Matt D

I thought Gordon in that 79-85 range was perfectly fine. He becomes whatever he becomes but as the partner/heir to Bordes, he more than held his own. Maybe that was my expectations. Obviously, he's not some sort of mat genius but for where the French scene was at that point, he was a perfectly fine lead babyface, very good at aping a lot of those who came before him and even those who were his contemporaries (I'd see him pick up moves that I saw someone else do weeks or months before; some of that was always zeitgeist and a token trait of the scene though) and he had the crowd. Plus he had a great finishing move with the Juan Gil Don up and over mare thing. In general @David Mantell, I'm sorry you weren't around a couple of years ago when I was living and breathing this stuff week to week. I ended up project drift by the end as you can imagine (though I'm proud for finishing it out and enjoyed almost all of it, even deep into the 80s). Now I'm on to Panama.

There are a lot of commonalities between lucha and French catch, which isn't surprising since the one (at least in the mythology) helped inspire the other and there was a South American contingent and vice versa. There's a certain code to being a stylist that feels not dissimilar to being a tecnico. So heel refs being a thing both places isn't too surprising. More likely though, I think it's just that it got heat and was a part of the show that got over so they leaned into it. When you had Saulnier there, he was a guy who could take bumps and stooge and get proper comeuppance like a bumping manager could. He was someone who was a better wrestler than most of the people who were in there with him, despite being on the short site. Hell, he probably trained a good chunk of them. It was a short cut. There's so much we don't know about how they drew money and how important the TV was, etc., but just from the text itself, it was almost always over, gave them a narrative tool to prolong matches and make them a little more interesting than the really dominant babyface tags you'd get in the Hunter/Hayes era for instance, while still keeping the stylists protected by giving them a reason they weren't steamrolling the bad guys. Now if there's something in French culture about authority figures and sports referees being notorious villains I couldn't tell you. To me, it's that confluence of having Saulnier in place and the narrative shortcuts it allowed that seemed to work for the crowd match after match after match after match.

My take on this is that he came out last year looking for Punk's approval and friendship and Punk turned him down, starting their feud. Now that he's found everything he had been looking for in Punk in Adam Cole, Punk is kind of beneath his notice. He's putting aside everything that he previously felt was important for his new friendship. That's the story and this tracks for it.

It’s the Jake we were always promised but never really got.

In that case, I am all for that ROH show. Whenever I get around to watching it next week. And I think Clayton has upside between his size and the JWOW (?) connection. Whenever you have someone with millions of followers tweeting about your product, it's a good thing. That's happened before. I just don't really want to see him at this stage and I know @The Thread Killer doesn't want to pay to see him.

I’m excited to see that match. Should be a lot of fun. Zack Clayton vs KM on the other hand sounds rough.

You should make sure to watch all three matches in the series if you're going to go out of your way to watch the one. But Athena's the female MVP of AEW this year so you should watch basically everything she's done anyway.

All I really care right now is that they got the ROH tag belts off the Lucha Bros. Massive anchor on that division.

I need @ohtani's jacket and @elliott to record an anti-Kawada podcast.

Got to roll with the hot hand. It's just business. They're the ones who want the Bucks match, not me!

I don't know. This feels like just the right amount of time for me. A one month reign. They can sell a few more shirts, build up the tension. After they win the belts, they can feud with Roddy and a partner (He had been a PWG Tag champion with PAC. That sounds good). Khan can make the announcement for All Out despite Cole not wanting him to, etc. You get out before it wears out its welcome so you can go back to it at some point. (Btw, part of this plan is Kenny and Page winning, FTR beating the Bucks at All In for a number one contender's match, and FTR winning the titles back at All Out. I just don't know what to do with Punk in this scenario).

They just won Blood and Guts. And did the Last Call. And they're former champs that never got another title shot after they lost their title. I think you could make it work. As for Cole, you have him win a couple of singles matches or a battle royal or a one night tournament or something where he almost can't help himself. Kind of a Sting/Flair 1989-90 Scenario. And then he realizes the implications after the fact and they're stuck with it. Or just have Tony Khan announce it since he had a draw with Max and then they've done nothing but win since. But yeah, the time could even be further extended out I guess. I have no actual mental idea when All In is. I barely know what today's date is. It's summer and things get muddled.

