Jimmy Redman

Before we get to tomorrow I want to say how much Rhea vs. Charlotte fucking BANGED. Even from what little I know this match was ice cold going in and I was not expecting Big Match Charlotte in 2023, and boy was I fucking wrong. Of all things it was actually a super generous Charlotte performance, since the whole match was based around the idea that the giant Amazon dominant Queen Charlotte was up against someone who turned out to be bigger, stronger, badder, and ultimately better. Rhea was the one throwing Charlotte around on her fucking head. Charlotte was the one busting out things like a flying crossbody or Tornado DDT, uncharacteristically "underneath" moves for her. And Rhea was the one doing the big deadlift strength spots to counter her. Charlotte still towers over Rhea, the world's tallest 5'7", but they did everything to make Rhea tower over her in this match. One moment really stuck out to me, and I may end up cross posting this in GWE because it speaks to something Charlotte is really good at and never gets enough credit for. I hate to put it this way, but it's Acting. There was a moment late in the match, just before the finish (I'd have to rewatch it to remember exactly what spot it was) where Charlotte got some super ridiculous nearfall on Rhea and she kicked out. Charlotte sat there and started smiling. Smiling. Not laughing in disbelief, which is what wrestlers are usually trying to convey in that moment when they do that. "Oh my God I can't believe they kicked out of my finisher!" She was smiling. She was... impressed. Her face said many things, but the main one was, "Wow, I am actually going to lose this match." You could see in her face she knew she was done for, that nothing was ever going to keep Rhea down, and she couldn't even be mad about it because Rhea was so fucking impressive and she was going to be defeated by someone better than her, by fate itself. Which contrasts so beautifully with the character work Charlotte usually does in the late stage of a match. She had a brilliant knack of showing desperation late in a match, particularly as a heel. Early on it was the point at which she'd cry out for Ric Flair ("Daaaaad!") and he'd start interfering. Then it was just her experiencing her own despair and having nobody to turn to, having to fight on in her desperation, find another big bomb. Here she actually felt something beyond all that. It was fate, it was acceptance. This wasn't even about her. It was Rhea's redemption, she was just there to let it happen. And all she could do was smile. People will latch onto the shot of her smiling on the floor while Rhea held the title up in the ring, but I think the smile she gave her right before the finish was a hundred times more powerful. Also, Charlotte being spiked on her fucking head a bunch of times was sickkkkkk and insane. Awesome match.

I echo everything Matt said about the Hangman character and the whole Page/Mox/Max dynamic. I really loved Hangman's promo, it felt like exactly the kind of reset he needed, but what I HATED was the decision to have MJF sitting in the crowd again, which just distracted the crowd from what he was saying, so they were chanting "MJF" for the asshole heel while this babyface kid is pouring his heart out and literally bashing his own brains out trying to promote the world title match. They should know by now he's going to get cheered so I found it moronic. The MITBification of MJF fucking sucks. Speaking of hatred, what in the everloving FUCK are they doing with Jungle Boy??? I cannot express how much I hate this neverending fucking angle and how much it has destroyed Jungle Boy. Same shit happens every week, and he just fucking jobbed to the literally dinosaur, which is inexcusable (and I'm a dinosaur apologist!). Hate it. That kind of killed my interest for most of the show. Jericho is the other thing killing me. I literally skipped the match. Why are you making me skip DANIELSON MATCHES?! And the Garcia SWERVE~ has been inevitable and drawn out way too long, just to do it in the one fucking place where it gets a babyface pop! On the other hand, Orange winning RULED and perfectly capped that series of matches with PAC. Love that shit.

Yeah I don't buy Dexter Lumis as a blatant IP rip off like that, when he doesn't have anything in common with Dexter Morgan beyond the first name and serial killer vibes. Lumis has much more in common with the silent stalker killers from the big slasher films like Michael Myers. They just did the WWE thing of "take two famous names from my character's general theme and that's my wrestling name". He could have easily been named Jason Myers or Damien Krueger.

