<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">The mood at the PC today ahead of tonight’s NXT show…. hooooooo boy. Tensions running high to say the least.</p>&mdash; WrestleVotes (@WrestleVotes) <a href="https://twitter.com/WrestleVotes/status/1425147733694984196?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 10, 2021</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Only going to get much worse based on the recent rumors of another big wave of cuts arriving soon.

Vince's recent visit to the Performance Center with a bunch of high level WWE officials really does feel like it was a Trojan Horse moment for NXT and the scouting wasn't for main roster call-ups but instead to personally see who should get cut and who gets to stay for the time being.

Gargano and Ciampa are gone aren’t they

I saw on twitter people were saying there were more 'comedy' segments on NXT tonight and that they brought up Ilja Dragonuv who is facing Walter for the NXT UK Title but had him lose clean in his regular NXT debut.

Indi Hartwell and Dexter Lumis storyline seems like the most interesting thing in NXT by far (other than Cameron Grimes maybe) even though lots of people seem to hate it

They did a main roster style booked finish but worse since the shenanigans with WALTER didn't really play a decisive role in the actual finish.

WALTER came out for the heel music distraction but instead of ending the match right there with Dunne getting a cheap sneaky win, they had them wrestle a bit longer making you think Ilja was going to over come the odds. Instead Dunne just hits him with his finisher clean moments later for the win anyways. Then they did main roster style 50-50 booking with having Ilja beat up WALTER so he could stand tall to end the show.

This stuff is great. Apparently Austin Theory ran away and is living somewhere "Half Naked in the Wilderness" :rofl:

I am too, but from the rumormill, he doesn't really give a shit. He's happy to be there and makes enough money to literally fuck off to go surfing when he's not throwing himself at the ground for a living It's nice that he's happy, but THE WORLD could have gotten more in a legit international star. I was super amazed at how crowds took to him to the point where he was not only not getting "WHAT?" chants when he would speak, the crowd would shut the fuck up in a similar way to when Mark Henry used to do his babyface crowd volume thing until he was done talking, then pop for pretty much anything he said.

(note: this was born partially out of where I was going to go eariler, but as I stated, I can't exactly follow the same stream of conciousness ) Circling back to a thing I know I've mentioned before: I kinda feel bad for, of all people, Triple H. I legit think his plan was to actually *address* most of WWE's problems with lack of star power with call ups and pushes up the entire card while he was fucking around with XFL 2.0. By the time he would've looked, he might not have liked the roster at first glance, but with all the fresh faces and moving merch, he'd have been a fool to just change gears with what was supposed to be working.

Then, Vince panic scrapped that when the pandemic shutdowns hit full swing, and all his attention was back on his baby. And that led to a faster transition of NXT becoming more like the main roster instead of the main roster being like the hot NXT of old. All the far reaching plans like UE or Walter fell away (unaided by shitheads like Patrick Clark), and now the product goes right back into the cesspool of what has always been plaguing it.

I would honestly like to see some the cut talent filter to NWA. Make that shit a viable location that people would seek out instead of perpetually getting their thunder stolen by AEW.

Same. Thus far everyone has gone to work for AEW or Impact but there is also ROH which I think is a better financial option than NWA, but seem to be hiring new talent even less. I hope both ROH and NWA get some new talent coming in. I don't think NWA is destined for success at this point but we shall see. I guess you can put MLW on that list too even though I think that they are a big disappointment.

This is a result of all the talent hoarding that went on a few years ago. I have no doubt that the released wrestlers fill find work and use it as an opportunity to rebuild themselves. Even those who weren't fortunate enough to get the WWE rub via active participation.

I'd like to see more of the talent leave and go to to NWA or MLW as well but I fear it isn't going to be the trend. There are 2 billionaires in town now. There's also still NJPW as a premier destination. Between those 3 I feel like the smaller companies will be left begging for scraps.

I'm amazed NWA and MLW are still operational. Same for ROH. Have no clue how any of the three have enough funds to stay in biz.

Impact I'm not surprised by because all of wrestling could collapse in North America and Impact would still find a way to survive, it's like the cockroach of the rasslin world.

ROH pretty much has a steady stream of funds flowing into the company since Sinclair sees them as being cheap weekly content for their television networks. Even when they took a break because of the pandemic, they kept getting money from Sinclair so they could continue paying their talent and staff without having to lay off anyone.

MLW managed to get financial stronger during the pandemic because they kept signing as many deals as possible to the point they can now drop older deals for better paying ones.

No clue on NWA since they've pretty much been hanging on a thread during this pandemic based on the stories about them. If it wasn't for their recent deal with FITE, they probably still would be shut down because of the pandemic.

Reading up on Court Bauer. Doesn't paint a good picture.

Went and fixed that for you. Granted, you were specifically talking about trying to keep people under contract to prevent them filtering to AEW, but WWE had been signing people to developmental contracts willy nilly for nearly two decades now if they had any kind of buzz around them whatsoever. The numbers have increased over time, and that's just since they started the developmental system. Remember: near the tail end of WCW, (before the buyout and failed invasion angle) when they started circling the drain, WWE was signing guys from there because seemingly because they could to rub it in. There was no fucking way they were going to seriously push Haku- but they deprived the other guys of Meng, and that was good enough to take a victory lap with.

Even like to see the deal with NJPW's attempted US expansion start to sprout some wings with the sheer amount of talent dumped onto the open market.

It's likely not going to work out that way, but this could really bite WWE in the ass if things shake out the "right" way. And for what? To blow everything up and pretty much start over because they forgot how this works? There's only so much that can happen and they can still coast by on their brand recognition.