MoS

One of the best ways AEW has improved its booking of its women's division over the last several months has been making the women interact with men and have common storylines, instead of treating the division as its own alternate dimension, existing separately from everything else

I think Phase 5 wouldn't just be about his working style, but also how they booked his character. Flair was very Flair-like till 1997, but in 1998-99, he was also booked like a crazy fun literally having escaped an asylum straight into the craziest locker room in wrestling history. He still had some very good performances in main events right till 1999. IIRC, the last bug buyrate WCW drew was for Flair-Hogan in 1999. But then they turned Flair heel and that was probably the death knell of the promotion. No one wanted to boo him in 1999.

On the other hand, Riddle and Orton are really the perfect oddball comedy pair

I feel so bad for Shayna. I am sure there are already 10 YouTube videos about how this adds to the Lore of the Bliss and how all the clues were right there the whole time

This man was put on this planet to cut pro wrestling promos

Loss, in terms of larger trends in the 2nd phase of his career, are there any angles or matches which you think he wouldn't have been able to do in the 3rd phase, on account of being a full-blown heel? I have thought for a bit that I am not sure that the legendary Flair-Lawler angle wouldn't have happened if Flair was what he became in 1987-89. The premise of that angle was a cocky but calm and dignified world champ, arrogantly thinking the city of Memphis was beneath him, being really patronising to its top guy, and slowly losing his shit as the local hick shows him up. It was a legendary angle and was even copied by AEW when Jericho was world champ, although Scorpio Sky is no Jerry Lawler. I am not sure if this angle would have been possible in 1987, cuz Flair would have been hyper and screaming since possibly the first second of the interview. There would be no escalating sense of the world champ losing his shit, cuz the world champ basically was always losing his shit on interviews.

A friend of mine here who is a Chelsea fan is absolutely convinced about it. To the point he has asked all of us to be free for the entire day, cuz the match will get over by 5 PM here and he wants to go crazy in celebration

I know no one really wants to talk about him, but I had been thinking about Flair for a few days and wanted to jot down some thoughts. Principally, I don't know how many people here share my evolution as a fan of liking him a lot more in 2021 than I did in 2016, but I am guessing not too many. I have been pondering over why that is, and I think it might be precisely due to his working style being the subject of criticism here. Flair is all about instinct, about thinking on his feet to pop the crowd, about not thinking, just understanding. It is a style that has become completely obsolete these days. People talk about Flair not thinking too much, and not trying to be logical about his matches. What we see in modern wrestling today is a lot of wrestlers who think a lot about their matches, going all out on using wrestling matches a medium of expression. Sometimes too much. It becomes very over-wrought and inorganic. An example would be the Young Bucks-FTR match from AEW Revolution last year. It received tremendous praise, I think Meltzer gave it 5+ stars. It was so incredibly thought out. Every move was supposed to have some consequence or a deep symbolic meaning. Except...none of it really made for great watching for me. I sat there as the two teams "paid tribute" to classic tag matches and tag teams like The Rockers, Hart Foundation, Midnights, etc, listened to Meltzer and Alvarez lose their shit at all the references and the "clever symbolism" of the finish, and it never felt appealing to me. Sometimes, putting too much thought into a medium as spontaneous as wrestling is counter-productive. Sometimes the right thing to do is go with your instinct, even if it does not make much sense. Flair understood that. That is not to say that you cannot do a thinking match that is not organic or exciting, or that pure instinct will always lead to illogical wrestling. But with wrestling becoming more and more epic and "lore-based", for lack of a better term, it is refreshing to go back to the 1980s and seeing that the only motivation or "reference" for what Flair is doing in the ring is just to insult the fat guy sitting in the third row and get him booing.

To be fair, I think they were countering my points. I don't see any inconsistency in not giving Shawn credit for Finn Balor while blaming him for how NXT main events are booked. From all accounts, Shawn isn't the booker there; he is a trainer who agents and lays down the format for the main event. It also cannot be denied that NXT main events have become more and more melodramatic in the past few years, right when Shawn started agenting. It's why I don't think the comparisons to Kawada and his influence or Kobashi and modern chopfests are entirely fair. I am not penalizing Shawn for indie geeks trying to emulate him and his famous gimmick matches without understanding what made them work. I am penalizing him for something in which he has a clear, direct input, which illustrates and showcases how he understands wrestling, what he values in main events, etc

Also, in defence of Shawn, as much as we might hate WWE main event melodrama, the fact is that Shawn was EXCELLENT in such settings. He himself was a great performer in that regard. It is just that that particular style of wrestling is not sustainable, and most of the time, it leads to cringe eye-roll worthy moments

I totally get that, but I think you can draw a direct line from "I'm sorry; I love you" to Gargano, Ciampa and Adam Cole having emotional insufferably melodramatic dialogues in the middle of a match, the kind of shit that makes Indian Bollywood movies subtle and understated. Think of the ground that covers. I'm not saying that is Michaels's enduring legacy, but it really is a part of it. And I don't even dislike that line from the WM 24 Flair match. I know a lot of people here do, but I thought it was a great moment personally, cuz it really fit both the context as well as the gimmick of the wrestlers participating in the match. But it was definitely an epoch-marking moment for treating wrestling as a medium for shitty middle school theatre, instead of letting the action and psychology in the ring organically describe the emotional weight of the moment. Like the exact opposite of "Show not tell." If we credit wrestlers for rising above the house style and delivering greatness in spite of that, should we also penalise wrestlers who eventually contribute in making the house style worse? I honestly don't know, and I don't even know how much of this is Shawn, and how much of it is Triple H, who has always had the same emotional overreaches as Shawn, except he was about 1/100th as good at Shawn in actually executing what he wanted. But still. This is GWE after all, which means it is an argument where there will be nitpicking, so I feel it is only fair if we have a discussion on this.

