Cobra Commander

From a people-watching POV, watching people float “AEW’s problem is the former WWE people they have working backstage” or “AEW has went downhill because they strayed from what they used to do” is fascinating. I suspect a big part of the equation is that AEW was better prepared to face Vince than Hunter and now that the WWE is hotter and the boss isn’t in his 70s and they're cutting valuable guys loose less often than they did in 2021, it’s a little tougher. Some of the “AEW is too sports entertainmenty now” feels like an ideology thing where if things go badly, it gets blamed on drifting from the shining path. Like if your party loses an election and it gets blamed on not catering enough to the base.

Dana Dimel out at UTEP (since there isn’t a thread for offseason stuff for the several teams that didn’t make a bowl game)

Tom Allen out at Indiana

There was a news blurb about Hammerstone being released from MLW to join the “World Titan Federation”, which is of course a thinly veiled fictional group inspired by MLW’s current lawsuit against the WWE. So unless MLW is made up of total blockheads, I suspect Hammerstone is sticking around. But you know which member of the Dynasty is not employed by MLW anymore? Richard Holliday. Holliday, whose MLW valet is MJF’s current lady friend

Meanwhile Houston fires Dana Holgorsen

Excited for Gunther to be the first Big Daddy in the WONHOF

Kudos to the kittens around here on only wrestling each other around here during the opening WarGames match. Although one of them showed up during the main event for a few minutes. Also it feels like the WWE could tinker a little with the door and where it’s located before they do this match next year. Basically the only scenarios to enter the cage involved either having the other team try to keep you out, going for plunder, or somehow making it in like a normal match. It just looks weird to have the stairs be where they are when the door faces the hard cam. Wonder how much of a schmozz the WWE WarGames would be if they tried putting 10 people on one ring instead of giving them an extra ring to nap in while the main fight goes on in the other ring.

There’s probably several “that’s it?” scenarios in play here. Not sure how this whole story would be working out if Adam Cole didn’t mess up his ankle. I think the injury happened before the ninjas showed up too.

Looking around Wikipedia earlier and I was reminded that one of Gunther’s previous ring names was Big Daddy Walter, which I assume is not the friendly version of Walter.

I’m not entirely sure if there’s any kayfabe reason why kendo sticks are under the ring. But hey. Almost everything else, sure. (Edit: maybe not the bullrope but perhaps Cody has the family power to make bullropes appear out of nowhere) Maybe the gap looks larger on TV than reality but it looked like someone on the outside could fit multiple foreign objects into the cage through that gap. Anyways, maybe a little too much Royal Rumble in how they present the countdowns to new entrants. I mean we don’t really need to be given that many updates on how long it is to a new entrant. Also if they’re gonna do pinfalls, maybe designate a captain who pinfalls count on. But I’m not expecting WWE to steal a match concept from Lucha. But as I noted, it’s WWE WarGames. It’s probably beating a dead horse to note the ways they do it differently.

feels like some people should remember the lesson of the former/future TNA: it's impossible for wrestling companies to die if they don't want to die

although in this case, it feels like a bit of an uncontested layup.. I mean, Punk was spending his time working the Shield 10 years ago just before leaving the company so there's a good on-screen reason to have Punk/Rollins without any shooty stuff (but there will be shooty stuff)

In regards to ongoings in another part of the Wrestling World on Saturday night. I've already been over how I think the entire didn't play out great here (and there's multiple reasons in my POV).. but... there's one big of upside to what happened. The Divorce is final. So, time for them to make some good TV matches out of a holiday season round-robin tournament and then we can complain over the reveal for the Devil angle at Nassau or whatever.

