Pro Wrestling Contract Season

[TheBurningRed]

I could see Bayley going. She needs a fresh environment and the options she’d have in AEW would be to good to pass up I reckon. 

[DavidB6937]

There's very few people I'd consider to be "lifers" anymore. If someone like Edge can go to AEW then I think most people would genuinely consider it.

Obviously someone like Seth is very unlikely unless there's a fall out, and guys like Cena and Miz are so WWE that i cant ever imagine it happening, but someone like Bayley seems like she just loves wrestling in general and has friends all over the place and wants to help the industry as a whole so I'd be really surprised if she didn't seriously consider a move because what's she really got left?

[TheScarlettChad]

7 hours ago, Hannibal Scorch said:

She’s an absolute lifer. She ain’t leaving. If they don’t re-sign her she’ll just keep turning up and helping out backstage for free. 
 

Punk and Drew were not asked to take pay cuts. Both are upset about the situation and one is apparently so upset they’re already considering options.

Which one is so upset? Punk jumping back to AEW would be HYSTERICAL. 

[Lion_of_the_Midlands]

Tony Khan is good at a lot of things as a booker, but booking more than one women's match per show isn't one of them. Bayley would have to just he looking for a cash out to sign with AEW. For example I know she is injured now but look at how wasteful the booking of Willow Nightingale has been and I can't imagine that Bayley is looking on thinking "That's what I want"

[RedTwoster]

7 hours ago, Hannibal Scorch said:

She’s an absolute lifer. She ain’t leaving. If they don’t re-sign her she’ll just keep turning up and helping out backstage for free. 

I don’t think that at all. They’ve already shown their hand with how they view her by bumping her from a ‘Mania card for a surprise return and she’s not been particularly prominent - with Mercedes there, I could absolutely see her jumping, particularly if she gets offered more money which I suspect she would.

4 minutes ago, Lion_of_the_Midlands said:

Tony Khan is good at a lot of things as a booker, but booking more than one women's match per show isn't one of them. Bayley would have to just he looking for a cash out to sign with AEW. For example I know she is injured now but look at how wasteful the booking of Willow Nightingale has been and I can't imagine that Bayley is looking on thinking "That's what I want"

I think his booking of female wrestlers deserves more scrutiny than it gets, but I wouldn’t count Mercedes Mone or Toni Storm in that criticism, outside of the fact neither have main evented a PPV. I imagine Bayley would come under that category, getting paid so much that she’d get used in a similar way. I’d have to hope that another big female name would lead to the rest of the women’s roster getting more TV time. Thekla is absolutely smashing it at the moment, as is Shida - AEW has the female talent, those wrestlers just need to be treated as equal to the men.

[Statto]

My favourite thing from that list is they have an option to keep R-Truth under contract until he's 60.

[BomberPat]

the thing with Bayley is that she has Lodestone going outside of WWE, which is her project of doing a ton of women's wrestling seminars with talent from all over the world. She's had Cena and Rey show up unannounced to some, among others, which is obviously the perks of her doing it while under the WWE umbrella, but I can see her having ambitions for Lodestone that she can't meet while contracted to WWE - if she leaves, I think it will be to run her own shows or to work with talent she'd never get to work with in WWE.

The difference between the two women's divisions - and looking on Cagematch, "booking more than one women's match per show", as low a bar as it is, doesn't do WWE many favours either; Backlash only had one women's match, and it's increasingly rare for RAW to have more than one - tends to be one of content more than quality; a lot of women would prefer to work AEW because of the freedom in the kind of matches they are able to work there.

[Hannibal Scorch]

I know someone who is a stat nerd about wrestling. These were the percentage of women’s wrestling in the last week

Dynamite/Collision - 9.3%
Raw 7%
NXT 21.7%
ROH 19.2%
TNA 7%
Smackdown 10.6%

 

Rather tellingly at the post DoN media scrum, he was asked about the in ring difference between ROH and AEW. He said with outside pressures he can focus more on Women’s matches. 
 

Read between the lines whether that’s directly a network decision (and we’ve heard various instances where talent were not allowed to work dynamite/collision), or because ratings are very key right now and the segments don’t do as well, reducing them.

[HarmonicGenerator]

19 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

The difference between the two women's divisions - and looking on Cagematch, "booking more than one women's match per show", as low a bar as it is, doesn't do WWE many favours either; Backlash only had one women's match, and it's increasingly rare for RAW to have more than one - tends to be one of content more than quality; a lot of women would prefer to work AEW because of the freedom in the kind of matches they are able to work there.

I suppose the difference there is that WWE shows don't seem to have more than 4 or 5 matches total anymore, whereas on AEW you're regularly looking at 9 or 10 match cards, so the disparity is much more obvious.

They do seem to do better at it on Collision where you'll at least regularly get two women's matches per show, even if one is a squash.

Edited May 29 by HarmonicGenerator

[gmoney]

9 hours ago, Hannibal Scorch said:

Punk and Drew were not asked to take pay cuts. Both are upset about the situation and one is apparently so upset they’re already considering options.

What's your source for that, Hannibal Meltz?

[RedTwoster]

1 hour ago, Hannibal Scorch said:

Read between the lines whether that’s directly a network decision (and we’ve heard various instances where talent were not allowed to work dynamite/collision), or because ratings are very key right now and the segments don’t do as well, reducing them.

If that’s a viewpoint held or suggested in AEW, it’s nothing less than sexism. Female wrestlers have never been treated as equal to male wrestlers in AEW, so if there’s any evidence to back what you’re saying up, that’ll be why - it’s nothing to do with the wrestlers or their ability, it’s to do with how they’re presented. 

It’s no different than the now many times debunked Hollywood viewpoint that people of colour aren’t box office draws. It’s shameful, and Tony Khan should be embarrassed by the fact he’s not closed an AEW PPV with a women’s match seven years into this company’s history.

[Kamran]

Yeah, I think that's a bit of a cop-out excuse. If you book a decent feud/storyline, irrespective of gender, you'll get people watching. 

In other news, Max posted this on X a few days ago:

He's still listed on the AEW roster page so it looks like he's still under contract but I don't know how long for. I can see WWE being interested in him if he does leave AEW.

[Hannibal Scorch]

1 hour ago, gmoney said:

What's your source for that, Hannibal Meltz?

Their agent. That was a direct conversation with him. He also has Blake Monroe and Miro. Up until last week, Liv Morgan.

[DavidB6937]

I had a conversation with Drew's wife's hairdresser's postman and he said Drew isn't going anywhere.

[Hannibal Scorch]

1 hour ago, RedTwoster said:

If that’s a viewpoint held or suggested in AEW, it’s nothing less than sexism. Female wrestlers have never been treated as equal to male wrestlers in AEW, so if there’s any evidence to back what you’re saying up, that’ll be why - it’s nothing to do with the wrestlers or their ability, it’s to do with how they’re presented. 

It’s no different than the now many times debunked Hollywood viewpoint that people of colour aren’t box office draws. It’s shameful, and Tony Khan should be embarrassed by the fact he’s not closed an AEW PPV with a women’s match seven years into this company’s history.

I’m not saying I think it’s a valid excuse. But when they used to release the quarterly breakdowns the women’s segments generally saw a bigger drop then anyone else. Only Jericho had a similar effect (which is why the women wouldn’t be highlighted until the 2nd/3rd quarter of hour 2. It was like clockwork. And if the networks care that much they probably will give notes on structure.

I think had Mariah not been on her way out, the Hollywood Ending would have headlined last year.