Tag: cashmoney

Welp, I guess it’s time to really become an AEW fan

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The night before Thanksgiving, mythical wife and I were talking about how it might be nice for the girls to wake up and watch some of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade; they might be entertaining by the giant floats, maybe they’ll see some characters they recognize like Bluey or Pikachu, and the real motive from mythical wife was that HUNTR/X from K-Pop Demon Hunters was performing but the reality is that my kids love the film as well.  A cursory search showed that we could watch it on Peacock, which was good because we did have a Peacock login.

That is, until the following morning when I booted up the projector and opened up Peacock, there was the lock icon on the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.  Seriously?  A paywall for this?

But then I noticed that pretty much everything else had the lock icon on it.  Feeling a sense of dread, I clicked on the WWE tab, and sure enough, all of the wrestling content that I pretty much use Peacock exclusively for, all locked.  I double-checked the login to make sure that I was still logged in, and we were.  I logged out and logged back in, and couldn’t even make it to the menus I was in previously, because I was met with the plan options, and it’s apparent that Peacock had kiboshed the free tier that I was on previously, and it quickly dawned on me that short of RAW on Netflix which has been more mediocre than Kentucky Fried Chicken, I was now incapable of watching any WWE programming.

Thankfully for the morning of Thanksgiving, I could find some free livestreams of the parade on YouTube, so the kids could still see floats and characters, but it definitely left a sour taste in my mouth and started churning some gears in writing out this post in my head.

When the WWE sold and TKO came into existence, yeah, they made a whole lot of shitty business decisions that really fucked over a lot of wrestling fans.  But most of all that shit seemed to pertain to the live experience and I’ve long since cared about live events, and said that as long as they don’t fuck with my viewing experience, I’d be okay.

But then the E sold all their premium live events to ESPN, which held them hostage behind a tier-2 paywall that I didn’t have access to, so now I couldn’t see any of the big shows anymore, which definitely sucks.  But Peacock still would get all of the NXT shows which I always thought were usually better in the first place, plus they still had an extensive library of original content, so I would make do with just using RAW to keep abreast on the product.

And now Peacock has turned full heel and restructured their tiers to ensure that people like me no longer had a means to access WWE and NXT content, so again, my only remaining means of watching WWE product is now solely Netflix, and RAW hasn’t really been particularly good since it debuted and Hulk Hogan was still alive and got booed the fuck out of Los Angeles.

So, like the subject of this post says, I guess it’s time to go full tryhard fan mode into AEW, seeing as how I can still access their product reliably between HBO Max, where they run both their television and PPV products.  Or perhaps I can log in through a tv provider and get the AMC app and see if they’ll allow me to watch TNA.  Shit, I have a Roku, I could feasibly get NWA Powerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr for free there too.

But fuck if I’m going to pay even more money for 2-3 different streaming platforms just to watch WWE.

As I’ve said multiple times, the streaming wars have gotten so out of hand, that we’re rapidly approaching the precipice where the ensuing result is going to be a company to emerge from the ashes, where they’ll consolidate ALL networks through a singular service, for a single price, but all programming will be supported by advertising. 

And it will be called . . . cable2.

Only illegal because they got caught

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

WSB: North Georgia VFW post busted for hosting “illegal” gambling, including slot machines and table games

Over the last weekend, I took #2 to a birthday party that was at some Dave & Busters-clone type of joint, where they had bowling, laser tag, arcade machines.  Additionally, they also had a section of the place loosely cordoned off with some velvet ropes that had pool tables as well as, slot machines.

I don’t really care enough to find out the entire legality of the ability to have slot machines in the state of Georgia, but the point remains that at a place clearly geared up to be friendly to all ages, which is to say a place where you can bring young children to and not get judged too much by asshole bystanders, this place still had a row of slot machines, in plain sight for kids to see and potentially watch, along with the gamblers who could be playing them.

So it’s a little puzzling to read this story about how some VFW post up in the sticks of Georgia was busted and raided because they had gambling there, because there are a number of Kroger grocery stores throughout the state who also have slot machines, legally, in addition to the number of joints that have them in plain sight.

