vincemcmahon Archives

Nate Diaz is going to get knocked out by a YouTuber

May 10, 2023

When talking about Jake Paul’s combat sports career, it’s correct to approach any fight he has with trepidation. His only fight against someone from a boxing lineage was Paul’s last bout and a loss to Tommy Fury in February, ending his undefeated run. Although the likes of Tyron Woodley, Anderson Silva, and Ben Askren were on the extreme backside of their careers, having big-time-fight experience can’t be underestimated. And Paul beat them all. And his next victim will be Nate Diaz — who learned that he’ll be subjected to weed testing for the fight — on Aug. 5. If you watched the press conference hyping the fight on Tuesday, it’s plain as a light fat-free mayonnaise packet.

During the photo-op and public display on trash talk better suited for the cesspool Twitter has become, Paul looked focused and ready to raise his profile in boxing against a similar opponent to ones he’s beaten before. Diaz looked ready for a paycheck and to cash in on his previous success before riding off into the sunset after leaving the UFC. I know how crazy Diaz is, and he’s not apeshit to fight Paul. It proved to be one last time to shine for Woodley and Askren after their UFC careers. Silva proved to be too much of a household name where no matter what happened against Paul, it wouldn’t take away from his influence. Diaz falls into the former category. At one time, Diaz was one of the top 10 pound-for-pound fighters in the world. He’s not in the combat sports legend discussion. So to keep a Jake Paul loss from bringing his resume down like the duo of UFC alumni that “The Problem Child” beat before him, a 38-year-old Diaz who hasn’t won back-to-back fights since 2016 has to overcome a fighter a dozen years his junior.

This fight is a must-win for Paul for a different reason at the complete opposite end of the spectrum. Paul’s boxing career is just starting, with every excuse thrown at him as to why he won’t succeed. The only thing to buck all the literal and figurative punches coming his way is to win. And he just lost to Fury, who isn’t a household name by any means outside of Love Island and being the younger half-brother of Tyson Fury. All of Paul’s out-of-the-ring antics can’t be used as a crutch if he’s winning. A second-straight loss this early into a career, where your only fight against a true boxer was a loss, could mean the end of Paul’s combat-sports career altogether. Why would anyone invest in him as a proper boxer with a loss to Diaz? Luckily, Diaz looks in it for the money, not the win. And it’s the style of opponent that can prop Paul back up before the rematch he’s wanted with Fury since the judges’ scorecards were announced for his first loss.

Logan Paul found his combat sport

Jake’s brother, Logan Paul, has found his niche in combat sports with WWE and has looked like a gifted performer, not just one collecting a paycheck and going back to Hollywood. Of course, professional wrestling has predetermined results and win-loss records under Vince McMahon’s thumb only matter if you’re Roman Reigns. The notion of predetermined elements of Paul’s fights isn’t exactly pristine, (why don’t you walk into that first-round knockout again Ben? Then walk out of the arena perfectly fine minutes later). Why would Paul book himself into a loss against Fury? That’d be beyond dumb, even if a redemption storyline was his idea. There’s no way he can lose to Diaz and still have any legitimacy as a fighter. And thankfully for Paul, this fight shouldn’t last more than two rounds without Diaz hitting the canvas.

Too much ain’t enough for Tony Khan

May 3, 2023

Tony Khan is going... wait for it... All In

Whenever talking about AEW, it’s important to keep in mind that it was formed on, essentially, a bar bet. Dave Meltzer tweeted out that no one could fill a 10,000-seat arena with an indie show. Cody Rhodes took that bet, but he had a backer in Tony Khan. That’s the base of everything AEW does, which is what gives it the daring, winking, renegade feel it has. The whole company is based on the idea that it’s going to do what everyone says it can’t simply for the fuck of it, just for the yell they get, just for the smell of it (cue every women you know over 35 reciting the whole song).

