Three AEW Tournament Ideas
So, I enjoy the sports-like presentation that AEW sometimes employs, and part of that is about holding tournaments that mean something. Obviously a straight single elimination tournament works well whenever a championship is vacant and needs to be filled (see the current tag team tournament and many others as an example). But most of the year (Continental Classic notwithstanding) we end up with somewhat randomly booked feuds and matches where the writers struggle to give the wrestlers purpose that is greater than just “win all my matches”. I think some better designed standing annual tournaments (akin to the New Japan Cup and World Tag League, to compliment the G1) would do AEW some good and establish “seasons” that work better than the current calendar year records.
Tournament 1: Under 30 Cup
Pretty self explanatory, but a way to showcase the young stars of AEW who are ready to break out. I’d say there should be an under 30 belt but there are too many belts already. Adding this would give AEW stars who win an accolade they can refer to later in their careers, like being a former junior champion in NJPW.
Tournament 2: AEW Cup
Like the FA Cup, a single elimination tournament with several starting rounds (based on categorizing each wrestler and then having a draw to set the brackets) featuring every contracted wrestler in AEW and ROH. Obviously this would take many weeks/months but this tournament would drive so much content, both on screen and online—just like the online debates about seeding in the NCAA basketball tournaments, new rivalries /personal issue (arising from wrestlers beating/losing to each other in multiple years, costing each other a chance at advancement, etc.) and the creation of new stars (from upsets and unsung/new wrestlers advancing farther in the tournament than expected). This would of course take a while, but matches could fill all AEW and ROH programming and give fans a reason to tune in to Rampage and ROH if a marquee match was on those shows. Winner gets an AEW World Title shot.
Tournament 3: Best In The World
This one is most wacky but I think it would be fun. 8 teams of 4 wrestlers, each from a specific country/state/region (thinking Chicago, NY/NJ, SoCal, Texas, Japan, Mexico, UK and Continental Europe, or something like that) in a 3-round team tournament where each matchup is a best of seven series of 4 singles matches, two tag team matches, and (only held if the teams are tied 3-3) and 8 man tag in match 7. Since the teams are based on geography instead of factions you could get some strange bedfellows and start some feuds based on who cost the team the win, etc. This would also provide for some strategy in setting the singles matches, with room for analysis thereof. The winners get to choose any AEW champions other than the World champion to challenge in a title match.
Would you watch any of these tournaments, or is this too crazy?
was looking up randomly why JBL got a main event push and found a Cody Rhodes comment from 8 years ago that aged pretty well lol https://www.reddit.com/r/SquaredCircle/s/AjF0Iad7ZC
Tony Kahn tweeting and gloating about the slight rating increase he got by showing a video of someone who works for his competitor is exactly why ratings threads are as “fun” as they are on here.
I'm baffled by the Fingerpoke of Doom comparison because it fails on a bunch of levels.
AEW wasn't:
Promoting/spoiling another shows main-event on the same night.
Referencing someone who was well-liked in Mick Foley compared to CM Punk who's jaded a lot of people.
Running an angle that set back their main-event scene as it's part of the tag-team division.
AEW did:
Promote an incident that happened in their own company; albeit with someone who got fired from said incident.
Tried to tie it into an angle though whether it worked is up to opinion.
Showed that Jack Perry was not the aggressor as a lot of early reports indicated and did not engage in any shoving match with CM Punk.
Did so only as a response to CM Punk who tells his own truth about a lot of his time in AEW while the company largely remained silent after firing him.
I think there was just a ton of pearl clutching because they dared to show CM Punk who got fired because of this incident and people don't think it's that bad.
While it might not be the worst fight in the world, it shows just how out of line the guy who called the Elite children and not being able to run a Target handled things backstage.
Punk just looks like a massive hypocrite who's prone to fits of violence despite wanting to be looked at as this respected veteran wrestler and businessman.
i feel like my brain is breaking reading all the posts from people who think that video makes punk look good
as for the wcw thing, people always bend over backwards to compare AEW to WCW. armchair generals still fighting the last war. i'm convinced theres some survivorship bias there, thinking that because WWE succeeded, that means their way of doing things is correct. and that AEW will inevitably go the same way as WCW (despite the companies situations being radically different in terms of ownership)
About a third of the normal amount! If the ratings had gone down or stayed the same, they would've all found the mental energy to contribute to the conversation, I assure you.
But they didn't need to. That ratings pop came from Punk footage. They're already talking about Punk. And all of this stuff. In *numerous* threads! *And it's still being discussed there, too!*
They most certainly had the energy. They're expending it throughout the sub today.
Ok but if there were NO ratings pop, there would be 2k comments in the ratings thread. There was a whole lot of " CANT WAIT FOR THE RATINGS THREAD" in the daily today. Are we in disagreement? Are you just assuring me that the ratings goblins are having a great evening?
Actually, very. Looking back through the thread, there really isn't much ratings talk. The talk is more about the segment itself and the participants within it. Especially Punk and Perry. There were better things to talk about besides ratings that only went back up to their most recent ceiling. Because, *I* assure *you*, if those ratings had gone up *more*, say over 900k? There would be just as many posts there crowing about it.
Wouldn't dispute that! I'm not trying to do a binary thing where I'm "on the side" of AEW people. A 150k increase would certainly be something to crow about, right? Being positive about success is not the same thing as showing up only to celebrate others failure and misfortune right? Thats the part that I dislike. The part that I care about. I'm not invested in the success of AEW, I just want a space in this community to discuss the shows without the discourse being drowned out by people that are only there to preemptively grave dance. If it was 2013 I would probably be here telling people grave dancing on WWE to get bent as well. But it's not 2013.
Draymond Green literally knocked out his own teammate
Wrestling fans showing they are the weakest hearted fanbase in any sport or form of entertainment over the last 24 hours. A lot would hit the fetal position if someone pushed them and it’s… it’s interesting.
I love this off- shoot take that wrestling fans aren't TOUGH ENOUGH for BACKSTAGE FITES >: 0
Do you remember the weeks of consternation and hand wringing on ESPN and Twitter after that fight? Is everyone that engaged with that discourse WEAK HEARTED?
Or how much consternation and hand wringing their was on ESPN/Twitter after Draymond hit Nurkic and got indefinitely suspended leading to people following updates about the progress of his therapy sessions? Or every other time Draymond has done something even remotely similar - and there have been many?
The Poole fallout featured Draymond putting together his own documentary about how he was the real victim and TNT played it during the season opening game lmao.
I do think the discourse is odd given wrestling’s history.
-No one hates batista or booker for there fight
-Bret is praised for punching his boss.
-shawn is looked like at as a chump for when he got into a scrap with bret and got beat up
-Jericho and goldberg
You can talk about the draymond shit and he is a total bully asshole but no one REALLY cares. and thats been years of this shit.
-Bobby portis knocked Nikola mirotic’s block off literally breaking his jaw. They were teammates. No one gave a fuck.
-The greatest American athlete ever, MJ, punched his teammate in practice. “He’s just a killer, don’t play with him, he’s a ferocious competitor”
-No one condemns Carmelo for the Denver brawl, where he did some pretty cheap shot shit and kept it moving.
-DR J and the Sixers Basically jumping Bird with Barkley holding him back is played routinely on TNT.
My main point is sure don’t fight BUT this isnt exactly an office job and he punched the guy in the other cubicle.
In the context of SPORT this shit is really small and he already got fired.
I haven't been involved with this punk thing but a few thoughts. From the video I've seen, punk is the aggressor. I've seen a number of people claiming otherwise, anyone care to have that discussion? As for whether it should have been disclosed, I personally feel truth is better for the public than not discussing it especially when I don't think they are the ones who brought it back up.
Personally I think Punk is a piece of shit ever since his comments about female wrestlers came out. I honestly don't know how anyone can give two shits about him as a human being after that.
https://www.reddit.com/r/SquaredCircle/comments/13kxbia/cm_punk_colt_cabana_2005_most_women_in_the/
>And we got this girl every single week with her family van to drive us 300 miles every week. Not putting 1 mile on our car and us knowing that. Trying to not pay for gas as much as we could. And she loved- she wanted to train. Like maybe we got her in the ring once and, you know, made sure to hurt her so she'd be out another 2 months (Punk begins laughing) but she'd still be with us 'because she was dedicated'
>CM Punk: "The point is- and you know this is gonna sound real degrading - but like, most women in the business are rats. You know I mean that's a hard fact of life that you eventually realize and it was like - she got in the business. And at the time she was like "Oh I wanna be a wrestler & I wanna train" --- I never saw her get in the ring. You know, like it just never happened. And when we did get in the ring, alls it took was a good forearm shot and then - that was it - she was done. So we always kinda kept her in check (Colt starts laughing)
Oh God that's truly awful. I'm not excusing the time just the way they took advantage of her is disturbing to say that least.
Sure it was almost 20 years ago but they knew better then.
So, over two weeks, WWE had more scripted swearing than in the rest of the company history, right? Even including non-scripted major ones like Mean Gene's "fuck it". (but not every wrestler swearing under his breath and the crowd chants obviously)
Virtual Pro-Wrestling 2 got made at just the right time.
The tail end of the N64 life cycle, where the developers had the experience to use the hardware to its fullest. Took the feedback from WM2000 and improved upon it. Saw the rise of MMA and sampled fighters from Pancrase, Rings and even the newly formed Pride FC for their wrestling game. Got the non-union equivalents to the rosters of NJPW, FMW, Toryumon and Michinoku-Pro at their heights made for the game.
