Embrodak

Well in all fairness, FTR barely does tag team wrestling on TV lately. Is Cash working hurt? All we hear about is how Dax’s shoulder is held together with chewing gum at this point, but he’s the only one that wrestles singles matches.

Cabana got his teeth kicked out by Danielson this year.

Moreover, even if The Elite weren’t the ones talking to Da Sheetz, they certainly could have been the gossips who spread it to people who *did* talk to Da Sheetz. Punk is a bitter old asshole, but I don’t think he’s such a social inept that he can’t put two and two together about why there’s a shitty locker room rumor about him.

MJF rules, suck it haters.

Punk, to me, put on by far the most compelling story in the history of the company, idk how one could call that a waste. Even with the bullshit, I fucking loved this run.

I love FTR, but we should be willing to consider that Dax may be as annoying in real life as he can be on Twitter.

What are they doing with Dexter Lumis? I don’t care how many cheers they pipe in, you can just look at the crowd and see they’re ice fucking cold for this abduction shit.

I agree, though Kenny has a pacifist vibe that makes it plausible to me that he was just trying to pull the guys apart and Ace misinterpreted it in the heat of the moment. There is a part of me that thinks Punk was immensely dumb to think the Elite were going to jump him. They are like the least likely three dude combo ever in wrestling to form a posse to initiate shoot fisticuffs. If he wasn’t (probably) hurting like crazy from the muscle tear and tired of having blood all over him, he probably would have realized that they were just coming to chew him out and throw their EVP weight around. This would all be much simpler if we lived in more of an honor culture. A duel would be a very straightforward resolution of this conflict.

Stokely is theoretically fine, but dude cannot catch a break on his booking.

Whatever Punk said, anybody with a modicum of managerial sense should have known that barging into Punk’s dressing room before Tony even finished the scrum was a boneheaded move. Dude was possibly still covered in blood! The act would be proverbial “fighting words” in basically any wrestling locker room prior to the last 15-20 years. If Megha and Daniels were there for any reason other than to try and stop the Bucks before they went in, they’re fucking nitwits, too.

Dude saw three guys on his friend and immediately threw a chair and bit a dude. He’s the designated wild card of the squad.

The only thing with the SS matches is it’s hard to create stakes.

Should have just said “willing”, because I do think Omega would prob not wanna work with Punk on his terms at this point, but I’ve not seen Omega do anything like the style Punk’s favoring in this run.

Other than abusers/creeps like Velveteen Dream, or weirdo narcissists like Enzo, I can’t imagine anybody less appealing to bring back.

Would throw the “I’m trying to run a business” line in a different light if Punk is something like an informal/unofficial EVP. Punk vs Omega sounds terrible, tbh. Total clash of styles, and I don’t think either would either want or be able to modulate themselves to match the other.

I don’t watch NXT, what’s up with that Quincy Elliott dude? Was anybody clamoring for Mabel with a Goldust skin?

I don’t think Dave is as bad as some people say, but The Elite being the top dogs in AEW provides him with the most access and influence he’s ever had, after decades of people in the business mostly rolling their eyes at him and finding him an annoying gadfly who exposes the business without actually knowing how it works. I think it’s fair to say that there is at least a subconscious bias on his part.

And if a slow burn Punk heel turn wasn’t what was agreed to? Page could have just done a “I built this, I won’t let you take it away from me” kinda babyface vs babyface promo, but instead, he implied that Punk was secretly an asshole. Eddie clearly had longstanding heat with Punk and has venom toward almost literally everybody, and MJF is the most vile heel in the company and not to be taken at face value. Maybe having the top babyface champion come out and imply you’re a two-faced piece of shit was not actually the story they were supposed to do? I certainly remember the Page promo feeling odd and being bewildered at people who said it was some perfect continuity with the Eddie feud, and based on how mad it made him, it seems like Punk felt similarly. “Make your niche audience on the internet hate your top star” and all that.

I think Punk in MMA did what used to be called “stealing a house” in the territory days.

From everything I’ve read, Disney buying 21st Century Fox should also have been illegal, but here we are. In political economic terms, the rate of profit is so low that a lot of economic activity only becomes worth doing if it’s done at a truly vast scale.

Hope Tony has made some TV industry contacts if NBC Universal buys Warner Brothers Discovery.

I think there’s concern that Punk will walk if they fire Ace, and I don’t think Tony’s convinced he wants to do that yet. Also it may be that if Ace came in the room after everything started and thought his friend had gotten jumped by three guys, there’s some plausible deniability in terms of his mental state? I must admit I’m perplexed that the hammer hasn’t come down on him, myself.

Oh I don’t deny that Punk has been an asshole about all this, that much is clear to pretty much everybody.

I mean Punk was also trying to become a babyface champion, having the current babyface champion say you’re actually secretly a piece of shit hypocrite behind the scenes if that wasn’t an agreed-upon direction for Punk’s storyline is actually pretty unprofessional, even if the specifics don’t translate to anybody but Page and his goofy friends.

Omega also comes off as the oddest and most in his own head, too, though. The existence of someone in a wrestling locker room that has been in a Guy Maddin movie is somewhat bizarre to me.