gordi

Holy Cow that crowd is HOT for babyface Arn! The pops he gets for powering out of Muta's Cattle Mutilation, for the reverse Atomic Drops, and for the Spinebuster. Wow. Very hot finish. Totally enjoyable match from start to finish. Really liked this a lot. Soilid basic pro wrestling. More entertaining, for me, than watching dudes doing back-flips through tables (thought that can also be entertaining if it's done well). Muta maybe could have sold the arm a little, if I'm gonna nit-pick. Jim Ross is a just openly racist on commentary. That part was pretty weird.

This is where AEW could win out over WWE. By not doing this. Just by letting their wrestlers get over and not interfering in it. It's very very early in their run and there is still a ton of time for them to screw things up, but just look at how people already care about Private Party and Darby Allin. At this point, I can happily imagine that they are going to let that flower rather than ruining it. Their approach so far seems to be almost the exact opposite of how WWE books their wrestlers. And thank God for that.

It occurs to me that in the past year and a half or so WWE has taken several wrestlers whom I at one time or another sincerely enjoyed watching (such as Shinsuke, Owens, Rollins, Rusev...) and overused them, misused them, and/or exposed their weaknesses to the point where I can barely be bothered to read about what they are doing these days... While in the past three weeks, AEW has taken people who were not even on my radar (like Darby Allin and Private Party) and made it so that I can barely wait to watch them wrestle again.

This got a legit lol out of me.

yep

Man, I sincerely hope that AEW have the patience to hold off on swerves and turns as much as possible. WWE's constant booking of """shocking """ swerves and heel turns and face turns has just taken all of the fun out of that. It's like having a "surprise" "twist" in a Sci-Fi movie or post-Sopranos TV show. If it happens all the f'n time, then there is nothing, absolutely nothing shocking, surprising, or entertaining about it. WWE swerves and turns are consistently boring and pointless these days. AEW needs to take a good hard look at how WWE does things and then not run their TV show that way. When Michaels threw Jannetty through the Barbershop window, that was cool and memorable. These days, if a wrestler doesn't turn on their partner or betray their friend, it's a surprise. It's not memorable, it's not meaningful, and it's not entertaining. It's been beaten to death. Hold off on the would-be shocking twists for a good long while, play that card once or twice a year at most... then it might actually mean something again.

Short answer: No. Long answer: NNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

I just turned 54 on Monday, and I think it's fair to call me an AEW mark already. Certainly a wrestling show that is focused on wrestling and not stupid puerile embarrassing bullshit will appeal to other lapsed fans in my demographic. Certainly a show that is trying to get their young guys over as stars rather than punishing wrestlers for getting over on their own will have appeal for a lot of fed-up wrestling fans. If you'd told me early in the decade that WWE would have Bryan, Shinsuke, Kevin Steen, El Generico, KANA, Samoa Joe, Claudio Castagnoli, Styles, Lince Dorado, Ricochet, Mystico, Pirate Princess Kairi Hojo, Davina Rose, Prince Devitt, Tyler Black, Octagon Jr, Mattias Wild, Kyle O'Reilly, Io Shirai and a ton of other excellent wrestlers on their roster... but that I'd far prefer to watch a show built around The Young Bucks, Kenny Omega, and Stardust?!?!?!? Good on those guys. Against all odds, they have completely won an old guy like me over and got me interested in watching weekly wrestling TV again.

Hell, hire Rina Yamashita!

Are we maybe at the point where we should no longer be allowed to be surprised by stuff like this? I mean, I think it's reasonable to be disappointed... but this is the second year in a row where they have ended the Hell in a Cell show with a non-finish in the Main Event Hell in a Cell match. Fool me once, shame on you...

Yep. It really seems like a massive shift from the days when "building to a PPV" was the WWE business model. Now they get so much oil/blood and TV money, it seems like the PPVs are a total afterthought outside of RR/WM. I'd assume that the thinking is that having PPVs is a way to draw people into paying for the network, and actually selling PPV buys on cable is a nothing deal these days. So, hotshot booking to draw viewers to TV is something that makes sense again, in that model...?

You have been watching professional wrestling. This is not that, indeed.

Three of my absolute favourite matches of all time, and three wildly different takes on how to encorporate comic elements into pro wrestling. Oh, and also: