Jmare007

They gotta have him live tonight. They've teased him too much and they have a massive reaction and moment (and buzz) in the palm of their hands. Just announcing he's signed and will debut at All Out or doing a swerve would be such a weird and needless move just to get their own audience pissed off.

And hell, we all know Punk WAS bitter when he was bitching about part timers taking the spots from the full timers (had a right to feel that way too). And soon after he was working with one (Rock) and years later he was basically in the opposite end when he worked in the UFC.

Did y'all actually heard the interview? Helwani asks Roman his take on stars from the past coming back part time for big shows and literally mentions Punk feeling some type of way when he was a full time performer (when he complained about Rock). Makes sense to me Roman mentions Punk, Rock and Cena as he answers. It's typical WWE talk by him and he's not wrong either. he just makes a very obvious statement that not only applies to Punk, who cares?

So Hickman is leaving the X-Office after writing the Inferno "mini" (160 pages in 4 issues). https://ew.com/books/inferno-jonathan-hickman-last-x-men-comic/ -The positive. I've really loved the new status quo and how many of the X-line writers have taken the ideas and settings from HoX/PoX and Hickman's main X-Men book to explore and creative new stuff (Spurrier, Ewing, Wells and Ayala being the top, really liked what Duggan has done in 2021 too). Hickman is basically saying that he wanted to advance the story so he could get to the 2nd phase of his original plan, but everyone just wanted to stay "in phase 1" and keep playing with it. So he decided to pivot, do Inferno to answer some questions from HoX/PoX and set up the stage so that everyone can keep doing their thing without his "master plan" to worry about. I'm glad the Krakoa Era will continue and hopefully the group of writers doing interesting stuff continue and even more compelling authors join in the January "relaunch". Also, he's staying at Marvel -his Substack work is not exclusive and seems it's gonna be very collaborative too so he's gonna have time in his hands- so he's going to continue to write interesting stuff. Hell, he might come back to the X-line eventually. -The negative: the uncertainty. Having Hickman as "Head of X" gave me confidence everything was actually moving with a purpose and an end goal in mind. Even though I'm happy they are stretching the life out of this new status quo, I worry that without his big name to back them up, Marvel will end up fucking up the X-Office and, with no more end goal in sight, will crash the ship without a big, epic and satisfactory ending. Now, there was no certainty that wasn't going to happen if Hickman stayed but "plans changing" might be something that comesback to bite them in the ass. Also. Marvel announced Chip's Daredevil run will have a "final issue" in November but his story isn't over. I guess it's just a relaunch with him writing the new n°1 issue? I hope so, Chip's their best damn writer.

Sad and in shock Rest in Puro

WWE will always find way to fuck their talent up with horrible booking because that's just how WWE works now. But why are you assuming that Vince will go back to 1985 when Vince would be more than happy to have another Roman Reigns. And I hope we all agree he's a great wrestler alongside having the look Vince likes. Hell, Cena may be more "1985" and he became a great worker for several years. They found a way to put Braun in positions to have great matches (though granted, Roman was a huge part in making those good-very good-awesome). It's not like they people don't gravitate towards those guys either. The problem with WWE's strategy is that they don't really have a strategy and that comes back to bite them in the ass constantly.

I don't think NXT was the "same old formula" and something that represented the vision of Vince at all. I mean yeah, there's very clearly a big group of people that are tired of said vision and finally found something that suits them better in AEW. But I wouldn't say that was the reason NXT lost the "war".

One of the most baffling things about current WWE narratives and culture is that within the company they think they have to teach people to "work differently" than the indys. When the fact is that for half a decade (or more), most of the main roster works more "indy style" than anything else. The exception being bigger/hoss people and even still, there's a couple of them that still do much more than what we are used to being "WWE style". I don't see any particular big changes to 99% of the people that went through the PC for an extended period of time when it comes to the way they work. Regarding the last question. The main reason had to be HHH wanting to have the new/cool signing as his champ so he could continue to run his Super Indy promotion and be praised for it.

Also, the Brand still draws for big events. Maybe WWE's future is just booking big supercards 3 times a year (RR, WM and Sumemrslam).

I kinda read this as Vince, Bruce, Dunn giving up on trying to compete with AEW and their core fanbase and trying to present something different. Of course it could end up being a lame product as always but I understand trying to change course and stop being WWE's Super Indy and revert back to what Vince has always perceived as the way to go. They are not going to be better than AEW at presenting athletic, smaller and high workrate guys anyways. The bigger problem is them being dumb enough to still think those type of wrestlers don't draw. If they get the chance of signing one with experience, they should just use him in the main roster and treat him/her like a legit talent.

