All Elite Wrestling

[C.S.]

36 minutes ago, El-P said:

At this point, I'd pick Callihan, Dragon Lee, Bandido, Pillman and Aldis and that's it. Fatu maybe, although he's way overated considering his actual output (granted, MLW is not a good place to shine unless you're working against LA Park apparently). LA Park showing up would be super cool, but would he be worth the headaches ?

Aldis and Pillman are natural no-brainers to sign.

Calihan seems like the epitome of an "indy sleaze guy" to me, but I guess AEW would see the benefit in having him work garbage matches with the Moxleys, Janelas, and Darbys of the world.

I'm not familiar with Bandito or Dragon Lee, so I have no opinion there.

Fatu is probably WWE-bound eventually because of his name and dynasty, so AEW might not want to bother when his ultimate goal likely is and always has been WWE.

If LA Park is a headache, why bother? AEW already has The Luchas Bros. 

[El-P]

4 minutes ago, C.S. said:

If LA Park is a headache, why bother? AEW already has The Luchas Bros. 

Totally different beast, lucha legend and crazy good worker still for his age. But hard to do business with. Still would be the coolest thing though, especially with Schiavone announcing.

[FMKK]

1 hour ago, joeg said:

But they do look totally second rate with some of the guys on their roster. They look incredibly indie when they got 20 guys on their active roster not good enough to land in one of the indies that has TV. So why not use guys who work in the top indies that have TV? why only use guys who work lower level indies. Would they look more indie if guys like Rush, Jacob Fatu, Davey Smith Jr., Briscoe Brothers, Rhino, Joe Doering, Sami Callihan, LA Park, King Mo, Tom Lawlor, Brian Pillman Jr, Dragon Lee, Bandido, Good Brothers, Ken Shamrock, Nick Aldis, etc were filling out the roster as opposed to guys like Private Party, Best Friends, Kip Sabian, Super Smash Bros, Hybrid2, Luther, Marko Stunt, Joey Janela, etc, etc..... I think their product would look far less indie and far more main stream and far more professional is my point so why don't they use some of those guys, its not like they are doing anything on Wednesday's is point.

 

Joey Janela shows up once in a blue moon and is in a jobber tag team. Marko Stunt is third banana in a lower card trios act. Hybrid2 and Luther barely make it off of Dark. Kip Sabian again only makes TV once in a blue moon. Private Party are young guys who they clearly think have a future. And Super Smash Bros are just a team in a stable. The only act here I would consider to be overpushed is Best Friends, and even then Trent is a decent worker with good size and Orange Cassidy is relatively popular. None of these people are essential to the shows and I don't see how it makes them look incredibly indy to have these people appear on TV every third or fourth week when genuine stars like Jon Moxley, Chris Jericho, Kenny Omega and Cody Rhodes are in the top angles.

I think they'd look much worse if they were booking Rhino, Ken Shamrock and the Good Brothers on TV. TNA-riffic. These are not people a new promotion should be putting on television in 2020/21. Brian Pillman Jr. stinks and Sami Callihan looks every bit the sleezy indy geek that Janela does. The only people on that list who are particularly enticing to me are Dragon Lee, Jacob Fatu and Tom Lawlor and none of that group would be roster fodder. They would all be coming in looking for a significant push and probably squashing the likes of Janela, Stunt and Sabian in week one.

[TheDuke]

Matt Sydal was appearing on both AEW and ROH this fall as well.

[C.S.]

4 hours ago, El-P said:

Totally different beast, lucha legend and crazy good worker still for his age. But hard to do business with. Still would be the coolest thing though, especially with Schiavone announcing.

Sounds like a good idea for a once-off, but maybe not anything more than that - especially with his age

4 hours ago, FMKK said:

Joey Janela shows up once in a blue moon and is in a jobber tag team. Marko Stunt is third banana in a lower card trios act. Hybrid2 and Luther barely make it off of Dark. Kip Sabian again only makes TV once in a blue moon. Private Party are young guys who they clearly think have a future. And Super Smash Bros are just a team in a stable. The only act here I would consider to be overpushed is Best Friends, and even then Trent is a decent worker with good size and Orange Cassidy is relatively popular. None of these people are essential to the shows and I don't see how it makes them look incredibly indy to have these people appear on TV every third or fourth week when genuine stars like Jon Moxley, Chris Jericho, Kenny Omega and Cody Rhodes are in the top angles.

