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Post by Snitsky on Jan 3, 2009 15:10:07 GMT -5
To be honest I'm more in shock about how high TNA's was. And if you take out the Knockouts, as there has been no talk of a female ever failing a test, then it works out that 58% of TNAs male roster were on something. And they were warned that they would be tested which is even more shocking. Criticise WWE and Vince all you want but at least they have a Wellness Policy and punish talent for failing a test and making their name public. Not surprising since most came straight from WWE
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Post by Andrew is Good on Jan 3, 2009 15:23:36 GMT -5
I disagree with not giving Jeff Hardy another chance at the top. I understand punishing guys with a top spot for getting caught, but why punish the fans by not having the satisfaction of Jeff Hardy being WWE Champion. Sure, they can see him, but the fans love Jeff Hardy, and no matter what he's done, they shouldn't be let down because he had past problems.
Jeff is over like crazy, and is over with everybody. Why deny them the desire to see Jeff Hardy as Champion?
I'm sure Jeff Hardy is not a mark. Not giving him the belt wouldn't be punishment to him, he still has a job, he still is making big money. It's the fans that want to see him as Champion.
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H-Fist
Hank Scorpio
Posts: 6,485
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Post by H-Fist on Jan 3, 2009 16:12:22 GMT -5
The difference between Vince and Steph is PLAUSIBLE DENIABILITY. Say it with me now. Steph has plausible deniability because no one has associated her with this stuff in the past. She may have heard through the grapevine of X or Y, but also like can use the "so many job titles" to keep her head in the sand on the issue. So, should/is WWE's priority in this round of investigations be to keep Steph clean - maintain her plausibility - given that she's essentially Vince's successor? Do/should they put their efforts into keeping her distant from these issues so that when she takes the reins of the company, she continues to have that plausibility and can just point to a line of refinements of the Wellness Policy and shrug her shoulders? (I don't see how they can, not long term; but that doesn't mean that they wouldn't pursue that strategy.) I'm not speaking from a regular person's perspective, but rather from WWE/legal perspective. Stephanie has to remain clean. Being open with Congress, with a few choice interjections by the pitbull lawyer, make her look good. Vince, on the other hand, can't look good. As far as Congress goes, he is as much a heel as his persona is. Thus, he should be confrontational as an evasion strategy. Since they know he knows things, or at least should know certain things given his own history, it is necessary to fight around and through questions. Stephanie would have no inherent reason to know everything or anything, so she can be more open on questions that are matters of public record.
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Lara
Don Corleone
IS A SWEETHEART
Posts: 1,292
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Post by Lara on Jan 3, 2009 16:33:29 GMT -5
So, should/is WWE's priority in this round of investigations be to keep Steph clean - maintain her plausibility - given that she's essentially Vince's successor? Do/should they put their efforts into keeping her distant from these issues so that when she takes the reins of the company, she continues to have that plausibility and can just point to a line of refinements of the Wellness Policy and shrug her shoulders? (I don't see how they can, not long term; but that doesn't mean that they wouldn't pursue that strategy.) I'm not speaking from a regular person's perspective, but rather from WWE/legal perspective. Stephanie has to remain clean. Being open with Congress, with a few choice interjections by the pitbull lawyer, make her look good. Vince, on the other hand, can't look good. As far as Congress goes, he is as much a heel as his persona is. Thus, he should be confrontational as an evasion strategy. Since they know he knows things, or at least should know certain things given his own history, it is necessary to fight around and through questions. Stephanie would have no inherent reason to know everything or anything, so she can be more open on questions that are matters of public record. Good cop/bad cop, almost. No, I agree with you: I see the sense in that strategy. If Vince takes whatever flak comes out of this, there's limited harm done; he's damaged goods anyway. If Steph can continue to look like a good girl - and keeps on with her Wellness and welfare policies - then in time when she's in complete charge, they might leave Steph/WWE alone, yeah? (I do wonder about the common sense of the committee members in accepting a claim that someone who's married to one of the top talent and was talent herself for a few years apparently knows absolutely nothing about what "may or may not" have gone on amongst the talent re dodgy prescriptions etc. I did notice she covered herself cutely here by saying that everyone would be careful what they said around the boss' daughter, but still.)
