strobogo

And apparently Omega/Bucks were "absolutely not" the sources for Punk getting Cabana fired/sent to ROH, so Punk's ire wasn't even directed at the right people, which makes it even more lol. And if he got injured either in the match or in the fight, what an incredible art imitates life imitates art situation with the Moxley quote in the hype video.

Oh it made sense it was just super weird to me

Do you think they slapped the leg when they double superkicked the door

I have two theories about why Punk has a bee in his bonnet: 1. Steve Austin came back and gave Kevin Owens a WM main event that he didn't get 2. Guy had this apparently Kerry Von Erich tier foot injury and surgery, somehow comes back in 3 months with a noticeably bigger upper body and suddenly developing gyno at 43. Just saying.

Pretty sure TK took full control and stopped allowing The Elite guys to book their own stuff like 2 years ago. It's also reported that Kenny and the Bucks absolutely were not the sources for the Cabana rumors, and Kenny hadn't been around since November, so it seems hard to believe he'd be involved in leaking stuff about Punk or his impact on the locker room. It's also obviously not just those guys anyway. A lot of people seem to not get along with Hey Phil for some reason. No idea what it could be.

I didn't say he didn't bring in higher ratings, I said they leveled off fairly quickly and overall the ratings from September 2021 to September 2022 are pretty close to what they were in 2020 and even 2019. There was a clear spike for 3-4 weeks of Punk's debut and then that spike leveled off to what they were doing in the months before Punk arrived. They had Punk/Cole/Bryan all debut at the same time and the viewership spiked but didn't really grow like everyone assumed it would. I don't think AEW needs Punk. If I'm given an us or him situation between Bucks/Omega and Punk, I'm absolutely taking Kenny and the Bucks.

It's just kind of wild to see the talent openly treating him like that in front of the "wrestling media". The only guy who seemed to have respect for him as a boss was Jericho of all people.

I think getting rid of Punk would be the ideal solution, if someone is going to get fired. Ace, too, obviously. Punk seems to be the nucleus of a lot of drama with multiple groups of people and all the stuff about turbulence in the locker room really started coming out within a couple months of Punk arriving. I don't think Punk has really made much of a difference in DA RATINGS if that's the metric that is so important. They pretty much leveled off 3 weeks into his run and have mostly stayed the same weekly outside of a few extra hyped shows. I'm sure his merch is bringing in a ton of money, though. I don't think AEW needed him before and I don't think they need him now, but the arc of the story of Punk lasting exactly one year before blowing everything up is delightful. One thing for sure is that no one respects Tony Khan. Could you imagine a WWE event like that with a talent repeatedly just straight up talking over Vince and talking about how fucking stupid and useless the other top talent is, and how Vince's booking is? Even Keith Lee/Swerve and Toni Storm cut him off and said some pretty out of pocket shit to/about him/other talent/the company and he just let it go. TK needs to hire a heater to crack down. Eagerly awaiting the story 7 months from now that Punk and Ace have had a bad falling out.

Sure but the spots didn't make any sense even by multiman ladder match standards, most of them did not go off well (like what the fuck was the Claudio/Andrade spot supposed to be lmao), and the announcers pointing out things not making sense hurt it even more. Matches like that can certainly go off the rails pretty easily, but that one never seemed to be on the tracks to begin with. Also, MJF's intro was so bizarre. Playing the phone call from TK was just...what in the world

I can't say I was into anything on this show, but that suplex power spot in the tag scramble was one of the wildest strength spots I can ever remember.

I hope it's all true because Punk completely imploding within a year over the exact type of shit he did when he was younger is hilarious to me. Just the idea that Punk sat at home for 3 months stewing over that Hangman promo like Punk himself hadn't done the exact same shit dozens of times in every damn company he ever worked for. Every feud Punk has had in the company has had his opponent saying something similar to what Hangman said to him. It's not like the Hangman promo was unusual other than he was a face saying it. I find it pretty difficult to have sympathy for Punk in any situation, because he's an asshole everywhere he's been and gotten himself into these kind of situations. Dude just seems to be one of those that thrives on conflict and then takes no responsibility. I would fucking die if Punk got fired for shoot hitting one of the Young Bucks with a chair.

