NoFistsJustFlips

The way Meltzer reported it, Woo has a similar deal to Slim Jim's WCW deal with Savage. They paid his entire salary in exchange for promoting the energy drink. But in the report it said the energy drink is not doing well and can't get into any stores outside of the local market they make it in. So if that reporting is correct I'd bet they just ran out of funding to keep paying for the sponsorship. The Flair component is kind of irrelevant if they're not making enough to pay for their part of the sponsorship. I'm guessing Flair's salary is a hefty fee. $500k a year maybe? That's a lot for a non-wrestler that really doesn't have a spot with no Sting and no Andrade.

Think it's a little crazy everyone thinks MCMGs will go to NXT. While they would certainly help the workers in NXT get better, if you're paying them enough for them to choose you over AEW I gotta think that's a main roster acquisition. And MCMG vs DIY in Cleveland for Summer Slam would be the perfect debut match for them. I almost think that's why DIY got the belts. To give Gargano something he can really sink his teeth into for Cleveland. I mean that might be wishful thinking. But I think them going straight to the main roster is the move here. You stick them in NXT and overlap it with the TNA stuff, then from a performer standpoint it's going to be a bit annoying. You finally get that big deal with the biggest company but you're still kinda just doing the same thing working TNA guys or being loaned for TNA shows. That's a morale killer for a lot of guys.

Well they're not going to give everyone a bye week at the same time in the middle of the season with nothing to put on TV for that week. So doing the same league wide bye week is pretty much dependent on slotting the all star festivities in that week. The idea kinda falls apart without it. The alternative is them still giving out two bye weeks but randomizing the second byes like the first byes. NFLPA isn't going to agree to that extra game without an extra bye week. So that's gonna be a necessary component. Which is going to make scheduling that much more difficult to juggle / more room to complain about teams getting more rest than others / etc. Example: Team A has both byes in the first 13 weeks, Team B gets 2 byes in the last 8 weeks and such. I thought this was a pretty solid way to shift everything around and tweak things. Especially since the day after The Super Bowl would always be a national holiday.

I saw a suggestion being credited to Joe Burrow about the inevitable 18 game season that's pretty genius. If you add in that extra game you're gonna have to give everyone a second bye week. Why not put the whole league on a bye at the same time around week 10 or 11 and do the Pro Bowl games during that week. Since it's all skill drills and no actual game now, injury isn't as much of a concern. Everyone that's healthy can participate. It shifts the league year in a way where The Super Bowl would always be the Sunday before president's day. Meaning almost everyone gets the day off the Monday after the super bowl. Everyone getting a break in the middle of the season makes sense. More people would probably tune into the Pro Bowl with all the big stars there. Seems like all upside with this plan. 18 games, 20 week season. Mid season all star festivities. Day off after The Super Bowl. Win, win, win.

You and I generally agree like 95% of the time, but this is one of those rare times we differ. Not every champ has to be strong. Not every champ has to be booked the same way. Things get a little samey with everyone always having to look so strong. It's perfect for Page's character to luck into a title run and talk shit on how great he is ignoring how it happened. Also keeps Trick strong for him to have the title taken away due to no fault of his own. It was his finish that knocked both dudes out. Just a stroke of bad luck, not him being bested. I like the way it was done. And I think character wise it helps both Page & Trick out.

Yeah and it would have thrown the whole cash in dynamic off. Can't be like oh Drew is cashing in and making it a triple threat if the match is over. That makes Drew the dumbest motherfucker of all time to add an extra dude to his cash in if the match is already over. One of those cases where it was handled the best it could be. Circumstances made that impossible to call it like a shoot.

The downtime and amount of ads will hit you a little less hard when you accept these aren't ppvs. They are tv shows. Peacock has increased the amount of ads they run for the non-ad free tier. Which means WWE can't run actual content during these ad breaks. All they can do is run video packages and hype videos to try and cover for it. It's out of their hands. The ad breaks aren't going away. Maybe they can be better managed. Or do exclusive live promos that the ad people miss? But Im not sure they'd want any segment of the fanbase to miss a chunk of the content for the shows. Maybe you also live stream the ad break promos on social? But I would think that would annoy Peacock. We'll just have to suffer through until the Peacock deal expires (at the end of next year I believe?) and Netflix buy up those rights too.

