Tag: branding

lol AEW but also QQ for Miro

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Man, my post about how I was finally happy with something AEW did didn’t even get to be pushed off of the front page before AEW had to go do something that basically devalues it pretty much entirely.  Barely a week later, Turner Broadcasting announces that AEW’s flagship show, Dynamite, is going to be moved from TNT to TBS.

Something or other about how Turner secured the television rights to broadcast the NHL, and that they wanted to use TNT to broadcast their games, which would have to force a live program with a static timeslot onto another network as not to force it to have to flex on a whim in accordance to the hockey schedules.  And of course AEW has other “shows” like the internet-only Dark and Elevation programs that I’ve never watched a single episode of, and supposedly another program coming in the near future, but make no mistake, Dynamite is the flagship, and when the flagship is moved, we are saying that AEW is being moved outright.

Initially, I laughed heartily at this news, because it kind of validates all of the passive swiping and criticism of the promotion as a whole, since they don’t have the clout or justification to be cemented on TNT and force other programs to flex around them, validating them as the network sidepiece or flavor of the month that I pegged them as, and that for all the big talk and paper accolades they tout, they’re still getting bullied around like a minor league racket.

But then my next train of thought was obviously the TNT Championship, which was recently won by Miro whom I’ve been high on for years, and how suddenly sad I am for him that after finally beginning to rise back up to the success I always knew he could be, he’s immediately now the sucker holding the belt that has a literal clock above its own relevance, seeing as how the tentative plan is to move AEW off of TNT in 2022.

It doesn’t even matter how much prestige Miro can bring to the belt with a lengthy reign, multiple defenses and quality work, because it has that stupid TNT logo on it, representing a network that doesn’t even want them on it.  Frankly, it doesn’t matter if they redesign the blet (again, which would be #4) to not have a company logo on it, or rename it outright in preparation for the network switch, it’s still going to have the stink of the silliness brought onto it because AEW can’t seem to get their shit together to make some appropriate decisions for their promotion that don’t have time-sensitive repercussions.

Naturally the big question is what’s going to happen next to the TNT Championship: will it just be updated to not have the TNT network logo on it?  Does it become the TBS Championship?  Does AEW unveil a TBS Championship and crown a champion, to then have a unification match with the TNT champion?  Or does AEW grow a fucking brain and turn it into a Television or United States championship and not associate it to a fucking television network before AEW gets moved onto TruTV or Turner Classic Movies?

Hopefully, Miro can come out of these three football fields of shit not too worse for wear, because I’m sad for him that he has to be the unfortunate soul to have to carry the Popeye’s title across the bridge of uncertainty.  I’d rather have seen Darby Allin be the guy to have to do it, but writing it out, maybe it was a plan all along, considering AEW’s puzzling protection over Allin’s character, so may as well have one of those former WWE guys do the heavy lifting instead?

Regardless, this is all just one big amalgamation of failure, and no matter how much spin Tony Khan, the Elite circle jerk, TNT, TBS or Turner executives can apply to this whole situation, it will always conclude with AEW looking dumb and weak, and tied down to that secondary tier that doesn’t put it anywhere in the stratosphere with competing with the WWE, no matter how much they pretend like they’re not trying to compete with them.

Not to further toot my own horn, I did write about the perils of naming a belt after the network it was on, in the event of this exact scenario, but here we are: AEW is being forced off of TNT, and now the TNT Championship is basically meaningless. 

Who changes their name first: the Redskins or Patriots?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Serious question.  Based on how often the phrase “patriots” has been thrown around unironically, I can’t help but wonder if people who work for the New England Patriots football franchise wince or cringe every time they hear it.  Obviously, there’s zero (I hope) correlation between a professional football team’s identity, and a legion of white supremacist fascists, but the word is the same and when enough people hear it enough with a negative connotation, the association tends to stick, even when used in completely unrelated context.

In a very short amount of time, the phrase patriots has mutated into this very ugly and unappealing definition, and I really do wonder if this keeps up, there will be enough of an uproar and backlash to the New England Patriots to where they will actually begin considering changing their entire franchise’s name.

