AEW 2022: The year of the bloody bunny

I hear you’re a racist now, Tony?

You know, sometimes I really like Tony, but this wasn't it, man. Wrestling twitter will throw down for Swole.

Yeah, that kind of DVDVR shitposting is a terrible look in every way for Tony, who is just far too online for a person in his position, but I think this may already have more or less have blown over? Lio Rush was the one who immediately leapt in there and he seems to have been pacified by talks with TK.

Hoping TK has learned his lesson though. this kinda thing is very funny when it’s about shitting on WWE. But speaking that way publicly about an outgoing employee would be unacceptable, but factoring in all of the additional dynamics of the Swole situation, yeesh. Wouldn’t be surprised if this has shaken the faith of quite a few ppl on the roster

Also when the fuck are you gonna sign Danhausen and give him a talk show segment you coward

He’s got an injury, right?

So excited for Thursday morning

Danhausen broke his leg at the same show where Mance Warner broke his. Other wrestlers blamed a slippery-when-wet canvas (they must have been using one of those shiny ones like an IKEA bag, or something).

My SO is convinced they’ve already signed Danhausen on the DL. There’s plenty of anecdotal evidence to support that: he’s got lots of friends in the back already (if you catch the vlogs he pops up suspiciously often); T-shirts and signs are conspicuous in the Dynamite/Rampage crowds; and he got Billy Gunn’s sons Rod and Tod over as the Ass Boys.

well, i guess it's a little early to call it, but danielson/hangman 2: moty

bums me out to watch a banger match and also worry about one of my favorite wrestlers getting injured really bad (fenix)

update: fenix is ok, didn't break but dislocated his arm, out for three weeks while they check on it

Fyi uk folks rampage is now on itv yesssss

that Dustin Rhodes powerslam is one of life's purest simple pleasures

TNT champ outcome spoiled what i thought could have been a great short storyline.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=my704d_l-a8

great great great great dark last night, stacked bc it was filmed the same night as battle of the belts

Here's what the print mag looks like when it's folded out. And yes, these are voted BY OUR READERS, and it's a shoot, brother. pic.twitter.com/OzRivCofFn

— Kevin McElvaney, PWI Guy (@wackelvaney) January 12, 2022

rosa/britt match of the year ;_;

i prefer the alternate cover with ms. 500 on it!
https://www.fanbyte.com/wrestling/join-the-pencil-army-the-essential-lulu-pencil/

lulu pencil 4ever

dynamite was really well-rounded last night, once again felt like a ppv. enjoying britt getting into the superdragonelite mix even though i actually want no heterosexuality in my wrestling

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlAyqXTcw7w

perfect

last night's episode was GREAT. sting!!!!! mox!!!!!!

cody's promo was both confusing and won me back over to whatever the fuck he's doing, somehow

Yea the Cody was sloppy as hell but “Cody is too important to allow himself to be tightly produced and therefore his shit is all over the place” has stopped being a negative and is now very much part of the point.

Anyway, calling back to the pipe bomb promo as really being ground zero for the kind of fandom that led to AEW (correct) and then being like “yeah when CM Punk said all that shit about all those other companies on Raw and everyone thought he was the coolest wrestler in the world, well I actually did all of that stuff, how dya like them apples” was absolute fucking god tier promo work

Also <3 Mox forever and I hope dealing with that initial heckler was cathartic for him

I've always thought Cody was excellent at character work, whether it be as a heel or as a face. Definitely a much better heel, though. He just has the look for it, especially with the blonde hair.

Great to see Mox back, and man, he looks great. It's a wonder what a few months sober can do. So happy to see him healthy.

there is a lot to love about Cody, even leaving aside his obviously excellent character work.

him becoming the babyface ace of AEW was so obviously the direction that almost every US wrestling promotion ever in history would have taken but times change and it was clear from day 1 that it wouldn't work (although this would not have stopped many other ppl in the past). it is very much to everyone's credit that they understood this p much from the get go and did different things with him, even if some of it hasn't really worked (Ogogo lol)

i'd argue that the Dustin PPV match / post-match promo was really the moment that AEW became a truly viable proposition and that whole early Dynamite angle where he was feuding with Jericho and the Inner Circle did the air-horns and the heckling and he punched through the glass and they brawled through the arena concourse and "not the dippin dots!", all of that was really funny and really natural throwback pro-wrestling in a way that hadn't been seen for years and was vital in reestablishing that tone - this is silly, it's funny, it doesn't take itself seriously but it's also pretty exciting, wrestling could very easily be like this again. Cody (and Jericho tbf, whatever his other faults) was really really important in getting AEW up and running as a viable proposition in that regard (and tbh i think they've lost a lot of that fun early chaotic energy and wish they'd do more silly shit like that early Rhodes vs Inner Circle feud again).

Cody suffers a bit from being a simply "ok, can sometimes be pretty good in the right environment" in-ring wrestler in an era where p much every remotely athletic doofus who has watched a bit of wrestling can have a "great" 5* match if they just go hard for 25 mins and do a bunch of finisher kick-outs (on that point, surely we're fucking due someone who bucks this trend and bins off the Meltzer-boner 2010s NJPW style and does something a bit different in the main events? idk god bless Dave Meltzer for everything he has achieved (which is all frankly kinda mind-boggling when you consider it in the round), but also he often has pretty crummy taste in wrestling and it's a shame that his word his law. Bryan Danielson and Serena Deeb are the two active AEW wrestlers who are consistently above his reductive bullshit and this is why they are the best in the world. i have hopes for Hook but maybe that's just the hype train in effect?

but back on Cody - I actually really like that he can't just drop an automatic 4.5* Kenny Omega match or cosplay as a 90s AJPW main-eventer or whatever to win over the crowd, because it forces him to find other ways to compensate and try and make himself interesting to fans who are now largely trained to enjoy one style of wrestling above all others. the thing i really love about him is that he has this masochistic mid-90s FMW / imperial-era Sabu mad streak where instead of going 00s indy by doing fucking superkicks and cutters and Canadian destroyers all day like the others, he goes proper grimy 90s indy by overshooting the moonsault, botching the finish and setting fire to himself.

in other words he is less good at what is considered "good modern wrestling" but actually he "gets it" way more than all of those other guys who could have a so-called 4* match with their eyes closed

in other other words, there are some popular AEW favourites who i really enjoy watching on tv but who are essentially all about hitting spots with little to no attention paid to the details; meanwhile Cody Rhodes, while not the best at hitting exciting spots, at least has a proper respect for the fundamental principle underlying all good pro wrestling: "if in doubt, mutilate yourself and bleed everywhere to up the ante"

wow really enjoyed both of those posts windsor

btw the trent/nick jackson match on rampage was a real rager

the thunder rosa/mercedes martinez feud is gonna rock my world, i can tell

Anything that either of them do rocks worlds in general. I love Mercedes Martinez so so much.

Windsor is absolutely otm, and I agree completely with his assessment. My buddy has very similar thoughts as far as the popularity of spots in wrestling now versus the storytelling.

bits of Rampage i've caught have been good (the Mox and Hook matches), catching up with the rest now, just watching the Trent / Nick match. Nick Jackson hitting a superkick and then immediately botching a dive over the top and nearly spiking himself on the outside = a fun encapsulation of things i do and do not like as outlined in those posts above.

Mox killing Page with elbows and knees before choking him out was a tasty finish. Moxley's whole thing doesn't always completely work for me, he's pretty hammy and it can feel way too much like an amateurish actor playing crazy rather than the actual crazy violent dude thing he's shooting for, but a match / feud with AEW Danielson is ofc gonna be excellent.

everything about Hook just works. I cant wait to see him work a proper back-and-forth match with a serious opponent cause if he can sell a bit and he can work with a guy to make it all hang together in a coherent match then like i don't see what can possibly stop the kid. the fact that Taz's meme-over son turned out to be this ridiculous total package wonderkid right out of the gate is one of the best and most surprising things to have happened in a year full of great and exciting things happening in wrestling

sorry to see Lio Rush has picked up his bindle and is back out on the road yet again. he's so striking in the ring, he could have been (and tbh hopefully still could be) such a great part of the AEW roster. some of the stuff him and Dante were doing in their tag matches, that double-team shit built around co-ordinated rope-running, i've never seen anything like it.

maybe some of the Dragon Gate 6 man tags got to that level of speed and smoothness but I've never really dug into that stuff so that could be way wide of the mark.

either way, sorry to see him go, but hopefully he's not gonna retire again any time soon. you'd imagine even if he's done with AEW he'll automatically be a draw for any indy which can book him at this stage

thank u both for kind words on the above rants which tbh I read back the next day and cringed at quite a bit (as I so often do whenever I write much on the internet). i like to think and talk about wrestling very much, I think it's all fascinating, but there is a dearth of spaces in which to do so. I only really know of two types of wrestling messageboard (ignoring Reddit and its ilk here because yuck) and neither of them are ideal. i am now gonna rant some more about this before looking back and cringing.

There are the ones where a bunch of very old, very crusty dudes who have all online-known each other for 25 years argue for the 50th time about whether Jerry Lawler or Volk Han is actually the greatest wrestler of all time and they write each other long essays about sundry topics of interest to the serious wrestling fan. these guys generally think that Shawn Michaels, Chris Jericho, Kenny Omega, Kurt Angle and many other GOAT popular favourites are totally beneath contempt as wrestlers and that the majority of fans who enjoy these wrestlers are total rubes who know less than nothing about what they're watching.

These kinds of forums are very useful places for learning about old wrestling and different wrestling cultures and different ways of watching wrestling and they can have (or sometimes used to have) that wonderful intensity you get when ppl who care far far too much about the niche hobby to which they have devoted their lives and, having honed their ideas by arguing among themselves for years and years, really get the bit between their teeth and start typing. tbh i kinda think god bless these guys and their little world. in certain respects some of them at least are pioneers. no one except Dave Meltzer has ever written or thought about any of this shit because why would you (because it's often fascinating, of course!)

on the other hand there are other places which are more representative of the modern fan, and these are useful for keeping up with news, current promotions, social media shenanigans, whatever latest revolting bile Jim Cornette has spewed out of his failing liver etc. these places can also occasionally be fun / funny for live posting during shows and the people there tend to be a bit more au fait with the niceties of civilised conversation in the 2020s and avoid some of the more problematic "58 year old wrestling fan with opinions on the modern world" bullshit you get in the old man forums.

but these also tend to be the places where Meltzer's word on star ratings is law, where it is completely verboten to suggest that Okada might not actually be the greatest wrestler who has ever lived but simply "very good, with certain limitations", where every Lucha Bros vs Private Party tag match or whatever is a thrilling match of the year contender rather than a brainless sugar rush mess (and don't get me wrong, i like a brainless sugar rush mess - just not all the time, and let's not then pretend that because Meltzer gives it 4 stars it was actually much cop as a wrestling match).

i admire the first kind of forum but it's the second kind which drives the "discourse" and this is the audience more than any other to which AEW plays. I think this might end up being a bad thing in the long-run.

what i am saying is can someone please come up with a new place where I can talk about wrestling which is neither of the those kinds of places described above, and can Tony Khan then book a wrestling show just for the true cognoscenti i.e. me and my friends

thank u

true to form, really wishing i hadn't posted the above, but seeing as i did, i'm gonna add to it, by noting that while thinking about these things i am reminded that Dom Passantino, late of this parish, once did actually start a wrestling blog that went nowhere, taking as its starting premise the following pearl of well-expressed insight

"There’s two types of pro-wres blog: the one written by the autistic and the one written by the manchild"

and while I wouldn't frame it in those terms myself (if only i were so pithy) i think he had a point which holds good.

There can be merit to some of the close reading to which some of the old timers described in that previous post subject wrestling matches, under certain circs it can be educational, but in terms of stuff that is actually fun to read, you can p much count the writers on one hand. the guy who did the Rumblemetrics blog and then later reviewed every Fighting Network RINGS show was very good i thought (http://tkscissors.blogspot.com/).

http://tkscissors.blogspot.com/2016/10/kiyoshi-tamura-vs-tsuyoshi-kohsaka_30.html

first post is good. the first thing i ever read that made me consider checking out shoot style (though i watched UWF / newborn UWF stuff rather than RINGS, which I have only ever really dipped my toes into)

i think he had a point which holds good.

to be quite clear on what i meant here, although i hope it was self-explanatory, i meant that he was essentially correct that there was no good writing to be had on the subject of wrestling (excepting always Meltzer of course, who is and always has been a hilarious, delightful avant-garde artist working in prose, besides all of his actual journalistic attributes)

Oooh I didn’t know the rumblemetrics guy started a different blog. Such a shame he doesn’t do that anymore, his one post a year was always something I adored.

y'all

:)

i'm so happy

this could be absolute magic if properly woven into the Punk/MJF storyline

how about those spots in that ladder match? god bless those boys, the whole thing ruled

up until now i had been worrying a bit that Wardlow wasn't gonna be ready and that the long foreshadowed turn was gonna feel a bit rote but man, last night he felt ready (and of course he was getting the hometown babyface bump, but still); ppl are gonna blow up when it happens and i think if they can stick the landing with a big win on PPV in a good match against MJF (and I reckon you can totally trust MJF to deliver that at this stage) then the Wardog is looking pretty well set for a big run now, people love him

Wardlow's purported turn on MJF has been laid on too thick imo. Although it relied on WWE's bullshit do-they-know-the-cameras-are-there backstage shit to stick the landing, Batista's 2005 turn on HHH relied on HHH and Flair wrongly thinking Dave was dumb and trying to manipulate him and keep their disrespect for him on the downlow. MJF berating Wardlow and going out of his way to insult him in ways that aren't even necessary on twitter makes both MJF look dumb for not charming Wardlow to keep him onside instead of respecting the obviously comparatively useless grunt Shawn Spears, and Wardlow look dumb for putting up with such obvious naked contempt for so long

As such it can ONLY BE that this in fact a swerve and Wardlow will realign himself fully with MJF and commit to the heel role

I let's say half believe this

Also: very nice

i aort of kwym but is that maybe a problem with MJF (mighty tho he is in the art of heeling it up) not actually being particularly subtle? it's an interesting thought which hadn't occured to me but i think you've got to give the people what they want, in the end.

right minded folk have always correctly ripped on WWE's big man fetish but the tiny kernel of wisdom to that misguided approach is that even in these enlightened days i think most wrestling fans just love to see a big old muscly brute of a dude ragdolling smaller folk about the ring, provided ofc that the aforementioned brute is also pretty cool (Wardlow imo is extremely cool). AEW have not yet had this type of attraction and although it's not really polite to say it out loud I think tbh that's a failing and it's a thing which has been missing from the pro-wrestling buffet they serve up. i for one am ready to see this gigantic man tear through some of the roster for a bit

also do something with Hobbs and give me Wardlow vs Hobbs and both of them vs Miro ASAP plz. did you see Hobbs's get-up on Dynamite?! the guy couldn't miss if he tried

I guess the logical flashpoint is for Micky Wardz to win the TNT title, show some measure of grudging badass respect to Sami or whoever he murders for it, and then obliterate MJF instead of relinquishing the belt to him - "thanks for the extra salary, you have outlived your usefulness"

Nothing better than a big man running wild. (He was a heel, whereas Wardlow will be a face but) Matanza in Lucha Underground was the greatest feeling. How the hell could any of these luchadores stop him? It made it impossible to turn away while he was rising to the/on top.