WWE mingling with TNA & Bloodsport makes more sense when you view it from the TKO perspective. They just paid out MLW 20 million in a settlement they didn't want to go to trial. They just settle a UFC anti-trust lawsuit. They don't want scrutiny on that independent contractor status / antitrust lawsuits. This is their way of mitigating all that. Having something to point to and say hey we aren't trying to monopolize. There's a clear #2 and we're working with the #3s & #4s to help them out. Some of it can be a shift in philosophy because Triple H & Shawn don't see the business in those same black and white 'I need it all' terms that Vince did. But TKO wanting to keep their nose clean is the driving force I'd say.

Yeah now this is a fair take that I can agree with. They had NO PLAN for once he won the title and it showed. That's on the booking. And boy did it fail him. Why was the world champ randomly in a battle royal (Road Wild)? That shouldn't detract from the point at hand tho. Because what he was saying that sparked me to reply was that anyone with that sustained push would have ended up just as over and in the same spot. And I disagree. It's the push mixed with the performer. It's like saying you could have slotted anyone into the Hulkamania thing like Kerry Von Erich. That's not true either. There's unique intangibles to Hogan as to why that went as high as it did. Just as I propose with Goldberg. There were parts of who he was that was the secret sauce in him being successful, not the unbeaten streak alone or just the strong push. Unique intangibles. I misunderstood the Oldberg reference. So I'm in the wrong on that one. That isn't the fans shitting on Goldberg that's the fans shitting on his booking from my perspective. But certainly open to interpretation.

14 matches is a lot. Probably too many. But in the case of this show where it's basically get as much of the AEW roster on AND the NJPW roster AND the CMLL roster, AND Stardom roster... I can kind of forgive it. You have like triple the amount of performers available to you, so you are going to want to use as many as you can. I'm looking forward to a bunch of the matches. Even tho we know MJF is up, his match will be an interesting one to see how it plays out. Main, both Women's title matches, all the zero hour matches look fun. Should be a killer show. I hope the crowd is able to stay hot all the way through. I think Swerve & Ospreay is going to exceed expectations.

It blows my mind The NFL lost the Sunday Ticket lawsuit. Obviously I'm okay with a lower price for SDT. I'm also okay if subscribers get a little payout. (I've had it for all the years the case covered so I will hopefully get a little something something if the verdict sticks). But I'm a little worried this means they are going to just scrap SDT. The revenue they make from it is a drop in the bucket compared to rights fees, especially if they have to drop the price going forward. They may just decided to not risk getting less money on the rights deals and pull the plug altogether. If the networks get less viewers because more people can afford SDT on YTTV, then obviously the amount they're willing to pay for the rights is going to go down. I know they still air the same broadcasts, but when they go to ad breaks YTTV inserts their own ads (as did DTV) for the most part, and the ads being paid to the networks aren't reaching all the viewers. I can envision a slippery slope where this outcome is a bad result for the consumer. Because no matter how many lawsuits they lose The NFL is gonna keep on NFL-ing.

