Coffey

I don't think there's anyone on the planet that could deny that Mysterio should be in a pro wrestling Hall of Fame. It just feels like every time when we're on the Road to Wrestlemania we, as a community (wrestling fans, not just PWO), seem to have the same arguments & discussions as per the inductees: the WWE Hall of Fame isn't credible, the celebrity wing is a waste of time, how is Wrestler X not in yet? Those sorts of things. If wrestling had a baseball style Hall of Fame, Rey Mysterio is a first ballot.

They could turn Moxley heel by having him go straight laced & being against violence & blood. Although that would probably bee Cactus Jack in ECW or Right to Censor levels of character work.

I would rather see a wrestling company try to do something with streaming than another TV show that people most likely won't watch. Like, does AEW need another hour of TV time? I feel like they already don't use their time wisely with just Dynamite & Rampage & that's not even counting the internet shows like Dark or Dark: Elevation. I thought that WWE would try to be more "internet savvy" when they were doing Byte This! & trying out shows like Cyber Sunday. They were also kind of the pioneers of internet online content with the WWE Network, which admittedly I didn't think was going to work at first. We've not really seen a wrestling company try to have a show that is on a streaming service with fresh content yet though. Like, I don't really know how you do it, maybe a bi-weekly show or something? I know we have seen iMPACT! on Twitch & the previously mentioned AEW shows are on YouTube but it's kind of crazy that we've not seen pro wrestling try to get into NetFlix, HBO Max or paid services like that. Lucha Underground would have been perfect for that. I like what @DMJis saying about a show geared toward a younger audience too. When I was a kid, I used to eat up WWF Superstars - and still to this day, I have a huge nostalgia for it. Granted that was like over thirty years ago & I know times have change. Like DMJ mentioned though, AEW definitely has a lot of their roster that could easily be geared toward children to sell games, toys, clothes, etc. & get their parents to spend money. Danhausen, Orange Cassidy, Dark Order, even Darby Allin. Also, no one is really ever trying too hard to appeal to women either. Like women & children are untapped potential in wrestling.

I hope this becomes a bigger topic for the next couple of days to get us all away from drinkgate.

I loved the finishing sequence in the trios tag title match. The Murphy knee off the springboard into the Black roundhouse kick into the GROSS assisted Greetings from Asbury Park. Everything looked like death there. House of Black look like monsters! Love it.

One of the biggest problems with AEW, in my opinion, is just having good matches for the sake of having good matches. I'm not opposed to great professional wrestling, obviously, but you need characters & angles so that the matches happen for a reason & that there's consequences for the winners & losers. The reason can't be "how many snowflakes will Dave Meltzer give this match?" Bryan Danielson is a terrific professional wrestler but can he carry AEW as the champion that makes people want to pay to watch his matches? That's the question we should be asking. It's the question AEW should have asked themselves before putting the world title on MJF. What is Bryan Danielson's current character? Because it feels like it's just "underdog that has great matches" & I don't see how that draws. Especially when half the time the underdog part goes out the window because you know he's not losing to the guys they feed him on Dynamite. He main evented Wrestlemania. Where's the heat? Where's the money? They need to start pushing up their homegrown stars so that they have options in the future that aren't Moxley, Jericho, Danielson, Punk. That way it isn't ridiculous if you have a Takeshita, HOOK, Starks or Hobbs main event. People take Darby seriously. Really they need to just start doing more angles. Something other than just post match run-ins.

This is probably true but they can't book Sting the way they do if his WCW run didn't go the way it did. The Crow character is iconic.

That’s the fire from Danielson we should have been seeing the whole time! That was great.

Yeah this battle royal is bad

I liked the ladder match, hated the Christian promo. Jericho match was pointless. Love the House of Black. This women’s match is missing for me.

I didn't feel like it was anything special. More like a glorified squash match. I thought that Hiromu/Amakusa was better.

All of that would be amazing. The feud, matches, Gunther in the main event & potential Gunther world champion down the road? I'm here for all of it. Right now, I'm loving this Intercontinental reign he's on. Making that belt seem special again. He's had several great matches too. He had crazy chemistry with Sheamus as well. I'm a big Gunther fan.

Well, the card tonight, for the third week in a row, certainly isn't anything special either, Stiva. I'm in the same boat as you. They're doing another tag team battle royal. That ladder match could be pretty sweet.

