All Elite Wrestling

[Jmare007]

55 minutes ago, rovert said:

Completely not the case. He's very hands on. He's producing matches in the ring on his knees and hands regularly.

That's even worse then because that means he fucking sucks when it comes to that part of creating angles/feuds.

[Coffey]

7 hours ago, Flyin' Brian said:

Wardlow's car got broken into and the TNT title got stolen. Maybe AEW needs to give everyone backpacks like Orange Cassidy and make them carry the title around at all times. 

I hope this becomes a bigger topic for the next couple of days to get us all away from drinkgate.

[RocknWrestling]

San Francisco is pretty crazy for car break-ins. I wonder where Wardlow was and why he left all of his travel stuff in the car.

Frankly, I hope Hobbs zings Wardlow about it in a promo tonight.

Didn't Jericho drunkenly leave his AEW world title in his car, only to find it stolen a while back?

[KawadaSmile]

Just now, RocknWrestling said:

Didn't Jericho drunkenly leave his AEW world title in his car, only to find it stolen a while back?

Yeah, IIRC it was early on during his title reign. 

Wardlow might have to stay away from that TNT Belt. He does not mesh well with that, there is bad vibes all around.

[RocknWrestling]

I would suggest that they ought to make an angle out of it where Hobbs broke into Wardlow's car himself, but that might be a bit much.

[NintendoLogic]

It was right after Jericho became the inaugural AEW world champion. The belt was stolen from the rented limo he had left it in while he was eating at Longhorn Steakhouse.

[Big Pete]

On 3/7/2023 at 1:52 AM, Jmare007 said:

After listening to TK in the media scrum about how he books AEW and ROH, it confirmed a lot of what everyone has said about him for a long time. It seems the vast majority of what holds a feud together depends mostly on the wrestlers involved coming up with stuff and TK is mostly concerned about who he pairs up with who (how that might work for ratings/buys) and then letting shit sink or swim, didn't sound like he worries much about the hows and whys of an angle.

Considering he's never getting booking help, I'm just gonna wait for cards to be announced before every show to see if I watch or not because expecting compelling TV that goes beyond matches will never happen in AEW (unless some wrestler(s) discovers a way to it by themselves).

Which is what the likes of Jericho, Matt Hardy, Jon Moxley, Bryan Danielson etc. have all said. Tony obviously has final say, but he's evidently nowhere near as hands on or restrictive as Vince which is why the show varies wildly from segment to segment.

It also helps when you're in a position of power like Sonjay Dutt. Certain guys are always going to be featured, whether they're a benefit to the show or not.

[Jmare007]

Any traction on this rumor?

 

[DMJ]

I'm really hoping this is true and that, maybe, hopefully, TK will think about having it be more like a "classic" 80s/90s B-level wrestling show. Granted, I have no clue how that would work out for the company ratings-wise, but I have some thoughts.

While WWE being the big fish has given it what I'd guess is near-total market share of younger viewers, its remarkable that the WWE looks at their toy sales, video games, etc. and says, "No reason to make more, we're good." I've never understood how the cost of producing content for WWE is more than the potential of syndicating a show (or making another deal with USA) with the intention of airing it on Saturday or Sunday mornings. Look at a show like the 2009-2011-era Superstars: there was no reason that show needed to exist except to recap feuds and have wrestlers appear on TV in meaningless matches. It was never going to be a ratings hit during primetime. 

But on a Saturday/Sunday morning? WWE programming wouldn't sell toys and breakfast cereals? Just confusing to me why the WWE hasn't really tried to produce some cheap throwaway show designed for kids when they seemingly have no problem producing cheap throwaway shows for no one.

Now, AEW would have to really, really produce a different, much cleaner product to try to get younger viewers. Also, 6:05 is not 10:00 AM/11:00 AM, so we're not talking apples-to-apples, but 6:05 PM is still early enough that a show like this shouldn't be as graphic/bloody/violent. I get that AEW wants to offer an alternative to the WWE's PG/PG-13 content, but y'know what would be even better? Differentiating your own company's content so that Dynamite is the more adult-focused show and your potential Saturday Night show is tamer, more "classic." (And that doesn't necessarily mean less "indie," it just means, this could be the show where you feature folks like Danhausen, Dark Order, Top Flight, Bear Country, etc. rather than Mox cutting his forehead to shreds and MJF cutting promos that involve him getting road head while drunk driving). Plus, you can fill the rest of the hour with edited, cleaned-up recaps of your big feuds. 

I have no idea if this could work in 2023, but I'd only add that children's programming hasn't really changed all that much - to my eyes - since I was a kid. Its colorful animals singing and dancing. Its toys and breakfast cereals. Its winking nods to pop culture for the parents watching along. There was a time when pro-wrestling shows were right there next to your Saturday morning cartoons and WMAC Masters. I'm genuinely curious and a little dumbfounded that WWE has seemingly never really tried to position some of their content back in that space.