If I had to guess, the real issue is probably that it’s not so much the fact that the VFW post didn’t report their gambling activities, it’s probably the fact that they probably paid no tax on their intake, as well as any of their gamblers probably weren’t paying taxes on any of their winnings, even though I highly doubt that a VFW hall is going to be a place where guys are routinely clearing $10,000+, the general cutoff where one should expect a notification from the IRS for exceeding.

It’s just funny to me, because gambling is an ever-increasing problem in my opinion, throughout the United States, and as gambling has permeated through the internet, and states are relaxing their buttholes and pulling the anti-gambling stick out of them, and the act is hardly restricted to just Las Vegas, Atlantic City or indigenous lands anymore, it’s becoming really problematic, I think.

Underground gambling undoubtedly has been going on since the dawn of civilization, but if I had to guess, it has probably gotten absolutely worse throughout the last decade or so with the relaxation of gambling laws, and the increasing availability of gaming in general.  Like, people who weren’t gamblers to begin with have a greater chance of being exposed and introduced and apt to become them, and with enough drive and addiction, it’s only a matter of time before they’re pissing away their social security checks at the local VFW because they heard that they could play some hold ‘em for cash.

When Shohei Ohtani got busted for gambling and he and MLB threw his interpreter under the bus, there was a great meme about how the golden boy could have gotten into this gambling scandal.  And all Japanese guys being degenerate gambling addict jokes aside, there was this one meme that I always remembered and still refer to this day:

Welcome back to SportsCenter presented by ESPN Bet, for more on the Ohtani situation, we go to our FanDuel MLB Insider Jeff Passan at our DraftKings Studio in Los Angeles, brought to you by Caesar’s Sportsbook.  Jeff, how could something like this happen??

That’s how I feel about the VFW gambling hall that’s supposedly illegal.  Sure, they probably weren’t paying any taxes on the cash money circulating around the joint, but at the same time, I can’t imagine anything remotely close to a casino’s liquid was sloshing around the joint.

Plus, probably all of them are veterans who have served the country in some way shape or form, leave them the fuck alone.  I’m not saying they should get full-on Armageddon don’t ever have to pay taxes ever again, but for fuck’s sake, turn the other cheek on some casual entertainment gambling, they’re not hurting anyone.

Instead, Uncle Sam gets to fuck over these guys a second time around, by shutting down their social gathering spot, and being colossal assholes in going after a small pissant operation, in the grand spectrum of illegal gambling operations throughout the country.

Way to go, Georgia.  Way to go, ‘murica.  Sure is great here

Dad Brog (#158): I’m not ready for anything prefaced by “adult”

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’m in the middle of one of those weekends where I’ve sparsely had any time for myself; even more so than usual.  The kids are still in this weird adjustment period of daylight savings as well as simply adapting to their general schedules, and this particular morning, they were up at 7 am, not long after I had gotten up to begin my day, and I was completely unprepared as far as having breakfast ready, but it didn’t matter that my kids were ready to begin their day.

Instead of a 60-90 minute quiet time reprieve in the middle of the day, this was a day in which there were two concurrent birthday parties happening at the same time, so mythical wife and I decided to divide and conquer and take each kid to a different party, in different parts of town.  I watched #2 plow through three slices of pizza, a ridiculously gargantuan slice of cake, and a bowl of dipping dots, all while playing a bunch of really shitty games at Chuck-E-Cheese where kids are lucky to get maybe 15 seconds of game time before the credits expire and I can’t imagine paying actual money for gaming time with such absurdly unfavorable math, and I felt fortunate to be on a timed party free-play.

Needless to say, with the kids down, instead of relaxing, I found myself playing catch-up on things that I didn’t get to do on a typical Saturday, which meant hopping on the treadmill to get some exercise, while simultaneously doing my daily Duolingo that I typically prefer to do early in the morning before everyone else is really up.  And then I decided to go run some errands while some stores were still open, all for the sake of not having to them during Sunday, when I would inevitably have to have a kid in tow while trying to do them, and by the time I’m sitting here it’s past ten, and I don’t feel like I have adequate time to really watch something from my endless list of crap that I want to watch, so I bring myself to sit here to write in my brog that nobody knows exists.

