El-P

So much joy in that picture. Stephanie Vaquer is leaving the dream, after standing next to the AAA officials who supported the person who tried to murder her and the people who harassed her, now she realizes that her "English class" was actually learning to speak propaganda. Meanwhile, Brandon Thurston in all his sarcastic glory : https://www.postwrestling.com/2025/09/12/opinion-i-hate-politics-thats-why-im-going-to-love-wrestlemania-in-saudi-arabia/

Athletes in general are really dumb as fuck, you know. Anyway, it's official. Mania 43 in beautiful, progressive Riyadh. No Effy's Big Gay Brunch during that Mania week, I reckon.

Yeah, they looked like shit during the last "TLC" match they had in TNA. Setting tables and ladder at a snail pace, taking awkward bumps. They look quite ok playing the hits at half-speed when they are in with younger and better tag teams but... In other news, apparently TNA has banned its wrestlers from taking booking with D'Amore's MLP Wrestling, because he's also getting AEW people. (EDIT : well, apparently D'Amore said it wasn't the case. So there. Moose is just an idiot. What else is new)

They ran an Eddie Gilbert tribute at the 2300 and guess who was there ? Old Stinger indeed. Hopefully some of that ends up on their Youtube channel. That's pretty cool because it feels like Eddie Gilbert in Philly, which basically set the basis for what ECW was gonna become, is often overlooked/forgotten about.

This is already way overstated because AEW has to be dying soon, right ? I mean, it has been dying soon since day 1. The reality is that AEW today is a valuable asset to WBD, merger or not (and no, WCW does not consist of a precedent because they were losing ridiculous amount of money and was owned by the station). And plus : Tony Khan is a billionaire. AEW is gonna be around in whatever form as long as he wants it to be, really. (however, more media conglomerate controlled by the extreme-right, yeah, that's really bad)

Said it already but I will miss the 2300 residency. It's been a streak of great episode after great episode. Josh Alexander basically signed with AEW for this. I hope for his sake (and my egoistical self) that he'll get that Omega match he craves. Toni Storm paying hommage to Sandman (she'll be on his podcast, talk about some wild combination) and New Jack while Sky Blue did to Dreamer was pretty much the perfect match, pun intended. Young Bucks keep on being hilarious (that ridiculous head bump Nick took on the apron). Great heel turn. Expected, but great execution (I actually thought it was Gable as usual at first). I think it will benefit Danny greatly, he was kinda lost in the shuffle after his TNT title reign, which itself was not the greatest (good, but nothing special).

In other news, Mark Shapiro wants to raise WWE tickets because they are not maximizing profits enough (?) and of course : Mania in Saudi Arabia in 2027.

So they had Faby Apache, legit legend in term of luchadoras and long time AAA star, who's challenging for a Reina de Reinas contendership spot against Natalya at the next Worlds Collide, everybody's new favorite exciting authentic lucha libre spectacle, lose to a NXT rookie in some Speed tournament match in two minutes and a half (yeah, three minutes matches). Fascinating.

I honestly never got what anyone saw in Wardlow in a promotion like AEW. Archer was there from day one, and he was always way better in every aspect (hell, even in looks). Most overpushed guy in the promotion considering what he brought to the table (not that much) until Hurt Syndicate showed up. People will point out how "over" he was, failing to mention that once he got away from MJF, he sure wasn't that over and his matches weren't very good either. Three powerbombs in a row may be good for WWE, but in AEW, that shit got old fast. BTW, talking about impressive looking people, a woman called Stori Denali debuted on the special ROH youtube show with the Premier Athletes, and she's TALL. Like, legit 6,3 or something. So, that's a project I guess. If she's trained right and get some experience in the right places (*wink wink* Japan), who the hell knows.

I love me some Statlander too, and I would love me some Deathriders Statlander alongside Marina even more. I would not love Toni losing her title without getting pinned in a 4-way, then again, that's booking for heat I guess, but it would come off cheap especially after the Hurt Syndicate debacle (oh, they have a match too, the only "appeal" is them finally putting someone, anyone, over). Not sure that's the way to go, really. I'd rather see her lose the title in a dramatic one to one match against whomever after a good build. Or maybe she can have her chase moment again after being cheated. She's one of the biggest star in the company, so there's no way she is not in the main title picture one way or another. (BTW, Wardlow getting injured already gets the exact same reaction from me as his comeback in term of this affecting the product : "Oh, anyway". Sucks for him though)

