Gramsci

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.

Yes, injuries are a big factor, but some of the booking has been atrocious. BCC and JAS have been feuding since May, and it seems like it will never end (and we could say it started 11 months ago if we count Eddie&PnP vs Jericho as the starting point).

I’m not really interested on who is a bigger draw between Punk and Danielson, nowadays it’s probably Punk but it’s a tough comparison on every metric because they haven’t been booked the same way. CM Punk was out of the business for 7 years, he sells good looking merchandise (by wrestling standards) while Bryan is not interested in selling t-shirts and his designs are not good. Punk has had hot feuds in every PPV, while Bryan has only faced ex-WWE wrestlers like Miro, Mox and Jericho (which is really disappointing if you think about it), while Punk has wrestled Darby Allin, Eddie Kingston, MJF in probably the best feud in AEW history, and has wrestled for the world title on a PPV. There's also the novelty factor in all of that. Danielson has lost all the momentum, he came to AEW like a star, he looked better than he has ever looked before, and had the best run I’ve ever seen between September and December. The feud between Danielson and The Elite was the real draw in September (As a curious note, Danielson vs. Bullet Club was the feud planned in NJPW around 2018 if WWE hadn’t cleared Bryan), one of its segments was the most watched in AEW Dynamite history with 1.5M viewers, but instead of keeping that feud going, after Grand Slam he was wrestling Rocky Romero, Anthony Bowens and Bobby Fish, which was great for me, but from a business standpoint I guess it was not. After this year’s Grand Slam ratings, Meltzer noticed the importance of last year’s Danielson vs. Omega, and I think they should have continued that feud. I know that they had the Hangman situation, and Omega was fucked up, but I don’t know, they could have done something like Danielson and Punk vs The Young Bucks, and both vs Adam Cole. Instead, Punk was wrestling Hobbs, Sydal and Danny Garcia, and Danielson was having his first PPV match against Miro (I guess the plan was Danielson vs Mox, but still…). I don’t care if Danielson is so stupid that he doesn’t know when he can or can’t lose a match, he is the guy that came back from a tragic retirement, after being the most over babyface of the last 15 years, and had to turn heel 5 months later, and maybe it wasn’t just WWE’s fault, because his feud with The Miz had his fingerprints all over it. I think Tony has a problem with being too conservative sometimes, while at the same time he throws big matches on paper with zero build. How many big Cody Rhodes and CM Punk matches have we missed?

There can't be no comparison because Bryan hasn't been booked as the Ace of the company and he is not selling any merchandise, but the most watched segment in AEW Dynamite history is with him and Omega, they peaked at 1.5 million. And they beat Raw for two straight weeks when he debuted IIRC.

Danielson has said multiple times that his brain is healthier than a normal person's. I don't know if this is true or not, maybe he is lying to us, but my feeling has always been that he feels ok and it's been proved that WWE forced him to retire in 2016 when he could have continued wrestling. He also said that this is his last contract as a full-time wrestler and then he will sign a part-time contract, which means he will wrestle 20 or 30 matches a year. He has no plans to retire and he wants to wrestle until he is 70 years old. It's funny how Punk sees himself, like this veteran that young wrestlers have to take advice from, when they built the biggest 2n wrestling company in the US since WCW while he embarrassed himself in the UFC. I love Punk, he's always been one of my favorite wrestlers, but it's delusional for him to come to AEW and tell Page, The Bucks and whoever to slow down and be "smarter" in the ring (whatever that that means) when they have created all of this. He seems like a boomer, an asshole and an egomaniac.

Claudio's best match is against Generico, either at BOLA 2011 or at Kurt Rusellreunion the same year. They were made to wrestle each other.

I hope Alvarez is wrong because I refuse to believe that they are stupid enough to make Bryan come out a few days before the PPV to say that he is not going to participate, like: "Hey, I know I'm not booked for Forbidden Door But you know what? I had a match booked with Zack Sabre but it's not gonna happen because I had a concussion. But anyway, buy the PPV!". It's bad promotion and a stupid decision. If he's not ready to wrestle, just put out a statement on social media saying he's injured.

