THE WINTER 2024 WRESTLING THREAD! (Feat. Royal Rumble! WK18! Sting Retires at AEW Revolution! & More!)

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Happy New Year, Graps Fans!

Hope we’re all looking forward to another year of absolute bollix!

The road to Wrestlemania ™ begins this week, with a couple big matches on Smackdown this week which will determine both Roman Reigns & Logan Paul(lol)'s respective title matches at the Royal Rumble, with Roman facing either AJ Styles, Randy Orton or LA Knight, while Paul will face either Santos El Halpar or Kevin Owens. As for the Rumble itself, it seems to be a 50/50 between CM Punk or Cody Rhodes.

AEW are now gearing up towards Revolution, which is too early to tell what is next after this weekend’s World’s End show, but the one guarantee we do have is that it will be Sting’s retirement match, I wonder if he’ll bring The Great Muta out for one last go around.

The biggest imminent event though of course is Wrestle Kingdom 18, even if NJPW very much feels like it’s on quite the downturn, always delivers as one of the best events of the year. Here’s the card:

The banner match of course is the rematch between Danielson and Okada (sorry Naito & SANADA, but it is) while Ospreay’s last match in Japan for the time being with Mox and Finlay will be fun, if an inevitable win for the latter, Takahashi vs El Despy will be predictably great flippy fun, Tama Tonga and Shingo Takagi could have a sleeper hit, Zack takes on the NEWLY ELECTED PRESIDENT OF THE COMPANY and The Three Musketeers each get bigger opportunities to shine.

WHO’S READY FOR SOME 2024 BOLLIX?!

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Don’t think Cody needs it to set up the rematch with Reigns tbh as the backstory is there already. So it’s Punk or maybe Orton or Drew McIntyre. Got a feeling Priest cashes in on Rollins at RR so maybe a face wins the rumble to challenge him.

Women’s rumble is much harder to call. Becky Lynch or Bianca Belair I reckon, or maybe Bayley and they’ll finally do her face turn.

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Got plans to watch the Rumble

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Really excited for Wrestle Kingdom. It’s hardly a vintage card but it feels like a new era is beginning. Losing Ospreay full time was a big blow of course but so long as they can avoid losing any more big names I feel like the future could be quite bright. It seems like the chat around Okada leaving was designed to get the old president kicked out so he should be sticking around. Hopefully we’ll see the musketeers + 1 trying to usurp the ace and full on arrogant dick Okada slapping them down for a bit.

But yeah, Wrestle Kingdom: War Pups v Catch 22 should be a banger, Despy & Hiromu couldn’t have a bad match if they tried, Ospreay isn’t going to let a little thing like David Finlay being in the match spoil his last outing as an NJPW wrestler, Zack having a go at a president instead of a Prime Minister should be good, Tsuji v Uemura should be a good glimpse at the future of the company and while it may be cold in the west SANADA v Naito is a big deal in Japan with lots of interesting story threads so should go down a treat. Sounds a grand way to spend a Thursday to me.

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As ever, I have taken the day off work to watch and then take DiS album poll thread duties

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I’m ‘working’ from home. If there wasn’t fuck all to do atm I’d be developing a mystery illness as we speak.

The only thing that can stop me is the new NJPW World app. Which could prove a tough opponent as it’s fucking useless.

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Enjoying the increasingly nervous vibe from WWE fans as April gets closer and it seems booking still has no faith in anyone but Roman as The Guy, so they’re probably going for 3-4000 days now, unless the Rock wants to pick up the belt at Mania.

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Oh, oh no. Oh no no no.

Poor Cody will never finish his story :cry:

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Lol, the timing on that

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Baffled as to why anyone wants to see him in WWE in the year of our lord 2024.

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https://x.com/wweromanreigns/status/1742044486895636515?s=46

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Really shit booking imo. Unless Reigns is gonna do both nights which seems highly unlikely.

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shit in terms of the story they’ve been building with cody, but it’s the match that will draw the most money so if he’s available they’ve kind of got to do it.

match will 100% suck though

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Hard to see what they’re gonna do with Cody too, another rumble win doesn’t make sense unless he’s gonna face Roman.

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rumble winner faces seth
rock/roman will be at EC in Australia
cody wins EC faces roman at mania

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yeah, no idea. dwayne surely is not going to win the title as you’d assume he’s not sticking around, so maybe they just kick the can down the road a bit and have cody beat roman at summerslam. no idea what you do with him at mania though, drew mac maybe?

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Rock will be at Elimination Chamber I reckon.

Also he was knackered after the elbow

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Poor Jinder :sob::skull:

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That show starts 3/6am in the U.S, doesnt seem likely to me

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Do find the timing of this quite ironic, man shows up shortly after CM Punk returns to presumably jump in line to the top ahead of Cody after his last run where he checks notes did exactly the same thing to CM Punk, essentially beginning his downfall in the company originally

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