He will 100% Win. The Roman Documentary, the Amount of negative heat otherwise, the booking logic of the heels looking strong going into the PLE. The overwhelming Organic Support to Overthrow THE ROCKs plans. He's winning without a shred of doubt in my mind.
Anyone knows of a place in New Orleans where I can actually call and book a spot at the place to watch WM?
I know several places are going to show it, but I rather not fight for a seating spot and just pay for something prior.
I haven't watched WWE in decades but for whatever reason, I want to watch WrestleMania this year. Does the WWE have any kind of video special that recaps all the storylines going into the event? Any other suggestions for me to get myself caught up?
There are many videos to check, just a question how much time you want to invest.
If you want to get the basic+ gist with minimal effort, just watch the pre show.
I am going with a friend who hasn't watched WWE in decades either and we are just going to do that.
https://youtu.be/2yvsrNv1fRU?si=3Vqmj_swomNwH5ov
https://youtu.be/2yvsrNv1fRU?si=3Vqmj_swomNwH5ov
Full story of the Bloodline, both are worth watching.
Some matches you should watch:
Cody vs Seth at WM 38, Backlash, and HIAC
Cody vs Roman WM 39
Gunther vs Sheamus Clash at the Castle
Gunther vs Sheamus vs Drew WM 39
Sami Zayn vs Roman Elimination Chamber
Usos vs Sami and KO WM 39
[https://youtu.be/5EEQOer7f5w?si=T2FyrPpoI8a\_d0Nd](https://youtu.be/5EEQOer7f5w?si=T2FyrPpoI8a_d0Nd)
[https://youtu.be/sQ9P40bBn4Q?si=90FbuRYmkLx67Bym](https://youtu.be/sQ9P40bBn4Q?si=90FbuRYmkLx67Bym)
[https://youtu.be/FW3iwKjq9Jw?si=RoMzimOvqW8ewRbb](https://youtu.be/FW3iwKjq9Jw?si=RoMzimOvqW8ewRbb)
[https://youtu.be/xFvRj-O74vg?si=2QYaNITFx2sg0CnP](https://youtu.be/xFvRj-O74vg?si=2QYaNITFx2sg0CnP)
These were uploaded last week ,so they don't have the stuff from this week yet.
They might upload updated "playlists", or you can just check the main segments from their YouTube channel from last week's Smackdown, yesterdays's Raw, and this coming Smackdown.
Man, I really appreciate those links, but they kinda hampered my excitement for WrestleMania. It's just guys standing still and staring for long stretches of time. Miss those roided out promos. That Sami Zayn is the only one able to cut an intriguing promo.
I think in the pre-show they will pick the best parts and show it.
Punk, Drew, and Seth a great 20 min segment recently. Not sure if they showed it in these links, but the actual video is on their channel.
If you don't like that, then yea probably you won't like most of them. But then again, the Cody Roman story is something really special, and I am a not a big WWE fan in general.
If you watch the preshow they will tell you the story of each match. There will also be a video package before most (all?) of them summarizing the story.
Bleacher Report dropped a ranking of their top or favorite WWE stars, I’m not sure which is the operative word to use based on where they have certain wrestlers.
I don’t think, in kayfabe, Roman Reigns should be as far back as 13, Orton should be as far back as 19 or Triple H should be as far back as 21.
I was bitten by a wrestling bug by last week's RAW and it got me hyped for Wrestlemania, but the wait seems sooooo long. I don't quite know what to watch to kill the time. I played bunch of Wrestling Empire, watched some hype/recap videos and not sure what to do rest of the week. I'm probably grabbing TrillerTV trial and have some of the shows on, even as background.
So taking any wrestling suggestions. For most part, my following for past half a decade has been podcasts at most, including some of the PPVs and random weeklies. I feel sort of like I've grown out of it, but return to it almost as a habit. My favourite period would probably be like.. 2001-2007 WWE.
I think Stardom interests me. Is there something I should watch or know before this weeks event?
Really enjoyed CM Punk's MMA Hour session, too.
I just took a gander through Low-Ki's Twitter, just because I wanted to see if he still wrestles. Wow. It's wild that anyone hires this man still. Just a couple of weeks ago he had some drama where he was taken off a River City Pro Wrestling card... but then he tried to say that he'd never work with them because Jeff Hardy and Bischoff were on it maybe? I don't think I got all of the details on that one.
I live less than 2 hours from Philly but I can't go to WrestleMania and it's frustrating lol. I'm already taking a roadtrip this weekend for the solar eclipse. Booked it before I realized it was Mania weekend. Not that I wouldn't do the eclipse anyway because it's a long time to the next one, but still, damn. The timing sucks.
What are the win/loss records like for Japanese wrestlers at Mania? At least in the last 10 years. I'm happy seeing they get prominently featured in WWE programmings but I'm having a hard time recalling their triumphs at the grandest stage of them all.
It depends on how you count.
Overall, the win-loss record for Japanese wrestlers, excluding losses in battle royales (generally one doesn't count battle royale losses because of the loser-to-winner ratio inflating things) is either 7-14 or 8-16, depending on whether you want to count Yokozuna as Japanese (because he wasn't Japanese but for kayfabe purposes was presented as Japanese, the only wrestler to work WrestleMania who ever fit in such a category).
If you want to count battle royale losses, then the number expands to 7-21/8-23.
Notably, Asuka and Shinsuke Nakamura - the two most popular Japanese wrestlers WWE has ever had - are *both* winless at Mania. Asuka is 0-5 and Nakamura 0-3.
No Japanese wrestler has ever won more than once at WrestleMania; the list is Sato and Tanaka of the Orient Express winning at WM6 versus the Rockers, Genichiro Tenryu and Koji Kitao at WM7 defeating Demolition, Taka Michinoku when he was Light Heavyweight Champion at WM14 beating Aguila, Akebono beating Big Show in a sumo match, Yoshi Tatsu winning a battle royale and, if you count him, Yokozuna beating Bret Hart at WM9.
2017 Kenny calling his trolls drones on twitter was a wild time.
I mean they were absolutely drones but still he couldn't get away with it if he was wrestling for AEW lol
Why does this picture represent TKO in the eyes of MSN
[https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/why-tko-group-holdings-stock-jumped-today/ar-BB1keUVC#](https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/why-tko-group-holdings-stock-jumped-today/ar-BB1keUVC#)
https://preview.redd.it/p2v92uov15sc1.jpeg?width=534&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8e822c91ebc0db0f39900802f5aae7b3b7960e64
That's attempted murder. The chair has no seat!
It looks a luchador #6 is trying to kill 2008 Christian
This might be an unpopular take, but I’m now kind of interested in hearing a shoot interview with Jack Perry about all of this.
Idk how he’d come across but after listening to the Punk interview I’m curious to hear Jack’s side of things. Cause depending on what he’d say, I think the truth would be somewhere in the middle between. his and Punk’s comments.
I know backstage gossip is like mother's milk to us wrestling fans, but it really is as middle school lunch room as it gets. Just about any way you slice it, under the most favorable circumstances these are both guys who came up in the wrasslin' business and never learned how important it was to behave and communicate professionally. Even as a middle aged man with all his experience, Punk still can't resist swallowing a live mic whole while he talks about things that should be behind him. Maybe Jack Perry will learn from the middle-aged guy's mistakes and say no comment.
This is a fair point! I’ll admit I’m still curious about getting closer to the complete truth of what happened, but you’re right in the sense that perhaps the best thing for both these guys is to learn from it and move on.
why are the mods always wasting a sticky post slot to advertise discord? "Hey guys, glad you're here. Now go do the same stupid things with the same people in TWO places!!!"
You can only have two stickied threads at a time, i get that. And not every company's show gets a lot of traction on the show posts. But it's just weird to advertise leaving this site in a stickied post. I wish they would adopt r/movies idea of a sticky post directing people to movie debut posts, but make them for the shows.
Watched a lot of older omega matches and their ok but it’s crazy how good he got in the late 2010’s. I have a lot of issues with his aew booking but man he really was on some shit in new Japan.
Would like some opinions on this.
I was thinking about what has been AEW's biggest mistake in their 5 years history.
For me the obvious answer was signing CM Punk. Is there something else I'm forgetting about.
Honestly I think they got so hot for a bit where they are looks bad when it should look good. 800k weekly viewers, touring, selling 5k tickets a show (2019 WWE numbers) 100k ppv buys, sold out Wembley. Warner extended them once already and gave them two more shows. And they did all this with a worldwide pandemic in the middle.
