Another eight went by the wayside in a Thursday night dump.
Another round of cuts, with the most prominent probably being John Morrison (leaving many to wonder what his partner, The Miz, will be doing after his final appearance on the 30th season of Dancing With The Stars Monday night), have left a continued bad taste in many people's mouths.
Let's get right down to it:
1) Vince McMahon has failed, at almost every turn, in his mission to gain all the talent so that "other companies" (read: All Elite Wrestling) cannot have anyone. Even outside the huge pickups like Bryan Danielson, Adam Cole, Christian Cage, Ruby Soho, etc. (CM Punk, remember, had left the business entirely for seven years!), the fact is that Tony Khan has put together an engaging list of other talent like Eddie Kingston, Darby Allin, grimaces Maxwell Jacob Friedman...
vomits... There, all better...
... and others to complement them. Though ratings are not quite to the standard of the flagging Monday Night Raw, it is evident that USA Network cannot be happy with the numbers they are getting for five hours of WWE programming for the money they are putting into the company.
2) To that end, NXT has failed.
Two years ago, especially after the Crown Jewel debacle and the burgeoning Wednesday Night War, the WWE began not only to feature NXT as a co-equal "main brand", but, by their performance in that year's Survivor Series, THE main brand of the three.
About 18 months later, Vince decides, now that he's lost the Wednesday Night War, to rebrand NXT as "NXT 2.0", and make it a more PG-14, etc. presentation, with a new female stable and a lot of skin...
The ratings have been disastrous since their move to Tuesday night. This week was about the worst they've had since they went live on USA. It is clear that rebranding NXT and moving it away from HHH's vision have been detrimental to an already flagging brand.
And, especially with a still-limited road schedule (and no real need, with record profits -- again, I stress with all these roster cuts, RECORD PROFITS!!), it is becoming apparent that there might be some question in even needing a third brand again, especially if it seems that they flourish there, and some talents aren't even getting a month on the other two shows before getting dumped as a budget cut.
3) There's still no word on a pending sale of WWE, but many have believed in several of these roster cuts that one is upcoming.
4) The continuing limitations on streaming and monetization of non-WWE products is showing strain. Xavier Woods, who has said he has gotten almost nothing from his super-popular WWE-based UpDownUpDown gaming channel, started a new assignment on the G4 network and actually called on "Kenneth" -- injured now-former AEW World Champion Kenny Omega -- to join him as soon as feasible on G4.
"Kenneth" responded with an anime video of Vegeta regenerating in a healing chamber from the DragonBall series. It would not be beneath him to do that -- a famous pre-AEW showdown between the New Day and Kenny and the Young Bucks was a massive Internet hit!
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Of course, you could be Japan right now...
Tokyo Sports has announced several major joshi stars will be on the move at year's end.
To contrast, a shock "Emergency Press Conference" between NJPW and NOAH has been called for 2 PM Saturday afternoon JP time -- about 4 minutes from when I send this...
And the unprecedented third night of NJPW's annual "Wrestle Kingdom" supercard will, in fact, be a joint card between the two Japanese promotions in Yokohama on January 8th, 2022.
This year is the 50th anniversary of New Japan Pro Wrestling, and the new head of the promotion has said he wants this year to have several such "dream" events.
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I leave you with this thought from previous WWE cut Taya Valkyrie, whose husband, John Morrison, was in this round of cuts:
Stop supporting a company that has ZERO respect for their talent. You love pro wrestling, spend your money on the hundreds of other alternatives. This is wrong. Ethically, as employers they don’t care about us. Talent or fans.
— TAYA VALKYRIE (@FrankyMonetWWE) November 19, 2021
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