Matt D

The lights go out. They don’t come back on.

I thin it's less the Bray and more the teasing. There hasn't been any intrigue in WWE TV for years. No mysteries, no "Who did it" since Bischoff tried to have someone run over Roman Reigns and it got killed in a couple of weeks, right? Wrestling fans love surprises. The entire Monday Night Wars era was built on who would jump next and who would join the NWO next. So there are almost weekly returns right now and the interactive mystery thing.

He’s more marketable intellectual property than Ethan Page or whoever? They send him to do radio spots because morning DJs know who he is. People who might be interested in a wrestling video game but haven’t followed wrestling since 02 know him. It does make sense even if maybe you don’t like or prefer it. They already have the people who want to play as FTR on board. They’ll gripe but they’ll buy the game anyway. Maybe they’ll even pay more for DLC to use their favorites and you can fleece hem twice.

This is the most important thing and the biggest loss. There’s no one else that can carry the torch. A few years of it being a counterweight to the Elite would have made so much difference.

Last third of that was a bit of a mess, but no one there cares and nor should they.

Good way to sell a ROH TV show.

BTW, this is probably the combo card that I'm most excited about since starting to watch AEW around a year ago, more so than any PPV. So many guys I like in situations I like and none of the guys I don't. (They're all hiding in the battle royal on Friday or suspended or injured). So it's not just that I like the highs, but there are just zero lows for me when there are usually 2-3. Here's what I wrote up on tonight's matches for DVDVR: FOR THE VACANT WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP - Jon Moxley vs. Bryan Danielson They already had a match where they really went at it. I'd like to see Danielson try to drive this one more towards being a "title match" and force Moxley down onto the mat instead of having a match where blood and violence is the end goal. Actually, look, here's the deal: Danielson says he wants the title because he wants to wrestle in title matches as title matches are the most exciting. Moxley says he wants the title for all that it represents and he wants to be given the ball to take the shot. The two of them need to get together and figure out what those two competing forces and visions and character drives looks like and build a match out of that. I don't know what that would look like but it sounds amazing to me. FOUR WAY MATCH FOR THE INTERIM WOMEN'S CHAMPIONSHIP - Toni Storm (c) vs. Serena Deeb vs. Athena vs. Dr. Britt Baker, D.M.D. Four ways are not great but there has been pretty good agenting lately. I think Davari might have been getting credit for some things? What makes this interesting are the characters/wrestlers involved. Britt brings the style, but there's a ton of substance with Storm, Deeb, and Athena. Deeb is one of my favorite wrestlers to watch this year. Athena's been tearing it up save for the Jade match. It's the only multi-person match on the show so it lets them get a bit more leeway with certain spots. I'll probably be more into single interactions and some of the alliances/betrayals/etc., than the overall match as a whole. 4-ways are more about the moments than the big picture most of the time. FOR THE RING OF HONOR WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP - Claudio Castagnoli (c) vs. Chris Jericho It's Jericho's career year and he's stacked the deck with yet another match. I'm curious how he goes at this one. With Eddie, it was the King's Road style. With Moxley, it was outwrestling him. With Danielson, it was getting outwrestled and having to rely on desperation moves or capitalize on a mistake. Presumably he's either going to lean into some aspect of ROH or he's going to have to work from underneath against Claudio's strength. FOR THE ALL-ATLANTIC CHAMPIONSHIP - PAC (c) vs. Orange Cassidy I haven't seen their previous encounters, but this is more heated than you'd expect given the sneak attack. Personally, I'd like to see Cassidy try to bewilder PAC instead of outwrestle him, but this will probably play out like some of the big 2022 Cassidy workrate heavy matches. I liked the idea that Kip was keeping PAC off balance for the first half of their All Out pre-show match. PAC has to keep the belt leading to the Ethan Page match in Canada though. FOR THE AEW TAG TEAM CHAMPIONSHIP - Swerve In Our Glory (Lee / Strickland) (c) vs. The Acclaimed (Caster / Bowens) They have to figure out how to build on the last match, amp up the drama to make it think that Acclaimed aren't winning, then have the Acclaimed win. It's really as simple as that. Given just how good the PPV match was and how many tricks they utilized, I have no idea what the detailed way to do it should be. It depends a bit whether Lee and Strickland are going different ways after this or not and whether you want to build to a split. If not, I'd really lean hard into Keith Lee this time and make him a wall that the Acclaimed have to somehow get over even as Strickland shoots arrows out from behind it.

If he can still go, I have a great gimmick to build on the “steel” thing:

They’ve been abusing the five count for years.

I am so sorry you had to sit through that Beefcake vs Bass match, my friend.

It's Chucky again.

