strobogo

Lmao. No one in America has ever given a fuck about Alberto Del Rio no matter how many main event pushes they kept giving him.

Of course a moment like Punk's return is going to get more and more sparse, because the amount of big name stars made since Punk's run is basically just Daniel Bryan, who has left and come back twice and been full time active including multiple main event runs in the past 3 years. There's just no one left. All the Attitude Era guys are too old. Even Edge is nearly 50. The real top guys from the era are pushing 60 and completely broken down messes. Sting is a unique case but also hasn't been used as a guy to headline shows and title matches with AEW (but was for WWE). But guys like Austin, Taker, Foley, Hall and Nash, Hogan, DDP, Bret Hart, HBK, Goldberg, Angle are too old and/or broken down or otherwise truly retired. Rock is also getting close to 50 and so busy and probably is not going to do anything to put his body in jeopardy at this stage but has himself also made a return in the past decade. When you move into the generation after them, well Orton is still active full time, Brock has been used as a special attraction for a decade now, Cena is a full time actor and any return he makes is going to be short lived like this summer which was probably his last sustained run of any kind, Batista is retired and definitely not coming back, and then who is left from that era? Eddie is dead and even if he were alive, he'd be in his mid 50s. Jeff Hardy? Completely broken down. JBL? Not a draw even at his peak and also old and broken down. WWE has already been trying to mine the Ruthless Aggression and early PG eras for nostalgia with Miz and Morrison, Lashley, Shelton, MVP, Carlito at the Rumble, the various Divas era women at the Rumbles, and so on. None of those people are going to do shit for ratings. They definitely aren't people that are going to create huge buzz and excitement in lapsed fans or current fans. And Punk himself probably wouldn't be much of a big deal if he hadn't left WWE and stayed out of wrestling for so long. If he had stuck around and been miserable with miserable booking for 7 years, most people wouldn't give a shit about him like they don't really give a shit about all but a handful of people in WWE.

When the hell was ROH even remotely a threat? ROH the same month they had their biggest crowd ever up to that point (Kenny vs Cody show was like 6200 people or something WM weekend) they drew something like 250 for their next taping. By the time ROH/NJPW ran MSG, the super indy phase of NXT had been going on for 4+ years already and that was a once in a life time event. There's zero chance ROH would have sold out MSG without NJPW, and if tickets hadn't gone on sale when they had all of the Elite guys who were expected to be there when the event was announced. It was very, very, immediately clear that the only draws for ROH were NJPW and The Elite for years and even when those relationships were still active, ROH was regularly drawing a couple hundred people to shows without them on the cards. ROH was never a threat because Sinclair has never given a shit about them to put any money into them to be any kind of threat to begin with. But also because ROH has been even worse than WWE for ages.

The "failure" of NXT really should be seen as Vince ruining everything and less placed on HHH's head. It was all fine and dandy until Vince started calling people up not understanding what made them popular to begin with and consistently fucked so many of them up that eventually the people on the roster were publicly saying shit like they'd rather retire than get called up to Raw or Smackdown. Then forced them to go to 2 hours and compete with AEW when they were already in a cold and stale streak due to issues already stated. Not to mention all the times when Vince would go out of his way to fuck NXT over by pulling people in the middle of storylines just to do nothing with them, often right after winning championships, and then making people who were portrayed and accepted as big stars in NXT look like complete fucking goofs and losers consistently once they hit Raw or Smackdown. Vince went out of his way to make sure people knew NXT was minor leagues and treated almost every talent as such for years on the main roster before "rebuilding them" to the point where the rest of the audience agreed and the NXT talent didn't want to work on Raw or Smackdown. And then put all the blame on HHH. Lol.

Oh weird I thought they did because they're easy to find on Archive/DailyMotion in what appears to be higher quality than what you'd get dubbing a tape and posting it online. Then I guess everything made it except the stuff in the Hidden Gems section, which sucks because there was a lot of dope stuff in there but it's probably a nightmare with Peacock's organizational system.

Ilja/Walter was amazing, again. KOR/Cole was not amazing, again. I don't know how the agent system works in WWE, but you compare those two matches and one feels like the wrestlers completely doing their own thing from start to finish, with every detail coming from their awareness of their characters and the story and their abilities. The other feels like HHH and HBK playing with toys or a video game of a match they wish they could still do with minimal input from the wrestlers where everything is laid out beat for beat, facial expression for facial expression, from start to finish. Whether that's the case or not, I don't know. But that's certainly what it feels like when you see those two matches back to back.

Cole will be fine as alternate brand Seth Rollins because he can talk and set up all the video packages with his facial expressions. KOR seems destined for 6 months of Main Event and then getting cut.

Eli Drake fucking sucks. He sucked in TNA, sucked in NWA, sucked in NXT. Dude is a poor man's Mr. Kennedy, who also wasn't good.

