Is the empire crumbling before our eyes?

[KawadaSmile]

56 minutes ago, Jmare007 said:

I mean, it's not a bad number either considering it had bad buildup, the main event was given for free two weeks prior and there was A LOT of wrestling during the weekend before this show. 

But I hope it's a wake up call for Tony to tight up the booking and get people to fucking help him once and for all.

It had 30% less buys than the previous All Out, in 2021. They absolutely should take that number into consideration here, IMO.

15 minutes ago, DMJ said:

I'm not sure what TK, Punk, or Mox were thinking they were accomplishing with that messy, convoluted stunt they pulled two weeks before the show aside from drawing a good TV number (but not really all that good of one). We'll never know if it really hurt or helped - maybe the show would've done even worse without the angle - but the angle angle made me  less likely to purchase the PPV and I ended up passing on it. I wonder if there were more of me out there or the opposite (I'd bet on me). 

The timing there sucked. Like, I loved what they did with the first Punk/Mox match, with it essentially being a squash, but after that they had like 3 months of story condensed into two weeks. If they kept the same angle for the first match, but did it on All Out, I am sure the numbers could be better. They did a very WCW thing of just giving big fucking matches away on TV and that bit them in the ass.

[NintendoLogic]

11 minutes ago, KawadaSmile said:

It had 30% less buys than the previous All Out, in 2021. They absolutely should take that number into consideration here, IMO. 

That show featured CM Punk's return to the ring and the rumored debut of Bryan Danielson. That there wasn't an even bigger drop-off is a testament to how much good will the promotion had built up (and likely squandered now, sadly).

[sek69]

Funny thing is that, since I was able to finally watch the show, is that it (like most AEW shows) it was pretty solid from top to bottom and that pretty much all got forgotten. The only "negative" was the ladder match turning into Angle Advancement but it was a pretty good angle so that was okay by me.  

No one should have expected this show to do more buys last year due to what was scheduled for that show and how this one had the main event booked literally days prior. 

[Jmare007]

2 hours ago, C.S. said:

Bobby Fish continues to embarrass himself.

He has also, apparently, aged 20 years since his last AEW appearance.

Bobby looking like Kim Bodnia in The Witcher tv show.

[sek69]

Put some respect on Fish's name, he's the guy Abraham Lincoln beat for the NWA world title 

[Dale Wolfe]

If you look at what is happening with the UFC card this weekend and what they're doing after this giant bust up at the press conference, it should be a real lesson for Tony i think

Just make three new matches at the next card/Dynamite, fuck it, let's go

Punk might have a torn bicep but make him fight Young Buck #2 anyway

[Dale Wolfe]

Tony should just absorb Dana's lack of morals and make the end game bizarro american federation we all deserve

[NintendoLogic]

I heard the perfect name for Punk's press conference rant: the Gripebomb.

[The Thread Killer]

Good Lord. Since his contract expired, it looks like Bobby Fish has made it his mission in life to give an interview to literally anyone who wants it, in which he relentlessly buries CM Punk for an ever expanding variety of reasons, praises The Young Bucks, (and Triple H, of course) and takes a series of increasingly less subtle digs at AEW and Tony Khan for daring to decide Bobby Fish wasn’t worth re-signing. I have seen at least four different interviews he has given over the past few days with these themes, being reported all over. This dude is starting to come off as an unhinged jackass.

[Johnny Sorrow]

1 hour ago, The Thread Killer said:

Good Lord. Since his contract expired, it looks like Bobby Fish has made it his mission in life to give an interview to literally anyone who wants it, in which he relentlessly buries CM Punk for an ever expanding variety of reasons, praises The Young Bucks, (and Triple H, of course) and takes a serious of increasingly less subtle digs at AEW and Tony Khan for daring to decide Bobby Fish wasn’t worth re-signing. I have seen at least four different interviews he has given over the past few days with these themes, being reported all over. This dude is starting to come off as an unhinged jackass.

He also looks like he's aged 20 years in two months.

[strobogo]

Dude just hasn't colored his hair and beard

[Embrodak]

More bizarre than Bobby Fish’s behavior is the choice to still do the UE beating up The Young Bucks angle when he was on his way out, Adam Cole was injured, and Kyle O’Reilly was also injured and having a potentially career-ending neck surgery shortly thereafter.

[sek69]

Dave's surprised "ME???" when Bryan was dispelling a rumor that he reported the Young Bucks were in talks to go to WWE on today's WO show was priceless. 

[KawadaSmile]

Thank you Punk!!!

[sek69]

This is interesting when you consider a lot of stuff from BTE played out on TV as well, to the point where even Dave would get miffed at them referencing stuff on TV that only happened on YouTube. This in essence takes away a not-insignificant chunk of their "canon". 

[C.S.]

2 hours ago, sek69 said:

This is interesting when you consider a lot of stuff from BTE played out on TV as well, to the point where even Dave would get miffed at them referencing stuff on TV that only happened on YouTube. This in essence takes away a not-insignificant chunk of their "canon". 

