WWE/NXT/AEW/NJPW Thread

[JDailey23]

Anybody else happy that Rock is focusing on WWE before his wrestling career goes off to the sunset? I sure am.

I know it’ll never happen given his heart issues, but I’d LOVE to see The rock vs HHH.
The power struggle angle is great.

Side note. Dakota Kai is adorable and so goddamn hot.

 

[ticon12389]

Okada is headed to AEW

Seems like Tony just keeps overpaying people to keep them from WWE with no long term plan for them. Disappointing he didn’t choose WWE.

 

[pr26]

Okada is headed to AEW

Seems like Tony just keeps overpaying people to keep them from WWE with no long term plan for them. Disappointing he didn’t choose WWE.

How do you know he has no long term plan for him when he hasn’t even debuted? I understand being bummed he didn’t sign with the promotion you prefer. However, a promoter throwing big money around to boost an alternative to WWE is great for the talent and pro wrestling as a whole IMO.

Ospreay, Mone, and Okada all coming in soon. MJF and Omega will be coming back after rehabbing. A likely Swerve title run on the horizon. Gonna be a fun 2024 for AEW fans.

 

[ticon12389]

How do you know he has no long term plan for him when he hasn’t even debuted? I understand being bummed he didn’t sign with the promotion you prefer. However, a promoter throwing big money around to boost an alternative to WWE is great for the talent and pro wrestling as a whole IMO.

Ospreay, Mone, and Okada all coming in soon. MJF and Omega will be coming back after rehabbing. A likely Swerve title run on the horizon. Gonna be a fun 2024 for AEW fans.

How many big names has he signed and done nothing with immediately after? The list is endless and it’s disappointing. The roster is already bloated and adding more to it won’t help overall, especially when Tony keeps insisting on ROH and forbidden door involvement (which the casuals don’t care about).

 

[pr26]

How many big names has he signed and done nothing with immediately after? The list is endless and it’s disappointing. The roster is already bloated and adding more to it won’t help overall, especially when Tony keeps insisting on ROH and forbidden door involvement (which the casuals don’t care about).

I guess that depends on who you consider to be a “big name”? Mox, Jericho, Cole, Danielson, Claudio, Joe, etc have all been presented as huge deals involved in major storylines. Regarding recent signings Jay White was immediately presented as a big deal getting matches with Punk, had a world title program with MJF that spanned months, and is the clear leader of the most over faction in the company that’s not the BCC. As someone who watches weekly, I’ve never understood this IWC narrative.

I’m not a casual and don’t care about casuals. I’ve been loving the CMLL stuff and watching guys I’ve e never gotten to see. Brings back all those WCW Nitro memories of watching lucha matches as a kid.

 

[JDailey23]

How do you know he has no long term plan for him when he hasn’t even debuted? I understand being bummed he didn’t sign with the promotion you prefer. However, a promoter throwing big money around to boost an alternative to WWE is great for the talent and pro wrestling as a whole IMO.

Ospreay, Mone, and Okada all coming in soon. MJF and Omega will be coming back after rehabbing. A likely Swerve title run on the horizon. Gonna be a fun 2024 for AEW fans.

AEW has never had a real long term plan for any of the “big” names. I can’t wait for Tony to come out and have another “big” announcement.
Granted, I’m a WWE and always have been, but I have been to a few AEW shows and have watched them a couple times a month and follow stories through TikTok and such. It always seems unorganized and clunky to me.
Ospreay, Banks will not move the needle at all. The average fan has no clue who Okada is. He’ll, I don’t even know who he is until I googled him.
AEWs problem is they go after a lot of talent from all over the world and expect the entire world to also know who they are. They think the fan base they have is equal to WWE when in actuality it’s like NXT.
Other than MJF ( who I think it’s highly overrated and not that great in the ring) they have yet to really develop anyone in the company outsider of Cody and he couldn’t wait to leave and go back to the big show.

 

[ticon12389]

I guess that depends on who you consider to be a “big name”? Mox, Jericho, Cole, Danielson, Claudio, Joe, etc have all been presented as huge deals involved in major storylines. Regarding recent signings Jay White was immediately presented as a big deal getting matches with Punk, had a world title program with MJF that spanned months, and is the clear leader of the most over faction in the company that’s not the BCC. As someone who watches weekly, I’ve never understood this IWC narrative.

I’m not a casual and don’t care about casuals. I’ve been loving the CMLL stuff and watching guys I’ve e never gotten to see. Brings back all those WCW Nitro memories of watching lucha matches as a kid.

Keith Lee? Barely on TV

Malakai Black? Hasn’t had a singles match in over a year

Miro? Was gone for a long time, barely on TV still.

Andrade was totally misused and is gone now

Ethan Page? Never on TV

Lance Archer? Nowhere to be found

Wardlow was the biggest waste of potential that AEW has ever had. I don’t think he can ever fully recover at this point.

What happened to Santana and Ortiz?

They’ve done an amazing job with some guys (Swerve, MJF, Adam Cole, Roderick Strong) but the misses far outweigh the hits to this point. They should be putting their own guys on TV and building up stories with them. ROH should never be on AEW TV (ratings and quality of product went down hard once Tony bought ROH) and Forbidden Door stuff should be limited to the PPV and build up to it only. This is how AEW would bring back the momentum they had in 2021. Just signing big names and doing the same thing with them as they do with the current roster won’t.

 

[kookoo]

Keith Lee? Barely on TV

Malakai Black? Hasn’t had a singles match in over a year

Miro? Was gone for a long time, barely on TV still.

Andrade was totally misused and is gone now

Ethan Page? Never on TV

Lance Archer? Nowhere to be found

Wardlow was the biggest waste of potential that AEW has ever had. I don’t think he can ever fully recover at this point.

