The Wrestling Thread

[Raging Justice]

I watched some of Dynamite live last night, as my one year old daughter decided she was not going to go back to sleep for hours last night (Dynamite airs at 1am in the UK). Then I watched the rest this morning.

MJF and Adam Cole are awesome together. They are producing some of the best segments AEW have to offer right now. It's a great pairing. I wonder if we are going to see a gradual MJF face turn and Cole might turn on him first.

My initial reaction to it was, "this is weird". I still feel that way. I don't know what the end game is, though MJF turning on him would be the predictable outcome. That crowd last night was really into them though, so this pairing could work.

I think it's funny that this angle is leaning into some of the stuff that Adam Cole haters say about him online. The whole, "He doesn't work out. He's a nerd", etc, etc. MJF has literally pointed out everything people hate about Cole in this story line. It's like AEW is very much aware of these people and are trolling them right now.

I have to say, AEW is trying a lot of weird stuff right now, but it's nice to try new things.

I'm excited about Kota Ibushi being in AEW. He was one of NJPW's rising stars before his weird falling out with them (he was saying crazy stuff, even implying they were connected to Japan's Yakuza...not that such a thing would be out of the realm of possibility, but I digress)

Pac is such a natural fit with the BCC. That's genius. His bad attitude and amazing wrestling skills have BCC written all over it. If he goes after Cassidy for the International title, that's gonna be a money feud.

Is the Sky Blue push over? She should have won that match. WWE has a lot of young women getting pushed in NXT as does Stardom. So I have always found it unusual how Julia Hart and Sky Blue always seemed to be doing nothing in AEW. Sky Blue has a lot of fans (in no small part due to her looks)

[Reprise]

I watched some of Dynamite live last night, as my one year old daughter decided she was not going to go back to sleep for hours last night (Dynamite airs at 1am in the UK). Then I watched the rest this morning.

MJF and Adam Cole are awesome together. They are producing some of the best segments AEW have to offer right now. It's a great pairing. I wonder if we are going to see a gradual MJF face turn and Cole might turn on him first.

My initial reaction to it was, "this is weird". I still feel that way. I don't know what the end game is, though MJF turning on him would be the predictable outcome. That crowd last night was really into them though, so this pairing could work.

I think it's funny that this angle is leaning into some of the stuff that Adam Cole haters say about him online. The whole, "He doesn't work out. He's a nerd", etc, etc. MJF has literally pointed out everything people hate about Cole in this story line. It's like AEW is very much aware of these people and are trolling them right now.

I have to say, AEW is trying a lot of weird stuff right now, but it's nice to try new things.

I'm excited about Kota Ibushi being in AEW. He was one of NJPW's rising stars before his weird falling out with them (he was saying crazy stuff, even implying they were connected to Japan's Yakuza...not that such a thing would be out of the realm of possibility, but I digress)

Pac is such a natural fit with the BCC. That's genius. His bad attitude and amazing wrestling skills have BCC written all over it. If he goes after Cassidy for the International title, that's gonna be a money feud.

Is the Sky Blue push over? She should have won that match. WWE has a lot of young women getting pushed in NXT as does Stardom. So I have always found it unusual how Julia Hart and Sky Blue always seemed to be doing nothing in AEW. Sky Blue has a lot of fans (in no small part due to her looks)

Yeah, the pairing with Adam Cole is weird and I didn't really get it at first (well, I still don't get it. Like you said, I really don't get what the end game is), but the last couple of episodes it has been pretty fun and the crowd loves them together.

I was surprised Skye Blue lost. The Outsiders are cringe and need to get a gimmick change. They're really boring and lame. Hopefully it's not the end of Skye Blue's push.

I was expecting Kota Ibushi, because that's what everyone on the internet was explaining, but wasn't expecting Pac. I agree it's an awesome pairing. Blood and Guts should be great.

In other news, a new deal with Warner Bros is apparently imminent and they're pushing AEW to have more PPVs, possibly as many as 12 per year. I hope they don't go that far. I think 6 is a perfect number and spread them out so you have a consistent pace throughout the year, with one every other month. One per month is just overkill and would lead to them rushing feuds and storylines I feel.

[Raging Justice]

Yeah, there's also an interesting story about AEW getting a whole bunch of new safety measures rolled out for the company. I don't know how to feel about it. Sure, making the job safer it's generally a good thing, but often times when you try to make wrestling safer you also end up making things look less real (like how you can see people put their hands up right before getting hit by a chair nowadays while in the old days they would just take the hit). Plus, it stifles creativity a bit as some wrestlers enjoy doing certain risky things in their matches. It's sort of like going back in time and telling Jackie Chan that he couldn't do half of the stuff he did in his movies because "it's just too risky". You know he would not have been happy with that, and I don't think Jon Moxley will enjoy being told that he can't do blood in his matches anymore. The funny thing about wrestlers is that many of them want to take those big risks in their matches. Making things safer also runs the risk of making AEW matches feel too much like WWE matches, once again making the whole AEW is the alternative thing feel less and less true.

Anyway, I have to mention Nick Wayne. He had a pretty great match with Swerve on Dynamite. I don't know if he has much of a future there, since Tony Kahn is so unreliable when it comes to pushing people as stars, but the kid had a pretty great night this past week. The crowd was totally into him. Swerve for his part showed once again why he's a bit of an underrated star in AEW.

I want to say a few words about Impact. Few people talk about them or watch them these days. Admittedly, I'm one of them, but I do know that they have developed a reputation among the few people that watch them for having pretty solid pay per views. It's one of the few times I check out their product is during certain pay per view events and this upcoming Slammiversary card looks awesome:

* Impact World Championship Match: Alex Shelley vs. Nick Aldis

* Impact Knockouts Championship Match: Deonna Purrazzo vs. Trinity

* Impact World Tag Team Championship Match: ABC vs. Brian Myers & Moose vs. Rich Swann & Sami Callihan vs. Subculture

* Impact World Knockouts Tag Team Championship Match: The Coven vs. Killer Kelly & Masha Slamovich

* Impact X Division Championship Match: Chris Sabin vs. Lio Rush

* Ultimate X Match: Mike Bailey vs. Jonathan Gresham vs. Kushida vs. Kevin Knight vs. Angels

* Impact Digital Media Championship Match: Joe Hendry vs. Kenny King

* PCO & Scott D’Amore vs. Bully Ray & TBA
Special Guest Enforcer: Darren McCarty

* Franke Kazarian (w/ Traci) vs. Eddie Edwards (w/ Alisha Edwards)

Impact is how I discovered Mike Bailey and I think this match he's in will be awesome given the talent he'll be working with. It's also looks like Angels (from AEW's Dark Order) is in that match. Also, I don't how many people are aware that Naomi from WWE is working there now as Trinity. I know some people still wonder what happened to her after she and Sasha Banks ditched WWE. Her being in Impact isn't as newsworthy as Sasha making waves in Japan, but it's nice that she's found a place to work where she's happy.

[Reprise]

Yeah, there's also an interesting story about AEW getting a whole bunch of new safety measures rolled out for the company. I don't know how to feel about it. Sure, making the job safer it's generally a good thing, but often times when you try to make wrestling safer you also end up making things look less real (like how you can see people put their hands up right before getting hit by a chair nowadays while in the old days they would just take the hit). Plus, it stifles creativity a bit as some wrestlers enjoy doing certain risky things in their matches. It's sort of like going back in time and telling Jackie Chan that he couldn't do half of the stuff he did in his movies because "it's just too risky". You know he would not have been happy with that, and I don't think Jon Moxley will enjoy being told that he can't do blood in his matches anymore. The funny thing about wrestlers is that many of them want to take those big risks in their matches. Making things safer also runs the risk of making AEW matches feel too much like WWE matches, once again making the whole AEW is the alternative thing feel less and less true.

To be fair, I think a lot of the early reporting was a bit sensationalist and clickbaity. From reading about it, it sounds like a lot of the things people were making out to be banned are actually part of a list that require clearance and additional checks for first. The stuff on the banned list didn't seem overly bad, like bleeding in the crowd and throwing things/taking things off the crowd. I assume the latter happened because of the lot of the stuff MJF has done before.

We'll have to wait and see to see how bad it really is I guess.

Anyway, I have to mention Nick Wayne. He had a pretty great match with Swerve on Dynamite. I don't know if he has much of a future there, since Tony Kahn is so unreliable when it comes to pushing people as stars, but the kid had a pretty great night this past week. The crowd was totally into him. Swerve for his part showed once again why he's a bit of an underrated star in AEW.

Yeah, he did great. I'm hesitant too, because TK seems to struggle with building and pushing stars and a lot of guys end up getting forgotten about or end up stagnant and lost in the shuffle, but it was certainly a great debut.

