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That ending was visually incredible, though, with the chain and Brody's selling/body language/perfect drop and spin into the coffin which slammed shut on it's own. Like, you could do take after take of that and never have it look as fucking GREAT as it did

Jesus fuck, that was a great main event. Welcome back, CM Punk. Jericho was in such great shape! I thought for sure that was it after the turnbuckle spot and the Judas Effect. Miro was all Get Thee Behind Me, Jezebel! when Julia tried to seduce him into joining the Black Side. I marked. Well, now there are four Coffin Matches that I have ever enjoyed and Darby Allin has been in two of them. Mil Muertes was in the other two. The only logical progression is to book a Coffin Match between Darby and Mil Muertes.

Allright! Pro Wrestling! Darby Allin is starting it off. Will Brodie King crush him again? Probably. OH! I see there will be BLOOD! YES! This match fucking rules already. JESUS! THAT'S A LOT OF BLOOD! Allin is bumping like Darby Allin. Brodie is a big dude, chockfull of blood! Picture in picture is construction time for Brodie King. The picture goes big and King misses Allin on the table! SABU! JAKE THE SNAKE! Buddy Matthews is fucking awesome. CANNONBALL THROUGH THE TABLE! I knew STING was going to be in the coffin! I'm psychic! Is STING turning to the House of Black? Well, that was a fun total trainwreck. They booked the holy fuck out of that. Darby Allin rules. Brodie King RULES. DRAGON LEE! AWESOME! It's RUSH! And ANDRADE! It's PENTA! It's REY FENIX! Fenix is fucking spectacular. This match needs blood. EVERY MATCH NEEDS BLOOD TONIGHT! This match is also insane. The crowd is fucking MOLTEN. That match was fucking great. PENTA should have wrestled without his mask to save his brother but it IS Lucha Libre and there are rules you don't break, so I will live with it. Soooo KENNY OMEGA is back? Awww, Anthony Henry gets murdered by Luchasaurus. OH NO! Luchasaurus is the new Wardlow! I await a new class action lawsuit by Smart Mark Sterling! Julia tries to seduce Miro with the POWER OF THE HOUSE OF BLACK! I await Miro beating the life out of Buddy Matthews to set up the ultimate HOSS BATTLE as Miro goes through Brodie King. Anna JAS is fun. I super dig Daniel Garcia, the Dragonslayer. Aaron Solo is going to get murdered by Ricky Starks. COLE KARTER SIGHTING! So Minnesota has the best crowds in the NORTH! Ricky Starks eventually murders Aaron Solo. Ricky Starks uses sheer will of BABYFACENESS to get over a feud with the fucking FACTORY. So Ricky Starks is going to be a superstar. The TRUSTBUSTERS! I assume this will be on Rampage? Will Sonny Kiss be there? (oh Kiss will be there to be crushed by Parker Boudreaux). Madison Rayne is going to get murdered by Jade Cargill. Rayne gets in some offense. Cargill sells it kind of awkwardly on the floor. Jade crushes Rayne in picture in picture. This match is pretty ugly which is weird for a match with two such stunning ladies in it. I liked the idea of what they were trying to do, it just they fucked everything up. Hey! It's ATHENA! That will be good. AWESOME! ASS BOYS vs BEARDHAUSEN! ERIK REDBEARD IS BACK! HOLY SHIT! DANIELSON vs GARCIA, 2 out of 3 FALLS! It's our MAIN EVENT! Feels big! Mox and Jericho are both over in Minnesota. Jericho is fucking channeling Negro Navarro. Well this is fun. BLOOD! MOX always delivers. This match is good. GREAT Boston Crab by Jericho, as he is stretching Moxley like he said he would. Mox is fucking great selling it. GREAT nearfall on a Code Breaker. JERICHO BRINGS THE BLOOD! AWESOME! BULLDOG CHOKE! BLOOD IS STREAMING DOWN JERICHO'S FACE! AWWWESOME! That was fucking GREAT. CM PUNK! WHAT THE FUCK? Well, that show ended well. AEW RULES THE MOTHERFUCKING FUCKING MOTHERFUCKING WORLD!

I’m bringing a work buddy along that doesn’t know wrestling but is interested. So I plan on playing along with any shenanigans that arrises. Also, I’m being naughty and taking the rest of the week off. So I will drink beforehand and have overpriced drinks there. I’ll do a road report.