Lol Charlotte. People are demonstrably not interested in her as proven by the groans and people tuning out in segments she's involved in on TV.

Edge/Rollins absolutely fucking sucked and all the people involved who thought it needed to be a long "we're telling a story" epic all up and down the line from agents to the wrestlers to Vince should be cut immediately. This is a match that only called for a hateful, brutal brawl and they're out here doing "we have to reference every period in our careers because this is IMPORTANT" bullshit instead of the two just trying to kill each other. Just completely the wrong match for the guys and feud and the crowd seemed to be pretty bleh on it, too. Lashley/Goldberg also sucked but that wasn't unexpected in the least. This shit with Goldberg has to be some kind of rib to use him as some special attraction jobber. But also the dude seems to come in with and/or leave every match he's been in since 2016 with an injury because his body can't sustain what it takes to be Goldberg in his mid 50s. Cena/Roman was the proper way to do a WWE epic and the crowd was about 300% more into it than they were Edge/Rollins. The thing that really makes Roman stand out is that WWE has more or less had some kind of unspoken rule to not play to the crowd out all, and he's the only guy that's been able to or allowed to in so long that it feels like some kind of revelatory idea. It's real great that he wins clean, again after so many years of heel champs always cheating to win even against lower card guys, even when they dominate them. It feels like they just kind of lucked into a "hey what if we do all these things with Roman that we haven't let anyone do for 20 years". This is such an unsatisfying company lmao. I really don't know how the people who watch weekly do it. Just sell off the archive to people who actually give a shit about wrestling and wrestling fans.

If they can't come up with a 10 minute match in a day, they shouldn't be in the positions they're in and all the agents are worthless.

There could not have been a more WWE sequence of events Blatant false advertising all the way up to bell time Fake out mystery opponent Real huge return 10 second one move squash that makes that champ, the headliner of WM, who has completely carried the women's division for the past 4-5 months, look like an absolute geek for a lol what a MOMENT

L m a o

I think Vince (or maybe it was Stephanie) himself said the same thing in regards to being open to listening to offers to sell if someone wants to make it in the past year

I think everything except the Hidden Gems and early Best of WWF volumes from Coliseum Home Video. Navigating through Peacock fucking sucks, but it's fine if you can just use the Xfinity voice remote to find something without directly having to open up Peacock first. Not really sure why the Best Of tapes aren't up as all the other CHV tapes up through 1993 are up. Maybe it's because they have their own best of WWE section up or something who knows.

It was real nice to see such a positive reaction for anything from a group of people that size. It was weird to see Punk showing emotions beyond smarmy or misery. I don't really have much interest in Punk doing anything but I'm interested to see if he can keep up or if he'll have anything fresh and new to bring to the table.

The year of Yoshi-Hashi and Yujiro

I'm a lot more interested in the reaction and how they debut him than seeing Punk in 2021 in any capacity. Would really hope they don't do the heel comes out instead for DA HEAT because that seems like 100% the "LOL I'M A HEEL YOU GOT WORKED YOU MARKS" kind of thing they'd do with MJF.

Punk mad he didn't get the WM main event over Cena/Rock and Roman saying Punk wasn't as big or as popular as Rock or Cena is 100% accurate even if it is also sticking to the company line. Punk/Jericho or Punk/Taker over Rock/Cena as WM main event would have been lol as hell. In the same way as Jericho/HHH over Hogan/Rock or HHH/Orton over HBK/Taker.

I don't think there are "normies" watching at AEW shows or probably even watching it on TV. You have to be already in the know enough to be watching AEW to start with, imo. But their handling of Punk is certainly very interesting and I can't really think of another debut quite like this.

I truly can not understand how QT has a job at all on screen, let alone keeps getting so much TV time. Dude is one of the most legitimate charisma vacuums anywhere in wrestling.

It's really pretty wild how good Sting looked in WWE and now AEW after years on the shelf from a spine injury, now 62 years old, when you compare it to the last 2 or 3 years in TNA where he looked so washed up and tired and out of shape. I know he's not really doing much tagging with Darby but I remember the end of his TNA run doing the scorpion on one guy and he couldn't even stand with it because he was so gassed even in 5 minute tv matches.

Maybe they should run it at a 8 or 9pm on a Friday night and see what happens

Lol at Nak and Kushida both leaving NJ for WWE because they hit their ceilings and were stuck in the same divisions for years and now Nak has been in the IC/US scene for 3 years and Kushida is still a junior ace and even was in a WWE BOTSJ.

I didn't watch the show but in regards to Britt Baker, turning her into a borderline face as soon as she won the title is bad and the segments I have seen of hers since winning the title seem like they're being written by Chris Jericho. It's like they learned nothing from why fans didn't buy into her at all in the first year of the company.