Let's talk wrasslin'

[The Grayfox]

We get invites a few times a year but they only last 2-3 days. It's really annoying actually. I get that it's supposed to be "exclusive" and all that, but I'm not sure why our invites expire after only a few days. Even if they gave out 1 invite a year per account, but it didn't expire, that would be preferable because so many people don't even realize they get the invites in the first place because they're gone so quickly.

Also, I didn't even know you could use archive.org for this shit lol. Awesome, thanks for that.

 

[DE4life]

Yeah archive.org has all the old Raw and Nitro episodes as well. I think they're just written backwards, so Nitro is "Ortin".

 

[The Grayfox]

I still have my Peacock account for Nitro thankfully. I'm still figuring out how I want to consume TNA though.

Next time I get an invite, I'll throw it your way. Going to have to be quick though.

 

[DE4life]

Muchos gracias. As long as you can get the TNA PPVs from the tracker you should be good alongside archive.org. It's possible there is another way to watch the PPVs but I haven't come across them in the wild, except when TNA's YouTube channel uploads a classic PPV - which they actually do somewhat frequently.

 

[DE4life]

I was at a work volunteer event yesterday and got talking to a few people who liked wrestling. A lot of negativity about both WWE and AEW (WWE over-commercialised and predictable, AEW too focused on match quality and has roster bloat). Everyone disappointed with Cena's heel turn, and WWE in general over the past year plus.

It's a shame because I could tell the guys were as passionate about the business as I was in terms of being a fan, but none of us had much faith in WWE or AEW delivering anything decent. We ended up talking mainly about how great WCW was in the 90s, and how TNA was pretty cool in the mid-2000s.

 

[The Grayfox]

Yeah, wrestling as a whole is real slog right now. At least U.S. based wrestling. The faith I had in HHH is pretty much gone. He's showing that he picked up a lot of bad habits from Vince McMahon, and the culture as a whole seems pretty fucked. A lot of MAGA shit going on. Some of that is probably TKO, but still. It's disheartening.

 

[DE4life]

I saw Cena's promo from Smackdown inverting the 2011 pipebomb. It's the best thing I've heard from him as a heel so far. Someone mentioned on Reddit it was the first time he didn't sound like a scooby doo villain, lmao.

Anyway, he went in pretty hard on Punk, but avoided the AEW stuff.

 

[The Grayfox]

I'm starting to wonder if that match will even happen (not that I care honestly, we know who's winning), due to the U.S./Iranian bullshit. Knowing WWE/TKO, they will push forward even if it means putting their talent in harm's way because, you know, money. But yes, I agree, it was probably the most worthwhile thing Cena has done during his entire heel run, which has largely been a flop. The thing is, Cena has more heel-like tendencies as a babyface who's pissed off anyway. His 'heel' persona is boring. If you look back during his main run, especially in promos with guys like Roman and Kevin Owens, he comes across as a heel with his fire. This 'heel run' can end any time and I think people will be happy to cheer for him for the last few months of his career.

 

[DE4life]

Looks like it will indeed be happening. I just saw a video of Punk grovelling and apologising to Saudi Arabia in front of a bunch of Saudi fans who had been booing him. Gross. At least we can say that he's now just a brand rather than somebody with genuine morals. It was kind of obvious when he went crawling back to the 'E, but yeah, expecting to see him walking around with a MAGA hat on any day now.

With Cena, the reality is that to the majority of the fans he was, for all intents and purposes, a heel from the mid-2000s to the mid-2010s. It was a weird meta-heel kind of thing, but he was only a babyface to Vince, children and women. To male teens and men, making up at least 50% of the demographic, he was the most hated guy on the roster and it wasn't even close.

Cena as a cookie-cutter heel is meh. The novelty has already worn off. Cena as a 'cool' heel is fine, but it'll just end up the same as Roman where the fans will now cheer for Cena as if he's a face. Crowd logic has been warped for a while now due to the massive disconnect between WWE and their fans over the last 20 years - it's gotten better since Vince got the boot, but those fractures are still there and to some degree the traditional face/heel dynamic is probably forever altered at this point.

Only exception at the moment is Cody. I don't know if it's because he's so corny that it loops around into being sort of cool. Obviously AEW fans didn't think so, lol, but WWE fans are very different in terms of what they like.