The following is opinion-based and reflects that of the author and not the website.
It has been 274 long days, but today, we finally get to see an old friend again after AEW All In: the AEW World title belt.
Trapped in an enhanced briefcase since last October’s WrestleDream, the symbol of everything that those in the company strive and compete for will see sunlight once again. It’s been basically four seasons worth of hiding for our old friend and we are now hours away from seeing it in all its glory.
That is definitely going to happen, right? There’s no way Hangman Page doesn’t come out of Arlington as your AEW World Champion for the second time and have the big moment with fireworks and the AEW good guys including Bryan Danielson and Darby Allin surrounding him, right?
(You nodding in approval.) Ok, good.
Because the opposite – Jon Moxley retaining the title – would be a really bad decision. No offense, Jon, but it’s time.
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I’m sure they are out there, but I don’t feel like there’s a big or vocal fan base for the Death Riders which perhaps was the idea to begin with. Being a heel in 2025 seems to be extremely hard for reasons I’ll write about another day, but Moxley and his crew have pulled off one aspect: no one seems to like them or like seeing them on TV.
At times, this fourth Moxley run has felt like, well, a lot. There was a little intrigue at first when he mentioned this whole movement was about something bigger which some took to wishcast Shane McMahon as the end all, be all behind it. That obviously didn’t happen and the group had a focus on, uh, something which has been disrupting matches and causing chaos just because. There seemed to be a focus on one point of them winning all the AEW titles, but that stopped and ended with the Trios titles. Why? Who knows. (Also, if Moxley hid the World title as a symbolic move, why didn’t they do the same when they won the Trios belts?)
The remnants of the Blackpool Combat Club weren’t exactly elevated along the way. Claudio Castagnoli feels he’s always going to be Claudio Castagnoli while Wheeler Yuta does have a great opportunity to cash the hated heel checks for a long time. I keep forgetting PAC is part of the group but getting hurt a lot will do that. Gabe Kidd is a convenient fly-in part of the gang when they need him to be.
And then, there is Marina Shafir who has played the Chyna role in beating up men with relative ease but for some reason, has had no storyline interest in wrestling for any titles and also for some reason, only one woman has seemed to have an issue with her in Willow Nightingale. This feels like a situation where Tony Khan isn’t quite sure what to do with her. She has wrestled just three times in AEW and another three times in ROH since Moxley won the title which feels like a missed opportunity if you wanted to make the group really dominant.
The Death Riders as we know them are coming to a long-awaited end. What comes next (a heel Daniel Garcia sending Moxley packing on a vacation?) could be fun, but it can’t be this anymore. It just can’t.
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That brings us to that hidden title belt – the idea of which I have despised since I realized it was going to be a thing after Moxley won it. One thing I am a firm believer in is that the World title is the most important thing to a combat sports promotion — the North Star for anyone competing because why wouldn’t it be? If you’re not ultimately gunning for the top title, what’s the point?
AEW has had past issues with their World title not feeling like the most important angle/match on their pay-per-views, something Tony Khan has wisely course corrected in the last six months or so. Regardless of what happens today (outside a combo of a Moxley win and Swerve Strickland & Will Ospreay losing), there’s a sensible mix of top contenders and stories to be told that can result in true World title PPV headlining matches.
But the only way that happens is with Page winning the title today and removing it from that god damn briefcase. As a wise man once said, cowboy up.
The following is opinion and reflects the views of the author and not the website.
Image: WWE
I don’t ask for much in this wrestling life: a few listeners when I fill in on Sunday editions of Wrestling Observer Live (all through July!), weekly TV and PPVs that generally are worth my time (also true of WOL on Sundays), and the flame of sweet nostalgia to keep burning until I eventually lose a Buried Alive match.
I do have one more, though: I want to see an in-ring confrontation between John Cena and Goldberg to close WWE Saturday Night’s Main Event.
I don’t need a match, just two of the biggest personalities in the last 30+ years to exchange some less than pleasantries and physicality in less than ten minutes time. I want it and I think you do too.
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In all their years within the WWE family, the two have never shared the ring outside the 2004 Royal Rumble where Goldberg head-butted Cena after entering the match at number 30…and that was it. I mean, we did get the dream Goldberg vs. Jonathan Coachman no DQ match the night after, but it’s not the same.
Goldberg was gone after that year’s WrestleMania only to return more than 12 years later. Cena was still around, but a one-on-one match never happened. Creative issues? No interest by Vince McMahon or by either Cena or Goldberg? Something else? I don’t know, but the time for that moment seemed to have passed us by.
Until now.
Unless there’s a swerve coming, Goldberg is heading into what is his final match at this weekend’s SNME. He’s 58 and has gone on record about the hardships in getting physically and cosmetically ready for this one last bout. His longest match since returning in 2016 was 11:25 against Bobby Lashley and that was almost four years ago. He and Gunther aren’t going 20 minutes Saturday and that’s ok.
Cena, 10 years Goldberg’s junior, has been plugging away in his final year with 15 dates left until he hangs up the jorts at year’s end. Eight of those remaining dates are basically confirmed and one of those remaining seven should be a surprise confrontation leading to what WWE loves the most: A MOMENT.
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I don’t love to fantasy book, but allow me to lay out a pretty simple scenario:
Goldberg loses to Gunther on Saturday as most expect and after he gets through whatever retirement speech he wants to give, Cena’s music hits. You get the “holy shit” chants and Cena then does a very rehearsed heel promo schtick running down Goldberg, his WCW run, and the like. He’s pleased with himself but gets too cocky, turns around into a Goldberg spear, gets a jackhammer, and Goldberg leaves to a thunderous ovation. Roll credits. Done.
It seems like a missed opportunity for a big fan service moment to not have these guys cross paths at least once before their respective runs come to an end, coincidentally in the same year. It wouldn’t make sense to do it at another time because, well, why would you? Cena being an asshole and mocking Goldberg on his final big night seems all too perfect. If Cena’s final dates are going to (and should) matter, this would have more impact than a random Raw or SmackDown appearance to say the same things he has been saying.
If this is already planned, I will look like a genius. If not, I will look like a sad man who just wanted two action figures to get pulled off the shelf and put in front of each other for the first time.
In an organization built on moments, this seems like one too perfect for WWE to not have it come to life on Saturday.
This is a column that represents the views of the author and not the website.
WWE Night of Champions was the final time John Cena wrestled CM Punk and you know what? I’m okay with that.
By now, we should know the formula of a Cena main event. Let’s be realistic: at 48, he is battered and bruised. He can’t do a long match. He doesn’t like taking bumps. So, you’re only going to get one kind of match where he trades some basic offense with his opponent until people run down to the ring for interference to pad the runtime.
To be fair, everything was perfectly alright for the most part between these two and probably the best match they could have done in 2025. But this was hardly the kind of match one would hope for considering their history.
As per usual, a ref bump took place near the end. Seth Rollins came out and instructed his new squad of Bronson Reed and Bron Breakker to do his bidding, taking out Cena. After Penta came out and took out Breakker and Sami Zayn took out Reed, Cena and Punk were left in the ring. Cena attempted to repeat what he did at Elimination Chamber, going for a hug and a low blow. It didn’t work this time as Punk caught him and laid Cena out with the GTS.
However, wouldn’t you know it, that was when Rollins came in and ruined everything by hitting Punk with the curb stomp. Before he could cash in, Cena threw Rollins out of the ring and covered Punk to win the match. This was one of Cena’s better matches this year but standards are so much higher now, especially for main events, and most of his matches aren’t reaching that bar.
