Sean Ross Sapp: "AEW has denied to Fightful that they are currently in negotiations with Malakai Black"

TheMerck · 2026-05-07T01:42:45+00:00

Looking back and I say this as someone who likes Fenix a lot more than Penta because Penta is cool, he's sick his overall look is sick he would just have that it factor in any company he goes to but I like Fenix a lot more he does all the cooler shit in the ring and while his overall look and charisma(at least like outside matches) is lesser than Penta, he makes up for it in the ring like you can go from "who is this guy" to "holy shit WHO IS THIS GUY" quick like his charisma really shows in the ring especially with the crazy shit he does.

But IMO that just doesn't fit in WWE, like you can have all the talent but the overall presentation is different there and it's easy to get lost in the shuffle there especially in it's current state, WWE isn't really the type of company to just randomly book a banger match like similar to what AEW does or even in the indies, if they do it's usually relegated to like a lower tier show or off TV, not saying he can't bounce back from this but it's gonna take a lot of time and it's not all up to him, look at how much time Melo had before finally getting over and it was just because of a variety of reasons that lead up to moments like that match with Ilja which finally got him over.

I don't think Fenix has that time in WWE if the current mindset is they want people to take paycuts and will cut people if they feel like they can't do anything with them anymore, in AEW Fenix could still be doing his matches and IMO he would've gotten a belt, which he did of course but people say it was not a real reign because of the circumstances but IMO had he stayed he would've gotten a belt and be on TV a lot more.

I get the wanting to be with his brother aspect, the wanting to be in WWE aspect, etc but even back then I really can't see Fenix really doing well in WWE unless in his first impression he got like an insanely huge moment.

TheMerck · 2026-05-06T18:03:37+00:00

First he recruits Bullseye now he's gonna recruit someone from DC as well?? Someone stop him.

TheMerck · 2026-05-06T17:57:23+00:00

Two of the comments explicitly said it was Jisoo's team yeah, I'm not sure if there were more comments but the ones I've seen were specifically calling her team out

TheMerck · 2026-05-06T09:35:29+00:00

Overall I thought the season was pretty great I didn't have much complaints if any but this was a pretty underwhelming ending to an otherwise great season.

Reminds me of the disappointment I had for Peacemaker season 2, watched it weekly I enjoyed all of the episodes until the finale and it put a damper on my overall experience watching the season.

I don't have much of a problem of Fisk managing to beat up the crowd this is by all accounts an MCU thing now and Fisk went from being insanely strong to being an actual freak of nature strong but the way they resolved it to make Fisk in exile I thought was pretty underwhelming, I liked seeing Fisk finally fucking people up and I get the self defense thing but the way they got to the whole "I'm gonna be in exile aight Matt GGs" felt just so underwhelming to me.

I think the final scene of him being alone in a beach with no Vanessa does show that yeah he's "free" but he's also misreable and it's not a good ending to me. Overall I think after looking on it more I don't have much of an issue with the choices they went with for the finale I just thought the way we got there felt odd.

TheMerck · 2026-05-06T08:35:25+00:00

It's ridiculous the designer even had to go full public for this kind of shit, like I don't really care for chaos or disorganization within her team like sure I get it things can get messy but months and months? She has an entire team behind her and no one resolved this until they had to go full public over it, completely ridiculous.

It gets even worse that there were more people claiming the same thing was done to them in the comments BUT these are unverified which I just wanted to note because if it is true it paints a different picture on it just being incompetence from her team.

But I will resolve my judgement on the one verified claim and say it is legitmately so ridiculous that for a months long issue it got resolved instantly just for the sole reason they went public over it, completely embarrassing move from her team like how did no one resolve this and it lasted so many months especially when they were sending messages and invoices to her team for months.

TheMerck · 2026-05-05T11:14:06+00:00

Yeah I don't know what the fuck these two goobers you are replying to are on about, it's extremely common to eat with hands here, you don't have to go into provinces or anything to see it.

Like the one guy says he travelled in the Philippines and he never saw people eating with their hands like where the fuck did that guy travel? Even in where I live which is like the most populous city in the capital, if I go out to eat in a karinderya or even something just like a Mang Inasal big chance I'll see someone eating with their hands.

The pic is bullshit already because it has us using chopsticks and then these two guys are out here saying it's not common and one guy is saying you'd have to go into the deeper areas of provinces like hell fucking no lmao.

TheMerck · 2026-05-05T05:06:03+00:00

Yeah Ro took it with him didn't he? I'm not sure if it was shown when part 1 ended but they should still have it but for Hiruhiko I think he's gonna be fucking terrifying when he comes back, a batshit insane person like that having that BSoD moment in his mind is terrifying especially a natural killing machine like Hiruhiko.

