Hugh Norton will be great in NXT. That’s Wardlow’s name there.

On the subject of guys leaving: QT fucking Marshall was apparently working without a talent contract and still performing VP duties. He has agreed to a short-term extension. It would be hilarious if they lost QT Marshall.

Saw a joke that suggested Cody’s match at Mania 40 be him & Brandi against Shaq & Jade. It’s actually possible.

I cannot sing enough praises of the vBulletin gods for the ignore feature :cool:

The way they've treated Wardlow makes me believe he will definitely jump ship when he gets the chance. I imagine WWE would pick him up in a heartbeat.

He absolutely wrote down the numbers Cornette gave him.

I honestly think MJF stays, but they lose Starks, Jade, and maybe even the House of Black.

Would serve them right.

Ricky Starks and Jade Cargill leaving AEW will surely be the death knell of the company. I can't imagine them surviving such a tremendous loss. Finally those who've been predicting the demise of TK's indie fed will be vindicated and celebrated.

I'm not actually responding to this. I actually even already have forgotten the context. But it strikes me as such an evergreen phrase applicable to AEW, I needed to save it for future copypasta.

I have a feeling you’ll be getting good use out of it.

Ha.

But in all seriousness, this is basically going to become a back and forth between AEW and WWE now.

WWE acquiring Starks and Cargill but AEW attempts to offset that by signing 2-4 of the wrestlers who will be released in the coming weeks as a part of the TKO takeover.

The issue with that is AEW is acquiring wrestlers that 1) WWE fans could not invest in and 2) Tony Khan will not know what to do with them. A big name would be Dolph Ziggler but I always remember that Dolph had stand up comedy on the side and was really good at it. TKO will not release any big names (or if they do it will be 1 that doesn't fit their ideas moving forward) but even if they do, how much does that move the needle for Tony.

Starks may not be a super big draw initially but I definitely see the allure in Cargill. A common problem with her is that people don't think she can wrestle. Guess what. Trish could not initially wrestle either and look how well that turned out. Cargill will benefit from being able to work in the Performance Center and be "taught" how to wrestle.

Waiting for the world shattering announcement that Elias is ALL ELITE!

Critics have questioned her dancing skills as well. I hope it is a part of the curriculum over at the performance center.

<iframe width="791" height="445" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/h7YYkTob5fg" title="AEW Jade Cargill Double Of Nothing Entrance 2023 #aew" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Wait....I see some 5th dimensional chess forming here.

Step 1: Cargill to WWE.
Step 2: SD rights picked up by Disney after Fox declines to pony up more for the next deal. Disney owns Marvel.
Step 3: Cargill plays Storm in a new X-Men project as part of a cross promotional deal.
Step 4: ???
Step 5: Profit.

Step 4 is AEW dies for the umpteenth time.

Cargill versus Sasha on that TV Show Sasha is a part of :shifty:

Also I know she is not Sasha anymore. But she will always be Sasha to me. Just like Paige is Paige.

Damn @ that Cargill entrance.... I remember seeing her when I watched for those couple of months and thinking "dang, she looks great and has a presence".

Think that entrance just wiped away all of that though....

Mmhmm. One of those "paper champs". She has a look, but that's where it all stops.

I don't honestly feel that AEW will die a death, barring Tony Herb Abramsing himself and Danielson selling to TKO for that guaranteed HOF spot. I mean, Impact is still around.

But losing Starks would be the kind of loss that could be comparable to a Steve Austin leaving WCW. I am not comparing Starks' potential career trajectory to Austin's at all. What I mean is, he could be that midcard guy who anyone with sense could see would be someone that the front office doesn't see shit in, then goes to WWE and finds the missing pieces and reaches the level everyone with sense saw he had.

And given the right opportunity can fully maximize his potential.

I.E. LA Knight

No one says that AEW is going to die. It’s a straw-man tactic used by apologists whenever someone raises a good point about what a mess AEW is.

In order for it to die, someone has to want to buy it out, similarly to what happened with WCW. Endeavor will not want to buy it so we can cancel that idea and there is no one who wants to buy it, nor will that idiot sell it. He could get 500 people in there for Dynamite's and Collisions but if he ends up getting 8,000 at a PPV and as long as they get 75,000-100,000 buys, it is considered a success.

But here's the thing. They are going to be going to Max with that new contract and will now have 12 PPV's a year. Is there going to be a deal where you can only watch the PPV's through Max or can you still buy them on the side? Because I can't see the casual (or even hardcore) AEW fan spending 59.99 per month to watch the trash they put out.

