Wrestling Thread 6: It's Poppy • Page 61

Can't believe I get to go to Takeover. Gonna be surreal seeing Cole/Chiampa, Balor/Gargano, Ripley/Belair, TUE/Broserweights, and hopefully Lee/Dijack.

 

Damn. That news has me wanting to hear Meltz daddy's take on the situation.

 

Jinder Mahal and Kevin Owens have worked the same number of main events; that says everything you need to know about WWE long-term

 

i have watched Edge's return like a million times this week. between Edge & DBry returning and Angle getting one last run we've been pretty spoiled with happy endings the last couple of years.

 

Fuckin anything is possible. Who else can come back.



Nigel!

 

i recall when he was trying to kickstart a new shoot-oriented fed of some kind, one of the stretch goals was him working a match i think. could be talking out of my ass but i def remember some talk about him returning but this was a few years ago now.

Nigel taking Regal's spot as the UK vet you dont fuck with would be gr8

 

i hate to give too much praise or views to NWA but that Scurll/Aldis promo was tremendous

 

There's a rumor going around that we're going to find out that USA was paying WWE $0 for NXT rights during the Q4 Financial reports. Wooooooof.

 

$50 million to $0 is quite the jump. Would be real bad if it were true

 

looks like the stock is bouncing back

 

i mean, AEW was getting paid nothing by TNT initially too, right? unless im misremembering, TNT just covered production costs and allowed AEW to pocket the gate if i remember correctly. NXT was a similarly unproven product, often not even the most watched show on the Network with its built in audience. it would make sense they would get a similar deal to AEW, likely with an option to renew after a test period. im sure WWE at least got a good chunk of the adshare in exchange for free programming.

 

NXT was definitely more proven than AEW tho, and they even did a test show on USA a few years ago that did 900k viewers. Its not like AEW and NXT were on the same level. NXT should be getting paid, and it says a lot if they aren't. It would also explain the whole NXT talents not getting pay raises when they moved to USA thing

 

that test show was part of WWE Week or whatever which they advertised like crazy and a one time engagement is gonna draw a different audience than "come watch us every week". i think WWE and USA would both be crazy to settle on a dollar amount for putting developmental on TV without a test period to determine where the market is. i doubt WWE is losing money on it, so this is a safety net situation for both parties. even if they settled on an annual $ amount after the first month that would have proved foolish for USA because NXT has slipped into a very consistent 700k threshold and has been down in the 20-30s for the key demo.

 

What the hell ever happened to Mustafa Ali

 

If I remember, the AEW was covering production costs plus splitting some of the ad revenue, but, that's understandable for a new product with an unproven TV show. NXT could show network numbers to USA before moving live, and also had that one day test run...AEW had only actually run one PPV when they got their deal, I believe.

But, part of why this would be real bad is that every estimate from market people was the deal was $30+ million/year. If they told investors it was making money and it wasnt, that's only gonna stack on top of the XFL stuff. Which is why its hard to believe $0 is true; and where Meltz's number probably makes sense (over $50mil became $60mil over 2 years)

 

AEW: 828,000
NXT: 712,000

 

Meltzer says there is nothing at all to the $0 rumors.

 

Revival requested their release again lol

 

Roman is now calling Corbin "Fetish Boy", for those not watching

 

I forgot how much I hate the John Morrison character

 

Ohno selling me hard on today’s Toryumon reunion show. That was THE company I followed in my early tape trading days.

 

Just found out NJPW is here tomorrow. Bunch of nice seats left I think I’m gonna go. Not super familiar with it, but Colt, Ibushi, and Jeff Cobb are on the card..among others I should probably be excited about, ha


Yuji Nagata & Satoshi Kojima vs Ren Narita & Karl Fredericks

Rocky Romero & YOSHI-HASHI vs Misterioso & Alex Coughlin
Colt Cabana & Toru Yano vs Jado & Yujiro Takahashi

Robert Gibson, Ricky Morton & Hiroshi Tanahashi vs Clark Connors, Alex Zayne & TJP

Jeff Cobb vs Lance Archer

Kota Ibushi vs Chase Owens

David Finlay & Juice Robinson vs Tanga Loa & Tama Tonga

 

as of last word, Ibushi got removed due to a bad bout of the flu fyi