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Post by Snitsky on Jan 3, 2009 16:52:37 GMT -5
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Post by Snitsky on Jan 3, 2009 20:29:12 GMT -5
Vince needs to hire his attorney Mr Mcdevitt as a character on RAW- he is Brilliant ;D ;D ;D ;D
Did anyone else notice the spelling error The Great Collie ;D
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Lara
Don Corleone
IS A SWEETHEART
Posts: 1,292
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Post by Lara on Jan 3, 2009 20:31:47 GMT -5
Vince needs to hire his attorney Mr Mcdevitt as a character on RAW- he is Brilliant ;D ;D ;D ;D McDevitt for Raw GM. Book it
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Warwolf
Unicron
Fear the Wolf
Posts: 2,541
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Post by Warwolf on Jan 3, 2009 20:33:25 GMT -5
Why the hell is Congress looking into this while the entire economy is collapsing right now? If you had not noticed, it is when things are bad that the politicians pay attention to the stupidest excretory matter. Makes it look like they are actually doing something. Sadly, if they actually paid attention to stuff when things were good, things wouldn't get so bad so that they'd have to pull stuff out of their ass to make it look like they're actually doing the jobs we elected them to do.
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Post by Snitsky on Jan 3, 2009 20:34:14 GMT -5
The Great Collie!!!!!!!! ;D ;D ;D
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Post by Red Impact on Jan 3, 2009 20:42:17 GMT -5
If you had not noticed, it is when things are bad that the politicians pay attention to the stupidest excretory matter. Makes it look like they are actually doing something. Sadly, if they actually paid attention to stuff when things were good, things wouldn't get so bad so that they'd have to pull stuff out of their ass to make it look like they're actually doing the jobs we elected them to do. Well, now that Barack Obama has made a college football playoff a campaign platform, they need something entertainment related to idle their time away on.
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Post by Snitsky on Jan 3, 2009 20:43:12 GMT -5
;D ;D ;D
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Warwolf
Unicron
Fear the Wolf
Posts: 2,541
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Post by Warwolf on Jan 3, 2009 20:57:47 GMT -5
dear god, Even I felt convinced by Mcmahon's Final speech in his interview "A Whoa, whoa, whoa. You haven't asked me okay. Again, what I would like to state here is that this company puts smiles on people's faces all over the world. We do it in a responsible manner. We're a public company on the New York Stock Exchange. We have lots of fun, by the way, doing what we do. It's a wonderful company. It entertains millions of people. I'm very proud of our company. I'm very proud of the wellness policies through the years that we put into place, very proud of everything that we've done to make this a safer environment and to enhance the performance of all around performrs and to create a better product, which we do every conceivable day, try to create a better product. I feel as though that this has been a complete witch hunt, and I feel as though despite what you said earlier, I think there is no question in my mind. Hopefully when the public reads this report they will keep in mind, and as best as possible I will remind them as well, not that it will matter, and as the media goes they're only going to want to print what they want to print. But I will state once again that when the chairman of this whole thing, Waxman, determines without any testimony here today that this wellness program is full of crap, my words not his, that's what he means, then we can only expect you guys, the minions who work for him, may only expect then that you write some sort of report that substantiates his point of view. And again I find it irresponsible for a Congressman to state something like that prior to all of this testimony, totally irresponsible. So for the record, I am certain that whatever it is, despite all the wonderful things that we've done, that no one else in the history of this business has ever done, despite all of that, you're here to in some way attack us, when in fact the Wellness Policy is a very good policy, it's one that has evolved and will continue to evolve regardless of what you guys have to say. It didn't take an act of Congress, didn't take Waxman, didn't take the media, didn't take anybody along those lines to tell us what we should do from a responsible standpoint. We've had three of these programs that we put into place voluntarily. We're concerned where our performers are concerned and good business people, by the way, and want to do good business. It didn't take any of that crap like baseball or anything else. No one had to tell us what to do. We did what we did because it was the right thing to do for our business. So there are so many other really good things which we'll try to give you in terms of information you don't have that are positves. All of this has been an attack on the company, all of this has been extraordinarily negative today. Almost every bit of it has been let's try and getcha and it's been negative, negative, negative. So again I'm not expecting anything, nor should the public expect anything other than some sort of scathing report from your committee chaired by the guy who alreay prejudged us, Waxman. We can't expect anything, nor can the public expect anything other than something that's rotten coming out of this committee. And I want to say that for the record. And that's all I've got to say. Have a nice day." Man Vince should really run for office somewhere. The guy is a classic politician trying to point the finger at the media. As a point though, how often is it in America that you see the mainstream media run a positive[/b] story about professional wrestling? I don't think I can honestly say I have ever seen a positive piece of information ever pass through the lips or word processor of the mainstream media. The only people who write positively about wrestling are people in wrestling magazines. And no, I'm not counting positive reviews for wrestling based videogames. That's something else entirely.