Well, not being on Dynamite, Rampage, and PPVs also takes away a not-insignificant chunk of their "canon." So, at this point, I don't see what difference it makes that BTE isn't around either.

Obviously, looking at the bigger picture, BTE's hiatus means The Elite probably won't be back for a while - if ever. 

That's crazy to think about, and it would be even crazier if all of the EVPs somehow ended up in WWE within a year. 

[sek69]

Honestly I don't think the EVPs will go anywhere. The show's most likely getting paused because of ongoing investigations/legal issues that would result in pretty much everyone who appears on the show from being able to do much of anything. 

My best guess is Bucks/Kenny's time outs last as long as the investigation goes, and Punk is given a release with Tony paying all medical bills (which would be the case anyway since it happened in a match).  If the Bucks want to go to WWE I see it happening after their contracts end in 2023. 

[DMJ]

I also think some of the reactions to BTE's hiatus is making a mountain out of a molehill.

Its now been over a week since the incident and its basically impossible to hold onto anger for that long. I'm guessing Omega and the Bucks are thinking that while they don't want to work with CM Punk and would probably prefer he was out of the company, they also realize how their own actions led to a very embarrassing incident that was detrimental to their own brand and the wrestling company they helped start.

It was always too idealistic to think that they, with Tony Khan and Cody Rhodes, could create a wrestling utopia, but that seemed like part of their vision. For awhile, many fans bought into it. Over the past year, the downturn in booking showed that, in terms of content/storylines, the lofty ideal of the "perfect" wrestling show was impossible to sustain. There were multiple reports of TK's leadership not being great. However, the events of All Out weekend completely shattered whatever remained of the notion that the locker room and TK's leadership were still united and strong. The Bucks and Omega are probably smart enough to see their role in that. 

So, maybe the BTE hiatus is them reading the room a bit. I don't think even their fans are in the mood to laugh at their hijinks right now considering how much a shit storm they were involved in (even if we can debate whether they caused it). Maybe they aren't in the mood to do videos with cleverly veiled jokes and references to getting legitimately suspended from the company they helped start. I'd be embarrassed too. I'd want to take a break too.

Its only been 7 days, though. Embarrassment and self-doubt doesn't last forever. I predict that CM Punk will be out and that when the Bucks and Omega return in 4-6 weeks (?), it will not be in some sort of victory parade where they make light of Punk's firing or act like they ran him out of town. I'm guessing they never mention him, even in a veiled reference, on-screen. It wouldn't help them. It wouldn't win them any new fans. I'm guessing that even they recognize that, at this point, they have to win back some trust from the audience for the sake of AEW. They need to make AEW "fun" again, recapture the spirit that, right now, Triple H has brought back to the WWE. Excitement. Good cheer. Optimism. AEW had a monopoly on those things up until semi-recently. 

I don't see the Bucks and/or Omega quitting on AEW unless Tony Khan really pushes their hand. 


 

[Embrodak]

At this point, with everything that’s come out, I don’t know why people feel so strongly that Punk is leaving. Nothing that’s come out has made Punk look *better* for going off at the scrum, but The Young Bucks, Kenny Omega, Cutler, Nakazawa, Pat Buck, and Christopher Daniel’s have *all* been suspended. And Megha Parek was there, too! 6-7 people coming into his locker room with his dog and his friend’s injured wife, uninvited, possibly even forcing the door open? On what planet is that not “fighting words”, in terms of the image it projects, especially if Megha wasn’t in the initial group? And on what planet do executives grab their doofus buddies, the talent relations guy, and the top lawyer in the company to go and confront the top star while the boss is *still in the middle of a press conference*? Do people think WBD is going to be inclined to raise their TV licensing rate if they’re doing dumb backstage antics that push out their top star out of nowhere, after giving them a Friday night slot that they’ve pissed away the viewership of and when Dynamite viewership dropped nearly a third from start of program to conclusion this week? I get that there is heat on Punk in the locker room, but if Tony Khan is really a wrestling promoter and not a money mark, I don’t think you can justify giving Punk the boot to keep The Elite from walking. And frankly, if they’re dumb enough to put Tony in a position where he has to consider giving Punk the boot for any investigation result other than “Punk is an unhinged maniac and a persistent danger to the locker room”, they’re not any kind of executives.

[Migs]

5 hours ago, DMJ said:

They need to make AEW "fun" again, recapture the spirit that, right now, Triple H has brought back to the WWE. Excitement. Good cheer. Optimism. AEW had a monopoly on those things up until semi-recently. 


 

This feels like the biggest shift in the wrestling world over the last few months, and the backstage fight sort of crystallized this. 

[Matt D]

Was very odd they didn't put the Best Friends over in a feel good moment then.

[Embrodak]

I am genuinely surprised they didn’t have Best Friends win the Trios belts considering PAC already has a belt and has more frequent absences from the show than a lot of the wrestlers.

