AEW
It’s been a dizzying week with so much happening in the world of All Elite Wrestling it’s difficult to keep up:
At Double Or Nothing in Las Vegas, CM defeated Adam Page to win the AEW World championship after Page had a Roddy Piper-style crisis of conscience, internally struggling with the choice to cheat to win. Celebrating with FTR after the match, Punk remains a face… for now.
Overshadowing everything else however, has been the story of Maxwell Jacob Friedman. No showing a fan meet and greet, rumoured to be flying out of Vegas on a plane, apparently only appearing at the T-Mobile Arena minutes before his match with Wardlow, before finally airing his grievances with Tony Khan in a profanity-laced promo on Wednesday’s Dynamite. Was it all a work? Did it start out as a shoot only to be turned into storyline? Will this kind of blurring kayfabe and reality burn the fanbase out as it did to WCW two decades ago? Only time will tell.
So, uh, what else? Julia Hart finally turned! Britt Baker and Adam Cole won the first ever Owen Hart Cup women’s and men’s tournament and were awarded championship belts inspired by the design of the Stampede North American Championship! Athena, the former Ember Moon, debuted! Andrade brought in RUSH to AEW, ditching the useless AFHO and hopefully starting a new Ingobernable Era! Miro returned on Dynamite and squashed Johnny Elite! And a whole bunch of other stuff happened too.
JAPAN
A lot of happenings in NJPW are also related to AEW at the moment too, with the Forbidden Door pay-per-view coming up on June 26th. Hiroshi Tanahashi arrived on Dynamite to challenge new champion CM Punk. It’s rumoured that Okada will face Adam Page for the IWGP World Heavyweight championship at the event too – providing he is still holding the belt, as he will be defending it first against Jay White at Dominion on June 12th. By the time this thread goes up though, the Best of the Super Juniors tournament will have ended, with Hiromu Takahashi (A Block winner) vs El Desperado (B Block winner) in the main event.
WWE
Hell in a Cell is arriving this weekend, where Cody Rhodes faces off against Seth Rollins for the third time since he returned. Sasha Banks & Naomi are still indefinitely suspended, and… what else? The company continues to eat itself in its partnership with A&E, announcing a second season of “Biography: WWE Legends,” a new show called “WWE Rivals,” and a new after show named “WWE Smack Talk.” Why produce new content of quality when you can revel in nostalgia?
What have you been watching, loving, and hating, in the world of professional wrestling this week?
