I’ve read a lot of the recent comment on this thread, so here my opinion on some of them.
Seth rollins: would draw anywhere outside wwe but won’t go anywhere because he’s pretty much the face of the company right now and is in line to get a pretty good push going into mania.
Owens and zayn: Owens lock himself up probably because that was the best thing to do for his family at the time and let face it, he worked so hard to get to WWE and show is kid that he can be a WWE superstar that he won’t throw that away for anything in the world. Zayn is probably in the same boat as Owens in a way, he’s in the twilight of his career, had multiple injury over the past few years and probably can’t go like he use to plus when you work on the Indy scene for so long just to make it to WWE, you want to end your career in wwe.
Christian: Vince didn’t hate him, he just didn’t see any star potential with him because of his look. At less That’s what christian said.
Ziggler: unless he get a contract for limited dates, I doubt he will resign for WWE or anybody else for that matter. I pretty much told a lot of people that he had other projects that he wanted to focus his time on and that wrestling wasn’t a priority.
As far as WWE releasing wrestlers, Let’s face it, if I was in their position, I wouldn’t give anybody their release and I would let them run out their contract, the more you not in the fans mind, the more fans will forget about you and the less valuable you are to the competition. Like someone mention previously, if WWE really wanted to kill his competition, just release everybody that isn’t of worth to the company, then you will have such a bidding war between, the Khan’s and Sinclair broadcasting to sign former WWE talents that they will go bankrupt and you have 2 of the major players that took each other out.
I doubt they’d shell out that much for a pro wrestling company…more likely realize making a profit in this endeavour is really hard and not worth their investment.
There is a difference between being billionaires, owning a billion dollar company, and spending billions.
Sinclair bought ROH and it’s been an asset as programming for syndication. Only in the past year did they start to recognize it as something with more value than they realized and they’ve acted accordingly while not willing to dump money into it full throttle. Nobody has mentioned ROH isn’t paying Cody, Brandi, The Bucks, SCU and Hangman anymore. That’s 8 roster spots which we can assume Cody was getting paid the most on the roster, The Bucks probably at the next tier and long tenured Kaz and Daniels not far behind. Brandi was probably also getting paid. They can afford to spend on PCO, Brody, Rush Bandido because those guys probably don’t equal half of what they were paying before. Let’s see how much they are willing to pay out in month 6/7 of all this.
Anthem will not over leverage Impact either with its lingering debt obligations. They will try to be competitive to get something out of the property but that company was in cost cutting measures a year ago.
AEW has reportedly $100 mil. It’s run but a sports team owner who knows working within a salary cap and manager a roster. It’s like second nature to Khan. But they are also looking to run a business, another thing that’s second nature. He’ll be responsible.
The only one who is even close to spending his worth on this is Vince. And that’s because this is a) a public company that can afford to as long as the investor market supports it and b) his life, not venture number 3 or property number 5. Single priority.
So if anyone’s considering money as a factor here there is one game in town. Vince. That doesn’t mean the the others won’t pay welll or better in some cases but if Vince wants he can pay 10x as much. I guess Khan could to be doesn’t seem like he’s looking to build this that way.
I got blocked when Nick Jackson was arguing with Daniel Cormier and brought up he made 6 figures that year and I was like “uhhhh…he made seven just for his last fight”.
One thing I don’t think being considered here, or discussed, is why is everybody thinking AEW is just looking to pick-up WWE names.
Everybody on the roster have essentially bet on themselves - and are talents that went out and have proven themselves as draws, and / or, bet on themselves and have proven to be successful.
While yes Jericho, Cody and PAC have all worked within WWE - none of them were fired or let go. They all asked for their releases or left on their own terms and have gone out and worked on building up their brand.
I think there is a major contrast of the mindsets behind AEW than TNA ever demonstrated. Where as Impact, historically jumped on anybody with some TV exposure - nothing about AEW seems to echo that.
As for talent looking for releases and why they would potentially accept less money… Wrestlers are performers. While immediate financial promise is obviously nice, many of them would likely rather be able to perform in front of an invested audience who care about who they are watching, and as such allow for performers to experiment and grow their personal brand and lead to financial success down the road. This is exactly what The Young Bucks did over the last decade. I’m sure many others see that and would like to follow in their footsteps.
Yes they are not going for anyone of course but if they were going for WWE wrestlers, they would take the best ones. The Revival would be perfect for them, I think. I mean Revival vs Bucks, Take my money.
I also don’t disagree with Ziggler - if he is actually motivated to still “prove” himself at any level beyond what he has. Like people have said, he’s probably set for life, or very close to it. But, I would imagine if he were to walk away from WWE, it would only be for creative freedom and to test himself as a performer.
Dolph loves wrestling. He has said what keeps him going is doing the live events. He just hates all the politics and having a glass ceiling put on him. Plus the comedy stuff he is doing most likely won’t make him any money. He is still in his 30s and can go every bit like he did 10 years ago. I’m positive he wants to go to AEW and they should take him also.
AEW needs stars with name value to draw casual viewers. A bunch of 5’8 indy stars doing flips with little exposure aren’t going to draw casual viewers.
Time will tell with Dolph, He always gave me the vibe of somebody who doesn’t really care about anything and will change his mind on a moments notice. So maybe now he wants to go to AEW and maybe tomorrow he wants to concentrate more on his stuff outside of wrestling. You just don’t know with Dolph. So we are going to have to wait and see what is next move is.
I really like that the Bucks are making surprise appearances at Indy shows, and announcing it ahead of time like Bar City Wednesday night and Defy in Seattle Saturday night. Hope they keep it going
AEW is sounding like it is going be a glorified 205. I mean they have to be aware that their whole roster is redundant at this point and is going to be almost exclusively little guys doing flips. You do need that on a show but you need some variety in your wrestlers. I know this company is catering to the hardcores but they have to be thinking about getting some guys with size just to make it more interesting.
Serious question, would people on here prefer if AEW was basically another 205 where everyone just does flips and it featured no one over 6 ft?
