The Wrestling Thread

[prfsnl_gmr]

That said…Cena has granted more wishes through the Make-a-Wish Foundation than anyone else. Way, way more. I have to appreciate that. (Plus, he’s actually a really great comic actor, and I look forward to seeing him in more movies.)

[marurun]

Wrestling status notwithstanding, John Cena is, so far, a much better human being than Hulk Hogan ever was. Knowing what I know now, he should never have been a face.

[RCBH928]

@Raging Justice

I despise Cena. A rapping wrestler? I do not know what was his appeal but he was definitely a kids attraction. Kids some how liked him. I will make a big guess and say they did market research and analysis and found some how kids like rappers and made a rapping wrestler. Just guessing.

Any one likes it or not, Cena is the Hogan of the 2000s. John Cena wrestled in like 15 Wrestlemanias. Austin and Rock whole career with WWE was like less than 10 years. They joined around 1995 and pretty much left by 2005. Guy has been main eventing since like 2002 and still can. Part of the reason Cena is hated now is that because he has been under the spotlight for too long which happened to Hulk Hogan as people started booing him by the end of his career with the WWF.

I am willing to say that there are about 3 household names in wrestling. Hogan , Flair for WCW, and Cena for the 2000s. Austin and Rock had higher impact and popularity (I think) but they didn't last as long. Cena was the face of the WWE. Even of Austin and The Rock did, they did it for a much shorter time especially that they were both in their prime at the same time in the same company.

@marurun

Whats wrong with Hogan? Yeah I kind of learned he is not the nicest of guys but many of the popular pro wrestlers are not. I kind of judge the act and not the human behind it. Hogan was the only guy to be a top face AND top Heel. He was the only Person to be the face of WWE and WCW. He made WWF beat everyone else, and when he joined WCW he made WCW beat WWF. Surely Scott Hall+Nash+nWo angle propelled him there (he was pretty much a childish comical figure before that) but he still has to get credited for it. The man is the wrestling legend. His career span is like 35 years!

[prfsnl_gmr]

Don’t say anything bad about Hogan! You might get sued!

[Raging Justice]

So this isn't anything related to WWE or AEW, although the person I'm about to mention did have a pretty great WWE career. Kairi Sane has now become the very first women's champion in the history of New Japan Pro Wrestling, an organization that never had a women's division. She defeated Stardom icon Mayu Iwatani in the first ever official IWGP Women's Championship match. I feel like between this, her accomplishments in Stardom, and her WWE career, the Pirate Princess (who has the best elbow drop in all of pro wresting) is approaching a Hall of Fame career. She'll be defending her title on NJPW's biggest show of 2023 against one of my favorites from Stardom, leader of the Cosmic Angels Tam Nakano:









Oh, and if you've never seen a Kairi elbow drop by the way:



The title match main evented a rather fun crossover event featuring historic matches with men from NJPW as well as women from Stardom. Stardom is apparently the number 2 wrestling promotion in Japan now I believe, at least in terms of attendance anyway, so it's good business for NJPW to collaborate with them. The show had a bunch of mixed gender tag team matches featuring both men and women, with participants frequently ignoring the no contact between opposite genders rules. This lead to some fun altercations with the women in particular trying to prove they were just as tough as the dudes. Some of the team ups were pretty cool like seeing the badass former Stardom world champion Utami Hayashista with "The Ace" of NJPW, Hiroshi Tanahashi and ZSJ teaming up with Giulia. The show also featured the last match of legend Great Muta, who was put in a trios match teaming him up with who I'd consider the face of NJPW, Kazuchika Okada

[prfsnl_gmr]

So…uh…what’s going on with the WWE? Think it’ll be sold this year? To whom? Will AEW be able to capitalize?

[Markies]

You know, with all the talk of Tribalism in Wrestling, its amazing how fickle fans and actual wrestlers can be.

Everyone loved AEW until CM Punk came along and dropped his Gripe Bomb.

Then HHH took over and everyone loved WWE again because he was going to turn the Main Roster into Black and Gold NXT.
But, now all of his signings have under performed in major ways and it looks like it will be all Gone.

So, after Vince "retired", there were rumors that he wanted back in. He felt like he was given bad advice and that WWE is still his. In basically a Corporate Takeover as he is the majority stockholder, he is now back and running WWE again. His main goal is to sell WWE and he will do that to the highest bidder and then turn the company private so that he no longer needs to be accounted for.

After this was announced, Stephanie McMahon announced her retirement and departure from the company. I don't think she wants to fight her Father and I think she wanted out before. The rumor also is that HHH will be next. He will either be shown the door or he will leave on his own. With his wife gone, his heart condition and Vince now in charge, I can't believe HHH will be the one to takeover.

For who wants to buy WWE, it's all the major US Companies. Amazon, Disney, Comcast, Fox. Anyone that can afford an almost Billion dollar company is interested in owning them. It's all about the TV and Streaming Rights. WWE comes with a network with thousands and thousands of hours of content along with a small (and shrinking) fanbase. They have proven in the past that they will follow WWE anywhere, so these are enticing numbers to any giant company.