What Paul London says is quite significant. How can people as stupid as Vince be rich? https://www.postwrestling.com/2022/05/17/paul-london-discusses-past-working-relationship-with-dean-malenko-issues-with-malenko-as-an-agent/

I want to rewatch this because I remember it was really good, not as good as Bryan/Dustin, but good nonetheless. Althought, for my liking, It had too many fake limb selling, like "Grrr PZYYYCHOLOGYYY", "look at me, I'm zelling the leeeg but I gonna walk next week like nothing happened to me", like seriously, we need to reevaluate this. It makes zero sense that Dustin is selling his leg that much and in the next Dynamite he appears without any protection or without crutches. I tore the ligaments in my wrist and I was able to finish my training session with no problems at all, but after that, once the body is no longer warm, that's when you really feel the pain. It's been almost 8 months and it still hurts. I rembember Kenny Omega once said that he knows how it feels like to get one body part injured, and he uses that experience to sell in his matches as realistically as possible.

Both are probably two of my all-time favourites, so, as Domènech used to say, take everything I say with a grain of salt. With that being said, I think Bryan is having a better run overall, even though CM Punk is having the most interesting segments. From September to January, Dragon has had at least 3 or 4 all-time classics in my book: The Omega one, the two Page matches, and the Eddie Kingston match at Rampage. Everything he did in the ring felt really special until January and if Page hadn't been as over as he still is, he would now be the world champion. Another good thing that I've seen since he is in AEW is that he feels liberated when he is in the ring and looks more like a superstar than when he was in the WWE. At the same time, I think Punk has had the better feuds, especially with Eddie Kingston (although it was really short) and MJF. His matches against Darby Allin, Eddie, FTR and Dustin have been really good, but asides of the Kingston match, which is epic for me, the other ones are “just great” and can be compared with the second-tier list of Danielson matches against the likes of Dustin, Garcia, Yuta, Fish, Jackson… My problem with Danielson right now is that he doesn't feel as special as those first few months, I like some of the ideas behind the BCC thing, but I don't want to see him in trios and tag matches, maybe that’s a set up for something bigger, I don't know. The role he's playing right now is something he could be doing in his third year on his contract, whereas now he should be booked as the Top 1 or 2 wrestler in the company. It's been almost two months since his last really good match.

I didn't enjoy this Dynamite as much as the previous ones. I feel like storylines aren't moving far forward, but this falls into the usual cycle after a PPV. I hope they are preparing a special show like Blood and Guts for Hangman and Cole to finally finish their story plus the WARGAMES between JAS vs Kingston and LAX, so we can move on to better things like Punk chasing Hangman's world championship. I'm not feeling at all the Danielson and Mox tag team, I like the idea and I love seeing Bryan and Regal togheter (that's some fantasy booking), but I'm not interested to see them as a team, I'd prefer them to wrestle individually and be part of a much larger stable. Also, Regal as his mentor should tell Bryan to cut his hair. And yes, the Lambert/Sammy/Tay segment was horrible and I agree with all said. I like Conti as a wrestler, but I don't think she's likeable either, I don't understand some of his facial expressions. His relationship with Sammy on screen (I also don't care for their "private live") is really annoying, and not because they are handsome, because they're not, at least by south European standards they are regular people.

Yes, it's a really good interview, although half of it is Dave trying to frame the questions. Danielson's ideas are really weird sometimes, he's obviously a smart guy for wrestling standards, but I think he lacks like a solid ideology to filter all the ideas he gets after reading the books he reads. Hangman Page says a lot more and seems smarter just supporting Bernie Sanders than him talking about all those theories in every interview he has. Wrestling related, sometimes I wish interviewers would ask him more about the wrestling he likes, his favorite matches, wrestlers, and if he reads some forums like this or some wrestling blogs (which seems to be true) to check what wrestling fans think of him and get some recommendations. Listening the interview I felt that he has been answering the same questions since he left WWE.