El-P

She has no shot whatsoever if she trained with Chigusa Nagayo for a hundred years. She's 37, she's been pampered her all career because of who her cousin is, she has no will to improve as showed by her actually declining work over the years and she obviously thinks she's a big star. I think I'm actually pretty representative of the tastes of the core fans of the promotion and I highly doubt the AEW audience in its majority would be excited about Nia Jaxx showing up.

Negative buzz, for sure. She's up there at the top of the list of people I *don't* want to see in AEW (or elsewhere, really).

That's a totally prescriptive view of how she *should* work as opposed to what she actually does and how it is executed and how it is accepted. The Riho vs Rose matches were and still are some of the best AEW women matches in the company's history. Yes, Roses bumps a lot. That's her choice. The idea of working "big" or "small" really doesn't register for me at all. Whatever works work. By that reasoning, Vader was a really shit worker, because it's not like he was bumping a lot for Sting, he was bumping a lot for small Fujinami in the 80's and for Owen in WWF and for everybody really. That was his style and actually what made him stand out and part of what produced so many great matches. And did that hurt his aura at all ? Of course not. I'm not saying Nyla is close to Vader, but really who is anyway. Ok now I'm personally offended ! Nia is clumsy as hell, nothing she does looks any good (that legdrop spot has to be the most pathetic looking ever), her timing is not very good, and her execution is ok at very best. She's got the easiest job in the world because let's be real, playing big monster who doesn't bump much is the easiest thing to do, and she's not even good at it. She's like, decent, when she's in with someone who will make it look decent. I often compared her to Eagle Sawaii and really, she was not even there, and Sawaii is like a fourth rate Nakano. Awesome Kong ? Come on now, it's like comparing the Miz to Misawa.

Why on earth would AEW offer her a contract ? She's a mediocre worker at her very best and she's a proven liability, her track record of injuring other girls is well documented. The only reason she ever got a job in WWE is because of her size and nepotism. She never got good despite years of working with really good workers. She was never a draw in any way shape or form. Would be a big time waste of money and time.

That "Less famous Miz" line was soooo wasted on MJF. Did this made more viewers in the key demos than NXT2.0 ? That would be quite funny, I admit.

K-Pop disagrees. Also, the push of quality women wrestling by WWE and the surge of the 4 Horsewomen did not translate into more female viewers, quite the opposite. On the other hand, sure, the Total Diva era got a female viewership to watch WWE stuff, but what were the women feuds at the time ? Awful, stupid, catty bullshit with terrible 5 minutes matches. Women like Gail Kim and Victoria (and Mickie James, although I don't remember how she left then) who actually wanted more for women ended up leaving for (or going back to) TNA (not that they got that much better served over there in the 10's). There was no correlation between quality and vierwership (there never is honestly, but that's another matter). I'm not sure the whole relatability issue is that important. I mean, did women watching WWE in the Total Divas days actually related to *those* characters ? Then again, I never got why anyone would watch real-TV shows anyway (apart from Wrestle House, obviously). I mean, I do watch Koh-Lanta, French version of Survivor, but it's still way more of a game than a Real-TV show as it's mostly done (and has been for what now, 15 years ?). Hey, good for Cody & Brandi I guess. Bad for Aubrey who will receive more weight belts in the face...

Yeah. It is completely disheartening and maddening though. Access to knowledge was supposed to make humanity better. Apparently human nature completely screwed this one up too. I'm getting my third dose after Christmas, so I should finally be able to get my own Bluetooth apparently. Well, hopefully, because the 5G stuff didn't work out after all, that was disappointing.

If they had pushed Adam Cole straight into the AEW title pictures, the same dumbfucks would have said "Hey, he was only a top guy in NXT and was not gonna success in the main roster and now AEW is making him a top guy, that's classic TNA". The level of denial with AEW since day 1 has been something else. Maybe it's just a sign of the time, with the chamber echo effect of social media and such, people are in denial about everything now, the results of an election, the reality of a pandemic, the efficiency of vaccines...

Well, after finally watching it : Confirmed. It was tremendous from A to Z. And yes, Swinger is legit one of the greatest character in pro-wrestling. Amazing that he finally got an entire TV show basically built around him. 2021 strikes again.

So the last guy is Bandido. Which is great. Jay Lethal and Bobby Fish though (and don't get me wrong, I have loved every minute of Bobby Fish in AEW), not exactly a fitting replacement for Omega. I understand not wanting to send Danielson for a multi-men match that he ain't gonna win, but there's still a hug drop-off in name value here. Triplemania will be in Fite TV for the first time too.

Fucking Omicron will ruin NJ again.

