The Man in Blak

It might as well be a triple threat, based on how many times they’re cutting to MJF in the crowd.

Didn't he take paternity leave before he won the belt?

How often were people calling Page's title reign a flop or a disappointment on this board over the last few months? He got to ride the wave of one of the best long-term storylines in AEW history, got two wins over Danielson as a champion, and where did he end up? And how hard was it really for AEW to rise above Impact and the shambling husk of ROH to become the No.2 promotion in North America? Punk talked about how Page jeopardized the promotion's first million dollar house - whether you agree with him or not, what does that say about the financial success of the company before he was signed? When it comes to the Bucks, they seem to be a case of Schrodinger's EVPs - are they just guys with "vanity titles" (as it's been argued here and elsewhere) or are they incredibly successful front office people that created a ton of jobs in wrestling, as Meltzer suggested? If it's the latter, how do they not bear some responsibility along with TK for not getting in front of this nonsense and de-escalating things before it exploded? As I see it, the critical question for AEW to answer -- especially now that WWE seems like it could be a friendlier home to people that were previously desperate to escape -- is whether Punk was truly the root cause of everything here or whether his blow-up is symptomatic of a bigger issue with how talent relations are handled in the company. There's a host of other issues as well (particularly with regards to TK's booking over the last few months), but I feel like the answer to that question is going to be what really determines how the company fares going forward. As somebody that's been watching from the beginning, I really hope they figure it out.

To be fair, MJF took an explicit swing at "WWE guys" in his last promo before his hiatus, and I don't think that was necessarily a fresh talking point then, even if Punk wasn't singled out specifically.

Dave insinuated on WOR that there were numerous people backstage that have been "rubbed the wrong way" by Punk for a while, with some allusions to folks resented being told that they were doing something wrong even though they had been successful. And then he went onto note that AEW is set to gross more money in 2022 than any non-WWE company in history as though it would have happened without Punk, Danielson, Cole or any of the other signings over the last year or so. Yeah, okay.

Yeah, Meltzer comparing Punk to Bill Watts -- and, specifically, how Watts went from being one of the smartest people in wrestling in the 80's to being out of touch in the 90's -- was definitely a choice, but not totally unexpected considering where Dave's loyalties lie. I think the only things I agreed with were that: Tony Khan had an opportunity to address all of this long before now and he completely whiffed. One interesting point I actually hadn't seen elsewhere: even by Punk's own standards, he actually blew off questions related to MJF in the media scrum in a way that was totally counter-productive to the build to the next PPV. He had an opportunity to put MJF over outside of all of this crap and he was too set into his own agenda to even try to be professional there.

Time will tell how the suspension lengths and forthcoming investigation plays out — like @sek69 said earlier, I can’t believe the chief legal officer was on hand for all of this nonsense — but I’ll say that I was pleasantly surprised by TK’s approach to the suspensions, including a very thorough scrubbing of all participants from the Dynamite opening video. There still needs to be a reckoning for talent relations writ large, but sending a definitive statement with minimal bullshit and then immediately getting back to business was a great play.

Also, in addition to Cody being a bigger reason for AEW’s early success, I would also point to Jon Moxley, who damn near carried the entire promotion during the pandemic. He’s never been the best worker in the promotion, but he might be the best promo that they’ve ever had after 2019 Cody and Punk and he almost turned a lame duck interim title championship into a killer run by sheer force of will and intensity.

