He gets it.

Gunter is not going to really go anywhere once his big long title reign is done. He'll either fade away quick or get repackaged into foreign comedy face when Imperium breaks up. There is a chance he doesn't fade away and just stays midcard for life.

Terrible take, and sounds like Blue Dot Man's career tbh.

Unless he has shown some outside the ring charisma I have not seen due to not watching outside major PPVs, dude has a ceiling.

I will say last time I tuned in to RAW was especially for Gunter/Gable... but again I probably would not have done so if it wasn't for the length of the title reign.

I think Gunther is very clearly the next heel World Champ, whether that is him beating Rollins or more likely about a year from now he ends Cody's WWE Championship reign.

I still think at some point they are going to separate the Universal and WWE Title again (they still have them listed separate on their website).

Could do a story where Roman defends the Universal Title on night one and the WWE Title on night two.

Gunther will be some sort of World Champion either heading into or coming out of Bash in Berlin. Yes, I know he is Austrian, but he’ll be pretty over.

There’s ways to work it, albeit they might also add “barriers”.

Have separate “divisions” like weight classes in fight sports. You can’t compete in 2 divisions at the same time. You have to “climb the rankings” in each division separately pretty much like in the video games. If Gunther decides he wants a shot at the World title he either vacates the IC belt or can’t move off until someone beats him for the belt. Then he has to climb the rankings in the “heavyweight” division.

The thing with Knight is interesting as there were some that felt like the title shit came too soon anyway. You have the conundrum of how do you build someone that’s already got the crowd behind them. Equally it stops you rushing someone to the top. Or you can do the occasional tourney where the rankings give you seedings or the top ranked guys get a bye to the next round. Or you do a “wild card” battle royal where the winner gets a shot despite not being the #1 ranked guy.

There’s ways to thread it in.

The easiest thing AEW could have done was to say wins on Dark don’t count to your record, or keep the top guys off the show.

I was comparing them due to an infamous tweet that Keith Lee made. After said tweet, their careers went in opposite directions.

https://www.reddit.com/r/SCJerk/comm...t=share_button

Best thing I ever saw lol

Lol, what did he say?

Too complicated. Totally unnecessary. If a guy is going to get a push, get them winning and insert them where it works. Take them out if it’s not working. Don’t create more work for yourself.

Didn't say it generally doesn't. My point was that if you're going to do a thing, commit to it. If you're going to drop it, drop it. But don't start doing rankings, quit doing rankings, then start pretending rankings matter again but only sometimes.

I go back to the WWE brand split, because it is the same principle - it only matters when there is a supposed "blockbuster trade!" or when they beat everyone over the head for it for about every 2 out of 3 Survivor Series down to talent wearing red or blue t-shirts every appearance. Then, they conveniently stop giving a shit and it goes back to being unimportant even to themselves and half the roster shows up on either show at any time because fuck it. Right up until a few years later when they act like they're starting it all over again, and there is strict adhearance... for a few months, maybe a year, then they mandate that all the talent are supposed to show up for both RAW and SD even though they aren't "booked" for the opposite show. Until they are. Then the veneer falls away again. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

Or, similarly, the idea of having two world champions. They are large enough and have enough people in "creative" that they should be able to focus on two different people with two lineages and trajectories. Right up until they inevitably want to put both belts on one guy. Then, when they get bored with having one dominating persona instead of two, they have to contrive a reason to have the champion drop one title instead of both. The simplest form would be to treat it more like boxing, and a contender is battling for one OR the other... but nope, the person wins both. Again, unless there is some arbitrary reason why they don't. And even with the split belts, they focus on one or the other again. Then pull gymnastics on ground rules like Roman not having title defenses for months at a time, but then, for someone they "need the belt off of", the company will dust off the old "...needs to be defended every 30 days or you're stripped" stipulation that magically was forgotten about when Brock Lesnar defended three times in a year. Either use the rule all the time, or retire it. Don't do both.

Which leads me back to rankings. Or tournament points. Or win/loss records. Or any sort of tangible recordable heirarchy that anyone tries to make a thing... if you are going to do that, you have to keep doing it. If it goes away, it needs to stay away. Its the seesawing that really kills everything.

LA Knight is pretty over and earning his spot. Which would make this a really bad time to decide the company would start a ranking system. Especially one that would lock him out of the main event picture... only to scrap it six months later and have someone like, say, in total ass pull fashion, Trick Williams leapfrog everyone and become a main roster big belt champion. The first thing would be bad, but if it's "the way of the world now", can be dealt with. But to fold the tents later - and not even in an appreciable amount of time later - makes it demonstrably worse from inconsistency and give people bad feelings for wasting time trying to get emotionally invested just for the rules to keep changing.