I thought he was doing ok until he started on about star ratings. There's a way to do that but this wasn't it. This on the other hand is a lovely piece of business

Really enjoyed Elevation last night in front of a game crowd that was getting to see AEW live for the first time (which is part of the benefit of Elevation as it's before the actual show) with a really good Emi vs Athena match, some great squashes (with House of Black over in a near cult-frenzy as faces), Menard fun on commentary, and Butcher/Blade/Allie getting to have a meaningful homecoming. Dark tonight has Danhausen/Avalon, Emi and Diamante teaming up against Aminata and Skye and Matt vs Angelico, taped from Chicago. There's always going to be fun wrestling. Where it seems to be struggling is a company that you can identify with and that STANDS for something, but I'm 40 now. I'm good. I don't really need that. And I identified way more with a sort of in-ring Neo-Bret-ism anyway. I'd suggest people look at it as a wrestling product that they can watch on their terms, picking and choosing and engaging with it as opposed to something to overly identify with in some sort of cosmic struggle. I am sorry that people had something they enjoyed that is harder now, but I think that sort of freewheeling pro wrestling feeling is still there if you look for it. I can talk about how Buddy Matthews had the creative freedom to flip the script last night and react to the crowd while still navigating his character. I could write paragraphs about that and how awesome it is and how it wouldn't have been possible a few years ago in his old job. That still exists.

Was very odd they didn't put the Best Friends over in a feel good moment then.

The Nese/Cassidy match is one of my favorite AEW matches all year.

This is my favorite Dave tweet in forever:

Losing Punk is honestly worth it for that.

There's no way that Punk can stay a face in this environment. The crowd was 50-50 for the most part in Chicago after a rah rah Chicago build (there were probably a lot of fly-ins but still) already just based on the Cabana rumors. You don't MJF as a face with that entourage but him going over with one big face pop and immediately reestablishing himself as a heel is fine. Granted, if the Bucks, Omega, and (especially) Page all walked out over this and never showed up again, it'd eliminate almost everything I don't want to see in the promotion, so that'd be the biggest babyface thing in the world for me. It'd probably siphon off about 30% of the fanbase though, so maybe not a great idea. I think all of this is going to be great for ratings, though, though it might be hard to tell with football coming back. And yes, the Acclaimed tag might be the best tag I've ever seen in AEW proper which is saying a lot.

Give me Rush vs Punk for the belt in two-three weeks time. That's one of the top matches they could put on for me right now. Though MJF at Arthur Ashe does make a lot of sense, huh?

That really doesn’t need a belt. But it probably does need to be the main event so that screws the belt if Roman doesn’t have it.

And hypothetically if the circumstances were that she’s been uncooperative and dangerous with opponents and was trying to find a way out of doing a job and couldn’t cover for that in a genuine and sympathetic way in front of a live crowd? Some of which potentially also being why Tony is publicly using a true ratings argument instead of really throwing her under a bus.

Just throwing this out there but that seems like a potentially bad idea given the circumstances.

I remember having talks with some people here a few years ago about how all wrestling felt homogeneous, that Japan, Mexico, England, the Indies, NXT all seemed like they were converging more and more. What we've seen in the last twelve months is AEW becoming more of a "big tent" promotion stylistically and that can only be a good thing. I know it makes people who were in love with the lead up and onset and first year or two of the promotion frustrated but it's now this melting pot of the 2010s New Japan style and the PWG style and the BCC/Mox+Danielson-as-Hansen style and the Punk/FTR sort of Neo-Bret-ism and a bit of the hosses-bealing-people bits and whatever else. It's a big promotion putting a lot of matches on every week, every month, every year and there's something for everyone even if it's not everything for someone anymore.

I don’t think Claudio should be in the ladder match. That’s dumb to me (though him independently hunting for another title wouldn’t be, just not in a multi man for a shot), but Tony spent all of 2021 hiring guys. Lethal would have been hired. Joe would have been hired. Claudio would have been hired. He’d keep introducing belts. Whatever the issue is, it’s not ROH. That’s just decoration.

And I am sympathetic to you. You had something you were enjoying. You're not enjoying it anymore. Way I see it, if things go a different direction, maybe you'll get to be happy at least, and I'll be happy for you, even if I won't enjoy it as much. I'm pretty good at finding things in AEW (especially the web shows) to enjoy even when things on top aren't for me, so I'll be ok either way. Also, let me cross post something I just wrote at DVDVR: I think people are really overinflating the impact of the ROH stuff. It's given them a couple of prop belts to use on shows to add some extra stakes at times. It helped cement Yuta being over. It gave FTR something on top of the AAA and NJPW belts as they're kept out of the top top of the scene due to whatever else Tony wants to do there. They spent something like 2-3 weeks building up a PPV after Forbidden door, with a lot of that on Dark (Pure title stuff) or Elevation (Martinez/Deeb). Almost no talent has come in from ROH specifically (Gresham had what, two matches on Rampage? Blake Christian gets some Dark matches. Cheeseburger was on Elevation once? Some other enhancement work here and there from others like last night where the Wingmen or Bears might be used otherwise). Martinez had a bunch of defenses on Elevation. The footprint has been absolutely tiny. Minuscule. It's not Jim Crockett overextending himself with dead territories that were geographically far away from his core and adding an extra ten wrestlers and salaries and a bunch of TV he had to cover. It's been one PPV with two weeks build and a way for him to sprinkle some extra stakes on things he'd probably want to do anyway. The biggest issue is that the PPV (which everyone seemed to really like!) came right after Forbidden Door so even though most of the build was limited to Rampage/Dark/Elevation, it was a month, month and a half with less focus. BUT! That was right at the moment where they had the worst injuries so it was a good way to paper over things with some extra/outside talent for a little bit. It actually helped to put a bandaid on things. Sorry, but what is anyone even talking about here?