u/uncannynerddad

With reports that AEW has already been informed by Discovery the TBS/TNT relationship isn’t being renewed, it feels like we’re heading toward a pretty interesting next couple years for that roster.

So realistically speaking, who would you actually want to see get a WWE run or return?

Who genuinely fits WWE better in terms of presentation, star power, or structure?

MJF feels obvious.
Swerve absolutely feels like a WWE IC Title level guy.
Jamie Hayter could be a great addition to the women’s division.
Wardlow has felt more WWE than AEW for years at this point.

Even somebody like Ethan Page already proved some talent probably should’ve left earlier.

And before the Sickos start crying, this isn’t “AEW bad.” Some wrestlers are just clearly built for WWE’s machine, production, and audience.

If AEW ends up on MyAEW, YouTube, or some smaller platform after TNT/TBS, I think you’ll see a lot more people reevaluating where they want to be long term.

Personally, I’d love to see Orange Cassidy get a shot. I’m genuinely curious whether Shawn Michaels and NXT could refine that character presentation a bit and turn him into something that works on a bigger stage.

What about you, Midcarders? Who do you want to see in WWE?

I swear, sometimes being a wrestling fan is embarrassing.

If it’s not the parasocial weirdness where people treat billion dollar wrestling companies like sports teams they personally play for (Hi, Sickos!), it’s stuff like this. Grown adults melting down over who a wrestler married. Or those creepy convention photos where dudes pose spooning women wrestlers like it’s prom night 1998.

And then you meet some of these people in real life and suddenly the lack of social skills, poor hygiene stereotypes, and terminally online behavior starts making a lot more sense.

I like wrestling. I’ve liked wrestling my entire life. But man, some wrestling fans make it really difficult to admit publicly sometimes.

With reports that Discovery informed AEW they would not be extending the relationship, and gave them advance notice to prepare for life after TBS/TNT, it raises a real question:

Would AEW actually be healthier somewhere else?

Because let’s face facts. The whole “competition with WWE” thing has been dead for a while. The ratings keep shrinking, the buzz outside the Meltzer bubble barely exists, and the company feels more like a niche internet product than the hot alternative it looked like in 2021 when Punk and Cody were around.

So maybe the answer isn’t chasing major cable prestige anymore.

Maybe AEW would actually fit better on something smaller and more tailored to what the product currently is.

MyAEW.
YouTube.
Tubi.
Destination America 2.0.
Some FAST channel setup.

Would moving to a smaller platform actually help AEW restore the feeling, or would it finally expose how much smaller the audience really is?

Since Darby Allin won the AEW World Title on April 15, Dynamite ratings have Coffin Dropped off the top rope, falling from 710K viewers to 617K, then 596K, and now 590K.

And before the Sickos start foaming at the mouth, no, this isn’t entirely Darby’s fault. AEW’s ratings slide started long before him.

But this is where perception becomes reality in wrestling.

When you’re the world champion, you become the face of the company. Fair or unfair, fans tie the health of the product to you. And right now, Darby’s reign is attached to some of the coldest Dynamite numbers AEW has seen on prime time cable.

What makes it interesting is that the online echo chamber keeps insisting the shows are “bangers” every week. The dirtsheets praise the “great wrestling,” the Sickos celebrate every match, and yet the audience keeps shrinking anyway.

At some point, AEW has to stop listening exclusively to the Meltzer bubble and ask itself an uncomfortable question:

If the hardcore audience supposedly loves the product this much, why are fewer and fewer people watching?

So where do Midcarders land on this?

Is Darby just taking the blame for a larger company-wide decline?

Or has AEW reached the point where nobody on the roster truly moves business anymore?

I recently watched Hulk Hogan: Real American on a flight, and enjoyed it a lot more than Mr. McMahon from a few years back.

The doc definitely softens some of the uglier parts of Hogan’s later life and controversies, and there are moments where it feels like Netflix is trying a little too hard to frame him as a “flawed but misunderstood” human being instead of fully digging into everything. And let’s be real, Hulk Hogan absolutely earned a lot of the criticism that followed him later in life.

But man… seeing the relationship between Hulk Hogan and Linda Hogan hit harder than I expected. You can tell there was genuine love and partnership there at one point, and watching both of them reflect on the collapse of it all was honestly pretty sad.

As someone who grew up a full blown Hulkamaniac, Hogan was professional wrestling for me. I probably don’t become a wrestling fan going on 35+ years without Hulk Hogan existing.

And that’s the weird thing about Hogan. He’s simultaneously one of the most important figures in wrestling history and one of the most frustrating. A guy who helped build the entire industry into what it became, while also spending decades repeatedly leg dropping his own legacy.

Curious where Midcarders landed on this one.

Did the documentary work for you? Did it feel too sanitized? Did it change your perspective on Hogan at all? Or are you completely checked out on revisiting Hulkamania in 2026?

I know the Sickos are gonna hit us with the “but he worked Korakuen Hall” defense, but man… this look is rough.