But hey, at least I got to go be on top of the drop of Vince Gilligan’s Pluribus, and watched the first two episodes on Friday night, and the show was as good as I would have hoped it would be, so that’s something remotely positive amidst feeling buried by life and looking out the metaphorical window of the world to see the United States completely at peace with itself forcibly starving its own citizens but this post wasn’t meant to be political as much as I just wanted to take that dig in lieu of making a dedicated post about how fucked America is.

However, getting to the point of this post, the biggest occurrence to happen over this weekend was undoubtedly the fact that #1 lost her first tooth, and I’m just not ready for this at all.  Because when it comes to teeth, most everyone knows that the vernacular for them are baby teeth, and when they fall out, they’re supplanted by your adult teeth, and I am so not fucking ready to hear the word “adult” at all, associated with my five-year old child.

It’s crazy, it was just like a few weeks ago in which #1 pointed out to mythical wife and I that she had a wiggly tooth, and we were both having the same reaction about how, wtf has all this time flown by to where our kid is now having her baby teeth starting to fall out.  A cursory internet search confirms that five is a fairly common age for the first teeth to begin falling out, and I have memories of my own childhood of when I had my first loose tooth, where my dad tied a piece of floss around it before yanking it out, and the vague memory of feeling like I’d been punched in the mouth, with a similar result of there being a lot of blood.

But as unfortunate as it was that I couldn’t be there when it happened, there wasn’t really much blood when #1’s first tooth came out.  I had literally just taken her to the dentist just says prior, and I saw the X-rays showing the adult teeth rapidly growing underneath and how to anticipate the first tooth to come out soon, and it was still a harrowing moment seeing those photographs of all these adult teeth starting to grow beneath the baby ones, and again I’m struggling to hear the word adult at all when it comes to my kid, because she’s still just five freaking years old.

Inevitably, like the Korean blood in her body demands, questions about the Tooth Fairy and the whole concept of getting money for teeth came up pretty immediately, and now I’ve got to start ponying up cash to put under her pillow and hope to not wake her along the way.  Plus there’s the whole question of just how much money to give for a tooth; when I was a kid, it was $2 a tooth, but my parents quashed the whole mythos of the Tooth Fairy real quick and just gave me cashmoney on the spot after an extraction.

It’s going to be a tricky next few years, given the fact that I have two kids of close age who will be inevitably be periodically dropping teef throughout the next 8-9 years, and me having to keep up with needing adequate cash to fund all these damn teef and keep up with inflation.

But heaven help me that there are anything at all in my little girls’ bodies that are considered adult, even if they’re pretty much right on schedule when it comes to the first teeth falling out.  They’re always going to be babies to me.

Praise for NXT Halloween Havoc

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Over the last few year and change, there’s been a lot of hullabaloo surrounding the state of the WWE following the company’s sale and eventual restructuring into being an arm of their new parent company TKO.  Questionable decision making as far as staffing, personnel and eventual booking choices, but more primarily how they’re killing the WWE with their flagrant price gauging, cost increases across the board on tickets, merch, and various other microtransactions, masterfully finding each and every nickel and dime to bilk out of wrestling fans.

I often said to my friends that I didn’t really feel impacted by much of it, because I had little interest in going to any live events; I’d been to Wrestlemania twice now, and numerous other ppvs when they were still called ppvs, and at the prices of tickets these days, I would way rather just watch from the comfort of my own home.  Over the summer, I went to NXT’s Great American Bash, solely based on the fact that it was at my favorite venue (Center Stage), but after paying $130 for almost literally the last row of the venue, only to be seated next to 1.75x of humanity, I almost want to swear off going to WWE shows outright, fearing a similar fate the next time I plunk down grown up money just to be in attendance.

Additionally, I would say to my friends that as long as TKO doesn’t fuck around with my viewing experience, then I don’t really have many qualms with how they’re operating the company.  But over the last few months, WWE PLEs have all been shifted over to ESPN++ to some new tier that I can’t get access too without actually having to pay money for it, so I’ve missed the last two major events.  NXT remains on CW which I don’t have access to in a streaming capacity, and I haven’t seen an episode of Smackdown in years because I don’t have the means to watch whatever channel they’re on now.  RAW on Netflix is still available to me, but the production of the show is really wonky and weird, and it’s hard to stay engaged when they’re being so flagrant with performing at 60% so that they can save their ammo for the next PLE.