I bloody hope they let Wardlow go crazy with it. One thing AEW lacks is unpredictability. I mean I absolutely love the show and I love Tony’s respect for long term booking, but I just couldn’t conceive Sgt B’s idea of a swerve happening. I also think they’ll go the predictable “be a monster (potential tnt champo)” rout they’ve done for all the other big men they were on sure of, like miro archer and brodie. But I wish they would go nutzo. Hangman will need some motherfuckers to prove himself against too.

Nick Jackson hitting a superkick and then immediately botching a dive over the top and nearly spiking himself on the outside = a fun encapsulation of things i do and do not like as outlined in those posts above.

I know he's not nearly the only one, but the weird Nick botches are always the ones that stay with me the most. I believe it was at All Out 2019, with their match against the Lucha Bros, where Nick went for a dive, clipped his leg on the top rope, and crashed half wrong onto the tables underneath. Sometimes I wonder how intentional some of them are, since they always look so terrible.

And they had me with that Wardlow tease! I really thought that it was time, but I guess they wouldn't do it on a Dynamite, no matter how special the Dynamite was supposed to be. I imagine they save it for Revolution, or wait until MJF goes for the gold.

Watching Dynamite after the Rumble and it’s really night and day. The RR seemed so stale and predictable and old. Dynamite is exciting and fresh and unpredictable. The ladder match was beautiful, Sammy’s cutter will be on highlight reels for the next 20 years.

jungleboy and luchasaurus are just unbelievable

so fucking excited for thunder rosa vs. mercedes martinez on the next rampage

Jungle Boy is the future. He had it before they changed his entrance theme, but Tarzan Boy really bumped him up another level. I'm waiting for him to finally chase a singles title. The influence of Christian has helped him grow even more.

I'm so happy to see Mercedes Martinez more on TV. She's so good, and was totally slept on by WWE. I'm hyped to get to see her have some great TV matches.

I’m glad Christian stayed as a mentor and they didn’t do the obvious quick WWE break up backstabbing. JB is slowly getting better on the mic and their matches keep getting better, you have to imagine riding around with a tag team specialist known for his charisma has to be worth it’s weight in gold for him.

watching on a half hour delay, Danhausen is over and Danielson is the master of all he surveys. in matches, on promos, this is gonna be an all timer of a run

hot show so far

Brandi having such severe go-away heat that Dan Lambert is the de facto face in a standoff is quite a thing. Lambert walking that line again, tbh a bit uncomfortable with how much this crowd are enjoying him here. definitely uncomfortable with this crowd chanting "shut the fuck up" at the black woman who hasn't actually been presented as a heel at any point. fucking hell Lambert talking about slapping the shit out of Brandi, I enjoy Lambert as a talker but this is baaaaad and really not good.

Paige VanZant really could be a star for them if she can work a bit but i'm not sure a Brandi feud is the right way to kick things off if that's what they're going for here and anyway fuckin hell someone needs to rein in Lambert a bit if they're gonna push on with this.

ugh sorry i totally fucked those spoiler tags, it's late where i am

no thanks to anytime lambert ventures into outright misogyny. it’s not entertaining. it sucks

rest of this show has been fucking on tho

wrestling fans’ hostility to brandi makes me want to like her but she isn’t good, it’s a great conundrum

every aspect of the Pac/Penta - Black/King tag match ruled imo, from the entrances onwards. the blindfold, the strikes, the rowdy Mexican dudes in the front row, the sit down for the finish. all so good. Brody King is I think the least of these four (not seen much of his work so that's gut instinct rather than an informed opinion) but even he had a role in there as the big hoss guy of the four of them.

not exactly redeemed themselves following the gross / ill-judged bits of the previous segment because that all still sucked and the shitty bits should be binned off ASAP but this is still a hell of a rebound from that low point. a bunch of very nice, very evil wrestlers having a baller tv match, what more can you realistically ask for

oh wtf can you just not do separate paras in spoiler tags?! i checked that time! never really used them so apologies in advance to anyone who reads anything they don't want to before they've had a chance to watch the show, won't do it again

yeah Brandi is not great and her angles have always been pretty bad, hence the hostility, but all the fucking same. you'd have thought that fans of a medium which deals entirely in metaphor and semiotics would be able to see the bigger picture. otoh of course this is wrestling and old habits die hard

Ruby vs Nyla better than expected. Jake the Snake still rules on the mic. Hangman is good but maybe getting a bit cold. can we at least quarantine Lambert to one segment per show? (nb he probably still would be my vote for the best heel promo out there in spite of his bullshit, it's on TK imo to adopt an editorial stance at ths point). 45 mins or so for Punk vs MJF?! wtf i have no idea what im about to watch, are they actually gonna go super long? i guess they have to! anyway here ends this painful live-tweet thread until we hit the angle that is clearly (hopefully?!) coming up here, at which point i will undoubtedly live-tweet again

mjf/punk was a wall-to-wall classic afaict

feels weird to call myself a mjf fan but his in-ring work is special

Excited to watch this at the weekend. The Brandi thing sounds horrible. She has been bad time and time again so i understand the X PAC heat; throwing her in there with someone very skilled on the mic who seems quite misogynistic and entitled is a really bad call.

Very strong in-ring show all around capped off by a tremendous main with genuine intrigue

That Brandi-Lambert segment was as horrific as yous have said though my god, grim misogyny, awful focus-grouped work-shoot edgy zings leading to a pull-apart for no reason and an angle nobody wants to see, the worst of all worlds

The Lambert stuff is bad, yeah (we know it’s a work, we get that you’re really a fan, let’s try something else please?) but there’s a really mean-spirited slant to the reactions Brandi gets. It’s not strictly go-away heat; it’s something more like ‘it’s cool to pile on here, for some reason’ heat. And as much as Brandi might deserve valid criticism for this or that, I feel really iffy about it.

i also feel iffy about it, it feels gross for sure

the women's division angles are crisscrossing so much rn it's a spiderweb and i love it

who's walking through the forbidden door wednesday

I have no idea. Excited to see who though.

Fuck me this Brandi segment is brutal. Did they intentionally send out there to get the town wrong? What a horrible way to start it, of course this was gonna be a mess. I havent seen this kind of x-pac heat in a while.

This is a car crash. This is horrific.

Danhausen is watching to see if you are watching #AEWDynamite tonight on TBS at 8pm EST of some sort

(if you do not, you will be cursed etc etc yada yada yada) pic.twitter.com/JPs1V5IOr3

— Danhausen (@DanhausenAD) February 9, 2022

not looking forward to the continuation of the brandi/pvz beef (hope brandy gets jobbed and has to recover through a series of hopefully increasingly less horrible matches on dark elevation) but otherwise so so so stoked for atlantic city dynamite

ugh i think the TK promotional push has sold me on staying up late for this - if he burns me here I'll be fuming but he's selling tonight so hard I think I have to check it out. not entirely sure what he can possibly be selling to justify this level of hype (Jeff Hardy? Keith Lee? enh) but for tonight at least I'm buying

the hype is outrageous lol

Idk if there's anybody left they can sign that actually warrants this level of hype

Would pop p big for Kairi who I miss being on TV

it's Shane McMahon obv

goldberg

what's Bautista up to atm?

actually the thing i'm longing for is for Switchblade to show up and initiate a proper AEW/NJPW angle but i'm a stupid mark and there's no way that's happening

i don’t wanna spoil it but it’s been a very special night

this is the most overwhelming episode of dynamite

I’ve woken up in the middle of the night needing a wee, checking ilx on my phone as I can’t get back to sleep, seeing these posts, wondering whether I find some headphones and watch it? No, I must sleep, wrestling can wait till tomorrow. Must go to sleep, and def not look at twitter…

you would just be catching the beginning of the texas death match, good timing

i don’t even know what to do with myself after all that

Best start to a Dynamite ever.

“Influencer” Jericho is a really wack idea

I’ve never really seen spoilers before but this match against Isaiah Kassidy is one of the funnest matches I’ve ever seen.

What a joy.

How does anyone not love this tv show?

Dynamite is so great.

The finish to the TDM actually made me cheer out loud in my own home.

Yeah top to bottom that was excellent. The deathmatch, the tag, the jade match, the debut match, all of it. When kassidy got tossed across the ring I hollered but there were sick spots spread throughout the show in every match and the talking segments all ruled. The crowd is still so ready for Wardlow, that’ll happen on the ppv.

On the forbidden door stuff - I am a prophet. Cannot wait for whatever comes next.

Most stacked roster in wrestling history at this stage

to see keith lee debut and immediately fight a match that played to every single one of his strengths made me overwhelmingly happy

also... gotta love how they set up a match in the opening and then had it happen later in the night. this is the most wrestling has ever felt like a normal episode of television to me, we kept returning to the same characters, picking up threads that had been dropped earlier in the hour

yeah that whole thing was so good, it felt in the 1st promo like they were setting up Wardlow to be the mystery partner on a later show (this would also have ruled, because in A-E-Dub there's always multiple cool ways that to book this shit) but Mox was such an amazing choice for a second in the context of doing the whole shebang in one night.

it worked on every level - Punk and Mox have history going back to the early months of the Shield, it was a delightful twist on Danielson offering an alliance to a hesitant Mox last week (particularly given all that talk about Punk and Danielson teaming together) and most of all because it makes so much sense that Punk goes into the back after that first face-off and asks "hey does anyone wanna come out for a punch-up with these two goons?" and Mox is just like "oh, a fight?! yes please!"

Moxley looks fucking incredible now too, so so happy for him

loooool so apparently TK had to pull out a few stops at the last minute to get Switchblade in because apparently he panicked when he used the phrase "Forbidden Door" in hyping the show and then realised that all of the hardcores were expecting a New Japan crossover as a result and he didn't want to let anyone down. doesn't suggest a long term booking plan but you can count on the Elite guys to have a good idea of where they want this to go. seriously, wrestling has never seen a promoter like this. he is simply the best

the idea that not only would you not dismiss your fanbase as a bunch of rubes to be cheated and condescended to at every opportunity but rather paying customers whose tastes should be catered to if at all possible, it's revolutionary stuff

It’s fantastic. Love Tony.

Mox was the perfect partner but I was secretly hoping for Cabana.

When I have some free time, I need to find some knife pervert highlights. NJ people fucking adore him.

AQA is All Elite! So psyched.

BESTIES REUNITED pic.twitter.com/KqGJdMoazJ

— chris kreider respecter (@jonmoxIeys) February 10, 2022

we're the ass boys
billy ass and the ass boys

cody and brandi officially left aew

Lmao at wrestling news today. Also includes bringing Austin back to squash owens at wrestlemania that isn’t selling well.

Also supposedly you can get 2 for 1 msg and WM tickets. Austin is 57! I know Sting is older but he also didn’t require 20 years ago.

Cody: WWE star is gonna be pretty dumb. Such a shame Hunter can’t have another WM match for the first throne on a pole match. And the likes of Charlotte having to take Brandi seriously? On the other hand, they desperately need something to shake it up.

The only perk I can imagine WWE could offer Cody that would bring him back is if they sign over the rights to the Rhodes name and maybe gave him a WM match. Also curious if they would bring back Brandi as Brandi or if they would go back to her being Eden Stiles.

Honestly, I'm hoping that they're taking this time off to focus on their little one. Maybe Cody can build up The Nightmare Factory more? I don't really want to see how self-congratulatory WWE will be if they actually take one of the founders of AEW. Especially the only one who had a run in WWE before.

Honestly the increasingly deranged tone of the little pocket universe Cody and Brandi were inexplicably permitted to book themselves in was getting so jarring I'm kind of relieved if he is gone

My instinct is all the people talking through all the permutations of how this is a work must get their wallets inspected a lot, but then what could be more Cody than doing a big unnecessarily elaborate worked-shoot "I'm leaving town forever" storyline then using it to come back and try and get cheered for the exact same "Cena but not even pretending to not be insane" character he's been doing for the past year without it even being a heel turn

Honestly the increasingly deranged tone of the little pocket universe Cody and Brandi were inexplicably permitted to book themselves in was getting so jarring I'm kind of relieved if he is gone

i would be a little less mean about it (cody's last promo was the good kind of unhinged pocket universe-making) but yeah

feeling genuinely sad for the wrestlers he's leaving behind tho

Yeah I have posted extensively about the bits of Cody’s acts I enjoy and why I think he really was very important in the early days but frankly if anyone is gonna jump I’m glad it’s him. They’re so stacked now that the show won’t suffer at all

Hope he soaks WWE for every penny and gets himself a title run out of it tho lol

this is very off-topic but i bought the warrior wrestling 19 ppv the other day because i really needed to see thunder rosa vs. athena, but the whole show is very good, particularly santana vs. speedball!!!! can't tell if i should start a thread for it

Start the indies thread, Brad. I tried last year and was the only person who ever posted in it.

Cody booked himself into a weird corner when he declared so early on that if he lost the title match, he would never challenge for the title again. The TNT title became so synonymous with Cody to the point where it really felt like it was made for him. I've always been a little on the fence with Cody, because you can tell that he really knows the business and how to do the character work to get the face pop or the heel heat, but sometimes I don't understand the choices he makes.

That being said, any fan interaction I've had with Cody has been super pleasant, and he's always seemed genuinely happy to meet with fans and give them a little bit of his time. I'm with you, Windsor. I hope that he gets that huge payday from WWE if he wants, and gets the Rhodes name back.

I pretty much agree with everyone.

I really don’t think it is a work but if it is, I hope it is something mental. Like pure wrestlecrap.

Also I forgot to mention how excited I was during this weeks shows (Dynamite?) that they had a teaser for old school crazy Penta. One of my favourite characters in wrestling history during that Lucha Underground run, and with Fenix out, I hope they let him run wild.

the thunder rosa/athena match was fucking incredible so i guess i'm starting the indies thread

even that last belt run that he had to relinquish, Sammy had to have an “interim” belt. It just felt like every angle he was running felt like one he could’ve gotten over in WWE if they’d believed in him.

feels like a shame if he goes there because he’ll get maybe a year or less before getting the shuffle down the card that caused him to leave.

i couldn't watch live tonight, and it's so late i'm saving the last two matches for tomorrow, but wow what an episode

revolution is gonna slap

show is much better with the neck tattoo removed. now the only person on the roster whose storylines/bookings i dread is jericho, and he's actually embroiled in a really good story rn

lambert before anyone.

