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MLW Fusion, anyone watching it?


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53 minutes ago, Laz said:

Agreed. I've watched the last month and really enjoyed it. The format is exactly what I wish more wrestling shows had, that feel of "this is an outlaw sport" that kinda made me fall in love with the medium as a 10 year old into Street Fighter II and Bloodsport. I wish Bauer was able to retain talent for longer because the company's really hit a groove.

From the sound of it, Bauer runs things on a shoestring budget, which is great for keeping things going but not great for keeping the same roster. Whatever happened between them and Impact that ended the ability for talent to be on both shows has been a real blow to the depth chart of both promotions, too. I think MLW is surviving it better due to the shorter run time - the episodes of Impact I've watched recently really feel like they're stretching to fill two hours.

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I'd love for an official "developmental" deal to happen between MLW and AEW, because I think Court/MSL could teach the Bucks/Cody/Tony Khan a lot about basic pro wrestling booking and overall presentation, but I know it won't happen because Bauer enjoys his independence. I can't blame him, I really can't, but the company is going to have a short shelf life (again) unless some larger deals are made.

I'm also being selfish, because I think Bauer/MSL would do a better job with the AEW roster than the AEW booking team is doing.

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  • 3 weeks later...

The main event from the last Super Series show with InJustice was awful. Just too sloppy for my liking.

That being said, MLW lately has been mostly on fire & feature several of my favorites going right now in Hammerstone, Mancer & Fatu. Giving L.A. Park his own cooking show is also genius. Definitely more good than bad for me lately. Also Alicia Atout has been tremendous. 

Even without MJF, The Dynasty has been a ton of fun. Hammerstone & Holiday have great chemistry & comedic timing. 

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I was hyped coming on to this episode because of El Hijo del Vikingo and I must say I was disappointed. All the performers ard good but the six felt disjointed in some parts. I guess Impact had the right strategy in focusing only on Vikingo because he is a worldwide star in the making. 

Also I'm in the camp of the LA Park cooking show, this man can make anything work with his charisma.

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1 hour ago, Coffey said:

My god, catching up on the show from this past Saturday and this Los Parks 6-man just will not end.

I've found most of the work in these last few episodes really poor, style clashes and way long matches. The Mance Warner/Savio tag match was also about 10 minutes too long.

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I gave up on MLW a while ago (never any real good match, crappy gimmicks like Justice and Contra, overpushed VE slogs) and was thinking about checking out the joint AAA shows, but reading this I'm gonna give it a pass. The promotion was super uneven but fun at one time (seems like ages ago honestly) but it seems like the PPV was a fluke winner now.

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The first AAA crossover show was pretty damn good. The Mance/Savio vs. Pagano/Mortiz went too long and was plenty ugly at times, but it delivered a memorable finish and Ol' Mancer is always fun. Hammerstone vs. Laredo Kid was legitimately good, too, in the 2.5-3* range for me.

The booking and segments, though, are its strengths. No matter how hard they keep trying to make Davey Boy Jr. into a big deal (he doesn't have the presence to be one), at least they're trying to push somebody other than Lawlor.

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6 hours ago, El-P said:

I gave up on MLW a while ago (never any real good match, crappy gimmicks like Justice and Contra, overpushed VE slogs) and was thinking about checking out the joint AAA shows, but reading this I'm gonna give it a pass. The promotion was super uneven but fun at one time (seems like ages ago honestly) but it seems like the PPV was a fluke winner now.

They were actually on something of a hot streak beforehand, with the Opera Cup show in NY and then the Dallas and Philly tapings being mostly pretty good. The AAA stuff wasn't great but they also really needed to stretch to fill time.

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25 minutes ago, Migs said:

They were actually on something of a hot streak beforehand, with the Opera Cup show in NY and then the Dallas and Philly tapings being mostly pretty good.

I thought most of these were boring as fuck. The Von Erichs as a main event act, even in MLW, is a complete joke. Contra has always been mostly a terrible act and Jacob Fatu is overrated (or simply not being featured the best way), the only match in which he delivered was against LA Park at the PPV. I like the guys in Justice allright, but again their gimmick is crap. I don't enjoy Mance Warner. The Harts became kinda boring during that time too. Dynasty's vignettes were the best thing during this period, with Holliday totally stepping up (this guy has to go somewhere). To me MLW was quite fun when it was about indy-dream matches called by Tony Schiavone back in the field and not believing what he was witnessing and Salina de la Renta feuding with Konnan. There's pretty much nothing in their current incarnation that makes me want to watch. Their long-ass tapings and no-exclusive contrat signing makes all their booking plans irrelevant, as showed by their laughable attempt at a women's division and the super delayed Killer Kross showing when he was already signed by WWE (and which they tried to sell as "interpromotional matches" in a move so carny it was embarrassing). BTW, whatever happened with Aries ?

I don't get the Alicia Atout thing BTW, wasn't she supposed to work for AEW when the company started ? What happened ?

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31 minutes ago, SirEdger said:

DDP's daughter

She's actually the daughter of DDP's ex-wife. Considering she was part of DDPY last live workout at his house (along with Jake and one of DDP's legit daughter) and DDP still calls her one of the Diamond Daughters (no shit), it's safe to say the relationship between the former wife and husband must be pretty good. 

But yeah, no idea why Atout isn't in AEW.

And no idea why MLW hasn't used Salina on screen for months.

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Atout has no broadcasting education/background. Still isn't slick.

Also has made her fair share of mistakes Pro Wrestling etiquette wise. For example, IMPACT fired her for pouting about the lack of opportunities she was being given there.

I believe Salina is just concentrating on college. She's signed very long term with MLW and did an interview last month about how many she is there.

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3 hours ago, El-P said:

And no idea why MLW hasn't used Salina on screen for months.

