Coffey

I had a big long diatribe ready to be written about why I want to see AEW succeed & why I'm on board with them but ultimately, it was a lot of words to basically say that AEW still has goodwill because they're new & WWE has spent the last two decades killing all of my expectations for that company as a whole. I think it's also why I was more willing to give NWA Powerrr a chance & want to love MLW. I was using Nikki Cross as an example, due to how she was good, fun & got over lately only to basically fall off of TV when they decided to make Alexa "Miss Fiend". I could write pages on just the women in WWE & how WWE made me care about women's wrestling to then only turn around & treat a lot of them as a waste of time & effort. All the people that I seemingly enjoyed & wanted to become invested in, like Nikki, Becky, Ronda, Asuka... they take a back seat (or left) to the likes of Lacey Evans, Carmella & Nia Jax & it just got to the point where I became indifferent to that too. AEW Revolution had some misses, yes, and I do think that it damaged them. However, that was really the first time that I have felt that way about AEW. In the past, there's been some disappointment but that wasn't on the company as much as it was the expectations of the fans: like C.M. Punk not showing up. But the shows, the actual shows that are on TV, are still fun to watch. WWE is a chore to watch. Even the PPVs drag on because more than half the card I don't care about & the other half the card WWE themselves don't care about. Yet, they won't let anyone leave to go elsewhere so they just have this giant mega-roster of people sitting in catering

I don't know if there's a catch-all thread, but there's been some mentions of it in the past. I'm on there as @Skelemania & Loss is @PWOLoss

I remember back-in-the-day, guys in JCP (I think?) were mad that Baby Doll was dating Sam Houston because in their company, Baby Doll was like a top valet to the top stars & in WWF, at the time, Sam Houston was a jobber. I don't remember if it was Dusty or Tully... but it was someone in that circle. Sometimes I think about how Vince McMahon would be petty enough to still think about that & hold a grudge about it to this day. "My guy isn't a jobber, goddamnit! We create superstars in the World Wrestling Federation!" So when I think of Andrade leaving with Charlotte staying, or Vega leaving with Black staying, I always randomly think about Sam Houston.

Aww, I didn't know that. That kind of legit makes me sad.

I was under the impression - from what I have read, mind you, I have not heard it - that what Cornette was saying was making a reference to the couple of Kip & Penelope on AEW as being similar to like a middle school boy and his slutty girlfriend. Which I guess that is the same thing as saying she's slutty but with all the other nonsense Cornette has spewed, this one seems pretty inconsequential & I'm surprised it sparked the outrage it did. I'm more surprised that people on AEW keep engaging with him. What will Penelope, Kip or Miro get from calling Cornette out on Twitter or Twitch? It's just going to drag them down to his level & make them look worse by association. It's a bad look for them & for AEW. They should all just ignore him, in my opinion. Everyone that is still actively involved within pro wrestling should. After the NWA debacle, just let Cornette be the angry old man that rants to his cult. A comparison that I'm sure he'll hate, he can be the Tucker Carlson to his audience of Fox News viewers & the rest of the people will just ignore that channel. Even if Cornette says that he's working or playing a character or whatever the fuck, I find it almost ironic that he has basically become the pro wrestling equivalent to what he claims to despise in politics. He is the hateful, close-minded, stuck-in-the-past bigot.

Yeah, people look back fondly on things like the Cruiserweight division now, but in the moment when that shit was live, that was mostly filler time 'til the nWo came out. At least for the casual fans, the reason for the popularity of wrestling at the time. The entire show revolved around the nWo & what Hulk Hogan was doing because he was getting paid all the money. Like there was obviously great stuff between the likes of Eddie, Rey, Jericho, etc. & a lot of them got over - but nothing sums up WCW at the time more than the Jericho Vs. Goldberg feud & how WCW perceived it. I think it was Jericho himself whom talked about how he just wanted to work a little program & Bill would still go over in the end & even with him trying to do the skits & what not they just wanted him to shut up & get squashed in 20 seconds like a nobody jobber. Funny how all the supposed WCW filler was the stuff that I ate up when watching the show. I loved the U.S. Title scene when Raven was around. I really liked Wrath when he came back & went on that undefeated streak when he was using the Meltdown. I remember even getting excited when Bam Bam Bigelow showed up & did a run-in (brisk trot) while wearing sweat pants. Whenever Meng's music would hit, you knew you were going to get something stiff. I loved The Giant back when he was dunking dudes with the Chokeslam that looked like death. I loved when the nWo B-team music would hit & that anticipation before the wrestler came out where I was hoping for Scott Norton (Yeah!) or would get Brian Adams (Boo!) - I mean, I ate up all the Goldberg & Sting stuff too but the people in charge were wrong in that the people only cared about the main events. If anything, WWF PPV at the time had awful undercards with great main events and the WCW PPV had great undercards & awful main events. The top of the card in WCW was what kind of sucked. One thing that WCW definitely got right though is that each guy had a finish, you knew what the finish was & you knew if they hit it, that the match was over. Raven's Evenflow DDT, DDP's Diamond Cutter, Saturn's Death Valley Driver, etc. Each guy had an established finisher & we weren't trained to expect each finish to be kicked out of three or four times back then, so when it did happen it was a bigger deal. It was awesome when a dude would come out, hit his finish & just lay someone out. Like a Sting Scorpion Death Drop - those were the moments I lived for. A Kevin Nash walk-in to hit a Lazy Bomb because he wanted mic time. I have always liked when the finish was what was treated like death instead of like doing a run-in with multiple people doing a beatdown with weapons or whatever.

Seriously, why doesn't WWE just fucking fire Drake? It's a ref, it's not that big of a loss. Let him go & save a bit of PR.