Plus, now you are asking Tiny to have to write meaningful storylines every month instead of every 3 months like they do now. Just seems like a recipe for disaster.

Tony clearly needs to recoup money. If he fails to get enough back, I can envision Shad possibly pulling the plug. But other than that it’s just going to be a constant agonizing decline.

Looks like CM Punk isn’t going to sue TK for his contract termination.

Really it's gonna depend on what WBD wants. If their goal is to just get more Max subscribers they could make it something where your regular monthly sub gets you the PPVs as a throw in, not unlike the WWE Network but obviously Max has a shitload of non-wrestling stuff on it too. Ratings are only one metric, WBD know what AEW's actual viewership numbers are and they might deem it worth the squeeze to just try to get all AEW viewers to fork over the monthly subscription.

If you've gotta get a Max sub AND pay a significant amount extra for a now-increased number of PPVs, yeah that's gonna suck and lead to an obvious drop in buys. At a certain point it becomes too much to justify.

Setting aside platforms and costs or whatever I do actually think TK might benefit from a monthly PPV format if it allows him to maintain a focus on the major programs. In a perfect world the original 4 PPV a year format would be able to stick around but it's clear TK gets stuck in dead periods and only like 4 weeks before a PPV does he really start to go whole ham with build.

AEW does a weird thing where you can pretty much figure out 80% of a PPV card and yet none of the matches get officially announced until a week or 2 before the show. Doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

Not particularly surprising. Trying to argue an unjust "for cause" termination is difficult to do. Very few employers fire someone for cause unless they've got a cut and dry situation where they know the other side has no real legal ground to stand on.

The bigger question is did Punk want to get out badly enough where he just said "fuck it" and did what he had to do to force their hand. Feels to me like he did. Really don't think anyone punches a colleague and shakes down their boss unless they're ready, willing, and possibly wanting to get canned.

Smart on his part. "they started it" isnt much of a legal defense.

Slander is also hard to prove if he can get a job somewhere else because everyone knows AEW is full of crap. Punk learnt that from his ordeal with Chris Amann.

LOL can you imagine the case?

That shit would be more entertaining than Depp/Heard

I think he wasn't trying not to try to get fired. And he failed.

I don't know about "back and forth". This isn't exactly the Monday Night Wars.

To the point you made about either picking bad horses or not knowing what to do with the good ponies they scoop up, you have more of the former than the latter. You're talking about a company that would rather pick up El Hijo De Vikingo and Kommander. If they brought in a monster like an O'Shay Edwards, they wouldn't know how to handle him outside of the initial "oooooh" he'd get mostly by himself because he isn't a flip-tacular Buck buddy. So, the same would stand from former WWE talent. They will either do what they've already done (say what you want about folks like Keith Lee or Swerve, but they deserved better than they got on the booking end), or hire the least impressive spot monkeys to make The Elite look better by comparison.

Meanwhile, I'm pretty sure that WWE would be able to cherry-pick guys who actually want to do this shit seriously without the express allure of TK's infinite money teat - or at the very least, look like they do. They'd look at an MJF or be talked into a Darby Allin, and all the while, the brain trust behind the scenes of AEW are prob'ly trying to contrive a way to bring back Joey Ryan with minimal social media blowback or bring in a nobody they can groom into a subordinate lackey to "their revolution" like a Jay Cutler. And it won't negatively affect them like it should, because Tony still gets to play with his live action figures paid for out of pockets deep enough to be hammerspace instead of actual business.

AEW isn't a business: it's his hobby.

About five years ago, it looked like there would be a plethora of somewhat viable options for folks to grow their careers: NWA, MLW, NJPW, iMPACT, AAA, and AEW all being a round table to flex against the all-or-nothing will of WWE. About five years later, it's kinda ironic that the only places really trying are New Japan and Old TNA. Everywhere else seems to be populated by scumbags and barrel bottoms. The tide didn't raise all boats: it raised just enough to float most of the dinghys.

Hey man Jay Cutler wouldn't put up with their shit!

https://leadingwithtrust.com/wp-cont...ning.jpg?w=300

He would casually walk off after a bucks super kick and then proceed to put his cigarettes out on Nick Jackson headband.

Hang on…didn’t he succeed at that? He’d have failed if he was trying not to get fired, right?

no no. He was trying to try to not get fired. He failed at trying to try because he was clearly trying to get fired.

I have a headache now.

I've had a headache since all this started.

Oh, my bad! I thought you meant that he was trying to try not to get fired, not that he was not trying to try not to get fired. And not that he was he was not not trying to get fired. But he was not not trying to get fired. Or trying to not try to not get fired. Got it.

Punk seems WWE bound damb