Sure, I'm of all people on this board is out of touch with how current pro-wrestling works. By 1989 thinking I refer to *only* building people that way. Not to squash matches as a mean to an end among others. Ok. What did I say in my last post ? I mean... really now. When did I say "Squash matches are useless" ? I didn't at all. I said that *only* building two guys through squashes to have them meet at a big show was 1989 thinking. Sure, you could still try it once. Not sure that would work well, and if it would, it would take very specific guys to do it with and it would only work (if it would) because it would be an exception to the rule. Then again, I'm not convinced it would work *that* well. Miro was so awesome as TNT champ not because he was doing squashes but because he came off like a monster while having actual great competitive TV matches. Him going Goldy on jobbers would have only get him so far with the AEW audience. And the final big match did not happen against someone who would do the same thing. Case in point, Jade Cargill, who's got an awesome look and presentation, is not exactly getting over like crazy thus far, and really the best reactions she ever got was when she actually had competitive matches, especially the Red Velvet one. (can't wait to see her go against Thunder Rosa, but I'm in the wrong thread) And really, you have squash matches pretty much every week, to a degree or another, and both Dark shows are basically just about that anyway. There are most squash matches and JTTS matches now that there ever was in 15 years during the WWE monopoly/late 90's (and yeah indeed, NXT but also LU to a point is when they surged back on the scene).

There's a huge difference between "Build two guys with squash matches and at some point get them together to collide", which is absolutely 1989 thinking, and what we're actually all talking about with Jade Cargill or the fact Kross should absolutely have squashed some jabronies for a few weeks to make him look impressive or the fact there's actually plenty of competitive JTTS matches on AEW TV (I actually thought Punk vs Marshall was way too long and way too competitive, so there). Yes, squashes matches have absolutely a use to build someone up especially if he/she is supposed to be a monster, but they are only a step in building someone, not the whole process. And can only work in very specific cases. Tik-tok is great to showcase cool sequences I guess. Gotta say, Goldy always bored me. I never thought he was very compelling, especially on rewatch, and he was lucky as fuck to have guys like Raven and DDP to make him look way better than he ever was. Plus he killed Bret's career due to sheer ineptness, so there is that. The idea people are paying to see a 50 years old Goldy do the 50 years old routine he did more than 20 years ago is baffling to me, honestly.

Well done.

Actually, there have been plenty of good reasons why this doesn't exist anymore. The model was tired and died in the 90's during US pro-wrestling nadir when the audience did not want to see that boring shit anymore. Nitro changed the format of the show. Pro-wrestling became less and less of a house-show model and more and more of a TV model (and exclusively one today). And squash matches are still used for some specific people, like Jade Cargill in AEW (because she's green as grass and his portrayed as a monster, although one could argue she won't get better working that style for too long) and of course, Goldy in 98. But building a rivalry using two guys doing squash matches and eventually colliding on PPV, yeah, that was good in 1989 when the audience did not know better and the goal was to sell house-show tickets and PPV's. Pro-wrestling weekly TV shows back then were basically commercials, like Transformers and such. Of course the issue with WWE is not that they need squash matches, it's that they are completely inept at booking.

Riho just used the freakin Gannosuke Clutch to beat Baker. Made my day. Oh, and that Kingston vs Garcia match...

I'll probably check out their Mexico tapings, but really only because of the perspective of more Cesar Durante & Karly Perez doing a low-rent LU act, which, I can't lie, is kinda cool (I mean, it's cool to see them again if anything). There's really something about MLW's production that doesn't work for me, and it's not for the lack of trying.

That NXT2.0 plan really was a stroke of genius.

I haven't watched it yet, but I was so excited when I saw it was actually an entire episode of Wrestle House. And their next special is gonna be a Throwback show too, the first one was awesome. Yeah, the nice thing about IMPACT is that they aren't gonna blow up, that ship has sailed a long, long time ago, but now they are under the radar enough that they can allow themselves to do stuff like this (although really you can credit Matt Hardy for jumpstarting it). Since LU has disappeared (and no, MLW getting Cesar Durante and Karly Perez aka Cueto & Catrina just isn't the same at all), this kind of off-the-wall stuff is always welcomed.

What is Brian Cage doing lately ? Talk about one guy who's AEW stint kinda went awry after a great debut and some cool matches. Honestly I would enjoy Kross & Scarlett more.

Kenny Omega. Amazing title reign, great big match worker, great gimmick worker, great TV worker against a variety of different opponents. Great heel champion, great reign that led to the perfect passing of the torch. The best championship reign in pro-wrestling since the Okada big ace reign. This year has solidified his GOAT contendership.

Only seven figures ? Let's get ready for some more cuts for budgetary reasons. I wonder why Netflix would spend seven figures on WWE programmings to promote their shit though (and I say shit quite literally too).

I wonder when Conrad will do a podcast about Survivor Series 2021 with Brucie. "Listen, we're telling a story."

Mania 45. Aurora H wins the WWE women championship in a 40 minutes main event against Charlotte Flair. You've heard it here first. You can quote me.

Yeah, you know, actually this is WCW 2000 level dumbfuckery.