AEW 2022: The year of the bloody bunny

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