In other words, TKO has been fucking around with the viewing experience, and it definitely sucks as a fan.  Not knowing what shows are on what platform, if I can even watch them or not, and if and when I can, there being paywalls in order to see things as simply as storyline promo packages and performer entrances.  Obviously, I’m not going to swear off wrestling by any stretch of the imagination, but I am entitled to air out my grievances about the state of the WWE when I find their operational conduct to be annoying.

All that said, I wanted to chirp a little bit about how much of a breath of fresh air NXT’s Halloween Havoc felt like, because it definitely felt like a positive reprieve from the suffocating corporate cloud that the main roster WWE has been feeling like over the last year.

It was on Peacock, which had the occasional commercial break here and there, but the show as a whole had a banger of main song that they spammed throughout the evening, and the replay showed all the promo packages, which helped a viewer like me who can’t actually watch NXT to the minute, to catch up with what to expect in the show.  The show itself was at a smaller venue in a part of Arizona that I’d never even heard of, but it looked like the type of show that I’d have definitely been interested in going to, because it wasn’t a mega arena, and it wasn’t in a clusterfuck of a place like Atlanta, and looked like a fun place to watch wrestling.

And of course, the matches were all pretty entertaining.  Call me crazy, but sometimes some matches don’t really have to have a convoluted storyline behind them, and you can really just take a bunch of entertaining workers and throw them in a match together to great effect, and that’s how I felt with the opening match of Je’Von Evans and Leon Slater vs. La Parka* and Mr. Iguana.  No real story, just an NXT guy teamed with a TNA guy against two AAA guys, and they tore the house down to open the show.

*What’s funny is that on this exact date, there was a Lucha show in Atlanta that advertised La Parka on the card, so I’m amused by the fact that one of these shows got the actual current La Parka, while the other got an imposter, or they’re up to like La Parka IV or V at this point, like the Villanos, but whomever NXT had that night was wayyyy too talented of a La Parka than what fans of his from WCW might have remembered.  Motherfucker was doing picture perfect Asai moonsaults out of the ring and press slams into gutbusters, a far cry from the dumpy fat luchador in WCW that swung a chair and strutted his way to the bank.

Mariah May Blake Monroe got to flex a little bit of her actual wrestling skill in her win against Zaria for the women’s North American title, and I’m pleased that she’s allowed to do some of the work that elevated her so much in AEW, and I really enjoyed Ethan Page’s match against El Hijo de Dr. Wagner, and despite being the heel, Vic Joseph’s commentary about how much of a fighting champion Page has been, it’s hard to not respect the work the man puts into the business.  But the match had some really brutal spots, and it was enjoyable from start to finish.

The Hardy Boyz vs. Darkstate was an entertaining disaster, even if I don’t believe in all at the long-term viability of Darkstate.  They’re like a Temu-grade Shield, with less charisma, but given the fact that the Hardyz are still TNA guys, it seemed likely that they were going to have give those NXT blets back sooner rather than later.

Honestly, it’s not that the Ricky Saints vs. Trick Williams match was necessarily bad, it’s just that other matches on the card were more entertaining and compelling, that theirs just kind of didn’t stand out in comparison.  Both are talented workers, but in the context of the evening their fairly vanilla wrestling match just wasn’t as exciting as all of the matches that preceded it.  Plus, the finish seemed really wonky and almost rushed, and when it was over, I was just kind of like, that’s it?

But let’s really talk about Tatum Paxley’s ascension to the top of the mountain, beating Jacy Jayne for the NXT Women’s championship.  Firstly, I do want to give my flowers to Jayne for a respectable run with the top prize; I know her win was a surprise, considering she beat the aura-filled Stephanie Vaquer, but I didn’t hate it, because she was a solid hand that was easily the most talented worker of Toxic Attraction, and I always like seeing hard workers get rewarded with solid pushes.

