gordi

Maybe the Saudis were, like, "We'll pay you 80 million to do some shows here," and Vince was like, "Deal!" Then later he was all "Where's my 80 million dollars?" and they were all "Dollars? Bro, this is Saudi Arabia. Here's 80 million halalas."

They are IN CAHOOTS!

AEW has finaly learned the lesson that AEW has finally learned the lesson that Eric Bischoff was trying to teach us back in 2002: The way to draw eyes to your product is by presenting HLA (Hot Lisbon Action).

Note: I was in the midst of editing my post while Slasher was responding to it. I got some bad news from back home recently, and haven't been sleeping well since. On reflection, I felt I was needlessly pissy in my original reply. Anyway, I agree with Slasher's take about as strongly as I disagree with Goodear on this particular subject. AEW tag action seems to me to mainly be a sped-up action-intensive version of the southern tag formula... There is always shine and heat and FiP. All of the necessary elements are clearly in place. I am often the most Old Man Yells at Clouds guy in the room when it comes to in-ring storytelling and just a few years ago I was convinced that Kenny and the Young Bucks were the absolute worst offenders... But every major AEW match I have seen so far has had a pretty clear and coherent story and they mostly seem to be trying to add cutting-edge action and pacing to absolutely classic formulae. There is room for improvement, certainly (there is always room for improvement) but 'there are no real heat segments' does not seem like any kind of valid criticism, even if we are only talking about Private Party. Perhaps *particularly* talking about them v Lucha Bros. When a good guy wrestler has been getting beaten down, and he makes a desperate lunge to tag his partner in and *the crowd goes nuts for it* then I have to believe that there has been a *successful* heat segment that led up to that hot tag - even if the good guy can't help but toss in a cartwheel and/or a back handspring.

Edit: I respectfully disagree with this particular hot take. Nobody is saying that Private Party are the new Morton/Kikuchi/Xavier Woods in terms of selling and/or working from underneath... but they absolutely worked a go-go-go version of FiP in both of their AEW tournament matches.

You are, truly, the target audience that Vince and WWE have in mind.

This. So, so, very, very much this. The contemptuous attitude toward the fans and horrible, horrible booking on RAW and SD have soured me so much that I decided it was better for me to just stop commenting on it. I literally had nothing nice to say any more, despite the fact that wrestlers I love are on those shows. (like Bryan, Samoa Joe, KANA, el Generico, Shinsuke, AJ Styles, Io Shirai and on and on...) It made me furious to see their talents being wasted. I regularly hate-read the recaps on With Spandex partly out of schadenfreude and partly in the almost-always-vain hope that there might be something I want to seek out and watch. Man... watching, reading about, and discussing pro wrestling used to be a thing that brought me so much joy... ...and now, maybe... maybe it can be again!

I never got into the BTE web series, but I have really been enjoying Wrestlers on the Road Getting Room Service. I like the hangout vibe and the various stories from the indie day. I end up liking everyone in them a little more each time. I like how open Matthew Youngbuck and Nicholas Youngbuck (a/k/a The Jacksons) are about what obliviously insufferable nincompoops they were, starting out. I like how nobody seems to be too self-serious and everyone seems to enjoy a laugh at their own expense. I like how everyone seems to genuinely love wrestling, and being a wrestler. I've seen the one you just posted, Janela, Hangman Page, and SCU. Is that all of them?

Hell yeah! It's almost as if this pro wrestling company likes and appreciates their fans and wants to make them happy, as opposed to troll booking and treating their fan-base with utter contempt. What a novel concept! A squash here and there! That would be another good way to avoid burning us out as viewers with constant go-go-go-. Four good, long matches that let everyone involved shine and a compelling angle that puts over the characters of the good guys and the bad guys while building toward something. To me, that is worth two hours of my time. It's an ample reward. And so far, they have yet to do anything on their TV show that makes me feel ashamed for watching. There is room for improvement and there are changes I wouldn't mind seeing.... but AEW Dynamite, four weeks in, is damned good pro wrestling television. Hell yeah! It's almost as if this pro wrestling company likes and appreciates their fans and wants to make them happy, as opposed to constantly troll booking and treating their fan-base with utter contempt. What a wild idea! Hope it works out for them.

Totally agree here. I'm a fan. Private Party totally won me over with that Young Bucks match, I love their characters, their energy, and their spectacular double-team moves and I can't wait to see what's next for them, but there is absolutely room for improvement. Some of those strikes they threw were embarrassing. Booking everyone to look as good as possible instead of booking them so you can have a laugh at their expense. It seems to work! Oh hell yeah. I hope this continues to be a big AEW talking point every week. It sounds insane, but it's obviously true: They are setting themselves apart from WWE just by doing basic pro wrestling booking and doing it well. In my mind, it's not just that there is a lot of wrestling , but that almost all of it was at a similar go-go-go pace and stuffed full of spectacular offense and huge bumps. Obviously, that is how Kenny and the Young Bucks roll... but I wouldn't mind at all if they threw out a slower-paced match with some more basic chain wrestling, or something that stayed on the mat and in the ring with more of a real-grappling feel, or a hoss-type battle, once in a while. Just to break up the pace if nothing else. Even having the occasional slowed-down moment in their fast-paced matches might help to throw the more spectacular stuff into sharp relief. (I'm not advocating for chinlocks, more along the lines of struggling over a move or fighting to escape/re-apply/re-escape a submission or something). Give us a little more variety and then it might not seem like too much of a good thing. I envy you. It would be awesome to be a part of one of these early-in-the-game hot-as-hell crowds.

Holy $#*+!

How bad is it? So bad that Sony is reportedly giving refunds to people who purchased the game.

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.