This irks the shit out of me, too. She's so good. We still gotta see Konnan's jobber ass but Salina is MIA. I guess that's better than Vampiro being around. :lol: "Bro, I don't remember, bro. I forgot 92% of my memories. I slept with at least 10,000 chicks though, bro. I was like the Beatles."

Another thing, why the hell hasn't anyone brought in Dario? I don't know what he's doing or if he's even interested but he was super good in Lucha Underground. There's still a huge void for targeting the Latin market in U.S. wrestling. Someone needs to capitalize on it. I thought AEW would go more in that direction with the AAA affiliation & bringing in the Lucha Bros. but, welp, I guess not.

MLW has some acts that I really like (Hammerstone, Warner) & some I really don't (InJustice) but I still like it more than I dislike it, so I'll continue to follow it. But it hasn't been stellar lately with these Super Series taped shows. Thank goodness for the Dynasty segments because if it were just those matches they've been airing, woof.

I love fat, old man L.A. Park though. 

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RIGHT?! Ol' Mancer is impossible to not love at this point, even if his ringwork is meh, because his promos are a thing of simplistic beauty. Def need to get one of his mugshot eyes at some point.

I'm worried about what happens when the Mance/Dynasty program ends, though. What else do they have? Hart Foundation/Injustice won't be able to carry the shows and, as outlined earlier, the open contracts don't allow them to invest much in the way of recurring talent really worth checking out. I'm glad LowKi keeps stopping in but he's always one tantrum away disappearing for a few months/years, no matter the promoter.

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3 hours ago, Laz said:

I'm worried about what happens when the Mance/Dynasty program ends, though. What else do they have? Hart Foundation/Injustice won't be able to carry the shows and, as outlined earlier, the open contracts don't allow them to invest much in the way of recurring talent really worth checking out. I'm glad LowKi keeps stopping in but he's always one tantrum away disappearing for a few months/years, no matter the promoter.

I mean, that's been a recurring problem for them, because they're running on a shoe string and just not in a position to really pay anyone, it seems. When people are choosing Impact over you, you're not paying enough. And so they're going to lose talent and hit ruts sometimes. I had frankly quit on the show late last year and only came back because I now have a lot of work from home time where I could have some TV on in the background, and I ended up plowing through the months I missed. Found the Dynasty and Mancer in particular had become really fun, and MLW does a good job of featuring the engaging parts of the roster on a weekly basis.  

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  • 3 months later...

Bumping this up and apologies if this is talked about elsewhere but, I've been digging MLW showing the TV show from their original incarnation back in the early 2000's, 'MLW Underground.'

I never knew that they had a TV broadcast and thought it was always straight to DVD/VHS like ROH so, its really great to see this early 2000's Indy wrestling time capsule. I think I've watched all 6 or so episodes so far and its pretty darn good. Or at least better than I expected!

It is very much from the ashes of ECW with Joey Styles being the host and calling the matches. Plus there is more than a handful of late era ECW talent (Corino, Simon Diamond, Super Crazy, Mike Awesome, Jerry Lynn etc.), those scrambled TV signal transitions between segments, the music, heck the whole thing is a an attempted ECW reset. I remember hearing about it in after the fact in '06 and being interested. I never knew it was this close to the bone of a reset though! It works because its mixed in with the indy standouts like Christopher Daniels, Amazing Red and the SAT/Maximos who you could see being in ECW had it gone for a few more years (I think Daniels was actually). Then, there's Satoshi Kojima as the world champ. No idea HOW they got him but, I'll take it! They call it hybrid wrestling but, its pretty random BUT wasn't too different from ROH at the time. Heck CM Punk is just made his first appearance! There are complaints like continuity issues between shows/segments, no real babyface in the company but, tons of heels, not seeing certain guys work for weeks despite being the big stars (Corino vs Funk feud, Raven vs Vampiro, Kojima wrestle or promo) in order to sell VHS/DVD over pushing the Tv program...

Anyhow, if you want a fun low stakes weekly wrestling show, it might scratch that itch. There's usually one good to pretty good match per week (any Christopher Daniels match for sure, he and Dick Togo & Ikuto Hidaka vs the SAT and Quiet Storm has been the best so far) and if you're an old ECW fan then, you owe it to yourself to see an episode or two.

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Yeah, I've been loving it too. It's scratching an itch of nostalgia both for ECW and that early 2000s indy stuff, and it's something I've never seen much of before. It's not super consistent but the talent level is really high and it's engaging. An easy binge if you want to catch up to where they're at (9 episodes in, I believe, and there's only 34 total). Hoping they still keep going in posting this when they bring the current show back.

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On 9/6/2020 at 9:00 PM, Migs said:

Yeah, I've been loving it too. It's scratching an itch of nostalgia both for ECW and that early 2000s indy stuff, and it's something I've never seen much of before. It's not super consistent but the talent level is really high and it's engaging. An easy binge if you want to catch up to where they're at (9 episodes in, I believe, and there's only 34 total). Hoping they still keep going in posting this when they bring the current show back.

Holy crap! 34 episodes would be awesome! I've been preparing myself for each episode being the last one. I'm hoping that they keep showing Underground once the new shows start up as well. 

My #1 'gripe ' if this were a current tv show would be that everything is out of order :D Almost comically! Its very much ECW slapped together at the last minute but, this lacks Heyman's neurotic watchful eye. For instance, this week's big match is Johnny Smith vs Kojima for the title. However, show #two or three showed Kojima beating him in clips! I guess this is all post YouTube criticism but, its only one example. There's a couple instances every show where Joey talks about some match we've never seen in passing then 5 minutes later advertises that match for next week or we see a clip of a match that in TV story hasn't happened yet :D Honestly, that gives it some charm!

Anyhow, that's cool that at least 2 people are liking it!!

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