AEW Discussion

[supersonic]

I don't give a shit what the locker rooms throughout the industry thinks, nor do I care about their morale. I actually appreciate Punk's handling of the situation, because his mind for the business was on full display for a year and he provided something that nobody else was providing. Not sports-entertainment shit. Not irony comedy shit. Not short-form, last-minute matches for the PPV shit. Actual long-form angles with insanely high crowd energy and that cater to lapsed fans, not CW Network-inspired title chases for soyboys. Nobody has stepped up yet to fill his void of making the rest of the soyboy spot monkey shit palatable and tolerable. (It could be MJF, but without Punk or even Cody around, I don't trust the instincts of the remaining "locker room leaders" to help him reach his fullest potential.)

It is the industry's loss for turning him away and not listening to his confrontational advice. He doesn't have to fucking put up with it just because his contemporaries choose to do so. He doesn't have to stick around just to collect a paycheck like so many of the territory and Monday Night War era personalities in the company do after they get disrespected by the spot monkeys who think their shit doesn't stink and have no ambition to step out of their comfort zone because "hey, I got my contract."

I'll be as vocal with the "negativity" as I was with the "positivity" a year ago. I'll be as fucking vocal as I please about the situation as I was when Jim Cornette took my all-time favorite era of any federation and turned it into the goddamn fucking low-rent Smokey Mountain of Honor, and the Kool-Aid drinkers of that time kept trying to push back against it and not be fucking reasonable.

And with ALL of that in mind...

It's still better than a Kevin Dunn produced program.

[DougN]

"I actually appreciate Punk's handling of the situation..."

"It is the industry's loss for turning him away...."

This is a guy who literally went on a 20 minute rant about EVPs and told anyone who had a problem to come find him. EVPs did go and find him, along with the head of legal, and started throwing punches while his lackey bit people and threw chairs. Then he had his inner circle start spinning it to the same outlets that he criticized mere minutes ago. "They kicked down the door" became "come on, they didn't actually kick down the door" which was then "well, they did kick the door down because my dog got hurt but I didn't mention any of these when I was burying them a month ago and was spilling everything else."

Yeah, I would appreciate his handling of the situation too.

It'd be better if you at least owned your hatred of the Elite as your reasoning behind disliking AEW.

And to be completely honest, if you appreciate Punk's handling of the situation, you have to acknowledge that Punk WANTED to come to AEW to work with everyone. He saw what you call a "soyboy" energy in the promotion and said "THAT'S WHAT I WANT TO DO" and came in.

The issue with Punk is not the product or what people do in the ring. His issue stems from his insecurity over the Colt Cabana fall-out.

[supersonic]

No, he saw a decent foundation that had plenty of room for improvement, and that morally speaking, the roster's behavior regarding Huber as a display that it wouldn't be so cutthroat and catty; so much so that he was willing to be in the same workplace as Cabana for at least some brief period. He was also under the impression that the roster across the board was eager to reach its fullest potential, rather than just a portion of it like Hobbs, Wardlow, FTR, Starks, and Danhausen.

I've seen enough evidence from the Elite that they are extremely catty, petty, two-faced, passive-aggressive individuals over the past decade. Rather than be directly confrontational like Punk, they talk their shit (as does Jericho) in "subtweeting" fashion or via the dirtsheets.

If we can get more stuff like Joe's promo tonight (in which he is the salty, bad motherfucker mobster type that for weeks one-upped Brock Lesnar), then all will be forgiven for the time being. Of course though, his body likely won't even hold up at this point anyway, leaving MJF as the only real hope for the lapsed fan audience to feel enough connection for this to be the appointment viewing that it was a year ago.

[supersonic]

told anyone who had a problem to come find him. EVPs did go and find him, along with the head of legal, and started throwing punches while his lackey bit people and threw chairs.

Power play move to bring the #2 person in the hierarchy along, and emotionally unintelligent not to read Phil's "come and find me if you have a problem" as a dare for a fight. Even if taking his words literally... they came to find him, when means they have a problem... what other conclusion would there be that they're looking to be confrontational and use the #2 executive's presence as an attempt to prevent their catty asses from getting into a real fight? Rationally speaking, to confront him with that rant so fresh, what exactly did they think was gonna happen otherwise? Some kind of diplomatic encounter?

Nobody, absolutely nobody, not even the #2 - should've been talking to Punk after his rant. Nobody but Khan. That's it.

