Paid Members TheBurningRed Posted July 14 Paid Members Posted July 14 1 hour ago, Lion_of_the_Midlands said: Mark Davis is a boring name for a wrestler. For a snooker player in the 1980s it would be fine Up until this year, there was a snooker player called Mark Davis. Nicknamed The Battler from Hastings. Maybe old Dunkzilla should become The Queen from Queensland. Quote
The Gaffer Posted July 14 Posted July 14 19 hours ago, Jesse said: On the other hand, maybe it just doesn't matter at all? Not to you, or to me, but to his career in general. It's tribalistic to bring him up, so I want to preface by saying I'm not arsed either way, but the person that feels closest to his is Punk. Where his on-screen "voice of the voiceless" persona felt so close to his principled stand in real life against a company that he felt de-prioritised his health, devalued their employees, got into bed with the Saudi's etc. And going back might've turned a few people off him who really bought into that, but you can't say it's done his career any damage. It's not a fun feeling to sit with but maybe in a few months he'll have another heater with Swerve and then it'll all be forgotten by most and he'll carry on with no real impact to himself or his career. Punk's closest friends in 2005 would all have said directly to the camera "Oh yeah, he's a total asshole." It doesn't remove the apparent ethical contradictions between his words and his actions, but it does make it all less of a shock that an obvious arsehole is...being an obvious arsehole. All contained in a historical understanding - also - that he'd likely be as cutthroat as the next person to get to the tippy top. It all means his general aura - especially moving toward the sunset of his in ring career - hasn't really suffered too much. Hangman's completely different. His upward trajectory as a face - AEW's Del Boy chasing the millions - was built on him being a lovely lovely fella who maybe - just maybe - 'got' a certain awareness, vulnerability and try-not-to-use-terms-that-have-turned-toxic. I've never had that feeling with CM Punk. And that aura (and sure, maybe he'll get another one) is just completely fucked. Sure, we could all have had a little more self awareness about the whole thing. But so could he. Quote
Paid Members BomberPat Posted July 14 Paid Members Posted July 14 a Drop Bear is an Australian cryptid thing; a carnivorous koala bear that drops out of trees to attack unsuspecting people. It's a weird tall story for dumb tourists, kind of like the running Scottish gag about the haggis being an animal. Not the worst nickname for a beefy Australian wrestler, but not one I'd run with as an official name. Quote
Paid Members Lion_of_the_Midlands Posted July 14 Paid Members Posted July 14 7 minutes ago, BomberPat said: a Drop Bear is an Australian cryptid thing; a carnivorous koala bear that drops out of trees to attack unsuspecting people. It's a weird tall story for dumb tourists, kind of like the running Scottish gag about the haggis being an animal. Not the worst nickname for a beefy Australian wrestler, but not one I'd run with as an official name. AEW is very inclusive, and Drop Bear might appeal to a very specific community if Mark Davis is OK with that. Quote
Paid Members BomberPat Posted July 14 Paid Members Posted July 14 1 minute ago, Lion_of_the_Midlands said: AEW is very inclusive, and Drop Bear might appeal to a very specific community if Mark Davis is OK with that. based on "Dunkzilla", and Davis' Hey! EW appearance, he is absolutely fine with that. Quote
Paid Members Statto Posted July 14 Paid Members Posted July 14 Just for clarity, "Drop Bear" as a nickname for him was purely a me idea based on a (during the ad break, I think) exchange between Nigel and Fletcher on comms (Nigel asked if there was any truth to Davis having trained with drop bears during his recent absence, Fletcher said they weren't real). It's better than Dunkzilla though. Oh, and the only sizes I can find in that blazer would swamp me worse than a Cena / John Matrix suit. Lousy giant Americans. Quote
Paid Members John Matrix Posted July 14 Paid Members Posted July 14 7 minutes ago, Statto said: Just for clarity, "Drop Bear" as a nickname for him was purely a me idea based on a (during the ad break, I think) exchange between Nigel and Fletcher on comms (Nigel asked if there was any truth to Davis having trained with drop bears during his recent absence, Fletcher said they weren't real). It's better than Dunkzilla though. Oh, and the only sizes I can find in that blazer would swamp me worse than a Cena / John Matrix suit. Lousy giant Americans. Oi. Quote
Paid Members Jesse Posted July 15 Paid Members Posted July 15 On 7/14/2026 at 10:53 AM, The Gaffer said: Sure, we could all have had a little more self awareness about the whole thing. But so could he. Shortly after I posted that I blacked out in the bathroom and hit my head, so I'd like to formally apologise to all Punk fans I was clearly going through some kind of brain problem at the time. Quote
Paid Members Kamran Posted July 15 Paid Members Posted July 15 Only a couple of matches announced for tonight: Quote
RIDDUM_N_STYLE Posted July 15 Posted July 15 Cope and Cage vs Yuta and Garcia for the Tag Team Championships been added as well Quote
Paid Members BomberPat Posted July 16 Paid Members Posted July 16 I found that a rough show after a couple of strong weeks (though I only watched highlights of last weeks). Unless I missed a video package, you'd be forgiven for not even knowing that Hangman Page was back. Unforgivable to not have some follow-up on a babyface former champion returning to TV - I assumed he would pop up in Kenny's title celebration, but he was nowhere to be seen. He said he was going to challenge for some of the other titles, but on a show that had challenges issued for the TNT, National, Trios, and International Titles, he wasn't there. He wasn't there with the Young Bucks to celebrate Kenny Omega's title win, and nobody on commentary even questioned it. And after all the cheerleading Will Ospreay did to get Hangman to challenge Moxley, what does Hangman think about Will (and now Kenny) teaming with Moxley? We'll just have to guess, he's not here. And where's Swerve, come to think of it? Redemption is shaping up to be a B-tier PPV, but one that you hope overdelivers. I'm sure Kenny Omega vs. Kevin Knight will be a good match, and feels like a carbon copy of Hangman vs. Kyle Fletcher - the young upstart TNT Champion, in the Don Callis Family, challenges the new babyface Elite World Champion, and comes up short, but shows that one day they will be at a World Title calibre. But assuming Kenny is losing at All In, what a waste of his one successful title defence on PPV, in Canada. It feels like something that warrants a bigger match than that. The Death Riders stuff at least feels like it's going somewhere, but it's the Death Riders, and I've been burned before. I still hate it. The show opening with Daniel Garcia coaching Will Ospreay. No slight on Garcia as a wrestler, but he's miles below Ospreay in the pecking order, and has spent his AEW career bouncing from mentor to mentor without ever properly striking out on his own, that's not the guy who should be barking instructions to the anointed top babyface next champion. To follow that up in the very next segment with Garcia and Yuta as the sneaky villainous heels is just doubling down on how dumb this whole thing is. The Death Riders are the babyface mates to Will Ospreay, making the save for him and Kenny against the heel Don Callis Family, but on the same show they're also the dastardly heels teaming with The Dogs to fight Cope & Christian and The Bang Bang Gang. It's not just that it's inconsistent, it's that it's unsatisfying in such a way that it's baked in to whatever the outcome is - if Moxley turns heel on Will, he's still a heel half the time anyway, and still hangs around with other heels, so it doesn't feel like a betrayal, it feels like an inevitably, it's Ospreay as Sting to the Death Riders as the Four Horsemen, the babyface just looks gullible for trusting the heels. But conversely, if Ospreay were to turn on Moxley, Mox isn't enough of a babyface to garner any sympathy. It's neither one thing or the other. I had thought for ages that the best thing to do would be get Ospreay out of the Death Riders, beat Moxley at Redemption, and have them completely in the rear view mirror by the time we get to Wembley. Complete non-factor in Omega/Ospreay. Now, I think it might have been better to have had Moxley earn a title shot somehow and challenge Omega, with the tension between Will and Mox being Will starting to question him for jumping the queue in terms of title shots. Have Ospreay save Omega from a Death Riders beatdown, send them packing, have Mox apologise and back down, only to turn on Will after the finish of the title match at All In, setting him up as Will's first challenger. Anything but having the weird ambiguity of the Death Riders hanging over a match that should have the simplest story imaginable - hometown babyface wants to win the World Title in front of his family on the biggest stage. If they have anything else planned, they need to work pretty hard for it to be a more worthwhile story than that. On the fantasy booking kick, Kyle Fletcher vs. Bandido will be brilliant, but I assumed that angle was setting up a multi-man. When Fletcher was talking about how he would accept challenges from anyone, Okada was eyeing him up, and I assumed he was going to step up and say he wanted a match. Imagine how bonkers a title match Fletcher vs. Okada vs. Takeshita vs. Bandido would be! Quote
Paid Members LaGoosh Posted July 16 Paid Members Posted July 16 29 minutes ago, BomberPat said: And where's Swerve, come to think of it? Seems to be a part timer ever since his return last year. Quote
Paid Members Supremo Posted July 16 Paid Members Posted July 16 The exact same energy. Absolutely wild that they needed a filler main event for a B Show and didn’t go with Omega vs. Darby. Quote
WyattSheepMask Posted July 16 Posted July 16 (edited) I don’t doubt that Kenny will give Knight plenty on the night and it will be a decent match, but I’d be lying if I said I was excited for it. Could be a bit of a litmus test for Knight to see how he does in a top spot and how far they may go with him further down the line if he does well. And oh great, The Painmakers back “Don’t be fooled, he’s just regular Chris Jericho with a stupid cheap hat (and shitty face paint), he still does the same bad comedy he did before” Edited July 16 by WyattSheepMask Quote
Awards Moderator HarmonicGenerator Posted July 16 Awards Moderator Posted July 16 6 hours ago, BomberPat said: I found that a rough show after a couple of strong weeks (though I only watched highlights of last weeks). ... Imagine how bonkers a title match Fletcher vs. Okada vs. Takeshita vs. Bandido would be! I found it quite hard going as well, but I mostly put that down to My AEW being absolutely shitty shitty shit crap. I think at one point on this show it was freezing after every spot, and there was a stage in the tag title match where it took 10 minutes of refreshes, back and restart, wifi off and on again, just to get it to keep playing. Which it did, for about 40 seconds before it froze again. Look, I don’t want a Roku TV thing. I don’t want to cast it. I just want my AEW to play on the iPad like I’ve done since 2019. If you’re out there Tony, please can you do an app, or make episodes downloadable or something. Anyway, I can’t comment on a lot of the show because of that, but happily it had sorted itself out by the main event, which I thought was loads of fun. Willow, Lena and Mercedes dependably great, Bayne looked as good as she ever has, and Hyan and Maya fit well in that mix. If ever there was a PPV to finally have a women’s match main event, it’s got to be Redemption. Willow vs Thekla to go on last over Kenny very obviously retaining against Knight, any day. On Pat’s last point here, I get a sense we might maybe be getting Fletcher, Okada and Takeshita in a triple threat at Wembley. Yes please if so. Quote
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