Coffey

As pro wrestling fans, this timeline feels cursed. WWE is going back to Saudi Arabia. AEW is bringing in Edge & Ric Flair to feud/wrestle with Sting & Christian while a bloated Chris Jericho is a main eventer. Remember all that shit with JAS & BCC trying to get Daniel Garcia over? Now he's a fucking Alex Wright rip off. Amazing.

Yeah, I've really come around on them as well. They got quite entertaining in a pretty short amount of time.

Something about family of thoroughbreds & hosses bah gawd.

I have been rewatching a lot of WCW. Lately, a lot of 1995 & 1996. Admittedly, it's not great. Especially 1995. Almost every main event is a combination of Hogan, Sting, Flair & Arn Anderson & the whole shows are just people talking about Hogan. What I really noticed though, is that there are SO MANY MORE ex-WWF people than I realized. The entire show feels like "hey, remember me?" with just a couple WCW people thrown in. Of course there's Hogan, Savage & later Hall & Nash. There's also I.R.S. & Ted DiBiase, The Big Bossman, Earthquake, Beefcake, Bobby Heenan, Mean Gene, Rick Martel, The One Man Gang, Jim Neidhart, The British Bulldog... there's way too many to name them all. Even if a lot of guys worked elsewhere or bounced around like The Nasty Boys or The Steiners, they still feel like they're fresh off WWF TV. AEW is feeling like that to me. It's not just the active wrestlers but all up & down the card of talent with people like Justin Roberts & Renee Young. Or commentators like Jim Ross & Taz. They have Edge & Christian now. They brought in The Big Show & Mark Henry for... reasons. Jericho & Moxley were really their first main event guys on the first PPV. Billy Gunn, Paige, Cesaro, Jack Swagger, The Hardy Boys, Aleister Black, Rusev, etc. They have a ton of talent & a lot of people that worked at a lot of places but even a guy like Bryan Danielson a lot of people will know from WWE TV not everything else he did. That's not necessarily a bad thing but it's an observation. Before the nWo angle got super over, WCW was the pits & even the nWo angle really only gave them like two years of hot TV. AEW doesn't have an nWo angle & like @El-P mentioned, it's starting to give TNA vibes. TNA had a lot of talent too & had a lot of good matches, but it was always pretty much a laughing stock to wrestling fans online. AEW has a ton of talent & are capable of having a lot of good matches too but there's not an angle or story to sink your teeth into & it's a lot of matches that happen just because "wrestler A is good & wrestler B is good, so this should be good" like what Ring of Honor used to do in the early 2000's & all that shit just started to blend together. When AEW started, it was Cody Rhodes & The Elite wanting to start something new. It's no longer something new & now it's morphing into something I don't think it was ever intended to be which is the dreaded "WWE lite." Right now, WWE feels strong & I think it is in large part due to the Bloodline storyline. AEW lost Cody Rhodes & now Jade Cargill. I think it's time they start trying to use & make their own guys more, like they've done with Darby or even having Powerhouse Hobbs cripple Jericho like he just did. That's what they should be doing. MJF, Orange Cassidy, Ricky Starks, The Acclaimed, all great things AEW has done or is doing but like Edge coming out & blasting Starks on TV? Bad look. Also Tony Khan needs to not be on TV, at all, ever - even in post show press conferences. I wouldn't have anyone reference him on the show ever either & he should get off of Twitter/X.

I know it's an AEW thread in the AEW section, so I might be veering into off topic, but I actually remember quite liking Hunico. Not so much when he was wearing the Mistico mask but more so when he was coming out with Camacho. Then, because of this thread, I thought "whatever happened to Camacho?" So I looked him up & had my mind blown that it's the same wrestler that teams with Tama Tonga as the Guerillas in New Japan. Small world.

Swerve is fantastic. He had that great Coffin match with Sting & Darby a few weeks back. Then on Tuesday, had that great match with Bryan Danielson. I know he lost both matches but man, what a future he has. I also love the pairing with Prince Nana.

I would argue that Cash is holding Dax back. I certainly think he's the lesser talented of the two, even before the outside the ring personal shit. His constant injuries held back FTR as well. I could see Dax having a strong midcard run like Arn Anderson did in WCW when he was finishing with the DDT.

Bronson Reed Vs. Gunther for the Intercontinental Heavyweight Championship is going to slap like E. Honda. That's a must-see match for me!

This fucking crowd is the drizzling shits.

