WWE Bad Blood 2024, AEW TV Deal And Weekend Observations

After a wild weekend filled with UFC 307, College Football upsets and WWE Bad Blood, finally decided to take some time to process everything and give some hot takes. Once again for everyone here, if you are upset with what I said, and don’t like it, then I will tell you two things.

One, don’t scream at Aaron Rift as he doesn’t pay me or agree with me, so asking him to do something is like asking a dog to speak Shakespeare quotes and getting pissed when it doesn’t.

Second, to quote the famous line from Tommy Lee Jones in The Fugitive. “I DON’T CARE!”

So, without further angst, lets dive into this week’s big notes and events and I will give you my two cents.

MR. McMAHON SERIES WAS NOT FOR WRESTLING FANS. Whatever you thought about the Vince McMahon documentary by Netflix, you have to remember that this documentary was not made for the hardcore wrestling fans. Just as I argue about casuals to the AEW nuts, this was not made for hardcore WWE fans but for casuals who just pop in and to check it out.

Bill Simmons was smart to realize that no matter what, the wrestling nuts would check it out even if it was a hot piece of garbage. Wrestling fans just like super NFL fans will watch anything and devour it.

No, this documentary was about explaining WWE, Vince and post Vince life all in six episodes to people who are fringe fans or just love drama. Give them credit as it’s a huge undertaking to produce episodes where the subject just doesn’t want to talk about himself in detail. And they did everything they could short of shoving truth serum into Vince to get him to talk and he still wouldn’t.

For me the biggest thing people took away was just how different Vince is and really understanding how it affected him family. Shane McMahon comes off as a very sympathetic character as they do a great job showing how frustrating it was for him. Ask any son who is in line to run his father’s business whether it’s a prime job like Jonathan Kraft or Clark Hunt trying to take over NFL franchises to just the son who is taking over the family plumbing business.

History has shown that sons sometimes bear the brunt of things from their fathers and the more toxic the relationship, the harder it is.

Overall, you can say that WWE should be happy with it as it wasn’t a damning portrayal of Vince nor was it a puff piece. It was somewhere in the middle and considering everything that broke after the fact, it was the best that everyone could do. And now WWE can move on as they and Netflix move into 2025 as the begin their fruitful partnership.

BAD BLOOD PLE IS PROOF THAT PLE’S ARE THE FUTURE AND UFC COULD END UP NEXT. I love Mr. Tito but his take on PPV’s is way off and shows how sometimes even genius can get things wrong. Tapology.com has a great site that shows that PPV’s have dropped considerably over the last four years across the board. It’s easy to explain in two words

Illegal streaming services and smart TV’s.

In a distressed economy which has been that way now for several years, people are not going to pay for something when they can get it for free. Its common sense and there are too many illegal streaming services to do anything about it.

Give the WWE credit for being ahead of the curve and tying the PLE’s into the WWE Network and selling it off to Peacock. Cable networks are still going Bananas for any live sports that do decent numbers and the WWE PLE’s are a network executive’s aphrodisiac.

Just look at what Peacock is paying for Smackdown and how much they paid over the years for the WWE content. With the NFL, NBA, MLB and College Football tv deals all being on lockdown, boxing being down, and UFC still tied with ESPN, WWE knows it’s getting bank from all of this.

Netflix’s 5-billion-dollar deal wasn’t just for RAW but for the international rights to all the WWE PLE’s.

PPV is dying and any smart tv executive is not going back to the old horse and buggy whip method when they can leverage the new model for more money.

AEW’s TV DEAL IS A SUCCESS AND A STAY OF EXECUTION FOR NOW BUT CHALLENGES ARE ON THE HORIZON. I will eat some crow for now and congratulate AEW on getting a second TV deal as I did predict that they would lose their television deal. In fairness I didn’t think that David Zaslav would BUTCHER the NBA TV rights as bad as they did and that FUBU TV would successfully sue and end the ESPN/WBD/FOX Sports package.

Those two moves made AEW for now a more attractive option as it still gets 600k for Dynamite and is 52 weeks. For now, they have a 3-year deal that according to Variety (Whom is in tuned with the TV/Entertainment world far better than any wrestling journalist) deal with an option for a fourth at an average of around 150-180 million per year for Dynamite and Collision.

It’s a stay of execution as while they got a second contract and they got live streaming for AEW, it still doesn’t address the elephant in the room which is their profitability and their ability to regain momentum.

