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Jacob Fatu gave me my greatest wrestling related compliment a few years back when a match I called with him and Boyce LeGrande was so good he passed it on to Booker T ahead of an appearance on his podcast because he thought it was a great showcase for him and my commentary really made it pop. And now the dude just took out the WWE champ and two top babyfaces on his first night in the company in dominant fashion. I couldn’t be happier for him. Strap the rocket to him.

With regard to the actual rating, I will go back to my standard talking points: 1) Live ratings are going down around the board, and will continue to go down as cable continues to die. The streaming TV providers, like YouTube TV and Hulu Live TV, are starting to lose subscribers in large amounts too. I saw an article the other day that YouTube TV lost subscribers for the first time in 2024, I believe somewhere in the neighborhood of 100k subscribers. That's a drop in the bucket, but the market is going to shrink. This is why AEW's next U.S. deal absolutely needs a streaming platform to go along with it. 2) Nothing is really appointment TV anymore outside of live sports. This is why I'm annoyed that only same day numbers get reported, and nobody goes back for live+3s or live+7s. A lot of people do watch via DVR or on demand. This week is the first week after school for a significant amount of school areas and families were taking vacations. TV is just not a priority. Losing a third of your audience isn't a "something better was on", it was a "we're not watching TV at all" moment. 3) AEW really does need to do more to connect with a wider net of audiences. They have been doing a better job with angles lately, so they get credit there, but most things with angles/storylines need months to pay off to draw people in to show that there will be consistency. I think if they keep it up for six months, that will be a big help. I don't think Tony Khan saying "I'm booking for the sickos" does them any favors. I do think if they borrowed from NXT and focused on women more, that would help; women's sports are a hot topic now, and NXT have seen their ratings and interest go up by focusing on the women. (Something I've been saying for what... five years? lol)

I wanna know who watches BBT re-runs and then says "eh, fuck it, I'll stick around for 2 hours of wrestling." If there's 250,000 of those people, TK can shell out to have Jim Parsons take Christopher Daniels' role.

I generally like Bryan Alvarez but he has the dumbest take on Toni/Mariah/Mina. Basically he compares it to HHH/Steph/Angle and says nobody cares who Mariah ends up with so it doesn't matter. Really hammers the nobody cares thing (spoiler: I care). And he completely ignores that they've explained the Mariah/Mina relationship, done video packages etc. He describes it as "random Japanese woman shows up and makes out with her.....then she shows up again and they drink champagne.....THAT'S IT" and acts like you had to follow Stardom. Fucking Alvarez has watched WAY more Stardom than I have (practically none beyond clips), get the fuck out of here Between his NXT love and his AEW takes lately I don't know man. I know having a couple kids changes people but if he can't appreciate this "love triangle" (he insists on calling it that) for what it is.....I'm fucking speechless

I've been saying this for a while now whenever people use the "there are great matches" point, but great matches simply aren't enough. There needs to be a hook for people to want to come back. That means something that entices them to watch next week, every week, with consistency. I can go to YouTube and watch a great match in a vacuum any time I want. I don't have to set my reminder at 8:00pm every Wednesday for it. The Attitude Era had absolutely dogshit wrestling, but people wanted to see if Stone Cold was going to take it to Vince, or what the Rock was going to say, or what the NWO was going to do, or if Sting, Lex Luger, and DDP could stop them. The actual in-ring matters as well, but you need characters people like and reasons to get behind them, and jerks for those likable guys to beat up, and there needs to be consistency behind it. You can literally have both! You can have great in-ring and great characters! But there's an inordinate amount of focus on the in-ring and it's going to tank things.

Been a little quiet on here, but I was AMAZED by Rush/MJF. MOTY stuff. Those guys are storytellers. And you know who else? ...Dante Martin. Yep. And I never had that opinion before. Overall it was a killer Dynamite overall, even the WAR multiman. Now I gotta rewatch Rampage.