Love that supposedly Tony was krusty-what-the-hell-was-that.jpg at Cody and Brandi over the past 6 months too and let them leave.

house of black gradually becoming thee stable

At least until Bryan beats Mox next weekend and they get their thing up and running. They've got to follow through on that idea. At first glance it seems a bit TEW fantasy booking but actually if they put those guys together, bring in Lee Moriarty and few other youngsters it has the potential to be the best act in years and the junior guys chosen for those spots will get over like mad

what a Dynamite that was. again. had thought I was totally uninterested in the Page / Cole title programme, Cole not really being my thing, but that smug little asshole coming out with his hands blacked up was supemo level heel work and Page hasn't missed yet in a big match so I'm shelving my prejudice and buying in for now

Punk's "will you be my Valentine?" line was the kind of fan service i love

Switchblade on Friday

stoked for the PPV, as always

sammy's title defenses are increasingly making me worry for his life

and andrade appearing at the end and taking both belts with him... this is a cool story!!! so many cool stories are happening rn

they're firing on almost all cylinders atm for sure.

if i had one criticism on that front i'd say they need to work out a hot programme for Hangman as champ (this Adam Cole, ReDragon, Dark Order thing is fine but it's not hot). a programme where he gets properly featured rather than doing a standalone segment each week. at the moment he feels like the third or fourth most important thing on the show.

his matches have all been amazing but i think they're struggling to keep him hot as a character, as is traditional with a babyface champion who's won the title after a long heated chase.

it doesn't help that Bryan Danielson is always just there, busy being the greatest wrestler who ever lived. not saying they should rush the title off of Hangman onto Danielson, especially so soon after their recent series, but Danielson is just operating at such a high a level rn that it feels incongruous that he isn't champ. he's overshadowing Hangman.

a few months ago I thought the answer was turning Mox and having him go after the title but i'm not sure you can turn that guy atm. even if he joins up with Danielson people will keep cheering him.

idk what the answer is tbh and presumably nor does Tony Khan, which is why we've got this placeholder Adam Cole thing for Revolution.

otoh they could always run Britt vs Thunder Rosa on top at Revolution in which case it doesn't matter that the world title feud isn't that special (they really ought to do this imo and i hope they do)

a bit like Mox vs Jericho, Mox vs Omega and the eventual Hangman vs Omega match in the men's division, the Britt vs Rosa PPV title match has been the obvious destination for the women's title for so long, they should go all in with it. just cause the result is predictable doesn't mean they shouldn't lean into it

yeah mox can't turn, his presence is too how do you say life-affirming while still being the most brutal motherfucker alive

he looks so good rn too ;_;

I agree! Rehab put ten years back ON to Mox's life. It's crazy to look at side by side pictures and see the difference.

I'm hoping that Thunder Rosa finally gets that title. DMD has been great as the heel top of the division, but I wouldn't mind a shake-up, and especially because I anticipate Cole also coming out of his match with the L, I would love to see the shit heel program they would run with both of them having lost.

i'd long given up on rosa's title shot (started assuming kris would take it from britt) but ever since they picked up the thread with mercedes a few weeks ago... man....

i do however enjoy that they've taken nearly a year to get to britt/rosa 2

would you believe that lights out match happened a few weeks before rosa was actually signed? :)

pic.twitter.com/Gz47zXBOCc

— Richie (@richiemalice) February 17, 2022

Looooool funny cause it’s true

Rosa’s coronation has felt as inevitable as Hangman’s was, pleased we’re finally getting there. This title run has done a great job of establishing Britt as a name but it’s done no favours for anyone else. Also the Deeb time limit challenge is obviously building towards a Rosa vs Deeb title defence (series?! Pray for it!) I would pay for multiple PPVs running that match back to back

I’m pleased they shifted the tag titles from Lucha Bros to A Boy and His Dinosaur quite quickly. Don’t like hotshotting of the world title but for the tag and midcard titles it’s good to keep mixing things up.
Not every title run needs to be 8 months long to mean something

By which I mean give Rosa her win and a short title reign then get the title onto the excellence of execution Serena Deeb quicksmart while you’ve still got her in her prime

deeb as a heel champion would be exquisite

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dz-DHfkWoPc

one of the best bte's in recent memory

Watching last weeks Dynamite. Fuck me I don't care about Adam Cole. I know I didn't watch his era of nxt but I just can't take him and RD seriously.

Killer promos from Punk and Moxley. I'm more excited for p much any other Revolution match more than the title bout. Kinda hope the women main event, although I still think that needs more heat too.

tbh it feels like the whole of the Elite just needs a program reset. Young Bucks hamming it up worked fine when Caliss, Good Brothers, Omega were around but now it doesn’t have that same feel with Cole/Fish/o’Reilly and that crowd.

will y'all let it play out ffs

adam cole fucking rules

complicated and tense history between bucks, cole, and redragon that rears its head once they're all in the same building, totally destabilizing the chemistry of the elite... i think the program reset you want is happening?

i admit kenny's absence is felt

Oh yes Violence is Forever on Dark let's goooooooo

sorry for yelling this morning, btw somehow the cm punk and mjf feud got even better tonight

The POP for Santana and Trent facing off! They didn’t even point to the wrestlemania sign!

Fans were getting out of their seat for 2 undercard tag guys. Don’t know if I’ve ever seen something like that. This has gotta be a great Dynamite.

That MJF promo was something huh

Still can’t really wrap my head around it. Possibly one of the best promos I’ve ever seen. But still a heel? Like I still kinda hate him trying so hard to suddenly drum up some sympathy.

5 star match and it’s two weeks away.

I enjoyed the Jericho/Kingston showdown but I think Kingston might need his character to move on from underdog who never got his chance, and Jericho needs to just go and reboot.

i like that eddie's opponents run away with the self-sabotage angle, always makes me relate to eddie harder

mjf doing an earnest face promo + punk's reaction was like..... poetry

Eddie Kingston’s reaction to Judas is amazing #AEWDynamite pic.twitter.com/b5Ja9gVcHU

— Kyle Lewis (@KeepItFiveStar) February 24, 2022

Some absolutely insane character work on this show. I expect it from Eddie but I didn’t see the MJF thing coming. Both of them were incredible.

MJF of course just looking to get close enough to CM Punk to shank him but it felt like at least some of that came from a place of truth (am I being worked?!) and in the space of 5 minutes he effectively blew off all the critics who said he was good on the mic but lacked depth as a character.

An utterly believable origin story for MJF the asshole, and because of the actual connection there with MJF the young fan idolising Punk, this is kinda turning into a lightning in a bottle, once in a lifetime deal.

Just lots of lovely depth, amazing

An utterly believable origin story for MJF the asshole, and because of the actual connection there with MJF the young fan idolising Punk, this is kinda turning into a lightning in a bottle, once in a lifetime deal.

OTM. My first reaction was, “This is his supervillain origin story.”

Have watched that promo back on YouTube several times. P sure now that this is one of the better stories which has ever been told in a wrestling ring. The promo itself was magnificent and Punk’s confused / wary / concerned “was that true” took it up another notch into something approaching uncharted territory for a wrestling angle. Legit decent acting in the wrestling! I can’t quite believe it

UNICEF - Support Children of Ukraine: https://t.co/C29Gtm21G0

Ukraine Crisis Relief Fund: https://t.co/GvAdAs1otF

10 Ruthless Chair Shots Kane Took to the Head: https://t.co/NFJ02hHFQr

— HANGMAN PAGE (@theAdamPage) February 27, 2022

What a tweet

i just saw that Glenn Jacobs tweet after the fact. Page is a legend.

Big news on the start of the show. Will wanna talk about it once everyone’s watched.

Caster’s rap was my favourite of his so far.

Then my laptop ran out of battery and I left my charger at work, so I’m waiting until it’s on itv

really good episode, historically important announcement

the staggered tag team royale was def a better match than "everyone in the ring at once"

rosa trios match felt weird, like they couldn't quite get their rhythm. i also think the coolest parts of the match were prob consigned to picture in picture

everything else was pretty pitch perfect. main event reminded me of nxt when it was good, which figures

oh and as usual punk and mjf figured out a new way to escalate their feud, and it's the greatest fucking thing on television right now

I'm really intrigued with the important announcement. The rumour has it that it will help them get a good deal on a streaming service that isnt available in the UK, so it might not mean much. But there are a lot of possibilities. Do they get it back up and running? Will it be a minor league system? Do they still have a tv show in USA or did that end with this? A lot of speculation around who may be involved if they do get it going too, people on Dark, new signees, older guys like Daniels and Lethal that they have around, people that aren't currently there like... Cody?

Tony Khan knows how to get me really excited about wrestling.

My dream is that this is how we get some Samoa Joe involved. I miss Joe so much, and I really hope that he finds his way back into a ring soon.

It really feels like every single match going into Revolution on Sunday is important, and I can't really call what's going to happen in any of them except for Hangman/Cole, and maybe Cargill/Conti. With the acquisition of ROH officially announced, do we see some "invasion" hit AEW like how it did IMPACT?

the ROH acquisition opens so many doors. I hope TK doesn't try to do everything himself booking both companies and burn out. for all that "AEW has too many wrestlers" has been a tedious concern-troll talking point for the worst element for the last year or so, it is also basically true.

there's massive scope to run ROH as a totally separate enterprise where ppl who aren't getting sufficient ring/tv time on AEW can go to develop and get exposure to live crowds. it would be a big mistake to fold it into the Dynamite/Rampage/Dark/Elevation framework imo. keep it as a completely separate crew, hire a third party to book the shows (or send Daniels or someone) to ensure it keeps its own tone.

But there's just so many people who would benefit. Emi Sakura weirdly was one of the first I thought of. She's amazing but evidently she's not gonna be pushed on AEW tv. she has spoken about being bummed out that she only gets on the Youtube shows and how she came to UUS to be a featured wrestler rather than a trainer / enhancement talent. She could have an amazing run as a dominant heel champ doing her "queen" gimmick with lesser known / less experienced opponents and a stable around her in that sort of environment.

sorry for descending into fantasy booking which is always the lamest, but as a business move this does kinda invite it.

there is an opportunity here to use ROH to make good use of veteran talents who are under-utlised on AEW tv, to give great exposure and training to young prospects they want to work out on AEW tv, to get ppl over with the hardcore audience who could then be brought in "hot", as opposed to simply giving someone a 10 match winning streak on the Youtube shows. it's got the potential to be fucking amazing. and at this stage i trust TK to see all of this and to deliver. a very exciting move.

also the good will AEW has built up now is enormous, if ROH is relaunched and presented as an AEW adjacent show with wrestlers you also see on AEW tv, only it's less featured wreatlers having proper matches and feuds, it will absolutely take off relative to where it was

ROH would be a great place for her to shine, where they would (hopefully) treat her like a big deal. Sumie Sakai was the women's world champion in her late 40's and more or less was still considered to be a cornerstone of the women's division in ROH. I think ROH had a good balance with treating the joshi wrestlers that came/were featured with a respect different from the sort of novelty that they were treated with in AEW, where the initial excitement was high, but the follow through with pushes just went nowhere, even for those who re-located to be part of the program.

i think they were in a tight spot with the joshi stuff tbf. it's not like they were pure novelty. Riho was the first women's champ, Shida had more than a year with the belt.

there was a sense early on that they could consistently run the kind of 6-man-tag they had on the first Double or Nothing and use their joshi talent the way WCW used to use the cruiserweights but they quickly focused on building the (Western) core of their women's division, which tbh I think was probably the right thing to do, because there were simply no names at all in that division in the early period.

unfortunately they only have so much tv time, and i'm not sure anyone who got excited about the potential of the TJPW link with Kenny in those early days in 2019 appreciated that within 3 years the competition for airtime would be quite so fierce. i'm not even talking about the men's division with Danielson, Punk etc. there - how do you justify not giving Serena Deeb and Thunder Rosa frequent tv time at this point?

tbh i wouldn't be averse to a few more angles and built matches on the Youtube shows, but i'm really hoping they use ROH in that way soon

hey y'all this is the best rampage since punk debuted

I’ve been under the weather this week, making me need to nap midday and inevitably wake up for hours in the middle of the night. Up until today, it’s felt like hell, just wishing my eyes would close and to wish the night could disappear. But when I woke from my nap today, I thought, fuck yeah, this means I get to wake up at about 3.30, just in time for pirates to have the start of Revolution available to stream. And now my illness feels like a blessing, and I’m really excited for it!

It’s like 5.99 to get the FITE tv subscription in the uk, sign up or be cursed

I’ve gotta leave for work at 7 am so there is literally no chance I’m staying up for this. Should be finished by 4 though so I can just roll into bed when I get home and wallow in rasslin nirvana.

Excited for everything but I think the dog collar match will be special. Danielson / Mox should be brutal as fuck and shouldn’t go longer than 12 mins imo

Just realised that you don’t get ppvs with your FITE subscription, otoh buy this show or be cursed

Show is so stacked I’m not gonna be even slightly tempted to ice it so I can play Elden Ring

happy revolution everyone

I’m currently so poor that I can’t afford my own rent and I’m having to put my business into insolvency, so I’m already cursed.

what a show

punk/mjf best rivalry ever

obv i was very disappointed about one match but i have hopes that storyline will resolve later down the line

still fondly remembering the most creative ladder match of all time

I didn't get a chance to fully watch this, yet (my BR stream was AWFUL), but MAN, what a card. A good balance of the nostalgia pop and the new. Genuinely surprised by a few outcomes. I really thought certain matches were going to have different outcomes, but I'm hoping that the storytelling behind it pays off later. It took me a while to get used to that long, long-term booking of NJPW, so maybe Uncle Tony's got some of that same idea here.

Sorry to hear about your troubles ahoyhoy and I hope you enjoyed this very lovely wrestling show

The whole thing rocked.

Punk/MJF feud has been a total masterclass. An all timer. And now Wardlow is primed to explode. He’ll keep heating up through the MJF programme. They just need to work out what he does next

Danielson / Moxley post-match was beyond my wildest fantasy booking dreams. Absolute unwavering faith in all three of those guys. Doesn’t necessarily feel like a long term project but even with a 9 month run this could be one of the great stables

Watched Rampage and now starting Revolution.

The 3 way was lightning quick. Andre needs to work his character more but he's near perfect in the ring. Whatever happened to Chavo? The CMPunk bloody promo was icing on the best-feud-ever cake.

Jericho and Kingston was a FIGHT. I haven't enjoyed something involving Jericho that much in years. He looks in great shape too.

This tag team match is incredible too. 5 star stuff. Luchasaurus has become the best hot tag. He's perfect here but I kinda wish he's join Regal-BD-Mox's violence club. Holy shit at this match, like a million great things have happened while ive been typing.

The ladder match was really fun. I liked Wardlow and Hobbs pulling one apart. They need to get rid of the piles cushion sonic ring though. It looks so dumb. Excited for Wardlow as Diesel in 94.

the sonic ring was perfect imo bc that ladder match looked like a video game

Had to stop for work, now back to it. The dog collar match was perfect. Really brutal stuff. I liked them keeping it simple and using the ring ropes and posts for leverage. Wardlow is a star but I hope someone tells him to stop dressing like Finlay.

Might skip the Baker Rosa match. Really not feeling the feud and heard it was a bit of a stinker.

:|

wrestling fans get what they deserve when they skip women's matches just sayin

i also thought the match was good and everyone saying it sucked has been an asshole about it

also idk the feud is the most interesting storyline the women's division has had, i'm not really sure why everyone is turning on it

tbf it's getting to the point where the less i know of what other wrestling fans think of wrestling, the better

motherfuckers are so quick to call a whole match a dud when they don't like the finish :)

Ok I’ll give it a go.

i will cop to criticisms of the build, the booking has been awkward, but i chalk that up at least partially to how little airtime women have in aew to really shape their stories. i am also deeply invested in rosa taking the belt and khan's got me stressed out about it (remember when page/dark order lost the match so that he could go on parental leave? getting those feelings again lol)

but if this is building toward a huge match in san antonio then i can respect the ride

Yeah wrestling fans as a species have a real problem with playing out match results in their head and then throwing their toys out of the pram if there is any deviation from that.

Must admit that I didn’t particularly enjoy the Baker / Rosa match, too many interference spots to really be enjoyable in a difficult spot on the card, and I do basically agree with the nerds that this Baker title run has gone on waaaay too long now. Idk why people are crying about it so much though, it’s perfectly obvious where this is going.