I’m actually more inclined to attribute a lot of AEW’s initial success to Cody rather than the rest of the Elite. Maybe it’s coincidence, but when Cody was locked in — before he drifted into the Codyverse and into his own bizarre saga of palace intrigue before exiting stage left — the promotion as a whole seemed on point. And so many of those iconic moments from the early days centered around him. The rest of the Elite has had great matches following that early period, but none of them have ever struck me as having that presence as a next-level star. Omega is one of my favorite modern wrestlers but, even when he was draped in three different world titles and on top of the world, he still didn’t seem to touch the same level as the guy standing the opposite corner from Okada in New Japan. To me, it feels like a big reason that Punk’s return to wrestling (and, to a lesser extent, Danielson’s signing) seemed to subsume the entire promotion — for better AND worse, apparently — is also a referendum on the Elite: the promotion needed a star. Punk and Danielson did a pretty good job of playing ball when they came in, up to the point where Page decided to work himself into a shoot during the Punk feud, but I think Page’s defensiveness there betrays an anxiety from the Elite as a whole.

Yeah, if there was ever a time for MJF to have a long Flair-style shitheel run as a champion, it is now.

This is a clip from Cabana’s stream re: that incident, for what it’s worth: https://twitter.com/danihausen/status/1447690985027350532?s=20&t=Hfxm6TnZn-RnGBDYzoHDaA

The last reporting I've seen is that basically everybody involved in the Punk blowup will be suspended at the very least, with Punk and Ace Steel potentially being fired outright. So, my guess is that the show will open with CM Punk's theme music, but MJF will come out instead to jumpstart the next interim AEW World Title program with Jericho or (ideally) Moxley.

As far as I’m aware, SRS denied getting it from the EVPs, but that doesn’t rule out the leak coming from Adam Page - that’s pure speculation, though, to be clear. And I haven’t seen Dave’s denial yet, but yeah, I’m not inclined to trust him at all on this one; I can understand how others could land differently. The really crappy thing is that I’m a fan of all the wrestlers involved and of AEW in general, which is why all of this feels so needless. And, as such, I’m more inclined to criticize the people in power (TK especially) and the others that seem to be operating with relative impunity in or around his inner circle.

Why should they? The Elite have their name on the branding of the promotion itself and, under that banner, it looks like they get to do whatever they want to do. They don’t have to have wield formal power as EVPs to reap the benefits; that they’ve been mostly benevolent actors up to this point is a huge factor in AEW’s success, so it’s not exactly surprising that the wheels seem to be falling off right around the same time that they decide to start playing petty games with the other talent. “WWE guys” or not, they’re pissing away an obscene amount of money here. Punk can definitely be an impossible asshole, but it’s not hard to understand why he’d feel like he’d have to take matters into his own hands here, because nobody’s at the wheel and, even worse, nobody appears to have the capability to take charge. TK can fire Punk and be justified in doing so, but the core problem behind all of this isn’t going to go away when Punk leaves the locker room.

Fire Punk, fire the EVPs, close AEW as a brand, change everything over to Ring of Honor, give MJF the strap and — most importantly — release AEW Fight Forever anyway so that the fans can smash their CM Punk and Elite action figures together in The Spiritual Successor to No Mercy (IGN.com)

Punk is the world champion. What does firing him even look like? Weirdly enough, shelving the Bucks -- the EVPs that arguably initiated this whole debacle -- is an easier play to make. And Steel is an easy fire because throwing a chair is a little outside the bounds of a Heated Wrestler Moment. (Also, he's Ace Steel.) But do you really want to run back the Bret Hart scenarios leading up to Montreal with Punk? Does Punk strike anybody as the guy that's going to relinquish the belt quietly?

I don't know about the ratings impact, but the way that AEW keeps featuring different variations of Punk merchandise in their online store would lead me to believe that he's a runaway leader for the company when it comes to merch sales.

Setting aside the No Mercy comparisons, which have already been detailed here, I would say that the bigger question facing Fight Forever's success in the video game market is whether AEW Games is actually going to be successful at all. It's gone under the radar until now, but AEW has put a surprising amount of energy behind establishing AEW Games as a brand and the initial returns have really been mixed. The AEWGames twitch channel has decent viewership numbers due to the higher-profile wrestlers showing up on it, but the first two games that AEW Games self-published for mobile -- Elite GM Manager and the Double or Nothing Casino -- both landed with a thud. If Fight Forever ends up being a flop, then I've got to imagine there will be discussions of whether they should even be trying to be so hands on with this stuff going forward.