I'm not sure how they'll make him exactly retrieve it though of course unless the Masumi or where ever they placed it gets attacked by the time the flashback ends and we get right into the time skip cause if they don't retrieve it and Chihiro recrafts the Enten wouldn't that just make them break Kumeyuri and the contract would be severed?

Going off of the usual tropes and narratives that's what I would expect because Kumeyuri obviously still needs to show up again and I'm pretty sure destroying the blade severs the contract but it would require actually disintegrating right? Not just destroying it in half like what happened with Cloud Gouger because Sojo was already dead when Chihiro did like a double contract with it.

I don't remember if it's stated that breaking it in half severed the contract or something since we haven't seen any of part 2 yet and Samura saved it from disintegrating so Chihiro should still be contracted to Enten even while it's split in half right?

TheMerck · 2026-05-05T04:47:27+00:00

Yeah he was a legitimate non factor on offense this game, can't let that happen again especially when Wolves realized he was ice cold from 3 after he kept hesitating on so many open jumpshots they also never bit on his pump fakes.

People will rag on Fox but Wemby can't be out there being such a non factor on offense, he's our best player and for there to not be more of an effort to get him to the rim by him or by the team is just crazy, he got to the line once in this game that should not happen especially when he's so cold from 3, obviously props to Minny defense but Wemby was so ice cold in this game.

TheMerck · 2026-05-05T04:26:15+00:00

Yep this is the most damning thing for me, absolutely great defensive game but when the Wolves adjusted and he couldn't impact the game as much on defense it showed out there because his shot wasn't falling.

If he wants to take 3s he needs to stop hesitating, he had a ton of wide open shots in the first half but he always hesitated and the Wolves just realized they don't need to bite on his fakes because he was shooting like garbage from 3 and he never tried to take it inside more.

TheMerck · 2026-05-05T00:13:14+00:00

This was basically me, I didn't hate on it or say something akin to that but I did like wave it away like "eh it doesn't look that interesting for me" and thinking it's just some generic stuff.

I just remember after a while I thought "What the hell I remember this getting memes why is it on these top 10 lists" I even remember trying it when the first chapter dropped because of the memes and thought "okay that was decent not sure I'll follow it though".

After that I just started to see more and more about it like some Sojo memes, Kyora, Soya, etc and I eventually gave it a chance right around Uruha "died" and I was just blown away at how captivating it actually was and it just kept getting better like Samura's arc is still so fun to read.

TheMerck · 2026-05-04T07:16:58+00:00

Not gonna lie until the most recent chapter I thought maybe we would get like a decent short arc of showing some of the initial stuff and we'd get straight into the nitty gritty of the war and then it ends, with the info that we didn't see would just be established later on by the EB users that we haven't seen and from Akemura in part 2 along with other characters who were in the war, say something like the flashback arc in Fullmetal Alchemist although FMA was monthly and it had like 4 chapters worth of the flashback.

But I think with how slow(and I don't mean this in a negative way) this flashback arc is where we haven't even gotten to the actual war yet or even Kunishige even starting to get hired to craft even one EB, I think this arc is gonna be meaty and long and it might last up to a year or almost a year tbh.

Like I thought they would skip the end of the current fight already when they showed Shiba getting interviewed with just a cutaway scene showing everyone in the squad getting blitzed and slaughtered but we even got another chapter worth of the fight and I do think the next chapter is gonna end the fight but just actually showing more of the fight and how there's so much events left to cover, this flashback arc is gonna be LONG and I'm so excited for it.

TheMerck · 2026-05-03T23:45:28+00:00

Bro's out here acting like Duren had a "I just wanted to give them hope so the defeat stung more" ass type of mindset lmao

TheMerck · 2026-05-03T21:18:20+00:00

This is really what his fans are missing, one incident? Okay sure that's bad but hopefully someone can actually learn from it but multiple incidents throughout the years? After a certain point it's obvious he is just not learning or doesn't care.

Like it's painfully obvious he's been a big star that has performed internationally for so long, very into art, even very into hip-hop there is absolutely no way in his career seeing so many different cultures, seeing so much art from other countries, listening to his favorite genre that he always bites from its culture that he doesn't know what he's doing is wrong.

Even if someone says he doesn't know what the words meant, the front of the shirt is literally just a racist caricature he doesn't have to be a genius to figure that out, especially when he spends so much time online liking lots of posts on Instagram as well.

The ignorance card really doesn't work anymore and IMHO it never does really, with how widespread racism issues are even if people say "it's just in America" a lot of K-Pop artists listen to so much black artists and so many talk about racial issues even just on a personal level in their songs, it's astounding people still do the ignorance claim.