However, the Major Player seems to be the Saudis. They are looking to diversify besides just owning all the Oil and they are beginning to gobble up as much Sports that they can handle. Vince has an existing relationship with them and they are most likely to offer the most amount of money. If that happens, the tremors it leaves could be ginormous. It would split the fanbase along with the wrestlers themselves. Fans would boycott and wrestlers would refuse to work for them. And this all under what Vince McMahon wants to do, so who knows what will happen.

For AEW, they have always done their best to be represented as the counter-culture and I can see them capitalizing as the rumors of the sell persist. If the Saudi deal does go through, I would expect to see a spike in their viewership almost immediately. The CM Punk/Elite fiasco has been swept under the rug and AEW has gone back to their roots. Their shows are much more consistent and I think they have some veteran backstage leadership that is helping the foundation. They have a nice Ric Flair style heel as Champion that many people would pay for him to get his dues, so as long as they iron out any issues they may have, they can only improve.

For 2023, anything can happen in wrestling. By the end of the year, WWE could be sold to Saudia Arabia, Stephanie McMahon/HHH could be completely out of wrestling or they could buy NWA or another promotion, AEW could have higher ratings than WWE, ROH could be on TV Station and Impact Wrestling could grow even stronger.

I no longer watch wrestling as I don't have the channels they are on, but I still follow it. I get enough for GIFs and videos. But, the behind the scenes rumor mill is more exciting than the television product now a days.

[RCBH928]

I am absolutely not following anything , but I have a theory that only Vince can make pro-wrestling work. After all , all his competitors died and he only survived and thrived . Any one buying WWE is probably going to lose money and is crazy to do so. IMO pro-wrestling is a shrinking niche. Between the fast pace of life and the ginormous amount of entertainment between youtube, tik-tokers, twitter, Netflix, twitch streamers...pro-wrestling is really losing audience.

To put things in perspective, RAW is currently having a rating of 1.7 while in the year 2000 it was 6.7 (74% decline) despite the population of the US growing 50M (number are estimated). In addition, I find no new talent worth while watching. The older generations like Hogan, Hart, Austin, Macho and the rest were much more entertaining to watch over than Roman Reigns and Bryan Wyatt.

In addition, a lot of people in wrestling are millionaires and have contacts. So if you buy the WWE its very easy for them to create a competitor fed. All you need to is to rent a hall, a wrestling ring, a camera a crew, and sing up some of your friends for the roster. Can easily be done for sub $500K. When you have 2-3 partners its going to be peanuts for them.

IMO any one who is going to pick pro-wrestling and surpass McMahon's success is going to be some visionary guy that takes into a different path like McMahon created a weekly show, PPVs, a wrestling superbowl (Wrestlemania), and a global empire. One thing to mention about McMahon, is that the guy is a businessman not a wrestling man. He doesn't do the best wrestling, he does what is most profitable and has longevity. I hate the current WWE product but the company is worth $6.6B and made a $300M+ profit (which should be enough to buy AEW outright)

[Reprise]

You know, with all the talk of Tribalism in Wrestling, its amazing how fickle fans and actual wrestlers can be.

Everyone loved AEW until CM Punk came along and dropped his Gripe Bomb.

Then HHH took over and everyone loved WWE again because he was going to turn the Main Roster into Black and Gold NXT.
But, now all of his signings have under performed in major ways and it looks like it will be all Gone.

Haha I have been thinking the same thing. Wrestling fans are the most fickle people in the world. I have been getting a laugh watching people wacking off over AEW only to turn on it 5 minutes later, because, reasons (ok, CM Punk hitting the self destruct button was pretty hilarious and not in a good way - side note, everything he said was probably true, albeit hilariously in the most childish and unprofessional manner possible). And then on the flipside, people hating on WWE only to start wacking off over that barely 10 seconds into Trips taking over creative, before he had even done anything.

It's just the underdog mentality. People liked AEW as long as it was the plucky underdog doing the "unthinkable". The second it basically reached its glass ceiling and was no longer something novel and new, people got bored and turned on it. WWE, meanwhile, people just had the Vince scandal and ultimately stepping down at the exact right moment when AEW was floundering, so people desperately wanted to believe it was some miracle overhaul once HHH took over creative and Vince was far away. In reality, yeah, there was a noticeable improvement, but only because 2019-early 2022 had been so god awful. It still has major issues.

But don't get me wrong, AEW has got a lot wrong and it does still have its own fairly serious issues. There are absolutely legitimate criticisms that can be levelled against the company. This has been a real difficult year and a lot of it is of their own making. I am also one of those people who is constantly fed up with hearing what Tony thinks about everything and I wish he would just lay low a bit and let their product speak for itself, rather than constantly reading tabloid-esque stories about what he has been saying or what shots he has been taking at WWE.

[RCBH928]

CM Punk still on the roster after that shoot?