However that being said, the same could very easily be said about Tatum Paxley, whom I get some Liv Morgan-like, love of the game vibes from, and like Jayne, her hard work has been noticeable and palpable over the course of the last 12+ months, and I’m pleased to see her get this honor of getting to be the women’s champion.  I think she’s more athletic than Liv ever has been and works pretty cleanly in spite of her general level of experience, but her character work and portrayal of the weird but talented goth girl seems to have captured the audience, and I’d be lying if I didn’t stop and let the look linger on her; she’s cute as hell.

But when she won the title, I definitely got those similar vibes to her championship that I felt when Liv won the women’s title for the first time, or when Iyo won the World championship the last time; it was a sense of satisfaction that a hard worker was getting their justly reward.

Overall, Halloween Havoc was a breath of fresh air of how good the WWE is capable of operating in a manner that I wish were the norm all throughout the company, and not just in NXT.  It kind of reminds me of that period between 2016-2017 where NXT was just firing on all cylinders so well that it was clear that they were the best brand in the company.  Look forward to the next NXT event, that is until they’re spontaneously sold off to start showing on like Tubi or Fubo or some other rando platform.

Dad Brog (#155): the 2025 Famiry Disney Cruise

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’m a day removed from having gotten off of the Disney Treasure, and hoo boy do I really feel my age these days.  For the first time in all of the cruises that I’ve done before, did I feel a little motion sick on a cruise before, but thankfully that was very short lived, and I was able to sleep it off and remain normal throughout the duration of the trip.  Driving back home all the way directly from Port Canaveral, I found my back hurting pretty badly to the point where I had to take some ibuprofen, thus making it the first time that I’ve needed painkillers, just to make a long distance drive, something I’ve done countless times in my life previously.

And unsurprising, the sea legs sensation of feeling boat rocking on solid land is hitting hard, and it’s mostly when I’m standing still or trying to remain as motionless as possible does the rocking sensation kick in, and I anticipate this will be the case for the next week or so, as it has been for me on previous cruises.

But anyway, big ass famiry trip in the bag, and do I have a lot of thoughts about it.  As curmudgeon as it may sound to say, I don’t necessarily refer to this entirely as a vacation, because the truth of the matter is that wrangling my two kids, on a boat, is still a colossal amount of effort that leads to a lot of aggravation at times, and I’d be lying if I didn’t get fried and pissed off at undesirable behaviors throughout the week long journey through the Caribbean on an egregiously overpriced boat.

#2 hijacked almost every single evening of the trip, mostly on account of fatigue and a lack of napping, but it usually amounted to her refusing to eat, behaving like a little shit at dinner, and then me needing to walk her out of the restaurants or carry her from point A to point B, and thusly being unable to really enjoy large chunks of time.  I don’t love her any less, but that’s about as succinct of a description of what happened throughout the course of this trip.

Oh, and I’m sure she’ll never live this down, she also barfed on the very literal center of the boat; in the grand hall of the main concourse, right at the center of the stage, where they had a photographer taking pictures of guests.  Immortalized, and definitely one of those stories that we as parents will always be able to recollect whenever we want to embarrass her in the future.

Still though, there’s little I won’t do for my kids and famiry, and despite the fact that I was probably burning out more than I was at any state remotely close to relaxation, there were still numerous pockets of happiness that makes it all worth it, and when the day is over, I want my kids to experience things and see things and visit places, and in those regards, it’s easy to say that the trip was a success. 

My children stepped foot onto the soil of other countries, experienced things that aren’t easily available to us elsewhere, and they got to experience a boatload of things that made them smile, rejoice or just be plain happy to see a bunch of Disney characters.  As a famiry, we went swimming with stingrays and sea stars, ate a ton of decadent foods, and enjoyed beaches, pools and a whole lot of fucking sunshine.

Some other observations about the trip were that this was apparently a tremendously busy cruise on account of two major factors:

  • It was the fall break for numerous school districts in the country, with a large quantity of them being from Georgia; I’m not even joking if I said that probably 2-3 fifths of the cruising populous were from Georgia, with quite a bunch of them being from my county specifically. The shore excursion we went on, our boat was literally over half from my exact zip code, as we were all on the same fall break.  Mythical wife even had one of her own students’ family assigned two tables away from us, so we saw them literally every single night.
  • This particular cruise was a Halloween at Seas cruise, which meant that there was a specific evening dedicated to Halloween, complete with characters all donning Halloween costumes, décor changing to be Halloween themed, and most importantly for the littles, trick or treating on the ship.

