Embrodak

If MJF leaves without the Cole stuff ever paying off, that would be an all-time great cocktease. Swole MJF seems like he’s a better fit for WWE imo, but he won’t be able to be as edgy like he likes.

I can’t believe WWE let the “Rated R Superstar” trademark lapse. Vince is losing his touch. Hated the way they did the debut, though, so cliche even for wrestling.

Adam Phoenix would actually be super neat, I’m into that.

Adam Copeland is such a bland name. Would love if they played off of Christian becoming Christian Cage and went for like “Edge Eastland” or some shit, though I guess that’s more arguable as copyright infringement. Just go full Impact Zone with it, fuck it.

I like Kyle O’Reilly just fine, but I do not want to see Undisputed Era back together as a three-man rump. Although MJF turning back heel and joining them in a mega twist might be fun, MJF is better with a goon or two than without.

Jay White would be a dope champion (him versus babyface Kenny would play well with that audience), and MJF doesn’t really need the belt for what he’s got going on, anyway. They can find a way to transition the International Title to him if they want him to have a strap for Adam Cole to screw him out of, and face MJF versus a returning heel Moxley would make for fun promo battles, at the very least.

Unless MJF has definitely signed an extension, Tony should probably think about getting the belt off of him soon, no?

The confounding variable here is AEW’s fanbase have shown they are pretty reliable, especially in terms of how monetizable they are. They might be having trouble selling tickets right now, but when it comes time to fill a big arena or throw down money for a PPV, they pretty much always do better than you would predict, even for niche products like an NJPW crossover. I honestly don’t think there is a statistically meaningful contingent of AEW fans for whom a main event Edge run would be a dealbreaker, so therefore the question is whether there is a CM Punk-sized contribution that Edge can make, in terms of his fans and more general WWE fans, given TK seemed more than satisfied with the return on investment from Punk. My intuition says that the answer would have been yes in 2019, when Edge was considering WWE vs AEW for his return, but no right now after a “meh” three year run, but that’s just a guess. Maybe he could be the Rated R edgelord guy more thoroughly in AEW than he could be in modern WWE, thereby reviving interest.

TK running a vast surveillance panopticon on his talent to see who’s having daddy issues that Christian can make fun of.

Matt Riddle has to be one of the biggest gaps between my enjoyment of them when they’re at their best and the actual guy they are. Him vs Roman was maybe my favorite Roman championship defense.

Matt Riddle got the boot.

Considering she gets to work and hang out with her partner and has stepped back from her dental practice to be available for more wrestling stuff, I doubt she’s seriously considering WWE.

I mean considering Punk tried to quit multiple times, he may look on getting fired as a blessing. He’s already a millionaire, he doesn’t need whatever remaining payout he would have gotten from the contract.

Punk is also well-liked by the Endeavor higher-ups, from what I understand.

Eh, WWE runs a much lighter schedule than they did in 2014, and he can prob get a (lower money) Brock-type contract where he only has to do a certain number of shows and agree on potential storylines in advance. He knows what WWE is, he’s not going to walk in thinking he can change anything or that he can overawe the extensive mentoring and development apparatus to be influential on younger talent the way he hoped he could in AEW. WWE is not going to hire any of his psycho friends, and they’re not going to secretly make him some kind of executive producer or whatever. I also doubt he’s going to try to socialize much, given how many bridges he’s burned. If he gets to show up, talk some veiled trash about AEW, do a Bret vs Owen tribute with Rollins or Owens or whoever, and look good in a loss to Roman, I imagine he could make peace with that. He’s uniquely capable of fucking that up, but despite how notoriously toxic of a work environment he finds WWE to historically be, it actually may be the lower-stress option.

I really don’t understand this “Criticism of Keith Lee’s promos is because people think he doesn’t sound black enough” soundbite that I’ve seen floating around. He doesn’t even sound non-black, he just sounds affected and unintimidating. It *might* work if he had a manager with a ton of attitude and it was a surprising voice to hear coming out of such a figure, and you heard only occasionally, like the first time you heard Brock Lesnar speak and he had a much higher-pitched voice than you would expect. But on its own, it makes him just not connect.

Even if she’d had one that clicked, there’s no substitute for experience unless you’re a prodigy like Bron Brekker or Kurt Angle. She just wasn’t going to have enough matches in AEW, and having to learn how to wrestle on camera while you’re simultaneously supposed to be this impossibly cool and glamorous badass just clashes.

Nick Khan genuinely has the kind of personality and skill set where he could make the jump to politics in ten years if he really wanted to.

Jade Cargill has the attitude, she just needs someone to teach her how to really wrestle and to actually get her reps in. It seems like there’s the possibility of this weird double movement where WWE trains people for AEW and vice versa. Will be interested to see who the next big jumps are.

I know it wouldn’t and shouldn’t ever happen, but somebody posted a picture of Christian Cage next to David Benoit a few days ago and I have not been able to stop laughing at the thought.

In my opinion, yes! I also think that poetry, literature, and film, at a minimum, are rather bad compared to their heyday, so I’m basically accepting of criticism that says that there is something important that is absent or done badly in modern media writ large.

See Cornette’s firmly-held belief is that the business is not worth doing if you do it in certain ways, and in fact is actively disrespectful to the enormous time and effort that people put into the suspension of disbelief mechanism that was kayfabe. I suspect a lot of this has to do with Cornette performing largely for hayseeds who actually threw bottles and slashed tires and tried to stab wrestlers and shit, sort of a sublimated trauma response, but that’s just armchair psychologizing.

Are people contrarian dickheads if they say that Marvel movies suck? Or that Hamilton sucks? Why is wrestling a special exemption where we have to bow to the whims of the market or of cultural tastemakers when it comes to rendering judgment? A hot crowd is nice, but it’s not the be all and end all. The crowd loved The Ultimate Warrior, too, but basically nobody defends him anymore. And if the only reason people are willing to trash Hellwig is because he was a reactionary dumbass, well, I have less respect for that than Corny’s straightforward and open contempt for those aspects of wrestling that he feels are disrespectful to what he and his colleagues held dearly.

I am generally in favor of more people saying stuff is good/bad instead of the endless subjectivism. More fun discussion, and gets more substantively to the root of what humans do and why they do it.

I listen sometimes because I think he’s basically correct, despite being an asshole.