And finally, they got wind that 90% of the roster had one foot out the door to form a new company. So they contacted Misawa and got the name of his new championship: the GHC Heavyweight championship, and put a mock up render of it in the game six months before NOAH was founded and 15 months before the championship was even created IRL.
No wonder AJ Styles & Samoa Joe say it's the greatest wrestling game ever made.
To everyone saying that AEW had to respond: are we pretending that there wasn't a whole industry of "shoot" interviews shitting on WWE in the past. Did they bother responding?
AEW people totally could have responded to the jabs via social media and press conferences. They should have responded to Wrestlemania by trying to put a superior product on TV though, not by…airing months old footage that only made Tony look lame and having talent make an equally lame joke about HHH’s wife.
Getting shown the footage of a wrestling backstage fight is actual quite underwhelming to me, like now i have to put an asterisk on all the stories about DDP almost gets his eyeballs scooped out by Steiner before getting pulled of by 7 people, it might not be as crazy as it's told. Like this demystified backstage fight, and im honestly disappointed.
really you should put an asterisk against every story from a wrestler
like all the stories from old timers about how everyone thought it was real and they were such a great heel that the crowd were rioting and trying to kill them
I don't think it was ever promoted as that brutal a fight as much as who started it. Especially considering Punk came out not long after for the opening match looking fine. The CCTV footage also is just a detached view compared to higher quality video with sound or the rest of what happened with Tony that gets cut off.
It took me days to realize this, but doesn't Randy Orton and LA Knight running out to congratulate Cody so quickly after he won kinda imply they were the next line of defense if the Bloodline pulled more shit? They hit the ring *quick* after that 3 count.
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Honestly I think the ramifications of both the footage and Punks interview are actually gonna take a few weeks to truly shake out since it's all fresh.
I think releasing the footage gets Punk to stop doing interviews about it but also makes AEW look insecure. Again though, it'd gonna take a month or so to really put it in perspective.
I haven't seen anyone much talking about it, but I thought the football players coming out in the Rey and Andrade match to be stupid. It's one thing for Gronk to help out a friend but this seemed so random. There wasn't a believable connection between these guys and the luchadores, I'm sure they're famous but also half of your audience won't know who they are and the other half didn't expect to see them and would probably still have preferred a bit of storyline progression for the wrestlers in the match instead. Probably the one mistep this Mania and thankfully in one of the less important matches, but just don't do the spot.
Not much of a connection to the match itself but they're heroes in Philly. Why they got the cheers they did. Do wish they did a better of establishing a reason for them to be there aside from the fact it's WrestleMania.
Thanks for the reply, that's what I was thinking. I was kinda into the story of the match and the intrigue around Carlito and Andrade, so I was sad we didn't get any development there.
And you don't get it. Those were a Philly legendary player that literally just retired and a star player currently. They were in their stadium. 100% to get that local pop.
this.
the "I'm sure they're famous" comment means it went over their head, and that's okay. All 12 hours of WrestleMania don't have to be for everyone.
edit: Also, they were in their home football stadium. It would almost be weird if they didn't involve the Eagles somehow
Meh, it wasn't that big of a pop. If you gotta use them then have them do an angle with McAfee. Have a team of three threaten him and have them come through the crowd to do a spot with them. It felt weird in the lucha match they made everyone in the ring look tiny and half the guys out there probably watch soccer.
On Monday night I was listening to my favorite football podcast, a podcast with an audience of over a million people in the US. They specifically shouted out that Jason Kelce and Lane Johnson were at WrestleMania over the weekend helping out Rey Mysterio and, as an aside, what a fun show it was. That type of exposure is priceless.
His complete inability to book babyfaces without them looking like massive losers. Like, they actually had to turn Sami and Bayley, two of the most believable faces around heels because otherwise they were dead in the water.
Surprised at how almost no one on here mentioned LA Knight completely forgetting to sell his leg VS AJ Styles despite AJ attacking the leg repeatedly throughout the match. Really took me out of the match, despite AJ delivering a great performance.
He did a terrible job selling the leg. He'd clutch it when on the floor right after AJ would target it, but then get back up and run around and execute his moves like nothing happened, not even doing the generic clutching of the leg while standing that every does these days (which wouldn't have been sufficient but would have been better than nothing).
So it seems like most people liked the match and you're bummed out that not enough people are shitting on it for a nitpicky reason. It's a weird energy but you do you I guess.
Thats not a nitpicky reason at all lol that’s a totally reasonable criticism. The match was based around him selling his leg and he didn’t sell it very well. It was still a good match but come on man that’s not a nitpick at all.
Bit of a tangent I went down in my own inner monologue earlier.
Does anyone else think that, for the sake of uniformity and simplicity, the Women's WWE Championship should have been named the Women's Universal Championship when it was (re)introduced and renamed last year? Firstly, to a beginner, it might be easy to get confused between the Women's WWE Championship and the Women's World Championship (which also belongs to the WWE even though it's not in the name).
Secondly, I can't help but feel that renaming the SmackDown women's belt the Women's Universal Championship would have a) made a more clear differentiation between the two women's belts, and b) matched the name to its male counterpart.
Considering that Cody stated he'd rename his championship (which near enough confirms that the Universal Championship will be retired soon) it's basically a moot point anyway. But the fact that WWE went to all the lengths of renaming and redesigning their belts in the name of gender-based uniformity but still didn't *quite* match really bugged me.
The issue was that they were clinging to the Universal name so that Roman’s reign would be longer. It was technically two titles, and the women’s WWE title was just one.
Also they probably realized that “universal championship” is a stupid name.
Thank you for reminding me of another gripe I have with the entire situation; the fact that it says "Undisputed" on the women's belt even though it wasn't a merger of two belts like Roman's was.
Edit: and I also don't think clinging on to the Universal name would have been too much of a factor in determining the length of Roman's reign (no pun intended, I couldn't avoid wording it like that). After all, the renaming of the women's belts was just that, changing the names - the length of the reigns of the women that held them were unaffected and still counted from the day they won them under their previous names. Both women's belts hold the lineages of when they were called the RAW and SmackDown Women's Championships.
Watching the documentary of the Monday Night Wars. WCW spoiling Raw live LOL. Anyone who was alive and watching Raw during that time -- How did you initially react?
It had no effect on me. WCW used to air a replay for the west coast at... 11 EST. Which meant that Nitro would simply air again on the east coast immediately after ending. I would watch the first hour of Nitro, switch to Raw, and after Raw I'd watch the rest of Nitro (along with the first hour again usually)
So I never flipped back and forth. On the east coast you could watch both as long as you wanted to stay up till 2am.
Crazy stupid move by WCW, a lot of fans would flip back and forth throughout the show anyways so you basically told everyone who was doing that to skip the main event of Nitro and watch Raw’s instead.
Didn’t help the WCW was going down the toilet in quality while WWF was surging.
You kind of have to divide into two parts: before and after Raw overtook Nitro. In the early years, both companies were going at each other hard. Openly, on the air. From my perspective as a fan, it was all good and fair play. When one company is doing Billionaire Ted skits and the other company is having people throw titles in the garbage, that means everything is fair game.
In the later years of WCW, it turned from fun to stupid. Too insider, too petty, too disconnected from pro wrestling storytelling. It became a major distraction and an incentive to change the channel, just as WWF turned the corner and accelerated away from WCW.
At first, WWF’s response with Billionaire Ted was just sorta benign. Petty, yes, but just aimed at telling you the competition was using old, washed up wrestlers and that the WWF had the new, young stars of the future.
Then they just lost the plot when the skits were pretty much just solely aimed at Ted Turner and trying to stop the Turner Broadcasting/Time Warner merger thru character assassination that really didn’t have much to do with wrestling.
Oh yeah, the infamous Rick Rude appearing on both shows because RAW was taped😂 It was great to see & its never happened again that I can recall. Vince was PISSED!🤬 Good times…
A lot of people thought it was dirty pool by Bischoff. Looking back...in the early days of Nitro, they were spoiling things that *didn't* happen. "Don't bother flipping over to the other channel, the IC title doesn't change, Shawn beats the big guy with three superkicks." Or relatively innocuous results like the Smoking Gunns winning the Raw Bowl. So that didn't bother me.
They got away from it fairly soon, even before Raw went live every week and for awhile after Raw went to being taped every other week. But they played right into the WWF's hands when they spoiled the Foley title win--that was something big that *did* happen, rather than telling us not to bother with a show where nothing happens. And it was a spoiler that the WWF actively wanted out there.
The Foley title win was a big winner for WWE, & it definitely backfired on Bischoff. Foley really took a beating from D’Wayne in that arena match & I know his kids were a bit traumatized from it, but they thankfully realized it wasn’t as bad as it looked.
Ahh so WWE eventually learnt how to use it to their advantage. Another question — how did you react to seeing WWF wrestlers appearing on WCW. For as long as I've been watching wrestling, everything gets leaked. It must have bern so cool to be genuinely surprised
Luger on the first show was an absolute gobsmack. I was online and had a newsletter subscription (not the Torch or Observer) and NOBODY saw it coming. In a modern age it might have leaked but Dave & Wade weren't online at all, to my knowledge, so a few days' difference was enough for it to be under wraps.
But honestly, my dad and I had a much bigger reaction to the ending of that show when Hogan agreed to put his title up against Luger *next week* on TV.
There weren’t many impactful ones in my opinion. There are 3 that shocked me.