Oldberg wasn't in reference to age? What in the world are you talking about then? Do you not remember correctly the audience reactions Goldberg mowing through people would get? Listen if you don't like Goldberg that's fine. I only make posts like this when I think a take is so far off the mark. I've been on the wrong side of takes before. I had a very strong opinion on Greg Valentine based on my thoughts of him as a kid. It was a bias and not objective. Matt D said as much and supplied a match for me to watch and try to be objective about. Going back and watching it with adult eyes and the knowledge I have now and not my kid knowledge I realized he was right and I was way off. Doesn't mean if I'm going to pick a match to watch it's going to be a Valentine one. Just means I accepted I had a bias and I was wrong, and it opened my mind to there being possibilities of that happening in other instances too. In the interest of trying to do for you what Matt D did for me I'm gonna supply you a link to watch a random Goldberg WCW match from before they put the title on him. Please take a look objectively and see if you still don't see any aura or intangibles that Goldberg had / actually watch how the audience is reacting. If your opinion doesn't change, that's okay. But I really do think if you go in with an open mind you're going to see what I'm talking about. Just a random Scott Norton Nitro match from April of 1998. It's 3 months before they put the title on him. It's sloppy and nothing special in ring wise but the crowd is engaged the whole time. Just look at how they react to everything. Look when he hits The Spear. Find me one match where any Wrath / Adam Bomb move gets that kind of reaction. Notice the whole crowd standing and popping for The Jackhammer. Find me one example of any of the other guys you say got the same push getting that same reaction. This one even happens to have a Goldberg Kicks Ass sign in the front row. Watch this and tell me the audience thought it was getting old and not into it: If it doesn't change your mind that's fine. But this is the type of thing Matt D did for me so trying to pass it on in good faith. ETA: Just for reference they had been doing the squashes here for seven months at this point. And it sure looks like not a single soul in that building is sick of it or finding it old.

Hogan, Piper, & Flair were all headliners at the same time and the new guy that had been on tv for only 2 years and was 15 years younger than them had old insults hurled at him? I call BS on that. For whatever reason you have a tainted hindsight view. They were piping the chants in basically the whole time. That isn't a smoking gun that he lost steam. Even during the shit ass Russo booking Goldberg remained one of the most over parts of what they had left. When he debuted in WWE that man was over. That alone should discredit a lot of what you're saying. If Oldberg signs and crowd was sick of him and all that why was the crowd so excited when he showed up and speared The Rock? Goldberg is a performer full of faults. But aura, charisma, presence, connection with the audience, being over... none of those were ever lacking. His nearest analog is Warrior. And they both had 3 runs. Warrior was a statr in his first. An after thought in his second (WWE) and a complete non factor in his third (WCW). Goldberg was over & valuable in all 3 of his runs (WCW, WWE 00s, WWE 10s). I think you're really lacking objectivity in your reflection on who & what he actually was.

Yeah agree with you 100%. The anti-Goldberg takes are wild. If sticking with it would work for anyone why did it never work for Ryback? Or even Braun? Or any of the countless others that got the same dominant push as Goldberg for just as long but never broke through as a tippy top star? Goldberg's run was longer than Ultimate Warrior's run and he drew a lot more money. I'm not saying he's some super worker to be respected. But I am saying he had some really unique physical charisma that's being ignored. He had this intriguing intensity and authenticity. They didn't plan to make Goldberg their world champion. They didn't plan for anything other than we're just gonna have this guy win a bunch and see what happens. And he got 100x more over than any other WCW baby (outside of Sting and DDP). Hell they even brought Warrior in who people compare Goldberg to a lot and Warrior was a nobody on the same show. That didn't happen with Sid being pushed. That didn't happen with Wrath being pushed. That didn't happen with that 1999 Bam Bam run. They used that same booking for a bunch of guys. They just didn't have the intangibles Goldberg did. He was green. He was sloppy. He was dangerous. But you absolutely can not deny he had charisma and the it factor. It was like merging a dangerous Shamrock MMA guy with a no nonsense action movie cyborg. And just like we talk about no one else but Mark Calloway could have gotten that legendary run out of The Undertaker character, no one but Goldberg was able to maximize that kind of push the way he did. You can say it was the streak. But he was still just as over after the streak. He was still over in first that WWE run. And he was over in his late years resurgence. I hate having to admit all this because I love Bret Hart. And it's undeniable that Goldberg was reckless and needlessly ended Bret's career. But it's just as undeniable that you needed the man Goldberg was to make that push work.

