Embrodak

Tony is a fucking mark, I don’t care if he approved it. At this point, AEW is as much or more an indictment of the people advising him as it is a wrestling promotion.

I haven’t been into basically anything that he’s done since the Adam Page feud. His match with Moxley was a Moxley match (and BD had Moxley’s match more than Moxley had BD’s match), he’s been fucking around with Jericho for many many months at this point, he got hurt in a stupid stadium match, he feuded with Daniel Garcia who I could not give a fuck about… I’m not even that into his in-ring lately, it seems like he’s more interested in playing around with the AEW House Style (which I’m not a fan of) than in trying to be like Punk and attempting to exert influence over what that is.

I respect his right to choose how to conduct his life and career, but if he doesn’t respect or value the emotional investment made by a large group of fans to earn him a position of prominence in the industry, a position way higher than he was on track for in an industry dominated by the preferences of Vince McMahon for most of his career, then yeah, I’m less inclined to view him positively. He basically just openly said he doesn’t particularly care if I support or like him, he’d rather go out in a Randy the Ram match in front of 300 people in an armory wrestling nobodies than in a big stadium show. If that’s how he feels, it is what it is, but where you envision an “ego driven mark for himself”, I imagine “Respects himself and his fans enough to insist that his booking be something others would be excited to see, rather than something that is merely self-gratifying or -enriching.”

I respect that Danielson has become a family man and has his own, bespoke set of preferences when it comes to wrestling, but I can’t say his AEW run thus far has maintained my interest in and respect for him. He was the greatest ever World of Sport heel at the end of last year, and now, he’s spent almost a year fucking around with Moxley and the BCC and the JAS having what are, by his standards, fairly mid matches, with a few exceptions. Even if you don’t value your own stardom all that much, the notion of wasting your reputation and drawing ability when it might do the upstart company you very publicly jumped to a world of good to stand up for yourself and insist you be used well… idk, man.

On some level Tony clearly doesn’t buy into FTR the way a lot of people do. Maybe he’s too much of a tapes nerd and thinks they don’t do enough original material, maybe the stats just don’t favor them as much as we’d like, maybe the Bucks and Omega are in his ear with that “tribute act” shit, maybe Dax is too near the verge of serious injury, but Tony does not see them as stars.

MJF is, to me, clearly the breakout star of AEW, glad to see him with the strap, though it would def be better if he’d gotten it off of CM Punk rather than a kinda cold match with Moxley. And lol at him quoting Corny and CM Punk in the scrum. He may have found the way to stay a heel if he starts using catchphrases and nicknames of the two biggest personae non grata in the company.

MJF is absolutely a ratings draw, at the very least, and Regal is a much better villain than hero. Moxley sucks way worse than MJF, I’m glad to see MJF with the strap.

What’s sad is I feel like Impact, NWA, and MLW have a collective solid third company roster, but talented guys like Aldis, Fatu, and Hammerstone languish where barely anybody sees them.

LA Knight rules, heathen. Classic wrestling heel!

Saraya is thoroughly derailed at this point, I don’t think that’s a future happening. She needed approximately the same story as Punk, “Can I still hang?”, not “This division sucks and I’m here to dominate it”. Even if the latter is true, AEW has extremely defensive fans who do not like stuff like that.

He’s also lost almost every match since Vince left and got jobbed out on his cash-in, and been made to look like a stupid goober every step of the way. At a minimum, it seems fair to say that Trips is significantly less sold on him than Vince was.

AEW is not dying, but it is absolutely in danger of settling into “good TNA” territory, if that makes sense.

Jericho is really terrible at singing.

Idk, man, Theory seems comparably or more talented than Orton at the same age, to me. Unless he’s a problem in the locker room or there’s more scandalous shit that they’ve squashed for now, not sure how Hunter could “not see it” but think Karrion Kross is worth his time.

The treatment of Theory is utterly bizarre. Have we gotten any dirt sheet speculation as to why HHH seems to have it in for him? Does he believe the #SpeakingOut accusations, or was he just an arrogant young guy who was perceived as needing to be humbled?

I mean there’s a lot of people that are part of the “All Friends Wrestling” crowd (incidentally, the people with the warmest relationships with the biggest journalists in the game), it’s unsurprising to me that the locker room is full of marks that think sticking up for their buddy Colt goddamn Cabana is worth losing probably their biggest star.