Obviously, when it comes to the original question, it stands to believe that the Redskins are the lock to win this “race,” seeing as how the Redskins name has been put on the shelf already, but I’m not going to give them any sort of victory until they actually pick a new name and stop parading around as the interim “Football Team” they’ve used throughout 2020.

But lest we all forget, this much progress has taken almost literally my entire lifetime, so if there was any franchise that could get overtaken by lightning in a bottle, it’s definitely the Washington Washingtons. 

We live in a very fast-moving world now where there’s little patience and even less regard for repercussions and backlash, and if the association of the word patriots continues to spiral and become more solely linked to racism, white supremacy and people who would dare attempt to disrupt and overthrow governments, the sooner the New England Patriots might want to consider renaming themselves.

Think I’m going to have to rule this race, a jump ball.

Now that’s how to protest

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Seems unprecedented: in the midst of the NBA playoffs, the Milwaukee Bucks boycott their game 5 matchup against the Orlando Magic, in protest of the shooting of an unarmed black man by the police in Kenosha, Wisconsin, prompting the NBA to cancel all games for the day

To my friends, I first made the obvious, low-hanging fruit joke about how the Bucks did the Magic a favor and kept them alive for one more day, seeing as how they were up 3-1 in the best of seven and were probably going to close out the series tonight, but the reality is, I’m actually pretty cool with what the Bucks did.

Far too often, we see celebrities and professional athletes talk a big game about the reach they have and they say a lot of meaningful things on Twitter about how change is needed, black lives mattering, and all sorts of political statements.  But after they hit send, they put their phones down, and then go back to making movies, music, or putting on jerseys and playing sports, for millions and millions of dollars that they make for themselves, and billions and billions of dollars for the people they work for.  And when the day is over, nothing happens, and this perpetual cycle of humanity failing continues on until the next tragic events causes everything to start all over again.

As long as life goes on, there’s little reason for anyone to stop what they’re doing and try and make any changes, of any size or magnitude.  But when the machine is abruptly killed when it is expecting to be churning at its maximum capacity, people will undoubtedly have to stop and look and wonder what the fuck is going on; and that’s precisely what the Milwaukee Bucks did, when they actually did boycott a pivotal and meaningful nationally televised basketball game.  Make no mistake, the rest of the NBA’s games of the day were cancelled in response and attempt to show solidarity, but this doesn’t happen if one team doesn’t make the first move, and that’s undoubtedly the Bucks.

I also love that it was the Bucks that did it, and it’s obvious why the team from Wisconsin did it, but I just think back to when the Bucks were the bottom dwellers of the NBA and that’s all I can ever think of the Milwaukee Bucks, despite the fact that nowadays, they’ve got a ten-foot tall all-star and are basically the best team in the entire league.

Continue reading “Now that’s how to protest” →

Nike’s Seinfeld Shoes

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Lately, I’ve struggled a little bit trying to get back in to the groove of regular writing.  Between the balancing act of trying do things whenever my child is napping, and the fact that I haven’t really found a good rhythm or inspiration to write about things, I’ve often times found myself sitting at my laptop with nothing much going on, other than scrolling through news sites and feeds to look for something to inspire me before ultimately killing time on YouTube watching chiropractor popping clips or scenes from Marvel movies.

But then I saw an ad, of all things, for Nike’s Alphafly shoes.  Supposedly, they’re causing somewhat of a stir in the running community, and I guess there are some tryhard enthusiasts out there who think they’re illegal or performance enhancing or something along those lines, but I can’t really care enough to delve deeper because I can’t really get over the fact of how fucking hideous they look.  With their gigantic, bulbous and protruding soles, all I can think of is that they’re basically the modern-day equivalent of the jump shoes from that one episode of Seinfeld.

Seriously, my mouth curled into a wtf face after I saw these things.  I gave a cursory google search to see what they were even capable of, but there’s so much noise and chatter about the legality of these things in organized marathons, that I can’t actually find any credible information on what the whole point of these shoes actually are, nor do I feel like expending the effort to dig any deeper.

Regardless, they’re basically Seinfeld shoes, visually.  And much like Kramer was pegged as looking like a special needs person when going out in public in them, I imagine anyone wearing these that isn’t actively in a competitive run would probably look similarly having these thick-ass shoes on while wearing jeans or ordinary pants.  But given the fact that they’re like 3” off the ground, I imagine a lot of height-conscious people might do it anyways, to make themselves look taller.  That’s the tradeoff however, for wanting to look taller than less mentally capable, I suppose.

