The Smackers Thread

[LaGoosh]

Is Pat MacAfee this big a mainstream name to even warrant this stuff? I'm probably out the loop but he just seems like another gobby annoying right wing podcast type in a sea of them. 

[SuperBacon]

17 minutes ago, LaGoosh said:

Is Pat MacAfee this big a mainstream name to even warrant this stuff? I'm probably out the loop but he just seems like another gobby annoying right wing podcast type in a sea of them. 

I would say the average American that likes any type of sport knows who he is. He's not Brady level, but he's pretty famous.

[Statto]

That's an interesting question, actually. My immediate reaction was going to be "Yeah he is actually, despite being an annoying twat", but looking into it - he's got approximately 3.3m follows on both Instagram and TwitX. By comparison, ishowspeed has nearly 48m on Instagram (although I'm not sure what it says about society that one of the "mainstream celebrities" brought in for Mania is famous for mispronouncing the names of footballers he gets on FIFA Ultimate Team, as far as I can tell).

His show averages about half a million viewers a day, and apparently did a billion social media impressions in September last year. I guess that's probably a lot...?

Considering how much he's infected both my major American interests over the last few years, I was expecting him to have follower numbers in the billions for them to put up with him. 

[LaGoosh]

1 minute ago, SuperBacon said:

I would say the average American that likes any type of sport knows who he is. He's not Brady level, but he's pretty famous.

Gotcha. But does he have the type of fanbase who'll follow him enough to buy tickets or tune in to Wrestlemania when they wouldn't have otherwise or is it like if AEW brought in Chris Kamara for All In Wembley this year? It'll make a few headlines but generally people who aren't already fans wouldn't give a fuck?

[SuperBacon]

2 minutes ago, LaGoosh said:

Gotcha. But does he have the type of fanbase who'll follow him enough to buy tickets or tune in to Wrestlemania when they wouldn't have otherwise or is it like if AEW brought in Chris Kamara for All In Wembley this year? It'll make a few headlines but generally people who aren't already fans wouldn't give a fuck?

"We're off to Las Vegas where there's been booked a shit card, but for which night Chris Kamara?"

"I don't know Jeff, has there?"

[gmoney]

4 minutes ago, LaGoosh said:

Gotcha. But does he have the type of fanbase who'll follow him enough to buy tickets or tune in to Wrestlemania when they wouldn't have otherwise or is it like if AEW brought in Chris Kamara for All In Wembley this year? It'll make a few headlines but generally people who aren't already fans wouldn't give a fuck?

It's hard to gauge, we don't seem to have sports stars that enter the mainstream in the same way over here. I will say when I went to Wrestlemania in 2023, the first thing my NFL fan friend said to me when I got back was "oh my God did you see Pat MacAffe?" because she'd heard he made an appearance. Not sure if that tells us anything really, but to her he's a megastar. 

[LaGoosh]

I'm enjoying Tony Khan's subtle trolling every time WWE has done one of these terrible segments over the past few weeks he will immediately after post something like this:

I saw a thing reported that apparently Ari Emmanuel loves McAfee and sees him as "the next Sylvester Stallone" and is looking to shoe horn him into as much shit as possible. Fucking weird.

Edited April 11 by LaGoosh

[TheScarlettChad]

Because when I think of John Rambo I think Pat McAfee. 

[Chili]

I love that little detail of Ari thingbob thinking Pat is the next STALLONE, and because he's a rich mentalist, he's going to try and engineer that partly through him playing a villain on a show where everyone knows it's not real, castigating in logic, the wrong people. It should be him saying the writers are fucking shit (which hilariously would be actually true). Everything about it is so amazingly flimsy. But yeah, making him an action film star is brilliantly funny. Just the stuff mad rich people with no toe in reality think should be a thing. If you want to make him this big action star, have him actually win the title. Not like it matters. Arquette the fuck out of it, but make him proper hard. Do it Ari, for my own amusement... And sack Paul.

[Arch Stanton]

33 minutes ago, SuperBacon said:

"We're off to Las Vegas where there's been booked a shit card, but for which night Chris Kamara?"

"I don't know Jeff, has there?"

Unbelievable!

[Lion_of_the_Midlands]

47 minutes ago, LaGoosh said:

I saw a thing reported that apparently Ari Emmanuel loves McAfee and sees him as "the next Sylvester Stallone" and is looking to shoe horn him into as much shit as possible. Fucking weird.

Ari Emmanuel is an agent at heart, he just wants his 15% 

[mim731]

The slightly mad thing is without the build etc, the matches in isolation on both nights actually look pretty good, and will probably deliver in-ring. Its just the storyline around them have been largely dogshit.

So much over-complication of stuff that should be simple. All this meta shoot bollocks needs to fuck off. People fighting over belts or personal animosity based on storylines played out on screen. Surely it's not that hard?

[TheScarlettChad]

Punk vs Roman and Cody vs Orton have builds built in. It takes a real moron to screw this up. But here we go. 

[SuperBacon]

4 minutes ago, mim731 said:

The slightly mad thing is without the build etc, the matches in isolation on both nights actually look pretty good, and will probably deliver in-ring. Its just the storyline around them have been largely dogshit.

And that's why I really only watch the events these days and never the weekly shows.Perhaps its a getting old thing or just not caring as much as I used to, but it massively adds to the enjoyment of the events, when you're not arsed about why they've got somewhere, just as long as they deliver when they're there. 

The card is pretty decent IMO.

[mim731]

7 minutes ago, SuperBacon said:

And that's why I really only watch the events these days and never the weekly shows.Perhaps its a getting old thing or just not caring as much as I used to, but it massively adds to the enjoyment of the events, when you're not arsed about why they've got somewhere, just as long as they deliver when they're there. 

The card is pretty decent IMO.

I'd be the same, but my 7-year-old is mad for WWE, so we have to watch pretty much everything. It's definitely better watching the big shows in isolation these days. WWE still does great recap videos for the main story points, so it's not wildly necessary to sit through the tripe on show week-to-week.