Yeah, I have warmed up to the Outrunners as regulars, and Dalton is the perfect absurd addition. Gotta say the same thing about MXM Connection hooking up with Johnny TV and Taya (and re-doing Rick Martel's Arrogance gimmick to boot, in a much dirtier way) I have no idea why Big Bill would call up Eddie from nowhere. The perfect way to me seemed for Kingston to do a run in on Mox and the Deathriders. That's kinda odd. Moné teaming with Emi Sakura, because of course she wants that. Footage of Chocopro was something. The 4-way for Tony's title also comes off kinda from nowhere, especially with the addition of Hayter, but I sure am gladly having that one. Awesome TV episode again, with two legit great matches. MJF vs Briscoe will be a bloodbath for sure, and Mark needs to wins that one. Fletcher vs Hangman is quite the intriguing main event because it requires the TNT champ to lose (which isn't a problem when it's to the world champ, but still). The Takeshita babyface turn seems to be coming sooner than later, so maybe him vs Okada already ? (the tweets on the screen really are unnecessary. This isn't 2013 anymore, and it takes up space on the screen for nothing. Small detail, but hey, this has zero purpose)

Sadly yes, but she LOVES doing crazy shit on the indies and she's totally not fitting WWE at all. TNA totally screwed her title reign, not only by making her a generic babyface, but look also line-up the worst opponents possible : Cora Jade, Victoria Crawford, Tessa Blanchard (not bad on the in-ring sense, but it garanteed the audience would not care about bit about the match and would just chant performative "protest"), Léi Ying Lee. Fuck, Jacy Jane actually was her legit best opponent this whole time all things considered. BTW, the women division is incredibly *wrecked*. Putting aside Ash,who is not very good at all in the ring but entertaining as a character because she goes 300% with it, they basically got the worse WWE rejects imaginable in term of in-ring talent : Léi Ying Lee, Indi Hartwell, Victoria Crawford, the IInspiration. It's crazy how *bad* this roster got with these signings (jury's out on Mara Shadé for now). When TAFKA Xia Li is the best of the bunch, holy hell. Also, the idea of them going live every week should be killed, because the live TV shows are looking clunky as hell. They are running Eric Young vs Joe Hendry (it's crazy how LESS over he is now, the reaction he got this week is nothing like he did 6 months much less one year ago, seems like the TNA fans have disengaged) next week. I would not be surprised if Young basically killed Hendry and ran him off the promotion, same way he did Josh Alexander. They may do it ad BFG I guess, it's not that far away.

It came from the viewers. It trended on Twitter after a 30 seconds match (imagine that, in 2015) between the Bellas and Emma & Paige on February 23. Mind you, at this point Paige & Emma already had their "patient zero" match in NXT a while ago. And of course TNA had ran legit women's wrestling for years now, but that's another story. Two days later AJ Lee basically made a tweet complaining about how women were not paid enough considering how much ratings they would drew (inspired by Patricia Arquette's speech at the Oscars the same year apparently). One months and a half later, she was retiring and was gone, and pretty much erased from history because of the CM Punk issue. So yeah, I'm sure plenty of current women wrestler were inspired by her character at the time which was cool and different from your run-of-the-mill diva, but still, there's a heavy dose of gaslighting going on. Funny how depending of the moment, the "Women Revolution" (and really now...) started with Paige vs Emma in NXT, oh no wait it was the Four Horsewomen, oh no wait Mercedes is not here anymore so it actually was AJ Lee... EDIT : even funnier when you look back at the source https://www.instagram.com/p/DORp4vbjmo1/ One day, some serious study of the toxic sewer that was 2000's/2010's WWE really should be done.

WWE continues to influence the world !