However, let’s stay on that latter bullet, because I feel like that was a big contributor to what I did not necessarily enjoy about my cruise experience as a whole.

Continue reading “Dad Brog (#155): the 2025 Famiry Disney Cruise” →

Justin Verlander is basically MLB’s Tom Brady

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

USA Today: Justin Verlander, 42, reportedly desires to keep playing despite having absolutely nothing left to prove, and having supermodel wife Kate Upton waiting at home

I saw this story about Justin Verlander wanting to keep playing past this season, and my mind was like wtf, why?  For the record, man has already accomplished:

  • Two-time World Series champion
  • Three no-hitters
  • 3x AL Cy Young Award winner
  • 1x AL MVP
  • AL Rookie of the Year
  • 9x All-Star

Surely it’s not money, because Verlander has already cleared over $400M in career earnings, and at that tier, it would take a Herculean effort of being a shithead to blow through it.  And it’s not like his wife is some financial leech, because he’s married to supermodel Kate Upton, whom Google claims has a net worth of $20M in her own right.

And speaking of Upton, it’s hilarious that he wants to keep staying on the road of living the life of a baseball player, instead of enjoying retirement with his bombshell of a wife and his two kids.  A cursory reaction is that in spite of the massive advantages he’s earned in his life, it seems like the life of being a husband and father is something that he’s not ready to commit to full-time, and the only thing preventing that from having to be a reality is, continuing to keep playing.

Frankly the only thing that seems remotely attainable and is a justifiable excuse to keep on trucking, is the pursuit of 300 career wins, which is something of a holy grail for pitchers and among the true milestones that separate the GOATs from the really goods.  However, he’s 35 wins away from that, and at the rate he’s going, he would need at least three more seasons, and get a ton of run support in order to have a chance at hitting 300, and by then he’ll be pushing 45, and most teams will probably be ready to take him out to the back of the pasture at that rate, especially if they’re going to be close to his 2025.

Getting back to the title of this post, Justin Verlander is basically MLB’s version of Tom Brady, the ageless star who has achieved just about everything there is to achieve, but continues to insist on playing, despite riches, achievements and a supermodel wife.

I guess us pleebs won’t ever be able to comprehend this innate desire to stay away from home and not settle down, or perhaps the adage of, every gorgeous woman is still someone’s colossal pain in the ass, rings true here and supermodels like Gisele and Kate Upton are as much head cases as they are attractive.

All the same, if I’m being honest, I feel like the Braves would be all in on being a match for Verlander, and I think the union could possibly work, at least for 2026.  The Braves are notorious for favoring aged stars on one-year deals, and the cheapskate org could possibly succeed at signing him for like 1-year, and maybe $13-14M.

The Braves would feel that they could extract the absolute last skill out of Verlander, and provided the team manages to bounce back from this abysmal 2025 campaign, they could be an ideal club to score a lot of runs again, with ol’ Justin to possibly be the beneficiary to them en route to 13 wins or so.

If the reports are true and he wants to keep going, I actually would expect the Braves to be in on Verlander for 2026.  His desire to not go home and be a family man could benefit the Braves, and lord knows they need all the help they can get for the future.

I sure as shit wouldn’t complain if he pulls a Tom Brady and jumps ship to a random team like the Braves and help them rip off a successful season en route to some World Series pay dirt.

Wrestlemania XLIII in Saudi Arabia? Thanks I hate it

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

When I heard the rumblings that Wrestlemania was going to be held in Saudi Arabia in 2027, I had two thoughts run through my mind:

  1. This was always going to happen eventually, I guess most of us wrestling fans didn’t expect it to happen just yet. When the WWE got in bed with the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, most fans saw a gamut of dollar amounts being thrown around as the cost of the union, with the only thing in common being that they were all ridiculously high with absolutely nothing measured in millions, but billions.  There was always talks and rumors that eventually Wrestlemania would make its way into the kingdom, but honestly I figured that at least Europe would have gotten a shot to host a ‘Mania before Saudi Arabia, but as is the way of the world, money talks.

