Mid Off
By Scott Keith on 10 January 2024
So what started as very normal day with the biggest story being the injustice of perennial jobber Jinder Mahal getting a title match on a Raw that's gonna get crushed in the ratings vs an NFL playoff game next Monday, turned into an absolute crapshow by the end of the day. Clearly Jinder's random opportunity was the final straw for Tony and he lashed out on twitter, complaining of the hypocrisy that this announcement wasn't met with the same disdain that Hook calling out Samoe Joe got. Tony also made sure to circle back around to the USA twitter account that took a shot at him in jest talking about cagematch ratings days earlier. My question is why does Tony think these hissy fits are helping AEW in any way? And where was this fire when Jericho was being called out as a potential sexual deviant? He had no problem letting Chris get slandered, but had to go out of his way to hinder Jinder?
I think it's clear why Tony did this, as it's the same MO every time. AEW gets some bad press, they have a few down weeks of ratings, so Tony decides to drum up some interest in the upcoming week of shows. But is whatever buzz Tony gets worth the fans he seems to turn off with these constant outbursts? It just doesn't seem like it's worth it. And then he fell into Bischoff's trap who started trolling him, to the point he needed to his Uncle Dave to step in and help save him. And look, EB's history is well known. He is the definition of dropping the bag. But while AEW has had some big wins over the last 5 years, nothing has come close yet to the lasting impact Eric had that is still prevalent today. He kicked Vince's so bad with WCW that they had to completely redo their whole business model. And if you are going to listen to anyone about how not to f it up, isn't Bischoff the perfect person to listen to? Because that guy has basically destroyed two companies.
The weirdest part about all of this is Jinder was actually heavily defended by his peers and wrestling fans all over, and got more of a rub than anyone else involved in this. The match is probably more over now than it has any right to be, and Jinder is trending for the 2nd week in a row. Now that's promotion, getting a rival match more over than anything on your own show. You had all these backstage exits the last few months, do you think Tony's behavior is the biggest problem right now? There has to be potential free agents out there, or current AEW stars up for renewal, that have got to be sick of this.
Man when the guys in DX drove a jeep over to Nitro you must have been equally outraged. If not more so.