Embrodak

MJF is 26, I think it’s as simple as him just not having enough experience to know when he can pull it back and still get heat. I’ve been fine with what he’s doing, I think people here are way overstating the deficits and ignoring just how much empty space he’s being asked to fill with personality alone in the context of the middling booking, but he is definitely lacking in the variety department. I don’t think he needed a babyface or tweener run, he just needs a little more variety to his persona and better stories.

Have Jey Uso either help or harm Sami Zayn during the Roman match, and the crowd will absolutely not care that Sami didn’t beat Roman. The main Bloodline/Sami story was not Roman treating Sami like shit, it was Jey not trusting Sami and Roman using that as a wedge to keep his quarrelsome cousin in line, then Jey’s emotional wall being broken down and wholeheartedly embracing Sami more than any other Bloodline member. Jey/Sami versus Solo/Jimmy or Sami and a partner versus the Usos is 100% the logical progression for this story, depending how they play it. I really think Sami dethroning Roman is downright a distraction from the emotional heart of the story, which was always Sami and Jey.

I don’t think Punk is coming back. The dude got two major injuries last year, there’s simply no reason to put the machinery of the company behind any story featuring him if you can’t trust that he’s gonna be able to see it out. Also, the fight is a broken fence that can be mended (assuming Tony is smart enough to see Jericho as doing self-aggrandizement in denigrating Punk), but you’ll never get the audience to see him the same way again. WWE could get something out of Punk, nobody over there gives a shit that he trashed the company they do not see as a serious competitor in the first place, but he’ll have Cody Rhodes go away heat with a considerable chunk of the AEW faithful.

There honestly has not been a good AEW champ run since Omega. Page was a flop, Punk had bad luck, Moxley is over with the crowd but didn’t do anything especially different from what he was doing without the belt, and now MJF is…. fine, but wearing his schtick a little thin, not to mention doing the same “run the gauntlet” story he’s done multiple times. Giving Dragon an excuse to have good matches every week is commendable, but there’s really no sense that there’s anything especially personal between these two guys. Tony was nice to let Regal go, but he really should have pressed him to stay and add some emotional heft and pathos to this feud, get MJF off on the right footing. I really think it’s more attributable to the booking than anything at this point, Khan just doesn’t have the juice when it comes to making a guy act and feel like a big deal. I’m not an Omega guy at all, but he was the last guy that *felt* like he was the champ. His relentless theatre kid energy wouldn’t allow him anything less.

I can’t see Kenny ever going to WWE. I know he was interested in one time, but he’s middling on the mic, has a ton of mileage on his body, and he won’t get the creative freedom he thrives on.

This doesn’t feel like WM30 at all. The audience isn’t actively shitting on *anything*, they are as into Cody as they are Sami.

It’s already been somewhat built, they can finish it up after Elimination Chamber no problem.

Idk, tag wrestling just ain’t what it once was. AEW has a better tag division than WWE, but that’s not saying much. Tag wrestling is more than ever seen as a place to hide green guys and get them some seasoning, or to park people you don’t have a singles program for, not as an end unto itself.

I think there’s also a possibility that maybe some portion of the very online audience sees them as the ones that pushed CM Punk out.

The Gunns are awesome, but I wouldn’t have put the titles on them yet. Should have done a long feud with FTR while they were still there and gotten some seasoning.

Alexa and Bray would be good Batman villains, but there’s pretty much no context in which I want to see them in a wrestling ring.

I was surprised Heyman didn’t add a dig like “Your father didn’t train you because he knew you didn’t have what it takes”, but they’re maybe saving that. Plus Roman being from a storied wrestling legacy himself and being able to rub in Cody’s face that he didn’t coast on it as much, how many more championships there are in his family than the Rhodes family, how he never had to leave the company to get them to take him seriously…. MAN are there a lot of fun layers there, hard to credit the idea that the crowd would turn on this in favor of Sami, no matter how much they love him. Sami doesn’t need to beat Roman, anyway; his real smoke is with the rest of the Bloodline, anyway, especially Jey.

It was a perfection of the WWE style of angle presentation, absolutely. But it does have a bit of that “God, The Godfather is a great movie, but no way mafiosi were these Shakespearean figures” aura to it.

