2021 Pro Wrestling Thread

Punk as the fans do the "Yes" chant:

"That's somebody else's schtick, and you might just need to be a little bit more patient."

That popped the crowd huge, and he's already got "Daniel Bryan" AND "Bryan Danielson" trending on Twitter.

 

Racist? No. But having Kofi and Bianca lose the belts the way they did, in matches far shorter than what Goldberg had Saturday night, is a bad look.

The Miz losing in a squash to Lashley isn’t comparable because he was billed as a weak MITB champion. Didn’t earn the briefcase, kept losing matches each week, then cashed in to win the belt, at which point he did all he could to keep it without competing. It’s not like that title reign began with WM wins, like Kofi and Bianca. Lashley squashing someone like The Miz is believable booking.

Have we seen Charlotte drop the belt in a squash? How about Becky?

Again, it’s bad booking. But when you can easily find lists and videos or your companies’ most racist moments and characters, and when Peacock is deleting tons of historic content because they deem is racist, you’re not always going to get the benefit of the doubt. And fans who are not white and noticed the company’s past transgressions, they will remember it when they see people like Kofi and Bianca get squashed months after their WM wins.

 

Never noticed it before—and maybe it's because I only recently watched Mad Men—but C.M. Punk looks kind of like Jon Hamm.

 

From the minute Kofi won the belt people were saying “but Brocks gonna kill him on Fox.” People are just looking for a reason to complain. He held the belt longer than any Mania world title winner in 15 years. He had a hell of a run.

WWE is not racist. Neither is AEW for that matter, my point on their horrible diversity record is the hypocrisy of the Twitter egg fans who write “wwe is racist” screeds while worshipping Tony Kahn

 

I wouldn't call WWE racist currently, but they were definitely racist in the past, and that follows them. And that history feeds into perceptions when people see things like what happened to Kofi and Bianca. No one brings up that it happened to Miz and Daniel Bryan before that because they weren't being booked like Bianca and Kofi were booked. If they brought Becky back before she was ready to go, that's on WWE for not considering what it was going to look like. Look at it this way -- every wrestler that Bianca has beaten on her way to the belt and since winning it has taken Becky to at least a 10- to 15-minute match, but now Belair has to drop the belt in record time? They should have known there'd be some backlash. It helps that they can point to all the things in this thread to defend themselves, and there is definitely hypocrisy in thinking AEW is a haven of inclusivity, though they have shown a ton of that in the women's division (sadly, not so much with the men, with Private Party not even getting a tag run when they could definitely justify that storyline-wise). But look at the history: five black champions in WWE history, including Lashley, and outside of the Rock, most of them got one or two title runs and then were quickly relegated back to mid-card or tag team status. Sure, they occasionally popped up in the title picture when they needed a filler feud for the current champ, and they might be in four-ways and Elimination Chambers, but they weren't given the chances and multiple runs that some white stars (*cough*Jeff Hardy*cough*) have been given. So it's understandable for there to be concern the same thing that has happened to many black male champions could happen to Belair and that WWE was using her as a token black champion to hold the belt until Becky got back.

 

Can I offer a hot take?
Belair is not quite ready to be a champion yet and people were starting to see that. Her promos were flat and once the fans got back in the building they seemed lukewarm at best to her. I said when she won the belt at Wrestlemania that it felt like she was a year away from being ready for that spot, and I stand by it.
I certainly don't want to see her shuttled down to mid-card obscurity. She obviously has potential. But she's still at a stage where she needs more established stars like Sasha, Bayley and Becky to carry and elevate her, rather than both of them elevating each other.

 

I think with AEW, as they started, there weren't many camera-ready male wrestlers of color who weren't bound to another company, so they had to go with what they had. Even with all the WWE cuts, they've only released a small number of male wrestlers of color to go elsewhere (Kalisto and Ariya Daivari are the only ones who immediately come to mind).

Their three top minority tags -- Lucha Bros., Santana & Ortiz, Private Party -- have been in upper-card angles pretty frequently. They've given Andrade a prime spot, and then you've got Sammy Guevara, Powerhouse Hobbs getting TV time. And they're giving time to a black, non-binary wrestler in Sonny Kiss.

They've got a lot of men of color in the pipeline, but many just aren't ready for prime time. They'd be more comparable to the guys in the NXT breakout tournament, or 205 Live.

 

i agree with this. One of the reasons I’m not up in arms about Becky is I don’t think Bianca Belair is all that great. I see the potential, I see the athleticism….I’m also kind of ready for something else. She won the Rumble, she won at Mania, she won a bunch of PPVs…. Now, heres some adversity, heres a new story, lets see where it goes.

I’m for that over running back another version of the Bayley feud with opponent X where she just wins so she can be “built to look like a star.”

 

Also Scorpio Sky was the breakout star of the second episode of AEW? I was ready to love the guy. And he had a weird heel turn and hasnt been on TV in like 6 months. Don’t know what they’re doing there.

Again I just think if WWE went 3 years with zero non white male singles champions there’d be a lot of think pieces on the internet about it. These guys, crickets, and still you get “WWE racist” stories. It’ll never change but I think its dishonest and dumb

 

To be fair to AEW, they haven't had a ton of men's singles champions, and the booking logic of why those people have held the belts is pretty obvious. Jericho gave the AEW belt credibility it needed, Moxley was the big acquisition that offered some headlines, and Omega is arguably their biggest star.
And then Cody and possibly Miro held the TNT belt for the same reasons as Jericho and Moxley, while giving it to Darby Allin was to build a guy who is obviously the future of the company.

 

Agreed, I really have no problem with aew’s booking of its titles. The people who have race goggles on with wwe’s should and they seemingly do not