AEW Fight For The Fallen

[C.S.]

2 hours ago, War is Raw said:

Evil masked wrestlers have been a trope since the beginning of wrestling, and just because WWE has conditioned fans to see it as low-rent rasslin', there ought to be a place for The Dark Order IMHO.

Yeah, no one thinks Dark Order is "low rent rasslin'" because WWE says so or because they wear masks in general. No one is making those comments about Lucha Bros (who I'm not a fan of at all - at least so far) or Luchsaurus (I dig him).

Dark Order is "low rent rasslin'" because this particular mask looks low rent.

2 hours ago, War is Raw said:

The gimmick itself is satire and/or nostalgia- and over everyone's head.  

Definitely over my head. They're being positioned as "fearsome" top heels, but they're supposed to be satire or a nostalgia act? Not sure I'm buying that.

[goodhelmet]

3 hours ago, War is Raw said:

Dark Order- especially Numero Uno- really knew how to cut-off Jungle Boy's shine. He did his job to perfection as a heel, i.e. as a fan I hated him.

The gimmick itself is satire and/or nostalgia- and over everyone's head. 

We shall see if AEW gets away from the meta commentary, obscure references, and memes once TNT starts or if they see The Dark Order as an example of a basic wrestling formula as seen on older wrestling TV shows and local indy events. Evil masked wrestlers have been a trope since the beginning of wrestling, and just because WWE has conditioned fans to see it as low-rent rasslin', there ought to be a place for The Dark Order IMHO.

Explain the gimmick to me, please. What is over our heads? Like I said, I loved watching them wrestle last night. I just think the entire evil empire garbage isn't believable or entertaining. What are we missing? 

[...TG]

3 hours ago, NintendoLogic said:

Doesn't Priestley have a track record of injuring people in Stardom?

I just realized there's Jack Perry is in a promotion with someone the last name of Priestly and I'm swooning. 

[goodhelmet]

I just rewatched the 3 way tag. I didn't give enough props to Evans and Angelico last night. They looked really good when they were involved and played their parts well. 

As for Dark Order, maybe they aren't used to the evil stable gimmick but they don't wrestle like they are evil, sinister, dangerous, dark, whatever. They wrestle like a couple of assholes who think they're smarter than the faces.  Grayson plays to the crowd way too much and makes really stupid facial expressions. I'm not even opposed to that but not for the gimmick they are portraying.  If I were in AEW,  the first thing I do is lock everyone in a room and find a way to repackage these two. Have a BTE episode where they fire the minions and throwaway the cheap ring gear. Keep the Uno mask though. Then align them with another asshole like MJF or Jericho as stooges. Not everyone can be Michael Hayes and that's ok. Being Buddy Roberts isn't a bad spot to be in. 

[Zoo Enthusiast]

My first thought when Jericho came out in the mask was that the Dark Order would work well as stooges for him.

[goodhelmet]

I was thinking the masked guy could be Ralphus 2.0 but with wrestling ability. 

[goodhelmet]

I watched Page vs. Sabian tonight since I missed it last night. In isolation, it was a good match with decent leg selling by Page and good stuff from Sabian.  It didn't make sense if you're trying to get Page up to Jericho's level. They could have had a nice sprint with Page catching Sabian and putting him away quickly. Also, there was more than an hour to go in this show and the crowd was already spent. So, good match but bad booking.  I liked all of the stuff with Jericho in the post match and the Jericho interview. 

Edit: I need to mention thatthis is another match that would have gotten over so much more in another environment, with air conditioning of course. 

[joeg]

4 hours ago, C.S. said:

Yeah, no one thinks Dark Order is "low rent rasslin'" because WWE says so or because they wear masks in general. No one is making those comments about Lucha Bros (who I'm not a fan of at all - at least so far) or Luchsaurus (I dig him).

Dark Order is "low rent rasslin'" because this particular mask looks low rent.

