El-P

I don't know, I thought the conversation here was interesting with people bringing up different points that made me think, so it's all good.

I actually agree with you in term of "there are inconsistencies", and my answer was "they are learning on the job, they are all inexperienced guys in that field with less than two years booking and writing a TV show". I for one would not mind at all if the whole show was totally meta. But I don't mind the mix of meta/not meta either. Also, being meta doesn't equal with insincere. @Big Pete mentioned how winking at the cam was the new kayfabe, and there's something to that, yes. I understand why some don't like it. I don't mind at all, because like I said, they are "like us", they are the product of the same culture of binge watching pro-wrestling and digesting it in speedrun mode. And I mean, Godard used to do the "wink at the camera" thing almost 60 years ago in movies.

Sissy = effeminate = gay. The insult was homophobic and misogynistic at the same time. It was subtle but not that subtle either.

Everything in pro-wrestling is seen as "being booked for your entertainment". You're grasping at straws here by wanting to make this whole" Who turned off the light" way more important than it is. I don't think you'd ask any ECW fans this question during Lawler's and Cornette's appearance at the Arena and the answer would have been "Oh, it's Paul E." in a kayfabe way. You make it seem everything in ECW was meta, but it was not. People popped because it was an awesome angle, yes. But they did not pop thinking "Oh, Paul E shut off the light so it makes sense because ECW is controlled chaos". They popped for the angle. They popped for the booker/promotion because it delivered something cool. But no one is mixing the fact the angle was cool with the fact it made any sense kayfabe wise. Shutting off the light was a production trick and it was accepted as a production trick. Yes, AEW did a mistake (hilarious actually) with the Sammy segment the other day. It doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things, like "Who turned off the light" doesn't really matter. Honestly, there's more important things to nitpick like why is SCU all of a sudden the n°1 ranked when they haven't been seen forever on Dynamite ? That to me is a bigger issue in term of dealing with details. If you don't watch Dark, you have no idea they are even winning matches. And if you watch Dark, you know they are winning matches against JTTS, so how that qualifies them as being the n°1 ranked when they really haven't beat any top tag team like FTR ? And if they are the n°1 ranked, why is that they don't get the tag title shots before Pac & Fénix, who have won a battle royal but haven't a big W number to their names ? There you have a detail management issue, one that bothers me a whole lot more that "who turned off the lights".

And that's pretty much who they are. I was referring to Tony Khan (and Mox) as "one of us" in term of getting the same experiences as many of us (posting on DVDVR, buying tapes from the IWA deathmatch tournament after seeing Terry Funk in ECW). And to me, that's what I love about it and this generation. The former generations were carnies. This is truly the first generation of workers and promoters who come from a "smart mark" (aka "curious fans") background. Maybe that's why some of "us" don't like it. They are too much like us, but they get to do what we only did in fantasy leagues and our fantasies period. Only they do it their way, which obviously is not everyone's way. So, some are gonna be happy about it (me, others), some aren't.

Agree about everything. The Jerry Lawler & Jim Cornette in ECW are great instance of ECW *not making sense* in the conventional way, but what mattered was the moment and the heat it produced. The bolded sentence is a perfect summary of the approach I love, very well put. In general, I find people are putting way too much weight into the "psychological" aspect of pro-wrestling, whereas I see it more and more as a "flux", and sometime, making sense in a "psychological" way is less important than hitting the right note, even if it has to be a dissonant one. That also goes for in-ring work BTW, where sometimes an abrupt transition or a spot that "doesn't make sense" but that will awe the audience is way more important than "playing your role right" in creating a great "flux" of pro-wrestling.

Really now people ? You're watching those early Cornette stuff and you never got it was not-too-subtle hints at him being gay, with the usual rampant homophobic stuff of the days ? Wow. I mean, I would not have guessed it watching him later on, but the early stuff is as clear as day. Plus the joke name on Barnett. Oh my boys... Anyway, honest question. How *less* listeners would Cornette's podcast do if he went back to only talk about old-school wrestling and never addressed AEW (nor WWE) again ?

