Author: Padraig Fahy

  • Vince McMahon retiring from WWE begins a new era of Professional Wrestling

    Vince McMahon retiring from WWE begins a new era of Professional Wrestling

    Last Friday evening, Chairman and CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) announced that he is to retire.

    At first, you would think that his Twitter account was compromised, as he had only reassured talent (WWE Superstars) a mere month ago at the Money in the Bank PPV that he wasn’t going anywhere.

    A follow-up announcement was published on WWE Corporate website detailing more about this. https://corporate.wwe.com/news/company-news/2022/07-22-2022a

    Vince McMahon & Shinsuke Nakamura

    This includes that he is to retire but still be a shareholder (He is the majority shareholder of the company) and his replacements is his daughter, Stephanie McMahon and Nick Khan as “Co-CEO’s”.

    Earlier on Friday, it was announced that Paul “Triple H” Levesque had resumed his position as Executive Vice President of Talent Relations, a position that he held from the beginning of NXT (The wrestling promotion, not the gameshow) in 2013 until 2020 when he stepped back due to health concerns.

    Vince’s retirement comes soon after the Wall Street Journal published 2 articles about incidents of sexual misconduct, going back to at least, the mid-2000s with ‘hush’ payments of at least $12 million being made to various people, in and out of the ring.

    The first report from the Wall Street Journal, detailed about how a paralegal was hired by WWE who was paid $3 million dollar in a ‘hush’ payment from Vince, but while employed, her wages were increased from $100,000 to $200,000 during this relationship.

    To date, several law firms have begun investigating these claims of sexual misconducts. As of writing, there hasn’t been any update to any of these investigations.

    With Vince leaving the most prominent position in WWE since he bought then-named WWWF from his father back in 1982, Vince leaves behind a legacy that seen him sent Professional Wrestling into mainstream entertainment domination.

    Without Vince, we would never have had Wrestlemania, the infamous Attitude Era, John Cena, The Rock, Batista, The Undertaker, Eddie Guerrero, Roman Reigns, Sasha Banks, plus thousands of other professional wrestlers, managers, commentators, backstage interviewers.

    We wouldn’t have had the Monday Night Wars between WWF and WCW back in the 90’s. We wouldn’t have had NXT. We wouldn’t have had competition in the form of TNA (Now, IMPACT Wrestling), Combat Zone Wrestling, Game Changer Wrestling, Ring of Honor, All Elite Wrestling and multiple various different promotions that has come and gone. Indie promotions that has produced home-grown talent who have gone onto WWE to become massive households names.

    Without Vince, professional wrestling would still more than likely be a circus attraction.

    Now with Vince leaving the company, we are entering a new era of Professional Wrestling.

    Fans are itching to see how well Stephenie and Nick can produce new and exiting superstars. The thoughts of the proverbial ‘Forbidden Door’ being swung open, just like how AEW has already opened its door with New Japan Pro Wrestling (NJPW) with their AEW x NJPW: Forbidden Door PPV back in June.

    Some talent that are in other promotions (mainly AEW) would see this as a great opportunity to go back to a place that they worked for previously. Perhaps they were frustrated by Vince personally or the way that WWE was being run. The likes of CM Punk comes to mind. Tag teams like FTR could see themselves back in the company to be on the world stage once more.

    That may not happen today, nor tomorrow thought as they are not expected to make big changes just yet.

    Over the next 3 – 5 years, we will see a change in Professional Wrestling. New management, new talent, new opportunities. Younger minds making these sweeping changes that would reintroduce healthy competition between all promotions to make professional wrestling bigger and better.

    In some cases, WWE as a company was/is being held back by Vince but maybe that changes. Or has the ‘powerfulness’ of Vince over the years, become second nature for the likes of Stephanie, Nick and the rest of WWE management.

    I am personally excited for a new change. Not just lipstick on a turd and blaming Baron Corbin for poor ratings.

    Mayhaps we get this scene again… This team that they only mean it.

  • [The JukeBox] #78 – Coco Star – Toca Miracle

    [The JukeBox] #78 – Coco Star – Toca Miracle

    I could have sworn that I have already covered Fragma’s – Toca’s Miracle from 2001 but it looks like I didn’t.

    While searching, I noticed that there has been a re-release of the song at the start of July 2022 by Coco Star who created the lyrics back in 1996 for ‘I need a miracle’.

    The song was released as a track on Fragma’s album Toca in 2001 with the instrumental Toca Me also included on the album.,

    The song was released on the Spinnin’ Records label.

    Lyrics:

    If you’re gonna save the day
    And you’re hearin’ what I say
    I feel your touch
    Your kiss, it’s not enough
    And if you believe in me
    Don’t think my love’s not for real
    I won’t take nothin’ less then a deeper love

    Let me tell you, you know
    Aah, I need a miracle
    I need a miracle
    It’s more than physical
    What I need to feel from you
    Let me tell you, you know
    Aah, I need a miracle
    I need a miracle
    It’s more than physical
    What I need to get me through

    Tell me that you understand
    And you’ll take me as I am
    You’ll always be the one to give me everything
    Just when I thought no one cared
    You’re the answer to my prayer
    You lift my spirits high
    Come on and rescue me

    Let me tell you, you know
    Aah, I need a miracle
    I need a miracle
    It’s more than physical
    What I need to feel from you
    Let me tell you, you know
    Aah, I need a miracle
    I need a miracle
    It’s more than physical
    What I need to get me through

    Let me tell you, you know
    Aah, I need a miracle
    I need a miracle
    It’s more than physical
    What I need to feel from you
    Let me tell you, you know
    Aah, I need a miracle
    I need a miracle
    It’s more than physical
    What I need to get me through

  • Follow-up – Choosing my next music streaming service

    Follow-up – Choosing my next music streaming service

    Back in January, I looked at each of Spotify’s competitors to see what could potentially become the next streaming service that I was going to subscribe to.

    For a couple of months, I had been using Deezer almost exclusively but now I seem to be back on Spotify with absolutely no reason for me to use it over the other.

    The track selection has been good, the UI is neat but how and never, I always feel drawn back to Spotify. The high fidelity audio option is a really nice touch and worth it on it’s own.

    Discoverability is somewhat lacking. Deezer seems to have a look at it’s close circle of artists that you listen to and gives a small list of artists outside before roping you back to square one.

    Most of the artists that I would be listening to are from Japan and they would be putting their music on Spotify over Deezer and any promotions either point them to Spotify, YouTube or LINE (LINE is only available within Japan)

    I seem to be at a crossroads when it comes to finding city pop / future funk music. So my attention turned to Bandcamp and this opened a massive can of worms.

    Bandcamp doesn’t have an official desktop client. There is a 3rd party one that is literally just the website in PWA with keyboard shortcuts. The music discoverability appears to be better on the one hand and the fact that I can subscribe to a LABEL rather than just the artist is very nice.

    Bandcamp’s search is good too as it’s able to show new music in a particular genre or by a label.

    I wasn’t sure if this was the best way to ‘support’ or ‘listen’ to an artist or whether something like Spotify/SoundCloud/YouTube was the way to go:

    One thing I do like about Bandcamp is the ability to support artists by buying their album or a set price or you can contribute more.

    Some artists/labels have the ability to purchase full discographies which you can download and listen to offline is a really nice touch.

    (Source: https://music.businesscasual.biz/ – I have already purchased this for $5 but it’s nice that their entire collection can be bought for just $1! )

    Overall, I have decided to go back to Spotify for most of my listening but from time-to-time, Bandcamp.

    I expect big things to come from Bandcamp in the future as the platform was acquired back in March by Epic Games.

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