Stiva

I do wonder what the eventual endgame for the MJF stuff will be. Wonder if he shows up at All Out in some capacity

Christian/Hardy wasn’t great but it had a valid reason for happening at the very least. Jobbing Cassidy to Lethal, even though it’s setting Lethal up for Wardlow, a match nobody believes he’ll actually win, is definitely the stranger match. They could have went with Lethal vs Trent for a similar outcome. I really hope Orange isn’t heading down the Darby route where TK thinks he’s bulletproof no matter what so he maybe jobs a bit too much.

Was talking to a friend tonight and he’s insistent that the Hangman/Silver team coupled with the renewed Elite drama is going to end up with Hangman as a heel and Silver as a singles babyface. Can’t think I’d ever thought of that before but when it’s spelled out like that, why not?

You could also have Dalton Castle and The Boys in the 6-Man tournament

They could do a lot worse than integrating the NXT UK roster to the US to really freshen the matches and programs up.

HHH, Michaels, Road Dogg and Jarrett around HHHs motorbike will be the Vince, Patterson, JR and Cornette around Vince’s pool for the new era

With Brock leaving, the only option they have is to bring Wyatt back, right? Everyone else is currently in AEW and Cody is injured anyway.

I wonder if, Pritchard in particular, does go, if they’ve even got anybody who could head up the booking that isn’t HHH? Do we get Shawn Michaels with the book of the main show? Is Ryan Ward still around the place?

Yeah, I’d wager this is going to get very ugly, very quickly. We’re through the looking glass now, boys. I assume Dunn and Pritchard fall next. Can Coach Tony K take advantage of the chaos? I notice they announced Hunter is back to work; does this actually end with him and Steph on the throne, as they always envisaged?

With regards to the Dark Order, they should team up Vance and Silver as a little and large strong boy team with Uno as the mouthpiece/occasional 6-man partner. Reynolds is perfectly fine but feels very superfluous at this point

Blood and Guts just hit over 1 million so I can kind of understand him seeing how far he can push it on tv for a rating. Didn’t the Moxley/Omega barbed wire PPV do good numbers too?

I’m also digging Nese as your arrogant midcard heel that can hold up his end in the ring. See the guys name on the TV card and you know you’re probably getting a solid 10 minute match. Agreed on Jane too; that genuinely feels like the missing piece that could propel him further. I love any time the ECW mark in Tony Khan pushes him to license music for people. As a catch-all now that work is going to see me fall behind; I thought Forbidden Door was out of this world great and, even it’s poorer moments were propped up by the insane crowd. Blood and Guts was hit and miss and probably too long but there were so many running threads and nods to history that I loved it in the end. Excalibur and Schiavone do a great job of bringing up moments in AEW where people have feuded or interacted before in times like this. It really does feel that the company is beginning to have a past and defining rivalries that they can go back to. Claudio is a superstar pick-up at a time where they needed him the most and I just hope there’s a plan for him beyond this initial period. Going to Kingston is a situation where neither should lose but I do wonder if Punk/Claudio is the tentative plan for Arthur Ashe with Punk/Moxley being the All Out main event. Either way, whoever said this is beginning to feel like last summer again nailed it. The crowds are getting really hot which helps but even things like The Acclaimed/Ass Boys stuff is good midcard work. Feels like all the belts are in the right places for them to move forward and have a good push into the autumn. Also, Rampage is the best hour of wrestling in god knows how long. What a consistently good hour that is

As awful as this story is, the more sickening thought is that this is probably just the surface

I’m psyched because I have Forbidden Door, Dynamite and Rampage to watch on Saturday and the response has been great to them. I watched the Forbidden Door buy-in last night and the crowd was molten for QT Marshall so that bodes well

Shuffling the tag teams to the main event scene is a great idea. Bucks vs FTR III could easily main event All Out if they’re willing to wait that long but you also have reDragon, Moxley/Kingston, Jericho/Sammy, Swerve/Lee, Starks/Hobbs, Lucha Bros, Andrade/Rush, Roppongi Vice, the list is endless with combos that could anchor Dynamite main events and even Fight for the Fallen. Make AEW a tag territory for 6 months, TK. And get someone else to book ROH while you’re at it.