[Raging Justice]

Yeah, there's also an interesting story about AEW getting a whole bunch of new safety measures rolled out for the company. I don't know how to feel about it. Sure, making the job safer it's generally a good thing, but often times when you try to make wrestling safer you also end up making things look less real (like how you can see people put their hands up right before getting hit by a chair nowadays while in the old days they would just take the hit). Plus, it stifles creativity a bit as some wrestlers enjoy doing certain risky things in their matches. It's sort of like going back in time and telling Jackie Chan that he couldn't do half of the stuff he did in his movies because "it's just too risky". You know he would not have been happy with that, and I don't think Jon Moxley will enjoy being told that he can't do blood in his matches anymore. The funny thing about wrestlers is that many of them want to take those big risks in their matches. Making things safer also runs the risk of making AEW matches feel too much like WWE matches, once again making the whole AEW is the alternative thing feel less and less true.

To be fair, I think a lot of the early reporting was a bit sensationalist and clickbaity. From reading about it, it sounds like a lot of the things people were making out to be banned are actually part of a list that require clearance and additional checks for first. The stuff on the banned list didn't seem overly bad, like bleeding in the crowd and throwing things/taking things off the crowd. I assume the latter happened because of the lot of the stuff MJF has done before.

We'll have to wait and see to see how bad it really is I guess.

Anyway, I have to mention Nick Wayne. He had a pretty great match with Swerve on Dynamite. I don't know if he has much of a future there, since Tony Kahn is so unreliable when it comes to pushing people as stars, but the kid had a pretty great night this past week. The crowd was totally into him. Swerve for his part showed once again why he's a bit of an underrated star in AEW.

Yeah, he did great. I'm hesitant too, because TK seems to struggle with building and pushing stars and a lot of guys end up getting forgotten about or end up stagnant and lost in the shuffle, but it was certainly a great debut.

Yeah, we'll see how the new safety rules play out. Maybe it has been blown out of proportion.

Smackdown was fun. LA Knight was over as fuck. So was Jey Uso. The women all chasing Asuka is fun, as is the cash in teases with Io. I still maintain that I'd like to see a match between Asuka and Io, but she seems more interested in a quick cash in. We'll see what happens. Bianca has been way more interesting since she got an attitude and I'd rather see her fight Charlotte so we can keep them both away from Asuka's title. The four way for the US title was a fun match, but Escobar is so boring. I love Theory no selling his win. He didn't even looked concerned

I'm so bored with Karion Kross. I forgot to mention AJ Styles as one of my favorite wrestlers and I wish they'd find something better for him to do.

Funny lines:

Wade Barrett schooling Michael Cole on popular anime Demon Slayer

Theory saying he beat Cena and then Cena ran back to Hollywood and became a mermaid

AEW Rampage was a terrible example of rushed booking as they quickly set up matches for Battle of the Belts in one night. Pretty lame, though the main event was alright and I think Willow Nightingale just ended the ROH Womens champion's undefeated streak. Good for her. Gotta give this girl something after Giulia ended her short NJPW Strong Women's title reign.

[Raging Justice]

Match of the century!!! 15 STARS!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Raging Justice]

GCW loves Maki Itoh

[Reprise]

Absolutely fantastic Collision last night. Probably the best yet. The show opened with the two out of three falls match between FTR and Bullet Club Gold. The match was absolutely incredible, just as you would expect. Each week I swear they put on a better match than the last. Apparently this was the longest tag team title bout in professional wrestling history, but I didn't even notice watching. I wonder how long it was (I think it was about 50 minutes) and what they previous record was.

Elsewhere, Willow won the Owen Hart cup, which was unexpected, but awesome. I really thought they were building it towards Ruby winning. Decent match, nothing amazing.

The show ended with Punk vs Starks, which was far better than I expected. It was a great match. Starks won, which I thought was more predictable, but the right result. What I didn't expect, although it was teased last week, was Starks making a heel turn. I am not sure that was necessary. It was also a bit weird because Punk also seemed to be teasing a bit of a heel turn during the match. Great match though. I am sure the finish will have some people complaining though.

Haven't finished Battle of the Belts yet, just started and Orange Cassidy is up, so this should be fun.

[Reprise]

Right, I looked it up. 57 fucking minutes those guys went for! What an incredible match and one of the best so far this year.

[Raging Justice]

Speaking of Collision, someone who has been making headlines was backstage apparently. I've no doubt she's also on WWE's radar as she's been training with Natalya and Iyo Sky.

GCW had plenty to offer Japanese fans this weekend with Utami, Maki Itoh, and Yoshihiko

https://wrestlingheadlines.com/stardoms ... collision/



https://www.wrestlinginc.com/1340644/st ... y-tapings/