LaGoosh

So they've announced the PPV schedule for the year. Of note is that WrestleDream will be in Bryan Danielson's hometown in a 20,000 seat venue. Guessing that'll be his big retirement match. Also Forbidden Door in June is in Long Island so a potential MJF return.

Also worth noting WWE took plenty of petty, shitty potshots at AEW in the week leading up to Wrestlemania. But you can pretty much get away with potshots if you're doing great business and making your customers happy. You can't do it if you're struggling.

I fucking hope so. He's been an absolute bust, the useless prick. But yeah, AEW have been on a decent run. Revolution was a fantastic success. They looked to be slowly but surely building up that consistency they need. Dynasty is looking to be an incredible card. But this is just taking a completely unnecessary shit on that. How can the company that booked the Continental Classic - probably the best booked wrestling tournament ever, be the same company that did this bullshit? Mind boggling. They should have seen Wrestlemania as a kick in the arse. Typically when people are into WWE that usually leads to the whole business getting a boost. If WWE gets ten new fans, you presume that at least two or three of them will want to watch more wrestling. That's the type of fan AEW need to be grabbing up. You don't do that with over the top silly nonsense. You do that with a strong, consistent weekly product that offers something different.

Not to derail the thread by being positive but the HOOK vs Shane Taylor match is going to be bloody great.

Yes. 🙂

Eddie, great guy that he is, publicly apologised and took responsibility for it. Which is the right way to do it.

Really if Tony Khan wanted to use this footage to humiliate or expose CM Punk he should have just quietly leaked it onto the internet then let everyone else run with it. This is going to be talked about as an idiotic decision for years to come. I can't even imagine what Jon Moxley thinks of the whole thing.

Ok, thanks for that. As for the rest of the show: - Everything else was pretty much fine if unexciting. With no BCC, Kingston,Cassidy, Allin, Omega, Hangman etc. these shows feel very light of stars right now. Hell, even chucking in Big Bill and Ricky Starks could freshen things up. The pacing and placement of segments drove me a bit crazy, they've been pretty bad at that recently. - Penta/Copeland was the best part of the show. Penta is another on their pile of untapped potential. He's an exciting singles wrestler and should be booked as such. Just on look alone, you push this guy properly and he'll be every kids favourite wrestler. Cool seeing Copeland trying new things. That powerslam on the apron was the best spot I've seen in awhile. Willow/Copeland vs Brody/Julia next week is exactly the type of thing I want to see on these shows. - Showing a vignette of the Trent heel turn, then OC's locker room to announce that he's going to be on Rampage felt like a waste of time. His name running out of space on the door label was a nice little touch. - Shibata and HOOK would actually be a really fucking cool, original and unique tag team. The scrappy, surly New York street kid with the violent Japanese veteran, there's loads you could do with that. Sadly though the bloated reanimated corpse of Chris Jericho is stuck in the middle draining them of life. - Feels like there's some really obvious and telegraphed things coming up. Purrazzo turning on Thunder Rose. Jack Perry returning to help the Bucks win the titles. - Once Ospreay got his shitty 2006 dig at Triple H out the way it was actually a pretty decent promo. - Production wise there's still too much dead air on these shows. With WWE it feels like the production is constantly assaulting your senses. With AEW it often feels like there's nothing going on at all. Like they always do shit like cut to the lighting rig while Excalibur tells you what's coming up next. JUST FUCKING GO STRAIGHT TO WHAT'S COMING UP NEXT! - Joe vs Dustin was pretty decent. As much as I love The Natural he does seem be losing a step or two - not surprising given his age. I'd love to see him having 8 minute cracker TV matches with everyone on the roster on Rampage or Collision every week but I'm not sure he has Dynamite main events left in him.

Well, that was depressing. I don't like watching real fights. They make me feel a bit sick, to be honest. And I'd rather not watch real footage of someone assaulting their co-worker on my wrestling show. Seeing the actual footage of a grown man attacking someone over something so stupid was depressing. CM Punk is depressing. If you watched this and still like CM Punk that's depressing. Trying to find a silver lining to this, the only thing I can think of is that maybe it is now fully put to bed. Until now it was all gossip and one sided petty public jabs from Punk. Now we have the footage in the public and seeing it exposes how pathetic the whole incident and the talk and everyone around it is. There's nothing left to discuss or gossip about. All it was was a miserable narcissistic childish millionaire who was unhappy in his job (a job where he is paid millions of dollars to travel the world and playfight in his underwear in public once a week) lash out publicly and violently at his co-workers over the dumbest, most pointless nonsense you can imagine. Some people have real fucking problems. Fuck it all. Like I said. Depressing.

