Niners Fan in CT

I'm tired. Everyone is gone now, time to relax. As I think about what I just watched, I'm left cold. There wasn't anything "bad" on the show but a lot of it was so uninspired. It all feels half-cooked. Even Cena's heel turn is half-cooked. I quite enjoyed some of what Orton and Cena were doing and the crowd reactions made it feel even better but by the end I was ready for it to be over. I'm so over the overbooked, interference bullshit WWE has been doing now for the last 3-4 years. I think it started with Brock and Roman and them even before The Bloodline Saga. Then Bloodline turned it into high gear and it was cool for a while. But now it's every fucking show, now Cena is doing it. Who is going to show up at Saturday Night's Main Event to help him? Vigilante? Guy Gardner? Vin Diesel? I'm over it.

This was a fantastic crowd reaction.

That was.... a show. A great show! There wasn't one thing that blew me away but there were a lot of several things that added up to being great entertainment. Whether it was MJF and The Hurt Syndicate or the women's fatal 4 way or Okada/Knight or the Mercedes and Hayter brawl. Good TV.

I guess they didn't put the Logan Paul match on here officially after it was rumored and they had that segment. So maybe it doesn't happen.

I thought they might have Ospreay go over Mox because he is so over right now and 'Forbidden Door' is in England so he'd main event that show as champion. But the more I think about it, I'd rather see Hangman conquer Mox and Ospreay could maybe face someone like ZSJ at FD?

Is Alberto popular in Mexico? It feels like such a risk to keep him around with little reward. But maybe I'm wrong and he's a big deal down there.

There's still a lot of crossover obviously, myself included, who watch WWE and AEW but I do feel AEW fans are more appreciative of the details in the ring and less caring about some "moment" The Bloodline Saga had every WWE fan conditioned to have one eye on the entrance ramp. It was cool for the Roman story but now it's all anyone wants and it's not for me.

If you had approached me with something more than a condescending tone I'd be happy to continue the conversation.

I agree with "WWE style" being more "big picture" and less about the details in the ring but I do think Mercedes was able to break through that on occasion, even a match like when she fought Ronda Rousey or the WrestleMania main event vs. Bianca Belair.

Watch any John Cena matches lately? Move, move, move.... finisher, kickout. finisher. Kickout. Wait for interference.

There's not enough TV time between AEW/WWE to feature all these people and I'm in no way advocating for MORE wrestling on TV from those two companies. AEW ran into some problems when they were trying to put new or different people on AEW each week. Viewers complained and they arguably lost viewership because of that. AEW has improved the quality of their shows by focusing on the stars they already have. This is why I liked AEW Dark because it gave others a chance to develop a character and wait their time until they could be slotted into the main programming. For WWE, because the focus is still very much on 20-minute in-ring promos, etc. you're just never going to have enough time to feature more people. It's not in their DNA to do so.

John Cena was part of a VIP package during WrestleMania weekend where people were paying thousands (not an exaggeration) to meet him and take pictures with him. There's nobody on the face of the earth where I personally would pay that kind of money to meet, I wouldn't pay any money to meet a celebrity, not my thing. But I would not knock anyone if they did. I didn't see anyone on here tagging John Cena fans about it. That's my point. I don't care what Mercedes is doing outside of entertaining me in a pro wrestling ring. If Mercedes was a dude, nobody would be implying anything and that's a fact. The biggest reason why I'm a Mercedes fan and this dates back to NXT, very few wrestlers these days are incorporating the struggle and the storytelling into their matches the way she is doing. Every move, every decision made, counts. There's a reason behind everything her and her opponent is doing. I also listened to an interview she had early on in her career where she discussed putting her entire life on the backburner to help raise her brother with autism (apparently she's still doing it from posts I've seen) and that was a nice story in a profession that doesn't seem to have a lot of nice stories. But 99% of my fandom is the ringwork.

I don't care, his post was just the last in a long line of misogynistic posts where I'm attacked and labeled for being a fan of a woman's wrestler. I used to post all the time about AJ Styles or a long list of male performers and not once was I attacked and if they had a text service nobody would imply that I'm somehow interested in that. Grow up.

