I haven’t watched any wrestling for the better part of the last three weeks because spring is my busiest time.
I tune in last night for the revival segment.
Oh good lord.
I watched because I was home. But I think it’s time for me to take another hiatus.
I use the Fast forward when Roman Reigns, some Vince self-stroking promo, or whatever their charity of the month are on, which amounts to about half the show, so I haven’t given up completely yet.
Angelico, who you may remember for diving off the top of Dario Cueto’s office to land a cross-body in season 1 of Lucha Underground, has signed with AEW.
It’s also being reported that AEW will announce next week that they’ve signed a TV deal that will give them a weekly show on TNT, which you may recall was the same channel that carried WCW Monday Nitro back in the day. No word on what day it’ll be airing on, probably Wednesday or Thursday so they don’t have to compete with WWE for live ratings.
you know id be glad if it did but on another i think thats crap … because its why fusient and then Bischoff’s group couldn’t buy wcw because Warners didn’t want wrestling on their “serious drama channel” … why they didn’t keep it on tbs ill never know …
Of course, USA tried the same thing but it almost killed USA off at the time now but now I think they could pull it off …
The latest Table For Three has the wives of Randy Orton, Kurt Angle and Matt Hardy and it’s really precious. They discuss having to balance their husbands’ absences with going out in public, and having to explain angles to their kids. Kurt’s daughter is a big fan of Bailey, and when Kurt was RAW GM and threatened to fire her, the daughter told him he better not do it. Kurt explained he was making Bailey go “time out” for behaving badly, and she seemed to get it.
“Okay, but only for five minutes!”
Thank you for sharing that. Table for Three is my favorite original, outside-the-ring WWE programming.
I thought it funny that Randy’s wife notes that he has a reputation as an asshole, even if it was only in passing.
yeah mick foley discusses that in his first book that when his kids were little he said had to explain "daddy and uncle----- weren’t trying to kill each other it was a show sort of like a fight in a movie … "
apparently, in so many words dusty letting Dustin think it was totally real and then finding out how it was really done on his own as a teen is one of the major things that caused the rift between them
Mexican luchadore Silver King, perhaps best known for his stint with World Championship Wrestling from 1997-2000, and for playing the villain in Nacho Libre, has died aged 51, after suffering heart complications during a match.
Most recent reporting is that Silver King died in the ring, but it isn’t believed to have been caused by any specific trauma. As ekedolphin said, heart complications.
Jeff Jarrett said his dad never told him the true nature of the business either. His dad had him doing odd jobs for the company when he was in his early teens, and that’s when he found out it was all a work.
With AEW’s TV deal being announced (or almost or whatever), is it really competition to WWE if they’re on different nights?
Yes. They will draw wrestling fans, potentially draw new fans, and draw away wrestlers who take a look, listen to AEW’s locker room and decide not to re-sign with WWE.
That ‘competition’ will force WWE to make changes. With Vince, probably all of the wrong changes, but we’ll see how that works out with the new network contracts they’ve got and already seeing pressure from the network they’re not even running on yet.
Isn’t it ironic that AEW’s TV deal is with TNT, the same channel that said, “We’re cancelling WCW Monday Nitro, because we don’t see pro wrestling as a core part of our business strategy”, thus causing Fusient to back out of the sale? I wonder if WCW would still be around today if AOL/TimeWarner hadn’t done that.
The other pressure will be too much wrestling. Some, self included, won’t want to watch every hour of wrestling every week, and will turn to whichever is consistently more entertaining. Unless one is brand-loyal (and why one would be except hollow tribalism is beyond me), if the pendulum of entertainment moves, some fans will follow. Will it be enough to alter the wrestling landscape? I have no clue.
ETA: I don’t find a 18 year old business decision ironic. One can play all the what-if scenarios one wants, but someone made a decision to plug up a division that was bleeding money. Both the cable and wrestling landscapes are different today.
i remember tnt used to not delay the channel so if it was on at 8 pm on the channel it was on at 5 pm here so id watched the 2/3 hours of nitro and then watch raw …
Funny thing is the Monday night wars are why turner finally decided to put up the normal west coast time delay for his channels and quit repeating nitro later that Monday … because it made raw and nitro on at the same time …
IIRC, Ted Turner had no control over WCW after the merger with AOL/Time Warner. The new execs hadn’t produced wrestling content before, and couldn’t conceive of letting wrestlers be in charge. Plus, none of those execs are still around after 18 years. I’m sure Cody & Barr made sure they would get executive control.
Eventually, HHH & Stephanie will have to get over their loyalty to Vince and give him a mercy shooting.
Asuka and Kairi Sane are now the Kabuki Warriors.
VINCE…
Yeah, that had me yelling at my TV too. Idiocy.