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Everyone can now see it — this is what CM Punk really is
“And I cried because I knew I was leaving a place that I love, and it was a home, and I knew where I was going, wasn’t going to be easy for a guy like me. Because I’m one of you. So I look at it like this: Aug. 13th, 2005, I left professional wrestling.”...
AEW <i>and </i>WWE fans were winners this time around
For all the noise about “WWE vs. AEW” and whatever that means to everybody, they don’t really go head to head on our screens very much. WWE pulled NXT off of Wednesdays when it mostly got its brains beaten in by the burgeoning AEW Dynamite. AEW has struggled on the Saturday nights that WWE runs a Pr...
WWE gets richer while 100 employees get the boot
Time moves fast for a company trying to send its stock price up a percentage of a point. Yes, this is how big corporate America works. Cut employee expenditure to as lean as possible while maximizing revenue. WWE cashing in on a new $1.4 billion deal to move Smackdown back to USA Network is a perfec...
A tribute to Terry Funk, an unsung wrestling god
Legendary wrestler Terry Funk died yesterday. He was 79. I am certainly nowhere near a talented enough writer to eulogize him properly. Nor have I been a fan long enough or deeply enough for long enough to try and encompass his whole career. The thing is, no one is, so it’s not a personal failing. F...
Retirement? We all know Vince McMahon didn’t leave WWE of his own volition
Stop calling it a retirement. Without the details of alleged hush payments skyrocketing well beyond $12 million to keep various women quiet, now-former WWE Chairman and CEO Vince McMahon would still be in unquestioned power. He didn’t leave his post of 40 years unprovoked or out of humility to trans...
Vince McMahon is an actual American story
As the eulogies for Vince McMahon’s career pile up in the wake of his not-in-any-way-forced retirement on Friday, they follow the usual script of any powerful and ungodly wealthy man’s career coming to an end. His offenses, crimes, and responsibility for the misery and violation of basically countle...
It really is Vince Wrestling Entertainment now
Unless you’re a complete sycophant, it’s hard to watch WWE regularly. If it wasn’t, would AEW have been able to thrive like it has? Quite frankly, and it’s an old complaint, there’s just too much of it. Five hours a week is a ton, and that’s before you even get to NXT. And they’re not all that good ...
Not surprisingly, there’s more to the whole Vince McMahon sex scandal
Vince McMahon’s road back to his seat as World Wrestling Entertainment’s chairman and CEO just got a lot more treacherous thanks to more allegations of hush payments, ballooning the total doled out to more than $12 million over the last two decades. Those large alleged transactions were to cover all...
A Flair for the geriatric
Ric Flair’s self-descriptors are outdated. Jet-flying, kiss-stealing needs to be the AARP-promoting, Werther’s Original-loving, slow-moving son of a gun! There’s no discounting the now-73-year-old Flair as the greatest American professional wrestler ever. His combination of entertainment and athleti...
This weekend showed everything that’s wrong with WWE
Of course, “wrong” is a relative term. In any sense that WWE cares about, or its most dedicated fans care about, WWE is as far from “wrong” as can be. Their TV deals are for more money than Scrooge McDuck could fit into his vault. The ratings remain strong enough to keep USA and Fox happy. The arena...
There’s a lot to this WWE Vince McMahon mess
As Wednesday’s bombshell report dropped of WWE Chairman and CEO Vince McMahon allegedly having a sexual relationship with an ex-company staffer and paying her $3 million in hush money, no longtime wrestling fan read the headline and was shocked. McMahon has been the Harvey Weinstein of professional ...