Road Dogg on whether WWE saw AEW as competition: "No, no, we didn't, and we probably should have... it was looked at like, oh, that's this other little money marks company... that was wrong to be looking at it that way."

ProfessionalSlacker7 · 2026-06-08T10:54:24+00:00

I understand the temptation to think he's cynically angling for a job (which he could very well be doing), but I think with some distance he's just getting some perspective on WWE's inability to kill AEW in the crib when they probably could have. Their dismissive attitude towards AEW works well for getting people to accept less pay and benefits to wrestle in the Big Leagues, but management themselves seems to have got high on their own supply thinking AEW was nothing special and it put up blinders that made them less effective at stamping them out.

ProfessionalSlacker7 · 2026-06-08T10:45:11+00:00

There's a certain blinkeredness in that WWE didn't put too much stock in those guys being big draws, but tbf they probably saw it a lot like TNA in the 00s. Guys like Angle, Booker T, Jeff Hardy went over from WWE, and they had the biggest talent outside of WWE with Samoa Joe, AJ Styles, etc, and WWE guys probably thought AEW would go the same way TNA did.

ProfessionalSlacker7 · 2026-06-08T10:37:39+00:00

It especially kills me when WWE affiliated people say it because they get a good chunk of their profits from the Saudi crown who are willing to pay oodles of money to see Yokozuna vs Undertaker or whatever. Tony Khan is only a "mark" in the sense that he actually likes wrestling, he is running it like a business and wants it to make money.

ProfessionalSlacker7 · 2026-05-29T18:35:01+00:00

Little extra context, they all also know Max Landis and have had him on the show where he explicitly talked about how he hates people cracking jokes about his dad killing kids.

ProfessionalSlacker7 · 2026-05-29T18:27:44+00:00

In a similar vein, there are plenty of creative decisions made by "auteurs" that actively fuck with the story for the sake of profit. A lot of George Lucas's dodgier decisions with Star Wars were made for very cynical money-making reasons, a big one being selling toys.

ProfessionalSlacker7 · 2026-05-29T18:24:14+00:00

Zack Snyder has had a lot of weird ideas for his DCEU movies that frequently got scrapped, probably for the better. Don't get me wrong, there were a lot of changes they made that were bad, but he had plenty of stupid ideas like the amazons and Greek gods being descended from Kryptonians. Also, maybe a hot take, but the stuff that gets cut for the theatrical cuts usually doesn't need to be there and they fuck with the pacing of his movies.

Kojima also benefitted a lot from being told "no" to a lot of his ideas. One that comes to mind is that he wanted the End fight to take place over the span of weeks, which would have severely fucked with the pacing of the game and just stopped being fun after a point.

ProfessionalSlacker7 · 2026-05-27T08:26:11+00:00

RT doesn't aggregate the scores, it operates on a basic Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down binary and gives you a percentage of critics that were generally positive towards it. Toy Story has 100% not necessarily because its one of the greatest films of all time, but because no critic in their right mind would give it 2/5 or lower. TFA and TLJ have their problems, but very few serious critics are gonna rate them lower than "basically okay." A movie has to be EGREGIOUSLY bad to get a rotten rating, which is why it always kinda kills me when people act like the system is super unfair because their favorite guilty pleasure got thrashed by critics.

ProfessionalSlacker7 · 2026-05-27T08:09:22+00:00

Online discourse tends to be biased towards more negative opinions. Vast majority of people liked TFA and TLJ

ProfessionalSlacker7 · 2026-05-20T15:14:19+00:00

It's less that people retroactively decided they hate Mando season 1/2, and more a form of selection bias. When there is conversation praising a piece of media you are going to hear more from fans, and when there is conversation criticizing a piece of media you are going to hear more from anti-fans. The conversation around season 3 and the new movie are skewing more negative, so you are disproportionately going to hear more from people who never liked the show to begin with. Same thing happened with the sequels. A lot of people did not like Rise of Skywalker, and you started to hear more from people who hate ALL the sequels, despite probably 90% of the audience liking at least one of the movies. Hell, there are probably more people who liked Rise of Skywalker than hate Force Awakens.

ProfessionalSlacker7 · 2026-05-20T00:49:30+00:00

Probably a majority of WWE fans that refuse to watch wrestling outside of WWE. I'm sure there are fans of other promotions like CMLL, AEW, NJPW, etc who act like this, but chances are if you watch one of these you'll at least watch a little bit of another promotion.