Whole lotta hindsight on these AOL takes lol. In 1995-2000 there was no bigger company in America. Their exponential growth was crazy. They owned such a high percentage of the early dial up market share it was crazy. Now 2000 and the dot com bubble burst and the advent of broadband in the early 2000s made their downfall even faster than their rise. But in January of 2000 when the deal was announced they were a juggernaut and the projections going forward were more exponential growth. We all know that didn't happen. But the 'what would Time Warner even get out of this merger' takes are really off the mark. A broadcasting company that merged with a media company that merged with a news corporation that then wanted to merge with an internet monster. It made perfect sense (at the time) to try and have an all in one media giant that pulled in revenue from every inch of the entertainment spectrum. And in a company that wasn't corporately inept, could maximize the synergy, that sounds like money in the bank. Now the grander WCW part of the equation we all have a better grip on. In my opinion there was no timeline where WCW was going to survive. Too much brand damage had been done. WWE fell to second place for a bit during the war, but it was never to a degree that they were tarnished beyond repair. And that's why they were able to come back. WCW in 2000 was tarnished beyond repair. Had Fusient closed the deal I really don't see how weekly studio taping in Las Vegas (very much like what TNA ended up becoming) with the failed brand stench WCW had would have any chance of survival. Even on a timeline where everything lined up perfectly. Bischoff had the best creative spark of his career. You get a healthy motivated Goldberg, a hot RVD off of ECW's collapse, Joey Styles as your voice, a renewed cruiserweight division with the Low Kis the Christopher Daniels the AJ Styles of the time. They didn't have the ammo to fight back to the top spot. And this is with the TNT & TBS time slots. Short of an Austin / Rock / Undertaker jumping ship and recreating the Hogan shift (which in it's self wasn't instant and was on the verge of failing without Hall & Nash / the nWo), no chance in hell. So in a way it's irrelevant who killed WCW. It was death by 1,000 dumb paper cuts. Bad booking. Bad management. Short sighted decisions, bad corporate structure, brand value being tarnished beyond repair, fucked up finances, bad contracts, creative control, and about 100 other things. It's hard for me to find any path where everything lines up and they survive the ratings bleed. WWE was the hottest it had even been since the absolute heights of Hulkamania. They had a hot hand that they rode for a long long time before showing signs of slow down. There's no evidence that anything could have changed that short of a catastrophic defection again to spark interest. I do miss the shit out of WCW. I just preferred their style of presentation to WWE's. At least up until 1999. When they switched from trying to be different to trying to be more WWE than WWE could, it was some ugly as fuck production visuals.

They're just set pics so willing to go in with an open mind. Movie magic can make the suit look totally different on screen. I agree the colors fit way better than the DCEU colors. But boy the quality & design of that suit is some sub-CW network levels of bad based on the pics. The Cavill design with these these colors would have been a pretty great looking suit I think. But this one is school play level quality by the looks of it.

This is a bonkers take to me. I 100% believe you that you prefer that. And there's nothing wrong with that at all. We all like what we like. But you can't think your opinion is the majority one. Stories and promos and conflict is what drives wrestling. When you really love the art form you can be entertained and appreciate the art of a match for the sake of a match and find things to critique and enjoy like we all do here. But the general viewing audience for wrestling overwhelmingly isn't that. It's the group that wants spectacle and conflict and story and stakes. Bringing back arguably your top homegrown star and the former champion off of a long break due to injury just to stick him in a nothing enhancement match at his first ppv back is counterproductive at best. Nothing that's going to tank the company or anything. But it's an odd booking choice that deserves questioning. I get that not everyone enjoys dissecting the business decisions of the wrestling business, but this is the finances & ratings etc thread. This is the specific place they like all that kind of talk to be kept to lol.