One of WWE’s plusses lately is that you can clearly see where the company is going. Punk and Rollins are very likely to do battle at SummerSlam while Cena will face Rhodes in a WrestleMania rematch for the WWE title. Cody needs to win if we’re going to have any good main events on WWE television this year and we need to kickstart Cena’s turn back as a babyface as we head into the final months of his career.
The heel run isn’t working, it’s not leading to good promos and matches, and it just feels like a compelling idea that ended up being a dud due to lack of creativity and performance.
Rhodes, as expected, won the King of the Ring final, defeating Randy Orton in the opening contest of Saturday’s show in Saudi Arabia.
This was the best match on a overall middling show. It was a standard, very good WWE main event style bout where both men kicked out each other’s big moves as the crowd in Riyadh cheered for everything. Orton orchestrated his own downfall, being pushed into a turnbuckle he had exposed.
Jade Cargill is the Queen of the Ring, pinning Asuka in what I thought was a short and rather uninteresting match.
It was just kinda there and didn’t get me into the idea of seeing Cargill challenge for the title. She’s been here for a while at this point and while she absolutely has the look and presence of a star, the work still isn’t there. She will take on Tiffany Stratton, which, well, I don’t know how that will go.
Solo Sikoa is the new United States champion, defeating Jacob Fatu thanks to the debuting TALA TONGA, fka Hikuleo, who chokeslammed Fatu through the announce desk.
This was okay, but Fatu at this point comes off as a far bigger star than Solo and it’s clear he’s outshined most of what remains of the Bloodline, so a title change here felt weird. There is bound to be a rematch here where Fatu regains the title but before that I think we may have a six-man tag for SummerSlam with Fatu likely teaming with Jimmy Uso and another family member to take on his three mean family members — maybe the one that just got a part in the upcoming Street Fighter movie.
The street fight between Raquel Rodriguez and Rhea Ripley was pretty good — your standard WWE weapons match where both worked hard.
Ripley won, so I wouldn’t be surprised if she and IYO SKY battle it out soon for the WWE Women’s World Championship as perhaps that’s the SummerSlam match. Rodriguez, meanwhile, needs a tag team partner and with Roxanne Perez’s interference on her behalf, it is likely these two will team together and become friends.
Sami Zayn defeated Karrion Kross in A Match That Took Place.
Nothing of note, though Zayn was obviously very over with the crowd. They keep pushing Zayn wanting to be a World Champion so much that I think that will be a title program for the fall, or maybe even a tease for the Royal Rumble.
The following reflects the opinion of the author and not of the website.
Image: Josh Nason
When it comes to WWE & UFC business, TKO chief operating officer Mark Shapiro says a lot of things. As one of the people that covers the TKO quarterly earning calls and his various other speaking engagements, I hear A LOT of those things over and over and over again.
Last December, Shapiro first dropped the news that WWE would be reducing their live touring schedule in 2024 as part of cost-cutting initiatives, referring to cities they would be phasing out as “C and D counties” in a bit of a misphrase.
Just a few months ago, Shapiro said their schedule would be cut back even more in 2025 while strongly hinting at increasing ticket prices for the WWE shows that were happening. While weekly TV and PLEs remain intact, the near-extinction of domestic WWE house shows appears imminent which puts their more infrequent appearances at a premium, something the first slate of domestic events for 2025 bears out.
Look, I get it. WWE house shows aren’t as profitable as TKO wants them to be, especially when traveling to venues that aren’t as big as those in “A” cities like New York, Boston, Los Angeles, Chicago, etc. Non-televised events are a different animal in the current day where TV rights mean everything and inevitably, they were going to get whittled down. While talent seems to enjoy working on them from a creative and athletic standpoint, TKO doesn’t love how much they cost to run with Shapiro once noting they were a favorite of Vince McMahon.
Nearly a year later, the impending impact of Shapiro’s comments for wrestling fans really hit me as I walked up to cover this past Wednesday’s AEW Dynamite in Manchester, New Hampshire.
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Like many of you reading these words, I have never lived in an “A” city but I did live in Manchester for 15 years. It’s where I both met my wife and grew up professionally. I was part of the front office for the hockey team that helped launch the SNHU Arena (then Verizon Wireless Arena) in 2001 – the same venue AEW debuted at on Wednesday. I was at the first WWE show in the building which drew more than 11,000 fans in 2002, headlined by New Hampshire native Triple H. In that same arena, I attended Raw and SmackDown tapings, Backlash, and even a few house shows. The city’s population is roughly 115,000 and has featured WWE wrestling since 1967 according to Cagematch.
By WWE’s metrics, Manchester is not an “A” city, but to myself and plenty of others, it felt like one a lot of the time. Now likely in the “C” or “D” column, the city with the longest dead end street in America probably won’t see live WWE action anytime soon given its proximity to Boston. Same goes for Portland, Maine, where I first attended a WWE live show as a kid and saw Hulk Hogan for the first time. Same goes for Bangor, Maine, where I attended my lone WCW show and was lucky to see the then-upstart phenom known as Goldberg with a few thousand other people.
Those experiences are part of what made me a fan and why I work for this website, why I attend indies, why I nearly started an indie in a different life, and why I have met a lot of great people that both work in the business and love wrestling like you and I do. Those experiences are also why so many of your favorite pro wrestlers got into the business and thought, “I’d like to do that someday.” It was the WWE NIL program in an extremely different form: cultivating the future by simply immersing people into the live experience.
I’m sure many of you could take the names Manchester, Portland and Bangor, insert your own city or town, and our experiences would be pretty similar. That’s why it’s somewhat depressing that the WWE house show era for smaller cities is coming to an end for the largest and most successful wrestling company ever. It’s the price of progress, I reckon.
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That’s why pro wrestling like AEW coming to Manchester and other smaller cities is important. Walking through the city on an unseasonably warm November midweek night, there was that buzz you feel walking up to a venue for any kind of show. In talking with a friend that isn’t really a wrestling fan and that still works at the arena two decades later, he was thrilled to have AEW there, specifically citing how it was going to be aired live on national TV. To those who write for websites and are monitoring social media 24/7, that doesn’t mean as much to us as we are desensitized, but to people who live and work in the smaller cities, that does matter. For a night, their corner of the world is the focus of someone else’s world for a few hours and that’s a good feeling to have.
It’s not just AEW that can potentially take advantage of the void. TNA has been doing more touring around smaller U.S. cities (including this past weekend) and NJPW returned to Lowell, Massachusetts, on Friday. There are countless indies running all around the country looking to scratch that itch for those who are unable to travel to see WWE in a bigger city due to budgets, proximity or other reasons.
All of this is certainly no reason to weep for WWE and if I was a higher-up there, I’d probably make the same decision even if they are potentially freezing out those who can’t afford the higher prices and the potential travel costs in visiting larger cities. Perhaps WWE was always destined to become like big touring acts who come through once every few years. I just wasn’t ready for it to happen this quickly.
While C and D cities may not be a destination for WWE anymore, that doesn’t mean the people that live there should be forgotten by wrestling at large. Now, it’s up to the promotions that do run there to remind fans that they are worth remembering.
Josh Nason has been a contributing editor to F4WOnline.com since 2012.
Editor’s Note: The following is an opinion-based preview and reflects that of the writer and not of our website.
