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Post by eJm on May 6, 2024 13:04:16 GMT -5
That being said, I don't think this is a WWE issue as much as a Triple H issue. It’s also a WWE issue if they’re having to try and explain after the fact that it wasn’t intended that way. Especially with people you do a lot of press with as is.
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Post by eJm on May 6, 2024 0:09:12 GMT -5
So wait... why is all this coming out now? Is it like, now that he's gone people feel comfortable speaking up about it? Or the Rousey thing caused journalists to ask someone backstage about him for the first time ever? Or they want to poison any perception of him now that he's out the door, for some reason? A bit from column A and a bit from column C. Wouldn’t be the first time it happened for the former or latter after someone’s left.
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Post by eJm on May 5, 2024 23:47:10 GMT -5
Can’t blame Trips for having that opinion of people who try to stir up trouble for him & the company. He’s passionate & truthful in these press conferences, I’d rather that than constant PR answers. In the context of this story, Fightful only reported what they were told and verified from sources in the company, that Drew Gulak was fired. The call is very much coming from inside the house, the same thing with most stories. And it isn’t even the first time WWE’s fed stories either publicly or anonymously that we know of. In terms of the press conference, he wasn’t even fully truthful in answering the question. He was asked if Drew was fired due to accusations from Ronda, which considering he was yanked off TV and killed in storyline right after News Nation’s interview isn’t something to rule out, and his response was “He wasn’t released, his contract wasn’t renewed” which wasn’t the question asked. The follow up should have been “So why wasn’t his contract renewed? Did it have to do with the Ronda accusations?” Again, if Shawn Michaels is doing a better job at these press events then you are, the guy who got in so many fights backstage with Bret Hart in 1997 alone they were mentioned on WWE TV, then you need to re-evaluate whether you’re cut out for the job you’re in. EDIT: Also to add, if both websites are hearing from WWE PR to say it wasn’t a shot at them, HHH f***ed up. Partially because PR needs to send these press releases to places that’ll actually publish them rather than have discussions on whether people will care about whatever announcement they have for bigger publications.
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Post by eJm on May 5, 2024 14:28:19 GMT -5
Someone on Reddit thinks that they might have found the match in question. It was against Damon Kemp on LVL Up. And seeing it, yeah it does look like Drew just tried to spike the guy. The clip was on the previous page and yeah, I barely trained as a wrestler but I know a deliberate attempt to not make a move as safe as possible for someone when I see it. And that was September last year. And they let that air unedited. Like, what the hell?
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Post by eJm on May 5, 2024 14:26:24 GMT -5
If he’s this bad at media stuff when the company is white hot and making major bank, what’s he going to be like when he’s under pressure? That’s it, too. There will be a point in time where stuff doesn’t do as well and another controversy happens because you can’t avoid these things and they at least had the sense for Vince to do interviews in contained environments to avoid another Bob Costas. If HHH is like this for the most softball questions like “Have you read the lawsuit?” and “Was Drew Gulak fired over Ronda Rousey’s accusations against him?”, how will he be like when it’s stuff that’ll affect his position in the company or about someone he works with?
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Post by eJm on May 5, 2024 11:57:17 GMT -5
Are fans actually angry over this? It seems like such a minor issue. I can understand talk over WWE actually acknowledging news outlets, but it seems like casual shit talk at most. It’s more, like, he shouldn’t be casually shit talking. If we’re talking about Dijak or someone else on the roster, hey, have at it, who cares? HHH is not only the head of creative but also the vice president of talent relations so not only has a connection with PR to talk to different publications and mediums, he’s also basically the most powerful person concerning the product itself not named Nick Khan. This is stuff that feels so basic to not do. And the worst thing is, this has been happening at least since last year’s WrestleMania and nobody has thought for a second to give him some kind of PR training? I’ve seen football managers being bashed for days for doing less.
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Post by eJm on May 5, 2024 11:42:50 GMT -5
I feel like I'm still not sure what happened here. I do know HHH is the absolute worst at PR but am a bit confused. Someone asked Hunter at the post show scrum about Gulak being gone from WWE and framed it as PWInsider and Fightful reporting it as because Ronda Rousey called him out as a pervert which neither did. Hunter told the guy he needed better sources because Ronda had nothing to do with it, they chose not to renew his deal. This sent the tribalism marks into a frenzy attacking Fightful, SRS and PWInsider. In reality WWE works with them regularly and openly so WWE PR jumped in to apologize to them. It seems it is one of those age old deals where a crap reporter frames something as from a good site when it is their theory or comes from an editorial instead of the actual news and Hunter took the bait. To be slightly fair to the reporter, English wasn’t his first language so the wording might have not come out as intended. It might have done for all we know but we have to consider that in these things, especially since the show was in France.
