Embrodak

I think Roman *has* to go on ice for a while after Mania. It’s booking malfeasance if he doesn’t, you can’t end a titanic reign and have the ex-champ still hanging around all the time. Maybe you could do one rematch, but no more than that. Bring him back to do something big for Summerslam. Would love to see Roman vs Big E if he’s able to come back and decides to do so, or a rematch against Zayn without the title if it makes sense. Wasn’t Edge saying last year he’s prob gonna retire again in August of this year? Roman as Edge’s final opponent could be a good rivalry to return to.

See my post above. Tony let the emotional and psychological core of the feud go back to WWE, and they’re just rehashing a storyline MJF has done before.

Roman was also pretty limited in the ring when he was first pushed, which didn’t help. I know his main event heel run is a little too samey in the ring for some, but I would still say he’s much improved.

Why is Brock wrestling Omos Who gives a shit about Omos

Let’s not forget that this whole fucking feud was supposed to be premised on William Regal as the emotional lynchpin. Regal betraying his FCW protege Moxley to embrace a new young villain that he can mold in his own image, then having divided loyalties when his new ward immediately butts heads with his star pupil, Bryan Danielson. There was a *lot* of juice in that, whereas there is just not two months of material in MJF and Dragon building up to an Iron Man match where the premise is that Danielson thinks MJF is a scrub who can’t hang and was very mean to Regal before he left. MJF eating popcorn with the “only hot chick in Denver” or wherever in a skybox to watch Danielson wrestle is great, but that’s one week. They’re having to get a lot of blood out of a stone without Regal, and I think that explains why MJF is drawing from so many weird wells to try and get this thing to feel like there’s some substance. Re: the fellatio car accident promo, I think Brian Last made a good point on Corny’s show, that that’s the kind of promo MJF should have done in MLW as a 21-year-old, not in AEW as a 26 year old. It could sell a young wrestler in a small promotion as a real piece of shit and get some buzz, whereas it just comes across as awkward coming from someone almost a decade out of high school and the champ of the world’s #2 promotion. It’s not that it was *bad* in some absolute sense, it was just the wrong material for the wrong program at the wrong time in the guy’s life. And in kayfabe, why the fuck would someone confess to a *relatively recent* crime (that he could prob still be prosecuted for) on national television? MJF could do the “I got bullied and you abandoned me” shit against CM Punk and make it work, but you can’t keep talking about high school as an adult and not come across as juvenile. Is he going to be doing Tik Toks about how being in the gifted program fucked him up next? How *should* this program have been booked? Maybe the match could have been announced, with the stipulation that neither guy can touch the other until the PPV, and they each engineer proxy feuds for the other to take up the time until the PPV? That’s kinda what happened with Takeshita, and the MJF/Takeshita match went over well. Could they have expanded on that, conceptually? Maybe MJF could have gotten Hobbs to fuck BD up like he got Wardlow to fuck Punk up, while BD enlists Takeshita to give it back to MJF? Thus getting two young guys over as credible upper card players and not putting MJF in a position to have to get creative to try and imbue this thing with life? I’m just spitballing here, but there has to have been a better way than just asking MJF to invent emotional stakes where there clearly are none.

Fuck Orange Cassidy, and I have plenty of joy.

I really think the extent of the “badness” or “cringe” or whatever is greatly exaggerated in these parts, in fact I think most of it is at least fine taken in isolation, but it seems fair to say that “Ace of the company *and* sustaining a middlingly booked feud that’s a half assed repeat of what he’s done in the past on personality alone” is a little above his skill level at this point.

Well that and it ruled. Haitch’s failure to revitalize the tag team division is my biggest disappointment thus far, in the realm of “things that could actually have happened”. Like I knew he wasn’t gonna fire the writers or change Kevin Dunn’s hyper-streamlined production and formatting, but credible tag teams seems like something he could have done, imo.

Cody at least has Gunther, but they’d have to get the IC title off him first. I’d also be super into him having a program with Damien Priest, but I just know they’d have him fight Finn Balor in a snooze-fest instead.

Dynamite card looking *rough* this week. Mox vs Uno, Yuta vs Orange, tag team battle royal, Saraya vs Skye Blue, Acclaimed vs The Firm, Tony maybe appearing on camera… looks like a two hour Rampage card. Danielson promo and Christian stuff should be good, but it seems like they’re dropping off steeply from those few weeks where it seemed like the old magic was back.

I mean the whole Sami/KO thing is absolute nonsense if considered psychologically. You just kind of have to accept that it’s a private joke between buds and go with it.

Yeah the IWC’s bete noire mentioned recently how one of the arts of booking is striking the balance between giving the audience what they want and making the audience want what you want them to want. I’d say that WWE has done that pretty much perfectly with this storyline thus far. I guess if you just really dislike or are indifferent to Cody, it doesn’t work - that’s true of my dad, for example - but I think Sami losing in Montreal was fine. He got to bask in two nights of adulation and wrestle his highest profile match in front of them. He doesn’t need the title or the win over Roman, and that’s frankly a distraction from the story they’ve been telling, which was about Sami USO, about Reigns trying to use him to keep his belligerent cousin in check but ultimately undermining the stability of the faction that is keeping him on top. Whoever is the creative behind this story, they’re doing a good job for once, and it’s a shame to see the persistence of this antagonism toward the usually overbearing and inorganic WWE creative process the one fucking time in ten years that it actually delivers.

