i know you might’ve talked about it before, but i would loooove to know more about your bte to wwe bloodline butterfly effect theory. i’m already inclined to agree, but i wanna know more about why.
hello! i appreciate your curiosity in my mildly inflammatory opinion (shskskgjdj it’s possible it isn’t, but i expect people to get mad at everything i say)
first off i would like to say that it’s been many years since i even thought about the bloodline bc i don’t watch wwe anymore. i also struggle with terrible brain fog with anything non-hangman related so i may not be very clear in what i say but i will try my best to remember.
so bte started in like. what? 2015? something like that? and it really started becoming popular even outside the indie circles in like 2017 and 2018, gaining popularity with ROH fans and NJPW fans because of the elite working in both. the strange toxic friendships and drama that like, became this very constant weekly addition to the wrestling happening in the promotions really added to what was going on, ya know? and the bloodline didn’t really become a thing till either late 2018 or early 2019, i think, but really i think it was more 2019 going into 2020 -> aka, when AEW started. i firmly believe that wwe has always pettily tried to counter program aew (moving nxt to wednesdays in mid 2019, moving PPVs up/down the calendar to push them closer to an AEW event, adding wwe events in the same markets, adding PPVs on certain weekends, etc etc). but something that i think worked the best was when someone (vince, hunter, who knows) recognised that intrafactional drama was very popular with the rise of BTE, something that, hell, even showed up on their doorstep once at a monday night raw and drew many fans to participate. i think that despite pretending like BTE and AEW were nothing special, they knew that it was and how much momentum each had, so they tried their own version of the Elite with the Bloodline.
you can even look at hangman and sami as two sides of the same coin. their relationships with the faction propel a lot of the best parts of what was going on at the time in each promotion, and they have similar personalities and go through similar struggles.
i don’t know if any of this is making sense, but i hope it does.
i am also remembering a moment on BTE with takeshita where matt and nick were explaining the whole drama they had with kenny and hangman and the elite as a whole, and takeshita was like “yeah……..bloodline much better”
And then they go to tell Kenny that Takeshita didn’t think their story was very good, and Kenny immediately clocks that Takeshita brought up the Bloodline.
(Disclaimer: At some point I did go back and realize that he didn’t say “knockoff” he said “copy” — but the Elite happened before the Bloodline, which reinforces that in reality, it’s the opposite. The Bloodline is a copy of the Elite, only it follows the dynamics of a “blood” family rather than a chosen one.)
Again, this is just my perspective and it’s totally fine if people disagree – but if anyone besides the person who asked me to elaborate wants to argue (rather than discuss politely), I probably won’t be answering.