Ultimately, I think that because I'm able to pretty much read the situation from Phil's perspective, it seems like it should've been so simple to keep it from ever escalating to where it got. I'd have been telling Hangman to be contrite and let Phil know that it was an anomaly jab he threw in, and that everything would be fine in Vegas, even if Hangman didn't believe it was that big of a deal. I'd have been directing him to do this because as the chosen ace and world champion, it would show leadership. I'd have been GRILLING the roster about gossiping to the dirtsheets and knock that shit off. I'd have gone to other long-time vets about Punk's attempts at leadership not fully clicking, and ask what we need to do for the roster to be more open-minded to refine their game. I'd have also been frequently checking up on all of the injured talents throughout the summer, letting each of them know that they're part of the AEW family. I'd have let Punk and Omega know after the WV promo jabs that it's done, period. No more shit-talking until the time would be right to finally pull the trigger on the dream program.

I also agree with Kyle Ross that last year, both Punk and Danielson should've been instructed in media interviews to throw organic praise about the roster in general, showing solidarity and preventing division.

I could go on and on but will stop here at this point.

[DougN]

You're missing the point that Punk is upset that people are gossiping to the dirtsheets while his camp does the exact same thing. People have been noting that logic gap since even before the fight. I also love how your stance is "nobody should have talked to Punk after his rant," yet Punk himself told anyone to come to him. You also "appreciated" Punk's handling of the situation.... where he told people to come find him. So they did. With the head of legal. And they didn't throw the first punch. But it's their fault. Clearly.

Goddamn dude. You hate The Elite so much that you've constructed this logic maze in your own mind after Punk set everything on fire. Instead of finding your way out of the maze, you're just the dog meme thinking "this is fine!"

I'm with you that it never should have gotten to this point, but that's on Tony then and trust me, Tony is single-handidly responsible for the cooling off of AEW's momentum this year from the over-reliance on Adam Cole and Jericho to this half-assed ROH backdoor pilot to a bloated roster that still has unsigned wrestlers almost weekly on the show to people who just disappear of TV with no single word for months on end.

But it still doesn't excuse anything that Punk did. Dude literally gave the game away when he was ready to attack the reporter for being Cabana's friend.... when it wasn't true. Punk was working on faulty knowledge the entire time, thinking the Elite was burying him over Cabana when literally everyone who reported on it said it wasn't them saying that. AND he missed how many pot shots other roster members, not in The Elite, had taken over the Punk-Cabana thing from OC to Eddie Kingston.

Again, I will point out, because you keep ignoring this point over and over again, that your gripes about AEW mean nothing right now because the style of wrestling and the style of storylines did not change magically when Danielson and Punk arrived. So when the company continued to grow and continued to get acclaim starting in mid-2020 all the way through to the beginning of this year, it was the exact style you're criticizing. So if the style of wrestling didn't change, then why is that a criticism for now? Like I said earlier, maybe it's other stuff going on this year that's souring people on AEW as a whole. Injuries, disappearances, endless drama, over-reliance on the same feuds/wrestlers.

I'll give you one more. Take that Punk-MJF feud. It was pretty great, right? But their matches had so many call-backs in it... just like Omega/Page... a feud that Punk himself praised and was excited about. But no... it's just an absurd style of wrestling so it must be the problem.

The really funny thing here is how you criticized Cornette's booking of ROH in this whole rant, yet don't realize that you yourself are becoming Cornette in this scenario. So blinded by your hatred/ignorance that you can't see what's working right in front of you, just like Cornette couldn't with Steen, Generico, and others. People like The Elite. The Elite on top was when AEW was at its best creatively and at the box office. You can find holes in things and you can still not like it, but you need to understand that your criticisms on them is always going to fall apart when it was clearly, clearly working for AEW.

[DougN]

In more productive news that's not an asinine gripefest...

AEW did a terrible rating for 11/16, the last Dynamite before Full Gear.

TK is booking this show into the ground. Too much ROH, too many cameos/unsigned wrestlers, feuds that go on too long, matches that are built up too quickly, a PPV that has two-three months to build but doesn't kick into high gear until 2 weeks before.

I could keep going. The in-ring product is the only thing keeping this company afloat right now.

[roacheyyy]

I've been pretty down on AEW the last six months, but I gotta say that Full Gear was pretty great

[Montana]

I thought it was a good PPV. One of their worst builds / worst on paper, and still delivered a good show. I didn't think it was great, or near great. Saw a few reviews with 9/10 - great/amazing PPV; and think that's being a bit generous.... although the fan favorites won, so that's a good recipe. 3 of the first 4 matches were great (4 stars or better) ... then the rest (6 matches) was just kinda OK to me (3.5 stars or less) . I'd probably go 7.5/10 compared to the other AEW PPV's.

