Migs

Um, I went to high school with that guy. He took Ivanka to one of our dances. That is quite the worlds meeting bit of weirdness.

Interesting stuff. The overall turn makes a lot of sense to me, although it does feel like there's some color missing because of the NDA. Like... I've worked for some really intense bosses, and there's always a breaking point moment. I wonder what that was for Eric for with Vince.

My gut is he's starting a bidding war to improve his NJ deal. But who knows what kind of contract WWE is putting in front of him? And I believe he already lives in Florida, so perhaps he does just want to hang out and get paid while too sweeting Finn Balor or something.

2018 at least had Jericho-Naito getting set up. I mean, this year figured to be relatively calm given the inability to fly people in. Thought there might be a bit more to the Jay White thing.

It's also possible White has a contract expiring and while they expect him to resign, might be a thing where he's leaving it theoretically expiring. Struck me a little like the way Omega would talk around this time of year when he was in NJ.

EDIT: Double post

I don't know where he's landing or if it'll be better. He had an awesome spot in ROH where he was basically going to be the booker and make WWE money to work 40ish dates a year. If he's not pushing for big money, I guess I could see him working MLW or Impact, but I don't think those are better spots necessarily. He didn't get used in New Japan this summer when the other guys in his group did, so I don't see that as a landing spot. I think the bridge is burned with AEW. NXT?

I loved Shingo-Cobb, probably Cobb's best NJ performance and a really nice twist on the NEVER style. Also thought Ibushi-White was incredible, with White's pacing really working for the longer match. Loved the various stages Ibushi went through over the course of the match, and it's why I'm really excited about his reign - seems like there's some interesting places for his character to go as champion.

My brain is a little scrambled from the late night and a toddler who decided she wanted to join me for the festivities, but that was a great show. Pretty much everything met or exceeded expectations (although of course the middle of the show had some low expectations) and I thought the top 2 matches were a pretty great 1-2 punch. I kinda liked how Ibushi and Naito played with how terrified everyone was for them to do crazy shit and were able to get a little more mileage out of a fewer bigger bumps. Okada and Ospreay was as spectacular as I imagined. Looking forward to night 2 more than I thought - very curious about the main event from a storyline perspective.

There have definitely been reports that getting rid of house shows has killed the pay for low to midcard guys who were relying on getting paid per show (plus probably getting small bonuses for meet and greets and stuff like that). If WWE isn't raising the downsides, there's apparently a lot of people who could make at least somewhat comparable money in other places (especially when the world is relatively open and you could combine your contracts with, say, Impact/AAA/NOAH or something).

I saw somewhere it was the beginning of the show. No idea why they wouldn't put up at least a year of it, they have it digitized from their old classics site through at least 1989.

Your comment seems to imply they'd be heels, but I think a Bullet Club reunion would get a lot of cheers if there were a crowd. Would probably be very similar to the old ROH vibe where they were "heels" who clearly had more support than the babyfaces.

BTE this week is a tribute:

I think if it was cancer, they'd say that. The Mayo Clinic is one of the top places in the world for lung issues, so my assumption is it was something unique that they don't want to bother explaining at the moment. Which I get, this is a time of enormous grief... I think we can all see through the responses of his peers how deep it must be for those closest to him. It's heartbreaking. On the wrestling front... what an incredible last match he had. Just spectacular. It feels cruel that we won't ever get to see that character in front of a full crowd, it felt like he was on the cusp of something amazing. A family tragedy, a wrestling community tragedy, an artistic tragedy... just a tragedy.

Weirdly, I think they also did something a little old school - they worked under masks and got experience, which made them fresh later on. Like, I found Air Wolf pretty generic in MLW, but if they hadn't mentioned one of them used that gimmick, I'd have no idea.

Wait, what? They were basically booking their own angles in ROH and New Japan the last two years and got themselves so hot they were able to start their own promotion.

Taker also wasn't wrestling 12 PPV matches a year against top guys. His no selling was mainly against jobbers and JTTS. Even Taker's matches against top guys tended to be on the shorter side, which made the no selling less egregious - it's much easier to build a 10 minute match with a monster than a 20 minute one.

This was an easy PPV comment thread to read. I always assumed if my daughter got into wrestling at all I'd end up watching some WWE again because that's what her friends would watch, but now I'm starting to think if she's watching when she's in grade school a few years from now even little kids will be onto AEW. EDIT: Took a look at the Observer site, and no one commenting on Miz cashing in and losing? What was the point? Why not have Otis keep it and get his ass kicked by Roman? The briefcase may be the most obvious evidence of the lack of long-term booking plans at the moment.

The main show was fine. The empty arena stuff is really hard to take for three hours, but I'd say the tag title match, TV title match and the main event were all pretty good. As usual with ROH, everyone worked hard, so even the stuff that wasn't great (way too long Kingdom tag match, the Danhausen match, a 25-minute Flip Gordon mat wrestling match) wasn't terrible. A fine effort that was just lacking a spark.

That's what's so weird! I can't remember the lines from last night, but the one last week was implying that the Young Bucks were incestuous because on the cover of the book "it looks like you're staring at each other's junk."

They seem fine in the ring, but the weird homophobic raps are not a great look in 2020.

It wasn't a title shot. He needed to win to get a title shot. The idea is he couldn't wrestle Omega in the tournament, so this made up for that.

If there's any interest from AEW, I have trouble seeing MLW matching them from a monetary perspective, although presumably DBS and Pillman leaving opens up some budget. ROH seems a bit better on money than MLW, but at this point its so cold it's only an option for guys who don't fit elsewhere.

Alexander apparently has another 9 months on his contract, so either Page would need to sit out for a bit or be introduced in AEW without Alexander. Although one consequence of the working relationship could be that if they want the North they could work something out to use Alexander.