Migs

The stadium seats 23,000 for tennis, and I'd expect a wrestling setup to probably be slightly under that. I think that's doable in the current hot event market without something massive (although I'm guessing this ends up being an event show).

So far AEW has mostly done long-ish title reigns (no one's held the World title for less than six months). I could see Hangman getting the big win over Omega but not having a long-term reign, instead acting as a bridge to MJF.

I think that's pretty likely... Okada vs. whoever the champion is probably remains their strongest possible Dome main event. Just hoping he's not ice cold going into it.

I look forward to hearing from the people anxiously scanning for this if they've made any new edits to the ECW shows to fit Peacock standards.

Given how well they sold tickets for Ibushi-Ospreay and Shingo-Ospreay, definitely makes sense to keep going with the fresher guys in the main event spots for now. The bigger question is whether they can find something interesting for Okada to do in the meantime, which they've really struggled with. Maybe they flip today's matches and he works against Cobb in Ospreay's place? That could probably main event one of the (numerous) minor shows they have coming up.

I think there's a good chance he gets to main event against Hangman (likely for the belt).

I do love that GCW makes some weird-ass choices.

They haven't done any proper LU stuff on the TV show, other than teases. The TV that's airing is the stuff from right before the pandemic - they're in February/March of 2020 right now (they'd taped some stuff right before everything went dark, so they had new episodes for a while). They did best ofs and 2003 episodes for a while. TV from November - April was all empty arena stuff - that's where Muertes first appeared and they started indicating Selina was being funded by "El Jefe." You can probably catch up with that pretty quickly on Youtube - they posted a lot of the Tv shows as clips, so you can just watch, say, the Selina vignettes or Muertes-Hammerstone.

It's in writing but the contracts are usually terrible and have out clauses (Gallows and Anderson discussed this, I believe). I kinda want to see Black in New Japan, feels like a perfect spot for him and they're lacking in that Lance Archer-type slot.

Yes! I've been noticing this all over the place, most especially in New Japan lately. If you tap the pinning man, but they don't get moved off the cover, or the shoulders don't come up, the pin should continue. I think it's mostly just guys getting too cute trying to come out of nowhere with the pin breaks and not leaving themselves enough time to really dive in.

The both can be true; they can be really hampered and limited by the pandemic and be ice cold. And at a certain point, the fact that they can point to the pandemic as the reason doesn't matter. They're coming up on almost a year now since they came back to running shows; you go cold for a year and it's going to hurt, even if there's a good reason behind it. It's a little unfair to crush Gedo when he hasn't had his gaijin and is trying to book six "big shows" on a tour with a limited crew, but it's also on him to try and find a way out of it, and glove on a pole matches aren't it.

He did, but his lady just moved back to the UK.

Admittedly, I can't imagine people are happy to be doing two week quarantines every time they come in to work. Especially when they could presumably be working in the US for this company that was oh so serious about its US expansion.

Yeah, strange they're doing road to shows for a show that's far from happening, but if you look at the NJ World calendar, the Dome still shows as postponed.

The Dome show is postponed. But Dominion is just a week after, so I'm assuming something related to the title happens there.

Apparently there's a financial bump for AEW in this as well.

I think my favorite part of the doc was listening to Mox tell stories; I could listen to that dude for hours.

I had fallen way behind and binged the last 2-3 months to catch up since I'm going to the Philly show. I'm with you that they've done a better job than most with pacing the empty arena shows, not going too long with dead matches and keeping the show moving. It's made the main events going longer seem more palatable and helped perception of them, I think. I'm guessing the roster has been intentionally thin for these empty arena shows - they've really focused on the guys they want to promote and haven't tried to spend money on anyone else, which has worked okay for the way they build the show. I also like the idea of doing an off season and a season premiere! Totally fine to watch some 2003 episodes while the main show is on a break.

Just the very end of the episode... looks like its setting up stuff for the July 10 Philly show, don't believe they're doing new episodes before then.

The ladder match would have been much better as a tag team or 6 man ladder match, which is basically what it turned into. The early sections were really terrible; I thought the section after the run-ins moved well, and was fine. The crowd cheering a man holding tightly and crying over a silver glove that has mystical powers and makes you go crazy is so fucking pro wrestling that you have to appreciate it. Tana-White was great and might be the best of their 300 matches.

I think there's a lot of guys who are simply apathetic toward anything political and do not care.

The company is owned by the TV station it airs on in the US and Canada, which means that even if it's not earning the revenue directly, it's generating revenue for its parent company. I don't have any clue how much that is, but I'm assuming based on the fact that they purchased the company that it's a relevant number for Anthem.

The average age of Impact's audience isn't in a nursing home anymore, so I think they've gotten a lot out of this, even if their ratings haven't jumped. I don't think there's a big payoff coming and I don't think they care.

It does feel like (1) they should do the title change in front a packed house and (2) Omega's run needs to be a little bit longer. The clear answer is to push it to All Out - there's a pretty good chance they can do a show in Chicago, or at least a full amphitheater in Jacksonville, by then. That would also mark exactly two years since Page lost to Jericho in the first title match. If they set Page up as the challenger early on, it also gives them main events for the TV specials in between - Page/Dark Order vs Omega and the Bucks is strong enough to main event Fyter Fest or Fight for the Fallen.

Meltzer said that looks like the direction based on TV; he didn't report it as the main event.