Wrestling Thread

[American Dragon]

It's a nothing burger. Paramount will be making the decision about AEW's media rights, not WBD. No s*it, Paramount just agreed to buy WBD, of course they will be the ones making the decision. Literally nothing in that is actual news.

Also, the original source - Nick LoPiccolo - for that guys article is someone who is more biased against AEW than I am biased against WWE. His source got fired from the talent agency he was an agent for because he can’t stop crashing out about AEW on Twitter.

And the guy that wrote the article is a WWE mark. The only other time he has written an article involving AEW was when that LoPiccolo guy accused Tony Khan for getting him fired.

 

[American Dragon]

Be careful dragon

I use my real name on there and my name is so common and unoriginal that I'm virtually ungoogleable. So good luck with that. I know several other people just within my own city that have the same name as me.

 

[American Dragon]

Cody wrestled 72 matches in his entire AEW career but wrestled in 113 matches for WWE in the 2004 alone. Punk wrestled 33 times in his AEW run but wrestled 38 times for WWE last year. It looks like AEW would be the easier workload since they don't have house shows.

WWE has basically gotten rid of house shows. They do one tour a year in the US and then do one when they go to Europe.

Cody worked 36 matches last year. H's at 17 this year.

Punk worked 38 matches last year. He's at 12 this year. He's had two matches total from February to today.

 

[American Dragon]

Yeah, not sure what Dragon is saying there. Weeks before Punk won the title, he posted an image of a skeleton with the caption "clickity clack" and said that's him after seeing his new schedule. Not everyone turns into Reigns or Brock at the top and I give those guys slack. Both paid their dues, started in developmental, actually move the needle, and one of them is a cancer survivor and spent years on every show. Guys like Punk and Cody are all over the place doing PR and showing up early. Most of the time Cody is showing up hours before SD at a Kroger and meeting fans. I know Knight wrestled an insane amount last year and Priest I think the year before.

On the above tweet, I think "Self Made" is an AEW mark. He says TKO "tried to force" New Day into a new contract. Anyone wanna tell me how that works? Did someone hold Kofi and Woods down by force and they escaped TKO's evil lair? TKO made an offer, New Day declined said offer. No one forced anyone to do anything. Good lord.

Ibou is a CM Punk mark above anything else. Back a couple years ago he said AEW should be a PPV only company because the TV was that bad in his opinion. His favorite promotion in wrestling right now is New Japan.

 

[American Dragon]

Wrestlers need options and this is why there needs to be more than just one or two major promotions.

Some fans were happy when WCW closed its doors but was the overall product better when WWE pretty much ran without much competition?

Pretty much impossible for a legit third to ever come around with as much as WWE has crowded out the tv market with exclusivity clauses. No one with the money to invest in making a legit third company is going to do it.

AEW had a very small window to work with to be viable and even then it was a confluence of a whole bunch of things coming together all at once that’s likely never going to happen again.

And now the barriers to entry are more massive than it’s ever been, most especially because of media consolidation and WWE spreading themselves out all over the place to limit options for everyone else.

AEW’s existence as a viable #2 basically eliminates the biggest major factor that allowed for the rise of AEW - the TV wrestling product in 2018 was garbage and had been for years. Ever since AEW started, there’s always been at least one tv wrestling product producing good tv.

Let’s say all the other conditions are ripe for a #3 to come along, what are the chances both AEW and WWE are going to be considered widely garbage for a long enough period of time for enough desire for a #3 to become a realistic possibility?

 

[Laparkafan]

Pretty much impossible for a legit third to ever come around with as much as WWE has crowded out the tv market with exclusivity clauses. No one with the money to invest in making a legit third company is going to do it.

AEW had a very small window to work with to be viable and even then it was a confluence of a whole bunch of things coming together all at once that’s likely never going to happen again.

And now the barriers to entry are more massive than it’s ever been, most especially because of media consolidation and WWE spreading themselves out all over the place to limit options for everyone else.

AEW’s existence as a viable #2 basically eliminates the biggest major factor that allowed for the rise of AEW - the TV wrestling product in 2018 was garbage and had been for years. Ever since AEW started, there’s always been at least one tv wrestling product producing good tv.

Let’s say all the other conditions are ripe for a #3 to come along, what are the chances both AEW and WWE are going to be considered widely garbage for a long enough period of time for enough desire for a #3 to become a realistic possibility?

New Japan tried a quasi American expansion but once their talent got raided (wwe/omega and bucks joining AEW) it ended quickly.

 

[American Dragon]

New Japan tried a quasi American expansion but once their talent got raided (wwe/omega and bucks joining AEW) it ended quickly.

Everything about it was ill conceived, though partly in hindsight

Timing ended up being terrible - they got it started not long before the pandemic.

People joke about how many New Japan talent, specifically the Japanese talent, treat American shows as a vacation because they don’t put in much effort during matches. Okada and Naito were the worst offenders. You never got Best in the World Okada when he did NJPW USA show, you got House Show Okada. Which is another derogatory term that came about for Okada because Okada would often get booked in multi-man matches on their equivalent of house shows (though not the same because everything is canon in NJPW) and not put in much of an effort.

Talent raids didn’t help either, but that was only part of the problem with talent. After a while they stopped sending or only sparingly sending a lot of the major NJPW talent because a lot of them didn't want to work in the USA to begin with. Who wants to watch shows centered around midcarders, low midcarders, and generic New Japan Dojo Young Boys from the west? Ever looked at a card from their USA PPVs from the last 2-3 years? It's no ideal, STARDOM and big name AEW talent are almost the biggest draw on them anymore.

New Japan USA PPV production values are terrible. I can't imagine the weekly show was any better.