Summerfest 2025

[conker8]

This was the best PWG Cena match ever. Callbacks to some of his best matches too (Punk RAW match, Owens, Umaga). I would have love to see Cena bleeds after the turnbuckle shots.

[El-P]

9 hours ago, Embrodak said:

Bringing back Brock is nuts, and the pop was fucking shameful. 

But... but they booed Trump on day 1, so it's okay, right ?.....

With Linda backstage, SummerSlam was sex trafficking Mania 

7 hours ago, Embrodak said:

This in the same week Triple H stood behind Trump while he answered at least one Epstein question has to be among WWE’s all-time low points. 

"Uh.... uh.... just enjoy the show and uh... look at the attendance."

Oh, wait, can't do that one anymore because they don't do "presser" anymore. I wonder why... could it be because...

Honestly, when I looked out for the news this morning, the *last* thing on my mind was Brock Lesnar coming back. The fact he got a huge pop says everything you need to know about people who attend WWE events today. I have zero doubt if Vince would show up, he would get an ovation. The smell of this audience, I swear...  

With the serious talk that Alberto del Rio is absolutely not gonna be gone from AAA, there you go. Fascists, rapists and sex traffickers. That's your company. That's your "New era". The rest is completely irrelevant.

"The Harvey Weinstein of Professional Wrestling" punchline almost looks tame today.

[SHOOTER]

First time poster here and I do not watch current pro wrestling and haven't for 20 years but I do sometimes read about it.. After reading about the Cody / Cena match from last night and seeing it was billed as a street fight, I was just curious to know when did pro wrestlig stop the traditional strreet fight rules of wearing street clothes in to the ring for the match? Seeing two wrestlers in their normal ring gear, didn't seem to fit the usual steet fight expectations. I guess Cena in his jorts was slighly more approriate but it's his usual gear in the ring and he should've had jeans on to make the street fight seem different from a typical match.

 

[strobogo]

3 hours ago, El-P said:

But... but they booed Trump on day 1, so it's okay, right ?.....

With Linda backstage, SummerSlam was sex trafficking Mania 

"Uh.... uh.... just enjoy the show and uh... look at the attendance."

Oh, wait, can't do that one anymore because they don't do "presser" anymore. I wonder why... could it be because...

Honestly, when I looked out for the news this morning, the *last* thing on my mind was Brock Lesnar coming back. The fact he got a huge pop says everything you need to know about people who attend WWE events today. I have zero doubt if Vince would show up, he would get an ovation. The smell of this audience, I swear...  

With the serious talk that Alberto del Rio is absolutely not gonna be gone from AAA, there you go. Fascists, rapists and sex traffickers. That's your company. That's your "New era". The rest is completely irrelevant.

"The Harvey Weinstein of Professional Wrestling" punchline almost looks tame today.

I believe it's the opposite with ADR, that they absolutely will not be using him anymore and he's out. But otherwise...I don't even know what to think about the crowds. I would think even at most casual of wrestling fan (and the prices for WWE tickets, I don't know how casual fans could afford to be the ones going to shows) would have to have some awareness of why Brock has been missing and not mentioned for 2 years, why Vince got pushed out, HHH keeps finding himself at Trump admin events and hearings. It is very confusing for me to make sense of the crowd booing the shit out of Trump on screen, while also begging HHH to spit on them, all the Hogan chants and merch, and losing their minds for Brock in the same weekend. 

I'm not sure it is fair to blame the whole audience for not knowing or paying attention or even caring that much about any of it. Sure is fair to blame the people at the top, though.

[Blehschmidt]

I'm just really glad Candice Lerae is okay after that fall. Someone should have probably thought better about a 40 year old mother taking that bump.

[Embrodak]

Brock is not the worst offender in the Vince mess by far, but when your septuagenarian billionaire boss offers to let you fuck some random lady amidst contract negotiations, you as a married father with more than enough walking away money should probably have questions and decline the offer, not immediately “Yes and” the situation.

Honestly, this seems like kind of an admission that the product is floundering and needs a shot in the arm. Shame it was a tainted B12 shot!

[El-P]

1 hour ago, strobogo said:

I believe it's the opposite with ADR, that they absolutely will not be using him anymore and he's out.

That's not what people very knowledgeable about lucha libre are telling. He's the biggest star in AAA. There are apparently people (including talents) in WWE pushing to use him (in the main roster I mean, because that's how it goes, AAA is just NXT Mexico already). At this point, why would they even bother not to ? The AAA fans love him, at the very least.

1 hour ago, strobogo said:

 I would think even at most casual of wrestling fan (and the prices for WWE tickets, I don't know how casual fans could afford to be the ones going to shows) would have to have some awareness of why Brock has been missing and not mentioned for 2 years, why Vince got pushed out, HHH keeps finding himself at Trump admin events and hearings.