The Good
LuchaSarus / Jungle Boy Cage
Trio's Title match
The New Champs, Think for the most part they were good choices.
ROH Title match - Thinks kinda felt downhill after this.

The OK
Jarret/Lethal vs. Sting/Darby - Fun, wild match, glad Sting survived.

3 Women's matches , a mix between OK to good, but was surprising to have 3 matches on the PPV, when there's a max of 1 on dynamite. They did well though. Saraya/Paige winning her first match in 5 years, against the best women's wrestler in AEW is interesting.

Wardlow vs. Joe vs. Hobbs -

Tag Title match , good but the crowd was kind of surprisingly dead for this for most of the match. Probably the result of a 5 hour show.


The Bad
Thought the MJF/Mox under delivered; and they'll need to be MORE additional explaining on the ending , why Regal would start a faction only, to help someone else. We all saw MJF winning; but felt like a swerve to do a swerve. The match itself, MJF style and MOX style didn't click for me. Stuff like Darby/MJF was much better. I'm not a huge fan of Mox's style.

The Pre-show.... I get AEW has a lot of injuries... but like you got the Factory on the show; but not FTR. You got a DDT legend, but like not Miro/House of Black?

Lacked any big surprises....kinda thought maybe someone like Adam Cole or House of Black returns...and a free agent debut. Most of their PPVs, have had something like that.



So the bad wasn't that bad. Hurt the flow/ timing and overall rating... but certainly a PPV worth watching.

[Wavelet Transform]

Terrible build to the show and a dreadful crowd, but as DougN says, the good wrestling band-aid covers a lot. Opener was fantastic as was the trios tag. The rest was good, but the lack of crowd reaction hurt many matches, TNT title, esp.

They really need to get away from structuring matches where the person losing takes 75% of the match. It tips the outcome every time. 50:50 is fine, as is occasionally steamrolling guys when you’re making stars. Thought this was esp. bad for the DMD and MJF matches.

Roster continues to work exceptionally hard, but they really need to get the booking sorted and figure out how to use the roster differently. Wrestlers disappearing from tv for weeks at at a time isn’t working.

[DougN]

I have no real problems with the matches or results last night. In fact, some of it was pretty damn good like the Elite and Death Triangle stuff. Even if you don't like The Elite like some bitter people here, it's clearly a well to elevate the belts the next few months and I think it's actually a good difference that's out of the norm. The only thing that I think should be different is that they should mix up the order too. They should do Pac v Kenny and Bucks v Lucha Bros too instead of just 7 straight matches.

The bigger issue is that the PPVs are paced/structured so poorly. The show desperately needs a 20 minute intermission, but I doubt they will ever do that. In that case, I would stop booking the show with the big matches peppered throughout. Just go straight NJPW and have each match be bigger (in storyline/importance) than the one before it.

[Montana]

Terrible build to the show and a dreadful crowd, but as DougN says, the good wrestling band-aid covers a lot. Opener was fantastic as was the trios tag. The rest was good, but the lack of crowd reaction hurt many matches, TNT title, esp.

They really need to get away from structuring matches where the person losing takes 75% of the match. It tips the outcome every time. 50:50 is fine, as is occasionally steamrolling guys when you’re making stars. Thought this was esp. bad for the DMD and MJF matches.

Roster continues to work exceptionally hard, but they really need to get the booking sorted and figure out how to use the roster differently. Wrestlers disappearing from tv for weeks at at a time isn’t working.

Agree 100%...

The match structure has annoyed me more; than probably any promotion i've ever watched. Everyone tries to make everyone look good. Preserve losses on select talent. It's odd to me; but sometimes i just want to see like Hangman vs. Wardlow; or whatever match they could do ; but like X person can't lose, so they don't wrestler that wrestler. So instead we get like Hangman vs. Angelo Parker and Wardlow vs. like Brian PIllman. Besides the match structure; the booking makes everything very predictable.

[Wavelet Transform]

The match structure has annoyed me more; than probably any promotion i've ever watched. Everyone tries to make everyone look good. Preserve losses on select talent. It's odd to me; but sometimes i just want to see like Hangman vs. Wardlow; or whatever match they could do ; but like X person can't lose, so they don't wrestler that wrestler. So instead we get like Hangman vs. Angelo Parker and Wardlow vs. like Brian PIllman. Besides the match structure; the booking makes everything very predictable.

