Originally Posted by Tom Guycott
When "budget concerns" is a phrase used, the implication is that you're overspending. Again, you either shouldn't have thrown that money around to begin with, or you're using that as an excuse... and the money you "save" looks like extra in the coffers.
If the talent isn't that valuable to you, then don't throw that value out there. This isn't limited to this particular crop of cuts, or even this field.
You act as if folks are saying they should be spending every dime they're making. Not the point at all. However, using that $200 million example, if you're spending $50 million, you're still up $150 million. There isn't really a dire need to save that chunk of cash just to make it look better on paper. If you have it to spend, and contracted people on the promise of it, then you go "Whoops, I don't actually have the money to give you, bye!" then turn around and brag about making $200 million. That sounds like a crock of shit to the folks you just kicked to the curb. Especially to ones that don't even get the chance to see any supposed return on investment because you changed your mind on investing in them.
Instead, it sounds more like an empty excuse. Much like when people used the phrase "in this economy..." around the 2008 housing bubble burst, even when the job wasn't even tangentially connected to the mortgage crisis at all. "Budgetary concerns" is almost a corporate way of saying "I could pay you, but I don't feel like it because profit margins" in fewer words and trying to dress it up like it can't be helped even if it can.
One thing their change in hiring philosophy will hopefully eliminate is their need to warehouse people and waste their time and careers just so someone else can't have them that they've been doing for about two decades or so now. Small solace, but still a minuscule plus.
Asking "who that perfect wrester" is basically just rode past the entire point of it being a hypothetical, can't-miss person that WWE would find a way to completely fuck up. It wasn't anyone in particular: they prob'ly don't exist. And if they did, I say again, WWE would likely fuck them up.
A thing I've said for years is that they are so intent on trying to find the next Hulk Hogan, that they'll overlook the next Rick Rudes, or Roddy Pipers, or a litany of other past top stars in their blind pursuit to not only find that cash cow figurehead, but somehow copy and paste them. That's not how any of that works, but it feels like nobody can tell Vince and company that.
I've also said that my decline in interest in WWE television started in the throes of the Smackdown Six era brand split. Smackdown had overtaken RAW in interest, ratings, match quality, and goddamn storytelling. It was done over time, and with talent that was supposedly for the most part subpar to who was on "the flagship". Heyman took that supposed chicken shit and made state fair quality chicken salad. And instead of having RAW do that same shit with the supposedly superior crop of talent, they instead just started poaching the people who were now over and have them appear on Monday nights and still put the same crummy effort into getting any of the stars they supposedly already had over. Nowadays, it's like they're mostly treating everyone like they're RAW talent from that era, and most of the NXT call-ups have been actively fucked with in one way or another at the transition if they even get called at all.
And being "the shits in the ring" is relative. Yes, I'm glad they got rid of the potentially lethal cancer that was Eva Marie again, but they still have Baron Corbin. Some of them were too new. Some of them never got an opportunity to be anything other than background bland. And the people who can and do stand out get meddled with. Again, something that happens most release cycles.
I'm actually not as excited about Steiner as I should be, because I'm just waiting for the punchline- that moment where they have someone that has future star written all over him, but somehow drop the boat and have him gone in the next eight months.
Overall, this isn't an indictment of the here and now. It's and ongoing gripe with WWE in general that has been happening for ages.
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