General

Vince being there did not stop Kevin Owens and GUNTHER from putting on one hell of a match 🤌

RIP Iron Shiek. Respect the legend or he make you humble like he did that jabroni Hulk Hogan.

RIP Bubba, long live Sheiky Baby

Pretty crazy. Sting’s first video game appearance in WCW Wrestling (NES, 1989), and his most recent video game appearance in AEW Fight Forever (2023, obv).

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I preordered AEW Elite edition digitally. I haven't preordered a game in 15 years, never bought a new game digitally, and have never purchased the higher edition. All that to say I hope this doesn't suck haha. I'm very much ready to play this.

I wanted to go for the Elite Edition but I’m gonna be using Paypal’s Pay in 4 function and no website that uses that seems to have that one for preorder unfortunately. Not bothering with Gamestop again after them screwing me out of my Zelda preorder. I’ll just snag the DLCs I want down the line.

Depending on reviews I might pick it up a week or so after launch. I was going to pre-order but am wanting a new tattoo and got a couple upcoming concerts I'll be attending and dunno what I'll be spending on merch.

Firmly in the waiting for reviews section I hate the art style they went for. I just think it looks amateur and hopefully they can go for full entrances next time. This reeks of TNA Impact! without the awesome graphics. Half done gameplay and the mini games will be a diversion of questionable quality. I hope it’s the second coming of No Mercy, but I’m expecting a lot worse. I hope it’s good because I want more good wrestling games.

Oh yeah. They released the Macho Man A&E Biography on YouTube. I think it’s from last year or the year before. What the fudge were they thinking on the second half of that episode? Yeah, the guy wasn’t perfect by any means and made some questionable decisions like a rap album, but why the hatchet job? I know they had to touch on the Hogan heat and the rap album and how Miss Elizabeth died and everything, but fudging hell that was a hatchet job. Might be biased as he’s the best there ever was, but that was bullcrap. I wish I hadn’t watched it at all.

Imagine that Charlotte returns, immediately demands a title match. Who didn't see that coming?
Honestly more tired of her than I ever was of Cena and Reigns when they were being shoved down our throats.

I'm not asking for much, I just want Andrade to knock her up so she's off TV for a solid year, at least. Once again my prayers go unanswered. If that Asuka curse is true, maybe it happens soon.

Is Paul Heyman pretty much a lock for the Hall Of Fame next year in Philly? As soon as I heard it was gonna be in Philly I was hoping Tommy Dreamer or Tazz would get inducted to give ECW some love, but the more I think about it, it's gotta be Heyman himself...right? If possible I'd hope they can work out a deal so he can get inducted by multiple guys who wouldn't be anything without ECW.

I don’t think Paul would want a Hall of Fame induction until he’s completely done. It makes all the sense in the world, but I don’t see it happening quite yet. I do see some ECW guys getting inducted, like probably Sabu and Sandman and Dreamer, but not Paul. Maybe even Tod? But I don’t see Taz because of the AEW thing. I hope they don’t do all the dead ECW guys in the legacy thing either, because that would be cheap.

A look at the mini-games in the AEW game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a15SkveNIdk

Pretty neat. The mini games are the things I’m least interested in but some of those looked like they could be fun and I love card games so it’s whatever to me. If the core gameplay is good, there’s no harm in having some extra variety in there.

As long as they are pretty non invasive I don't really care about them. The CAW is said to be limited, but I imagine if there is enough of a base and enough people asking for it that could be rectified in a future DLC or patch.

Yeah, just keep the mini-game stuff optional and I won't have a problem with it being there. I'm buying it for the wrasslin' not because I wanna play Wii Party or something.

tfw your entrance theme is more over than you
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He looked legitimately annoyed at the crowd lol

BucketofJustice wrote:


I watched this last night. ngl, pretty damn creepy that he had cameras set up in Gorgeous George's house. I never knew about that. I guess the jealousy issues didn't stop after the split from Elizabeth.

I also watched the one about Ultimate Warrior. They made sure to cover his homophobic rants too, so it just seems like they want to cover the highs and lows, which I don't mind.
But I watched the one about Bret Hart too and I don't recall anything negative being said about him (maybe because he's still alive and participated in it?). I recall Bret saying in his book that unlike a lot of other wrestlers, his problem was never with drug addiction, it was with having sex with ring rats while on the road and having to be away from his wife for long stretches of time. Immediately when I first heard that I remembered when I was a kid and my oldest sister was working at a hotel in Upstate NY, Bret Hart was staying there and as two women were leaving his room he gave them tickets to the event in town. He probably boned them.

