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Helmsley did a clean job to Jake's DDT and even got the snake treatment afterward, which almost never happened to pushed talent (even as a kid I noticed when Hercules got Damian at SummerSlam '88 and thought, "Wow, that's rare, Herc must be on his way out.") He also had a countout loss to Freddy Joe Floyd at one point. I do think there was something to the "burial"...but it's also known that he scored a lot of political brownie points for doing all that without complaint (as well as going along with Warrior's late demands to squash him at Mania 12), so it's hard for me to see it as HHH scratching and clawing his way back to the top, either.

That's almost an insult to Bay, though they both peaked "artistically" in the late '90s. Freidberg and Seitzer is probably a good comparison, though.

Orange Cassidy officially signed. I'd be less disheartened if they'd instead announced that the Librarians would be given a bye to the tag title tournament finals.

You seriously have to ask this? Why did Vince sign Brad Rheingans and Rod Tronguard away from the AWA?

Dave seemed pretty okay in the "real world" debate in his reaction to El Paso, but that's not very prowrestlingonly of me, I guess.

Well, they've announced a Hidden Gem for Thursday: the 1993 SummerSlam Spectacular (featuring Steiners vs. Money Inc. in a cage). Now to see where the hell this show actually ends up.

But why is AEW portraying itself as a heel promotion if that's the case? Haven't we had enough of that with all the reliance on evil authority figures in WWE and elsewhere? I'm also not sure what the target of the satire is--circa 1995 WWF occupational gimmicks? Is that a thing that was really begging to be taken down a peg in 2019? It seems slightly less up-to-date than Bill Clinton cigar jokes.

Who's "outraged"?

Cornette, probably to the shock of many, praised both of them to the heavens on his FTFF review.

I thought there was more good than bad to be found in that main event. Even the finisher-stealing at the end I liked. My main issue wasn't the length, it was the LOOOONG Texas tornado closing stretch. I get that epic tag matches all sort of turn into that eventually, but come on--make an effort to keep one guy out of the ring, please. Still, I had it in the ***1/2 range which seems to be on the high side. Pretty bush-league post-match, all told .

There was another old standby back in the day, which is that most of the matches were fake but the title matches were real and for real money.

The pre-shows are probably the worst place to be showing that gimmick, which is the point most of us are trying to make. AEW seems to be treating the pre-shows as dumping grounds for failed experiments, failed comedy, and other bullshit that isn't good enough for the main show, instead of using it to try to sell people on what they can actually offer and what they can expect to see.

Cornette basically dropped the "I'm not working...or am I?" routine on Monday's Drive-Thru, making the point that he was about the last person in wrestling where you could actually question where the work ends and the shoot begins. So, yeah--workers be workers indeed.

"It's just the pre-show" is the precise opposite way they should be approaching it.

Well, 1 out of 2 ain't bad (the Tazmaniac match was already on the Unreleased DVD set).

It's different because even in the oppressive land of the WWE we could see what a brilliant all-around performer Dustin was, and how he could get over almost anything just with his acting skills even as his ring skills theoretically deteriorate with age. We didn't see any of that with Dillinger at any level, just a novelty gimmick that was kind of cute because it was on an undercard guy.

Or use him in the undercard where he belongs. Terry Taylor didn't get a big push on WWE TV when HHH acquired more power.

My bolting last night was as much about me being tired as hell as much as it was about the pre-show, though the pre-show is still one of the worst shows I've seen in years. Finished the rest of it and it was obviously going to be a downgrade from DoN, but on the whole it left me way less excited about AEW than DoN did, because other than swapping out Alex Marvez I don't really feel like they learned anything from what they did wrong the first time--and despite what a great show DoN was, there were opportunities to be fixed that they didn't take. The hokey shit on the pre-show was as bad as the hokiest WWE shit that Moxley was complaining about, and it climaxed with...someone explain the appeal of Joey Janela to me, please. I don't give a shit about how he books Spring Break shows, explain to me what he does in the ring that I should care about him in a main event role. To me this came off as bush-league proto-ECW when hardcore legends like Funk and Sabu were forced to try to carry guys like Rockin' Rebel. I have low tolerance for torture-porn to begin with, but that main event was not something that made me want to keep tuning in, even if Janela was only doing a one-shot. Again, the main show was actually enjoyable, but was it more enjoyable than the last IWC indy show in Pittsburgh that I went to? Jury's out on that, and AEW still has that outlaw-mud-show mentality and vibe permeating a lot of the product where it doesn't belong. I know it comes off as incredibly reactionary, but I've gone from thinking that AEW is a genuine competitor in some sense to being an indy rec-center product with more money behind it. I have less and less faith that these guys are going to be able to switch gears when it comes time to run a weekly TNT show to hook in new viewers and not the fanbase already predisposed to like their product.

Cornette already talked about "rec-center bullshit" when talking about the lineup for this show, and he was right. You can't just cater to a bunch of devoted BTE viewers--not on national cable TV and not now, either. But AEW didn't learn a thing from the DoN pre-show, which is concerning no matter how good the actual shows proper are or have been.

Alex Jebailey specifically isn't the problem (*a* problem, maybe). Who's the next non-wrestling buddy of one of the Elite who's going to get a plum spot on an AEW show?

The people who need to be sold on the promotion the least are into it, yes. But it's a bad sign for how their TNT show is going to go. I'd rather they not play the, "Well, we can wait and change our presentation model when we have to" game and work on differentiating themselves and selling themselves to a new audience *now.*

Not having seen any BTE with absolutely zero plans ever to do so in the future, I'll go on doing something else with my time if I just can't handle the awesome post-modern meta-ironic booking of AEW, which all comes across remarkably like WWE Lite like another attempted competitor historically does. What purpose does it serve to put on something that, apparently, is intentionally dumb, like the Librarian? Can we have any promotion anywhere in the U.S. that doesn't want to turn itself heel?

The "self-awareness" almost made it worse. Contrived "hyuck hyuck, let's be WACKY!" bullshit instead of letting humor arise organically out of a situation like all good comedy comes from. My old acting teacher used to beat into our heads that actors in a comedy can't know they're in a comedy. "Self-awareness" is usually comedy death.

I liked the triple threat itself okay (though if they wanted to actually think outside the box as much as they want us to think they do, they'd can the idiotic first-pin rules) but this feels very WWE Lite despite the few token attempts at differentiating themselves. A completely useless 3-man announce booth more interested in bantering with each other than calling the match or explaining what's going on to a new audience, same general beats in the matches.