El-P

Take the roster of AEW two years ago. Who should have been "crafted" that had the same star potential and in-ring ability as Darby or Jungle Boy (or MJF) ? It's not like Jungle Boy did not play utilities forever before getting the serious push since last Spring either. Jade Cargill is receiving the biggest push compared to experience level in the history of the company thus far. And really, like it's been said, out of 4 woman champ thus far, you got 2 Japanese and 1 black native & trans. So, trying to argue there's not enough diversity on that front from Swole is pretty disingenuous.

Can't argue with that.

I mean, let's be real : Tony's tweet is a bad look. Should not have done it. However, Swole is kinda full of shit. When she talks about her daughter looking at Sasha Banks and Bianca BeLair on WWE TV, yeah, it's cute and all (always bring up children because it plays on emotion, which doesn't mean shit but always works in rallying people). Except, well, there is no Sasha Banks or Bianca BeLair on AEW's roster. So, what is she trying to say ? That *she* should have been pushed at that level ? Again, if Sasha Banks had jumped to AEW, does anyone doubt she would be the top female star in a blink of an eye ? In its short time on the air (less than three years), AEW has had asian champs, black champs, trans champ, latino champs. Considering the landscape in which they started in, with tons of great talent *already signed* elsewhere, it's not that bad, really. Do we really want to talk about the WWE, the fact they were always behind on time and the big picture to boot (*cough* actively working to re-elect Donald Trump *cough*) ?

Of course. But here goes Twitter for you, it's a trashcan. Between Coach Tony K. sleaze thread style reply and Lio Rush "APOLOGIZE", this is typical Twitter stupidity on all parts. Nobody wins. Wait until Brandi says something. I'd drop the classic "hold my beer", but I already started Dry January two hours ago (not saying I'll be able to stand it !)

Nyla Rose, a trans, native and black woman was champ already in the short existence of the company. Two others champs (out of four thus far) are Japanese. They have been heavily pushing Jade Cargill, and that's before she's even ready... Swole is so full of it. And yeah, Big Swole's work was indeed the shits. She was poor when she started and never improved despite being at one point heavily featured in a feud against Britt Baker, and that feud remains the worst stuff ever on AEW TV. The lack of diversity argument is such complete bullshit anyway. AEW started with the people that were available. It's not like they had a Moose or a Keith Lee that they could push to the top of the cards. They couldn't get Rich Swann or Willie Mack also alongside other people because guess what, they were under contract (and still are) already with other companies. So what, put the AEW title on Scorpio Sky (hey, he was the first tag champ but I guess that doesn't count) and the TNT title on Powerhouse Hobbs just because ? Well, sorry but Swole was just never any good and was *still* pushed pretty heavily on TV for a while. Really now... If they had Sasha Banks or Bianca BeLair under contracts, I'm pretty sure those two would have got the belt already too. Of course it's gonna be the usual Twitter drama that'll get forgotten in three days. 2022, same as 2021 already.

Hey. I'm in 2021 2022 already. Guess what, it still sucks. Happy new year anyway PWO People !