The PWInsider reports makes it sound like they want to go back to Dusty's PC. But like 95% of the cuts in the past few months don't align with that. Unless they just want less than 30 people in the PC. Fuck it, let HHH go so he can start his own promotion and we can enjoy the fuckery it would ensue.

If that would happen, would we expect Hunter to start his own promotion? I'd lean towards yes. Man, imagine the fuckery.

Budget cuts want to become the new 'deavors.

Considering the moves they've been doing lately this doesn't shock me at all. Wyatt is probably a pretty expensive contract and seems Khan is fucking ruthless when it comes to big money being spent on people that aren't moving the needle or main eventing consistently. Wouldn't shock me either that Bray's mental health wasn't part of the equation. They can still help him out with that and release him tbf.

Surely not "i'm not so sure where their (AEW) investments are...as far as their talent is concerned...but perhaps we can give them some more". Khan basically saved it by steping in and giving a perfect corporate answer.

Rocky still giving Bret Hart props to this day.

Nick Khan really gonna end up phasing out Vince. Old man sounds lost as fuck

HA, totally got the wrong link. I wanted to post this

EDIT: LMAO my bad

Yup.

I love Hideki, when he is on he makes every move matter and forces his opponent to struggle for control that is so heavily missed in today's wrestling. He can have a goofy side too (him teaming up with Abby Jr and trying to be "more hardcore" will forever blow my mind ) but of course, his strengths are being an stoic wrestling machine that will turn you into a pretzel just like Billy Robinson taught him how to do. My biggest problem with Hideki's case is how inconsistent he is and how reliant on good chemistry and big moments he is. You are not gonna find a lot of even "good" matches from him when he's not in a big match or against something he deems worthy of wrestling and that's a huge flaw in my book. I mean, he was supposed to make Daichi Hashimoto look great and crown him as the next big champ for Big Japan and Suzuki made him look like shit every cotdamn he was in the ring with him 1 on 1 (on tags it's was vastly different). Granted, Daichi is an average/above average wrestler and one could argue he shouldn't be anyone's main champion but shit, everyone else on BJW has at least one good match against him and Hideki refused to do it every single time. There's also tag matches when he's a complete ghost and others when he makes the match feel legitimately special, he has a very weird on/off swtich. But again, when it's on...boy he really is one of the best out there and a special talent. Shoutout to his series of matches with Sekimoto and his interactions with Nomura, fucking gold every damn time. I hope he gets a couple of chances to shine in NXT. He's a bottom 20 candidate for me but we'll see how I feel about it in 5 more years.

saadasdasd Like others have said, nowadays it's practically impossible for 1 wrestler to be a draw in WWE as full time roster member. Therefore, the threshold a top guy needs to be a considered great are much simpler because it's basically about performance. Given that Roman is a better in ring worker than Cena and that this current heel run has showed us he was as much charisma and can cut great promos, then I can see why you would put Roman ahead of John. Now, in my book, a "top guy" is someone the company heavily depends on so being good at that role goes much further than just in ring performance. And Cena was way more important to WWE than Roman has been. This is not Reigns faulr, as others have pointed out too, but Cena's star power puts him ahead of Roman in my book if we are talking about who is the better top guy. It's gonna be really interesting if Rock comes back to work a Wrestlemania against Reigns and how that feud affects WWE. If it's a big success and it propels a big Roman babyface run then that could probably make me change my opinion. It would also mean Rock was instrumental in making the last two big WWE stars make a leap by working with them (10+ years apart too).

Omega doesn't outright say it and talks about a "what if" scenario, but it sure sounds like at least Bryan has indeed signed with them already.

That's not something WWE can just go ahead and give to him and those are the two big things he wants. It's not like he can go to WWE and say "hey, I can work New Japan and a fuck ton of promotions if a sign with AEW, can you do better?". That's just not realistic "leverage".

In Bryan's case there's not a lot to leverage for besides being able to work in Japan. He's gonna get a big money deal with either company and he's not a guy that will stay in WWE for X millions more (when he's already getting a big ass number anyway). What else could he ask? Having a clause that forces WWE to give him 10-20 minute matches on TV/PPV every week? shit, he already had that.