What are we blaming them for? “It’s a huge missed opportunity if it’s not Sami” seems to be an internet phenomenon without much purchase amongst the attending audiences. They’re loving what WWE has been doing with these two storylines, and the way they’re intersecting has complemented both of them. They gave Sami an out by having him basically “win” with no ref in the ring (and Roman, in turn, has the out that he’s not obligated to waste energy kicking out if nobody’s counting), and it makes sense in storyline that it would take two or three top babyfaces working in sync to end the Roman Imperium and Bloodline reign of terror.

Cody has been absolutely killing it and is way over with the WWE audience. It seems really weird to talk about WWE “dropping the ball” when they are poised to exit Wrestlemania with two of the most over babyfaces they’ve had in years. Sami versus Roman was never the main beat of the story, either in terms of screen time or in terms of emotional heft; it was always Sami and Jey’s back and forth. They can have Jey go either direction now and have it make sense, and Sami tearing down the Bloodline and setting the stage for Dusty’s baby boy to win the Big One for his Daddy against a denuded Roman Reigns at the end of his God Mode run is like the most perfect booking I can imagine WWE doing in 2023. This is the rare situation where we can have our cake and eat it too, where the only predictable beat of the story thus far was Cody winning the Rumble and where the “swerves”, such as there have been some, have not been bad Russo bullshit. WWE still sucks overall, we can all still have our Two Minute Hate at Chad Gable having the stupidest gimmick for someone of his talent in years or the asinine decision to rehire Top Dolla, but let’s take our victories where we can get them.

Nervous breakdown or health thing, tbh. Can’t imagine anything else breaking the money mark autohypnosis.

The thing I love about Reigns is he really has a signature swagger, a way he carries himself that is distinctively “him”.

Keith Lee looked rough last night.

If TK meant it as a joke, AH calling TK “snowman” seems to imply he didn’t take it as a joke.

Y’know, Goofy WWE Jon Moxley sucked, but I vastly preferred his younger look to whatever he’s got going on now. He just doesn’t look intimidating enough to pull off what he’s going for with his current look, and his face goes from handsome to homely with short hair and a beard.

Anybody remember when Dean Moxley threw a chair in the ring and accidentally beamed Wyatt on the dome? I’ll bet Wyatt still carries a grudge about that, shit had to fucking hurt. Best Wyatt moment tho.

Sami got the biggest fucking pop since CM Punk’s return and gave a killer babyface promo. Goddamn, whatever gentlemen’s rivalry to try and top one another exists between Sami and Cody right now is absolute fire. WWE is still mostly terrible on the whole, but when was the last time they had two simultaneous credible main event baby faces at the peak of their game?

Yeah the Nakamura path is the only thing that could maybe be alluring to someone like Kenny, on the whole.

Again, you misread me. I didn’t say The Elite and Page were the ones that leaked it to the dirtsheets. I don’t trust Meltzer or Sapp a lick, but it’s totally possible that they’re telling the truth that the Elite and Page had nothing to do with their reporting. But it’s entirely possible that they had something to do with the story starting or spreading, encouraged somebody to talk to the dirt sheets about it, or that they failed to stop its spread when they were in a position of authority and/or influence to do so, since it made them look good vis a vis this interloper. This is stuff it’s frankly impossible for anybody not in that locker room to actually know, no matter what they hear from those in it. Punk is actually *in* that locker room, which is something neither of us can actually say, and he had the interpretation of events that he had. Moreover, even if his perception was *totally* invalid, if the Elite camp had absolutely nothing to do with the rumor and were doing their jobs as EVPs in good faith and attempted to squash it when they heard it, misperceptions happen all the time in life. It fucking sucks that this one blew up so publicly, and Punk certainly needs to take ownership of that, but I frankly don’t respect anybody who can’t put that behind them for the good of the company. I’m not religious, but I can recognize that there’s a reason why grace and forgiveness are emphasized in many religions: humans are assholes and hold grudges even when it’s socially corrosive for them to do so. (For what it’s worth, I recognize that Punk is the grudge holdingest dude involved in all this, and that his unwillingness to mend fences and own up to his shitty behavior may be as or more limiting than the Elite or Jericho or whoever.) The only person who I think has a valid reason to want to keep Punk out is Tony Khan, who has an unimpeachable right to decide that he can’t trust Glass Phil to either hold up in the ring or to be given a live mic on live television. But all the “he’s so toxic” bullshit, when we have like ten people on record saying that Punk was incredibly generous with his time and attention - especially with the women’s division and with younger talent like Starks, Hobbes, and Darby - just doesn’t fly with me. It’s just backstage politicking bullshit, a tale as old as time.

You misread me. I said that *if* Punk saying the EVPs suck at managing and that Adam Page is an unaccomplished airhead “jeopardized the company”, then AEW is not long for this world. But AEW is fine, and was fine, so it didn’t. Punk was pissed at a persistent rumor that had been dogging him in the locker room (that Tony seemingly had not addressed in any substantial way), and hurt, and he let’er rip in public. It might have ruined his relationship with the owner and terminally alienated the least interesting camps of the locker room, that remains to be seen, but if the company was any kind of healthy, it was always going to be fine.

He didn’t “jeopardize the company”. I don’t care what you have heard from any anonymous source or any dirt sheet reporting same; get real. If he *did*, AEW is not long for this world. He made Tony look bad, definitely, but Tony is the guy who marches his people in front of the press without a script and minimal experience in dealing with wrestler egos, not to mention his obviously poor media training.