The coffin match, Starks/Solo, and Jade/Rayne all had finishes that were slick as hell. We all deserve a hype man like Claudio.

More like Quake By The Lake Of BLOOD, amirite?

Your friend sounds bald.

Octo-Thoughts: I think the concept of shame is something I am familiar with and is a part of me on a daily basis. As a midwestern-Scandinavian/Irish American, neo-Christian existentialist with poor dietary control and regularly flirting self-deprecating humor to at times hide self esteem issues and on-again-off-again anxiety issues that I can occasionally fail to address in a healthy manner, I am comfortable with how uncomfortable I am. Life, to me is both the joys of a stylish new shirt and the feeling of it’s oddly placed thick tag that takes its boney decrepit grim-finger to slowly ride up against your neck, reminding you that death is either near or inevitable. The color looks great but as your weight and figure changes, you will not look as nice to yourself tomorrow. As is life, life is good. Tony Kahn and the Elite establishment should feel some level of shame for poor booking of women (Deeb vs Shida feud was a mess and I feel the same disappointment towards the botched WWE Naomi vs Mandy Rose feud that was oddly enough a camel’s back breaking straw moment that I think if regularly) but really to me (and maybe JiJi but respectfully I can’t speak for anyone but myself) shame is an inevitable part of life. The theoretical power of shame is action we take. Among the self-hatred, do we better ourselves and make strives towards improvements even with the understood acknowledgment that we will inevitably fall again? And for the improvements or lack of in booking is a discussion point that could be neat. I remember when my wife was pregnant and not feeling well we were having a bit of alone relaxation time. Well, I went to a bar and drank heavily, people kept buying me shots and I had little to no food. Well, I came home very drunk and spent a good amount of time vomiting. I uncontrollably wept at my poor decision to make myself unfit to care for of pregnant wife who was also feeling sick. Fast forward to just a week ago. My wife took my baby over to her moms and I had some free time. I walked to a bar and they kept forgetting to put in my food order (never took a lunch at work because I was stressed and very busy) I believe this saga was mostly posted about already. I’m shamefully going to praise myself and say that I’m likable to some people and if I’m derping, people tend to buy me drinks . No food and free liquor is a bad thing. Long story short that night went smoothly where my wife knew I was derped because I was texting her about the food thing and I was embarrassed. What she didn’t know was when everyone was asleep I got dizzy and needed to shower and then vomit. This was a mess and I spent a good chunk of the night quietly cleaning up and hating myself. Thinking back to other times I was a failure to my son and my beautiful and loving wife. I’m a good father, but we are all humanoid-octopi and at times even less than that. So what I’m getting at is that Tony Kahn should be vomiting in a shower because he is responsible for me not seeing Jamie Hayter and kris Statlander regularly suplexing each other. As for employee happiness issues, I feel that we maybe agree with each other but the terminology is getting mixed up? Or I’m misreading everything. I’m typing this while quietly crying in a parked car while my baby is asleep in the back. I will get a smoothie when I’m done typing this. It will be delicious. It will be a large instead of a medium and I will possibly feel bad about that if I get a stomachache. I fucking suck. Yes, if an employee asks for their release, then the company should release them. If an employee is unhappy, then the company should have a good enough HR team to reach out and try and make things work out. I tend to side with the workforce. Yes, there can be unreasonable people that think they should be hire up the card or will likely never be happy. But case by case, I generally tend to side with the worker. I’m unhappy with my work. I was unhappy with my last work. My last work had a poor system in place and it didn’t fit with me, so I left. The place I’m at now I have recently found issues with but they have a good enough HR person who made me feel heard and wanted as an employee. So I’m happy to ride things out as things get better. Talent relations is pretty much HR. AEW either has/had a systematic issue in dealing with employee/management communication or not the proper personnel to successfully run what would be a good system efficiently OR just bad PR and it appears to be a problem that it isn’t (which would be a different problem but a problem still). But systematic vs efficiency? I don’t know what the issue is (or if there is one) but it should be dealt with before an employee feels disgruntled enough to rather be elsewhere then there. Worst thing is a Brodie in WWE situation. As for crabby patties: I generally don’t vibe with curmudgeons. People who choose to ignore good and only focus on negativity (I’m referring to my non-internet people, this isn’t a dig) I’m just not happy being around. I can’t watch basketball with my dad because he slowly gets angry about ball movement. My hatred is inward, not outward. I’m Octopus, not Squidward. But I understand that people’s soul’s resting position is a part of them. I’ll debate points but if I’m not feeling a vibe then for me it isn’t worth partaking in discussion. There’s only a few people here I blocked who I felt were actively harsh towards others when it didn’t seem called for. Saying everything I said, I will be playfully snarky for fun and teasing. All in all, disregard everything I said and I was never here.