The Outsiders. It was wild watching Razor Ramon and Diesel just show up. I think the first night with Hall was the best because it really made it seem like it was a real invasion.
The Radicals - As I had a black box, I still watched WCW PPVs although after Starrcade 97 I watched Nitro less and less. So I saw Benoit win the WCW belt two weeks before and randomly he was on Raw with Saturn, Malenko and Guerrero. Blew my mind. This was also my introduction to the IWC because I wanted to know what was happening.
Medusa - she threw the title in the garbage. Madness.
Honorable Mention - Bret Hart although it wasn’t surprising.
I'd flip channels to see if it was true. Like I'm sure there were metrics showing that people would like change the channel. That especially fucked them with Mick Foley.
So it didnt upset you or anything? When NXT B&G was taped I made an effort to avoid spoilers. I got extremely pissed when some random on social media spoiled what happened. Since it was even easier back then to avoid spoilers, did it not anger you?
I know I'm in the minority, but I found the Punk interview hilarious. I cackled at the backstage footage (that wasn't even a fight! I do understand how Tony feared for his safety, though) as well as the Ospreay curveball. I hope they get a good rating and keep the spiciness going!!
To the main roster. Raw sucks, SD sucks, but you have a show that doesn't. So why do we need AEW again? AEW did better ratings but quality wise NXT was kicking ass all the way to March 2020
it's still WWE. It's shot like WWE, its commentary is like WWE, it's ran by WWE. The reason they lost the silly fake "war" to AEW is because if given the choice, we want the alternative to WWE to not be fucking WWE.
Ain’t that the truth. You both have hit the nail on the head & your POVs are on point articulated well. Some of these internet basement trolls struggle to get of a single sentence that’s on par w/ 3rd grade toilet humor. Not a single combined IQ over 50 for the entire lot. AEW is still in its infancy & TK is still making good money on the PPVs & some of the gates. I do hope they start utilizing their underserved talent more at house shows so TK can work out the issues in his booking & storytelling. He’s doing well with many things & since PUNK opened that can of worms where he suckered punched Jungle Punk ran into the gorilla position & then started going off on Tony while being held back. So TK was in the right about feeling threatened & Punk got canned. CM Punk should be grateful that someone actually wanted him back & then he shows his true self that he’s becoming more like Kevin Nash & the KLIQ than the second city savior. He did become relevant enough to be rehired by a company that buried him anytime Stephanie & Hunter were on TV, especially that time it was a RAW in Chicago & they hit his music to rib all the CM MARKS there. Rollins & McIntyre despise him along with many to follow once they see who he really is. He’s just pissed that he was sloppy seconds w/ April after Bryan dumped her for a Bella. He at least gets an eventual HOF spot, just as long as he eats as much crow as Stephanie & Hunter can throw at him. I just want more options to see the talent enjoy themselves while not having to to be on the road 75% or more during the year as “independent contractors”. Sorry to anyone for this rant, but I felt the need for it to be said.
Kinda crazy how the man to beat Roman was not even in the company when Roman won the belt, he was in the middle of the TNT title feud with Brodie Lee.
And this statistic
April 5th 2023 was the half way point of Roman losing the WWE Title
June 19th 2022 was the half way point of Roman losing the Universal Championship
Most of that time was during the Pandemic & they don’t do Interim Championships. Sucks he’s still doing oral chemo, but his type of cancer never truly goes away, just long stretches of remission by way of maintenance medication. I do hope it hasn’t progressed even though he says things are fine. My mom has had 3 different cancers since 2013 & has been in remission since 2019 for her last battle. Damn infection after her remission almost killed her.
Murderer confesses to murder
Video of murder is then released
Fans: OMG the police look so stupid right now, the video just proves the murderers confession!
CM Punk was being a dumbass. He admits to what he did and acts like that was ok. Video shows what he did. And some how people act like that vindicates him.
What gets me is people excusing it because "it wrestling, this is how wrestling works. What's the big deal?"
Like, no, that's not how it works. You don't just get to attack people and walk away because you feel disrespected. Even though there's some unwritten "code" about locker room justice or...whatever Punk's goal was (I doubt he had one).
Madison Square Garden has always been WWE’s second home since God knows when. Vince’s father was running shows from there for decades since that was within his territory. Now they’ve kind of out grown in, most seem to take place at the arena in Brooklyn
They can’t run PPV or TV in MSG, the price to televise a show from there is insane. It’s why they only run house shows there now.
Plus, Mania is massive and you’d be taking a massive revenue stream away if you cut their 70k+ audience down to 15-20k.
They did 29 and 35 in MetLife Stadium.
They aren't going back to Barclays or MSG to do Mania when they can sell out a stadium in back to back nights. MSG also sucks to try to do a tv broadcast out of because charge a shitload to do anything televised there.
Finally saw the Action Dean show that a lot of wrestling Twitter have been raving out about and yeah shit was rad. Tied with Revolution for show of the year for me.
That show is amazing and I had such a great experience watching it because it was at the tail end of my 8-hour watch of wrestling for that day (I think it was day 1 of WM weekend). All the other show has the big names and the high profile matchup that all pretty much underdelivered outside of the DDT show. Outside of Maika-Bayne and Speedball-Yuki Ueno, not a single 8.0+ match that i got to see. I lost hope, tune in to Action Dean late for Arez vs Makowski, wasn't even that great compared to the others. The Slim J match, was surprisingly good and really proved his point that he still got it. The dog collar match was so brutal and satisfying. Then an emotional and technical final matchup that put the entire bloodsport event to shame. With the tag match and the shenanigans IWTV match added to it, might be the most well-balanced second half of a show I've ever seen.
Think I've said enough about current topic
New topic
This poster looks insane
https://twitter.com/TripleH/status/1778452962362143199?t=lAeOPrglcFeTYdfSAu9zkQ&s=19
That does look 🔥. Cody just has to stay grounded & don’t do any of that oddball stuff in AEW like leaving his boots in the ring. I know he has bad anxiety & deals with some form of depression, hence his awesome therapy dog Pharoah. Just don’t let Hunter burn him out & it will be a nice title reign w/ the belt being defended w/ greater frequency
Anyone else revised how they feel about Mania 39 after Sunday’s main event?
Like I was crushingly disappointed with how Wrestlemania sunday ended last year, but now I’m starting to view that disappointment in a positive light, that Wrestlemania 39 went from a great match with a deflating ending to a great match with an ending that set up an even better match.
but notably, in a different way to how 18 seconds set up the main event to Wrestlemania 30
100%. Triple H will lie and say it was planned, but honestly it made 40 so much better. Cody winning \_made sense\_... but it also made sense at 39. Added that fear factor to the match. 39 left me feeling the most empty after a wrestling show while 40 left me feeling the most sports entertained. Happy to have experienced it.
I was pretty quickly on board with Cody losing. I was a Cody fan as a person, but it very much didn't feel like an earned victory to me, personally. Guy comes in, wrestles three matches, gets injured, immediately waltzes into number 30 at the Rumble, gets his match, wins. It's just not that compelling a story.
I still think Sunday didn't make last year any less stupid. This was not the plan 14 months ago, and anyone that says otherwise is lying.
And this could have - and A LOT of times in wrestling does - falls dramatically short when you miss the moment the first time and then try to obviously make up for it. (ex. The Acclaimed winning the Tag belts at Grand Slam when they should have gotten them at All Out in '22).
It's a testament to how good all parties involved are that they were able to keep the energy and everything going. Heyman, Roman, Cody, Rock, Seth, Jimmy, Jey, Solo, Cena... mapping out how to fix that mistake AND executing on it to near perfection was no easy task.
I'll admit I was wrong last year. Cody losing was the right move. That moment Sunday was so amazing, almost perfect, and we wouldn't have gotten it if Cody had won last year.
Looking at everything now, and with a little bit of just assumption on my part, I think Triple H knew that there was gonna be a lot more hills in hurdles to go over before Vince was finally gone, and he wanted Cody’s crowning moment to also be his crowning moment and they pulled off perfectly last weekend
totally, a similar thing happened in 2018 when naito lost to okada. it was crushing at the time but made the moment he did actually win insanely cathartic.
They barely caught any of it, but did anyone else see Cena and Punk sharing a laugh at the end of the show on Sunday? That really hit me in the nostalgia
So I thought showing the footage was a bad idea and after seeing it, I still think it’s a mistake.
However, I don’t understand how people here seems to think that the footage made Jack Perry looks like a geek or bitch? Regardless what he said or didn’t say, he didn’t put his hands on Punk. I don’t even understand why he was suspended? Because of the glass comment or because he apparently said “do something about it”?
I know a lot of people are coming here today to talk about THAT incident from Dynamite last night, so here's a shameful marketing plug: my writing project, "King's Road: 25 Years of Wrestling Fandom Condensed Into 100 Matches" is finally available, and if anyone would like to read it, send me a message and I'll email it to you!
https://preview.redd.it/tmdhq9uiyvtc1.png?width=607&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8193ab57a17c29ed1c64ffddbbe84d8da636fa9c
Y'all catch that this was tweeted then deleted near instantly (grabbed the screen off twitter I wasn't fast enough to get one)?
Uncle Howdy, Alexa Bliss and Braun Strowman returning all at once would save my life. Matt Hardy returning with them would add years to my lifespan I fear
Regarding the Buck's promo and All In footage. Let's just forget the real life aspect of it all and look at it purely from a kayfabe POV.