The real and important question here is - which thread does all this chat belong? This one, the Tony Khan Is A Twat one or the CM Punk one?

Cody to me feels like a man who has never had a single original idea in his life. Every single part of his act is something stolen from a former top babyface act and amalgamated into "The American Nightmare" Cody Rhodes. I imagine he's spent thousands of hours studying tape of Bret, Dusty, Hogan, Cena, Austin etc. and meticulously picked apart what worked, what didn't and what he could take from them. In AEW that didn't really work because all the people he was stealing from and copying were not what the AEW audience wanted to see from their top babyfaces. However in WWE, it's exactly what their audience and the company want from a top babyface. He's the perfect man at the perfect time for them. I don't think he would work in any other era.

Yeah really, being an ally should be the default setting for every person. It should be the norm rather than a label. I know what you mean. It always comes across creepy and disingenuous to me and is often used by phoney blokes who are absolutely full of shit. My wife has told me that, based on my views and things I've said, that I'm a feminist but I would never dare label myself one. Like being an "ally" to me my views are, in my opinion, what should be the norm for everyone. Personally, I think it's easier just to settle on the labels of "twat" and "not a twat" when it comes to these issues.

If they are planning to build to Edge & Christian vs Young Bucks I can definitely see how you could spring an angle off of this. Last week you had Copeland doing his "rah rah" speech then the following week the Bucks do this petty negative shit and Copeland calls them out on it for being exactly that and not what he joined AEW for. Then slowly build things from there. It's basically the only positive spin I can think of in doing this.

Fuck the All In footage, just give 2 hours of Eddie and Mark drinking beer together and talking shit and it'll be the highest rated wrestling show ever. This 50 seconds is better than Cody's title win.

The reporting from "news" sites is typically all over the place. SRS is saying that Khan wasn't actually bothered by Punk's interview and has been wanting to release the All In footage for ages but was just waiting for the right time. Wade Keller is saying that those who have seen the footage have said it's pretty tame (unsurprising that a fight considering both men involved) and is just being used as a cheap trick to get ratings. Dave Meltzer is saying it's solely to embarrass CM Punk and Khan is furious.

Reigns and Mox are still close but him and Rollins aren't really mates. There's not heat there but they are essentially just former co-workers who don't keep in touch from what Rollins has said in the past.

Fucking hell, we're talking about millionaires here who could have easily quit if they actually really hated it so much. It's not like their families were being held at gunpoint. Don't have too much pity for poor little ol' Michael Cole.

Yeah fair enough. My post was meant tongue in cheek. If we want to watch something guilt free then wrestling definitely isn't it!

Good thing WWE don't have any negativity going on right now that could distract from their product. Oh wait, the rapes. I forgot about the rapes.

If it is real I hope it's proper arms flailing embarrassing hand bags at dawn stuff. At the very least I hope this is leading to a specific angle. If it's just to make CM Punk look like a cunt...well I knew that already.

I'm so tired. Can't wrestling just be fun?

Some Japanese wrestler called Giulia. They cut to her in the crowd at NXT but unfortunately because they didn’t introduce her with a vignette and expected everyone to know who she was the WWE crowd all soiled themselves, burst into tears and left the show in complete hysterics.

I don't think they've done that for ages. Typically these days they do usually show you some footage and explain who the person is beforehand and why it's worth watching. Typically it won't appeal outside of the core audience but it's important to keep that core audience happy, people forget that sometimes.

Not great examples as both matches had a story behind them, told stories within the matches and the finishes of both matches cleverly directly fed into the Danielson vs Ospreay story but I get your point. Personally I think there absolutely is and should be a place for the "dream match" style of booking in AEW. The sheer depth of their roster and international partnerships means you have basically almost unlimited fresh potential matches but not all those matches require a story going into them, the matches are the story. I love it when a match is announced for Dynamite and my reaction is "holy shit, I never thought that would happen" or "I never even considered that match, looks cool, can't wait to see it!". It's fucking great and the unique offer AEW has that makes them a real alternative. It's not for everyone but if you enjoy wrestling matches and the stories told within them rather than before them then you're absolutely eating good right now. The problem is when that is your sole selling point. AEW need to incorporate big, exciting storylines leading to big, exciting matches alongside the crazy dream match booking. That's what they did when they were at their best.

Not sure what you mean by "give away"? Shibata isn't a PPV draw in the US in 2024 so putting his matches on TV is the best use of him.