Topic: Wrestling Fans Unite!

Indeed! Full Gear next month is going to be killer!

So it's being reported that Ring of Honor will release everyone contracted under them at the end of the year. Not sure what kind of financial state RoH is in but it can't be good if they are releasing everyone. Though this can be interesting for AEW, Impact and New Japan.

Part of what drove me away from wrestling, was the sheer oversaturation of it. Once you step outside that WWE bubble, there is a LOT of wrestling out there and given wrestling is a pretty niche thing, I was honestly surprised so many promotions could all exist, while using a lot of the same talent and all of these promotions would have strong followings. If ROH does end up going under, that'll be sad - but I honestly will be half surprised it took this long, especially in the context of Covid as well.

It was fun watching Stay Puft get revenge on the "Ghostbusters" on Dynamite last night!

I just have a suspicion that Ric Flair will be coming to AEW here soon possibly at Full Gear. With Cody fueding with Andrade right now and Andrade having an alliance with FTR it just seems perfect. You got Cody with Arn, FTR with Tully and Andrade Ric Flair's son to be son in law. It just seems like we might see a Four Horsemen reunion.

I thought AEW's Beach Break special was very nice, very evil.

I also enjoyed Beach Breakhausen

@Link41x All jokes aside it was all around a great show. That ladder match for the TNT title OMG!!! Also MJF/CM Punk promo was soon good. I especially liked how they made Wardlow look conflicted. I can't wait for them to pull the trigger and make him a face. It so reminds me of Batista and when he first turned face and broke away from Evaluation.

I still think it will be MJF vs Punk at Revolution. Something shady will happen during that match on Wednesday night...

Thanks to NXT, I got big into wrestling again in my mid 20s and thanks to the internet I was really able to enjoy so many types of wrestling I would have never been able to enjoy, previously. This was also my downfall too, as trying to juggle so many promotions just left me no time for anything else. Like when you are at the point of investing like three hours of your time to people smashing each other with light tubes in front of about 10 people in what looks like maybe someone's garage, you've gone in too deep. I ended up getting burnt out around 2019 and fell off basically completely.

It also didn't help that in the period I was super into wrestling, which was probably only like 4 to 6 years, I watched guys show up on the indies, fall in love with them, watch their rise on the indies be caught short by being hooved up into the WWE machine. Getting to enjoy them in NXT for a while, before they'd be brought on to Main Roster to job to guys with a fraction of their talent and mourn that potentially the prime of their career will be wasted with them eating pins in squash matches.

On the flip though, COVID has basically meant that a lot of promotions haven't really moved very far from where I left off, but it is still fairly daunting trying to get back into wrestling again after all this time away.

I still have missed wrestling over the years and for no real reason in particular I started watching some New Japan shows from 2018 which was really the last time I was fully following the promotion. I'm doing a sort of where are they now as I watch in a way of trying to catch myself up in real time.

Wrestling is kind of a strange industry in that when you watch the weekly product it can feel like not a lot necessarily happens but then you like look up something from just a couple of years before you are watching and are often looking at a completely different landscape as wrestlers filter through the system, get hold, get cold and move around the card.

This makes 2018 NJPW feel like this especially weird thing to watch, because this was right around their US expansion plans, when NJPW was being regarded as like the "high art" of the wrestling world, it seemed like they were at the start of this great boom but really within just a couple of years that sorta died before it even started.

A big part of that seemed to be AEW draining them of a lot of the talent that made the expansion possible in the first place and then COVID/travel restrictions, it just shows how quickly these things can land with a thud before they've ever even really started.

This was something I experienced too with BritWres, it seemed from around 2016 onwards it was going to expand into the next big territory behind places like the US, Japan, Mexico etc but then WWE came long, made their UK brand, hoovered up all the promotions and talent connected and within just a couple of years it went from seeming like we were going to usher in this next great era only for it to seemingly die all together. And that was before things like the Speaking Out movement rocked the industry and COVID caused other issues etc

This probably suggests I should try and get into AEW but I already feel like I am so far behind and have missed so many big moments, I am not sure if I can even be bothered to make the attempt. My understanding too is they have two weekly shows and monthly PPVs as well, right? Plus a lot of their talent seems to drift to different promotions like Impact to progress storylines, just feels like a lot to take on.

@Pizzamorg You can jump into AEW anytime and get caught up quick. AEW has two weekly shows Dynamite and Rampage. AEW also has weekly YouTube shows and four PPVs a year. All AEW talent is free to work indie events as long as they don't clash with AEW shows. AEW isn't perfect by any means, but I find it personally better then alternative promotions.

