The Wrestling Thread

[Reprise]

I was thinking about this and found it funny how WWE is proud about beating AEW on a night where they were not on their normal time slot. That's like bragging that you beat someone in a fight when they had one hand tied behind their back. It's natural to lose viewers when you move to a different night or a different channel.

I am glad you made this observation, because I thought the same thing. Funny, as soon as they went back to Wednesday this week, they were up to 900,000 and beat NXT (not that I think comparing ratings on entirely different nights really works).

They were make you think LA Knight is going to win and then they will snatch the win away from him. The question is really how they keep him strong after that loss and keep him in the title picture. I hope WWE don't drop the ball here. Could he win the Rumble? The only issue I foresee is they really shouldn't have started this whole "FiNiSh ThE sToRy" story with Cody if they didn't intend to actually finish the story. I know you wouldn't have a problem with that though

Speaking of Impact, Bound For Glory is on tonight. So I guess Collision has competition again. I do kind of want to get into Impact, but there's just so much wrestling it really is insane. I haven't even watched AEW since Wrestledream and even that PPV (which we got for free in UK for some reason, albeit two days later), I watched to around the half way point and haven't picked up again.

Watching less wrestling does mean I have been playing more games though and in particular some of my retro stuff, so it has been nice to get back into that.

[Raging Justice]

I'm gonna be a bit of a hypocrite and post a youtube clip after I said I wouldn't anymore. I got a little salty over youtube's recent very aggressive policies towards people using ad blockers. This clip is so good though. LA Knight really channeling Stone Cold and The Rock here and it's very entertaining:

[Reprise]

Strange news today. Impact Wrestling has announced it is changing its name back to Total Nonstop Action (TNA) Wrestling.

Edit: Oh and I just read Hollyhood Haley J debuted on AEW Collision! Wow.

[Raging Justice]

This is going to be awesome:



I rag on Cody a lot, but I loved this gimmick. Ironically, he was getting cheered doing this character while getting booed when just coming out as himself







I'd argue Cody is at his best when doing comedy. When he is being serious he either gets annoying (his AEW run) or bland and boring (his current WWE run)

[Raging Justice]

Strange news today. Impact Wrestling has announced it is changing its name back to Total Nonstop Action (TNA) Wrestling.

Edit: Oh and I just read Hollyhood Haley J debuted on AEW Collision! Wow.

I didn't know who she was but I enjoyed her match. It was just a squash for Sky Blue's new heel character though

TNA has a LOT of baggage attached to that name. Not a smart move

[Raging Justice]

Some, angry, drunk, homeless guy managed to get backstage at Collision and even managed to get on camera and cut a promo....oh wait, my bad. That was just Eddie Kingston.

His match was horrible, just him doing his horrible looking chops the whole match and barely moving that out of shape body around.

You know who is a much more awesome, better in every way version of Eddie Kingston? This guy:



Better in the ring (can Eddie do a swanton dive?) and better promos too. Every Eddie Kingston promo just sounds like a drunk, angry rant. All of his promos can just be summed up with, "I hate everybody! I don't even care if you're a face or a heel. I just hate people! I'm also an angry teenager who laughs when people tell me to grow up!!!"

[Reprise]

I am surprised how enthusiastic people are for the return of TNA. A lot of people are treating it as if it is some big come back for the company. I didn't realise people were nostalgic for those three letters to be honest. It doesn't really matter to me whether it's called Impact or TNA, although I always thought the latter was a silly name.

I wonder who Will Ospreay is going to sign with. Impact, WWE and AEW allegedly all want him and he's teased signing with all three this year. He would be a good person for TNA to pick up once they rebrand and up their marketing game.

[Raging Justice]

I don't know what's so special about her, but WWE is really high on Lyra Valkyria. I remember seeing an NXT match where they even had her dominating Rhea Ripley.



I know it's stupid, but when the WWE machine heavily pushes someone, I tend to not like them. I like seeing someone get the big push AFTER the fans have chosen that person, like Daniel Bryan or LA Knight. I like when it's organic.

[Raging Justice]

Dynamite was pretty damn good. We got a Ric Flair appearance (and he actually didn't embarrass himself), RVD teaming up with Hook (RVD ain't looking too shabby for his age, still hitting all of his signature spots), we got another depraved promo from Christian where he proved to everyone that there is no God because, "Ric Flair didn't die 20 years ago".

I think it's official. Christian is the most savage heel in wrestling. I saw a woman in the crowd who was literally like:





It's funny how we have so much Flair family in AEW with Ric and Andrade, but no Charlotte

Fun trios match with some crowd favorites in the Elite and the Hardies and man, suddenly everyone in AEW is gunning for MJF, as they should be. MJF is a wanted man, and it feels like everyone is competing for his attention. Not just opponents, but potential allies too. Poor Hangman never got treated this well when he was champ.

If Christian is the most depraved heel in AEW right now, Swerve is the scariest, going to a man's home and hovering threateningly over a baby's crib. Damn. When MJF turned face, we needed some heels to step up and we got them. Swerve feels like he could be a villain in a TV series.

Jericho is really putting over Hobbs, but also teased someone coming into AEW to help him.

Oh, and of course, we had the awesome main event of Okada/Cassidy vs Bryan/Claudio. The ending was a bit strange though.

We had a first from Orange Cassidy, ANGRY kicks. Yeah, he dropped the comedy kicks and started laying into Claudio. That was awesome. He also attempted one of his moves on Claudio and the guy just like caught him in mid air and immediately went into the big swing. Great stuff from all four men, the crowd was into this match, especially whenever Bryan and Okada got in the ring.

We also had Shida wrestling Soho, who no one cares about. I feel bad for Shida. She'd be thriving in some other company. Oh, and they hit Toni Storm's music after the match as Shida's next challenger and you could hear crickets from the crowd. Yeah, this gimmick is dead. The match wasn't all that bad though to be fair, Rubo Soho hit a wicked looking No Future to Shida from the ring apron, pulling her down to the floor in the process.

[Reprise]

So we're getting MJF vs Kenny Omega for the title on TV?

Hell yes!

Sounds like it was a great Dynamite indeed. I will check it out later this week.

MJF has lots of ongoing stories at the moment. I am enjoying how they are interweaving with one another. And of course, the devil mask angles is interesting.

Also I am really intrigued about who will be Sting's final opponent at Revolution. Will it be a tag match? Will we finally get a Sting singles match for his last match? Will it be the obvious choice (Darby)? Or somebody else?

I hope they don't mess it up. I hate it when a retirement match just doesn't seem like a fitting end. I can understand why The Undertaker just kept going, for example, because that match against Roman just felt off and wrong. And I never understood why Kurt Angle's final match was against Baron Corbin.