funkdoc

Having lived through that time it’s easy - he got really bad with the GREATEST IN THE HISTORY OF OUR SPORT stuff, the fake laughing, having to sell segments he obviously didn’t believe in, etc. Those last few years of WCW were rough and most of those viewers weren’t familiar with his previous work at all. 100% with you though

Yep, the way people often described him in the draft was "Michael Jordan but with the body of an NFL linebacker" so that tracks.

Tessa also tried to hold the Impact title hostage IIRC, that's the sort of thing that (for better or worse) matters more to promoters than racism. Remember that Ivelisse is one of the very few people to get fired from AEW, because she wouldn't job to Thunder Rosa. What i find funny is her dad has always gotten the same sort of treatment - was blackballed from the business and has everyone on podcasts imply he was a special kind of asshole without fully saying why. On a different topic, seeing Jade Cargill & how excited people are for her as a prospect has given me a couple thoughts... 1. College basketball might be a highly underexplored talent pool for wrestling. Traditionally the biz has looked to football, of course, but the NFL itself has recruited from college hoops for years now. Think of Antonio Gates - he got into the league after having never played college football at all (virtually unheard of at the time), and had a Hall of Fame career. The kind of size & athleticism that basketball demands is a very good fit for the direction wrestling's headed in these days, so i think there's potential here. 2. Chyna's reputation & historical stature will only grow over the years, as we're seeing more and more women break into the business after being inspired by her. i bring this up because Jade herself has mentioned Chyna as an influence. It's been really neat to see after so many years of her being considered a total joke among the fanbase. Also, as a bit of an aside, another smaller part of it might be younger generations of women being less judgmental toward porn/sex work - millennials & zoomers often know at least one friend with an OnlyFans if they don't have one themselves, so One Night in Chyna is nothing.

Bix speculated that, more so than Tessa, it's his public friendship with Redacted Penisman that keeps him from getting pushed more. That would make sense to me considering how important that kind of stuff is to the core AEW fanbase - he's a PR nightmare waiting to happen if he gets a belt. If you look at his recent W-L record AEW is basically using him as the Monster Job Guy a la Kane, and i'm OK with that. Give me Powerhouse Hobbs any day!

Still feuding with Alabama Doink for all i know. OK, i'm joking but their matches span across a whole decade - including one in the GOLDEN CORRAL PARKING LOT

Ratings came in and Dynamite got over 1.3m, 2nd highest ever. And for the first time, straight-up beat Raw in the 18-49 crowd!

The problem there is Dustin is very much a part-timer these days. He runs his own wrestling school in Austin and that's his real value to AEW. He still rules whenever he does get the opportunity though!

Swole has definitely gotten better - you might be pleasantly surprised. =) Another one who's been putting in the work lately is Abadon, she's getting in way better shape and everything.

Started watching those recently myself and the Worldwide/Saturday Night influence definitely shows sometimes. They have self-contained storylines on there, such as the Big Swole-Diamante feud which they just blew off with a nice 2/3 falls match. Would also highly recommend looking up Joey Janela vs. Lee Moriarty - Moriarty's performance there was likely the main reason he just got hired.

We'd have to assume those numbers include BR & fiteTV buys, no? That would be the obvious place for the truthers to nitpick, to be fair.

i think part of it is he was never close to a top guy when he was at his worst, the way guys like Piper & Savage were. In my experience most people only care about the low points of your wrestling career if you were heavily pushed then.

Talking to AEW fans every day, i def disagree. i think some people here aren't realizing that he's meant to be a stand-in not just for Cornette, but for Vince as well (cf. the 5'9 comment last night). And let me tell you, perhaps *the* thing that unites their core audience the most is distaste for the Vincels. Also i'm giving them the benefit of the doubt re: payoff because the timing would be right for them to run Archer/Suzuki vs. Lambert's bois at Arthur Ashe...

BTW, hearing through friends of friends on Discord that Andrade vs. PAC lived up to the hype and then some - this feels like a critical spot for Andrade so i'm excited. Also Lee Moriarty vs. Daniel Garcia for next week's Elevation - Moriarty impressed a lot of folks with his most recent match against Janela in particular, and they're likely going to air the announcement of him officially signing there.

We had a person watching with us tonight who isn't a regular viewer and was weirded out by how they didn't spend time recapping All Out the way WWE does with their PPVs. Personally i like this - this episode felt like the start of a new season, so to speak, moving on from the old programs. The greater amount of time on promos compared to matches speaks to that.

