There were definitely fewer than last year (think they got like 15-16k rather than 20) but as far as I could tell the only substantial pockets of unsold seats were near the very top of the arena. Still don’t think those seats are bad but can see why they didn’t sell out given the more expensive tix, the logistical issues from last year, AEW not being as hot last year and also last year having the extra appeal of not only being their first time in NYC but also being the first big gathering plenty of people in the audience had gone to after COVID.

Lines for concessions were way better this year. Got my food at Fuku which allows you to just grab your food and pay and it took 2 seconds.

That spicy chicken sandwich was delicious but a lot hotter than I expected. Was definitely getting a high from the heat at one point.

William Shatner defeats AEW.

Give me Chris Jericho vs Dalton Castle

idk why they don't use Dalton Castle more in AEW instead of just keeping him in stupid ROH... one of the most charismatic guys they have + was like the most over guy in the battle royal at the Rampage tapings

Tony Khan still has this idea that he’s going to make ROH a thing even though AEW isn’t really a thing.

All it seems to be doing to me is "muddying the brand".... don't watch AEW, but I would be "annoyed" at other brand's belts being constantly on the show.... it is maybe ok when it is like an "international brand" and can be like "this rassler is so skilled he has won belts in other countries"..... but to have another American fed titles there.... dunno.... why should I care

TK being a mark means he thinks the belts make the wrestler.

I care about wrestlers less when they win a ROH belt lol. It’s like winning a WCW Title in 2001. The promotion is dead. Claudio was not a World Champion.

The Impact Title was a bad idea too.

They should have just brought the top talent over from ROH (The Briscoes), but they were sabotaged by The Bucks who don’t want better tag teams floating about.

A big philosophical issue I’ve had with AEW from the start is that a lot of the people involved don’t want it to be good wrestling. They want it to be their wrestling.

This was the heat with Punk and why negotiations with him in 2019 were tanked. It’s why they never reached out to the best from MLW and ROH. It’s a threat to the PWG group who want to be the top of the class via rigged scores.

My hopes for a third promotion continue to live. I’m not that into Malakai Black, but he’s gone. If Punk leaves, there might be talent that follows suit in time. If TK needs to save money or Punk swings his dick and gets a bunch of misused guys out of deals if they want to get out, you could have a pretty good roster floating about. Punk and AJ Lee might be able to work something out with ViacomCBS and get a good spot somewhere.

LOL After that tirade at the presser, there is literally 0% chance CM Punk could work out a TV deal with anyone other than public access in a small midwestern market, and even thats a stretch.

If AEW doesn't bring Punk back, he's done. He won't be there, he won't be in WWE, and no one else is gonna shell out the kinda money he wants for a guy that is in his mid 40s, is apparently now super injury prone, and is liable to blow up the whole operation at any time if he gets in a bad mood.

Good show. Not great. Acclaimed and Saraya were the highlights.

Complaints are Tony still shitting away the women’s division. The obvious match was Toni v Britt. Neither Deeb nor Athena, who just lost a title match a few weeks ago on ppv, needed to be in the match. Saraya throws a nice wrinkle into the division but given how little direction or long term planning Tony has for the division it’ll prob end up being underwhelming.

Idk what it is but I haven’t enjoyed the last few Danielson matches. Might be the pacing. His first 3 big matches against Omega and Page were excellent. Last night was ok, but not the barn burner I was hoping for.

Moxley is the fucking man. It’s a shame he had to lose to all out, only to get the belt back and now be primed to lose it to MJF in the very near future. But that should be a god program. Of all the big signings they’ve made, idk how anyone could argue that their first big one, Moxley hasn’t been the best one by far. He’s their MVP IMO.

FTR and Wardlow being directionless and Starks and Hobbs being left off this show is a travesty.

Hopefully this reset of sorts after all the chaos the company has endured since Full Gear will help right the ship and get things back on track.

This was the last bridge to burn. While I understand being mad at rumors, the press conference following your comeback win and your greatest rival returning to essentially challenge you isn’t the place to suit your dirty laundry.

Love Punk. But I’m fine with him fucking off of that is what it comes to. If he’s back and he’s healthy and can go, great. If not, great.

