Sports Pro Wrestling

[Starlight]

I still haven't watched it yet...

First time ever missing it for me.

 

[Zeostar]

I still haven't watched it yet...

First time ever missing it for me.

Night one was fantastic, probably the best wrestlemania in a decade. The card looked weak, but every match was stellar. Even the celebrities put on a great show.

Night two can be passed.

 

[Starlight]

Night one was fantastic, probably the best wrestlemania in a decade. The card looked weak, but every match was stellar. Even the celebrities put on a great show.

Night two can be passed.

Ty Zeo I'll keep that in mind if I do get chance to watch it!

 

[Allen Ceedos]

Ty Zeo I'll keep that in mind if I do get chance to watch it!

I agree with Zeo, Night 1 gets a medal from me as well. Night 2 wasn't terrible, it just didn't have a steady build of matches like Night 1 so you end up cherry-picking. I'll recommend the Tag Team Triple Threat, Knoxville vs Zayn (hearing Michael Cole trying not to completely corpse during commentary was worth it!), Edge vs Styles and Pat McAfee vs THEORY. I didn't think WWE could top what AEW gave fans with one night of Revolution but they did put on a great show overall and I was sports entertained STUPENDOUSLY! 😅

So now the real work begins. Cody is aiming to become a world champion, Reigns has unified the 2 world titles (for now?) and expects the Usos to unify the tag titles soon (I haven't checked what happened on Smackdown yet). Even before Mania I heard reports that the title unification wasn't going to be an actual unification and that a new title might be introduced down the road, but now that Mania is done I hope this is an actual unification because no matter how many times fans keep asking about if or when Reigns will drop one of those titles, that title which he loses will not mean as much as the one that he remains with....and then we're back to square one where World Title A is with Reigns while World Title B can end up in almost anyone's hands until Lesnar gets it again. I have no problem with the tag titles being unified (again, after how long now since the previous unification?), neither Raw nor Smackdown have deep tag divisions anymore to justify having 2 sets of tag belts. As for the women's world titles I'm not too sure about those yet.

What say you?

 

[The Mega Champion]

This post is probably not going to age well... but...

It's starting to look like either the brand split is actually ending or WWE has stopped caring about their rules for the brand split. The latter isn't really all that surprising as it's happened so many times that I've lost count. However... with the two main titles on each brand now on one person and a match at the next PPV to unify the Tag Titles as well... it's starting to seem like this is the case.

It's not actually clear if the brand split will fully end or not. Most of the WWE critics seem to want this. I can see why I guess. But the networks have made it clear in the past that they don't want this and want their own roster with their own champions. But they haven't made a statement on this recently so maybe they changed their mind? It's hard to really tell honestly.

We'll see though I guess. If they introduce only one pair of belts for the tag titles and only one title for the main title that would be a pretty clear indication that the brand split is ending. But there are still multiple other champions because there are still two women's champions and of course there's still the intercontinental and united states champions.

I guess we may have to wait a month or two or longer to really know for sure

 

[AlolanRattata]

I hope they don't end the brand split.
The draft is one of the most exciting nights in the World Wrestling Federation.

 

[Allen Ceedos]

This post is probably not going to age well... but...

It's starting to look like either the brand split is actually ending or WWE has stopped caring about their rules for the brand split. The latter isn't really all that surprising as it's happened so many times that I've lost count. However... with the two main titles on each brand now on one person and a match at the next PPV to unify the Tag Titles as well... it's starting to seem like this is the case.

It's not actually clear if the brand split will fully end or not. Most of the WWE critics seem to want this. I can see why I guess. But the networks have made it clear in the past that they don't want this and want their own roster with their own champions. But they haven't made a statement on this recently so maybe they changed their mind? It's hard to really tell honestly.

We'll see though I guess. If they introduce only one pair of belts for the tag titles and only one title for the main title that would be a pretty clear indication that the brand split is ending. But there are still multiple other champions because there are still two women's champions and of course there's still the intercontinental and united states champions.