Yep, there's no such things as "casual fans" anymore. Especially not as *those* ticket prices especially. 

1 hour ago, strobogo said:

It is very confusing for me to make sense of the crowd booing the shit out of Trump on screen, while also begging HHH to spit on them, all the Hogan chants and merch, and losing their minds for Brock in the same weekend. 

Because they are complete hypocrites. The (alive) Hogan and Trump boos are performative bullshit so they can feel better about themselves while financially supporting a company that enables fascism and rape culture. And the parasocial relationship WWE fans have with Triple H is something out of a cult. 

1 hour ago, strobogo said:

I'm not sure it is fair to blame the whole audience for not knowing or paying attention or even caring that much about any of it. Sure is fair to blame the people at the top, though.

Not paying attention is on them. "Oh, I wasn't aware they were actively supporting fascism, I didn't pay attention, I just focused on the awesome pSYChoLoGY". Fuck this shit and fuck these people, seriously. That joke isn't funny anymore (hasn't been in a long ass time, but since Trump got in office again, they totally dropped the mask, so it's on the audience which is still choosing to support it). 

(the fact they brought Brock back just a few weeks after Evolution is fucking amazing too)

[El-P]

In a few years when people will look back at the infamous Cody win at Mania and the discourse about "the bad guy is out, this is a completely new era now !", it' gonna be so hilarious/embarrassing in retrospect. (I mean, it was already embarrassing when it happened to anyone actually paying attention to that post-match display, but with the benefit of hindsight, holy hell 😂)

[El-P]

As soon as they "legally can", they'll bring back Vince's carcass in front of a camera (if he doesn't kill himself and some poor schmuck with his car before that). And he'll be cheered. You can quote me.

[The Thread Killer]

4 hours ago, SHOOTER said:

First time poster here and I do not watch current pro wrestling and haven't for 20 years but I do sometimes read about it.. After reading about the Cody / Cena match from last night and seeing it was billed as a street fight, I was just curious to know when did pro wrestlig stop the traditional strreet fight rules of wearing street clothes in to the ring for the match? Seeing two wrestlers in their normal ring gear, didn't seem to fit the usual steet fight expectations. I guess Cena in his jorts was slighly more approriate but it's his usual gear in the ring and he should've had jeans on to make the street fight seem different from a typical match.

 

There really is no distinction between any of those types of matches anymore, especially in WWE.  I agree that back in the day, guys used to wear Street Clothes for a Street Fight, but these types of matches were rare at one point, and they sure aren't now.

Last night alone, there were a bunch of different matches with no rules, which all had different names or different stipulations, but it amounted to the same thing.  The opening match was a Triple Threat Match, which WWE has now decided are No Countout and No Disqualification, and if you didn't remember that, Michael Cole was happy to remind you every 30 seconds.

The match after that was a "Tables, Ladders and Chairs" match...which is No Countout and No Disqualification. The only difference with those matches is that they go ahead and set the Tables and Ladders up for the participants before the match, and even leave some chairs laying around...but it's essentially the same thing.

The next match after that was billed as a "No Countout, No Disqualification" match, which made it like the first two matches.

The match after that was a Steel Cage match, which is No Disqualification, but you can actually win the match by escaping the cage, (which Solo did) so I guess in theory that match had slightly different rules.

Dom Mysterio vs. AJ Styles was the only match on the card which was contested under "normal" Pro Wrestling rules.

The Main Event was a "Street Fight" which is now essentially just a No Countout/No Disqualification match. I assume the only reason they billed the Main Event as a "Street Fight" is because they were already billing the Women's Intercontinental Championship match as No Countout and No Disqualification and they didn't want to book two matches with identical stipulations on the same show, so they changed the name. But these types of garbage/plunder matches are done so frequently now, there is literally no distinction between any of them.  They just slap a violent sounding name on the match to try and distinguish it and hype it up, but it always amounts to the same thing. The only discernible differences in WWE is when they do the occasional "Last Man Standing" match which can only be won by a standing 10 count, or when they very rarely do a Falls Count Anywhere match.  

[The Thread Killer]

4 hours ago, Blehschmidt said:

I'm just really glad Candice Lerae is okay after that fall. Someone should have probably thought better about a 40 year old mother taking that bump.

Yeah that was rough, didn't she land right on her knees?  And imagine what Michael Cole would have said if she'd been injured:

"Oh my God, something has happened to Candice Michelle!"

[The Thread Killer]

9 hours ago, conker8 said:

I would have love to see Cena bleeds after the turnbuckle shots.