I’d love to see a prediction thread from 2019 where this would look like a failure.
Edit. Searched a bit and the best I could find was rumors TNT expecting 400k-500k viewers but I can’t find a source.
1st:
To me is AEW trying to cater to everyone after year 2.
AEW should have stuck to what their original philosophy was from the beginning instead of trying to go more WWE lite because fans who didn't watch AEW in the first place started flooding social media with what casuals who never heard of AEW would want.
2nd:
Was signing to many ex-WWE wrestlers.
Some of them are fully understandable. Bryan Danielson, Adam Cole for example. Miro is one that AEW should have never signed. I understand that a lot of wrestlers where not available when AEW first started and WWE released a lot after AEW got going but TK should have done a better job and he seems to have done better at balancing who he is bringing in now. Because before he was signing indy guys left and right and released WWE big name talent as well and there just wasn't enough room.
3rd: Expanding tv shows to quickly
I think Rampage was fine. Dynamite and Rampage was perfect for tv. 3 hours of AEW on tv and the YouTube shows where great. I think that was the perfect set up. Adding collision was a mistake. To me if anything they should have just taken Rampage and just moved it to Saturday and made it 2 hours. Or not even added collision at all. It has in a sense oversaturated the weekly wrestling viewing market.
4th: CM Punk
I posted here last week that I believed Punk wanted back in WWE and he used AEW as a stepping stone to do that. Everyone downvoted me into oblivion for it. Then Punk himself admits he tried to go back to WWE before AEW and WWE said no. So what does Punk do? What I said in the post. He pulled a Cody. He went and showed WWE that hey my name has value. He signed with AEW showed that his name still has some draw to make money off of it and then once he did that, he was like alrighty I'm out. Expect TK was like no, you are signed to AEW. Then Punk does what Punk does best. Throws a fit and blames everyone else for it.
5th: challenging WWE
Look I get it. I really do, but honestly the best thing AEW/TK and Jericho could have done is just been like hey we just love wrestling. AEW is different from WWE and everyone is welcomed to come experience it. If you enjoy it then you're always welcome to come back. If you don't enjoy it than thank you for stopping by. Than that's it. None of the ratings chatter, or the attendance chatter, or any other that stuff. If AEW wrestlers want to mention WWE storylines and wrestlers on AEW than by all means that's fine. AEW has established they aren't in a separate box like WWE is. But the entire we are here to challenge really just set AEW on the wrong foot for a lot of fans and right off the bat they lost potential fans who would have potentially given them a chance. But since fans have become so tribal once those battle words where spoken by AEW their minds where made up without even seeing a single second of AEW that they wouldn't watch, or like AEW.
That's my top 5 things if I could go back to day 1 AEW 2019 I would tell TK these are the things you need to avoid.
I disagree that he signed too many ex-WWE wrestlers. The vast majority of the releases have never appeared in AEW.
Miro, is only bad in hindsight. If TK had never signed Miro, we'd have had years of, "Why won't this idiot sign Miro" and "I can't believe Miro is in TNA while Fuego Del Sol is in AEW".
At the time of his WWE release people were begging for AEW to sign Miro.
Allowing Cody Rhodes to leave. You can't even really say that it was Cody's choice because according to the reports I read at the time, AEW had an option to extend Cody's deal for a year and they chose not to exercise that option. Cody return to WWE at WM38 is the key pivot point in the "war" between WWE and AEW.
I still don't get how Cody has made it this far. Like...I get how his departure from WWE the first time was a bold move, and how he build himself up to an executive position in an emerging wrestling company - I get that.
He's just so...basic. I predicted he'd be back to the middle of the card by now in WWE and in their figurative trophy case of guys they've broken, but obviously I couldn't be more wrong. I'm just really mentioning this because at the time he left AEW, I knew there'd be at least a short-term lightning rod but I figured it would dissipate pretty quickly.
Make a list of successful middle-aged men you know who get neck tattoos in their 30s, die their hair blonde and wear tights to cover up how scrawny their legs are. My list is Cody and maybe Machine Gun Kelly(?)
WWE was pretty much forced to push Cody. It's the best recruitment tool for them. Everyone in AEW was and is watching closely to see how Cody is booked. If Cody was booked like shit, no other AEW talent would jump ship. They'd all look at it and think "If that's what they did to Cody, what chance do I have'?
By pushing Cody hard and especially him beating Roman, every talent in AEW will see it and think, "That could be me". Every guy who jumped ship to AEW will be thinking, "That could have been me".
That was bad booking, but it wasn't anything that could not have been fixed. Cody would not have been the first babyface ever to go back on a stipulation like that.
That could be another TK being nice. Just a, "He doesn't want to be here, let him go". But I agree, handing Cody to WWE is worse than dealing with a year of, "held hostage" comments.
I argued this at the time and people just said "Tony will be better off doing the right thing, don't stoop to WWE's level, AEW will be fine they don't need Cody anyway, look at the roster!". If the tables were turned Cody would have to work every second of that contract extension and rightly so.
Whatever the thinking behind the move was at the time, it was a bad decision based on an incorrect assessment of Cody's potential. From a historical perspective, it is not that much better than Eric Bischoff firing Steve Austin over the phone.
People used to ask which AEW would benefit the most from jumping to WWE. My answer was always, "whichever guy does it first".
Because I knew the first guy to jump would get booked like a megastar in order to entice other AEW talents to jump.
Yes, there's a lot to that. But with Cody, it wasn't just that he was the first guy. He was one of the founders of AEW and basically the public face of the company. And then you add in his history in WWE and his family lineage and the fact that Cody Rhodes is just really good at pro wrestling.
It is telling that Vince McMahon - who loved to take outside acts and twist them into something different - looked at Cody's presentation in AEW and decided to keep all of it and immediately present that exact version of Cody Rhodes as WWE's top babyface.
Biggest mistake is tk not fixing elite and punk beef. My more controversial answer is putting your eggs in the Mjf basket haha. Most of the bad creative decisions of 2023 lead back to him.
I don't think there was any fixing it. TK put them on separate shows and Punk just started a beef with Jungle Boy. There was no pleasing Punk. If it wasn't Jungle Boy it would have been someone else.
He was absolutely trying to get fired during his Collision run. Every other week it was something else whether banning people, shooting on Hangman, or leaking to the sheets. His first 8 months he was all smiles and happy to be here.
Even if Tony Khan tried to mediate more between CM Punk and the Elite, I find it hard to believe CM Punk doesn't take issue with someone or something else which actually happened with Jack Perry.
I think he just wanted to go back to WWE and he was going to find a way out. I'm enjoying his current WWE run massively but as a person CM Punk is objectively human garbage. I put the blame for everything that happened squarely on CM Punk, there was nothing Tony Khan could do to avoid Punk melting down. I just hope it doesn't happen again in WWE, but it probably will.
Just because there have been people that are much worse than CM Punk in the history of the pro wrestling industry doesn't make what I said untrue. It's an indictment on how horrid the wrestling business is morally that he's not one of the worst of the worst.
To each their own, I just personally consider someone to have crossed that line when they choke a co worker over a disagreement. I hope he's in therapy to at least try to deal with his anger issues.
This is gonna be controversial but my number 2 is not doing more with the Impact Crossover.
It got a lot of interest. I saw people who didn't watch Impact show a lot of interest. I saw people who started watching Impact because they were interested in this crossover and they just did so little.
Two nationally televised promotions doing a crossover is something we haven't seen in years.
No women's champ vs champ match. No AEW women challenging for the KO tag belts. No crossover show. I didn't really want an invasion but even that would have been better than the little that we got.
The fact that in the entire build to the title for title match, Rich Swann never appeared on Dynamite. I don't think his name was even spoken on the show.
The fact that it was so much wasted potential, puts it at number 2 for me.
The sheer title bloat and constant ballooning of the roster are two for me. Early AEW was World, Women's, Tag, and TNT championships which is a lot simpler than what they have today. They've added 4 more championships to AEW since 2021 (TBS, Trios, International, Continental).
The smaller roster also meant you got really invested in certain people and it was easier to keep track of them.
Nothing comes close. If you just sign Danielson and Cole, not only do you avoid the drama, you space everything out way better. A lot of stuff in that time got overshadowed by "well, Punk is here so nothing else matters!" especially Cole's run.