This is the full segment that closed the show. One absolutely lovely little touch that sells Jacob like a million bucks and a gigantic problem is the way the Tongans both look at each other right before they throw up the 1's. It's "oh fuck, what have we gotten ourselves into?" It will be one of those moments that when, not if, this all blows up in Solo's face, you'll definitely remember.

No. I’m quite enjoying Vince-free pro wrestling.

I still haven't seen Doom Generation. I probably would love the shit out it, but it never gets any play like all the other '90s stuff I've seen a million times in a similar vein. If you don't want The Long Good Friday then I don't trust you posting in this thread. Hell, I bought it on Region 2 without owning a Region 2 player.

Wargames has to be Solo, Fatu, & GoD vs Roman, Usos & Sami. Don't add in Hikeleu. Don't add in The Rock. 4 on 4. Bloodline 1.0 vs Bloodline 2.0. The original Bloodline is going to be so fucking over as faces especially if Sami joins back in to even the odds.

I really think some of yall are underestimating the Juneteenth factor. I know several places here in GA had evening parades, fireworks, etc. A LOT of people who fit the socio-economic profile of potential AEW viewers were out and about when they normally wouldn't be, especially in the Southern United States. Plus, AEW still finished 3rd on the evening, which leads me to believe that no one watched much of anything Wednesday night. I didn't watch the Kendrick Lamar concert, but I would have if I'd known about it. Was it free?

The Private Party vs Komander and Metalik match was not good. Slow motion, lots of standing around. Fenix-Turbo Floyd was pointless and not much fun. Shingo match was solid, good way to “introduce” him before the PPV. Andretti-Lio started out very indie then turned into a decent, athletic match. Main was good, Willow’s power vs. Deeb’s grappling and veteran wiles.

Clearly he had a continue.

So I just automatically dismiss anyone that says "there aren't storylines" as there are plenty of those going on in AEW, so those people either aren't watching or just repeat what they see on X. But certainly no use in engaging with people making arguments in bad faith. We'll see if its a weird one-time thing that can't be explained or part of a trend. I think the two biggest factors are the lack of BBT lead-in and also... lets face it, Forbidden Door probably isn't the most exciting PPV for more casual fans. That's a PPV that really is for the sickos. While I don't think Dynamite has suffered due to the build, in fact I think Dynamite has been really hitting its stride the last month and the shows have been really good, I could absolutely see some fans that aren't interested in CMLL or Japanese wrestlers and just checking out. Will they come back in July? I think the Blood and Guts rating will be important, not that it needs to set new records but if its also sub-700K I think that would show a legitimate notable shrinking of the fanbase. I know its popular to say they should run smaller venues, and I don't necessarily disagree but I think one issue that has been brought up before is there aren't as many 3K to 4K arenas in the US, that can be adapted to wrestling for a reasonable price, in major cities. I'm not saying they don't exist but most arenas are going to be at least 8K as the places wrestling run are college basketball arenas, hockey arenas, general entertainment arenas, etc that are decent sized. They could do 'studio' shows but that clearly isn't the look they want. I'd love for them to at least once a month run Dynamite or Collision in a sub-4K arena they can fill or 95% fill, really get a good loud crowd in a small place but I don't know if its realistic on a broader scale. AEW's Dynamite ratings over the last six months have varied really wildly (as much as a 250K swing that fluctuates week to week), which admittedly I find fascinating as most shows don't ebb and flow over 20% of their viewers week to week. I mean they hit 819K on 4/10, 672K on 5/15, 787K on 5/29, and 502K on 6/19. That's crazy. But they definitely need a hot storyline or wrestler, even if its a weird one like Joe Hendry got in TNA, which is easier said than done.