I think they'd look much worse if they were booking Rhino, Ken Shamrock and the Good Brothers on TV. TNA-riffic. These are not people a new promotion should be putting on television in 2020/21. Brian Pillman Jr. stinks and Sami Callihan looks every bit the sleezy indy geek that Janela does. The only people on that list who are particularly enticing to me are Dragon Lee, Jacob Fatu and Tom Lawlor and none of that group would be roster fodder. They would all be coming in looking for a significant push and probably squashing the likes of Janela, Stunt and Sabian in week one.

I agree with most of this, but I'd still take a chance on Pillman Jr. He's still very young and can be molded into something, and he has all the goodwill in the world because his dad is so beloved.

Sami Callihan is not someone I'd personally sign, but AEW might because his sleazy garbage match indy cred might make for good pairings in their mind against Moxley, Janela, Darby, etc.

Then again, AEW signed the ice cold flip-flop guy Matt Sydal, who has less buzz than a dead bee, so someone like Sami with actual buzz would be a step up.

[Stiva]

Sydal is good but I wish they’d go out and sign guys who don’t flip and fly. Top Flight are now in the tag ranks and they were gutted about losing Ben Carter who fit that mould too. Go out and get more guys like Butcher and Blade to have some variation in the shows. 

[El-P]

6 hours ago, C.S. said:

Sami Callihan is not someone I'd personally sign, but AEW might because his sleazy garbage match indy cred might make for good pairings in their mind against Moxley, Janela, Darby, etc.

Thinking of Sami Callihan as solely a guy who can do garbage match is not knowing Sami's work well. Yeah, for sure, he's excellent at it, but that's not why he should be signed. He's a great heel, he's unique, he can work any kind of style (from serious hate feud to lighter comedic stuff) and his track record to me is impeccable in term of making you care and elevating anyone he's been involved with in in the past 3/4 years I've followed him in LU/MLW/IMPACT. The only guy who made me care about a Jimmy Havoc match, elevated Rich Swann, made me care the most I ever did about Brian Cage, who doesn't have a whole lot of personality as a character (Melissa Santos helped a lot too), had the best feud with Tessa Blanchard (and worked wonderfully with her in a way that it neve looked contrived) , of course Tessa rules but still) etc... His stuff with Shamrock has been the best you could hope for a Shamrock feud in 2020. Callihan is a terrific worker (great brawler, great bumper and feeder, shows ass like no one else business, can go with pretty much anyone in term of modern pace and intensity) and a terrific angle worker. Easily one of my top guy to watch in the last few years.

Edited November 23, 2020 by El-P

[FMKK]

Sydal works on Dark most weeks and occasionally appears on Dynamite as a JTTS. Completely inoffensive signing and probably has a decent value as an experienced guy to guide the youngsters through matches on Dark.

[NintendoLogic]

I think AEW has a nice mix of talent. Sure, there are plenty of flippy workrate guys, but there are also plenty of brawlers and hosses as well as more personality-based workers like Cody and MJF. The only thing they're really missing is guys with technical gimmicks. I'm not sure what free agents are out there who would fit that bill. Maybe Fred Yehi.

[Mad Dog]

I don't see the problem with Joey Janela honestly. He's a low end mid-carder. He sells well and his offense looks decent. He's good enough to get offense in and push other mid-carders and stars in loses. As far as looking low rent. He doesn't look any worse than guys historically look at his spot on the card historically. I think he's worth keeping around just for creative input.

[C.S.]

12 hours ago, El-P said:

Thinking of Sami Callihan as solely a guy who can do garbage match is not knowing Sami's work well.

That's true in my case. All I know of him is Solomon Crowe and various Impact/indie garbage match clips. 

[joeg]

Ok so I think this got side tracked. My question was more the mechanics of how and why guys signed to ROH/Impact/MLW/etc aren't appearing on AEW as there isn't a scheduling conflict. Because there seems to be a couple dozen really talented guys working in the US right now who AEW isn't using and who appearing once every week or two wouldn't interfer with any of their other bookings or commitments. Now Rovert said that ROH and Impact have contracts that exclude their wrestlers from appearing else where on TV. And I ask how is that possible for a company that only runs 40 dates a year (in the best of years) to tell their independent contractors what they can and cannot do on the other 325 days of the year? 

 

I wasn't trying to open up debate as to whether or not Sami Callihan would do better in that "lower card jobber that gets some offense in" spot than Janela does (the answer is yes by such a wide margin that I didn't know we could debate this). I instead was was just wondering why we aren't seeing more guys under contract elsewhere like a Sami Callihan (or the other dozen of examples I listed) make an appearance on AEW Dynamite from time to time. 