So yeah, Tony Khan can announce a show at London’s Wembley Stadium in August, a 90,000-seat soccer stadium, which dwarfs any other building the company has ever run a show in. He can let everyone speculate just how they’ll lay it out, how they might reduce capacity, how many tickets they’ll actually sell…and then sell 43,000 on the pre-sale, and let everyone think, “Damn, are they actually going to sell 80,000 to this motherfucker?”

Khan can get WB/Discovery to pony up another $50 million for a Saturday night show, giving AEW five hours of TV plus another few on streaming (including Ring of Honor, considered a separate company but another Khan property, as well as AEW’s YouTube content), and leave fans wondering just how they’re going to fill all that. And then everyone realizes it doesn’t really matter once CM Punk returns and anchors the new show (once he’s done showing up backstage at every other company to prove all the friends he can make if he wants to).

There’s nothing about wrestling that’s supposed to be reserved or measured. The bombast of the presentation is one of the main points. And Khan is certainly going to be pushing that for the next few months. Between now and Labor Day, AEW will run Double Or Nothing on Memorial Day Weekend, It’s partnership show with NJPW, Forbidden Door, in Toronto at the end of June (that’s become Burning Man for wrestling fans), All In at Wembley, and its tentpole, All Out, in Chicago the following week (reportedly). Somewhere in there it will run one or two heightened TV shows like Blood & Guts and Fyter Fest and perhaps a ROH PPV, too, while they’re at it. If Khan is ever “making his move,” this is it.

And if there ever was a time, it’s now. The idea of the casual wrestling fan is pretty much a fantasy. You’re either in it or you’re not. Also the idea that most fans of WWE can be converted is a fallacy as well. Everyone’s kind of entrenched. But for whatever population is out there that can be grabbed and brought into the AEW world, this feels like an opportunity. While WWE may be flush with cash from their sale to Endeavor, the feeling that Vince McMahon is back in charge (however much he is or not doesn’t really matter, because in wrestling, perception is reality perhaps more than anywhere else), and a deflating ending for most to WrestleMania, the actual product WWE puts out feels pretty stale. Why not get the AEW product out there as much as possible in the biggest ways possible to show something new and different?

It’s impossible to measure how much good that Wembley show could do, and not just monetarily (though that’s not to be ignored either). There is just a different look to everyone between running a show in a college basketball arena, where most of AEW’s shows have taken place, and tuning in on a vacant Sunday afternoon and seeing the company put on a show in front of 70,000 or 80,000 people (and as of now it hasn’t been officially announced as a PPV, so there’s a decent chance it might just be on TV). There’s a legitimacy there that can’t be quantified. Anyone not even familiar with wrestling is going to wonder what’s going on there.

As for the second show on Saturdays, it’s not that AEW doesn’t have the amount of talent to fill another couple hours (especially if it’s ending its streaming shows, Dark, and Elevation, and can move some of that to TV). But one strength of Dynamite and (to a lesser extent) Rampage is just how packed they feel. Fans are left breathless after the show, because so much has happened in those hours. It is certainly a contrast to the dirge that Monday Night Raw feels like most episodes.

Yes, that overstuffed nature can leave some wrestlers going weeks without being on TV, or some stories taking months to complete simply because they can only rotate onto TV once every two, or three weeks. But it also makes it feel more important when they do appear. Will some of that be lost when more and more are appearing every week?

But Khan always seems to come out on the right side of these kinds of bets. When he introduced the International title, many wondered if the show really needed yet another midcard belt. Orange Cassidy’s run with it might be the best title run the company has ever had. The trios title felt superfluous, and while it may have undercut the tag division a touch, The Elite, and The Lucha Bros along with Pac put on some of the best matches in the past year, and the House of Black have carried on that torch just as high. And splitting all of the company’s titles onto two separate shows might let them breathe just a little more (but seriously, stop putting the TNT title on Wardlow).

