Matt D

So the live crowd who paid for tickets got to see him wrestle. He was booked for the live Rampage a couple of days later (and had been on the previous week’s live Rampage) but it was a different crowd. Both he and QT got great reactions. It’s a feature, not a bug.

While I believe the Kitao thing having watched him now in this period, the card has Sano vs El Dandy! How could that not have been amazing?

Re: Creative Control. Saraya on Jericho's podcast isn't really necessary to listen to but it was interesting when she said she came into TV and had an idea for Khan and he basically told her. "Great! I wish you told me last week. We're all booked/plotted/marked for this week, but we can do it next week!" but then she wasn't going to be at TV next week (which was this last week), and then Jericho, just talking to her conversationally said that he usually goes to Khan with a month worth of ideas ahead of time and that's how they plan things out. My guess is that he's now being paid to help other talents organize their month of ideas to present to Khan, basically, on top of his own. People will go to Jericho now and say they have X, Y, Z ideas and he'll help organize things to present it to Khan like he would. That's just a guess though. We've heard from Saraya that she was frustrated with her first promo back and that she wished she went to Jericho and Mox first to work it out with them. Moreover, we heard a lot from Britt a couple of years ago how instrumental Jericho was in coaching her promos. She'd go to him with ideas and he'd help her work things out and block things, basically. He was just doing that out of the goodness of his heart (and so he could shape future things he could use, I'm sure) before. Now he'll be paid to do it and probably be more proactive. That's what I figure at least. The other benefit of Jericho is that he's on commentary for a lot of Rampages so he gets to see some new/upcoming talents first hand in a way he might not be watching backstage. That's absolutely why he's working with Dalton Castle this week. He saw him for the first time or one of the first times a few weeks ago and it was obvious just to hear him on commentary that he loved the act.

They should have just had Jungle Boy "injure" Christian in that match in a bump-free sort of way. Totally lose his cool so that Christian won the match because he goaded JB too far but that he certainly paid the price for that victory. I know we're (rightfully) complaining about too much repetition of the same themes, be it the handshakes or the contracts, but I think they could have differentiated this enough from the Sammy/Eddie finish. Some brutal violence out of JB (or the simulation of such) would have helped to get him over at no real loss and when Christian came back, he can say that he never lost to JB and there'll be more heat to go around there.

I’d love a feud between the Pinnacle + Joe and the JAS (after they potentially get the ROH trios belts) right now. So many fun potential match ups. And it would centralize most of the ROH stuff in one place.

Cross-posting a couple of thoughts I posted in DVDVR, as people there felt a real resonance to what Page said:

I mean I'd rather see Spears than Omega anyway... But yeah, they couldn't have announced a Mox/Claudio vs Butcher/Blade match early to at least let people know Mox and Claudio would be wrestling?

I repeat that something is absolutely up. They're lagging on ticket sales for tomorrow (for Rampage, which doesn't even exist in Canada) and the only thing they've announced is Judas. And that's with it extremely likely that Ethan Page vs Matt Hardy will happen, for instance. Why not announce that? It's weird.

The real victim here is Booker himself who hasn’t had the luxury to enjoy JD Drake matches.

My gut says Omega comes back on Weds. It's just about the only thing I can work out for why they wouldn't be announcing a bunch of matches for Thursday when ticket sales hadn't been doing all that well, for a show that doesn't even air in Canada. Having it be a surprise on Weds to set up a match on Thursday is about the only thing that makes sense. Literally the only thing they've done to push the show is have Jericho say that he's using Lionheart music on Weds and if they want to sing along to Judas, they have to come Thursday. (Regardless, I hope Renee debuts to MC as the start of Dynamite and the place comes unglued for her like Saraya.)

Macro, I hear you. Micro, FTR/Briscoes and Mercedes/Serena were some of my favorite things out of AEW this year.

I haven’t seen any WWE since Mania but this six man is a hell of a thing.

No, I agree with the general idea, and there are tiers of guys. I love watching Serpentico, one of my absolute favorite guys on the roster, but you can only use him to accomplish so much. I think some of the problem is that the heel roster is a bit limited. If I said to everyone... Ok, no more Lethal. Let's use QT in his place. Everyone would groan. If I said Comoroto, half of everyone would want him pushed and protected. No one would think Solo was credible in that spot. Ogogo is both not ready and SHOULD be protected. The more I think about this, it probably makes sense for them to use tag guys in singles roles there. Butcher. Blade. Kassidy. Quen. Drake. Henry. They do it sometimes too. They just did with Menard. They should do it a little more and have to rely on guys like Lethal a little less.