TK still needs to work on giving the women’s roster generally more interesting storylines and angles I think

On that though - the rate at which Jade Cargill is putting it all together is completely thrilling, she is going to a HUGE deal

it's nice that i rarely have to wince through jade matches anymore

i sort of agree about the interference spots, when that started my brain immediately knew rosa was losing, but i think rosa and baker have such great ring chemistry, i was glued to every shift in the match. crowd was dead though (i think this also unduly influences whether wrestling fans think a match sucks)

also, again, i'm hugely invested, so of course i was glued to the match. but i also think.... the way women's wrestling is viewed by fans is so fucking distorted and the deck is so stacked against the wrestlers themselves that i sometimes wonder how the lights out match would've gone over with a crowd present

I would like to say it isn't because its a womens match that I wasn't interested. I loved the Jade squash. But I also don't particularly care for the title match with Adam Cole. I have a bit of a time limit before I have to go out and knew I'd have to skip out on 1 or 2 matches. I think going back to this, I'm gonna have to skip the tnt guys match. Might actually just stop before that and the title match and get them later in the week.

The crowd is absolutely dead but you can tell they are really trying to get it going. You can hear Rebel trying to get chants going to silence and its really awkward. Whatever went after Punk-MJF was going to suffer, it should have been the main event.

Crowd reaction definitely make or break for a lot of fans. This usually plays in AEW’s favour compared to modern WWE cause for the big shows at least the fanbase is absolutely rabid.

But no crowd is going to sustain the heat across 5 hours of wrestling (I actually thought this lot did themselves proud by being as up for the main event as they were). They need to give some thought to breaking these shows out over two nights if they want to keep putting 13 or 14 match cards on. WWE used to do one night shows like that back in the 80s but the matches weee only 3-10 minutes long each back then.


Also ahoyhoy you are soooooo wrong about Wardlow’s gear, the low cut singlet accentuates his magnificent muscle tits beautifully.

Intrigued to see what they can do with him now - he feels so much more WWE than AEW, he’s got that Batista vibe, but it has never done a wrestling company any harm at all to have a gigantic handsome muscle monster with the fans behind him, I think they need to seriously consider giving him a concerted push now rather than cooling him off after the MJF feud

yeah i wasn't trying to insinuate anything about your priorities a hoy hoy xp

By which I mean heat it up some more for a few months and then give the War Dog a title run xp

I just dont like the irish green. His beautiful boobies do need to be on show, you are right. He's got such potential to be a mega star. Supposedly he has a lot more experience from the indies than his squash matches let on to, so if matches get longer and need more story, he really might be ready.

Ooof. They actually were getting into it and pulled the crowd into it! I think you are right Brad about the finish. It does seem both like the Hangman-DO loss and like we should trust them to have a killer cage match next time. They do need to heat Rosa up though, maybe have her totally wreck Hayter and Rebel on Dynamite. Glad I took your advice and watched it, but also think the criticisms are valid and not just people being weird about womens wrestling. They need more TV time and to use it wisely. Like after watching that whole match, I just remembered BB's 'sensei' that turned up for 2 weeks and wasn't here or mentioned by the commentators. What was the point of that?

A really beautiful belt.

One of my least favourite wrestling tropes is babyfaces being left alone to have a group of heels make them look stupid. I feel like it took them a million years to figure out that the Usos or Ambrose could possibly run in to help Reigns. Cena would supposedly be mates with someone like Zach Ryder and happily sit in catering instead of helping him get obliterated by Kane. Hasn't Rosa spent weeks earning Martinez's respect, teamed with her on Dynamite etc. only to be left alone to be played by the DMD crew? Outsmarted by Rebel isn't a good look for a babyface.

I just remembered BB's 'sensei' that turned up for 2 weeks

cobra kai cross-promotion, also it was only the one week iirc

also yeah i'm being extremely defensive here.... hoping for more over the next two weeks

also i'm so glad they changed the women's belt, i was just thinking the old one looked... not good next to the world champ/tnt/tbs belts

Ah ok. I've never watched Cobra Kai and presume I missed a concise Excalibur explanation.

Has Tony Khan all but confirmed that a trios belt is coming? Feel like I remember this from somewhere but possibly I daydreamed it?

I have most certainly daydreamed about a tournament with Omega and the bucks, Cole and redragon, Mox/Danielson/a.n.other (make it claudio to complete the Regal connection ffs!), house of black, death triangle, Jurassic express and Christian, sting/punk/Darby, dark order, MJF and FTR, team taz, Eddie and P&P, Garcia and 2.0, a million others who I’ve forgotten

Surely they’ve gotta go down this route now?!

The last time WWE felt like it was worth watching was when they were running Shield and Wyatt Family 6 mans, it’s impossible to fuck up 6 man tags

i heard from somewhere myself that tk is considering adding a trios belt when omega returns

Yeah that’s the rumour, with the Elite spinning their wheels up until they can split Omega and the Bucks/Cole and red dragon

Trios belt would be great and especially if they start to incorporate more ROH guys, it would work well. ROH had the 6-man tag belts for a while. NJPW has the NEVER Openweight 6-man tags as well, and there are so many good trios to be able to do it, especially if they allow it to be intergender, like how it was in Lucha Underground. I wouldn't mind seeing Ivelisse team back up with Angelico (and Jack Evans), and go after a trios title.

The thing that I think most people hold against the women's match is the finish, which was the most surprising outcome to me from the whole show. Thunder Rosa felt like the opponent most primed and ready to finally end Britt Baker's streak. Nobody else really feels as close, but I guess it's good that there's some time for that build.

It’s been quite a few hours out but I’ve gone back to the show. This match, Danielson v Mox, could have been a WM main event and the crowd is possibly as silent as the womens title. They are throwing everything at each other and people barely give a fuck. Only when someone jumps through the ropes or something do you hear a reaction. Really puts the reaction to the womens title match in perspective. The dog collar has killed the heat for both of these.

Also in watching these guys, it is so noticeable the face/heel divide. If they become a tag team, I want 100% sting/Luger baby face friends with a heel storyline.

When was the last time someone did a move off the top rope, like a super plex or their avalanche finisher etc and actually got a three count?

Seeing Mox thrown off the top to a 2 count must have been like the 7th time tonight

Well presumably Rosa still wins it? Don’t think they’re looking to build anyone else to that spot, they’re just building to the cage

Don’t see TK allowing intergender tags, he’s on record as absolutely hating that stuff

That was an xpost to hourspass

Yes, as noted above, they are burning out their crowds and should do something about it. I had to do the show in two sittings, I got burnt out just watching from my sofa

dynamite has been so good oh god

As I’d hoped, the interference spots in Rosa/Baker on the PPV were a set-up for a rematch in a cage. In San Antonio. If the dentist wins we riot. (My fantasy booking outcome: Rebel and Jamie try to interfere anyway but they’re thwarted by a debuting Athena. Rosa gets her rightful crowning, and then backstage they film a faceoff between her and Athena. Maybe they’ll even reference the indie match they had a few weeks ago. I won’t be upset if this doesn’t happen, but it’s what I would do.)

Only caught a few little clips of Dynamite and won’t be able to watch the show til later but man I am *unreasonably* into Wardlow right now. Big, handsome, amazing look, great facial expressions, can talk, can work, has an actual character with clear motivations and is on fire with the fans right now.

AEW has done really well getting people like Hangman, MJF, Darby etc over as big stars by featuring them heavily and giving them consistent steady pushes but no one has suddenly caught fire like this in AEW yet.

Strap a rocket to him imo

renaming this thread the wardlow appreciation society

feel like britt must read the wrestling internet a lot, her whole promo after the rosa match was a summary of the talking points i've read from everyone criticizing the build

XP

I was thinking “WardLOW: Classic or classic?”

lol

I love Wardlow too guys, I wanna join your club.

wwe-induced traumatic skepticism had me primed to hate wardlow, sometimes i forget that you can just trust the tv to be good sometimes

Generally even at its very worst, AEW has still been well meaning, attempted to be entertaining and get people over. And Wardlow is a big part of their current hottest storyline, not some throwaway mess like Americas Top Team, so I presume everyone is primed to get the most they possibly can out of making him a star.

errrr America Top Team is good actually, or at least it's not bad. Dan Lambert can push the chuddy Jim Cornette shit too far at times but he always kills it on. the mic and idk i think you can probably just toss a coin as to what we're gonna get from Paige Vanzant? she might turn out to be really good! (she might also kind of suck but crucially she is hot and legitimately tough and that's more than most ppl have to work with)

not everything needs to be a huge deal, sometimes having giddy MMA fighters who gleefully enjoy themselves while trying not to accidentally kill their opponents in not-great midcard matches is enough. anyway i liked all of that in the end

Will don't sleep on Wardlow, i won't repeat myself by enumerating his many virtues but he's in that exact sweet spot which occasionally happens for a well-booked wrestler of being on the very verge of blowing up in a big way. the most exciting thing when it actually happens, which is usually only once every year or two

That you really liked ATT is actually a testament to how good AEW is. I honestly struggled to come up with a proper example. My other potential examples were the start of the Dark Order, Brandi’s promos and Cody v Ogogo? There honestly haven’t been many bad moments in these 3 years!

Wardlow reminded me in his promo that he's been in AEW since 2019, which blew my mind, but then I realized that it's probably a good thing that he doesn't feel like he's been around forever. I thought he would blow up upon arrival, and I had seen him a bit in the indies before he got signed. It took me a minute, but I've really liked him as MJF's muscle, and feel like they did a good thing with pairing him with MJF, because nobody will get him over as a babyface as well as MJF right now.

I didn't get it until last night, why they held off on Thunder Rosa, but I imagine that pop when she wins in San Antonio will blow the roof off the place.

xp I would think the original roll-out of Miro as the best man gimmick was a flop.

baker/rosa revolution finish already works so much better knowing we're getting the steel cage match. has AEW even done a bad cage match yet?

on paper the Jericho Appreciation Society looks like it could be a dud but Jericho is one of the few wrestlers who will be able to bring it to the next level.

Will don't sleep on Wardlow, i won't repeat myself by enumerating his many virtues but he's in that exact sweet spot which occasionally happens for a well-booked wrestler of being on the very verge of blowing up in a big way. the most exciting thing when it actually happens, which is usually only once every year or two

oh don't worry -- i'm already sold! i was just READY to dislike him, because wwe/nxt has a long line of big built up protected guys who end up having the org drop the ball on them (baron corbin, bull dempsey, big cass, killer kross, the red trunks guy whose name i already forget who was racist online, even to an extent strowman and big e)

the red trunks guy whose name i already forget who was racist online

Lars Sullivan, the latter-day Snitsky.

Just watching Dynamite. Loved Regal, he made the episode a must watch.

Why tf is Wardlow “Mr. Mayhem” and not “Mr. Reapectful Nice Promo Guy”? Never have I heard a wrestler so perfectly pleasant and reasonable despite being treated like shit for so long.

"wwe-induced traumatic skepticism" is such a great phrase

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHLrwNn-nQI

the sky/wardlow and britt/rosa promos in this are SO GOOD

I’ve had really shitty news today and found out we have to move house v quickly. Whenever I have to put up with stuff like this, I get mad anxiety and can never sleep, so I’ve already told myself not to get drunk and just know i Should wake up at 2am and watch dynamite, see the TNT slugfest and calm

<3

prob my favorite episode of dynamite, every match delivered

jericho appreciation society is not for everyone but i find it unbelievably hilarious

Good luck to anyone getting their teeth seen this week. Britt’s hand got beat to death on those thumb tacks!

Pro tip: don’t count pins in a pile of tacks #AEWDynamite pic.twitter.com/awNtLA9P2X

— Aubrey Edwards (@RefAubrey) March 17, 2022

Damn!

I feel like I need rewatch some of that. I’ve never cared that much about Wheeler Yuta but that slap! Monday Night Jericho for a modern age! Triple moonsaults!

Wheeler is great! He's also still young, so lots of upside potential. He had some great matches in MLW and in ROH (Pure Tournament).

his broadway with garcia from last year is good too

yeah i gotta see that 60 min yuta/garcia iwtv match

Rewatching Dynamite and I can’t believe how good the tag team roster is. They have MoxIelson, the Bucks, FTR, the Harry’s, JE, P&P, Red Dragon, the Lucha Bros, Top Flight, Team Taz, 2.0, Best Friends, Private Party, the Ass Boys, Hager & Jericho have teamed before, Sting & Darby, the Dark Order and I still feel like I’m missing some names.

Some of these names are jobbers/Mid card and yet better than I’ve seen in the past 20 years. But those first like 10 or so team genuinely has to be the best tag team roster ever assembled.

You need skilled midcarders/jobbers to flesh things out; otherwise you get Usos vs New Day for the umpteenth time past the point anyone cares beyond saying ‘they put on a good match’.

Amen. Also most of them could be built into credible players in the next couple years. I missed the House of Black too.

Just watched last weeks Rampage (not this Fridays, its not on itv until Tuesday). Swerve hads bags of charisma but watching him fight Tony Nese had me falling asleep. Interested to see what happens with him though. Could be a good ROH type if Tony moves people around.

Watching Dynamite. Mostly amazing, no one has jizzed on anything, although Kyle O Reilly got that go home heat with a promo up there with Yip Jumping Jeff.

All I can think though is what happened to Ruby Soho? She went from being mega over to being on the same Miro/Marko Stunt milk carton missing list.

ruby's been wrestling dark matches but i feel like it's not long before we see her again (idk anything)

miro is injured(? i don't actually know) and marko's contract was not renewed

concur that dynamite was amazing

Loved the debut of Toni Storm and I hope that she is able to gain more traction in AEW than in WWE, even though the roster is stacked right now.

I agree with your sentiments on Ruby; I love her so much, and it's been cool to see her with Anna Jay on Dark, but MAN I wish that there was more of a push for her. Hopefully soon.

Also loved seeing Roppongi Vice on Monday. The true kings of the night.

Can I comment on The Bunny vs REDACTED yet or would it be too spoiler-y? I have thoughts.

Dynamite is tonight, so I imagine it's fine. I think that it's been difficult to avoid spoilers this long, with how much Wrestlemania weekend has been talked about for wrestling in general.

I'm hyped for the matches tonight. Max Caster is going to get crushed.

technically-not-aew-but-related: the roh ppv from last weekend was fucking glorious

ROH is the outlet theyve been screaming for. not just pumping more aimless Dark content out into the ether to the benefit of no one (one of the two Dark shows should have actual lower-card storylines imo) but a whole other brand with titles and a history and its own presentation etc. etc.

so much you can do with that with young guys, vets, guys like Cage who are in their "prime" but are never gonna cut it in AEW. it's extremely exciting

give Lance Archer the title run he'll never have in AEW

which reminds me, Minoru Suzuki is the fucking TV champion lol. that's not a bad opening hook if they're looking to drag viewers into another weekly tv show

Can I comment on The Bunny vs REDACTED yet or would it be too spoiler-y? I have thoughts.

Toni’s still wrestling Performance Center style, and that match was structured like a WWE special (one side dominates 99%, other hits their finish out of nowhere for the win).

It was pretty obvious from even the pre-show that the ROH show was being filmed/directed by the AEW crew. They’re not perfect but they generally have the hang of how to make wrestling look good on TV. It was a fun show and I think everyone is energised about what will happen next, which can only be a good thing.

Toni’s still wrestling Performance Center style, and that match was structured like a WWE special (one side dominates 99%, other hits their finish out of nowhere for the win).

Man they are still going hard for the John Cena format, huh?

