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I was reppin' NJPW and AEW at the local amusement park. (Anyone here besides @The Natural and I who has one of the "old school" hoodies?! I'm sure there's at least one more in the club on here). There was another dad, a big Japanese dude, wearing a LIJ cap. I made Naito's round-eye gesture at him and his face lit up and he came over and fist-bumped me.

Give me more Konosuke Takeshita, and Jun Akiyama vs Eddie Kingston you cowards. Also, NEO Biishiki-gun, Maki Itoh and Shoko Nakajima.

Two belts at the same time, man.

I like Tetsuyo Endo, Yuki Ueno and Naomi Yoshimura in addition to the best guy they got, Konosuke Takeshita. Yoshimura in AEW would rule. EDIT: HOLY FUCK! THEY CAN SEND OVER MOTHERFUCKING YUJI HINO!

Gee, that's too bad. See ya! ?

What?!

Salient point here. Counterpoint: Douchebag wrestling fans will chant any old shit.

What did you do today? I was in Bucksnort, TN looking for Bunkhouse Buck ?

?

Can I get two hours starting at approx 6:05 on a Saturday night?

Man I haven't been on this forum in a while but AEW reignited my interest. Anybody catch Hey!(EW) with RJ?? It's like the between two ferns of wrestling and just fantastic stuff!

If you can't get the creative freedom that you want, might as well get paid, right?

Yo, that Darby va Butcher match was the shit. Butcher is so freaking good now. Please TK, make that guy into your Sid. Dude has an incredible look and since dropping weight, he’s not gassing out in 5 minutes. That Cloverleaf, powerbomb, cloverleaf spot was awesome. I think I loved everything about that match, including the finish.

That's why it's so weird he's going back to WWE for me. He smashed the throne with a sledgehammer. He used a golden shovel. He was teasing using The Pedigree as a finisher, but would say he's not resorting to using a shitty guy's moves or whatever. His music was all about WWE taking his name but not his legacy and shit. I realllllyyyyyy hope he got a gigantic money deal. Because there's a good chance his future is shit sandwiches, and learning to like the taste of them.

The idea that AEW would keep somebody under contract like Brian Cage to avoid badmouth seems pretty silly. It also seems like an idea from one of his many detractors. The purposed MJF bodyguard idea is perfect. This works to his strengths-his look and ability to pull off neat power/agility spots here and there. Cage as a wrestler needs to better grasp pace/psychology before he has any upward mobility. His mid-match super kill death spots end up making him look weak when they result in a 'shocking' 2 count and quick comeback. The heavier Keith Lee doing a fraction of his stuff but making things matter could be a good pointer/inspiration. Also, there's a lot of great minds backstage in AEW to help him. I for one (maybe I'm the only one), am curious to see the big guy get another chance. I assumed a fresh coat of paint in the new ROH would be his destiny, but... speaking of which... I am very intrigued by this first ROH show. @RIPPApulled quotes from Tony's Busted Open interview that answer some of your questions. But still lots of question marks. Can't wait to see who fills out this roster, the commentary, the set, the new logo, live show and broadcast logistics, etc. etc. I have no doubt this refresh will be exceptional and a great improvement. Not to mention a fantastic opportunity for a lot of rising young guns. And a few deserving vets (can we get Silas Young a job? Chris Hero maybe?). I'm more stoked for FTR v Briscoes than anything on the last fantastic AEW PPV. I really hope this isn't a one and done for Dem Boys. I need this thing to go at least 6 months with a best of 5 or 7, a gimmick blow off, etc. etc. As for where to tune on that Friday night - weekly Rampage is a very enjoyable high end weekend B show, but no question it'll be the honorable Supercard for me. Rampage may end up being like a punt, but will surely be, as always, a terrific Saturday morning broadcast. I'm sure logistics (eg. the ROH show being a PPV) etc etc won't or wouldn't allow for a simulcast, but it would have been neat.

I think there is a sense in which "You sold out!" can be seen as highly complimentary. It kind of means "We cared about you. We identified with you. We considered you 'one of us.' We are sad and even a little angry that, in moving up, you have moved on." in that sense, "You sold out!" chants might actually be a good sign w/r/t Cody Rhodes. I don't think you get those chants if people have stopped caring about you.

Great. That always turns out well among wrestling promoters.

I see where this is heading ... "The kinda belts that'd double-up on a guy like me, would."