When they announced a "lucha rules" match between LFI and the Lucha Bros I assumed it was going to be 2/3 falls or at least have leaving the ring count as a tag. Changing it up to a "Tornado Tag" or whatever name they wanted to use as a NHB match right after a coffin match which had pretty much the same stipulation made it less interesting. The main event was the best I've seen Jericho look in a long time. I was kind of hoping he'd use his first WCW theme song though. Post-match angle ruled.

The thing about bold predictions is; they're often incorrect.

I took a work buddy who didn't know wrestling when I went to the Dynamite after Revolution. He had a blast, as did I. After 5 minutes he was Woo-ing for every chop and booing the heels. I still love that out of all the star power on the show he thought Luther and John Silver were the best. Really fun to watch with a newbie with an open mind and an open heart

Personally I would rather they turn Nyla Rose face. She has such a likeability to her that I think if she got to show her personality more than just "grr I'm a monster!" I think people would take to her right away. Let her be the biggest threat Jade has ever dealt with, and have Jade defeat her. Then after that you turn Jade face.

You bring up great logistical points as to why long free matches are an issue, but this is entirely why I love AEW and my main reason for supporting it. If there was less mouth watering action I would likely have less interest. Even when the booking is meh, the savior for me is the in-ring product.

I've said it for a while and I will say it again - AEW's biggest problem is 2 fold. 1.) Their roster is so bloated right now. They have the WWE effect where we want 800 guys to be pushed in 10 spots. I went through the roster the other day (and would encourage some of you to do so as well) and look at everyones records. Out of about 90 active wrestlers (that in and of itself is a lot for 3 hours of weekly programming), around 70-75 have winning records. How exactly does that really help anybody get over? That's almost 50/50 booking except with giving those guys wins on Dark. How many guys get pushed on Dark and get a beefy record just for one TV match to lose and be booted back to Dark? 2.) Long competitive TV matches give you less time to get more talent on the show. When you have a 2 hour show that runs about 1:40 with commercials, that leaves you with 100 minutes to get as much on TV as possible. If AEW had WWE's 5 hours of programming a week, it might work - but even then I don't think it would because AEW doesn't have the gravitas that WWE has for fans (not the hardcore fans) to tune into 5 hours worth of programming a week. Let's be honest, with only 3 hours of TV every week, how do you manage to fit (here we go) Kenny Omega, Chris Jericho, Jon Moxley, CM Punk, Hangman Page, Bryan Danielson, Miro, MJF, Adam Cole, Jungle Boy, Darby Allin, Will Hobbs, Hook, Ricky Starks, Andrade, Eddie Kingston and the list goes on and on. I don't know if this is by design either, but I feel there's no direct "world title scene" if you will. Yeah we got the main eventers up there (pretty much everyone I just listed) but who would you classify as a good TNT (comparable to IC Title) holder? You have so many people you could consider "above" the title, but not within reach of the World Title. Darby should've realistically been a real challenger with a feud for the World title by now with how much they pushed him when he was TNT champion. Instead, he's fallen to the back of the line while the other shiny new toys come in. And don't take this as AEW slander since I love AEW with all my heart and want to see it succeed - but it's clear that the waters are a little more murky than they used to be. Maybe part of that is taking the time to put the spotlight on NJPW or Ring of Honor and thus diluting your own brand in the process. Like say TK hadn't bought RoH when he did, I think we would be in a fine situation right now, but it's just crossing too many streams at once. Focus on AEW being AEW, you can do your Forbidden Door shows and stuff too, but then compounding that with RoH integration as well?

RIBBONS OF BLOOD! FUCKING AWESOME!

Next week!