So yeah, the Hardies vs Team 3D match at BGF will indeed, be a table's match. Because things could not get any worse. The Hardies at this point can have *good* matches with great teams like the Rascalz or Leon Slater & Cedric Alexander. They absolutely are effective at being the 50 years old Hardies. But with Bully Ray (I've seen him in MLP last year, it wasn't pretty) and D-von in whatever ring shape he'll be. Holy fuck. And yeah, they are pushing Indi Hartwell as the potential next champ. Because of course, she's basically from NXT, so she should be pushed ahead of much better talent. And really, I did not know anything about Hartwell before, I heard she did not have the greatest rep as a worker. Well, she's just *bad*. Like, when you can't have a good match with Tessa Blanchard (yeah, I know, but still), you're *bad*. And she really hasn't exactly shined as a character either. Seems like they just rest on the fact that "Well, she's Indi Hartwell from NXT", which for that crowd, seems to be enough (guess why ?). Meanwhile, Dani Luna is most probably gonna work against Mercedes Moné in RevPro, which is quite the interesting dynamic, as there's no way Moné drops the belt to a TNA contracted wrestler (my guess is that when she does, Kanji gets it). I would really like to see Luna and Masha go the Speedball/Josh Alexander/Ace Austin way after they finish with TNA. And also, I've read the spoilers of the last tapings. They brought Ken Anderson back. At this rate I halfway except another EC3 run. (both guys whom, BTW, in their days have had underrated TNA stints, actually, but in 2025, yikes)

And that's exactly the angle that isn't talked about and should. They brought her back and will gaslight people about how important she was was "women's wrestling" (she was to some extent in WWE for a short while, but as predicted the general discourse is already overrating how important she was) and "women's rights" in WWE while at the very same time, putting back on TV the guy who took part in sex-trafficking an employee with the boss. And THIS is the important part, actually. The rest is irrelevant sports-entertainment shit. AJ Lee coming back is basically whitewashing Lesnar's return (not that it even needed to be considering how the WWE audience hasn't cared at all about a sex predator being on TV in a major role again, but in term of public discourse, it serves its purpose in drowning whatever could be told about Lesnar, that has already be told anyway). (I would add that she and Punk deserves each other, but that would be a personal shot. Then again, actions speaks louder than words, or tweets. She agreed to come back at the same time sex-trafficker #3 did. Hell of a message in term of speaking out for women, pun absolutely intended)

Danielson part of the Dynamite announcing team full time. Fuck yes ! Fuck yes ! Fuck yes !

Yeah, I'm all about Riho vs Mercedes Moné. I sure didn't see this one coming. The 2300 is great for AEW. Maybe not for ratings (whatever), but I couldn't care less. I hear there's talk about an Hammerstein Ballroom residency again ? Fuck yeah. Make it the last rounds of the CC again !

It's completely insane to me that we've reached this point of nostalgia for the early 2010's WWE. AJ Lee was barely above your standard diva's level (there's a reason why a match like Emma vs Paige, which was *good*, was considered so revolutionary in WWE at the time) and she only stood out because she looked like a teenage Avril Lavigne fan and was marketed as some sort of "anti-diva" character (while still being sold as hot as fuck, because hey). Plus, the fact she came back on the same TV show as the sex-trafficking shithead is quite something when they'll push her as this revolutionary figure for women's wrestling. Talk about a smoke-screen effect. (watching the clip, she also looks 15 years younger than Punk. Damn, that guy has AGED in the last 3 years it's insane) (reading results of WWE show is insane too. 3 hour TV show, 3 matches, two of which under ten minutes. WOW)

It's kinda fascinating how Joe Hendry has basically vanished from TNA programmings in the last few weeks. And really, when you look at his entire "rise", it speaks volume about how the WWE/TNA partnership works and how inept TNA's booking has been. He was getting over big time in 2024 thanks to his song getting viral. Then TNA fumbled (pun intended) and did not put the title on him at Slammiversary when he was seemingly at his hottest. At this point, he was already getting featured on NXT regularly. They finally had him win the title with the involvement of JBL, a nonsensical and lame storyline that went absolutely nowhere and was basically dropped despite playing a role in every big title match for the last few months. And from there, what ? Well, nothing really. He never had a real feud as TNA champ. The closest thing was the short built Kazarian/Ethan Page three-way PPV match in Winter of 2025 (Page actually did the job). But his entire character and hype was that he was appearing in big WWE shows. He appeared in Royal Rumble as TNA champ, got treated like a geek (TNA fans applauded because it was great for TNA). He appeared at Mania as TNA champ, got treated like a geek (TNA fans applauded because it was great for TNA). Then lost the title to Trick Williams on an TXT show. And then... not much. He was plugged artificially into the Santana/Williams match at Slammiversary, which was pimped as the biggest attendance ever in the company's history (easily forgetting that AJ Styles showing up drew almost 3K on its own), a match Santana, in his hometown, should have won but lost, in similar fashion Hendry lost the previous year. He actually did the job there too. And from there, he's basically been in the background, letting the Hardies and Trick Williams be the biggest attraction in the company. He was last seen last week being dropped backstage by Eric Young, who's been given his hundreds variation of evil/deranged/maniac/cult leader persona yet. Oh, and they pimped him beating the Miz on a WWE houseshow in Europe. Contract is basically ending soon, and he's been heard on an NXT show tell the crowd he would be on NXT now a few weeks back. So there. That's the "great" Joe Hendry story in TNA. Both how he was handled by the booking of his own promotion, not capitalizing when his popularity was at its peak (which he did not get from his pro-wrestling talent and/or booking, he was an undercard comedy character for a long while before his song got viral), and how WWE completely hijacked whatever hype he had. I fail to see how that benefited in any way shape or form to TNA. The talk of "record attendance" is well and good when it's artificially bumped by WWE guys, but the truth is, the weekly tapings are not looking that good (tons of empty seats in those way too big buildings), there's zero talk about PPV buys. And Joe Hendry himself has lost whatever creativity he had during his infancy days in TNA (not to mention his indie days) to milk his meme like there's no tomorrow, making his matches which always were pretty mediocre, even more patterned and meme-ish. I have no doubt he'll sell crazy merch for a while in WWE, where chants and sing-alongs theme are more important than having any kind of good match. But for all the hype and cult following, Joe Hendry's very short run at the top of TNA has been a whole load of nothing and basically window-dressing for WWE's predatory "collab".

