Arena Pro Wrestling Discussion, part deux - Only $9.99/month!

Dominos is apparently threatening to pull all future ads because of it, so best case scenario is it was probably a one-off situation with an apology afterwards on Dynamite.

 

Cultaholic was covering some stories that said that WWE was running a “smear campaign” against AEW about the pizza cutter incident - trying to blow Domino’s reaction out of proportion, looking to try and make the story more maintstream, etc.

Not going to lie, as a Social Studies teacher, I’m kind of fascinated at how this plays out as an example of a market leader’s business tactics in an entertainment industry, especially in interaction with the wrestling news media; I’ve long since come to the conclusion that Vince is a *genuinely* great and dangerous businessman, probably the best in his industry, but his believe he’s anything but a mediocre booker gets in his own way… and with that fact becoming public knowledge in a wrestling new industry that has arguably *grown* even as the industry itself sinks, some of his old tactics aren’t as effective anymore.

And when examining how de-facto monopolies work in luxuries like entertainment genres, it’s fun to notice how the existence of AEW basically shows where an entertainment genre simply can’t be cornered the way a more physical commodity can.

 

unbelievable. creative and talented enough to do anything he wants, wish him success.

 

Feels like every spark of original light from the late 10’s that constantly got undermined and held back by booking is getting released.

 

I’ve become a AEW mark, I know that, but it really feels to me like if you wanted to dump expensive contracts as WWE does… you’d want to keep the young assets that have proven themselves valuable commodities who can handle their side of almost anything. Not dump them.

Unless there’s some other issues here, Bray feels like one of the last people you’d cut; dude managed to reinvent himself almost entirely into a career resurrection that made serious merch.

…Not going to lie, I kind of want WWE to “pay” for this somehow. I usually try to be less “hopped up mark for getting away from the ‘E,”… but I feel like Bray should make himself someone’s else’s megastar at a greater profitability than WWE ever got out of him just to show why you shouldn’t cut that kind of talent.

 

Reviewing the most likely and craziest ostensible reasons for the “budget cuts”… it’s still pretty hard to see any reason not to keep Rotunda that doesn’t come around in some way to also rejecting the idea of talent managing to make themselves “superstars.”

If they just want to save cash, sell the company, restrict their operations to Vegas, streamline their product and become even more kid friendly… you’d still want an iconic villain and that level of creativity in your camp.

On some level, there has to be a conscious element of “proving a point” about the brand being so much more important than any superstar, no matter how skilled or creative, that everyone is ultimately completely interchangeable. And it wouldn’t just be a WWE idea - more than one NFL owner clearly has similar sentiments, and are likely behind Goodell’s known tendencies to crack down on individuality. But in WWE, they need entertained to prioritized over the brand, because entertainment *is* the brand - Disney is a monstrously huge entertainment company because ultimately they just want people entertained enough to give them money, and they have no problem letting other “front” brands seem to take the credit.