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Ishii vs Cobb was spetacular but didn't get to *that* level indeed. That bieng said, still an excellent match. And Matanza Cueto in the G1 is pretty damn cool. It's gonna be really interesting to see him work against the rest of the block. Although there was no match as great as Tanahashi vs Okada or even Ospreay vs Archer, I still loved that first B Block showing. Juice vs Takagi was excellent and I like how they are gonna tell he story of powerful junior Takagi trying to prove himself against the heavyweights. White had bloomed mast year in the G1, he's only better this year. I can't say I'm a big Goto fan, but this match worked on so many levels. White is a terrific heel and his style is almost too smart for his own good in that it reflects his kayfabe character almost too much therefore his matches are maybe less spectacular that others, but he's crazy good for his age. Storytelling wise, the best match of the show. And then, two very different matches, with Mox destroying Taichi, to the distress of Miho Abe (she was indeed great in reacting to the whole table spot) and Yano & Naito working the absurd comedy/spoiler match. Yano is so great at what he does. Must be cool to have him in your block too, as it's a day off and good to rest your body a bit. I hope Taichi will get some victory, at least, so Miho can celebrate. Love it that Taichi made it this year, he's ridiculously underrated. After the first two shows, I can't say I miss Tama, Makabe, YOSHI-HASHI and Elgin at all, this year's gonna be so much fun. Suzuki in place of Fale would have been perfect. In the undercard, I quite enjoyed the LA Dojo vs Young Lions thingy too. Ok, still 17 shows to go. What a ride.

Totally agree about all of this. He talked about the Fyter Fest pre-show during the GAB 90 episode and it was cool to hear his genuine thoughts.

It's crazy. I'm watching Night 2 of the G1 tonight. Probably gonna watch AEW tomorrow, then I'll have to catch up with day 3 & 4. That's the issue with the G1, it's taxing to follow, as great as it is. Hell, I want to watch last Friday's CMLL show too before next week's show which will feature Jushin Liger. Thank god iMPACT was basically a recap show this week so I skip it.

It is.

That's cool, I had no idea. Let them be just that and have them speak French then ! The card looks pretty hot. I've never seen Brandi wrestle, so that's interesting to me, especially against Allie whom I really liked in iMPACT. Lucha Bros vs SCU & Young Bucks vs the Rhodes will compete for show stealers. Luchasaurus is the new Mortis. You can quote me on that.

In the spirit of what brings us together about AEW : "Are you that good, Young Bucks ?" Dustin's so awesome.

Now, that would be some heeling up.

Gotta love the kayfabe priests.

Come on. You know AAA is run by the power of the urn.

The Perro Aguayo tribute from last week was nice. So, in Mexico they don't do the ten bell salute but rather a whole minute of applause, which is a whole lot warmer indeed. The trios title match that followed was terrific. Really curious to see if they have done anything special today for Paco Alonso's death.

That's understood. But it's a wee bit early to talk about AEW driving fans away or not being able to grab an audience, especially since, for the very short time it's been there, it's been nothing but an unexpected success. And I'll be pretty honest, as much as I'm very excited about AEW, the whole "strict sport presentation" and "Mid-South as an inspiration" is absolutely not the part I'm excited about. For the record, what got me back following current pro-wrestling was Lucha Underground. If you ask me, I'll have this over any kind of "strict sport presentation", which is why I enjoy iMPACT doing some out of the box stuff (although nothing will beat Catrina the evil witch and Matanza eating people). The Raven fan speaking here, I guess. FWIW, the Micheal Nakazawa match got over great with the audience that was in the building. Let's see if Sonny Kiss vs Peter Avalon gets shit on by the crowd. If that's the case, well, let's not do this too much anymore. If it gets over, well, the disconnect is between some people's expectations of what the promotion should be in their opinion and the actual current AEW audience. I hear "they need to get the lapsed fans, they need to get the casual fans". Well, fuck me if I care about that. They need to find their niche and be successful at whatever they do, and I'll care as long as it suits what I enjoy. Last time the casual audience loved pro-wrestling, it was the Attitude Era, so thank you but no thank you. So, if AEW has to catter to its own audience with their own indiosyncrasies which may or may not include enjoying meta-gimmicks and the occasionnal Micheal Nakazawa crass comedy match, I'm perfectly fine with it.

Well, since we're at it, I have to say I don't know who the Super Smash Brothers are. Never saw them work, don't know how they look, don't know anything about them. So the Dark Order stuff, yep, completely looks like an unimaginative third rate Wyatt Family-lite gimmick without the cool factor they had (I mean, from the first few months and vignettes). Lights going out and masked minions surrounding the ring from nowhere, yep, that's some washed up, seen a billion times already stuff. And the promos haven't been compelling at all. And this is not a comedy undercard gimmick. So, there's your big miss thus far.

I do that all the time. Read my posts about iMPACT, which has been my favorite promotion for the last year. Thus far with AEW, I have nothing much bad to say about it, honestly. I liked the Battle Royal. The Nakazawa match made me laugh. I'm mostly indifferent to the Librarians. If they do something I find bad, or even something that doesn't work for me, I'll have zero issue saying it. I'm not a fan of them using Jimmy Havoc. I find it's too bad they won't do intergender matches. The Dark Order thus far is a complete miss.

