MoS

So, how do AEW book Omega-Page when the Omega-Danielson program is still pending? It feels like it's too soon to take the title off Omega since he has so many opponents, but getting Hangman beaten again and again will take the edge off his win and drawing power imo, as has always happened in American wrestling. He has lost to Omega once, and then he and Dark Order lost clean a match for the title shot opportunity after they had started the angle of Page being the guy who cannot win the big one and doesn't believe he can win the big one. I mean really, it goes back even further than than, to the time he lost to Jericho 2 years ago at All Out. His entire arc since has been about someone who is insecure about being good enough to win the top belt. There are only so many times you can break hearts with the top guy losing, until the fans lose that connection and the eventual run doesn't mean much. Do you want the Hangman to be Tommy Dreamer, or do you want to him to be Cena/Rock/Austin? Cuz Dreamer might have been the heart and soul of ECW, but he sure as hell never was the ace. Not when ECW was actually doing well at least. At the same time, this Omega-Danielson program is so good and enticing, and I badly want it to continue. I don't want it to get blown off on TV before the PPV either; the rematch imo should be a 60-min title match with zero commercial breaks. There's also the possible Omega-Punk match, which has to be the last big match before Puk turns heel - and he absolutely is turning heels. You have so many hot programs left with Omega. It's funny cuz the first several months of his reign, he was just fucking around in interminably boring segments with Callis, pretending that hitting Jon Moxley with a microphone was amongst the top 10 worst things to happen in wrestling history, cutting lame, insufferable promos about the forbidden door and his cunning and how everyone was a part of a catastrophic plan, designed and directed by his stupid invisible hand, none of which ended up leading to nothing except the fucking Good Brothers (I know the NJPW guys started coming later to Dynamite, but by that time it had absolutely nothing to do with Omega and Callis, it was about Mox, really), taking about weird conspiracies, just being a turnoff. And now, he has a host of great opponents, he has been easily doing the best AEW work of his career for a while now, and Adam Cole keeps making the Good Brothers look like chumps, which has significantly improved the situation. There are multiple dream matches, opponents, angles and feuds for him to work with. He also said recently that he got some stem cell therapy - I think - and thus is feeling the best he has physically in a while. That explains the improvement in the quality of his recent matches too, apart from having better opponents and with better booking now. It now feels way too soon to take the title off him imo. AEW I feel have booked themselves in a weird place by bringing back Page right in the middle of Omega-Danielson. It will be genuinely hilarious though if yet another young babyface's coronation gets affected cuz somehow Danielson finds himself in the way lol

Well I guess this was expected, but I am with @El-P I wouldn't have had Hangman's return be the Joker in a multi-man ladder matches. Future Kings don't return as Jokers. His return should have been his own thing, and I actually wouldn't even have brought him back until Omega beat Danielson. It's also sort of killed the match, cuz now the crowd doesn't care about anyone other than Hangman and nothing in the match that is not Hangman winning is capturing their interest.

Why does Andrade come out in a dorky mask, like the world's worst tribute to Vader

Never been a fan of these special AEW ladder matches, they are a cool idea in theory, but they never seem to work out. Hopefully this bucks the trend.

What happened was even better. Yo, Coach Tony K, since you clearly read PWO, please can you book Darby v. MJF to be a Texas Death Match.

I love Deeb so much. There are very few wrestlers today who make an active effort to be booed when they work heel, and she is one of them.

So Serena can hold it up scornfully when she beats Shida ofc, like a true heel

I mean obviously they will not give away the match tonight out of nowhere? They obviously have to build it somewhat. They have invested heavily in Black and see a lot of potential in Martin, they want the match to be more than a random squash.

I woke up to Nick Comoroto beating up Darby. That was good. Saw the botched Luchasaurus spot. It was funny. Botches don't bother me unless it disrupts the flow of the match, and they used this botch really well. Nice to see Dante Martin getting some mic time. Black v. Martin will bang hard.

It's the 2-year anniversary of Dynamite!! This promotion looks and feels so different from 2 years ago, even with most of the featured wrestlers then still being featured now.

I don't think that article implied otherwise tbh. The headline was clickbait yeah, but it basically said that the EVPs basically lost their booking power last year and now TK runs creative. From all indications, TK took over all booking after that year-end Dark order angle was a giant flop, so probably beginning of last year. I don't know how much the EVPs and Jericho were flat-out booking their own angles then, that has never been fully explained, but yeah it has been Tony Khan's ship for a while. Meltz said the Elite and Jericho/Moxley and now Punk/Danielson tell him what their long-term wishes are for their booking, and he encourages that, but ultimately all decisions are his. That still doesn't explain why he looked shocked like he had seen a ghost in the backstage reaction to Cody's Rah Rah America promo. If he gave Cody the end-point of that promo, which was to set up a US v. UK feud with Ogogo, like what was he expecting.