Lol.

Just don’t do it. It never works lol. It’s always a pain because you book yourself into a corner. Every time.

Sorry to be brief, I just have no sympathy for this company and what was an identifiably bad idea from the start.

lol LJ you're so brainwashed by Vince. Someone not doing songs and dances doesn't mean they don't have charisma. Smooth brained bullshit.

No, but to get over in North America they do need a rudimentary grasp of the English language and how to do a promo. I guess Nakamura gets the very occasional main event push, so Gunter could be like him... but he doesn't have as much non-verbal charisma as Nakamura either

Gunther has been excellent in all the interviews I’ve seen him in. When it comes to WWE promos, he’s seemed “fine” at the very worst. I actually love Nakamura and don’t shit on his WWE run, but I wouldn’t give Shinsuke the clear edge in charisma either. Gunther’s got a lot of appeal in basically being the best worker going today.

I’m getting pretty horny at the idea of Gunther vs. Dominik Mysterio. The crowd is going to be so into Gunther chopping the shit out of Dom Dom.

Trying to work out whether I’d most like to see Gunther take the WHT off Seth Rollins, Damian Priest, Sami Zayn or Brock Lesnar.

Outside option: Dominik somehow ends up in possession of the MITB title shot. Maybe Priest gets kayfabe injured in War Games to sell the concept. But Dom ends up as Senor Money in the Bank.

Dom wrestles CM Punk at WrestleMania. Lots of talk about how disrespectful CM Punk has been to Dom’s family over the years. Punk can beat Dom, but Dom still cashes in and becomes World Heavyweight Champion for Money in the Bank. Judgment Day vs. Imperium. Then at Berlin Brawl, Gunther beats Dom 1-on-1 to become WHC.

Then it turns out Rhea Ripley has been taking REAL good care of Damian Priest while he’s been injured.

The non-verbal charisma is there too, it just isn't the same as Nakamura.

He is a big dude and knows how to silently be imposing with his mannerisms. Again, from curtain to curtain, he has it - no questions.

How would you know he's wrong? You don't even watch the product lol.

Keith Lee is not charismatic. I can't remember if he ever was at this point.

Oh wait, we're talking about GUNTHER. Yeah, fuck off LJ you smooth brain.

Not going to lie: Christian vs. Gunther could have been a classic.

That is why I clarified with unless he has shown more on TV or lesser PPVs I haven't watched....

Whatever... I'm just enjoying the ride... and in a funny way I am now more invested in whoever eventually takes the title from Gunther than I am Roman since with Roman they literally just said "dunno" and made a whole other belt.

To their credit, they’ve also made the other belt boring.

Brandon Thurston has stated the obvious, in that AEW isn’t profitable and they’ll need a large TV deal to get them there. Like I’ve been saying, Collision probably exists because Dynamite isn’t worth it on it’s own. It’s a good thing AEW have tried their best to sabotage that for themselves.

AEW are reportedly doing 3-for-1 tickets and managed to get their Portland show over the 4k line.

NXT just got a 5 year deal from Network channel The CW, worth somewhere between $25.5-$35.5 million a year. If WBD is going to use that as a price point, AEW is going to be really hard pressed to get that $200 million per year deal Thurston said they need to become profitable.

Tony’s gonna need to do some splaining to daddy.

Just realized that with Tony being so desperate, Goldberg is probably due for a truck to pull up to his house any minute.

On Dynamite last night they made a few references that could maybe be construed as Punk references and it's now got a segment of the fanbase speculating that he's gonna be revealed as The Devil and that maybe the firing was all a work. And I don't get that at all. It's nearly impossible to fathom a work of that magnitude actually being pulled off.

One thing about wrestlers is that they're notoriously bad at keeping secrets. That's what made even Jim Cornette applaud AEW with the Brodie Lee stuff because it was completely unheard of for an entire locker room to actually keep a secret like that. But the AEW locker room back then was half the size it is now, there was very much the "big happy family" vibe at the time and most of all, it was a very real-life situation involving the tragic illness of a beloved colleague.

Can't imagine 200+ wrestlers + refs/agents/production + office staff all being in lockstep with a worked angle and corroborating the same story when asked by dirt sheets. I also can't really buy the idea that only those involved or some of the big names know it's a work and everyone else is in the dark, if that were the case I'd expect it to actually not be great for morale because, well, generally people don't like being lied to by their employers.