Seems like a big wrestling week with Joe, ROH, WWE having to fire a champion for abuse/Hitler pictures and umm I guess Weestlemania. But I’m moving house/work from London to Brighton and def don’t have time to watch any of it. Such a shame, cos I love Dax Harwood now, I want to make tumblr esque word art dedications to him with love hearts and xoxoxos and lyrics to the many songs they dedicated to bret hart around wrestlemania x

dynamite was really awesome this week

as usual i guess! ftr/bucks 2 was a sight to behold

Yeah, very good stuff. Nice to see FTR finally getting the front-and-centre "holy shit these guys are the best tag team working" treatment for a sustained period.

I'm going to just skip forward 15 minutes any time a Hardy Boys match comes on I think. Just not a good idea for anyone involved at this point

Looks like another good rampage coming up too, good women's match and a lovely hoss fight last week

I got the chance to watch Lee-Hobbs and it was great. Would love to see them get a proper PPV 20 minute match in a year or so, maybe for the TNT title. Absolute beasts. I loved seeing Lee being able to yeet Hobbs like he was a cruiserweight.

Good promo from Hobbs too! He's looking like he should be pushed as a bigger star ASAP imo

Satisfying Dynamite debut for Joe. I'm so glad to see him again.

It was pretty obvious from even the pre-show that the ROH show was being filmed/directed by the AEW crew. They’re not perfect but they generally have the hang of how to make wrestling look good on TV.

agreed. lord knows AEW has had its production issues and i didn't watch any ROH at all really in the 2010s so i'm completely bullshitting but surely ROH with AEW production is gonna be a step up.

it's important imo that they maintain largely separate crews with a bit of crossover / promotion of important ROH stuff on AEW tv. I get making the Joe / Lethal / Gresham[ /Bandido] a cross-promotional thing at this stage, both because it's important to try to convince AEW viewers to check out reborn ROH if you can and because clearly there are plans or wishes to use all of those guys on AEW tv. But once it's up and running they should try to maintain a bit of a Chinese wall imo.

v excited for Rampage - Mox vs Yuta feels like a pretty big stakes match. one thing AEW hasn't been great at for a bit is the jeopardy in these tv matches. they run lots of cool matches but you can see the winner coming a mile away. this is a star vs young talent match where it's a bit more up in the air. I still expect Mox to win but i think it's at least possible that Yuta steals an upset here and gets accepted into the Combat Club. such a great, simple angle.

Danielson / Moxley / Yuta vs Trent / Chuck / OC is a match i would watch

the hapless loser fantasy booker in me still wants Cesaro to join up to complete the Regal-adjacent triumvirate.

Yuta rules. That match was also incredible on second viewing.

mox/yuta is a classic

I'm so happy for Wheeler. He's going to be a star!

I’ve only seen the gif and not seen Rampage in full but HOLY FUCK GOOD FRIDAY EVERYBODY

wednesday was very frustrating, should've been a perfect dynamite but finale was inexplicable and the women's match was a fucking joke

i'm watching rampage this morning and it is FUCKING AWESOME. ruby & robyn renegade really rocked it. main event starting now

holy shit lol

Finale pretty explicable in a business context apparently but there’s no surer sign that youve gone too far down the rabbit hole as starting to care about that shit. Total fuckin trash, leave that shit in WWE where it belongs

Also I refuse to believe that if it becomes a commercial imperative to appeal to the south Asian subcontinent specifically you can’t find someone who moves better than this joker

I’ve still not seen it, is he really that bad? I’ve always had a soft spot for rubbish big guys though. I’ll take to my grave that they ruined Kurrgan by having Ken Shamrock be the first guy to take him off his feet.

He might not be quite in the same league as giant gonzales but it wasn’t an auspicious intro

It stuck out like a sore thumb. AEW has always been a kind of rebuttal to that vision of wrestling and I guess it should be celebrated that it’s taken this long for them to pull something like this but yeah - no thanks

I felt like the reveal was just...weird. It's funny, because the Japanese commentary that NJPW adds on (featuring Shingo Takagi) had the same reaction as I did when the lights went out. I had no idea who that guy was, so when the lights came back up, it didn't feel like "holy shi-!" but instead felt more like, "who is this?" I don't know if that's just because of my lack of sports knowledge, though.

In any case, Suzuki vs. Joe was great. What a weird cap to that.

Found time to watch Yuta-Mox. Holy shit.

Have they actually said what the Owen is going to be yet? I presume G1 style league type tournament, especially as they do knock out tournaments regularly already. Intrigued to see both sexes get a tournament too, it could really make some stars.

Also I’ve not seen Dynamite yet but god damn the news. It most probably would have happened earlier if not for covid, but dream matches are gonna be happening on ppv once a year if this goes well.

The background art for all the owen stuff has included a standard knockout bracket. A G1 style tournament, if you were to say organize it as 4 groups of 8, would be 112 matches long before the finals. Without an actual G1 style touring schedule, that would take roughly 75 years to get through assuming they want every match on TV. Never going to happen with a field that large.

Lmao yeah ok.

I guess I hope they maybe do an old school KotR type thing with wrestlers going many matches on one night (maybe quarters-final).

Just a minute into the FTR faceoff and it's constantly laughable at the kind of Usos/New Day/etc. tag-team level talent WWE allows to dip

not exactly sure what they're trying to do with sammy and tay but it's not working and it's inadvertently turned att into faces lol :( sammy's two big ladder spots were uh... painfully executed

otherwise perfect show last night :)

wardlow and archer looked so dope in the ring together that i hope they have a feud down the line

Sammy and Tay have turned themselves into the most revolting, despicable heels just by being themselves so I don’t blame AEW for trying to course correct. But yeah they’re dangerously close to “you suck, get the fuck off my tv” reactions at the moment.

Doesn’t help at all that Sammy / Scorpio is simply not an interesting direction for that belt when you’ve got all those other amazing wrestlers just hanging around

Similarly Scorpio / Kaz isn’t exactly a hot ticket.

Also bench the the Undisputed Elite guys for a bit please, they’re absolutely all over the show and none of them is better than “fine” at this point. Get the feeling TK dumped a lot of cash into the Adam Cole signing and wants to get his money’s worth but it’s way too much. AEW is so much better when it isn’t just 2010s indy / NXT guys everywhere

Show ruled, company rules, obviously

i love kor but i feel like his personality gets a little buried between cole and fish

KOR is easily my favorite of the whole group. Always thought it was talented, but he won me over huge at the first NXT Wargames. I've loved him ever since.

Was hyped on The women's trios tag match! Always happy to see Willow Nightingale on my screen, and happy to see Trish Adora on AEW! Though would have been happier with a different finish.

IN OTHER NEWS, WE PROUD:

WHEELER YUTA IS IN BOSJ 29!!@WheelerYuta pic.twitter.com/Kci2tKM5aG

— Ciarán (@CiaranRH93) May 1, 2022

i'm kind of immediately sold on the baddies section as a faction. they looked great

Agreed. Jade has big money huge star potential, and I've always loved Kiera Hogan from her time in IMPACT. Red Velvet fits so well with them, and I think the heel attitude suits her really well with how well she swaggers. I think it's really revitalized her.

FTR fighting each other was a lot of fun, but man I wish that it was a quarterfinal match or something. Wish it was for something more than just to qualify for the Owen Hart cup. Though it looked like they had some fun working against each other rather than as a tag team. It was easy to call who was going to win, but I didn't expect that sort of finish, though I guess it makes sense for how early this match was.

when you got a women’s division like riho and yuka in them, you can’t lose

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bIhwKDYOr8

i was at the long island show with maura, it was wonderful pretty much the whole way through except the crowd sucked ass (e.g. seconds after a nyla rose/emi sakura tag match started i heard someone behind me shout transphobic shit, anyone who shouts transphobic shit at nyla rose should get powerbombed through the earth; also during the ruby/riho match on rampage i heard someone dissing the entirety of joshi. can you imagine??? the total absence of taste??? on long island??? i guess you can)

very pleased to hear you enjoyed it for the most part, very sorry to hear there were people putting a downer on the experience.

it was objectively a good show and i thought the Hayter / Storm match in particular was excellent so idk if it's just a wider depression-induced malaise but i'm struggling to take as much pleasure in it atm as i used to.

I have been umming and ahhing but i think i might actually really fucking hate the presence of Adam Cole, ReDragon, Jeff Hardy, Tony Nese, Jay Lethal and (god forgive me) even kinda Samoa Joe. like if i wanted to watch a 2016 indy or NXT show I could just go and watch one. there are quite a few people who I enjoyed and who i would like to see more of who are getting no tv time because all these new guys keep coming in and shunting them out the picture, it's exhausting

enh maybe it is just depression-induced lack of interest in anything much, as i say. but it does feel like TK has been going way too far in his quest to assemble the perfect c.2014 wrestle-nerd's roster.

i wish he could find more use for Serena Deeb, Miro, Pac, Lance Archer / Jake the Snake, Jamie Hayter, the Butcher and the Blade, the Best Friends.

why the fuck am i watching another 20 minute Adam Cole match when neither Andrade nor Malakai Black are getting reliable tv time

totally projecting here but I am increasingly entertaining the thought that unfiltered TK has pretty shitty taste in wrestling i.e. loving all these completely tedious early 2010s indy dopes like the Undisputed Era, and that the best stuff which goes on in AEW is basically talent-driven, whether by Omega, Punk, MJF, Jericho, Danielson, Moxley, FTR, whoever

that's probably unfair but i'm feeling sour on it all tonight for some reason.

will be ponying up for DoN 22 regardless, of course. I think this Punk vs Hangman thing has legs

I kinda agree with you. And with the (possibly kayfabe) news that MJF wants out, hopefully it makes Tony have a reassessment of how he is using his roster.

That said, I’ve barely watched any wrestling in the past 6 weeks thanks to moving my whole life/work taking all my time, so I’m not the best for judging it. Still made time for hookhausen

i really do not agree with the last few posts lol

like how would mjf wanting out make tk think about anything? mjf gets tv time EVERY WEEK

would say he def can’t afford to keep the roster this big tho

I'm not at the 'get these gobshites off the television' stage but I see where you're coming from. AEW has a lot of moving pieces and I suppose it's only natural that TK would get distracted by a few at the expense of the others, but yeah they could mix it up a bit. They have a lot of time between PPVs and can afford to slow-build so you can swap people in and out of in-ring stuff while keeping the angles alive with backstage bits, video packages, etc.

checking out the card for tonight's Dynamite and i stand by my comments from last week. they're really focusing far too much on recent and recent-ish hires. i;m certainly not saying that they're at risk of running off talent or any of that stuff - i'm speaking purely in terms of my own enjoyment of the show.

and i don't mean to be a downer, i love the whole thing pretty much top to bottom and they still do almost everything so well. it's a miracle it even exists. just.. enough Adam Cole for a bit, please. AEW has always had the indy-to-end-all-indys vibe but recently it's veered too hard in a direction that doesnt interest me as a fan.

less NXT, Impact, ROH (or whatever) guys who have been around and wrestling each other for a decade. more joshi, more PAC, more Deeb, more Hayter, more Acclaimed. much more Miro. in fact if Miro is the joker tonight and we get him vs Joe all is forgiven.

excited for Takeshita tonight - that's a new hire that genuinely carries some intrigue

if the joker is Johnny Gargano i will explode with rage

I went to Miro's Twitter yesterday to see if he'd been tweeting much through his mysterious absence and he'd just retweeted something from Glenn Jacobs about keeping Knoxville "pro-business and pro-life" 🤮

ffs

ban all wrestlers from twitter.

except for CM Punk. "go suck a blood money-covered dick you fucking dork" is one for the ages

joker reveals were both huge surprises, no one i know guessed them both

only punk, danhausen, and nyla rose should have twitter

hangman vs. takeshita match of the year

i'm glad tony khan knew i wanted to see more konosuke takeshita

i appreciate that punk and hangman have yet to do a promo where they talk at each other. they've been building this up just with monologues and silent stares

i really loved this whole episode. perfectly-paced long promo between the bcc and the jas, just the right amount of surprise and dynamism added to the owen cup by the joker selections, astonishing deeb promo, and kor vs. fenix was nearly as good as hangman vs. takeshita

is the endgame of the men's owen kor vs. cole???? have to say that i actually am fascinated with the instability of the undisputed elite

Honestly, Brad, as much as I want Samoa Joe to take the whole thing, I would be very interested in your final two. Honestly, I've always liked KOR more, and felt like he's a much more complete performer, which almost everyone I know disagrees with, but he always looks good in the ring, and honestly, can always make his opponent look good, too.

I was definitely surprised by the Jokers, but not by the outcome of the matches.

Catching up with Dynamite. Great Hangman match. Serena’s promo got my excited. Lol at JE seem to be the third in the tag team match at a second pay per view in a row. Just a shame this Cole Hardy match is the “main event”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6Co5Eq8ncw

so excited for this week :)

now that cole is telegraphing kor vs. cole as the final, i believe it's gonna be joe vs. cole... and joe may go over

i really hope you're right.

alas i am really struggling to gaf about the men's side of this tournament;
also about Adam Cole (the dirt worst and together with Johnny Gargano the surest sign that Dave Meltzer doesn't know wtf he's on about in the 2020s);
also his reDRagon buddies (Kyle O'Reilly is a good wrestler and fun in a vacuum but he's stuck orbiting this boring bullshit);
in fact really anything to do with the Undisputed Era;
2018 Bullet Club-adjacent in-group tensions;
various ROH guys;
Jeff Hardy;
John Morrison;
Big Cass;
Big Damo;
even, sadly, Samoa Joe.

stop debuting people, even for a one-off. stop pulling "surprises" out the hat. there's about 100 wrestlers (ok maybe 50) that got over to a greater or lesser extent between 2019-2021 through time, effort, good matches, good stories, good booking. i love those guys, the AEW guys. i do not want to watch 2019 NXT, 2017 Impact or re-runs of old New Japan feuds. AEW was the escape route from all of that shit, that was the whole point

to focus on the positives (which massively outweigh the negatives), I am wholeheartedly onboard with the Wardlow / Spears match, anything involving Ricky Starks, FTR, Toni Storm, also for Punk vs Hangman showdown.

gonna stop whinging now cause im a broken record on this stuff and i'm obviously gonna buy the PPV anyway, which I'm confident is gonna be amazing from top to bottom

what was i moaning about again?

I think Daddy Magic may be my favourite new wrestler. I’m a simple man.

mind blowing dynamite tonight

well except i was pretty disappointed in the women’s owen booking (and i think i have been… in general)

wrong choice in the women's bracket again tonight i think

in the spirit of not being a purely negative presence in this thread, i have been daydreaming about Punk turning heel and winning the title from Hangman and dropping it on a big show to Eddie Kingston for the Mick Foley title run. that's probably enough wanky fantasy booking for one night.

people are gonna look back on the CM Punk comeback run as an all-time peak in pro wrestling history. Punk vs Eddie is where the money is

"where the money is" is wrong, sloppy syntax. that match isn't a money maker (p much nothing other than Rock / Cena appearance is these days) but it'd be an aesthetic / artistic triumph and that's all that counts

i think they know that which is why the punk/eddie conflict continues to simmer on twitter... i want it to happen but i don't want to get my hopes up

i actually predicted ruby would win tonight but then stat not only gave her best promo ever she looked like dynamite the whole match. finisher felt like it played with my feelings and echoed the (admittedly much worse) britt rollup, crowd responded accordingly

i actually am coming to terms with my disappointment and feel like i'm finally learning what it means to be a real wrestling fan and it's all good bc i know the ppv's gonna be bonkers good

it's just a bummer because the women's division is so stacked and the women's owen feels like a missed opportunity and like it's not even moving any storylines forward at this point (except for maybe ruby's established feud with britt, but who hasn't feuded with britt?)... the men's comparatively had a lot more drama and tension imo

i mean it's a moot point bc they don't even have equal tv time. i just need the world and the company to change already. i'm aware i won't get it

but then stat not only gave her best promo

Her in-ring has been on a higher level for a while, she’s been getting better every match since the gimmick refresh. But that promo is the first time I’ve believed in her. Before now she didn’t get it, there was no passion there. Now I feel it. More of that, please.