I would never compare the Smoking Gunns to the Hart Foundation in terms of match quality or tenure, but I don't think it's unreasonable to say that Billy Gunn was a better and more dynamic performer than Jim Neidhart.

If we're fantasy booking a call to Paul Heyman, I'd actually be offering him full control for Ring of Honor, but that's beside the point. And yeah, setting aside that the entire company is so thoroughly rotten at this point that I can't wait to shovel dirt on it, there is certainly a (nostalgic?) part of me that recognizes that Dunn possibly leaving along with Vince opens up a whole new possibility space where WWE could actually be watchable as a television product again. Just amazing potential for wholesale addition by subtraction here.

NJPW World just added the following matches to celebrate the anniversary of Hashimoto's passing: 1993.12.13 - Hashimoto vs. Power Warrior 1995.04.16 - Hashimoto vs. Regal 1996.06.11 - Hashimoto vs. Kojima 1996.07.17 - Hashimoto vs. Flair 1997.02.16 - Hashimoto vs. Yamazaki 1997.08.10 - Hashimoto vs. Tenzan 1997.08.31 - Hashimoto vs. Sasaki 1998.06.05 - Hashimoto vs. Fujinami https://twitter.com/njpwglobal/status/1546434130572877824?s=20&t=JHAcMyuYsI8dGyeoIFDsSA

This looks bad -- and I agree that the identities of the women aren't really important here -- but I can't help but feel like Vince will be dead before he'll ever be held accountable for any of this.

(EDIT: Somehow, copying and re-pasting a paragraph apparently unleashed hell on the formatting of my post below, so apologies for the weird formatting in advance.) I actually think Cody’s early attempt to throw in the towel works insofar as it both sets up the Okada/Cody match at the G1 in the USA special the following month and further stokes the Omega/Cody tensions in Bullet Club. It’s so impeccably timed after the Rainmakers that it feels self-serving, a point that becomes more explicit when Cody challenges Okada mere moments after Okada enters the post-match press room. As for the actual match, I think the Wrestle Kingdom match (which I loved) has the flashier high spots and the better work in general, but the 2017 Dominion match does a really great job of weaving its work into the broader ongoing storylines with one glaring exception: Okada completely no-selling the knee damage early on. The match recovers (and clicks into a higher gear) after Cody and Bullet Club comes down, but Okada’s abrupt transition away from all of Omega’s hard work early on is a really glaring blowoff that stands out in contrast to how fluidly the WK match developed from its opening matwork onward. The ending here goes a long way towards building up the special feeling in this match and rivalry. One of Okada’s promos ahead of WK talks about how he could never lose to Kenny because he’s endured more as a champion than Kenny can even imagine but, after standing triumphantly after their first match, Okada is left shell-shocked in the post-match as Gedo tries to hype up that’s he’s still the champion after the time-limit draw. Omega, unthinkably, has been carried away to cheers, having gone the distance with Okada and even gotten the better of the champ on a forearm exchange late in the match. Okada eventually finds his feet as the gold tassels fall around him, but it’s hardly a post-match celebration, as he feels more defeated than he has at any other point in this historic title reign. It’s not the Austin/Bret WM13 double-turn, but it’s almost as critical of a turning point for this era of NJPW history; the ascendance of Omega and Cody lays the foundation of AEW here (as the Bucks and Adam Page cheer on from ringside), the seeds of Okada eventually losing his self-confidence are planted and the curtain begins drawing to a close on this red-hot run for the company. Not long after this, Okada would beat Naito in a stunning unforced error of booking, Omega would win the title just in time for the Elite/NJPW relationship to unravel, and Gedo would turn on Okada to begin the Rainmaker’s post-‘93 Flair run as Jay White’s perpetual whipping boy and as a faded memory of better times for the company.