I would also recommend the MSG cage match against Koloff from 15 December 1975. This is the culmination of basically 5 years of a blood feud, and it's pretty much all Bruno on offence, but I love the fire and the emotion that comes out. Bruno's connection with the WWWF crowds was unreal, it's amazing to see those unmic'd crowds with primitive production making so much noise, especially from a modern perspective with no stage or tron or music.

Coach Tony K is clearly a far better wrestling promoter than he is a futbol or NFL owner, so maybe he should get some actual EVPs to run the legit sports while he obsesses over the exact time Hangman Page should beat Kenny Omega

Yeah I think both Ambrose and Reigns were really over and either would have worked with the right booking. Again, even without postponing Bryan's return and fucking up in Philly, they could have still saved everything with a strong Mania title win and a strong title run. For starters, Bryan was about to get injured soon, so there would have been understanding, if not acceptance. I don't know how paradoxical this sounds, but I think Roman would have felt much much less pushed down the throat if he actually had a long run where he was beating everybody. Yes, a certain section of fans would have still said that about him, like they had with Cena, but for most of the less hardcore fans, he would have earned the top spot. It wouldn't have felt like someone who would randomly be shoehorned into main events cuz it was time to try and crown him yet again. Instead, they went with the one member of the Shield who was not over on that level, while Roman IIRC went to feuding with Bray Wyatt after old man Taker pretty much squashed him.

So are the NXT guys who are drafted going to start wrestling immediately or is this just where they land when they get eventually called up? Cuz otherwise it means Gable Steveson is skipping developmental, which is the most confidence they have shown in a rookie in forever. I don't know how that will work for him, but the Performance Centre certainly isn't making these rookies good wrestlers and Steveson is a generational wrestling talent, so might as well learn on the road on the main roster

Not getting a big title run and yet always being in main events wrestling for the world title was part of the reason he felt so pushed down the throat. Bad booking enhances the feeling of being pushed down the throat, it is not a substitute. He would always be in the main event, nothing the WWE did with anyone else would ever matter no matter how hard their initial push was because come WrestleMania season, you knew Roman was going to be in the main event. Yet, it would feel unearned even in kayfabe cuz he was not booked to win like the guy who should be in the main event every year. It was the worst possible combination of overpushing yet undercutting someone, and if they had just delayed Bryan's return by a month and then just pulled the trigger at WrestleMania and let him have a long reign, none of this would have happened. If he had been John Cena, he could have overcome bad booking, but there is only one John Cena. And even Cena got lucky cuz he was supposed to lose the title to HHH at WM 23, but Hunter got injured so they finally went all in on Cena that year, and that really was the making of him.

I clearly see glimpses of Shawn in Tanahashi. He has the same flashiness, charisma, flamboyant personality, and a lot of his old-man work is like late 00s Shawn in its psychology, although YMMV on who does it better.

I think the top end matches of the 90s were better, but the 80s had a lot more depth. Actually, that wouldn't be exactly correct, since they ran a ton more cards, but the bigger roster, more cards, and the influx of Crockett and Calgary talent means there are so many fun, good matches sprinkled throughout the cards in the 80s, on the home videos, in the arena footage from MSG, Spectrum, Boston and Maple Gardens, etc. What helps is that angles and wrestlers were hotter in the 80s than most of the 90s and therefore you have much hotter crowds, which makes for a better viewing experience than some of the awful crowds I have sat through while watching 90s WWF. In the 90s they still had their Calgary guys and kept getting good talent throughout, but they didn't have as many good workers as they did in the 80s, and thus they didn't have the volume of good matches that they did in the 80s. I would argue that didn't happen until 2000.

Probably the famous This is Your Life segments, yeah. Or The heel Hollywood Rock concerts. He also had a promo on the first WWE draft ever after he got drafted to Smackdown where he got the crowd to chant like ten different things at Vince. Yeah the more I think of it, Rock was probably the king of 20 minute promos, and given everything we know about HHH's feelings about Rock - and Rock is no longer shy about publicly discussing old wrestling politics, although he avoids naming names - I absolutely think one reason HHH has done so many interminably long promos in his career is cuz he wants to show he can do them better than Rock and his catchphrases. Remember how hard he tried to make "And I AM. THAT... DAAAMN...... GOOOOOODDDDD!!!!" a thing.

