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The audience will identify and emotionally invest in a tough, funny, or badass babyface - who succeeds in outsmarting a heel faction, getting personal revenge, acts heroic, or chases the title. However, the way WWE books babyfaces is beyond atrocious! Apollo Crews tries to be clever on the mic, but was totally cringeworthy. Ricochet and Cedric try to act cool, but come off as instigating juvenile douches cracking lame jokes backstage. Then, even babyfaces in loose alliances, sometimes don’t bother help out their friends against a rival heel faction - regardless if they were shown earlier in the show. Other times, the babyface crew arrives well after their friend has been decimated or end up getting punked themselves while making the save. Worse, Cedric turns heel to join the faction who beat him up for months. Really? Finally, Keith Lee debuts and is in the WWE title hunt immediately and yet still looks totally ineffective and out of his league. No wonder fans don’t care about these so-called "fan favorites"... they are consistently booked as total dweebs, cornballs, doofuses, or losers. Why can’t they book all their babyfaces strong, smart, and courageous like Drew McIntyre? I would even settle for babyfaces being protected like Brutus Beefcake at this point!!! Your thoughts?
My thoughts are that I couldn’t agree more. Mike Epsenhart and I talked about this a lot on our show last weekend. The reason less people are watching the product on TV is due to the fact that WWE creative doesn’t book talents in a way to make you care about them. Most talents are interchangeable and when that is the case, there is less to care about. Most fans watch for the stories and the people involved in them. They watch when they care, and they don’t when they don’t.
Of the prominent WWE talents who are greatly affected by WWE's acquisition of their Twitch channels, do you see any of the seriously considering leaving the company to sign with AEW or another promotion who will let them keep their individual Twitch channels?
Without mentioning names, yes I do see someone at some point taking action. They may not be able to leave the company due to their contract but they could file a lawsuit, or do something like contact Andrew Yang about getting help. As I said yesterday, I really question WWE’s decision to pursue this. It seems like it could blow up in their face to me.
Ronda Rousey has invested heavily in her Twitch channel since leaving WWE. If she was to come back, given her massive star power and mainstream appeal, would she be able to negotiate an exception to WWE taking over her channel? In other words, could she essentially demand that she retains ownership of her channel or else she won't come back? If, hypothetically, that was the only barrier to getting Ronda to re-sign, would WWE grant her an exception in order to appease such a big star as her?
Sure, she could do that and if she does, that would give someone who wants to take WWE to court ammunition if they granted her an exception.
I know you might be getting tired of all the COVID19 questions, but here's another one (sorry I had to say it). With the success of the NBA "bubble" in terms of players/staff coming down to getting the virus and them not able to leave willy-nilly (and if they did, they come back and put into 2 week quarantine until negative test results), do you think this is something AEW and/or WWE should implement? I know it might put a strain on some of the talents who are married/dating cross company but that's the risks of doing so. While I know the NBA had the "luxury" of using the Disney property to house all the NBA players they invited, I can see where this would be a problem for either company since it wouldn't be ideal to house them in the Jag's stadium property or Thunderdome arena. Your thoughts?
In a perfect world, sure that would be great for the companies. But, they would have to get the talent to do it and I just don’t see them agreeing. With the NBA, they were in a bubble for a finite period of time. Once they lost, they went home. I don’t see wrestlers agreeing to move to Florida for what could be several months, or even longer. Wrestling doesn’t have an end date so if they are going to move people to Florida it will be for an indefinite period of time. I know I wouldn’t agree to do that if I were a wrestler or even an employee.
Would you agree with the statement that the Rock is Everything a Man ought to be? Yes, he’s big, he’s strong, he’s freaking tough, he takes care of himself physically... a noble quality even if you can’t look like The Rock, and who really can? He’s super confident and charismatic. But he’s also intelligent, he’s well spoken, he’s charming, he’s calm cool and collected (unless he’s cutting a promo), he’s confident but still humble. So would you agree that he’s what a man ought to be, that he’s what a leader ought to be? And can you think of a world leader right now who has absolutely none of those qualities?
I have nothing but respect for The Rock, I couldn’t agree with you more. He is definitely a man his mother can be proud of. In a world where a celebrity can become President Of The United States, The Rock would be someone I would vote for and think would do a great job.
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