MoS

If we are quoting one quarter number to prove our point, this week saw mediocre growth for their angle - compared to usual growth in the last quarter - and an actual decline in 18-49

"Being in the midcard is great cuz main event booking is shit" is a pretty weak defence

IIRC Sasha liked a couple of anti-vaxx Insta posts but it seemed pretty mild compared to a LOT of her peers across promotions including AEW, Impact, etc. Not sure if she is vaccinated or not but there was never any news or whispers of her being difficult backstage - apart from years ago when Ryan Satin acted like a bitch and gossiped about Sasha and Bayley throwing a "backstage tantrum" over losing their tag titles

I will defend Ronda here, she drew well against Sara McMann, Alexis Davis and Bethe Correia despite headlining absolutely terrible cards (seriously, look at some the fights they booked on those cards) with no appeal other than "Watch this Amazon Goddess-Queen beat her opponent in seconds!"

Speaking of Ronda - As someone who doesn't watch WWE TV, is this some kind of elaborate work/angle?

The thing with Austin also is that he did face the repercussions of the law. You can argue that he got away too easily, but he was arrested, he was sentenced, he carried out his sentrnce, and by all accounts he has not repeated that behaviour. A lot of people - not sure about Moose's case but this is true in general - want redemption without actually putting in any work, in which case it is not redemption as much as denial. I don't know whether Moose faced the law or not, but most wrestlers accused of shit like this do not.

Given they had a match and shot zero angle with BPJ about this, Imma call bullshit on this

You are not helping Dark Order's impression with good bubba KawadaSmile by comparing one of them to "the Ten Guy" hahaha

Dr. Baker is awesome, fuck the h8ers

Dark Order are one of the most over stables in AEW, beating them will only heat Black up. Certainly ten times better than feuding with BPJ (sorry Jerome, there I go again...)

Black should have 1000% challenged for the world title by now.

https://handwerkreviews.wordpress.com/2022/03/25/triple-h-vs-roman-reigns-wwe-wrestlemania-32-4-3-2016/ I have been following this blog for a long time and the timing of this review is so unfortunate

Ask and ye shall receive -

Man your standards for AEW booking certainly are extremely high. They are literally different teams in the Dark Order. 5 and 10 are the lowest in the pecking order in the various Dark Order teams. I caught the main event and they have turned Keith Lee v. Team Taz into a pretty hot feud, almost entirely due to the charisma and personality of all men involved. Looking forward to Powerhouse v. Lee and I think the goal eventually is Starks v. Lee.

I mean Austin outsold them all. Pretty sure Rock did too. 1998 DX's place has really been mythologised by subsequent hagiographies. They were a really cool midcard act in an era when midcard acts were given the space to shine, but they were still midcard acts.

His greatest contribution to wrestling is being the subject of this epic PWO thread -

Remember when he shoehorned himself into having a feud with Brock, had the worst Brock match in history up to that point, and post-match tried to sell his arm injury as possibly career-ending and was crying as he looked out at all the fans....who were changting "nananana eh he, GOODBYE!!!" at him? So many of these wonderful stories for the King of the Kings.

I enjoy being a hater, what can I say. Plus this angle has been going on for quite a while. I know you said you like this elongation, but I think AEW sometimes teases and stretches angles a bit more than necessary.

Might be awkward for you, but I am sure you can deal with it. He is not my friend, I don't care about his personal struggles. He is probably the mosy overpushed talent on the AEW roster given his talent, and he jumped the shark when they had him feud with Malakai Black and waste so much of Black's time on a jobber. I do like Griff Garrison though, think he has potential.

Props to Julia Hart for staying around BPJ for an extended period of time, listening to his promos, and not losing control and slapping the fuck out of him

No argument from me on the Sammy-Tay and Vickie-Rosa stuff, those two segments stuck out like two sore thumbs. As for the Jericho Appreciation Society, I would argue that is very self-aware and tongue in cheek and is probably going to end with the wrestlers beating the crap out of the sports-entertainers who call themselves stupid. I would call their segments a parody of sports entertainment more than anything, although with Jericho, it is very easy to switch between parody and the real thing being pathetic.

Wrestlers cutting promos and doing entertaining out-of-ring stuff is not automatically sports entertainment. Vince did not invent entertaining wrestling. Would you call Memphis studio segments or JCP Jimmy Valiant feuds sports entertainment? Because I personally associate that term with 20 min back and forth promos where no one interrupts another person, they take turns delivering stilted dialogues, etc. I guess that is not entirely fair because the Attitude Era certainly had sports-entertainment stuff, but I would say that Austin would have certainly hated his stuff being called sports-entertaining?

Yeah I call bullshit on this. The first hour was far far from sports entertainment, it was proper high quality pro wrestling.

You all can hate on Jericho's latest faction if you wish, but it is really putting a spotlight on Danny Garcia and letting him showcase his charisma and personality, and it's undoubtedly worth it for that reason alone. TK clearly sees something in him, as he should.

So I know I said that I was actually surprised by how above-average Cole-Lethal was, given how mid both of them are, but having watched the first hour, which was some of the best wrestling TV that's been put on so far this year, I retract my opinion. Watching the match live must have veen a flat experience. Also, Sting and Darby HAVE to get a title shot soon, don't they? They were arguably the US tag team of the year for 2021, and 2022 if anything has been better for them.