NotJayTabb

Between Cole namedropping Orig Williams at the start of the show, and that incredible Sheamus/Gunther match, I'm already a happy boy

Where IS Samoa Joe, by the way? He's the ROH TV champion, and he's getting less screen time than Lethal, who he beat on PPV. Is he injured or just on the sidelines?

Given HHH's recent tendancy to rehire people previously canned, I'd like to see Tegan Nox return at Cardiff. I know she recently said she's not been able to wrestle elsewhere due to visa issues, so I don't know if that could affect a comeback. Alternatively, rehire Mason Ryan.

Heck, Rampage is where CM Punk made his big return to wrestling, which is definitely not where they'd have that happen now. If you look at the ratings graphs that Brandon Thurston tweets out every week, there's a hilariously big spike in the Rampage rating for one week last year before settling down to be the lowest show of the big two companies

Interesting choice to bring in someone fired by the opposition for apparently failing a drugs test. Its not like Two Dimes is this big name or super worker where it's worth the gamble.

It does feel like Dark Order is slowly being phased out with Grayson and Angels going, and Cabana being moved to RoH. I hope they do something with Silver & Reynolds as a team post DO, feels like they could have been featured a bit more in the tag mix. Anna Jay will be fine and Preston Vance can be easily repackaged, not sure where it would leave Uno though.

Nia tweeted yesterday that she won't be a part of this :-D I'm looking forward to this odd Frankenstein's monster of a show. SDS vs Dorado will be good at least, and I'm curious about a No Way Jose vs Jody Fleisch match.

Busick would be a great replacement, not so much in terms of fan reaction, but he'd have a great match with ZSJ and fits the Blackpool Combat Club dynamic perfectly. Same with Thatcher TBH. Another reason I don't think it's Cesaro is that he'd be debuting in the faction, but would already be placed behind Danielson and Moxley, whereas you'd think he'd be a bigger deal if he debuted in AEW.

It's been rumoured that Cesaro is going to be Max Dupri's first client on Smackdown, so if that were true you'd think he'll be appearing this Friday to shut down the Forbidden Door rumours. Maybe ZSJ will face Karrion Kross...

It is kinda hilarious that the Jarrett/Effy storyline arc went: Jarrett comes out of retirement to attack Effy, repeatedly beats him up, beats him cleanly in their only match, then goes back into retirement with a proper office job. Really makes one of GCW's homegrown stars look bad there.

Sterling is perfect as an undercard manager. He's a very good speaker, he's a trained wrestler so he can bump and take heat, but he's not physically impressive enough to outshine his clients. He should be given an undercard tag team like Bear Country to give him a little stable with Nese.

At this point, it wouldn't surprise me if Jeff Jarrett ends up in charge of creative by year end. Never bet against him.

Heel Balor was a breath of fresh air in NXT, and having a bit more edge meant his offence had a bit more snap to it too. He's never been a main roster heel before, so this is a positive change for him. Kayfabe, the only reason they won the night before was Rhea stopping Balor hitting the Coup de Grace on Edge, so you can frame it that he's seen as a liability who needed removing.

Really enjoying these write-up's @El Dragon, especially for guys like Brodie Lee who I've always liked, but haven't thought much about in the context of this project. I'm already planning a CHIKARA deeper dive for Kingston, Hallowicked, Hero, Claudio and (sigh) Quackenbush, but this now has me excited for Brodie there too.

Apparently it's been moved to 9th July, so my dream of seeing Braun Strowman vs a UFC fighter I've not heard of still remains intact.

It's almost certainly a poorly timed joke, but there was one of those "Who's going to Double Or Nothing?" tweets by a wrestling news site, and Ricky Starks replied "No". He's deleted the tweet, and it's probably a heel answer that he's had to delete once he's heard the MJF situation, but coupled with Joe's accidental no-show it doesn't help the rumour mill.

The segment ended with a legitimate "Shanky" chant, which I would have previously thought impossible

In a lovely twist of fate, I've been bought tickets for this show for my upcoming birthday. My mum had bought me some WWE house show tickets before, and I'm guessing the Motorpoint Arena e-mailed her to say "Hey this other wrestling show is coming up" and now I'm the proud owner of 2 tickets to the AoP island of misfit toys promotion and I'm kinda pumped about it. She did tell me that she's so far had two e-mails from the arena giving her a partial refund on the price as "The promotor has reduced the ticket prices", just in case you were wondering how sales were going.

Really hope Tony K has his delegating boots on, or the next few months could be tricky. With Fulham preparing for their bi-annual season in the Premiership, he's likely going to be involved in a lot of transfer negotiations and scouting meetings for the next few months, which is a full time job. He's either going to need to hire a director of football at Fulham (this would be the smarter move, as he's not great at it himself) or delegate a lot of the AEW booking for risk of burnout. There's already a few worrying signs that he's not firing on all cylinders (the terrible state of the TNT title scene), and it might end up getting worse.

I quite like KOR's goofiness, it's not overbearing and little touches like air-guitaring the NXT tag belt or "Peter DUNE" made him stand out a little bit. He was not only in a promotion of indy darlings in NXT, he was also in a stable of four similarly sized, pretty generic wrestlers, so he needed to stand out. Roddy was the worker, Cole had the catchphrase, so KOR started amping up the goofiness to stand out and it worked.

As a Nottingham resident, which is where this show is taking place, I know the Motorpoint Arena very well, and I can't see this being remotely profitable. It's a 10,000 seater arena, and to put on a show at 3 weeks notice with basically undercard WWE talent feels like a madness. The last time WWE ran there in 2021, they only got 4,500. I guess this might have morbid curiosity value, but it feels very odd.

I don't think it's being cute to call Keith Lee an NXT guy, in as much as he was one of the faces of NXT when they were going head-to-head with AEW. I think the perception of "signing NXT guys" thing is because AEW have signed a bunch of them in a really small timeframe - you've got Cole, Fish, O'Reilly, Lee, Swerve, Toni, Nese, Shafir all debuting in the space of a few months. At the same time, I don't see the validity in the argument that AEW are signing too many guys for their TV time. It makes sense to me as such a young company that they're still building, and in this case they're bringing in a lot of options, seeing what sticks and who they can use. It's like the original roster signings - some caught on, others like Janela and Evans didn't, so they weren't retained when their contracts ended. It makes sense to bring in people, see how they fit and how they are as people, then use the ones you can use, while the others get a payday until their deal expires. Everyone wins.

Yeah, I think Gulak trained Bad Bunny, along with Adam Pearce. If you're this off-the-radar and have avoided the chop so far, you must be doing some other backstage role and doing it well at this point

LuFisto was on Dark Elevation last night, she'd fit the BCC vibe as the only female member.

Possibly burnout? I wonder what percentage of those fans had also attended SD!, NXT and both days of Mania.