(And less of Britt in the Jack Sparrow shirt, eugh.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMfvgiZqm6A

#AEW EXCLUSIVE: An emotional @MadKing1981 #EddieKingston vows to make @IAmJericho pay for dragging the demons back into his life, ahead of #AnarchyInTheArena THIS SUNDAY at #AEWDoN LIVE on PPV 8pm ET / 7pm CT/ 6pm MT/ 5pm PT - Available on @BleacherReport & major cable providers pic.twitter.com/iHGVyXZgSP

— All Elite Wrestling (@AEW) May 28, 2022

eddie's version of the bathroom scene from mandy afaict. incredible. greatest promo in the game

house of black vs. death triangle is my match of the year

the owen results: lol

that show was awesome. it was probably the least great of the last three aew ppvs but the highs were all beyond cathartic. deeb vs. rosa was awesome, and it was so beautiful to see the two best wrestlers in the world (i'm calling it) do their thing in front of a hot crowd. page vs. punk... pure storytelling, you could see every emotion traveling in the air between them. wardlow vs. mjf was almost a wholesome feel-good opening after all the feel-bad shit mjf stirred up this weekend behind the scenes. and finally.... house of black vs. death triangle..... i'm so overwhelmed i can't even talk about it yet lol

the remainder of the matches weren't band in fact several of them were phenomenal... hardys/bucks did exactly what it needed to do and was so fun (alternately: so terrifying when jeff hardy did anything), kor vs. darby as a story feels like it came out of nowhere and then disappeared right back into nowhere but the match itself was dynamic and inventive and it made me want to see a lot more of kor solo as usual. the owen finals... both were good, eventful matches, and the results were absolute bullshit engineered to make me wanna die

the only total dud on the card was jade/anna jay, a bummer bc i love anna but they never aligned at all, i guess it's fitting bc the interference/match coda ended up being way more important than the match

how could i forget the brawl and the tag match??? the show was too long. both were great though. not everyone is thrilled with the tag results, i sort of agree it's time for jurassic express to drop the belts but i'm undecided what direction they should go in (unless the direction is ftr, in which case i am enthusiastically for it). but i think they need to build it more and i think they think they need to build it more

I’ve had quite a different reaction. I thought the show has been a bit sloppy, lacking a bit of direction. I think the first five minutes of the JAS-BCC should have come with 2 paracetamol, the camera direction was so sloppy and constant that you missed seemingly everything until they kinda reset the whole match. And that Tony said in the start of the main event, to paraphrase, “Hangman said this about Punk but I don’t really know what he’s on about” shows how lacklustre and confusing the build has been. sad that page went from “I’m not gonna have Bret hart masterbation matches” to… directly ripping off Bret hart at wm8

Absolutely adored Thunder Rosa - Serena Deeb and Rosa’s outfit though. My favourite ring gear in years. And I love Wardlow.

I still liked the show. I just think it’s been my least favourite AEW PPV since… idk that one where Sammy-Matt Hardy shoulda been stopped.

I skipped the Sammy match, the Darby match and the TBS title so I could watch it before work.

Death Triangle-HoB was fun. Bucks-Hardys was a bit meandering but still alright. Martha nearly put me back to sleep and the belts seem pointless. The matches were alright but I thought they could have done something more with the winners.

The main event great and hard hitting, a solid ****. Hope it builds some actual story and character coming out of it.

Some stuff that bugged me Jeff Hardy’s boot hanging off all match, making him botching everything.

Why was it 4 million matches? So much should have been left for rampage.

JR seemed to have one of his off nights. You get Rancid to play you out, so why is this guy banging on about you being a farmer?

The JE seem like the least interesting thing in any feud and I think it’s starting to become a problem. ( Ricky Starks and Hobbs need all the gold.)

Lol the medical care MJF received.

I don’t think Martha congratulated either winner by name. They just stood around looking like goons in their merchandise and underwear. I really don’t care for Cole/UE and I hope they don’t drag Baker into that.

the hangman punk build was great! i don’t understand

“Hangman said this about Punk but I don’t really know what he’s on about”

tony said that because no one believes either hangman or eddie when they say they know the real punk. it makes sense!

I don’t think Martha congratulated either winner by name.

this is good actually bc i didn’t want to think about who won at all. besides it wasn’t about them

idk if i can spoiler tag an image so i'm just gonna hope everyone who hasn't seen the ppv is avoiding this thread like the plague

https://i.imgur.com/tgitWUj.jpg

my new favorite wrestler julia hart

the hookhausen match in the buy-in was so good too, prob my motn after house of black, rosa/deeb, and hangman/punk. they should've put it in the actual program

(and removed one of the other matches)

(honestly the tnt belt match was about as good as it could've been and i'm thrilled kazarian threw sammy and tay under the bus bc they're insufferable)

(so maybe the no-build darby/kor even though i'd hate to throw away a match that good) (it's certainly a rampage matchup tho)

Sorry I messed my spoiler tags upthread, it should have been all of my ppv thoughts, not just the first sentece.

Wtf is going on with MJF

Years to run on his contract. Even the threat of no showing such a major event seems like a bizarre thing to do. I guess it’s possible for him to row back from here but it seems as though he may have really torpedoed all the good will there was towards him among fans and you couldn’t blame TK if he doesn’t trust him in important spots from now on

Speaking of TK, that post-show presser….woof

lol i'm still pretty upset with mjf and i'm glad i got to see him get powerbombed ten times :)

just silly diva shit imo. afaict the issue is that he wants to get paid more (fair i guess, he's amazing, though the payscales in wrestling seem super fucked up to me lol) without signing an extension, but there's no reason for aew to invest in him if he's also not investing in them

tk going off on one of the five wrestling journalists left in the industry was idk pretty hilarious to me, i didn't even understand what it was about

Tbf some sources were reporting MJF had no expectation of being able to get a raise without adding time to his deal, hard to think he would expect to have any leverage to do that with 18 months left to run

Per T Khan's OTT tweets, cringey digs at WWE and particularly the Big Swole stuff he is evidently at the very least immature and a terrible communicator, so I wouldn't be surprised if there were multiple strands to the beef

(Doing anything to jeopardise Mickey Wardlow's ascension to megastardom should carry a custodial sentence though, read the room Max jfc)

All of us after MJF shows up and wrestles his match without incident. #AEWDoN pic.twitter.com/nAVMQFHDXl

— JamieOD (@JamieOD) May 29, 2022

maura sent me this tweet before the ppv and it's still accurate

lol

i guess we knew this already (and most of this is fuckin Wade Keller and therefore to be taken with a fistful of salt) but it sounds as though the gist is that all sorts of people are now being paid substantially more than him, the vast majority of whom have nowhere near his value to the company and some of whom aren't even active on the roster.

and rather than airing his grievance about this in full MJF might have just given broad indications that he wasn't particularly happy about this state of affairs while quietly taking it extremely personally, stewing and finally exploding. and as biscuits points out, it's quite believable at this stage that Tony Khan wasn't particularly sensitive in his handling of this.

which, now that the dust has settled and the initial outrage about MJF potentially screwing Wardlow out his big moment, tbh I think the guy has a pretty cast-iron case. the no show nonsense was the wrong move cause how is Khan supposed to bow to that kind of pressure and establish the precedent that he can be pushed around by his wrestlers

but the only people hired since day 1 who have offered / can offer more than MJF in the men's division are Punk and Danielson. that feud with Punk alone ought to have been enough to earn him the raise.

i hope they work it out. he's the best they've got and it would be a fucking tragedy to see him wasted in WWE.

finally got round to watching DoN in full (and if anyone wants me to stop bringing negative vibes into the discussion I won't take it all personally as I know I'm like a broken record and I don't wanna shit up the thread), but they're in a real rut atm.

there were a bunch of good matches but that's par for the course. Cole and Britt as cup winners was a tremendously bad idea and the booking of the whole tournament, right down to the choice of participants on the men's side, has been a let down. the Hardys are done. this was a waste of the Young Bucks. Darby / KOR was a fine match but it did not need to be on a 4 hour show. i still can't muster any enthusiasm at all about Sky, Kazarian or Sammy in the TNT title scene given all the talent they've got elsewhere.

it's fine, obv, cause it's now full steam ahead for the NJPW show which is gonna be electric. but they've made a lot of bad choices this year and it's showing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsIwKOafWG8

great coda to the ppv

If MJF bounces for WWE, good for him, but if he thinks he’ll be getting the Cody-level push…. Lol.

one of the best dynamites ever

yeah that was an incredible show

this is maybe my favorite tweet ever

demo of elvis costello's rejected triple H entrance theme pic.twitter.com/GlMrO5hWl1

— bossmoz (@BossMoz) January 7, 2018

A bunch of my friends went to Double or Nothing, and they said that Anarchy in the Arena was great for them in the actual arena, but they couldn't imagine what it looked like for those watching at home.

Best debut, however:

If ever there was a perfect pairing in wrestling this would have to be it...@Jade_Cargill @Malcolmvelli #AEWDoN #AEW @AEW pic.twitter.com/QT57JO4bGj

— Scott Lesh (@ScottLesh724) May 30, 2022

So this MJF stuff - started out real. They reached a compromise position before the ppv (temporary? long term?) and did the match. MJF cuts that promo on Dynamite (real emotions perhaps but would have to be fake for them even to consider letting it air). May have actually landed sufficiently badly with the Warner execs in the audience on the night that it’s now back to being a shoot, in some respects?

How the fuck are you even supposed to keep up with this?

Either way I think MJF is pretty clear the guy. Within whatever narrow scope it’s possible for a wrestler to blow up to superstardom (particularly without the WWE machine behind you), he’s the one

Considering how much Tony Khan loves playing the classics, I’m 100% convinced this is just them playing Pillman & Punk, and they knew it would only work if they really created a mess to begin it. MJF was the golden child like a month ago and acts like a spoiled brat going into the match where he was guaranteed to be power moved 10 times? He has also been known to quote old Punk promos, so I can see him feeling like a kid in a candy shop trying to figure out with TK how to get his own “is this real” pipe Bomb that echoed that one from 11 years ago. I bet he was disappointed he couldn’t spear Cena through a table to start it. I presume the Sasha/Naomi thing really helped them pull the trigger.

Idk or maybe it is real. Work or shoot, he deserves a better pay check.

The one real fucked up thing is Cody’s injury. There is absolutely no way he should have worked that match looking like a 1/3 of a corpse, and I really hope it hasn’t set a precedent to make other people at WWE have to work hurt.

it seems like in this day in age to break out in WWE you need some unexpected violence. Becky Lynch had a rocket strapped to her after that Smackdown invasion from then on out.

And I guess this is the first “breakout” star since then haaaa

more of Stokely Hathaway making 90s r&b-laced promos.

Jeff Hardy. Dammit. They’ve got to fire him.

Evelyn Waugh was a prick but “a blow falling on a bruise, no shock, just a dull and sickening pain” pretty well captured the particular blend of sadness and revulsion that the unsalvageable addict inspires in ppl who care about them

Do what you can to help and support him, pay for treatment if he wants it, but they can’t continue to promote him. He shouldn’t have been on the show anyway for obvious aesthetic and health-related reasons but this isn’t that. He’s done

Fuckin sucks

hear hear

pretty much every take i've seen on this has been utterly infuriating, from smug "WWE was right all along" to complacent "i don't get it, he couldn't possibly have had a cushier job, why self-destruct like this now" to self-righteous "fuck him and all drunk drivers, i hope he burns in hell". wrestling fans really are the worst. he's not a well man and it's a heart-breakingly sad story. always hoped he'd find a peaceful place but it's looking less and less likely

not that the wrestling side of things matters at all in the bigger picture but he truly was special. for such a terrible talker and mediocre wrestler he inspired a level of devotion in his fans that very few wrestlers of any level and in any period or context have ever achieved. and not only because he threw himself down from absurdly high places. that intangible quality that just makes people love you, that. shit can't be learned or faked, you either have it or you don't and he had it in extraordinary quantities.

Amen to all of that.

I’m sick of all the bad takes.

we all knew will ospreay vs. dax hardood would be match of the year, and it was

all of the forbidden door microfeuds are unfolding in a way that seems drawn from the pages of someone's au wrestling fanfic, and i love it

I’ve not seen it yet but Wardlow v 20 was my pick for potential MOTY

finishing up dynamite right now. the ladder match is incredible. feel like you could put together a pretty long youtube comp of "the most insane aew ladder matches" at this point

yeah that was yet again one of the best episodes of dynamite ever, real bounce back from last week's (understandable, given the storyline cleanup you gotta do when both punk and danielson are injured) confusion

yeah i really enjoyed that. Will Ospreay has never really been my guy, either as a wrestler or a human being, but in certain respects he is absolutely amazing. certainly his matches are lots of fun.

Jay White very much is my guy and I would happily watch this douchebag wrestle against practically anyone (except Adam Cole)

a lot of my criticisms of AEW this year have revolved around Tony Khan's new toy syndrome and how the hell you end up in a place where the detestable Adam Cole, Jeff Hardy, John Morrison, Big Cass, Killian Dain, Jay Lethal, reDRagon (I like Kyle O'Reilly but it's still been too much) etc. etc., whoever, how these guys have been getting featured to a greater or lesser extent on AEW shows ahead of more talented established AEW wrestlers that already have that crowd connection. i stand by those criticisms. i think it's done more harm than good.

but i'm a total hypocrite because i don't extend those criticisms to guys like Switchblade, Ospreay (warts and all), Takeshita, Shooter (back for the PPV on the Moxley team!)

that's all really exciting to me, and the idea that a guy like idk, maybe Zack Sabre Jr. for example, might run out of things to do on NJPW shows and could be traded across to AEW for a few months in exchange for an AEW guy who is also looking to freshen up - what a great idea. can't wait for the PPV, can't wait for the freshness that talent trades could (should) be bringing to both companies.

p.s. breathe with the Switchblade

John Morrison, Big Cass, Killian Dain

again you’re focusing too hard on the negatives bc to me these all elicit a big “who?”

(except for cass who i knew from wwe and who was on 1 episode of dynamite)

cass was also a sub for someone else, can’t remember who

yes you're right, those were all more or less one-and-done guys and that's not the end of the world. the good stuff outweighs the bad by orders of magnitude. shouldn't be nitpicking when there's stuff happening like MJF vs Punk, 2022 FTR, the rise of Wardlow, Hookhausen, everything Eddie Kingston does, the Blackpool Combat Club etc. etc. still the best wrestling show ever

wardlow's star power is amazing to me. he barely spoke before a few months ago

yeah it's one of the most exhilarating things in wrestling when someone catches fire like this. you think you've got a handle on someone's ceiling and then they smash through that and just keep on going. he could be a really big deal for them. will be really interested to see where he goes from here

Ospreys-FTR bald was a clinic. Liked Ortiz’s intense head shaving too.