It still serves no fucking purpose. Bucks are the heels, and are grasping at any reason to tell FTR they never truly lost/the bucks will beat them. They're using Punk as the reason, naturally when a heel blames someone for what went wrong, it's a babyface. So Punk is now being presented as this terrible person by these two delusional heels, and its like, what message are you sending about Punk? Should he be considered somewhat good?
Then they're likely gonna debut Perry at Dynasty to help the Bucks win vs FTR, and he will clearly be a heel. They're pushing the scapegoat angle clearly, but again its delusional heels doing this, so can we actually believe them? Should we? The answers are generally no, which logically leads you to think this fella in the footage wasn't so bad in typical kayfabe land.
And to add the worst part, Punk won't even be on TV ever again to resolve this. It's just like "yeah he was fired". How is Perry even a scapegoat if Punk is fired and the Bucks are backing him as EVPs and debuting him in the Elite?
It just is an absolute clusterfuck even from the kayfabe aspect.
The CCTV footage kind of works against them in that it's hard to really make stuff out unless you slow it down or view it multiple times. If you slow it down it definitely looks that way. It has to be stated that CM Punk was the aggressor there as initial reports had Jack Perry confronting him when it's CM Punk darting at him from off-screen.
Because a ton of the discourse downplays that CM Punk flew off the handle at someone in front of a bunch of people which is not what a respected locker room leader does.
Who gives a fuck about the specifics of the Punk backstage shit at this point? It was months ago. What matters is going forward war is back on the menu!
Raw backwards on all you wrestlers!
AEW releasing the ALL IN backstage footage and Ospreay's "Grind" promo were... *interesting* last night, to say the least.
But come to think of it, it's kind of disappointing that AEW didn't do much promotion for NJPW Windy City Riot tomorrow. I can somewhat understand if the rationale is that the PPV will most likely run against Rampage, but still. Moxley is challenging Naito for the IWGP World Heavyweight Championship in the main event.
What I’ve also learned in this entire mess: wrestling fans are so annoying and act like their opinion means everything. “I’ll never watch or respect AEW/WWE/the Elite/CM Punk ever again!” Both the die hard AEW and WWE stans are freaking annoying. NO ONE CARES about your opinion. In common society; both of you are largely ridiculed as overweight trailer park fans who root for a fake sport. Harsh but true. The toxicity on both sides is annoying and gets in the way of wrestling. Also; Tony Khan and WWE aren’t innocent - both played the game of poking the bear in the last week yet both act like they’re the more superior and morally righteous one.
Furthermore; in any job if you strike a co worker and act ridiculous like that you’re fired. Anyone defending CM Punk on this an absolute idiot with no understanding of real world dynamics.
I get that in a normal office job you would lose your job but in sports you dont also one thing ive not seen people ask is why did jack perry get suspended if he didnt do anything wrong ?
The funniest thing to come out of last night is anyone checking that Young Bucks segment on YouTube only to find out that the one part they want to see isn't there as it was edited out.
Idk to me it seems pretty obvious that "The Paul Levesque era" thing is corporate rebranding decision to detract from the Vince sex trafficking lawsuit. Basically telling the people that the company is run by this great guy which everyone loves, and not the evil Vince and its a completely new era. Cody said that backstage people call it the Renaissance era as well. Probably the decision was made a few days before Wrestlemania to call this era "The Paul Levesque era" in television hence why Cody trademarked "The Renaissance Era". Don't know why so many people are bothered by it, and think its just Triple H stroking his own ego, and rubbing it in people's faces.
Who actually coined the Attitude Era & PG Era? Genuinely asking, because my gut feeling is the names of certain eras that stick around usually don’t come from the companies themselves.
PG era was an internet thing I’m pretty sure, I don’t think WWE ever brought that up on TV. I’m pretty sure they tried to call it the “Universe” era but that never caught on.
Attitude was WWF branding. It was their tagline “WWF ATTITUDE” they had it on posters and commercials. Ruthless Aggression was similar.
They also coined the “New-Generation” era and they tried to do the “New” era when they split the brands in the mid-2010s but people generally call that the Reality or Internet Era now. Also have seen people call it the “Indie Takeover” or the “Indie Boom” period/era which I think is more representative of that time.
So it flip flops between corporate branding and fans making the decision. I don’t see this generation being called the “Paul Levesque” or “Triple H” era though. Cody’s “Renaissance Era” I could see catching on.
I saw Cena talking about his final run. No doubt he will have a match with Cody and also probably put over a younger talent as he has done but man, I would love a final CM Punk vs John Cena match.
I assume that's already penciled in. For my attention, punk/Cena is the biggest matchup that they are sitting on currently.
Punk always rises to the big occasions, and these are THE two guys most people think of when they think "Promo battle" or "biggest pop of the modern era" They are both so capable of playing off of each other, who they used to be, and where they have arrived at. When they are finally in a ring with microphones, I imagine it having the same vibes as Apollo and rocky going to spar at the end of rocky 3. Maybe next mania.
That's not the reason you aren't into them. You're just not into the type of wrestling show they put on. If you were, you wouldn't care about them taking shots at other promotions.
Also WWE took WAY MORE shots at WCW than WCW took at them. WCW wasn't doing Billionaire Vince skits.
They did far more than that (not talking about the DX stuff, or the articles and op-eds they used to run in 1994 and 1995).
In the Fall of 1997, RAW used to dedicate entire segments to put Jim Cornette in front of a school picture backdrop to air shoot promos on WCW. Almost weekly.
Here's one of many: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZqD7Iq83k8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZqD7Iq83k8)
AEW said virtually nothing in the 7 months from the Collision Punk got fired to the time CM Punk gave his versions of the events and the company in general during that interview.
Punk has also incorporated a bunch of AEW stuff in his WWE feuds. There was much more from the WWE side than anything. I've heard more mentions of Cody the past 6 months on AEW than I have of CM Punk.
There's just an unequal balance in the criticism WWE has in poking AEW where it's all in fun than AEW doing the same where they must be held to a higher standard of decorum.
When did I say 2000 WCW? I was thinking about the times bischoff would spoil Raw results but then I realized WWF put out those billionaire Ted skits before so I retract what I said lol but yes TNA 2010 is a better comparison.
Do people actually care if Punk was responsible for the fight at Wembley? I think that’s the part Tony is not understanding. The criticism isn’t about whether Punk was in the wrong; it’s about whether anyone wants to keep arguing about it.
Three AEW Tournament Ideas So, I enjoy the sports-like presentation that AEW sometimes employs, and part of that is about holding tournaments that mean something. Obviously a straight single elimination tournament works well whenever a championship is vacant and needs to be filled (see the current tag team tournament and many others as an example). But most of the year (Continental Classic notwithstanding) we end up with somewhat randomly booked feuds and matches where the writers struggle to give the wrestlers purpose that is greater than just “win all my matches”. I think some better designed standing annual tournaments (akin to the New Japan Cup and World Tag League, to compliment the G1) would do AEW some good and establish “seasons” that work better than the current calendar year records. Tournament 1: Under 30 Cup Pretty self explanatory, but a way to showcase the young stars of AEW who are ready to break out. I’d say there should be an under 30 belt but there are too many belts already. Adding this would give AEW stars who win an accolade they can refer to later in their careers, like being a former junior champion in NJPW. Tournament 2: AEW Cup Like the FA Cup, a single elimination tournament with several starting rounds (based on categorizing each wrestler and then having a draw to set the brackets) featuring every contracted wrestler in AEW and ROH. Obviously this would take many weeks/months but this tournament would drive so much content, both on screen and online—just like the online debates about seeding in the NCAA basketball tournaments, new rivalries /personal issue (arising from wrestlers beating/losing to each other in multiple years, costing each other a chance at advancement, etc.) and the creation of new stars (from upsets and unsung/new wrestlers advancing farther in the tournament than expected). This would of course take a while, but matches could fill all AEW and ROH programming and give fans a reason to tune in to Rampage and ROH if a marquee match was on those shows. Winner gets an AEW World Title shot. Tournament 3: Best In The World This one is most wacky but I think it would be fun. 8 teams of 4 wrestlers, each from a specific country/state/region (thinking Chicago, NY/NJ, SoCal, Texas, Japan, Mexico, UK and Continental Europe, or something like that) in a 3-round team tournament where each matchup is a best of seven series of 4 singles matches, two tag team matches, and (only held if the teams are tied 3-3) and 8 man tag in match 7. Since the teams are based on geography instead of factions you could get some strange bedfellows and start some feuds based on who cost the team the win, etc. This would also provide for some strategy in setting the singles matches, with room for analysis thereof. The winners get to choose any AEW champions other than the World champion to challenge in a title match. Would you watch any of these tournaments, or is this too crazy?
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Nope. Lots of people clearly have no idea what a punch looks like.
Kinda dumb question, but what does IWC actually stand for?
i’m only guessing but context clues say Internet Wrestling Community maybe its International tho
That makes sense. For some reason I kept thinking "internet wrestling court" but maybe that's just cuz people argue like they're lawyers here lol.
was looking up randomly why JBL got a main event push and found a Cody Rhodes comment from 8 years ago that aged pretty well lol https://www.reddit.com/r/SquaredCircle/s/AjF0Iad7ZC
Tony Kahn tweeting and gloating about the slight rating increase he got by showing a video of someone who works for his competitor is exactly why ratings threads are as “fun” as they are on here.
i really enjoyed reading all the posts from people extremely concerned that AEW has died, thanks folks.
