Embrodak

It was a fine promo, leaving room for both babyface or heel maneuvering, and I’m pretty sure the disingenuousness is at least partially intentional, especially if they’re gonna have Seth doing the Hangman “I stayed, you left and talked shit, I’m protecting this place from your two-faced opportunism” role. Gotta say, El-P, that’s a pretty vitriolic and nasty post.

So what really is the overlap between WWE and AEW fans? Everybody aware of Punk had a bad taste in their mouth around him just a few months ago, but the reaction to Punk returning has been overwhelmingly positive everywhere I’ve looked, even on Reddit.

Punk’s whole deal is that he’s from an underprivileged background and he “keeps it real”, unafraid to make enemies and hold grudges but the height of generosity and ecumenism with his friends. I think the contradictions and cracks and inconsistencies actually make him more endearing as a performer and personality, but it’s not hard to see why him being a hypocritical carny who signs up to work for a company he’s had nearly a decade of contempt for after having a falling out with the one company where he could have made a genuine, lasting difference over stuff that seems extremely petty from the outside would rub people the wrong way.

This doesn’t speak very well for Punk’s character or Lefty bona fides, but him being spiteful enough and still wanting to do Bret Hart tribute spots enough that he buried the hatchet with a company that gave him so many oral antibiotics for a staph infection he was required to work through that he shit his trunks in the ring certainly does add to how compelling I find him!

Damn, I got worked. What a great surprise, a true rarity in this day and age. Coach TK has to regret listening to his legal team right now.

I would love if Punk came back, but I see zero reason why he would. WWE are hot as fuck for 2023 right now, they don’t need him.

RKO outta nowhere is a trope that never gets old for me, happy to see Randall Keith coming back.

I quite like MJF as a worker, I think it’s probably better for him as a draw that he wrestles sparingly but I would like to see him against a wider variety of opponents. Really dislike MJF as a face, though. It’s over with the crowd, can’t deny that, but even as a “bad guy who is consciously trying to act like a babyface” postmodern meta thing, it’s forced.

I certainly like Ospreay more than Omega in the Kenny Omega role, I’ll say that much.

AEW should just give everybody a title, then have them all on the line in every match. Whoever has the most titles wins.

You’re way underestimating wrestling’s popularity in America prior to the WWF’s national expansion. This is an area where Corny’s cantankerous ass and copious quantity of preserved notes, financial statements, and other administrative ephemera is actually useful. Without a large and voracious audience, you simply do not have multiple territories sustaining independent, multi-decade, low- to no-merch operations over decently large geographic areas that required guys to drive many hours in their cars between gigs with no guaranteed money. The idea that it was some scummy thing with no profile is the self-promoting propaganda of Vince McMahon, not reality. The reason it has minimal mainstream media presence is it tended to be covered more in local news outlets than in national ones. If anything, it’s arguable that the WWF’s national expansion either caused or was emblematic of a decline in wrestling’s total popularity in America, though this is harder to assess given the territory promoters had zero reason to accurately track such things as long as it was overall profitable, lest the tax man discover how much they weren’t reporting.

Corny has said that Vince pretty much ignores new movies and pop culture, so it would be very funny to me if EWS is one of the few newer movies that Vince has actually seen.

Lol CW picked up NXT instead.

This is why the first Goldberg/Brock match of Brock’s second run ruled so hard at the time, THE BEAST put down in two minutes.

I appreciate that AEW puts actual wrestling and not “TV wrestling” on their TV shows, but there is something to be said for a “big fight feel” for a first encounter between major stars. It not only makes the match more impactful, it makes subsequent matches more impactful by seeming a part of something larger. That one Punk/Cena match on Raw before WM29 felt bigger following in the wake of the marquee Punk/Cena matches that had happened in the past, for example. It doesn’t have to be on a PPV, though. Dragon/Page I felt suitably big by following in the wake of Danielson kicking the shit out of Dark Order geeks for weeks on end. Given we don’t know how long MJF is going to remain in AEW, however, this may have been a “now or never” type of thing, it’s hard to say. It’s kinda clear that TK is either burnt out or panicking, I’d say. Wembley maybe being a glorious peak instead of a coming-out party has to be weighing on a lot of the upper brass.

Home invasion angle reeks of WWE. Apparently the solution to WWE getting hot and your company getting cold is just to ape them. Edit: Also, I know we’ve already blown past this with the last match fiasco, but Ric Flair was implicated as a sexual assailant on national television. We have plenty of wonderful Nature Boy memories that we can cherish and watch clips of on Youtube, there’s zero reason to glorify him in the here and now.

Big Bill is a terrible ring name compared to Big Cass, which is great for some reason, but I quite like him as Ricky Starks’ Diesel.

Honest to God Christian would be on more top 10 lists if McMahon had followed through on his impulse to digitally insert a blue dot over his face in the 90s. That’s one of my favorite Crazy Vince anecdotes.

Brock Anderson was not re-signed. Think he goes to NXT? Arm’s gotta have a favor or two to call in.

I wouldn’t underestimate Punk lowering his asking price just out of spite. Honestly, though, I don’t think this will really work. Maybe if they bought out MLW, but otherwise, doesn’t seem like the roster could sustain a weekly TV show.

If WWE passes on Punk in perpetuity, seems likely NWA would try to convince CW to foot the bill to bring him in.

Englebert Edgerton.

Maybe Edge conspired to keep Griff Garrison off of TV and Ricky subtly referenced it somehow

Hunicara was actually pretty alright, iirc.

Women’s divisions and video game design, my two Achilles heels.