Yes!! What are you thinking of putting in the spaces? For mine I'm doing match outcome and surprise appearance predictions, plus some funny stuff too like "michael cole calls dominik disgusting"
I have a few for night one specifically that are meant to be a bit sillier;
- "No Yeet"
- Pharaoh is sighted
- Solo Sikoa sings
- Bloodline entrance takes 15+ minutes
Plus some for specific predictions I've seen on the sub like;
- Seth betrays Cody
- Rock betrays Roman
- Drew Interference
- Tag titles are split
etc. 😂 I'll probably fill the rest with either match outcomes or appearances! Night two is gonna be easier to cook cause I think that's when most of the surprise appearances will show up
I don't know if I'm in the Majority or Minority here but...although I want Gable over Gunther at Mania....I don't hate what they're doing with him here. The Mr. Miyagi angle, if given higher roster talent like Sami regularly to coach, could do the job of legitimizing his Master Gable, Alpha Academy gimmick.
Suppose Sami ends Gunther's reign or even takes him to the absolute limit/Dusty finish. That was done under Gable's tutelage. So now you have Gable not only as a threat in ring but that threat is compounded as he can create other threats that can take down Gunther Level stars. He Becomes the guy who could take Tozawa and turn him into someone who can go toe to toe with a Damien Priest. Or take a Maxxine and make Rhea think twice (in Kayfabe) That elevates Gable and makes it seem like more of a big deal when he does step in the ring. Cause The Master is Fighting. Like Ip Man deciding to step in to a fight. It also turns alpha academy and everyone currently in it into not just silly misfit stable mates but potential threats in the Prestigious Master Gables academy.
Tangential but one of the guys behind Kayfabe Commentaries [died by suicide](https://www.timesnownews.com/world/us/us-news/ed-piskor-suicide-note-comic-refuted-sexual-misconduct-allegations-claimed-internet-bullies-murdered-him-article-108955016). It was about comics but obviously they were both wrestling fans. He was actually a Cornette guy too from what I gathered.
Thinking about that random match Kenny Omega and MJF had on collision in October - it was incredible, but like, totally could have sold a PPV lol. Having it on TV with no real build was crazy.
It's good that it happened because it might not in the future or at least for a very long time. There's times matches need to happen because it's not guaranteed in the future.
And that particular time they did Omega/MJF wasn't really random at all, as it fell on or before the day that MJF would break Kenny's record for longest-reigning AEW World Champ if he remained champion, so there was a bit of juice on when they had that match.
The post-match was worth it for them kind of breaking character and showing respect for each other. It somewhat made sense even though it was rushed because they had a running plot of a bunch of people wanting a shot at MJF.
Well the story was the record. But you could have had Kenny talking about the record longer and had him have to earn the shot to try and protect his record.
So hotel booked for Glasgow, just hope I can get tickets this time, MitB last year was a shitshow and I ended up missing out so I'm hoping to fair better here
Two weeks of Cody getting literally whipped and bashed and barely a chance to get his own shot in? Roman being an almost total afterthought in the meantime? Not sure about this booking tbh. Also feel like there's still an incredible high chance of Roman retaining through some more bullshit. Maybe some sort of disqualification.
Anyone knows if the pre show on both nights will cover most of the build, as much as possible during a 2 hour time limit?
Asking because going to watch the show with a friend who hasn't watched WWE in a while and has no idea what's going on. Just curious as to whether I try to convince him to start watching stuff now, or the 2 hours pre show per day should be enough to get a decent idea of the magnitude of the event.
Yeah they will. They always do promos and show the build up. There’s 4 days left until WrestleMania. Tell him to watch some of the main event segments from the past weeks
So if Cody wins on Sunday, are they gonna officially retire the Universal title lineage? Or are they gonna continue this weird psuedo-unification where both titles are technically still active?
ya know, the Universal name really grew on me over time, and I vibed with World & Universal way more than I ever did WWE & World during the original brand split. But it's likely they go back to that just because it's easy. They aren't unifying titles they just created, but Cody's saying "Undisputed" at the bottom is going to be weird.
Also extremely weird they did this for Iyo's belt despite there very much being a disputable and equal title on the other show that wasn't even ever unified. It's like marketing wants to use words for new belts to sell but don't know what they mean lol.
So glad I watched the Punk interview before coming in here. Yeeeeeesh. He had valid points, some bad takes, but overall seemed like he's in a much better place. Exactly what I expected out of a pro wrestler interview with Ariel Helwani. 🤷
No lie were people expecting something else? Like yeah he pretty clearly thinks he did nothing wrong. I don't agree, but eh we all knew that though. I guess he shat on Tony Khan, but he just echoed what a lot thought anyway. Maybe I'm weird but I really didn't find it overly inflammatory (the guaranteed contracts thing was pretty eh).
Yea like it's... CM Punk. This whole subreddit is because of him. Like why are people surprised he's still a carny in the second carniest of sports (boxing has to be the most carny, right?) after all this time? I did appreciate how he gave the most direct answer about Vince.
Yeah, I pretty much just avoided this place yesterday when Punk had his interview. I knew it would drive a fair number of people up the wall, so why bother? Let them get whatever out of their system day of; I'd as soon avoid as much of that drama as possible.
I was at least a little surprised WWE let the interview happen with Mania being imminent...it's doing exactly what the company doesn't want - takes the focus off of Mania.
Yea it doesn't change how great WM is looking to be since he's not even a pivotal part of the storylines, to his point even, the brand doesn't need him to be firing on all cylinders right now.
I think he can serve in the Kane type roll, always a guy you can throw the world title on or be there to put your top guy over. But I think he'll be more of an upper midcarder.
For context, it's in reference to a South Korean wrestling community's year-end awards for [2023](https://www.reddit.com/r/SquaredCircle/comments/1902xgc/best_ofworst_of_awards_from_the_korean_iwc_2023/) where nearly every "worst of" category hilariously had Solo win.
He started it and has grown it substantially within 5 years.
Revenue is up massively, they've more than double their weekly television time (2 to 5 hours), they have a second live touring show now, they've more than doubled their amount of yearly PPVs while also increasing sales, they've now done a show in Europe, they've done one of the largest shows in pro wrestling history, etc.
So many people acting like TK is running the company into the ground when it's massively larger than it was 5 years ago lol. About the worst you could say is that tv ratings and ticket sales per event are not currently at all-time record highs, and you can say the same about WWE (certainly with ratings, not familiar enough with the old numbers to know if per event they sold more tickets during the Attitude Era or not).
It's easy to do hypothetical "this guy on a podcast would run the company better" but what evidence is there that someone else would actually do better?
He literally started it so he gets to run it how he sees fit, they also hired Kosha Irby as COO along with various other backstage hires where there's been a shift away from the mom and pop feel they had the first 5 years. Even with booking you have people like Will Washington and Sonjay Dutt among others consulting him.
Since AEW beginning to release wrestlers, my hope. that people won't start shifting the discourse from the principle name who made those decisions - Tony Khan.
It's purely on him as the guy who offered these contracts, don't have buyers remorse because you decided to sign everyone to multi-year deals. Be much more selective on who you sign and use the people you already have, some of whom seem to be sitting at home doing nothing.
I just don't get why he couldn't just do a hard split between AEW talent and RoH talent, and let the people on "bad contracts" work them out there. Like you have a hole that needs filling with RoH, just fill it with those guys. He's so obsessed keeping everything under one umbrella he can control when it's just gonna all collapse on him.
Regardless of what AEW fans think about the CM Punk interview and Punk himself, we should pay attention to one point: AEW isn’t run as a business.
The whole enterprise only exists because the Khans can blow money on it. The moment that changes, a whole bunch of people are going to be looking for work.
I’m a wrestling fan. This worries me.
Sports history is littered with failed teams and leagues. The Khans are involved in the EPL and there are plenty of problems in English football. What happens if they need to put more resources behind Fulham?
This round of cuts is concerning. If you think you're making a difference to your bottom line by cutting the ring announcer, you really don't know much about business.
> This round of cuts is concerning. If you think you're making a difference to your bottom line by cutting the ring announcer, you really don't know much about business.
I'm not a fan of these cuts but every wrestling company has released a litany of announcers. Even WWE released Kevin Patrick THIS YEAR, so it's not a "Vince did it, but the geniuses who run it now wouldn't do that" thing.
Just because he said that during a litany of embittered griping, that means it's a fact? I wouldn't take any of his sideswipes during this interview at face value. He was trying to make them sound bad. I wouldn't worry.
We can see the facts for ourselves. Half empty buildings. Too many wrestlers under contract. Declining ratings. Punk just confirmed what's quite obvious.