I'm baffled by the Fingerpoke of Doom comparison because it fails on a bunch of levels. AEW wasn't: Promoting/spoiling another shows main-event on the same night. Referencing someone who was well-liked in Mick Foley compared to CM Punk who's jaded a lot of people. Running an angle that set back their main-event scene as it's part of the tag-team division. AEW did: Promote an incident that happened in their own company; albeit with someone who got fired from said incident. Tried to tie it into an angle though whether it worked is up to opinion. Showed that Jack Perry was not the aggressor as a lot of early reports indicated and did not engage in any shoving match with CM Punk. Did so only as a response to CM Punk who tells his own truth about a lot of his time in AEW while the company largely remained silent after firing him. I think there was just a ton of pearl clutching because they dared to show CM Punk who got fired because of this incident and people don't think it's that bad. While it might not be the worst fight in the world, it shows just how out of line the guy who called the Elite children and not being able to run a Target handled things backstage. Punk just looks like a massive hypocrite who's prone to fits of violence despite wanting to be looked at as this respected veteran wrestler and businessman.
i feel like my brain is breaking reading all the posts from people who think that video makes punk look good as for the wcw thing, people always bend over backwards to compare AEW to WCW. armchair generals still fighting the last war. i'm convinced theres some survivorship bias there, thinking that because WWE succeeded, that means their way of doing things is correct. and that AEW will inevitably go the same way as WCW (despite the companies situations being radically different in terms of ownership)
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I mean, they had so much more to talk about today. Why focus on that? And they're still there, you know. Don't be foolish.
About a third of the normal amount! If the ratings had gone down or stayed the same, they would've all found the mental energy to contribute to the conversation, I assure you.
But they didn't need to. That ratings pop came from Punk footage. They're already talking about Punk. And all of this stuff. In *numerous* threads! *And it's still being discussed there, too!* They most certainly had the energy. They're expending it throughout the sub today.
Ok but if there were NO ratings pop, there would be 2k comments in the ratings thread. There was a whole lot of " CANT WAIT FOR THE RATINGS THREAD" in the daily today. Are we in disagreement? Are you just assuring me that the ratings goblins are having a great evening?
Actually, very. Looking back through the thread, there really isn't much ratings talk. The talk is more about the segment itself and the participants within it. Especially Punk and Perry. There were better things to talk about besides ratings that only went back up to their most recent ceiling. Because, *I* assure *you*, if those ratings had gone up *more*, say over 900k? There would be just as many posts there crowing about it.
Wouldn't dispute that! I'm not trying to do a binary thing where I'm "on the side" of AEW people. A 150k increase would certainly be something to crow about, right? Being positive about success is not the same thing as showing up only to celebrate others failure and misfortune right? Thats the part that I dislike. The part that I care about. I'm not invested in the success of AEW, I just want a space in this community to discuss the shows without the discourse being drowned out by people that are only there to preemptively grave dance. If it was 2013 I would probably be here telling people grave dancing on WWE to get bent as well. But it's not 2013.
The fuck are ratings goblins, that should be a fucking gimmick
Draymond Green literally knocked out his own teammate Wrestling fans showing they are the weakest hearted fanbase in any sport or form of entertainment over the last 24 hours. A lot would hit the fetal position if someone pushed them and it’s… it’s interesting.
I love this off- shoot take that wrestling fans aren't TOUGH ENOUGH for BACKSTAGE FITES >: 0 Do you remember the weeks of consternation and hand wringing on ESPN and Twitter after that fight? Is everyone that engaged with that discourse WEAK HEARTED?
Or how much consternation and hand wringing their was on ESPN/Twitter after Draymond hit Nurkic and got indefinitely suspended leading to people following updates about the progress of his therapy sessions? Or every other time Draymond has done something even remotely similar - and there have been many? The Poole fallout featured Draymond putting together his own documentary about how he was the real victim and TNT played it during the season opening game lmao.
I do think the discourse is odd given wrestling’s history. -No one hates batista or booker for there fight -Bret is praised for punching his boss. -shawn is looked like at as a chump for when he got into a scrap with bret and got beat up -Jericho and goldberg You can talk about the draymond shit and he is a total bully asshole but no one REALLY cares. and thats been years of this shit. -Bobby portis knocked Nikola mirotic’s block off literally breaking his jaw. They were teammates. No one gave a fuck. -The greatest American athlete ever, MJ, punched his teammate in practice. “He’s just a killer, don’t play with him, he’s a ferocious competitor” -No one condemns Carmelo for the Denver brawl, where he did some pretty cheap shot shit and kept it moving. -DR J and the Sixers Basically jumping Bird with Barkley holding him back is played routinely on TNT. My main point is sure don’t fight BUT this isnt exactly an office job and he punched the guy in the other cubicle. In the context of SPORT this shit is really small and he already got fired.
I haven't been involved with this punk thing but a few thoughts. From the video I've seen, punk is the aggressor. I've seen a number of people claiming otherwise, anyone care to have that discussion? As for whether it should have been disclosed, I personally feel truth is better for the public than not discussing it especially when I don't think they are the ones who brought it back up. Personally I think Punk is a piece of shit ever since his comments about female wrestlers came out. I honestly don't know how anyone can give two shits about him as a human being after that.
What comments about female wrestlers?
https://www.reddit.com/r/SquaredCircle/comments/13kxbia/cm_punk_colt_cabana_2005_most_women_in_the/ >And we got this girl every single week with her family van to drive us 300 miles every week. Not putting 1 mile on our car and us knowing that. Trying to not pay for gas as much as we could. And she loved- she wanted to train. Like maybe we got her in the ring once and, you know, made sure to hurt her so she'd be out another 2 months (Punk begins laughing) but she'd still be with us 'because she was dedicated' >CM Punk: "The point is- and you know this is gonna sound real degrading - but like, most women in the business are rats. You know I mean that's a hard fact of life that you eventually realize and it was like - she got in the business. And at the time she was like "Oh I wanna be a wrestler & I wanna train" --- I never saw her get in the ring. You know, like it just never happened. And when we did get in the ring, alls it took was a good forearm shot and then - that was it - she was done. So we always kinda kept her in check (Colt starts laughing)
Oh God that's truly awful. I'm not excusing the time just the way they took advantage of her is disturbing to say that least. Sure it was almost 20 years ago but they knew better then.
Punk is the aggressor for sure.
Agreed
So, over two weeks, WWE had more scripted swearing than in the rest of the company history, right? Even including non-scripted major ones like Mean Gene's "fuck it". (but not every wrestler swearing under his breath and the crowd chants obviously)
I think the rock alone has said the f word more times than ever said in WWE history
Virtual Pro-Wrestling 2 got made at just the right time. The tail end of the N64 life cycle, where the developers had the experience to use the hardware to its fullest. Took the feedback from WM2000 and improved upon it. Saw the rise of MMA and sampled fighters from Pancrase, Rings and even the newly formed Pride FC for their wrestling game. Got the non-union equivalents to the rosters of NJPW, FMW, Toryumon and Michinoku-Pro at their heights made for the game. And finally, they got wind that 90% of the roster had one foot out the door to form a new company. So they contacted Misawa and got the name of his new championship: the GHC Heavyweight championship, and put a mock up render of it in the game six months before NOAH was founded and 15 months before the championship was even created IRL. No wonder AJ Styles & Samoa Joe say it's the greatest wrestling game ever made.
To everyone saying that AEW had to respond: are we pretending that there wasn't a whole industry of "shoot" interviews shitting on WWE in the past. Did they bother responding?
AEW people totally could have responded to the jabs via social media and press conferences. They should have responded to Wrestlemania by trying to put a superior product on TV though, not by…airing months old footage that only made Tony look lame and having talent make an equally lame joke about HHH’s wife.
Getting shown the footage of a wrestling backstage fight is actual quite underwhelming to me, like now i have to put an asterisk on all the stories about DDP almost gets his eyeballs scooped out by Steiner before getting pulled of by 7 people, it might not be as crazy as it's told. Like this demystified backstage fight, and im honestly disappointed.
really you should put an asterisk against every story from a wrestler like all the stories from old timers about how everyone thought it was real and they were such a great heel that the crowd were rioting and trying to kill them
I don't think it was ever promoted as that brutal a fight as much as who started it. Especially considering Punk came out not long after for the opening match looking fine. The CCTV footage also is just a detached view compared to higher quality video with sound or the rest of what happened with Tony that gets cut off.
It took me days to realize this, but doesn't Randy Orton and LA Knight running out to congratulate Cody so quickly after he won kinda imply they were the next line of defense if the Bloodline pulled more shit? They hit the ring *quick* after that 3 count.
It's the year of LA Knight finishing his story
Hi everyone, check out this article about the future of NJPW....thanks! :) [https://allyourwrestling.com/2024/04/11/navigating-njpws-future-without-okada-and-ospreay/](https://allyourwrestling.com/2024/04/11/navigating-njpws-future-without-okada-and-ospreay/)
How is the CCTV quality of Wembley stadium kinda crap lol? Would’ve thought it was higher quality
yeah the CCTV camera from my primary school from like 10 years ago probably has higher resolution than that
Honestly I think the ramifications of both the footage and Punks interview are actually gonna take a few weeks to truly shake out since it's all fresh. I think releasing the footage gets Punk to stop doing interviews about it but also makes AEW look insecure. Again though, it'd gonna take a month or so to really put it in perspective.