I do wonder if they put it too as locker room vote, how it would it turn out for him.

I don’t know if I follow. Punk took shots at the incompetent management, but it’s the straw that broke the camel’s back kind of thing. It was also more compelling than the actual PPV.

He doesn’t suffer fools lightly, I’ll give you that.

I don’t know if Punk has been smart or not.

Barely anyone is talking about his injury, the second one in as many matches. The perception could be that’s he not up to it anymore but he’s “changed the narrative” at least temporarily. He’s suspended during a time he wouldn’t be there anyway.

Or, he’s just thought “fuck it”, and doesn’t want to come back if he’s going to keep getting injured.

And you think some other, and in the case of CBS, much more serious/professional management team is going to want to work with a guy who will publicly snap on them at a press conference over rumors? LOL sure thing buddy. He went off on his bosses in front of everyone because Dave Meltzer said some shit on the internet and he assumes his bosses are the ones who told Dave, when in reality, its equally as likely that Dave just made it the fuck up for clicks lmao. Furthermore, if you can't deal with internet rumors as a famous person in this day and age then you pretty much just need to go away because they aren't gonna stop.

Imagine how easy it is to cause a situation in AEW if they keep him around; just go off spreading insane rumors about Punk on the internet until he loses his shit again. This is exactly what people are gonna do lol.

Feel like if The Elite were feeding Meltzer as much info behind the scenes as people think they are that Daves information would probably be a hell of a lot more accurate than it is a lot of the time. He gets an awful lot of shit wrong for someone basically acting like a proxy for the guys making the decisions.

it could also serve the Elite to feed Dave half truths.

This and the constant idea that if she takes a bump, I am going to think she is paralyzed.

It could, but at this point all of that is pure speculation on everyones part. We dont know if they were feeding anti-punk shit to Dave or if someone else was or if he just made it up because he knew it would cause controversy and get attention. All we know is that Punk publicly lost his shit over internet rumors, made accusations he can not back up, and embarrassed the shit out of his boss.

None of those things are going to now help him get a bigger company to back him on an insanely risky proposition of a 3rd major wrestling company in this country when the 2nd one is struggling and the first one isn't doing great either in the grand scheme of things. The way AEW has gone has made it very hard for anyone else to get a major wrestling company off the ground here any time soon. The market is already oversaturated with a product that is targeting an increasingly niche market. There isn't room for more. And honestly, there is nowhere near enough recognizable talent for it.

Yeah, everyone sucks in the situation, but Punk seems to have been the worst, IMO.


If you do indeed have that kinda grievance, that shit gets hashed out in a professional manner, behind closed doors with all parties involved.


He made himself look like a crybitch, and really made Tony look like a cuck.


I was a fan at one time. Had the 25/8/366 Knees 2 Faces shirt - that was a good time when Punk was wrestling. He seems though, to have become just as, if not more, bitter than Bret Shart.


Just like Bret screwed Bret, Punk screwed Punk.

It was really odd to have an ROH championship main event Dynamite a few weeks ago (or last week, maybe?). I don't mind ROH being featured on AEW TV until they get a TV deal of their own, but they shouldn't main event.

(I know that was right after the suspensions and whatnot but it was still a bit off to have a different promotion main event your main show.)

AEW screwed AEW

AEW tried to sign the idiot right from the start.
The idiot publicly shamed AEW for 2+ years.
The idiot waited until others built something acceptable.
The idiot comes in and wants change to fit his vision.
The idiot disparages the people who put in the hard work.
The idiot burns it all down takes and drags people with him.
The other idiot who signed the idiot nodded while it happened.
The other idiot needs more money from dad to pay off the idiot.

AEW screwed AEW by letting a snake with a blowtorch into their house of cards.

Lets say you book punk, ignoring my opinion if one should book him in the 1st place. So you know he isnt aging well physically. Thats beyond contestation at the point. So best practice would be a 30-60 day no contact build. Do that match on paid TV. Ok great. You get your pay day. Problem is you cant book any momentum after that, you must book a one shot the night of because you cant ensure he isnt going to need 90ish days off to recover. How can you effectively use him?

