[Evil Vito]

Originally Posted by M-A-G I'm going to assume this will have zero connection to your previous AEW sim in EWR but is going off of real world continuity?

Yeah, I can't see myself getting back into that EWR game. I started it on February 2021, only made it to June 2021 and in the past year AEW's roster has grown exponentially. I'd be hard pressed to go that far back when I know the real world is just so different and I could be throwing bangers out there every single week with the talent on the current roster.

If I were to do an EWR game again it would almost certainly be another restart. But two issues....A) I know myself well enough to know I'll get writers block quickly, B) a nearly 20-year old EWR really isn't meant to sim modern wrestling, especially with how much everyone's stats drop once you hit 35 years old. Nowadays guys are performing at a high level into their mid-40s and beyond, can't really replicate that in EWR.

Have to say just by appearance, MJF reminds me of the Miz. His "fire-me-oops-wait-I'm-back" is such a George Costanza move. Is the ROH Pure Title still a thing? I used to follow ROH when we carried the channel but I said goodbye to cable companies a long ass time ago.

Miz and MJF are very much comparable. Much as I wanted to hate on Miz for a long time, the man has always been a genuine heat magnet. MJF might be the Miz on steroids (well, not literally), his shoot promo where he demands to be fired was viewed as one of the best in recent years. I have no idea when he'll actually return to AEW but in Fire Pro land, sure what the hell.

The ROH Pure title was deactivated a long while ago but reactivated in 2020. ROH basically closed up shop last year but Tony Khan bought them out. For now, AEW contracted talents hold most of their titles but I believe the plan is to get ROH on TV and eventually hire an ROH-exclusive roster.

The employment situation of Joe confuses me. I could've sworn he was in WWE again a while back.

WWE have had like 3 or 4 massive firing waves since the start of the pandemic, along with a number of guys asking to be released. Joe I believe got fired, rehired, and then fired again. He wants to wrestle and WWE think he was too injury prone. So off to AEW he goes. I should've mentioned he is also holding an ROH title at the moment (the ROH TV Title).

Swerve Strickland? Please tell me he specializes in propane and propane accessories.

I dunno if I'd buy propane from him but I'd probably buy something else.

I've seen that Black guy's name tossed around here and there, more so than some of these other guys. Wasn't he one of the big names that got the axe from NXT a while back?

Yeah he was another in the long line of WWE cuts last year. Wrestled in WWE at Aleister Black. Held the NXT title for a while, got called up to the main roster and was squandered for a solid 2 years before getting cut.

I love it when the computer gives zero fucks about the real world and produces results that are like this. I remember simulating an Iron Man Match between Rob Van Dam and Chris Jericho and RVD ended up with like 25 decisions in his favor.

Yeah that's the fun thing about Fire Pro especially, anyone can win. Yes certain characters will always be favored and have higher stats but at the end of the day it's a RNG happening behind the scenes. Upsets will happen.

I've mentioned that I haven't played a wrestling video game in over 15 years but I do have to ask: did they ever incorporate the "YES!" chants in the WWE 2K games? Or did they go the extra mile in their burial attempts and downplay him there, too?

Prior to this year (the first GOOD entry in the series in an eternity), the last one I played was like 5 years ago. They actually did incorporate YES chants and even scripted it so the crowd would visually chant along. One of the few good things about those games.

LOL, that "THE CHAMP IS HERE" bit made me call back to Punk's feud with Cena a decade ago. I wonder if he'd get in any trouble if he was to wear the Cena shirt with that phrase on TV. Of course, him rocking pro-choice apparel is good enough.

I doubt he could actually wear real WWE merch on AEW TV. There was a PPV match last year he had against Eddie Kingston where both guys were face but the night of the show the crowd seemed to be siding more toward Eddie, so Punk leaned into it and started working through Cena's 5 Moves of Doom. Wonderful bit of trolling when the crowd figured out what he was doing.