Coffey

Brodie Lee was Big E's best friend, from what I understand... and how AEW treated his passing, compared to WWE acknowledgement is a night & day difference. It wouldn't surprise me. That's even before you to get what they've done w/ a lot of Xavier's friends like Tyler Breeze or how WWE treated Kofi Kingston or a number of other things. Hell, the New Day Podcast, even. If they were in AEW, they can do their podcast, they can do Twitch, they don't have to worry about being exploited, they earn their own money that they get to keep & they're back working with a lot of their friends. Plus AEW doesn't have the history of racism & isn't in a working deal with Saudi Arabia, nor are they a publicly traded company that cuts people each quarter just to look better to non-wrestling fan shareholders. To be completely 100% honest, I have zero idea why ANYONE would choose WWE over AEW right now. WWE can't even claim to be where the money is at anymore. The only negative about AEW right now is that their roster is getting so big, there's not enough room/time for everyone.

WALTER should be a top guy somewhere. He's one of the best in the world right now. Occasionally get just a match on NXT seems insane to me.

What a great read. Got me emotional. I saw the link on Reddit and was coming here to post it too.

This could pertain to so many different things but yeah, for the most part, I almost always agreed with Bret. At least as it pertained to pro-wrestling opinions. I feel the biggest back-and-forth would be over Ric Flair but I even feel like that after the Plane Ride from Hell Dark Side of the Ring episode might have a few people even potentially having their opinions swayed.

Legitimately one of the first things I thought when I saw his name on the list was "they probably asked him to dance & he said no."

You know, I was thinking... the week-to-week shows as a whole might be awful. However, at the end of the year, if you were just making like a WWE 2021 compilation tape? There would be a ton of good stuff on there. Especially if you included stuff that wasn't just matches, like the stuff between Brock & Roman with Heyman.

This is such a tough & touchy subject too. Mental health & well-being in our country is still honestly really lackluster & comes with a lot of stereotypes & negative connotations. I like to think that we're turning a corner & coming around on it - myself included. I have made insensitive comments about it as well, even here on PWO in posts that I believe were deleted by moderators when I got into it with MoS over the way I careless expressed an opinion with over-the-top language. I was wrong, he was right & I overreacted due to pride & getting called out. And that was just like a couple months ago. I like to think people like Eddie Kingston coming out & speaking about mental health is a positive thing that will lead to more heading in the right direction. Or even more recently with C.M. Punk saying that if people need help, ask for it & get it. There's nothing wrong with needing help. On the other side of the coin, I'm already seeing & reading comments online - not just from the wrestling communities that I frequent - how people are starting to use mental health as an "excuse" & that they think it's bullshit. I've already seen it about Nia Jax. And I've been reading it a lot the last month or so over Ben Simmons of the Philadelphia 76ers in the NBA in particular. They seem to think that now whenever shit hits the fan that a celebrity can just claim being mentally unwell like it's some sort of get out of jail free card or something. Which, even if that were true, which I don't believe it is, it wouldn't be worth throwing out all the actual mental health issues that others have to try to play a "got'cha!" against some famous person. I've seen it even be likened to when a celebrity adulterer used to claim being addicted to sex & checking into sex rehab to try to save their marriages. People will really jump through some hoops to try to discredit people they've never actually met because they don't like their answer to how they're dealing with something. It's kind of crazy. Social media has really compounded this issue exponentially too. You also see it now with how words or phrases like "woke" or "cancel culture" are being vilified. Or politically, how they've turned the words socialism & communism into weapons where they can just try to tie people to those words to discredit them. We see it with the pandemic & vaccinations pretty much daily at this point.

THROW IT UP!

They didn't even put Scarlett on TV on the main roster either, did they? I'll be curious to see if more names come out over the unvaccinated speculation.

I'm not going to pretend to shed any tears for Nia Jax & I hope no other wrestling company touches her with a 10-foot-pole. She's unsafe & downright dangerous. That being said, some of the names on the release list shocked me. And apparently they're firing whole couples at the same time now? Mia Yim & Keith Lee. Scarlett & Karrion. John Morrison better not answer his phone! The literally just brought Eva Marie back & now she's released again. Heh.

I don't have to work tonight so I can actually watched AEW Dynamite live which is pretty cool.

Today is Monday. Monday Night RAW was tonight. Three hour show like it has been for the last long while. They hyped up & built to a Bianca Vs. Becky championship rematch. It's now 11PM, the end of RAW. No one even bothered to make the thread this week. That sums up the current state of WWE to me.