Nobody's perfect. In their minds, the Librarian joke is obviously funny. And some people do think it's funny. Hell, people in the audience at Fyter Fest did the "Shhhhhhhhh" gimmick (which sounded kinda like Tenzan throwing the mongolian chop, which is kinda cool). It is a pastiche. Some get it, other don't. Matter of taste. I thought it works well on BTE, didn't think it was that good on the actual show (didn't do Allie any favors either), but then again, not everything is gonna be a hit. Like I said, I don't particulary care one way of another, but people acting like AEW is doing a huuuuuge mistake and will draw people away with these awwwwwwwful pre-shows, while no-selling the terrific tag match and the way it introduced green as grass Private Party and made them look like something special, sounds like gross overstatement and a will to focus on something negative because honestly, thus far, there isn't much negative to talk about... Can't wait for Peter Avalon vs Sonny Kiss...

The thing I stated is that they're no way to know if those 5000 people who left the Youtube stream (if that did happen) would have bought the show or not *anyway*. There's just no way to know. None. So, we're just speculating on something that has zero ground. Wait, are we now at the point where we compare AEW, which like you said has had a grand total of TWO successful shows, with WCW being a sinking ship, all because of…. THE LIBRARIANS ? Sorry but… it's laughable. The success or lack of success of AEW in the upcoming months won't be because of the fucking LIBRARIANS. Chill out people.

What ? I'm not even making argument for anything, I'm just stating facts. Thus far AEW has been a success. The Librarians is a pastiche comedy gimmick on the undercard (thus far, only on BTE and pre-shows) and people are acting like it's the worst thing ever and it's gonna kill the promotion's appeal. There's a complete disconnect between some reactions and what actually is occuring with the promotion thus far. Total overstatement. Really. That being said, it's gonna make for a fun running gag at this point.

Workers be workers. Yeah. Hard to take him seriously now though whenever he'll find a next victim to vent about... Next thing you know, he'll end up in AEW and put the Bucks and Omega over... Only in pro-wrestling.

Well, first off, "a comment on Reddit" isn't exactly a sure source of data. And even if it's true, the fact is the number of live stream they got was apparently way better than what they expected anyway (per Meltz). So, 5000 people leaving Youtube during the pre-show (which also doesn't actually indicate anything about would these people have watched the live stream of the main show anyway, it's just impossible to tell) isn't much compared to the, I dunno, tens of thousand more exceeding their projections. Funny how this Librarian gimmick and how awful it is and how it 'drives people away' seems to get way more focus than it should, really, when you think of the overall success of the promotion (thus far and for its limited scope).

With Sofia Alonso now running the show apparently, it'll be interesting to see if any changes occur in the months to come.

Yep. And a really petty move considering this is a charity event for victims of gun violence... Anyway, this is gonna be that way with the Network.

They are probably trolling Cornette so he gets them free publicity on his podcast. On BTE this week : 5 years booking plan for the librarians. Baron Corbin like push. On Road to : Yet another great promo by Dustin & Cody. That's where they are selling the shows.

So there, that show marks my one year of following current iMPACT. And as I've called Callihan & Tessa the MVP's of the promotion for months and months, I almost took it as personal validation that they would boost their match up to the main event. Ok, in all seriousness, this was awesome. Tessa winning that match would have been too early maybe, but I think the audience would have loved it. Just loved that match. Both are the MVPs of the company, without a doubt. As far as the rest of the show goes, LAX & Johnny leaving would leave a huge gap. I really hope AEW picks up LAX, maybe the Konnan connection can works things out that way. Johnny, well, I can see him show up in MLW but I'd rather have him stay where he is rather than waste his time in Bauer's cosplay promotion (wink wink). I just hope Taya ain't going anywhere, she was terrific in the Monster's Ball, which was one of the most fun match of the card along with Kross vs Eddie. RVD vs Moose was better than I thought it would. Swann vs iMPACT was fine but it really lacked more dynamic between the characters (odd, Johnny usually is better at heeling up) and Elgin vs Cage was as good a bombfest you could ask from those two, but in the end of the day was still just that and has no business being the main event (but hey, it wasn't). Elgin vs Rhino is about the picture perfect of something I wouldn't give a flying fuck about if my life depended on it. Why the hell would you want to sign Rhino when guys like Kross are wanting more money to stay and Scarlett Bordeaux is already gone ? So yeah, hopefully they meat up the undercard, they already are losing too much good talent (I wonder if Kross still wants to leave, that would be terrible at this point). So yeah, some super fun matches, a terrific main event, but the futur looks very uncertain...

Who the fuck goes to a Blink-182 or Lil Wayne concert anyway ? Wait. Blink-182 and Lil Wayne share the same stage ? WTF ?

Awww, come one now. Last week everyone was "It's suuuuuuuuuch a Heyman show" and now the reboot hasn't happened ? Come the fuck on. Most hype from last week's show was Maria Kanellis anyway, so it's not like it was a great indication that things were gonna turn around, but are we pretending last week's reactions to the show did not happen ? And as far as Smackdown goes, come on, Bischoff ain't shit.

Reading the comments on this thread, is this the shortest post-reboot honeymoon ever ? I mean, jeez...