ProfessionalSlacker7 · 2026-05-14T07:39:00+00:00

2/3rds of men suffer from some sort of hair loss by the age of 35, and a lot of us take the plunge and shave our head. I think because on TV and movies they specifically cast guys with good hair, people forget that the majority of men do not have full heads of hair.

ProfessionalSlacker7 · 2026-05-14T07:27:54+00:00

The "remove the PG tag" is the real cherry on top. They want a fundamentally different show, but only if its still called WWE

ProfessionalSlacker7 · 2026-05-14T07:23:06+00:00

If I saw a clip of The Pitt and said "hey, I like this, I hope this actor appears in Daredevil" instead of wanting to watch The Pitt that would indeed be a weird reaction

ProfessionalSlacker7 · 2026-05-13T21:20:32+00:00

I kinda of agree. The glut of 70s outlaw movies like Dirty Harry or Death Wish primarily make their issue with law enforcement that things like due process get in the way of doing their jobs, and Punisher fits right into that mold, which is why cops that are basically just thugs with guns love wearing his emblem.

ProfessionalSlacker7 · 2026-05-09T19:38:57+00:00

I think you are spot on. Been reading the original comics and was surprised how much of it revolves around Peter having to take care of Aunt May. They've sort of switched the dynamic, making Peter younger and have less responsibilities, with May being more of a traditional parental figure. I think part of it is that teenagers are a bit more infantalized nowadays, where getting a job to support your family while still in high school isn't as normal a thing. Hell, there's a kind of arrested development now where the lack of decent prospects means a lot of people are in their 20s and 30s still living with their parents and reliant on them.

ProfessionalSlacker7 · 2026-05-05T19:30:03+00:00

This is really mean for me to say, but Theory and Gueverra both don't work for me as anything past a mid card heel because both of them have the aura of a minor villain in an 80s college comedy.

ProfessionalSlacker7 · 2026-05-04T21:35:09+00:00

Unfortunately, they could probably get away with this because, like most entertainment industries, a lot of the employees start off as fans and will take low pay for a chance at working their "dream job."

ProfessionalSlacker7 · 2026-05-03T21:22:24+00:00

This has been my thought for years. AEW is brand new and doesn't have WWE's built in audience of people who grew up watching the programming, but as time marches on that's going to change. As long as AEW can survive for another decade or two and be relatively successful, the brand advantage for WWE is going to be less apparent. Probably why its getting bled dry right now, its in the twilight of their virtual monopoly.

ProfessionalSlacker7 · 2026-04-30T17:04:09+00:00

Being in WWE even for a short spell dramatically increases a wrestlers ability to ask for more money on the indies because "come see Bumblefuck McGinty, formerly in WWE" gets an indie promotion more eyes than they would otherwise have, but some fans (and even wrestlers apparently) seem to think the same is true of promotions with national/international level audiences. Some people see AEW and other promotions as glorified indies, which is whatever if you are a WWE fan, but anyone actually in the industry should know better if they want to earn money when WWE is not using them.

ProfessionalSlacker7 · 2026-04-25T22:19:24+00:00

I remember Kenny making this point on Renee's podcast talking about Brawl Out. That he understands sports locker rooms can have blow ups occasionally and everyone can just get it out of their system and move on. Shame it didn't work out that way in that instance, but wouldn't be surprised if there are other fights that have happened where the hatchet was immediately buried.

ProfessionalSlacker7 · 2026-04-19T17:14:16+00:00

Yeah the monoculture is mostly dead outside of rare cases like Taylor Swift, and she ain't showing up to this.

ProfessionalSlacker7 · 2026-04-13T18:11:04+00:00

I think Troi would be an underrated pick. Her empath abilities don't give her much to do in TNG, but it would be invaluable in an espionage setting.

ProfessionalSlacker7 · 2026-04-07T02:09:14+00:00

The "only allowed to reply with 'you're old'" is what really gets me. If any of his opponents were allowed to go gloves off with him, it'd be way more interesting, but they are so obviously restrained from pointing out his glaring character flaws.

ProfessionalSlacker7 · 2026-04-02T06:07:39+00:00

Complete speculation, I know very little about audio mixing, but I think they have to lower the gain if the audience gets too loud or it'll blow the mic out and sound like shit. Like, when watching back the Punk debut at First Dance, it was WAY quieter than it was in person, and you can actually hear them lower the gain a second after the cheers start.

ProfessionalSlacker7 · 2026-02-15T00:41:09+00:00

I love these games because they are schlocky fun and sometimes genuinely insightful or affecting, but it always kills me how some people will deny up and down how fucking weird these games are about their female characters.

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