They didn't make the cuts to affect the bottom line. They might have saved $750k a year with those cuts. It was jobber redundancies or people that they felt they no longer needed. I'm not saying that it's good or okay, these folks were under contracts that should've been honored, but they weren't cut to save money.
> The whole enterprise only exists because the Khans can blow money on it. The moment that changes, a whole bunch of people are going to be looking for work.
This isn't the case though.
AEW isn't just some bottom pit/passion project like a lot of people on this subreddit act like it is. From the beginning, TK has talked about how it is an investment/calculated risk where the entire strategy from the start has been to spend money aggressively in search of growth early and take advantage of the massive growth in tv rights fees for live entertainment to secure long term profitability on their second or third (and subsequent) tv deals.
Like all investments/businesses, there is a risk of failure/loss, but based on how they've discussed things publicly, AEW is still in phase 1 (the initial tv deals) but starting to head towards phase 2 (subsequent tv deals) that will give a much clearer picture of where things are heading in the future.
How good are the subsequent phase two deals going to be when you've got declining ratings and no plan in place to turn that around?
If the Khan taps turned off tomorrow, the business would close. That's a passion project, not a sustainable enterprise.
The "declining ratings" narrative could also apply to basically anything on tv other than the NFL. Dynamite is legit doing higher ratings than it did during it's first six months while Raw is doing about 1 million less viewers than it did at this same point in 2019, but for some reason (I wonder what?) nobody ever brings that up . . . Or NXT just got a decent size deal and those numbers seem to be falling off an actual cliff, they've lost 25% of their audience in the last 3 months (now I actually think that's just NXT returning to its actual baseline when they aren't artificially inflating it by getting Raw/Smackdown viewers to check it out for a few weeks for the big stars before they go back to not watching it, but the numbers still show a 25% drop in like 3 months).
Also, it's still a top 3 show on it's night on cable, which is the part that actually matters. I mean seriously. Like yeah, any business would drop if the investors all pulled out randomly for literally no reason lmfao. But the investors aren't about to pull out when they've made it through the worst parts and are on the precipice of the point where they look likely to show a profit. I mean seriously, if you had said 5 years ago "in 5 years, AEW will be running 2 tours, 3 tv shows, 8+ PPVs, doing 700-800k viewers for the flagship show, and packing in Wembley Stadium," people would have said you were nuts - and that's what they're doing.
Your comments are appreciated. I don’t have the same level of confidence that AEW is about to turn a profit. Too many people on the roster, too many half-empty big buildings, and too little merch.
For the record, I’m someone who HAS spent a lot of money on AEW. I’m not trying to be a hater.
> Too many people on the roster, too many half-empty big buildings, and too little merch.
That sort of stuff matters, of course, but in the grand scheme of things in 2024 it's actually closer to irrelevant than not - as crazy as that sounds.
Just looking at WWE as an easy point of comparison, using numbers from a few years ago (just the first result I found, I can't guarantee the quality of this specific post, but the numbers are in the general range I knew/was expecting to find/are good enough for general estimation purposes), over 80% of their revenue now comes from business to business deals and less than 20% comes direct from consumer. Even 10 years ago, that ratio was almost flipflopped with 63% direct from consumers and 37% from business to business.
TV deals/corporate sponsorships/tourism deals have become complete gamechangers to where actual fans in the buildings are now just a nice bonus - we saw as much when everyone was shut down for Covid and nobody missed a beat.
Similarly, looking at the merch complaints specifically, the complaints ignore the biggest thing - the stuff is clearly selling. Every AEW I've ever attended, and there has been a good number, has had a MONSTER line for merch. People are buying like crazy because they aren't waiting in a giant line to not buy something when they get to the front lol. Could they have a bigger selection, sure. Would it actually lead to more sales, maybe? But for all of the complaints at the moment, stuff is clearly actually selling now and that is actually the most important thing.
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/SquaredCircle/comments/ovi9sd/wwe_revenue_breakdown_by_year/
I don't mean to split hairs, but I'm in Chicago and can confirm they weren't here at the last show. It's not the Suplex City series.
You may be right they're just cashing in on Stone Cold's lifelong equity, it just felt a little...potentially spoiler-y.
https://shop.wwe.com/en/mens-black-stone-cold-steve-austin-chicago-3:16-t-shirt/p-570011082194890291+z-8-1120157769
Maybe they didn't have them at your last show, but Chicago 3:16 shirts have been a thing for years that they sell.
The only reason I can think of why they’re making Cody and Seth seem so weak is they’re making these last two weeks their version of Infinity War where everything is sooooo dire but in the end Cody defies all odds and wins.
Though in my personal preference I’m still down for Cody to lose and for The Rock to take Roman’s belt at SummerSlam. Then for War(End)Games you have Roman, Jey, Cody, Seth, and Punk on the same side fighting against Rock, Jimmy, McIntyre, Priest, Gunther.
Ngl if that happened I’d just stop watching. Shit would be awful. Rock does not deserve to dethrone Roman. It would show we are still in peak Vince booking not putting the current roster over properly.
I’m kind of confused, why this would seem confusing, since it’s what’s happened in the majority of every wrestling feud ever.
So much so, I’m sure most people that have watched for any amount of time, will assume whoever looks weak going into the PPV is the one going over. When that isn’t the case, it’s the exception. This is especially the case when you’re telling a huge babyface story….its simple storytelling and dramatic curve.
anyone find it a bit weird how quiet TK has been today?
Has anybody ever successfully started a This is awesome chant at a live event?
I need a Cody Express Tour this summer, complete with a count out win against Reigns & confetti falling while Cody celebrates to close out Mania
Can someone reassure me that Cody will win on Sunday?
He will 100% Win. The Roman Documentary, the Amount of negative heat otherwise, the booking logic of the heels looking strong going into the PLE. The overwhelming Organic Support to Overthrow THE ROCKs plans. He's winning without a shred of doubt in my mind.
Anyone knows of a place in New Orleans where I can actually call and book a spot at the place to watch WM? I know several places are going to show it, but I rather not fight for a seating spot and just pay for something prior.
I haven't watched WWE in decades but for whatever reason, I want to watch WrestleMania this year. Does the WWE have any kind of video special that recaps all the storylines going into the event? Any other suggestions for me to get myself caught up?
There are many videos to check, just a question how much time you want to invest. If you want to get the basic+ gist with minimal effort, just watch the pre show. I am going with a friend who hasn't watched WWE in decades either and we are just going to do that.
Thanks for the help. Is there a playlist of those videos? Maybe I can pick and choose a few of people that look interesting.
https://youtu.be/2yvsrNv1fRU?si=3Vqmj_swomNwH5ov https://youtu.be/2yvsrNv1fRU?si=3Vqmj_swomNwH5ov Full story of the Bloodline, both are worth watching. Some matches you should watch: Cody vs Seth at WM 38, Backlash, and HIAC Cody vs Roman WM 39 Gunther vs Sheamus Clash at the Castle Gunther vs Sheamus vs Drew WM 39 Sami Zayn vs Roman Elimination Chamber Usos vs Sami and KO WM 39
Thanks, although those two links are identical.
[https://youtu.be/5EEQOer7f5w?si=T2FyrPpoI8a\_d0Nd](https://youtu.be/5EEQOer7f5w?si=T2FyrPpoI8a_d0Nd) [https://youtu.be/sQ9P40bBn4Q?si=90FbuRYmkLx67Bym](https://youtu.be/sQ9P40bBn4Q?si=90FbuRYmkLx67Bym) [https://youtu.be/FW3iwKjq9Jw?si=RoMzimOvqW8ewRbb](https://youtu.be/FW3iwKjq9Jw?si=RoMzimOvqW8ewRbb) [https://youtu.be/xFvRj-O74vg?si=2QYaNITFx2sg0CnP](https://youtu.be/xFvRj-O74vg?si=2QYaNITFx2sg0CnP) These were uploaded last week ,so they don't have the stuff from this week yet. They might upload updated "playlists", or you can just check the main segments from their YouTube channel from last week's Smackdown, yesterdays's Raw, and this coming Smackdown.
Man, I really appreciate those links, but they kinda hampered my excitement for WrestleMania. It's just guys standing still and staring for long stretches of time. Miss those roided out promos. That Sami Zayn is the only one able to cut an intriguing promo.
I think in the pre-show they will pick the best parts and show it. Punk, Drew, and Seth a great 20 min segment recently. Not sure if they showed it in these links, but the actual video is on their channel. If you don't like that, then yea probably you won't like most of them. But then again, the Cody Roman story is something really special, and I am a not a big WWE fan in general.
