Classic Vince lol. When Ted Turner bought WCW he told Vince he's in the wrestling business and Vince told him were in the entertainment business. Trips would just give a serious answer. I wonder how the mnw would fare if hhh was running things. WCW would have killed raw.
Since the UFC antitrust lawsuit ended with them paying hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation, WWE has gone out of its way to mention the existence of other wrestling promotions (aside from AEW) every chance it gets, which never happened under Vince when they actually were a monopoly. It's also hard to argue that WWE is a true monopoly when AEW formed and right away was able to get a national television deal without WWE having the ability to prevent it. Just because AEW has been mostly incompetently run after a strong first couple of years of business doesn't mean that's WWE's fault, which I'm sure would be their argument if for some reason they were taken to court for an antitrust case.
You're probably right because Austin/Vince is what really drove the Attitude Era and HHH wouldn't have worked as well for the boss.
Legally, i'd disagree. maybe from after buying WCW and ECW to whenever TNA got on Spike, it was.
We don't know that AEW is profitable. All we know is that Meltzer claims they're profitable, but given his track record, I don't think I'd put too much stock into that.
I would personally put it at 65/35 that it's profitable to SOME degree. not 20 million dollars in profit, but it's pulling a small one. Plus even then, Khan owns the Jags, Fulham, a car bumper company, he can keep it afloat as long as it doesn't start going down to 100 million dollars of losses a year. That'd be when they can't even sell PPV's. if they get to half of tna's level, or get kicked off TNT/TBS/MAX, I'd say their screwed, unless they end up on Hulu or something
Yeah, profitable or not, there's no chance of them going under anytime soon. Tony's dad is absolutely loaded and is funding AEW so that Tony is occupied with that and not fucking up the Jaguars and Fulham.
I mean, tony's job with the Jags is to find UDFA's (actually not a bad haul this year, wait till training camp though), and with Fulham, he's the guy in charge with transfers iirc. And their a yo-yo club between the Championship and the Prem. right now, their 10th in the Prem, which isn't that bad. but there's a 29 point difference between them and Liverpool. I mean, take it as is, he isn't fucking up too badly, Jags might be decent if Travis Hunter works well.
My main criticism of the AE is that angles moved too fast, too much crash TV. By the time the Monday night wars were over it felt like wrestling blew its load. Still a very fun time, don't get me wrong. Personally I like 87-92ish WWF the best though.
Not really sure what there is to say about the Muhammad Hassan thing other than it was a case of very bad timing. Even if the bombings didn't happen, the story doesn't make sense. Vince tried to do the "foreigner heel makes a point about racism" story a few different times. During Jinder Mahal's world title run, he would speak some phrases in Punjabi while the crowd booed but he was always saying positive things. No shit they're booing, you just spent the last five minutes berating them. It doesn't work in wrestling because the heel is cheating during his matches and acting like an asshole while showing no remorse for it, but you're supposed to sympathize with him because muh racism? In the case of Hassan, he had a group of random thugs in masks beat the shit out of Undertaker then they all prayed while Hassan put the camel clutch on him. Are the crowds not supposed to think Hassan is a bad guy because he then complains about stereotypes? It was all a contradiction.
The gimmick itself was short sighted. As weeks went by especially when Daivari began speaking in Farsi/Arabic, everyone knew it was a disaster waiting to happen. Then TNA gave Daivari that not so subtle intro to his theme
this, a lot of the lower card during the AE was borderline shit, the tag division was very good with the Hardys,Dudleys,and Edge and Christian, but the midcard was basically filler, and the womens division was just coomerbait, with HHH the product is more even with good stuff whereas the AE is a god-tier main event but most of the other show not being that good
Hulkamania,Attitude Era, and to some extent the Ruthless Aggression era and current WWE were and are overall, generally a good product, imo 93-96 WWF and 2013-2020 WWE were the two worst periods in the history of the company, a lot of good talent was squandered and creative was a complete mess, the New Generation Era especially could have been so much better then what Vince actually booked, he should have trusted Bret to carry the company during that, mind you WCW was also shit during this period but they had Hogan and Macho Man so they werent going to out-compete them anyway, Diesel as Champion was uninteresting
Yeah, Hassan started out awesome. Was a "foreign" (actually NYer but whatever) heel who was sick of being stereotyped. Made some real good points; he was American, he was not a terrorist, etc... Then he slowly got more and more like a terrorist, including having hooded goons come out and kidnap the Undertaker. Basically he proved the fans were right which killed the entire basis of his character
If im being perfectly honest I think that the whole "America Good, Foreign Country Bad" trope is way too overdone in wrestling, second to Heel Authority figures it just gets exhausting after awhile, Hogan in the 80s and 90s beating up random Arabs,Russians,Japanese,etc. is entertaining for awhile, especially at a time when people were less cynical about the US Government then they are today, but if you tried that shit today people would be calling it shit,boring,cheap heat,etc.
What if they went the comedy route and just paired him with an obvious white guy playing a heel while cosplaying as a Middle Eastern stereotype while speaking perfect English like so
wrong thread bro, also soccer is football and football is handegg