AEW - All Elite Wrestling (*Spoilers for Latest Show*)

Black has head on addressed the rumours now - he's stepping away for a while, and will return to AEW. I'm assuming the same thing with Murphy because he's called Fightful's headline sh!t, and AEW sent a public Happy Birthday to him also on social media

Must say I totally marked out with arms aloft when Sammy beat Eddie Kingston on Rampage!

Absolutely delighted Sammy won!

Black may prefer to go back to WWE all things being equal but he signed a contract. At least he is acknowledging that he can't just walk away from it and rock up at another company.

Buddy has apparently gone back to Australia to deal with some Visa paper work, that has to do with him being in the States.

If you listen closely you can hear the sound of goalposts being moved.

I'd say the whole thing with Punk may have been the last straw. Will see if he's as willing to have media scrums again.

Stands to reason that if you honour the full term of your wrestlers contracts, that you expect them to honour those same contracts to you too, no?

Toni Storm vs Serena Debb for the interim Women’s world title announced for tonight.

I think the point is more that the outrage over WWE not releasing talent has been no where near the level of outrage AEW gets for not releasing talent. Those people have all gone quiet but when WWE don't release Ali or Roderick Strong there's uproar.

I wouldn't give a toss if there was a degree of equality. Yet I see people justifying it online with the flimsiest of arguments to say that it's bad when WWE do it but not when AEW do it.

Business decisions are generally not moral and when people treat them as such they usually expose their biases.

Is the important distinction not that the contracts need to work both ways? That people slated WWE for on the one hand cancelling contracts at the drop of a hat, but on the other hand not granting releases? So contracts were only working for WWE, and against the wrestlers.

AEW has wrestlers honour their contracts, but on the other side they honour the contracts of those who become surplus to requirements. So the contracts work for both parties. (And they’ve been pretty decent about granting time off where requested etc too).

Or maybe he is off filming the TV series he landed a role on that starts next week.

WWE firing people willy-nilly is ****, without a doubt. They were massively bloated from hoarding everyone. It was scummy behaviour that was going to be unavoidable as soon as it started. Doing so during a pandemic, etc. made things even worse. AEW are a pretty recent company and it's only been recently that original contracts are starting to lapse and let's be honest anyone, outside of Cody has been a pretty small time player (unless I'm forgetting someone) and there's not even many that have been let go or they've been changed to different contracts. Point being, if AEW gets bloated and starts releasing people, are they bad guys now? Contracts in wrestling are garbage and I think assuming that it is exclusive to WWE is dumb and people suggesting it keep saying otherwise.

People dump on WWE extending contracts for injured wrestlers, AEW has the same clause and seemingly done it before. If you've heard Tony talk about how long he has people under contract, I think it sounds quite despicable personally.

WWE are 'tampering' with contracts. AEW have done this with Jeff Hardy and most likely others. Again the debate of contracts and tampering in wrestling is another conversation altogether.

AEW seemed very interested in talking about unions and healthcare when they started off for clout and then it quickly disappeared.

WWE have given plenty of time off to people recently, Charlotte hasn't been seen in months when she took time for her wedding, they gave Seth and Becky time off, they gave Sasha time off when she was mentally drained a few years back. They're no bastion of morality obviously but the time off thing is very different than what it used to be.

All I'm saying is that people like to keep saying the grass is greener or that AEW is some virtuous company that is totally pro-wrestler and worker rights, they're not. Are they better than WWE morally? Yeah, probably but they also are dealing with less money and don't have the baggage of a long problematic history. On that note, I know TK likes to slam the Saudi deal but does anyone here really think that he'd turn down a deal like that? Genuinely?

Don't ever expect a wrestling company to put morals over money. I'm tired of people pretending that it's fine when one group does it and not the other and then finding a sliver of difference to justify the argument (not saying you're doing that, you have some excellent points) more and more I find myself arguing on the side of WWE lately who historically I think are pretty deplorable but I can't stand the glass house arguments at times and can't help calling it out.

Jericho did everything to get and put Bandido over there to fans who wouldn’t have ever seen him before.

No Honor Jericho is great

Thought the exact same, poor promo that got feck all reaction from the crowd and throw in a few digs about WWE for a cheap pop.

Then announces a lumberjack match but walks to the back instead of being one.

I get that she won't be wrestling but what is her role going to be.. women's GM or something?