I guess we may have to wait a month or two or longer to really know for sure

Maybe we won't see a hard brand split and instead from time to time we'll see people float between brands like what has been going on even with the Draft still being done. I think because the one world title is now held by someone who can be trusted to make people tune in to whichever show he appears on, the networks might not have a problem with having one world champion who floats between Fox and USA. Same with tag team champions who will do the same thing. There are multiple other champions yes, but are they going to be elevated now? The women, pehaps, but the men though? I hear Ricochet is seen as either the 2nd or 3rd top face on Smackdown and he's the current Intercontinental champion...yet is he going to be pushed differently going forward? Meanwhile on Raw the 2nd and 3rd top face spots are probably held by Cody Rhodes and Bobby Lashley respectively, but I couldn't tell you where AJ Styles and current US champion Finn Balor rank. AJ has the Edge feud to occupy him and there's nothing for Balor except losing to Austin Theory.

 

[Allen Ceedos]

I hope they don't end the brand split.
The draft is one of the most exciting nights in the World Wrestling Federation.

You might be lucky, the Draft could be one of the reasons keeping the brand split active.

 

[Hermione Granger]

Wish the draft took place shortly after Mania each year. And Cody Rhodes might finally be getting his world title push in the WWE.

As for AEW, well Dynamite wasn't that good last Wednesday, but will hope this Wednesdays Dynamite will be good with an major announcement being teased, maybe AEW striked a deal to get AEW content on HBO Max. Which would be a good place to air their ppv's.

 

[AlolanRattata]

You might be lucky, the Draft could be one of the reasons keeping the brand split active.

Well outside of it there's not really any major defining characteristics of the brand split. I'll be the first to admit that they do tend to take any opportunity they can to shirk the rules of it. They love their unification matches.

 

[Allen Ceedos]

Wish the draft took place shortly after Mania each year. And Cody Rhodes might finally be getting his world title push in the WWE.

As for AEW, well Dynamite wasn't that good last Wednesday, but will hope this Wednesdays Dynamite will be good with an major announcement being teased, maybe AEW striked a deal to get AEW content on HBO Max. Which would be a good place to air their ppv's.

That would make sense, if only they treated Mania as a "season finale" and then the Raw after Mania kicks off the new season with the Draft being announced. But for a while now WWE has had their "season premieres" later in the year and last year that's around the time we saw the latest Draft. I don't know if that will change as time goes on and now that Vince has made it clear that talent will be given new names, I wouldn't blame those who don't want to be drafted onto the main roster 😂 it's bad enough if your name got changed while you're on NXT, then it gets changed again after you move up and it's not even a better name than what you had before.

As long as creative doesn't drop the ball with Cody after a few months, sure. But we're still a long way from major PPVs like Summerslam or that UK stadium event in September where you could have Cody challenge for the world title, what do they do with him in the meantime while keeping him strong enough to be seen as a challenger?

I've heard about HBO Max and also that the announcement might have something to do with New Japan Pro Wrestling, like maybe a joint event to be held sometime this year. There's the Warner-Discovery merger to consider as well.

 

[Allen Ceedos]

Well outside of it there's not really any major defining characteristics of the brand split. I'll be the first to admit that they do tend to take any opportunity they can to shirk the rules of it. They love their unification matches.

Yeah, not anymore. Even when the shows are on separate networks, WWE has got their own version of the "forbidden door". They unified the WWE and World Heavyweight titles, then introduced the Universal title and made it a much bigger deal than the actual company title....and now here we are with the world titles unified again. I wonder how long it will be until the next new world title is created...

 

[The Mega Champion]

For anyone that cares... Kushida and Grizzled Young Veterans are officially done with NXT 2.0

They saw the writing on the wall and got the hell out of there (they were both Triple H projects)

 

[Allen Ceedos]

For anyone that cares... Kushida and Grizzled Young Veterans are officially done with NXT 2.0

They saw the writing on the wall and got the hell out of there (they were both Triple H projects)

I heard about Kushida, but damn GYV too? I mentioned talents getting their names changed in a previous post and GYV were among those talents, becoming just Gibson and Drake. It's bad enough that people's places of origin are no longer mentioned during entrances, because being hailed from Liverpool was part of the GYV package. So I really hope they'll land somewhere much better, while Kushida presumably returns to New Japan's Junior Heavyweight division just in time for the Best of the Super Juniors tournament.

 

[The Mega Champion]

I heard about Kushida, but damn GYV too? I mentioned talents getting their names changed in a previous post and GYV were among those talents, becoming just Gibson and Drake. It's bad enough that people's places of origin are no longer mentioned during entrances, because being hailed from Liverpool was part of the GYV package. So I really hope they'll land somewhere much better, while Kushida presumably returns to New Japan's Junior Heavyweight division just in time for the Best of the Super Juniors tournament.