And I mean, if if doesn't dent AEW's buyrate *badly*, what's the next plan ? They are putting up the sex-trafficking shit vs John Cena on his (crappy) retirement tour and now there's words AJ Lee is gonna be back at this event (now that's gonna be an entire story in term of unbearable discourse and gaslighting). What's the next big "legend" they can use ? Jericho next year ? Because there's one thing the AEW audience will absolutely do, it's switch to WWE instead to watch Chris Jericho in 2026...

Grand Prix Internacional was awesome. What else is new ? Gotta love that Speedball was positioned as the star of the International Team, being paired with Mistico at the beginning and the end. Must have been the highlight of his career thus far. Mistico in 2025 in Arena Mexico is just an amazing thing to watch in term of atmosphere. And he's not "aura farming" (yeah, gen-z talk here) either, he's working his ass off at his 42 banged up self. MLW being valued as a partner by CMLL will never not be weird, but it allowed Donovan Dijak to be in this, and he made sure he belonged. That mofo even did a torneo. Beast Mortos sure signed the best contract of his life with AEW, now, didn't he ? (on every level) Next is Anniversario, and unlike the disaster last year with Jericho (remember this ?) it should be a classic. (it would be quite ironic if the year WWE did their predatory shit by buying the second biggest lucha promotion to turn it into an americanized feeder system, CMLL won promotion of the year, Mistico won wrestler of the year and Bandido won best worker, which at this point, they really all should)

I totally take Red Death Daniel Garcia as a part of Deathriders 2.0 (pun intended) alongside Statlander. Gotta love these B-shows were FTR gives a whole lot to JD Drake and Adam Priest. And the obligatory Vanilla Baby is great segment. A evil version of Hologram is not the worst idea. It's kinda classic actually. Why did this vignette gave me some Blood Runs Cold, lucha version, feels ? Dunno. I totally am not taking for granted how fun these multi-women matches have been week in and week out. If they end up doing that women Blood & Guts, which they totally should, I got a feeling Sky Blue is gonna try to do some really stupid shit, and I love her for it.

Just put ROH on Youtube and make it a paywall like IMPACT used to do. And Death before Dishonor was an awesome show. Between the mat clinic that was Moriarty vs Xelhua, the fun QT Marshall vs PWH garbage match, Sammy having the best time of his life being a douchebag again (the interactions with the crowd, who loved Rush, were just great), the entire undercard being really solid to very good (loving Deonna being featured after that lengthy talk about her issues by TK, hopefully that will be a fresh new start maybe as Pure division champ, this would be perfect for her; loving STP finally winning some gold) and of course that insane epic Bandido vs Hechicero match. And the most amazing thing to me about this whole thing, is Athena and Mina having to follow this stuff and went "Yep, we can follow it". And did they follow it (a much better match that the Toni Storm match at Forbidden Door too). I pre-shot the Blue Meanie cameo as soon as Billie showed up with that blue MIT shirt. Yeah, Meanie danced with Mina, of course. Intimate settings > big arenas. Always.

Dying laughing. The "Vous connaissez NordVPN ?" joke has never been funnier.