Hagan

I will be at this. Am very excited. It feels like it makes the most sense to build to Punk challenging for the title in Chicago in September so feel like he should win this. I'd wait until 2023 to pull the trigger on MJF because once he challenges for the World Title he needs to win it.

You wouldn't take a chance on Arn Anderson's son at a prelim level and see how could good he can get with experience? I mean, if he turns out as 75 percent as good as his dad in time you have a helluva of a professional wrestler.

Tremendous show. Brock yoking guys is wonderful.

Pluto TV has a 24/7 TNA channel that, when you catch the 2002-2005 shows, is WILD. And yeah, AJ was pushed basically from Day 1. He was World Champion in 2003 (after a really dumb heel turn to align with Russo). And then he continually gets rebooted and shuffled up and down the card for TEN YEARS. I'm trying to think of a WWE equivalent. Maybe Ziggler who somehow cycles from irrelevant to randomly pushed World Title contender every few years.

All the discourse with money is awful (again, not here). People think that signing Danhausen for presumably what is one of the lower-end contracts is the reason you can't afford a Cody seven-figure contract. Or that, possibly, bringing in Buddy Matthews is the same financial outlay as what Owens was asking. Owens and Zayn are great but are you going to get into a massive seven-figure bidding war for them, especially after signing Bryan and Punk? Also, as always with WWE contracts, what they offer you and what you get are wildly different things. Gallows and Anderson were re-signed to major deals to keep them away from AEW and were then cut like a year later. I think this is one of those places where Meltzer is steering a misguided narrative. Unless it comes out that Cody was offered like a massive pay cut or something, I don't think there's much of an issue here. edit to add: in one week it went from "AEW is financially irresponsibly to bring in yet another guy like Keith Lee. They gotta stop adding talent" to "AEW is falling apart because they didn't offer Cody the money he was asking."

No real big surprises on the Observer awards. Omega joins, Race, Flair, Styles, Misawa, Kobashi, Jericho, Cena, Tanahashi as the only multi-time winners. What is striking about that is Styles feels like the outlier there historically but once we all go back and really deep-dive into his TNA run it won't be nearly as odd looking. Kind of amazing that someone that historically great has spent random long patches of his career being booked as a comedy goofball. Like, imagine AJ Styles with 20 years of even moderately consistent good booking? I think he's been booked well for like 5 of those years overall with 15 years of mismanagement. Also unique, and building from last year, before these two Young Bucks MOTY wins you would have to go back to the 2006 ROH Dragon Gate six-man for a multi-man match to win and 2002 for a straight tag.

yep! That's where I got a lot of commentary on JCP from so that def colored it.

Yeah - I kind of think the same. I mean, this company either passed on or fired a fairly large portion of the AEW roster. Look at what the NXT roster is right now? Now, would they take guys just to so AEW doesn't have them, for sure but I don't think they are putting any thought about the optics of how these guys would be booked. This company's future is NCAA athletes and models not signing the hot young workers off a competitor's TV. This whole "Vince can't afford to blow this" talking point is so bizarre. Are people watching the WWE? Does that look like a company that gives a fuck about how they book outside of the very top stars? Put the "they can't afford to blow Cody" in the bin with the "Big E really can't afford this loss to Roman" nonsense from Survivor Series. They can afford to blow it and they, in fact, will.

I will be at Revolution and am much excited to see CM Punk wrestle MJF in A FUCKING DOG-COLLAR MATCH!!!!

In regards to Cody's booking his own angles. I mean, the first couple of years of AEW there was definitely a tonal shift between what Cody was doing and the other Elite guys. Cody's stuff was a little more old school and a little more logical and story-driven. It worked out well for Omega, Hangman and the Bucks long-term but that first year for them wasn't great. Early on, a lot of the most praised stuff was the stuff involving Cody and the dissonance between him and the rest of the show indicated that he was probably the main reason. Then - TK takes a firmer grasp. The booking gets less scattershot up and down the board and somehow Cody's stuff goes from logical and old school and story-driven to whatever the Cody-verse became. Not that there weren't good matches and feuds but now his stuff was tonally off from the rest of the show. It seems like Cody may have always been trying to go his own way and constantly pushed to be different from the tone of the show and clearly Khan gave him plenty of leeway on his stuff and finally things came to a head.

Time to bring up another topic. This weird rehabilitation of Dusty as a booking genius that Cody yearns to follow is some some interesting historical spin. I mean, Dusty did great stuff developing the early NXT kids and he certainly had Hall of Fame level runs as a booker for short periods but didn't he also help destroy JCP and run territories into the ground and was also on and off the WCW booking committee during its many years of darkness? Not to slander the great name of the American Dream but it seemed that before his death he was more widely mocked as a booker than anything else. I mean, one of the most territory destroying finishes is named after him. For some of the grey beards here, what do y'all think?

F4W VIGNETTES? VIGNETTES? They're not gonna just have him come out on Raw with a mic out of the crowd? Or do anything really? We're gonna hype him with "coming soon: Cody Rhodes" like HE'S FUCKING NIKKITA LYONS?!?!?!? This thing is already donzeo as any kind of significant angle, ya'll.