What a great main event match that was! Lotta firsts. First time seeing Jericho in lionheart tights in AEW. First time anyone has kicked out of the Judas Effect. I'm pretty sure that was the first time Mox has bled in an AEW ring. I'm sure someone will correct me if I am wrong about that. Jericho hit a Thrillseekers level gusher at the end there. Mox bleeding from his ear was sick. Holding the Crab all through pitcher in pitcher was awesome. Did Jericho come out to White Zombie? What a pop for the surprise run-in! face off was goose bump territory. Our boy @Octopus picked a good one to see live. There was some issue with FITE at the beginning, my chat buddy got a "no feed from the venue" message too. So I missed tge start of the coffin match. Loved the finish, though. Brody king nailed that difficult bump and roll into the coffin! Were those issues just in Japan? I expected to love the tornado tag the most. But I was distracted while it was going on, missed a bunch of the action, and mostly came away thinking "enough with the unmasking already!" Jade was effective and believable taking offense. She keeps improving. She could be genuinely great some day. I.got to see a workhorseman on TV! Jobhoresman, maybe. The way to beat Starks is to invite him to a wedding at your castle, in my opinion. The way to beat Solo involves either carbonite or his own son turning on him. lookie here: Trustbusters! United Empire! No Baybay Fish KOR. Surprised and relieved. FTR run-in was good fun. Fans dressed as Brandon rule the world! BEARDHAUSEN! BRYAN VS GARCIA TWO OUT OF THREE FALLS!!! YES! YES! YES!

I was afraid this show was losing a ton of steam in the middle but Madison/Jade overachieved and the main was straight-up PPV main event level. If Jon Moxley is not your Wrestler of the Year then I don't know if you're watching wrestling. Can't imagine how they're gonna run Rosa vs. Toni back without a title change. But I'm cool with that!

Did JR really say "That canvas needs JR's BBQ sauce on it to make it palatable" at the end of the Jade match??

Jeez. That's the thanks he gets for putting together the Shield... Smh.

I think we all need a really good show tonight, so I hope that's what we get.

This RVD/Sabu stuff from 1991 that was posted is mind blowing. Look at those spots in these clips...and imagine seeing them in 1991. Crazy.

If I were pitching TK on ideas for ROH, and he'd had a few White Claws and some of that good booger sugar, I'd pitch Danhausen as the authority figure of Ring of Honor. I think his weirdness would play well between ultra serious matches. His character loves money and as he figures out that the more people like the matches, the more money he makes, you could have a lot of fun with that. But I think authority figures have to be done like that now, instead of "biased heel boss oppresses totally not ordained top babyface."

Yeah, Omega is back. Punk is back. Danielson is back. Meltzer said the goal was to have the big dogs healthy for autumn going into tv deal negotiations. Business is about to pick up. Sure looks like we are getting Ospreay vs. Omega interactions in round 2. They really gonna have Hangmin cheerlead?

Really neat fake out by announcing Danielson is in the building and he was the obvious choice to make the super save after the first round of cavalry was taken out. Saw a tweet saying Jericho is having one of his best years and whole I think the character stuff hasn't been that great he has had four of his best matches of his career in 2022. That was an incredible turning back of the clock.

I didn’t hate the middle of the show but it did have a lot of short vignettes and a couple of shortish matches. I like what they tried to do with Jade-Rayne and they were really close to having a really good match. Brody King isn’t going to be allowed to donate blood for months after the amount of plasma he spilled. No true spurts, just a constant wave of blood pouring down his face and onto the floor for most of the match. He had a lot of thumbtacks stuck in him too, while Darby just had random cuts and scratches everywhere. A little overbooked but a fun ending, and I’m glad I got to enjoy another Darby match where he didn’t die or get paralyzed. Tornado match had some fun moments, probably the most I’ve liked Penta’s work in a match. Rush and Andrade are fantastic bases for the high flying moves. That said, I wanted a true tornado where you come in when your partner leaves/is thrown from the ring, not a free-for-all. Jungle Boy needs to watch out, they’re leaning towards a Garcia-Anna thing and we all know how wrestling love angles go... Main event was quintessential professional wrestling: a great story told by the wrestlers in tandem with the announcers, blood, a slow, steady build, believable near falls, selling, things that looked hurty, guys busting out desperation moves, heel shenanigans backfiring (kind of think Jericho went hardway at the end), and the whole time a sense of not knowing who was going to win until it was done. I was actually almost in tears (but it’s also been a hard couple of weeks so I’m prone to strong emotional reactions). I was expecting it to be Danielson so when Punk’s music hit my jaw totally dropped and I marked hard. Good lord that pop was deafening. And then the stare down. PPV sold on that image alone.

