Coffey

I guess with Ric Flair asking for & being granted his WWE release we should see what Barry Windham is up to? Seeing as how Arn Anderson & Tully Blanchard are both already in AEW. It's going to lead to a IV Horsemen beat down on Cody or something, surely.

So Adam Cole's contract is rumored to be expiring post SummerSlam. If he leaves NXT/WWE, that seems huge, especially as he's friends with so many people in AEW & of course, Brit Baker is there. If AEW get Punk, Danielson & Cole, my goodness, can you imagine? Really makes me wish Joe didn't go back to NXT/WWE.

They could start with Matt Hardy, The Gunn Club, Jake the Snake, Luther & Vickie. I don't think they should have brought in Christian either, even if he can work. Definitely shouldn't be running Matt Hardy Vs. Christian in 2021. An issue with AEW right now seems to be that a lot of people that look like they're dead weight are also doing stuff behind the scenes, like training & what not. So they bring in someone like Mark Henry or Paul Wight & they have other non-wrestling duties. So like, Daniels, Nakazawa, Best Friends, QT, Dustin, I don't even know what all everyone is doing but they seem to have several of those. If Punk & Bryan are both coming in those are two huge gets & they can use them to make their own stars brighter. Adam Page, Darby Allin, Sammy Guevara, Jungle Boy, Wardlow, Powerhouse Hobbs. I'd use Orange Cassidy as a special attraction but never actually push him as a legitimate wrestler. They need to push the tag team aspect of the show a lot more seriously too. Not just the Young Bucks hamming it up. FTR, Santana & Ortiz, even The Butcher & The Blade. In the women's division, Britt Baker has turned into a legitimate star & now they have Thunder Rosa & Serena as well, which is great, but that division is still way too thin. Tay Conti is developing nicely & Shida is pretty good but it will run stale quickly when you only have a rotation of about five women. Miro, Moxley, MJF & Omega can all be the upper card/main event guys that get cycled around with incoming stars & homegrown people they want to elevate. Andrade needs to do his talking in the ring & when not wrestling have someone else talk for him entirely. I wouldn't mind a Lucha style stable with like Fenix, Pentagon & Andrade then get someone like Dario Cueto/Cesar Duran to be their manager/mouthpiece.

I look forward to Bray being able to work elsewhere & cut a promo without having to worry about the "what!?" chants. What I don't want is another "that other place sucked!" promo.

Like how do these releases not absolutely shatter any morale that exists behind the curtain? Like these firing are completely blindsiding people. And there's a lot of relationships behind the scenes that are just disappearing on a whim.

Some of the recent WWE releases have felt really peculiar to me. They're just all over the place. Cutting someone like Lars Sullivan made sense but in 2021 alone, WWE has released so many people, a lot of which were even on current TV when they cut them. Andrade, Tyler Breeze & Fandango, Ruby Riott, Lana, Buddy Murphy, Aleister Black, Braun Strowman, The IIConics... citing "budget cuts" for the reason for, I think, all of them? Now Bray Wyatt too. It's just really odd. If it were really budgetary reasons, when they're making the most money they ever have, they could have easily released people that wouldn't have had nearly as much name value & probably saved comparable money. Like, yes, a person like Bray or Braun is going to earn more than someone that is like off-TV developmental talent, but just go to WWE.com & look at the Superstars page to see how massive their roster still is.

"AEW is where they are." How very enlightening.

Because he didn't go to my school. That anime nerd would have been tormented relentlessly by the rednecks. Living in Indiana our high school dynamic was a lot different from the movies. The country boys that worked on cars all day were the kids that didn't get fucked with. Them corn detasseling hamhocks. And being an MMA fighter with a pretty OK record doesn't mean anything if we're in the way back machine talking about high school. I don't love AEW Omega but I'm not going to pretend the shit he did in NJPW didn't happen. I'm not writing that dude off. I hate his current character but him in a main event is still going to be money. Can't deny his talent. And Chris Jericho, I'm not a fan of old bloated Jericho hamming it up but, again, credit for that shit he did with Gage because he did a lot more than he had to take, for sure. But I do think it's time to move on from Jericho at the top end of the card. He helped AEW get started but with potentially Bryan & Punk coming in, Miro tearing it up, Hangman needing his day in the sun & the dynamic of Omega, this Pinnacle/Inner Circle stuff has ran its course. I actually think it has hurt MJF more than helped him. He feels like he's really cooled off recently & he felt can't miss a few months ago, like he was going to be one of the very top break out stars of AEW. Andrade has been a miss so far. Vickie & Jake the Snake aren't really needed/doing anything. Christian has been basically invisible. There's way too many people & it feels like they don't have time or room for them. Maybe another show changes that dynamic & maybe not. I guess we'll find out.

