AxB

It's good that, even though we're still in the first half of the tournament, we've already had a couple of bigtime upsets. Establishes that we're not just going to be following the form book in every match (either that, or they're using the tournament to establish the new hierarchy).

He can't do Rainmaker matches on TV every week because the shows are only 2 hours long and have to have commercial breaks in. If you have one guy going 40+ minutes on every show, the rest of the roster wouldn't be getting a look in. Now he did come off as a bigger deal in AEW when he was still a guest from NJPW, but that's because he wasn't there for 50 weeks of the year, and him showing up was an event. Nobody's "It's a big deal they're here, because it's so rare" survives once they become a regular fulltime cast member.

I hope they upload Sid's post-arm wrestling promo where he yells into the wrong camera about how he's an unpotsable pots stop object.

In Kayfabe, Mortos doesn't wear a mask. Other wrestlers wear masks, Komander wears a mask. But More Toes, he's an actual Beast. That's not a mask, that's his face.

Pick whatever you like. Surprise me.

Lethal going 0-5 under CC rules makes sense, because he's part of the TNA Legends (plus Satnam) stable, that relies on interference to win matches. So Juice doing the same would also have a legitimacy to it, with Bullet Club Gold not being out there. Whereas Komander... now I like Alex Abrahantes (I know other people don't like him, but I do), but he doesn't really help Komander win matches, does he?

Yeah, bloody Plumbers think they own the world.

I disagree. Get Athena and the ROH Women's title on AEW TV.

The World title is more prestigious than the Intercontinental title, because if you're IC champion, you're only champion of the landmasses of the earth. If you're World champion, you're also champion of the Ocean and the Sky as well. There was a time when PWI was refusing to recognise things like the USWA World title as a legit World Championship, because it was only ever defended in Tennessee. So they declared that for a belt to be an actual World title, it must have been defended in at least two different countries. Which does mean that things like the Ruthless Pro Rustbelt title is now a World Championship, because Big Lou Nixon defended it in England for a few months. There was one time on an ICW NHB show in England, where the H2O Deathmatch belt was being defended, that got a bit emotional. Because they had previously renamed the belt to honour the late great Danny Havoc, and it was about to be defended internationally, meaning it was going to become an actual World Championship. And people who loved and missed Danny Havoc thought it was great that the belt that bore his name would forever more be the Danny Havoc WORLD Hardcore Championship.

I mean, obviously British fighters are uniquely qualified for multiple non-World title championships, but at the same time, plenty of World Champions have also been NABF Champion (and not all of them were American citizens, despite being champion of the North American Boxing Federation).

Should have been Hechicero, but this is acceptable.

Not a Boxing fan, then? Because plenty of British Boxers, they turn pro, win a regional belt, work their way up to the British title, then try to defend it three times so they can own a Lonsdale belt outright, then try to win the European or British Commonwealth titles, and only once they've won one or both of those will they start to decide which of the 7 World Champions in their weight class they want to challenge. Also, Anna Jay literally said on TV last week that since she can no longer challenge Mariah May for the World title, she's going after the TBS belt instead.

There are meaningful differences between the titles in AEW. The Men's & Women's World titles are defended rarely, fewer than once a month. Title shots are a rare thing, not handed out willy-nilly. The TNT title has, at times, been defended every week, against all comers (although the TBS title currently isn't being defended that often, with Mercedes Mone's quasi-Undertaker schedule). The International title is one that is defended in multiple companies all over the world, rather than just against AEW wrestlers on AEW shows. The Continental Championship is defended under CC rules, with nobody at ringside and interference strictly prohibited, and is vacated annually, and presented to the winner of the CC tournament.

Did Marina have a fully sunk Ezekiel on Switchblade? Well, probably not, for the same reason as pro-wrestlers doing sleepers don't apply a fully sunk Rear Naked, and a front facelock isn't a Guillotine choke (and that's one that's going to be hard to re-program wrestling fans for; The first NOAH show ever had Akiyama choking Misawa out with a Guillotine w/ Bodyscissors, and nobody bought it at all). But the Ezekiel did become a bit of a buzz move in MMA (and BJJ, but moreso MMA because it's a lot harder to do both with gloves, and without gi sleeves to grab onto), because Aleksei Oleinik managed to get a couple of big wins with it.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/f6-U3g96YGk