MoS

I agree. Also, like someone said in this thread, this entire 4 Pillars is so contrived in the first place. Why are Sammy and Perry pillars, but not Starks and Hobbs? What about Britt and Jamie? Fucking Hangman Page (whose title reign feels so underrated business-wise, AEW would love to get that level of ratings and POV buys now)? The Lucha Bros? Like, just an entirely arbitrary concept with no solid basis.

Yeah, with Randy Orton, the hardcore match with Cactus was just the culmination; it was a 10-month long feud where Randy showed tremendous growth and..err...well..evolution. His 2003-04 heel run remains the best work of his career, as much as some people love his 2009 heel run, which I always felt was overrated. Sammy hasn't done anything close to it. I don't think he is capable of doing that. Ironically, working with Punk might force him to do it. It certainly made MJF add layers to his character and evolve as a worker. But given how Tay liked that shit Deadspin article about Punk "gaslighting" AEW, that's probably not going to happen.

I honestly think his ceiling is as high as Mysterio's, and I don't say that lightly

The thing that makes Darby different from everyone else his size imo is that his shit really looks like it would hurt, because he doesn't look like he's doing spectacular dives or flips, he looks like he is literally using his body as a weapon by hurling it across space onto his opponents. It's like getting hit flush with a 150 pound bat in full swing; you might be 300 pounds but that shit will still hurt.

My dad has hated every single thing about wrestling ever since he walked into the room when I was watching WWE and Rikishi was smothering some opponent's face with his ass in the corner like he used to do

Yeah I actually liked Darby's promo in the opening segment. Sammy should not be anywhere near the world title scene OTOH, he is a midcarder. Jack Perry can get there one day, but he is not ready.

Hobbs should have beaten Wardlow. Book him to destroy QT next week, turn face, and then briefly feud with MJF for the world title imo

Yeah this has been a hot angle so far. Danielson is the best

Darby Allin is one of the best wrestlers in the world and was a needle-mover when he was TNT champ, both with a great presence and incredible matches in the bank. He will definitely make my GWE list. Far better than Wardlow or Cody, far better than most wrestlers wrestling today

Business usually takes months to get affected by booking debacles (or reflect excellent booking too for that matter, like with the nWo and Austin's rise). WCW was never hotter than it was in 1998, despite the ending of Starrcade 1997 and how they later botched Goldberg's title run. in 1998 itself. The only exception I can think of in modern wrestling is Austin's heel turn, but Cody losing isn't anywhere close to it - as Meltz put it in a rather mean way, none of these guys are Austin. WWE has been on an extremely hot run the last year or so, that's not going to change anytime soon.

IIRC, John Cena once said that Bruno was his both his dad's and his grandad's favourite wrestler

Probably for the best, really

Bruno should really rank more (and higher) in lists of pure babyfaces that we often see in online wrestling circles. Being able to remain beloved and actually getting bigger as a draw as the years passed despite almost never losing is so fucking impressive. Has *anyone* else actually become a bigger draw over 20 years despite being booked so dominantly? Almost every wrestler's drawing power decreases when that happens. Shows what an incredible worker Bruno was. Look at the babyface fire in this video.

Hey, if a goatee is good enough for this man, it's good enough for anyone -

No, my point was, even if he had adhered to kayfabe like he was Bill Watts, the steroid scandal that destroyed WWF's business and sent the entire business into recession would still have happened. Wrestling would have still entered its dark age.

Reports are that WBD are heavily involved in Punk's return, which makes me think that he is a bigger difference-maker than we can make out from publicly available metrics.

Also, Kommander walking the ropes looks stupid, but not as stupid as Taker sloowly, awkwardly and precariously walking the top rope, even as his opponent does his absolute best to ensure dude doesn't fall embarrassingly. I don't really know where I am going with this. Wrestling is stupid, I guess.

Loss put it really well once: it didn't matter whether the fans took wrestling seriously. Wrestling took wrestling seriously. I prefer that approach to wrestling too. Do you really think that the death of kayfabe was the reason why wrestling declined after initially booming though? The steroid scandal would have happened regardless of how stringently VKM had adhered to kayfabe. We did have another boom like 8 years after the first ended.

Plus, that Deadpsin article I linked to earlier, which completely perverts the meaning of "gaslighting". To call it misuse would be being generous and euphemistic.

yeah should have put in this disclaimer. Wasn't a fan of the article either - baseless assertions about how Punk doesn't care how he gets it as long as he gets what he wants, and some psychobabble about the mind games and psychological warfare he is engaging against Tony Khan, the Elite, and AEW. And a misunderstanding of the word "gaslighting", which means maybe writers should use terms related to trauma and abuse with a whole lot of discretion and understanding. Seems to me like a lot of people are angry that AEW has grown far beyond what it was when it started. AEW is no longer only about the Elite: there are many other great wrestlers, old and young, who have as much claim over AEW as the Elite members do.

All those deleted tweets were in reference to this Deadspin article - https://deadspin.com/cm-punk-aew-wrestling-young-bucks-kenny-omega-ftr-leaks-1850336362

With Dax, it's also his blatant hypocrisy that's grating - pretending he doesn't care about Meltzer or his opinions, and then throwing a fit cuz he didn't get enough star ratings for a match - shit like that is a turnoff. If Punk was not medically cleared to return, he should have never been doing the Mox main event PPV match in the first place. Surely it didn't help his injury issues.

I do think Punk is too smart and too much of a veteran to let Jericho leach off his heat like Chris's usual modus operandi.

And the heat-stealing begins!

Part of what he said -