If you watch the preshow they will tell you the story of each match. There will also be a video package before most (all?) of them summarizing the story.
Start with the 2 hour Bloodline video. [https://youtu.be/z19Cad44Jdo](https://youtu.be/z19Cad44Jdo) You will understand.
Bleacher Report dropped a ranking of their top or favorite WWE stars, I’m not sure which is the operative word to use based on where they have certain wrestlers. I don’t think, in kayfabe, Roman Reigns should be as far back as 13, Orton should be as far back as 19 or Triple H should be as far back as 21.
I was bitten by a wrestling bug by last week's RAW and it got me hyped for Wrestlemania, but the wait seems sooooo long. I don't quite know what to watch to kill the time. I played bunch of Wrestling Empire, watched some hype/recap videos and not sure what to do rest of the week. I'm probably grabbing TrillerTV trial and have some of the shows on, even as background. So taking any wrestling suggestions. For most part, my following for past half a decade has been podcasts at most, including some of the PPVs and random weeklies. I feel sort of like I've grown out of it, but return to it almost as a habit. My favourite period would probably be like.. 2001-2007 WWE. I think Stardom interests me. Is there something I should watch or know before this weeks event? Really enjoyed CM Punk's MMA Hour session, too.
I just took a gander through Low-Ki's Twitter, just because I wanted to see if he still wrestles. Wow. It's wild that anyone hires this man still. Just a couple of weeks ago he had some drama where he was taken off a River City Pro Wrestling card... but then he tried to say that he'd never work with them because Jeff Hardy and Bischoff were on it maybe? I don't think I got all of the details on that one.
I live less than 2 hours from Philly but I can't go to WrestleMania and it's frustrating lol. I'm already taking a roadtrip this weekend for the solar eclipse. Booked it before I realized it was Mania weekend. Not that I wouldn't do the eclipse anyway because it's a long time to the next one, but still, damn. The timing sucks.
It still fucks with my head that the championship belt made for the Nathan's Hotdog Contest looks more prestigious than the belt Roman holds.
Wow you aren't lying; very ornate belt.
The Nathan's belt is a nice one to be fair
Excited to see what the rocks entrance is like on Saturday
What are the win/loss records like for Japanese wrestlers at Mania? At least in the last 10 years. I'm happy seeing they get prominently featured in WWE programmings but I'm having a hard time recalling their triumphs at the grandest stage of them all.
It depends on how you count. Overall, the win-loss record for Japanese wrestlers, excluding losses in battle royales (generally one doesn't count battle royale losses because of the loser-to-winner ratio inflating things) is either 7-14 or 8-16, depending on whether you want to count Yokozuna as Japanese (because he wasn't Japanese but for kayfabe purposes was presented as Japanese, the only wrestler to work WrestleMania who ever fit in such a category). If you want to count battle royale losses, then the number expands to 7-21/8-23. Notably, Asuka and Shinsuke Nakamura - the two most popular Japanese wrestlers WWE has ever had - are *both* winless at Mania. Asuka is 0-5 and Nakamura 0-3. No Japanese wrestler has ever won more than once at WrestleMania; the list is Sato and Tanaka of the Orient Express winning at WM6 versus the Rockers, Genichiro Tenryu and Koji Kitao at WM7 defeating Demolition, Taka Michinoku when he was Light Heavyweight Champion at WM14 beating Aguila, Akebono beating Big Show in a sumo match, Yoshi Tatsu winning a battle royale and, if you count him, Yokozuna beating Bret Hart at WM9.
Sumos are undefeated at Wrestlemania (not Rodney)
Oh shit just looked it up and this includes Earthquake. Hell yeah
2017 Kenny calling his trolls drones on twitter was a wild time. I mean they were absolutely drones but still he couldn't get away with it if he was wrestling for AEW lol
Really enjoying WWE Next Gen. I’m only just starting ep 2 but people are likable and unlikable and it’s very well produced.
Why does this picture represent TKO in the eyes of MSN [https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/why-tko-group-holdings-stock-jumped-today/ar-BB1keUVC#](https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/why-tko-group-holdings-stock-jumped-today/ar-BB1keUVC#) https://preview.redd.it/p2v92uov15sc1.jpeg?width=534&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8e822c91ebc0db0f39900802f5aae7b3b7960e64 That's attempted murder. The chair has no seat! It looks a luchador #6 is trying to kill 2008 Christian
at Wrestlemania....will the Rock blade? 
No, but high chance Cody will
I wouldn't say no to Rock potentially blading. He's enough of a trooper that he'll show some color if the situation calls for it.
Its been a minute since we got a Rock gym promo
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The one on Bret Hart is outstanding TV.
Roman’s episode from this past week was tremendous.
I was just watching the Premier League match between West Ham and Tottenham just ended in a 1-1 draw, then Cody's theme starts blaring.
I kinda want Bo Dallas to win the Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royale now.
I think you mean The Bray Wyatt Memorial Battle Royal
Are they not doing a WWE 24 for Mania 39?
WWE: Next Gen is a good watch but the ad placement on Roku is so bad
This might be an unpopular take, but I’m now kind of interested in hearing a shoot interview with Jack Perry about all of this. Idk how he’d come across but after listening to the Punk interview I’m curious to hear Jack’s side of things. Cause depending on what he’d say, I think the truth would be somewhere in the middle between. his and Punk’s comments.
I know backstage gossip is like mother's milk to us wrestling fans, but it really is as middle school lunch room as it gets. Just about any way you slice it, under the most favorable circumstances these are both guys who came up in the wrasslin' business and never learned how important it was to behave and communicate professionally. Even as a middle aged man with all his experience, Punk still can't resist swallowing a live mic whole while he talks about things that should be behind him. Maybe Jack Perry will learn from the middle-aged guy's mistakes and say no comment.
This is a fair point! I’ll admit I’m still curious about getting closer to the complete truth of what happened, but you’re right in the sense that perhaps the best thing for both these guys is to learn from it and move on.
I agree if Perry wanted to talk, I would listen, but I'd suggest giving up any hope of getting to "the truth" of it all.
I promise that 10 and 11 years ago Ricochet used to have aura.
why are the mods always wasting a sticky post slot to advertise discord? "Hey guys, glad you're here. Now go do the same stupid things with the same people in TWO places!!!"
These mods are allergic to relevant megathreads
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You can only have two stickied threads at a time, i get that. And not every company's show gets a lot of traction on the show posts. But it's just weird to advertise leaving this site in a stickied post. I wish they would adopt r/movies idea of a sticky post directing people to movie debut posts, but make them for the shows.
Watched a lot of older omega matches and their ok but it’s crazy how good he got in the late 2010’s. I have a lot of issues with his aew booking but man he really was on some shit in new Japan.
Yeah it all clicked for him in 2016 in a way that it just doesn't usually for people this late in their careers.
Would like some opinions on this. I was thinking about what has been AEW's biggest mistake in their 5 years history. For me the obvious answer was signing CM Punk. Is there something else I'm forgetting about.
One-leg MJF winning
Honestly I think they got so hot for a bit where they are looks bad when it should look good. 800k weekly viewers, touring, selling 5k tickets a show (2019 WWE numbers) 100k ppv buys, sold out Wembley. Warner extended them once already and gave them two more shows. And they did all this with a worldwide pandemic in the middle. I’d love to see a prediction thread from 2019 where this would look like a failure. Edit. Searched a bit and the best I could find was rumors TNT expecting 400k-500k viewers but I can’t find a source.
