The Wrestling Thread

Post by **Reprise** » Tue May 07, 2024 6:35 pm

Oh I see the 'he's announcing a new GM' speculation is happening. Could be that then.

As we discussed last week, could be a bad idea, but hard to know how well it might work or fail.

Post by **Reprise** » Tue May 07, 2024 6:47 pm

Raging Justice wrote: ↑Tue May 07, 2024 3:02 pm I love when people remind everyone of what a hypocrite CM Punk is:

https://www.reddit.com/r/SquaredCircle/ ... criticism/

Wow.

Punk is a fake. All he does is plays to his audience.

If you watched his interview with Ariel thingy (I always forget that dude's surname), he was quite smart. He wasn't outlandish, he wasn't hyper emotional or aggressive. He was very calm.

But he made sure to downplay his issues (of course he is the "victim") and include and regurgitate literally EVERY anti-AEW trope you can imagine, as if he had literally swiped them straight off of Reddit or Twitter.

"They care more about some goof giving them 5 stars, than selling tickets and growing their audience"
"It's not a real business"
"Tony is a nice guy, but he's not a boss"
And so on and so on...

Now everyone buys his nice guy, super professional act in WWE, when he knows it's his one final shot to not end his career as a failure and that he has no choice to make it work.

Post by **Raging Justice** » Tue May 07, 2024 9:19 pm

This is very cool, and timely with Ospreay being in AEW full time now

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDHX6VVHz7U

Also, here are some clips from some cool stuff in NXT i.e. the only WWE product I don't completely hate right now

https://www.reddit.com/r/SquaredCircle/ ... ighlights/
https://www.reddit.com/r/SquaredCircle/ ... or_karmen/

Post by **Raging Justice** » Wed May 08, 2024 6:49 am

Has it happened? Is it time? Or we FINALLY moving past the revisionist history regarding John Cena and actually getting back to the FACTS regarding his career? Are we past this, "Greatest of all time!" gaslighting bullshit? I saw a little excerpt from an article by Zack Heydorn. I can't read the FULL article because that requires paying them money, but anyway here's the part that I WAS able to read and it just confirms the things that I have said about Cena many times and also confirms that WWE hasn't had an effective top babyface since all the way back to Stone Cold and The Rock:

"You guys remember Super Cena, right? You know, the “babyface” act in 2010-ish WWE where John Cena simply couldn’t lose? Pay attention to those quotes around babyface. They matter.

Super Cena
John Cena technically was a babyface in that era of his career, but you wouldn’t have known it if you were a casual viewer of WWE programming. Cena was cheered by adoring young children and women, but a large majority of the male audience saw through the Cena antics and mercilessly booed the guy into oblivion.

The antics? Think Superman. Nothing could beat John Cena during that era of his career. One opponent, two, hell, he even took on the ENTIRE RAW LOCKER ROOM with Randy Orton as a partner and was victorious. Cena eroded the credibility of a hot Nexus faction during this time, won lots of championships, and leapt tall buildings in a single bound. Cena didn’t have a kryptonite and fans began resenting him for it. After all, part of being an effective babyface in wrestling is having something that audiences can relate to. Who can relate to winning all the time?

Super Cena was an enormous star for WWE and the 50/50 reactions for him will live in infamy inside WWE lore, but certainly isn’t something you wan replicated for future top tier babyfaces.

Super Cody?
Fast forward to the Backlash 2024 PLE from over the weekend. There was Cody Rhodes. He’s in the main event of the show, defending the WWE Undisputed Championship that he won in the main event of WrestleMania, and has the entire audience firmly on his side. Perfect. Well, almost..."

The rest of the article you can read as a paid subscriber, but you can already see some concerns regarding Cody Rhodes as the top guy, which isn't surprising. WWE doesn't know how to create great, face of the promotion, babyfaces anymore, and when they actually manage to stumble into it (Sami Zayne, LA Knight), they just fuck it up. This is what led to the 2014 Yes Movement when the fans finally said, "Fuck it! We'll do it ourselves. We choose Daniel Bryan and we DEMAND that you make him the top guy!".