It was just a ten minute match. It had a build over two weeks with multiple backstage segments. It was set up by the Premier Athletes having a promo package and winning a squash. It was to heat up the trio of Joe/Shibata/Hook to set up the post match of the Jericho match and the challenge. They did everything right! On paper it’s perfectly good booking. There was nothing more they could do! There’s plenty they’re doing wrong but this was done exactly how it was supposed to be. There were no gaps. Seamless. Complain about something else. Or at least note that the issue is the theory and not the execution because the execution was perfect. You just weren’t paying attention.

The worst thing that ever happened to wrestling are people with their stopwatches going "there was X amount of wrestling on a wrestling show". Yeah I'm sure there wasn't a ton of wrestling back on World Championship Wrestling back in the day, you tell Ric Flair or Tully Blanchard or Arn Anderson or Dusty Rhodes to shut up so we can have a 15 minute match between Tim Horner and Cougar Jay. Talk me into wanting to pay to see you wrestle. It's not house shows anymore, it's to keep my cable or streaming subscription. (Or I guess PPV if AEW's going to insist on keeping that.)

I know Jacob Fatu has dominated the Smackdown talk but I gotta give some love to the no-cut tracking shot of Drew carrying Punk's carcass: The fact that all the Wyatts talk makes the viewer's mind go there first and everyone being jumpy because of it and then slowly panning up from Punk being laid out to reveal Drew. Not showing what Drew did to Punk so that it's up to the viewer's imagination and then just having Drew silently walk through the entire Smackdown roster before he just dumps Punk unceremoniously on the floor. They took the super obvious idea of "Drew getting revenge by attacking Punk in his hometown" and really over-delivered on it.

It depends on the return on investment that they get, as well as the amount of seats they have do to production kills on (set, camera setup, et cetera). Sometimes the 8,000 seat building, with production kills, configuration, and setup, is the bigger profit generator than the 4,000 seat building because the rent is cheaper. It's also going to depend on the market. If you feel you can get 5,000 in the building and you can get that ROI on the 8,000 seater, it's better to run that than the 4,000 seat building and leave the secondary market open for scalpers where you're not going to get a sniff of that money anyway. This is especially the case in a market you're not hitting more than twice a year anyway; better to get as many people in the building if you can than have people miss out and be disappointed so they're not interested when you come back. Are the optics better on a full building? Sure. But the name of the game is to make more money, and if people are influenced to not go to a show because they saw a half-full building on TV or in pictures, they were looking for a reason not to go anyway.

Opening segment with Punk, Heyman, and the Bloodline was good. Women's MITB qualifier was solid and fun all around. Was pleased to see Chelsea sneak away with the win. She needs these occasional victories and is someone who likely has few issues doing dumb shit in things like ladder matches. Hope Jade wins her qualifier next week to set up at least a little tension with Bianca. Drew murdering Punk outside and carrying him like an empty sack to the entrance ramp to display to all of Chicago was neat. Orton/Hayes/Tama was solid. KO/Waller/Andrade was good. That finish was impressive with how perfectly it seemed to work out. Generally hate stuff like Cody/Solo being nothing more than an angle, but it was a great introduction to Jacob Fatu. Loved Jacob taking out all of the faces on his own while Solo watched on grinning the entire time. Don't like there being only 3 real matches, but all 3 were rather enjoyable and worth a watch. Dug all of the segments thought he standouts were definitely the opening and closing. Jacob looked badass and dangerous. Not quite Umaga levels, but he was close. Really makes me curious how Hikuleo will fit into this whole story eventually. He is tall, but he isn't really the monster or mean mfers Jacob and Solo are. Good show.

hell, let's get wild and have Cody teaming up with Roman so that Cody can catch another beat down in pure Dusty style

Jacob Fatu's table spot on Cody reminded me of when they brought Sabu into the WWE and had him hit a table spot on Cena the first night. As someone who was watching MLW in 2019/2020, it's good to see that they finally found a way to get this scary lunatic into the WWE.

TK, ARE YOU READING THIS?!?!! REAL SICKOS WANT THIS!

