Blehschmidt

I totally agree with you about the commercial breaks @Coffey. I despise the picture in picture thing that they seem to be oh so fond of, and I wish they would time shit better so that we would see less of that. I am all for good long matches when it's called for, but Joey Janela vs Alan Angels certainly doesn't need to last long enough to see a commercial break. Striking a nice balance between WWE's 15 matches a show that all go 3 minutes, and every match lasting 15 - 20 minutes is where they need to be. Those numbers that @gordi posted show me that they are getting the times in just about the right place. Now they just need to get the formatting a bit tighter, at least in my opinion. I just feel like the picture in picture thing should actually be something that feels special. Like a "Oh Shit, this match is so good and is going long, we are going to have picture in picture because we love you fans and don't want you to miss a moment of it!!"

I think Big Show in wrestling attire is the most concerning thing about that image to me.

I think if they could find a way to mix that style with exciting, sensible, long term booking they could make it work. They also need to make sure that they mix it up and not have the same types of styles in back to back segments constantly. You can have the flippy dudes, the Walter types that look like they are murdering each other, the Jeff Cobb types doing cool throws and shit, and you can have them on multiple segments. Just spread that shit out!! I have a buddy who grew up watching WWF and NWA, then morphed into ECW and the Monday Night Wars, then stopped watching all together when Vince bought everything because he thought it sucked. A few years back I showed him the crazy shit that the guys in PWG were doing and he popped huge for it and always wanted to know when I got a new dvd of that "California wrestling" So, I think that kind of athletic style could draw in people, but at the same time you need to surround it with angles and storylines that aren't going to turn those same people off, and will at the same time draw the interest of your core audience. Essentially I think we need someone to book PWG matches, with 1995 Paul Heyman's creativity, 1985 Crockett's angle and storyline pacing, and Mike Quackenbush's eye for continuity. Is that too much to ask?