Only problem I’ve had with dynamite so far is the worst nickname I’ve heard in years, Inhuman Dante Martin. That guy has lost a hell of a lot of momentum. Take him away from jobber Evan Bourne and give him a couple months holiday to come up with a better gimmick. He doesn’t need to be saying “I’m good now, honestly guys” and losing to bigger names every week.

“Catalyst of pro wrestling” also a wack name but I’ll let it go cos Jay White is obviously awesome

pretty good

opener was probably match of the night (Eddie Kingston doesn't miss, ever) but everything about that show ruled. best bit was either the Danielson replacement or maybe all of the NJPW guys visibly revelling in how much the crowd loved them after years of clapping-only crowds in Japan

the swerve/lee match in the buy-in was incredible

I’ve seen the first couple matches. My favourite bit is Sting no selling the super kick party. Don’t think I can finish it until tomorrow.

i have also only seen the buy-in and the first few matches bc i’ve been on vacation in vienna with my mom. on the bright side i’m now aware of how much my fellow ilxors suffer bc of ppv timing

i was immediately won over by the simultaneous english/japanese ring announcing though, i don’t know why but it just made this feel so special and cool

i just watched the all atlantic title match, clark connors had huge shoes to fill and he really brought it

lmao the bullet club/dudes with attitudes match. i've still got two hours left and i'm ready to call this the most delightful wrestling ppv i've ever seen

Orange Cassidy is a great fucking wrestler. Absolute classic with Osprey.

enthusiastically seconded, what a match

i am so obsessed with okada

what a fucking ppv

gopro jones

i am so obsessed with okada

yeah it was v cool seeing him in the context of a major US show. he's been around for so long and done so much now that it's hard to see him with fresh eyes but on both Dynamite and the PPV he has leapt off the screen.

who knows where they take the AEW / NJPW thing from here (they'll probably do less with it than I personally would like because neither company is going to want to trade off their major players for extended runs abroad (and it's very sad to think we might not get Danielson in the G1 or Omega having one last big NJ run as a result)) but if nothing else this show proved you could drop guys like ZSJ, Ospreay, Shingo and Okada (him most of all) into major programs in the States and have it get over huge

always got to account for the ferocious Chicago crowd but they were cheering for fucking Yoshi Hashi lol. loudest Kaze ni Nare ever, too.

if they're not prepared to send main-eventers back and forth i definitely think ZSJ is a guy who has found his ceiling in New Japan who could be a major player for AEW on a talent exchange deal. for all the talk about him and Bryan being the top two technical wrestlers of their generation, they're not actually all that similar. ZSJ is pretty unique.

Swap him for Miro for a year and let the Redeemer go and hurl himself at Cobb and Ishii and Shingo and them

What’s the Japan covid situation? I can see them making a couple big temp trades (like your Miro for zsj suggestion) and there is already talk of FD2 in Japan.

Absolutely no way it’s a 1 off when Kenny at a FD type show will sell a bazillion tickets.

The Japanese covid restrictions have only recently started to loosen, but with the G1 coming up, I can't imagine that they would send anyone there yet when those blocks are set. They might have a few people show up later, and I'm convinced at least FTR will be in World Tag League this year.

As far as I know, the situation with Kenny is still a stinger for NJPW, as they had invested so heavily in him only for him to walk away. They were lucky they had a star in Jay White, but if they didn't, it would have been a pretty dire situation. You can tell that Jay White's initial push post-Omega came from the spot that they had formerly carved for Kenny. Plus, Kenny surely is on Ibushi's side with everything that happened earlier this year with his injury and the conflicts he had with NJPW, even after he (Ibushi) chose to stay with them.

The real money on the Japanese side is all in getting a few more big matches out of Kenny, they’ll make that happen for sure if he’s physically up to it. Wouldn’t be surprised if Omega vs Okada headlines a US show either

i adore wardlow

Yeah he is *the guy*. He can work, he can (more or less) talk, he looks the part in a way none of their other guys do, everyone loves him and he’s very much an AEW original

They’re gonna have to book him well to sustain that love from the audience but he feels like the breakout star from that pack, together with MJF (remember him?)

That is a nuclear title program for those guys a year or two down the line, assuming no disasters in the meantime (where the fuck is MJF?!)

Being in the Blackpool Combat Club #BCC is utter Madness. ⁦@GentlemanRegal⁩ pic.twitter.com/XtrosBU21v

— William Regal (@RealKingRegal) July 14, 2022

obv i'm watching dynamite right now, anyway pretty astonishing the chemistry between claudio and hager... first time i've given a shit about a hager match lol

also.... takeshita is my new favorite wrestler

xxp would buy a shirt of that

Hager was in a pretty good Fox News tag team with Claudio for years. If Vince didn’t hate tag teams, they could have had a second team to fight. Oh I guess the rainbow Usos would have been around.

Holy fuck that Dynamite main event! My girlfriend watched it with me who usually doesn’t care and even she was losing her marbles at it. They all looked so good! There was so many great spots that it reminded me of the wm17 TLC match.

def couldn’t believe that match. so wonderful

rampage was also great this week. feel like a broken record

I am very intrigued by Stokes trying to recruit more clients. I would be very into him managing Lee Moriarty, which is a pairing I never even thought about until Stokely walked into frame last night.

Both nights of Fyter Fest look great. Excited to see Wheeler and his 3 dads wrestle on Wednesday.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_8jMBtB4dQ

one of the things i love about aew is the degree to which they draw on wrestling history instead of y'know largely pretending it doesn't exist *cough cough* and this 30-minute preview of saturday's roh ppv is the best example of that yet. the lethal/joe relationship is so richly illustrated, deep archival footage spliced with absolutely banging present day promos

almost done with dynamite. I FUCKING LOVE FTR

willow nightingale is a star imo

She's one of the most naturally charismatic people they regularly put on TV imo

ftr vs briscoes 2 was breathtaking

hook taking the ftw title was an incredible microdrama

not enough dancing Ryan Nemeth in this week's BTE

otm

"Why weren't you Willy Gecko or the British Iguana?"

absolute trooper William Regal performance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98aEqKqfyBQ

Jim Ross: Matt Hardy looks like a young Bruce Dern in "The Cowboys."

punk is so hot

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpi8uDSZRpY

kenny's coming back

I think I speak for all of us when saying how happy I was to see Don Callis back

otm

LMAO.

God knows what the hell they are doing. All Out seems like a chaotic mess.

Love Scissor Me Daddy Ass.

lmao

I genuinely don't know wtf is going on, and I kinda love it. I also kinda hate it.

Is Punk injured still? Is he being punished for backstage shit? Or neither of these things? Whats happening with the Cabana rumours? Is MJF alive? Who does Mox face at All Out? Hangman still needs something too, they've shit the bed with him since he feuded with Punk and lost the title.

Generally AEW is very good, so I'm pretty happy to give them the benefit of the doubt. And I don't really gaf about internet rumours, backstage dealings etc. But I feel if they get this wrong, it could leave quite a sour taste with fans. And they don't seem to get away with shit anywhere as easily as WWE, who regularly book shows this badly.

Perhaps the most truly baffling outcome coming out of AEW this week is that the video game looks...fun?

I like AEW but I do think Tony's lost the plot a bit, I want a weekly wrestling programme not an erratic machine that randomly shits out indie dream matches, blood-drenched garbage brawls and New Japan crossovers, its like eating the resultant paste of several different desserts all the time, just let some of the guys who know how to work have some three star matches for ten minutes on the undercard til things settle down, grab a damn hold

Bring back 2015-17 NXT basically

i find the backstage drama intolerable to read about, much prefer when the locker room was all good vibes

mjf’s disappearance from this layer of reality is maybe the only thing i’ve sort of enjoyed, like, he’s been gone for months and no one’s said anything, it’s like he’s poochie

the video game was always going to be good imo, omega was drawing from the right inspirations

still so glad kenny is back, the trios match with ospreay is gonna whip

i think punk jobbing to mox is like directly addressing the rumor mill but who knows. like everything it seems like a work/shoot ouroboros, reality influencing fiction influencing reality

Hangman still needs something too, they've shit the bed with him since he feuded with Punk and lost the title.

my feeling is that the trios tournament is gonna bring him back toward the elite’s orbit but admittedly this is wishful thinking

i also think despite mox unifying the title…. it isn’t over

i’m actually into this twist in the storyline tbh, mox’s promo after getting the win (“oh, was that not how it was supposed to go???”) was all-time great

just let some of the guys who know how to work have some three star matches for ten minutes on the undercard til things settle down, grab a damn hold

Gotta give the belated nod that they in fact sent Uncle Dax out to do exactly this last night

Re: MJF, I am not into the lazy cheap heat edgelord end of his promos but I became a total convert of his in-ring after that great PPV match with Darby Allin; I guess with him and Punk being off TV for a while the slowed-down maximum-heat storytelling style I enjoy most got de-emphasised for the hurriedly booked dream matches

did you tune out when christian was on tv or

also aew is p chaotic right now but i don't think it's because they're staging constant underbuilt dream matches (and if they were, forbidden door was proof of concept)

but i did misread your post bc i'm just realizing you're referring to mjf and punk's in-ring action, which yes is a more patient and intense genre of wrestling

i would just like to register that i was fucking right

all the punk/mox stuff last night was masterful

my feeling is that the trios tournament is gonna bring him back toward the elite’s orbit but admittedly this is wishful thinking

― flamenco drop (BradNelson), Thursday, August 25, 2022 10:10 AM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

it wasn't wishful thinking at all :))))))

If the yesterday’s 4-way was any indication, the casino ladder match is going to be nuts.

Maybe mine is a minority opinion, but I think AEW could probably do the two-day PPV thing and give everything some space to breathe. This card is so stacked and compressed I just know it’ll exhaust me.

i'm starting a campaign for forbidden door to be two days

on the other hand, i know aew could pull it off, but two-day mania always felt so unfocused to me

I’ve tried to not really look at wed spoilers so this is encouraging.

As dumb and chaotic as AEW is, I still expect something good and not 99wcw

i think the last four dynamites have been truly awesome. punk and kenny returning gave the whole thing a shot in the arm

mox getting to unify the title also clearly unlocked something in mox

best friends, dark order and the commentary delivering an absolute gem performance

imo: somewhat messy but fun ppv with dizzying highs, like that acclaimed/swerve in our glory match during which my heart just about stopped

punk apparently going scorched earth on the presser :(

Just watched clips of him going off and think “fair enough lad, get it off yr chest” more than the internet acting all maude flanders about it. It’s pro wrestling, maybe people are supposed to talk shit about each other. Who gaf about how professional it is or whatever, let’s build to a proper Punk-Hangman 7 star ugly ass brawl.

appreciate that punk is still bitter about the penguins sweeping the blackhawks in 1992

In the most unsurprising turn of events, the Elite v the DO was really good.

The ladder match shit the bed though, what a mood killer finish.

Lol at Jade running out of Hulk paint, she just looks mouldy. When cosplay gets embarrassing.

Wtf are they thinking of

The Punk shit is so, so embarrassing. Repeatedly going after Colt Cabana for taking care of his mom(?!); he’s a gigantic fucking baby and it’s pathetic that Tony Khan didn’t pull the plug as soon as things started going off the rails. He should never have been out there

There have been a lot of high points this year still but overall the company is a mess rn compared to where it was

not sure why he is intent on destroying the locker room that made him return to wrestling but it sucks ass

way to poison the air in the room after a good match and ppv too lol, just a great way of making me not want to watch the product

way to poison the air in the room after a good match and ppv too lol, just a great way of making me not want to watch the product

If the yesterday’s 4-way was any indication, the casino ladder match is going to be nuts.

― Western® with Bacon Flavor, Thursday, September 1, 2022 10:25 AM (four days ago) bookmarkflaglink

lol that finish was dogshit

I’m just sad we will never get Punk v Cabana out of it. Tony is a coward if he doesn’t make a Boom Boom main event.

cm punk scrum bullshit has me like: it's stilltoo real tofor me, dammit

God damn Punk, Luchasaurus is the true most evil heel bastard man.

Wait no even worse is the backstreet boy playing AmDrag out

that was prob the only time i yelled “this is horrible” during the show. danielson cornier than i even knew possible

I hadn’t even seen the majority of quotes that Punk scrum, only the headline bits. That fucking PWG dig Christ you cuuuuuunt who do you think you’re working with. Bet Excalibur loved that line

Punk's existence is just kind of a downer to think about at this point, he is doomed to this Groundhog Day of suddenly deciding everyone is a cunt and scorching the earth. How much longer before his ire is turned FTR, Tony, April, Larry, the good folks at Marvel Comics even

The show wasn't bad, the standard now seems to be "you could make a brilliant 2.5 hour card out of it if you have the energy to watch it all". I don't mind screwy finishes to dangerous ladder matches because I'm burnt out on dangerous ladder matches anyway; no problem with them sticking with the Acclaimed losing as long as they recognise they're made now and book them accordingly.

Dynamite is going to be a weird vibe, the MJF angle feels a bit "ehh what's even the point", to say nothing of death triangle vs best friends and such, through no fault of their own

Hopefully the successful completion of the video game isn't in anyway impacted by this ongoing series of venomous public declamations, violent brawls and legal recriminations

lol that finish was dogshit

The whole match was dogshit. Not a slight on any of the wrestlers involved, but who the fuck booked that? The rules didn’t make any sense: it was basically a gauntlet that could be won any time, so if someone from the first two in grabbed the token, then what’s-his-face doesn’t get his stupid moment at the end. Honestly it annoyed me so much. It’s the worst thing AEW has done. Worse than the exploding ring. Worse than the Librarians.

I said on Twitter that I graded the whole show as an A+ for effort but a D for the booking. Someone I follow there suggested last week that AEW is a ‘pop’ promotion compared to WWE being a ‘heat’ promotion but all the booking on Sunday was for heat.

The Punk shit is so, so embarrassing.

OTM. If it’s a shoot, it makes him look like a fucking whiny baby-man. Like, whatever happened between the podcast and that email in 2016, here’s facts: Colt hasn’t said a word about it ever, but Punk won’t fucking let anyone forget it. Then on the other hand, if it’s all part of some elaborate shoot? then they all look like dickheads and I’m out.

*elaborate work, I meant.

that ladder match was not worse than the owen

The more details that come out, the more embarrassing it looks. Like that no one asked Punk about Colt, he made a journo bring up he was friends with him and used that to start ranting about him. Or that Ace Steel seemingly bit Kenny Omega.

Finally getting around to the main event. This is brutal, brutal stuff. It’s not ended yet and maybe the afters will have ruined it for a lot of people, but this is honestly looking like one of my favourite AEW matches since Hangman-Bryan

it was great. i’m so mad at punk

Putting my “the Montreal Screwjob was a work!” hat on, this whole thing reads as sus to me. Until a few months ago, AEW kind of had a reputation as a place where stuff didn’t leak to the dirtsheets. Then from out of nowhere TK makes a statement about putting an end to leaks (which didn’t exist, and which is rich coming from a guy who’s been an Observer subscriber for decades) and suddenly they’re ‘leaking’ like sieve. And then we get this whole… mess. It’s fish four days old, I won’t buy it.

Idk man, making the company look like it's abysmally run and most of its top stars are terrible, unprofessional people so they can randomly start an out of nowhere worked shoot angle at the expense of the major MJF angle they just presumably spent huge money getting a Stones song for?

is someone who believes everything is a work in fact the ultimate mark

It's still kayfabe to me dammit

Didn’t TK say something during a pre-All Out scrum about a good way to settle personal lockeroom could be in the ring? Kinda felt like foreshadowing at the time.

punk is also... injured... again.... lmao

There is no way this is a work, come on.