It's a fair point but it also speaks to that WWE's notion of booking strongly a lot different than most rational people. Brock, Roman, Charlotte and Becky are booked strong, as in they just win and wrestle in main events. Can Cody break into that level? However, this company also thinks that they book Big E, Bianca, Drew and Rollins well and all four have had some serious missteps over the last few years (maybe not Drew but feels like his main event window has closed).

Didn't Cody and Brandy go on that weird podcast tour after the infamous December 2019 Dynamite when Tony took control of the book totally away from the EVPs? I remember they did a weirdly defensive tour. I mean, obviously very little with Brandi worked with the exception of her as Cody's second. Punting her for Arn never really made a sense as they were stronger together and the Arn thing never really fit. Also, just to clarify, Wade didn't call her a bitch. I was making a joke because he definitely buried the fuck out of her on the pod. Just didn't want anyone to think he (or I) for that matter was using that term. But the implication is, as Technico said, that she's the Yoko of the story.

Dave hemming and hawing through diplomatic double-speak and Wade Keller basically saying "the thing with Cody is he has a bitch wife and is burning through money like his dad did" is tremendous.

But that’s what perception means. It’s optics that doesnt necessarily matter. It’s bad optics that WWE is having a swords are legal match in a country that beheads people but it doesn’t actually matter in the long run. That’s the argument. If Cody wanted Roman money and TK decided he didn’t want to pay that that’s just a business choice. Tom Brady left the Patriots. Lebron James left the Cavs. It’s a loss for the company but AEW has a lot of depth right now so they should be fine.

Oh sure, but I'm talking about revenue/profit margins. If TK wants to lose a fortune, then he can pay whatever he wants. The key for AEW is to be making the profit from TV rights deals that enable them to bid high without getting into the red. Clearly, there is a number they have currently and they're deciding when and how to allocate the money. The WWE can give your Brocks/Goldbergs/Edge multiple-million a year without any adverse impact to their bottom line. Vince McMahon hasn't had to dip into his wallet to pay someone in a very, very long time, ya know?

So - the question is how much does this hurt AEW and how much does this help WWE? On the hurting AEW side - it's definitely a big perception hit. This was a guy that helped launch the company. A year ago this would have been a bigger deal but AEW has brought in bigger names so that cushions the blow. Perception can go a long way, though. It also begs the question of AEW's budget, which Meltzer seems to be banging the drum on. How willing will they be to get into bidding wars over the next few years for their top guys? When it comes to a pure money transaction WWE going to always win. This isn't a big issue now but in a few years with MJF/Page/Baker etc. it becomes a larger issue. On the helping WWE side. He'll pop a rating for three weeks and then he won't matter as a draw. Edge peaked higher than Cody ever did in WWE and meant little after three weeks. No one full-time is any sort of factor except for Roman. They're all cogs in the machine. Here's the question - would WWE see signing Cody as being a bigger deal than Edge coming back? Look at how Edge's run has gone (mostly underwhelming and he's not really factored into Mania main event plans it seems). It's just...there is a very long history of WWE signing stars from other companies and either they don't think they are stars because they came from the 'minor leagues' or they have to lose to show the other side was inferior. As I said in a prior post, best case is that Cody gets booked as well as Owens and Rollins. So, in summation, this hurts AEW perception-wise in the short-term and potentially has long-term significance about how willing they'll be to give raises on contract negotiation. Jericho's situation going to be interesting soon as his deal has to be up and WWE would definitely pay him more to come back than AEW would to stay, you'd think. For WWE - short-term it juices Mania and may help that show pick up steam but by SummerSlam he'll be in the McIntyre/Big E/Rollins/Owens mix of guys who main event when the real stars aren't around and exist to be fed to them when they are.

I get the speculation on the Nightmare Factory but look at who the WWE is signing for NXT and look at the majority of men and women coming out of the Nightmare Factory. Unless Cody and QT start pumping out former UGA football players and bikini models I think that's not an issue.

Let's be honest, the worst thing about Cody leaving is gonna be all the bad faith takes from the usual idiots on how Tony Khan is running his company into the ground. Expect a lot of "too busy signing people like Keith Lee instead of focusing on the real stars like Cody" from the co-opted WWE nitwits.

Somehow surprising and not surprising. In many ways, going back to WWE at this moment is the best shot Cody has at becoming a main event act there. But, more likely he's going to be in the same spot that Rollins and Owens is. Not a bad spot, reasonably well-booked and making a boatload of money but on the hamster wheel clearly behind the real top stars. Obviously, a lot of stories are gonna come out now regarding whatever creative frustrations he had and/or whatever issues he with the Elite. He's still a young guy though and a weird guy and I really, really doubt that he's going to spend the rest of his career going 50/50 in WWE though. Probably a lot more chapters to be written here.

Late chime in on this but the way I contextualize is is the weapons, thumbtacks, tables, doors etc are under the ring because the promotion encourages the use or weapons in their wrestling. Everyone company is like "we know these dudes hate each other so let's put some murder weapons under the ring so it will up the violence."

Coming in early, and maybe it was said before, but Charlotta and Ronda has big Orton/Batista energy. I think they're gonna have to put in someone to make it a three-way otherwise there's a real chance the crowd turns sour on it in the buildup.

Amazing that Chris Jericho wrestling Kenny Omega butterfly effected a world where Vince McMahon destroys his own family.

Dragu vs Devlin was awesome until they went to the Ciampa and Gargano School of Method Acting.