I thought it was going to be health related but then he just showed up on TV again. I thought maybe he was injured. Then I thought maybe it was something CoVid related but didn't it come out that it wasn't that? I remember hearing about him being sent back down to NXT to "learn how to work" or something too, or at least it was speculated to be him? Due to not working like a big guy & it pisses Vince off or something. There's a lot of question marks around Keith Lee in WWE. Certainly after interacting with both Brock at the Rumble & Roman Reigns they saw SOMETHING in him. I have no idea why they seemingly did a 180 on him. Some of the shit he can do is amazing. A man his size just doing a leap frog was some next level shit. And yeah, maybe you don't need him doing all that stuff every week in every match... but he's never going to work like One Man Gang in 1989, so I don't know what the fuck.

Her accent is also super thick & it's hard to understand her sometimes.

So Nikki A.S.H. wins the Money in the Bank briefcase. Then she successfully cashing in after Rhea Ripley beats up Charlotte Flair & hits her with her finish on the outside. So the babyface gets a cheap, fluke win to become the champion. This opened RAW with the replay of all of it & then Nikki A.S.H. coming out first to start the show. Then Charlotte comes out, says it was a cheap win & that Nikki A.S.H. can't beat her fair & square. Then Charlotte proves herself right by beating Nikki A.S.H. Then, after losing, Nikki A.S.H. says yeah, she lost, but it was close & she wants a rematch for next week. How is Nikki the babyface & Charlotte the heel here, from a standpoint of if you were just reading the layout on paper? It's like WWE completely forgot how to book a babyface. The woman that IS ALREADY THE CHAMPION said "yeah, I lost but it was close." The babyface champion that won via fluke. Then the babyface fluke champion LOSES & asks for a rematch. Meanwhile, the heel says you can't beat me & then beats Nikki to prove herself right. Even if we ignore how Wrestlecrap that dumb fuck A.S.H. gimmick is - regardless of who in the fuck came up with the idea. HOW EVEN IN THE FUCK DOES ANY OF THIS MAKE FUCKING SENSE?! It's not just bad television it's bad professional wrestling. It's bad sports entertainment. It's bad writing & bad storytelling. The match announced for SummerSlam is a triple threat. My head is gonna pop.

Is this Nikki A.S.H. shit the top angle on RAW? They got the opening video package & the opening segment. This is surreal to me.

An observation that I made: in WWE, Zack Ryder felt like just another guy. Had he went to AEW, it would have felt like he wasn't a big enough star to make a dent. In Impact, Matt Cardona would fit right in, really. In GCW, he felt like he was too big of a star. Kind of funny how that works.

To put into perspective how competitive college football in the United States is, Ron Simmons was a 2-time All-American, had his number retired at Florida State & is in the College Football Hall of Fame. In 1979 he finished NINTH in the Heisman Trophy race. And the athletes have just continually gotten better since then. Stronger, faster. Advancements in medicine, recovery, training, technology, etc. American football is on another level. And we all know Ron Simmons is unfuckwithable.

There's also the Steamboat argument too. John Cena never got that turn & heel run in WWE & Roman has. For all we know, Cena might have thrived just as much if he were heel.

He did & physically, he looks bigger than ever. Or as Meng's Mullet so eloquently put it on Twitter:

I would argue that the reason I can't get into Hangman Vs. Omega is exactly BECAUSE it's not treated real. The Dark Order stuff. The Kenny & Callis stuff. It's a turn off for me as a viewer.