Bound for Glory 2012 was quite interesting for a few things. James Storm has the distinction of having probably the best "tag team partners split up and feud" ending matches anywhere. He had the all time classic brawl against Chris Harris, one of the very best match of the 00's and now has a great, show stealing brawl (too) against Bobby Roode, and Roode best single match since he has done the turn (not that hard considering most of his matches have been incredibly dull, Randy Orton-like, thanks to Brucie's brillant vision). He was the charismatic one/good promo in Beer Money and the one who should have been pushed as a main event guy, not the other way around. Roode was game as fuck though, reconnecting with his great bumping self and not afraid to take those tacks bumps like he's Mick Foley. Full credit to both here. Great match. Speaking about Brucie, it's very obvious that despite making the company better produced and more focused, he just did not get TNA's audience. Two perfect exemple happened on this night, which did not take place in the IMPACT zone but in front of a real audience. Crowd goes crazy for every interactions between Style/Angle and Bad Intentions (Daniels & Kazarian) during the Triple Threat match, but really doesn't care about Chavo Jr. & Hernandez, who have been shot up the spot from basically nowhere. When the crowd feels this is going toward a win for the later, they boo like crazy and when it actually happen, they go mild. And then Chavo cuts this awkward promo where he has to resort to "I did it for Eddie" in a very "Please I beg you to cheer me a little bit" move. And in the main event, they had Austin Aries kinda turn heelish on Jeff Hardy from nowhere the previous week, probably in fear of what actually happened : crowd being at the very least extremely mixed toward Hardy, with a super vocal pro-Aries crowd. When Hardy wins an overlong match (a staple of Brucie's booking, apparently he loved those Triple H matches) where Aries is doing 95% of the work (and holy shit he was great and did everything in his power to get booed), he gets way more boos, to the extent of even flipping off the crowd before hitting the swanton. TNA was a hardcore pro-wrestling crowd who stayed loyal despite years of shitty booking because they could see people like Styles, Daniels, Joe and now Aries having kick-ass matches, but Aries, by far the most over guy in the company when he ended Roode endless reign of terror and boredom, only got an afterthought of a title reign of a few months, taking a backseat to the pathetic Aces & Eights storyline and serving as transition toward Jeff Hardy, who never did any difference for the company and got rewarded for his "redemption" after embarrassing the company the previous year. Aces & Eights.... holy shit, this angle is six months old and has overstayed its welcome by about 5 months already, the latest angles and vignettes being Dungeon of Doom level of cringe. Fun trivia though, Leva Bates is the one who sprayed gas in the eyes of Hogan & Sting before they got kidnapped. So, anyway. The first big reveal being Devon was Savio Vega-steps-up-for-Shawn Micheals level of "awwwwww please who gives a fuck". And yeah, I know the stable is gonna be Wes Brisco & Garrett Bischoff and fucking Mike Knox and D.O.C and whatnot and will last a whole fucking year. Fast forward galore are incoming. Again, I have no idea why this era of TNA was ever praised. It completely exposes Brucie as a booker, focused indeed but with a poor eye for talent (no, Robert Roode is NOT a main event guy, and certainly NOT for 9 endless months) and tons of really shitty booking ideas, and a pretty terrible booking of women overall, complete with the systematic over-sexualization of Christie Hemme (ahhh, those camera shots panning from her heels up to her miniskirts, but she never actually gets to do the big main events because that's a serious job I guess) and female referee Taryn Terrell being dressed like Sunny in 1998. Brooke Tessmacher gotta get tons of credit though, as she sure worked her ass off (no pun intended), trying her hands at tons of pretty hard lucha-style flying and pretty much overachieving when pushed as the champ (a spot she really had no business being in when you have Gail Kim, Mickie James and Madison Rayne right there, no disrespect).

This has been a great year for AEW. My favorite pro-wrestling TV year ever. And a super cool show to cap-off the year, with an great war of dirty punchlines between Lambert & Brandi, Jade Cargill learning how to sell the leg and doing a damn good job at it, the Undisputed Era debuting on the main roster and looking like stars like they should have sometime ago on Smackdown, Mercedes Martinez showing up, JR getting back to the booth (and yes, I was happy to see him this time), crowd chanting Judas and a bunch of terrific multi-men matches. Yeah, 2021 was quite a year. Glad to having been able to live it.

Thanks for the clarification. I guess I only caught up when he was already a heel and thought he had been doing it since day 1, especially since this was the very first time I saw something in Cody (and really it was only on the NJPW shows). The IMPACT stuff sounds kinda fun actually, gotta check it out some day.

Probably sums up MLW as well as anything, although honestly I was never a fan of the whole Contra stuff. They have interesting aesthetics ideas, but I always thought the show had a terrible sense of pacing and at the end a 45 minute show would drag like crazy with seemingly a thousand short bits saying nothing, teasing shit that would not happen for months (while often the guy teased already gone when the stuff would air) or going nowhere. And underwhelming matches in between. They have had some interesting guys, but also tons of dead weights once NXT & AEW kinda raided the indies for good. And yep, for some reason MLW is a promotion where, apart from that PPV in late 2019, the roster always underdelivers. For instance I would need to see Jacob Fatu outside of that context, because although I can kinda see why people praise him, I always found his matches pretty underwhelming for a guy with such a rep. The LUesque stuff kinda looks cheap honestly, it reeks of trying to re-do LU without the production budget and know-how. I will watch the Mexico episodes (I guess the Azteca Underground series is basically only the stuff taped over there with The Crash ? Not sure, I find everything to be super confusing with MLW) and keep on eye on whatever FTA Cueto & Catrina are doing, but MLW has not done it for me basically since that 2019 PPV. And it's not for the lack of trying, although at this point there's too much good stuff I actually wanna follow.