When AEW x NJPW Forbidden Door was first announced, the buzz was strong. I was excited, you were excited, we all were excited.
Now? I am…sort of excited, but more about the idea of it than the execution.
The next few paragraphs are mostly critical of the event (sorry!), but this event even happening to begin with is potentially monumental for pro wrestling over the next decade. A co-branded show from the second and third most popular companies in the entire sport is unheard of in modern wrestling. It opens up endless possibilities for more and for even bigger shows, but has been hampered by clunky booking, injuries, and ambiguous communication.
When the show goes live, the bell-to-bell action should be excellent, but a good quality product isn’t always enough.
To me, the biggest question is this: How much popularity do AEW and NJPW stand to gain from this? A lot of the popularity gains New Japan had over the last five-to-ten years have been dampened due to a combination of the pandemic and their cracking down on people GIF-ing/Streamable-ing parts of their matches.
Gone are the days when you could readily find the last eight minutes of a G1 Climax match on the web. Sure, New Japan wants those matches to be watched live or on-demand, but those clips and GIFs were free advertising spread by people who want the sport to grow. This event could go a long way toward rebuilding some of that fan base, but it sure seems like it will have a hard time attracting the more casual fan.
Much of what is already on the card has been overbooked at best and, at worst, it required a press release to explain. I’m grasping at straws to explain why a face-to-face between Jon Moxley and Hiroshi Tanahashi, an actual god, seemed to serve as a vessel for Chris Jericho reintroducing Sammy Guevara to his faction and announcing a weird six-man tag match.
Surely, a match that has been talked about for three years can be sold by the two people in the actual match. A lot of these problems will get swept under the rug if the show is good, but there are certainly some cracks in the AEW foundation as of late – ones that need to be sealed up soon.
Let’s preview the Forbidden Door.
Chris Jericho, Sammy Guevara & Minoru Suzuki vs. Eddie Kingston, Wheeler Yuta & Shota Umino
Every card needs an opening match. This will serve to further the issues the Blackpool Combat Club and Kingston have with Jericho and his pals. Suzuki will be captivating as always as he and Kingston having a cute lil’ face-off sure would be nice. And Guevara will also be here. Not much else to say!
Prediction: JAS & Suzuki
Inaugural AEW All-Atlantic title: PAC vs. Miro vs. Malakai Black vs. Clark Connors
The following titles exist, or will soon exist, in the ever convoluting AEW wrestling multiverse: AEW World Championship, Interim AEW World Championship, AEW Women’s World Championship, AEW World Tag Team Championship, AEW TNT Championship, AEW TBS Championship, AEW All-Atlantic Championship, ROH World Championship, ROH Pure Championship, ROH World Television Championship, ROH Women’s World Championship, ROH World Tag Team Championship, AAA World Tag Team Championship, and the FTW Championship.
This doesn’t even cover titles from New Japan, Rev Pro, or whatever other title someone totes out to the ring. Adding another to that list is just too much. Jamming this onto the card is especially strange. This very much seems like an AEW only thing and would have been the perfect way to draw eyeballs to the product over the summer. Everyone loves brackets!
I hope we get to see how The House of Black acts with a title as the way they are presented now, the competition part of pro wrestling seems to matter less than spooky tales about vengeance and violence. It’s either Black or Miro, but I think Miro is bigger than this belt.
Prediction: Malakai Black
Zack Sabre Jr. vs. TBA
If this is CSRO stretching and getting stretched by ZSJ, sign me the heck up. If this is like, Jonathan Gresham or someone else, tuck me the heck in bed.
Prediction: TBD
The Young Bucks, Hikuleo & El Phantasmo vs. Sting, Darby Allin, Shingo Takagi & Hiromu Takahashi
I am far too rapidly approaching my 37th year on this big blue marble and there are embarrassingly few things I enjoy more than going to bed at a reasonable hour. I am once again pleading with Tony Khan to stop filling his cards with so many matches to help me achieve that goal.
I was ready to end the preview here, but then Shingo and my precious Hiromu got added to it. Does it make sense? Nope! Does this contradict everything I wrote in the intro? Yes! Nevertheless, I am immediately 100 times more interested now. Shingo still does the high speed Dragon Gate-style as well as anyone and Hiromu might have the most uniquely captivating energy in all of wrestling.
Prediction: Dudes With Attitudes
IWGP U.S. Champion Will Ospreay vs. Orange Cassidy
Denying the pure breathtaking talent of Ospreay is crazy. He is not wrestling Twitter’s favorite wrestler, nor is he mine, but he has all the athletic gifts a wrestler could ever want. One of my first memories of him is hearing a promo where he said, ‘I heard you like to shoot ospreys from the sky’ and I realized that he was just another hyper-athletic theater kid which is not an insult!
He’s who can take your breath away while at the same time making your eyes roll out of your head and out the door and also part of one of the best cinematographic moments in wrestling. Will has found himself since he’s really leaned into being a heel, which has allowed him to cut out a lot of the empty calories (choreographed flippy stuff) from his matches. That said, I’m not sure he can resist hamming it up for an American PPV audience.
Between the overwhelming love for Cassidy, a general loathing for Ospreay, and the abilities of the two wrestlers, this match should have an insane amount of heat. A fired-up OC getting a near fall is going to blow the roof off the United Center. The match could either steal the show or be a spectacle of self-indulgence. Either way, it has my attention. As much as the crowd might want it – and trust me they will be frothing for it – there is no way Ospreay is dropping a belt he just won.
Prediction: Billy Boy
AEW Women’s Champion Thunder Rosa vs. Toni Storm
This is a match with almost zero heat that I am worried will get buried in a bad spot and get lost in the rest of the card. Thunder Rosa continues to, somewhat confusingly, have a real (extended fart noise) title reign and that was before the disaster of a match with Marina Shafir a few weeks back.
So much so, that it’s worth wondering if AEW is losing confidence in their relatively new Women’s champion. That combined with Storm being very, very good at this whole pro wrestling thing has me sniffing around a title change.
Prediction: Toni Storm
Winners Take All: ROH Tag Team Champions FTR vs. IWGP Tag Team Champions Great-O-Khan & Jeff Cobb vs. Roppongi Vice
Usually, these multi-man matches exist so that champion can lose their titles without taking the pin. But since two titles are on the line and the winners take them all, that changes things. Look, Roppongi Vice are nice and fun and but they are clearly here to eat a pin to set up a regular tag team match between the new champs and whoever loses their belts.
FTR has called themselves the best team on the planet and it’s never been more true than it is now. They’ve been on an absolute heater since Supercard of Honor and Dax Harwood himself has been doing his best Arn Anderson impression by putting on incredible TV matches with Will Ospreay, Adam Cole, and even his own partner just in the last two months. Figuring out how to keep everyone in two companies looking relatively strong is giving me a popsicle headache, but for this card to work, titles need to move between companies and this is the best spot for that to happen.
The best things going today have never been better, and they leave Chicago with one more set of titles.
Prediction: FTR
IWGP Champion Jay White vs. Kazuchika Okada vs. Hangman Page vs. Adam Cole
Earlier, I wrote that if Forbidden Door winds up being filled with high-quality matches, a lot of the bad lead-up will be forgiven. This might be a perfect example of that. The yes-no-yes-no-YES of this match had my head spinning, but when that coin dropped and Okada walked out, I was healed. The weirdest great wrestler of the last ten years can wash away any and all types of pain.