The propaganda got another one lol.

Meh. Call it selling out if you want, but the correct term is cashing in. The wrestling business is a... business. Always weird to me when fans turn on a guy for doing what he's supposed to be doing. Making money. I would have preferred if he stayed in AEW because I liked the narrative of him betting on himself and trying to live up to his father by being more than just the wrestler. But that's all just a narrative. None of it's true. He didn't own AEW. Not even a piece of it. He is a businessman trying to make the most money possible. Good on him for cashing in. You sold out is about the dumbest thing anyone could ever chant at a wrestler. EC-dub chants didn't buy Taz a house, but that WWE money sure did. I loved ECW. But this idea that wrestlers are supposed to destroy their bodies for "the love of the game" and not piles and piles of cash is pretttttttty antiquated.

Eddie's said before that his ultimate dream match is against Akiyama... LET'S. FUCKING. GO.

There is absolutely no way that AEW is keeping people to avoid having them speak badly about the company. It belies logic. If you're gonna spend money to have people keep their mouth shut, a little severance package and/or an NDA would be the way to do it. A bunch of people have had or are having their deal expire. Swole is to my knowledge the only person who has said anything negative, and it only blew up into a whole thing because of TK's tweet, which was truthful, but not the right thing to say publicly.

@Gordlow: Looking good my friend. Cheers for the tag, the pictures and bonding with a fellow wrestling fan over LIJ. Great how we've got the original AEW Logo Premium Varsity Zip Hoodie (2019 Colors) and at 50% off when we bought them. I prefer the grey border to the white. My friend @NikoBaltimore's Wife has one. @Jiji as well. Any others want to join the club?

Brian Cage and MJF could do an Incredible Hulk character in a promotion like DDT. If keeping people under contract post Swole is a strategy to avoid them provoking Tony into saying stupid in public maybe there are larger issues that need to be addressed.

I have gifs to come on this one and we'll post the whole match at SC on Tuesday night, but check out the one minute of Mantopolous doing his thing:

Skeletor as well.

I liked how they said that Sheamus, Ridge and Butch grew up together. a 44 year old Irishman, a 33 year old rugby player from Liversedge, and a 28 year old backyard Wrestler from Birmingham. Just hanging out at weekends together, in the past. As children.

William Sadler has the same opinion of it as we all do.

Look, here's the deal with Khan. For 85% of actual bookers in history, going back to Eddie Graham and Gary Hart and whoever else you want to bring up, to guys like Kevin Sullivan, to Russo/Ferrera, etc., it was a job. Khan's like us. Even if he didn't own a wrestling company, he'd probably spend some chunk of his time fantasy booking in his head, even if he was trying to work out who the Black Scorpion should have been, just because it's fun and he's so tuned into it. He might not be posting about it on a board or whatever, but he'd do it. Even if it's work, it's work he'd rather be doing than just about anything else and he's got endless combinations to play with. And if he wants a new piece that normally wouldn't be possible, he just tosses some money at it. I wouldn't worry too much about the guy booking. Vince wants to work out all night. Khan wants to book.

I kind of expect the same as you. Best case scenario, I see him levelling off in the Drew/Rollins/Lashley/AJ/Owens zone. Which is relatively speaking still a great spot if you can get it and by most reasonable assessments of how things go there these days that is what being handled "well" looks like. I'm mostly just curious to see how much of the fun of what he's become they sand off and how much weird/good Cody still makes it onto their shows. And how the crowd takes to him.

Regardless of the reasons for people's "demotions," some of Cody's pushes have been commensurate with Drew's at the height of his Chosen One/IC reign stuff. Cody's been an ascendant 230+ day IC champ, been given characters and time to feature feature his personalities prominently, had PPV matches with some of their biggest stars, and he was part of a team that went over the Shield as strong as anyone has. He didn't achieve main event singles success, but his WWE run was equal to if not greater than Drew's first go in the company. As for burned bridges, who's to say. Things could go poorly, but some people with awful things to say about the place have come back in and gotten reasonable treatment (within the boundaries of what could be reasonable in this company; and yes, of course I realize this hasn't been a universal reality). And for all the shit Cody catches for slagging the them off or mocking them, Cody does go out of his way to say kind things about some prominent people in the company, Hunter especially. They might come to use him poorly, but I think you're painting an incomplete picture. No idea what argument you want to win, because we're not arguing. I'm just pointing out that the things you're using to draw firm conclusions really don't merit such certainty. This could break a few different ways, and we don't know till we see it play out.

