Havent really watched aew since cm punk left, but checked out first Dynamite on Max. Wow has AEW gone downhill a lot, this is what is supposed to compete against first Raw on Netflix? But looking forward to catching the 2019 AEW ppvs that I missed.

Worlds End was cool with Ospreay and Okada having two matches each.

Do not care at all about the Deathriders story though. Or any of the other stories really. I just wanna see Will Ospreay matches cause they're always so freakin good lol.

With wwe ... still a lot of time to go, but all the rumors and leaks suggest Rock vs Cody vs Roman isnt happening this year even though the story has been leading to it for almost a year now. But.... I dont mind if the alternate plans of



Feels like we never get a battle of generations that doesn't involve the attitude era or monday night wars in some way. The PG era was rough but both of those guys elevated themselves and turned things around heading into the WWE Network Era.

I stopped really caring about AEW once Punk left as well and stopped watching regularly about a year ago. I keep up mainly through Twitter posts, which I have to admit don't entice me to go back. It seems like the same song and dance: some excellent matches/gimmicks overshadowed by really awful booking decisions/old and part timers overstaying their welcome.

I can't get past the idea that AEW and Tony Khan chose to nurture a hostile work environment over having any semblance of a mature workspace for everyone. Not hashing things out between Punk/Page/Young Bucks will go down as a massive loss for the company as a legit challenger to WWE. They may have lost the battle anyway with Vince gone, but they would still be a viable challenger if they'd make some major changes. They're slowly falling into TNA territory when Hogan came in. It'll take many years for them to be seen like current day TNA.

And I do feel bad for Edge/Adam Copeland. He was a big deal coming back 5 years ago and had some legit fun matches and moments in WWE, but they didn't seem to have a place for him. Now he's falling dangerously into Chris Jericho territory. A guy who was, no pun intended, on the cutting edge for many years of his career, now falling into the trap of not being able to stay relevant with his current character. He shouldn't still be the Rated R Superstar. He definitely shouldn't be trying to replicate his old days by shortening his name to Cope. And it's not like they wouldn't want him to do anything different with his character. Look at Christian. I'd dare say Christian has (sorry, no pun intended again) edged out Copeland in terms of latter half of their respective careers.

Whether it's egos, Khan "respecting" the longtime indie/Japan/ex WWE midcarders or the most likely reason, pressure from the internet to not be like WWE and bury guys, they protect way too many guys and try to "keep them strong". But it's insane to do that if it's like the 25th most important singles wrestler. Those guys should be happy just to get to lose on Dynamite or still be a singles wrestler instead of forced to become permanent tag division.

Like writing it out

Main guys: MJF, Swerve, Moxley, Ospreay, Page, Allin, Cassidy, healthy Omega (8)
Ex WWE old guys: Edge, Jericho, Christian, Lashley, Samoa Joe, Danielson if he's still part time (14)
Can be part of big storylines: Fletcher, White, Cole, Black, healthy Kingston (19)
Recent midcard champs: Okada, Garcia, Perry, Briscoe, Takeshita (24)

This means that those quality veterans with fanbases like Claudio, Pac, Ricochet, Strong are somehow closer to the 25-28th most important singles wrestlers, plus there's age reasons to care about them less than projects like Hook, Hobbs or Wayne. The sane thing to do is pretty obvious. Take the 41 year old Roddy Strong or 44 year old Claudio (both of whom probably also have no ego) and make them job the fuck out, just lose to dudes like MJF and Swerve in the opening match of Dynamite constantly, make them be the ones to Beast Mortos it and 0-5 the tournament. Is that so bad? They have 20 other guys they can keep strong instead. But I guess they'd be accused of being like WWE.

After watching Worlds End the actual main event definitely felt more like a midcard belt fatal four way without the star power of Okada vs Ospreay. Mercedes and Statlander also had a great match.

