The Unknown Poster

Hells yeah

I saw that. Hilarious.

They must really be getting worried now Interesting article http://www.cnn.com/2018/01/03/politics/manafort-lawsuit-robert-mueller-authority/index.html Well, if the crimes never happened, they have nothing to worry about. Funny they are indicted but are challenging the Special Counsel's authority to lay the charges. As I recall, the Counsel has broad powers to investigate the core issue or any crimes he comes across while investigating that. Recall, thats how Clinton was Impeached (and I dont recall Republican's getting too hot and bothered about it). They're boned. All of them. Mueller seems to be doing a pretty damned detailed investigation. Keep in mind, Mueller is a Republican, appointed by Republicans. This isnt a witch hunt. Its a patriot doing his job.

On the subject of ratings, WWE was down 5.1% from 2016. They solidified to a degree with 4 straight months of gains but ended the year with two straight declines. 2016 had a far larger decline over 2015. So they've stopped the bleeding. 2.5 million people watched RAW on Christmas so that tells you the "core audience", about the lowest they can possibly go before they begin turning off the fans that will watch anything. So we can see that they have managed to whittle away their audience over the past few years down to the core plus maybe half a million or so. And that is definitely concerning. WWE will say its simply the over-all trend in cable TV and thats some of it. But its simply not true. Because numbers go up and down based on creative. Its the same thing when they bought WCW and suddenly millions of Nitro watchers stopped watching wrestling instead of watching RAW. Those fans left, never to return. But...WWE is record profitable and will be for many years to come. They dont see ratings (or attendance) in the micro sense now. In years past, a bad rating would get people fired, pushes ended etc. Now, they see it evens out over time and nothing really matters. Going from PPV to the Network contributes to this as well because they dont have to "sell" viewers on buying a PPV. They simply deliver a show to the same fans month in and month out. There are pics of some TV's recently that were always bullet proof that show half empty hard-cam side of the arena. WWE's fanbase is being chipped away. But as long as TV Rights Fees continue to rise and the Network stays steady with slow growth, WWE makes a ton of money and wont care. There will be a magic number that Vince would go nuts over...and USA will too, but what it is, who known. Sub-2 million maybe? WWE programming is over-valued but because its highly rated for cable and relatively consistent, they generate higher rights fees than they otherwise would. They are seen as DVR proof (like live sports) though thats not really true. But most of the time WWE wants to be thought of as entertainment. When its time to negotiate TV deals, they are a sport. Likely nothing changes under Vince fully transitions out. Hunter will make changes. Until then, this is WWE status quo.

Speaking of Vegas

Much better players available yes. And a system that favoured them because in the cap era, Vegas was willing to take some good players that were high cap hits. But good for their management. Getting Fleury was great and then being gifted Subban didnt hurt either. Its good for the league. And if Winnipeg played Vegas in the playoffs, you can bet there will be some Jets fans trying to get a package down for the two (or so) games.

Uh oh FOX might not like trumps attack

Very excited for this. I loved both seasons, even though many did not like Season 2. It had a great cast though. Sounds like they are going back to their roots with Season 3.

wow. Unbelievable.

Dont forget, tonights the night. Biggest match of the year anywhere. Alpha vs Omega - Jericho vs Kenny. Available live on New Japan World for 999 Yen (about $12 Canadian). Starts at 2am. English commentary by Kevin Kelly and Winnipeg's own Don Callis. Card: New Japan Rumble (Like the Royale Rumble, sometimes has a surprise, like Haku worked a couple years ago as his kids work there). Roppongi 3K (Sho and Yoh) (c) vs. The Young Bucks (Matt Jackson and Nick Jackson) - IWGP Junior Tag Team Championship Bullet Club (Bad Luck Fale, Tama Tonga and Tanga Loa) (c) vs. Chaos (Beretta, Tomohiro Ishii and Toru Yano) vs. Michael Elgin and War Machine (Hanson and Raymond Rowe) vs. Suzuki-gun (Taichi, Takashi Iizuka and Zack Sabre Jr.) vs. Taguchi Japan (Juice Robinson, Ryusuke Taguchi and Togi Makabe) - Six Man Tag Team Championship Cody (with Brandi Rhodes) vs. Kota Ibushi NOTE: This should be excellent. Ibushi is one of the best in the world. Killer Elite Squad (Davey Boy Smith Jr. and Lance Archer) (c) vs. Los Ingobernables de Japon (Evil and Sanada) - IWGP Tag Team Championship Minoru Suzuki (c) vs. Hirooki Goto - Hair Match - OPENWEIGHT Championship Marty Scurll (c) vs. Hiromu Takahashi vs. Kushida vs. Will Ospreay - IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship NOTE: Scurll and Ospreay are hugely rising stars. And Takahasho and Kushida are good. Should be outstanding. Hiroshi Tanahashi (c) vs. Jay White - IWGP Intercontinental Championship Kenny Omega(c) vs Chris Jericho - IWGP United States Championship - No DQ Kazuchika Okada (c) vs. Tetsuya Naito IWGP World Heavyweight Championship I think Bucks win. Ibushi wins. Hmmm...Ill say Los Ingobernables win (side note, Davey Boy Jr works in Winnipeg from time to time, just worked our local Champion Jackie Lee a couple weeks ago actually). Ospreay wins. Tanahashi wins (Im a big Tanahashi fan). I expect Naito to win. Im torn on Kenny vs Jericho. If its one and done, Kenny has to win. If its a series (which I dont believe it is), Jericho should win here. But certainly makes sense for Kenny to win. By the way, I just received an email from Kenny. He's very excited about tonight and says Chris is really pumped to "turn it up bigtime". I think the feeling is that Kenny will work down to Jericho and it will be more of a smoke and mirrors brawl as opposed to the usual super fast athletic Omega match. But Kenny says he's looking to "surprise" people. Should be dynamite!