F'N AWESOME night of pro wres tonight! Coffin match was an excellent way to start with a hell of a lot of blood. I liked the Sting involvement and the ending was picture-perfect. I really liked the last Darby/Andrade coffin match and this delivered the goods as well. Tornado tag was fun. Laughed out loud at Cutler suggesting Hangman meant he should team with the Bucks. Dug the sequence of Luchasaurus squash then the Wardlow/FTR brawl with Lethal and co..... loved FTR still having Wardlow's back, Pinnacle style. Solid squash for Starks of his former tag partner. Jade/Madison was rough in parts but enjoyable overall, another good win for Jade. Thought the main event was absolutely epic. Marked for LIONHEART using his old ECW music, great touch. The unpredictability and feeling it could go either way added a lot to the match. Felt like a real bloody war. Walls of Jericho all the way through the Picture in Picture ruled, the first ever kick out of the deadliest move in all of pro wres, the Judas Effect. Massive pop for Punk's return, didn't see that coming at all and thought he'd be out another few months. Great stuff all around. And holy shit did they throw a TON of stuff out there for Rampage, next week, and beyond. The trios tournament should be fun, if predictable by the brackets, I like that the Trustbusters made it in. Then we've got Sonny Kiss returning from 2 years of Dark/Elevation, KiLynn King coming in!, Erick Redbeard's back! the AAA mixed tag titles getting defended in AEW, potential Kenny return next week. So much awesome stuff coming up! And to top it off, Bryan/Garcia 2/3 falls! I love that it's taking place on the show presented by "House of the Dragon", the graphics made it feel like that was the name of next week's event so that's how I'm going to treat it. American Dragon vs. The Dragon Slayer at AEW House of the Dragon!

Julia needs to be neutralized. The time for the flexible wife is now.

Thing from the main event (well one of the many things) I like is that unlike a lot of flippy floppy AEW style matchups, that Jericho and Moxley weren't quick on the transition late in the match between painful holds. you got the feeling that they were legitimately fighting for position through exhaustion. And in AEW, Red Means Green. Blood Sucking Freaks, Tough-guy wrestling, Sports Entertainment, all of you... ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED! I do think they telegraphed that Judas Effect kickout immediately after it was hit by saying "NO ONE HAS EVER KICKED OUT OF IT". They should have figured a way to work it into conversation a minute or so earlier.

Holy fucking shit that post match angle was FANTASTIC. Octopus got his money's worth on that pop alone. Ross sounded sincerely enthusiastic for the first time I can remember in ages. Awesome opener and main event. Tornado was a bit sloppy but fun and effective. Thought most everything in the middle was a massive drop off and just stunk. That happens too often lately, hot opener, boring middle section, good main event.

Got to meet Gene at a small MMA show where he was Judging probably 10 years ago

I somewhat agree with you on all of this, but I do think the big roster and limited tv time are almost an advantage. Would I like to see Bryan Danielson wrestle twice, maybe three times a week? Yeah, I probably wouldn't complain. But, it's also not the worst thing that I don't get that since it makes his matches more special. I don't want to WWE bash, but at least AEW can't run matchups into the ground like them. The Usos and New Day have had some amazing matches together. But, they've had so many, that none of them really stand out, IMO. Like, I can't sit here and pull up one of their matches that sticks out from the others. It's a double-edged sword. On the one hand, I would like to see someone like Miro in action more often. I enjoy seeing him wrestle. But, I will probably get to keep enjoying seeing him wrestle longer, because there won't be that burn out. Again, not to WWE bash, and not to say that anyone here is acting this way, but I think sometimes that the monopoly that WWE has had for the last two decades has made a lot of fans have a very narrow view on how things "should" be done. I personally don't want more ppvs. I don't want to see the same guys/gals wrestling each other week in and week out. WWE is very successful and that has worked out for them very well. I just don't prefer it.

Great stuff. I like how it's kinda a tweener fraction. BD never turned back face, Yuta kinda told Trent where to go and even CC kinda worked heel a bit in his recent match against lard lad. Re: The women. The one thing I agreed with swole about was that its hard for the women to get off the youtube shows. When HHH was booking NXT (black and gold edition) it felt like it was pretty evenly gender balanced. I'd like to see AEW work towards that because I feel it can be done On another note... Love That Danhausen!

