Migs

Watching Tony during the presser is incredible. You can tell he's trying to figure out if he has the guts to cut Punk off and decides that he doesn't and that he's going to have to endure it, but he has no poker face.

Why doesn't this board have a love button?

Yeah, I hear CM Punk's head is a scary place.

I think one of the fundamental WWE Brain things, which feeds into some of the things on this thread (re: casuals, what works on TV) is that the number one goal of a wrestling company is the broadest amount of success possible. Whatever has the most views is empirically good, and every decision of other companies (AEW most freqently, of course) is viewed through that lens. Which... is not really how art works? Nor is it even true from a business perspective when you're not a public company - the only real goal is for the owner to be making enough money to justify continuing ahead. If Tony Khan wants AEW to do some things that turn people off it fulfills his artistic vision - he can! And we can judge if its good or bad not based on the ratings but based on our subjective tastes. (Of course, Vince also turned a ton of people off with decisions that were focused on his preferences and not those about what drew, but that's been covered elsewhere.)

I think these two guys had better pandemic era matches at the Tokyo Dome. I'd still probably have this one in the top 5-10 for sure.

Yeah, I thought that match was a great cap to a tournament that mostly didn't get above good. Better G1 than last year but I'm not even sure this was as good as 2020 (as a whole tournament - final was definitely the best since at least 2019, maybe 2018).

Two options, I think - setting up a gimmick match, or the PPV match has Hangman for a 3 way.

Gilbert was incredibly mid-card in major promotions. ECW clearly gets better without him. He was an enjoyable worker who was meant to be an indy guy, same as Janela. Both sold a fair bit of tickets as cult darlings too and started hardcore movements in the northeast. They're the same guy. Eddie Gilbert 100% would have jumped off a building with Danzig as a stunt.

Kind of a weird show this morning, with a lot of flash pins and quick matches, presumably to conserve the semifinalists for tomorrow.

I happened to watch an early '98 Scott Hall vs Jim Neidhart match on a comp tape and Neidhart used an oriental spike, which is something I have literally zero recollection of. Feels like something that should have main evented WCW Saturday Night for six months.

The current Eddie Gilbert is Joey Janela. A creative indie darling type who's too small and too headstrong (and maybe too into some vices) to work in a major promotion, but has a cult following of people who think he's being underused.

Conrad's going to be really embarrassed when he finally gets around to doing a show that's not about WWE/WCW/ECW, learns about World Class and realizes what he's done.

Flair looked really gassed at the end - like, he was unable to lift his body up on the figure four. At all. Hoping that realization means it's actually the end, although something tells me this sold enough tickets that he may try again at some point.

Isn't '89 also when the Hogan train started to slow down a bit? I recall in reading old Observers that the idea may have been to push people to buy house show tix instead of watching on TV.

There's also the Bucks being some of the greatest trios workers of all-time, and so many of the great PWG matches being in that format (which schooled a huge chunk of the roster). These titles are absolutely a good idea, its a bunch of the other ones that are the problem.

I think there's something to be said for competition in the market. AEW honestly at this point has more than enough guys to build a show around. If they lose a few to WWE when contracts expire, I don't think it's a killer. (And the key guys I think are with them for the long haul - no way Punk is going back, for example.)

I think Triple H has slightly more personal interest in historical (especially non-WWE) content than Vince, but I don't see it being at the top of the priority list.

I used to do that with Tony ones until they turned into mostly Conrad making jokes. But it was an enjoyable way to watch wrestling for a bit.

I think those guys just want a watchable product to review because they have to watch it, and you'd think the changes coming would at least cut down on how intolerable the announcing and camera production are. Even if the booking is stagnant, the production changes should make the show easier to tolerate.

Johhny Gargano. Just sitting out there without a contract and could actually theoretically be used on the main roster now. Might turn out to be brilliant timing by him.

With this new format, the weekday shows appear to now very much be B shows. I mean, they always were, but needing to include the full block on each show generally kept the quality level a bit higher (especially before the field got depleted in '20 and especially '21).

If I'm reading Thurston right, it's the opposite - he was trying to use his own money to keep it off the books, but there are financial statement rules about what are company expenses, and these apparently should have counted. So it was Vince's cash, but was appropriately an expense of the company - so it was like Vince gave the company money to pay these settlements.

The G1 is really lighting the world on fire, eh? I will say, from this first batch of shows I've really liked Taichi-Ishii and Ospreay-Phantasmo. Some other solid stuff in there, too, although not much memorable.

So, are they not doing Bucks-FTR again? Holding it off? Just doing it for FTR's million other belts?

Just checked and Honor Club is still operational (they haven't charged me for it in a VERY long time). Possible it'll be there as well and they're just not pushing it.