I wonder who the guy is that dresses likes Don Callis. He's been front row on a lot of AEW shows recently.

I'd appreciate it if you didn't tag me in dumb ass posts. I've sat ringside where Mercedes has had matches on the card, I appreciated her work (as I do on television) and that's where it ends. I'm a fan of hers as a character and as a performer. I also feel she was done dirty by WWE several times. That's all I have to say on it. If someone is dumb enough to pay $99/month to text "Mercedes" (more than likely an AI bot or her assistant) then that's on them and they deserve to have their pockets raided. Crawl back into your hole and stop trying to start shit with me on here.

This is criminal. Jakara Jackson was a perfect example of someone busting their ass, improving their in-ring skills, presentation, etc. and finding herself as a character and then she's gone like nothing.

I remember loving Macho Man as well but I had a Million Dollar Man wrestle buddy so yeah.

I was going to wait to post about this but I think it's relevant to this discussion now. It's clear WWE isn't as hot as they were last year or the year prior. Yes, they will tout the outrageous Vegas prices and what the gates were but weekly they are running some midsized arenas again and/or not selling the full capacity of said arenas. Also, the numbers on RAW for Netflix have been meh at best and SD! numbers have fallen off a cliff. The reason I'm bringing that up is because I feel when there's more casuals attending shows and families attending shows you do get the crowd response you desire. You do get people booing the shit out of Dom and Liv on a weekly basis. When the crowd shift more to the hardcore WWE fan base, that's when you start seeing all the shit they do to try to be part of the show and get themselves over. The weird chants. The "One more time!" for Bron as he's killing a defenseless Sami Zayn. The cheering out of nowhere for Dom Mysterio. The booing of Bianca Belair. Those are the people who spend money to go to these shows and try to make it about them.

Even if you just want to narrow it down to those three months, it was simple and effective. We knew the motivations. None of that rings true for Cody and Cena. We STILL don't know anything about how The Rock played into this story or why Cena decided to turn other than "YOU PEOPLE!" It fucking sucks.

Card for 'Double or Nothing' looks good on paper so far with Hangman vs. Ospreay and Hayter vs. Mercedes for the Owen Cup Finals. I'm guessing we will get an Anarchy in the Arena match between Death Riders and Swerve's Squadron? I'd like to see Toni Storm on the card.

I don't have a problem when promotions book for a "moment" but let's look at WrestleMania III. Hogan and Andre was slowly built up for a good while with basically Hogan ducking Andre and Andre seemingly just happy to be there until he wasn't. It all made sense and was very easy to digest. The moment was the staredown in the ring combined with the bodyslam in front of a stadium crowd. That's something that people will never forget. But the match itself wasn't even that bad. Andre could barely move but everything they were doing made logical sense to the conclusion. Now look at Cody and Cena from the other night. What was the "moment"? Was it Travis Scott taking 1700 hours to get to the ring? Was it the terribly overused finisher-kickout, finish-kickout sequences? The story coming into the match wasn't fleshed out. It was convoluted, we don't understand any of the motivations behind it and the match itself was complete ass because it was just move, move move until Travis Scott came out. Say what you will about guys like Kenny Omega but nobody has kicked out of his finisher in like a decade or more. When it happens it will truly but a "holy shit!" moment. He's telling way more of a story in his big matches than these formulaic WWE main event slogs. In WWE lately.. it's just 30 minutes of waiting around until the person you know is going to interfere shows up. To me... that's not wrestling.

This card has both Logan Paul and Pat McAfee in feature bouts. Fucking hell...

According to luchablog AEW 'Grand Slam Mexico' is completely sold out. It sold out in one day.

I wouldn't mind if they did I'm just saying that it's not generally how Tony Khan does things. He tends to focus on wrestlers who want to be there and puts the others on ice until the contract runs out. I don't believe a win over Mariah does much when the entire crowd knows she's leaving anyway but I'd be cool with them doing it if they chose to.

They literally killed him off TV. This isn't telling the entire story.