I honestly wish that Tony Khan had just never bought ROH. Especially after this week. The entirety of the anniversary Dynamite show felt like some sort of ROH backdoor pilot, with every match trying to enforce the Code of Honor for no apparent reason, ROH belts all over the place. The AEW shows and roster were already squeezed as it was, and then you add all of the ROH belts and import unnecessary talent like Jay MF Lethal, there's no room for anything, especially when he's signing more people and adding more AEW belts on top of that too. Has anything at all been gained, creatively, from adding ROH to AEW television? I honestly can't think of anything. It has helped ROH as an entity, sure, because they added all those AEW names to the ROH PPVs and drew big. And I understand that he has to expose ROH as much as he can to try to shop around for a buyer or TV slot or whatever he's doing. But that's his problem. My problem as a viewer is that it has taken over the AEW product and I haven't enjoyed any of it. I wish there was some alternate timeline where he acquires ROH and then just waits until he can set up a separate TV or streaming deal to relaunch it as its own thing. Then down the line, hell, have ROH turn up to AEW TV and it's a big deal.

I have less of an issue with the idea of the "JTTS with some vague name value" role in AEW (which you do need in AEW because they try to protect match ups and records) but I do have an issue with it being Jay Lethal. He sucks and it feels like he's featured having a long match on TV every bloody week. I FF when I hear his music. Its 2022, I never need to see another Jay Lethal match as long as I live. There are like 700 guys sitting in catering every week and most of them are more interesting than Jay fucking Lethal in 2022. Use someone else.

Dang. That explains why he wears that girdle.

Finally catching up on all the TV. Jericho beating Claudio was fucking stupid. I hate it. Like I can sit back and understand that it might be a business decision so Tony can market ROH with Jericho attached, whatever, but as a wrestling show in front of my eyeballs, Jericho beating Claudio clean with that atrocious elbow to win the Ring of Honor World Title sucked a dick. So far they've been able to strike a balance between "continuing ROH as a show-within-a-show with ROH and ROH-adjacent guys" while just having them on AEW TV, but that tipped them off the wire. Also Jericho has been feuding with BCC for what feels like five hundred years and I am so done with it. I'm sure they'll create tension with the ROH belts between Jericho/Garcia too, but that also feels like it has gone on too long now. We'll see. On the other hand, I am so, so glad they pulled the trigger on the Acclaimed. The match obviously didn't reach the fever pitch of the first one, but that was lightning in a bottle. The result was what mattered. The tag titles have felt really irrelevant for large parts of this year, but now at least they'll be on one of the hottest acts on TV. MJF needs to stop screaming. That's what's been different about his presentation since the Punk feud, he's just... yelling all the time. Why is he yelling? MJF as a character works better when he's smug and smarmy and smirking. He came back, he got everything he wanted, he has the title shot. Why is he so mad? Why isn't he gloating? Him cutting angry pissed off wrestling promos, trying to heel on crowds that are cheering for him, just isn't working for me. PAC vs. Orange ruled, these guys are great together. And PAC resorting to using the ring bell to cheat to beat the "joke" wrestler he doesn't respect is great shit. I thought the women's 4-way was really fun, they never get any promo time or actual motivations, so the only way to win these crowds over is to just hit some spots, so I liked how they built this around Deeb and Athena just doing wild shit. Enjoyed it as a spotfest. If they had done this on not such a loaded card it could have stood out even more. These girls need SOMETHING. Hi guys, Paige here! I'm happy for her that the crowd popped and treated her like a big deal. I'm also curious to see how well she wrestles after so many years out with her neck. The women are always in need of star power, but I don't see her being a difference maker while the entire division is so hamstrung. Bryan vs. Mox was great but also kind of disappointing to me. I LOVED the first half of it, but it didn't feel like it ever got out of second gear somehow. They did the strike trading and the chops and the back-and-forth, and then... I don't remember anything after that. Also I've seen enough back rakes on the top rope to last me a lifetime. I like Bryan doing the masochistic stiff-fests sometimes, with certain people, but I think for the occasion and for the world title, I'd like him to wrestle a little bit more like... Daniel Bryan. The match didn't feel *big* enough. Maybe the biggest problem with it was cutting to Max every 5 seconds to the point of parody. Not only was it annoying as fuck, but it was clearly meant to tease a "cash in" that was obviously never going to happen. AEW don't usually make those WWE-style "hammer you over the head with this" mistakes. If they hadn't shown him at all I think the intrigue that something might have happened with Max after the match would have been stronger. And it's not anyone's fault obviously, but Mox just winning the world title back again kind of felt a little anti-climactic at this point. Part of me feels like they're wasting a lot of the time Bryan has left to be the top guy. The Darby clusterfuck ruled and he was literally made to be thrown into furniture by Brody King. The Muta shit was hilarious just for how slow that fucker walked to the ring. That Dragon Whip was insane though. Julia Hart ate fucking SHIT on that table bump, holy Jesus. Perfectly fun shit. Similarly, the HOOK tag was some fun celebrity shit. Bronson is perfect because he's so big he doesn't have to train for months to hit a Canadian Destroyer to get over, he just has to tackle some fools and look cool. I blinked and missed the Wardlow tag, but the Powerbombs on Sterling were the goal there and they nailed it. Honestly if they're not going to pay much attention to Wardlow, have him and Joe go on a tag rampage, I'd dig that. Jungle Boy vs. Fenix was more fun shit, this time of the flippy variety. If Christian is really this injured I'd rather they had just done an angle and had him go away until he's healthy and do the feud then, because these mean heel promos and dinosaur beat downs are becoming interminable. Kingston vs. Sammy was stupid. Can't Eddie ever have anything nice. I know they had the Twitter angle about the refereeing to set this up, but it just felt super lame (especially when it was like, no offense, but just a Stretch Plum). Guys cheat and use low blows and weapons for finishes all the time, and every other match in AEW results in guys getting beat up afterwards or some shit. But somehow this was the bridge too far. You can work TV around literally everyone's hometowns, but you can't give Eddie something nice in New York. Over it. I'm not sure what you do with Jade at this point. They've built it to the point where there is absolutely no woman around who can or should give her that first loss. But it makes every match of hers redundant until they find that person or that angle. My only takeaway from the battle royal was that someone somewhere really missed the boat with Dalton Castle. I actually felt bad for Starks, he's supposed to be getting this new babyface singles push, and he got squashed at the PPV, and here the crowd left before his match and nobody cared because it started so fucking late after a four hour PPV level card. The Starks bump onto the upright backs of the chairs must have FUCKING SUCCCCCCCCKED. Christ. Again, this is my issue with the overbooking of these big shows, because if they never had the stupid All Out match, and just came out swinging killing themselves in the main event of a normal Dynamite with all eyes on them, this could have been star making. Here it was just exhausting, even though the crowd got into it by the finish. All in all, two very good shows, I actually think Rampage was even more fun to sit through, just because almost everything did its job and delivered.

