Timbo Slice

Nah, he had the Steve Corino Hardcore Heaven match that’s was about as spiritually perfect a Tajiri match there was. And is the best ECW match ever, too.

Meltz’s diction almost turned that into Steiner Math territory.

Please open the show with Tony having a giant “RESET” button on his desk in Gorilla or something. Seriously, nobody says “innards” anymore.

If I remember right, wear and tear may have been one of the reasons Grayson and Uno weren’t featured as much, too, so between that and how other tag teams ended up being featured, they just got shuffled out.

Kenny being out for basically a year at this point is proof positive. This is where I’m really careful about people talking about “depth” and such. A truly good use of depth given the roster they have, they style they work, and the amount of time they have would lead to bigger names working less so that minor injuries don’t compound. They don’t need to go Full Big Dawg, but at the same time, nobody ever thinks about how to keep folks fresh. I understand that if a guy is over you want to keep him on TV as often as you can, but given transparency on folks being hurt being about as prescient as ever, you can absolutely do a different way of working here to avoid issues like this.

American’s co-opt things in bad faith politically all the time. “Communism” and “Socialism” got pounded into our heads that it was bad since that was fascism, except the liberal sides of those ideas got put into good use. Same thing with “Libertarianism.” The American Brand of it sucks, and with us being international in nature, I agree that no good conversation would come it. So we should park it for now.

Bayern Munich got their guy, though, so MU might be a bit reeling. Forbidden Door tonight? You guessed it, Vince’s office.

Okada loved it. Dude ate it all up.

Because they need him to get to All Out where he can face Kenny in the 6-man of all 6-mans. Then they can get him off to heal to replace Kenny coming back.

I watched it on my phone so couldn’t comment here, but it says a lot that the NJPW stars came to play tonight, even if Okada “skating” in a 4-way still saw him hit his spots and have the fucking charisma that I’ve never seen him have before. Dude knew he was the guy in that match and wrestled as such. I came off extremely impressed. Also, you’re never going to hear this sentence again: “I really liked this four-man commentary booth.” They all complimented each other perfectly. Insanity. A truly over performing show across the board. And now am sad we didn’t see what could have been on the original card. But they now have the outline for a truly spectacular show next go around.

I think the big takeaway from this show is how much NJPW controlled talent here. They really protected specific interactions to the point of really hampering how this show could go down, and it’s selfish due to what they want to do on 1/4/23. For example, I don’t see them rushing to have AEW representation on upcoming shows or tours even after the G-1 based on how they set the G-1 up this year, and feel like there are certain matches they’d rather have on their turf. That’s all well and good, but while injuries tell a good chunk of the story, throwing in the booking mishaps and NJPW letting guys get big paydays for minimal involvement in multi-man matches and 3-way/4-way matches dampens the impact of the show even more.

I’m sorry, but given the gimmick, Naito having eye surgery is ironic as all hell.

Tony’s issue has never been his long term vision: it’s been his ability to adjust on the fly.

Not as messy as the booking for this show.

I have a feeling it’s gonna be someone from NJPW.

Could this actually close the thread? Stay tuned…

Enough to make an AEW Colombian Championship.

It’s more about shareholders: Khan is viewed as righting the ship and Vince’s antics like this might be considered too much. I don’t see the shareholders just ignoring this.

Yeah, this is basically it for Vince, I’d wager.

Yeah, after what happened with Tammy Sytch? No time for people who do that.

Ospreay isn’t nearly as big a deal now as he was even two years ago, and given where he now resides on the pecking order, how he gets booked isn’t nearly as important as keeping FTR strong given how much they mean to the company right now.

And putting on all that bloat.

One of the things that hasn’t been brought up here is that the “depth” question is entirety based on environment. WWE’s “depth” issues on the mens side are clearly self imposed, but also, they’ve run multiple folks who are their “depth” on top in the past, only to be shuffled down the card never to be heard from again. AEW has more interchangeable parts, but that’s because it was born more out of necessity. They needed to keep trying folks to see who popped off the page, but they had a clear hierarchy in regards to the world title, for example. I think both companies project too talent pretty well, but I also feel like the idea of depth being talked about here is more about “talent we like.”

So how real is the scuttlebutt surrounding Claudio going back to WWE?

If Mox is the guy they’re facing, it won’t be Danielson. They just did that match, plus Kingston and him still have to face off. The GUY would be Omega.