Vince McMahon is back. "I hear ya a racist now, father?"

[Loki]

Yeah, I’m not sure Paige was a huge fan of it being spread all over the internet.  I’m also a bit leery of the culture there that dumped very young girls into a fairly testosterone-filled environment with very little oversight.  I suspect NXT is a different beast nowadays.

I do wonder what AEW is like backstage.  I suspect it might be the Wild West compared to corporate modern WWE.

[Keith Houchen]

26 minutes ago, Nick James said:

What about watching a company through nafarious means? Never putting a penny into their coffers or views on their stuff? 

Yeah this is something I’ve thought about lately. I mean, is someone who got BT Sports for Champions League and rugby guilty of putting money on Vinces pocket even though they don’t watch his product? There’s levels to it but ultimately it’s down to the individual if you’re bothered about it. What I am not keen on is excusing it or ignoring it because you like the product. 

[Chris B]

16 minutes ago, Loki said:

Yeah, I’m not sure Paige was a huge fan of it being spread all over the internet. 

Xavier Woods clearly wasn't overjoyed either. But there's a world of difference between predators, particularly with power differences, and a bunch of similarly aged young oeople at a similar job level consensually shagging.

If one of the people involved intentionally shared it publicly, I totally agree with you. At the moment, though, it feels like you're likening sexual practices you don't approve of to rapists and abusers, and these things aren't the same.

[Loki]

I think you’ve misunderstood my point @Chris B, if you think I’m making a moral judgment about that.  It was the passing around and leaking of the videos I was referring to, both of which iirc were without her consent.  A young relative of mine suffered a similar thing recently, it’s devastating.  My point was only that even the NXT locker room, mocked by seasoned vets for its videogames, wasn’t free of incident (see also Dream, The).

 

[Keith Houchen]

9 minutes ago, Loki said:

I think you’ve misunderstood my point @Chris B, if you think I’m making a moral judgment about that.  It was the passing around and leaking of the videos I was referring to, both of which iirc were without her consent.  A young relative of mine suffered a similar thing recently, it’s devastating.  My point was only that even the NXT locker room, mocked by seasoned vets for its videogames, wasn’t free of incident (see also Dream, The).

 

Was it passed around or did everyone see it after the hack? I know what mean about the devastating effect it can have, I worked in a very male warehouse and a couple who worked there split up, she got with someone else and the ex shared a vid of her as revenge. All the managers thought it was hilarious and shared it around with each other. I was able to spot that when he sent her threatening stuff when pissed up, he did it from his work phone. Even then the managers were very sorry they had to sack him on a technicality. Awful stuff all round. 

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Loki said:

Mikey presumably didn’t watch a minute of Wrestlemania but I reckon the rest of us did.

I certainly did, if we're talking about WrestleMania 33. That's the last one I watched.

Edited April 7, 2023 by Uncle Zeb
Even forgot the right number of it.

[King Coconut]

48 minutes ago, Uncle Zeb said:

I certainly did, if we're talking about WrestleMania 33. That's the last one I watched.

Indeed. I switched off forever when they wheeled Hogan out at Wrestlemania after "cancelling" him for being a massive racist.

[El Hijo del Mikey Jr]

I don't watch WWE because a) I don't enjoy it and b) I don't want to put money in their coffers.  If I pay for their services, I'm part of the problem.  However, the product is usually so annoying, disjointed and boring, I can't even bring myself to steal it.  Every once in a while, I feel like I have to watch it just so I can have an informed opinion.  Nothing worse than somebody who opines on something that they don't watch.  So the last time I watched any WWE, the thing I noticed was that everything was far less loud and obnoxious than it once was.  There was a point in 2019 where you couldn't follow the flow of anything because it felt like there was a computer program randomly cutting from camera-to-camera every two seconds, while the announcers shouted so much it felt like I was going to have either a brain haemorrhage, a epileptic fit or both.