 

[JRH]

Saturday morning has succumed to the "death slot" curse. Most younger fans are simply just streaming or playing video games now on Saturday mornings, and the Saturday morning shows that ARE hits are ones that also have a teen/adult demographic (ie, The Ghost and Molly McGee, The Owl House). While wrestling does have that demographic built in, the last major wrestling show to get a Saturday Morning slot was Saturday Morning Slam, which was only a half hour and had ridiculous restrictions on which moves could be done (no moves involving the neck or face, meaning Rey had to do the 619 to the backs of opponents). I'd love to see Saturday wrestling come back, but I think we've sadly lost it (though putting a replay of Rampage on Saturday morning could be the next best thing, especially for people who dont want to watch a 10pm wrestling show).

[Coffey]

I would rather see a wrestling company try to do something with streaming than another TV show that people most likely won't watch. Like, does AEW need another hour of TV time? I feel like they already don't use their time wisely with just Dynamite & Rampage & that's not even counting the internet shows like Dark or Dark: Elevation. 

I thought that WWE would try to be more "internet savvy" when they were doing Byte This! & trying out shows like Cyber Sunday. They were also kind of the pioneers of internet online content with the WWE Network, which admittedly I didn't think was going to work at first. 

We've not really seen a wrestling company try to have a show that is on a streaming service with fresh content yet though. Like, I don't really know how you do it, maybe a bi-weekly show or something? I know we have seen iMPACT! on Twitch & the previously mentioned AEW shows are on YouTube but it's kind of crazy that we've not seen pro wrestling try to get into NetFlix, HBO Max or paid services like that. Lucha Underground would have been perfect for that. 

I like what @DMJis saying about a show geared toward a younger audience too. When I was a kid, I used to eat up WWF Superstars - and still to this day, I have a huge nostalgia for it. Granted that was like over thirty years ago & I know times have change. Like DMJ mentioned though, AEW definitely has a lot of their roster that could easily be geared toward children to sell games, toys, clothes, etc. & get their parents to spend money. Danhausen, Orange Cassidy, Dark Order, even Darby Allin. Also, no one is really ever trying too hard to appeal to women either. Like women & children are untapped potential in wrestling.

[Blehschmidt]

So, there is apparently some kind of to do about Riho shutting down her Twitter account, Cornette saying something on his podcast (maybe about Hana Kimura?) and Corny fans/AEW fans blaming each other that I am hoping someone here can explain without me actually having to read peoples tweets or listen to Cornette rant about AEW?

[The Thread Killer]

1 hour ago, Blehschmidt said:

So, there is apparently some kind of to do about Riho shutting down her Twitter account, Cornette saying something on his podcast (maybe about Hana Kimura?) and Corny fans/AEW fans blaming each other that I am hoping someone here can explain without me actually having to read peoples tweets or listen to Cornette rant about AEW?

Riho deleted her Twitter account. A bunch of AEW fans decided it was Cornette’s fault and claim she was “bullied” off Twitter by the “Cult of Cornette” even though he hasn’t said anything much about her lately. No denying that over the past few years he has mocked her pretty thoroughly, but to the best of my knowledge there hadn’t been any new shots taken at her. There doesn’t seem to be any specific recent incident that originated from Cornette which prompted her to quit Twitter, but I guess her fans decided it was his fault anyway so they Tweeted about it so much that Cornette ended up trending again.

In the interest of full disclosure, I do not listen to both of Cornette’s weekly podcasts in full…that would mean I’d be listening to 6-8 hours a week of Cornette and I just couldn’t do that. So it’s entirely possible he might have said something recently that I might have missed, but I do usually listen to his weekly AEW reviews and I never heard anything new about Riho.

Anyhow…I guess Cornette and Brian Last got all sorts of flak on Twitter from AEW/Riho fans about this, so they addressed it on yesterday’s podcast. I did hear that segment. Cornette basically said he doesn’t know why Riho deleted her account but he basically implied that he doesn’t really care. He essentially claimed that Twitter is not a place for people with thin skin, and both he and Brian Last pointed out that they routinely get all sorts of shit from people on Twitter all the time, including threats towards them and their families. Cornette said that the way to handle these people are to block them and if there is a threat made, report it to the proper authorities.

Cornette did reference Hanna Kimura when he talked about this situation, but not in a way that I thought was particularly egregious. He just cited her as someone who was bullied on social media and ended up taking her own life as a result, to underscore his overall point that people who are sensitive to anonymous bullies really shouldn’t use social media because that’s what you’re going to be exposed to. If anything he seemed to be almost sympathetic (for him) but I don’t see where his referencing her was all that inflammatory. He literally said that what happened to Hanna Kimura was “horrible.” So I don’t know…how dare he, I guess?

