The Wrestling Thread

[Raging Justice]

Cue everybody on the internet screaming, "He's going to WWE!"

[Raging Justice]

Just a brief follow up to what I said before:

https://www.wrestlinginc.com/1532142/st ... etirement/

Michael Cole: “Before we get started, I want to send our congratulations out to another great champion. After nearly 40 years the great Sting has retired from professional wrestling. Thanks for the memories. Congratulations to Sting.”

Pat McAfee: “Absolutely epic match last night.”

[Raging Justice]

https://monthlypuroresu.com/features/sp ... h-stardom/

[Reprise]

The new Dynamite set looks a bit like NXT 2.0. I don't mind it though (at least, from what I saw of the one photo. Don't know how I feel when we see it for real later tonight).

[Reprise]

Interestingly, AEW is teasing a huge announcement tonight, but it's being delivered by Nicholas and Matthew Jackson, The EVPs, not Tony, so I am not sure if it's a troll or not

AEW have also referred to this episode of Dynamite as a start of a new era (or words to that effect).

We have the new design too.

Okada was rumoured to debut tonight a couple of weeks back, right? I am sure there was talk of him debuting the Dynamite after Revolution. Perhaps we will see that happen.

[Reprise]

Drew is the best thing about WWE right now

[Raging Justice]

Interesting details on Darby's crazy spot last weekend:

https://www.f4wonline.com/news/aew/aew- ... t-continue

Drew is the best thing about WWE right now

Him and Hangman are killing it right now. Two of the best heels going.

[Raging Justice]

Wow. Okada is QUITE LITERALY all elite:



Matt dropping money on him and then picking it up off of the floor to put in his pocket was hilarious. I don't know why some people hate The Bucks. They are fucking awesome.

Swerve was super over tonight. I like that Swerve repeatedly acknowledges all of the heelish things he did. He even wonders if he's getting his karmic backlash for them. THIS IS WHAT GOOD STORY TELLING IS

This injury has to suck for Adam Cole, but at least they are still giving him TV time.

Lot of talking to start off the show, feels more like WWE than AEW, but they need to do this from time to time. I hope AEW doesn't lean too much into this "season premiere" nonsense that WWE likes to do though.

They wrote Hangman off TV in a way that actually makes sense. I mean, he beat up two referees. I thought I heard some boos for his suspension too even though he's a heel now. I supposed that could change when he returns. Technically, he's already gotten his revenge against Swerve. What's with the Omega being fired thing though? I guess they just mean fired from "The Elite". This seems like a setup to Okada vs Omega again. I wonder if The Bucks/Okada will actually be at odds with both Hangman and Omega when they return. That could be interesting. I'd like to see a Takeshita face turn. If he feuds with Okada that could be fucking epic.

Ospreay, Okada, Riho...feels like a star studded night. Nice women's match. Statlander heel turn being teased, probably the best thing they can do with her at this point. It irks me that we see Riho so rarely, but I like that they tend to protect her whenever we do actually get to see her. She is the first AEW women's champion, and we don't see her lose very often. That's a good thing. They book most of her matches with her as a fighting underdog who finds a way to win, kind of like some of Cassidy's matches.

Cassidy said he wants another title, interesting. He's going to be in the tag title tournament.

Damn, Hook actually choked out Brian Cage. That's kind of crazy when you think about it. Now apparently him and Jericho are buddies.

Nice little video promo from Julia, we need to hear her talk more often. It looked really cool seeing Skye Blue lurking in the shadows behind her, not speaking a word. Fucking creepy...and kind of sexy LOL. Seeing her AGAIN at the end of the House of Black promo video was nice as well. I want more of this if she's going to continue holding that title.

Christian is awesome. We actually got a long, one shot take of him RUNNING LIKE A BITCH throughout the entire backstage area from Edge

Cool segment between White and Darby. White is such a great, smarmy little heel. So are The Acclaimed heels now too? Darby may LITERALLY be having his last match next week. People actually DO die climbing Mt. Everest and you can supposedly find their corpses on it. Like, you will actually see the people who died before you as you're climbing it.

