AEW really needs to stop this stuff

I think that sums it up.

Sammy is extremely unlikeable. I tend to fast forward when him or Tay are on.

Andrade probably didn’t start this as a way to get fired but quickly saw that opening as it evolved.

Imagine Andrade sitting around with Ric, Bruce Pritchard, Conrad’s cronies and the Flair family. Now ask yourself if it is at all plausible they brainstormed ways for him to be an agitator and get fired. It’s practically like he booked his own storyline to leave and played it out online/backstage backing TK into a corner. This doesn’t feel not-pre-meditated on his end. And that Sammy is an immature mark for himself, I couldn’t think of a better target to instigate because you know he is going to be hot headed when dragged into things. The entire thing is bullshit. This worked though - more egg on TKs face and as I’ve stated before when everyone wanted to figure out who to blame (Punk or the Elite) - the buck has to stop with Tony. He’s embarrassing himself and ruining real business opportunities (from the outside looking in).

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If TK allows Andrede to pull what he pulled and give him his release, the message that send us a bad one. Bench him and send him home. Make an example out of him that what he is doing isn’t the way to go about doing things.

A lot of people bring up a double standard of a bit like Mustafa Ali wanting his release and fans being upset when he wasn’t getting it vs. this current situation. The difference is that a company like WWE was literally releasing dozens of people at a time and barely doing anything with Ali - yet they wouldn’t let him voluntarily go and potentially save somebody else’s job.

Andrede meanwhile - maybe not a main event run - has more or less been booked strongly and given plenty of big matches… Clearly just wants out for the sake of his personal connections to another company. And now he’s pulling all sorts of bullshit.

Dangerous precedent to give in to what he wants.

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I think you give Ric Flair too much credit, he’s probably just drunk and not participating much lol.

I think what happened was he went on that interview and said that stuff about Sammy (which may have just been frustration as we know Sammy is a knob) but then when Sammy got upset he completely saw an opportunity there to push this. I’m sure once he saw Sammy got upset he probably was on the horn with people like Bruce who told him that if he just starts a physical altercation they will have to release him, and that the WWE will cover any potential claims of lawsuit. So he probably told him to throw a punch, but do it more like a worked punch. Clearly Sammy looked fine when he was wrestling.

I don’t know if you’re Tony Khan how you handle this. If it were me, I oylr hold a large meeting and say anyone who wants out can leave right now, but after this there’s no more opportunity to leave. Everyone else who stays wants to be here, and going forward anyone else I sign that would be clear to. But I think having these toxic cancers hanging around isn’t helping

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Yeah I don’t disagree with this approach either. I’m not sure what the right approach is. Ultimately you also don’t wanna pay him money just to sit at home either. I guess no good solution really

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Sure you do. It sets precedent and shows a spine. And at the same time AEW needs to become MUCH smarter about who they bring in and have a real process. Not just signing WWE’s scraps. Remember when Vince said on an earnings call AEW can choke on more of their released talent. I think we should revisit that and give WWE credit.

I just remember this drunk old guy celebrating getting his Woo back on the Raw opening as the greatest moment of his career or some nonsense like that. I view him entirely as somebody desperate for WWE to accept him back. And Pritchard probably is in his ear, too. Idk, I wouldn’t want a disgruntled Andrade with ties to my competitor in my locker room. I’d pay for him to sit home 100%. Cost Benefit analysis. He’s not moving a business needle for AEW as is.

I’m speculating entirely on Andrade and the people I speculate are influencing him, but I think it’s fair and logical given everything we know to be true about who he is married to, who is part of that family, and who is around that family as well as knowing WWE has been tampering. Deductive Reasoning

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Again, my thoughts are similar to this…

You don’t reward bad behaviour.

I think you make an absolute example out of Andrede. Bench him and be clear of legal ramifications if he takes aim at the company publicly any further.

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I’m still yet to see a real answer to this, so any help/links would be appreciated. What did WWE actually do and is it actually illegal? Because my basic understanding is that it’s not “contract tampering” for WWE to call and talk to a guy. AEW and the individual are the ones with a contract, WWE isn’t under any obligation to honor it.

I mean, I guess it’s super hard to prove that WWE is tampering.

Is Charlotte or somebody else playing an intermediate/ passing along a possible to her husband and the company she works for illegal? I’m not sure.

Anyway, I agree. The last month has been dominated by stories of AEW backstage instability, despite the show actually being really good - and consistently so. I would love to see the Bucks & Omega stuff figured out sooner than later, so that black cloud isn’t hanging over things too. They desperately need to change the narrative going on.

But, all in all, I see Triple H continuing everything he learned from Vince and playing dirty for years to come.

Tampering? I’d be shocked if WWE wasn’t tampering, I’d also be shocked if AEW didn’t tamper. This is something that trough back channels at least has happened for decades pretty much across the board. NBA, NHL, NFL, wrestling etc. When guys are about to make a major life move, of course they are going to send feelers. You don’t think guys like Owens and Zayn were getting feelers from AEW through their friends? You know they were, and I dont even have an issue with it.

As for Andrade, to fair when I said fire him I wasnt aware he was trying to get fired (if the reports are true). That does complicate the matter if true. The issue here is you have a lot of talent that are unhappy, and this type of unrest is like a cancer, if you don’t cut it out this shit can spread and damage your entire company. At the same time, if Andrade went as far as to start a fight on purpose to get out of his contract, you almost have to not succumb to that. It’s tricky, but as fans we also have to be careful, this could be a smear job against Andrade to attempt to babyface AEW in all of this.

