Gramsci

Excellent post. I'll have to think about it, but right now I have Santito, Casas, and Satánico as #1 candidates. Also, I want to explore how far I can go with Sangre Chicana with all the footage we have of him. Last week I watched his retirement match against Satánico, and it's a beautiful work of art. El Dandy is in contention for the Top 10; if you look at his versatility, his input in all the matches we have of him, and his catalog of good-to-great matches, he's just as good as anyone else. I also want to do a deep dive of Atlantis. I love him, but I want to explore some of the criticisms I've read about him because I just don't see them. I wouldn't say he's among the 10 or 20 best wrestlers, but he's at least in the second tier for me.

Yes, I don't feel like these last ten years have served them as well as other candidates. Between 2010 and 2015, they were both at the peak of their powers, and I think they benefited from that in the 2016 voting. Their tag team runs with Steen and Hero, respectively, and their individual careers, especially in PWG and later WWE/NXT, boosted their cases. I feel like they're two wrestlers with tremendous potential, some of my all-time favorites, who wasted their best years in WWE. And yes, there's an argument that they both made the most of the minimum in that environment, and that Zayn explored other unknown avenues with his heel turn, but I don't know if "doing the best they can within the crap they're given in WWE" is something that interests me too much compared to other candidates who were able to tap into their full potential. Claudio's run in AEW has been a bit disappointing for me, I was expecting something more like his 2012-2014 version in WWE and not so much "Superman Cesaro" from 2016-2017.

I think Darby walks out of All In as World champion.

I think Danielson should beat Moxley in Tacoma reversing an inside cradle and then book an I Quit match at Full Gear or World's End. Darby can win the World title from Moxley at Revolution or Dynasty. That would be a satisfactory outcome for me.

I'm glad Danielson won, Hangman's character is much more interesting if he loses from time to time. That ending with Mariah May and Toni Storm is some of the best stuff they've ever done, incredible.

Let me also add that Omega, Hangman and The Young Bucks debuting at Survivor Series would have been a much harder blow for AEW and the company's identity.

It is a work, he has said more than once that he will never retire and plans to wrestle until he’s 70 years old and that he doesn’t want to have a retirement match. Also, how much time Tony will have to add to his contract after he has missed all that time because of injuries? I think he plans to be more of a part time wrestler, which is basically what he is now. Maybe he’ll do 15 or 20 matches a year, who knows, but he will not retire and I’m sure Tony wants to keep him in AEW in some capacity. It’s funny how wrestlers talk about wanting to be home more often, maybe it is because they have never had a real job in their life, but they work like 1 day a week (+ 1 or 2 if you count travelling), they can spend more time with their children than anyone who has a regular office job.

I think Tony Khan also said at the Forbidden Door media scrum that he’s planning on playing Final Countdown at least one more time, probably at Wembley?

Well, that and that it is the most important show in the company's history, they have to put the best possible card. I would even find the 6 man disappointing because that would mean that Omega and Punk don't have individual matches on the show. It must be a better card than any they have done in the PPVs since the start of AEW.

I think we have already seen Bryan wrestle against average or "just good" wrestlers for too many years, the exciting part of him not being in the WWE anymore is that he gets to wrestle the Okadas of the world. I think people are overreacting with the idea that Bryan only wants to wrestle and help younger talent. For every interview where he says that, there are five more where he says that what he likes the most is to wrestle in apuestas and world title matches and flirts with potential bouts with Okada, Shibata, Omega, Ospreay, CM Punk...

I agree. Considering that the main reason Bryan went to AEW is to be able to wrestle in Japan, it was already a disappointment that they scheduled the show in Seattle on the same day as WK. But that's not the most important thing right now. The thing is, it's AEW's first show in Seattle and Bryan's first time going to his hometown in over 3 years, and his match is against Tony Nese, a guy who hasn't win a match on TV. It would be a great match for Rampage or even another Dynamite, but it's disappointing for this one. It's a match we could have seen in 2019 on SmackDown, and that's not what AEW is supposed to be. I'm sure it will be a good match but it's disappointing, and right now it must be like the third most important match on the show (Jericho vs. Starks and Darby vs. Joe are definitely more important). It is one more episode of how wasted Bryan has been used as a top star in AEW.

The dog collar match is so good, it has exceeded my expectations, I prefer it over the other two matches they've had this year, and it's one of the main candidates for this year's MOTY, along with Anarchy in the Arena, Villano vs. Penta, Mox vs. Punk and Page vs. Dragon. I think the FTR vs. Briscoes trilogy is much better than Flair vs. Steamboat, I've rewatched their matches recently for the GME project and none of them would make my Top 200, but maybe it's just me being weird or being tired of their matchup, I prefer Flair with Ricky Morton and Terry Funk.

Great show! But I also liked the one from last week and It drew one of the worst ratings in recent memory. I doubt they are announcing a tag team match 1 month in advance if they don't have someone BIG booked for it. I don't know if Sasha is still under contract with WWE, but I remember reading somewhere that she'll start taking wrestling bookings in January, so I don't see it as impossible. It reminds me of when people were saying that Bryan would be staying in WWE because of Total Bellas or something similar.

I think we are arguing two different things, what Bryan Danielson thinks about his booking doesn't matter at all if we are trying to discuss how he's been booked. The interesting thing for me is if Bryan's booking has been good or bad, not if he's happy or not with the way he's been booked. I don't care at all if he wants this or that, I pay to watch AEW every week and as a Bryan fan that I've been for more than 15 years I can say that he is in one of the most uninteresting stages of his career, which is frustrating cause he was having one of the best runs ever from September to January (or January’21 to January’22 if we count those months in WWE). He is not as over as he should be with the crowd, and the ratings in his segments hasn’t been as good as they were in 2021, when he was undefeated and one of the main focuses of the product. Those are good metrics to extrapolate that he hasn't been booked like he should be. He also looks like 5 years older; I don’t know what happened to him. We must also consider that Bryan is a troll. Yeah, in this interview he says that he wants to wrestle with younger wrestlers and all that, but in another interview two months ago he said that what he likes the most is being in World title matches, and when he has been asked about matches and stuff he wants to do, he always names other wrestlers like Okada, Tanahashi, Omega, Shibata, FTR, Bucks, CM Punk + G1 + Apuestas match… So, he is obviously interested in the BIG stuff too. I don’t think some of us are asking for him to be the world champ (although, TK would be stupid not to attach Bryan’s name to the world title lineage), but to have a similar run like he had at the start of his AEW career, when he was booked as a killer and every match was like a gift, like the Bryan vs. Dax match that we are getting next Wednesday feels like a gift. All things considered, I don’t think his booking is that bad, he has been booked better than he was in the WWE, and there’s a lot of good things to enjoy in his 2022, and I’m sure that 10 years from now, when we’ll do some of this projects we like to do, there will be a large catalogue of awesome matches for AEW in 2022, with Danielson being part of a lot of them.

As much as I like Garcia and Yuta, they should stick around ROH for a while (if they get a TV show) and build their reputation. People like Punk, Joe or Bryan spent years in the indies and around the world having classic matches that everyone was talking about, and there was a real hype when they appeared on national television in a big company.