LaGoosh

Firstly, Punk has done plenty of leaking to dirtsheets of his own - he's not innocent on that front. Secondly, I think everyone in AEW has been desperate to move on from the entire thing. No one from that side has said anything publicly about it whatsoever which is the professional and sensible thing to do, them bringing it back up again doesn't help anything at all.

No.

If only there was someone they could release from their contract who is paid significantly enough that it'd save the company serious money... So anyway, what's Jericho up to on Dynamite this week?

Dasha was great, hopefully they're not getting that prick Justin Roberts to do double duty going forwards. Anthony Henry is a very good wrestler but is desperately lacking a gimmick. If he can come up with one I hope they bring him back. Jose The Assistant is the shits who adds absolutely nothing whatsoever to the acts he's managing so farewell. Out of the bunch The Boys is the weirdest one. The rest are so insignificant that no one will even notice they're gone.

Who said it wasn't? I think everyone agrees that Jack Perry is an idiot. They should have sacked him for it.

I think they're done. They had a good run but it's not the type of gimmick you can keep fresh long term. I have no idea what you do with either man as singles acts but if I was them I'd get the drawing boards out now before it's too late.

Yep. There's a distinct vibe of Punk walking into AEW expecting everyone to bow to his wisdom and go along with all his brilliant sage advice but when that not only didn't happen but some people actively disliked him it seems things went rapidly downhill from there. I also think people seem to have forgotten that Punk's original gripebomb All Out meltdown was because he was so upset that the Young Bucks had apparently been leaking rumours about him to Dave Meltzer. He was so upset about pointless "internet shit" that he shit his pants and tried to tank the entire company. The ultimate overreaction to something so meaningless possible.

Yeah that stood out to me too. Him chatting about "houses" made him sound a bit stuck in the past. AEW is essentially a TV company, not an old school wrestling promotion. Their still a young company and their entire business plan is built towards getting a big pay day in the next round of media rights as that's where the money is. They've been incredibly open about this. It felt very much more along the lines of "I know what's best for business and they didn't do what I think they should have done so therefore they aren't a business".

Of course. He's a professional after all. He's not unprofessional like those dastardly Elite lads.

Perfectly watchable episode this week with only The Acclaimed stuff being bad. These lads are fucking dead in the water right now. Fun main event, the opening exchanges made me very keen to watch a Shibata vs Lance Archer match which isn't a match I had ever considered before. They just seemed to have good chemistry.

The annoying thing is that they actually had over 4000 people there which is good crowd and the base level of what they should be drawing most weeks really but the problem is that they booked a fucking 16,000 seat arena for it. So frustrating! A tight and packed 4000 seater arena would have looked and sounded great! A perfectly ok show with Ospreay vs Shibata being the highlight. Good to see an Ospreay match here he was a bit reigned in and didn't go for the high spot extravaganza. Shibata is great and should be a full member of Blackpool Combat Club. I was thinking about Swerve and I think the problem here is that he needs a real heel to play off and win the belt from. Unfortunately the fans love and respect Joe too much so it's taken away the buzz from Swerve's title chase. Swerve winning at Dynasty would be a mistake. He needs to win the title from Hangman. There's no other way to finish this story. Fantasy booking: - Hangman stops Swerve from winning at Dynasty. - A few weeks or at the next PPV fully blown heel Hangman beats Joe for the title. - Keep Hangman vs Swerve going all summer, including a Team Hangman vs Team Swerve Blood & Guts match. - Swerve beats Hangman at All In in the main event for the title. - The following week in the final match at All Out you run Swerve vs Hangman Texas Deathmatch 2 to finish the story for good.

I think actually you're spot on with that and it's a perfect summary of the man.I always find it baffling how in one interview he'll complain about others being unprofessional or going off script or doing stupid stuff for the niche "internet audience" while seemingly having complete blinders on to his own behaviour which is exactly the same or usually significantly worse. Like how he often talks about and clearly wants to be perceived and treated as a locker room leader but in reality he overreacts to every backstage issue and escalates them. He's a fascinating contraction of a person. Just perfectly mental enough to be successful in wrestling I suppose.

Goes on a podcast where he knows they're highly likely to ask about it, says he doesn't want to talk about it but then does talk about it anyway while taking shots at people, talks about how unprofessional everyone else is...it's classic CM Punk schtick.

The off script comment Hangman made that riled Punk so much was that he didn't care about workers rights. In this interview Punk says guaranteed money has ruined pro wrestling. Hangman was right all along!

