Duke

12 minutes ago, Supremo said:

The way everything is playing out, I think The Rock has got a good shout for winning The Rumble.

Equally though, the idea of The Rock, at his current age and size, in the Royal Rumble match? I reckon all his muscles will fall off his body and if he makes it to Wrestlemania he'll look like the fella who melts at the end of Robocop.

Considering Roman isn't at the chamber, I think Rock has to win the Rumble, especially as anyone winning and calling out Seth Rollins' belt will look an absolute knob. Even if it's Punk.

I suppose you could have Cody win but be punted by Orton before he has chance to announce who he's going to face, Pearce says he has to find another main event because he can't have a touch and go Mania main and Rock takes it (but Cody makes a miraculous return in order to face Randy). This would massively cheapen the rumble and is a terrible idea, but it's the only other idea I can think of.

19 hours ago, CharlesTuckerTheThird said:

I've seen very little of Bluey, odd clips here and there, is Unicorse just the dad's way of venting his true feelings at the others or.....?

Unicorse is the most annoying unicorn in the world. I don't think he's meant to be any more than that, just Bandit on the wind up.

At least in his first episode, he's there to teach Mum that you can't control others behaviour, just how you react to them. 

1 hour ago, Lorne Malvo said:

Orange Cassidy not being one of the four pillars is a bit of a bugbear of mine (an irrational bugbear, because it doesn't really mean anything). He may be AEW's biggest homegrown success story outside of MJF.

To be fair, I think that might be because the pillars were always meant to be the young guys who will be the future, rather than just important wrestlers. OC turns 40 this year.

11 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

I actively disliked Adam Page before AEW, and now he's one of my favourites, so he's a success story for them regardless of whether you'd consider him homegrown, as far as I'm concerned.

Yeah I think Ol Hanger's transformation from at best a vanilla, boring midcarder to one of their most popular main eventers gets understated as one of AEWs biggest hits.

1 minute ago, JLM said:

So I was going to join in with this fun little side thread you have going. I was going to say “Vince famously abhors sneezing and Tony doesn’t have problem with it.”

Then I thought “well sneezing is a great way to waste your cocaine actually, so maybe it’s something they have in common”. I wrote a fucking Tony Sniff joke in my head. I hate this world. I will not post in this thread again in 2024. That’s it. I have hit rock bottom. 

This made me giggle silently to myself in the middle of the office sat by a team who have no idea who I am. Thanks very much.

Vince prefers intravenous drugs, allegedly. That's another one.

Vince is a lot older than Tony Khan, that's another difference between them.

A few brief thoughts on what I thought was a really fun show.

- I've never clicked with the Toni Storm thing. Didn't hate it but never enjoyed it, but being Mariah May's posh mum is amazing. "Did you do an arm drag" and "here have a chocolate" while Mariah looks annoyed but still eats the chocolate was both funny and oddly triggering about my own childhood.

- Undisputed Kingdom has stalled already

- the whol bang band scissor gang feels both stupid and entirely out of nowhere. Here's hoping it leads to a double turn of the gunns being kicked out of the bullet club gold with Daddy Ass and the Acclaimed taking their spot, because they're massively spinning wheels at the moment.

- Bucks V Sting and Darby feels really weird but will probably mean it's a really good match, so I can dig it. Hoping that Bucks do Sting opponent spots through the years.

- Joe talking about bringing your record to the committee feels like what TK was talking about after the CC, and the promos with Swerve and Hanger was fantastic. 

- What was better though was the HOOK signal and his confrontation with Joe. He felt like Goldberg and it's a shame he's going to lose, although obviously he needs to. Your turn to make a superstar Joe. Let's see what you got.

Vince does all his sex testing himself rather than outsourcing it to independent contractors. That's another difference.

Vince also didn't start his company from scratch - there's another difference.

He's doing it so his posts get engagement and his #aewdynamite gets traction. He usually does this stupid stuff 24 hours or so before dynamite. It's a strategy.

It's a stupid strategy that undoubtedly does more harm than good, makes him look small time and sours people on the company. 

Hook is awesome.

4 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

In the first Undisputed Kingdom (a name I hate, btw) promo, I was disappointed that Roderick Strong started with his "shouting Adam's name" bit, which was already a rubbish distillation of what made him an unexpectedly good goofball heel into one stupid catchphrase, but was even worse when trying to relaunch him as part of a serious threat. 

Yeah I bumped on this too. Surely the whole of all the goofy crap in the last months was a misdirection, and so retaining any of that is completely stupid.

Seeing as Roman isn't on the poster for EC, my prediction is that he isn't even on the show, but Rock is in a promo battle with Paul Heyman and Cody tags with Jey to take on Jimmy and Solo. In the grand old tradition of his dad, Cody gets a horseman beatdown.

The tag belts have been very much the dominion of collision lately. While they were clearly intending to feature Starks and bill on dynamite with the golden jets things, they're now stuck in Jericho's quagmire. 