Interesting insight because there is a belief that many "inside" know its only a matter of time. It doesnt get much more inside than Bannon https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jan/03/donald-trump-russia-steve-bannon-michael-wolff?CMP=share_btn_tw

Im not sure Asuka and Nak being charismatic and working a "strong style" would be considered stereotypical. Nak is definitely watered down from his New Japan work to a degree. Asuka is great. They could have a roster full of Bobby Roode's but who wants that?

Great break down of Jericho vs Omega by ESPN:

Ladies and gentleman, the President of the United States what's crawled up his ass this week? Maybe he’s heard about some impending indictments

Ratings are not irrelevant. But WWE is what makes USA number one and they won’t want to lose that. 2017 ratings were down from 2016 but not historically so as it was in 2016. And they dropped less than the overall drop across the board for cable it would be fair to say wwe stabilized their ratings in 2017. And I don’t think they would drop much further anyway unless the bottom fell out. There is a minimum number of core fans that will watch no matter how bad it is. Record profits on the back of increasing tv rights fees. Which is good. Business is business but that’s more a result of tv rights fee trends than as a result of the quality of WWE programming. They are sill down in key metrics. but the most key metric is money and they are up. They have to be really careful with soft ratings and soft house attendance though. It can be an indicator of a future downturn. Presuming they get another increase in rights fees next year wirh built in yearly escalators, they will be record profitable for the foreseeable future. In a way that’s bad for creative because they don’t care about week to week trends. And it allows rhem to spend five years on the failed Roman experiment

Hitler might summarize this argument he best

I think they thought the Jordan angle of being Kurt’s son was going to work. But I truly believe they are now booking it the way we see it. It’s a story. Jordan doesn’t move ratings up or down. It’s just a story.

Hint: They know this, and its on purpose.

I think so. Maybe not to the same level but her removal from the public eye has been more her doing than offers drying up. She's still a huge name. I agree. Jordan has all the physical tools. And he shows some decent charisma delivering some poorly scripted promos. Its no surprise the fans treat him like a heel or that his character acts like he's a hero. Ambrose is out for awhile so it made the perfect opportunity to slide Jordan in there and have him act like he's a real member of Shield when, to Rollins and Roman, he's just a placeholder. If they play it right, it could be a great heel turn, one where the heel is justified in everything he does and says as to why he turned, but hated nontheless. It reminds me of Rocky when he claimed he never turned on the fans, they turned on him.

That happens here to avoid providing benefits, I know that. Im not sure Im against a "student" minimum wage where you'd make less than an adult. I guess if employers abuse it. Then again, if you're doing the same job, you should get the same pay. I guess the argument would be that a business might be more likely to hire X number of students for more menial work and to "contribute to the community" if it doesnt cost them as much. Maybe a better option would be a payroll tax credit for hiring students/young people.

Last year at the deadline Bishop was traded along with a 5th round pick for Budaj, Cernak, 7th round pick and a conditional pick. Darling got a 3rd round pick at the end of the season. Hutch isnt getting a first rounder.

As an aside, just read a story where Christian Bale reveals he was in talks for a role in Solo but it didnt work out. He says he hopes he can appear in a future Star Wars film.

If we agree that points within the division are most valuable, it stands to reason you play your starter against those teams. Helle it is.