@blakeb@mastodon.world cover
@blakeb@mastodon.world avatar

blakeb

@blakeb@mastodon.world

Wrestling, rock and roll, tabletop games. I think? He/him

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. For a complete list of posts, browse on the original instance.

blakeb , to random
@blakeb@mastodon.world avatar

Hahahaha WOOOOOO

If you can say one thing about tonight, they put their foot on the gas pedal in a BIG BIG way tonight.

If you hate then they drove the car straight into a brick wall. If you love then you were galvanized. But galvanization of their base is probably the best call for in the post-Mania hangover, when WWE fans are still high on the Cody Rhodes win.

Anyways. Let's talk about Dynamite! (Also I figured out how to spoiler my posts, YAAAYYY)

blakeb , to random
@blakeb@mastodon.world avatar

Another somewhat middle-of-the-road
this week, which usually happens right before a PPV as they don't want to give anything away or risk anyone getting hurt when they've got big matches coming up.

Considering how strong the Revolution card is, it's hardly an issue that the go-home Dynamite didn't exactly blow anyone's socks off. They played it mostly safe, with one notable exception which I'll get to.

blakeb OP ,
@blakeb@mastodon.world avatar

The weirdness with Hangman last week was apparently because he might have needed to get written out of the 3-way at Revolution. That is seemingly no longer the case, but they decided to use the angle anyway, rather than let it get swept under the rug.

Hangman's behaviour here does definitely seem odd, considering the low stakes to his deception, but it works if you consider that he is slowly having his mind destroyed. Every week the moustache is bigger and he is more insane. Good.

blakeb , to random
@blakeb@mastodon.world avatar

There is an important lesson to be learned about the state of the wrestling industry at this exact moment.

In the closing days of 2023, CM Punk had just returned to the , the deal between Mercedes Mone and was said to be off, Raw was rumoured to be moving to TBS and endangering AEW's TV deal, and Tony Khan answered a sensitive question about the Jericho/Kylie Rae controversy whilst wearing a silly hat.

In the eyes of pundits, it was "so over." But that was all the way back in 2023.

blakeb OP ,
@blakeb@mastodon.world avatar

Fast forward to today.

Punk has only been in the company for two months, and is already on the shelf due to a Tricep tear. AEW is once again the favoured destination for not only Mercedes, but now also potentially Okada. The WWE Netflix deal takes the possibility of Raw moving to TBS off the table. Vince McMahon has been once again forced to resign as CEO due to allegations of sex trafficking.

The point is not to declare victory, but to point out this one immutable fact: Things change.

blakeb OP ,
@blakeb@mastodon.world avatar

This has happened before. Brawl Out, Brawl In, Matt Hardy bounces his head off of the concrete, Big Swole. Others that I'm not remembering.

It's not that the things that have happened in AEW aren't serious and worth weighing. It's that even minor setbacks for AEW are often treated as existential threats, while WWE's problems are speedbumps.

CM Punk returns to WWE = Pack it up, AEW.
Vince McMahon turns WWE headquarters into his own personal sex dungeon = Well, Triple H will turn it around.

blakeb OP ,
@blakeb@mastodon.world avatar

@BeAware That's fine, there are real legitimate reasons to want to choose one product over the other right now. I don't have any problem with people making those kind of judgment calls.

What I don't agree with is when people make the claims that the problems in AEW make it somehow non-viable as a product, when WWE often suffers from the same issues, yet the validity of WWE's existence is never called into question.

blakeb , to random
@blakeb@mastodon.world avatar

I don't know what to say about the Vince stuff today, to be honest.

I've hated Vince for a long time, and I've always felt like an alien in any conversation about wrestling, because it seems like most people don't agree that Vince is a reprehensible mutant who should have been broken down into his constituent elements and shot into the sun a long time ago, for the safety and prosperity of the wider wrestling universe.

But we didn't, and now here we are.

blakeb OP ,
@blakeb@mastodon.world avatar

I don't have any sympathy for anyone who is suddenly coming online to the idea that Vince McMahon is an abusive, misanthropic rapist.

The information you've needed to make that conclusion on your own has been out there for decades. You either ignored it, or you denied it for whatever reason. Maybe to protect the image you built up for Vince in your mind, or to resolve your cognitive dissonance about being a fan despite the high probability that this shit was going on.

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • random
  • test
  • worldmews
  • mews
  • All magazines
    •