Oh and WBD would've needed some level of involvement too. Remember that SRS and Alvarez reached out to people there directly to gauge the reaction on Punk's firing. Can't really imagine a scenario where they would've been happy with a top star a new show is built around being taken offscreen 2 months in, let alone right as they were about to lose viewership to the college football season.

So even if somehow it was Punk as The Devil I'd think it would've been a fairly recent return agreement. Even that would be tough to keep under wraps with how Online the guy is and how many other people would've presumably needed to greenlight it and keep it in the dark. There's just no way in hell it wouldn't have leaked from somewhere.

More likely to me is that they've seen that WWE are continually dropping vague little Punk references themselves even while office staff there also deny he's coming in. It's obvious there's still a lot of people who think he's gonna be at Survivor Series and I'm sure there are people in AEW who feel the same way. If these even were Punk references last night they're probably just doing it because of all the ongoing speculation about where he's gonna end up.

Logically a worked firing would make zero sense/be of very little value to AEW anyway given the ripple effects resulting from it.

Tony Khan always wants to present himself as the babyface promoter. That was a lot easier to do when everyone was down on WWE and Vince was still the public face of it.
WWE have got better, Vince is more or less out of the picture, a lot of people have moved on from the Saudi Arabia stuff even though it's still happening.

WWE aren't, right now, the "heel" promotion. AEW aren't a heel promotion either but they've clearly lost their grasp on being the babyface promotion where everybody wants to work. They've been a bit chaotic this year, and their booking is a bit of a mess. CM Punk has a lot of fans, and Tony Khan had to know that firing him risked losing his fans with him, and why would you take that gamble for an angle?

When attendance is down, when AEW are running directly opposite NXT, when TV deals need renewing, all of that, why would they keep one of their biggest names off TV for months, let his departure derail the company's momentum and overshadow the success of Wembley? And do it all in a way that suggests it's very much not a storyline, and that he won't be coming back, if everything's actually fine and he's still working there?

There are a million ways you could've gotten to a potential Punk vs. MJF feud with the roles reversed - choosing a route which involves taking one of your most popular guys off of TV for months and objectively hurting numbers in the process would be a really dumb way to get to it.

To put it simply, why not make money from somebody when you could be making money from them?

Rumors that WWE is negotiating an ECW/TNN type situation and that they’ll snag a deal with WBD for Raw. :lol:

I’ve had the thought. AEW is floundering. Raw would bring more eyeballs and profits for WBD. From a promotional “war” aspect, the move makes sense on WWE’s side. But that’s exactly the sort of reason someone might make it up. They would have obviously talked to WBD though.

Seems like it would be a lot of trouble for a shock reveal. If the point was to get to Punk vs MJF, they could have got just with what they already had setup.

To take Punk off TV, to take Jack Perry off tv, to embarrass the company again, and to ultimately burn their fans for a twist that would pop a youtube number and trend on Twitter, (because they won't pop a ratings number because they wouldn't without spoiling it) would be pretty bad booking, even for Tiny Khan.

Lol, CM Punk’s situation with AEW is not a work. It’s made the company look terrible and has done (possibly irreversible) damage to them. It would get groans from so many fans. You can’t keep “going back.” Even if Punk was their biggest draw and one of their best performers, that’s compromised now.

Punk wouldn’t take it anyway. You can’t trust Tony Khan. He’ll take one side of an issue at Collision, take another at Dynamite (or All In with the glass). He is not a leader. Even if he promised Punk a stake in the company, there would be suspicion that TK would fuck him over.

AEW is desperate though. But it’ll take A LOT to get Punk to drop his plans. I imagine Punk would need to be given the authority to remove some of the problems backstage in a more permanent sense. Even then, is that enough to challenge the perception that AEW clearly has no idea what they’re doing if they flip-flop with Punk?

Also let's not forget, if it was some big work, you think the Bucks wouldn't leak that, just to stick it to Phil.

Goldberg will be the desperation move from Tony Khan.

Remember when they exposed the Cody/Shawn Spears angle? And when they tried to sabotage Collision days out?

I’d love to make a joke about having doubt because AEW is really fucking stupid, but this would possibly be the stupidest work ever.

Tony’s reaction if WWE programming ends up replacing AEW on TNT/TBS is going to be hilarious. He might have a meltdown if the rumors pick up steam. Starting the rumor might be enough to achieve the goal of the actual move.