Is the empire crumbling before our eyes?

[Boss Rock]

6 hours ago, C.S. said:

Captain Shawn Dean, Max Caster (although this is his usual shtick) and MJF (retweeting Caster) have all said they don't want Black back in AEW. Oof!

Lesson to be learned: Don't big league your colleagues, don't think you're a "star" when you've never done anything anywhere or gotten any fans to buy a ticket to see you, and DON'T BURN BRIDGES.

Rusev will learn this the hard way too - probably in a year or less. Yes, he was the victim of Vince booking malpractice, but that excuse only goes so far when it happened years ago at this point.

Meanwhile Andrade left on good terms and was welcomed back with open arms.

[Dustin]

6 hours ago, C.S. said:

Captain Shawn Dean, Max Caster (although this is his usual shtick) and MJF (retweeting Caster) have all said they don't want Black back in AEW. Oof!

Lesson to be learned: Don't big league your colleagues, don't think you're a "star" when you've never done anything anywhere or gotten any fans to buy a ticket to see you, and DON'T BURN BRIDGES.

Rusev will learn this the hard way too - probably in a year or less. Yes, he was the victim of Vince booking malpractice, but that excuse only goes so far when it happened years ago at this point.

I've always been shocked by shitting on the other company when you leave for another, even if they did you wrong. I even knew as a kid during the Monday Night Wars that WCW wouldn't always be in the position they were in. I didn't think it would be as bad as being eventually gone but, sadly, it is what it is. WWE, AEW, TNA, GCW, Japan, Mexico... you may need to save your shot at returning. The grass, obviously, is dirt sometimes on new turf.

[sek69]

44 minutes ago, Boss Rock said:

Meanwhile Andrade left on good terms and was welcomed back with open arms.

He's someone I would have expected to cause issues but he was fine with doing business. It's tempting to look back and wonder if he wanted to go back to WWE to try to repair things with Charlotte (they divorced within 6 months of him returning). I could see him telling TK he has to go see if he can fix this and then being welcomed back when it didn't work out. 

[Boss Rock]

1 minute ago, sek69 said:

He's someone I would have expected to cause issues but he was fine with doing business. It's tempting to look back and wonder if he wanted to go back to WWE to try to repair things with Charlotte (they divorced within 6 months of him returning). I could see him telling TK he has to go see if he can fix this and then being welcomed back when it didn't work out. 

Him trying to reconcile with Charlotte is the popular theory.

[sek69]

3 minutes ago, Boss Rock said:

Him trying to reconcile with Charlotte is the popular theory.

It would also explain why AEW was so certain he was free and clear of his contract when he (first) came back. 

[El-P]

Andrade wanting to go back to save his marriage is pretty much what everybody think happened. Also, it has to be said his last months in the company saw him be very professional and he was working very hard and delivered too. The fact he was sent to Arena Mexico (way before everybody went there) and was put in the C2, in which he really shined, tells everything you need to know about how much TK thought of him at the end. 

Malakai ? He was booked the way he was for a reason... And Miro ? He wasn't booked at all for a reason too. Although if Rusev gets released I don't think you'll see him wrestle anymore since apparently he made a lot of money in real estate in Bulgaria. I think these two are the ones Darby was talking about when he said the cancer backstage was gone... So yeah...

[C.S.]

Add Carlee Bright to the list of releases, two days before appearing on LFG. 

[El-P]

8 hours ago, C.S. said:

Add Carlee Bright to the list of releases, two days before appearing on LFG. 

Amazing that shit nobody ever talks about (apart when Taker pushed for his wife to replace Mickie James) is still around. I checked the Wiki. That girl has been around for 4 YEARS. She had 65 matches. In four years. WWE developmental ya all.

(for comparison in term of system, Sayaka Kurara who just beat Saya Kamitani for the Red Belt in Stardom has started 3 years ago. She has 265 matches under her belt)

[El-P]

https://www.postwrestling.com/2026/04/27/nick-khan-endroses-paul-levesque-performance-as-wwe-head-of-creative-defends-product-against-online-criticism-in-message-to-all-staff/

Yeah, this is absolutely a great sign of things to come for Levesque, and maybe even Khan. When you have to reaffirm someone's role, it absolutely means everything is mighty fine, you see...

And reading tweets from 2015 ? What ?

[C.S.]

Also released: Aria Bennett from EVOLVE

And yeah, Dick Khan reading tweets from the dumbest fans - admittedly not difficult to find plenty of examples - just to prove his anti-consumer points certainly is a take. 

[strobogo]

Considering that every media outlet that covered WM, including ones out of nowhere like Newsweek, and even the very outlet that aired the shows and had their own set of ads on top, were talking about how shitty WM was and how awful and absurd the advertising was, it's funny that Khan even doing PR spin can pretend like that was a vocal minority making noise. 

[sek69]

Ironically "all the noise is from a vocal minority" is a card Hunter's been playing for over a decade now. 

[El-P]

The fact that he used tweets from 2015 is even funnier. Yeah, sure, that mid 2010's period really wasn't up for criticism from a "vocal minority", it only opened up the boom of the indies, the US market to a the red hot NJPW and eventually led to the creation of AEW, which should have been killed by NXT then booked by the genius booker you're referring to but didn't.

BTW, Khan also mentioned that Levesque was actually resigned to a multi year deal. My first thought reading that was "Oh yeah. Like Santos Escobar".