I don’t know if anyone is talking about Shane McMahon sending out feelers for AEW or not but think about it if Shane signs to AEW we are one step closer to Shane vs Sasuke.

Is this what booking for sickos looks like? In all seriousness, there are some things that could make it just an outlier. It was 6/19. It's a holiday for a lot of people now. There were cookouts, my family went to the beach, it's been super hot on the east coast all week. Also, the Kendrick Lamar concert was our primary viewing on that night. I'm guessing it did crazy numbers streaming. It was trending on social media for hours. If the number is just as bad next week then it's a real issue but right now I'm saying all of that factored in.

Not the Winged Eagle, but I wouldn't mind seeing the Spinner tossed in the garbage because that belt is fucking hideous and doesn't bring back fond memories of my childhood.

I don't think anyone named her yet but I think Willow is the biggest success story. Started her AEW career with eight straight Dark losses.

I think there are worse things TK could burn his money on than bringing Shane in for some kind of one-shot appearance but I do not under any circumstances want to see him as a recurring character.

That Jeff Jarrett promo was basically AEW telling people that thinks he didn't belong in Owen Cup to fuck off and was beautiful. Now it makes me hope this Wild Card isn't someone that needs to win

leaving aside the question of "are the long-form stories actually good enough to be seen through", a bunch of guys getting hurt over and over is a bit of a problem too and back to the question.. if the stories aren't good enough to be short-form, then they're not better if they get dragged out either

This week I've been reading Castle Waiting by Linda Medley. It truly is the most delightful book I've read in a long time. In fact, it's the most excited I've been about comics since I discovered Strangehaven and Age of Bronze. It reminds me of when I first discovered the early issues of Bone and bought the first trade paperback with the Great Cow Race. Beautiful black and white cartooning and a pure joy to read. I was so absorbed in the story that I put everything else aside this week and only read Castle Waiting. Loved every single panel. Check this out if you enjoy enchanting storytelling.

1000% agree with you. Everywhere that's ever been successful gets that way by getting characters super hot with their audience and putting those characters in stories people want to see play out. We all love great wrestling. But the audience for great wrestling is smaller than the audience for compelling storytelling. If you can combine the two you're golden. But you need to get someone hot. Like really hot. And then tell stories people want to see. You have to do that in addition to getting the roster construction, show formatting, live event routing, and all that other stuff right too. It's really really hard to capture all that lightning in a bottle at once. In a lot of ways I don't think WCW gets enough credit for their hot period with how much they did right to flip the momentum during their apex. For that kind of lightning to strike twice is almost impossible. But especially so if you're gonna be stubborn and try and do it only for the "sickos" instead of the wider audience like it's been done in the US for the last 70+ years.

There's no one definitive reason AEW is down right now. There's about 10 or so things adding up to negative momentum for them. In the same respects, there's no quick fix to get the momentum back. They need about 5-10 things to turn around and break right for them to start reversing the momentum. The perfect height / sweet spot for them was August of 2021. Punk came in. Danielson & Cole jumped. AEW felt hot. It felt important. People were fed up with Vince's WWE. But from that point on just a bunch of things broke wrong for them. And the inertia just hasn't stopped. It's still great that it exists. I still prefer it to WWE personally. You're bound to see at least 1-2 legitimately great matches a week. But's not the same as it was a few years ago. Injuries, the backstage dramas, the stigma of both Punk & Cody leaving, content saturation, booking and hiring proclivities. There's a lot working against them right now. I think the smartest course of action is to come up with a new game plan. What's happening in the now is making you money still. But there are warning signs. If you stay the current course you're about to have a WWE in 93-96 / WCW in 99-01 rut hit at any moment. There needs to be shake ups in format and roster construction and live event routing strategies. They made a big hoopla about rankings coming back and how Punk was the one that kind of scuttled them away. And that lasted TWO WEEKS before it was dropped again. You have to sit down and make a game plan and stick to it. There needs to be some commitment. Decide what can be improved. Decide how it can be improved. Then give it time to improve. A month of good shows doesn't change anything. You need about 9 months to a full year of consistency before you can expect to really see the results. Just my thoughts anyway. I personally just think this weeks's rating is an outlier. The TV universe is shrinking. Stuff was happening. Forbidden Door is always a killer show but the build is usually pretty bland. It's not a panic decision based off of that. It's just a feel based off of the product and attendances since Punk left. Or more accurately since Collision started really.