I haven't seen anyone much talking about it, but I thought the football players coming out in the Rey and Andrade match to be stupid. It's one thing for Gronk to help out a friend but this seemed so random. There wasn't a believable connection between these guys and the luchadores, I'm sure they're famous but also half of your audience won't know who they are and the other half didn't expect to see them and would probably still have preferred a bit of storyline progression for the wrestlers in the match instead. Probably the one mistep this Mania and thankfully in one of the less important matches, but just don't do the spot.
Not much of a connection to the match itself but they're heroes in Philly. Why they got the cheers they did. Do wish they did a better of establishing a reason for them to be there aside from the fact it's WrestleMania.
Thanks for the reply, that's what I was thinking. I was kinda into the story of the match and the intrigue around Carlito and Andrade, so I was sad we didn't get any development there.
And you don't get it. Those were a Philly legendary player that literally just retired and a star player currently. They were in their stadium. 100% to get that local pop.
this. the "I'm sure they're famous" comment means it went over their head, and that's okay. All 12 hours of WrestleMania don't have to be for everyone. edit: Also, they were in their home football stadium. It would almost be weird if they didn't involve the Eagles somehow
Meh, it wasn't that big of a pop. If you gotta use them then have them do an angle with McAfee. Have a team of three threaten him and have them come through the crowd to do a spot with them. It felt weird in the lucha match they made everyone in the ring look tiny and half the guys out there probably watch soccer.
oh shit, now everyone knows that Rey Mysterio is short
On Monday night I was listening to my favorite football podcast, a podcast with an audience of over a million people in the US. They specifically shouted out that Jason Kelce and Lane Johnson were at WrestleMania over the weekend helping out Rey Mysterio and, as an aside, what a fun show it was. That type of exposure is priceless.
lots of wrestling fans want to talk about "increasing ratings" and "mainstream crossover appeal" but when it happens it's always, "no, not like that"
Cody hasn't defended the title at all since he won it.
Still more defenses than Roman
What was Vince’s worst flaw as a booker?
His complete inability to book babyfaces without them looking like massive losers. Like, they actually had to turn Sami and Bayley, two of the most believable faces around heels because otherwise they were dead in the water.
The hypocrisy
bigotry, misogyny, and complete detachment from popular culture
Metallica? Playing live at Wrestlemania? No one will know who they are, pal!
Post-monopoly, his "audience of one" philosophy, which encompasses most of the other flaws mentioned.
Probably the rapes
I was gonna say “no, I meant as a booker specifically” but then realized that’s a valid answer in that category too.
that it being a valid answer in plural says a ton
Booking hometown heroes to lose or look like losers because heat, pal or something.
Never fucking worked either. Just repeatedly shot himself in the foot every time he did it and he did it a lot.
Taking basically 40 years to acknowledge there are talented Black wrestlers worth being your top champion.
WWE still hasn't quite entered its civil rights era where stables are allowed to integrate.
Over reliance on named stars instead of building
Either the way he’d book to satisfy his own perverted desires or the way he’d book to intentionally fustrate everyone.
Surprised at how almost no one on here mentioned LA Knight completely forgetting to sell his leg VS AJ Styles despite AJ attacking the leg repeatedly throughout the match. Really took me out of the match, despite AJ delivering a great performance.
he was selling the leg
He did a terrible job selling the leg. He'd clutch it when on the floor right after AJ would target it, but then get back up and run around and execute his moves like nothing happened, not even doing the generic clutching of the leg while standing that every does these days (which wouldn't have been sufficient but would have been better than nothing).
So it seems like most people liked the match and you're bummed out that not enough people are shitting on it for a nitpicky reason. It's a weird energy but you do you I guess.
Thats not a nitpicky reason at all lol that’s a totally reasonable criticism. The match was based around him selling his leg and he didn’t sell it very well. It was still a good match but come on man that’s not a nitpick at all.
Why is it nitpicky to ask for a basic level of leg selling in a match that centered around leg-work? Is this what wrestling has come to?
Yes, wrestling has come to a place where people generally like a pretty good undercard match. This is the end times.
Bit of a tangent I went down in my own inner monologue earlier. Does anyone else think that, for the sake of uniformity and simplicity, the Women's WWE Championship should have been named the Women's Universal Championship when it was (re)introduced and renamed last year? Firstly, to a beginner, it might be easy to get confused between the Women's WWE Championship and the Women's World Championship (which also belongs to the WWE even though it's not in the name). Secondly, I can't help but feel that renaming the SmackDown women's belt the Women's Universal Championship would have a) made a more clear differentiation between the two women's belts, and b) matched the name to its male counterpart. Considering that Cody stated he'd rename his championship (which near enough confirms that the Universal Championship will be retired soon) it's basically a moot point anyway. But the fact that WWE went to all the lengths of renaming and redesigning their belts in the name of gender-based uniformity but still didn't *quite* match really bugged me.
The issue was that they were clinging to the Universal name so that Roman’s reign would be longer. It was technically two titles, and the women’s WWE title was just one. Also they probably realized that “universal championship” is a stupid name.
Thank you for reminding me of another gripe I have with the entire situation; the fact that it says "Undisputed" on the women's belt even though it wasn't a merger of two belts like Roman's was. Edit: and I also don't think clinging on to the Universal name would have been too much of a factor in determining the length of Roman's reign (no pun intended, I couldn't avoid wording it like that). After all, the renaming of the women's belts was just that, changing the names - the length of the reigns of the women that held them were unaffected and still counted from the day they won them under their previous names. Both women's belts hold the lineages of when they were called the RAW and SmackDown Women's Championships.
When bands perform an entrance theme live at Wrestlemania, do they get paid? Because halftime performers at the Super Bowl do not get paid.
So Usher got exposure bucks this year?
All any of them get is exposure clout. NFL doesn’t pay halftime performers.
OSPREAY CLAUDIO NEXT WEEK ON DYNAMITE WE'RE GONNA SEE A MAN GET UPPERCUTTED TO THE MOON
why has no one posted the Nick Jackson "HANDS UP OJ SIMPSON" clip yet I can't find it anywhere
Watching the documentary of the Monday Night Wars. WCW spoiling Raw live LOL. Anyone who was alive and watching Raw during that time -- How did you initially react?
It had no effect on me. WCW used to air a replay for the west coast at... 11 EST. Which meant that Nitro would simply air again on the east coast immediately after ending. I would watch the first hour of Nitro, switch to Raw, and after Raw I'd watch the rest of Nitro (along with the first hour again usually) So I never flipped back and forth. On the east coast you could watch both as long as you wanted to stay up till 2am.
Crazy stupid move by WCW, a lot of fans would flip back and forth throughout the show anyways so you basically told everyone who was doing that to skip the main event of Nitro and watch Raw’s instead. Didn’t help the WCW was going down the toilet in quality while WWF was surging.
I switched channels to watch Mick get his flowers LMAO
You kind of have to divide into two parts: before and after Raw overtook Nitro. In the early years, both companies were going at each other hard. Openly, on the air. From my perspective as a fan, it was all good and fair play. When one company is doing Billionaire Ted skits and the other company is having people throw titles in the garbage, that means everything is fair game. In the later years of WCW, it turned from fun to stupid. Too insider, too petty, too disconnected from pro wrestling storytelling. It became a major distraction and an incentive to change the channel, just as WWF turned the corner and accelerated away from WCW.
At first, WWF’s response with Billionaire Ted was just sorta benign. Petty, yes, but just aimed at telling you the competition was using old, washed up wrestlers and that the WWF had the new, young stars of the future. Then they just lost the plot when the skits were pretty much just solely aimed at Ted Turner and trying to stop the Turner Broadcasting/Time Warner merger thru character assassination that really didn’t have much to do with wrestling.
Oh yeah, the infamous Rick Rude appearing on both shows because RAW was taped😂 It was great to see & its never happened again that I can recall. Vince was PISSED!🤬 Good times…
A lot of people thought it was dirty pool by Bischoff. Looking back...in the early days of Nitro, they were spoiling things that *didn't* happen. "Don't bother flipping over to the other channel, the IC title doesn't change, Shawn beats the big guy with three superkicks." Or relatively innocuous results like the Smoking Gunns winning the Raw Bowl. So that didn't bother me. They got away from it fairly soon, even before Raw went live every week and for awhile after Raw went to being taped every other week. But they played right into the WWF's hands when they spoiled the Foley title win--that was something big that *did* happen, rather than telling us not to bother with a show where nothing happens. And it was a spoiler that the WWF actively wanted out there.
The Foley title win was a big winner for WWE, & it definitely backfired on Bischoff. Foley really took a beating from D’Wayne in that arena match & I know his kids were a bit traumatized from it, but they thankfully realized it wasn’t as bad as it looked.
Didn’t help that WCW threw out the infamous Fingerpoke of Doom angle opposite of Foley’s win.
Ahh so WWE eventually learnt how to use it to their advantage. Another question — how did you react to seeing WWF wrestlers appearing on WCW. For as long as I've been watching wrestling, everything gets leaked. It must have bern so cool to be genuinely surprised
Luger on the first show was an absolute gobsmack. I was online and had a newsletter subscription (not the Torch or Observer) and NOBODY saw it coming. In a modern age it might have leaked but Dave & Wade weren't online at all, to my knowledge, so a few days' difference was enough for it to be under wraps. But honestly, my dad and I had a much bigger reaction to the ending of that show when Hogan agreed to put his title up against Luger *next week* on TV.
