Pro Wrestling (WWE, AEW, NJPW, etc..)

The wrestling thread has been around almost as long as the CHUD boards have and continued all the way through to Trouble City. It would be a pity to not at least attempt to keep some form of it alive here. I'm pretty sure at least a few active members made the jump over to here... and by all means anyone else who enjoys this silly past-time should feel free to jump on in.


Anyway...

Stu Grayson looks to be gone from AEW. It's a pity TK didn't fully get behind he and Uno as a tag team and only used them as fodder. On the flip side, Roderick Strong is requesting his release from WWE. I'm sure he'd love nothing more than to help TK complete his Undisputed Era collector set, and I'm there for it!

That's too bad about Grayson. Him and Uno are so good together.

As for Strong, he'll fit in nicely with AEW. Especially good timing with the whole DDT/NJPW relationship going on.

Sounds like the 'E isn't letting Roddy go.  Looking at history, it's probably a safe bet that he'll get let go in one of their future purges, when he'll be just one of many free agents flooding the market.  From the sounds of things, a new WWE policy is to conduct more frequent rounds of releases for these developmental and NXT talents.  The bloodletting never ends.

Anyway... anyone catch Dark last night?  Cheeseburger was instantly over with that crowd. He's got to be on Tony's radar now.

Heard AAA's Triplemania had a great main event with the Bucks vs Fenix and Vikingo. Matt and Nick are openly expressing interest in having Vikingo work in or with AEW at some point.  Good call!

The show also featured Tay Conti eating a Penta superkick, lol!

Well that blows. Roddy and Ricochet could be flourishing elsewhere instead of being stuck on the leaky shitbucket that is the WWE.

Apparently Sasha Banks and Naomi surrendered their tag belts to Johnny Ace earlier today and left the RAW arena, forcing WWE to change their televised main event tonight.

I'm sure WWE isn't going to just release her from her contract and just hand her over to Tony Kahn with a bow, but if I'm TK I'd immediately start brainstorming ideas for potential Sasha Banks storylines just to have something ready just in case.

Difficult to work with or no, I feel Sasha is one of the few women who could be a real game changer for that division.

She'd be a huge boost to AEW's womens' division, for sure. As long as she's booked well.

I'd just be concerned with how many matches she'd have waiting for her in AEW, where the division isn't exactly strong at the moment.

With the NJPW relationship they've got going now, I wonder how difficult it would be to fold STARDOM into the forbidden door stuff. There'd be no end to the awesome matches Sasha could have with that roster!

I don't imagine she'd be content working with Ruby SoHo on Dark Elevation and getting the occasional Rampage match every few months.

So word is the main event was to be Sasha, Naomi, Becky, Asuka, Nikki and Doudrop in a match to see who would get the title shot against Belair at Hell in a Cell, and Naomi was booked to win. Now if Naomi was willing to walk out on getting a title shot, there has to have been more issues for which a boiling point was reached.

What Culture made the excellent point that you could easily use that 6-way match to set up a tag match between Sasha/Naomi and Nikki/Doudrop, with those two teams basically taking each other out and leaving Becky and Asuka (which is essentially what we got anyway). Two PPV matches set up with one match. But instead, you're going to render the women's tag titles irrelevant leading up to HIaC (it's not like you're going to have a women's title contender waste time on those belts).

I wonder if the angle coming out of this was to split Sasha and Naomi over Naomi getting the title shot. That seems like the kind of "disrespect to the tag titles" that would set them over the edge.