Here's a little thought experiment for myself. I'm going to see if I can rattle off 10 ideas I think that are better than this one. Keep in mind I like Hechicero's work. Him vs Bryan was very good stuff. But he's had exactly zero important wins. There is no shot he's beating MJF. There's no intrigue. It's a glorified enhancement match in practice (while it'll be a fun one!) let's see if I can come up with ten ideas that would be more compelling for him at the PPV. There are plenty of non-inter-promotional matches so I'm not limiting his options to that. 1. MJF vs Daniel Garcia. MJF has been brushing up against Ospreay. Garcia wants Ospreay's title. Would be a good match. Either one could believably win. MJF slipping on a banana peel here to Garcia then Ospreay beating Garcia gives juice to the Ospreay vs MJF conflict. Or you could even do some ECW / Attitude booking and have a run int from two CMLL guys or two NJPW guys and turn it into a quick tag if you don't want a full finish. 2. MJF vs Claudio. While MJF winning is the likely outcome, at least Claudio has a ROH world title run, multiple important wins, and a role in one of the main factions to leave the finish in doubt. BCC screwiness leaves doubt that it's an easy win. 3. MJF vs Okada. Both AEW guys but would sure feel inter-promotional-ish. Okada has no opponent as of now. 4. MJF vs Mark Briscoe for The ROH Title. Would they put the belt on MJF? Would he work the ROH PPV? Also inter-promotial-ish. I know Mark is in the ladder match but this would have been a better use of him. 5. MJF vs Jeff Cobb. Are there politics involved making this one not possible? I'm not the most knowledgeable on current NJPW. But seems like a fun match with the ending in doubt because of the politics. 6. MJF leads an 8 Man Tag Team vs The Elite. Do MJF, Acclaimed & pretty much anyone here. If they feel like this is too similar to what Blood & Guts is going to be then do... 7. MJF leads an 8 Man AEW team vs a New Japan Team. Get a lot more personalities interacting. The people on the teams could be pretty much anyone. It's going to have more intrigue than MJF's current match. 8. MJF vs Christian. Same idea as Claudio. While the MJF win is very likely at least Christian is protected and has wins and credibility. 9. MJF vs Juice Robinson. Same idea as Claudio & Christian. With BCG around it's always possible the story could go another way. 10. MJF vs Samoa Joe. Joe beat him for the belt. Shouldn't he want to avenge that loss? Wouldn't that make for a better story? I know they've moved Joe on but I feel like it would have been more beneficial to let MJF avenge that loss before Joe switched over and joined up with Hook. Your mileage may vary with these ideas. But there's probably another 10 more at least out there better than what we're getting. I don't think it's very productive to just throw our hands up and go well what do you expect, this is the best they can do. There's plenty of other creative fun directions to go. There almost always is, in any situation in wrestling. The only limitations are the creativity of those involved in the process. And it feels like there's a little bit of a mail it in thought process sometimes here lately with AEW. Good matches aren't enough. People want compelling storytelling too.

I tend to agree AEW has that problem too. Not that it changes the overall narrative but these few examples don't fit the trend. Wardlow blew out his knee. He's not 100%. The couple times they've had him in there since his injury just doing run in stuff he's been so ginger on it, it's almost not worth having him there at all. Which is why he hasn't been. That's not to saw AEW is off the hook. They've iced him before for zero reason. But this time it's injury related. As is the Cole blowoff. He's still at least 6-9 months away from being able to come back. MJF is back now. They had two choices. MJF kills time with Roddy / Taven / Bennett for 6 months (in which case the Cole thing has zero steam left anyways when Cole can come back) or they pull the trigger on blowing it off so he can move on. I don't think how they handled it was especially productive. But how else can they really handle it? Cole isn't ready. Keith Lee can't get cleared. Ricky Starks is a weird limbo deal where he had that injury, he says he's healthy, TK says he wishes Starks was available. It's all read between the lines shit but his bags are packed and I think TK is just icing him out and not giving him anymore TV equity since he knows Starks is gone the second he's able to leave. So yes booking limbo is a problem but not everyone that disappears fits that category. This. So much this. Enhancement matches can be a good tool in the tool bag that serve a greater purpose if they're leading to something. But far too often AEW just uses these matches for content churn. To fill time. It's one thing when WCW would do this with the weird Bobby Eaton vs Marty Jannetty or John Nord vs Jushin Liger matches they'd give us. But those matches weren't going a mandatory 15 minutes +, two segments, with a commercial break. Which gets me back to formatting being a big issue. Why does ever single Dynamite have to be 6 matches exactly? Why can't some have 8 matches? Why can't some have 10 six minute matches? When you book the exact same amount of matches every week and they all go the same amount of time and all the promos fit in the same spots your show is going to feel rigid and stale. And to me that's a far bigger problem than anything else booking wise. Every show feels exactly the same. You get six matches. One is a womens match. And all the matches get about 15 minutes. Every week feels the same even if the matches and stories featured are different.