[strobogo]

Strongly disagree with the idea that Kenny and the Bucks need to regain the trust of the AEW audience. Punk seems 100% in the wrong in pretty much every narrative of the whole mess.

Wrongly thinks Kenny and The Bucks were spreading rumors about him to Da Sheetz, spends months stewing over Hangman's promo that he could have responded to in the ring when it happened but instead waited until there was no chance Page could respond, then goes nuclear at the scrum, burying not just Page, but Kenny, the Bucks, TK, and ultimately the entire locker room and company. 

Then, all the stories pretty much state Punk was the one to start fighting, and Ace was the one to start biting. 

[Embrodak]

35 minutes ago, strobogo said:

Strongly disagree with the idea that Kenny and the Bucks need to regain the trust of the AEW audience. Punk seems 100% in the wrong in pretty much every narrative of the whole mess.

Wrongly thinks Kenny and The Bucks were spreading rumors about him to Da Sheetz, spends months stewing over Hangman's promo that he could have responded to in the ring when it happened but instead waited until there was no chance Page could respond, then goes nuclear at the scrum, burying not just Page, but Kenny, the Bucks, TK, and ultimately the entire locker room and company. 

Then, all the stories pretty much state Punk was the one to start fighting, and Ace was the one to start biting. 

A big group of people stormed into his locker room immediately after he called them out publicly, in what wrestling company in history would that not have been perceived as a hostile and provocative act? And in what company on the planet would management confronting the guy before the big boss that he just embarrassed in front of what is technically a national press not be a boneheaded and needlessly escalatory act? The fact Omega tried to mend fences later that night suggests at least some self-recognition of fault on his part.

Idk, it seems obvious to me that most litigations of this are reliant on what one thought of the participants going into it. But at a bare minimum, I think taking Meltz and SRS’s statement that the Bucks and/or Kenny are not who told them about the Cabana stuff as proof that Punk was wrong and just looking for trouble strikes me as working backward from a conclusion about the guy. Even if they weren’t the direct leakers, were they responsible for spreading the rumors throughout the locker room? Was it someone friendly to or aligned with them that talked to the Sheetz, even if it wasn’t them, themselves, assuming the wresting journalists in question are telling the truth? He’s actually in that locker room, he may just be being paranoid or he may have a better insight into the social dynamics at play there than we as people reliant on a drip feed of info from the wrestling press. There’s no question that Punk was being an unprofessional asshole throughout much of this, but it’s unclear to me why there is no critical evaluation of the other side going on here. We have extensive oral histories of how cliques and backstage politicking shape locker room environments in wrestling companies, it seems reasonable to me to assume the same forces are at play here.

[DMJ]

28 minutes ago, strobogo said:

Strongly disagree with the idea that Kenny and the Bucks need to regain the trust of the AEW audience. Punk seems 100% in the wrong in pretty much every narrative of the whole mess.

Wrongly thinks Kenny and The Bucks were spreading rumors about him to Da Sheetz, spends months stewing over Hangman's promo that he could have responded to in the ring when it happened but instead waited until there was no chance Page could respond, then goes nuclear at the scrum, burying not just Page, but Kenny, the Bucks, TK, and ultimately the entire locker room and company. 

Then, all the stories pretty much state Punk was the one to start fighting, and Ace was the one to start biting. 

 

Even if you and I (and most people) were to agree that CM Punk was in the wrong, that doesn't mean Kenny and the Bucks don't have heat with a segment of the AEW audience.

Punk was clearly in a shit mood after All Out (likely because he'd just re-injured himself, but also because he's CM Punk). TK is an absolute idiot for putting a live mic in front of a guy who came into the scrum in a shit mood. However, nobody forced Omega and the Bucks to come into Punk's locker room after. That's not how anyone de-escalates a conflict. Their actions, whether you think they were justified or not, tarnished the memory of the show and the AEW brand and caused a whole hell of a lot of issues.

If CM Punk had went off at the scrum and Omega and the Bucks let it slide for 24 hours and then maybe approached him in a civilized manner, things would look so much different. 

But right now, and I don't think I'm alone, I feel disheartened about the whole AEW enterprise. I enjoy CM Punk as an on-screen character and wanted to see what the next chapter with MJF would be. I wanted to see what Omega and the Bucks were going to do with the Trios Championship to combat the "They're just vanity titles" narrative. I wanted to see what Tony Khan had planned because he was undoubtedly already feeling the heat from the WWE. All of those things were torpedoed within 24 hours.*

I'm probably in the minority, but I know my spirit and excitement for AEW is the lowest its ever been and I didn't bother tuning in or watching (on delay) any of last week's shows after probably watching Dynamite  90% of the time over the past two years. I don't even know if I will this week. There's loads of other wrestling to watch, past and present. I'm not sure I want to watch a show that I used to love just flounder and go through the motions.

* Obviously, Punk's injury would've been a factor even if the scrum/backstage fight doesn't happen, but if all we were talking about was Punk re-injuring himself, I don't think this thread would be 10+ pages.