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Post by eJm on May 5, 2024 11:19:48 GMT -5
What on earth would Triple H apologise for? Good grief. He can trash them all he wants if he thinks they're spreading shit Well it seems like their PR team is apologizing privately to the reports for the "mishap" so it should probably be done publicly as well given the insult was also public. Exactly. Especially since the story wasn’t something either source reported, they just added context to News Nation’s interview with Ronda Rousey. If you’re trying to smooth things over afterwards, you clearly f***ed up when it happened. And not being funny, who were the people giving stories to Fightful and PWInsider about the free agent negotiations and Drew Gulak’s own reputation in the PC? Because they didn’t get that from thin air and WWE hasn’t gone out of their way to deny any of that.
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Post by eJm on May 5, 2024 11:05:35 GMT -5
If I understand all of this correctly;
Filming a locker room without people knowing, being a creep inside said locker room, bashing your co-workers on private social media chats, injuring and re-injuring workers for hazing/toxic masculinity or whatever; We’ll either hope you ignore or we’ll avoid talking about it as much as possible.
Having a paid social media channel with risqué content only accessible to those paying it legally: Immediate firing.
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Post by eJm on May 4, 2024 23:09:30 GMT -5
Triple H should actually come out and apologize if WWE PR is going to Fightful and PWInsider and saying no insult was intended because it was in fact a very insulting public statement. Exactly. Heck, if he meant News Nation even, say that. Especially since, as mentioned, they’ve put out hit pieces on people before. Heck, they put out a hit piece on Stephane before the other shoe dropped with the Vince stuff.
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Post by eJm on May 4, 2024 16:57:48 GMT -5
RAW or SmackDown at the Sphere? Just imagine the media coverage I’d put NXT in the Sphere if anything. Make it a show that stands out for the weekend.
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Post by eJm on May 4, 2024 16:45:36 GMT -5
Me when someone uses something I said against me: "If you're gonna cite sources, pick a credible one." Another thing with that, people are saying to SRS that it was more a shot at PWInsider than Fightful (still weird but whatever) but Sean, rightfully, doesn’t care even though he was told by PR it wasn’t. His publication was mentioned in questioning, HHH lumped them both together publicly so yeah, I’d be annoyed too.
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Post by eJm on May 4, 2024 16:34:43 GMT -5
HHH is such a clown. No matter how good the shows are, it's always morally correct to hate on him. It’s insane how consistently bad he is, though. Like, no PR person is having words or anyone in the board is like “We really should tell this guy to knock it off, especially since he’s representing the most profit making arm of our company right now”? Are they that cocky with how much they’re making right now that they don’t think it’ll blow back in their faces at some point? At least sneak a set of headphones and a tape that says the words “No Comment” while he sleeps like he’s Dexter learning French.
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Post by eJm on May 4, 2024 16:22:35 GMT -5
The whole tweet if it's easier to read here: "Levesque is asked if Drew Gulak was released and if Ronda Rousey's accusation had anything to do with it. The questioner mentioned Fightful and PWInsider reported that Gulak was released. Levesque quipped that if you're going to cite news sources, pick good ones, credible really. He says Gulak was not released, his contract was just not renewed. He didn't address the part of the question about Rousey's allegation." Like…he does realize most of the past year has been WWE leaking stuff to Fightful not just about firings and such but also about all the free agents they let go to AEW and the negotiations that happened. Heck, just two years ago, Cody was the one to thank Fightful for breaking the story about him leaving AEW and signing for WWE. HHH did the same thing but I forgot the story. Like, this comes off as a guy whose super cocky, knows theses organizations are going to keep playing the game regardless on if he shits on them or not. Vince did that a lot with trying to discredit or gang up on Dave Meltzer whilst handing him stories to break for years so it’s clearly a tactic that works. EDIT: Also, if you are going to discredit a story that made a mainstream news outlet and got a lot of play, you have to, you know, actually say what you’re discrediting instead of ignoring it. “We didn’t fire Drew Gulak, we let his contract elapse”. Cool, why did you let it lapse?
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Post by eJm on May 4, 2024 16:00:54 GMT -5
This the latest a WrestleMania’s been in at least a while, right?
It’ll also be interesting if this is the first weekend where a UFC event is happening around that same time considering how late in the month it is.
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Post by eJm on May 3, 2024 17:51:31 GMT -5
It's amazing how many ratings and TV experts are also wrestling fans. It’s more amazing how, somehow, none of the people who are ratings experts actually work on a network wrestling is on to let them know their mistakes. They clearly need their expertise on these matters.