I had missed that post earlier on. Yeah, Eddie is just a gift to pro-wrestling. They really did the best job possible to "save" the disaster with that promo. Blaming it on IMPACT was funny as hell too. And also, what's more important : the tag-team of Mox & Kingston working on top... just picture the matches and promos we can get from this unit. I'm salivating.

I never thought about that one but hell, Vince don't like a guy not seen as top level dating a hot blonde. Miro the bulgarian brute the husband of Lana ? We ain't having that. Maybe Vince is pissed because Ashley is engaged with this lowly luchador. I mean, I won't lie, I would LOVE to see Charlotte Flair leave the nest and travel the world. Ok, go to AEW basically, because she is not going anywhere else. Their history of trying to push latino stars after Eddie (and they had to scrap to convince Vince anyway) has been a failure from A to Z. Rey was pushed for the wrong reasons and his world title reign was a joke. Alberto could have been.... but then again his toxic personality would have surfaced at one point for sure, in retrospect. And anyway they fucked him too and he ended up in a useless stable with other "foreigners". Remember when they sign the biggest star in Mexico, a guy named Mistico ? Yeah, but it was *his* fault, see, because he acted like a superstar who knew what was gonna get him over. Silly him. I don't think it's even fair to discuss the Mascara Dorada case, that guy who looked like one of the best worker in the world during those NJ tours... Talk about a guy who's wasting years... Garza is not going anywhere either. Zelina Vega, well, she got her ass fired because she likes the idea of a union and doesn't like to be told she can't make money on the side, because independent contractors don't do that.

That's exactly what I was trying to remember, that damn Meng push ! Well, Dusty's booking effectively helped kill JCP. His stint as a booker in TNA, post-Russo/pre-D'Amore, in 2004 was just awful. I know Dusty's popularity has risen a lot the last 10 years with NXT and his death, but the pendulum has swung way too far on the positive side to the point people have forgotten haw terrible Dusty's booking has been at times too. Of course, Nash's booking of WCW has been well documented.

Did Taylor really took over or was he just more influent ? I thought Sullivan was still basically booking in the first half of 98. I don't remember Terry Taylor being the top booker ever.

I believe there was somebody between Sullivan (who was totally burned out by 98 honestly) and Nash. I should now, really. Wasn't Dusty helping at some point in the Summer of 98 ? They had guys who had been doing this for 15 years (and learned from the best). Not one and a half. Hey, WCW 96/97 is some of my all-time favorite pro-wrestling, I'm not the one telling you're wrong about it being immensely more consistent than current AEW. I'm just telling you can't expect them to be as good as the best of them when they are new at this.

No one ever kicked out of the One Winged Angel (Ibushi maybe once in Japan). No one kicked out of Mox finisher I believe. No one kicked out of the Meltzer Driver in AEW I don't think. The "everyone kicks out of finisher galore" really is not a staple of the promotion at all. It's really the WWE Self-Conscious Epic formula (even worse with Lesnar's short match formula which is *only* spamming finishers). There are certainly death spots all over wrestling, still. In WWE, less so.

They should do the same in AEW, except if you're still working your match during the hour change, the ring actually explodes.

This. WCW absolutely was a buffet. I want the buffet. It's not like anything really happens. It's not even like Saturday Nights or Thunder during the Nitro days when you had somewhat cool secondary feuds happening there. It's mainly competitive JTTS matches. I hope they do something different with the Monday show, as Dark is already way too long with so few happening for me to watch every week considering I want to watch other stuff too.

No one knows or even notices who he is. For most people, and that included me for ever, he's just a short jacked up orange referee. BTW, this Andrade thing is the story of modern WWE. Then sign a hot lucha libre superstar. They deprive him of *everything* that made him cool in Mexico. Surprisingly, he doesn't get over. Then he turns heel and gets paired with Vega and magic happens. He has that match with Gargano which was deemed by some as the greatest WWE match ever. He goes up to the main roster. They eventually split him up with Vega. He vanishes because Heyman who wanted to push fresh talent ain't got the book anymore. 5 years after, he asks for his release despite being engaged to one of the biggest name in the company. Meanwhile, The Miz got a world title push and Edge is main eventing Mania.

They should ask Don Callis about stuff (although I do think D'Amore is the brain booker of IMPACT, seeing as he was also the only guy who made TNA a really fun and easy to watch alternative in 2005/6).