With all due respect to Tim, Nemeth’s current act really shouldn’t be on tv. I’m not saying he shouldn’t. I’m not saying the Wingmen in general shouldn’t, but the flossing and the trophy and the parody of his brother’s one-liners which are already a parody isn’t it. The current act shouldn’t be on Dark.

I’d much rather it be JD Drake.

Just saying that Nese has one of my favorite AEW matches of the year in the Orange Cassidy Rampage one. The Swerve/Lee vs Nese/Woods was a bunch of fun too. But that's beside the point. I disagree with you on the rest, but I'm not going to just repeat the same thing over and over again. I think there's value in a guy who can put on a competent tv match and lose, even if he's not super over. If he's super over, I don't WANT him to be losing all that often. "Wardlow's defended the TNT title five times" means slightly more than "Wardlow's defended the TNT title four times" and one of those times is Lethal. It wasn't a guy that they should be protecting like Hobbs.

It’s not dire if they can basically “flip” the property and make a bunch of money on the library. They’re a deal compared to Snowpiercer or whatever WBD isn’t going forward with.

Obviously WWE just released Nigel to mess with Tony. (This is a joke).

I'm looking forward to seeing FTR getting back in there with Toa. They had a really fun Elevation match last year:

After hearing the Helwani interview with Khan today, here's what I think the ROH mindset is: He feels like he needs to build the brand up with WBD, to establish it in their eyes, to put some star power behind it, to show that it can make money. My guess is that yes, it's because he wants another hour of TV and seems to think that this might be the best way to do it, but even more than that, he has the library and it's relatively huge compared to the AEW library so to get over the brand with the suits, he could potentially get a better deal on streaming the library. I could be wrong, but that's what I'm thinking now.

Jay is there to lose. He’s there to put guys over in competent, competitive matches. Guys like Nese and Lethal are important so that every match isn’t one where neither guy can lose. Occasionally you get matches like that but they can’t be every match. He’s on so often because people need to beat him so much. That’s not the role you want Miro or Kingston in.

It wasn’t great to show the Jericho ambush during the handshake in the package right after the Moriarty ambush during a handshake but the show started off well past that. I love that the crowd went from 50-50 to 90% for Yuta by the end.

Good draw for Page this month. RUSH and Moxley are maybe the two best people on the roster to push him hard, give him no air, and tamper down on his bullshit match structure ideas. He should have a good month. I'm kind of fascinated to see what Cage vs Wardlow will look like as a cold match. We've seen Wardlow showing off the agility a bit more lately and that's basically Cage's deal, for good or ill. I ALMOST think that it's there to be a set up for Joe vs Cage maybe? Remember how we felt like Yuta and Garcia were going to do everything they could to steal the show a few weeks ago. Same deal with MJF and Yuta. That's the mentality that gave us the technically sound but kind of empty Darby vs MJF match from earlier in the year, but this has more heat and history behind it, so we'll see. MJF is going to want to help get Yuta over the next hump while still going over strong. It'll be a real test of both guys and I hope they nail it. Women's match has to overcome whatever the hell happened last week. It definitely feels like some random Team BAD vs Team PCB 2015 Raw women's match, which is not a good look. Everyone in it is good though, so it should be solid. Main event is all about the turn one way or the other. Does Tony feel like he really, really needs a hot program going into Canada? Does he realize Jericho will be over as a face no matter what and decide to run with babyface Garcia in the long turn? I think what I'd do is have Yuta lose valiantly earlier in the night (due to, let's say, interference from Firm member Moriarty) but get pissed off that Danielson wasn't there for him and turn on him at the end of the night to join with Jericho to heat things up. Basically, this really, really needs to be a good show. But there's no reason why it shouldn't be.

I got a treat for you guys. Not only will I post my comments on last night's Dark (not a treat), but I will also post our friend DEAN's as well, just to counterbalance some of the mood as of late. DEAN: Me:

Now I want to see Rush vs Kingston.