This is a script for my new podcast that is available on Spotify here: https://spoti.fi/3HK11I2 and YouTube here: https://youtu.be/386uvkyiQOc
I started my YouTube channel in 2021 but got serious about it a year ago this week because I wanted to share my fandom, and share my thoughts also. I'm always looking for new ways to do that and hoping to connect with wrestling fans. In my videos I usually talk about wrestling history, anniversaries, matches or moments that meant a lot to me, or strange but true moments. Here I'd like to talk about more current events. You won't get the breaking news here, but you'll get a take I guess, and I want to know what you think too.
As always I'm so grateful for anyone who gives my channel a chance, so thank you if you're listening to this and I hope you stick around. If you like what I'm doing here please consider leaving your thoughts in a comment, or by clicking like or even subscribing, and I promise I'll try to get better at doing this. This podcast is available mainly on YouTube, but also on Spotify as YAWC Podcast, and maybe more platforms once I figure out how to do that.
Fair warning, this one will be very AEW centric, but I hope to cover more promotions as we go on. I want to talk about three of the biggest subjects this week, and I'll begin with All In, the Wembley Stadium show at the end of August. Admittedly, this one is maybe more important to me than others. I have waited eagerly for AEW to come over to the UK for a long time now. On Tuesday morning I sat at my computer, phone in hand, waiting eagerly for Ticketmaster to mess me around as they do best. I know some fans had problems with Ticketmaster during the presales and getting their codes but I got mine in about 15 minutes, and not too bad a seat. Whatever you think of AEW, it's might impressive that in a day and a half they sold over 40,000 tickets, just in presale. Thats double the company's precious record, twenty thousand at Arthur Ashe Stadium for Grand Slam. Not only that, but in a country they have never run in. It's not all that easy to follow AEW in the UK unless you're a dedicated fan. The ITV coverage is a few days later and cuts segments out, if you want to watch the full show and live, you have to pay Fite TV for the right. I always thought that if they would come over here it had to be a tour of some kind. Why would you fly over an entire roster of wrestlers for one show? Well I got my answer when a single show the scale of All In was announced.
There's been a lot of talk about how this event will take shape. What wrestlers will be involved, what matches, how they will figure in All Out a week later, which has been confirmed to be taking place. On my YouTube channel I've occasionally made AEW predictions, and some times I've hit the nail on the head, and other times I've missed and smashed my thumb with the hammer, but here's my idea for how they book these shows.
I've seen suggestions that AEW should book the likes of Will Ospreay, not an AEW guy but he has wrestled there in the past. I've also seen the argument that AEW should only use their own roster, and I get that perspective, but I kind of disagree. AEW has, when it makes sense often brought in outside stars when it makes sense to. It's a company that likes to introduce its fans to the wider world of wrestling beyond its own reach, admittedly not effectively sometimes. When Nick Gage was the talk of the town following his Dark Side of the Ring episode, AEW brought him in for a match. When Sting was going to Noah to wrestle the Great Muta, they brought Muta to Grand Slam. Here's my suggestion, a New Japan sponsored match, Will Ospreay vs Zack Sabre Jr. It doesn't have to be too high up the card, but it would be two of the top British wrestlers going today, who came up on our indie scene and are undeniably stars.
I'd also like to see some other British wrestling stars maybe just in non-wrestling roles or even as additions to a battle royal or something. Having just signed its fair to assume Nigel McGuinness will be part of the show, but I'm also thinking of people like Nick Aldis and Doug Williams in some sort of British Invasion reunion, hell why not book Harry Smith or David Hart Smith or whatever he's billed as these days, it is Wembley after all, the not quite same stadium his Dad and Bret main evented in. Having said all of this I'm well aware this will be an AEW show at heart, I'm just suggesting ways that they could include the fact that this massive event will be taking place in London.
Maybe that gives you an idea of where I'm going for this card. A week later you have All Out, and to me, that should be your card where you've built a ton of storylines to culminate on pay per view in a traditional sense. All In, to me, should be more like Forbidden Door, where most of the card was build on dream matches between New Japan and AEW stars. Yes there were some stories going in, but it was mostly a card built on one time matches, and that was one of the most popular shows of last year. Thats how I'd build the All In Card.
That would also be in the spirit of how the original All In was booked. Yes there were storylines through Being the Elite, such as Hangman Page vs redacted and Cody Rhodes chasing the NWA world title, but some matches didn't need a build as such, like Kenny Omega vs Pentagon Jr. The main event also, Kota Ibushi teaming up with the Young Bucks against Bandido, Fenix and Rey Mysterio. Just having Ibushi and Mysterio on opposite sides was enough, and I just with they had enough time to work that match as well as they could have, but thats a topic for another day.
