Voting "yes" is critical to countering Republican horseshit nationally. I cast my ballot. If you're in the Commonwealth, do your part.

The era of the loud asshole peaked with Trump's win and is crashing back to earth now that society begins to understand what loud asshole hegemony really means to the culture.

Some Something Awful threads have the rule "don't touch the poop." Perhaps it applies here.

How do you have "warfighting readiness" if your "warfighters" are incapacitated by preventable illness? This dipshit is so stupid, he can't even jerk off over the lethality capabilities he worships correctly.

WrestleMania 42 and the Cost of Chasing Growth | Column - POST Wrestling | Podcasts, News, Reviews | WWE AEW NXT NJPW By any historical metric, WrestleMania 42 is an unqualified success, but the company is using its own stories to tell you the opposite.

TKO sure seems worried it won't make its revenue projections, which are lofty this year. www.postwrestling.com/2026/04/17/w...

All of the above.

It's not just about making money, though. It's about making sufficient money to please the shareholders. You can turn a tidy profit, but if it wasn't a level of profit the shareholders were expecting, you still need a scapegoat. That's the joy of being a public company, baby.

I am quite certain he leaned into culture war bullshit to paper over the fact that he legitimately sucks at comedy.

I don't want to see any goddamn tributes to Brock Lesnar. Good riddance to a sick fuck.

The fucking feeling I felt when they had the showdown across the ring from the corners and were about to charge. The masterwork of North American wrestling.

Barnett being fed pilled while advocating for less silly shit in wrestling is beyond dumb. I guess he likes their politics more than what they put in the ring.

Matt Riddle's Bloodsport was a GCW thing before Barnett had anything to do with it.

(Which isn't objectively true, in my opinion, but certainly it avoids the clickbaity promotion war stuff.)

I think the best answer is something like "it's an A+ anywhere Ricky Saints goes, because Ricky Saints is an A+ player."

I think the Mania tickets story is egg on their face and they're gonna end up finding some scapegoat. Creative seems like an easy finger to point without having to really do a gut check on their ticket pricing strategy.

The red hat of wrestling merchandise.

Whether it's "I was all for it and my execution still sucked" or "I didn't want to do it and, sure enough, it ended up bad," are we really in B+ territory for the run?

The Merriam-Webster definition of "assault": "a threat or attempt to inflict offensive physical contact or bodily harm on a person (as by lifting a fist in a threatening manner) that puts the person in immediate danger of or in apprehension (see apprehension sense 1) of such harm or contact."

It fits the legal definition perfectly. If somebody slaps my phone out of my hand, I'm going to reasonably fear a punch is coming at my face next. The fan's a creep, but Phil assaulted him as well.

The creepy Lio character seems to be getting a *big* push on AEW social media, which suggests to me it's here to stay on television. Kudos to Lio for getting over the new characterization. I'm certainly intrigued to see more. #WrestleSky 🤼‍♂️

Like, wouldn't you want to pass the buck to Levesque in preparation for his head being on the chopping block? I really don't think now is the time for him to be going "yes, we are absolutely in control of everything." Play the game a little better, guy.

It's very comparable to Republicans trying to sanewash Trump by going, "what he *really* meant was..." and then he'd go "I didn't just mean what I said, I double-meant it, more powerfully than anybody has ever meant anything." Every time.

We really missed out on John Cena vs. Marky Mark during his retirement run.

I ranted about the anti-consumer implications of his comments elsewhere, but that aside, it's an odd time for Shapiro to be grasping ownership of WWE creative decisions in the shadow of a historically reviled WrestleMania. I postulated he doesn't strictly care about fan opinion, but is he aware?

Truth be told, I don't really give a shit about the plight of Fed fans, who shouldn't be patronizing a sex trafficking wannabe monopoly anyway, but the blatantly scummy anti-consumer rhetoric really pisses me off.

A Dirt Sheet Radio Facebook post: "Speaking at University of Alabama, a student asked TKO President Mark Shapiro about the perceived over reliance on celebrities in WWE due to TKO: Shapiro confirms that TKO has full control of WWE Creative and are responsible for the increase in celebrity usage. He says he disagrees with the idea that it's a bad thing. Having these Hollywood tie ins and stars on the show, is not new but TKO is spending a lot more money to market WWE now. Shapiro admits that spreading the WWE product across multiple streaming services will chase long timefans away. But he compares this to MLB fans who have to spend $1000 across ten platforms. He says this is just the way of the world."

A Dirt Sheet Radio Facebook post: "Speaking at University of Alabama, a student asked TKO President Mark Shapiro about the perceived over reliance on celebrities in WWE due to TKO: Shapiro confirms that TKO has full control of WWE Creative and are responsible for the increase in celebrity usage. He says he disagrees with the idea that it's a bad thing. Having these Hollywood tie ins and stars on the show, is not new but TKO is spending a lot more money to market WWE now. Shapiro admits that spreading the WWE product across multiple streaming services will chase long timefans away. But he compares this to MLB fans who have to spend $1000 across ten platforms. He says this is just the way of the world."

TKO are fucking scum. Totally uninterested in offering creative in which the fans might be interested, totally unconcerned with pricing them out of the market. This is the Trump "I thought the gas prices would be worse, actually" argument for wrestling. They don't care.

AEW books upsets frequently enough that you're never really sure of a given match outcome. The benefits of not orienting your entire booking calendar around a single event every year where only the truly important results can happen.

It'd be a helpful start if they said anything of substance at all.

Respectfully, someone asked a question, he answered it, and I get to comment on his answer. You're welcome to move on. You're within your rights to do that.

I'm sure.

AJ Styles comments on feeling use of his move shows "appreciation."

Notably, AJ has said he has no problem with anybody else using the move and AEW pointedly calls it the "Styles Clash" on commentary as a show of respect to the originator. This is different than Jade's "Sandstorm."