I reiterate: The main event of All In should be MJF/Cole (c) vs Page/Omega with the pressure of an already booked despite Cole's wishes MJF vs Cole title match at All Out hanging over them. It's the most "AEW"-ish match possible for the biggest AEW show and the logical successor to previous most iconic AEW match ever in Page/Omega vs Bucks. Whatever the initial plans were (Unless they're Omega vs Punk, sure) they should change them.

Doing a rare (for me) DVDVR Cross-post but the more I think about this, the more I like it: All In/All Out will be a bit of a conundrum when it comes to not shortchanging either, even with the potential of Punk being a heel in one setting and a face in the other allowing them to maybe redo matches. You need some sense of conclusion at All In while still building to All Out. One possibility I see at this point is Cole and MJF defending the AEW titles against a reunited Omega and Page at All In ahead of a somehow mandated AEW Title match that they can't get out of between the two of them at All Out. That's playing the "hot hand" as far as humanly possible right now. You get the finality of the Omega/Page story, the end of the MJF/Cole team, the intrigue of which will betray the other, and it will feel like both a big deal and an "Only in AEW is this Possible" sort of deal with a lot of throughlines that have been building for a while. Or they can just blow up the team tonight, whatever.

I like ROH. It frustrates me but it’s enjoyable wrestling for the sake of wrestling and I like wrestling. It’s also removed from most of the wrestlers I like least in AEW (most), and has one of my absolute favorites featured every week in 2023 Athena. I think the negatives bugged me more before Collision started. Now it’s the wrestling I catch after I finished everything else each week and I usually enjoy it more in reality than I think I will on paper.

I am the lowest guy on Adam Page on the board, but before they announced Briscoe, I thought Page was the best choice for an opponent stemming off the current BCC vs Elite feud and as a fresh match up with a guy with some ROH history. The Briscoe match felt super cold even given a pretty good promo from Claudio and an Eddie one from Eddie. I figure they should probably just go back and go with Hangman at this point (Unless it's some crazy ruse to have Eddie come back from the G1 and put aside his dream to stand up for honor and fight Claudio once and for all).

My only guess is that Athena needs an opponent for the PPV and this is a different way to get there than an eliminator. In some cases ways Willow is the perfect opponent to Athena, light vs darkness and they could have built a year long story around that leading to Final Battle. Ah well.

I’m going to hold out a tiny bit of hope for Athena to be the Faces of Fear vs Ruby’s Outsiders.

Adam Cole should work a George McFly gimmick.

If nothing else, we have the sheer variety of the "Rugged Russians" WWWF match and his Japan work. That gives you a sense of potential breadth. Still, I get the sense he was absolutely great. Unquestionably great. He is one of the greatest wrestlers ever. I just don't think I have enough to rate him relative to other wrestlers or figure out where he'd be on a list.

Beating Omega with a side headlock takeover would be pretty good heat.

The whining about a long ROH show (really two put together) was absurd. You can watch it whenever. On paper, there were maybe 17 of the 19 matches (sorry Cole Karter and Action Andretti) I wanted to see and I'll watch them in between other things as it fits into my life over the next week. I think a lot of the whining about it had to be a Twitter thing. On Twitter, you have to stay up with the most recent thing to be part of the immediate discourse. On Twitter, you watch wrestling not necessarily because you love wrestling but because you crave being part of something immediate and live and bigger than you. You derive part of your identity from it and therefore you have to consume it as soon as possible so you don't fall behind the curve, because the curve is only going to last a few hours. ROH is made for a message board crowd by a message board poster. I kind of feel bad for people who can't find joy in a show that kicks off with Mark Briscoe vs JD Drake. Those people are definitely doing wrestling wrong.

Now I want to see them vs RUSH.

I don't push SC stuff often around here, but I covered a few HH matches from House Rules over the weekend (where Darby and OC tried out some of their spots that htey used last night) here: http://segundacaida.blogspot.com/2023/05/aew-five-fingers-of-death-and-friends_0255000681.html And a couple of things from last week including the great Athena vs Skye Blue match that not enough people saw here: http://segundacaida.blogspot.com/2023/05/aew-five-fingers-of-death-and-friends_098280981.html