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Post by Bobby Womack on Jan 4, 2009 2:25:28 GMT -5
They asked Vince the same and he mentioned a Trips/Orton segment but, claimed that it was ad-lib and not scripted. Might be the same that Steph was thinking. As wrong as the HHH/Orton incident was, the incident with Masters was much worse. For starters. it looked to me like Masters was not too shocked that HHH said what he said, which means that it was not ad-libbed. Second, Masters was a midcarder who started losing matches and was publicly made fun of when he got off of the juice, which was very much the wrong damned message. you're reaching really hard if you think gauging a characters on-screen response to something is evidence of real life happenings, you have no idea whether his not looking shocked was legit or him just being a professional, aside from that i took it as a jab at him using steroids in the first place, not mocking him for stopping and about the steph thinking punk isnt good looking, i agree, dude looks like a tweeker who hasnt had a wink of sleep since the 90s
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Post by dh03grad on Jan 4, 2009 3:49:56 GMT -5
As wrong as the HHH/Orton incident was, the incident with Masters was much worse. For starters. it looked to me like Masters was not too shocked that HHH said what he said, which means that it was not ad-libbed. Second, Masters was a midcarder who started losing matches and was publicly made fun of when he got off of the juice, which was very much the wrong damned message. you're reaching really hard if you think gauging a characters on-screen response to something is evidence of real life happenings, you have no idea whether his not looking shocked was legit or him just being a professional, aside from that i took it as a jab at him using steroids in the first place, not mocking him for stopping and about the steph thinking punk isnt good looking, i agree, dude looks like a tweeker who hasnt had a wink of sleep since the 90s Masters already said he was shocked at what HHH said. He knew he couldnt retort on camera or off camera so he said nothing. He was clearly being mocked for his weight loss. His depush was proof of that, even though he was better in the ring with the weight loss.
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greeby
Hank Scorpio
Posts: 7,088
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Post by greeby on Jan 4, 2009 6:27:20 GMT -5
I'm not speaking from a regular person's perspective, but rather from WWE/legal perspective. Stephanie has to remain clean. Being open with Congress, with a few choice interjections by the pitbull lawyer, make her look good. Vince, on the other hand, can't look good. As far as Congress goes, he is as much a heel as his persona is. Thus, he should be confrontational as an evasion strategy. Since they know he knows things, or at least should know certain things given his own history, it is necessary to fight around and through questions. Stephanie would have no inherent reason to know everything or anything, so she can be more open on questions that are matters of public record. Good cop/bad cop, almost. No, I agree with you: I see the sense in that strategy. If Vince takes whatever flak comes out of this, there's limited harm done; he's damaged goods anyway. If Steph can continue to look like a good girl - and keeps on with her Wellness and welfare policies - then in time when she's in complete charge, they might leave Steph/WWE alone, yeah? (I do wonder about the common sense of the committee members in accepting a claim that someone who's married to one of the top talent and was talent herself for a few years apparently knows absolutely nothing about what "may or may not" have gone on amongst the talent re dodgy prescriptions etc. I did notice she covered herself cutely here by saying that everyone would be careful what they said around the boss' daughter, but still.) I've watched hearings of this committee on matters of actual import. Government officials regularly go before it and lie their heads off with no repercussions from Waxman, in spite of the objections of some real ass-kickers on that committee. (even if you're not under oath, it's still a crime to lie before Congress). Doesn't suprise me in the least that Vince and Stephanie feel they could probably do the same.
