MoS

If they do this in a modern version of "Luger gets a one week run amongst the nWo's reign of terror" way, then I am all for it. I get the sense from TK's interviews though that he doesn't want to do transitional runs with his main title, so dunno if he will go for it.

Delaying Naito's win worked great for New Japan but didn't work great for Naito's personal drawing power himself. The difference was that Naito was quite older and Gedo decided to prioritize continuing to build his young ace's mythical landmark reign so he became a GOAT level wrestler in kayfabe, and so another young guy who was going to open the US market for them could get the rub of beating him instead. It was shrewd long-term booking, even if the Omega reign didn't exactly work out due to political reasons. The situation is different here. Punk and Danielson (and Omega himself now) are the older guys, Hangman is the one who needs to be put over strong and built to carry AEW forward. In that respect, I firmly believe he has to be the guy who takes the title from Omega. Anything else damages AEW long-term imo. The only question is when. I am a firm believer in not elongating the chase; there are so many examples across decades and promotions in the US of a babyface getting his momentum hurt cuz he chased too long, ultimately damaging both him and the promotion. With Hangman, I think they can wait a bit now because of the influx of so many hot new talents, but they have to come back to him, and they have to do within a reasonable period of time. In a way, they've booked themselves into a corner because having Punk and Danielson come in hot means they kind of need to have them challenge Omega for the title soon, to strike while the iron is hot. But that is also precisely the reason they can't take the belt off Omega. They don't need to be built for the title shot. They will give you excellent gates/ratings/buys if you slot them in the main event right now, and they will keep the iron hot, but they also can't be the ones carrying your main event scene going forward. It has to be Hangman. It's the one great storyline the Elite has done. It's the only time in Dynamite that the Elite quarters were consistently getting the highest ratings. It has to culminate with Hangman beating Omega for the title, relatively soon. I was very surprised to hear Dave consider giving Punk the world title. Hulk Hogan came back to WWF in 2002 to a tremendously emotional welcome, was doing great ratings, receiving massive pops, and the day he won the world title, all his drawing power basically ended, cuz it's the idea that is actually more appealing than the actual reality itself. Dave knows this, cuz he covered this in real time and was pointing out it would happen before it did. I am not saying Punk in 2021 is Hogan in 2002, but the parallels are there. Danielson I still understand giving the world title to, although I wouldn't. But not Punk.

WHOA Am I too into the bubble to think this might be a work? Like I am sure Joe is injured, but he was also injured when he won the title. I think this stripping is a part of completely tearing and burning down NXT to build it back from the ground.

Saw some real buzz for all three, although Allie had some mixed response - I really need to check out her work, she's been getting so much discussion recently - and I am excited to check out Dark when it airs. Apparently a lot of really good indy talent featured.

When Brock faces Reigns is a matter of how Rock's schedule is looking like, I am guessing. If he is free WrestleMania season, of course they go with Rock-Reigns. I am sure Rock would like to put over his cousin, but it will depend on his shooting schedule. Dunno what that is for next year, but he will probably want to make up for the pandemic disrupting his movies. Although he reportedly made $50 million for his last movie, so God knows he is not hurting for money.

Cage is billed at 6 feet which seems a big exaggeration. Looking at his pre-roided figure, it's striking how much smaller and more generic he was. Now of course the point of roids is to enhance your look, but this is Chris Masters in 2006 times ten, except Masters was bigger.

They've gained some decent star power in the last couple of years with the three African Kings becoming legit draws, along with Masvidal and Nate Diaz still being a draw. Their non-Conor PPV buys were quite poor just a few years back.

As Loss mentioned on Twitter, Hell in a Cell 2012, with the Punk Ryback match that did 200k buys, was considered a big success at that time. This show would have been a major success by 2012-13 WWE standards, forget about AEW standards.

I don't remember if she did a lot of actual promos during this, but the Jericho-Trish-Christian angle they ran in 2004 was great stuff and she was fantastic in both in-ring spots and backstage segments. I thought she clearly carried that feud; the guys had good matches, but she was the one elevated the feud to another level.

They clearly format Rampage to make the main event go first. Pillman-Caster was solid and Mox coming in was such a simple thing that made the fans happy. Wrestling is easy. It's not supposed to be rocket science. Rampage has been great every single time, it feels different from Dynamite but great in its own way. Need to cut on the commentators though, I swear there were like 8 of them tonight.

Yeah he has never done anything for me either.

Good solid women's match. Britt being so over and Statlander being so strong help. I really love this pre-match split screen with Henry they do for the main event

Spears is probably a stepping stone for an MJF-Darby feud I think. Same with MJF and Pillman Jr. Build the heat back for your two stars with a quick win after a loss, and then have them feud with each other

Good match but a lame finish. Quite weak tbh. This post-match angle is..interesting. Face turn to bring in Flair?

The Askren PPV numbers have been massively inflated as per Meltz, for what it's worth. UFC's buys are listed here - https://www.tapology.com/search/mma-event-figures/ppv-pay-per-view-buys-buyrate It is ordered per descending buys and not in chronological order, which is unfortunate. The UFC also no longer shares the PPV numbers of events that do real bad, so there are some gaps there.

Trish was also a great promo and used to do excellent character work, and would get over angles really effectively. I struggle to think of a single thing Nattie does that isn't painfully average.

Tony Khan has officially said it cracked 200k buys, although he hasn't given a concrete number yet. I am guessing he is waiting for the numbers of the last-minute cable buys and replays to come in.

Imagine if one day, Rock buys the promotion from Vince and lets Hunter's contact expire due to a 'clerical error'

It would be foolish to delay Hangman's coronation for too long, so I hope the long-term story involves Kenny losing the title to Hangman and spiralling and hitting rock bottom, and Hangman doing his old friend a favour and helping him get back on track by reuniting him with what all the gold he had collected was a mere, poor, inadequate substitute of: his golden lover

He is a guy with a lot of big moves but with limited structure or sense of transition. The first time you see someone of his size and build do those moves, you're blown away, but it quickly gets old. It explains why he has actually been less over than his push. I mean he was the first Team Taz member and one of the very few in AEW with a pinfall win over Hangman. Yet somehow he is the least over Team Taz guy, behind the son who just wears really tight-fitting clothes and mugs for the camera.

Dude has been on the Road Warrior diet for years now. I was thinking that it wouldn't be a bad idea for him to be the first high-profile jump from AEW to WWE, given Vince will clearly like his body, but there's no way his body survives the WWE Wellness Policy, no matter how much of a joke their testing might be.

He was not even the best body guy in Team Taz

They'll also get a better lead-in from Big Bang Theory reruns than some of the shit movies that come on TNT before Dynamite starts

Women's matches have generally done well in the quarters for a while though from what I remember. I do get that it's a stacked roster and there are only so many spots. I mean there are some people on Twitter right now complaining that Brian Cage isn't getting featured enough, when I would argue he is being featured more than enough for someone who was not even the best body guy in his previous stable.

While this is true, I don't see why that needs to put an asterisk on modern PPVs' success using streaming platforms to buy PPVs. Sure, this means there are more options to purchase PPVs now, but it's not as if the ones who wanted to buy one 10 years ago couldn't find a way to order one. I am sure there were such cases and there were some PPVs which were affected when WWE would occasionally have a dispute with cable companies. But by and large I don't think that number was statistically significant. The question is whether those who purchase on a streaming platform today would have bought it on cable 10 years ago and imo for a show like this, they would have.