I personally don't watch the YouTube shows for AEW, the only ones I watch are Dynamite and Rampage and I am able to follow everything just fine.

I like Dynamite, and AEW is most of the wrestling I still watch at this point, but I much prefer last week's Dynamite to most previous ones. The average Dynamite is so focused on solid wrestling and basic, logical storytelling that it sometimes forgets to be all that exciting or compelling from a story perspective (being very competent is not the same as exciting). This one, without doing too much THAT crazy (its not like this was an Attitude Era WWF show), was super fun and interesting the whole 2 hours. Nowadays, unless its a game or the rare times I've watch a movie in theaters, keeping me invested for 2 whole hours is tough, so props to them for that alone. And it really only needed 2 good matches (though they were PPV worthy matches tbh).

Completely surprised about the news of Cody Rhodes leaving AEW. I get that he's a new father and has other projects but I thought he would at least stay on as a consultant or coach. I know some sites are wondering if he is going to WWE but I don't see that happening. In fact I don't see going to WWE, Impact, NJPW or any other wrestling company for awhile. But who knows.

On the one hand, if all he wants is money and AEW can't give him the money he wants, then I guess WWE is the next best place. Although haven't WWE released like 90% of their roster in like the last three years? So I am not sure how well things are going over there to give you a big money deal.

On the other, if he goes back to WWE, it is just going to be such a surreal cycle of events, given AEW was born, in part, due to the fact that Cody felt underutilised in WWE and wanted to prove to the world that wrestlers don't need WWE to be stars. I guess he technically did prove his point, but then to go back to WWE, so he can assumedly pick up a crap gimmick and start eating pins again would just be such a bizarre end to this story. Because regardless of what they tell him, there is no way WWE protects Cody.

I feel that Cody thinks to high of himself being the fact that he's Dusty Rhodes' son. Word around the net is that he wanted the same kind of deal that CM Punk and Bryan Danielson got, only problem is CM Punk and Danielson bring in alot more then Cody does. They were able to pay Cody a premium amount when AEW first begun because there weren't really any big North American names at the time. Yeah Kenny, and the Young Bucks were big in Japan but most casual wrestling fans didn't know the. Other then Cody the only really big name was Chris Jericho.

Fast forward 3 years later and now fans rather see people like CM Punk, and Bryan Danielson in the big matches. Not only that but AEW has their own home grown stars like Darby Allen, MJF and even ones like Wardlow who are starting to shine and bring people in. While Cody is just Cody. I mean other then taking jabs at WWE was there really any reason people wanted to see him to warrant a high pricetag?

So I just got done with the first ever episode of Dynamite and I thought it was surprisingly bad. Lots of oddly paced and booked matches, with stuff that seems like angles throw in at random that doesn't go anywhere or have any involvement in the finish. All of the wrestling had this awkward, sloppiness, to it. Felt like no one had any chemistry, everyone somehow seemed really green, despite a lot of these guys being vets. All of the promos had this awkward, cringiness to it as well, even from guys who I know are usually amazing on the Mic. The outside of match angle stuff all felt like the first dress rehearsal, rather than the finished broadcast version of the skit. Lots of really basic, generic, wrestling shenanigan stuff too with people leaning into the cartoon heel or face roles, and basically just following the template. The commentary was just atrocious, too.

The only real exceptions were the main event, which was a nice blend of like modern wrestling and old school chaos. Although the introduction of Swagger wasn't exactly something to be excited about lol And I thought the Hangman/PAC match was the best match on the show. Another fairly whatever finish, but by far the best pure wrestling on the card. Before AEW I'd never heard of Page before and I think this might be the first full match of his I've seen. Dude can really move for someone so big, not sure about the gimmick though.

Holy ****!!!! Tony Khan announced tonight that he bought Ring of Honor. To be honest it's sad to hear that Ring of Honor is gone now but at the same time it's nice to know Vince McMahon didn't get his greasy hands on it so he could mess it up some how.

Kind of interested to see how AEW uses RoH's assets now.

So word round the campfire is that VinnieMac is backing up the Brinks truck to Stone Cold's doorstep so that he and Kevin Owens can throw down for Wrestlemania?

@Magician Meh, WWE has gone too mad with these old timers. Goldberg vs Undertaker could have resulted in someone's death, Shawn Michaels comeback was shambolic, Bret Hart vs Vince was an overbooked mess.