Probably did bone them. He did say he was really unfaithful. I also heard a lot of stories about Bret doing cocaine but if he did it didn’t become a problem, at least not to the point it did with Bulldog and Anvil. The Bret biography was decent, as was the Warrior one. I don’t think either of them focused on things the way they should, but I was also really glad they weren’t copycats of Dark Side of the Ring.

Looks like SmackDown ended with a bang last night, I'm going to have to download it and watch that segment.
I was watching for the first hour, but then to kick off hour two they bring out Charlotte Flair (who looks more and more like Dee Snider every time she returns from time off due to injury/surgery) and I turned it off immediately. That's some real "go away" heat.

Haha I don’t hate Charlotte like you do, but yeah her constantly leaving and coming back and getting immediate title shots and monopolizing that scene is getting old. Bianca is starting to tread that water for me too. Definitely watch that last 25 minutes or so. It was great.

It was pretty good for what it was, but what is was was just the same “will he/won’t he” story beat they’ve done like 4 times since before the Royal Rumble. They’ve literally just been doing the same “swerve” anytime it comes to Roman. If I need to see Solo’s “stunned anger” face one more time, I’m gonna lol.

Looking forward to checking out Collision tonight. It'll be in town on August 12, but before I buy a ticket they're gonna have to convince me the show is worth something beyond the first week or two and it won't fall off the way Rampage did.

Yah, I think they’d have to put a little more into Collision than Rampage. 1) it’s live, 2) it’s prime time, 3) it’s 2 hours, 4) its theme song is “Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting” by Elton John lol

Rampage definitely lost a bit of its luster when they decided to make it a strictly taped show, but the past month or 2 have gotten back into a good rhythm imo. Most of the “entertainment” shenanigans happen on that show, and then some real good random matches thrown in. Still a fun watch when I’ve got nothing else to do

Gonna give AEW another chance tonight with Collision. I hope it’s better than the last time I watched Dynamite was, which was about a year ago.

I thought Jim Ross was supposed to be on commentary?

I think he’s just going to give “analysis”, whatever that means.

Nice worked shoot from Punk to open. 100% gonna lead to an on screen feud with the Elite in some fashion.

Oh damn
https://twitter.com/JRsBBQ/status/1670079797840445...

Holy crap that looks gnarly.

There’s too many titles. Everyone has a belt. Whether it’s AEW or RoH or New Japan Strong… too many people here have belts. Some of them aren’t even announced as a champion even though they have a belt, like Willow. I don’t think Buddy Matthews got announced as a Trios champion either. Also I’m pretty sure Dasha called him Buddy Murphy.

Anyway, some stuff is hitting and some isn’t. It’s to be expected. Apparently the live crowd loved Buddy vs. Andrade, but I find Andrade boring. Always have. He was best in NXT, but hasn’t been able to recapture that since.

Really liked Miro returning, and the women’s match was decent. What they’ve done, or haven’t done, with Wardlow is criminal. He had so much momentum a year ago, and for him to have nothing even close now is very disheartening.

The Punk promo was really good. We’ll see where it goes. I do hope the soft brand split thing isn’t true, mostly because it’s fudging stupid that a bunch of grown ups have to be on separate shows because a few of them can’t act like they’re grown up.

Jeff Jarrett in 2023 rules too.

Little things like that are part of why I love AEW. Folks who take wrestling way too seriously are STILL trying to take the piss out of AEW for that blunder to this day, meanwhile AEW are cracking jokes about it.

As for Collision, it was alright. Didn’t blow me away or anything but I’m always down for another wrestling show that puts the emphasis on the in-ring product. Punk looked sort of out of shape but he was never a body guy so whatev, at least he was fluid in his movements. That main event match was pretty fun, especially the Punk/Joe bits. We need another singles match between those two. I love how Punk infamously hates chops but Joe just said “tough crap” and gave him some of the stiffest I’ve seen in a while.

Hey having the choice is funny. Good on them to taking the negative and spinning it as best they can.

I liked Collision. I just restarted my Sling subscription for a month and if I’m home then I’ll try Dynamite on again and see what happens. I hope it’s better than it was last time when I didn’t like it so much.

Do you remember what happened on that episode of Dynamite? Just curious. I can’t recall anything that was so abhorrently bad that it’d make me stop watching (since I still watch haha)

Obv not gonna judge, we all have our tastes, just interested as to what turned you off to it.

