FMKK

I’m sure there are still some Omega resisters amongst the people who would have been posting a lot back then. I guess that vote wrapped up just before his legendary G1 Finals in 2016 so you basically have his entire run as a top worldwide star missing from the process. My top ten would skew so modern that Parv and such would write a fucking book about it.

That G1 line-up is looking rough. Expecting a Naito vs Cobb or Ibushi vs Okada final out of these line-ups.

Triple H has to be 100% dead inside after the last year of eating shit.

Some of the anti-Punk takes in this thread are completely baffling to me. Guy needed some time to find his legs in his first match in 7 years and all of a sudden he's a useless scrub. Guy milks his pops and lets the fans love him for a bit after a comeback we thought was never going to happen and all of a sudden he's lost all of his edge and is out of place in the promotion. Jesus Christ, he's been in for three weeks. Give him a chance to have an actual feud.

It may be more interesting than current NXT but at the end of the day, it all requires modern day Vince McMahon to actually commit to pushing someone and doing it well. I wouldn’t hold out hope for that. In further HHH is buried new, apparently NXT Japan has officially been disbanded. Before it ever got off the ground.

TK being the fucking sleaze thread guy is the cherry on top. Khan should hire HHH just so Punk can get his win back, then send his ass to Impact.

Nick Khan runs the business side and Bruce inherits the book. Triple H can follow round Stephanie on the shitty philanthropic speaking circuit and get pegged in every hotel room in America or whateverthefuck.

Is this the place to come for the NXT burial party? I agree with the diagnosis but not necessarily the remedy. Who needs more Vince and Bruce booking in 2021? The fate of NXT and Triple H in particular is very amusing to me. HHH was absolutely loathed online because of his politicking and egotism for years before NXT started, managed to ingratiate himself to those fans by booking their indie faves and setting himself up as the alternative to Vince and the future saviour of wrestling only to be destroyed by a smarky message board poster and be removed from power because Vince thinks he’s pushing too many vanilla midgets. The karmic justice is just too good. People thought Triple H was this great booker when he never had to draw money, never had to draw ratings, got to sign a load of top quality wrestlers with existing fanbases and then move them on to the main roster once he had done all the big matches with them. He had every ridiculous advantage possible and ate shit the moment he was put to the test for real.

She also had surgery on both her knees so her already limited mobility declined further. Honestly, if Vince thought AEW would actually hire her he’d be better to let her go and injure all their top women.

Nia Jax is the drizzling shits. She almost killed Rhea in the run-in after her match earlier in the show as well.

Do black wrestlers all have to ‘represent their community’ or can they just be wrestlers? Also, Brandi should never tweet again. Most gotten to wrestling personality this side of Roman Reigns.

They have Lee Johnson and Dante Martin cooking for the future but they’re clearly not ready to be pushed just yet. Same with Jade Cargill. They used Lee Moriarty on Dark recently so hopefully he comes in. I get the point that the cards should be more diverse but you also can’t and shouldn’t push people above their level just to tick boxes. Like, they tried to push Scorpio Sky at the start and the reality is that he’s a midcard act and doesn’t warrant going higher than that.

I think the stuff they did this summer was just to build to a write-off for Page and to ensure they can pick it right back up when he returns. Just teasing the fans a little more.

It’ll be interesting to see what happens in about 6 months time when the first wave of AEW contracts presumably come up for renewal. The likes of Janela and Kiss could easily hit the bricks with no loss. Maybe they like having Kazarian around but he also seems to be at a point where he doesn’t have a load of utility. And maybe if there are a couple of big names there, Vince might be tempted to offer big bucks to get the first AEW to WWE jump.

QT has had a combined like 5 minutes of TV time since he lost to Cody lol

It’s a Smackdown show but they made it both brands in a panic move because it wasn’t drawing. I saw it said that Cena would be working a dark match on the show.

Surely the whole crux of the feud was that Bryan had to annihilate the Miz, not do job after job

Bryan Danielson came back after what seemed like career ending injuries and his big return match was in a tag team with Shane McMahon before he immediately went into a feud with Big Cass and ended up as a heel six months later because his heat had died. Let’s not say he wasn’t misused. Becky Lynch turning heel isn’t necessarily a bad thing imo, just that their way of getting there was so bad. Why not have her come back for a face-off with Bianca, soak up her return pops for a few weeks and then have her turn in a future match when she realises she can’t beat Bianca fairly? This way, she’s only a heel because she was booked to win and Bianca was booked poorly. They are obsessed with the meta narrative where the true top heel in the company is WWE booking itself.

Adam Cole and Bryan Danielson shouldn’t be lumped in together like that. Danielson is a far bigger star. He’s main evented two Wrestlemanias including this year. That gives him as strong of a big show pedigree as anyone else in AEW, even Jericho. He’s not going to be as big as Punk because of all of the unique elements to Punk’s story but he’s another one of those people who represents everything that AEW is about and that that segment of wrestling fans identified with even when they watched WWE. Plus, while Punk is a master promo and storyteller, having Bryan Danielson in the ring working with all your top prospects arguably has greater long term benefits.

Tbf, Dominik absolutely sucks so I wouldn’t be spotlighting him

Bray Wyatt is the drizzling shits. Keep him away.

The other problem is that he’s had people who fit those roles and whiffed on them too. Braun Strowman was always pushed to a decent level but there was a window for him to be a proper top star and they totally sidelined him and devalued him with comedy shit. Mandy Rose is like the absolute epitome of what you’d expect Vince to want and she did the horrendous Otis programme and then nothing else and has now been demoted to NXT.

Cutting everyone over thirty seems like a bad idea for a developmental brand. You need solid workers to help your fitness models and college football washouts learn how to work and also to make sure that the TV is still watchable while USA network pays millions of dollars a year for it.

Yeah this feels like mega political manoeuvres against HHH as much as anything. I would have assumed Bruce but Rovert is saying Dunne and that’s believable. The reality is that NXT is a failing brand and going head to head with AEW only exposed the cracks that were already long since set in imo. I’m genuinely more interested in seeing what the new version of it looks like than watching the current shite. If it were me, Samoa Joe wins the belt, transitions it to Odyssey Jones and he squashes all the remaining old guys to write them off as top players while they try to find their next Batista or whoever to beat him. But even with a roster full of muscle guys, I don’t trust 2021 Vince to actually get anyone over.

You mean they built to the new guy beating the established star instead of giving it away on the first go? Darby lost to Jericho, lost to Moxley twice and lost to Cody twice before he finally beat Cody for a belt. That’s showing that he has progressed to the next level. Not everyone has to come in pushed like Okada, especially not a guy like Darby. And if established AEW star Cody Rhodes can’t win B-level feuds with QT Marshall and Shawn Spears then you’re basically saying he should be a no entrance jobber.