[Dale Wolfe]

I suppose the main problem for TKO in terms of creative is there simply aren't many people you could try and give the book to

I barely skimmed through Mania - it really was shit - but the system they've created for themselves needs someone deeply indoctrinated into the WWE mindset to put up with all this stupid money grabbing shit that they're doing

And it's not like the 90s (or even 00s) where you had historic legacy figures who could come in with some ideas or a viewpoint like Dusty did with NXT to begin with

It will just be the normal sycophants in line to replace, not that you can really see them pulling the trigger anytime soon.

[Dale Wolfe]

I guess the end conclusion is that they end up with a Netflix writers room, surely it can't be any worse

[El-P]

28 minutes ago, Dale Wolfe said:

but the system they've created for themselves needs someone deeply indoctrinated into the WWE mindset to put up with all this stupid money grabbing shit that they're doing

Indoctrinated is the right word. WWE is basically a cult. It really is. 

The thing is, TKO doesn't give a flying fuck about pro-wrestling. The day that cow is milked and it doesn't get them enough money for their taste, they'll just dump it. 

6 minutes ago, Dale Wolfe said:

I guess the end conclusion is that they end up with a Netflix writers room, surely it can't be any worse

 

I mean, AI or a Netflix writers room, at this point, what's the difference, really.

[Stiva]

We’re about 6 months away from ChatGPT getting the book 

[Dustin]

I try not to complain, but it was a chore to sit through Raw.

• We already know Roman isn't losing to Fatu. This story has been milked to death.
• Becky always feels like she's phoning it in; she has become worse over the years now that she's a skeleton. She doesn't seem to have the fire, in my eyes. It's just money.
• Seth is pouting. We will hear about not having friends for a month.
• Bron's voice and facial expressions were meme worthy, though I do enjoy the guy. Why give him the Spear as a finisher? It makes no sense.
• I expect Waller to be next to go.
• The Grande Americano feud is great; I'd prefer if Chad was de-masked. The other three are phenomenal heels, and the Spanish last night was very funny if you know what they were saying. Basically, you couldn't say it in English!
• I don't even put it past TKO to get rid of Bayley.

[tcg91]

As usual, WWE/TKO higher ups are great at not addressing the issue itself or acknowledging it. Everyone hated 'Mania and they just refuse to accept it, as usual. They should kiss the floor every morning and be thankful that we live in a globalised 'quantity over quality' era, where you are not even asked to score a rating, to draw fans at a live show or to sell a PPV. All you have to do is film content and put it online, where the platform and the sponsors will pay you billions regardless. 'Clicking on Raw' and watching 5 minutes of it does not equate to watching it every Monday night on TV. On these terms, with their production value, customer base, resources and dozens of 'creative minds' on the payroll, offering a product that is less than 'very good' is nothing short of embarrassing.

The same goes for the wrestlers. They are in a landscape where they don't have to draw, there is no quarter-hour rating and there is no backlash about how many buys a PPV will get if you're the main event. You get your salary, guaranteed, whether you match sucks or you go out there and kill it. According to cagematch, Roxanne Perez is the one that wrestled most matches last year, with 66 bouts... they wrestle once a week and are the most spoiled generation of wrestlers ever. For them too, anything less than putting on a good match on this terms, is unacceptable. If they have all of this time off, why can't Liv Morgan be taught to wrestle properly, instead of spending time rehashing for a lip-syncing entrance and dance? (By the way, why would a heel have a special entrance to wow the fans if they are supposed to be, you now, heels?)

I don't understand why WWE wants to be the biggest thing out there in the sport entertainment world, charge insane amount of money and then be so butthurt when their subpar product is criticised. McDonalds' is the most famous burger joint in the world, but they sell a lot because they are way cheaper and aware that their burgers are not the tastiest. Ferraris are beautiful cars, but they sell only a few of them because they are very expensive. Why is WWE acting like it is completely fine charging Ferrari money for McDonald's output?

[Blehschmidt]

4 hours ago, Dustin said:

I don't even put it past TKO to get rid of Bayley.

I'm not sure she would care. I feel like she is just riding out her contract at this point until she can go join Mercedes in AEW

[El-P]

5 hours ago, Stiva said:

We’re about 6 months away from ChatGPT Grok getting the book 

There you go.

[Dale Wolfe]

https://x.com/WrestleOps/status/2049227988722389501?s=20

[Blehschmidt]

6 months, 6 hours.....who's counting

[El-P]

6 months ? 

https://www.postwrestling.com/2026/04/28/tko-town-hall-nick-khan-on-saudi-arabia-safety-executive-comments-on-wwes-use-of-ai-back-to-back-wrestlemania-in-las-vegas-ali-act/

“Nick Khan and Triple H are using AI for storylines with the WWE,” Shapiro said. “What’s resonating? What superstars are resonating? In what pockets of the country are they resonating? That helps us with, obviously, our content, our editorial, our creative, our mapping, our touring, and of course, maximizing revenue and getting our product out to the fans most in need of it.”

"The fans most in need of it".
No one in the world needs your dogshit product, but it's nice you're actually speaking like a legit drug dealer now. The fact is the "product" is actively destroying brains (hence the amazingly dumb discourse on Hogan these days, I fucking swear the current WWE hardcore audience are the dumbest motherfuckers I've ever seen in the pro-wrestling landscape, and I've been part of the "ICW" since 1997).

[C.S.]

EVIL debuted in...NXT.

Lole.

The IWGP World Heavyweight Championship has never meant less.