What are you looking forward to most this week in nerdom?

Joker, without a doubt. And I'm interested to see how AEW is going to introduce themselves to a much wider audience and try to explain that idiot with his hands in his pockets and why we should take him at all seriously.

i'm most interested in aew/nxt squaring off.

I'm mostly looking forward to continued bellyaching anytime Orange Cassidy is featured prominently on television...so AEW I guess.

"Oh, man, have you heard of this guy Orange Cassidy? I never had either, but he was at the Evolve show I went to the other night, and he was a total blast. I guess his whole schtick is that he's like, a really talented, athletically gifted wrestler, but he's just completely lazy. Doesn't even give a f*ck. Like, no sh*t, he wrestles in jeans and a white t-shirt, doesn't even bother to take his glasses off, and check this out - he keeps his hands in his pockets. It's wild! He'll do like, these lazy slaps, barely brushing the guy, and it's not like they're selling them or anything, but they get all riled up and go to deck him, and this wiry little guy just dodges them like it's nothing. Eventually he'll still land his sh*t, but he sticks to the gimmick the whole time. It's completely wild, man." - paraphrased dialogue of me explaining Orange Cassidy to the guy going to AEW with me next week who has never seen Orange Cassidy before.

(Yes, I'm entirely aware that when I get excited, I talk like an uneducated townie)

Eh. I think the people taking him to heart are vastly overestimating the height of his ceiling. To me, wrestling has always been a variety show. Somewhere along the way, everyone decided that there needed to be this consistent expectation that everyone from the top on down should have the same feasible potential to carry the weight of the (any) company on their back, and it just doesn't fit the bill. It's the sort of mentality that lays ruin to great tag teams by breaking them up because there's this predisposed notion that now every tag-team has a Marty and a Shawn and we've got to split them to figure out which one is which, completely devoid of any possibility that maybe there is no Marty or Shawn to this particular tag team and that maybe, just maybe, the pair of them have equitable share as the Hawk/Animal of their tandem.

*Exhale*

I'm not looking at AEW, even for all their talk of being a more "sports oriented product", as a roster full of talents who are equally placed upon the slate in pursuit of the top championship. I mean, come on - nobody is looking at Marko Stunt or Jungle Boy in that respect, and why the hell would they? It's still a scripted program, even if they hold WLDs to a near-biblical reverence. If Cassidy doesn't drastically alter the trajectory of his gimmick, I think that there'll still be a spot for him along the way, because him doing his comedy bit somewhere down the lower to mid-card isn't going to take anything away from the likes of Omega or PAC or Moxley or anyone else putting on a more serious tone in the main event.

As a young company in the early, early stages of development, there are a lot of risk/reward assessments that could feasibly make or break AEW, but I don't think Orange Cassidy is one of them.

You forgot to put down Total Divas!!!

New entrance stages.

What’s “nerdom”?

1) AEW Dynamite, purely because it's the very first episode. They've done a few things this past week to discourage me (the crapty ITV deal after Cody hyped it up as "way better than WWE's", AEW social media promoting an article with Cody VS Vince in a "blood feud" as the thumbnail & tagline), but I'll still give it a go.

2) Hell in a Cell. I'm ready to see Sasha Banks become the new RAW Women's Champion and finally get a decent title reign. The Becky/Sasha feud has easily been consistently the best thing on the main roster since it began, so I'll always be up for seeing more of it. Especially inside Hell in a Cell! Should steal the show again, just like they did at Clash of Champions. And of course it'll be cool to see the Fiend inside Hell in a Cell too.

3) RAW. I surprised myself with this one, but I was oddly really excited to watch the RAW clips from last night this morning. The thought of getting show intros back, a good theme, pyro, a fresh commentary team. All those presentation touches makes a big difference.

4) NXT. I don't know what makes this any different from the previous two weeks, apart from the fact that they're taking it off the Network completely on Wednesdays. But they seem to be promoting it as a big "launch" for some weird reason, despite having been on the USA Network for the previous two weeks. Some good matches, and I especially love Candice finally getting a title shot, even though we all unfortunately know there's zero chance of Shayna ever dropping the title. Bit of a shame to have to wait until Friday mornings to watch NXT now (airs too late on Thursday nights in the UK for me to even consider staying up for).

5) SmackDown. I honestly haven't thought too much about SmackDown. I like the new match-up designs.

I didn't know what Joker was, and looking it up, it doesn't seem to have anything to do with pro wrestling, so I'm a bit confused as to why it's on this poll.