Spot on. So many needless matches w/ no backstory where one person has 0 chance of winning. Like, why did Moxley / Pentagon happen? What’s the kayfabe justification for it? Penta doesn’t have a bunch of singles wins to justify it and he’s definitely not winning, so just makes him look bad (and Moxley for struggling to beat him). Give me matches where the outcome isn’t obvious or if you don’t want talent doing jobs, then do more promos to build to ppvs, where folks can actually lose.

[supersonic]

Tuned in as the Elite antics sounded hilarious, only to see that it was a tame mockery complete with the energy of "see what we did, that was funny, why aren't you laughing yet, bro?" Of course, the beginning of the fan-flaming moments also have to take place during the PIP ad break when we can't hear Chicago's visceral, immediate reaction.

I still wait for a program like Punk vs. MJF to arise - something that's comparable (not just equally long-form) to Austin vs. Hart Foundation 1997, Batista vs. HHH 2005, Jericho vs. HBK 2008, and Steen vs. Generico 2010. Right now based on the consensus I hear and read (as I don't bother tuning into WWE since their pandemic behaviors), it sure sounds like WWE is running circles around AEW in this particular storytelling department thanks to the Bloodline and Generico.

[Montana]

The wrestling has been quite good on Dynamite lately… but…

The storytelling logic has fallen off the cliff. So Regal forms the BCC, Only to turn on Mox to help MJF. The next show, Mox threatens Regal (as he should) and Daniel Bryan makes the save for some reason. No MJF , so they make us wait a week. Tonight Moxley has already moved on.

Regal and MjF come out. Apparently Regal wanted to help MJF (for some reason?!?) after the firm beat down. Only to have MJF turn back on Regal. So many gapping holes in this…

Why would MJF storyline wise want Regals help.
Why would Regal form BCC only to help MJF
Why would Danielson defend Regal after helping MJF
Why would Mox move on so quickly.
Do Claudio and Yuta not care what Regal did?
Are we supposed to feel sympathy for Regal?!?

It’s too bad, they just did a swerve to do a swerve. This could have been great… but they left so many plot holes.

Why not just have Regal “accidentally” hit Mox to cost him the title. Would have made much more sense… even if they teased it was on purpose.



Plus it seems like Tony is taking feedback with less ROH on AEW tv. Samoa Joe and AR Fox had a good match, but we have no idea who Joe is facing at Final Battle. I assume Wardlow wants his TNT Title back. Could have easily set up the FB match here. FTR had no build to a final battle either. But what was announced was Garcia vs Yuta, which I believe is a rematch from like 4-5 months ago at DBD. Hoping we get some good match announcements soon.

[DougN]

I'm with you. Storylines haven't been good and anything that has seems to be more out of luck than anything. Part of it is that Tony is just not good at pivoting when things go wrong. He either stalls a ton or he just goes in a weird direction.

I saw someone on Twitter ask why they didn't just wait to do that and that's my thing. There was no legs with Regal and MJF as a pair at all.

[roacheyyy]

Both title matches were great this week

[Montana]

Meant to post a little earlier, but i thought this was one of the better Dynamites in a long time.

MJF and Ricky Starks had a fantastic promo - as expected. Battle Royal was good/fun. Great way to get more talent on TV.

Samoa Joe vs. Darby Allin was great.

Claudio/Yuta vs. Hager/Garcia was good.

FTR vs Acclaimed was great as well.

The Gunns taunting FTR as the end was a nice touch as well.

The William Regal logic/explanation was very poor....but at least they tried to explain it.

Think if AEW has a hot angle, they need to run with it a little more. I'm hoping MJF vs. Ricky is a little more than a one and done match. Could see them doing good Rivals.

[Montana]

Solid Dynamite. Danielson/Ego was solid. The "game 6" of the Trio's best of 7, was another good match. It's almost too much of a good thing; but hard to complain with that. The highlight of the show for me; was Samoa Joe cutting/taking Wardlow's hair. Thought that added a good dynamic to that feud to close the match. Didn't need Darby's run in at the end, but oh well.

[DougN]

Honestly, the best of 7 series has been great for AEW in terms of resetting the show. The show feels like it has a flow now and is not just cobbled together. It's still not what it was a year ago, but it's getting closer to regaining that status.

[supersonic]

Game 6 was hopefully an appetizer of what the Elite could do in a trios plunder match next year that has the kind of visceral heat comparable to The 100th Show main event.