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.

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.

Just for the weirdness alone I'm down for Shane showing up. Fifth man for The Elite in Blood & Guts? I'm sure he's a sneaker head and likes fast cars. Can drop and elbow off the cage or some shit. Why not lol

I agree with this 100%. Which is why you have to juggle who those that get to send the crowd home happy are and those who fail are. When you do back to back failures in the main event in the same city with the same talent you're doing damage. WWE is so hot right now, burning the town is more a turn of a phrase than a literal. I'm sure they'll still draw a full building the next time they run Scotland. But a little devil's advocate here, Clash in the Castle in 2022 was in front of 60k. Clash in the Castle in 2024 was in front of 11k. Is that just semantics and routing? Mostly, probably. The town may not be burnt for good, but Drew as a true main eventer is toast. I'm sure him vs Punk at Summer Slam will be treated as a big deal special attraction. And will surely feel bigger than Priest vs Gunther for the World Title (if that's what we get), but they sure make Drew lose a lot in big opportunities. And he's not a bulletproof top guy where the aggregate of it doesn't hurt him. And does he beat Punk? I don't see how that makes sense. Punk is the bigger star with better and more intriguing stories on the horizon. Punk gets cutoff fairly soon into his run if he's slayed by Drew. Idk. Just seems like the smart thing to do is not give Drew the title match here if you weren't going to give him the title. Just off the top of my head, a big number one contender's match where he wins a world title match at MITB here and you do the same Punk ref finish at MITB gets you to Summer Slam exactly the same way, just without the dicey divisive finish making him look bad again in front of his hometown.

I haven't posted much in the AEW folders. Still watching. Still browsing the threads. Just feel ambivalent to a lot of what they have going on. It's all so messy and unfocused. I generally watch Dynamite and the PPVs. But that's it. Collision & Rampage and ROH is all too much of an investment. Especially in a period where they don't have much cooking. Enjoying Swerve. Enjoying Ospreay. Enjoying Danielson. It seems like they rarely get two people hot at the same time and then put them together anymore. I wish there was more Omega / Danielson & Ospreay / Danielson vibes. Just being super excited because you're seeing these awesome dudes finally working each other. I'm probably one of the highest raters of Christian on the whole board. But putting him with Swerve was a disservice to Swerve. Glad to see Swerve & Ospreay put together. Two tippy top over acts getting to work will def be fun. Stupid that it has to be muddied by there being too many belts and Ospreay having the International kind of telegraphs the finish with be something shady and unclean. There's so many fun workers that will likely never cross paths. And that's a bummer. Where is Danielson vs Switchblade or Danielson vs Pac? Samoa Joe vs Ospreay or Joe vs Okada? Mox vs Ospreay or Mox vs Joe. Omega & Cole are hurt but it's the same story with them. MJF vs Rush is actually along those lines of what I mean. You have a diverse roster lets start mixing these guys up a little more. It's too structured. It's too formatted. The amount of matches we're gonna miss out on Danielson alone when he's done as a full time guy is a bummer (even if we did get some cool shit we did even know we wanted like him vs Hechicero). And on a final note, one that might be shading my viewing more than anything, Chuck Taylor. Just so so bummed out for him. He's one of my favorite people in the business. It just happened to workout that everywhere cool I ever made it to in my own carer, I got to have a Chuck Taylor match most of those places. Fun to work. Even more fun to BS with before shows. He's just a really good dude and I hate to see that he's probably forced out of the ring. I will say I am happy he got to have such a meaningful final match that called back to that great five start parking lot tag match. And I know he's gonna kill it as a producer. And a commentator if they ever give him a run there. But still just bums me out to see such a genuinely good dude have this taken away from him.