The Rumble angle was soooooo long and milked. The Corny analogy of the bank robbery where the cops never show up and the criminals have no sense of urgency to make their getaway is just modern WWE to a T. I can buy Owens having no friends in the back, but no refs or security out there trying to stop the assault? No consequences for taping a guy to the ropes and threatening him with a chair? Despite AEW being touted as the more postmodern of the two companies, they at least try to pay some attention to these basic logical considerations sometimes. In WWE they’re just these free-floating signifiers.

Someone in the YT comments of F4W really nailed what Cody’s secret sauce is, which is the fact that he is really more of a monologist than a promo guy. That came across as overweening and arrogant in AEW, with its 2 hours per week and plethora of talent fighting for time, but in a company with fucking five hours per week of TV time to fill, it makes him fit perfectly into the Cena/Triple H/Heyman type of slot where he can go out there for a long time and queue up everything. We’re all tired of that television cadence, I think, but as long as they have so much TV time to fill, I don’t think it’s going anywhere. And yeah, the weepy facials are overdone, but everything about the way he has been presented makes it click in WWE in a way it just never did in AEW. It makes me wonder if WWE’s limitations would be good for someone like MJF, too, force him to cauterize around the loss of some of the edge lord stuff and give him a presentation that matches the image he tries to project.

That Heyman and Cody promo was fantastic. Just the right amount of shootiness without being in your face about it. And WWE cinematography usually sucks, but that one shot from a low angle on the ground of Cody in Heyman’s face spitting acidic anger was perfection, absolutely made Cody look like a righteous hero.

Darby is truly insane, in a way that sometimes makes me feel uncomfortable and complicit, even as it feels viscerally compelling. This guy is tempting a *lot* of bad physical problems down the road, and while that’s his right, it’s also the case that the audience’s willingness to go along with it generates one of the preconditions that make him want to exercise that right. It’s a difficult line to draw, because literally nothing these people do is at all medically advisable, but man does Darby skateboard right on that line sometimes.

The gauntlet thing is something they have way overdone for MJF, but it does work for the Danielson feud in that it gives BD an excuse to wrestle a bunch of randos like he really wants to. No fucking clue why they’re doing it for Starks, or why he’s continuing to feud with Jericho at all for that matter.

Yeah I was thinking this was probably not a point in their favor. The Confederate flag is always a racist symbol, but based on the rainbow coalition of wrestlers singing Jay’s praises, I think they’re maybe the rare breed that truly bought into the “heritage not hate” propaganda.

Also Drew rehabilitated himself without AEW, not his fault his coronation happened at the weirdest and most non-canonical time in wrestling history.

The Usos honestly feel closer to Sami than to Reigns at this point. Sami facing the Usos as currently constituted just feels so wrong as a denouement of the story. Plus I’m kinda tired of the schizophrenia of the forever tag champs being so skilled in matches yet so easily dispatched when acting as Roman’s goons.

Here’s an interesting question - who would Reigns have a better match with, Sami or Cody?

Honestly, I suspect the WWE audience that would turn on Cody like the audience turned on Batista probably doesn’t watch WWE much anymore. AEW is basically “Yes Movement: The Company” in terms of its demographic and product appeal. WWE has been doing a 22 year long winnowing of audiences that don’t go along with their booking plans. And let’s be real, Cody has done everything right in WWE that he did wrong in AEW; the highly imperfect WWE creative filter is perfect for canceling out Cody’s worst instincts. I also disagree that the Sami/Bloodline stuff has been perfect. I think some cracks started to show in the last week as it’s starting to feel rushed with Mania approaching. The Sami trial came somewhat outta nowhere, like a chapter or two was skipped, and doing Sami’s turn so soon after that somewhat blunts the sense that Reigns was narcissistically paranoid to have questioned Sami’s loyalty. Jimmy jumping right to violence while Jey was genuinely hurt and just had to duck out was a great touch, though.

I think Cody has a lot more good will than people are giving him credit for. That HIAC match was legendary. Edit: Maybe do Sami/JEY versus Jimmy and Solo? That’s a fucking twist!

Roman ain’t gonna job two days in a row. They ain’t giving Sami Zayn the “beat Roman’s streak” rub, no matter how over he is. I don’t think even Tony Khan would do that, tbh.