Here's the big issue. WWE won't acknowledge AEW and for Cody to be perceived as this huge star they would have to mention his past accomplishments. They won't mention former ROH Champ, AEW TV Champ, etc. The other issue is, Cody was never main event material in WWE. I'm willing to bet 90% of the people here can't remember his last WWE feud without googling it. He is coming in as a way of Vince "sticking it to the competition" as well as his way of burying Cody just like he tried with Dusty. Just wait for it.

I hope his future is polka dots and rainbows literally. I was a fan of Cody the person. Not a huge fan but I always liked what he did and wanted to do. With the exception of going out of his way to bury the WWE. Now he is going back there and to me he is more than a hypocrite it's just cringe. It wouldn't look so bad if he didn't go out of his way to bury them but he did and it's going to bite him in the ass. It will never happen but I'd love to hear him drowned in chants of "You sold out' the second he debuts. No bigger sellout currently than Cody.

Few months old link below, information as to how Tony Khan books https://www.pwinsider.com/ViewArticle.php?id=151495

I don't know who started that baseless speculation about AEW keeping everyone so no one can disparage them. But that's just silly. Cage did a video interview with some site just this week and explained he was as surprised as anyone they wanted to keep him, but they have an idea for him we all just have to wait to see what it is. That's not how the wrestling business works. If someone is unhappy enough to make disparaging comments when they leave, they are also unhappy enough to stir shit up backstage during a show they aren't being used at. There's a reason WWE isn't flying Ali in for all the Raw tapings and they're sitting him out. You think Cage tweeting his thoughts makes AEW look bad, wait til dude starts unplugging cables trying to mess with their satellite feed or something lol. Warner Media couldn't give two shits what a wrestler says on Twitter. Unless TK is physically or verbally abusive with them or using hate speech or some other high level offense. Brian Cage & his wife saying TK sucks and Cage should have been used better makes exactly zero impression on the media rights deal.

Gable steveson won his 2nd NCAA title and officially retired from amateur wrestling

They appear to be wrestling as that persona for a Rhodes Wrestling Academy show next weekend.

I personally couldn't stand Cody and his batshit, rambling nonsense promos. Ever since his weird America promo in May 2021, Cody has just he started overstaying his welcome. It got to a point where he was totally oblivious that he had gone from being Captain America to Captain Cringe/US Agent. His storylines and angles, ie Aleister Black, started feeling like big jokes without a punchline. Case in point, you had that whole conflict with Arn Anderson, where Arn was gradually turning on Cody and proclaiming that Cody had gone too Hollywood. That basically went nowhere. Then you had him and Brandy feuding with Men of the Year, and that went nowhere as well. Cody's promos had gotten so cringe that fans started cheering Dan Lambert and Men of the Year over Cody and Brandy. At the same time, I think there's enough evidence to show he was a draw and fairly over for the most part. Just in terms of pure numbers, I don't think AEW is better off without Cody and Brandi. In terms of on-air product...I mean...yeah kind of. Cody building up to a heel turn that was never happening was tiresome.