What happened to Santana and Ortiz?

They’ve done an amazing job with some guys (Swerve, MJF, Adam Cole, Roderick Strong) but the misses far outweigh the hits to this point. They should be putting their own guys on TV and building up stories with them. ROH should never be on AEW TV (ratings and quality of product went down hard once Tony bought ROH) and Forbidden Door stuff should be limited to the PPV and build up to it only. This is how AEW would bring back the momentum they had in 2021. Just signing big names and doing the same thing with them as they do with the current roster won’t.

How many of those were big names to the level of Okada or any of the ones they've used well? None of those guys were used well at all when they hit the main roster in WWE. You think Miro, Malakai or Lee would want to go to WWE or would even be used well there? There can only be so many people on the top of the list. I agree Black should be in the main event scene but his stable has been great. House of Black is as close to his NXT run and it also highlights Matthews as well as King. Plus Julia Hart is so over after working in the HoB.

I'm not sure how the misses outweigh the hits. What Toni, Swerve, Cole, Jericho, Joe, Christian Cage, Billy Gunn, Big Bill, Danielson, FTR, Takeshita, Briscoe, ect have all been really good and revived their careers to a degree. Okada would 100% fit in that. The biggest miss has been Jay White to me and he's a champ plus has been in the main event scene.

IDK, I'm still enjoying AEW a lot but WWE has some storylines that have me hooked. I think this is the most I've enjoyed wrestling and the most I've watched it since I was in my teens.

I'd like to know who you think WWE has done justice to after being signed. Cody was already there and they basically carried his NJPW and AEW momentum but then stopped him in his place. Most of the top stars really gained their popularity in NXT outside of a few who started out in Japan.

Do you think Black or Lee going back to WWE would put them up at the top? Will Andrade be at the Chamber? Was he even on Raw this week?

 

[Sebastian]

Keith Lee? Barely on TV

Malakai Black? Hasn’t had a singles match in over a year

Miro? Was gone for a long time, barely on TV still.

Andrade was totally misused and is gone now

Ethan Page? Never on TV

Lance Archer? Nowhere to be found

Wardlow was the biggest waste of potential that AEW has ever had. I don’t think he can ever fully recover at this point.

What happened to Santana and Ortiz?

They’ve done an amazing job with some guys (Swerve, MJF, Adam Cole, Roderick Strong) but the misses far outweigh the hits to this point. They should be putting their own guys on TV and building up stories with them. ROH should never be on AEW TV (ratings and quality of product went down hard once Tony bought ROH) and Forbidden Door stuff should be limited to the PPV and build up to it only. This is how AEW would bring back the momentum they had in 2021. Just signing big names and doing the same thing with them as they do with the current roster won’t.

And look what they did with Hookhausen: nothing after setting it up for months and months.

We all await a Danhausen championhausen run.

 

[LennoxLewis]

I don't think it's so much to keep Okada away from WWE. Okada is a well known established star, especially if you follow AEW regularly. He can immediately get involved with one of AEWs main guys, or get into any of the title pictures depending on how they want to present him.
Ospraey as well, he can immediately step in and be a guy. With Sting retiring, and hopefully transitioning Jericho into Stings role, AEW has room to maneuver after Revolution.

They have been a lot better with the women's booking too. We're getting multiple stories/matches vs before where it was once a show at 920. Mone will immediately be another star that can go in the ring that they need.

I agree about keeping ROH separate from the main roster, figured by now they would have pivoted to having ROH act like NXT for them, including replacing Rampage. Having extra titles for the sake of extra titles doesn't help elevate the titles, or the people carrying them.

 

[FrontPageNews]

Okada is headed to AEW

Seems like Tony just keeps overpaying people to keep them from WWE with no long term plan for them. Disappointing he didn’t choose WWE.

He’s overpaying for them because he’s a mark. As good as okada is the wwe audience has no idea who he is and they’d have to start from the ground level with pushing him. 99% of American wrestling audiences don’t know anything about new japan.

 

[kookoo]

He’s overpaying for them because he’s a mark. As good as okada is the wwe audience has no idea who he is and they’d have to start from the ground level with pushing him. 99% of American wrestling audiences don’t know anything about new japan.

NXT and AEW fans have a greater understanding of the industry. People who are just fans of WWE seem as a whole to know very little about the rest of the industry. And that's a massive portion of the Western World wrestling fan because WWE did an incredible job with market share and basically destroying any company that tried to get popular in the US. I'm surprised TNA is still even alive. The ones defending Vince and Brock and yelling Cody sucks are the ones who just have no visibility on the outside... Nostalgia merchants. Now, there's nothing wrong with watching just one promotion. So much content just from one, it's impossible to keep up unless you dedicate a few hours every day. But it's very closed minded when you just assume everything other than WWE is shit. And vice versa. Which, watching people at Wrestlemania asking questions like "what do you think of AEW" met with visceral hate and then followed up with "but I haven't watched a minute of it"... That's unfortunately still the bulk of wrestling fans here.

 

[CBBI]

He’s overpaying for them because he’s a mark. As good as okada is the wwe audience has no idea who he is and they’d have to start from the ground level with pushing him. 99% of American wrestling audiences don’t know anything about new japan.

Holy shit you and I actually agree on something.

 

[ticon12389]

Rock is officially in the Bloodline and says he’s gonna do whatever it takes to stop Cody at WM. Heel Rock was back in form tonight and it was glorious.

I think it leads to Rock turning on Roman to help Cody ultimately but until then it’s gonna be a great buildup.

 

[Real Deal]

Yeah this sounds like Rock is turning on Roman but in the build up he's going to enjoy the hell out of talking mad shit to the crowds. The trailer park trash line was always one of my favorite. Definitely marked out to his 90's heel look.