That's a good point. The thing with AEW, because of who they are and how young the company is and what they've showed thus far, is that it's obvious they are learning on the job. That last PPV should be a terrific learning experience, despite providing jokes for the next 20 years. AEW brought back optimism as far as I'm concerned, which is something that has been killed dead by WWE a long, long, long time ago.

Wait wait wait. The Big Swole vs Britt Baker angle was awful. Swole is just bad and she still gets pushed. I don't see jackshit in Max Caster, who did not look good at all in that PPV ladder match. Why are Billy Gunn and his annoying offsprings taking time on Dark ? Sure, these are little things, but still. Why is Penelope not pushed seriously yet, it's obvious now (even to me who have showed a lot of patience) that Sabian isn't going anywhere interesting. Well, if you're read my PPV thoughts, I don't think I'm into honeymoon mode anymore either. Like I said, they are rookies with less than 2 years experience doing this. The best is yet to come I'm sure in term of finding themselves.

Ok, ECW was 25 years ago. Since then, we've had at least a good 20 years of lights going out for no reason whatsoever apart from : because. It's a trope. Not a particularly good one, but that's what it is. Like people doing run-ins with their music and videos popping up at the same time. There's nothing more to it. The backstage stuff can be more stupid (like the hilarious "Are you recording me !" from Sammy the other day... while he's on TV), and some actually have worked around it in interesting ways (like TNA at one point when every backstage scene that wasn't an interview was shot from what seemed like a "hidden place", by a cameraman the wrestlers would not see, that was a neat little idea). Most of the time it's a shortcut because people are so used to it. I would love AEW to be more consistent too on those matters, but it's not really an important point compared to a real crappy angle or bad worker getting pushed to me.

Was it ever said that it was really Paul E. Dangerously doing it though ? I know he was the manager but... And how is it different from imagining it's anyone @sek69 mentioned, really ? Like I said, it's basically a trope now. Some people can get the light to go out. Some even have magic powers apparently. I'm not a fan of it, I think it's been overused in AEW. But I basically accept it because pro-wrestling. Like, I would LOVE for the NJPW referees to not be the stupidest human beings on planet Earth. But apparently they are, so I have to deal with this as a NJPW trope and let it fly. One thing I loved in Lucha Underground which pretty much resolved all the issues is that it was presented as a TV show about pro-wrestling, in that the announcers did not see any vignettes and backstage stuff. That was a radical departure, but to me it worked wonders in making me accept the fact murders were taking place, people got shot or kidnapped and tortured and of course, traveling through time.

The "turning off the light" as been pretty much an accepted pro-wrestling trope since about the time Sabu was popping up in the ECW Arena while the lights were turned off by... someone. It's been so overused that I'm actually surprised anyone even thinks about who could turn the lights off. Seems like anyone has walked freely into pro-wrestling TV production trucks for at least 20 years now. There's something to be said about AEW's booking that is pretty much never addressed : the guys booking and writing the shows are rookies. They have been doing it for less than 2 years. Think about it. Of course there are gonna be inconsistencies and misses and messy stuff sometimes. What do people expect ? Still, with that little experience they have, they have basically blowing away the 40 years + veterans on the other channel (who suck and have sucked for a long time, ok). But they are still learning on the job. It's like people have crazy-ass expectations. Yes, some stuff are misses. Yes, some stuff are inconsistent. Yes, I would gladly never see a "lights go out" moment until there's a HUGE surprise in like, 5 years or so. But overall and considering their experience level (less than two freaking years), they are doing quite ok on that front. I still think Scott D'Amore is doing the best job of anyone considering the talent ratio he's working with.

Well, I guess I did my job right then ! I absolutely did not think about it but it actually makes all the sense in the world.

Which means Mox vs Omega in an Onita style match was a draw. Of course there's people that are gonna twist this again because Kenny Omega can't be successful in the real world and whatnot, but hey, one more for the good guys I guess. Makes the absolute disaster of the post-match even more disastrous, but in the long run hopefully it won't hurt them.

Awesome announcement. This is big deal stuff for IMPACT. Also, Ace Austin vs Chris Bey this week was really good.