There could be pitfalls. There always are. While the Wembley bet looks pretty sure after that presale news, perhaps the new show doesn’t garner ratings on a Saturday night and softens some of the energy the booking has had for all of AEW’s existence. Though it’s hard to see how a Punk-anchored show ever sags too badly, and Dynamite has a core audience that will never leave. A rash of injuries, like the one the company suffered almost exactly a year ago before the first Forbidden Door, exposes a lack of depth to cover five hours of TV. And yet AEW pulled through that to put on that first Forbidden Door, one of the best wrestling shows of the past few years. Maybe Khan simply gets too stretched booking-wise thanks to the number of PPVs and shows, along with Ring of Honor, and things go loopy. But it hasn’t yet.

The more AEW stretches out, the more wagers they make, the greater the chance of something falling off. But AEW and Khan have never operated that way, taking on more, and more — be it shows, free agents, titles, ambition, or just exhuming a new company in ROH — and keep heading to the window to cash. Sometimes life is just better in fifth gear, and it doesn’t look like Khan or AEW have any plans to downshift anytime soon.

Follow Sam on Twitter @Felsgate while he taps his foot and checks his watch waiting for Mercedes.

How did the Milwaukee Bucks ever win a title?

April 27, 2023

I won’t pretend to be any kind of basketball expert, and my brethren here will spend the day breaking down the Milwaukee Bucks coughing up a curd-ridden hairball in the first round to the Miami Heat. But I know a deer caught in headlights look when I see one, and Bucks coach Mike Budenholzer spent all of Game 5 with that look on his face. That’s when he didn’t have both hands wrapped around his throat.

It’s de rigueur these days to let your players play as the clock winds down, and maybe catch a defense a little scrambled. But not when your team has spent the last minutes of regulation in two games — and overtime in this one — throwing the ball around like it was on a detonator, and your star player is terrified of having it because he can’t throw it in Lake Michigan from the free throw line. The Bucks blew two huge leads in the fourth quarter of the last two games to a team they’re supposed to have completely outgunned. This is not a team that can be trusted to run on autopilot with the shot clock turned off.

No wonder their season ended with the ball in the hands of a dimwit like Grayson Allen as he Euro-stepped to nowhere, which also happens to be my favorite Ozzy song.

The Bucks can point to the banner in the rafters as proof of what they can be, but it’s a real wonder how they ever got it. Budenholzer watched along with the rest of us as Bam Adebayo was allowed to direct the offense whatever way he wanted as Brook Lopez sagged somewhere near Fon Du Lac. It happened over and over with no adjustment.

When the Bucks got the ball there didn’t appear to be any plan or anything they could call on to get a good shot. They just hoped, the play-calling consisted of, “I don’t fucking want it.” They were waiting for someone else to conjure something. They panicked. The wilted. They choked.

Having gone the route just two years ago, the Bucks should still be chock full of the confidence and swagger that comes with knowing you’d done it before and you know what it takes. The Bucks spent the past two games choking on their own boogers. They were frantic, unorganized, and weak, and their coach stood and watched. All summer we’ll hear jokes about the three timeouts he held onto that he can marvel at over the summer. He may get to do so while updating his résumé.

WWE hit with another lawsuit that it can brush off

You knew about Vince McMahon being a misogynist and an admitted physical danger to women around him in the office — he’s previously been twice accused of sexual assault, and has denied all allegations of wrongdoing — but did you know he’s likely a raging racist too? Well yes, of course you knew that. You’re not new here. But a new lawsuit fills in the blanks about the degree of that.

Britney Abrahams, who wrote for the company at the beginning of the decade, is suing the company, Vince McMahon, and other execs for racial discrimination, claiming that she was fired because she spoke up against some pretty horrific storylines that were proposed for various wrestlers. The company’s claim is that she was fired for keeping a Wrestlemania-adorned folding chair, the kind in the first few rows of the show. Abrahams says plenty of other employees kept a chair and that was merely used as a smokescreen to cover for firing her over her objections in the writers’ room. WWE has not commented on the lawsuit.

