Matt D

More general responses later, but it would hurt Acclaimed more to take the belts off of them so soon after their title win than it would help FTR. Twenty or thirty minute broadway. Post match beatdown to set up the ROH PPV with Kingdom (Or Ass Boys I guess). Do promos from both babyface teams vowing to fight again soon. Run Acclaimed vs FTR at Revolution with a longer time limit and do the title change there depending on whether or not FTR are signed deeper into 2023.

You live long enough and you become Johnny? What a world. Though some of my point is that I'm not convinced the stuff that's bad now has ever been particularly good and it's always been a promotion that you should probably take on your own terms. And don't discount the injuries up and down the line. Cole, O'Reilly, Statlander are three people that absolutely factored into his long term plans.

I get that I'm not ticket sales or ratings, but I still am deeply enjoying just about everything AEW does. The booking has issues, but the booking has always had issues as best as I can tell. My favorite parts of the week wrestling wise continue to be right at the end of Dynamite when they announce the matches for Rampage and right at the end of Rampage when they announce the matches for Dynamite, as well as shortly after Dynamite when I can look up what the Elevation matches are going to be. I'm just really enjoying the wrestling, and skipping the stuff I know I'm not going to enjoy like the best of seven series. Given the kids and everything else, I can almost never watch live. I catch Dynamite on my commute in Thursday morning. I catch Rampage Saturday morning like a WCW Power Hour or Superstars/Challenge. I usually watch Dark and Elevation shortly after they happen or the following morning, but on my own terms, at my own speed, and with my own discretion. I don't know what to say to you guys. I don't think ROH is a big issue, for instance. I think the biggest issue, by far, in the last 15 months or so was the injuries. Khan can adapt in a EWR sort of way to one or two injuries and probably even sees it as a challenge, but the whole roster went down in a staggered sort of way and that upset the applecart. If anything, I think having ROH and a few more titles in there just gave him a couple of extra crutches to book with and it all probably would have been even worse without that. I'm definitely looking forward to Wednesday. I don't expect Acclaimed vs FTR to have a clean finish but I wouldn't have expected Backlund vs Race or Flair to have one either. I expect it to be a really fun match. Joe vs Darby is a fresh, pretty perfect match up. It'll be good to see Velvet back in action and Skye Blue is one of my favorite prospects in the company as she hits hard and takes hard shots and she'll probably play FIP. Hager/Garcia vs Claudio/Yuta is just good wrestling. I'm curious to see how Hager and Garcia work together since we haven't quite seen that exact pairing so it's fresh even in a feud that isn't. And I love AEW Battle Royals because of all the weird interactions you get. It's a great roster and it leads to some weird interactions with guys like Cassidy. Here, I'm looking forward to see Starks interact with everyone. I don't fault anyone who has misgivings about the booking, thinks that there are too many turns or too many guys on and off tv without being a chance to grow and build or that some plot lines are just dropped and some feuds go on for too long. There are issues, but it's a really easy promotion with a lot of wrestling to enjoy if you take it on your own terms. 2022 will make for a hell of an AEW comp tape ten years down the line. That's for sure.

This should be something we can figure out from the clues. There's another episode where he brings up a different match and then connects it back to this as it was the same agent on both (which was a new piece of info) but I can't remember what that was. I always kind of listen in a bit closer when he talks about the potential suspects from the time (which would be who? Arn? Greg Gagne? Mike Graham? Terry Taylor? Ted Dibiase?)

The Omni tapes. Liberate them.

I don’t ask for much from this company but if they’re not going to give me old Omni shows, can they at least have Sami accidentally win the Rumble?

But let's have him face Rush in the next month or two. Just saying.

Toni Storm was a babyface ace. She showed up every week, fought hard, took on all challengers, did everything right, had an aura of being cool, etc. Hayter won the title with help after she said she wanted to do it alone. The fans were absolutely elated for it. Not a hint of doubt. Not a hint of hesitation. She basically went from being a tweener who had trouble with Britt to just a 97 style cool heel who gets cheered over the babyface who does everything right and the fans rewarded her for it. They got the candy they wanted and didn't care how they got it. Obviously they may do some things with Britt moving forward and Storm called her out for it on Rampage today but the fans already rewarded her by popping for her win and not caring how Storm lost.

Just caught up to the end of the pre-show. Incredibly emotional stuff.

What the heck was up with that Cole Karter dive?

Austin vs Cena is 100% the play.

Unless it gets us closer to getting more Houston footage, we don’t care.

I will fully admit that 2022 AEW will work better in ten years as a comp than it has for us living through it, but it'll be a hell of a comp.

Phil, while we have you, do you find it odd at all that L'Ange Blanc is so poorly represented in the French footage we have? Especially relative to guys like Ben Chemoul or LeDuc?

Yeah, it's not like weekly AEW talk was ever through the roof though. I haven't seen the main yet and thought Saraya's promo was very, very bad, but otherwise, I thought it was a really good show. In some ways it was "just" a really good wrestling show, but that's the kind of thing I want to see, so I'm not going to complain. Jericho can tour Europe for another month and the Elite (everyone but Cutler; I like Cutler in small doses) could stay home for another decade and I'd be ok with it. Here are my DVDVR bulletpoint thoughts so I can show my work. I just think I'm vibing on an entirely different plane of existence than you guys. Which is ok. I didn't watch any AEW at all for the first two years, wasn't interested, and that was what a lot of you liked. I do see problems (injuries derailing booking plans, too many turns, poor use of capitalizing on the really fun webshows) but in some other ways, I don't see some of the same problems you see (ROH is fine. The number of belts and tournaments is probably fine since it's a crutch for Tony's booking lapses; at the end of the day, it's a promotion built around the idea of good matches, so it's fine).

Here you go. Feel free to share it. Even better if you can get it back to him and/or his family.

I wish we had appropriate footage of Becky Lynch as it's impossible to tell whether she's any good or not with Dunn cuts.

We should have gotten Kingston vs Claudio shortly after that.

Injuries making their biggest matches Jericho vs Moxley/Danielson.

Would you give Eddie Kingston one? I’m not expecting a lot of chants. The test should be Chicago.

You know, I can't find a post that really sums it up well because it was an opinion shaped over a year but you can find me developing it with this search: http://deathvalleydriver.com/forum/index.php?/search/&q=Page&page=3&quick=1&author=Matt D&search_and_or=and&sortby=newest But I don't actually suggest it. I do cover some in my SC review of Punk vs Page though.

Especially after Goldberg kicks Punk in the head in Saudi Arabia in 2023.

I put this together over at DVDVR but it's a crazy crazy list. These are the people that I could find on the roster that were injured/suspended/off the roster somehow during the last year. And I'm sure I'm missing people.

All this drawing stuff is fun and all but everyone should be happy to hear I plan on writing up a bunch of Big Daddy to try to decide if everyone’s been wrong about him or not on my own set of criteria.

It's sort of been the story of the year. There were HR issues stemming from people like Janela and Swole leaving so he boosted the HR team. There were locker room leadership issues so he extended Moxley and Jericho and gave them bigger roles. Now there are live gate issues and scheduling issues where they're going to the same towns too often so he brought in Jarrett.