Stiva

Man, a few months or so of Rhodes and Lesnar as odd buddies brought together by a common enemy is so much more interesting than that swerve last night

Jericho probably understands that, if Punk does come back, his first program is going to be the big draw and he’s trying to worm his way into it now

Way too many “shoot” comments for lack of a better word in that opening segment. I’m all for taking the title off that lame edgelord at this point

My boys Miro, Darby and Sting are AWOL but QT Marshall is back, baby. We are truly blessed

Yeah, this was a fun little revisionism project and it sort of makes me want to watch the whole run for myself but it’ll take a Herculean effort to drag me from my big Memphis rewatch. Maybe one day I’ll give them a fair crack of the whip

I’ve been sour on recent AEW but Danielson going an hour is always essential viewing and I’m half expecting FTR to show back up after the tag match.

If Parker is the one they’re putting in ring, the other guy must be barely trained because Parker is green as grass. Even with those three working with him, he looked lost on Rampage

This new ROH is exciting purely because it seems like it’ll be the home of Slim J working studio style for the foreseeable. Some more stray thoughts: The show didn’t feel too different in style from AEW but there were enough distinct faces to make it feel like it’s own promotion and I’m sure there’ll be big crossover anyway. The Infantry is a fantastic WCW C-Show tag team; they have the corny entrance attire, the choreographed double teams and they lose to the established teams. In general, there’s a lot of freshness in the tags. You’ve got Trustbusters, The Kingdom, Aussie Open, Claudio/Yuta, Titus/Williams, Roju/Johl, The Embassy and that’s just on this show alone. Sabre Jr calling out Danielson seems to indicate one match for Forbidden Door at the very least. Christopher Daniels pulling a regular schedule in 2023 is certainly something I didn’t expect. Takeshita vs Woods felt like a match you’d find nestled into the centre of Dynamite so the general flow of the in-ring work seems to be some competitive TV matches mixed in with a couple of marquee, longer matches intended to be of a much higher quality. I think I’d prefer Takeshita to win a title in AEW but it feels like he may be the guy who beats Claudio. The commentary is really great. They’ve got fantastic chemistry, for a start but it’s not just the calling of the action and relaying the stories, they’re having fun with all of the characters. Saying that the Trustbusters have enough money to make it so Metalik didn’t get an entrance, things like that. Really just a total net positive for the whole show and everyone on it. The women’s matches on the show were…fine. Madison Rayne went nowhere in AEW so why not send her to ROH to help bring the rookies along. Willow Nightingale showing up is, like Takeshita, the case of someone who I’d prefer to be getting a sustained AEW push but at least it seems like it’s going to happen somewhere. Plenty of AEW advertising and a few references to make things clear that, yeah, this is its own promotion but I assume it’s expected that you’ll watch it along with Dynamite and Rampage as the AEW “universe” if you will. Especially if the idea is that workers will “graduate” to Dynamite from ROH with momentum. Claudio vs Kingston at the PPV seems like the time to bring in a certain Chris Hero… Overall, it was a really good first episode. There was nothing outright bad other than the Daniels match plodding along and it feels like a roster full of people that can certainly put on good matches. Whether Khan can be relied on to book another 2 hours of TV and fill it with memorable angles is another question altogether.

There hasn’t been anything to hook me personally on AEW TV for a good month and a half at this point and I can only say that the whole company feels like it’s oddly spinning it’s wheels and stuck in a pretty cold place. To the point where I’m way more interested in seeing how the ROH rebirth starts

Only started Dynamite now but Lethal, Jarrett and Singh doing stereo struts is awesome. They’re slowly winning me over

I assume you’ve been watching them but did their PPVs from around 2014 or so, that all seemed to have the same theme year on year (World Cup in the summer, the Extreme Rules knock off etc) even tie into the main product? I seem to recall that they’d tape them months ahead of time and I’ve always wondered if they were ever worth watching

Not to be the kind of person who makes assumptions on these kind of things but this has been going across my mind since I heard the news. I understand they were both driving large cars but Christ, the other driver must have been travelling at some speed, especially if they lost control of the vehicle. It seems that the fundraiser has hit over 200K and shows no signs of stopping so I truly hope that’s of some real assistance to his family in the circumstances.

Jesus, this is awful news. Because of how long they’ve been around, I’d assumed he was older than 38. And with a kid in the car too, shocking. RIP to a real one

That main event was wild but someone needed to tell Ruby Soho that, with a face that was caked with blood, she didn’t need to pull expressions that make Matt Jackson look subtle.

They really have to run as many new markets as possible this year. The crowds being so hot have really enhanced the last two weeks

Bill Ding, the evil architect is also objectively very funny

When PIF bought Newcastle United, everything was in place and ready to go months before the final stumbling block (the Premier League concerned about piracy in Saudi) was removed. Once that was done, everything was rubber stamped in about 24 hours. Don’t be so sure that it’ll take a long time

Those two Tag Title matches this week were so great. The Acclaimed are now just a straight up good team but Jarrett can be placed in the Sting bracket of “Perfectly used” and even Lethal, while the lesser part of everything, played his role in executing everything perfectly. Who else can Jeff Jarrett have Memphis tags with? Get Dustin a good partner and we’re off to the races

Crazy fucker probably has a vision of this culminating in Vince vs HHH at Mania

I thought Jericho’s early AEW stuff was fantastic. He did a great job as the first heel champ, showing enough of his ass during the Cody and Moxley feuds and always made sure Guevara, Santana and Ortiz got moments to shine in things like Stadium Stampede. This current JAS is way too bloated and he keeps insisting on cutting all the promos when he’s like the third best promo in the stable.

Hasn’t just about dev who has released games onto Game Pass said that it’s absolutely worth their time from a monetary and exposure POV?

Like, nothing I read in the recap from Canada would suggest that in a fortnight, you’d end up at last nights show. It’s a truly bizarre promotion but still feels pretty exciting, I suppose.

I have 3 weeks of AEW TV to catch up and I’ve been reading the recaps all along with a vague sense of complete bemusement so I can’t wait to actually watch all of this transpire

Watching this after the fact after hearing no spoilers was pretty bastard worrying, I’ll tell you that much. Let’s hope Page takes as much time as he needs

At this point, I wouldn’t be against a brand split. Anchor one show around the tag division and one show around Moxley.