New

Here's the joke I thought of last night as I was drifting off to sleep: Idea for Cody's WrestleMania entrance: There's a Jacksonville Jaguar's jersey, a Fulham kit, and an automobile bumper on a.small platform near the entranceway. Cody comes out holding a sledgehammer... And then I came here to post that joke, and found that @For Great Justice (and others) had beaten me to the punch (no pun intended). And I got a huge smile on my face thinking that I am part of a community where I am not the only person who thinks about pro wrestling that way. ***** Skip-able side-ramble about social media I am of two minds about the posters here who paste up tweet after tweet after tweet. On the one hand, I strongly agree with the "we do not need to see every tweet from every wrestler" point of view; and often I cannot see any reason for a particular tweet to have been re-posted here other than "Hey! pro wrestling!" On the other hand, almost every single day there are a handful of genuinely amusing tweets or very cool gifs posted here that I would otherwise miss, since I have never ever been on Twitter myself. I follow a very small number of people on Insta, mostly people I know in real life. Mostly from a single extended social circle here in Japan. But my Insta feed is choked up with dad jokes (one in five of which are even mildly amusing, one in ten actually funny), food porn, obviously manipulated photos of male and female fitness influencers, fitness advice that alternates between terrible and obvious, and worst of all nostalgia posts where there's a picture of, let's say, a bicycle and a caption reading "If you rode one of these as a kid, like this post." Those nostalgia posts make me weep for the human race. Presumably people are that desperate for any sense of connection whatsoever these days. I can only assume Twitter is like that, but worse, and with way more negativity. I occasionally follow a wrestler on Insta that I like but haven't met. But generally only one at a time. At least their muscle/sexy pictures don't appear to have been manipulated! Minoru Suzuki posts lots of pictures of socks! So: What is wrestling twitter like? Is it possible to manipulate/curate a feed that isn't a maddening stream of vitriol and bullshit? Are there (worthwhile) discussions that go on there that don't make their way over here? ***** Second topic: Speaking of Cody, (and of Twitter): Now that he's apparently officially moving to "the other channel" I think it's a good time to gaze into our navels and ask: Is AEW actually better off without Cody (and Brandy) (and Pharoah) Rhodes? I don't think this has been discussed much here, yet. Is it a thing on wrestling Twitter? (Sincere apologies if it has been debated and I somehow missed/forgot it). Anyway, maybe the answer seems too glaringly obvious (on one side of the debate or the other) for most people? I mean, Cody is handsome, talented, has star power... Cody vs Dustin is undoubtedly one of the all-time great AEW matches... He and Brandy have cross-over celebrity appeal... People were always talking about Cody and what he was up to... AEW (probably) wouldn't exist without him.. On the other hand, his stuff really didn't seem to fit in any more, even given the extremely broad range of stuff (from Orange Cassidy through Eddie Kingston, from Abadon through Juventud) that somehow does manage to fit in on AEW's shows. He seemed, at times, pretty tone deaf. He made some baffling creative decisions. And so on. Certainly there are a lot of arguments to be made on both sides. I am only scratching the surface here. There might also be arguments to be made (kindly and unkindly) that Cody will be better off without AEW. Personally, it feels weird to say it, but I think I have been enjoying AEW's shows a bit more since he left. They have certainly had zero difficulty putting on banger after banger even with Cody gone, Kenny and Miro on the shelf, and so on. Its kind of amazing. And it speaks well of the breadth and depth of AEW's roster and their style of booking lots of wrestlers to look strong rather than having a.tiny handful of top wrestlers who dominate the main event and championship scenes. I feel like Bryan, Punk, Kingston, Wardlow, Keith Lee, Thunder Rosa, and others are a better fit on 2022 AEW's (very spacious) upper card/TV main event scene than 2022 Cody Rhodes is. Quite curious if everyone generally feels the same, or not. Also, while we are navel-gazing here: Is there ANY chance whatsoever that this is all (still) part of some massive post-modem Brian Pillman style swerve?

Maybe the "Jericho Appreciation Society" is a way for AEW to beat Cody to the "I am a pro sports entertainer and I love sports entertaining" punch! ?

It's pretty much the same format as The Hardy Boys coming back at WM 34 in Orlando. It's not something that has been promoted but wink wink, the smart fans know it's happening. So Rollins will come out in gear and complain about not having a match. Then Cody's music will hit, gigantic pop. (Which music I wonder. His Downstait music is his, he can use it anywhere. But it also is lyric heavy on fuck WWE stuff lol). But as has already been mentioned, once the bell rings the reactions will be the real interesting part. Rah rah WWE guy Rollins vs the invading guy that started "the new WCW". Plus even in AEW he was getting that mixed Cena reaction. I imagine that's a possibility since it's a smart heavy crowd. Or do they just keep humming Rollins theme the whole match and ignore what's happening? I think a lot of it depends on the placement. You open the show with it people will love it and do the dueling "Let's go Cody, Cody sucks" chants. You put it 4 hours in, you'll get muted reactions and them humming Rollin's music. I think this segment / match is the most interesting thing on Mania for me. It's the only thing that has any real intrigue. Everything else, even if it will be good, will be paint by the numbers in a lot of ways.

Is it just me, or does it seem like Lee while still being awesome, is still working himself back into shape after all of the heart and health issues? He seems a step or two slower in AEW than in NXT.

How long will Cody's WrestleMania cape be?

Oh yeah, here ya go.

Just have Tully find some team to send after FTR as revenge. They counter with Bret in their corner. He punches Tully. Tully bumps huge for it. FTR wins, poses with Bret. That’s it. No need for Bret to ever bump.