As I was writing this, I had a recurring thought that I can not shake: would Jay White be the best performer in AEW? Not to be hot takey, but I think he could be. He has carried this program on the back of great mic work and incredible presence. He feels like a champion, he speaks like a champion, and carries himself like one. There’s a lot of talk about WWE throwing the bag at MJF and rightfully so, but White is someone who can carry an entire company and there’s no amount of money I wouldn’t give him.
He just won the title from Okada so him losing it here would be a huge shock. Nothing would create buzz like someone from AEW walking out of Chicago with the biggest prize from New Japan, but I can’t see it happening. One of the Adams is eating the pin.
Prediction: Jay White
Interim AEW World title: Jon Moxley vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi
In life and in the universe of pro wrestling, there can only be one ace. Lots of people call themselves that, but it is truly a 1/1 position. There can be many constellations of stars, but there is only one Polaris. Only one star shines brighter than all the others. That star is Hiroshi Tanahashi.
No one connects like him, no one structures a match like him, and no one makes the audience feel like him. AEW called him the Bret Hart of New Japan and, with full apologies to Bret, he is nowhere near as beautiful as Tanahashi. He was the IWGP Heavyweight Champion at the first Wrestle Kingdom back in 2007. Fifteen years later, he is main eventing a massive cross-promotional show and he’s still in the top two of all wrestlers when it comes to telling a story in the ring. And cats and kittens, he’s not number two.
I’m really looking forward to seeing how Moxley’s frantic, brawling style plays against Tanahashi’s more methodical, less is more approach. Moxley’s style works well regardless of his alignment and that will allow Tanahashi to work as the pure babyface that he is. Tanahashi winning would be shocking and beyond exciting, but I just can’t see a world where the match ends with anything other than Moxley with his hand raised.
Editor’s Note: The following is an opinion-based preview and reflects that of the writer and not of our website.
The hardest part of writing these previews is the beginning. It’s usually the piece I write last. I bang out some thoughts on the matches and those kind of inform what the lede is going to be. In a way, the column starts to structure itself.
This time, even though I knew right away what I was going to write about, I still left it for last because it was the hardest one yet.
I had to say goodbye to my best friend two weeks ago. For seven wonderful, irreplaceable years, Lenny The Dog was the true, loving constant in my life. Six years ago, I sold my house in New Hampshire and moved to Boston, setting off a wild series of events that led me to where I am now. Len was happily with me through all of it: three jobs, three apartments, and everything in between. This summer, when it was time to move again, he barely raised an ear before finding the spot with the most sun in the new place. He was unbothered by any and everything as long as he was getting head scratches and ear rubs.
All he ever asked for was affection and cheese.
He had been sick for a while and I knew the end was coming, and sooner than I would ever want, he took a drastic turn on a Friday. The following Thursday, he let me know it was time to go. On an otherwise idyllic May afternoon, I took him for one more car ride with the windows down, his favorite, and said goodbye.
I miss my medium-sized dude every single day, but I especially miss him on Wednesday nights. Every episode of Dynamite that I watched at home, I watched with him. He was my wrestling companion and I bounced more of my ideas off of him than anyone else. He wasn’t the most vocal cheerleader or critic, but he always listened and he was always there. I still find myself looking for him curled up on his favorite cushion and anticipate his nails frantically click-clacking on the floor as he tries to scarf up some food I didn’t even know that I had dropped. My grief was, and still is, beyond anything I could have imagined; a deep and profound sadness that exists right where I begin. It is a void that I can’t imagine filling. But if this pain is the price to pay to get to experience such a deep love, I will gladly pay it every time.
There is AEW this weekend and I am thankful. I am thankful for an escape that so fondly reminds me of my pal and thankful for an incredibly supportive family, girlfriend, and group of friends that have made something that can feel so isolating feel anything but. Our grief is entirely our own and it’s easy to get lost in it. But knowing I am not alone through my grief is something for which I am forever grateful. Writing this has been cathartic, in a way, and I’m beyond thankful for the platform. If you made it this far, thank you for reading. Thank you for indulging a man in his grief, and please tell your pets you love them.
Let’s talk Double or Nothing.
Men’s Owen Hart Foundation Tournament final: Adam Cole vs. Samoa Joe
The transition of Samoa Joe into the angry old man stage of his career is going to absolutely rule. Calling him an elder statesman sounds weird and wrong so I’m super not doing that (even though he is). This is a world-traveled athlete that carried multiple companies and proved time and again he could do anything. He paved the way by doing his own thing, his own way. It worked in ROH, it worked in TNA, it worked in NXT (twice!), it worked on Raw and Smackdown. There’s nothing he couldn’t do and as he enters what is probably the final stage of his career, doubting him would only serve to make fools of us all.
I don’t have an elegant transition here, but I’ve found myself wondering if we have reached critical mass with Adam Cole. He’s been doing essentially the same gimmick and wrestling the same types of matches for quite some time now. I’m at the point where if I’ve seen one Adam Cole match, I’ve seen them all. We had reached a similar point with Johnny Gargano, but at least he was able to switch up his character work and do something totally different. There doesn’t seem to be a dramatic change on the horizon – he’s still massively over – but everything in wrestling has a shelf life.
Maybe Cole’s something different is formally aligning with his IRL girlfriend after they each lose their respective sides of the Owen. It gives them both a fresh, new direction to go, and pulls Cole out of any Bullet Club/Elite/Undisputed whatever related storylines for a little while and let’s him breathe on his own.
Prediction: Samoa Joe
Women’s Owen Hart Foundation Tournament final: Ruby Soho vs. Britt Baker
As great as Britt Baker is, I can’t help but wonder if someone else would make more sense here. Wouldn’t it have made sense to give the newly debuted Toni Storm the PPV rub? Britt is the person associated with the women’s division — it’s hard for her star to get any brighter. Using the Owen as an opportunity to make a new star and to attempt to bring someone up to her level seems like a better use of the tournament, and the TV time. But hey, I don’t write the shows!
If Ruby Soho doesn’t win here, what is the point of anything. She’s been getting a bit more TV time recently and hopefully this is the start of something big with her. Britt is still the biggest thing in the division, and a win over her means almost as much as winning a title. There is plenty of history between the two of them, making a win by Ruby feel big.
Prediction: Ruby Soho
Darby Allin vs. Kyle O’Reilly
I am thrilled that still Kool Kyle gets a solo match on the big show, but am much less thrilled that it is the THIRTEENTH(?!?!?) match on the card. I am 36 and staying up late is hard! Even if all the matches are ten minutes bell-to-bell, that is over two hours without counting entrances, promo packages, and all the other extras. Tony Khan’s comment about not wanting to run the main event against Game 7 is all well and good, but by the time the main event happens, the crowd is going to be completely exhausted.
Anyway, it’s gonna be a good match that Allin wins.
Prediction: Darby Allin
MJF vs. Wardlow for Wardlow’s contract freedom
Whatever MJF’s contract number is, it’s far too low. It took some time for me to buy all the way in on young Maxwell, but he’s proved time and time again that he is appointment viewing whenever he’s on our screens. He still leans a little too much into corny name calling and his hands are way too tan, but those are the only real nits to pick. This is a fully formed and fully realized star among stars who will be underpaid the minute he signs his next contract.