In Abrahams’s suit, she claims that senior writer Chris Dunn proposed a promo where Bianca Belair would say, “Uh-uh! Don’t make me take off my earrings and beat your ass!” This was obviously stereotypical and Belair said, according to Abrahams, that she had repeatedly told the writing staff she wouldn’t say that line.

In another heinous story laid out in the suit, Abrahams describes a storyline where a Muslim wrestler, Monsoor, would claim responsibility for 9/11. In another, a Black wrestler Reggie would be caged while being hunted by a white wrestler. Or he would dress in drag to team with Carmella. If true, these are insensitive at best, ugly at medium, and totally gross at worst. Given what we know about WWE and Vince McMahon, they also are hardly out of the realm of possibility.

And as you might expect, Abrahams’s attempts to be an actual adult in the room and to try and install a conscience anywhere within Titan Towers’ walls were met with being thrown out of said walls, according to her suit. Which also scans.

But none of this matters, at least not to WWE. They were just sold for $9 billion. Even if Abrahams and the company don’t come to a settlement, whatever the verdict isn’t going to cancel out their TV contracts. Vince McMahon couldn’t be completely removed after his payments to women he had allegedly mistreated, or assaulted, came to light, and five minutes later Endeavor were forking over billions. WWE and their sycophants will point out that none of these storylines actually made it onto TV, so everything is fine. They’re too big to fail, no matter how hard they try.

Follow Sam on Twitter @Felsgate.

How did the Milwaukee Bucks ever win a title?

April 27, 2023

No wonder their season ended with the ball in the hands of a dimwit like Grayson Allen as he Euro-stepped to nowhere, which also happens to be my favorite Ozzy song.

WWE hit with another lawsuit that it can brush off

Follow Sam on Twitter @Felsgate.

WWE invents new title that Cody Rhodes can win

April 26, 2023

Adrenaline in my soul, a new belt for Cody Rhodes

Just imagine the heartwarming scene, the one fans have been clamoring for. It’s 2 in the afternoon, U.S. time, as thousands of miles away Cody Rhodes caresses the belt that was introduced to WWE a month prior, at a show drenched in blood money that has an incredible wrestling history of…Goldberg nearly killing an aged Undertaker. Cody, with fireworks going off and somehow with a straight face, will look into the sea of fans in Saudi Arabia and tell us that his “story is completed!” And every WWE fan will be expected to just go along with the fact that Rhodes’s “journey” really was about a title that had the gestation time of a cockroach and is certainly the junior to the title he didn’t win at Wrestlemania.

For those of us who aren’t exactly Cody fans, it’s a delightful image.

WWE invents a new ‘top’ title

In case you didn’t see the news, WWE is inventing a new “top” title that will be the highest spot on one of their shows after they reorganize their roster between Raw and Smackdown through a “draft.” The new title’s home will almost certainly be Raw, because it’s highly unlikely that Fox is going to just let Roman Reigns walk over to Raw, even if he only shows up five times a year.

Of course, having two top titles devalues both. Triple H came out on Monday on Raw to unveil the new belt, which looks like it was stuck in the microwave for 20 seconds too long, and in his promo somehow managed to run down both the current title that Reigns has and this new one.

Raw and Smackdown had separate titles for years, after the last brand split in 2016. Reigns united them in Vince McMahon’s last attempt to make a Reigns-Brock Lesnar match feel like anything other than his own personal vanity project (just missed!) at Mania 38. Because Reigns lords over the company to such a degree that he was able to get himself a part-time schedule — more power to him for that — and almost never appeared on Raw, the Monday night show felt pretty centerless without the anchor of a champion to main event most weeks.

This could have been avoided

WWE, as it always does, missed a chance to enhance one of its shows and get people excited about whoever was carrying the belt that Reigns wasn’t. Anyone taking one-half of Reigns’s collection of belts would have felt like a huge star and given the new title luster. It would have felt important because of who it was taken off of.