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Post by eJm on May 3, 2024 17:00:38 GMT -5
Charles Barkley said he expects a decision from WBD today on whether they'll match the NBC offer. To add to this, Ernie Johnson at the very least won't leave Turner if the NBA does leave. Which makes sense because he still does various other bits of coverage around Turner Sports and there's not really a benefit for an NBA or a ESPN to try and get him for what would be a real short term deal. This whole thing is just surreal. We could really be seeing a lot of what WBD's been trying to do with these cuts and tax breaks and harming their overall reputation for short term gains go up in smoke if they can't keep the thing that's kept them going.
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Post by eJm on May 3, 2024 16:57:28 GMT -5
Tony must be praying that Warner don't spend big on the NBA, because if they do, I think he could start looking at other networks to get the money he wants. Most people say it’s hard to predict which way things go. It could be that if WBD retains the NBA at a high number, they know they’ll be making a lot in carriage fees and advertising because of it and will be more apt to pay up for AEW. It could be if they don’t get the NBA, they are worried about their carriage and advertising numbers coming in and are more hesitant to spend up on AEW. Really no way to know. Yeah, by all accounts, AEW's deal is all but wrapped, they just need to figure out the spending of stuff. And with how the NBA has been performing, there's no reason to think they can't try to have their cake and eat it with their rights deal. But again, they could try and cut back and rebrand and we'd be in a different spot come October (or whenever the exclusivity window shuts, something we also really don't know about). And even so, zero chance they're going to just be outbid on AEW. As a disaster it would be to lose the NBA, it wouldn't be a great look to basically go "Yeah, you know how we've basically dominated Wednesdays for the past 5 years? Enough of that" for no real benefit.
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Post by eJm on May 1, 2024 16:39:02 GMT -5
And just to add with my point above, sure, you can absolutely make the case that whilst the end of 2000 to 2001 wasn't perfect, it felt like they were turning things around and people were being built and Nitro and Thunder could have kept on but under Bischoff and his consortium's ownership...what was the reason to take the risk? What was chance 1001 going to do that the first 1000 chances didn't try before? There were no more rolls of the dice, no more disgruntled WWF creative people to go after unless they wanted to deal with Bill Watts again and they couldn't even do the nWo again because they literally just did the nWo again!
The wider point is goddamn I'm not looking forward to the same arguments trotted out over and over again about WCW and what happened 23 years after it died. I'd rather have my eyes forced opened and a bunch of talking heads talk about f***ing Brawl Out.
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Post by eJm on May 1, 2024 13:58:56 GMT -5
My only counter to that is, it was overperforming but it wasn't really making that much money. It never recovered from the losses of the year 2000 and with everything else that happened, it was easier to put it on the chopping block than hope it can rebound in some way. Like, it sucks but also calling it "petty BS" feels like an oversimplification and lazy. If it was making a profit in some way, in a time it really needed to, it would have still been in business for longer. End of. That and not all ratings are created equal. Wrestling, even during the heights of WWF's popularity, was considered low brow television and their target audience wasn't thought of as the kind who would spend on advertised products by companies who tend to spend the most on advertising. Nielsen ratings are much less a function of popularity as they are demographics and advertisement.
And since Turner/Time Warner-AOL didn't just air WCW, but owned it, they incurred all the operating costs, too. Live television like pro wrestling can be real expensive to produce. Those classic movies they aired might've gotten a tenth of the rating of Nitro, but they're also way cheaper to air. And even in its most successful years, WCW bled a lot of money. But yeah, without Ted Turner's protecting the company anymore, it was pretty much f***ed. I think if WCW was separate from Time Warner, there's a chance WCW might still be around today. Turner seemed committed to keeping it going no matter how much money it lost him personally. Even if AOL-Time Warner decided to go in another direction, someone would've still been interested in airing a product that even at its creative worst would still be doing pretty solid numbers. Hell, it could've been USA since they just lost WWF Raw to TNN/Spike.
And the thing is, I don't even blaming AOL Time Warner for washing their hands of it when they did. The last couple of years were full of people taking advantage of the fact the main people in charge of Turner Sports had no idea how to deal with how the business was being run by Bischoff or anyone else who took his position that all they could do was switch and hope for the best. Heck, the entire trailer of this show seems to be "It was his fault" "Na-ah!" "Yu-huh!" where the true answer of who killed WCW could only be considered "suicide". Nobody's going to actually admit any sort of fault so we're going to do this song and dance with WCW until the sun explodes and takes out the last reminants of the solar system.
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