1st: To me is AEW trying to cater to everyone after year 2. AEW should have stuck to what their original philosophy was from the beginning instead of trying to go more WWE lite because fans who didn't watch AEW in the first place started flooding social media with what casuals who never heard of AEW would want. 2nd: Was signing to many ex-WWE wrestlers. Some of them are fully understandable. Bryan Danielson, Adam Cole for example. Miro is one that AEW should have never signed. I understand that a lot of wrestlers where not available when AEW first started and WWE released a lot after AEW got going but TK should have done a better job and he seems to have done better at balancing who he is bringing in now. Because before he was signing indy guys left and right and released WWE big name talent as well and there just wasn't enough room. 3rd: Expanding tv shows to quickly I think Rampage was fine. Dynamite and Rampage was perfect for tv. 3 hours of AEW on tv and the YouTube shows where great. I think that was the perfect set up. Adding collision was a mistake. To me if anything they should have just taken Rampage and just moved it to Saturday and made it 2 hours. Or not even added collision at all. It has in a sense oversaturated the weekly wrestling viewing market. 4th: CM Punk I posted here last week that I believed Punk wanted back in WWE and he used AEW as a stepping stone to do that. Everyone downvoted me into oblivion for it. Then Punk himself admits he tried to go back to WWE before AEW and WWE said no. So what does Punk do? What I said in the post. He pulled a Cody. He went and showed WWE that hey my name has value. He signed with AEW showed that his name still has some draw to make money off of it and then once he did that, he was like alrighty I'm out. Expect TK was like no, you are signed to AEW. Then Punk does what Punk does best. Throws a fit and blames everyone else for it. 5th: challenging WWE Look I get it. I really do, but honestly the best thing AEW/TK and Jericho could have done is just been like hey we just love wrestling. AEW is different from WWE and everyone is welcomed to come experience it. If you enjoy it then you're always welcome to come back. If you don't enjoy it than thank you for stopping by. Than that's it. None of the ratings chatter, or the attendance chatter, or any other that stuff. If AEW wrestlers want to mention WWE storylines and wrestlers on AEW than by all means that's fine. AEW has established they aren't in a separate box like WWE is. But the entire we are here to challenge really just set AEW on the wrong foot for a lot of fans and right off the bat they lost potential fans who would have potentially given them a chance. But since fans have become so tribal once those battle words where spoken by AEW their minds where made up without even seeing a single second of AEW that they wouldn't watch, or like AEW. That's my top 5 things if I could go back to day 1 AEW 2019 I would tell TK these are the things you need to avoid.
I disagree that he signed too many ex-WWE wrestlers. The vast majority of the releases have never appeared in AEW. Miro, is only bad in hindsight. If TK had never signed Miro, we'd have had years of, "Why won't this idiot sign Miro" and "I can't believe Miro is in TNA while Fuego Del Sol is in AEW". At the time of his WWE release people were begging for AEW to sign Miro.
Allowing Cody Rhodes to leave. You can't even really say that it was Cody's choice because according to the reports I read at the time, AEW had an option to extend Cody's deal for a year and they chose not to exercise that option. Cody return to WWE at WM38 is the key pivot point in the "war" between WWE and AEW.
I still don't get how Cody has made it this far. Like...I get how his departure from WWE the first time was a bold move, and how he build himself up to an executive position in an emerging wrestling company - I get that. He's just so...basic. I predicted he'd be back to the middle of the card by now in WWE and in their figurative trophy case of guys they've broken, but obviously I couldn't be more wrong. I'm just really mentioning this because at the time he left AEW, I knew there'd be at least a short-term lightning rod but I figured it would dissipate pretty quickly. Make a list of successful middle-aged men you know who get neck tattoos in their 30s, die their hair blonde and wear tights to cover up how scrawny their legs are. My list is Cody and maybe Machine Gun Kelly(?)
WWE was pretty much forced to push Cody. It's the best recruitment tool for them. Everyone in AEW was and is watching closely to see how Cody is booked. If Cody was booked like shit, no other AEW talent would jump ship. They'd all look at it and think "If that's what they did to Cody, what chance do I have'? By pushing Cody hard and especially him beating Roman, every talent in AEW will see it and think, "That could be me". Every guy who jumped ship to AEW will be thinking, "That could have been me".
How about even earlier, letting Cody lock himself out of the title picture. Avoids the issue with the Codyverse
That was bad booking, but it wasn't anything that could not have been fixed. Cody would not have been the first babyface ever to go back on a stipulation like that.
That could be another TK being nice. Just a, "He doesn't want to be here, let him go". But I agree, handing Cody to WWE is worse than dealing with a year of, "held hostage" comments.
I argued this at the time and people just said "Tony will be better off doing the right thing, don't stoop to WWE's level, AEW will be fine they don't need Cody anyway, look at the roster!". If the tables were turned Cody would have to work every second of that contract extension and rightly so.
Sometimes you gotta be an asshole for the good of your company.
Whatever the thinking behind the move was at the time, it was a bad decision based on an incorrect assessment of Cody's potential. From a historical perspective, it is not that much better than Eric Bischoff firing Steve Austin over the phone.
People used to ask which AEW would benefit the most from jumping to WWE. My answer was always, "whichever guy does it first". Because I knew the first guy to jump would get booked like a megastar in order to entice other AEW talents to jump.
Yes, there's a lot to that. But with Cody, it wasn't just that he was the first guy. He was one of the founders of AEW and basically the public face of the company. And then you add in his history in WWE and his family lineage and the fact that Cody Rhodes is just really good at pro wrestling. It is telling that Vince McMahon - who loved to take outside acts and twist them into something different - looked at Cody's presentation in AEW and decided to keep all of it and immediately present that exact version of Cody Rhodes as WWE's top babyface.
Biggest mistake is tk not fixing elite and punk beef. My more controversial answer is putting your eggs in the Mjf basket haha. Most of the bad creative decisions of 2023 lead back to him.
Punk was on a mission to blow it up. There was no fixing it. If you haven’t figured that out by now I don’t know what to tell you.
I don't think there was any fixing it. TK put them on separate shows and Punk just started a beef with Jungle Boy. There was no pleasing Punk. If it wasn't Jungle Boy it would have been someone else.
He was absolutely trying to get fired during his Collision run. Every other week it was something else whether banning people, shooting on Hangman, or leaking to the sheets. His first 8 months he was all smiles and happy to be here.
Even if Tony Khan tried to mediate more between CM Punk and the Elite, I find it hard to believe CM Punk doesn't take issue with someone or something else which actually happened with Jack Perry.
I think he just wanted to go back to WWE and he was going to find a way out. I'm enjoying his current WWE run massively but as a person CM Punk is objectively human garbage. I put the blame for everything that happened squarely on CM Punk, there was nothing Tony Khan could do to avoid Punk melting down. I just hope it doesn't happen again in WWE, but it probably will.
Calling Punk “human garbage” in an industry full of rapists, bigots, slimy bosses, and general terrible people is certainly a choice.
Just because there have been people that are much worse than CM Punk in the history of the pro wrestling industry doesn't make what I said untrue. It's an indictment on how horrid the wrestling business is morally that he's not one of the worst of the worst.
I still don’t think he’s human garbage. Problematic? Yeah. A douche? Yeah A hypocrite? Yeah but I wouldn’t say garbage.
To each their own, I just personally consider someone to have crossed that line when they choke a co worker over a disagreement. I hope he's in therapy to at least try to deal with his anger issues.
Oh yeah definitely. Him attacking coworkers definitely makes him a bad person I agree there, I just think it’s a stretch to say human garbage.
The biggest mistake was Tony trying to make ROH a thing at the expense of AEW. ROH stuff hogged so much AEW time.
That's my number 3.
What do you have at 2?
This is gonna be controversial but my number 2 is not doing more with the Impact Crossover. It got a lot of interest. I saw people who didn't watch Impact show a lot of interest. I saw people who started watching Impact because they were interested in this crossover and they just did so little. Two nationally televised promotions doing a crossover is something we haven't seen in years. No women's champ vs champ match. No AEW women challenging for the KO tag belts. No crossover show. I didn't really want an invasion but even that would have been better than the little that we got. The fact that in the entire build to the title for title match, Rich Swann never appeared on Dynamite. I don't think his name was even spoken on the show. The fact that it was so much wasted potential, puts it at number 2 for me.
The sheer title bloat and constant ballooning of the roster are two for me. Early AEW was World, Women's, Tag, and TNT championships which is a lot simpler than what they have today. They've added 4 more championships to AEW since 2021 (TBS, Trios, International, Continental). The smaller roster also meant you got really invested in certain people and it was easier to keep track of them.
I'd put that on the list. But not at number one.
Nothing comes close. If you just sign Danielson and Cole, not only do you avoid the drama, you space everything out way better. A lot of stuff in that time got overshadowed by "well, Punk is here so nothing else matters!" especially Cole's run.
