Loss

Shane McMahon would cost them about $2 million and would be unbearable. They wouldn't be able to really trust him either. I also don't think they'd get much return on that investment.

The only real problem I see with Ricky Starks is that he doesn't get nearly enough to do. He needs a program he can sink his teeth into. That's true for a lot of AEW talent, but I think it's probably more true for him than it is many others.

I think one of the divides is that Dave doesn't rate matches based on his personal tastes, as much as people think he does. That doesn't mean his personal tastes aren't a factor, that means he's not saying, "This match is ****3/4 and this match is ****1/2, which means I personally liked the ****3/4 match more." Dave is attempting an objective review of the match where he tries to set aside (or at least contain) what he thinks of the match personally and evaluate how well it worked with its intended audience. His personal tastes will still creep into that because he's not a robot, but he doesn't intend his ratings to be a measuring stick of what he personally enjoys, even if they in part turn out that way sometimes. I think most people here and elsewhere are using star ratings to say how much they personally liked a match and what it meant to them as a viewer. Yes, Dave's ratings are ostensibly that, but he's striving for them not to be that, and the final rating is meant to reflect that combination of attempted objectivity (which is impossible but what he's striving for) and his own personal tastes (which he's attempting to downplay in the hopes that he can be fair). That said, if the wrestling quality offends his sensibility so much that he can't get past how well it worked live (think Hogan-Andre at WM3), he's going to crap on it regardless.

TV is different than it was in 1998. So are wrestling fans.

My personal and unqualified theory on ratings is that the quality of the previous few weeks is a greater factor than the lineup that night, with rare exceptions. Dynamite ratings were up for a few weeks after a great first TBS show and they were down last night after a few below-par shows.

They aren't, and I'm not disputing that. I'm just wondering if they are exploited.

Are hedge fund managers exploited?

A good thread to also drop that a wrestler once told me that there are three types of selling -- physical, emotional and contemplative.

Does setting, characters, plot, theme, point of view work for wrestling? - Setting -- Promotion, venue, city, place in time - Characters -- Who is involved and what are their motivations - Plot -- What happens during the match - Theme -- What is the general idea behind the match (e.g., make a new star, have someone come close in winning, etc) - Point of view -- How the match is shot, what the commentary aims to convey, how fans respond Just spitballing.

Agreed on Cena. His acting is excellent. Wrestling was so lucky to have him as long as we did, and I never felt like fans truly appreciated the guy. I'm glad he's doing well. He deserves it.

The Hardyz have exactly two matches (POSSIBLY 3) that I think would be of huge value to AEW: FTR, Young Bucks and the third possibility is Santana/Ortiz if they're turning heel. I think you could do all of those in a year. After that, I'd rather them do more to build the future.

I wasn't even referring to this board. That sentiment ("He's not my type of wrestler, but good for him") was common enough that Veda Scott even tweeted that it's not really necessary for everyone to say that.

Maybe he'll thrive in a format where he can show up 10 times a year.

Literally every take I've seen (probably 3 dozen or so at this point) is, "I don't really care for Danhausen but he has a following" type stuff. I have yet to see anyone actually saying they like Danhausen. Not sure what that's about.

The peak is the TBS show from April until about the Great American Bash if you're looking for exciting weekly TV. The syndication was honestly pretty weak in this time period. Watch Power Hour and Saturday Night, and you end up seeing about 90% of what you need to see.

Liked the show a lot, way better than the last couple of weeks. The opening match was fantastic and the Punk-MJF segment was golden. I didn't like the main event at all. It's not even about Orange Cassidy specifically. For some reason, most of Adam Cole's matches have had lots of plunder and comedy in AEW. I'm not sure why he's not just trying to have great no-frills wrestling matches. I'm not even a huge fan of his, but he clearly did it a good amount in NXT and before that.

They can still go back to it, and they should at some point. I don't know who ends up the babyfaces and who the heels in the inevitable Undisputed Era vs Elite feud, but if it's the Elite that come out as babyfaces, hopefully they return to that feud later this year.

I wish Tony Khan would do an AMA with fans. Has anyone ever asked him why FTR vs Young Bucks only wrestled one time? That match result, more than any other in AEW's short history, seems to be the one that has bugged people.

There was this guy who was pretty good a few months ago named Bryan Danielson. What happened to him? Remember when he wrestled every week?

I don't think they ever need to have a match against each other at all. I think they should win the tag titles at some point, and they probably need to have a match with the Young Bucks at some point. And Sting should have exactly one attempt to win either the World or TNT title on a Battle of the Belts special that segues to a Darby program with a big name when they're ready to push him to the top. But I don't think there's any need to do a breakup in this case.

I do think there's a risk of Wardlow becoming like Virgil in 1991, where he does the big angle people want and then that's really all people want him to do and he's done. That said, they still have to try and hope for the best.

I would think AEW would love to get on any emerging streaming service. That's guaranteed money. They probably wouldn't get anywhere near WWE-Peacock money because of the difference in both brand recognition and archive depth, but it would still make a lot of sense. I don't know how much their deal with FITE complicates that, or what the conditions are with TNT and TBS when it comes to streaming archived content. Right now, I believe all the episodes are in the TNT (and maybe TBS now too) app.

I think we are probably only a few weeks away from paying off MJF-Wardlow. They've been teasing it for over two years and I don't see how they can stretch it out much longer. And the audience is very much ready for it. I would even say that after the Punk-Wardlow match, the interest in MJF-Wardlow became higher than MJF-Punk, at least until Punk and MJF start doing promos again. I don't even know that HOOK needs a huge issue right now. He just needs to be featured. I think the key is him having a match every week. He does most weeks at this point.