Jenalysis

AEW needs to see what it actually has in HOOK right now. He's over, but his gimmick and his look don't fit- he's too small and too cute to be such a badass face. That said, if Hangman is going down a darker path- Hook as like the cowboy fighting for what's right with the HOOK signal might be a good use, and a way to slowly put him up the card, take the occasional loss, while gaining credibility. He's not beaten enough pushed talent to be seen as credible to Joe, and the match should be HOOK does well for a while but is out of his depth, and Joe drowns him in the deeper waters. Maybe run a Hook/Eddie Kingston team next where Hook learns how to be tougher. Either that or have Hook do a BOSJ tour.

Eddie confirmed on local media he was going to be on Rampage.

I've seen Airica on the indies- she has potential, but still very green and young. Her strength is striking, the other stuff is a work in progress. NWA might be a good spot for her given that. For someone with a superhero gimmick, she doesn't do any top rope moves that I've seen, but given her size that's probably a good thing. Also she and her dad (who goes with her) are very nice.

The question is what next for the Devil- MJF's likely taking time off to heal, Cole needs to heal. Does he just manage and have the devil goons run roughshod? I'd be fine with Wardlow just squashing Eddie to make the faction look threatening, with Cole managing, and the Kingdom stooging. Bring in KOR for more firepower eventually.

On the Jericho stuff- I hope it isn't true, but I wouldn't be surprised if it is. If there's anything to this beyond "he said, she said", Jericho needs to be suspended at a minimum, and preferably fired the way Punk was. One uncorroborated allegation shouldn't be sufficient to hurt someone's career. If TK knew about anything that corroborated this , and swept it under the rug, that's a very, very bad look. I think that's unlikely though. It's also possible they knew about the allegation, investigated already, and decided there wasn't enough proof to go public/do something with it.

They mentioned a few times that anyone not in the match interfering would be fired. That's an incentive not to cheat.

White/Eddie is a good story for NJPW fans as well, and I'd rather see Jay as champ than anyone else. Let Jay and OC keep their belts until May, then Double or Nothing their championships against each other on the PPV to make a real triple crown. Same story could be told with Mox and OC and continue that feud down the road, but OC vs Jay would be an incredibly good contrast of styles.

I think a cooler idea would have been a Devil busting Swerve with a beer bottle (with REAL GLASS) during the CC, then getting out before anyone can get to him. Everyone thinks it's Hangman, but Hangman was just wearing a devil mask while not being the actual devil, doing it to screw Swerve. Save the beatdown of Hangman until after that. MJF and Joe can get paranoid as well, with more justification, and Hangman can't admit he was just pretending or he gets fired for interference in the CC.

If they really wanted to make Hangman a super red herring, have Hangman dress in the Devil's goon outfit and screw Swerve during the Classic, to make sure he doesn't advance. Hangman is not the Devil, but dressed up buying a hoodie at ShopAEW.com just to screw Swerve. The actual devil is someone else. Jay then Advances by beating Mox and having the tiebreaker.

I believe so, as makeup for some contract tampering. There was also the SMW show with Arn in a box.

Even a T or two who are. (I've met one) I'm exhausted also. That said, I found a nice local indie wrestler from that list that I'm sure me and my gf will support when she comes here.

I think Jay's going to end up winning with 12 points. Swerve and Mox draw, and then Hangman costs Swerve on the last day (perhaps gets suspended and does a Midnight Rider gimmick as the Cosmic Cowboy), while White beats Mox with 1 min to spare. I just want to see Hangman do a modern-day version of this.

ECW lost top stars for years and kept their core fanbase till the end. TK won't have Heyman's check-cashing problems. AEW can survive this, and should. They just need to stay the course, keep their fanbase, which is still pretty good, and slowly try to draw new folks with a mixture of continued quality and occasional surprises.

Matt's promo style seems perfect for NJPW. As for the Devil- I'd love it to be Hammerstone. He's visually impressive enough to make a good first impression, there's the obvious history, and gives you a choice of goons. Outside of Cole I don't think anyone in AEW would be a good Devil except possibly Hangman , and that's risking a lot to put Hangman in that role.

I think the original plan was for Punk to lose this way to MJF to end the X belt story, Punk got fired, Jay got slotted into Punk's place, but Jay can't afford to lose this way while Punk could. Hopefully there's a good Kiwi rehab center near Jacksonville.

I'm super biased, I'm probably the biggest Jay White fan on here. Been all in on him since his NJPW match with Hangman where they both figured it out at the same time, followed by the Cow Palace match with Juice. The one piece of wrestling merch I feel ok displaying in my place is from Jay. (It's also the one piece I have in my actual name) So I'm not just pissed, I feel the same way I felt during the Roman wins LOL Rumble. I know some of this is personal, but this was so fucking stupid and it hurt my favorite wrestler. If TK reads this, I want him to know that I want to kick him in the nuts for this match, though I will forgive him eventually if things turn around. This is legit the angriest I've felt as a wrestling fan ever, which I know is irrational as hell, but it hurt watching this, especially since there was like 8 to 10 different ways to have a more logical ending to this- the easiest being Joe saves MJF to save his title shot. I understand if I get a vacation due to this, I probably deserve it, but it's how I feel. I've been around this board and previous iterations 25 years or so, and this is the first time I've posted something like this. I wonder if it's ok to feel this way?

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Jay won't be able to survive this. I think Jay's world class and should have won tonight, I was prepared for some shenanigans costing Jay, or a healthy MJF winning clean, but this was just awful booking. Turned a PPV I was pretty positive about to making me feel like I was starting to feel when WCW turned bad, or mid-2010s WWE. I think this is legit the maddest I've been at booking since the Roman Rumble.

My limit is two shows per week. In 2019 I was doing Dynamite+MLW mostly In 2020, it was the pandemic year, so things pretty much were take what you could get and be thankful In 2021, When Rampage started that was my two shows When Collision started, I stopped with Rampage (the only Rampage match I remember in the past six months vs Romero vs Mistico) A1/A2/a weird B might be AEW's best option. Dynamite and Collision should be the main shows, with Collision having a different vibe. Rampage needs to be the weird wrestling show. Give me foreign wrestlers and freakshow matches. AEW is saturated now.

And you can make up a reason for Swerve attacking Jay from their NJPW Strong history as well.

I'd be happy with Rampage being a matchup of international talents doing wrestling for the sake of wrestling, main evented by the women, with the occasional squash in there. This was pretty much what I want out of rampage every week that is realistic.

The whole AEW vs WWE thing, as long as AEW can keep its diehard fans and gain enough new ones to make for diehards dropping off, they'll be fine. The problem is you need more than preaching to the choir to do this.

It made me wonder if Edge is going to be the Black Scorpion Devil. There's like legit a lot of ways they could go with this, and all could make some kinda of sense. I could even see Jay faking the attack on himself, and using that to trick/test MJF.

Given the drama of the past year or so, it's understandable Hangman in particular would be a bit gunshy about audibles like that. The match I think was laid-out without a real face or heel, which was smart, so they didn't have to change much. Hangman did do some heel work on the hand he hurt on Rampage. I want to see where things go from here. A more vicious Hangman that doesn't go fully to the dark side would be nice, have him be tempted by Callis but not give in.

The Gunns and Juice fighting Ninjas Lucha Underground style would be epic. Maybe decapitate Luchasaurus again.