WWE Agrees $21 Billion Merger With UFC

[Rozalia1]

10 hours ago, LukeTheGooner said:

Tony has no idea what he's doing anyway, the guy is just a fan of wrestling with loads of money and isn't a great promoter/business man

 

At one of AEW's "scrums" he complained about WWE messing with AEW like they did with Jim Crockett, and that he wasn't going to take it and he has a lot more money than Crockett did to use to fight back. Now is the time to hit back. If Khan doesn't try to get WWE in trouble with antitrust than not only is he a fool, but a coward on top of that.

 

WWE joining with UFC is essentially two monopolies joining together into one bigger monopoly. Khan needs to complain to the American regulator as soon as possible and also get on board as many companies, both in wrestling and in MMA, to further strengthen his complaint. This is Khan's moment to do something meaningful for wrestling (and even MMA), something that even someone like myself who thinks he is a horrible booker and a fool would give him massive credit for.

 

Lets not also forget that this is nothing new for WWE. A big part of WWE destroying the territories was WWE absorbing others until they became unstoppable, which forced the weaker Crockett to attempt to absorb others themselves to hope to compete which only caused them to fall apart even quicker as they spent too much money in the process and couldn't effectively manage all of the territory that they had quickly absorbed, which lead to WCW under Turner which itself was a mismanaged mess that was finished the moment Turner could no longer feed them unlimited money. Khan by comparison is in an even worse position than Crockett was as while yes, he does have more money than Crockett did, his business has only been going down and there is no territories for him to absorb in the hopes of better competing with the WWE.

 

9 hours ago, majob said:

Ironic I guess, Vince was offered the opportunity to buy UFC once upon a time and now it's UFC buying out him.

 

Technically it is a merger that is a pretty good deal for him and also puts him above the UFC guys. Shane was who suggested it to him which perhaps why it didn't happen (I think Vince hated Shane even back then honestly, he just hates him more these days). Shane also suggested a third promotion under the WWE but a little bit separate (as NXT and the feeders before it have been) before it ever got done under others. He was the top supporter of the attitude era stuff. Shane has been ahead of the curve on these big issues so often that he should be the natural heir to the WWE, especially when you remember that Shane unlike Stephanie/HHH is even admired by Vince's inner circle. Heck, he could even keep a positive relationship going with both Jim Cornette and Vince Russo at the same time when they were around which is an achievement in itself.

 

10 hours ago, majob said:

IIRC WWE has been  bleeding money for years and Vince's second XFL venture cost him millions after Covid resulted in the League stopping and being sold for pennies on the dollar. Many former WWE wrestlers have gone into MMA like Shamrock and Brock Lesner. Sucks either way though but I honestly stopped watching after Stone Cold/Rock era ended.

 

You can hold the opinion that if they were better creatively then they'd have made even more money, but to say they've been bleeding money is simply incorrect in a massive way. As far as I'm aware WWE has only lost money 1 year in its entire history, and even in that year they lost only a couple of million. WWE is and has always been ran spectacularly well financially, which combined with them holding the most profitable territory (the northeast) was what allowed them to the competition which was ran nowhere near as well as they were and establish their monopoly.

 

8 hours ago, enaysoft said:

I used to love Wrestling in the 80s and the 90s. I think when Covid kicked off and there were those weird matches in front of computer generated Facetime tablet audiences and the sets looking like Saturday morning TV shows did the industry a lot of harm.

 

The product has certainly become poor, I think that started happening as far back as 1995 to some extend, but I think a big issue with the "sport" in general is just that it's a sign of the times. Same with Radio, regular TV etc, newer technologies and cultural things in society just surpassed. So many other forms of entertainment like video games and Netflix and the Internet. A lot of mistique about wrestling is gone and due to the Internet we can easily see the wrestlers outside of the ring. Even the WWF games look more realistic than the actual wrestling these days since they look realistic ingame but they are doing way more moves on each other than the actual human wrestlers will be doing.

 

I remember seeing some weird "wrestling" shit a while back when I saw a guy wrestling an inflatable doll and then there was the "invisible hand grenade" stuff. Whether this is a sport or entertain is of course up to you. And honestly, I watched the inflatable doll match and that Japanese guy, he did pull it off well, it was entertaining fighting by himself, but like, wrestling... has changed.