Well, the Cody & Brandi Rhodes act that got to AEW was first a heel act on the indies, IMPACT (if I'm not mistaken) and ROH/NJPW. The American Nightmare was absolutely not a babyface gimmick at the start. Sure, it was in AEW but that's because of the broader context, as all of these guys where IRL babyfaces to this audience, so they could not work heel at the very start (which has hurt Brandi, as she was at her best doing the Sensational Sherri valet gimmick, but she really could not do it alongside her babyface husband, which probably caused the confusion for her character during the first years).

WWE needs the Cavinder Twins to reach a younger audience. Cavinder Twins don't need WWE to make shitloads of money already. The new generation of influencers use brands to their advantage. They are not gonna be brainwashed by the "WWE Dream" unless they are super WWE fans to begin with. And we know that there aren't a lot of *young* super WWE fans.

Bianca BeLair has already been damaged. And they got lucky with her. New girls in NXT2.0 are awful thus far. Tay Conti stayed in their system for years and did not amount to zilch until she left and met with QT and Dustin. Their track record of training people from scratch is *awful* (how many years has the PC been a thing already ?) and their ability of creating new stars has been non-existant for 15 years. Why that would change because they signed a bunch of big guys and pretty girls from colleges, many of whom probably never reaching the main roster anyway ? Also, Meltz is praising Bron like there's no tomorrow. Cursed. Also, he's not just some guy out of college. He's born in a wrestling family (so is Von Wagner, but so was Erik Watts).

Playing Dark Souls III myself. My life will never be the same.

Good for her. Totally underutilized, WWE never got her (I know, they don't get jackshit), Toni Storm is ALL ELITE sooner than later, please. Not to mention she can fucking work too. And yes, 26 is too old apparently since the requisite to be signed to NXT is 25 at most. For women only though, of course. And really, they also have released Scarlett Bordeaux who is as stunning as it gets (and can work, and can be a great character), but hey, the old granny is 30 years old. What a joke. So yeah, please Toni Storm to AEW to kickstart 2022 with a bang.

Surely a name that has been there forever, and never worked WWE oddly enough. Last year's last show was the Brodie Lee tribute. That is also certainly a bittersweet anniversary. So many fun multi-men matches on the card. Looking forward to Thunder Rosa vs Jade Cargill too, as it's a really a test for Jade going against an excellent worker in a meaningful match. This has been an awesome year for AEW. Favorite year of TV wrestling for me in 31 years.

The worst part, by far, was the whole "Hey, there used to be segregation but hey I'm having a half-black baby so everything is fine now fuck yeah 'murica !" bit. Sure, white boy. Yes, that was the first bump in the road from that perspective. Well, that and announcing a HOF newcomer and having Christian show up (no disrespect). But the booking is clearly meta now. In a half-conscious way only though, as I'm sure they expected Cody to get more cheers against Lambert. That "He's a bigger dick than I am" line the following week was killer though and made it right. The booking of Cody as TNT champ should be interesting at the very least (and yes, I realize it could also be a disaster if they aren't very careful).

Ok, I know I'm gonna drop this one from 20 years ago, but eventually I'm gonna re-watch that stuff (hopefully), so I gotta give a shout out to Mariko Yoshida.

Actually, you're right, for whatever reason I seemed to remember Okada's legendary title reign being from 2016, when in fact most of it was in 2017 and only began in mid 2016. There you go. Still probably Okada though. Or Naito.

Actually, AJ Styles might be the one.

Yep. And despite that, AEW this year was probably my favorite year of pro-wrestling TV.... before 2021. Still, that's an odd year to gauge indeed.

What an odd year. Omega I guess.

Okada. One of the best year ever anywhere.

Tetsuya Naito. Of course not, that was the year of Okada's legendary title reign. Okada, doh !

Kenny Omega.