Wrestling is presentation. Aura matters. Presence matters. And Mason Rook doesn’t look intimidating, dangerous, athletic, or even remotely believable as a TV wrestling star.

You don’t need to look like Batista, but you should at least look like you’ve seen the inside of a gym voluntarily.

Maybe he can work. But first impressions matter, and this immediately takes me out of the product.

Am I alone here, Midcarders?

We are officially in a new era of WWE.

John Cena is retired. AJ Styles is retired. Brock Lesnar is retired. A lot of the established main event talent is either moving into special attraction roles or being shifted down the card to help build the next wave.

And that next wave is starting to look pretty loaded.

Oba Femi. Trick Williams. Jacy Jayne. Dirty Dom. Bron Breakker. Ethan Page. Blake Monroe. Tiffany Stratton. Giulia. Roxanne Perez. Je’Von Evans. Sol Ruca. The list keeps growing.

This feels like WWE’s “New Generation” reset. Not in the cheesy 1995 branding sense, but in the sense that WWE is clearly transitioning from one era of stars into another.

So here’s the question, Midcarders:

If WWE’s next decade had to be built around FOUR pillars, who are your picks?

Which four names do you think will define this “next generation” of WWE?

Welcome to the official r/midcarder live thread for WWE Backlash.

Tonight’s the night. Grab a beer, settle in, enjoy Danhausen’s weird little gremlin energy, and watch some fake fighting with your fellow Midcarders.

This thread will stay pinned/highlighted throughout the show so it’s easy to find during the event.

How To Watch
WWE Backlash streams tonight at 6PM ET on ESPN Unlimited through the ESPN app in the U.S., with the first hour simulcast on ESPN2.

Internationally, it streams on Netflix.

Full details and previews:
https://www.wwe.com/shows/backlash/wwe-backlash-match-card-how-to-watch-previews-start-time-and-more

Tonight’s Card
- Roman Reigns (c) vs. Jacob Fatu
Tribal warfare. Family drama. Samoan violence. This one feels like someone’s getting launched into the fifth row.

- Seth Rollins vs. Bron Breakker
The future of WWE trying to spear a hole directly through Seth Rollins’ ribcage.

- Trick Williams (c) vs. Sami Zayn
Trick has become one of WWE’s fastest rising stars while Sami continues his yearly tradition of being exhausted and morally conflicted.

- IYO SKY vs. Asuka
Two absolute killers finally colliding while the internet pretends this won’t rule.

- Danhausen & Mystery Partner vs. The Miz & Kit Wilson
Very nice. Very evil. Very likely to completely hijack the conversation tonight depending on who the partner is.

- John Cena appearance
Which will likely be a 17-minute infomercial for Club WWE and nostalgia merch bundles.

Use this thread for:
- Live reactions
- Match discussion
- Bad fantasy booking
- Overreactions after every near fall
- Beer/snack check-ins
- Danhausen conspiracy theories
- General Midcarder chaos

As always:
No Sicko behavior.
No basement-tier meltdowns.
No acting like this fake sport is a geopolitical crisis.

Enjoy the show, Midcarders.

Danhausen teased a mystery tag partner for tonight, so let’s hear the guesses before WWE inevitably reveals it and wrestling Twitter pretends they “called it.”

Do they go with another comedy act? Someone from NXT? A nostalgia pop? Or does Triple H fully lean into the weirdhausen energy and give him somebody completely unexpected?

My only request: please no fantasy booking involving Kota Ibushi teleporting through a forbidden door powered by Meltzer stars.

Who you got?

With the recent moderation and rule changes, we’re asking Midcarders to help us keep this place from turning into the basement 2.0.

A lot of the usual suspects are discovering this sub exists, and shockingly, some of them are struggling to process that not everyone wants to pretend every 600k ratings dip is actually “great for wrestling.”

If you see bad-faith posting, derailment, tribalist nonsense, misinformation, disinformation, or whatever malformed narrative the Sickos are workshopping this week, report it. Don’t waste your afternoon arguing with someone whose entire personality was built in a Discord server and reinforced by Meltzer star ratings and Bagel Bites.

We want r/midcarder to stay fair, balanced, funny, and rooted in actual discussion. Criticizing WWE is allowed. Criticizing AEW is allowed. Worshipping billionaires and treating wrestling companies like political parties is not.

And remember: this is a scripted fake sport where grown men and women play fight in their underwear for shiny belts. If someone is acting like they’re defending the honor of a medieval kingdom because you said Dynamite felt cold lately, there’s a good chance you’ve encountered a Sicko.

Report accordingly.

Recent rules/mod update here: https://www.reddit.com/r/midcarder/s/pG9d7jyDw2

275,000 viewers for NWA POWERRR on Comet is honestly a pretty encouraging number for a company many people assumed was dead a few years ago.

Free broadcast TV still matters, and there’s clearly an audience out there looking for wrestling outside the WWE/AEW bubble.

Have any Midcarders checked out the Comet run yet?

Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends.