Loki

Indeed. It’s a difficult moral line for any of us here, all wrestling fans, to tread. If we were being strictly morally pure we’d perry much have to not watch ANY wrestling given how many sordid stories have come, and continue to come out all locker rooms. So it really makes all of us “tribal” for watching something that as @Supremo points out the rest of the world generally regards as intrinsically low rent. Given all that, it’s particularly hypocritical to point fingers at each other in a “you like THIS brand”. Let’s just deal with each issue that arises on its own merits or lack thereof. Or just don’t watch any wrestling. In a similar vein, it’s a proper “wrestling bubble” moment for the owner of one wrestling company to bring up sexual misconduct at another wrestling company. The outside world sees no difference, you’re just drawing eyes to the seedy side of your own industry, you massive idiot. I really am a fan of AEW but it’s moments like this that remind me how far we’ve come from the promise of its creation, “wrestling but done better”, and as the 89 pages of this thread attest to a lot of the blame for that lies at Khan’s door directly.

"I prayed for this, and it happened". He even does the "I'm on TV, fake sip of my drink". I'm loving this angle, it's the sort of fun stuff that only wrestling can do.

@JLM Have you considered skipping a few episodes, for your own sanity? Then you could exist on the same timeline as the rest of us

Haha! Let's be fair, there's no way AEW would put an alleged sex offender on tv like that. Haha! Let's be fair, there's no way AEW would put an alleged sex offender on tv like that. Again. Haha! Actually, that one would be ok.

Like when they blew up Vince McMahon in a limo and he was never. Seen. Again. Personally I'm all for non-wrestlers taking moves and showing arse, it makes the actual wrestlers look harder. Khan has shown admirable restraint waiting 5 years, most money marks are booking the entire show around themselves within a few weeks. They should have Daddy Shaddy appoint an interim general manager whilst his boy is out recovering. Someone bound to infuriate the locker room. Eric Bischoff perhaps?

His match with Pac was his best outing so far, but yeah... underwhelming so far. I think the issue is that he's been asked to play this arrogant heel character, which I guess if you're very familiar with him might translate ok, but to his large new audience it just comes across as if he can't quite be bothered and the whole thing is beneath him. He seems a bit listless and low energy. It reminds me of when WWE guys would come into TNA and not take it seriously, for some reason. It was really jarring against Pac, a wrestler who makes everything look snappy and intense. Okada's slower, deliberate pace is actually something I like, and would probably fit in perfectly into WWE main event style, but in AEW it feels weird. He has a lovely dropkick, but so did Jeff Farmer. Extremely worrying. The reason I think Joe has been the best AEW champ in years is that he was presented as the top guy, the main event, and he also carried himself like that. He brought so much prestige to the title. I wonder how much of that was his influence, because I hope we don't slip back into the MJF era where the champ and the title are just one of a number of things competing for tv time / Khan's attention. In recent years, the booking has been all about the chase (see also Hangman) and the minute the babyface wins they're out of ideas.

Maybe I'm misinterpreting that caption but it reads like he's trying to say "actually, not all working class white men have shitty views on immigration" and is posting this clip precisely because it IS lucid and well thought out. That in itself could be seen as patronising by omission. As ever, social media's short form, clickbait format makes everything less clear.

So are we having sensible draft rules this year, like not splitting tag teams or factions? The bizarrest thing about some previous drafts was the way they would seemingly deliberately derail existing booking plans by randomly splitting teams.

Q Acoustics are fantastic, I put a 5.1 system together with them at Christmas and I’m so happy with the sound quality. Listening to music on the main 5040s is great and the smaller 3010s make great satellites as well as decent bookshelf speakers for music.

It certainly was - in that he literally never wrestled again. His last ever match according to Cagematch was on FCW TV Dec 18 2008, which was around the time the vignettes aired. I know HHH and his shovel were powerful but to end a guy's career? I reckon there must have been something else, unless Vansen literally thought "fuck this" and retired on the spot.

There must also be more to his story. Built up and then released like that, something must have happened for them to drop him like a hot brick and never touch him again surely? You're right though, the Streak rumour has to be bullshit. I do believe the one that Nathan Jones was going to end the streak but then Taker got cold feet after having wrestled the guy.

I've been saying this since pretty much Trick turned up in NXT as Carmello's mate, but it's reinforced by last night's match. Worth watching the main event of Spring Breakin' as I think it underlines that we're looking at a next big thing, potentially. He's unpolished but the crowd love him. Edit: full match -

This is a very boring question probably, and I'm not sure if anyone here can answer it, but I know a few people have worked in and around wrestling tv. Just watching the Netflix series "Wrestlers" and from time to time they use WWF footage but it's clearly ripped from YouTube, often even with the ripper's logo or web address still visible. Surely using any WWF/E content in another show would require permission from WWE, and if obtained you'd get a decent quality copy? Or have Netflix just decided to literally steal stuff off Youtube and hope nobody from WWE comes calling? I've noticed something oddly similar a few times on the BBC, where they appear to have grabbed some low quality footage from Youtube rather than go into the BBC's archive, but at least they own the copyright. Is there some sort of "fair use" policy regarding ripped footage I'm not aware of?

And yet it's become accepted internet fact - it's even on Wikipedia, unsourced of course. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WWE_brand_extension#2002_split I mean, they DID do the match at the end of A Raw, with the Nitro branding but I think that's been expanded into a whole "plan" by Meltzer and other "journalists", I can't see it ever being the actual idea on Vince's part. I'm generally against roster splits, I don't think it works and the WWE ones have derailed more careers than they've made I'd argue. One of the nice things about WCW was the ever-rotating roster which made the shows feel a lot more "international" if you know what I mean, a bit like AEW nowadays except they weren't putting Scott Norton into a feud with Hogan. But WCW could easily have split off an entire WWF roster's worth of talent and made Thunder a completely separate brand at that point they had the bodies.

Yeah, the whole story stinks to me. It's been pointed out by some outlets that there were Jewish protesters marching, who weren't in danger, weren't harassed and weren't singled out by the police. Which kind of suggests that he and his crew were doing something that warranted Inspector Knacker's attention. I can't imagine the stress of having to police these marches, with counter protests and agitators mixed with peaceful marchers, and it sounds like the policeman on the scene had a serious brain fart when it came to his choice of words. Having watched it in context, it doesn't seem deliberately antisemitic as much as stressed and hurried. There's almost certainly been an uptick in antisemitism since the October terrorist attack, and I am sympathetic to people over here feeling the heat for something a foreign government is doing thousands of miles away, but this particular news story feels heavily manufactured and counter productive.