I think all parties involved would be better off if they started putting Nia into more skits like that and stopped putting her in matches with other people for her to accidentally fuck them up.

Yeah, I've been thinking that if Tony Khan is the Vince McMahon, Jr. of AEW then who is his Pat Patterson? They need a guy like that. They have quite a few good wrestling minds around 'em over there. I don't think the answer should be Cody, Kenny Omega, The Young Bucks or Adam Page. It needs to be someone that isn't a part of the AEW founding squad, for a lack of a better phrase.

I liked Stephanie McMahon a lot back in the days of the Love Triangle between her, Triple H & Kurt Angle. That got squashed quickly. I liked her feud with Trish Stratus too, which led to her taking a Stone Cold Stunner as it intertwined with the feud between Steve Austin & Triple H. I thought Stephanie was really cute back in the Wrestlemania X-Seven days, too. Although that hideous angle with a comatose Linda McMahon that Vince McMahon was making out with Trish Stratus in front of didn't do anyone involved any favors. I was also a huge ECW mark so when I saw Shane McMahon "steal" the Rob Vam Dam Van Terminator, I was pissed! Yeah, I think I like Stephanie more than Shane, it's just that Stephanie wore out her welcome by never going away during The Authority era & Shane kind of went awhile for quite awhile, so people had time to forget him getting on their nerves with his shitty punches & that awful Mean Street Posse mess. Vince McMahon is obviously better than both & Linda McMahon is obviously the worst of the lot. I'd say Vince, Steph, Shane, Linda.

I'll be honest, I had not even considered WWE just saying no. I don't know why that didn't even cross my mind. Yeah, now they have to hope they don't piss off Charlotte, I guess? Not that I think it would ever come to fruition, but Charlotte, Andrade & even Ric showing up to do something with Arn & Tully, J.J. Dillion & Sting again would be wild. Charlotte got to main event Wrestlemania though, she's not going anywhere.

So, Andrade/La Sombra asked for his WWE release on Monday, apparently. If AEW don't bring him in, they're insane. Unless he just doesn't want to go there. Especially after some of the other names they've brought in. He's one of the biggest gets they could acquire imo.

Let's be real, we only have like 5-10 active posters anymore. We all follow each other around & click on any thread with new activity at this point.

Same. Although I did like the closing angle & feel like the new stable has potential. Inner Circle did good things & like you mentioned on Twitter a few days ago, it lead to a lot of intriguing things. If a stable helps get new talent over, like Inner Circle did with Sammy, I feel that's a success. In that regard, I hope we see Wardlow break away from this new stable ala Batista in Evolution. I feel like my biggest issue with AEW right now is I disagree with the people they choose to use, talent wise. Like, I've mentioned before - as has a couple others - that Penelope Ford is the money in the group with Kip Sabian, not him. How Miro should be higher up & being used to do more than waste time with, let's face it, a jobber. Now they're doing things with QT Marshall & trainer or not, it's a waste of television time. The entirety of the Casino Tag Team Battle Royal up until the very end on the PPV was like just twenty minutes of all the things I dislike about AEW.

Back in 1994, when I was becoming a teenager & started thinking that the bad guys were cool, I thought Mr. Bob Backlund was great almost solely for the fact that he started doing the Crossface Chickenwing & at that point, I had never seen it before. The whole angle rebuilding Backlund up as a loon, having him put it on non-wrestlers & not let go & then culminating in him regaining the WWF Championship by beating Bret Hart of all people was awesome to me. I feel like I'm on the other side of the coin where I prefer when the finish is a Submission. I grew up watching the likes of The Iron Sheik, Sgt. Slaughter, Rick Martel, Greg Valentine, Ric Flair, Sting, Bret Hart, etc. Of course I loved moves like the DDT, or Savage's Elbow or Snuka's Splash but there was something about a Submission breaking people that I enjoyed. Then Taz came along in ECW & I started seeing people tapout. I was hooked.

...that's not a good look. For those that don't know, Britt McHenry sued Fox News over sexual harassment from Tyrus when they worked together as Co-Hosts & said she filed at least four different complaints. I know a lot of names have come out but is it really that hard to just not bring in sexual pests in pro-wrestling?

There's not a card in the world that could make me feel like Wrestlemania needs to be a 2-day event. Hell, it doesn't need to be four hours.

I wonder if people in general would like Spears more, or tolerate him more anyway, if he were able to walk to the ring with Peyton Royce instead of Tully Blanchard. Like how in ECW guys like Lance Storm or Justin Credible would come out with Dawn Marie or Francine.

That's good shit. Can't wait to hear the name of the new stable. MJF, FTR, Spears, Wardlow managed by Tully.

Maki Itoh is amazing. Holy shit, I fell out at all of that lmao

Christian needs to not immediately be in the world title picture.

All that talent in the company and they're giving TV time to QT Marshall of all people lmfao.

I'm glad Molly is going in. It's deserved. My favorite thing is how like, zero people have anything bad to say about her. Even some of the biggest assholes in shoot interviews when giving names in rapid fire succession are all like "...I don't know why she was in wrestling. She was too sweet to be in this shit business."

I think the show tonight will be really important in how AEW is perceived moving forward. There's going to be some ill-will from the Pay-Per-View on Sunday, especially from the people that paid $50 during a pandemic to watch it. So they need to do something, and I don't think they should just ignore it or make a joke of it.

Oh, absolutely, 100%. Revolution was their first real "miss" & tonight, how they respond, will answer a lot of questions. I also think that when fans can come back is when AEW will really catch on. The shows felt special with the fans before the pandemic. It was like you were a part of something cool, which WWF has not had in... twenty years. Everyone seemed like they were having a blast, both in the crowd & in the ring both & that is an environment that people will want to be in. Especially with AEW seemingly being so much more inclusive than any other big wrestling company in the past.