Some friends of mine were looking it up and it looks like Suzuki might be in the NY area around the time of the Ashe stadium show...i have a feeling this won't be his last time on AEW

i thought it was great because they made that kind of material work after having just recently gone through the whole Max Caster thing - would be very easy to just shy away from anything nearly that edgelord as a rule. Also, most importantly, it made Brian Jr. look like a top babyface

What i've heard from others is Final Countdown runs you $250k. It's one of the all-time meme songs and has a billion views on Youtube so i get it. EDIT: Also Ruby Soho was literally given to her for free because the Rancid singer is a huge wrestling geek (appeared on Phil Schneider's podcast and hosts one of his own)

Wow. Just...wow. Katie Vick & HHH killed my love for wrestling for a long time, and Bryan & the Shield brought it back until WWE botched them...but this year has been a revelation for me. This show hit basically all the right notes booking-wise, nothing was terrible in-ring (even Wight-QT was short and let Paul work like a giant again), and i really might compare it to WMX-7. To add to what others have said, a few notes: - i have friends who were there, and if you heard the "WE WANT TESSA" chant on the PPV it was just a few dudes who got shouted the fuck down by the rest lol. AEW's fanbase cares a lot more about...those kinds of issues, to the point i'm not even sure they'd fully welcome Sasha Banks. - To those who found the quick eliminations of the joshi wrestlers in the battle royal weird, apparently Riho's was an accident. Also i expected Jade to rack up eliminations, but not Nyla as well - really dug that since she's looked more like a weak cheating heel as of late. - That Lucha Bros entrance, on top of being awesome in general, was a great way to establish the tag titles as important. That matters when you have a bunch of first-time viewers coming from WWE. - On a related note, some of this stuff absolutely wouldn't have worked without the live crowd IMO. In particular i'm thinking of Minoru Suzuki - probably half or more of the PPV watchers had never even heard of him, but the folks in Chicago sure did and they fucking ERUPTED. Between that and him looking great beating down Moxley, he instantly came across as a big deal to those first-timers. Would also say this applies to Cole & Ruby to a lesser extent. Exciting times we live in, indeed...honestly, with everybody they've picked up lately, Impact can have Bray.

The point is they've become some of the most over guys in the promotion even though they don't fit the mold you describe either. Punk will be fine in that regard. If you'd argue that Punk's matches in AEW aren't likely to add to his GWE case, i could see that, sure. But i feel like Punk is more of a candidate for the "overall experience" kind of voter than the "matches" voter anyway.

counterpoint: Moxley & Kingston

Yep, pretty much this. i'd just add that with a lot of fans nowadays the influence isn't from Crockett so much as HHH & Brock.

Nobody in our group thinks he should either - the prevailing mood is hoping the Lucha Bros win here then Omega drops it at Full Gear. Also "largely bond over hating WWE shit" does sum us up pretty well, haha - good call there sek!

Man, tonight set off a ton of discourse in our watch party Discord (not the GWE one, something completely separate from PWO) because people hated the ending - felt like the beatdown went on too long and they're just sick of the Elite cheating all the time and winning all the time. A lot of this crowd are the sort who dropped wrestling from their schedule in the past because of heel dominance and how samey the cheating always feels - i feel like people like us who are more steeped in wrestling booker mentality maybe don't notice that as much. i'm optimistic AEW has their plan set for this, but if Hangman doesn't get the belt at Full Gear...we might just become a puro watch party Discord EDIT: i agree with the point that if they're going to use run-ins and ref distractions this much, they should be more willing to have countout/DQ finishes...but most fans nowadays hate those on principle. Like in our Discord group above the majority opinion is "there should never be a countout or DQ on a PPV" - keep in mind this is referring to AEW where the PPVs are a lot more spread out & you're less likely to get the same match on 2 PPVs in a row.

Decades of WWE brain poisoning are why so many people thought AEW would bring in Punk then have MJF beat him down or something. We've been so heavily conditioned to expect wrestling not to take the most obvious route even when it's what the entire fanbase wants.

What a hell of a night, man... Besides the obvious, i think going the quasi-Goldberg route with Jade is 100% the right move. i'd actually say she's in a rather similar spot to him in terms of size + athleticism + charisma + being green, so go with what's proven to work imo The only real downer was Mark Henry not exactly being ready for prime time, but i'm willing to give him time