The Wrestling Thread

[Raging Justice]

Proof of my point about how unbelievably stubborn WWE is about who they want their top guy to be...

When Brock Lesnar returned to the company with a massive wave of hype and momentum...they had him lose his first match against John Cena in one of the stupidest goddamn booking decisions I've ever seen in my life as a pro wrestling fan.

[Raging Justice]

WWE has the absolutely worse music in all of professional wrestling.

https://x.com/WWE/status/1841267752767574140

Garbage. They always use shitty hip hop crap for all of their shows, while wrestlers get the most bland, generic sounding rock themes for their entrance music. How is the wealthiest company in the business not able to pay for some quality music? Everything WWE puts out makes your ears want to bleed.

[Reprise]

WWE has the absolutely worse music in all of professional wrestling.

https://x.com/WWE/status/1841267752767574140

Garbage. They always use shitty hip hop crap for all of their shows, while wrestlers get the most bland, generic sounding rock themes for their entrance music. How is the wealthiest company in the business not able to pay for some quality music? Everything WWE puts out makes your ears want to bleed.

That's one of the things that massively turned me off WWE in the last 20 years.

What happened to bangers like these:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eMDPNL1Ph ... dGhlbWU%3D

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oU_6GYgp9 ... dGhlbWU%3D

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_23s3DmQU ... VtZQ%3D%3D

[Reprise]

So the new deal for AEW got announced. Multi-year deal, $150 million apparently close to $185 million a year (more than double they currently get). Dynamite and Collision will now simulcast on Max as well as TNT and TBS. PPVs will also be on Max for a discounted rate (in other words, they aren't abandoning the PPV model as some people had hoped). Collision is staying on Saturdays, which some people find surprising (there was apparently speculation it could move to a different day).

Rampage is being cancelled. A new show, 'Shockwave' with Fox is still being negotiated apparently and hasn't been announced yet, but it is thought it will be on Thursdays.

Good for them.

The announcement coincides with the 5th anniversary special of Dynamite tonight, which allegedly has some surprises and announcements (although I guess the new deal is probably one of those announcements and they just decided to break it early). It will also have a 30 minute overrun, which is a bit over the top imo.

Edit: It's confirmed the entire AEW library will be on Max.

[Reprise]

Why does the site sign me out every 5 minutes?

I saw a lot of complaints about last night's Dynamite. I haven't seen it yet, so it's hard to gauge what is genuine criticism and what is just bad faith attacks from people who dislike the company anyways. There seems to be a lot of it since the nee deal got announced yesterday.

From the clips I saw though, I am happy to see Jay White back and the Mox/BCC storyline still intrigues me no end. I am really enjoying the subtleties with allusions with that one. There's talk of a war coming and how this isn't about Mox, it's bigger than that etc. Is it derivative? Sure, but most things in wrestling are.

Ricochet and Ospreay looked like fun if that's your thing. I am sure Danielson and Okada was good too.

Main criticisms I saw was that a lot of matches had shenanigans and silliness and that the overtime was pointless and was only utilised so Okada and Bryan could have a longer match (which felt long for the sake of it - I hear).

I am not sure if shenanigans and storylines are necessarily a bad thing two weeks away from a PPV though... I assumed Ricochet and Ospreay was all about leading to a bigger PPV match, so no surprises there really. It's now announced that at Wrestledream Ospreay will face Ricochet and Takeshita for the International title. AEW does that a lot to be honest. They have a match on tv, there's some sort of angle and then they build to a rematch on PPV. Fine.

Other criticisms I saw was "it wasn't special enough". Yeah probably true. I saw the card and saw after what was ultimately the surprise/announcement involving MVP, and I can understand that.

Anyways, AEW is officially profitable and officially here to stay (at least for another 3 years minimum), so people will just have to cope if they don't like it

[Raging Justice]

I find this amusing. WWE has ladies like Rhea Ripley, Ivy Niles, and others repeatedly attacking guys all the time with no repercussions. It's an unspoken rule, the men can't touch the ladies and the ladies know this and abuse it. AEW these days kind of stays away from this sort of thing too it seems. Meanwhile, this just happened in Stardom:

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

Japan gives no fucks

Anyway, I enjoyed AEW's fifth anniversary show. Nice to see a five year celebration of the company without any references to Punk or Cody at all. AEW can just wipe them out of the company's history and I'd be okay with that. Fuck both of them. We got some killer matches, more teases of Bobby Lashley and his faction in AEW, some more movement on this interesting Blackpool Combat Club story, and a nice Hangman/Jay White feud that I'm looking forward to.

I do believe AEW is showing that they are indeed doing long term planning. A lot of their guys feel like they have some direction right now. Takeshita, Mox, Yuta, Hangman, Jay White, Christian, Danielson, Ospreay, Ricochet, Darby, Jack Perry, Bobby Lashley (and he hasn't even debuted yet), etc. Hell, even Private Party is starting to seem interesting again.

The women's division still needs some work though. Mercedes needs a long term story line, and Maria May still has the stink of that Timeless Toni Storm/MIna Shirakawa crap on her. AEW has a lot of women I like including some great talents in ROH. I want to see them start utilizing them properly. If ROH is going to continue to exist, let's get some of these women on AEW television more. Brisco is the ROH world champion and they've got him on AEW television every week. Why isn't Athena getting that as well? I need to see more of Yuka Sakazaki as well.

AEW is pretty good right now honestly, other than the women's division. We should be seeing some more positivity regarding the company. Even more so with this new TV deal. The way AEW is using many of their top guys is more compelling than what we're seeing in WWE right now. Though, I find the women's side of things SIGNIFICANTLY better in WWE...for the most part. WWE women's tag division still sucks, but they are doing great things with all three women's world champions

[Reprise]

Lol yeah, I always find it amusing whenever I see the intergender stuff in Japan. I am sure I once saw clips of some violent death match between Minoru Suzuki and a female wrestler (can't remember who it was). I think he has fought Asuka before too.

Though, I find the women's side of things SIGNIFICANTLY better in WWE...for the most part.

WWE's women's side is way more consistent. I think AEW has made some improvements, but it's still lacking overall. Mercedes needs something interesting to do. Her presentation and gimmick is meh. I saw something the other day on Youtube, someone was criticising her in AEW, but then started saying "but you should see her in this match in Japan, that was a banger". I wonder why she did/does well in Japan, but since signing with AEW I can't even think of one good moment or match from her. I guess her match with Willow was pretty great actually.

[Raging Justice]

"AEW doesn't have stories"

Grab some popcorn and enjoy these movies



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYI5WNfqj8A

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGKblULK2zs

[Reprise]

I am hearing a lot of praise for the Punk and Drew match last night. The rest of the show was apparently fairly average though.

Me: "Man, WWE is supposedly so hot right now. Why don't I watch it?"

*Sees Goldberg is back and might be wrestling again*

"Oh..... That's why"

[Raging Justice]

I wouldn't care if Drew and Punk had the greatest match ever. The feud has been trash and the wrong person won last night from what I'm hearing. Everything about Bad Blood sounds like trash. Finn Balor should have beaten Damien.

and I am so sick of being logged out of this forum all the time and have to do fifty attempts to log back in