I don’t remember anything about it. It was as much a tipping point as much as anything else. It was shortly after one of the PPVs early last year. I don’t remember if it was the one with MJF vs. Punk or the one with Wardlow and MJF. I just saw a bunch of crap and I didn’t remember a damn thing, and that’s the takeaway I got was that my eyes glazed over for the umpteenth time and I was letting my Sling sub go anyway. I want reasons for matches, whether it’s storyline based or rising up the ranks or whatever, and I don’t need to see 12 Canadian Destroyers and every other kind of dive in the opening match.

Gotcha. I honestly don't expect you'll be entirely into Dynamite at this point either then. They've put more emphasis on luchadores as of late, what with guys like Bandido, Kommander, Vikingo, etc, coming in and making waves, so there's still a ton of high spots. I don't mind them obviously, but if they're not your thing then I don't expect you'll be interested. But heck, who knows, maybe they'll win you over. I'd definitely say give it a go.

As for the spots in opening matches situation, I think I just have a different philosophy there. The opener is usually designed to be fast paced and entertaining over anything else, so dives should be expected in my opinion. Canadian Destroyers are a little overplayed for sure, but moves that were once finishers just become commonplace over time. I still find them impressive, so it's whatev in my book.

I was mostly just interested in your take because AEW strikes a far larger resemblance to something like mid-2000s ROH than, say, WWE (even with the former ROH talent they have), and considering you were one of the folks who helped ME get into that era of ROH, I was surprised to see you have as much disinterest as you do. But it's neither here nor there really, like I said, we all have our preferences.

Whoever negged my last post: you're part of the reason wrestling fans have a tough time discussing with any civility. It's okay to talk about this stuff, ya silly goose.

I’m not saying that opening matches shouldn’t be exciting and dynamic. I’m saying that if you do a zillion things in the opening match, what’s left for the other matches? You’ve seen it all already, no need to see everything else 8 more times. AEW doesn’t have nearly enough variety in what they do. Well, not the last time I saw Dynamite anyway. Collision was really good in my opinion. I do think they need to do more Collision type presentation. Hopefully they can keep that up.

I feel ya. I personally feel like there’s definitely enough variety but that’s just my opinion, interested to hear what you think come Wednesday. Collision definitely gave me a more “big guy/old school” vibe for sure, so maybe that’s how they plan to divvy it up.

gosh darn, after last night, the Forbidden Door card looks like it'll be the best money I'll have spent on pro wrestling in quite some time ($20, thanks VPN).

1. IWGP US Title: Kenny Omega (c) vs. Will Ospreay
2. Bryan Danielson vs. Kazuchika Okada
3. AEW World Title: MJF (c) vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi
4. IWGP World Heavyweight Title: Sanada (c) vs. Jungle Boy Jack Perry
5. Men's Owen Hart Cup First Round: CM Punk vs. Satoshi Kojima
6. Blackpool Combat Club (Jon Moxley, Claudio Castagnoli, Wheeler Yuta), Konosuke Takecrapa & Shota Umino vs. The Elite (Hangman Page, Nick Jackson, Matt Jackson), Eddie Kingston & Tomohiro Ishii
7. AEW International Title Four-Way: Orange Cassidy (c) vs. Zack Sabre Jr vs. Daniel Garcia vs. Katsuyori Shibata
8. AEW Women's World Title: Toni Storm (c) vs. Willow Nightingale
9. Sting, Darby Allin & ??? vs. Chris Jericho, Sammy Guevara & Minoru Suzuki
10. Women's Owen Hart Cup First Round (pre-show): Athena vs. Billie Starkz

That's an all-timer card right there. I could have maybe gone for splitting up some of the guys in the International title match... ZSJ is the NJPW TV champ and Shibata is the ROH Pure champ, so seeing those titles defended on the PPV would have been nice, but that match will absolutely be a banger regardless. Lack of Samoa Joe & Jay White/Bullet Club Gold is a little disappointing, but we still have Collision on Saturday so maybe they'll be added in somewhere. I'd love to see Tetsuya Naito thrown on the card somewhere too but I doubt that'll happen, and I expect Shingo Takagi to be Sting & Darby's partner. Though, Naito COULD fit in there too, being a rival of Jericho and all.

Otherwise, they're doing a great job building to this show despite the fact that both companies have their own busy schedules on entirely different sides of the planet. It's also nice that the majority of the matches have either little stories, or full blown stories, which wasn't the case due to injuries last year. Pumped for this one.