Wild that SIOG vs The Acclaimed was the match of the night. I'd actually say that was the second best match of the weekend of shows, behind only Walter vs Sheamus. A couple of random thoughts: Wardlow's straight up video game clothesline looks way, way more devastating than any of his powerbombs. The ladder match was a disaster. Might not ever have been a match with so much talent that went so poorly. Punk comes back from his injury with a noticeably bigger upper body, suddenly appears to have developed gyno at the same time. Are steroids straight edge? Really have no idea what the deal with Kip Sabian is. They had him do that box head gimmick for like a year and a half, he didn't take any outside bookings either, and now he looks like Kizzarny and treats the box like Al Snow and Head. The Christian/Jungle Boy thing was real weird to do on a PPV with so much build up. Hobbs/Starks really should have had another 5, maybe even 10 minutes. The Jericho/Bryan match certainly didn't need that much time, and the women's 4 way felt like it was a half hour. I'm really not at all interested in a Punk title run as a face or heel. Mox has had so much more momentum and juice, and while I'm not a big fan of Moxley, he's clearly better for the role of top guy of AEW in 2022 than Punk.

The handling of Drew has been so odd the past 2 years. They had him hold things down in the pandemic era and as soon as they went back to crowds, he decisively lost multiple times to Lashley, lost to Big E, also lost clean to Roman as champ at Survivor Series, then got into a 4 month feud with Corbin, gets back to the title scene and again loses.

The size thing to me is less about the actual size of the talent and more about how they are booked/work. Adam Cole should not be doing Frye/Takayama spots with Luchasaurus or controlling Keith Lee with a headlock for much of the match. Alexa Bliss shouldn't be dominating Nia Jax. On the opposite side, Rey Mysterio shouldn't run through whatever guy a foot taller than him. Which he doesn't, which is part of the reason everyone got over his size 25 years ago, because he works in a way that makes sense for his size. So many talents today will work the same way against every opponent regardless of size and weight differences. And it looks real dumb when it's something like Adam Cole and Luchasaurus trading shots.

I love that Miro consistently refers to the House of Black as "The Pagans".

Thunder Rosa is also a bad promo. Britt Baker got a ton of promo time every week when she went on her big run.

In regards to Don Callis still being with Kenny, seemed clear to me that the segment with Don/Ospreay in the locker room was planting the seeds for Don to turn on Kenny and ride Ospreay's coattails.

Yeah kind of but the first match was more of an angle than a match and definitely gave the whole thing a lot more juice, although this is not something AEW should do on a regular basis. The WWE version would be having a full 15-20 minute TV match the Raw before a PPV, then at the PPV, and then a rematch the next night on Raw.

What is this melodrama

Drew is so boring though. It'd be a real shame to have this legendary reign end to a guy that's already been a 3 time champ that also already had a multi-month feud with Roman in the recent past.

Definitely. I think that's always been the case going back to at least the SNES/Genesis days if not the NES/SMS days.

The folklore is stupid. Without the internet mythology, it just looks like a competitive match where Regal put up more of a fight than most of Goldberg's opponent. There was an early match with Jerry Flynn that was worked pretty much the same way and no one has ever said Jerry Flynn shot on Goldberg.

Ok believe Bill Goldberg could not escape a front headlock from Chris Jericho, as told by Chris Jericho, because Goldberg lolz didn't know how to wrestle

Goldberg had been training BJJ and muay thai for years before WCW. It's absolutely ridiculous to think he'd have no idea how to get out of a fucking headlock.

Personally I'm much more entertained by a sudden burst of chaos 2-3 weeks to fill up a PPV than the 10 weeks of the same segment on repeat until the go home show when some real cool shit happens.