NotJayTabb

The Danielson stuff I'm really excited about is when he'll be given free reign to go on Dynamite or even Dark, and work surprisingly good matches with people like Sonny Kiss, Alex Reynolds or Billy Gunn's kids. Feels like the kind of thing he'll want to do

The ending of Swole/Katch was especially yikes, you could see they tried to edit around it

Looking back over this thread, and there wasn't a lot of love for Randy Orton for GWE16, a guy who I ended up putting somewhere in the mid-50s. I think he might rank even higher for me now, he's just a remarkably consistent professional wrestler, who is also capable of some real highs. Things like his 2011, where he had a great series with Christian before selflessly getting dominated by Hall of Pain Mark Henry to kick off Henry's title run. Like 2013, where he had a great series of matches with Daniel Bryan where he really amped up his vicious side and was one of Bryan's best opponents during his WWE career. Even a few years back, when he was booked in a HIAC match with Jeff Hardy that no-one was really excited about, but ended up being really gnarly and having that memorable moment when he contorted Jeff's extended earlobes with a screwdriver. He's not got many lows in ring (bar any time he feuded with Bray Wyatt, but the list of talented people dragged down to Wyatt's level is huge), and he's still putting in good work to this day - the Lashley match the other week was very good.

Very much looking forward to this, it's as good a line-up of TV wrestling as I've seen in a long time. Not going to watch it live - there's very few wrestling shows that can convince me to stay up until the early hours on a work night - but I'm at least going to try and go into the show spoiler free tomorrow. Very curious about the FTR/Sting match and how it will be worked, and the women's title and MJF matches should both be good. The main event feels like it could join the Fiend strap match in being a real gold star in Danielson's GOAT GWE candidacy for me. If he gets a good match out of a wrestler who's in-ring quirks render him near unwatchable to me, then he's going to be hard to budge as the greatest.

In fairness, he'd not be doing much more in AEW at the moment following his COVID/heart scare issues. In the long run, yeah he'd probably fare better, but I'm guessing his current role is all about getting him back in ring shape, trying out a few ideas and getting him ready for a proper return.

I'm guessing this is a reference to Bearcat Wright, who was one of the first African-American heavyweight champions. It's not a bad sounding nickname, so to me it depends who chose it for Keith Lee. If Lee chose it himself, then that's pretty cool. If it's just Vince and Pritchard going "here's a reference to another black wrestler", then not so much.

Hey, don't blame Duke Hudson on us, he's Australian

Admittedly I've not seen her wrestle since dropping the "I'm a cat" gimmick, but she's not particularly good. Her vs Swole feels very skippable

Anthony Henry and Santana Garrett also popped up. Henry faced Kingston, which sounds tremendous

Stevenson feels like a prefect fit for Diamond Mine

For a show that started and ended with a 33yr veteran in the ring, I thought the opener absolutely smoked the main event. Dustin at 52 looked better and moved better than Moxley in the main event, and I loved the storytelling of Black playing mind games by taunting Dustin with Cody's boot. They've got something with Black, I really hope they go all in with him and let him beat Cody in the rematch. Never mind Cole looking small compared to the othe Elite members, when he went face to face with Schiavone, I thought "You know, I reckon Tony could take this guy"

Cutler is perfect as the modern day Vincent, the lackey who gets left in the ring to take babyface offence after the heels bail

There was a really nice tweet from Mustafa Ali about HHH, saying that when he'd relocated to Orlando in the 205 Live days, he'd asked for a week off to visit his pregnant wife in Chicago. HHH told him not to visit, but to move back so he could be there to be a father. That, coupled with people like Tegan Nox referring to him as "boss man" in the tweets, suggests that for all his faults he's almost certainly a better man-manager than Vince, the guys he's hired seem pretty loyal to him.

People refer to QT Marshall as Cody's "Brother Bruti", but at least Marshall contributes by training guys. Cutler and Nakazawa aren't pushed acts at least, but the Good Brothers are the most egregiously pushed act on a ratio of wins/screentime vs talent/overness.

No, Goldberg injured himself in the Russo era, and his comeback match was against Tank Abbott on Nitro . Road Wild 99 had 3 big matches (Sting/Sid, Goldberg/Steiner and Hogan/Nash retirement match), plus Dennis Rodman wrestling, so it was a pretty big name card. Hogan had just returned to the yellow and red too.

I know the Elite appropriating some of the NWO schtick is already cannon (all the "Too Sweet" stuff etc), but the adding of new members is giving off very NWO vibes. Cutler is a pretty decent Vincent, but Gallows & Anderson make a very poor Stevie Ray and Brian Adams. Adam Cole as Horace is probably on par.

All that says to me is that in 2016 Omega was too high and Kevin was too low ;-)

I've watched it three times already. Love the way they tag and I love that one brother yelling "I love this" after decimating a guy. So much fun

They just hired the guy who had a good strap match against one of the worst wrestlers on the planet last year, so I can think of at least one

When you think that All In featured a 20 minute Joey Janela match, and now he doesn't even get a sniff on Dynamite, you can see how much the roster has evolved.

Fully believe that Adam Cole was a secret agent sent to undermine NXT by convincing HHH and HBK to let him work 45 minute main events, helping to render NXT unwatchable. The fact AEW had their biggest ever PPV without Cody is obviously hilarious too.

Very much looking forward to the Io watch party, she feels like someone who's more likely to make my list than not. Good NXT run, really like what I've seen of her in Stardom and there's bonus points for having one of the best matches I've ever seen live (against Kay Lee Ray in a small pub in London). As regards watching more, I was thinking of re-subbing to Stardom World and was wondering what it's like in terms of archive stuff? I used it in 2016-17, and it was mainly new shows, but with a few older bits on there. I'm interested in catching up, but I'd initially be using for old favourites like Io, Hojo and Act.

Is Cesaro still dating Sara Del Ray? I can see Cesaro rolling into a trainer role in the next 5 years, considering he's pushing 40 already.

Got to respect Tony Khan's commitment to the bit by having a stable called The Elite getting watered down by adding mediocre wrestlers. Glad Danielson debuted. I signed up for the AEW Plus gimmick last month, at that was like 90% because of the rumours of him signing (the other 10% is basically Kingston and Thunder Rosa)

Boogs had that one week where he was on NXT, and everybody loved him, only for him never to turn up again. Which might honestly have been the best thing for him