This is the first that I'm hearing about the pills. I didn't buy the tan story to begin with & honestly, I don't ever really trust anything that Bischoff ever says. If you've ever listened to his podcast, man, that dude can definitely go on some off-the-rails tangents. The thing is, even with the pill story, or the Hogan creative control, like what else could you have done other than pay off the year plus long build? The fact that they still didn't go through with it, and had all the bells & whistles... even before the Bret Hart stuff or the ref fast count (or not fast count), Hogan got WAY too much in that match. It should have been a squash match. Like Hogan goes for some shit, Sting no sells it. Irish Whip, Stinger Splash, Scorpion Death Drop, Scorpion Deathlock, Hogan taps. Then if you need to get out of it later, you can do so on Nitro or whatever. Just monumentally disastrous for WCW. Even more so than the Halloween Havoc Pay-Per-View that cut off during the Diamond Dallas Page Vs. Bill Goldberg World Title match. Sting could have just said he didn't need the title & relinquish to back to WCW or whatever if they needed to get it off him. His whole goal/story was to conquer Hogan & the nWo anyway. Once Sting joined the Wolfpac & started painting his face red, he was doneski.

I guess it depends on where he goes after Wrestlemania but I think he's booed by the end of the year. Of course, he might also turn heel, so who knows? But the returning babyface comeback that wins the Rumble then goes on to win the title at Wrestlemania for his "boyhood dream" or "do it for daddy" angle or whatever, it won't last. The crowds always get bored of it & turn on it nowadays. Still, I'll take Cody Rhodes over Kevin Owens any day.

I don't dislike MJF. That being said, several months to maybe a year ago, there was a lot of talks about cosplaying wrestlers in AEW. That's what MJF feels like to me. Not that he's a vicious or vile heel, but that he's acting like he's a bad guy. It comes off as phony. He's done a great job getting himself into pretty spectacular shape & I like that AEW took a chance on him as the top guy but like Hangman Page before him, I just don't think it is working. There's also zero that they can do to make me care about an Ironman match in 2023. Even if it didn't involve MJF. I just think that gimmick has jumped the shark. After the last one that I remember in the WWE, where the fans were more interested in doing a Royal Rumble style countdown for every minute of the match, I don't know why anyone would try to go back to that well again. It's the wrestling match equivalent to filler.

I think you answered your own question, brother.

I still think the crowds turn on him, I just don't think it happens until he wins the title.

They didn't mention the one that drives me the most crazy: the Devil's Advocate fan. If 4/5 people love a show, this person will hate it. If 4/5 people hate a show, this person will love it. They always have to go against the grain of whatever the popular opinion is. You see this shit online ALL the time, especially nowadays when everyone is trying to get clicks.

I don't think that it's out of the realm of possibility that WWE could get FTR/The Revival back as well. Aren't their contracts up soon?

We also don't get any of this Sami storyline if Drew McIntyre beats Roman Reigns at Clash at the Castle.

If WWE were going to pull an audible, it should have been at the Royal Rumble with Cody winning the Rumble, not at having Sami win the WWE title at a not-Wrestlemania show a month before Wrestlemania. The blow off for the Roman Reigns 900+ day title run has to happen at the biggest show. You don't crown the champion at the AFC Championship, you crown them at the Super Bowl. Now if that should have been Sami Zayn at Wrestlemania instead of Cody Rhodes, that's a different conversation altogether.

I really liked the U.S. Title Elimination Chamber, although I'm disappointed that Austin Theory is the U.S. Champion. I don't see anything in that guy. I thought it was going to be used to elevate Montez Ford. I do also really like Bronson Reed, I've always been a fan of hosses, but I get why they eliminated him early as he was pretty gassed out. Sad we didn't get to see the Tsunami or Ford Frog Splash off of a pod though. We did get the Johnny Gargano uber Frankensteiner though! Also, I just really want to acknowledge how much both Rhea Ripley & Beth Phoenix killed in in their intergender mixed tag team match. The way the match was laid out to let the women shine was great. That Superplex was awesome. I'm glad that Asuka won the women's Chamber too. Asuka Vs. Bianca should be a really good match. I'm kind of over WWE presenting Liv Morgan as any sort of credible threat though. It looks ridiculous. Credit where credit is due however, because that off-the-pod Sunset Flip Powerbomb was gross! EDIT: Online, I'm seeing a lot of people mention that Sami winning would have been the correct decision but I think maybe too much emphasis is being put onto the hometown crowd? It happened with Drew McIntyre at the Clash at the Castle show too. A hot crowd makes a show a lot more enjoyable but just like Wrestlemania X-8 in Toronto when the crowd was mega over for Hulk Hogan against The Rock, it doesn't necessarily mean you put over Hogan (or Drew or Sami). I don't know, I can see it both ways. I thought it was a misfire when AEW didn't put over The Acclaimed the first time when they were super over but it worked out (until they just lost to the Gunns). The point made earlier in this thread about how WWE has conditioned their fans to never expect the favorite to win the big one is valid, for sure.

Roman Reigns is going to go down as an absolute all-timer. Main roster debut in The Shield. This amazing Bloodline angle. This heel run & championship reign. He has a lot of great matches and moments even at the biggest stage. Dude made me care about Braun Strowman for awhile and just made everyone believe Sami Zayn could win the WWE Title. Absolute legend and if we do another PWO GWE he’s going to be high on my list.

Great show.