I agree but WWE were even able to mend fences with The Ultimate Warrior, of all people, at the end there, so I wouldn't count it out. Maybe they could get A.J. Lee to come with him so Rhea could rag doll her a bit too. That could be fun. It's crazy to me that AEW had guys like FTR, Bryan Danielson & Samoa Joe around in the locker room, that Punk gets along with & is good friends with, and he still couldn't stay out of his own way. If he couldn't make it work in AEW, he's not going to be able to make it work in WWE again either. The pipe bomb was never some shoot shit on the microphone, it was always how long until his temper blows up & he burns another bridge.

Man, feels crazy to think of saying this since I wouldn't have never thought it just a few years ago: Dominik Mysterio is the future of WWE, y'all. He's only twenty-six years old, too! He's only going to get better & he's already so good. Taking from his dad, Eddy, Art Barr, etc. He gets it, man. Also, Dragon Lee looked great & WWE just signed Jade Cargill to a multi-year deal? Plus The Rock & John Cena both just came back & WWE still have the big Roman angle to pay off & they made Jey Uso a star. Plus Cody & L.A. Knight are on fire & there's still Gunther. Man, WWE is on fire.

I'm curious how much NFL Thursday Night Football being on Amazon Prime video live might change the perspective as it pertains businesses looking at streaming services. I know I read not too long back that AEW was looking at streaming on MAX.

There was still a lot of talent in the nWo, like Hennig, but I'm not sure how many of them got much chance to display anything. Bret?

Keith Lee's problem is that he's a huge nerd. Which wouldn't be a problem if he was able to put that to the wayside when he's in character. Instead, he's just a giant nerd while also still in character. So it's really hard to take him seriously.

I've heard a rumor that the WWE/UFC merger will go through on Tuesday. If that does happen, do we anticipate a lot of layoffs?

This women’s cage match is a banger goddamn Edit: the interference really takes away from all Becky/Trish did, don’t think they needed that but still a great match

I think there's some miscommunication here. I was talking about who the guys like Jungle Boy probably looked at in the way that Punk looked at Smothers or Piper, not who they could get along with. I feel like their influences were probably more high flying wrestlers.

Have a good time, Sek! Hope they give you a good show.

If I were a betting man? Jeff Hardy, Rob Van Dam, Rey Mysterio. Guys like that. Small guys or high flying guys or high flying small guys that got over but weren't necessarily great on the mic. That kind of feels like the direction pro wrestling went, at least for the likes of AEW talent. Not to say that RVD was small, just those names popped into my head.

Unbelievable. Totally & completely. Some various thoughts & rambling. I feel like I should have probably seen the writing on the wall when Cody Rhodes left AEW to go back to WWE, citing that his decision was largely based on a differing opinion of what he wanted professional wrestling to be. He wanted a more storyline driven, Mid South style wrestling & AEW is apparently a more in-ring athletic competition promotion. I have never been a fan of the Young Bucks style of professional wrestling & I realize that from the jump, that's what AEW was. I was excited for another U.S. based promotion that could lead to competition in the wrestling landscape that would, hopefully, lead to both companies trying their best to put on the best show possible. AEW doesn't happen without The Elite, so I get it. C.M. Punk was the biggest star AEW had. To date, I think his AEW debut was the biggest single moment in the company. It's lunacy to me that they would fire their biggest star... but I get it. He's a headache. They're choosing the likes of The Elite & Jack Perry & that style of wrestling. I do think that maybe this could have a domino effect & we could see other people like FTR leave AEW as well. With it almost all of my interest in the company too. I thought that Collision was going to be more my speed. The more old school wrestling, with the likes of guys like FTR, Punk, Joe, Miro, Andrade & Brody King. With Punk gone now, it's only a matter of time until it's just another Dynamite with Garcia dancing, Mox bleeding, Orange Cassidy existing & Young Bucks flipping. But I'm sure we can get another Canadian Destroyer off of a ladder through a table for a 2-count & the crowd chanting "this is awesome." No thank you.

Nevermind Freddie Mercury as that man is fucking untouchable vocally, but Jericho singing his own goddamn song instead of just letting crowd sing it made it worse. I was cracking up.

That match had several insane bumps, for sure. The Scorpion Death Drop on the coffin. The Coffin Drop on the coffin outside the ring where Swerve missed & Darby ate it. The finish Coffin Drop with Swerve half way out of the coffin. Hell, just Sting flopping on the coffin with Swerves hands out was nuts! The second bump when the table didn't break was also gross. It was definitely a lot more fun than whatever the fuck that Moxley mess was.

I just marked more for Sting in 2023 than probably anything else wrestling related this year. That was awesome. And Metallica too.

Missed the first hour. The tag & the hardcore match were both sloppy as fuck. Women's match was the best that I've seen so far but strapping Paige seems like an odd decision... I know she's the hometown girl but... c'mon.

Terrible few days for the professional wrestling world.