Instead, WWE has been so focused on making sure that Reigns never loses that they’ve smooshed anyone who ever came up against him into an unrecognizable mess. Now whoever claims this new title will be seen as being given some consolation, something lesser, something that Reigns can’t even be bothered to put at risk.

Simultaneously, as HHH pointed out that Reigns is only part-time now, he made his reign seem like something the company has to deal with instead of one it’s banked pretty much its entire present upon. “Roman isn’t here much, so we have invented…this thing!” If it hurts the company so much that the champion isn’t around to defend the title that they felt the need to make up a new one, then here’s an idea…HAVE HIM LOSE!

Booking themselves into a corner

WWE had multiple chances for someone to take the title off Roman, who then could have lost half of it down the road to get to where they are now, just in a lot better shape. Be it Sami or Cody or KO, there were triggers to be pulled. Maybe I’m the only one who still thinks so, but coming out of the 2022 Royal Rumble there was still an excellent story to tell with Seth Rollins.

But because WWE kept taking the safe road, the easy one, the predictable one, they’re left with two titles that seem definitively trinket-like. One make-believe title to make up for the problem of the other one.

This is what WWE does, try and assuage fans and wrestlers after cocking up the big moment. They had Sami and KO come out on top in a post-match beatdown with the rest of the Bloodline after they whiffed on putting the strap on Sami in Montreal as a make-good to the fans who were so disappointed after being so ravenous for a Zayn win. Then they put the tag titles on the two at Mania as another one, and though it was fulfilling to see the two get there, it was still below what could have, and should have, been.

While I may not have bought it, WWE certainly sold Cody Rhodes as a viable hero at Mania and fans were certainly eating it up, and then punted him overboard, and any fan’s ability to actually buy into this kind of story for a long time. So again as a consolation, at least likely, they’ll hand this concoction to him and try to tell you it’s just as meaningful. Reigns will continue to carry the other one, the one they’ve taken down a peg or two because no one is going to buy that they can actually pump a challenger up to the point of believing he’ll beat Roman, or that they’ll ever pull the trigger on doing so. It’s not so much a title Roman carries now, but a weight. No wonder he only wants to do it a handful of times per year.

But hey, Cody will get those tears going again, don’t you worry.

Follow Sam on Twitter @Felsgate to see which wrestler this week is using him to forward a storyline.

In their infinite wisdom, the Cavinder Twins turn to… Jake Paul?

April 19, 2023

I don’t know what part of “Down with influencers” landed me on the Cavinder Twins beat, yet here I am, writing my third story on Haley and Hanna as if my only motivation in life is engaging with their content. I’d rather throw myself to the wolves or discover what “YouTubers” are than bring you up to speed on what they’re doing.

Nobody fucking cares, but since you can’t watch porn at work, you’re stuck clicking smut adjacent material like this. So, today I’m here to inform you about their new partnership with a like-minded piece of shit I never want to think about in my free time, Jake Paul.

The Cavinder Twins are partnering with Jake on Betr, a social media/gambling platform that sounds as legit as the next app that’s dropped a few vowels and is promising to be the future of the internet (and a congressional investigation). I literally just read the headline and first couple of sentences from the TMZ story about it to make sure this news is true and my facts are straight, so if you’re looking for a thoughtful angle or more information about their prospects in the WWE or on Betr, you won’t find it here.

Jake is a scumbag whose exploits are easily findable on Google, and young women should be wary of who they associate with, lest they end up cleaned out. However, “exploitation” seems to be steps 1 through 10 of the Cavinders’ business plan.

They’ve already been on Dave Portnoy’s podcast and signed up for Vince McMahon’s WWE, so a Jake Paul-backed venture is the next logical step. Are you morally problematic and/or a cash-hungry captain of industry? If so, start writing up a business proposal for this dynamic duo.

So good luck, I guess, to the Cavinders on their post-influencer, post-basketball careers. Ideally, this is the last time I’ll ever have to write about them.