I referenced these tweets in my earlier comment & yes, they're heinous, no doubt. Those tweets were made in 2013 & from what I can recall, there's not been any incident since then, right? Then he publicly apologized & his next two ROH payoffs went to the Partners Against Hate charity. That being said, his fucking apology was shit & he ended up deleting his Twitter over it at one time. "I feel very strongly about how and who should teach kids about certain things but I showed poor judgment by using that analogy and I’m sorry." I do think we have to allow people to make mistakes & be able to learn from them & move forward. Depending on the severity of the mistakes, of course. Like Hulk Hogan being allowed to comeback to WWE was ridiculous to me. But I think that the last several years have shown that Jay Briscoe can be valuable as an asset & he wasn't using slurs at least. Not to condone what he said but in the grand scheme of things, his sins were a helluva lot less severe than some of the others that have come out in the last few years. Like Joey Ryan & shit. I don't think Jay Briscoe should have been blackballed from professional wrestling over it & I'm glad he wasn't. I don't know how AEW's roster would feel about him though.

Not putting the NXT title on Bron but putting the NXT women's title on Mandy Rose sounds like the most WWE decision-making I can possibly think of. Unbelievable.

They some how found a worse champion than Xavier, which is impressive.

Big news for the entire world of professional wrestling. Ring of Honor potentially coming to an end. A ton of talent hitting the free agent market. NXT has their new mandate. Impact is basically non-existent from a viewer standpoint. AEW is already way too bloated. Traveling to Japan still seems mostly out of the conversation during the pandemic & what not. It'll be interesting to see what shakes up from all of this. Maybe WWE hires some former ROH talent & puts them directly onto the main roster & doesn't try to send them to NXT. Some people will go to Impact, I'm sure, but just like the Iconics, it'll be met with very little buzz. Maybe a company like MLW might get a couple of names, or even, unfortunately, GCW. I really like the Briscoes but I know that they kind of shot themselves in the foot with hateful tweets from Jay awhile ago. Jay Lethal isn't exactly a young pup anymore. Would be cool to see Brody King pop-up somewhere but I feel like it might be too much of a cliché to put him with someone like Aleister Black. Maybe Gresham goes to Impact to be with Jordynne Grace. I don't get Danhausen at all so I fully expect AEW to sign him & feud him with Orange Cassidy. EC3 can't catch a fucking break. Poor guy.

This should be its own thread. There's a lot of discussion to be had & candidates to be name-dropped. Also, if you look at it from a titles perspective, not just the world title, there's some interesting cases especially around tag teams.

Ain't Mark Henry the one that Michael Hayes said "I'm more of an n-word than you are" to & he didn't do shit?

WWE is thinking they're going to make the next Undertaker with their gimmick ideas & instead they're re-doing Big Vito, Tony Mamaluke & Deuce/Domino. WWE has always had more misses than hits. For every Undertaker or Kane, there's a Val Venis, Mantaur or Repo Man. Even when something falls into their damn lap, like Rex Steiner, we get Bron Breakker.

Here's to hoping none of them get murdered!

This is actually hilarious and I would love to see it. I've not seen it but that sounds comedy. How do they defend the red lighting?

To me, they're the epitome of Indie style. Getting all your shit in, kicking out of everything, doing high spots for the sake of high spots. It's video game wrestling. It's Twitter .gif wrestling. It's, to coin a favorite phrase from PWO's past, COSplay wrestling. When people in the wrestling circles talk about the Young Bucks to the point that they call them the greatest ever or some shit, I just roll my eyes. It's something I'll never understand or comprehend. Thankfully there's a mute feature & block button on every forum/social media so I can remove myself from any discourse with those people. It's easier than trying to engage them, like Trump supporters. Just let them live in their bubble & I'll live in mine. Life is too short to argue with strangers on the internet over opinions that will never be persuaded. I never understood the Kevin Steen love. I don't get Orange Cassidy. But to me, the Bucks are the worst. AEW "Stans" on Twitter are a different breed. It's like the Beyonce fans or the fans of that all dude Korean pop band but from wrestling marks. Not to say the die-hard WWE fans aren't also equally biased & nuts, but some of these people it feels like it's their life mission to try to spread the gospel about pro wrestling that I'm never going to like. It honestly just really reads like that Steve Buscemi meme to me. A bunch of people trying to fit in & pretend that they get it. Like Randy Marsh listening to the shit music in South Park.

I actually didn't know this. That makes a lot more sense. Even still, they brought back Eva Marie & hired both Scarlett Bourdeaux & Pricilla Kelly so I still don't think they particularly care about how good a worker a female is or has the potential to be. But it's not like Tay didn't pass the eye test too, so it's a head-scratcher.

I saw this going the rounds on the Twitta Machine & wanted to say a comment: These are the crazy kind of replies that you hear about people making where it feels like it'll always be an "Us Vs. Them" or this side against that side situation. Like the stuff gets so territorial & outlandish, I can't even tell when someone is just fucking around or if they're being serious anymore. I can differentiate trolls from actual fan opinions anymore. Personally, I don't think the Young Bucks are the best team in their own company, let alone in the world. I would have them firmly behind FTR, The Usos & The Briscoes, but that's just me. I just find it fascination how differing opinions are nowadays. And Roman is more entertaining than Kenny by a mile lately. That match with Daniel Bryan is the best thing Kenny Omega has done in AEW.