[Mad Dog]

I kind of blame Gabe and Evolve. That's when companies started getting into signing guys to "contracts". Personally, I think it's bullshit. If you are paying a guy enough to not have a day job and just work for you, then offer contracts. If you are just paying them a couple thousand a year then you should have limited say in what they can do. Granted, the wrestlers need to stop agreeing to that shit.

 

[Mad Dog]

It also got weird after WWE freaked out over the Kevin Steen action figure. That's when they started hording talent and trying to freeze promotions like RoH out. It started a sort of arms race with all of these promotions trying to do more to protect their rosters from getting poached. I think it sucks but it has probably helped the American indy scene to not end up like the UK indy scene did.

[Blehschmidt]

In answer to @joeg, I think it would be more that MLW, ROH, and Impact all have TV for whatever it's worth, so they structure their contracts so that their talent can't appear on another companies TV.

I think they are free to work anywhere else they want those other 325 days, so long as it isn't televised.

[Coffey]

I like AEW. I like a lot of the AEW roster. There's not a single person there that comes off as a bigger deal or more legit to me than Jacob Fatu though. But I agree that he's probably WWE bound if he goes anywhere. Moxley is pretty close. But man, I would not mess with Fatu. He definitely has that bad ass problematic aura about him. I like Alex Hammerstone a lot too but I don't think he has the same aura as Fatu. Fatu is like over 40 though & Hammerstone is 29.

I also love LA Park. The Fatu/Park match on the MLW PPV was cash. But yeah, these dude's aren't spring chickens. AEW doesn't really need to be signing a bunch of dudes over 40.

If anything, I'd love to see them bring in more people from Lucha Underground or some more non-wrestlers, like Salina de la Renta or Dario Cuerto. They should really be pushing the demographic that WWE for whatever reason, even with talent like Andrade, ignores, in the Hispanic market.

Also, today I learned that Drago is 45 & Texano, Jr. is 36. Like.. what!?

[El-P]

4 hours ago, Coffey said:

Fatu is like over 40 though

Wow ! I would never have guessed ! That's crazy, I thought he was like 30 or something. He sure doesn't look nor work like his age (or maybe at times he kinda does which now explains something to me, as I said he does not come off as anything special to me and his matches are often pretty disappointing honestly compared to the hype)

4 hours ago, Coffey said:

If anything, I'd love to see them bring in more people from Lucha Underground or some more non-wrestlers, like Salina de la Renta or Dario Cuerto.

*sigh* Oh yeah. Salina is wasted in MLW to me and I miss Dario. Hell, Whatever happened to Catrina ?

4 hours ago, Coffey said:

Also, today I learned that Drago is 45

I knew Drago was already 40 in LU, so no surprise here.

But Fatu ? I'm pretty stunned.

[Coffey]

1 hour ago, El-P said:

Hell, Whatever happened to Catrina?

That's... a really good question. I don't know either. Apparently she was in a movie named Seized that came out in 2020 with Mario Van Peebles. But I don't know if she has done anything wrestling related since leaving Lucha Underground. I can't find anything on Wikipedia anyway.

[NintendoLogic]

Fatu's age doesn't appear to have been made public since I can't find any semi-official source for it. And he refers to himself as a "young cat" in this article from last year:

https://www.theringer.com/2019/9/17/20864851/mlw-major-league-wrestling-court-bauer

However, the article also mentions that he has six kids, so he has to be getting up there in years. In any event, he re-upped with MLW earlier this year (and given the aforementioned six kids, it must have been a hell of a deal), so he's off the board until 2025 at the earliest.

[El-P]

Well, until he asks for his release to go to WWE. Can you picture anyone with talent staying with MLW that long ? Pillman & DBS wants out already apparently.

[Rah]

Are we sure of Fatu being over 40? His dad is only 55.

[Mad Dog]

6 hours ago, Rah said:

Are we sure of Fatu being over 40? His dad is only 55.

I mean my niece is 18 and her dad is 34. Shit happens.

[Coffey]

I'm not sure about his age. When I Googled him all I could find was his stats that said "above 40" & a dude on Reddit that says he trained with him & he's 30. Neither were exactly ironclad.

[Johnny Sorrow]

So, if McBrodie is supposed to be Vince, I'm thinking the obvious way to go is a slow push of John Silver into being a babyface who McLee tries to " hold down" because he's tiny, but getting over?

[Badlittlekitten]

Haha! I love that idea. The meta/WWEsux stuff is mostly useless but that could actually be effective in getting someone over.