Stiva

I haven’t been commenting on specific shows but I will say that 2024 AEW is the most I’ve enjoyed it for quite a while. I’m enjoying pretty much everything and while I wish they would try and find a balance between some more creative angles and great matches as they did at their peak, it feels like TK has got his ducks in a row in a way that he hasn’t for a long while. I do think they need a couple of big signings to counteract the perception that a lot of workers are wanting to jump back to WWE and I’m not really sure anything they’re going to do will lead to increased ticket sales but eh, I’m enjoying it. I just hope they stick the landing with Swerve down the line

Watched the men’s Rumble and man, they need a way better structure than “Entrant comes in and hits his hot tag for 30 seconds, rinse and repeat” What a boatload of nothing that was. As someone said, for a company that’s crazy hot at the gates, this felt like such an anodyne show in terms of the booking. Talk about playing everything super safe

So, did the AEW/TNA relationship go so badly that WWE of all companies managed to become friendly with them? Does this end with Mike Bailey coming into the Men’s Rumble?

Darby’s matches are attractions because you know you’re getting wild shit in the first minute or so most times out. And he must be doing something right as, in a company where they’ve lost basically everyone to injury at some point, he’s been an ever present.

I don’t have much to add other than agreeing with the choir on how deplorable this whole affair is but you get the sense that if people start digging and you see more women feeling comfortable enough to come forward themselves with their own stories, this could just be the start.

With regards to AEW ticket prices, Khan is also getting a lot of criticism for hiking the prices up for Fulham tickets. To the point where their FA Cup game today is seeing fan boycotts so dude has precedent for over pricing

I assume Joe pins Hangman at Revolution, Swerve goes 3-0 against Hangman in a gimmick main event on Dynamite and then Swerve takes the gold at Double or Nothing. That gives Joe a good 5 months reign and I think that’s about as far as you delay the Swerve coronation without him losing momentum. That’ll probably lead into another “Hangman loses confidence” story which is honestly old ground these days but maybe they move him to Roddy and the International title down the line

It really isn’t a surprise that everything feels better with a guy like Joe on tops who talks about being a bad man and backs it up in simple fashion than it does with MJFs convoluted, work shoot, Attitude Era nonsense. For the first time in a while, TK has actually established some challengers right off the bat which helps

That angle may have had more effect if NJPW and AEW weren’t sending each other talent back and forth all year and co-promoting a PPV together in June. I assume this is building to something there

Khan getting into it with people on Twitter is not really worth speaking about but he can’t really talk about wins leading to title shots when he scrapped his rankings to be replaced by constant open challenges to build title matches

Aside from the main event result and reveal, I thought this was a real slog. The opener was good fun but just about everything after it wasn’t great. I suppose this is the trade off when you go to monthly PPVs. I actually liked Copeland/Christian and thought it was laid out nicely and both guys did well, other than the table not playing along but the ending angle sucked. MITB type shit should be nowhere near AEW. Glad they did the right result with Kingston and Joe in the end. Swerve to get the title at Revolution seems the call but who does Joe run opposite until then? The only babyfaces coming off of wins are Kingston and Sammy Guevara but I guess that school of booking has went out the window with TK nowadays

I’m very glad that we have a change of champ as MJFs Attitude Era babyface shit was wearing thin. This gives everybody new something to sink their teeth into. I do wonder what Cole and the Devil Gang do in the short term while MJF heals though.

I’m amazed they’ve worked it as competitive as they have. I figured it was going to be Andrade squashed on the way out

I’m all in for a good Mark Briscoe solo run. I hope he isn’t siloed to ROH

TK letting Statlander and Willow throw bombs on the pre-show and bringing Deeb and Riho back to prove to Mercedes Mone that she has people worth working with

It’s a testament to AEWs production team that they have the WWE-like quality to make hype videos that make the stories and angles look way more exciting and interesting than they actually are

Dolph Ziggler is a former WWE champion, right? That would be pretty funny

I guess the downside is that, with so many good matches, things struggle to stand out, especially with a lack of strong angles but, yeah, what an in-ring year. Especially if you’re counting ROH in there too.

If this whole thing was Danielson with the book, let him wild on everything

So that team was definitely Taven and Bennett right? I’m still plumping for Wardlow being the muscle we saw the other week and Cole being the devil after all. Revealed at Worlds End in massively underwhelming fashion. Hopefully after they hand Joe the title

Yeah, Swerve/Ospreay at Wembley seems like the natural direction to go when everyone is healthy. Also, the best thing about Hangman was his entrance graphic having a different sentence every week. In hindsight, they probably should have put the belt on him sooner but he needed paternity leave IIRC. Kind of felt slightly cooler when they did put the belt on him. Especially when Danielson and Cole came in molten hot at All Out 2021

Plus, the CC has thrown up a ton of credible challengers for his feuds post-title win on the Blue side. Really, this MJF devil nonsense doesn’t need the title, it’s just need resolved

Maybe they’re linked back up with AEW and they can put babyface MJF out of my misery

I can take or leave The Elite (even though I generally enjoyed Omega’s title run) but I always appreciated that the stories they were in tended to have a solid focus on where things were going. AEW can feel unfocused a lot so I always appreciated that side of their work.

Kind of ominous to read “new direction” when AEW is already hurtling along the “let’s show how much forgettable content we can produce so we can get a bumper tv deal” route already