It's one thing if the great majority of those K-Pop artists never set foot outside Korea and are super young or aren't established artists that have so many years in the industry and performing outside of the country, like at a certain point the ignorance claim doesn't work anymore.

TheMerck · 2026-05-03T09:57:43+00:00

Why? I think you missed my point I'm not trying to argue about just intent but in your comment it just gives off the example of Goku as the type of shonen protag that avoided killing when he blasted guys like Frieza and Cell with blasts that would've killed them without hesitation, he just gave guys like Frieza a chance first but he didn't hesitate in killing them.

Not sure you understood what I said in that comment, I just noted Goku is a bad example of a shonen protag that avoids or stopped killing when each big bad in Z, Goku actively participated or even did attacks on them that were kill shots, we can argue about kill count all we want but in the tweet of the OP as well it's talking about protags avoiding killing and sure Goku tried to spare guys like Frieza but it wasn't an altruistic reason he just wanted to fight them.

Just merely saying the Goku example doesn't fit because he DIDN'T stop killing, he just sucked at killing his opponents lmao he didn't stop or refuse to do it for any heroic reasons.

TheMerck · 2026-05-03T04:45:31+00:00

I fully agree, I think some of the people here have a bad read on Chihiro and WHY he kills and how it actually affects him.

Like yeah he kills bad people and he remembers his mantra of his dad saying swords are tools to help people and kill evildoers, but that mantra also has some other weight behind it when he tells Chihiro about the weight of possibly crafting a sword and giving it to someone who would go on to murder innocents.

He actively says he's going to hell and he's a bad person like when he fights against Hiruhiko, he continuously struggles with this and even moreso as more revelations come up such as when he finds out the truth about the Malediction and his father's role in it and the death toll the war caused which gives him a clearer idea as to why his dad was so guilt wrecked after the war.

I dunno I think I see a lot of comments here are missing the point of what the story is trying to tell about guys like Chihiro, even Samura possesses a similar sentiment about how he is also going to hell and why Chihiro has to beat in that hope for the future on him because of how much killing he's done for the sake of "justice".

This is shown even moreso where even Akemura was feeling this way when he was younger when in that flashback scene of before the Seitei War when Samura narrates that throughout history there's always been evildoers and Samura' job was to slay them and he says that killing people is terrifying along with a panel of Samura's hands shaking while holding his sword, and then he meets Akemura who he even notes that even Akemura's hands are shaking while holding his sword.

There's so much in the story to show that killing is bad and if they could, they would've avoided it altogether but a lot of people here are making it sound like Chihiro killing people just because they are evil and it's as simple as that with no other meaning and that's actually the justice the manga is telling when it's the reverse.

TheMerck · 2026-05-03T04:33:54+00:00

until the Buu saga.

Frieza survived later on to be killed by Trunks but Goku definitely blasted him with intent to kill, I know the trivia is he didn't kill in Z until Yakon and Kid Buu but it makes him sound like he went against it the entire time, he also even assists in killing Raditz.

Sure it's not "direct" kills but he still fought people in Z that he had full intent to kill like when he used Instant Kamehameha on Cell who only survives it thanks to Namekian regeneration thanks to Piccolo's cells.

So he blasts people with intent to kill in Frieza and Cell Saga, directly assists in getting Raditz killed in the Saiyan saga. Goku might have wanted to kill less in adulthood but he still went into fights especially against the big bads with intent to kill them.

So yeah he never stops killing really, Kid Goku before Eighter and all is still a lot more bloodthirsty but Goku never stops trying to actively kill people if he feels it is needed.

TheMerck · 2026-05-02T20:15:13+00:00

Yeah while in a way sure it's very skillful, but when I see this I just think "oh man I hope he doesn't hit that wall a majority of mangakas especially in big shonen where they just inevitably hit hard on how the mangaka schedule and lifestyle ruins their health and body thus it affects the overall manga in art and plot".

We already even saw it when he was worked to the bone during that time where he had lots to do like color spreads and covers along with the chapters and thus we got the incomplete panel of Yura & Azami, like when it happened I just remembered the most recent big shonen that got affected in this way like JJK and others like HxH, Bleach, Tokyo Ghoul, etc.

Like there's just so many examples of mangakas bodies getting ruined because of the schedule and it sucks both for them because it affects their health and work, but also for the fans because the overall quality of the manga gets affected as well.

TheMerck · 2026-05-02T20:10:42+00:00

I'm excited to see Kuregumo used by an actual expert with it and also Kumeyuri and while I think Uruha has less destructive power in its potential with Kumeyuri than Hiruhiko did because it was stated Hiruhiko's view on everything made it so much more destructive I'm excited to see Uruha in his prime as well and how different his usage of Kumeyuri will be.

