John Pollock & Wai Tingpresent a special Sunday night bonus POST Roundtable assessing the latest news and developments regarding the COVID-19 pandemic and the wrestling industry’s response.
They’re joined by Andrew Thompson and Nate Milton for a roundtable chat about the past week, how WWE, UFC and AEW have handled the pandemic, how this has affected everyday life, the latest warning from the CDC on large gatherings, the presentation of Friday Night SmackDown inside an empty arena, and the potential effects this will have on the industry for months to come.
Listening to the show and Nate brought up Tony Khan as opposed to Vince McMahon and I don’t know why Tony Khan wouldn’t want to try and do a Final Deletion style shoot this week, especially with the exalted one reveal. They also have great Road To series videos that I wish they would put on TV more. Now, they have that opportunity. AEW also has the ability to do small shoots with separate matches because AEW has their rankings.
Another thing brought up was matches that influenced Drew McIntyre. Since WWE has access to everything with their money, why not pay to use some of Drew’s best matches outside WWE. Never before seen matches from different indies showing his key wins and losses outside WWE from ICW, Impact, Evolve and elsewhere.
It was Wai, I believe, who wondered on this podcast for how long shows like last Friday’s SD can keep their TV audiences. I watched (mostly fast forwarded) through last Friday’s SD, which is unusual as I gave up on Raw and SD a long time ago.
What was so very odd to me was to see Sasha and Bayley cut promos but not looking into the camera. I know that WWE has for some time now trained their people to avoid cutting promos into the camera, but in this instance that really stood out as a stupid thing to do.
A show like that SD can’t be run too often - it’s just bad TV. The best part of that SD was the insertion of the chamber tag match from Elimination Chamber.
Wrestling is heavily dependent upon nostalgia, so it would seem these past few years. WWE and other companies might as well just put together re-wind shows for their customers.
Haven’t listened yet but will soon. Wondering if anyone noted now is the perfect time for WWE to utilize its network and try and push subs as people stay home more and more.
For example - today is 3:16. And Raw is being promoted with Austin. How bout the entire episode is just best of Stone Cold Steve Austin. I would bet after a few hours of all time Austin moments you’d have people wanting to go try to Network to watch other content they remember.
Yes, i haven’t been subscribed to the Network for at least 6 months and i’ve already been thinking about resubscribing organically. If Vince et al weren’t so stubborn and still in denial about the situation they would have been actively promoting the Network more weeks ago, as soon as events started being postponed around the world.
It’s amazing actually, how some people who’s entire being is centred around making money can’t see the forest for the trees.
Interesting show, great to hear John, Wai and Nate together again and give their thoughts on this topic. Andrew Thompson is a snooze and adds nothing, but enjoyed the rest of it.
I did not listen to this show yet, but I disagree Andrew adds nothing. He’s a very good writer and does a great job with the written updates, interview/podcast recaps, etc on here.
Andrew Thompson is incredible and doesn’t get the credit he deserves from so many people because he isn’t (or in my opinion doesn’t appear to be) a spotlight guy.