I tried to watch NXT but it's possibly the worst thing they've ever done.  They want soap opera actors with abs and physical abilities but they don't seem to have found anybody who can do those things.  So, instead, you have non-actors going through poor, rehearsed matches and reciting terrible dialogue with acting that is the level of kids in a primary school nativity play.  I heard somebody call it Disney Channel acting but that's harsh on the Disney Channel.

Plus, why are they cutting promos in the middle of their matches in WWE?  Austin told more of a story with one bladejob than Rollins or Reigns have done in their entire career of yelling at people during the middle of the match.  So much of the nonsense I read on some of these wrestling "news" sites just has no foundation in reality about WWE telling stories to the point where I wonder if they're just copy and pasting stuff written by WWE PR.

[LEGIT]

Don't know if it's mentioned elsewhere, but it's all naive shite that all good booking must be Triple H and all bad booking must be McMahon. 

It was the same when Heyman was in charge. Every enjoyable moment was Heyman, all the laughable shite = Vince. 

The amount of "inside experts" aka nobodies that come out with the same rubbish. "Yeah Heyman/Triple H was really against that segment, they pushed against it but were overruled."  And "the best angle on the show was clearly Triple H/Heymans vision, Vince had nothing to do with it and the wrestlers were very happy with it."

Every likelihood there's some truth in it, but not everything bad will be pantomime villain Vince's doing and if you don't like the show then some blame will have to lie with the booker.

[Tim Healys Chutney Spoon]

16 hours ago, El Hijo del Mikey Jr said:

 

I don't know of another company that earns 50m per event from Saudi Arabia.  When everybody was cutting ties with the Saudis, WWE were the only major company to stand by them.  Not just that, they're using such obviously nonsensical logic to justify doing so.  If WWE had the opportunity to play Sun City in the 80s, they would have broken the South African cultural boycott in a heartbeat.  Not just that, they would have said that cultural boycotts do nothing, despite obvious evidence to the contrary.

Formula 1 says 'hello'

[El Hijo del Mikey Jr]

14 minutes ago, Big'Olympic_Hero'Pete said:

Formula 1 says 'hello'

I won't watch that either.

[Keith Houchen]

37 minutes ago, El Hijo del Mikey Jr said:

I won't watch that either.

Did you watch the World Cup?

[El Hijo del Mikey Jr]

51 minutes ago, Keith Houchen said:

Did you watch the World Cup?

Yes.  However, that's a little more complicated, isn't it?  Qatar aren't slaughtering Yemenis. If we're going into troubling countries around the world, the whole of Polynesia bans homosexuality but nobody ever moans about Samoa or Tonga.  However, everybody has to draw their own line.  If you choose to just ignore Vince's alleged crimes - and they are crimes - then it's very difficult to play any kind of moral relativism.

[Keith Houchen]

8 minutes ago, El Hijo del Mikey Jr said:

Yes.  However, that's a little more complicated, isn't it?

Because it’s something you love? It’s easier to boycott something you don’t like. I don’t know if you’re an F1 fan and just skip the Saudi one, but if you’re an F1 nut it wouldn’t be so easy to not watch. 
 

13 minutes ago, El Hijo del Mikey Jr said:

Qatar aren't slaughtering Yemenis

No but they built the stadiums with Slave labour and loads of deaths, and bought the hosting rights. For me, that was enough to make this the first WC I didn’t watch a minute of. Made no difference to FIFA or Qatar what some prick on the internet did, but as you say, we all have our lines. 

 

19 minutes ago, El Hijo del Mikey Jr said:

If you choose to just ignore Vince's alleged crimes - and they are crimes - then it's very difficult to play any kind of moral relativism

Yep. There are very few who stopped watching WWE because of moral reasons compared to those who stopped watching because they thought it was shit. 

[El Hijo del Mikey Jr]

17 minutes ago, Keith Houchen said:

Yep. There are very few who stopped watching WWE because of moral reasons compared to those who stopped watching because they thought it was shit. 

On this point, if you look at when they started the Saudi deal, especially the second show, the ratings take a sharper dip and the highest heights have never come back.