This is facts. I don't get Orange Cassidy. I don't get the Young Bucks. But I would be insane to not acknowledge they're over & it's working. It doesn't matter if I get it, because all the people buying tickets do. The argument that Cornette uses a lot is "but it won't be able to have X amount of growth!" (to whatever X is in his head) but we just don't know that anymore. With how TV has changed. How wrestling has changed. With the internet & social media & how the fans have changed. How we consume media. It's more like being a part of the in joke crowd now than thinking wrestling is real. Wanting to see the people you like instead of wanting to see the good guy win or the bad guy lose. I, personally, like when wrestling is portrayed like it's real & the stakes matter & the drama can draw you in. I think the best match in AEW history was Cody Vs. Dustin. But that isn't really the direction AEW has been going from the jump, so I can't get mad at them for not doing what they were never doing, right? I mean they're selling out 10k seat arenas in like one day & getting over a million viewers on Dynamite on TNT, right? So obviously something is working. (he's not in AEW but Danhausen is 100% another guy/gimmick that I don't get at all)

I actually quite like several things on SmackDown right now if I'm being honest. RAW is a cess pool, sadly. However, Smackdown of course has The Tribal Chief angle with Roman Reigns which I love & think is currently the best thing going in all of professional wrestling, not just WWE. I'm honestly even digging this new Baron Corbin thing too. Spaghetti out of a can. I think SummerSlam might turn out to be a pretty good show. I've liked Ring of Honor lately. Haven't loved most things AEW Dynamite, although their crowds make the show energetic & fun. I'm off MLW & NWA & I haven't seen New Japan in a bit. I pretty much never watch Impact. But any AEW PPV or NJPW big PPV I'm there - I'll never miss Wrestle Kingdom. Smackdown is not bad if you watch it in parts & not in one live sitting. It also helps if you're watching wrestling shows anymore by following along with social media. Watching with others really enhances the experience, not unlike popular shows when they come out on Netflix or whatever. I've been caught up watching old Mid South Wrestling lately though. Today before work, I watched The One Man Gang come off of the top rope, which I had never seen before, when he attacks Big Cat Ernie Ladd. Early Gang was uber greasy, lol. I've been pretty bummed lately over the Terry Funk news & having to work so much, but I'm off the next couple of days & I plan on not doing much but watching some shows. I am planning on watching a good amount of old school wrestling this weekend, so I was pretty surprised when the stuff I was seeing from SmackDown was so entertaining to me. I did see that Zelina Vega hit Toni Storm with a Code Red, which Michael Cole then promptly called a Sunset Flip, because of course he did.

Honestly, she would be perfectly fine just being on TV & not working matches anyway. She's a good promo & she's entertaining whenever she's on the screen, she doesn't have to be working. She can just be talking shit or doing vignettes.

Toni Storm is another talent that, to me, should be can't miss... but in WWE, you just never know. WWE has a lot of talented women. A lot of beautiful women. A lot of women that are both. But they also constantly do 50/50 booking, a lot of rematches, goofy gimmicks like Alexa or Nikki, overexposure & they have Becky Lynch's return on the near horizon. So you just never know if someone will be booked into obscurity, lost in the shuffle, or if they'll bloom into something special. Of course, that's not exclusive to just the women, that's where the men are at too. At this point, it feels like having been in NXT before being called up to the main roster is more of a detriment to a talent than a positive. They'll probably give Toni Storm some sort of booty bump spot & a headscissors submission & call her "Thunder" Toni Storm.

I'm enjoying all the buzz around AEW right now, between the Punk/Bryan talks & the good ratings the last couple of weeks with the return of the jam-packed, rowdy live audience. That being said, bringing in Nick Gage is an awful look, especially after his Darkside of the Ring which just aired. Just seems like a really poor decision.

Someone is gonna find Cornette hanged in his closet on a belt.

I think people are nuts for even questioning bringing Punk in. If the conflict is Colt, he'd have been fired yesterday for me. That's a no brainer to me.

Just the name value & promos alone would be worth it. Punk is still also five years younger than guys like Matt Hardy or Christian, with a lot less mileage on him I would imagine, and those guys just wrestled against each other on Dynamite last week. I mean, if fat, drunk Chris Jericho is an AEW main eventer, CM Punk is going to look like goddamn Lou Thesz. But I wouldn't put it passed AEW to pay Punk $7 million dollars just to come in & have Cody-uh, ya know, cut a promo on him, brother. Now if AEW can some how get both Punk & Bryan... yeah. I was disappointed Joe went back to WWE, I was hoping they would get him too. I feel their biggest issue right now, since they're back to having fans again, is that they have to move on eventually from the stuff they've been doing at the top of the card. It can't be The Elite forever. It can't be Inner Circle Vs. Pinnacle forever. It can't be Chris Jericho; Main Eventer, forever. Ya know? They bring in all of this talent, like Miro, Andrade, etc. & they're basically in limbo because there's no way to move up because AEW already feels bloated. Not to mention when their own stars start getting over, like Darby, Jungle Boy, Britt, etc. There's just not enough room for everyone.