I respect Dave's opinion on a lot of things. I'm not sure I trust him to have any real feel for what's "popping on the streets," as Dave Chappelle as Nelson Mandela would say. I don't think you're totally wrong. Mistakes have been made. I've been saying for two years that having the Young Bucks as a focal part of your weekly TV show is a mistake. I think there's a big enough sample size now that you can say that pretty definitively. The thing I keep coming back to, however, is that nothing else on TV last night did anything either. If they don't have a strong bounce-back over the next few weeks, then I'll believe even more that it's a content issue...

Partially agree with you. Even with the past events having weaker builds and maybe less big name NJPW possibilities, the concept and event itself has been very fun in the past. I’d rather see or have build for Swerve vs Osprey than most other match possibilities, but they found a way, as silly as it is, for my heart to not be in it. —- Also, I was joking relating it to the ratings. That was just a dumb me joke.

Well, Mr. Own Goal scores the goal of the tournament (the 2-0 of Portugal against Turkey).

the Shane Douglas "Franchise University" podcast is done due to things like "Shane and the other guy not having schedules that aligned to record" and "I was losing money" and "my wife is pregnant" but don't worry... the same guy is gonna launch a new podcast with Stevie Richards next week, thus keeping our quota of former wrestler podcasts up

having multiple dudes who are either known entities or good acts out of action with leg injuries inflicted due to some dumbshit spots isn't great either

It looks like the biggest drops occur... when MJF is around. MJF, say his name and viewers disappear...

Thank you A-Rod. (I never thought I'd be typing that). Reggie Jackson gets real about the racism he suffered in Birmingham, including the fact that if it wasn't for his coaches and teammates support and defending him, he would "have been found swinging from an oak tree) (Warning: Unfiltered language) https://x.com/GaryParrishCBS/status/1803976410563850245

Yeah, I mean the few murders I've committed I always made a point to get a Jalapeno & Cheese afterwards.

Made from real gorilla chest!

Let Darby cut a promo backstage about "The Best in the World" again. Launch the following Rampage with Shane.

Jim Ross compare modern wrestler to wrestler of the past without race or ethnicity playing a part challenge (impossible)

https://x.com/Variety/status/1802974557327761503 Max the Impaler has just finished shooting a horror movie with Seann William Scott and Fabianne Therese, apparently.

Well you need to remember that NXT pivoted to "Papa Haitch's Super Indy" when Vince got pissed at ROH and other indies drafting off them on Mania weekends. So, in a real "we have Santino" move, they hired all the indy guys they could in order to out indy the indies, like why would you watch ROH, etc. anymore when all the indy darlings are here?" So putting super indy NXT against glorified indy AEW was just the natural progression. That was always the thing about Vince, he always had such Dunning-Kruger Effect self-confidence that he assumed anything he created would automatically be better than anything else you could watch elsewhere. I always laughed at the pretense for taking NXT away from HHH was, "he's not developing young stars." Like hey, no shit, you changed it from developmental to your in-house anti-ROH on a whim yourself.

I only want AEW to sign Ricochet if they're actually gonna push him. I'd like to see a real program with him and Swerve for the title, but I'm not sure AEW needs another guy to just lose 12 minute matches on Dynamite or Collision every 2-3 weeks.

I fucking loved celebrity boxing and I’m proud to say I predicted the winners of all 7 fights with 100% accuracy