed repackage are legitimate. That was pitched to them by Vince, Bruce Pritchard and Mark Carrano (sp?). </p><p>

- Dax Harwood (previously Scott Dawson) made a point about Braun defeating the entire tag division and winning the belts with a 10-year-old at WrestleMania. Points out that there was no tag team match at Summerslam 2019 until the women's tag title was added at the last minute.</p><p>

- They asked for their release after defeating The Lucha House Party on RAW, which was tactical because they didn't want it to look like they were bitter or they were complaining. I've looked on Cagematch and it looks to me like this was January 2019.</p><p>

- They were vocal throughout their run about tag team wrestling not being taken seriously and they cannot understand why it is not pushed as a vehicle to make the company more money. They say that two singles guys slapped together are pushed more heavily as tag teams than the established tag teams themselves.</p><p>

- Both Dax Harwood and Cash Wheeler were each offered in excess of $750,000 per year to stay with the company.</p>

[milamber]

A few more notes:

 

- They say they don’t wanna sign anywhere right away, note that there’s awesome tag teams everywhere that they wanna face, specifically mentioning the Briscoes, FinJuice, The North and the Young Bucks.

 

- Unlike Brodie Lee, they are actually Southerners and were told to hide their accents. They say they think being Southern held them back, that there’s a stigma against Southerners because of the accent.

 

- Dusty Rhodes was their main supporter in NXT and sounded like they owe their success all to him as no one else really believed in them.

 

- Cash/Dash burst out laughing in front of Vince after Vince gave them pictures of their new look. While it wasn’t ideal, they were open to doing the comedy gimmick as it showed other sides to their characters and more time for character development for tag teams was a big deal for them. They weren’t sure if the comedy gimmick wasn’t just a joke at their expense, they told Vince and co that they would go along with it and have fun with it for as long as their deals last but after that they’re gone. wanted to be professional about leaving. The following week they were pulled from the road.

 

- Scott/Dax got an email from Bret Hart congratulating them on getting out on the day of their release announcement.

[Mootinie]

- Cash/Dash burst out laughing in front of Vince after Vince gave them pictures of their new look. While it wasn’t ideal, they were open to doing the comedy gimmick as it showed other sides to their characters and more time for character development for tag teams was a big deal for them. They weren’t sure if the comedy gimmick wasn’t just a joke at their expense, they told Vince and co that they would go along with it and have fun with it for as long as their deals last but after that they’re gone. wanted to be professional about leaving. The following week they were pulled from the road.

 

Did you get the feeling that they were pitched the gimmick under the impression that they would refuse and thus, WWE could control the narrative more and paint them as uncooperative? It's all very odd that they accepted it and said they would do it, only to be pulled from everything immediately after the pitch.

 

Another thing from the pod that I think has flown under the radar on the wrestling news sites was that both Dax and Cash agreed that somebody in WWE's creative team or somebody in upper management is responsible for all the leaks that land in the hands of wrestling journalists and the likes.

 

They said that immediately after asking for their release, everybody seemed to know and they were getting text messages straight away from other talents asking them if it was true. They said they hadn't told anybody, so they have no idea how other people could have known unless somebody in talent relations was responsible.

[tormyb]

It's all very odd that they accepted it and said they would do it, only to be pulled from everything immediately after the pitch.

 

Agreed. The inner workings of WWE never cease to baffle me.

 

It's this massive (incredibly successful) business, which seems to run every department contrary to the way that they would be run in any other industry, even when there doesn't seem to be a reason for it. They seem caught in this extraordinary position where they have a combination of insane wrestling industry practices, and more widespread business practices. They seem to be caught between the worlds of big business and wrestling, and I never know when they are going to act as if they are just in one of those worlds, or combine the two in some odd way. They often (and I'm a longtime WWE fan) seem to end up with the worst of both worlds - cutthroat capitalism, mixed with stories of inexplicably unprofessional practices, justified by strange wrestling logic, amidst a backdrop of advanced bureaucracy.

 

One thing I will add, is that if I proposed something to an employee that I line manage, and they accepted it but only after openly laughing at the idea - we definitely wouldn't be pursuing the suggestion without a lot of further work. I would have almost certainly taken their response as a tacit rejection of the idea. So I'm less bemused by that aspect of it than I was at first.

 

Then again, I don't understand WWE...at all.

[milamber]

- Gargano vs Dijakovic was good.

- Tozawa vs Gallagher was OK.

- Xia vs Chelsea was OK. Nice call back to IMPACT with the wedding dress attachment.

- Karrion Kross/Scarlett have the best entrance on the show since Aleister Black. Leon Ruff is a good jobber.

- Io vs Charlotte was solid while it lasted. I expected the finish. Charlotte wasn't dropping the title yet and Io had to be protected. Just didn't expect Rhea back yet.

- KUSHIDA vs Atlas was OK.

- Grimes vs Denzel was OK.

- Dream vs Cole was solid but overbooked. Creeper alert.

 

The show failed to live up to the hype.

