NintendoLogic

If A&E Biography is to be believed, his treatment of Gorgeous George may have been even worse.

Mentioning Callis in the same breath as Rance/Scurll/Ryan seems like a stretch since the evidence of him being a sex pest is nowhere near as strong as for the other three. We do know (and the Observer did report) that Anthem brought in a third-party investigator in response to allegations of inappropriate behavior by an Impact executive, but I'm not aware of any reputable source specifically fingering Callis as the culprit. In fact, Bix explicitly said he had never accused Callis of anything.

Cody is too clean-shaven to be a HHH guy. At the very least, he needs to bring back the mustache.

Also on Arsenio, he dropped the elbow on toxic masculinity.

The spike in viewership was spurred entirely by an increase in 50+ viewers, which makes sense since it was an anniversary show and boomers love notalgia nostalgia. The show was down 6.3 percent from last week in the 18-49 category. Viewership in the demo is down 28.6 percent since the debut of the 2.0 format.

AEW booking has always centered around cycling guys in and out of the main event to prevent wrestlers and matchups from getting stale. And it was working quite well before the injuries started piling up. I'm not sure there's a better booking model for a national promotion.

To be honest, smoking blunts with Mike Tyson is probably one of the more responsible things he could do at this point.

All things except Roman losing, that is. I suppose they could do a rehash of the Eurocontinental triple threat at WM2000 where Kurt Angle lost both belts without being involved in either fall. It wouldn't be good, but it's a thing they could do.

I don't give a shit about Theory, but the Chosen One gimmick is a kiss of death. Look at Drew McIntyre. It took him years (and a stint in TNA/EVOLVE purgatory) to live it down.

I heard the perfect name for Punk's press conference rant: the Gripebomb.

That show featured CM Punk's return to the ring and the rumored debut of Bryan Danielson. That there wasn't an even bigger drop-off is a testament to how much good will the promotion had built up (and likely squandered now, sadly).

I don't know, the injury rates in WWE and AEW don't seem too far apart to me. You can't really get away with not bumping in either company, which is bad news when you have back issues like Castle does.

Based on what Regal has said on Twitter and in interviews, his advice would be stuff like "make every spot count" and "don't get dumped on your head." In other words, the same advice every single veteran wrestler gives and every single younger wrestler blows off.

I'm not saying no one should go to Regal for advice. Just that he wouldn't be at the top of the list when a guy who was far more successful working the same style is in the same locker room. In other news, the press conference for UFC 279 was cancelled after a fight broke out backstage. Talk about life imitating art.

With all due respect to Regal, why should anyone go to him for advice when Bryan Danielson, who actually drew money working a similar style with the handicap of being much smaller, is right there?

Again though, this is where professional courtesy and common sense come in. If you're going to take shots at someone in a promo, there's no good reason to not clear it with them beforehand. Especially if you know the target has a thin skin and a tendency to hold grudges. Then again, that only holds if the goal of the promo is to do business rather than settle petty political scores.

If the allegation is that the Elite were planting stories about Punk trying to get Cabana fired, that's plainly absurd when you look at the timeline. Punk shows up in AEW and the guy with whom he had a public bitter falling out and was barely being used to begin with starts being used even less and is eventually shunted off to the secondary brand. Who on Earth wouldn't put two and two together in that scenario? Hell, just about everybody was speculating that Cabana's days in the company were numbered when the Punk-to-AEW rumors started picking up steam.

Law enforcement is now involved per Alvarez, so we can say with absolutely certainty that this is not an elaborate work.

The fact that Omega and the Bucks are EVPs makes this far more than a typical clash of egos. Management getting into fistfights with talent is completely unacceptable. Some kind of punishment is obviously warranted if Punk threw the first punch. But executives have a responsibility to defuse tensions, not escalate them. Barging into a guy's dressing room en masse is not the way to do that. If it wasn't already, it should be clear by now that letting wrestlers just do whatever they want in the ring and say whatever they want in interviews is not tenable in the long run. We're seeing the fruits of the former in the sky-high injury rate and the fruits of the latter in...all this.

The Luger example is instructive. The argument that it would take the shine off Hogan/Sting made perfect sense in theory, but it ended up not being the case at all in practice. At least in that case there was a concrete goal that was being built toward. What is the endgame here that needs to be protected? Roman killing everybody forever? A prospective Rock/Roman match wouldn't be diminished one iota by a quickie Drew title reign. Neither would Roman/Cody.

Sheamus/Gunther was a hell of a thing.

It was actually Pat O'Connor who thought that. Muchnick thought Flair was the second coming of Buddy Rogers when Larry Matysik showed him some tapes. Anyway, you can definitely see WWE Brain when people discuss Adam Cole's physique, including on this very board. I've also seen people complain about AEW champions not receiving automatic rematches after losing the title. As far as size goes, boxing and MMA have absolutely shown that smaller fighters can draw, but it's important to remember that they're facing fighters in the same weight class. Smaller guys beating up much larger opponents almost always looks at least somewhat silly. Thankfully, that's not as much of an issue in modern wrestling since size has gone down pretty much across the board. Look at how Billy Gunn, who was never thought of as particularly big in his heyday, dwarfs virtually everybody in AEW.

NARRATIVE STATUS: UNCONTROLLED

Tony said absolutely nothing wrong. This is a star-driven business, and the biggest stars can and should receive preferential booking. The men's and women's divisions shouldn't be treated equally, but they should be treated fairly. If a woman becomes the biggest star in the company (like Becky Lynch was in WWE a while back), she should be booked accordingly. But pretending that Thunder Rosa is anywhere near as big a star as CM Punk would be ludicrous. By the way, as someone whose knowledge of active soccer players other than Messi and Ronaldo is basically nonexistent, I initially thought the thread title was referring to either Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland or Parker "Harland" Boudreaux.