Embrodak

MJF has to be actually in trouble, right? There’s absolutely zero reason to stretch the storyline out this long unless he was actually serving penance for the no-show and for publicly talking shit about how unhappy he was with his contract situation.

I mean weight classes are a thing in real fighting for a reason. It’s one thing to say that one can allow a degree of flexibility for a Rey Mysterio or Daniel Bryan or Shawn Michaels, a generational talent, but “small guy who can hang with heavyweights” should also probably be used sparingly if one is to maintain any pretense that this is worked combat, rather than an athletic burlesque that has combat as a loose theme. I can sympathize with some of this thread, but there does seem to be a converse “AEW brain” where rules of thumb and best practices that have guided the business (not just WWE) for decades are just not applicable at all if they come into conflict with enjoyment of the product.

I must admit, I don’t understand this at all unless it’s just personal with Punk. Even if one does not like or believe face Punk, and I think that’s a fair criticism even if I disagree with it, I would kill to have a higher proportion of the roster take their shit as seriously and present it as straightforwardly as Punk has. Even if it was melodramatic and over the top, which I don’t necessarily agree with but think is a valid read, the stuff with Punk last night was 1000x more wrestling to me than that six-man main event, where my 67 year old dad lost track multiple times of who the legal person was even supposed to be.

Is this the first time WWE seems to have a stronger card on paper than AEW?

It has more juice this way, but it’s hard for me to be hyped for a main event between two of the sloppiest top guys in the history of the business, with both guys as babyfaces. It’s a weird way to heat up a match that, on paper, seems ill-conceived, but I guess it’s better than just running the match cold.

God help them if Austin Theory cashes in MitB and a more substantiated accusation from a teenage fan comes forward. Right now I think they’re operating on the assumption that since the original accuser has disappeared from the internet, it may have just been a bogus headline grab in the midst of all the #SpeakingOut stuff, but if that was legit and the person just dropped it because it wasn’t worth it to her to pursue it, there’s pretty much guaranteed to be more out there.

If people were being misogynistic, take them to task, but if people were pointing out that the team that looked markedly worse in the ring should not have won the titles, get over it.

I get that it’s a surprise, but having a big tournament to make the women’s tag titles feel like a big deal, only to have them become a prop that gets put on a pretty weak team in order to build heat on a PPV match not *involving* said weak team, or the titles, is just nonsensical.

Omos is absolutely terrible. Braun had a period where he was pretty good. No real reason he should be brought back, but he’s absolutely preferable to Omos if they’re gonna have a giant.

See this is my assumption, and what I was thinking when I posted that. Jericho is a vulture, he wants to be at the center of every wrestling happening.

Cody is still young enough to get a few years out of him and had the Dusty story to pitch. Jericho is gigging himself in the middle of the ring on camera and arguably hasn’t had a good match since the one with Kingston two PPVs ago. Idk, I don’t see it.

I think people were seeing what they wanna see in that Yamashita match, tbh.

I just don’t believe that WWE reached out to Jericho. I can believe that they called Swerve because they were bringing Hit Row back, or Keith Lee because Trips is a fan, or either Starks or Hobbs, but I cannot imagine anybody at WWE looking at Jericho’s self-indulgent bullshit and saying that they want to be in that business.

I can’t stand Moxley, but if Punk needs a longer time out, either because of his foot or because he and TK can’t agree, it was the right call, I guess. Thunder Rosa has been a dud of a champion, but idk why people are buying that “sandbag” stuff, it was Marina goddamn Shaffir she was wrestling when that came up.

Omega turning the AEW video game into a huge financial debacle because he’s a picky video game nerd is pretty funny, if true, so there’s at least that component.

I get that. I’m burned out on cool shit, been watching old Mid-South of late.

In terms of this year, I liked it when Danielson was being a grumpy dick treating Hangman like an upstart goober and MJF-Punk was running. I strongly dislike the AEW “house style” (to the extent one can say there is such a thing) and, to be honest, Moxley and Jericho are both huge turnoffs and have been the biggest focus of the show for months.

Did he piss someone off? Was *he* pissed off?

Tony is definitely spreading himself pretty thin, will be interesting to see how he handles the backstage drama and if the people he hired to deal with it are up to the task.

Because Last is one of the only people with an encyclopedic knowledge of territory history that can keep up with Jim.

Corny digs into his archives and reads a 1997 memo from USA Network that may have gotten Vince Russo a spot on the creative team and inadvertently kickstarted the Attitude Era. I honestly think he should just retire the podcast and write some memoirs and history books, this is much better than him reviewing goddamn Smackdown.

Danielson is about as “Left” as a wrestler gets, and even he wouldn’t say anything bad about Vince in all of this. (Granted, his father-in-law-in-law was also implicated, so he may have a legal reason to stay quiet.) To the extent that it’s “culty”, I think it’s just that Vince has an interpersonal charisma and magnetism that doesn’t translate in anecdotal form.

Maybe, but then you have Dax telling Dave he was full of shit when he stated confidently that the Bucks hadn’t been holding back FTR, the Punk stuff, MJF being upset with his contract, all the people mad at how Tony and Daniels are running talent relations, people openly airing their grievances with Thunder Rosa on Twitter, and a few other stories that have come out in the last few months. In my head, I’m laughing at the idea that Punk is such a bitter, anhedonic asshole that he ruined the locker room with his bitching, but I’m also wondering if maybe Cody was doing some informal talent relations work, as a lot of this stuff seemed to start burbling around the time that he left. All we heard was that he had a big ego and was kind of insufferable to work with, but he was also the most traditionally “wrestlery” EVP, he may have had some hand in calming locker room unrest and bringing it to Tony’s attention.

Weird that all these stories about the AEW locker room are coming out now, whereas for three years it’s all been sunshine and roses about how great of a boss Tony is and how fun and chill it is there. Was all of that bullshit, did something big happen that turned a lot of people, or have they just been sweeping a lot of issues under the rug and now they’ve piled up to a degree they can’t be ignored?

I have strongly disliked the last several months of AEW without Punk, MJF, and partially without Danielson (though I don’t care for what they’re doing with him), so different strokes.