I think Fetterman would have curb stomped Oz were it not for the stroke, but alas, ableism is one of the last -isms people allow themselves without much reflection.

Tony doesn’t delegate enough, but I think it is probably safe to assume that he is probably pretty permeable to advice and suggestions.

And it couldn’t have waited because….?

I’m sorry, but I think anybody with an ounce of sense about social norms within both combat sports (even worked ones) and masculinity writ large would understand that barging into his dressing room uninvited in that context, after that scrum and the obvious vibe he was giving off, would beggar a fight. You really have to be hypercolonized with HR-think to argue otherwise. It’s not “grasping at straws”, it’s looking at the situation with any perspective other than a middle school principal enforcing a zero tolerance policy.

AEW may not be going down in flames, but at this point, I see very little reason to watch it. The Elite can’t even go at the level they used to, which is what was supposed to be what justified them flushing traditional ring psychology down the drain; Bryan Danielson is the world’s best paid midcarder; I can’t stand Moxley’s in-ring style; I can’t stand Jericho’s anything; they regularly push and feature guys I don’t want to see and marginalize guys I do want to see; and MJF, my favorite young guy, appears poised to do an ill-advised babyface turn. Punk was pretty much the guy I wanted to see on the show, and if he’s splitsville, well, call me when they put the world title on Ricky Starks, I guess.

I meant “hot” in the sense of over-ness with the audience. Page was hot around the time he actually won the title, but nowhere near where Punk was in 2011, especially when you factor in the relative intensity of fandom of the audiences they were working in front of. And that was also with Page being basically the main character, if not always the most prominently featured performer, of the show for several years, with the full weight and support of the company behind his storyline and eventual ascension. That’s not as impressive to me as guys like Punk and Bryan getting over with a multi-billion dollar behemoth working at cross purposes to them. Punk was never and has never been a John Cena-level draw, let alone a Rock-level draw, but the career he made for himself has been impressive nevertheless. It’s a shame that he’ll not have the influence he envisioned for himself, but with as much of a dick as he is, I have to imagine doing that scrum and then decking a Young Buck, and potentially getting paid millions of dollars to do nothing after having done it, was orgasmic in a way that was almost worth it to him.

“You guys have the former host of Wipe-Out on your show? This we gotta program.”

Not just that, but passing on his 2009 Monday Night Raw-ass “instincts” to the younger generation and blockading about the genius of it to reporters.

I don’t think he was a “cancer in the locker room”, though, I think he was annoying to the people who see themselves as having a right to be on top in AEW and resented this interloper coming in and thinking he should be treated like a bigger deal than them. And, hey, I totally get that, but that’s just locker room politics. Punk was clearly in a bad place, but he still did business with Adam Page after he touched his sorest spot on national television, still agreed to put over Jon Moxley in a television match, so however pissy he was or was not (and if he’s a “private dressing room” guy, how much of that bad mood is actually intersecting with the wider locker room?), he wasn’t Hogan or Michaels or anything. Jericho has taken this whole thing as an excuse to grandstand and self-aggrandize, and it’s disheartening to see the most deleterious influence in the company walk away from this whole thing smelling like roses. Point taken Re: Punk in 2011, but the difference is Punk in 2011 was in a company run by a senile sex offender desperate to clamp down on someone who had gotten over without the proper approval and planning, while Page in 2022 was ostensibly in the company where the creative influencers are supposed to be clear-sighted and hip to the vibe and where his years-long, company-sanctioned push had fallen incredibly flat when he actually got the title. Punk in 2011 was having one of the hottest runs anybody had had since John Cena got big, while Adam Page in 2022 looked second fiddle next to Bryan Danielson and was doing ice cold death matches against Lance Archer weeks later. If Page perceived Punk to have been doing the same thing Nash and Rock did to Punk - or, to flip that around, if Page saw himself as comparable to Summer of Punk era Punk - then he *is* as emptyheaded as Punk intimated. Punk in 2011 feuding with a still-alive Eddie probably reacts a lot differently than Punk in 2011 feuding with a bizarrely-returned Kevin Nash, and frankly, Punk’s not wrong that in the context of AEW, he is the former, not the latter.