LaGoosh

I don't think they're friends but I don't think there's any specific heat or grudge or anything.

My main issue with John Cena's style is that despite being a freakishly strong muscle man is that all his offence is weak as piss. Running bull dogs, second rope leg drops, flipping neck breakers....absolute crap. You're a beast John, do some goddamn power moves. Press Slam someone for the love of God!

The Good - Ospreay vs Hobbs was absolutely cracking. Kinda weird to have Ospreay beat all the Callis Family BEFORE the inevitable split though but maybe they have something else planned. - Willow getting a proper live promo segment for the first time and absolutely smashing it. She has more potential than any woman wrestler on the planet. And Mercedes sliding into her natural heel role made her infinitely more watchable. - Trent's heel turn was great and the first time in ages I've been genuinely upset by a heel turn (in the way intended). I love Best Friends and want them to stay pals. - contract signing felt like real main eventer shit and Swerve really proved he belonged there. Loved Joe no selling the chain then headbutting Swerve into the shadow realm. Brilliant, brilliant work all round. The Bad - obviously Chris Jericho. Probably the shittest thing on all TV right now. He gets initial boos then complete apathy. Read the room! - Danielson/Archer was fine but felt like it went on for 6 years. When you already know who's winning just keep it short and sweet lads! - barely any backstage segments. They really help break up the shows otherwise it feels like endless matches. - Jay White/Billy Gunn should have lasted about 4 minutes maximum before breaking down. Truly dreadful. Nothing worthwhile going on here. - just a genuine lack of excitement throughout the show. Felt like stuff is just being thrown out rather thsn built to properly. - AEW roster is absolutely stacked but the shows don't really feel like it. Imagine if they had all the people Copeland listed actually on one show at the same time! It'd be fucking AMAZING and can't miss. They have enough people to stack all 3 weekly shows with top guys but it never feels like they do. - three singles matches in a row. They really need to pace and format the shows better.

Ofcourse big houses are key to wrestling being fun and crazy and a lively crowd is essential. Likewise ticket sales bring in big money. But the real money is absolutely in media rights. They are the sole reason WWE has been making record breaking profits for years now. If AEW was drawing big crowds but had a bad TV deal the money from live shows would be highly unlikely to put AEW in profit. Creating lots of content that they can get paid for is the key to the companies long term business model. Everything from the past 4 years plus has essentially been leading up to this round of TV rights, it's their only chance to be a self sufficient profitable company. Calling AEW a "TV company" isn't giving them a free pass or excusing their mistakes but it does help understand what their priorities are and why they've been shite at certain things.

Slim J is actually a pretty good worker. One of those guys whose been around forever but never got a decent break. If he had a different gimmick you'd have thought he'd be exactly the type of person they would want to feature in the new ROH.

I think this is best encapsulated in his own words when he complains in the interview about going to Tony Khan and saying "you need to do something about this because if you don't I will, and you're not going to like it". If he genuinely was a real locker room leader he'd be able to have these conversations with other younger talent where he sets them straight but in a professional and proper manner and they understand and appreciate what they did wrong and what effect it has on themselves and others. Punk on the other hand sees something wrong and his way of "fixing" something is to basically yell, scream and/or fight said person or to basically do what they did but ten times worse and more publicly. Then he blames others for the fact that he "had" to respond like that, because in his mind he had no choice and it's not his fault - it's theirs.

I don't think banning piledrivers made any difference at all. A piledriver is a dangerous move if it's fucked up but if done properly and safely then I imagine it's fairly low impact for the person receiving it. I think the main thing around this time, especially with the Smackdown crew, is that they were having a lot of heavy hitting matches each week which were filled to the brim with suplexes, particularly German Suplexes. I think the sheer amount of German suplexes all these guys were taking all week long is probably the main cause of everyone being drugged up maniacs with dust for spines during this period.

EDIT: nevermind.

During the Gripe Bomb at All Out, while the Bucks and Kenny were in the building Hangman wasn't. FTR had actually taken him out drinking, which leads to two possibilities: 1) It was sheer coincidence that Hangman was taken out drinking with CM Punk's best buddies when Punk started publicly slagging him off. 2) the much funnier possibility that Punk asked FTR to take Hangman out drinking to ensure that he wouldn't be in the building when he was slagging him off.

The Dynamite thread is getting once again over loaded with the ongoing CM Punk saga. Makes sense to have a separate thread to discuss the whiny hyper sensitive hypocritical little twat. Or you can just post stuff you like about him. The Raw match with Cena was his finest moment and he's never been anywhere near as good since.

