C.S.

I kinda hope Dragon taps Page out in the first minute. Would make a statement.

I assume you mean Mox. MJF's promo sucked. Between the scrum and tonight, he is already ice cold.

Give this man the championship!

That MJF "American Rollercoaster" Cody Rhodes Triple H promo died an instant death. That was the shits.

Even though AEW overkills tournaments, I'm a fan of this one. There's a murderers row of top talent in it. "We don't need Punk or The Elite." Message received loud and clear.

No Eddie Kingston in the tournament makes me a sad panda. MJF's pandering face turn can't be for real. It's too over-the-top.

No reason given for vacancies is a lol. Yes, "everyone knows" - but do they really?

There was also scuttlebutt on Twitter a few weeks back about Colt using a homophobic slur during a livestream. (I think the d-word for lesbian, but someone can correct me if I'm wrong.) Needless to say, Scott Colton probably isn't "the nice guy" he's been made out to be. Even so, I still feel kind of bad for him with Punk going off about his shared bank account with his mother and other details that really didn't need to be aired out in a public forum.

I doubt HBK - pre- or post-Jesus - pays any attention to AEW or cares about it any way.

Even the nobody jabronis are taking shots at the company now. What a mess! This is funny though.

Big Daddy Dave:

Yeah, @The Thread Killer and @KawadaSmile, I meant Fish. I don't see a universe where Punk ends up back in WWE. He won't. He already mocked it as a mark designation, and said when he was offered the title in the beginning, he turned it down for more money because there's only one boss.

Why would H touch an obviously mentally damaged man like this with a ten-foot pole? Even for a player/coach role, would you want someone this unstable and unhinged in charge of watering the plants at the PC, never mind training all the kids there?

For how terrible Kevin Dunn's camerawork is, I wonder if creative camera angles like this are also his brainchild.

Cody has repeatedly called Triple H his favorite wrestler, said they shared a nice private moment after his return, and you know H is going to respect Cody gutting it out in Hell in a Cell with a major injury like H himself did after he tore his quad. Cody is still the guy. Tony Khan should have backed the Brinks truck to keep him. Biggest mistake ever.

Neither did the other 100+ people who got future endeavored for "budget cuts." No one deserved to lose their job. Doesn't mean I'm going to stand up and cheer at the shit Vince-esque booking we just saw. The ship has sailed with Braun as an interesting and compelling money-making act.

Damn, was hoping Braun was joining Alpha Academy. THAT would be something interesting. This Monster of the Week shtick is stale and the shits. His new look is cool though. One guy annihilating almost the entire tag team division is vintage Vince booking. Are we sure he's really gone?

Why would anyone trust Edge? Dom ain't wrong.

Ace "Armie Hammer" Steel. What a joke! This is why you shouldn't hire indie nobodies for major backstage positions.

Haha, Bubba, I couldn't resist! It's a riff on the WWE thread of the same name, but if we're being technical, the combined wealth of Tony and Shad Khan and all of the sports and entertainment properties they own make Vince, Trips, and Steph look like street cart vendors in comparison. The Khans have much more of an "empire" and it's not even close. "I have a lot more fucking money than Jim Crockett did, and I'm serious, I’m not going to sit back and take this shit!"

What are the stories here? If Fish had a meltdown, letting him go must've been the easiest decision Tony Khan ever made.

I was openly mocked here on PWO for saying that letting go of Cody was the worst mistake AEW ever made and would have disastrous consequences. Granted, I never envisioned all of this, but I knew it was a massive error in judgment for Tony to let go of someone that valuable, that good, that business savvy, and that media savvy. Cody >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Kenny and Bucks on every conceivable metric, and it has never been close. Six months later, I have been proven right and then some. I'm not patting myself on the back. I fully realize what Cody's downsides were in AEW, but all of those could have been rectified with stronger leadership.

Yes, this is a riff on @flyonthewall2983's WWE thread of the same name, but it's also become kind of necessary. I am rooting for AEW and hope most of this is a clever work designed to get everyone talking and/or these situations can be resolved. I'll certainly be tuning into Dynamite this week, that's for damn sure! With that said, there's a ton of drama going on right now. - MJF no-showing a fan-fest, cutting a heated promo on Dynamite, missing months of action. - Eddie Kingston and Sammy Gueverra getting into a physical altercation backstage after Sammy body-shamed Eddie during a promo. - Punk and Scott Colton's long-standing litigious issues. - Punk and Hangman Page "going into business for themselves" in promos and Hangman feeling he doesn't need to take advice from veterans. - Punk's belief that the EVPs (Kenny and Bucks) are leaking salacious stories to Meltzer and other "journalists" (quotes intentional) with Jericho also openly criticizing these leaks. - Punk (and maybe Ace Steel) reportedly getting into a physical altercation with the EVPs (the Bucks and maybe Kenny) while the scrum was airing, and Tony not finding about it until after. (Someone somewhere compared this to the famous clip of George W. Bush reading a storybook to an elementary school classroom while the towers collapsed on 9/11.) - Malakai Black possibly asking for his release and/or walking away. - Heat in the women's locker room involving Thunder Rosa, and Tony openly burying Rosa with an ill-advised and irrelevant comparison to Punk. - Tony sitting there numbly at the media scrum looking like he's ready to burst into tears at any moment while Punk happily munches on delicious pastries and I raid my own empty fridge desperately looking for a midnight snack. And I'm probably forgetting a few. Oh boy...

Punk transcripts here: https://slamwrestling.net/index.php/2022/09/05/cm-punk-openly-slams-aew-evps-hangman-and-colt-cabana/ https://www.cagesideseats.com/aew/2022/9/5/23337439/cm-punk-tirade-colt-cabana-hangman-page-young-bucks-all-out-media-scrum-aew-drama-tony-khan But trust me, it's much better to hear it than read it!

A former cocaine user on another board - can't remember if it was Cageside or Reddit - said Tony clearly wasn't on cocaine but on adderall.