Tony needs to take control of his locker room, and I do feel that part of this is for him to give some type of speech where he says something to the degree of “We are building something great here, if you don’t want to be here, there is the door”. I get this “could” be a scary precedent, but I also dont think this really happens again as alot of this unrest is guys who want out and back in WWE is because of the major transition WWE just went through that will likely never happen again, or at least not for decades. The other issue is AEW pretty much branded themselves as an alternative to WWE, a company that doesn’t do thing like hold their talents hostage to their contracts. Forcing people to stay, also does make them look just like WWE. Regardless of what Tony does, he needs to do something as AEW is getting killed in the eyes of public perception right now.

I really do see it from both sides, it’s a tough call.

Personally I’d fire Andrade and Guevara and just move on. Neither guy is worth the drama. Andrade was unhappy in WWE too so good luck.

Again, it all comes down to Khan. He allowed this to happen. He hired Andrade and others without thinking about the locker room. Maybe go run the Jaguars for a while and hire someone else (with experience) to run the show for a while.

Tony Khan is a good booker, but has shown himself time and again to also be a rich brat. From “I have more money than Jim Crockett” to getting worked up about WWE running shows against All Out (it’s almost like they’re competing or something…), he has never really shown grace under fire outside of the product that appears on TV.

And as for contract tampering, I know enough about WWE that I will believe any shady story that may come to light. But at the moment, I’ve yet to hear anything on par with Kenny Omega being pretty widely known to be an incoming wrestler and executive while he was the current IWGP Champion.

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It may be best for Tony to just be the lead booker/writer and hand the running of the company over to someone else. Guy is a creative genius, but he has zero control over his locker room.

I think most would agree there is a clear difference between a talent who has an expiring deal exploring options vs. somebody who has many year left intentionally trying to get fired.

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This is just it.

Is Triple H cold calling people asking them to come to his company? Probably not

But look for instance lots of these people have spouses who work for WWE. Is it tampering for their spouse to say to them “Hey Triple H was saying he loves you and wishes you never left”? I mean it’s very Greyzone when they’re married to say what discussions are off-topic.

Like in all likelihood it’s going through Charlotte or Zelina Vega or Rhea etc. Virtually impossible to say it’s tampering if you and your spouse are sitting there discussing this stuff over dinner. Could easily be spun like her just saying she’s heard at work that there’s interest in him coming back. That’s not tampering

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I SO badly want to pin FUD on WWE for a lot of the change in AEW sentiment but this :point_up_2: :100:

No amount of speculation on WWE’s “tampering” which I believe has happened whether direct or indirect by employees or non-employees (it’s funny how this has been mostly contained to talent with spouses in WWE) covers up for TK just flat out seeming like a bad Coach/GM. He replaced Urban Meyer, he should replace himself if you are judging on the last few months.

Obviously that’s extreme but the most hardened AEW fan (myself) can’t put blame past anyone but him. If AEW was a team I rooted for I’m at the fire the coach stage of frustration with them this last few months.

Edit (adding a reflection): I used to think TKs antics were a funny way to pop a target audience and cultivate fandom among Hardcores who were into that stuff (not me, but I gave it a pass as I saw the promotion benefit of it). I also think he played up some of it and was fueled by a locker room that was full of smart people who wanted to build something great to compete, not a locker room of people who wanted a paycheck from an alternative. Under his nose, the locker room culture clearly changed and the people he brought in came for less reasons. I do not think a lot of the signings were there because they believed in All Elite Wrestling the way the original group of ex-WWE guys (or even a Bryan Danielson) may have. This was an alternative, leverage play for talent and he either didn’t realize or was blissfully ignorant. As a leader, if you don’t have a sense of what the culture or motivation is of the talent, you cannot get what you want out of them and they are going to cause more harm than good. It’s true in any business. Even more so in one like Wrestling where these talents are their own independent companies. with motivations and agendas. In what John wrote and spoke about re: the place AEW finds itself at in Yr 4, I’d say the shift in what it has become and means to the people who actually work there is the biggest factor. Long gone are the days of keeping secrets about Brodie Lee, which in hindsight symbolizes the kind of culture that existed, and now so obviously doesn’t.

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If you had to pin it on one inflection point it was Cody leaving.

On one hand you had a pillar of the company, a founding father leave. It definitely killed the image of “best friends wrestling” and started this whole spiral of dissent.

On the flip side it was the first time I (and I’m sure others) tuned into RAW in years. We waited and they delivered him at WM complete with music and theme. The reactions to it were insane. People started to not view WWE as lame because they delivered a huge moment and didn’t screw it up

AEW can’t have a WWE wrestler debut with the same music and gimmick unless maybe it’s Ronda or Brock. WWE owns all the characters as we know. But the fact that this was literally the same guy in WWE I think really made people who had sworn off WWE tune back in.

Since then, it snowballed with the AEW dissent growing and more “cool” WWE stuff like Vince leaving etc.

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The Cody thing is a factor. One big thing not a lot of people are talking about is the whole ROH mess. Just get it all off TV, no one cares. Shoehorning in all the titles and talent is just confusing and not needed.

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I assume he’s trying to get them a TV deal by showcasing them like this. I think he’s hoping somebody watches the stuff on TV and offers him some money

Yeah way too many titles right now with ROH it makes it hard to care about the champions for any of them.

You have 2 womens belts (3 with ROH which hasn’t been featured much) in a division that can barely support 1.
You have 5 AEW belts (world,tnt,tag,trio,Atlantic which I almost forgot)
You have 4 ROH belts (world, TV, tag, pure)
And the FTW belt (which has been defended whether you consider it real or not)

This doesn’t even bring in any belts from other promotions that have been defended on AEW. It makes nothing feel special. You have 12-13 titles and 3 hours of weekly TV.

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