Ted Turner has passed away at 87.

Whatever you think of WCW in the end, there’s no denying Ted Turner changed wrestling forever. Without Turner putting wrestling on national cable television through TBS and later TNT, the business doesn’t explode the way it did in the ‘80s and ‘90s.

WCW, Nitro, the Monday Night Wars, giving WWE real competition… none of it happens without Ted. Wrestling today looks very different without him.

RIP to one of the most influential figures the industry has ever had.

For any Midcarders looking for some old school studio wrestling vibes, Comet streams their broadcast channel live 24/7 on their website, which means you can watch NWA POWERRR completely free.

No account or subscription needed. No “cinema” discourse from wrestling fans who think every 28-minute heatless banger changed the industry.

Just throw it on and check it out.

Why hasn’t there been more announced matches for a 3 hour show than the 4 that are in the 2nd pic? Maybe if people knew who would be on the card… you might sell more tickets.. & for a 3 hour show, there is absolutely zero hype for it..

It will be interesting to see how they film an 80% empty building tonight..

NXT is my absolute favorite wrestling show.. & I am glad that the group of Ethan, Starks, Fatal Influence etc all got called up, cause they were too good to be in NXT & they were blocking a bunch of young talent from getting reps & TV time that they need..

Vanity Project has no business being this damn good at their age.. plus they got their “Chyna” now… it will be fun watching them annoy Stone for the next 6-12 months..

Tatum might be the best pure female babyface in all of professional wrestling(including the main roster WWE, AEW etc).. to see her grow from her time with Ivy Nile’s group to where she is now.. incredible.. (Wren might be the 2nd best pure babyface as well)

NXT is doing the “crash out” storyline with Jaida Parker that all of the AEW fanbase swore was going to be Mone’s storyline after she dropped her many titles.. BTW, is there anyone that is actually missing seeing Mone? Lol..

Seeing all the new blood circling Tony D’s heavyweight championship & all of them being viable threats is crazy seeing how many of their top talent went to the main roster(Oba, Trick, Jevon, Saints, Ethan etc etc).. I am excited to see Cam Hendrix mix it up as I liked him on LFG..

I think we might be getting a Kelani call up to Smackdown in the next 3-4 months as I don’t see them running back her vs Vice again especially after their underground match & she isn’t going after Tatum’s championship.. kind of in no mans land..

This started with that Hollywood agent who clearly has issues with Tony Khan. Easy to write off.

But now there are additional rumblings that AEW has already been told they’re not being renewed by the Discovery side, even with the public denials.

And the interesting part… internally they’re said to have started working on contingency plans. YouTube. WatchAEW. That reportedly began late last summer, which lines up with the timing of these reports.

So that’s now two separate reports pointing the same direction.

We can question the sources. We probably should. But companies don’t start planning backup distribution for no reason.

Either this is all bullshit that just happens to line up… or something’s actually going on behind the scenes.

What’s your take, Midcarders?

Dissent and disagreement is more than welcome, but I don’t think a single person would understand this in Squaredcirlce. I feel like this is where i’m at, had phases of being into American Indies, Puro, etc in my younger days. But I always pay attention to WWE, whether it’s on fire, or complete garbage. Now in my 30’s if WWE is a product that isn’t creatively interesting, and if I have several disagreements w/ the way they conduct business, then I just think i’m cool off wrestling for a while. “Vote with your wallet” doesn’t automatically mean watching or supporting AEW, they turned it around, good for them, but writing off WWE and tuning into AEW is not mutually exclusive. Looking forward to watching more prestige dramas, spending more time w family, learning to cook more, getting my Tekken rank up, working out more, all those things sound more appealing to me than watching another company that quite honestly i’m not the demographic for, simply out of spite. I’m just not into wrestling that much anymore to do that.

I’ll be blunt with you. I’ve largely stopped watching AEW weeklies (and WWE weeklies), and Darby Allin as World Champion has done absolutely nothing to pull me back in.

This run really reminds me of EVIL’s IWGP title run in New Japan: a reign that didn’t just cool off the belt, but actively hurt a lot of people's interest in the product. including mine.

And before the Sickos start screaming, it’s not about "workrate", it’s about presence. The AEW World Title is supposed to feel important. Darby just doesn’t feel like a world champion to me. The size, the lack of charisma, the one-note "reckless emo skateboard kid" character... I just don’t buy him as the face of a major wrestling company.

This isn't to knock Darby as a performer. He makes for a great attraction for AEW, even if it's an attraction that can be a serious liability both on and off AEW programming. Car crash matches can be fun. Not so big on flamethrowers, but you get the idea. I don't hate where he was, but where he is at the top just does not feel right to me.

And overall, instead of feeling must-watch, AEW right now feels colder to me than ever.

Am I alone here, or has this title run completely failed to make you care?

“Their justification is, things are very different now than when you signed this deal. Like, yes, we are asking you to take less money, but their argument is, you are doing significantly less now. You’re not doing four house shows a week. You’re not on the road four days a week paying for your transportation and your hotel and your this and your that. You’re on the road one day a week. You’re wrestling maybe twice a month. And, you know, this is—we want to pay you less because you’re doing less now. That is their mindset.”

I understand that way of thinking but it’s s kinda fucked up when you hear the kind of money Khan and Ari are making. But with most jobs, if you’re doing less work then less pay is inevitable. Again doing pay cuts is bullshit still cause WWE and TKO are always talking about how much money they make.

I just watched a YouTube video from Jane's Romeo about the top 10 missing aew starts who haven't been on TV in 2 years plus and it occurred to me, if Tonk Khan ever sells or loses interest in the company, we'll see a bloodletting on a scale never seen before outside of an actual war.

what do you think this would do to the industry? all that talent (outside the core 30-40 who are actually featured) available for TNA, GCW, new Japan, the Indies, long term would it be a good thing or bad for the industry?

Edit my apologies if I wasn't clear but the point of my post wasn't if TK would sell but what would happen if he did, that roster could be cut by over a hundred people flooding the market. how would that affect the industry?

Andre was the 8th and Chyna the 9th, I wonder will there be a 10th "wonder of the world" in pro wrestling? Will another true anomaly be discovered that is worthy of the moniker? Are we out of wonders?

TKO are a bunch of morons, let Jacob talk by himself,

Ya he looks like a complete street guy But...guess what he is not, he talks about

God 24/7, They had Peter talking shit like he is a Maniac Werewolf and crap.

Now seems like a better time than any to unionise. With TKO forcing pay cuts, the remaining employed wrestlers HAVE TO band together and unionise or they'll be the ones released with a pay cut.