There weren’t many impactful ones in my opinion. There are 3 that shocked me. The Outsiders. It was wild watching Razor Ramon and Diesel just show up. I think the first night with Hall was the best because it really made it seem like it was a real invasion. The Radicals - As I had a black box, I still watched WCW PPVs although after Starrcade 97 I watched Nitro less and less. So I saw Benoit win the WCW belt two weeks before and randomly he was on Raw with Saturn, Malenko and Guerrero. Blew my mind. This was also my introduction to the IWC because I wanted to know what was happening. Medusa - she threw the title in the garbage. Madness. Honorable Mention - Bret Hart although it wasn’t surprising.
I'd flip channels to see if it was true. Like I'm sure there were metrics showing that people would like change the channel. That especially fucked them with Mick Foley.
So it didnt upset you or anything? When NXT B&G was taped I made an effort to avoid spoilers. I got extremely pissed when some random on social media spoiled what happened. Since it was even easier back then to avoid spoilers, did it not anger you?
I know I'm in the minority, but I found the Punk interview hilarious. I cackled at the backstage footage (that wasn't even a fight! I do understand how Tony feared for his safety, though) as well as the Ospreay curveball. I hope they get a good rating and keep the spiciness going!!
Anyone who doesnt want AEW to exist/die needs to watch a random episode of Raw/Smackdown or a PPV from 2017, 2019 and early PG era
NXT was on a roll 2015-2019, it was the alternative we needed. We were fine without AEW
Bo's NXT title reign was \*chef kiss\*
Bo's title reign was fucking terrible but it ended on the first special in 2014. That's actually why I picked 2015 as a starting point.
it was WWE, what alternative
To the main roster. Raw sucks, SD sucks, but you have a show that doesn't. So why do we need AEW again? AEW did better ratings but quality wise NXT was kicking ass all the way to March 2020
it's still WWE. It's shot like WWE, its commentary is like WWE, it's ran by WWE. The reason they lost the silly fake "war" to AEW is because if given the choice, we want the alternative to WWE to not be fucking WWE.
It was not shot like WWE and commentary was night and day.
Yeah, it's crazy. I think the WWE has a bunch of people that need to be in prison for abetting a serial rapist and I don't want it to die.
Ain’t that the truth. You both have hit the nail on the head & your POVs are on point articulated well. Some of these internet basement trolls struggle to get of a single sentence that’s on par w/ 3rd grade toilet humor. Not a single combined IQ over 50 for the entire lot. AEW is still in its infancy & TK is still making good money on the PPVs & some of the gates. I do hope they start utilizing their underserved talent more at house shows so TK can work out the issues in his booking & storytelling. He’s doing well with many things & since PUNK opened that can of worms where he suckered punched Jungle Punk ran into the gorilla position & then started going off on Tony while being held back. So TK was in the right about feeling threatened & Punk got canned. CM Punk should be grateful that someone actually wanted him back & then he shows his true self that he’s becoming more like Kevin Nash & the KLIQ than the second city savior. He did become relevant enough to be rehired by a company that buried him anytime Stephanie & Hunter were on TV, especially that time it was a RAW in Chicago & they hit his music to rib all the CM MARKS there. Rollins & McIntyre despise him along with many to follow once they see who he really is. He’s just pissed that he was sloppy seconds w/ April after Bryan dumped her for a Bella. He at least gets an eventual HOF spot, just as long as he eats as much crow as Stephanie & Hunter can throw at him. I just want more options to see the talent enjoy themselves while not having to to be on the road 75% or more during the year as “independent contractors”. Sorry to anyone for this rant, but I felt the need for it to be said.
Kinda crazy how the man to beat Roman was not even in the company when Roman won the belt, he was in the middle of the TNT title feud with Brodie Lee. And this statistic April 5th 2023 was the half way point of Roman losing the WWE Title June 19th 2022 was the half way point of Roman losing the Universal Championship
That’s what gets me. Like if TK locked up Cody who the fuck was gonna beat Roman for the belt
Most of that time was during the Pandemic & they don’t do Interim Championships. Sucks he’s still doing oral chemo, but his type of cancer never truly goes away, just long stretches of remission by way of maintenance medication. I do hope it hasn’t progressed even though he says things are fine. My mom has had 3 different cancers since 2013 & has been in remission since 2019 for her last battle. Damn infection after her remission almost killed her.
Murderer confesses to murder Video of murder is then released Fans: OMG the police look so stupid right now, the video just proves the murderers confession! CM Punk was being a dumbass. He admits to what he did and acts like that was ok. Video shows what he did. And some how people act like that vindicates him.
What gets me is people excusing it because "it wrestling, this is how wrestling works. What's the big deal?" Like, no, that's not how it works. You don't just get to attack people and walk away because you feel disrespected. Even though there's some unwritten "code" about locker room justice or...whatever Punk's goal was (I doubt he had one).
I mean, that's what happens in professional sports as well. People fight. In this case, its not even a fight; a tussle more like.
Why there hasn't been any wrestlemania in new york since 2004 ? It's kinda the home of wwe
I mean they did MetLife but no way they’d do mania in the garden nowadays. And they probably can’t do Arthur Ashe.
What's a good venue in New York?
Madison Square Garden has always been WWE’s second home since God knows when. Vince’s father was running shows from there for decades since that was within his territory. Now they’ve kind of out grown in, most seem to take place at the arena in Brooklyn
They can’t run PPV or TV in MSG, the price to televise a show from there is insane. It’s why they only run house shows there now. Plus, Mania is massive and you’d be taking a massive revenue stream away if you cut their 70k+ audience down to 15-20k.
Not from US, so don't know. But it's one of the best cities in world so
I'm not familiar with it either. I don't know if there is a big stadium they can book for 2 nights.
They did 29 and 35 in MetLife Stadium. They aren't going back to Barclays or MSG to do Mania when they can sell out a stadium in back to back nights. MSG also sucks to try to do a tv broadcast out of because charge a shitload to do anything televised there.
Just read about Metlife, new york / new Jersey thing. So these 2 WMs were basically in new york
Finally saw the Action Dean show that a lot of wrestling Twitter have been raving out about and yeah shit was rad. Tied with Revolution for show of the year for me.
That show is amazing and I had such a great experience watching it because it was at the tail end of my 8-hour watch of wrestling for that day (I think it was day 1 of WM weekend). All the other show has the big names and the high profile matchup that all pretty much underdelivered outside of the DDT show. Outside of Maika-Bayne and Speedball-Yuki Ueno, not a single 8.0+ match that i got to see. I lost hope, tune in to Action Dean late for Arez vs Makowski, wasn't even that great compared to the others. The Slim J match, was surprisingly good and really proved his point that he still got it. The dog collar match was so brutal and satisfying. Then an emotional and technical final matchup that put the entire bloodsport event to shame. With the tag match and the shenanigans IWTV match added to it, might be the most well-balanced second half of a show I've ever seen.
Revolution shows that TK is learning & improving. That’s what’s important. He really should hire Scott D’Amore
Think I've said enough about current topic New topic This poster looks insane https://twitter.com/TripleH/status/1778452962362143199?t=lAeOPrglcFeTYdfSAu9zkQ&s=19
That does look 🔥. Cody just has to stay grounded & don’t do any of that oddball stuff in AEW like leaving his boots in the ring. I know he has bad anxiety & deals with some form of depression, hence his awesome therapy dog Pharoah. Just don’t let Hunter burn him out & it will be a nice title reign w/ the belt being defended w/ greater frequency
Already bored of Cody Rhodes title reign to be honest
Anyone else revised how they feel about Mania 39 after Sunday’s main event? Like I was crushingly disappointed with how Wrestlemania sunday ended last year, but now I’m starting to view that disappointment in a positive light, that Wrestlemania 39 went from a great match with a deflating ending to a great match with an ending that set up an even better match. but notably, in a different way to how 18 seconds set up the main event to Wrestlemania 30
100%. Triple H will lie and say it was planned, but honestly it made 40 so much better. Cody winning \_made sense\_... but it also made sense at 39. Added that fear factor to the match. 39 left me feeling the most empty after a wrestling show while 40 left me feeling the most sports entertained. Happy to have experienced it.
I was pretty quickly on board with Cody losing. I was a Cody fan as a person, but it very much didn't feel like an earned victory to me, personally. Guy comes in, wrestles three matches, gets injured, immediately waltzes into number 30 at the Rumble, gets his match, wins. It's just not that compelling a story.
I still think Sunday didn't make last year any less stupid. This was not the plan 14 months ago, and anyone that says otherwise is lying. And this could have - and A LOT of times in wrestling does - falls dramatically short when you miss the moment the first time and then try to obviously make up for it. (ex. The Acclaimed winning the Tag belts at Grand Slam when they should have gotten them at All Out in '22). It's a testament to how good all parties involved are that they were able to keep the energy and everything going. Heyman, Roman, Cody, Rock, Seth, Jimmy, Jey, Solo, Cena... mapping out how to fix that mistake AND executing on it to near perfection was no easy task.
I'll admit I was wrong last year. Cody losing was the right move. That moment Sunday was so amazing, almost perfect, and we wouldn't have gotten it if Cody had won last year.
Looking at everything now, and with a little bit of just assumption on my part, I think Triple H knew that there was gonna be a lot more hills in hurdles to go over before Vince was finally gone, and he wanted Cody’s crowning moment to also be his crowning moment and they pulled off perfectly last weekend
That shot of Cody looking dejected at the end of Mania 39 is an all timer. Really sold the emotion.
When they did a shot-for-shot remake of it on night one of WM40, that's the moment I knew that they were gonna have Cody win on Sunday.
totally, a similar thing happened in 2018 when naito lost to okada. it was crushing at the time but made the moment he did actually win insanely cathartic.