Decided to put a thread together where we can bitch and complain about whatever stupid thing Cody has done this week rather than inevitably clogging up the Dynamite thread. Personally, I find Cody Rhodes to be a pretty interesting wrestler. On paper and at one point in practice he was the perfect babyface with a great story. Son of a wrestling legend walks away from the big evil WWE who are forcing him to dress up like a cartoon character to start his own promotion for the fans and to bring back "real wrestling". There was a few months where Cody Rhodes was an absolutely excellent white meat pure babyface the likes of which the business hadn't seen for years. But it all gradually fell apart and every week it seems to get worse and more confusing. I would easily put Cody at the top of my worst wrestler of 2021 list. The fall from grace is really unique and kind of fascinating. I've tried to come up with every terrible decision he's made that gradually eroded fan support to the point now where everyone is either bored of him or hates him. - Firstly and perhaps most importantly: that fucking tattoo. The MJF match was a hot feud with great angles (the 10 lashes is an all time great angle) but regardless of how good the build was when he came out for the match with that ridiculous thing on his neck you could feel the air suck out the room. I think a huge portion of the fanbase lost a lot of respect for him as soon as they saw it. I know I did. It's hard to cheer for someone who would do something so stupid. - "Cody Rhodes has a special announcement". Every couple of weeks you'd get this on Dynamite. And every time not much really happened. Cody merely going out to do a promo was advertised as if it was important. Gradually over time fans pick up on that stuff and it's annoying. - Cody is not a very good singles wrestler. He seems to think he is though. On a show with one of the best and most exciting and dynamic rosters of all time, you need to be really good. Especially if you're positioned as a top star like Cody often is. Cody rarely has a match above average and only does with the right opponent (namely someone who is much, much better than him). He does a lot of stuff in his matches that don't really make sense for someone of his style or size and his matches rarely have any story or psychology to them. He had a terrible match with Anthony Ogogo which had probably the most obvious story possible to work (dangerous boxer vs wrestler - wrestler dodges and outwrestles the boxer to stay away from the punches, eventually a punch lands so the wrestler sells loads before eventually getting using his superior wrestling skills to get the win) but instead they worked a generic and dull normal match. - That time he dyed his hair black to show everyone how serious he was but looked like Eddie Munster. Cody does not do subtlety. - Brandi Rhodes. I'm sure she's a lovely person in real life, but she's a horrendously unlikeable onscreen character and any association/appearances she makes with Cody Rhodes the character makes him more smug and unlikeable by association. Remember when she randomly went all "ima' whoop yo' ass ya trick bitch" on Jade Cargill? Embarrassing scenes. - Hey, it's lovely that Cody and Brandi had a baby but did they really need to announce it on television? And did they really need to do it with the most sickeningly smug video of all time? It's not a huge thing on it's own but all of these things add up. - That entrance. Firstly his song is pretty bad but not offensively bad by wrestling theme standards...then he started adding extra layers to it...and more pyro...he has the biggest entrance of anyone on the roster by far. Even the Champion! - AEW typically doesn't do rematches...except for Cody though. Dude always gets his win back. - Cody is booked like he's a special attraction. He's not. He hasn't earned that spot. The fans don't see him as a special attraction. - Cody Rhodes is a lazy storyteller. You can tell he's a product of the WWE system because Cody's stories are always based around "moments" rather than build or logic. It feels like he has an idea he gets excited about and he just rushes towards it so he can do it as soon as possible. It always makes his stories feel completely disjointed. Like the 3 week long story of Arn Anderson calling him weak, setting a fire in his garden and him getting slapped about in a training school before coming back like nothing had ever happened. Or having a hardcore match with firespots to blow off a feud that's ONLY ONE WEEK OLD. - Set himself on fire on live TV doing a fucking idiotic spot for no reason whatsoever. Cody also blades constantly in matches because he's not talented enough to build drama in any other way. - The CodyVerse, completely separated himself from the rest of the roster and spent almost a year only feuding with his training school people who no one cared about. All the while the rest of the roster rapidly outgrew him in talent and star power. Now feels like he's from a completely different show. - No one comes out of a feud with Cody better off than they were on the way in. He's a star power blackhole, sucks you in and shits you out. - Seems to think he's doing some kind of tweener John Cena type act. Except people actually liked John Cena, he was a star and paid to see him. I know the talk is how great a Cody heel turn would be...I'm not convinced. He doesn't seem to want to do it and I don't think he has the talent to actually pull it off to a top level. So...anyone here like him?

Fuck megathreads. Paul Wight made a good start as a commentator on Elevation. He's naturally likeable in the booth and while he sounds fairly green at times it's clear he's working very hard to put over the wrestlers. AEW feels much less chaotic and much more cohesive when you don't have JR rambling, bitching and fucking up constantly. Not really sure what the difference between Dark and Dark Elevation is supposed to be though.