Board 8 > All-Purpose No Wrestling Topic 496: What is Gronk

(+) Yeah! (+)

Sob stories for guys employed by WWE who have sorta been free riding for a long time is pretty silly. They should be financially very much fine if they've had any foresight whatsoever.

I mean I love Heath Slater as much as the next guy but there are so so many people who are in worse positions than him that I can't really pretend to be outraged at WWE or feel like they're screwing over their employees or whatever.

Heck maybe AEW will pick him up (they SHOULD) and actually use him for something when this all settles down.

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Aew will pick up a handful of the cuts and debut them as a stable

The Future Endeavors

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Lopen posted...

Sob stories for guys employed by WWE who have sorta been free riding for a long time is pretty silly. They should be financially very much fine if they've had any foresight whatsoever.

I mean I love Heath Slater as much as the next guy but there are so so many people who are in worse positions than him that I can't really pretend to be outraged at WWE or feel like they're screwing over their employees or whatever.

Heck maybe AEW will pick him up (they SHOULD) and actually use him for something when this all settles down.

"Hey, these guys lost their jobs. Doesn't matter, because they were probably sitting in catering. Fuck them."

Ouch.

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I think there's a happy medium between "oh those poor helpless souls, this is the worst thing to happen in WWE history" and "fuck em they're not doing anything anyway."

Like these are the established facts:
Its shitty they lost their jobs.
It's even shittier WWE did it when they could have afforded to have kept them on.
They were given (seemingly) a decent amount of their remaining contracts out the door.
They're likely compensated than a significant portion of the 22 million people filing unemployment right now.
This probably doesn't crack the top 5 of horrible things WWE had done in the last couple of years.

I'm pretty sure if WWE completely fucked them over there wouldn't be so many of them still thanking the WWE on twitter.

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TheRock1525 posted...

This probably doesn't crack the top 5 of horrible things WWE had done in the last couple of months.

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Pretty much.

I like a lot of these dudes who were released but everyone is losing their jobs. Realistically speaking WWE should have released a lot of these guys a long time ago.

Like I'd sooner have sympathy for the people who are working paycheck to paycheck, people who are actually valuable to their company and got laid off anyway, etc etc. People who settle for an easy job, in times like this, they're going to be fired and that's not the company's bad, that's just the company trimming a little fat when they should prepare to need to do so. WWE was being "nice" by letting these guys hang around as long as they did (not so much in the cases that have been trying to get out) and them not being nice anymore doesn't make them some sorta heartless tyrant it just makes them neutral.

Being realistic these guys should have realized they were expendable long ago and either been working to get out or had a contingency plan in place.

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Lopen posted...

doesn't make them some sorta heartless tyrant

Well

They kind of already had that status
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Oh no I agree

I'm just saying this isn't really anything bad. It's not getting them any points but it shouldn't be losing them any either

Holding Harper, Rusev, The Revival and the like hostage was way worse than any of these releases.

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Zack Ryder spent $40,000 on wrestling action figures.

I think these people are still going to be way better off than the average person right now.

That being said: #rehireheathulu

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I think we can at least agree that the Rollins take of you should feel bad for WWE too for having to let all these people go is asinine at least
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Rollins is always the worst, that's why it's comforting to have some sort of normalcy right now.

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FFDragon posted...

Zack Ryder spent $40,000 on wrestling action figures.

I think these people are still going to be way better off than the average person right now.

That being said: #rehireheathulu

Do you think hell cut back now?
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Does Zack Ryder look like the kind of person to do responsible things?

We all watched Z!

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Ironically WWE releasing Rollins would, to me, be worse than releasing these guys.

Company line towing sycophant or not he's busting his ass to try and maximize what he's doing in that company.

But yes his take is asinine!

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https://twitter.com/themattcardona/status/1250842547112546308?s=21

Awww yeah more figure money
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Apparently main roster cuts are done and it'll mostly be NXT people, which is actually shittier because of their lower pay and likely harder to find work even when things get better.

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I think one of the more damning things about this release cull is not so much the amount of people, but the amount of people who DID have fan support at one time or another that WWE just absolutely refused to go with (Ryder) or did, but only saw them one way (Rusev).

The fact remains that there's not enough spots in WWE for everyone to thrive and always get given spots to work with. I've said before it's not just "who is the top guy/champ" at the top, but who are the top 6 or top 8 per brand that can rotate in and out of the major storylines at a given time. Rusev "should" have been in that conversation, and he was definitely getting fan support with the Rusev Day thing, but WWE's steadfast refusal to do anything is just weird. Upper midcard tag champ/IC champ/World title contender...I mean for fuck's sake. No one would have batted an eye. But maybe Vince still held a grudge over the Lana thing...who the fuck knows.

