Embrodak

AEW should have done a big build for a one-off Hardyz vs Bucks match for the last PPV (wasn’t a good match, but could at least have had some juiciness to the build), then never had either Hardy wrestle for them again. The Hardyz are idiots for wrestling the way they do at their age, don’t enable them.

Wendy Choo is a mind-bogglingly bad gimmick. Is she Vince’s attempt to have an Orange Cassidy?

Not that they’re the ultimate arbiters, but I think it’s telling that criticism of HBK as a worker comes from ultrafans and not those in the business.

I mean a little forethought that maybe you shouldn’t give one of your only Asian performers a Chinese farming hat and martial arts moves seems pertinent. I honestly have similar reservations about Asuka’s weird geisha/dragon lady combo entrance, but there’s at least a sense where that’s about intimidating the opponent with spectacle. This was my first time seeing it and it just seemed gratuitous, what can I say.

Didn’t watch, but looking at the results, that was the wrong main event to book, conceptually. Will Ospreay shouldn’t be losing his first match in the company (he didn’t get pinned or tap, but still), but FTR also shouldn’t be losing right now, given the streak they’re on and how often they lost when they were heels. I get that AEW is kinda in canon with everything else in wrestling, so Tony doesn’t exactly see Ospreay as someone he needs to get over with his crowd, but if you’re going to set Ospreay up as a threat for the PPV, he should at least win his first showing.

I really don’t like Riddle’s gimmick, but I actually think him versus Reigns would kinda rock.

Super happy to see Gunther with the belt, him versus Cody after Cody dethrones Roman will whip.

Ronda does jiu jitsu and comes out in a leather jacket and skirt. I’m not saying the whole gimmick is racist, and to be charitable, one could say they’re going for a Raiden in Mortal Kombat thing, but idk, it’s a bad look. this match is surprisingly aight though.

The real way to madness is trying to imagine how, in kayfabe, the format of these shows would be intended to work. Shotzi and Ronda can just decide to have a match? What was the original plan to be happening right now?

Big Chinese characters projected in hologram, comes out in a coolie and robe, swings a bo around and does martial arts moves. If somebody did that in the territory days, people looking back would say how cringy and stereotypical it was.

Xia Li has a very racist entrance, holy moly.

It’s either that a lot of this stuff is stuff he didn’t experience in real time, so he doesn’t quite realize how spread out a lot of it really was, or his presumable ADHD gets in the way, or he thinks WWE, WCW, ECW, and TNA have blown everyone’s expectations so far past plausibility that it’s stupid to even try. But I agree, it’s hard for me to get invested in AEW because there’s barely any sense of normalcy that any of the storylines feel like some kind of a deviation from. “The most dangerous place in wrestling - BACKSTAGE!” bounces around my head a lot.

Well it doesn’t help that the build is NJPW guys just walking out on the entrance ramp and doing a pose. Tony needs a booking committee, man.

I always enjoyed Bray in the ring, tbh. Re: House of Black, whether they have good matches or not (I disagree), I can’t imagine them even going for the tag team titles, let alone any individual member going for a singles championship.

I can’t see this happening because nobody would want to take a chance that the ratings wouldn’t keep pace, the whole “women’s revolution” rhetoric would be undermined if it drew Dynamite numbers or fewer.

If we’re being honest with ourselves, the Wyatts worked like twice - the Shield feud, and the Daniel Bryan storyline. Outside of Undertaker and early Kane, spooky just doesn’t work that well in wrestling. Malakai’s entrance rocked when it was just him, but all the tomfoolery with the lights and the terrible mist and the House of Black has absolutely killed him dead.

Axelmania!!!

Cody absolutely has to come bask in a warm send-off, he’d be crazy not to.

Idk, it’s wrestling, bros. It’s a bunch of carny bodybuilders, gymnasts, college wrestlers, and failure-to-launch MMA guys throwing themselves at the ground to tell a a story of combat and struggle. Stuff with a real-world valence is always going to have an extra whiff of legitimacy and intrigue, especially post-kayfabe. I don’t think there’s going to be some extra pressure on guys to push through the pain of serious injuries, this was Cody taking the opportunity of a lifetime to be a god amongst contemporary babyfaces and set himself up for a huge return pop. idk, thinking the gruesome and gratuitous stuff in that Anarchy match, or the Hangman-Archer death match, or any Darby or Sammy match, are A-Okay, while a guy doing something with actual emotional, performative, and narrative heft that was probably less dangerous is not seems like a weird, concern troll-y double standard to me. Guys need to be protected from themselves when they can do something safe with a HUGE potential payoff, but not when they put themselves in life-threatening danger for ice-cold TV matches or poorly-built PPVs? I’m not saying anybody is actively trolling, but what Cody did last night strikes me as WRESTLING to the core, and I’m confused at the notion that it was some worker-hostile breach of decency. (I’d also argue that a proper class analysis would place Cody in more of a petite bourgeois category than that of a proletarian, but the independent contractor thing really does muddy the waters.)

I’ll bet Corny is gonna love this.

This has an actual goddamn story and isn’t just gratuitous carnage to satiate people’s lizard brains. This fucking owned.

These are the risks when you put your title on a 42 year old with that much mileage and who was pretty sloppy even at his absolute prime. But as Corny often says, “How can we miss you when you won’t go away?”, and this may be a chance to shake off the months of pointless matches with underneath guys and make him special again when he comes back.

It feels like they’re like five seconds out of sync with each other. And Hogan is terrible, her strikes make Dante Martin look like Shibata.

Kiera is the problem in this match, right? I’ve never been a big Athena fan, but I wouldn’t think she would fuck up multiple sequences quite so blatantly. Goddamn Jade has an amazing presence and look, like if Chyna had Mr Fantastic powers and Sasha’s wardrobe guy. It’s a shame she’s so fucking green, being on TV having wrestling school matches lowers the ceiling I’d assume.

I knew it was gonna be a squash match, but why the fuck did they play a promo OVER it? Terrible formatting! And it was a good promo, so why fuck up the presentation?