The reason, dear readers, he will be underpaid is because of programs like this: a slow burn that turned an anonymous heavy into someone who gets s-tier reactions without a theme song. Wardlow went from the replaceable muscle to someone the crowd just can’t get enough of. He’s consistently getting the biggest pops and most of that is because of MJF. MJF is so loathsome and so hateable that all Wardlow has to do is show up with his natural physical charisma and he’s over like rover, baby. The pop he’s going to get when he finally gets to touch MJF is going to be so loud that even Nick Papagiorgio will hear it.
I’m excited to see what happens to Wardlow after this when he “finally” signs his contract, gets his music back, and gets away from MJF. AEW messed around and created another star, I just hope they keep treating him like one.
Prediction: Wardlow
The Hardys vs. The Young Bucks
The actual Hardy cosplay on Rampage was amazing. The whole presentation was as funny as anything can actually be in pro wrestling. Nick and Matt looked like they were having the time of their lives.
This is the easiest story in the world to tell. AEW could have run this match anytime, anywhere and it would be great. These are two legendary tag teams getting to share the ring on a properly massive stage. This match has happened before in other places when the teams were in different stages of their careers. The current form of the Young Bucks is one of my favorites, and The Hardys look like they have one more run in them. A match that requires nothing to grab our attention surely will do just that on Sunday.
Prediction: The Hardys
Anarchy in the Arena: Jericho Appreciation Society vs. Eddie Kingston, Santana, Ortiz, and Blackpool Combat Club (Bryan Danielson and Jon Moxley) (w/ William Regal)
Keeping your top talent out of the ring is actually good. Stick with me here. We are all delighted to see Bryan Danielson on TV as much as possible. I think we are all equally as happy to see him taking it relatively easy. What he’s doing now is a great way to preserve his body. He’s not grinding out grueling 15+ minute matches every week. Asking him to have a consistent run of matches like he did when he first joined AEW isn’t sustainable, especially for someone who has admitted that his in-ring time is winding down.
But keeping him on TV and front of mind is perfect. It allows AEW to heat him up whenever they need to, and we don’t have to remember where he’s been. The same goes for Mox, Kenny Omega, or any other wrestler, honestly. Dave Shoemaker used to talk about the idea of a wrestling offseason that would allow wrestlers to rest and save their bodies for bigger matches and moments. Look at how few matches MJF actually has. He’s a fixture on our TV, but wrestles infrequently. By not having their top talent wrestle week in and week out actually allows them to wrestle longer, and better, while making the matches that much more important.
All of those words make me feel better saying that this whole match is kind of dumb and a waste of time. The Jericho Appreciation Society as a whole is nowhere near the caliber of its opponents. Whatever the matchup, JAS is on the losing end. I can always count on ol’ Jake Hager to make me not care about, well, anything he’s involved in. It takes a lot to make me not care about a Danielson match in 2022, but nevertheless, here we are. Against my better judgement, Jericho calling himself a wizard does make me laugh.
Prediction: Eddie Kingston, Santana, Ortiz and Blackpool Combat Club
House of Black vs. Death Triangle (w/ Alex Abrahantes)
This is a PWG All Star Weekend main event-level match. Whoever wins should immediately given the non-existent, but for sure existent, AEW Trios titles that Tony Khan is saving for a rainy day. He’s said he doesn’t want to debut the belts until Kenny Omega returns, but if not now, when? What trios match could possibly be better than this? What better opportunity will there be? The Elite doesn’t need to be involved in something to make it matter. Things can exist outside of their sphere of influence and do just fine – see Baker, Britt and Cargill, Jade for example. Big Tone, please surprise us all with some new belts on Sunday
I’m a huge fan of how SpOoKY these two teams are. I have no idea what House of Black is saying or doing most of the time, but I don’t care. I’m all in. All three of them bring something different and special to the group and the presentation is special without being over the top. Death Triangle is a skeleton man, his brother who can’t die, and a terrifying wrestling gollum and somehow it all works. (Wow, did I just accidentally reboot Lucha Underground?)
Death Triangle has quite a few stops and starts because of injuries and other reasons not entirely in their control, and the House of Black could use an establishing win in their first real feud as a unit.
Why is this still happening? This unwanted, neverending feud continues to soldier on, undaunted. It will not go quietly into the good night even though the crowd doesn’t like either side! Throw this on a special edition of Rampage or something.
This match does put the spotlight on one of the biggest problems with AEW. Dan Lambert, supreme heat magnet that he is, needs to stop taking digs at Tay Conti for just having sex. The wh**ehausen thing is bad at best and seriously problematic. Sammy Guevara is having the exact same amount of sex that she does but is not being publicly shamed for it. We can do better than this.
Prediction: I don’t care
TBS Champion Jade Cargill (w/ Kiera Hogan & Red Velvet) defends against Anna Jay
I’ll keep this one short because otherwise it’s just going to be a whole ass thesaurus of words about how great Jade Cargill is. There is not enough praise or flowery adjectives to throw her way. She is everything, everywhere, all at once. There is no talent in the AEW locker room that has as high of a ceiling as she does. Every moment she chooses to grace us with her presence in a wrestling ring on in a pre-tape is a blessing. She’s a star that is too big for wrestling, and it’s only a matter of time before everyone else figures that out as well.
I’m not entirely sure how this match happened as all of a sudden it was on the card. Seems like bad news for Anna Jay!
Prediction: Jade Cargill
AEW Tag Team Champions Jurassic Express (w/ Christian Cage) defend against Team Taz (Ricky Starks and Powerhouse Hobbs) and Keith Lee & Swerve Strickland
Another PPV, another chance to talk about my favorite thing in AEW: Ricky Starks dragging Keith Lee. And big Rick never misses his chance either. The Acclaimed telling Lee to go back to the renaissance faire will be tough to beat, but Starkman could soon top that. Do you think Lee gets mad at the Duolingo owl because he won’t teach him how to talk like he’s reading Shakespeare? God bless that big goof and God bless him for chucking all of these dudes around and taking all of this in relative stride.
One of the challenges with Jurassic Express is their presentation. Because of how they are presented and some of the microphone-based shortcomings of its two members, getting a hot program out of them is challenging. I guess that’s not really the point — the crowd loves them and they shine in matches like this — but there is a ceiling to an act built that way. Only one of them ever speaks and he is still sort of figuring out how to do that. You can be the best tag team in the world without saying you are the best tag team in the world, meaning it, and having the audience believe it at the same time.
This is a good spot for a title change. The seeds have been planted for a Jungle Boy/Christian program, and maybe that starts here. Jurassic Express can drop the belts to Swerve and Lee (two great talents meshing unexpectedly well) and maybe that lets them move towards that singles program. Both Jungle Boy and Christian can use something meaty and serious right now.
Prediction: Swerve and Lee
AEW Women’s Champion Thunder Rosa defends against Serena Deeb
The little air that existed in this feud has been totally sucked out of it over the past few weeks and it’s puzzling! I just don’t get it! Thunder Rosa was scorching hot during her run up to the title. Now she’s lukewarm at best. Her momentum is gone. I don’t know it seems like only having your champion wrestle on TV once since mid-March is actually bad. Curious! This match has been built to with mediocre promos and almost no in-ring action.
I believe in Rosa and I believe she can have a really good match with Serena Deeb. This feud did no favors to anyone. Rosa’s connection comes from her fire and passion and we got to see very little of that. Deeb, while excellent in the ring, is significantly worse on a live mic. Rarely can I say AEW played into the weaknesses of their performers, but that’s exactly what happened here.