It’s kind of appropriate that it sucks

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

When I caught wind that the WWE was going to unveil a brand-new United States Championship design, I had a moment of dread; if it looked baller, then I was undoubtedly going want to get a replica, no matter how many times in my life at this point I’ve said NO MOAR BLETS.

Plus, I’ve been very unhappy with the WWE Shop for having available replicas of just about every single championship belt design over the last 30 years, except for the one and only WWE-branded belt that I want: the NXT UK Tag Team Championship.  Seriously, they have shit like the yellow Intercontinental belt that the Ultimate Warrior wore like, twice, and the old European Championship which only existed for like 3-4 years, but they do not have the NXT UK Tag, which unlike the litany of “tribute” belts they seem to release on a weekly basis, is an active championship in the company right fucking now.

To hell if I was going to be wooed by a brand new US Championship belt before I could get the one and only belt that I really want*

*not entirely true, I’ve been keeping my eyes peeled for a Ring of Honor World or John Cena US spinner belts as well

But then Monday Night RAW came and aired, and because I don’t have cable television and don’t actually watch RAW anymore, I had to wait and see when the pictures broke on Twitter, and unlike the NXT UK Tag, the WWE Shop was more than ready to push the new shit available online like a software hotfix.

And the verdict is . . . it sucks.  Whew!

Continue reading “It’s kind of appropriate that it sucks” →

Does anyone else feel the Washington Redskins are deflecting from bigger issues?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The skinny: amidst pressure from large corporate sponsors who have likely been pressured themselves by myriads of influences, the Washington Redskins have acquiesced to “thoroughly reviewing” the name of the franchise AKA changing the name may actually be happening after multiple decades

Pretty much my entire life after realizing that I was someone who enjoyed sports, the Washington Redskins have been under fire for their name.  In all fairness, “Redskins” is probably the most offensive of names out in professional sports that borrow from Native American culture, because it’s basically the equivalent of if there were a team named after Africans called “Blackskins.”

But for all intents and purposes, the Redskins were the closest thing in my life I’d ever have to a home team, and when I was really started to develop interests in sports, the Washington Redskins were a powerhouse and were on the cusp of winning the 1992 Super Bowl.  Fewer things make it easy to become a fan than immediate success, and seeing the Redskins topple the Buffalo Bills for a championship made it really easy to become a Redskins fan.

Continue reading “Does anyone else feel the Washington Redskins are deflecting from bigger issues?” →

Let’s talk about the AEW TNT Championship Belt

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

When I was in high school, some of my friends had this backyard wrestling fed, that I occasionally participated in from time to time.  My “ring name” was The Yellow Meanie, which was a play on the fat blue haired blob in ECW who went under the name The Blue Meanie, except this was more racist in the obvious sense.

One day, for no other reason than boredom and an idea for our own amusement, I took an old weight belt, some cardboard, packing tape, spray paint and most importantly, an empty box of Popeye’s fried chicken, and I created the Popeye’s Championship Belt.  It symbolized absolutely nothing at all, but regardless I brought it into our backyard wrestling federation and began “defending” it, and cutting promos about how important and prestigious it was.

That kind of logic, is basically what comes to mind when thinking about All Elite Wrestling’s new don’t-call-it-a-mid-card championship belt, the TNT Championship; yes, named after the network in which AEW airs its one and only program, Dynamite.

They’ve literally named a flagship championship after a television station, as if they didn’t seem remotely aware that networks can change, whether the network themselves re-brands or re-identifies, or the network changes directions, decides they don’t want professional ‘rasslin on their network anymore, and dumps them off to Spike TV or Destination America. 

Additionally, they’ve designed the belt to the specific current TNT logo, again, ignoring the fact that in the last ten years, the TNT logo has changed twice prior, and could very well change again in coming years, as Turner is such a volatile company that’s always knocking on the door of being acquired by FOX every year, resulting in endless rounds of layoffs that many people I know in Atlanta have been victimized or threatened by but that’s another story.

Continue reading “Let’s talk about the AEW TNT Championship Belt” →