Before I answer your questions, I want to say that I have been waiting for something like AEW for ages. WWE's product has felt like the stalest, paint by numbers, same shit different week, wrestling company to me for nearly 20 years. Probably since they fucked up the Invasion, and followed it with the never ending reign of Hunter. Sure there have been glimmers of hope with the first One Night Stand, The Summer of Punk, Daniel Bryan, the first few years of NXT, the beginning of The Shield, etc. But they have managed to take everything extraordinary and beat it back to ordinary as quickly and soundly as they could. Ring of Honor was amazing for quite a while, then they lost all of the talent that made them that way, got television and became something else. TNA was mismanaged from day one, and well, we've all seen the "Is TNA the worst company ever" thread. I enjoyed Chikara for a while, then they did that stupid closing angle, things were never the same, and well, we know how that ended. So for years, when it came to modern wrestling, I enjoyed some PWG shows when they came out every few months, watched a ton of older stuff, and viewed everything else with far less enthusiasm. With the announcement of AEW, I finally hoped that we were going to get a true alternative to Vince's monopoly on American television. So far, I would say things have been hit or miss with them, leaning more toward the positive. The pandemic certainly made things harder on them, and makes things harder to judge.But having said all of that, let's look at your questions. How do you feel about the commentary in AEW? Jim Ross & Excalibur specifically. I think Excalibur is fantastic. He has a great voice, he knows the moves, he knows the stories, he knows the right times to raise his voice. As a lead commentator, I have zero issues with him. I know the mask bothers some people, but who gives a shit? It doesn't interfere with his speaking, and it gives him a unique look. Better than Michael Cole and the endless supply of Michael Cole sound-a-likes that WWE seems to have. I love Jim Ross. He is the voice of my childhood. I felt so awful for him when he lost his wife. But, I feel like at this point he is a detriment to the product in his current role. Use him for intimate backstage interviews. Use him for big time main events. I say give him a weekly segment where he runs down the Top 10, and discusses one of the big angles like Gordon Solie use to do on the Power Hour at the end of his career. But we are past the point where J.R. should be calling several hours of wrestling on a weekly basis. Re-energized Tony Schiavone is fantastic. Taz has also been really good in AEW, and I never cared for him in WWE. As for Big Show and Mark Henry, we'll discuss them in a later question, but I certainly don't see the need for more commentators! How do you feel about the ring style or the look of the show/arena? I guess I never really thought much about the look of the arena. It isn't distracting, so I suppose that is a good thing. As for the look of the show, I have to say that it is fucking wonderful to have camera work on a wrestling show that doesn't make me feel like I am going to have a seizure! Kevin Dunn and his 75 camera cuts a second can go right to hell. As for the in-ring style. I mentioned being a PWG fan, so for the most part I enjoy it. There are guys I don't care for, but I think you get that in any wrestling you watch. What are your thoughts about the talent that AEW has been bringing in like Jake Hager, Shawn Spears or more recently, Mark Henry & Paul Wight? I have felt from the beginning that AEW needed to be very selective about which former WWE guys they brought into the company. I honestly thought there best bet would be to go after the guys that the fans felt were being held back, or misused by WWE, in hopes of drawing those eyes to their product, and at the same time avoiding the "LOL TNA" trope where they just brought in every cast off and scrap that fell from the WWE table. I think they have done reasonably well in this. Moxley, Tay Conti, Brodie Lee, Miro, Andrade, and FTR were all good choices. At the time Matt Hardy and Shawn Spears were good choices as well. I don't particularly like Spears, but that 10 gimmick was over in WWE. He just hasn't shown a god damn thing since. Hardy was over as hell with the Broken stuff. HIs creative has just gone sailing off the rails since. On the other hand: Hager, Christian, Billy Gunn, Big Show, Mark Henry... Not sure these were needed. Even understanding that Gunn, Show, and Henry have different roles to play. These signings just have that "Look who we got! These guys used to be stars elsewhere!!" stigma to them. As for the recent WWE releases... I hope to see Tommy End, Buddy Murphy, Ruby Riot, and Iiconics show up. Do you think that AEW relies too heavily on comedy? No, not too heavily. Though I do think they sometimes have guys continue acting "funny" when the situation calls for something different. What about their abundance of factions/stables? This I am growing very tired of. We don't need faction wars, or team challenge series! The Inner Circle has run it's course. I don't need a group with Peter Avalon, Cesar Bononi, and whoever else. The Pinnacle only exists to fight the Inner Circle. QT Marshalls group is cringe worthy, and The Nightmare Factory is literally Cody surrounded by jobbers. The only two needed factions are Death Triangle and The Dark Order and I suppose for now, the Omega version of The Elite. But only until he loses the title. Managers/Valets? As everyone else has said. Taz and Tully are wonderful. Vickie is worthless. The new lawyer guy with Jade is unproven. I like seeing Arn on TV, so I am good with him. I have zero issue with Penelope and Kip cornering each other. Callis is great in his current role, but needs to disappear once the angle is over. Matt Hardy...needs to go back to WWE. How do you feel about the decisions Tony Khan has taken, or how Dave Meltzer seems to give AEW the constant benefit of the doubt where as Jim Cornette will barely acknowledge when something is good? I'll start by saying I don't read Meltzer, and I only care about what Jim Cornette says about stuff that happened before 1997. That being said, i think Tony Khan is doing a good job. However, I feel like maybe he is letting certain people get too much of their own shit on his show. He needs a Pat Patterson type that can help him out, and be a buffer between the talent and management. I have no idea who that would be though. Are AEW presenting the women well? How about the tag team division? The women's division is a tough answer. I feel like they were off to a decent start, and then the pandemic totally fucked them since half the talent was foreign. Hikaru Shida did a wonderful job leading the division for the last year. She was a great champion, and I hope she gets another chance with the belt in front of people at some point. They listened when babyface Britt wasn't working and went with it, and now they've organically created a HUGE star. Imagine if that had been WWE? She'd still be a smiling babyface. If they can lock Thunder Rosa down full time, they will have another potential cornerstone for the division as well. So my answer on the women is, the jury is still out. They are trying, but Covid hindered it too much to give a fair and accurate judgement. As for the tag team division, I think they are doing a pretty good job with it. This Young Bucks reign has actually brought it down, as before that I thought it was one of the highlights of the company. Between Page/Omega, Lucha Bros, FTR, PnP, Jurassic Express, etc they have had plenty of really good tag team matches. So I would call it a win. Is AEW relying too much on gimmick/stipulation matches? Relying on them too much? No Doing them without enough build? Yes 2 Stadium Stampedes, the war games match, the explosion match, and the arcade match are the only one's I really remember. Sure, the explosion match ended badly. The Stampedes were both fun. The war games was good until the stupid ending, and the arcade was harmless fun. My issue is more that those kind of matches need longer builds. But that seems to be the case with the whole world today, not just wrestling. No one has the attention span for shit. In closing: I think AEW is doing a pretty good job of being an alternative to Vince's product. I hope as we come out of the pandemic and they go back on the road, they find themselves and their niche even more. There are certainly still several parts of the product that could be tightened up. For example, I don't think they need 4 shows. If they insist on keeping both Dark and Elevation, they need to significantly cut down the running time on both. I also think it is time to take a look at the over bloated roster and start sending some folks packing. 1 Ruby Riot in the women's division is worth Joey Janela, Luther, Serpentico, and all of Billy Gunn's kids. But, I hope they continue to improve and grow an audience. Because the WWE Monopoly on American mainstream professional wrestling has certainly done more harm than good for the business itself.

Certainly not you, that was fucking terrible. Kross is awful. Gargano, Cole, and O'Reilly have been played out for at least two years, and Pete Dunne can't be expected to carry 4 people.

Got my copy over the weekend! Looking forward to diving into as soon as I finish the book I am reading. If there is a file with links to all of the matches, I'd love to have it!