Unfortunately yes but it doesn't really come as much as a surprise. To me at least. Most of the talent Triple H scouted are either gone or now in AEW ever since he/NXT 'failed' to beat AEW when it debuted (though from what I've seen the general consensus is that he was set up for failure and it was just an excuse to get rid of everything Triple H did in NXT)

I didn't want to double post but both Asuka and Mustafa Ali returned to WWE on Raw last night. Asuka was going to happen eventually but I think the most shocking was Ali considering this past January before the Royal Rumble he was asking for his release.

 

[Allen Ceedos]

Unfortunately yes but it doesn't really come as much as a surprise. To me at least. Most of the talent Triple H scouted are either gone or now in AEW ever since he/NXT 'failed' to beat AEW when it debuted (though from what I've seen the general consensus is that he was set up for failure and it was just an excuse to get rid of everything Triple H did in NXT)

I didn't want to double post but both Asuka and Mustafa Ali returned to WWE on Raw last night. Asuka was going to happen eventually but I think the most shocking was Ali considering this past January before the Royal Rumble he was asking for his release.

From the time NXT switched to 2.0 the morale behind the scenes has been declining, because this isn't the NXT that they've known anymore...even though this version of NXT is pretty much what NXT is there for - to be the developmental wing of the WWE - and not the "super indie" brand that Triple H built up. I wasn't too happy about the change and yet I've kept up with NXT since 2.0 started, just to see how things go and to find talent worth investing in because one never knows, some of these Superstars could go on to succeed on the main roster later on. But it's becoming a light version of Raw and not easy to watch from week to week. Even the podcasters that I follow who cover NXT are finding fewer and fewer positives from the show as time goes on and I wonder when they'll decide to call it quits.

I'm behind on this week's content, am hoping to catch up over the weekend, but that's a big surprise about Ali. From the time he asked for his release and with him being absent from TV (plus his social media activities), I thought he was going to be left on the sidelines. Now that he's back, I would think creative has something meaningful for him. Asuka too, I'm curious to know what's next for her. Hopefully she's moved on from being a caricature of herself and is back to being more serious.

 

[AlolanRattata]

Yeah, not anymore. Even when the shows are on separate networks, WWE has got their own version of the "forbidden door".

I think at this point the only importance is that there are certain people that have a free pass and maybe that pass is only temporary, but until it's explicitly stated we won't know for sure. That and, as far as I know, the IC and US Belts are firm where they are, and, to a lesser extent, the womens titles as well.

 

[Allen Ceedos]

I think at this point the only importance is that there are certain people that have a free pass and maybe that pass is only temporary, but until it's explicitly stated we won't know for sure. That and, as far as I know, the IC and US Belts are firm where they are, and, to a lesser extent, the womens titles as well.

The free passes could be given to anyone, as long as it fits whatever angle or storyline that's being played out e.g. free agent Brock Lesnar a few months ago and for some reason Seth Rollins when he was on Smackdown to challenge Roman at the Rumble. Also remember the short-lived "wild card rule"? So even those secondary titles may not be as firm as they appear to be. The women's titles though have more of a chance to stick with their respective brands and we don't see the champions popping up on the opposite show until it's Survivor Series season or something. But for now while there is a unified world title and an upcoming unification of the tag titles, maybe we'll get a unification of the women's titles after that.

 

[The Mega Champion]

I said this on Discord and wasn't sure I wanted to put it here... but I guess I'll put it here too...

For those who haven't heard already or aren't aware... Sasha Banks and Naomi walked out of WWE Raw as it was on the air this past Monday over creative. They were forced to change the main event to what was shown that night.

I'm not giving my opinion on this because it's god damn obvious who was in the right here (hint: it ain't Vince and his puppets).

I can't wait to see them on AEW tonight and for WWE to finally start a downward spiral they can't climb out of 🙄

Can WWE just go out of business already please so I can stop hearing about shit like this? 😑

 

[FullMetal_Ashheart]

While Naomi and Sasha Banks were in the right to walk out and they were rightfully mad too. But, WWE isn't going to be going out of business as long as they are making money.

But as far as seeing the both of them on AEW is kinda unlikely at the moment, especially if they're still under contract.