You cant build him forward and putting him under will quickly lose return value. So... whats the point? Sure get the few gates if you can while you can but my efforts would be feeding him to my long term talent. The amount of business to do is pretty limited.

And again thats ignoring if you should even use him at all.

Vs Scott Colton, easy

I just re-watched Soraya's debut. It just seems like something is off. Like she didn't even want to be there or anything

Weird. I thought she looked pumped up big time.

They need to keep ROH off of TV and stop referencing/booking matches for other promotions titles. It’s dumb. It devalues their own titles. And it takes away TV time from guys like Wardlow who should be featured in dedicated segments every week. Same with Jade. Same for the trios/all Atlantic titles.

Nobody watching AEW to see ROH, NJPW, and AAA titles.

My penis was pumped for her to be there

If they’re going to use him it should be as a special attraction who only wrestlers a few dates a year. Kinda like the way they’ve used Christian.

So odd for punk, though. He went almost an entire year, wrestling 20 matches including his first title win, with little if any problem. Then he idiotically dives into the crowd, breaking his foot, which you could’ve written off as a fluke injury, followed by the elbow injury on a dive he landed a million times randomly injuring him immediately after returning.

He went from fine to the durability of toilet paper overnight.

That's just how aging goes for some people. Sitting at home for a few years didnt help matters. They say the no.1 killer of old people is retirement. Doing nothing breaks you down fast.

Absolutely. My grandpa swore the worst decision he ever made was to retire. He said it was all downhill from there and that it was fast.

Punk’s mad at how unprofessionally AEW is run. He used a platform they provided him to tell the truth. I can understand why AEW wouldn’t be happy about it, but I don’t think it has any bearing on how well Punk can do his job.

He didn’t get mad at internet rumors. He got mad at people in positions of power being allowed to constantly go around and fuck around with talent/run talent off. He’s been dealing with it since 2019. He’s not coming at it from the same perspective as us on the internet — he knows a lot of the machinations going on back there and how hard it is to deal with these twats.

Absolutely. I’ve noticed they don’t always tell Dave much. He was behind the ball on the Punk and Danielson signings. But maybe they just didn’t tell The Bucks? Either way, they’ve worked out how to use Dave — and how to not use Dave — to their advantage.

The Bucks being tiny dicks is nothing new. Unless you just listen to Meltzer and assume they’re really great guys. You just had Malakai Black going “Why is my personal shit out there?” Cody and Brandi. CM Punk when he was first dealing with the promotion. Someone else (I think it was Konnan?) had their financials leaked. Lol, the findings of the investigation are not known yet. I wouldn’t say he “can’t back them up” just because he hasn’t personally shoved the evidence under your nose.

Also, take the Adam Page incident. So much about wrestling is about trust. I don’t know if Punk knew 100% what Page was originally scheduled to say, but there’s a good chance he did and was completely blind-sided by him going into business for The Elite. But even if he didn’t and just knew “Page is going to cut a promo on you,” it’s still a massive break of trust to have someone out there trying to halt your babyface momentum before a big match. That’s not “speculation.” That’s something Page actually did on live television. It may be speculation that he did it all on his lonesome, but that’s the toxic influence of The Bucks.

Anyway, ViacomCBS already have a working agreement in place with AJ Lee. I don’t know the exact status of it and if it will go anywhere, but my point wasn’t so much that ViacomCBS would take off their panties and throw them at Punk because he is Punk so much as their wrestling executive is married to a big star who could tell AEW to go fuck themselves because he wants to be on a product that delivers results. AEW has been a bad look for wrestling, but I imagine the angle would be to convince TV networks that they’re bad television aimed at the niche and that WWE numbers are possible. And if Punk can blow up AEW with legal leverage and create a scenario where talent can get out of contracts they no longer want because of the environment, you COULD have that talent roster that is currently chained up.

* CM Punk
* FTR
* Malalai Black
* The House of Black
* The Briscoes
* Will Hobbs
* Ricky Starks
* Brock Anderson
* Brian Pillman, Jr.
* Griff Garrison
* Wardlow
* Even MJF

I’ve seen it happen. It’s horrible.