But I mean, popular as Ryder is, I would never, EVER put him in main event spots over people like Cena, Punk, Edge, or Orton at the time or Bryan and AJ now (upper mid/main event status). That's to say nothing of Slater or Rush, or how many else. So, in WWE's defense, when you have 100-200 guys fighting over at best 20-30 spots on a show, it can be kinda hard to look at Rollins and go, "You know what, fuck you, we're bored. Ryder's our new top heel. Deal with it."

So there's this push pull of "do they pass the eye test," will WWE ALLOW them to (certainly the main issue), and "is there someone else who does a better job/is more popular/more reliable/less injury prone/etc." Where WWE fucks up is they have had so many goddamn misses versus hits, it's hard to give them the benefit of the doubt. Ryder could have had a "Miz" career, where's he's a goof, but successful and somewhat protected because he's over, and that's probably why it sucks.

It's a convoluted point I'm trying to make, I know. WWE's at fault for not pushing guys, but also for having TOO many to give them to.

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I'm not saying (at least some of) these guys didn't deserve better pushes or anything

But the writing was on the wall for most of them-- you need a contingency plan at that point. Either start saving, start training for different work, ask for your release, whatever. And even as low card guys they're making way better incomes than so many people hit by this.

It's just not something to be particularly sad or outraged about. WWE is cutting roster bloat when the potential use for having more workers is gonna be way lower. That's what like 95% of companies that aren't small businesses are doing right now and honestly I'm not even sure those companies are wrong either, but either way it's not a WWE issue. Job security is earned by exceptional work it's not just something that should be given for free just because you exist. It's kinda sad that some of them were considered expendable while other less talented/driven guys aren't, but that's something we've already gone off on WWE about time and time again. This is just a consequence of a previous beef.

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Someone will have to explain how Bo Dallas survived this.

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The answer is obviously his brother.

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Mo Dallas?

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Husky Houston

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Everyone in this topic whining and being negative, meanwhile Roman Reigns gets to celebrate the gift of life with his wife being pregnant with a second set of twins.

Be more like Roman. Impregnate your wives and be happy.

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The Big Dog indeed.

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FFDragon posted...

The answer is obviously his brother.

But he didnt save his own father?!
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The irony of firing IRS on 4/15 was too good to pass up.

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_PandaMaster_ posted...

Impregnate your wives and be happy.

ok vlado

And yeah I get less mad on this over time but I feel like a lot of those guys shouldn't have been IN the "bloat" category. If they had let Ryder do anything, or given Slater a push, they could have been really good midcarders, and maybe even more by now. (That was kinda a point I was trying to make when I was whining about the Rumble but it got muddled) Gallows and Anderson actively WERE solid midcarders at the time as I understand it. Yeah ok maybe 2020 Ryder isn't worth keeping but that's because you actively torpedoed 201X Ryder. 2020 Slater is expendable but there wasn't really a good reason for him to be, other than Vince getting greedy. Aiden English did good work with Rusev, and should probably have had something to do afterwards. For me it just dredges up long-standing frustrations with creative and also is another bit of less-than-stellar PR when I'm not yet over their previous scummery.

Also I dreamed last night that New Day retired on top of everything

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It's WWE Canon now that Undertaker murdered Anderson and Gallows.

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OC now stands for Officially Cadavers.

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Yeah to be clear the reason this is heartless is the Titan Towers people they fucked up the ass that wont get their own press releases.

But also alot of these guys have been begging for their release but this is an awful time to have been granted your release because like...Primo and Epico are for instance gonna want to strike while the iron is well not exactly hot... but at MLW theyre gonna be decent sized stars and they won't get to do it for a bit

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The Revival's new name is Fear the Revolt. Actually, if they just go with "The Revolt" I think it would work out really well in AEW.

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https://twitter.com/newfoundmass/status/1250857591456043011?s=21

Apparently they stole it

Just be FTR! You dont need to explain what it means
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The AoP route, I see.

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MITB card so far

Braun vs Bray for Universal title
Bayley vs Tamina for SD Women's title
MITB: Bryan vs Crews/MVP winner vs Gulak/Corbin winner vs Mysterio/Murphy winner vs Black/Theory winner vs others
Women's MITB: Dana vs Asuka vs Nia vs Shayna vs Lacey/Sasha winner

Rumored additions
Drew vs Seth for WWE title
New Day vs Miz/Morrison vs Usos for SD Tag titles
Street Profits vs Viking Raiders for Raw Tag Titles
Sonya/Ziggler vs Mandy/Otis

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I heard Sonya had a really good promo. I wish I had any faith in them doing anything with her after this feud.

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Dolph Ziggler has randomly been buying 10-20 shirts from various wrestlers on ProWrestlingTees and when he was called out about it, he said he didn't know it would show his name to them when he purchased.

Just wanted to point out something good someone is doing in the wrestling community now.

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Assuming he wasn't intending to sell those same shirts at a profit...

Edit: I mean, I don't think Dolph would be the kind of person to do that, but that was the first thing that came to my mind when I saw "buying 10-20 shirts for various wrestlers".

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