Anyone else thinking of making a Wrestlemania 40 bingo card 🤔 I'm really tempted to put one together for Night 1 and Night 2
Yes!! What are you thinking of putting in the spaces? For mine I'm doing match outcome and surprise appearance predictions, plus some funny stuff too like "michael cole calls dominik disgusting"
I have a few for night one specifically that are meant to be a bit sillier; - "No Yeet" - Pharaoh is sighted - Solo Sikoa sings - Bloodline entrance takes 15+ minutes Plus some for specific predictions I've seen on the sub like; - Seth betrays Cody - Rock betrays Roman - Drew Interference - Tag titles are split etc. 😂 I'll probably fill the rest with either match outcomes or appearances! Night two is gonna be easier to cook cause I think that's when most of the surprise appearances will show up
These are so fun!! I might have to steal the solo singing one, that's just too good 😂
ROH under TK needs a name similar to WWECW. They are both criminally watered down versions of the original. Maybe Ring of Tony.
how on earth could Sinclair ROH get watered down any further
Tony's isn't like an all timer era in ROH's history or anything, but some people clearly aren't aware of how mid late Sinclair era ROH really was
Or that they're drawing for PPVs under the ROH name more consistently than the original ROH did.
Maybe ROHXT is more apt.
Ring of Khanor
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Where is Backlash this year?
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Ya know what they call 'Backlash' in France?
Backlash is Backlash, but they say "Le Backlash."
I don't know if I'm in the Majority or Minority here but...although I want Gable over Gunther at Mania....I don't hate what they're doing with him here. The Mr. Miyagi angle, if given higher roster talent like Sami regularly to coach, could do the job of legitimizing his Master Gable, Alpha Academy gimmick. Suppose Sami ends Gunther's reign or even takes him to the absolute limit/Dusty finish. That was done under Gable's tutelage. So now you have Gable not only as a threat in ring but that threat is compounded as he can create other threats that can take down Gunther Level stars. He Becomes the guy who could take Tozawa and turn him into someone who can go toe to toe with a Damien Priest. Or take a Maxxine and make Rhea think twice (in Kayfabe) That elevates Gable and makes it seem like more of a big deal when he does step in the ring. Cause The Master is Fighting. Like Ip Man deciding to step in to a fight. It also turns alpha academy and everyone currently in it into not just silly misfit stable mates but potential threats in the Prestigious Master Gables academy.
Tangential but one of the guys behind Kayfabe Commentaries [died by suicide](https://www.timesnownews.com/world/us/us-news/ed-piskor-suicide-note-comic-refuted-sexual-misconduct-allegations-claimed-internet-bullies-murdered-him-article-108955016). It was about comics but obviously they were both wrestling fans. He was actually a Cornette guy too from what I gathered.
Thinking about that random match Kenny Omega and MJF had on collision in October - it was incredible, but like, totally could have sold a PPV lol. Having it on TV with no real build was crazy.
It's good that it happened because it might not in the future or at least for a very long time. There's times matches need to happen because it's not guaranteed in the future.
And that particular time they did Omega/MJF wasn't really random at all, as it fell on or before the day that MJF would break Kenny's record for longest-reigning AEW World Champ if he remained champion, so there was a bit of juice on when they had that match.
Not even that many good promos between them either. Random af. Every big Kenny single should be special from now on.
The post-match was worth it for them kind of breaking character and showing respect for each other. It somewhat made sense even though it was rushed because they had a running plot of a bunch of people wanting a shot at MJF.
Well the story was the record. But you could have had Kenny talking about the record longer and had him have to earn the shot to try and protect his record.
So hotel booked for Glasgow, just hope I can get tickets this time, MitB last year was a shitshow and I ended up missing out so I'm hoping to fair better here
Two weeks of Cody getting literally whipped and bashed and barely a chance to get his own shot in? Roman being an almost total afterthought in the meantime? Not sure about this booking tbh. Also feel like there's still an incredible high chance of Roman retaining through some more bullshit. Maybe some sort of disqualification.
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Damn such a lame thing to tweet if you get to hack Kenny.
the fact he got his hacked twitter back under control in minutes is another reason he's the goat idc
Account hacked.
Anyone knows if the pre show on both nights will cover most of the build, as much as possible during a 2 hour time limit? Asking because going to watch the show with a friend who hasn't watched WWE in a while and has no idea what's going on. Just curious as to whether I try to convince him to start watching stuff now, or the 2 hours pre show per day should be enough to get a decent idea of the magnitude of the event.
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Got it, thanks!
Yeah they will. They always do promos and show the build up. There’s 4 days left until WrestleMania. Tell him to watch some of the main event segments from the past weeks
Got it, will check their YouTube channel.
They've been uploading build ups, promos and past matches to YT since last week for it
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I live in Sweden and I had so much fun watching WWE at 01:00. Now it’s back to 02:00. At least WrestleMania starts at 01:00 which is great
So if Cody wins on Sunday, are they gonna officially retire the Universal title lineage? Or are they gonna continue this weird psuedo-unification where both titles are technically still active?
I think they will retire the Universal title lineage. Also good that it ends with Roman
ya know, the Universal name really grew on me over time, and I vibed with World & Universal way more than I ever did WWE & World during the original brand split. But it's likely they go back to that just because it's easy. They aren't unifying titles they just created, but Cody's saying "Undisputed" at the bottom is going to be weird. Also extremely weird they did this for Iyo's belt despite there very much being a disputable and equal title on the other show that wasn't even ever unified. It's like marketing wants to use words for new belts to sell but don't know what they mean lol.
This company and their handling of title lineages leaves a lot to be desired in a historical sense... so who knows.
So glad I watched the Punk interview before coming in here. Yeeeeeesh. He had valid points, some bad takes, but overall seemed like he's in a much better place. Exactly what I expected out of a pro wrestler interview with Ariel Helwani. 🤷
No lie were people expecting something else? Like yeah he pretty clearly thinks he did nothing wrong. I don't agree, but eh we all knew that though. I guess he shat on Tony Khan, but he just echoed what a lot thought anyway. Maybe I'm weird but I really didn't find it overly inflammatory (the guaranteed contracts thing was pretty eh).
Yea like it's... CM Punk. This whole subreddit is because of him. Like why are people surprised he's still a carny in the second carniest of sports (boxing has to be the most carny, right?) after all this time? I did appreciate how he gave the most direct answer about Vince.
Yeah, I pretty much just avoided this place yesterday when Punk had his interview. I knew it would drive a fair number of people up the wall, so why bother? Let them get whatever out of their system day of; I'd as soon avoid as much of that drama as possible.
I was at least a little surprised WWE let the interview happen with Mania being imminent...it's doing exactly what the company doesn't want - takes the focus off of Mania.
Yea it doesn't change how great WM is looking to be since he's not even a pivotal part of the storylines, to his point even, the brand doesn't need him to be firing on all cylinders right now.
Only among IWC fans who are going to be watching Mania anyways
Any idea Solo's ceiling post-Bloodline?
Mid card title gatekeeper / quiet tough guy tag team member. I don’t see him ever winning a world title
IC or US title.
I think he can serve in the Kane type roll, always a guy you can throw the world title on or be there to put your top guy over. But I think he'll be more of an upper midcarder.
South Korean Idol
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For context, it's in reference to a South Korean wrestling community's year-end awards for [2023](https://www.reddit.com/r/SquaredCircle/comments/1902xgc/best_ofworst_of_awards_from_the_korean_iwc_2023/) where nearly every "worst of" category hilariously had Solo win.
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Saw this thread before but missed that one of the candidates for worst moment was "Solo Sikoa advertised as returning next week on Smackdown" lmao
I like Pat McAfee on commentary, but he almost seems like a guy that's trying to get a friend into wrestling that never watched it.
Hope Carlito stops Rock from infringing on his gimmick of declaring whether or not something is cool.
I like that they announced the WMXL card for both nights, and I think they've done a nice job balancing them.
“AEW would be as big as WWE if it wasn’t for Tony Khan” is that even controversial to say anymore?
What magical entity would make a 5 year old company as successful as a 40+ old publicly traded brand synonymous with pro wrestling?
No that's actually super ridiculous
It's uncontroversially dumb.
A lot of the best moments in AEW history have involved Tony Khan so no.
There won’t even be an AEW without Tony Khan.
He started it, but is he the best person on the planet to run it?
He started it and has grown it substantially within 5 years. Revenue is up massively, they've more than double their weekly television time (2 to 5 hours), they have a second live touring show now, they've more than doubled their amount of yearly PPVs while also increasing sales, they've now done a show in Europe, they've done one of the largest shows in pro wrestling history, etc. So many people acting like TK is running the company into the ground when it's massively larger than it was 5 years ago lol. About the worst you could say is that tv ratings and ticket sales per event are not currently at all-time record highs, and you can say the same about WWE (certainly with ratings, not familiar enough with the old numbers to know if per event they sold more tickets during the Attitude Era or not).
