LaGoosh

On 3/19/2024 at 7:01 PM, waters44 said:

 I had a La Parka mask with me but was too shy to wear it. Here I am with it from last year at a local Indy! It cost way too much money but I love it (I’m on the left)

Nice! Here's mine:

Just now, garynysmon said:

is Tony Khan really a ‘nice guy’ though?

Probably not. Human beings are complex. He's definitely done some nice things and has definitely done some morally dubious things. 

Just now, RedRooster said:

And what led to the change in approach? 

Quite simply, I think every booker has a life span. After about three years they usually start running out of ideas.

13 minutes ago, Loki said:

It's not

Exactly.

13 minutes ago, Loki said:

And over the years his booking decisions led to the industry booming to extraordinary heights.  So he has that in his favour.

And in 5 years Tony Khan has created a viable number 2 wrestling promotion for the first time in decades, put on some incredible matches, stories and one of the biggest wrestling shows of all time. He has also put on some execrable TV. Which isn't really relevant at all to my real point which is that every wrestling promotion in history is basically at the complete command and every whim (no matter how petulant, idiotic or childish they may be) of the promoter.

1 minute ago, organizedkaos said:

we're completely at the mercy of the what Tony Khan wants and whilst he wants an audience he only wants them on his terms..

1 minute ago, organizedkaos said:

whatever they want to do they're going to do because the reason they have this position is because of the money they have

2 minutes ago, organizedkaos said:

If the child suddenly decides they don't like a toy, that toy isn't TV anymore. If the child suddenly decides they want to re-enact some vendetta against a school bully, we have to watch that

2 minutes ago, organizedkaos said:

It also makes it hard to get invested because there's a sense we're just experiencing the whims of the emporer. They might bestow on you favours because of their mood but conversely they might decide to burn everything down.

Genuine question, how is this any different from when Vince McMahon was running WWE?

If I watched Top Gun Maverick at home I wouldn't have given two shits about it at all but it was as fun and pure and old fashioned as a night out at the cinema gets. Pure escapism and a good time.

I'll definitely never watch it ever again. 5 stars.

Just now, Devon Malcolm said:

It's an e-fed brought to life. There's never been anything like it on this scale.

I know, it's brilliant!

There's always this weird criticism of Tony Khan that he's just a "kid playing with his toys" or whatever that I've never really understood. What part of a billionaire spending his fortune on creating his own completely mental wrestling promotion which has resulted in some of the best wrestling in history is a bad thing? Would people rather he invested his millions in hedge funds or stocks rather than blowing it on wrestling, giving hundreds of people well paid jobs that they wouldn't have been able to have otherwise?

I wish every billionaire was as bonkers as he was rather than just sitting on their piles of gold. 

59 minutes ago, Supremo said:

Tony is too nice to be a proper boss and he doesn’t run a tight ship, all of which is clearly evident in the clip.

I've said this before but Tony needs to hire an absolute fucker to be his bearer of bad news. Just have a complete cunt on the payroll to keep people in line. Vince always had a total bastard whose job it was to be the bearer of bad news, listen to all the complaining and draw all the heat from the boys. That's why you'd get released wrestlers complaining in shoots about Johnny Ace, Jim Ross or whoever fucking them over while at the same time saying "Vince was a nice guy, we were cool" and completely oblivious to the fact that the absolute fucker was always acting on Vince's orders. That solid as a rock, loyal, pain sponge figure is essential when dealing with a bunch of headcase wrestlers.

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. 

50 minutes ago, air_raid said:

His deal is up soon isn't it? I imagine Hunter's already added him to the group chat.

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.

35 minutes ago, Infinity Land said:

With how baggy and toothless AEW is right now, its only fitting there's a Battle of the Belts this weekend 😴

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

9 minutes ago, SuperBacon said:

You don't like it fine, but it's clearly not "garbage" is it? 

Yes. 🙂

Just now, Factotum said:

Yeah, he slapped him. That was fucking stupid as well but they seem to have put that behind them.

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.

Just now, Lion_of_the_Midlands said:

Seeing the actual footage of a grown man attacking someone over something so stupid was depressing. Pro wrestling is depressing. If you watched this and still like Pro wrestling that's depressing. Discussing it on a forum, thats depressing. Wasting even one more second of time on any of it, that's depressing. I think my story is finished chaps. 

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?

1 hour ago, BomberPat said:

In AEW, all of Cody's weirdnesses stuck out like a sore thumb to the point that people started turning on him - he speaks like a wrestler generated by AI, his promos are needlessly verbose and self-important, his matches are melodramatic self-conscious epics overbooked to within an inch of their life, and he's constantly putting a hat on a hat, apparently never having heard the phrase "less is more". Yet somehow all of those things that made him harder to like and harder to relate to in AEW make him come across like one of the most genuine people in WWE

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.

31 minutes ago, Mr_Danger said:

I wish people could be an ‘ally’ without using the term ‘ally’.

Yeah really, being an ally should be the default setting for every person. It should be the norm rather than a label. 

13 minutes ago, Mr_Danger said:

I felt the same when some blokes were calling themselves feminists all the time.

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.

3 minutes ago, Factotum said:

No, especially as I'm not sure him and Rollins are particularly close.

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.

10 hours ago, The Gaffer said:

And I realised with a genuine pang of pity for the guy that my fixed image of Cole for all those years involved no movement because he wasn't permitted any. Hunched shoulders, focussed voice, taking a constant bollocking on the cans. He was like one of those greyscale, plugged-into-the-system slave people you see depicted for dramatic effect on conspiracy videos. JBL to the right delivering the big "We hate our audience" lines. King to the left doing his passionless face thing. 

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.