I'll never forget Cena's reign of terror, the amount of WWE fans (mostly male adults) that he drove away and the TONS of careers that he absolutely BURIED. This led to memes like this:

Nothing could stop John Cena. He made every heel look like a joke. The thing is, Cena at least had something resembling charisma, which Cody doesn't. Cena could occasionally drop a great promo, unlike Cody. Hell, CM Punk could DESTROY Cody on the mic. Now if they start doing Super Cody booking on top of all of these other issues, Cody's gonna have problems

Post by **Reprise** » Wed May 08, 2024 7:03 am

Watching Cena getting beaten by Lesnar with ease at Summerslam 2014 was fun at least (holy shit, how was that TEN years ago?).

Wrestling fans are notoriously fickle and always engage in revisionist history. I saw Cody saying how Cena managed to ride out that stuff and prove that he is the best and prove that he was right to never turn heel. You can imagine why he's saying all that...

This particular fanbase right now seems incredibly docile and compliant with whatever direction WWE takes though. Even with the whole we want Cody backlash, which might suggest otherwise, did seem to be carefully manipulated and manufactured by WWE.

Post by **Reprise** » Wed May 08, 2024 1:57 pm

Fightful just reported that the plan is to have Stardom be part of Forbidden Door this year.

Post by **Raging Justice** » Wed May 08, 2024 5:39 pm

Reprise wrote: ↑Wed May 08, 2024 7:03 am Watching Cena getting beaten by Lesnar with ease at Summerslam 2014 was fun at least (holy shit, how was that TEN years ago?).

Wrestling fans are notoriously fickle and always engage in revisionist history. I saw Cody saying how Cena managed to ride out that stuff and prove that he is the best and prove that he was right to never turn heel. You can imagine why he's saying all that...

This particular fanbase right now seems incredibly docile and compliant with whatever direction WWE takes though. Even with the whole we want Cody backlash, which might suggest otherwise, did seem to be carefully manipulated and manufactured by WWE.

The other problem is that The Rock and Steve Austin were perceived as "cool" back then. John Cena often came across as corny and silly, a problem that Cody also has to a degree when he does lame stuff like "What do you wanna talk about?" or stupid shit like "I ended racism". Speaking of which:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8E7r7ulaTTI

^Cody better hope this thing doesn't start catching on and going viral. Anyway...

Cena being so corny could maybe have just been a symptom of the product becoming too obsessed with appealing to children (and their moms as a side effect of that). In a shocking, "why the hell would you say that?", moment, Cena literally said in one of his promos that most WWE fans are children. My jaw hit the floor when he said that. Some people liked his thuganomics character and thought that was cool, but when WWE started pushing him as the top guy they moved away from that and tried to turn him into the WWE version of Captain America. They pushed this cheesy, patriotic, soldier character (with a guy who never even served).

Cena also did some awful things for a babyface, like stuff that a decent human being wouldn't do. I remember Rey Mysterio winning a world title. Cena challenged him for it like the next day, and beat him for it. Proving that it wasn't just heels that Cena was in the business of burying, but babyfaces too. Cena was an equal opportunity burier.

Reprise wrote: ↑Wed May 08, 2024 1:57 pm Fightful just reported that the plan is to have Stardom be part of Forbidden Door this year.

If they have all of the Stardom titles defended on Forbidden Door along with Mayu Iwatani and Stephanie Vaquer defending their NJPW titles, we are going to have one badass pay per view. Keep in mind Moxley will likely defend his NJPW title on the show, Okada will likely be involved in something cool possibly tied to his history with NJPW, and Mina Shirakawa (if rumors turn out to be true) will be defending her AEW Women's title against someone from Stardom (I would assume Tam Nakano), and Ospreay will no doubt have a show stealer with someone (though if this show plays out like I'm saying it will then his match is going to have plenty of competition for that honor). Swerve could really cement his legacy here too with a great match against someone. Let him have a big match with some NJPW legend...maybe a guy like Naito

This is one time where I would totally be in favor of AEW doing a long pay per view even if it might be a little exhausting to get through the whole thing. You just can't argue with the value you'd be getting for your money with a super show essentially involving three promotions. If Tony Kahn, NJPW, and Stardom actually take the time to build this properly, it could be the best pay per view of the year by a very wide margin.