Miz/Gunther was my match of the night and The Miz finally found someone that he could hit hard. Granted that shouldn't be a surprise, since The Miz's NXT protege, Daniel Bryan, was also pretty good against that style of wrestler. Just imagine The Miz working British tent shows for crowds of random children like Danielson did.

one of the dudes who is a Reddit/SC "insider" (Kermit) says Punk/Rollins at the Rumble Clearly Punk's WM main event is gonna be against The Miz and it'll turn into Ogawa/Hashimoto

Looking at CageMatch and there were 33 Punk matches in AEW. 27 wins and 6 losses (22-3 in singles matches). All the singles losses were quickly avenged and Punk wasn't pinned in any of the tag losses. Just an amazing sequence of events, wasn't it? In the scheme of things, adding Collision was probably more of a minus than adding Collision and then having to fire the De Facto King of Collision within 3 months. The timing worked out in a way where Punk got fired just in time to get some "they fired him and the ratings dropped" backup QB shine. They probably shouldn't have brought him back this year but well... things happened.

73 yard punt because the returner lost the ball in the lights

Texas A&M's next head coach will be... Mark Stoops CM Punk Maybe Bob Stoops? Well, Bobby Petrino is the Texas A&M offensive coordinator... so....

Just wait until we get the Sasha Banks return out of nowhere at the Rumble or something.

IF "this is happening on a wrestling show in front of a bunch of fans" THEN "it's a work" At least the wrestling drama-based economy won't cancel Christmas this year. I suspect a rumor of "R-Truth is mad that his return was overshadowed by CM Punk" would be believed by some online people.

Wonder if there was a "Bruno Sammartino watches the modern product and realizes the athleticism" moment for the Punk return story. "See, this isn't like 2013 WWE anymore!" Hunter has made it through the last year of WWE stuff in pretty good shape and I guess he's figured out who he has to throw some bones towards to make sure they let him do his work undisturbed. Not every political maneuver is gonna be a 100% win. Vince is basically a corporate figurehead and Hunter is being allowed to cook. What a world.

Just remembered The Miz doing a ringpost figure four vs Gunther tonight. It was a good match, not just a good Miz match, although there was a little bit of a "this pop star is a real musician, as evidenced by this acoustic album" energy with how the commentary talked about The Miz at times. Yeah, he actually watched the product, but good luck getting the people who don't like him to buy into that.

getting a major WWE PPV that didn't last as long as a college football game was sort of an interesting throwback to the good ol days of actually having to wrap things up in a certain time. also, for the record, i'm not watching an entire 3 hour Raw this week. edit: also gonna note that R-Truth is back, which is great news for the people writing backstage segments on WWE TV

not counting WWE Backstage. Which might as well have happened on another planet for all intents and purposes. Back to Punk... CM Punk is basically Wrestling Morrissey. There are people who pay attention to the drama. There are people who just show up for the concerts because they like that kind of music and they don't care if he's an asshole. I mean if you wanted to be a stickler about it all, Punk has been a sellout in the "CBS promotes the Clash, not for revolution, just for cash" sense for years. He was before and after he was employed by a former DVDVRMB poster. Because this is wrestling after all. Extra show note that I forgot to type: Boy, did that preview panel look cold or what. If Lawler hadn't had the stroke and he was still in his role of "only works preshow panels", would he have nope'd out of working outdoors in Chicago tonight?

They sent him home for like 9 months last time around... this time they fired the guy knowing that Survivor Series is in his home town. Tony just gave the WWE another top guy at a time when the perception is that WWE is up and AEW is down. Maybe CM Punk just 1996 Pillman'ed Tony Khan without getting into a Humvee wreck. Maybe things just came together magically. For the record, We're at exactly 90 days since Wembleymania. What it looks like with Tony is that WWE guys and guys who couldn't be employed by the WWE a few years ago during the most recent Vince reign of terror went to Tony for a job, and some of them have either found a way out of a job or otherwise made it obvious they're going back with HHH around. So Tony looks like a rube with a checkbook either way, doesn't he? I guess for the record, the return wasn't discussed until this week. But hey, they lied on other things on this story so it wouldn't surprise me to read if that story wasn't exactly true. Anyways.. I guess the angle is gonna be Seth Rollins vs CM Punk for the Raw title in a few months.