If Vince comes out with his No Chance music tonight and they cut to idiots bowing to him, I’ll die laughing. You have to have some begrudging respect at being so deep into the pro wrestling hustle, that your first thought is to dive on live TV and pop a rating for the potential demise of your professional career and empire. Let’s hope it’s an incredible blaze of glory. 2 hours of unfiltered Vince, shooting and insulting everyone who ever crossed him would be a dream

I’m assuming we’re getting Bucks vs FTR 3 at All Out to finish the trilogy. Hopefully FTR take it as reward for Dax Harwood being the outright best guy in the company at the moment. Does Sasha’s release give us our big All Out 2022 debut, I wonder?

Nick Khan going for the kill

They should have sent MJF for the G1 and passed it off as Khan sending him because he knows he’ll hate it

I’m away so didn’t watch and have only read recaps but I was completely bemused reading them and having read the opinions of people who actually watched the show, I’m still none the wiser. What is the obsession with tournaments? Did they even show the bracket for this one? Why is there no qualifying matches for an actual title that will be defended when there were qualifying matches for a yearly tournament belt? Why wasn’t Wardlow in the battle royal when his record is better than everyone else’s? Maybe I’ll have a different opinion when I watch the show myself but this is starting to feel more and more like a real scattershot promotion by the week

If I remember right, I don’t think you’re far off the great Spud vs ECIII match from England. That’s easily one of the top 5/10 things TNA have ever done

I feel like MJF always drops shoot bullshit into most of his feuds and it’s always come off as boring and annoying. This is the culmination of it. Just go to WWE, have 6 months of goodwill as Vince pops for you insulting AEW on air and have the overbooked Mania feud with Cody like you want, buddy. Other than the needless after-match beat down by Britt Baker (she needs at least 2 months off TV), I actually liked the show. Punk’s sloppiness was counteracted by FTRs smoothness, I want to see a Hayter/Storm Best of 5 and MIRO IS BACK. The more I think about it, Miro and Punk could absolutely talk that match into being the All Out main event. This Wardlow angle feels like it could go either way. He probably shouldn’t be spending more time on shit like this than is really warranted when he could be beating Scorpio Sky. I do wonder if a TNT title reign where he proves he can have good, exciting AEW style matches might be what he needs before he’s generally accepted as World Title level.

Glad I’m not the only one. The whole thing got me energised in a way that a wrestling match hasn’t in years. The kind of thing you rave about to people who don’t care in the off chance they’ll watch it