We're roughly a year removed, give or take, from AEW snagging big time signings in Okada, Ospreay and Mercedes, and while that felt like a huge loss to WWE at the time, it's refreshing to see them signing AEW names like Penta and making a huge deal of them. It was honestly surreal seeing Penta last night in a WWE ring after watching him in AEW for five years. I didn't watch WCW and I didn't watch TNA when it was making its run against WWE 15 years ago, so this is my first time really seeing big names jumping back and forth between companies. And I'm glad Vince is nowhere to be found. Bad enough Cole did his "welcome to the big time Penta" line last night. But I'll let it slide.

And while I do feel Ospreay would have been a huge asset to WWE, I'm also glad we got Penta, Guilia, Stephanie Vaquer, Cody... heck, even Ethan Page is a fun get in WWE/NXT.

Ospreay and Omega on the railing was the type of wrestling moment energy they need, and dominant tag title change on TV after kept it going. But they should've made MJF have the street fight with instruments around the ring thing with Jeff Jarrett like 2 weeks ago and moved on.

Jey Uso has to be the most surprising royal rumble winner ever. Not sure what they do with him at Mania though.

I think so. Especially given how stacked this year was with potential winners. A lot of rivalries going on right now, some overlapping, so we might see one triple threat/fatal four main event at Mania this year.

Only other "surprise" winners I'd say, based on memory which could be wrong, were Nakamura (2018), Benoit (2004), and maybe Vince (1999). But I'd put Jey above them, I think.

Charlotte winning I'm okay with, but it became too predictable for too much of the match. After Alexa got eliminated quite early, there really wasn't anyone left for like a third if the match who was going to win over her. There wasn't a Jey to her Cena, so to speak. Although I think it'd have been kinda cool to maybe give Trish a win here? She's still great in the ring, especially given her age. I wouldn't mind giving her a rumble victory under here belt as a way to give one to maybe all the women legends who never had a rumble themselves.

In hindsight, Jey Uso is probably the best winner in the long term. Short term sure, maybe Cena should have won for the pop. Although is there anyone more consistently over than Jey Uso right now? You can call him a catchphrase and a hand movement but he got over big since going on his own. The only thing I would change would be either the SNME match against Gunther or put more focus on him last Monday being fed up not being able to get the big win for a world championship. Which is I guess what they'll do now.

If Cena had won and challenged Gunther (which is what I thought would happen), it would mean Cena cutting promos for 3 months calling Gunther "strudel boy" or something and following up Gunther promos with "Fine speech..". But now this puts Cena in an underdog spot that really makes his farewell tour more exciting. He was Super Cena for half his career, the torch passer for the other half, so now he needs to prove himself again. Good choice to make him earn a world title match, if he does get one at Mania.

Other than that, you have Punk and it seems like he wasn't getting a world title match anyway. Although honestly I would have him against KO at Mania and keep Reigns and Rollins on their own.

Yup, after a sneaky fun and arrow up 2024 for TNA they're getting plundered now. It will be interesting to see how Josh Alexander (Angle style, but has a "generic face") and Mike Bailey (Bryan/Karate kid style, but how many Ospreay/Ricochet match type guys do they need?) do in AEW.

Well damn they actually did it after all these years.

I'm not caught up on the context but I watched the clip and I'm not sure I'm in love with it as the moment after all these years. It made it seem like the Rock is the real big bad and Cena is just his muscle. Also Pat McAfee calling it makes it seems like a WCW swerve.

They need to just pick a non 50 year old babyface and make them beat Moxley, cause people would be so happy for anyone else to be champion.

I went to the Knoxville Dynamite in January. For a crowd that cheered for the stars and when they’re supposed to, SILENCE for the Death Riders. You could cut the apathy in the air with a knife.

The gaslighting from Meltzer/Alvarez is that PPV main event finish was GOOD heat. No, people aren’t annoyed the heel won. That crowd and online are mad because this terrible Mox/DR run will continue until morale improves.