I am watching some Ron Starr matches from the Los Angeles territory, and I am curious if anyone more familiar with that area knows how big the ring they used was? Because it looks freaking gigantic!!

A buddy of mine watched Heatwave '98 the other day and said Bubba calling the fan a "fat, bald, motherfucker" and telling the girl in the front row that her mother taught her how to suck dick was all still in there.

So, I can tell that the episodes of MLW that are airing on Vice are older footage. Can someone who knows the product better tell me how far behind the Lucha Undergriund stuff what is currently airing on Vice is?

Not even half way into this Grizzly Smith episode and it's just as rough as we expected.

At the very least, in AEW she could be a manager who occasionally wrestles. Instead of Vince-land where everyone must wrestle and manager is a bad word.

Absolutely agree with you about Chris Hero/Tommy End coming in. They would be a great bridge team, as they can work the Bucks style, the FTR style, whatever style the Lucha Bros feel like working. They could seriously gel with everyone. I would absolutely vouch for Buddy Murphy coming in. He started as a rather dry tag team guy on NXT, but when he totally changed his body, look, and style, he had some absolute bangers with Cedric Alexander and Mustafa Ali on 205 Live when no one was watching that show. He seems to have a good attitude and work ethic as well.

They almost have to be at this point. Nothing else makes any sense. I hope to see Black and Murphy in AEW. I think both of them would fit in well there.

I'm fairly certain both Enforcer and Strobogo are long game troll accounts.

The New Japan Young Lions will be much better off after spending some time doing forward rolls at the Performance Center.

I just wonder what is causing this "We have to have a legitimate sports announcer calling our show" mindset. They've seemed perfectly fine with Michael Cole and the legion of Michael Cole sound-a-likes that have been calling their shows for the last 20 years. I wonder if this is an NBC/Fox mandate, the current idea on how to get the fans back, or if Vince just discovered ESPN 2.

Dear God, THIS! When it happened once in a blue moon, it was impactful and made you go "Holy Shit, he actually kicked out of (insert finisher name)!!!!" Now, they do that when a guy kicks out of a sunset flip, and it is has zero meaning at all. My other pet peeve probably make me a bad person, but I fucking hate the referee constantly checking on everyone that is so prevelant in the post-Benoit world of modern wrestling. It literally seems that the referee is down and checking on people after every single bump, and it just distracts from the illusion for me.

In one of the comments Sapp confirmed this isn't the same thing as what Andrade was referring too. So yeah, seems like more than one wierdo at work.

I can't screenshot and post it because I am at work, but a Twitter exchange between the allan_cheapshot account and Sean Ross Sapp of Fightful.com just caught my eye. Cheapshot posted: "Has the hidden camera phone filming talent in bathrooms story got out yet? Or that talent found the camera phone and less than savory files stored on it?" Sapp responded: "It's gonna next week if I can get the person who caught it to go on record." Wow....

-Dynamite Thoughts- Having Mox and Kingston come to the ring first, so they would be there to kick the shit out of The Acclaimed after their rap was great thinking. The sit out shinbreaker that Shida gave to Rebel looked nasty as hell The Deeb/Red Velvet match was a lot of fun. I definitely agree that they have something with Velvet. She is small enough to be a great underdog, but is a good enough worker to be totally believable, and she keeps getting better. I know someone said this last week, but if they keep having Ogogo beat up Billy Gunn and his kids, they are going to babyface him to a lot of us! A Blondes win would have been a feel good moment, but they would have felt like transitional champions, because they have no one to feud with. Bucks are tied up with Mox/Kingston. FTR and Santana/Ortiz are stuck in the Pinnacle/Inner Circle nonsense. Jungle Boy seems destined to break out on his own. Lucha Brothers aren't being used for shit. The Acclaimed just got beat. Best Friends are afterthoughts. Dark Order are afterthoughts. So, what would you do with them if they won?

This is so fucking spot on. Especially the part about them needing help, but not wanting it. Thank You for verbalizing all of this. Seriously, fuck that guy, and anyone that continues to believe in, spread, and normalize this nonsense.

The thing that really astounds me about the Cody promo/angle is attempting to pull off the "Fighting for America/Evil Foreigner" angle against a guy from the United Kingdom. At the very least if it were against a Japanese guy, or a "German" guy or a "Terrorist Country" guy they could get the lowest common demoninator fans to bite on that shit, but seriously, who is sitting around, shaking their fists going "Those damn Brits!"

I saw a tweet that said something along the lines of "We are heading towards "the dogs are in the enclosed pool area" texts at this point" and sadly it doesn't seem that unrealistic. Lots of people have fallen for this Q nonsense, but this guy seems to be taking it to dangerous levels and beyond.

You aren't wrong. He did show up on ECW in a wheel chair. If I remember correctly he broke a crutch over the head of Shane Douglas.

Does anyone else think the sound was strange in that first match? The crowd seemed super mic'ed, and the in ring action was almost nil. (The chops were silent, no sound on bumps, etc.)