EDIT: Jesus, I forgot to mention Mercedes, I'd assume she'd want a big match on a show like this. Hell, she could challenge Mayu Iwatani for a rematch. AEW has so much fucking talent right now for me to actually forget to mention Mercedes

Post by **Raging Justice** » Thu May 09, 2024 1:47 am

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUVm7JEgEEA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_yOBE81qww
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjxzWUQMAKE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NpAUgPTkhQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDzCK7sc7o0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDTJH8WHFJ0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIDdIFeTycE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uR46O1n7rq8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKopFjCq5XA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQUB2G880V4

Lucha Underground needs to "finish the story" somehow. MLW is playing around with some of their characters, but I want a true revival (or at least a final chapter) of Lucha Underground

There are people who never would have gotten AEW or WWE's attention were it not for their work in Lucha Underground. When it comes to production, camera work, and just little bits of genius like putting a camera on the mat right before a wrestler does his finishing move, LU was so smart and ahead of its time. Now you see WWE trying to do so many fancy, cinematic things with camera work, one takes, etc. The pandemic era had EVERY wrestling promotion essentially doing what Lucha Underground had already done. I miss it so much

Post by **Reprise** » Thu May 09, 2024 3:05 am

Lucha Underground launched at the right time for me, as it was not long after I was really trying to get into wrestling again, but WWE was pretty goofy.

I really enjoyed watching it, although I had to try to download torrents and find random uploads of episodes to watch it here and I never saw all of Season 2 or beyond.

I heard AEW announced another Anarchy in the Arena match for Double or Nothing. I guess I should have predicted that. I am kinda bored of those every year now and I really hope they retire them as an annual tradition next year. I hope they don't do Stadium Stampede (which is basically the same thing as Anarchy In the Arena now post-pandemic) at All In again either. It feels really samey having the Bucks, Danielson and Kingston involved too, since they have been in them before.

Post by **Raging Justice** » Thu May 09, 2024 4:15 am

Reprise wrote: ↑Thu May 09, 2024 3:05 am Lucha Underground launched at the right time for me, as it was not long after I was really trying to get into wrestling again, but WWE was pretty goofy.

I really enjoyed watching it, although I had to try to download torrents and find random uploads of episodes to watch it here and I never saw all of Season 2 or beyond.

I heard AEW announced another Anarchy in the Arena match for Double or Nothing. I guess I should have predicted that. I am kinda bored of those every year now and I really hope they retire them as an annual tradition next year. I hope they don't do Stadium Stampede (which is basically the same thing as Anarchy In the Arena now post-pandemic) at All In again either. It feels really samey having the Bucks, Danielson and Kingston involved too, since they have been in them before.

Yeah, I was a bit underwhelmed. I keep saying this. AEW has the talent, but some of the booking and creative is just...sigh. I wasn't thrilled at the announcement. Even what they are doing with Mina and Mariah May isn't winning me over, though I find pretty much anything tied to Toni Storm to be pretty much shit anyway. Willow had a strong promo, better than the one from Mercedes. I think Mercedes definitely needs to turn heel. Her whole character SCREAMS heel right now. She also feels very WWE, which makes you naturally heelish in an AEW environment in my opinion. The way she presents herself and the way she cuts promos is very, very, very WWE. She hasn't really adapted to AEW the way people like Edge, Bryan, etc. have. She has a chance to evolve or be something different in AEW, to kind of re-invent herself. Instead, she's just being Sasha Banks, and I'm not sure that really works in AEW.

Lucha Underground's availability was always a problem. Many people didn't have a way to see it (the network it aired on is dead now too). Even now watching it can be a pain. Someone had links to where you could watch all four seasons on reddit just two months ago and it seems to have been taken down now. It's worth watching all four seasons if you find a way. There were some big missteps they made with the booking and creative, but still plenty of great stuff worth seeing.

I'm reminiscing about LU since it seems to be popping up in the news lately with the Fightful tease and that upcoming show they are doing in the Boyle Heights temple

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