I found it really interesting also that right after the Wembley announcement was made there started to be talk of CM Punk coming back. Him missing wrestling, then him having meetings, and then showing up backstage at other shows. I feel like those reports might have been a test to see how fans received the idea of CM Punk coming back. Personally when Brawl Out happened, especially the press conference, I didn't want to see him back until he at least apologised for his actions and words. He did after all do a great deal of damage to both AEW and Tony Khans image with his actions at the press conference alone. I though we'd never see him again, but then I also never thought I'd see him again after he walked away in 2014. I also though we'd never see Bret Hart in WWE again, it took many years, but even he came back in the end.
Here's a trivia note for you, the last time CM Punk wrestled in the UK was on a tour in November 2013, nearly ten years ago. On a bunch of house shows he and Bryan Danielson defeated the Wyatt Family, at a Raw taping that I went to he and Bryan went to a no contest with the Shield, and the following night at a Smackdown taping he and Bryan would again have a no contest with Rybaxel of all teams.
Another subject I'd like to talk about is the upcoming Saturday night show, presumed to be called Collision. Fans my own age might remember playing booking sims such as Extreme Warfare Revenge, or later Total Extreme Wrestling. I loved those games before I got a mac and couldn't play them easily anymore. Tony Khan seems to manage his programming the way I used to run my federation back in the day, which was called TNT, not that one. You sign as many great wrestlers as you can, add as many weekly shows as you can book, until you get bored or burned out and start a new save file, or on Tony's case buy Ring of Honor. AEW's roster has been overrun with talent for a long time now. Think of all the talented wrestlers we don't see often enough. Miro, Andrade, the House of Black and more. They just signed a guy I'm a fan of, Jay White. For half of last year he was IWGP World champion, now he's seconding Juice Robinson in a midcard feud with Ricky Starks, and it's clear AEW already have no clear plans for him. A roster split might in fact be a good thing at this point. I've long thought that Tony needs to delegate some of the booking to others, especially ROH but thats a whole other argument, but a brand split might help to facilitate that. Just yesterday as I wrote this he actually hired a man named Will Washington to help with creative and continuity. Hopefully this is an admission from Khan that he can't book all those hours of television with two more on the way by himself. Dave Meltzer has said many times that every wrestling booker, even the best ones, burn out eventually.
This week with the WWE draft there has been a lot of conversation around the whole concept. Does it even work? Why do they never stick to it? Back in 2002 when the first brand split happened, Raw and Smackdown genuinely felt like two different shows. Not just because of the rosters but the actual content of the different shows. Raw was very angle heavy while Smackdown had some great wrestling. There is a reason people still talk about the Smackdown six. Over time the introduction of a third brand and declines in ratings led to mixing things up, where a little consistency might have helped. Twenty years on nobody trusts the concept given how many times WWE broke their own rules. We don't know however, how AEW will manage a brand split if that even is the plan.
Lets not ignore the elephant in the room here though, CM Punk. Apparently the catalyst for this whole idea. At this point Collision looks to be a two hour show starring Punk and Danhausen versus FTR in a best of 52 series. Obviously there will be more to it than the mates who publicly still like Punk, but it still feels like a way around having Punk backstage on Wednesdays.
Two unfortunate casualties of this are Dark and Elevation, admittedly not all Punk's doing as the removal of those shows is apparently due to a new exclusivity deal with Warner Brothers. Even though the YouTube shows increasingly didn't matter, I'll miss them. Those shows came out at midnight in my time zone, and so I used to watch them until I fell asleep. They were by the end inconsequential, and left me dreaming the Trustbusters theme song which is great by the way.
Dark when it began was a very different show, it essentially hosted matched with talent that wasn't booked on the early Dynamites. Early on we saw great matches like Kenny Omega vs Joey Janela, and matches including Jon Moxley, the Young Bucks and more top stars. The pandemic kind of changed that, as wrestlers who were essentially the crowd would get matches on there, leading to Dark being sometimes two hours of enhancement matches. Elevation came along in early 2021, and while they did try to highlight new stars, it became another dark.
Occasionally they would do storylines in Dark and Elevation, such as the breakup of Joey Janella and Sonny Kiss. They also for a while built up Jora Johl as a new member of the god awful Hardy Family Office, only for him to fade away when AEW started touring again. They even had Britt Baker host her own talk show on a dentist office set, akin to the likes of Pipers Pit, the Barber shop, the Funeral Parlour, the Heartbreak Hotel and many more that I hated as time went on. This week with no Dark or Elevation, AEW metrics on twitter who is a great follow by the way noted that their cancellation led to the longest gap in AEW programming in a staggering twenty six months. As much as I'll miss these shows we do need a gap every now and then. I'm sorry to quote Jim Cornette here but this feels applicable, "how can we miss you if you don't go away?"
I'm going to end this here, and I thank you if you made it to the end. I'd love to hear any thoughts you have on anything I said here, and I'll address any comments in the next podcast. Please if you enjoyed this consider leaving a like, a comment or even subscribing. I'll hopefully be back next week with a different topic. Until then thanks for listening.
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