[milamber]

*Q1: 739K for Johnny Gargano vs Dijakovic

*Q2: 694K for end of Dijakovic vs Gargano and Tozawa vs Gallagher

*Q3: 737K for Chelsea Green vs Xia Li and Velveteen promo

*Q4: 653K for Kross entrance and debut

*Q5: 693K for beginning of Io Shirai vs Charlotte Flair

*Q6: 656K for Rhea & Io Shirai arguing and beginning of KUSHIDA vs Atlas

*Q7: 614K for Finn Balor promo & Cameron Grimes squash

*Q8: 580K for Adam Cole vs Velveteen Dream (188K in the 18-49 demo)

 

 

*Q1: 714K for Cody Rhodes vs Joey Janela

*Q2: 707K for the ending of Janela-Cody, Nyla Rose vs McKenzie Page

*Q3: 651K for MJF, Shawn Spears video package

*Q4: 741K for Jon Moxley vs Kazarian

*Q5: 738K for ending of Moxley vs Kazarian & Dark Order beatdown

*Q6: 702K for Lance Archer vs QT Marshall & Brandi Rhodes promo

*Q7: 768K for beginning of Omega-Hardy vs Guevara-Jericho

*Q8: 838K for the ending of the Street fight, which includes the Golf Cart spot (399K in the 18-49 demo)

[Jaysin]

Fun show honestly

[brat99]

Fun show honestly

 

Have to agree......won't say it was all quality, but as a huge fan of B-movie horror flicks, they don't necessarily have to be good to be fun.

 

Really enjoyed Seth vs Drew, Sasha's outfit, Braun vs Bray wasn't bad (puppets as the crowd was kinda funny), AJ flashbacks at poster and coffin were great, and did I say Sasha's outfit already?

 

However, while I did enjoy watching it I'm not sure where they are gonna go with Otis having the briefcase.

[milamber]

Skimmed most of the show. Drew vs Seth would have been good with a crowd. MITB was fun. Not sure why they bothered playing entrance themes. The camerawork sucked at times. The music was cheesy but better than silence. Asuka and Otis winning was best case scenario, although I would have been happy with Bryan or Styles. Poor Dana <img alt="" data-src="//content.invisioncic.com/g322608/emoticons/frown.png.e6b571745a30fe6a6f2e918994141a47.png" src="<___base_url___>/applications/core/interface/js/spacer.png" />

[FuzzyLogic]

I really can't see them having Otis as WWE Champion. I'd be all for it; I like ti when they take a bit of a risk and go a bit leftfield, but really, I'd be surprised if they put it on Otis.

 

More likely, I think the MiTB briefcase will be used as prop in the Otis/Mandy love story. I think that somewhere down the line, we get to a point where Otis is feuding with someone and it ends up where Otis has to choose Mandy or the MiTB case. If he chooses Mandy, whoever he's feuding with gets the case. Of course, he choose Mandy and then she turns on him and aligns herself with whoever got the case.

[Blackman]

*Q1: 739K for Johnny Gargano vs Dijakovic

 

Where do you get these numbers? Is that from the liveshow? Don't forget those WWE network clicks. The latter make more sense, as dividing in 8 "quarters" (if that's what the Q is for) seems a bit excessive for small shows. It seems weird that people would zap between two shows so much, but then again: the modern audiences...

[Jaysin]

Asuka is Raw Women's Champ <img alt="" data-src="//content.invisioncic.com/g322608/emoticons/cool.png.f00d2562b2c1d873a09323753efdb041.png" src="<___base_url___>/applications/core/interface/js/spacer.png" />

[Makhai]

<p>So lets break this down for a second. Ronda signs telling them that she wants to have a baby, works Mania-Mania like a grown up, and then puts over Becky and leaves. Gets absolutely roasted.</p><p> </p><p>

Becky canoodles with Seth until she gets surprise preggo and then HHH's the belt to Asuka, kills the business on the way out, and basically retires? She's revered like a patron saint...</p><p> </p><p>

??? </p><p> </p><p>

I mean, happy for them. But this is a 30+ year old couple. Surely they've figured out how sex functions. Either she didn't want to do a job out the door, or she didn't give a crap about the WWE, and the state of the company, which put her over and signed her to a deal worth a ton of money. The least she could do is put Asuka over and then do the babymaking. Either way, Seth is really on fire. He may very well burn that whole company down at this rate.</p>

[milamber]

Without knowing all the details I'm either going to say either it was unplanned or she notified Vince and he and creative decided not to bother kayfabe-ing it like usual.

[milamber]

Where do you get these numbers? Is that from the liveshow? Don't forget those WWE network clicks. The latter make more sense, as dividing in 8 "quarters" (if that's what the Q is for) seems a bit excessive for small shows. It seems weird that people would zap between two shows so much, but then again: the modern audiences...

 

I think it's Meltzer who used his contacts to get the full breakdown. I don't think there as much crossover between NXT and AEW as people think, given NXT skews older. There's lots of reasons why someone might not watch an entire show and change channels. But it's still a useful metric to see what segments are peaking interest and which ones are driving viewers away.

[Makhai]

Without knowing all the details I'm either going to say either it was unplanned or she notified Vince and he and creative decided not to bother kayfabe-ing it like usual.

 

The only way this shouldn't blowback on her is if they told Vince and he just forgot about it, and then Corona happened and... Oh yeah, I need to get the belt off my pregnant star. Crap. Have her hand it off to the Kabuki girl, who cares. It would be a very WWE thing to do.

[Makhai]

I think it's Meltzer who used his contacts to get the full breakdown. I don't think there as much crossover between NXT and AEW as people think, given NXT skews older. There's lots of reasons why someone might not watch an entire show and change channels. But it's still a useful metric to see what segments are peaking interest and which ones are driving viewers away.

 

It's from Meltzer's cable contacts and the fact he's practically on the AEW payroll so he's getting it from either or. He gets the full Nielsens. But I would never take Neilsen's as gospel like a lot of people do. They are ludicrously ancient guesstimates based on the people they give Neilsen boxes to. Which trend white, and upper-middle class.