The Wrestling Thread

[Raging Justice]

Some of the negativity right now seems to be due an AEW staff member being fired by someone the company brought in from WWE.

Again, Tony is not smart about many things, including optics for your employees.

[Raging Justice]

You can tell Cargill doesn't want WWE to ditch her no talent ass or have her jobbing in NXT as she's out there now indirectly shitting on AEW.

Oh, and Jericho sort of buried AEW too, maybe unintentionally, maybe not. He said:

"There’s a way that the WWE works where you don’t say no to anything. I mean, they asked you to do press you do it, they ask you to sign 1,000 action figures you do it. Because if you don’t, you know there’s gonna be consequences, and big ones. And I think everybody in AEW needs to understand that sometimes."

Make of that what you will

Some people say Jericho is a shill or an ass kisser. I think he's a businessman. He knows what to do, what not to do, what he's supposed to say, and when to shut up. There's a reason he's gone far in this business and is still making money off of it in his 50s.

[Raging Justice]

God, I wish Britt Baker would come back and just pin Toni Storm in 30 seconds so we can start taking the women's title seriously again. Then debut Mercedes Monet and immediately start a feud between her and Britt.

And the TBS title has been a joke throughout its entire tenure. Statlander did nothing with it and Julia Hart is doing nothing with it.

[Reprise]

Mercedes Mone is rumoured to be going back to WWE.

[Reprise]

"There’s a way that the WWE works where you don’t say no to anything. I mean, they asked you to do press you do it, they ask you to sign 1,000 action figures you do it. Because if you don’t, you know there’s gonna be consequences, and big ones. And I think everybody in AEW needs to understand that sometimes."

He's right to be fair. I don't think he was intentionally burying AEW, although it does come across that way. He's probably frustrated by the attitude of some people in the company and maybe frustrated by the lack of leadership or discipline. Although speaking of that, I just read in the dirt sheets that those under contract to AEW will now face consequences for their conduct on social media etc, so I guess that's good. Hopefully it stops people just going into business for themselves, bitching about their booking and all the other stuff I have been complaining about.

[Raging Justice]

"There’s a way that the WWE works where you don’t say no to anything. I mean, they asked you to do press you do it, they ask you to sign 1,000 action figures you do it. Because if you don’t, you know there’s gonna be consequences, and big ones. And I think everybody in AEW needs to understand that sometimes."

He's right to be fair. I don't think he was intentionally burying AEW, although it does come across that way. He's probably frustrated by the attitude of some people in the company and maybe frustrated by the lack of leadership or discipline. Although speaking of that, I just read in the dirt sheets that those under contract to AEW will now face consequences for their conduct on social media etc, so I guess that's good. Hopefully it stops people just going into business for themselves, bitching about their booking and all the other stuff I have been complaining about.

Repriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiise!!!!!!!!

Did you know about this already? Sure is interesting:

https://www.sportskeeda.com/aew/rumor-b ... um=twitter

On a somewhat related not, someone on a wrestling forum made an insightful comment about Bryan Danielson, Punk, and Cody in particular:

"Bryan Danielson has very little in common with CM Punk. He has never shown the antisocial and selfish characteristics that his fellow ROH alumnus named Phil. He isn’t Cody either. Cody used his power to gaslight the fanbase and book himself as a WWE audition on AEW TV"

[Reprise]

Haha I did, yeah! Someone (forgotten who, but I can look it up edit my post later) already mocked the fact they got fined on Twitter (I refuse to call it X!), but deleted their post. Presumably they just got fined again lol.

[Reprise]

This is another one of my 'I haven't actually seen Dynamite, but I have an opinion anyways' posts, but is it me or is involving Nick Wayne's mom in this Adam Copeland and Christian story really very WWE-esque?

[Raging Justice]

This is another one of my 'I haven't actually seen Dynamite, but I have an opinion anyways' posts, but is it me or is involving Nick Wayne's mom in this Adam Copeland and Christian story really very WWE-esque?

They awkwardly set that up with Edge doing a conchairto on Nick Wayne right in front of his mother two or three weeks ago. Can't blame a woman for turning on a guy who does that to their kid. Christian probably looks like the lesser of two evils.

I don't know anymore with AEW. I'm not sure what their identity is anymore. I will say they do have better matches and betters crowds than WWE, so there's that at least.

What I have noticed when watching AEW with other people. They enjoy the crazy, spot fest matches and livelier, more fun crowds (compared to WWE), but don't tend to enjoy how extremely violent their product can be at times. It doesn't bother me personally, but it's something to take note of. Oh, and they also just find everything involving the women in AEW to be pretty trash too. The fact that there are AEW fans into this Toni Storm thing is mind boggling to me. To more casual viewers, it's a fucking stupid gimmick. This isn't the sort of thing that will get them more viewers or more female fans. It also feels more like WWE than anything else the company is doing, which is why I don't get that there are AEW fans loving it. It's like I'm in bizarro world. Even some of the people who shit on Cassidy are loving this crap. Seriously? Timeless Toni Storm is dumber than anything Cassidy has done in his entire AEW career.

On another note, I didn't watch anything from WWE this past week. I may be taking a hiatus from them for a while. I don't like the main event picture, especially with CM Punk back. Frankly, it doesn't matter anyway, as it seems like Roman Reigns will be holding those belts until the day he dies and the belt Seth Rollins has is a joke no matter how good his championship run and feuds have been. We all know he's carrying the consolation prize because no one can beat Roman Reigns.

I'll probably still talk about AEW when I feel it's worthwhile. Their product is so inconsistent though.

Truthfully though, I'm feeling slightly bummed out with wrestling. I don't like what WWE is doing, Stardom has lost my two favorite girls for the foreseeable future and made them both vacate their titles, and AEW's product is such a mixed bag these days.

I don't feel excited about anything in wrestling right now. The excitement I once had about Triple H running WWE is gone, because the product feels stale and stagnant and they are also pushing people I don't like...the exact same complaints I used to have when Vince McMahon was running things. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Wrestling goes in cycles, and right now, it's not exciting me. I'm kind of hoping for another "big thing" to happen in wrestling, like when Lucha Underground hit the scene or when AEW first came into existence and was more exciting than it is now. Maybe something awesome will happen that grabs my interest or generates a lot of buzz...kind of like when Matt Hardy created his alter ego and did that "Final Deletion" match. I just want something fun and exciting to happen in wrestling again.

Ironically though, while I'm not super excited about anyone's product right now, I do still kind of want to buy some wrestling figures

Some of them look really cool and the kid inside of me keeps begging for them

[Reprise]

Yeah, it seems like AEW and WWE are both in a bit of a lull at the moment. I really haven't watched much WWE at all since 'Mania and I haven't watched much AEW since Wrestledream.

WWE is a weird one, because the fans online act like it is super hot right now. Even when all the Punk return rumours were going on, both the fans and (reportedly) WWE were saying they don't need him for a cheap pop, because their product is so hot. It isn't though. I stopped watching because the Bloodline story just became so incredibly nonsensical and ludicrous, creating a consolation prize belt for Seth to win is dumb and nothing really seems to be going anywhere. Cody is boring too and I didn't care one bit about his feud with Lesnar or anything he has done lately.

AEW doesn't seem to be something anyone can agree on what direction it should go in, at least from what I see in the various AEW groups. I think part of the issue is it is just impossible to recreate that feeling and that excitement they had as a new company, along with the "shocking" debuts they had over the years. They can improve their storylines and improve their booking, but I think they will suffer either way. Weaknesses have been exposed and I don't know if and how they can fix them. They still have great matches and great wrestlers in the company, but it's just cooled off a bit.