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By making Stephanie Vaquer the second double champ in NXT history, and the first woman to do it, it goes to show how high WWE is on her. Tony Khan booked her in a high profile match against Mercedes, at a time when she was unsigned, and remained unsigned after. Of all the boneheaded booking decisions Tony has made, where does this rank among them? He essentially gave Stephanie, an unknown in the US at the time, a tryout match for WWE.
I said at the time that he was crazy to let her leave the building without signing an AEW deal and I stand by that today. I have no idea why he saw what she brought to the table and chose not to get her signed, especially after the exposure that she garnered in wrestling Mone.
Do you think Tony Kahn would let Sting, who is under contract to AEW, induct Lex Luger in the WWE HOF?
If both men wanted to do it, I would hope that Tony would say yes. I can’t say whether I think he would but he does really respect Sting.
I just read your Q&A about the national anthems at Elimination Chamber. I find it interested that they edited that part out of the replay, since I assumed they purposely did it for heat. I mean, anyone following the news these days knows the issues and threats against Canada, and that the US anthem has been getting booed lately. On top of that, I've been going to WWE events since 1988, and I've never known them to play either anthem before any events, other than Wrestlemania and the post 9/11 events. I can't imagine it was just an oversight that they decided to have both performed when the US is threatening annexation of Canada. Plus later Logan Paul came out with the American flag, looking for heat, so they knew the market they were in. Have you heard from anyone in the company about the incident or whether it was planned?
A number readers wrote me to remind me that the booing of the anthem was on the pre-show and that is still archived on Peacock, so WWE didn’t wash it away. I am sure it was done for the reaction. WWE is run by smart people. They know how most Canadians feel about America right now, and rightfully so in my opinion. I think that they knew the reaction that the anthem would get and did it for the publicity.
As a follow up, do you think Pat McAfee's multiple mentions and insults towards Canada were also planned? Or was he just upset over the incident? It seemed to draw enough attention that he issued a non-apology a couple days later.
I honestly can’t say. Pat knows how to get attention, for sure. He’s a smart guy, he had to know that the boos were coming. Was he being a populist or getting pub? I can’t say. It could be both.
Why does WWE get to rewrite history? They keep saying that John Cena can break the record for most world titles of 16, held by Flair. Yet correct me if I'm wrong but Flair won 9 NWA world titles. He then went up north and won 2 more. He then came back to WCW and won 8 world titles as well as 2 international heavyweight titles which is like John winning a world title while there was the other world title on the other brand. Now doesn't that equal to 21 and not 16? For a company that is trying to get away from any hint of Vince, this still feels like one of his shenanigans, doesn't it?
I think that going forward they will probably be better at that but in this case that has been the narrative for song long that I think they just go along with it because it’s been accepted by the audience as the truth.
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