sek69

Well at least they explained what happened to Juice (appendicitis), I thought it was odd he was stripped of the title and was still announced in the G1.

It's wild to see the Imapct X Division champ and a match to get into the AEW Interim World title on a major New Japan show. Plus they are walking the tightrope still partnering with CMLL when AEW and Impact work with AAA (it's also why FTR haven't been carrying the AAA belts while New Japan folks are appearing to promote Forbidden Door)

Jeff Cobb and the Great O-Kahn won back the IWGP tag titles at Dominion, commentary makes it seem a match with FTR for the ROH titles are next. Guess that's the Forbidden Door match?

Asian wrestlers in WWE have to either be cultural stereotypes (like Xia Li and Asuka) or act like children (Tozawa and Wendy Choo) and not much in between.

Yeah by all accounts and as much as we joke about most of them being another way to work the marks, Shawn seems to have made a legit 180 degree change in his life. No doubt a large part of that is being such a made guy in WWE (he's on the short list of guys Vince would pay whatever it takes to keep them from going on another promotion's TV) that not only did he survive the purge of anyone who ever said "Hi" to Hunter in the office, he ended up basically running NXT 2 POINT OH. Also yes, Excalibur and Taz are a great team but only having a two person commentary team is apparently illegal in US wrestling.

Maybe, considering how some people are about not understanding nuance and differences in situations. Sasha from all accounts gets upset at her creative (or lack thereof) to the point she walks out. Hasn't really hurt anyone except maybe Bianca since Vince's plan to fix SummerSlam was to job her in seconds, but that didn't really do too much long term. Shawn on the other hand was one long string of "that doesn't work for me brother" pretty much the entire time he was pushed as champion and top level guy. On to of, if shoot interviews done in the last 20 years were anything close to correct (I know), he went out of his way to fuck with other people's careers by getting pushes snuffed out/not wanting to work with them. I could see the first couple times he weasled out of jobbing a title people would still be all "yeah, but the matches....", but after a while I believe most folks would end up with a negative opinion of HBK.

Usually the people who are fans of him in the business come down to those who idolized him as a kid and his peers who were either in the Clique with him or were not affected by his politicking. IMO it's fair to say Shawn was both a once in a generation level talent and also a drug addled asshole at the same time. Imagine how HBK would get treated if he was around in the 2020s and did shit like always weaseling out of doing jobs and losing titles. I don't think he would be viewed nearly as favorable as he is now. He'd probably be in that Low-Ki "talented but rubs everyone the wrong way" category.

Was this Ospreay's first match back since his recent health issue?

IMO most of the negativity towards HBK stems from him being an irredeemable dickhead who fucked with people's careers until he found Jesus.

I mean it's pretty much the same gimmick as Imperium, just with one less person and red gear instead of black. Also since when is Mortal Kombat racist? As you might suspect from my avatar, I disagree with that opinon.

Holy shit, Dax is so good at like....EVERYTHING. It's amazing to watch.

After watching his New Japan work, it was kind of jarring to hear Will Ospreay due a promo with no swearing.

Jade vs Athena is money

I'm digging Kris Statlander's new gimmick as well

John Cena is a A+ quality human being.

Is Ronda a heel? She's facing Shotzi who (I think?) is still a heel but she's acting like a heel doing this promo.

Oh hey, they found Lacey Evans after she was supposed to be on Raw two weeks ago.

Smackdown's kicking off, so presumptive thoughts and prayers for Ricochet's chest since it's about to get caved the hell in.

I just can't wrap my head around people who seemingly base their lives around star ratings that they lose their shit on Twitter over 1/2 or 1/4 stars. It's a meme but those are the folks who desperately need to touch grass.

The way I heard the story is that DSOTR is being put on ice and WWE is behind a new show that is basically going to be their version of events. So it's not technically going to be DSOTR but a WWE financed replacement. Either way it seems clear WWE was not happy with their dirty laundry being aired and wanted to put a stop to it.

Between Cole's shoulder, Omega working high quality matches in 3 different promotions while being held together with duct tape and wishes, and Jeff Hardy doing a motherfuckin' ladder match despite looking like a zombie at the PPV, its safe to say pro wrestlers are insane.

SRS reported Adam Cole has been working with a torn labrum, which would explain why he's gotten smaller as of late as that would keep someone from being able to work out much.

Loss made a point that people are hung up on the total viewers and not the actual numbers TV stations look for.

Also NJPW doesn't allow any matches to be officially announced until they run their own show (they do that for their own shows too), which handcuffs how much you can build.

I think the big issue here is AEW is clearly not built to do PPVs back to back like this, and it's messed with the booking as a result. Sure Punk getting injured was a "shit happens" moment that required some last minute scrambling, and doing a joint show with NJPW is too good to pass up.....but doing another big show a month after one of their big PPVs is not how this company was configured. AEW works best when long term stories build to a crescendo after months of twists and turns, not the WWE style "hey it's June so everyone has to be excited about this months PPV because reasons".