  2. Regardless, I hate it. I’ve always been vehemently opposed to everything in regards to the WWE’s partnership with Saudi Arabia, and the only reason why I spite-watch the shows that they hold out there is that over the last few years, they’ve actually woven storylines into the Saudi shows as if they were going to Birmingham, Alabama for a PPV, and I have FOMO on any progressions in them.
    Yes, I know that makes my wrestling fandom a little bit (more) gray, but at the end of the day, I’m still a fan of the business, and I like to consume as much of it as I can, even if I don’t like the town they’re in.

But I am not a fan of the Saudi culture, which no matter how many billions they dump into the world economy to try to change the world’s perspective on them, doesn’t change the fact that they exist in a reality where women are full-stop, a full-ass tier beneath men, and there is absolutely nothing a woman could to do change the status quo.  Forcing them, as well as all visiting women to adhere to their bullshit laws of being completely covered up and probably other nonsensical things that would probably result in a beheading if violated.

Furthermore, they’re a culture of extreme homophobia, transphobia and just plain opposed to the LGBTQ+ community entirely.  Frankly, they’re just a culture of extreme prejudice in general, and early on in the arrangement, it was known fact that if Sami Zayn were to even step foot in the country, he would probably be killed, due to the conflicts in Syria and him being a native Syrian.

Honestly, I know I’ve said my piece about how I feel about Saudi culture, and I don’t much see the point in typing in circles and doing it again.  I just hate that the WWE has finally pulled the trigger on SaudiMania, and we’re less than two years again from the showcase of the immortals™ having to be broadcast from a culturally backward country at very likely an extremely inconvenient time to account for time zone, and I’ll probably get completely spoiled to everything by the time I can get to watch it, because not only can the internet never shut the fuck up, the WWE themselves has a really nasty habit of firing off emails in real time to the show, announcing critical results in order to hock their shitty overpriced merch powered by Fanatics™.

However, I had another thought while pondering this post: if there were ever a time for AEW to launch a genuine tactical strike against the WWE with the sole intention to gain industry footprint, I think this would be the perfect opportunity to do so.

Like, AEW books a show on the same weekend, entirely to counter and challenge SaudiMania.  Absolutely load the card, spread it over two nights.  Collaborate with everyone, especially since all the smaller and indy feds that love to book in the WWE’s gravity during Mania weekend probably won’t be able to do so if they’re in fucking Saudi Arabia, in order to help stack the card.

Hold it at EverBank and not Daily’s Place, where they could fill probably 50-60k, which would be a huge economic win especially since April is not football season, and since Daddy Shahid owns the team, it’s probably basically a free venue less the cost of event operations.

Run it free with existing subscription on HBO Max with any additional charge, to mitigate one of their biggest handicaps against the WWE, which is the fact that they effectively still operate on a pay-per-view model.

Capitalize on all of the western and global WWE fans who probably won’t be able to get into SaudiMania for fear of getting beheaded or just plain not being able to afford the royal cost of tickets.  Emotions are already high and resentful towards the E for running in Saudi, and if there ever was a moment in time to try and flip any fans, this would absolutely be it.

Over the last year, WWE hasn’t been shy about running counter to AEW, even though they claim that they don’t view them as competition.  And maybe it’s because they are still kind of the little brother in the real/unreal rivalry between them, AEW has for the most part avoided running shows on dates that the WWE had “claimed.”

But I’m just saying, I feel like if there was ever a chance for AEW to take the offensive and have it do some noticeable impact, running a mega show right on top of SaudiMania’s dates, could possibly be effective.  A combination of fan resentment and the likely time difference could lead to it running almost entirely unopposed, and if they deliver, could have some massive effectiveness at closing the gap with their competition.

I’m not saying such would make me a massive AEW fan for life, but I think I’m in a position where I’d prefer to see the E take a ding for their poor decision making, and if it means supporting their competition, so be it.  I don’t hate AEW by any stretch of the imagination, I just find their brand of product to be puzzling at times, but it does not meant that I wouldn’t want to see them succeed as well.  AEW being prosperous is good for the industry as a whole, certainly more than an arrangement with fucking Saudi Arabia.