strobogo

Dude is rad. Very strong 70s Jumbo vibes to me.

The idea of Vince being in charge but it no longer being his company seems completely antithetical to Vince McMahon's personality and vision. What makes more sense to me is that he wants to cash out and doesn't want to leave it to his family, of which he has publicly said he is disappointed in in regards to the business, fired his son, demoted HHH, and removed Stephanie from any creative position.

Casino ladder match to be replaced with King of The Mountain in 2023

Luckily they aren't on television and are in absolutely no way required viewing of any kind to enjoy the promotion. AEW doesn't run house shows. The talent on Dark aren't going to get their reps, particularly when it comes to working within TV time limits and hard cams. And a lot of the talents that pop up on Dark have little to no actual television experience. Same goes for Level Up, but there's nothing forcing anyone to watch them. They're tertiary web shows. You can completely ignore their existence.

Being mad about the dark shows existing is weird as hell. Like being mad that Jakked and Metal that aired at 2 am on Sunday morning existed.

For Vince and a pop culture gimmick, he's 10 years ahead of the curve on Rad Radford.

By the time Raven debuted in January 1995, Kobain was dead, Pearl Jam was basically blacklisted in the US due to the war with Ticketmaster, Soundgarden was winding down, AIC was on hiatus, and pretty much all genres of rock had completely fallen off the charts. The time for a timely grunge gimmick was definitely not 1995.

Which was why the WCW reveal that he actually was a try-hard cosplay by a rich kid hilarious. I'm pretty sure that actually was part of the character initially in ECW but was dropped early on. But anyway, the content and delivery of Raven promos were garbage. Even the grunge deal had peaked and was on the way out when the Raven character debuted in ECW. I've seen most of his ECW/WCW/WWE/ROH/early TNA work and I can't think of a single stand out Raven promo or promo that sold me on needing to see a Raven match. Luckily with the right guys he could have pretty solid matches at least for a while, but his promos always sucked.

The delivery is what sucks so much, though.

Sucks that the Sasha thing fell pretty flat in all aspects. The name is very TNA meme, promo style did not translate at all, and the move was botched. Personally, the thing that was the biggest disappointment to me was that the match with Kairi is going to be in the US. I have absolutely zero interest in any of the US based NJ shows and did have interest in seeing Sasha go full joshi in Japan.

Raven's promos actually fucking suck. ECW and WCW. I will never understand how he got the reputation as this great promo/psychology guy.

I think "fans thought it was real" in other eras is hella overstated. There are newspaper articles going back to the late 1800s/early 1900s talking about the worked nature of pro wrestling. There's no way you can watch stuff from the 40s/50s and truly believe the audiences thought it was 100% real athletic competition. Most of that kind of talk is from old timers gassing themselves up in later eras than the Thesz era anyway. And on the legit whilst also being entertaining tip, there are a ton of Lou Thesz spots that are still regularly done all the way up to 2023, including comedy and high spots.

Vince staging a hostile takeover angle of his own company in real life out of spite is incredible lmao

Coming back to sell. Which I think he could do without resuming leadership of actual on screen stuff.

AAA looks way more foolish than TK in that situation

Finished the show and still felt quite underwhelmed. Ospreay/Omega was something. Certainly not the match I expected, but quite interesting. I do feel like I've seen this story a few times before, though. Same with Okada/White. Really just feels like a reset to right before the pandemic/AEW formation.

Any comparison to WCW cutting Austin is silly because while it was a bad call on its face, no one could have predicted Austin to become such a singular ultrastar. That said, Swerve is definitely a very unique talent that any company would be crazy to let go. Everything he does is so singularly him, he's one of the few guys that are legit cool in a crossover way.

Double J?

Watched up to Anderson/Tama and the show has been hella underwhelming. Have to imagine the double main will pick up, but up to this point in the show its just as cold as 2020-2021 NJPW to me.

But imagine if White beats Okada and the video package is from Chris Jericho

I want to see Bryan vs Darby Bryan vs OC Bryan vs Joey Samoey in 2023 Bryan vs Hook Bryan vs Penta Bryan vs Fenix Bryan vs Bandido Bryan vs The Butcher Bryan vs Brody King Bryan vs both Martin bois Bryan vs Jeff Jarrett Bryan vs Jungle Boy Bryan vs Keith Lee Bryan vs Swerve Bryan vs Takeshita Bryan vs Hobbs Bryan vs Ricky Bryan vs Rush Bryan vs Sting Bryan vs Jade

I think I'm actually more interested in Bryan doing random 15 minute matches with no stakes against guys he's never worked because the random talent he can work with in AEW is truly wild.

I watched so little outside of AEW/WWE PPVs and the ROH PPVs. I think I watched WK but I'm not positive and I don't think I watched any NJ the rest of the year. The matches that stand out in my mind are the Cody/Rollins HIAC, Sheamus/Gunther, all the FTR/Briscoes. I'm sure there were a ton of great matches on AEW tv that I watched and just can not recall. Sami vs Knoxville is a top contender, though.

Viewing it as a cause and effect that they didn't get their Bryan WK dream match that was never announced, teased, or hinted at in any way whatsoever by either company or any talent, because TK just had to book Bryan vs Nese for Seattle is silly to begin with.

No one should have thought Bryan was going to be at WK if there was no video sent in by the end of any of the November shows. If you're mad about Bryan being "kept" from WK when it is clear he was never booked in any way for it, I dunno what to tell you.