I was surprised somebody didn't end up bleeding in that match as well. They proved the night before with Gunther that they're not squeamish about blood anymore, although maybe they didn't want to do it two nights in a row, in both Main Event matches.  Plus, Cena has a legitimate acting career, he probably doesn't need to be cutting up his forehead at this point, especially with only 9 appearances left.

[C.S.]

4 hours ago, El-P said:

As soon as they "legally can", they'll bring back Vince's carcass in front of a camera (if he doesn't kill himself and some poor schmuck with his car before that). And he'll be cheered. You can quote me.

You post this like it's a hot take and surprising revelation instead of an inevitability.

[El-P]

21 minutes ago, C.S. said:

You post this like it's a hot take and surprising revelation instead of an inevitability.

Not really. Because I only ever take bets I'm sure I'm gonna win (yeah, not a betting man at all). The eventuality it would *not* happen would indeed be, at this point, a hot take. This is the level of idiocracy and repugnancy WWE has reached (well, one could argue it actually *always was* the case, since day one Junior took over). Basically a sewer. It kinda is fascinating though, for all the wrong reasons.

(I mean, you meant getting back on TV, not killing some innocent victim with his car., right ? Hopefully the latest doesn't happen at all. Well, he could still do *both* ya know, Nick Hogan did got cheered too (because it really is the gift that keeps on giving, therefore one shall deliver))

[DMJ]

I haven't watched most of the shows yet, but...John Cena is back to being a face, right? 

Ignoring the optics of the Lesnar return, to me, the WWE Creative/HHH/The Rock/whoever only being able to get 6-7 months of content, which was, *at best,* forgettable but at times outright Wrestlecrap (Travis Scott, the R-Truth fiasco), out of JOHN CENA TURNING HEEL is about all one need's to know about the WWE's creative direction and storytelling in 2025. I mean, say what you will about an ethically bankrupt, racist, misogynist, sex trafficker like Vince McMahon but he at least knew a decade ago that Cena turning heel was a creative dead-end.
 

I won't put too much blame on Cena himself - in fact, I wrote many times after Mania that Cena deserves some credit for taking a big swing and trying to work as a post-modern "meta" heel, even as he was actively striking out - but it does go to show, you can't really half-turn if your whole shtick, for 20 years, was being the ultimate babyface. Cena tried, unsuccessfully, to "play a heel" within the parameters of the show but then do absolutely none of the work to "live" that character outside of it and so the audience could only play their part at booing him up to a point. And maybe a smarter, more clever performer would've been able to find a tone that could made this dynamic fun and entertaining. He didn't. At least not for longer than the occasional promo. 

His "heel turn" simply didn't go far enough and it fizzled out around June or whenever Cody returned to unremarkable/nonexistent fanfare, "Main Event" Jey Uso (who does seem to open a lot of shows for being a "main eventer," right?) and Logan Paul were weirdly and unfittingly in Cena's orbit, and all anyone could talk about was how awful the company was for releasing a Cena-adjacent comedy midcarder. So Cena's big heel turn, a storyline that should've been epic, ended up being a total nothingburger. People Power. The Nexus Invasion. Cole vs. Lawler and the Anonymous GM. The Vince Paternity mystery. Y'know...stuff that people remember more for "What Could've Been..." rather than what happened. I don't think you needed this storyline to help "make" anyone or put a new star over either, but Cody Rhodes is less over than he was a year ago and Orton/Punk/Jey didn't really benefit longterm from their bit roles in this saga either. (And it is worth noting, if they did want to at least sorta get someone more over with this storyline, even in a loss, someone like LA Knight or Damien Priest standing up to Cena would've likely worked, but hey, at least we all got to see a recycled house show match as the main event of Backlash instead). 

So now we get the old babyface Cena back to finish his career...but who even cares? Who even "missed" the "old Cena"? How could anyone? Babyface Cena only left for 6 months, a forgettable blip in his career and likely to end up being the punchline of a joke in his eventual HOF Induction Speech one day, nothing more. 

[El-P]

Even if you ignore (and you should absolutely not) everything about that company and those people and pretend there's nothing there, and look at it from a Pro-Wrestling ONLY point of view, Triple H had been exposed as a booker before going back to the Black and Gold days.

Again and again it has to be said : The Bloodline and Cody winning the World Title jumpstarted the hot period under Vince. Levesque just inherited the whole thing, like he inherited his spot on the company's hierarchy by marrying the boss daughter. He was never that good of a worker, he was never that big of a star, he's not that good of a booker either (the whole goal of Unreal being to make it seems like he is, which is completely hilarious). He's also a failure as a human being, but that's another story. But Triple H is, and has always been, a fraud that got where he got by being a political animal. He's nowhere near as smart as people give him credit to be, as demonstrated time after time after time. That entire John Cena heel turn thingy has been fucking laughable.