Fucking awesome main event with a Bryan Danielson/Will Ospreay tease to close the show. It's obvious Bryan only cares about having all of his personal, little dream matches rather than holding a title or being the kind of star he actually COULD be if he wanted to.

In the same week, Will Ospreay had this debut match and a five star classic, Sting retired and the match even got a shout out from WWE on live television, and Okada debuts.

And next week, we get Mercedes Monet?

I hope AEW keeps up this momentum. Tony has got to start really taking his women's division more seriously now to get the most out of Mercedes. Seriously, this is the biggest signing the division has ever had. Is he even ready for this? I think the Stardom shake up could make things interesting in the coming months if Tony takes advantage of it. After debuting Mercedes, it would be cool to see other fresh faces turn up in the division. I also really want to see a feud between Mercedes and Stephanie Vaquer. It goes without saying that we'll see Mercedes vs Britt at some point, maybe even very soon. Also, and this may be controversial, they NEED to get Tessa Blanchard, who I believe is competing in CMLL.

It may be wishful thinking, but AEW's women's division has the potential to be on fire in 2024 and 2025. I didn't even mention Deonna Purrazzo, Serena Deeb, Athena (get her out of ROH), Thunder Rosa, Mariah May, Jamie Hayter, Riho, Shida, Yuka Sakazaki if they actually started using her, and for all the hate I give them - Soho and Saraya could work some interesting programs with Mercedes. Ruby can be great in the ring sometimes, and Saraya is just interesting because she's former WWE like Mercedes

[Reprise]

So Hangman *is* taking time off then. That sucks. I don't want him to return in a month or two, or however long and him just come back as a face as if nothing before happened. But knowing AEW, that's probably exactly what will happen.

The weird thing about the Bucks is despite the backlash and the hate, they proved to be the perfect final opponents for Sting. Having Sting win and get the pin in his final match was an amazing feel-good moment and a great way to send the crowd home happy (and the people watching at home). And what better team to have take the loss than team that seemingly no one wanted to win and who played the part of despicable heels so well, not to mention who are capable of putting on such a great match?

Okada debuting as a heel and immediately becoming an ally of the EVPs is certainly interesting.

So Adam Copeland and Christian III is happening on Dynamite? I wonder why they aren't just waiting to the PPV next month.

[Raging Justice]

This is kind of random, but you mentioned tournaments before:

Oh, one other thing. I mentioned that I was about 60-40 on Sting losing his final match, but one thing that had me thinking Sting might win, was that it meant the tag team titles would be vacated and then Tony could do one of his little tournaments to decide the new champions.

I legitimately find it kinda funny that Tony announced that there would be a tournament to decide the new champions

I get it does actually make sense. But the dude really does love his tournaments

Have you see some of the tournaments WWE has done in the past? I was re-reading your post and it reminded me of the Mae Young Classics and Cruiserweight Classics. Those were AMAZING. We saw new faces that would go on to become WWE stars (not to mention AEW stars like Serena Deeb and Toni Storm) and I love that they were like these international sort of things. The Mae Young and Cruiserweight classics were like WWE pulling in people from other places, a very uncommon thing for WWE to do. Big huge international stars you could see in these tournaments like Zack Sabre Jr. and Kota Ibushi. Also, the presentation and the production were off the charts. Also, they made it feel like you were watching a real sport. Honestly, I could see TKO loving this kind of shit if WWE were to do them again. This was a time too when WWE really gave a fuck about the WWE Network, so they tried to create great content like this to get subscribers. The network used to bring out the best in WWE, like the Black and Gold era of NXT.

If Tony wants to do REAL tournaments, those are a good model to follow. Hell, you could even make a case for WWE outshining some Japanese tournaments with those events they did. Plus, some of the matches were awesome of course. Check these clips out to see tournaments done right:

Mae Young:






Cruiserweight:







I could also point out how well Stardom handles tournaments too. Presentation is so important, watch this and tell me it doesn't make you feel like you're watching something grand and important:



Can you imagine AEW's women's division pulling off something like this today?