Prediction: Thunder Rosa
AEW World Champion “Hangman” Adam Page defends against CM Punk
I love this. Neither of these guys are faces and neither of them are heels. Traditional alignments are kind of out the window because neither of these guys are going to get fully booed. Life exists on a spectrum, operating mostly in shades of gray. More feuds should lean into that. Let the individual audience members choose who they want to cheer and who they want to boo. The crowd on Wednesday was probably 65/35 in favor of Punk but it vacillated depending on who was talking and what was being said. There is nothing wrong with dueling crowds. It’s a totally different dynamic than everyone pulling for the face and booing the heel. This allows both sides of the crowd the chance to be vocal and to go back and forth. More of this, please.
Hangman really needed something like this. He needed something to bring the best out of him. Because if we’re being honest, his title reign has just been okay. Other than his matches with Danielson, what has really stood out about his run on top? Not everything has to be a five star classic, but I shouldn’t have to look up his title defense history to be reminded. His matches with Adam Cole were mostly empty calories. Was his death match with Lance Archer really memorable or did you have to look it up on Cagematch like I did? Unmemorable doesn’t equal bad, but it sure doesn’t equal good.
The whole point of *gestures to the 3000 other words in the column* this is to experience something memorable, because isn’t that the point of life? To have experiences and make memories? There is plenty of room on team #SmellTheRoses (shouts to Adam Levitan) and we are a very welcoming bunch.
Page’s mic work the last few weeks has been the best of his career, and I can’t help but wonder if that’s because of who his dance partner is. He might not be The Best In The World anymore, but very few are better when it comes to building something big and telling an actual story than CM Punk. The rust might show in the ring, but performers at his level don’t just forget how to talk. That’s innate to who he is.
While the quality of the mic work has been good all around, the content and messaging has been a bit confusing. When Page said he’s protecting AEW from Punk, what does that really mean? He alluded to seeing thing happening off camera, but what things? The announcers were all torqued up about Page hitting Punk at the end of the segment, and saying Punk got in his head…but Punk pushed him first? These are, admittedly, small things. The quality in performance has elevated this feud a bit.
I’m not sure what the outcome of this match will be, but I am pretty certain Hangman is going to beat on Punk bad. He might not win, but this is a different version of Hangman – one that seems out for literal blood. I think that’s enough for him to retain.
Editor’s Note: The following is an opinion-based preview and reflects that of the writer and not of our website.
13 Conversations About One Thing is a movie and one that I like very much. It’s also something you can say at work that makes you sound smarter than you are. If you are in a meeting and find the room talking in circles quite a bit, just say ‘It sounds like we’re having 13 conversations about one thing here’ and watch people tilt their heads to the side and nod. So wise, so well said.
The movie tells the story of a handful of individual characters that all wind up intersecting in some way. I’m a sucker for both vignette films and Alan Arkin so this is right up my alley. NXT 2.0 reminds me of that movie.
Individual stories are being told, but they aren’t completely isolated into themselves like they used to be. Characters interact with each other in ways other than to set up matches. It feels more like an organic and a more natural environment. It’s more aligned with how the real world works. I don’t just work with or see the same two people for three months. Other people float into and out of our lives all the time. I guess I just like the ‘art’ I consume to imitate my life.
All of this is a long-winded way to say I am trying on a very special, very new format for this preview. Since this is the weekend of The Most Stupendous™ WrestleMania of all time, I decided to bust out a different format that I have been sitting on for a while.
Instead of the usual predictions and match write-ups, I’m going to write 13 observations with the ‘One Thing’ being NXT. Everything is going to relate to the current landscape of the now technicolor brand. I know change can be scary, but I do hope you’ll indulge a man looking to spice up his Internet words a bit.
Welcome to your NXT Stand & Deliver preview: 13 Observations About One Thing.
1. NXT 2.0 is…really good.
It took some time to get there, but NXT is once again a good wrestling product. The days of a card full of 25+ minute epics are probably over…which isn’t a bad thing. Those cards and matches were still good (and often great, but the product had become homogenized to a certain extent. A lot of things looked and felt the same. Other than charisma, what was the real difference between Rod Strong and Adam Cole matches?
I loved the black and gold era of NXT more than anything. It brought back my love for wrestling and got me this gig (for which I am deeply grateful), but where else did it have to go? It had reached its ceiling.
NXT 2.0 is nothing like that, but it’s probably a better springboard for main roster success. It feels a lot like the wrestling of yesteryear where the wrestlers were characters first. Heck, a bunch of them even had an occupation. Let’s not pretend we didn’t grow up watching a tax man, a prison guard, and a truck driver on our screens. Surely a school teacher, a woman who loves to relax, and mean Europeans aren’t a bridge too far. There’s still a segment or two each week that makes me suck in through my teeth with second-hand embarrassment, but those are fewer and further between these days.
The product is different and it might not be for everyone but nothing ever is. I was as sad as anyone when the switch happened, but as each week passes, I find myself drawn to it more. Before I was drawn to the show and the brand itself. I knew that no matter what, I was going to see good wrestling. Now I’m more drawn to individual segments and characters. Every Diamond Mine segment is a must-watch and nothing is funnier on any wrestling program than Andre Chase. Our attention spans have never been shorter and getting people to fall in love with the characters lets them tune in and out as they see fit which is how we consume content anyway.
2. NXT 2.0 is…really horny.
Other than Finn Balor and like six months of Scarlett, the previous version of NXT had zero sex appeal. It was borderline puritanical. Even the Quaker Oats guy thought they were a bit chaste.
But now? Goodness gracious, sakes alive. Nikkita Lyons seems to only exist to cause the Internet to explode with thirst. Toxic Attraction? Sheesh. Tiffany Stratton. The Persia Pirotta/Duke Hudson and Indi Hartwell/Dexter Lumis pseudo makeout contest. Everything, all of that. Just outrageously horny. And, in a way, it makes sense. Who is more sexually repressed than pro wrestling fans? Look at how many grown men buy Alexa Bliss merch and tell me it’s not the thirstiest (and problematic) corner of the internet. To whoever edits this, please leave this in. I feel am very passionate about this and am also very correct.
3. This timeslot stinks!
It’s a beautiful spring day. The world is ready to come out of *sigh* another long Covid winter and WWE wants us to watch 7+ hours of wrestling on a Saturday. It’s an awfully big ask. WrestleMania moving to two nights means either NXT or the Hall of Fame has to give. With such a big deal being made about this being in Texas and The Undertaker being inducted, it makes a fair bit of sense to punt NXT to Saturday morning but i still stinks and I hate it.
4. LA Knight is shockingly over, but Gunther is comin’.
I don’t quite understand how Knight became a face the audience loves so much, but that’s where we are. It goes completely against his natural alignment. He’s someone you just really, really want to loathe. That’s probably where he ultimately winds up, but it speaks to his talents on the mic that he could flip a crowd as he did. He’s a ready made heel for Raw or SmackDown, but has shown the versatility to be more than that.
Unfortunately, however, he is running into inevitability. Not to overuse what has become a very overused Marvel term, but that is what Gunther nee WALTER is. No one hits harder and there are very few better. He’s still one of the best things going, of any name, anywhere. Knight is probably gone as soon as next week and NXT should be built around Gunther and Imperium for at least through the end of the year.