The tag title finish is so hard to pick. It feels like too soon to take the titles off Swerve, especially with the face/heel combo they have that you would think needs exploring further. But I also don't know if you will ever have the Acclaimed as hot as they are now if you beat them again. There are moments.

It's also not that hard to make stakes. 2003, Austin's career was on the line, and Bischoff promised favours to the heels if they won. 2004, the winning Raw team each got to be GM for a week. 2014 was Faces vs Authority with their jobs on the line right? At any point in the SD vs Raw nonsense, they could have said "the winning brand gets a draft pick/#30 in the Rumble/something else" as a prize, they just never bothered.

I wasn't as high up as you, I think in the tier below, but same issue because the G is humongous. Still I had a bird's eye view of a 5 star crowd fight on the floor. I agree the biggest issue with these stadiums is the crowd noise evaporating. I guess its the trade off to getting the amazing visuals of a crowd that large and the setting sun.

Is AEW Plus on FITE not available to you? That's exactly what you get.

The benefit of the doubt version would be something like, "I wouldn't have hired 80% of you [on paper], but you have all proven me wrong with your work blah blah blah.."

The MJF situation reminds me of The Miz. Completely hateable heel character, total asshole, and very good at projecting that they are an asshole. BUT also has a compelling real life story that works as a babyface origin story, and they can even come off as "right" at times, because of how hard they work and how convincing they are. To follow the logic, we might find that while MJF has a lot of genuine goodwill now and will get cheers and what not, that doesn't necessarily mean that the MJF character can or should be a babyface. Even when he was doing the OTT fake babyface routine last week, I just kept thinking how bizarre he would be as a face. I think that was a decent way to handle it actually, do the cheap pops for the crowd to get it all out of their system, and he goes back to being MJF.

That's a big if.

I guess my thing is, everyone is so convinced that Cody will return and win the Rumble. But he tore the pec in June and was projected to be out for 9 months. There's no guarantee Cody will be ready for the Rumble at all (unless he inherits Cena Serum) and even if he is they won't know until the last possible moment. They can't rely on him being the plan for Mania.