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Mo Wonderboy

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I'm genuinely curious as to, outside of what DA says about people pitching ideas, what people are supposed to do. When people DO self promote and get spots, it doesn't always work well. WWE ignored Ryder for years. Now,  I think Ryder is a fucking awful wrestler, but he put himself out there and people were interested in him. WWE didn't like that his own work got that interest and ignored it for yonks. Rusev got the same for ages. Ali self promoted and has been rewarded by being the leader of a joke faction thus making him a joke. The thing about that last one? It's not even supposed to be a joke.

If you want a REAL example of how WWE isn't creating stars, look at Bray Wyatt. He's a guy who had a genuine aura about him for ages. And no matter how many times they fucked it up monumentally, he was gradually able to become interesting again and again. The whole thing with him and Seth Rollins was like a template for how NOT to build someone. Even after those monumental f**k ups, Wyatt was actually selling more merch than Reigns and Lynch, which is probably why they persisted with him and had him put Cena out of the game, have they capitalized on any of this? Nope.

It'll be interesting to see how Becky Lynch does when she gets back. She was very much a superstar when she left, and had sustained that for a decent length of time, and still makes WWE a fair amount of money despite only being on top a relatively short period of time, and being out for ages.

WWE's problem isn't the locker room being a cesspit for depravity like what Undertaker sees as "the good ol' days" like the fucking dinosaur that he is. It's that when WWE DO have something good, they hammer it into the ground until nobody gives a shit about it anymore. It's no surprise their one big slow burning character, Reigns, is being pretty much taken care of booking wise by Paul Heyman. A guy who used to be able to take guys and bring out their best qualities rather than their worst.

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6 minutes ago, bernardblack said:

I’d rather the locker room was filled with the team playing video games, than JBL bullying everyone and Taker leading everyone to bully lads like Mohammad Hussan.

Taker carries a gun ffs emoji23.png

As a complete a side, Taker is a big stupid redneck, Trump supporter. He donated something like $10k per month to his campaign up until at least last year.

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36 minutes ago, Ludo*1 said:

As a complete a side, Taker is a big stupid redneck, Trump supporter. He donated something like $10k per month to his campaign up until at least last year.

He and Jericho have shown themselves to be unpleasant individuals in real life. Jericho in particular surprised me given how he worked all over the world and seemed to be a pretty liberal guy.

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1 minute ago, DA Baracus said:

He and Jericho have shown themselves to be unpleasant individuals in real life. Jericho in particular surprised me given how he worked all over the world and seemed to be a pretty liberal guy.

I was shocked with Jericho as well. Up until Covid hit, he came across as a reasonable guy and even in his books, he didn't appear to hold any controversial views. He's just completely tarnished his reputation.

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Guest bernardblack
I was shocked with Jericho as well. Up until Covid hit, he came across as a reasonable guy and even in his books, he didn't appear to hold any controversial views. He's just completely tarnished his reputation.


Coincidental that Jericho was able to hold a Fozzy gig with no restrictions, last year
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Undertaker almost certainly has very unpleasant views given he has been photographed wearing an SS t-shirt and is best pals with the 100% Nazi Harris Brothers.

He is probably smart enough to avoid saying publicly the kind of things that got Warrior and Hogan cancelled.

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I love the older wrestlers' cult-like reminiscing of how they "broke into the business".

"Yeah, about 20 of us paid him 2 grand each, and he mad us run 20 miles a day then kicked the shit out us and fucked off with all our money. But that was the way it was in those days and you respected it".

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Wrestlers playing video games instead of shooting up and playing blackjack or whatever really wouldn’t make a difference if the product wasn’t garbage. To try and join up the two is just wild. Almost anyone that’s tried ANYTHING to get themselves over or had it happen organically has had it thrown back in their face. Rusev day, Zack Ryder, Fandango, Cesaro etc, all had the carpet taken out from under them.

This company now makes so, so much money that everyone outside of Roman Reigns is pretty much expendable. They’ll happily jist have contracted wrestlers sit on the sidelines if they piss the wrong people off. To try and spin the talent behaving like literally any other locker room/team in sport as a reason for WWE being in the state it’s in is just insane. They have the most talented roster in the history of professional wrestling. They do not know how to use it. 

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Guest bernardblack
I love the older wrestlers' cult-like reminiscing of how they "broke into the business".
"Yeah, about 20 of us paid him 2 grand each, and he mad us run 20 miles a day then kicked the shit out us and fucked off with all our money. But that was the way it was in those days and you respected it".


Hahaha

“Yeah so I paid $3000 and I turned up and he was drunk as a skunk and made us run the ropes for 8 hours and he let us sleep on the floor of the gym!!”
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That weird fondness for the days when the locker room would distribute their own justice on uppity rookies etc just sounds relentlessly grim. It’s not perfect at all but when you read about how folk like Maven got on and compare it to now where most of the locker room seems to genuinely like each other then it’s obviously an improvement.

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3 minutes ago, bernardblack said:

The network streaming rights have been sold to Peacock?

Given the absolute erse they've made of taking The Office, that seemed like bad news for the US, but looking at the article, seems like it might actually end up cheaper.  That seems too good to be true though, so interesting to see how it progresses.  Shouldn't affect anyone outside of the US.

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16 minutes ago, TheGoon said:

It’s a good deal for those in the US. Quite surprised to see them go down thar route but the money from NBC must be very good.

A billion over 5 years apparently. Works out to basically 1.666m monthly subscribers on the network. Currently only have 1.1m. So WWE has got a good deal, especially if they can still do traditional PPV to top it up further. 

Peacock obviously hoping they can grow that base by offering more diverse content than just wrestling and top up with ad revenue. 

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On the Network front, there's a potential impact on indy wrestling too. The deals with Evolve, ICW, Progress, and wXw etc were more about creating a higher price tier on the Network with all that additional content. I'm not sure there will be the same push for that now. Although the neverending expansion of NXT will no doubt continue.

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I dread to think what stupid shit involving Retribution or The Fiend this will be. 
 


Normally I’m fine with people anonymising sources but given how every single wrestling journo is definitely just making shit up and hoping some of it sticks I think they should have to put a name to the source and add some actual stakes to their begging for Patreon money.
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