For all the celebrating everyone is doing, let’s take into account that two years ago every AEW fan was saying “billion-dollar company” and “billion-dollar TV deal”. Instead, they barely are getting 500 million for 3 years and that is in a time when the WNBA is getting billion-dollar TV Rights.

Meanwhile ticket sales are severely down, audience interest has plummeted and AEW is still spending big money on talent that often doesn’t even wrestle. They lost all the goodwill and momentum they had in the first three years and now the challenge is to get it back.

Meanwhile on the horizon lies the UFC TV rights up for bid in early 2025 and several insiders have said that WBD plans to make a huge push. After losing the NBA, no NFL rights and the Sports package going up in smoke, WBD is in desperate need for the UFC. Zaslav particularly needs a big win as his tenure at WBD has been abysmal and he has had to stay off calls for his head.

With ESPN hemorrhaging money, Amazon being tied up with ONE FC and PBC boxing, WBD has strong odds to land them. But that deal is going to be pricey as UFC as many TV executives view the price at 3 to 4 billion dollars over 5 years. If WBD happens to get UFC, a lot of things will change and not for the good for AEW.

UFC is on the upswing and Dana White has been very cautious about how the UFC is portrayed and who works with them. He wasn’t thrilled about WWE trying to do cross promotions with him and they are his partners. If anyone thinks he is going to warm up to Tony Khan, you need to be drug tested as they are on the opposite sides of the personality department.

What would be to stop Dana from pushing WBD to get rid of AEW as in his mind they are a bad look to be associate with? WBD has resigned AEW because they are for now an asset for WBD programming but if ratings continue to fall and WBD lands the UFC, this deal could easily be cancelled and AEW could end up like TNA and the NWA have.

HULK HOGAN ADMITS TO SABOTAGING JESSE VENTURA’S UNION PLANS IS PROOF UNIONS IN PRO WRESTLING WILL NEVER HAPPEN. What does boxing, the porn industry, professional wrestling and mixed martial arts all have in coming? They are all industries that have no unions, have tried and failed to unionize and will never happen probably in my lifetime.

That is the ultimate takeaway from the segment on NETFLIX’s Mr. McMahon when Hulk Hogan admitted to ratting out Jesse Ventura to Vince when Ventura tried to unionize the pro wrestling industry.

If you think Hulk Hogan is the ultimate bad guy here, then you’re wrong as while what he did was a scumbag thing to do, the bigger bad guys were the wrestlers who couldn’t band together. Ask any union member and they will tell you that the biggest thing unions have is strength in numbers. It’s what gives them leverage over their employers is they try to strong arm them.

It’s easy to crush one guy if you’re the boss of the company, but if you’re the boss and have to deal with hundreds of employees revolting, your screwed. It’s what gives union members power and allows them to make demands and set terms as a group.

But even today, with everything going on pro wrestling has never been able to get any momentum going and part of it is that the wrestlers just can’t get one started. There is no leader in pro wrestling who is willing to stick his neck and big salary out to piss the boss off. Can’t blame them as like MMA, Boxing and Porn, pro wrestling is a very individual industry in that it’s about just that person.

People have families, responsibilities, mortgages and bank accounts to worry about and biting the hand that feeds you, scares people.

If your Mercedes Mone, Roman Reigns, Jon Moxley, CM Punk or any high-level wrestler who is getting paid big money and has lots of perks why risk it? Why should you care about not just undercard wrestlers but Indy wrestlers or developmental wrestlers who haven’t suffered like you or sacrificed what you have to get more money that might be taken out of your pocket?

It’s easy to say that everyone should rally behind the industry, band together and fight back against AEW, WWE and the pro wrestling industry. But for a lot of top wrestlers who have gotten to this spot, they look at it as if they push for a union, they could lose a lot more than what they gain if it fails.

Former MLB All-Star Curt Flood is a tragic tale of an athlete who pushed for a union, took MLB to court and lost. The Saint Louis Cardinal sued MLB for free agency but faced the league alone as his peers at the time refused to back him. They didn’t want to lose their paychecks, get blackballed from the sport and suffer like he did.

And while MLB finally did get unionized and free agency thanks to Marvin Miller and the players association, Curt Flood not only ended up leaving baseball but the country due to the mental toll it took on him.

So, while everyone bashes Hogan for being self-centered and egotistical for sabotaging Ventura, its par for the course in this industry. And until pro wrestling can find it in themselves to unite and stay strong in the face of promoters, nothing is going to change.

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