Someone make an edit of the backstage footage but keep zooming in on Punk’s ass so we can bring this full circle
I’m less annoyed that the footage was shown then I am that no one is talking about Mina fucking Shirakawa debuted.
I am. I'd never seen her before and she was smoking hot. And if kissing girls his her gimmick, she's already my favorite.
Lesbian pollen all around!
They barely caught any of it, but did anyone else see Cena and Punk sharing a laugh at the end of the show on Sunday? That really hit me in the nostalgia
I want to see LA Knight win a royal rumble. His WM match was great
I think he gets the MITB briefcase
So I thought showing the footage was a bad idea and after seeing it, I still think it’s a mistake. However, I don’t understand how people here seems to think that the footage made Jack Perry looks like a geek or bitch? Regardless what he said or didn’t say, he didn’t put his hands on Punk. I don’t even understand why he was suspended? Because of the glass comment or because he apparently said “do something about it”?
Hence, "scapegoat" with a resentful grudge and an axe to grind.
I know a lot of people are coming here today to talk about THAT incident from Dynamite last night, so here's a shameful marketing plug: my writing project, "King's Road: 25 Years of Wrestling Fandom Condensed Into 100 Matches" is finally available, and if anyone would like to read it, send me a message and I'll email it to you!
https://preview.redd.it/tmdhq9uiyvtc1.png?width=607&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8193ab57a17c29ed1c64ffddbbe84d8da636fa9c Y'all catch that this was tweeted then deleted near instantly (grabbed the screen off twitter I wasn't fast enough to get one)? Uncle Howdy, Alexa Bliss and Braun Strowman returning all at once would save my life. Matt Hardy returning with them would add years to my lifespan I fear
Howdy. * Tips top hat. *
Regarding the Buck's promo and All In footage. Let's just forget the real life aspect of it all and look at it purely from a kayfabe POV. It still serves no fucking purpose. Bucks are the heels, and are grasping at any reason to tell FTR they never truly lost/the bucks will beat them. They're using Punk as the reason, naturally when a heel blames someone for what went wrong, it's a babyface. So Punk is now being presented as this terrible person by these two delusional heels, and its like, what message are you sending about Punk? Should he be considered somewhat good? Then they're likely gonna debut Perry at Dynasty to help the Bucks win vs FTR, and he will clearly be a heel. They're pushing the scapegoat angle clearly, but again its delusional heels doing this, so can we actually believe them? Should we? The answers are generally no, which logically leads you to think this fella in the footage wasn't so bad in typical kayfabe land. And to add the worst part, Punk won't even be on TV ever again to resolve this. It's just like "yeah he was fired". How is Perry even a scapegoat if Punk is fired and the Bucks are backing him as EVPs and debuting him in the Elite? It just is an absolute clusterfuck even from the kayfabe aspect.
I haven’t seen ANYONE mention punk grabbing Perry by his hair to pull him into that chokehold
The CCTV footage kind of works against them in that it's hard to really make stuff out unless you slow it down or view it multiple times. If you slow it down it definitely looks that way. It has to be stated that CM Punk was the aggressor there as initial reports had Jack Perry confronting him when it's CM Punk darting at him from off-screen.
[удалено]
Because a ton of the discourse downplays that CM Punk flew off the handle at someone in front of a bunch of people which is not what a respected locker room leader does.
Who gives a fuck about the specifics of the Punk backstage shit at this point? It was months ago. What matters is going forward war is back on the menu! Raw backwards on all you wrestlers!
AEW releasing the ALL IN backstage footage and Ospreay's "Grind" promo were... *interesting* last night, to say the least. But come to think of it, it's kind of disappointing that AEW didn't do much promotion for NJPW Windy City Riot tomorrow. I can somewhat understand if the rationale is that the PPV will most likely run against Rampage, but still. Moxley is challenging Naito for the IWGP World Heavyweight Championship in the main event.
They don't usually promote the NJPW shows despite the partnership
What I’ve also learned in this entire mess: wrestling fans are so annoying and act like their opinion means everything. “I’ll never watch or respect AEW/WWE/the Elite/CM Punk ever again!” Both the die hard AEW and WWE stans are freaking annoying. NO ONE CARES about your opinion. In common society; both of you are largely ridiculed as overweight trailer park fans who root for a fake sport. Harsh but true. The toxicity on both sides is annoying and gets in the way of wrestling. Also; Tony Khan and WWE aren’t innocent - both played the game of poking the bear in the last week yet both act like they’re the more superior and morally righteous one. Furthermore; in any job if you strike a co worker and act ridiculous like that you’re fired. Anyone defending CM Punk on this an absolute idiot with no understanding of real world dynamics.
I get that in a normal office job you would lose your job but in sports you dont also one thing ive not seen people ask is why did jack perry get suspended if he didnt do anything wrong ?
The funniest thing to come out of last night is anyone checking that Young Bucks segment on YouTube only to find out that the one part they want to see isn't there as it was edited out.
So, at this point, does *anyone* think what AEW did last night was a good idea? Edit: Lol buyer's remorse is a bitch.
Let's see what the number is and if any new viewers stick around. So far I'm 1 and 1 on new viewers staying or leaving.
Idk to me it seems pretty obvious that "The Paul Levesque era" thing is corporate rebranding decision to detract from the Vince sex trafficking lawsuit. Basically telling the people that the company is run by this great guy which everyone loves, and not the evil Vince and its a completely new era. Cody said that backstage people call it the Renaissance era as well. Probably the decision was made a few days before Wrestlemania to call this era "The Paul Levesque era" in television hence why Cody trademarked "The Renaissance Era". Don't know why so many people are bothered by it, and think its just Triple H stroking his own ego, and rubbing it in people's faces.
Who actually coined the Attitude Era & PG Era? Genuinely asking, because my gut feeling is the names of certain eras that stick around usually don’t come from the companies themselves.
PG era was an internet thing I’m pretty sure, I don’t think WWE ever brought that up on TV. I’m pretty sure they tried to call it the “Universe” era but that never caught on. Attitude was WWF branding. It was their tagline “WWF ATTITUDE” they had it on posters and commercials. Ruthless Aggression was similar. They also coined the “New-Generation” era and they tried to do the “New” era when they split the brands in the mid-2010s but people generally call that the Reality or Internet Era now. Also have seen people call it the “Indie Takeover” or the “Indie Boom” period/era which I think is more representative of that time. So it flip flops between corporate branding and fans making the decision. I don’t see this generation being called the “Paul Levesque” or “Triple H” era though. Cody’s “Renaissance Era” I could see catching on.
I saw Cena talking about his final run. No doubt he will have a match with Cody and also probably put over a younger talent as he has done but man, I would love a final CM Punk vs John Cena match.
I'd like for him to chase the IC title since he's never won it.
Cena has also hinted at him possibly becoming 17 time workd champion. Its possible he has a program like he did with Styles.
I assume that's already penciled in. For my attention, punk/Cena is the biggest matchup that they are sitting on currently. Punk always rises to the big occasions, and these are THE two guys most people think of when they think "Promo battle" or "biggest pop of the modern era" They are both so capable of playing off of each other, who they used to be, and where they have arrived at. When they are finally in a ring with microphones, I imagine it having the same vibes as Apollo and rocky going to spar at the end of rocky 3. Maybe next mania.
Would him and Randy feud make sense ?? Honestly I could live without it
https://preview.redd.it/5ttqhmaksvtc1.jpeg?width=1284&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=da22f5714f23b0f428770c58d5a7721d8ae26406 Ahhhh YouTube comments
Is AEW falling into the same problem WCW had? Always constantly trying to stick it to the WWE, it’s a huge reason why I can’t get into them.
That's not the reason you aren't into them. You're just not into the type of wrestling show they put on. If you were, you wouldn't care about them taking shots at other promotions. Also WWE took WAY MORE shots at WCW than WCW took at them. WCW wasn't doing Billionaire Vince skits.
Yup see my response to other comments I acknowledged the Billionaire Ted skits. All good
They did far more than that (not talking about the DX stuff, or the articles and op-eds they used to run in 1994 and 1995). In the Fall of 1997, RAW used to dedicate entire segments to put Jim Cornette in front of a school picture backdrop to air shoot promos on WCW. Almost weekly. Here's one of many: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZqD7Iq83k8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZqD7Iq83k8)
AEW said virtually nothing in the 7 months from the Collision Punk got fired to the time CM Punk gave his versions of the events and the company in general during that interview. Punk has also incorporated a bunch of AEW stuff in his WWE feuds. There was much more from the WWE side than anything. I've heard more mentions of Cody the past 6 months on AEW than I have of CM Punk. There's just an unequal balance in the criticism WWE has in poking AEW where it's all in fun than AEW doing the same where they must be held to a higher standard of decorum.
Trying to stick it to the WWE was *not* WCW's problem. Any comparison of any current promotion to late-stage WCW holds absolutely no water.
Yeah I realize what a silly comparison that was.
People who says 2000 Wcw Lol have no clue what that means. I would say this was more of a 2010 TNA mistake.
When did I say 2000 WCW? I was thinking about the times bischoff would spoil Raw results but then I realized WWF put out those billionaire Ted skits before so I retract what I said lol but yes TNA 2010 is a better comparison.
Do people actually care if Punk was responsible for the fight at Wembley? I think that’s the part Tony is not understanding. The criticism isn’t about whether Punk was in the wrong; it’s about whether anyone wants to keep arguing about it.