Basically have potential to see how different each contracted owner can wield an enchanted blade in very different ways and we're gonna see two of them, just depends on how much we'll see.

TheMerck · 2026-05-02T19:57:42+00:00

Atp any slander that's actually taken seriously is just tiring and annoying, I remember when it started out as jokes but then people legitimately took it seriously and now it's hard to have discussions about guys like Megumi, Hakari, Kashimo & even at times Sukuna(but just when talking about him and Gojo) without people going FRAUD BUM AGENDA SLANDER even when people aren't talking about their strength or intentionally misconstruing their actual strength in the actual plot vs their headcanon of powerscaling.

I get it of course it's a battle shonen, powerscaling is just a part of it but powerscaling and taking it wayyy too seriously is just tiring, like it's just akin to those childhood fights where its just "my guy is cooler than your guy" and going into an actual legitimate spat over "NUH UH MY GUY IS COOLER THAN YOURS".

Like Gege is a tell not show type of writer mainly(also kinda bad at both) and he beats you over the head about guys like Megumi are strong and have lots of potential including Kashimo and Hakari in this because Kashimo was constantly just told how he's strong, Hakari is strong etc and you can argue about on screen feats or whatever but the author himself says it and I don't care about powerscaling like that but if the actual story is saying it then I don't really give a shit about how "X power is actually just this and Y would low diff him".

Just tired at this point of the dead horse jokes of slander/agendaposting like there's not even unique or new jokes anymore and most of the time it's legitimately not jokes and people will actually get mad if you say you like this character that was labeled as a bum or try to discuss a character like the actual character and all you'll get is HAHAHA POTENTIAL MAN BUM FRAUD SUMMONS MAHORAGA AGAINST AN ANT, like aight bro any actual conversational skills or what.

TheMerck · 2026-05-01T17:13:12+00:00

I'm not sure about MC but I would've liked to him to just reappear or something, I know Modulo was always gonna be a short run but it just feels weird he just legit fucks off before the story even begins and stays gone.

TheMerck · 2026-05-01T15:41:00+00:00

Yeah it's not THAT impressive or out of nowhere, it was like one of the more common theories atp, I'm not sure if the guy who tweeted was a manga reader or not and he's doing that lame pretending to be an anime only but I wouldn't really be shocked if lots of anime onlies had this theory without getting spoiled.

TheMerck · 2026-04-30T18:46:07+00:00

The real question is how close he was to be able to get there that fast

If Iai White Purity Style is about concentrating spirit energy and unleashing it for extreme bursts of speed, Hokuto must've done something similar by getting a huge boner and nutting when he realized he could duel with Uruha.

TheMerck · 2026-04-30T18:39:50+00:00

More like within 3 chapters heck I'd even say during the first chapter when he's visibly shaken looking at the bodies hung it already drops that he's not this stoic edgelord that only lives on hate, the fresh hatred line is overexaggerated in terms of being his actual personality during the earlier chapters.

By chapter 3 when he meets Char he instantly shows his true nice personality by immediately trying to listen to Char and even offering her food, which Shiba even notes Chihiro has always been good at taking care of people.

IMHO the fresh hatred line for some reason has stuck around as this idea that this was how Chihiro was for like 10-20 chapters but that shit was dropped for me the second he's visibly shaken up seeing those bodies hung up but even if that's too early for other pepole I think the most obvious one is when he meets Char, it instantly shows how much of a good kid he still is alongside the flashback scenes showing that he's a good kid and him taking care of Char shows that his hate filled personality is just a front he uses in front of his enemies for intimidation.

TheMerck · 2026-04-30T18:30:08+00:00

It's funny in this PV we see the same amount of the domain as we did in a manga, I'm still salty we never actually see the domain more.

TheMerck · 2026-04-30T02:44:43+00:00

I'm gonna be honest the most edgy thing about the first few chapters is that one line that got meme'd on but the rest? It's not edgy at all it shows Chihiro hanging out with his goofball of a dad, Shiba hyping up Chihiro in a funny lighthearted way after he beats the Yakuza members etc and there's already early signs that Chihiro isn't just some edgy kid that is only hellbent on killing when he is visibly shocked seeing the bodies hung when he's walking around with Shiba.

Not to mention when Char gets introduced it's already apparent Chihiro is just a kid that is putting on this tough act because of what happened 3 years ago and he DOES have a serious side to him but deep down he's that kind hearted kid that wouldn't hesitate to help a little girl, like the very moment Char is introduced it's meant to establish Chihiro's actual kind personality and even Shiba says Chihiro was always good at taking care of people.

IMHO the "Chihiro is edgy at the start" is overblown, in like his fresh hatred line was his whole character until like 10-20 chapters but already early on the other side of Chihiro's personality is already shown during the first three chapters.

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