I wonder if his agenting for the interminably long 3-hour insufferably cringe melodramatic NXT main events will hurt him this time around. And if does, wonder how much.

Of course Omega's booking is not close to as awful as Hunter's run of terror, but that promo was not a good sign. Trying too hard to be unlikeable and looking like a geek in the process is also a valid explanation. I don't get that. Their most acclaimed promo guys are Mox, King and Taz, and none of those three use shooty insider terms (Kingston saying he is not going to do sports-entertainment aside, but that's the opposite of an insider term) or bury their opponents in any way. Unless you think Mox calling MJF a virgin is burying him, but I admittedly popped at that

I dunno if we are ready to move beyond the War Games discussion, but what did you all think of the Omega promo? I thought it was boring, went way too long, and did nothing but attempt to bury Orange, when they need to build him in his first PPV main event. Thankfully, Omega sucks at cutting heel promos so he couldn't actually bury Orange, but the booking was so weird. What, was Omega watching Raw 2002-04? Did he think "You know what our show REALLY needs? Some of those 15-min rambling heel world champ Triple H promos about how my opponent isn't on my level." Also it was funny to listen to him say Orange copied him by wearing sunglasses. I can think of one or two wrestlers who wore goggles to the ring before Omega

The latest non-controversy about AEW and Botchmania was hilarious. Amazing how, despite AEW giving plenty of ground for legitimate criticism, there are all these sad weirdos whose aim in life is to piss on AEW for daring to go against their beloved billion dollar childhood institution

Wood also had one of the best lines in the show's history, about how the best way to break up with a girl is to make her think it's her idea. That was a massive burn at Bischoff's expense, and I wouldn't be surprised if 83 Weeks soon did a special episode of "Brian Pillman in WCW: Eric Bischoff SETS THE RECORD STRAIGHT"

Absolutely dead at how even in this pic of everyone laughing and having fun, including Baba-san himself, Kawada STILL looks grumpy and pissed off. The man probably kicked the doctor who delivered him in the face as soon as he climbed out of his mom's womb

I have seen people say that they have had bad finishes to two straight big-time gimmick matches now, and like, are we just going to ignore the Lights Out Britt-Rose match? Maybe Britt can teach Jericho how to blade without showing the entire world what he is doing.

AEW topped the 18-49 chart for the first time ever and did so by a huge margin for a show literally titled Blood and Guts. Maybe it's time to definitively retire the narrative that blood and violence is chasing away women viewers

I haven't listened to it yet, but apparently Meltzer was really vague and confusing and weird about the Daniel Bryan contract situation.

A friend of mine texted me saying "That Jericho bump was more padded than the directors cut of The Hobbit movies" and that honestly might be the most brutal insult I have read so far of that bump

I think that's Joeg's point. The "one" box KO checks is probably that he can talk

So apparently, the reason for this is that the prelim matches were taped but they were using the live crowd reaction to the matches. So what we were hearing was the match being shown on the big screen, and the crowd reacting to it

The Jericho one or the Matt one? The Matt one was of course unnecessary and the fact that they continued the match after that might be the biggest black mark in AEW's history. The Jericho one..I don't know. They had a clear idea for the finish, but I guess, apart from wanting to write off Jericho, they probably als thought it was the wrestling eqquivalent of Chekov's gun. If you have teased a big spot, then you kind of have to do it, otherwise fans might complain. With the benefit of hindsight, I would just not do the rooftop finish at all. There was a clear point where the match started falling off, and it was when it took Jericho about 3 hours to slooooooooowly, gingerly climb the cage. Sammy Guevera could have climbed the cage, done a 630 degree splash from the top of it, got up and climbed up again in the time it took Jericho to climb the cage once lol. Jericho's historica, famous weakness has been trying to do physical, athletic spots that he is not capable of. So of course he was going to try this lol

I would say my big disagreement in this topic is that I don't think this was much worse than normal similar stunts honestly. This was an average Shane McMahon/Jeff Hardy bump imo. There have been many better Shane McMahon/Jeff Hardy bumps. There have been as many, if not more, worse bumps. It definitely looked bad/funny. My only point of surprise is the extent to which it has been focused on and dissected. Most similar bumps in major wrestling looks similar to me imo, crash pads and all. I don't think it was embarrassingly fake, in that it wasn't much different from the usual kind of bumps of this nature. Of course, they should have never showed the close-up of Jericho falling. The money was in focusing on MJF's expressions. Letting fans imagine the Jericho fall would have been actually more effective. It's why I don't think it is fair to compare this to the Explosion dud. That one was a disaster. AEW had literally sold their most PPV buys ever on the premise that the ring was going to explode. Sure, there would be a match before it, but it was basically the setup to the explosion. And then the explosion never happened. This, though? Here the hook was the match itself. The stunt bump was supposed to be the unexpected cherry on top. It didn't work out, but it was not the main hook. Hell, they had a similar, much more dangerous bump an hour before when Darby went flying down the stairs. Actually, now that I think of it, the bigger issue is them booking two spots like this on the same night. Even if this would have gone perfectly, having two holy shit falls in one show would just dilute both