sek69

I mean, beating up the Miz is the one thing that could turn him babyface but he's too douchey even for that to work.

Rey got time to express his gratitude to the fans and didn't get humiliated, so that was a noticeable difference.

lol Roman just ethered the fuck outta Theory

I hope Roman spears Theory into outer space at SummerSlam.

Kicking things off with the Big Dog, Hunter ACKNOWLEGES the Tribal Chief.

WWE's biggest problem was having one guy still trying to be in complete control of every aspect like it was still 1985 and he was running the regional territory he bought from his dad. It seems like Nick Khan/Steph will be running the business end and Hunter will be doing the creative, so that alone is less of a workload. Plus I'm going to go out on a limb and assume he's not going to be an obsessive weirdo who tears up the script before every show. I'm not going to say managing 5 hours of TV (plus a Premium Live Event every month) isn't a massive workload, but a lot of the stresses that existed in WWE were self inflicted.

Dave in particular seems hopeful WWE will do a better job at creating stars now that they won't be limited to Vince's extremely narrow vision of what a star is. WWE main roster creative has become so glacially stagnant literally anyone else would be doing a better job by default, but HHH really got exposed when he had to do long term booking instead of just 5-6 month callup cycles. Also there's the fact that all the positive buzz NXT ever got was from them being the alternative to main roster WWE where guys were actually allowed to have good matches and not be stuck with career ending gimmicks. When AEW came along, we got a real alternative that wasn't part of the extended WWE Universe and NXT started looking more like the corporate sock puppet it always was. Plus as NXT got more well received, Hunter started getting high on his own farts and booked every NXT main event to have to be a Mania style overdramatic experience with a million "shocked someone kicked out of a move" faces.

It looks like the show was a big hit in terms of digital buys, more than the first TK produced ROH show, and was something like the #4 all time biggest attendance for a ROH show. Basically it was the biggest ROH crowd for a show not on a Mania weekend or in MSG.

Yeah it seems the most valid complaint one could make about AEW is that their Talent Relations department is dogshit.

I suppose the real question is how long do Steph/Hunter/Nick feel they need to keep things relatively status quo? I expect a lot of smaller changes that were directly tied to Vince quirks (like most of WWE Newspeak), but things like the general presentation to stay more or less the same for a little while longer.

Matches on NJ Strong occasionally from what I can gather.

I'd like to think we've all come to terms with your Mauro and Christian obessions at this point

Because dummies on Twitter think TK is a micromanager like Vince and personally oversees every department. Now you can (and probably should at this point) make the argument that he should have someone else running talent relations, but instead they just work under the impression that the owner of the company has to be on call for all the wrestlers at all times.

Also the plan apparently was always for Claudio to win the title, it's the reason TK initially signed him before Bryan got hurt. For Gresham to be surprised that it was actually going to happen seems a bit rich. I get the sense he tried a "that doesn't work for me brother" and it didn't work out the way he thought it would.

Rush asked Tony to have Dragon Lee as his opponent because he thought it would help his brother get signed, so that explains him putting in the work last night. Now him vs Mox will be interesting since Rush is very much a student of the LA Park School of Not Doing a Job. Gresham coming out for his match without his usual octopus getup sporting a boo boo face was hilarious. If you want to tell Tony to go fuck himself, fine, but don't go out to the ring all pouty like a child who was just told to eat his vegetables.

Rush vs Dragon Lee was crazy as expected since these two have probably been having this match since they were kids. Rush can very much be the Randy Orton of Lucha in the sense that you don't always get maximum effort, but when you do you're reminded why he's one of the best.

Pure matches aren't always my bag, but Yuta/Garcia was a banger, and Regal on commentary dropping knowledge made it that much better. I loved when Ian asked if it would be a concern if it went to the judges (one of them was Josh Woods, who Yuta beat for the belt) and Regal made it clear going to the judges was not acceptable like a stern dad

Six man was fun, I'm surprised Tony remembered ROH had six man titles. Daniel Garcia is so great trolling ROH fans, even sporting the Regal/Danielson maroon gear.

I was at work during the show, watching now, and I love how Regal was becoming excited at the ways Grisham was inflicting pain. He loved it even though it was his guy on the receiving end!

Vince's last act seems to have been removing him from the Maximum Male Models gimmick. Will that be overturned now? Maybe, but I'm sure Steph/Hunter/Bruce/whoever else is doing creative will have bigger fish to fry.

Bryan Danielson just announced he's cleared to return as of this morning and will be facing Daniel Garcia on Dynamite this week.

Apparently TK signed Claudio with plans to have him be a ROH guy before Bryan went down, so maybe that was the plan all along? I don't see it being a bad call no matter who wins, but it would be odd to have a guy who's part of one of the main AEW factions losing to a guy who has only been on TV a couple of times.

Maybe, but Old Man Vince was going around backstage 2 weeks ago saying FUCK EM, so clearly someone (Fox? USA? the Board of Directors?) stepped forward to tell him it was time to go. It's going to be something when the full details come out.

Pat's been allowed to break a lot of the weird verbiage rules since Vince loves him and is a mark for having a celebrity on his announce team, but there's been several times where Pat would say something and then be quiet for a while since Vince was in his headset. As for Dunn, it probably will come down to who ends up controlling creative. He'll be safe as long as Bruce is around, but Bruce's main talent was coming up with things Vince would enjoy so that makes him a third wheel now.

Rumors are that when Real Sports interviewed Vince for whatever their story will be, the questions he was asked showed HBO knew way more about everything than WWE/Vince realized and that's what prompted him to bail. We won't see huge changes overnight, but things that were 100% Vince quirks like strange verbiage and yelling in the announcers' headsets will be things that will no longer be happening. Dave pretty much outright said last night the announcing in WWE is going to improve immensely now that they will be able to talk like normal humans and not have to worry about getting screamed at all night. I also think Steph shouldn't necessarily be painted with the same brush as Vince, at least not yet. Yes that was what she was raised on, but since we've never seen WWE without Vince having final creative say, we really can't just assume she's going to just be Vince 2.0 only (hopefully) less horny.