 

Pretend to fight, just doesn't really cut it anymore, fake fights and fake stories, everyone knows it is fake. Which doesn't help. I like UFC less, but still, that's an actual sport, which wrestling isn't.

 

Regardless of what Vince McMahon has done, arguably this is a dying industry, or at least, void of ideas for now, a bit of life was certainly injected into it over the years decades with more acrobatic wrestlers, and then over the top violence or stunt work, and most matches have to have a million upsets and crazy shit happening inside and outside of the ring to be considered "a match".

 

Blockbuster Video used to be the king of the world, and then suddenly it wasn't. WWF used to be the king of the world, but probably wrestling will go the same route eventually, to be honest I am surprised it didn't happen earlier.

 

Subscribing to WWF network, how many people like myself subscribe to it to watch the past catalogue and not the newer stuff? Would be very interesting to see those stats.

 

Massive amounts of misconceptions, but I will try to address your post.

 

The COVID period destroyed some of the smaller companies but did nothing to the big players. WWE did lose a good amount of ratings during that period which could be blamed on COVID, but AEW was also rising at the time which was likely the real culprit for that. With AEW currently falling the WWE's numbers have been rising which supports that.

 

Even back in 19XX there were people who knew it was scripted, fake, or whatever term you want to use. Everyone knowing it is what it is actually isn't the problem certain people think it is, though I will agree that more wrestlers should be like for example MJF who carries himself in kayfabe even when in everyday life. On the matter of the video games... there are two camps lets say on that. The 1st camp is the more traditional if you will that supports wrestling being as real as possible by having things not look phoney and making sense. The 2nd camp is the one that as you mentioned video games, wants it to be like a video game and have all manner of silly stuff happening. So no, the video games are not more realistic. You're not supposed to be back on your feet at 100% 5 seconds after taking piledriver like you'll see in AEW or even worse elsewhere. You're supposed to sell the move as being legitimately devastating, and if the move is that big of one then you're supposed to sell its effects throughout the match. 

 

Ah, you saw PWG, Kenny Omega's comedy matches, and the like. It is an embarrassment to have those goofs running around yes.

 

You have a fundamental misunderstanding of the appeal of wrestling. Outside the tiny amount of bloodthirsty people who watch the likes of Nick Gage, people aren't watching to see guys get legitimately hurt. They're seeing a performance that attempts to look as real (well, not the comedy goofs) as possible while having some matter of issue between the 2 or more competitors. The charisma of the people involved and the stories between them is the draw in wrestling, the actual wrestling as silly as it might sound is actually the least important part of the thing though it obviously helps if you can actually handle yourself.

 

Wrong and as I said above, massively so. WWE has only ever had one year where they lost money in the 90s and they've made money every other year, in fact, WWE year after year has been making money. Believe me, people have been predicting the WWE was going to start bleeding money massively for the last 20 years and it has yet to happen (though TV rights fees going into the toilet should achieve it if that happens, but WWE has more than enough cash on hand to survive any such thing).

 

You're surprised because you're, and I mean no disrespect so please don't misunderstand it as such, ignorant of how things actually are.

 

The network only exists in some countries outside America, the network has actually been rolled into Peacock's subscription service.

[You]

27 minutes ago, Rozalia1 said:

You're surprised because you're, and I mean no disrespect so please don't misunderstand it as such, ignorant of how things actually are.

 

Hey, absolutely no offence taken. Although I did laugh because you quoted my entire post and yet you got all defensive and kinda missed the point of what I was saying. Which is fine.

[Infernopommes]

Colby Covington vs Jorge Masvidal in a Hell in a Cell match, Leon Edwards as special referee. I'm here for it.

[Rozalia1]

11 minutes ago, enaysoft said:

Hey, absolutely no offence taken. Although I did laugh because you quoted my entire post and yet you got all defensive and kinda missed the point of what I was saying. Which is fine.

 

You'll have to enlighten me then because what I saw in your post was a lot of inaccuracies which I've tried to clear up for you. What point were you making with your post that was wrong on every count?