It's all pretty much what you would expect. At one point he says "I don't wanna' start drama" with a completely straight face. Doesn't accept any blame for what happened, makes the expected potshots. He's always been very good at presenting his opinion on things in hindsight as totally reasonable and professional when you know at the time he was throwing a complete wobble and pissy fit. As modern day bullshitters in wrestling go he's one of the best.

Despite what he's claimed Punk always wanted to go back and tried to go back several times before the AEW offer came along. The people with a vendetta always seem to go back. Mox seems a bit different because he doesn't have a vendetta or outrage or enemies. He just wants to wrestle the way he wants to and where he wants to. If he does end up back there it doesn't really feel as momentous as others returning because he never had that huge falling out. If his decision ends up money based I'm pretty sure Tony Khan will match any offer WWE throw at him.

I remember from Jericho's podcast a bit where Mox described a promo Vince wrote for him where he described riding to the arena backwards on a bicycle and other various hijinx and when Mox asked why he would say that Vince said "because you're wacky Dean Ambrose, people are gonna' love it! and Mox responded with "Vince, this is what a stupid person does. Only someone stupid would do any of these things. Why would anyone want to cheer someone so stupid?". I wish someone would write a book with nothing but mad and terrible Vince creative story. What a lunatic (and rapist).

Yeah I can't personally see Mox going back to WWE. He doesn't have any huge personal issues like others have but he just seems to hate the environment and it doesn't seem to mesh with his vision of what wrestling should be or what he wants to do with his career - namely complete creative freedom. He signed a long term deal with AEW about a year or so ago anyway. If his body is still holding up by the time his AEW contract finishes then who knows but he doesn't seem motivated by that big pay day - he does deathmatches for GCW for fun!

I checked out the Punk/Drew and Rock/Cody segs out of interest. The Punk/Drew stuff was pretty bad. I'm assuming the praise from this is that it's so rare to see promos where people speak somewhat like normal human beings rather than weird robots that it blinded people to how lame the material was. Firstly, a 20 minute segment building up a guest commentator rather than the TITLE MATCH AT WRESTLEMANIA itself is pretty funny for how stupid it is. Punk's stuff was standard Punk stuff , "oooh look how edgy he is! He's shooting!", textbook CM Punk teenage edgelord schtick. Always goes for the low hanging fruit. This segment also had that "breaking the fourth wall" type stuff that I hate with a passion. Drew's line about rehab was an absolute cracker but apart from that I didn't really feel like he brought much. His time in America has made his accent very strange too. Really quite baffled by the comments from people that this felt wild, chaotic and out of control. Felt like the same old shit to me. The Cody/Rock stuff on the other hand was all very good. I don't know where the weird thing where wrestling fans call anything good "cinema" came from -this just felt like proper good old fashioned wrestling to me. The main problem though is when the heel is bigger, stronger, cooler and more charismatic than the babyface...that's going to cause a few problems down the road. But just looking at the segment alone there's few things better than the traditional bloody beatdown on a babyface before the big match and this was a good one. If it was Cody vs Rock instead of Cody and Freakin' Rollins vs Rock and Roman then this angle would have probably made me want to watch it. Alas, I will be skipping Wrestlemania this year.

Unrelated to the discussion at hand but fuck me, that initial Reigns/Strowman feud was just some of the absolute best stuff. It got Strowman over as an absolute killer and it was the only time Roman was even close to being accepted as a babyface.

Not really sure what your issue is here but in an attempt to explain what should be simple and obvious. My original post simply asked "what's the American Nightmare stuff all about"? Someone else posted their thoughts and I responded with my own views. I'm not angry or stressed that Cody's nickname doesn't fit with some kind of "head canon" that you've imagined I have. We're just discussing stuff here because discussing stuff is interesting and fun. That's the whole point of this place. Meanwhile someone just responding to you saying nothing more than "It's wrestling" with no further explanation is completely meaningless and one could argue goes against the entire point of even coming to this DISCUSSION forum and is actually a fairly patronising response. But if you want to continue to make assumptions about what emotions I'm having in response to this nonsense, please feel free.

To clarify I don't think Cody as a person is surface level or shallow. I think he's a very genuine and decent bloke who very much wants to be a hero to fans everywhere and that's awesome. But for me his character work and storytelling in matches comes off as very surface level type stuff lacking in real depth, he's never seen a short cut he hasn't liked and he likes to create moments but often doesn't create the connective tissue around them to give them real meaning. But everyone else seems to like him so what the fuck do I know?

What's wrong with asking people to actually explain their incredibly vague posts?

If you're making a point then actually explain your point. Just writing "it's wrestling" is completely meaningless.