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Post by Red Impact on Jan 4, 2009 9:16:40 GMT -5
Man Vince should really run for office somewhere. The guy is a classic politician trying to point the finger at the media. As a point though, how often is it in America that you see the mainstream media run a positive[/b] story about professional wrestling? I don't think I can honestly say I have ever seen a positive piece of information ever pass through the lips or word processor of the mainstream media. The only people who write positively about wrestling are people in wrestling magazines. And no, I'm not counting positive reviews for wrestling based videogames. That's something else entirely.[/quote] ESPN used to do a column for Wrestlemania every year where it wasn't negative. There's also the occasional newspaper story if you look where they're touring. I also read one in my local paper about Smackdown's ratings with MyNetworkTV Well, now that Barack Obama has made a college football playoff a campaign platform, they need something entertainment related to idle their time away on. Comedy....isnt your forte. It's not comedy
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Post by Sparvid on Jan 4, 2009 9:43:43 GMT -5
Vince needs to hire his attorney Mr Mcdevitt as a character on RAW- he is Brilliant ;D ;D ;D ;D Imagine McDevitt present at Mr America's lie detector segment ;D
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Post by Brandon Walsh is Insane. on Jan 4, 2009 17:27:47 GMT -5
rajah.com/base/node/14685- Scripts for television shows are constantly being changed up until and on the day of the show. - Stephanie now oversees John Laurainitis because "he needed some management." - Stephanie calls Vince and Linda "Vince" and "Linda" at work. However, she calls them both mom and dad at home. - They are in the midst of capitalizing on ECW's strong following, but they want to change its image and clean it up. - Vince doesn't believe in appealing to a certain demographic - they appeal to a "cross-section of Americana." - Only issue of a wrestler not wanting to switch brands was with Shawn Michaels (Stephanie doesn't specifically state his name though) because Tuesday is his day of worship. - WWE want everyone to be a main-eventer because it means more money for everyone. - Stephanie calls Hulk Hogan a terrible wrestler from a technical standpoint, but he has incredible psychology and is incredibly charismatic. - WWE talent relations gave Chris Benoit four months off after he said he was having a very difficult time and needed some time off to go home. - Main eventers can make between $150,000 to $200,000 per pay-per-view event. They can also make up to $1,000,000 at a WrestleMania event. -- Wrestlers are compensated with 25% of the revenue for licensed merchandise (like T-shirts only available at K-Mart with the tag saying Fruit of the Loom for example) and 10% for WWE brand merchandise. Stephanie said Vince made his contracts that way because he believes his performers should be part of the company's revenue stream and deserve to be treated as fairly as possible. - The typical WWE contract runs from three to five years. If they want to keep a three-year contracted performer employed, they usually start negotiating one year before the original contract is set to expire. - Stephanie doesn't name the wrestler, but at the time, they had a a person in the developmental program that creative wanted to call up, saying he has amazing charisma. However, he wasn't ready to be called up because his ring skills weren't up to par. She says while charisma will probably take you the farthest, you still need to be able to wrestle at least somewhat decently. - Road agents always meet with the wrestlers after their televised matches to explain what worked and what didn't work. - During the provision in which suspended talent could still work television tapings and house shows (if need be), they'd get a $200 per day salary for food and road expenses. - WWE is hoping MVP will be a main-eventer one day. - Stephanie doesn't agree that the WWE stars of today are more "muscular" (in general terms) than wrestlers during the Eighties. - Said the average weight of the wrestlers on the WWE roster was in the high 100s, which surprised her. Although it should be noted that females likely factored into the average, thus bringing it down. - The Chris Benoit tragedy made the company look at how they could be treating their employees better. They asked them if they had any financial planning or health insurance, which a little over 60% of the wrestlers have. - They also implemented seminars for the wrestlers, including "exit strategies" such as life-skills type seminars for when they are done in WWE. - Only Stephanie and John Laurinaitis decide who gets called up to the main roster from developmental. Although of course, Vince can decide to call someone up if he really wants to. Stephanie also noted that they have called up certain talents to add more ethnicity to the brands. - Said they don't hire wrestlers they think are on steroids. She doesn't give a specific name, but they brought someone in recently and didn't hire him based on a positive drug test. - Said she has never heard of an experienced creative team member or agent or anyone telling any worker they needed to be bigger to be signed or called up to the WWE roster. - The only time she recalls telling a person to change their body was telling some of the female performers to lose weight, which she says isn't easy. She also brings up a recent story regarding Beth Phoenix as she told her to change her hair because she looked too similar to another female talent they have. - Said Chris Benoit was supposed to be ECW champion, but "didn't show up at the pay-per-view because he was dead." - Said workers might be more prone to concussions because of their line of work. Said Chris Nowinski had multiple concussions and they no longer wanted him to work in the ring. - Said they are looking to do proactive impact testing for concussions or for workers that may be prone to concussions.
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Celgress
Bill S. Preston, Esq.
The Superior One
Posts: 19,009
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Post by Celgress on Jan 4, 2009 18:37:14 GMT -5
Why the hell is Congress looking into this while the entire economy is collapsing right now? You can thank Chris Benoit for this. May he CONTINUE to burn in Hell.
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H-Fist
Hank Scorpio
Posts: 6,485
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Post by H-Fist on Jan 4, 2009 18:37:40 GMT -5
I wrote:
Rajah.com wrote:
Dude! Rajah used me as a source without my permission. WTF?
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