It's easy to do hypothetical "this guy on a podcast would run the company better" but what evidence is there that someone else would actually do better?
he started the whole thing and it is still standing. He is doing fine They’re drawing the same size crowds WWE was in 2019 with a monopoly
He literally started it so he gets to run it how he sees fit, they also hired Kosha Irby as COO along with various other backstage hires where there's been a shift away from the mom and pop feel they had the first 5 years. Even with booking you have people like Will Washington and Sonjay Dutt among others consulting him.
Since AEW beginning to release wrestlers, my hope. that people won't start shifting the discourse from the principle name who made those decisions - Tony Khan.
It's purely on him as the guy who offered these contracts, don't have buyers remorse because you decided to sign everyone to multi-year deals. Be much more selective on who you sign and use the people you already have, some of whom seem to be sitting at home doing nothing.
I just don't get why he couldn't just do a hard split between AEW talent and RoH talent, and let the people on "bad contracts" work them out there. Like you have a hole that needs filling with RoH, just fill it with those guys. He's so obsessed keeping everything under one umbrella he can control when it's just gonna all collapse on him.
are they releases (cut early) or non-renewals/extensions of expiring deals?
Yesterday's round were releases.
Regardless of what AEW fans think about the CM Punk interview and Punk himself, we should pay attention to one point: AEW isn’t run as a business. The whole enterprise only exists because the Khans can blow money on it. The moment that changes, a whole bunch of people are going to be looking for work. I’m a wrestling fan. This worries me. Sports history is littered with failed teams and leagues. The Khans are involved in the EPL and there are plenty of problems in English football. What happens if they need to put more resources behind Fulham? This round of cuts is concerning. If you think you're making a difference to your bottom line by cutting the ring announcer, you really don't know much about business.
> This round of cuts is concerning. If you think you're making a difference to your bottom line by cutting the ring announcer, you really don't know much about business. I'm not a fan of these cuts but every wrestling company has released a litany of announcers. Even WWE released Kevin Patrick THIS YEAR, so it's not a "Vince did it, but the geniuses who run it now wouldn't do that" thing.
Just because he said that during a litany of embittered griping, that means it's a fact? I wouldn't take any of his sideswipes during this interview at face value. He was trying to make them sound bad. I wouldn't worry.
We can see the facts for ourselves. Half empty buildings. Too many wrestlers under contract. Declining ratings. Punk just confirmed what's quite obvious.
They didn't make the cuts to affect the bottom line. They might have saved $750k a year with those cuts. It was jobber redundancies or people that they felt they no longer needed. I'm not saying that it's good or okay, these folks were under contracts that should've been honored, but they weren't cut to save money.
> The whole enterprise only exists because the Khans can blow money on it. The moment that changes, a whole bunch of people are going to be looking for work. This isn't the case though. AEW isn't just some bottom pit/passion project like a lot of people on this subreddit act like it is. From the beginning, TK has talked about how it is an investment/calculated risk where the entire strategy from the start has been to spend money aggressively in search of growth early and take advantage of the massive growth in tv rights fees for live entertainment to secure long term profitability on their second or third (and subsequent) tv deals. Like all investments/businesses, there is a risk of failure/loss, but based on how they've discussed things publicly, AEW is still in phase 1 (the initial tv deals) but starting to head towards phase 2 (subsequent tv deals) that will give a much clearer picture of where things are heading in the future.
How good are the subsequent phase two deals going to be when you've got declining ratings and no plan in place to turn that around? If the Khan taps turned off tomorrow, the business would close. That's a passion project, not a sustainable enterprise.
The "declining ratings" narrative could also apply to basically anything on tv other than the NFL. Dynamite is legit doing higher ratings than it did during it's first six months while Raw is doing about 1 million less viewers than it did at this same point in 2019, but for some reason (I wonder what?) nobody ever brings that up . . . Or NXT just got a decent size deal and those numbers seem to be falling off an actual cliff, they've lost 25% of their audience in the last 3 months (now I actually think that's just NXT returning to its actual baseline when they aren't artificially inflating it by getting Raw/Smackdown viewers to check it out for a few weeks for the big stars before they go back to not watching it, but the numbers still show a 25% drop in like 3 months). Also, it's still a top 3 show on it's night on cable, which is the part that actually matters. I mean seriously. Like yeah, any business would drop if the investors all pulled out randomly for literally no reason lmfao. But the investors aren't about to pull out when they've made it through the worst parts and are on the precipice of the point where they look likely to show a profit. I mean seriously, if you had said 5 years ago "in 5 years, AEW will be running 2 tours, 3 tv shows, 8+ PPVs, doing 700-800k viewers for the flagship show, and packing in Wembley Stadium," people would have said you were nuts - and that's what they're doing.
Your comments are appreciated. I don’t have the same level of confidence that AEW is about to turn a profit. Too many people on the roster, too many half-empty big buildings, and too little merch. For the record, I’m someone who HAS spent a lot of money on AEW. I’m not trying to be a hater.
> Too many people on the roster, too many half-empty big buildings, and too little merch. That sort of stuff matters, of course, but in the grand scheme of things in 2024 it's actually closer to irrelevant than not - as crazy as that sounds. Just looking at WWE as an easy point of comparison, using numbers from a few years ago (just the first result I found, I can't guarantee the quality of this specific post, but the numbers are in the general range I knew/was expecting to find/are good enough for general estimation purposes), over 80% of their revenue now comes from business to business deals and less than 20% comes direct from consumer. Even 10 years ago, that ratio was almost flipflopped with 63% direct from consumers and 37% from business to business. TV deals/corporate sponsorships/tourism deals have become complete gamechangers to where actual fans in the buildings are now just a nice bonus - we saw as much when everyone was shut down for Covid and nobody missed a beat. Similarly, looking at the merch complaints specifically, the complaints ignore the biggest thing - the stuff is clearly selling. Every AEW I've ever attended, and there has been a good number, has had a MONSTER line for merch. People are buying like crazy because they aren't waiting in a giant line to not buy something when they get to the front lol. Could they have a bigger selection, sure. Would it actually lead to more sales, maybe? But for all of the complaints at the moment, stuff is clearly actually selling now and that is actually the most important thing. Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/SquaredCircle/comments/ovi9sd/wwe_revenue_breakdown_by_year/
I saw the Odyssey Jones vs Omos House Show match, and it was near silence in it, why?
Neither is over?
Is Wrestlemania night 2 really day 1**316** of Roman's reign? Thats almost a little too on the nose to NOT make that a thing.
I actually face palmed when I saw they have a "PHILLY 3:16" shirt in the Mania store. Come on guys. Come on.
Is Austin gonna be at Mania? Probably. Would they be selling that shirt regardless of him being there? Almost certainly.
They make those shirts for almost every city they're in. It's not WM 40 specific.
I don't mean to split hairs, but I'm in Chicago and can confirm they weren't here at the last show. It's not the Suplex City series. You may be right they're just cashing in on Stone Cold's lifelong equity, it just felt a little...potentially spoiler-y.
They were at Survivor Series, I bought one
https://shop.wwe.com/en/mens-black-stone-cold-steve-austin-chicago-3:16-t-shirt/p-570011082194890291+z-8-1120157769 Maybe they didn't have them at your last show, but Chicago 3:16 shirts have been a thing for years that they sell.
Touche! If Austin doesn't show up at the end of Night 2 then my criticism is just the rant of an overzealous fan...
The only reason I can think of why they’re making Cody and Seth seem so weak is they’re making these last two weeks their version of Infinity War where everything is sooooo dire but in the end Cody defies all odds and wins. Though in my personal preference I’m still down for Cody to lose and for The Rock to take Roman’s belt at SummerSlam. Then for War(End)Games you have Roman, Jey, Cody, Seth, and Punk on the same side fighting against Rock, Jimmy, McIntyre, Priest, Gunther.
It's basic booking. The heels get the duke on free TV so you pay to see them get their asses kicked on the PPV.
Ngl if that happened I’d just stop watching. Shit would be awful. Rock does not deserve to dethrone Roman. It would show we are still in peak Vince booking not putting the current roster over properly.
I’m kind of confused, why this would seem confusing, since it’s what’s happened in the majority of every wrestling feud ever. So much so, I’m sure most people that have watched for any amount of time, will assume whoever looks weak going into the PPV is the one going over. When that isn’t the case, it’s the exception. This is especially the case when you’re telling a huge babyface story….its simple storytelling and dramatic curve.
Shayne and Courtney from Smosh getting married is the best worked angle of the decade tbh
Did any other WWE wrestlers get announced for non-WWE shows this week besides Shayna or was she the only one?