This part right here. I keep coming back to the fact that this guy could only get women if they worked for him. Like the idea, even in an open marriage, that he could just meet a woman someplace and get together just didn't compute. So much so that he literally saw a woman he wanted to fuck, so he gave her a job first so he could fuck her. That is absolutely mind blowing to me. Either Vince was just so stunted emotionally and psychologically that he couldn't comprehend getting with a woman any other way, or this was his kink -- he could only enjoy it if he had power over them. I'm sort of leaning toward the latter at this rate. This has been my Dr. Sidney M. Basil moment of the day, thank you for your time.

As far as aew’s womens division, I certainly think they’ve made strides since the inception of the company. Some of that can be chalked up to who was available at the time the roster was put together. I certainly subscribe to the theory that losing Kylie Rae so early threw a monkey wrench into a lot of what they had planned early. I don’t think anyone thought Brandi was going to set the world on fire, but I don’t think any reasonable person would’ve foreseen how bad everything she tried would turn out. Britt Baker and Kris Statlander getting hurt so early didn’t help. Big Swole was kind of a sunk cost. For a while that division was held together by Nyla and the Joshis (sweet punk band name, btw) and during the pandemic era your roster got so thin that Anna Jay was having tv matches like 60 days after she started training. Thunder Rosa is clearly someone TK has a lot of affinity for, and I can see why. She came in and brought a level of credibility to a division that sorely needed it. It’s just insane to me how poorly she’s performed since she signed full time. I can’t help but wonder if she’s like one of those athletes that gets a big extention/contract and coasts because the drive to get paid is gone. The personnel they’ve brought in in the last 18 months has been a legitimate uptick in quality. Ruby, Toni, Tay, And Serena Deeb have thickened the roster tremendously, and Jade Cargill is an absolute STAR. The division as a whole just feels stagnant. I certainly think introducing tag titles would help, but so many of the women have the opposite problem as the men; underexposure. shit, I rambled. My bad. But there’s a fundamental change that has to happen in aew’s philosophy regarding women before any real change can occur. I still wonder if there’s some edict from tbs or WB that limits the number of womens matches. But getting behind Statlander, Jamie Hayter and one or two other fresh-ish faces (Ruby? Toni Storm?) would do a lot for how the division is perceived…

i think the belief/fear is always there that if you produce a women only show, it will seem like some combination of "lesser than" or "segregated". Not that it would necessarily be presented that way (i would sure hope not!) but it wouldn't be hard to see that being the way people take it. I see similar arguments made in certain MMA circles ("they should shuffle the women off to their own show so i don't have to watch it") so the mindset certainly exists.

It's more a general thing, but it's going to be interesting to see how NXT changes philosophically from the past. Like Adam Cole and UE spent 2-3 years in NXT which seemingly everyone agrees was way too long. So now they're all in AEW (except Roddy), and WWE missed their chances with them. So, now it's when do the call ups/demotions happen, when do the releases happen... all that should be changing since it's much more Hunter's (and Shawn's) show. Guessing we'll find that out later in the year.

Blackpool Combat Club is my favorite thing in wrestling right now. The concept of being proud wrestlers, the wrestling itself, the use of Regal on commentary, the elbows, most of them being good guys while Danielson is still pretty much a prick. Good stuff.

What I never really understood (and this goes for WWE too) is if you have access to a low-cost facility to film programming you can produce all sorts of shows for next to nothing. Why not produce a womens only show with unique storylines, etc. instead of trying to squeeze a sizeable women's roster into a small programming block.

Justin Roberts kept asking us if we wanted Sonny Kiss all night before their match, and frankly outside of when Jane hit for Orange, Sonny got the biggest Pre-show pop of the night. Also everytime we cheered, he said come on louder folks, the guys backstage hear everything.

How much extra to call me a genetic jackhammer, pal?

They were sexual entertainers providing an intimate relations opportunity.

And btw I fucking love AEW. I just wish it did some things better, the women's division is a serious one for me and many others.

No.

He should have gone with escorts — legitimate sex workers — instead of these independent contractors.

TK said on an interview recently that Black's got like 5 years left on his AEW deal. FTR ain't going back. Miro is doing more acting, apparently. One thing I think we're discounting is the appeal of the AEW schedule as opposed to WWE's. You're home more. You have more leeway with your likeness ie third party appearances and whatnot. WWE is still a publicly traded company. Nick Khan still has a lot of sway. Some folks will flock back toward WWE, sure. But I don't think it's an exodus of talent TK needs to worry about so much as it is a rabid cost-cutter in the driver's seat at WBD.