Typing stray thoughts as I go. I’ve managed to avoid all fallout and spoilers so let’s go. If that’s MJF leaving the territory, then that’s about as perfect a way to go. Even without knowing about him managing to make himself toxic, that was the biggest prick in the company getting his come-uppance and making someone on the way out. Great stuff. Wardlow is the man. You look out into the crowd and everyone is into him, the men were in his hand and you even heard the women too. Give him the strap. At this stage in the game, The Hardys are far more suited to be working Butcher and the Blade than they are the Bucks. I can understand why they did the match though and I’m assuming we’re getting a big Hardys title challenge as a Dynamite main event. The Bucks will stay over even if they drop the fall here. Ass Boys and The Acclaimed is great midcard shit. Billy Gunn as the disapproving dad is a great use of him. Cargill/Anna Jay was a little sloppy but Cargill is improving all the time and she feels like she’s about 6 months away from becoming the star of the promotion. Just radiates pure star power and giving her Stokley and the Cody lift will only improve matters. Going to Statlander as her next challenger seems like another situation where neither should lose but between her and Athena, at least she has some credible challengers lined up. Hey, we finally get the Julia Hart turn. I think I need another watch of that to process just about everything that went down but I’m glad that thread has finally been tied up and she looks 100x better in this getup than the cheerleading gear. Adam Cole is looking more and more like 2008 Shawn Michaels every week. He just needs to start throwing weak chops and sell his back 5 minutes into every match and he’s completed the look. He took that clothesline like a champ, I’ll give him that. And the match itself was really great, I’d say. Joe has found an extra yard and if you could get yourself into the mindset of Cole actually being able to hurt Joe, it was really well put together. Cole is in danger of getting overexposed on Dynamite every week but he’s a star to the AEW audience so I don’t hate him winning. I somehow haven’t put together that Baker and Cole will win the Owen belts and have them together on TV… Of course Jericho’s guitarist looks like that. Getting Rancid to play Soho out was choice though I do wonder how many people realise her theme is actually by a real band and not just an AEW creation. The match was what it was; Baker feels stale and Ruby is underwhelming with terrible over-acting. No complaints about the post-match though. Fantastic stuff and the one thing I do love about Cole is how consistent he is with being untrusting of Tony. A little touch that helps everything feel more alive. I feel that every time Tony Khan sees someone complain about this nonsense with Sky, Sammy and co, he adds another week on to the feud. Talk about wasting Van Zant’s first match. My man Darby still getting the superstar pops and he will make O’Reilly look fantastic. O’Reilly is definitely a man who recorded videos of himself playing with nunchucks as a teenager. But fuck did Darby ever eat shit on that dive, Christ. That was frightening. I have to say, for a match that was thrown on the card, both men worked as hard as they could to make it feel like a big fight. Good stuff but that’s Darby losing to Jeff Hardy and O’Reilly pretty quickly off the belt. I hope he’s as bulletproof as Khan seems to think. Thunder Rosa’s attire was something else. Respectfully, of course. Thought the whole match was really strong. Deeb’s baseline is basically “very good” and Rosa came ready to work. Rosa just slapping Deeb in the neck to try and break up the figure four was nasty. I wouldn’t be against them running that back as a Rampage main event while they build up another challenger. The JAS ring gear is OUTSTANDING. And then you have the other 5 looking like the coolest fuckers ever, especially with Wild Thing playing as the brawling was going. Fucking AWESOME. This was exactly what this show needed and I cracked up at Bryan just punching Ange in the face for about 5 straight minutes as madness went on below. That was about as close as we’ll get to one of those wild JAPW brawls on a major stage, fucking outstanding. Kingston walking to the ring, covered in blood holding a can of petrol is one of the greatest pro wrestling images I’ve ever seen and we’re going to get heel Danielson vs face Kingston and fuck yeah to that. Andrade and Rush is some real fucking business. What a world. Scorpio/Dante will low-key be great too. Three way tag matches are rarely any good but the tag title match was about as fun as you’d expect with the guys in there. Jungle Boy, Hobbs, Stark and Swerve felt like future main eventers in this. All 4 are dripping with charisma and then you have Luchasaurus whiffing by about 6 inches on strikes. I’d have said the time was right for new champs but maybe they want to do Jurassic Express against the Hardys? The main felt like a huge deal in a way that the title matches haven’t for a while. A lot of that maybe had a lot to do with the outcome being genuinely up in the air which is something AEW haven’t had a lot of in their big title matches. I dug pretty much all of Hangman’s control segment and Punk definitely got him to slow down as they went with the crowd. Punk trying the buckshot after so long into the match when he isn’t the most athletic to begin with is asking for trouble, especially trying it again. Though I bet Punk wishes everyone could take the GTS as well as he can. Could have done without the conflicted acting over the belt shot but I guess it’s leading to more drunken Hangman battling with his demons. I’m glad we’ve got the belt on Punk though. Let’s get heel champ Punk going. A real weird show in the sense that it started great, really lulled in the middle but they managed to get it back at the end. Some strange booking decisions too but some unpredictability isn’t a bad thing if it’s leading somewhere that will make sense down the line. Now to catch up on the news

Hogan’s tweet warning people to not work themselves into a shoot, brother seems apt here