I do think action andretti and top flight should've won the trios titles though. The Acclaimed feel so cold right now and the belts feel crap because they're on them. When it was elite v death triangle and elite v HoB they felt much more important.

6 hours ago, JLM said:

Fine with Hangman/Swerve continuing for now, though have no idea how they'll top my 2023 match of the year. Swerve is going to be the champ before the end of the year but he shouldn't be Joe's first challenger, and I like how fired up this feud makes Hangman. I think this works for both of them for the time being. 

 

Considering Pages promo earlier I'm expecting a three way, which personally I am absolutely here for.

4 minutes ago, Supremo said:

Remember when Austin Theory cashed in Money in the Bank for the US Title? Finish your story, Cody! US Champ! Cody vs. Logan!

Surprised how many people don’t think it’s possible for Rock vs. Roman to happen at Elimination Chamber, as if this wasn’t the exact pattern of events last year. This seems to be Hunter’s approach to Wrestlemania season. Don’t waste it by only having the one big event when you can have two or three. Sami vs. Roman was fucking massive last year. Felt as big as Wrestlemania itself. It doesn’t feel like a big leap at all for him to do something similar here, especially when they’ve booked a stadium, with rumours that someone else is willing to foot the bill to get The Rock to appear.

See, I'm surprised how many people seem to think the primary factor is what WWE want to do, rather than what the Rock wants to do, but I guess we'll see

28 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

It's possible. There was some talk a couple of weeks ago that the Australian government/tourist board/something or other were trying to convince WWE to book The Rock. If somebody else is footing the bill for it, I can see WWE not waiting until Mania.

If they can get two matches out of him, which I doubt, it could kill two birds with one stone if he works Roman at Elimination Chamber and CM Punk to main event one night of Wrestlemania.

I don't know, Rock/Roman is the biggest match they can do by far and I can't imagine a) Rock wanting to do anything other than the main event of Mania and b)them changing their booking philosophy so radically. 

I can imagine Rock being on the chamber show for a promo segment or an angle, but not doing Wrestlemania seems like such a profound departure from how they book and view Mania that I just can't see it.

Twitter IWC trying to talk themselves into believing the Rock is coming back to work Elimination Chamber and not Mania.

I've seen that video and while there is good stuff in there the Jay White and Hangman explanations are extremely weak.

He either:

1) didn't know it was coming, in which case he's an idiot.

2) knew it was coming but didn't realise it was inappropriate in which case he's an idiot.

3) knew it was coming but his pride got in the way of taking it off, in which case he's an idiot.

11 hours ago, d-d-d-dAz said:

He may just be a creepy weirdo. People tend to conflate that with criminality these days, but it may just be that he's a creep that had a moody when a younger woman asked him to keep his melted lego figure of a barrell body away from her and they all agreed to go their separate ways.

Depends how you spin it I guess. That exact scenario could also, quite reasonably, be portrayed as "young woman lured into a senior leader's hotel room under false pretences, where, getting her alone, in private and in his space, he implicitly pressured her for sex. She rejected him and had to leave her job as a result" 

The power dynamics in play make this so so grim.

Seeing something coming doesn't make it a worse story, in fact the opposite is often true 

15 hours ago, Duke said:

If the Devil ends up screwing Max out of the belt then I will concede it's the worst storyline of the year

So why attack Jay White then? 

I can only assume Max's injuries are worse than expected and he needs some proper time off, so needed to lose, but that's grasping at straws. Glad we can move on to the proper story now.

Saying "choosing Punk over the Elite was the wrong decision" (a viewpoint that I think is wrong anyway) presupposes that Punk doesn't start another fight with, for example, Jack Perry, at a later date and get fired, meaning you're losing 4 of your top stars (and the guys hat the company is literally named after) and Punk, rather than just 45 year old Punk.

It definitely hurt losing him, but not as much as it would have done losing the elite, and it doesn't guarantee he stays 

If the Devil ends up screwing Max out of the belt then I will concede it's the worst storyline of the year

Edit: and surely the smart thing to do if you're TK is pull the Jericho match, right? You're not announcing his guilt, you're just buying yourself time to figure it out and it means you don't risk being booed or heckled out of the building on a sting match.

I think the sports entertainment bit isn't "do we want storylines" but rather "do we want a show about wrestling, or a show that has wrestling in it?". 

Orange Cassidy has potential to be a classic sports entertainment goofy character thats all about skits, and he has been in the past, but his first international title reign was grounded around matches with a compelling story built in. What it wasn't was a debate segment with Chris Jericho.

The CC has had really good stories throughout, whether it's Eddie Kingston s redemption, switchblade cheating his way through, or Daniel Garcia looking for that one big win. It's all still "sports based presentation", but has stories baked in. 

I'd argue that all their best stories fit that model. Hangman's descent started because he lost big matches and was built around the title as much as Kenny specifically. It was built around Hangman as a wrestler and became about Hangman as a man. By comparison, Sammy had a match with Roman because of their interpersonal conflict. It was still great, just constructed differently.