As has been observed elsewhere, if nothing else TK is no actor. the idea that he was feigning during that presser is ludicrous

is someone who believes everything is a work in fact the ultimate mark

― flamenco drop (BradNelson), Wednesday, 7 September 2022 18:47 (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Goodnight HULKAMANIACS and jabronie marks without a life that don't know it a work when you work a work and work yourself into a shoot,marks.

Sounds like a hell of a show from looking at twitter while walking the dog in the rain. Can’t wait to watch it later.

Idk man, making the company look like it’s abysmally run and most of its top stars are terrible, unprofessional people so they can randomly start an out of nowhere worked shoot angle at the expense of the major MJF angle they just presumably spent huge money getting a Stones song for?

In fairness, I agree with this and it’s the thing that makes me preface my comments with “putting my ‘screwjob was a work!’ hat on” and means I’d never bet money on it.

(Mind you, they did waste the money licensing that song for an ill-conceived bit that fell flat with the live crowd, at best. I don’t understand it, either.)

Sounds like they knocked this one out of the park :)

Mox putting the team on his back. Great reset promo.

that opening promo was such a bounce back from a horrible weekend

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JO5PgBSbmZM

i want this preserved in the thread

the grand slam card is 1. incredible 2. basically a restaging of all out 3. i'm not complaining

i'm gonna see that shit live!!!

Watching last weeks AEW and Stokely’s job squad is on.

What happened to Shawn Spears?

Also why does one of the ass boys have an arm pit tattoo that looks like he’s gone mouldy?

What happened to Shawn Spears?

Bit early for paternity leave. I think they just cycled him out for a while, especially after the whole MJF deal.

i’m at arthur ashe and i’m soooo happy

the match that opens rampage… just y’all wait

loving jericho's repeated mentions of "no honor" for low-blowing an opponent during the starks/hobbs commentary

that rampage was my favorite aew thing i’ve seen live

Did you stick around till the end? The building looked conspicuously empty on TV (and I know why, it was well after midnight on a school night).

Also, that Julia Hart table spot looked nasty and I’m glad she’s OK.

it was 12:30 and yes a lot of the crowd had emptied out but we stuck around, and starks/hobbs was absolutely worth it

I’ve not seen it yet but I feel for them, Starks and Hobbs are two of my favourites.

You know who needs a good feud? Wardlow

jungleboy/fenix was match of the night and prob a contender for match of the year. shame we were all so tired

I was at last year's grand slam and was absolutely drained about halfway through the Rampage taping. Were the concession/merch lines any better than last years?

night and day, they really got their shit together this year

ffs itv4 dont have the two hour rampage, it only starts with jungle boy having just won his match and christian coming out

as someone with back issues, i winced at the lower-back kneebomb move done during the MJF/Yuta match

Just a reminder all, Dynamite is tonight instead of tomorrow.

Lots of crazy stuff going on with this company lately, as far as backstage issues. Unfortunately not surprised that Sammy Guevara is involved.

despite things blowing up behind the scenes regularly i think the product has been p consistently great over this past month

hope nyla stealing jade's title leads somewhere lol

Sorry if this is a spoiler, but relieved that Hangman seems to be doing okay. Scary ending to the main event last night.

#Hangman @theAdamPage Medical Update pic.twitter.com/NAFnfzFhEL

— All Elite Wrestling (@AEW) October 19, 2022

yeah that was an unpleasant ending. love hangman so much <3

I’ve not seen Dynamite for about a month due to ~Lyfe~ and I thought I’d check out the full gear card

lololololol sting and Darby V. …. JEFF JARRETT AND JAY LETHAL?

Wtf is this shit?

And seemingly no Wardlow, TNT champion or FTR, best tag team in the company.

jeff jarrett’s debut was a recent low

everything else has been dope. ftr just wrestled an amazing eight man tag match

and the acclaimed are the best thing on television

full gear card is actually extremely awesome

They need to stick the landing on this one, it’s been feeling very flat for a while now. Time to correct course and go in a new direction

idk i think every dynamite since and including grand slam has been excellent. they’ve already pivoted. and mjf is gonna make an amazing champ*

*i agree with max it’s his time

got to ditch the ROH stuff and end this interminable JAS vs BCC feud imo.

still feels like they're benching major AEW players that the fans are behind in favour of featuring whoever TK fancies this month, still feels like whenever a new star heats up to a certain point they run out of ideas of where to go next, still feels like there's too much emphasis on putting on technically competent wrestling matches as opposed to running memorable or buzzworthy angles.

all personal taste ofc but i've really fallen out of love with AEW this year.

this card does look predictably sick though, yes. TNT title match should be a hoot

like, Rush and Bandido are cool. AR Fox and Dalton Castle could be cool. Jay Lethal, Jeff Jarrett and many others are not cool. but none of them should be getting TV time when you've got the usual list of suspects spinning their wheels and not being featured. and that's before we even start on Brian Cage, Daivari, Gates of Agony, whoever the fuck has been getting featured matches ahead of fucking Miro, who was p much the best wrestler in the world for a while there.

it's a mess

also i can't remember the last episode of AEW tv where you couldn't look at the card in advance and call every winner, give or take. they've got to freshen it up.

anyway sorry these are all really boring complaints that have been made everywhere ad infinitum so i'll stop. i am looking forward to this show.

i really have to assume miro is injured again lol

i think i agree that bcc vs. jas has been interminable while also thinking jericho’s roh champion run has actually been v interesting

roh tv deal is supposedly in the works, or maybe not, who knows, i do like that there isn’t much roh content in the ppv beyond the title match

brian cage is a very good wrestler, his charms may not translate to tv effectively ever but he’s one of the dopest big guys out there

I think he's a charisma-free douche and I wouldn't mourn if he was cut because of all his dumbshit extracurricular opinions, but I also kind of tend to automatically tune in if he's wrestling a very squishy little guy or another big hoss he can have a video game match with, it is quite simply good television

Same is true of Wardlow, Hobbs, joe, archer and others. Big dude with snappy offence pulverising a jobber in the Steiner style is always fun tv but there are guys on the roster (including but not limited to all of the above) who can do that while presenting much more upside than that dipshit Brian Cage who will never be anything more than that

Even leaving Miro to one side, I just can’t fathom having a guy like the entirely and correctly beloved 2k22 Eddie Kingston on the roster and not having him be perpetually in a major program as a mainstay of the show, same goes for FTR, same goes for PAC

I didn’t want to watch jay lethal 10 or 15 years ago, I certainly don’t want to watch him now. Bobby fish is gone now but I felt the same way about him when he was all over the tv

Should be noted that in terms of raw talent Jun Akiyama vs Eddie Kingston is an absolutely absurd match to be able to chuck out there on a pre show, there aren’t many obvious contenders for better wrestler than those 2 in the 21st century beyond Danielson

Can’t watch this live so bowing out but I’m confident this is gonna be a great show

wardlow is not charismaless! wtf. capricious ass wrestling fans

that elite/death triangle match was special

sorry i misread that post lol

i’m very emotional is all

Yeah sorry I could’ve been clearer. To be clear - Wardlow fucking rocks

this fucking ppv is astonishing

shits gonna end before midnight too

they’re doing a best of 7 between the elite and death triangle

embarrassment of riches

sorry i know i am less critical of aew than most but that whole thing just blew me away. they nailed it

this fucking ppv is astonishing

― flamenco drop (BradNelson), Sunday, 20 November 2022 03:54 (three hours ago) link

i had zoned out of every one of these narratives leading up and in the ring they made you invested in each of them. blackpool/jac was amazing. i think my favorite thing at the moment was mjf's classic walk-on drip.

they managed to land two planes simultaneously on a busy landing strip with that main event.

also, i'm not sure how anyone else heard it on the PPV, but i thought the audience was saying "fuck 'em up" until they followed it up with "colt cabana".

I’m watching this on silent at work. WSG in those big ass Stevie Wonder sunglasses keeps making me laugh. Every match has been great so far, including the Jade match, who can make me tune out some times. The cage match was perfect.

Currently watching the Paige-Britt, Paige looks in pretty good shape.

I’m watching this on silent at work. WSG in those big ass Stevie Wonder sunglasses keeps making me laugh. Every match has been great so far, including the Jade match, who can make me tune out some times. The cage match was perfect.

Currently watching the Paige-Britt, Paige looks in pretty good shape.

Sorry Saraya

Holy fuck a Wardlow backflip off the top rope!

Damn, I actually have customers and can’t just watch wrestling. I’ve skipped the old man tag, I presume I’ve not missed owt there

I don’t like sexualising female wrestlers but god damn I have such a crush on Hayter. She is such a good wrestler too, I hope she wins.

Whatever happened to Deeb? I’ve not been watching recently, is she on the Miro milk carton?

the old man tag is actually very good

My dodgy stream didn’t show any video package or entrances for the main event ;-;

Excited for the inevitable match coming out of the tag team match.

Mox’s burgundy leggings gear is awful. Really strange as Max is kinda being the baby face and yet doing stuff like pulling the ref in the way. Also MJF as a Babyface just doesn’t work, he’s a slimy bugger.

Ah ok, seeing the end makes it make sense. Wait, no it doesn’t. Why did Regal tell him not to cheat and then helped him to?

Oh shot SPOILERZ SORRY EVERYBODY

regal’s been referring to himself as a villain for the past month. in the past tense of course but… i think he sees something in max that reflects what’s inside him way more than anyone in the bcc, which is effectively in shambles

makes sense to me!

I didn't think Full Gear was a particularly good show, but that was a strong Dynamite to follow up. Thought Starks vs Page was a really good solid match. The commentary in the picture in picture breaks was also some of the loosest, goofiest shit they've ever done and it was glorious

sometimes the picture in picture commentary slips into the youtube uploads, i’ll have to check it out

but yes really excellent dynamite, and i’m so happy for ricky

I thought both Full Gear and Dynamite were excellent. It did seem like a transitional PPV though, as opposed to their usual blow outs. Jungle Boy v Luchasaurus was my favourite match of the night.

Picture in Picture was great. I love goofy Taz. I also loved the clip on Mox on Renee’s show talking about doing cheap speed and cocaine and getting inspired to go to the library.

Mox talking about going to the library high is one of my favorite mox-isms, so to speak. Glad he's clean now, but I still love those stories.

Also, this is gonna, as the kids say, slap. Probably literally.

#FTR’s @DaxFTR vs. the #AmericanDragon @bryandanielson TONIGHT on #AEWDynamite LIVE from Indianapolis, at 8pm ET / 7pm CT on @TBSNetwork!

🪓 or 🐉? pic.twitter.com/rphfflIaRi

— All Elite Wrestling (@AEW) November 30, 2022

oh my god

That's surely a motyc if it goes anything north of like eight minutes

Update: it should go EXACTLY eight minutes

They can do it

RICKY STARKS SPITTIN.

(via @AEW) pic.twitter.com/hzSPgYByEl

— B/R Wrestling (@BRWrestling) December 8, 2022

Ricky Starks has really won me over this year. I liked him before, but man, he got over HUGE with me this year. My friends were at Dynamite this week and they were losing their minds, since Ricky is the hometown hero in Austin. It'll probably be a great showing for him.

I’ve been on the Ricky Starks train since I first saw him on NWA Powerrr so I’m delighted to see him get the push he deserves. TK needs to keep it going.

twitter tells me that TK has apparently acknowledged that (1) the ROH stuff on AEW TV has to stop, soon and (2) that you can't keep devoting c.50% of your airtime each week to the latest new signing(s) (who promptly disappear after a week never to be heard from again).

in the quote i read he sounded pretty fucking miffed about item (2) in particular, because yknow WCW used to bring all these lucha and Japan guys in back in'96 and it was the coolest shit. but "apparently" that doesn't fly anymore

well yeah guess what Tony AEW 2022 is not WCW 96 and that actually doesn't fly anymore. please god let him be getting the message here.

hilariously i end my latest whinge by noting how much I enjoyed that episode and yeah, Starks has got the lot if they give him a chance. i fully expect him to lose to MJF and then disappear back off into oblivion (which fucking sucks, i have loved (and still in theory do love) AEW so much, but they have now conditioned me to expect the hot new star to get beaten and immediately benched which is a shitty place to be because that's what shitty wrestling companies do. i kinda need them not to fuck this one up

[well yeah guess what Tony AEW 2022 is not WCW 96 and that actually doesn't fly anymore. please god let him be getting the message here.

reading that back it's a bit ambiguous. should probably clarify that imo there is a way to do guest stars from other regions and companies. there is a qualitative difference between Jun Akiyama, Minoru Suzuki, Bandido and Takeshita vs idk Juice Robinson, Jay Lethal, Jeff fucking Jarrett, Anthony Henry etc. etc. etc. call me a snob if you like

dynamite has been outrageously good. once again

I'm selfishly hoping that they'll do some build towards some Wrestle Kingdom matches in the coming weeks (namely next week, since I'll be going to the San Antonio show). I'm interested to see how the card fills out and when Ospreay is going to show up to cost Kenny and the Bucks in the best of seven. Also, one of our guys from here is wrestling on the Dark recordings, so I'm hyped to go over there and cheer for him.

Re: what Windsor said - I agree, but am sad about it. It's a shame that for several of the people they have brought in (like Jay Lethal and Juice Robinson), the timing was off, and they hadn't heated up again in quite some time. I get why they brought these people in, but man, crowds were dead for most of them. At the end of ROH, Jay wasn't as hot of a commodity as he was a few years back with his feud with Colt Cabana. I also had a time where I thought Juice was doing great, but his Bullet Club run hasn't done anyone any good. FinJuice had run their course, but I feel like an amicable split (like RPG VICE) would have felt better, since they haven't done much with the split between Juice and Finlay. I'll stop before it turns into a post that should be in the NJPW thread instead.

Maybe it's also a testament to how the atmosphere and the interests of the average "indie" fan have shifted during these pandemic years.

Hell of a strong run of TV to close out the year, I loved Hayter vs Shida and the Acclaimed diss track in particular

Not really that much bloody bunny to speak of in the final reckoning for 2022, but a very strong year for Orange Cassidy and the Acclaimed

Also I guess some other stuff happened idk

lol yeah I guess some stuff did happen.

as I’m newly sober (started going to AA, it’s actually a hoot) I’m gonna binge the past couple Dynamites on nye instead of going to a house party. Excited about the new set and maybe sasha.

Any good new thread title ideas?

bunny was injured for like nine months so i really blew the thread title lol

She was unlucky!

Good luck with sober NYE AHH, you should be in for a good time with those recent eps. The Rampages have been fairly good lately too IIRC

Thanks man. I’ve kinda forgotten about Rampage, I’ll make sure to take the time.

AEW 2023: Scissor me daddy
AEW 2023: The return of slapnuts
AEW 2023: Where’s Miro?
AEW 2023: We miss you, Larry the dog

Holy fuck the Acclaimed diss of Jarrett and Lethal had me rooooollin. Absolutely love those guys.

Watching 3 weeks of tv and I’m back in love with aew

AEW 2023: R-A-S-S-L-E-R

Lol Wardlow should be a killer and he just had a great match, please don’t try to make me care that he had his “man bun” cut off

I'm into "We miss you, Larry the dog" but I did get scissored by Bowens when I went to Dynamite tapings, so I gotta go with Scissor me daddy.