Originally Posted by Psycho666Soldier
Well, this has been an incredible journey. Both Rusty and Nash have had a standout year, Rusty with a star-making debut and Nash properly breaking out and making his way to the final. Both have scratched and clawed to destroy their opposition, only growing stronger with each passing bout. But only one can say they've scratched and clawed their way to victory, and that's what we're here to decide.
While I think Rusty actually called out Nash for his first post not directly relating to the debate topic, I think Nash Diesel brought it all together with his second post. I think a likely underrated counter here was Nash bringing up that the ratings don't really matter when you look at the bottom line of their revenue. Going from $478 mil to 960 is a pretty significant increase. And ignoring my personal feelings on the matter, I think comparing situations like Wyatt/Cena to Bret/Austin was a stroke of genius. I also think he made a clutch argument about NXT keeping the core audience while the part-timers keep the casuals. Were it not for NXT, a lot of the core audience would have likely dropped off a while ago. He even tied it in as a place that keeps workers happy and have people wanted to sign up just to be in NXT. I also liked him highlighting the examples of WWE using part-timers right with Shield/Evolution, Bryan's WM 30 Moment, and most importantly Drew vs. Brock which is happening right now.
Rusty really set the tone of this debate, though. By making his choice, he forced Nash into arguing the merit of part-timers, which I think took a bit away from his ability to prop up NXT. Rusty made it obvious that the reliance on part-timers has been a defining aspect of the recent decade, with WrestleMania being dominated by stars that aren't there day in and day out. Leaving this open to being both a positive and negative impact allowed him to explore more avenues, such as it creating the Daniel Bryan moment as well as being one of the main points of frustration that has led to the creation of AEW. He was very sharp in taking apart Nash's choice and his arguments for it. He was convincing in that NXT hadn't actually done anything to move a needle for WWE. This is made stronger by the fact that the only other numbers Nash could bring up were buyrates for PPVs headlined by part-timers. He even turned it around to paint the idea that NXT could be an even greater treat that's a part of a more entertaining WWE as a whole. The vivid picturing of What If's in his second post helped. That said, I do think Nash was great in countering that it's mostly fantasy-booking, and that in the case of someone like Ambrose, that part-time syndrome wasn't really his source of frustration.
I think the crutch of where Nash's argument fell apart was in his counter to the part-timers' argument. I think it's natural to talk about how the part-timers helped elevate current stars, but despite comparing it to the likes of the old WCW midcarders, I don't think he ever gave strong evidence of that successfully working other than Shield/Evolution. His point on Owens was a double-edged sword based on his earlier comment that Owens got bad ratings as champ, and the Bryan moment was, unfortunately, a result of how they treated Punk and what the original plans for Batista were. This, combined with the fact that he kept pointing out the part-time appearances popping numbers, uiltimately led to him helping argue Rusty's point. Yes, he was countering by saying the part-timers' have done good things for WWE, which plays into Rusty's point that positive or negative, the reliance on part-timers has had the most impact on the last decade.
I do think Nash was close to having something by attacking the WWE booking as opposed to the part-timers, and if the debate topic was something a bit different, this could have been the bit that undid Rusty's argument. But again, Rusty had opened up the idea that his choice had the most impact regardless of whether it was positive or negative impact. Remember when I said Rusty forced Nash to argue the merit of part-timers? Whether intentional or not, this was a move that made Nash argue the other side of Rusty's argument that he had left mostly open. The fact that Rusty had a tight, concise final post that outlined all his points and hammered them home in a way that turned Nash's argument against him was basically just the one thing that made it so Nash couldn't really come back without completely flipping how he framed the argument.
Nash made Rusty have to work for it, and he really did put in a strong effort here to cap off his best Wilfred's Debate run of his career. But the emerging newcomer was fierce and focused, and ultimately, Rusty Shackleford takes this victory with gusto.
Congratulations to both of you on your achievements!