I don't doubt they both wanted to have the best match and steal the show. I think their idea and conceptualization of having the best match and stealing the show were wildly different though, and not just in terms of movesets. I don't doubt that a lot of the younger wrestlers on top today patterned their wrestling on Shawn's style - the Bucks are massive Shawn fans after all - but I think Bret's stuff has translated better to the younger generation of hardcore fans. That's just my guess from reading stuff on Twitter and sometimes on reddit though. Of course it doesn't help that a lot of the wrestlers who tried to follow in Shawn's footsteps did not have an ounce of his talent and pro wrestling IQ, and Shawn's style when done bad is a lot more awful than a boring/bad Bret style match.

McMemphis was great too. Vince was also, at the age of 70, able to get Roman universally cheered after his entire post-WM knee-cutting run in 2015, and get Roman on track to being the top beloved babyface ace until he feuded with..you know. And while I get the point about him being competitive against Hogan, I love that match as an amazing spectacle. I thought him gaining the upper hand on Hogan was okay cuz it was an accident in the uncontrolled chaos unfolding. His facial expression before and after he jumped off a ladder on Hogan was incredible. Vince the character should have been blown off mid-1999 after Austin won some stipulation match - I think against Taker - and basically not have come back at all for at least a couple of years. He couldn't resist though I guess. Wrestlemania in 2000 was so underwhelming for the hottest year in company history, and one reason was the naturally hot HHH v. Rock main event being diluted just because they wanted "A McMahon In Every Corner!!!"

That's a valid point. Also @Jimmy Redman if you wanted to see Bryan Danielson work a nasty style involving matwork and moves against a modern indy wrestler, this is a good 15 min match to check out.

Shane has always been my least favourite McMahon. It has something to do with one of my vivid memories of watching wrestling as a kid being him going toe to toe with The Rock in some post-match brawl on Raw and me just being turned off by this little geek not getting massacred by the WWF champ and top guy in wrestling in 5 seconds. I never really believed wrestling was real as a kid, cuz word on the street (that is to say, playgrounds, school buses, and wherever else kids would assemble) was that it was fake and I had enough sense to understand that a sledgehammer shot to the head would kill a man and not get a long 2 count, but I didn't fully understand what parts were real and what were fake, and Shane-o-Mac with his dumbass jerseys being in the ring with these amazing wrestlers and not having to be buried later that night was something that always stood out as clear fake bullshit to me. I have said this before, but if you take out the post WM 30 Authority Era Steph, then Steph was 10 times the heel and performer that Shane was. I guess there were some fans on the internet who liked him more cuz he took crazy bumps once every couple of months, and I know the wrestlers liked him a lot cuz he would party with them (but Dave reported when Shane first left that even they thought that Steph and Hunter would be better successors than Shane) but he has nearly always been a turnoff on my TV. And even with the Authority Era Steph, I had stopped watching weekly by the time Shane became a full time character in his comeback, but was she really more obnoxious than the Boy Wonder being in weekly programs with Daniel Bryan and Kevin Owens, and winning dumbass giant trophies? That said, I agree with Matt about his return popping the fans cuz it was a genuine surprise in a time when no such thing exists. And apparently his HitC match announcement with Taker really moved tickets for WrestleMania, believe it or not.

Voices of Wrestling on Twitter said it would be a good idea to capitalise on the goodwill Roman has earned from this run to do a double turn with Brock and finally fulfill Roman's potential as a face. That is something I have been thinking is a good idea since the second Lesnar showed up and Heyman was the centre of a wrestling love triangle. My idea came from Brock's own original face turn from 2002, when Heyman betrayed Brock to align himself with a bigger monster in Big Show (and then turned on Big Show in a month to align himself with Angle, but let's ignore that.) A double turn with Heyman aligning himself with Brock versus Roman seems a great way to accomplish this. Now, that turn arguably failed but that was because it was too soon to turn Brock. I don't think it's too soon to turn Roman. He has been heel and champ for a year now. He has done some great work, but I firmly believe that long term, the top person in your promotion should be a face. It was WWE's tried and tested philosophy for decades, a philosophy that has made it a billion dollar juggernaut. I think fans are now perfectly fine with cheering Roman unreservedly, and he deserves a run as the undisputed top face. The main reason I would have liked his heel run to continue would have been if he eventually put over Big E huge, but I don't think that is in WWE's plans anytime soon, so might as well do the double turn.

I am so happy Danielson isn't working from underneath like he did his entire WWE run. If I never see him work underdog ever again, I will be so happy