Don’t get me wrong, Cornette was not sympathetic towards Riho. He said that if you’re a woman in your mid-20’s making a six figure contract for working part time, your life can’t be all that bad and essentially implied this whole situation is making a big deal over nothing.

And of course, he used this whole situation as a platform for shitting on Kenny Omega for even hiring Riho in the first place. Brian Last made some really weird comment about Omega controlling Riho’s life which was kind of bizarre and I don’t even know if Cornette knew what he was talking about. If he did, he didn’t follow up on it, the whole thing was really weird and out of place and didn’t seem to have anything to do with the topic at hand.

I know Omega has given a bunch of interviews where he has bemoaned the fact that Cornette fans say horrible things to him and the rest of the AEW’s women’s roster on social media. So maybe this an offshoot of that, I don’t know. Cornette did make some vague comment saying that people shouldn’t harass others on Twitter and they should leave the AEW criticism to him.

Quite honestly the whole thing seems like a bunch of nothing. Cornette’s newer fans (especially the ones on social media) are a bunch of morons. They’re so bad that Cornette had to shut down the Cult of Cornette facebook page recently and have Brian Last moderate it.

Conversely, it’s legitimately hilarious to see some AEW fans listen to 8 hours of Cornette a week, desperate to find something to get offended over, so they can clip it into a 20 second sound byte and hysterically post it all over social media. These people really can’t wrap their heads around the fact that every time they do that, and every time they get him to trend on Twitter, they are exposing him to a wider audience, and they are exacerbating the problem.

[KawadaSmile]

Do you think AEW makes a move on the Garcia Twins?

[The Thread Killer]

17 minutes ago, KawadaSmile said:

Do you think AEW makes a move on the Garcia Twins?

Should they? No.  Will they? Probably.

If TK thought Paige was a great signing I assume he would feel the same way about the Bella Twins. I was going to say that I don’t know if the AEW Women’s Division could get much worse, but it definitely could. I had always heard Kenny Omega was pretty much in charge of the Women’s Division and I wonder how much of that is true now.

Maybe they could form a new stable and claim Daniel Garcia is their long lost cousin, making the Bellas the AEW version of Lance Von Erich!

[NintendoLogic]

Nikki and Brie giving Daniel lessons on how to be a sports entertainer would be dimes.

I'm tempted to say nothing the Bellas would do in AEW could possibly as bad as the horseshit with the spray paint, but I never thought Saraya would have come up with something that terrible either. Maybe WWE creative really was filtering the Divas' worst ideas and there's no telling what depths they could sink to when left to their own devices.

[Coffey]

If nothing else, Nikki is a better worker than Paige.

[sek69]

So it looks like signs are pointing to Taya being the mystery Canadian woman to face Jade. 

[Johnny Sorrow]

19 minutes ago, sek69 said:

So it looks like signs are pointing to Taya being the mystery Canadian woman to face Jade. 

Boo. I was wanting Nicole Matthews. I met Nicole when I was the ring announcer at the BOOM Pro Wresting show in Vancouver in October. She's super cool and amazingly talented. She carried a dude working his second match ever into the match of the show. She beat him and made him at the same time. 
 

[Blehschmidt]

@The Thread Killer Thank You for summing that up. Doesn't sound like anything particularly egregious on Corny's end, and just a bunch of Twidiots losing their shit about nothing. 

 

[strobogo]

15 hours ago, The Thread Killer said:

Should they? No.  Will they? Probably.

If TK thought Paige was a great signing I assume he would feel the same way about the Bella Twins. I was going to say that I don’t know if the AEW Women’s Division could get much worse, but it definitely could. I had always heard Kenny Omega was pretty much in charge of the Women’s Division and I wonder how much of that is true now.

Maybe they could form a new stable and claim Daniel Garcia is their long lost cousin, making the Bellas the AEW version of Lance Von Erich!

I don't think anyone expected the Paige deal to go the way it has gone. It seemed like a big deal and good signing at the time both online and for the live crowd. 

[NintendoLogic]

Matthews would be a good pickup for AEW if her legal issues have been resolved. She got busted September 2018 for booking indie dates with a travel visa rather than a work visa, which normally carries an automatic five-year ban from entering the US. But she appeared at a Defy show a few days ago, so someone must have pulled some strings to get the ban lifted early. As for Taya, she said in an interview that she'll be at home in California on Wednesday. She never explicitly denied showing up in Winnipeg, though. Not that it would mean anything if she had, of course.

[Johnny Sorrow]

Nicole's visa issues have been resolved. She just announced it on Twitter a few days ago.

[Al]

Nicole would be fantastic.

[Migs]

Do we think this is someone they put over Jade? It really feels like the right time to end the streak, and a surprise debut who gets that rub seems like a good use of the moment.