5. Carmelo Hayes feels like the biggest star on the brand.
Bron Breakker is going to ruin my Grammarly plug-in and be WWE Champion one day. Mandy Rose is a star outside of wrestling. But no one does a better job making themselves seem like the biggest deal on the planet than Hayes. He can do comedy, he can do standard pre-tapes, he can do live promos, and oh yeah, he’s sensational in the ring. Do I have a soft spot from watching this dude in the Northeast indies? Yes, of course. Has he done everything he possibly can to make the North American Championship be the A-Championship? Also, yes. The character doesn’t feel forced and he does one of the hardest things a wrestler can do: speak naturally. Melo really doesn’t miss.
6. Trick Williams might be just as good.
I have no idea what Trick can do in the ring, but as Carmelo’s second, he’s been a revelation. The chemistry these two have is off the charts. They play off each other so well and seem to genuinely enjoy working with each other. There is nothing better than two pals yukkin’ it up and having a time on our nationally televised wrestling programs.
I have no idea if he can go in the ring, but it almost doesn’t matter at this point. Everything else is so good and so fun that if there is even a modicum of ability in the ring – and there probably is considering the dude was a wide receiver at South Carolina – then, well, you’re looking at a star, baby.
7. Tomasso Ciampa.
The story of NXT can’t be told without Ciampa.
Recency bias might have soured opinions on him, but let’s not forget just how big a moment his turning heel on Johnny Gargano was. His catchphrase became ‘This is my moment’ and before Keith Lee took on the unofficial nickname of ‘moment maker,’ that’s what Ciampa was. From the classic match with The Revival in Toronto, the already mentioned heel turn, blasting Gargano with a crutch in Philadelphia, the unsanctioned match in New Orleans, etc., etc., etc. The man created MOMENTS for us.
He’s not the best NXT Champion of all time, but he might be the most memorable because of his relationship with the belt itself. He was obsessed with it. He personified it, gave it a name, and loved it. It fueled his entire existence. Every champion wants to be champion forever, but he needed to be champion. When he didn’t have the belt, it consumed him. He was by far the more interesting player in the Gargano/Ciampa endless feud and was one of the more compelling characters of the black and gold era.
8. The Women’s title match could steal the show.
I absolutely love how we got here. Kay Lee Ray and Io Shirai saying ‘Nah, we’re good’ when it comes to the NXT Women’s Tag Titles was so unexpected and set up what should be a really fun four-way. Granted, this says a lot of things about those tag titles and none of them are good! Nevertheless, it brought us to a very good title match. Hopefully, a four-way match spares Shirai from doing something truly insane but knowing her, that is super not happening.
A match like this is perfect for someone like Mandy Rose: someone who isn’t at her best when she’s responsible for carrying the match, but can more than hold her own when others are leading the way. And once again, I am reminding you that she has the best knee strike in the biz. KLR is as good as anyon and it’s great that she’s on a much bigger stage. That leaves Cora Jade, who gets her own section just below. This is going to be a fun one.
9. The Internet needs to take a deep, calming breath when it comes to Cora Jade.
Wrestling Internet people, as always, seem to have curiously strong opinions about Jade. The Internet stays undefeated at being remarkably unnecessary. It outright refuses to have a regular one and insists on dialing it up as high as possible on absolutely everything. Having a Twitter account does not make anyone contractually obligated to have an opinion on everything. Seems exhausting!
Jade does not need to be reminded of how young she appears. She was born in this millennium, which seems like an impossible thing to write, but it’s true. Not everything should be a referendum on how someone looks. It’s a shame that’s what gets all the focus because Jade kind of has ‘it.’ She’s got that unteachable ability to connect with the audience as a babyface. They just love her, man. She’s not quite there from an in-ring standpoint, but who is at 21? Who’s doing anything at a high level at 21? You can teach people who love wrestling to get better at actual wrestling and Cora loves wrestling. You can’t teach this kind of connection. If they book this right, her eventually winning the title will be a huge moment for the brand.
10. The Creed Brothers shouldn’t be here very long.
If there wasn’t an actual Steiner on NXT, these two would feel like the closest things to just that. For being so young, it is downright frightening how good they are. And they are actual brothers! We love a good set of wrestling bros, don’t we folks? They move so suddenly and so smoothly that it’s incredible to watch…and they have only been on TV since August. That seems impossible for how good they already are.
These two are exactly what NXT is after: legitimate athletes that they can turn into pro wrestlers. Great athleticism isn’t a prerequisite to being a great wrestler, but being a great athlete is a prerequisite for being the next Brock Lesnar which is clearly what WWE is after. They might not be ready now, but they aren’t far off. We shouldn’t get used to seeing Brutus and Julius (LOL) on Tuesdays, because Mondays or Fridays are calling very soon.
11. Malcolm Bivens is simply the best.
A famous and egregiously overused anecdote in wrestling is the one about Ric Flair wrestling a broomstick and getting it over. In the same vein, there is nothing on God’s green that Bivens could not get over given mic time. The man is hilariously perfect. He has essentially remade Catch Point in NXT and guess what? It’s great. I love the idea of him having a rotating stable of real-ass wrestlers to build up and send on their way. The best on the microphone, the best facials and reactions this side of Paul Heyman, and the best Twitter account in pro wrestling. There is not enough time in the world to appropriately praise Bivens, but I’ll take every opportunity I can to do just that.
12. Dolph Ziggler winning the NXT title was a good thing.
Ziggler has been great since he’s been in NXT. He’s hitting exactly the right notes to build this match. Talking about how he has to do the media because no one knows who Bron Breakker is. And he’s totally right. If you’re reading this, it’s too late because you already know who Bron is. You know his talent, you know his superstar ceiling.
But for everyone else, they have probably don’t know who he is. They couldn’t tell him from Adam. 626,000 people watched NXT this week. Raw had almost two million viewers this week. Dolph’s reach is just greater and being in a program with someone like Dolph is going to do wonders for Bron’s future. He’s not going to have to carry the main event on his own. He’s getting more exposure both on NXT and a taste of the main roster. These are all good things made possible just by Ziggler being around.
By Dolph’s own admission, he was stale. He wasn’t doing a whole lot. He has the Dirty Dawgz with Bob Roode which is fine. But that’s all it’s ever going to be. This immediately freshened up his character. Do you know what happened when he won the NXT title? I searched his name on Twitter. (When is the last time any of you have searched for Dolph Ziggler on the bird app?) This whole plot twist has served the dual purposes of making it feel like anything can happen on NXT and adding some much-needed life into a character that wasn’t doing all that much.
If people from the main roster are going to pop in and out of NXT, things like this need to happen to keep interest high. We need to believe something can happen when people from Monday and Friday come to Florida on Tuesday.
13. Bron Breakker is too big and too good to fail.
The big strong boy gets saved for last. He’s just so good. He has only had FIFTEEN televised matches. AP style says not to write out numbers over ten, but I had to write that out just so I could put it in all caps. If he is this good this fast, it’s frightening to imagine what his actual ceiling is. Does it even exist? With a bit of seasoning, this is a no doubt, top-of-the-card main eventer.
Everything I said about the Creed Brothers above goes double here. He’s got all the bonafides plus the Hall of Fame legacy. This isn’t a matter of if, it’s just a matter of when.
It’s call-up season szn and I think this is it for Bron in NXT. Their SVP of Global Talent said the following earlier this week: “The second you enter our developmental program and then potentially end up on NXT TV and then onto Smackdown or Raw, you want that number to be 25, not 30 or 35.”
