Slasher

Huh? Sitting in a heated up car while going over 100 mph makes you a sportsman? Guess that makes me a sportsman too. People sitting in saunas? Clearly a sport because you require to be in a certain physical condition. Wearing jumpsuits means the janitor at the local high school is a sportsman because he has to labor in the jumpsuit. BTW sek, way to borrow my comments earlier in the thread I already acknowledged everything you said, and still I determined its not a sport. You may be steering a wheel, you might have to sit uncomfortably in the suit, you might use muscles to press down a pedal or two, but none of that makes it a sport. It's a competition. Nothing more or less. I'm alright being called delusional though.

I believe it's legit. I don't think the heel character, which he is so committed to that he would act like an asshole to young kids, would have made these tweets. If it's a work, for what? What does that accomplish for him?

I'm not the booker. I don't want to offer fake solutions or fantasy booking. I don't know what they can do to get better because it feels like they are following their vision of what pro wrestling is. So we have old dudes coming in getting better reactions than the guys they are meant to support. Is that good? I don't think so. They were given just about the greatest starting position a promotion could ever ask for. Primetime TV slot, a built in fanbase from all their exploits in NJ and RoH and then they have an advantage of having the trust of their fanbase. As good as some people are, I don't think they should be the featured players. I'm talking about people like Nyla Rose, an extremely green performer, being their world champion of the women. They dragged on the Dark Order storyline, which okay I understand they changed their direction, then you bring in Brodie Lee to do what? A Vince parody? How is that gonna make him or anyone else involved in this stars? Adam Page is still as goofy as all hell, and just because he added alcoholism (to comedic effect) to his character isn't going to lead him anywhere except possibly being seen as an Austin knockoff (I know he isn't but bear with me here). I can go on and on and on but I suspect y'all won't really care for it so I'll shut up now.

Can't argue with that flow chart.

They're not keeping the old building? Its a complete switch over to the new building? For some reason I assumed they were keeping both.

Eh that's a false narrative. They absolutely had a built-in audience from Day 1. The fact they are doing about the same in buyrates all four PPVs would seem to indicate that is their audience and it's not growing. Like I said, they seem content with that. Yes they are doing much better than anticipated but they are not really taking advantage of that success. That's just my opinion based on what I've seen.

It certainly is a novel way to get the insurance company to pay for renovations, having his wrestlers destroy shit in the building.

I agree creativity for creativity's sake is not a very good way to put together a storyline and can often serve to the detriment of the story. That said, I kinda get what CS is saying. For the time when Russo was on top, he was more in touch with the mindset of the core audience in the late 90s. The problem is it was usually never any good or compelling in the right way. Russo understood his audience but just was not capable of giving it to them. This is not to say Russo > Cornette or anything. Honestly neither guy would be my booker if I owned a wrestling promotion, but I definitely think Jim Cornette has the vastly superior record of booking than Russo. The first opportunity he got to run a company unchecked, he drove it six feet under (WCW) to the point that Vince could buy his most bitter rival for pennies on the dollar. As out of touch as Cornette is, I doubt he would have killed WCW like Russo did.

Russo is the guy who wanted to run wrestling shows without a ring in place. His lack of "proper" respect for wrestling is well documented. That's nothing new. But yet Cornette lets him get to him way too easily. Instead of dismissing his opinion as a joke and nothing more, he'll derail interviews just to get shots in on Russo. When I was watching the Brawl for All episode, it was surprising how well Russo came across and how poorly Cornette did. And if you look worse than the guy who was admitting that he came up with this to see JBL get knocked out, you probably need to take a step back.

AEW's problems run deeper than changed plans due to the pandemic. Catering to the very specific AEW fanbase isn't a strategy that would lead to a boom. Now I know pro wrestling isn't going to have a boom anytime soon regardless, but AEW doesn't seem to possess the motivation to grow their audience from that existing base they were always going to have.

The Ringer has a great article about him (and its not written by Shoemaker).

Apparently Chris Kreski belonged to the WGA-West branch. He's the only one I found on their database though, so yeah the WWE probably avoids the union writers nowadays.

I want to say the writers coming from a Hollywood background would be in the writer's guild. But I'm not confident about that.

Haven't watched a full episode of any WWE shows in maybe 4 years now. I'd watch bits and clips on YT whenever there's a big moment happening in the company, but for the most part, I don't think I'll ever watch a full WWE show again.

I like Jake Hager but I can't help feeling that if Hager was swapped out for Rusev, it'd set them up for more and better storyline potential. Rusev as the muscle who can cut his own promos, and eventually turning babyface on the Inner Circle or Jericho.