The days of years-long NXT runs for people with superstar ceilings are over. As soon as they show they can do it, they are gonna go up and get finished there. I mean, Bron was already the NXT Champion, so what else is left for him to do? If you’re already scratching at the top, there isn’t much room to grow. It’s going to be weird seeing Dolph Ziggler with his hand raised closing out a not-so-TakeOver but that’s where we’re going. Okay, I lied. I made one prediction.
Tony Khan’s All Elite Wrestling was not supposed to succeed. If it lived for a month, it wasn’t supposed to be good. In fact, it hasn’t been good; most of the first nine weeks of television have been great.
AEW is a company that did not have TV in August, and outside of a couple pay-per-views and spot shows on Turner’s B/R Live app, it was brand new. Even optimists saw a hard six months for the company as it delved into weekly TV.
Instead, it has been a great six weeks of roaring crowds, of wrestlers off the creative leashes and performing with passion not seen outside Japan and the best international promotions, and a mishmash of indie wrestlers that were supposed to bomb but have instead been embraced and are slowly becoming stars.
The kid of a billionaire from Illinois wasn’t supposed to start a wrestling company and not only have a smooth operation, but a successful one. In doing so, he’s killed almost all of the previous notions about the wrestling business, and he’s found that failure will make you a punchline on podcasts, but success will make you hated.
Khan has been slandered as a “money mark” by the old guard of prognosticators in the wrestling media. “Mark” is a slur in the wrestling vernacular. It means you’re a fool who gives up their money for nothing. You’re the idiot who can’t manage the backstage politics, the ignorant sucker who doesn’t get the small stuff you can only learn through decades of mafia-like ritual and endless weeks on the road.
To prove how big of a mark Khan was, he hired four misfits as his executive management: an indie darling tag team, an oddball Canadian who quit WWE’s developmental program to wrestle matches in creek beds in Japan, and a WWE castoff who was pulled from television and expected to be grateful anyway.
While Khan’s success is the death knell of many of the notions of what it means to succeed in wrestling in the 2010s and beyond, it also signals the full legitimacy of the wrestling business. What’s more legitimate than a company founded by an NFL billionaire? This is a club even the President of the United States was denied entry to. It was negotiating a TV deal with major cable networks before putting on their first match.
Khan took wrestling and made it a legitimate business. On the other side, Vince McMahon has always held disgust for pro wrestling judging by how he’s produced it and tried to run from it. He has tried to desperately funnel his way into multiple businesses like movie studios that failed, two attempts at starting a new football league including one that’s earmarked for a quarter of the money from WWE’s new TV deals, and a bodybuilding federation. These weren’t business ventures, these were personal ventures to give McMahon the legitimacy he always craved.
AEW’s weaknesses are its strengths. The Young Bucks survived on their own merchandise business, by leveraging social media, and by creating a weekly YouTube show that’s pushed the creative bounds of the wrestlers involved and the platform in terms of using it to keep your personal business afloat.
Kenny Omega wanted more out of pro wrestling than what was in the United States, so he went to Japan and found inspiration in DDT Pro and New Japan. He became a resident and learned the language as he embraced the culture, and put on four of the greatest matches in the history of the business. He’s taken storytelling, psychology, and athleticism to another level.
Cody Rhodes had to watch his career fizzle and was met with disgust when he asked for his release from WWE. Within three years, he is one of the biggest stars in U.S. wrestling, one of its top draws, and one of its best performers. Unless John Cena or the Rock returns, Rhodes is the top babyface in the business. While Paul Levesque married his way into executive management, Rhodes earned his after three years at the so-called bingo halls, wrestling in the Tokyo Dome, and helming the best year in the history of Ring of Honor.
He studied independent wrestling and with his infamous checklist, he embraced it. He knew the importance of appearing in Pro Wrestling Guerilla, and his infamous Twitter checklist showed he had an understanding of who and what was popular and deemed important by fans. This simple move made him legit to indie wrestling fans like few WWE stars have managed. It also showed he was better promoting himself than the WWE marketing machine. He went back to his roots, ones he never knew he had, and came out the other side a star.
The misfits turned out to be geniuses. The Elite should be at the Aspen Institute or giving TED talks to entrepreneurs. Lord knows many need the help.
After two months of analysis, I’m less worried about AEW than WWE. AEW has long-term plans and yet remained flexible. It has set expectations to adhere to and it doesn’t involve getting bogged down with the other company down the digital dial. They are giving their wrestlers freedom and want them to become draws – they want them to become stars.
That was something WWE used to be very good at doing. They stopped and for one simple reason; Vince McMahon thought WCW’s rise was built on making wrestlers stars only to have them leave for more cash at the first chance.
Ironically, WWE is now in the situation often found at many of those “small fiefdoms” he so snarkily called small territories in a Sports Illustrated interview during the 1980s, where territories trusted the title only to family. The McMahons are the stars of WWE, and the WWE brand means everything. There are no stars outside of the family, and any wrestler perceived as such isn’t – they’re replaceable. That’s why fans have had to witness the grind of 50/50 booking and a company that cuts the legs off its own talent more than the competition ever could.
WWE will be around, but its monopoly days are over. As someone who has witnessed the demise of the newspaper and automotive industries up close, the similarities are startling. I don’t believe the company has the ability to change, because the template it has now set has been built and engrained for 20 years. They aren’t nimble enough on social media. The AEW guys are masters of that, and they’re quicker. If WWE makes a mark on a show, AEW counters it on social media or YouTube the next day.
AEW doesn’t look at WWE as competition the same way WWE does. WWE wants to crush them and put them out of business. AEW deals with them as another business in a competitive market in which doing your best business means servicing your customers. Ask WWE fans of recent years how well their company is doing there.
WWE has billions of dollars in TV deals going into the next decade. That should mean financial security, but this is also a company that’s adding years to deals and doubling pay, sometimes tripling it in some occasions, to lock talent away from AEW. The last estimate I read said WWE has over 200 wrestlers on contract. That alone means AEW has been a success for wrestlers.
But it hasn’t stopped with the checkbook. WWE has been hot-shotting for weeks and even before AEW was on TV. Its Saudi Arabia shows are a black eye to the company, and its move of Smackdown to Fox has left the company at the mercy of TV networks more so than it has ever been previously.
With the money comes the responsibility to deliver. WWE loaded its Wednesday NXT show with main roster talent and managed a win of 20,000 total viewers two weeks ago. AEW won every ratings category but 50+ and is still dominating in the core 18-35 and 18-49 demographics that advertisers pay the most attention to.
For those that think this is luck, keep in mind The Elite were regularly sponsored on its YouTube show by major companies, and even included some in matches (Cracker Barrel most prominently, as well as TGIF restaurants). WWE has always had the advantage on the business side, but that’s no longer the case. The Khan family runs Flex-N-Gate, building bumpers for a large portion of the world’s automotive manufacturers.
As much vitriol fans, former wrestling bookers, and media have for AEW, it doesn’t change that what we are seeing is a seismic event in the wrestling business, one there is no going back from. The carnival days are finally dead and for good. While many thought this was the case beforehand, WWE’s recent fiasco in Saudi Arabia with its talent show this wasn’t the case. AEW is the real deal.
The sunshine is now in, and many are running to the shadows – scared.
B.J. Bethel covered wrestling from 1998 to 2003 focusing on WWE’s developmental territories. He has covered the Russian election interference scandal and the Midwest opioid crisis for the Sydney Morning Herald. He has had bylines in the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, and RogerEbert.com.