Definitely over my head. They're being positioned as "fearsome" top heels, but they're supposed to be satire or a nostalgia act? Not sure I'm buying that.

I turned the show off when they came on and never turned it back on. The gimmick would work with two different workers. Dark Order is low rent because they suck. They sucked as Super Smash Brother. Both guys look like somebody who would lose in a fight to your average wrestling fan. Thats my number one pet peave in wrestling- wrestlers I could beat in a fight or any athletic contest for that matter. And AEW has a lot of those sort of Chikara / Jersey indie kinda guys on their roster and it makes large portions of their show unwatchable.  Anyways that gimmick would work with two guys over 6 feet who actually look scary and can actually work. 

[KawadaSmile]

It seems Britt Baker's concussion is more severe than previously thought. Bad news, considering she was one of the biggest names of AEW's Women's Division. Hopefully she can have a speedy and sound recovery.

https://411mania.com/wrestling/britt-bakers-concussion-said-to-be-significant/

[rovert]

Reporters are using significant or serious to describe the concussion for very good reason. Keep her in your thoughts. As this could end up really bad for her and AEW if her current symptoms don't subside. 

[KawadaSmile]

51 minutes ago, rovert said:

Reporters are using significant or serious to describe the concussion for very good reason. Keep her in your thoughts. As this could end up really bad for her and AEW if her current symptoms don't subside. 

Are we talking career-ending serious? 

[Dale Wolfe]

Was it the suplex? It looked pretty grim 

[KawadaSmile]

7 minutes ago, Dale Wolfe said:

Was it the suplex? It looked pretty grim 

It was this spot right here, most presume:

 

[SirEdger]

Is it true that Bea Priestley has a rep for being unsafe in the ring? (Just curious, I haven't seen anything from her other than this and comments I've been reading online)

[C.S.]

1 hour ago, SirEdger said:

Is it true that Bea Priestley has a rep for being unsafe in the ring? (Just curious, I haven't seen anything from her other than this and comments I've been reading online)

I hope not because an alliance between Bea Priestley and Jungle Boy Jack Perry needs to happen. (I realize I'm not the first person to make that joke - in this thread, even - but it's true!)

[Calvin]

Didn't care much for this show. Three-way tag was the MOTN, and that was *** at best, to me. Page/Sabian felt like a complete miscalculation on AEW's part. CIMA/Omega didn't do much for me. Mixed feelings on the ME. Loved aspects of it, but went too long. Crowd was gassed. Matt Jackson FIP segment should've been cut. Finish was blah. Not a bad match, but you can clearly see a good match laid out there, so it's disappointing that they missed the mark. 

[Migs]

Finally finished the show. The main event was probably the first AEW match where it didn't hit my expectations, which were sky high. The FIP section on Matt was really strange after they did such a good job establishing the Bucks as heels for the match. That really killed the energy of the match and it didn't totally recover for the finishing stretch, which was good.

 

[rovert]

11 hours ago, KawadaSmile said:

Are we talking career-ending serious? 

It will be a month or so until we know what we have. 

[Dale Wolfe]

That's a sloppy old kick and achieved nothing. Poor. 

The suplex I was talking about is after that as well. 

[FMKK]

I didn't watch the pre-show and skipped the Brandi match that everyone said was terrible but I found this to be a relatively easy watch. The main event was too long for sure but it would've been a great match if they've have even just shaved 5 minutes. The extended finishing sequence was too extended. I didn't think the Page match was too bad and I can understand why they made the booking choices they did but I do think a more decisive win would have been better for him given the push he's receiving. I also agree with Dave that he really needed to cut a promo after the Jericho brawl.

 

Most interesting thing for me about these shows is seeing who is getting over as the upper midcard acts. We knew who the superstars would be going in - Jericho, Omega, Moxley, Bucks, Cody - but seeing guys I was less familiar with getting increasingly over as these shows go on has been refreshing. To me, MJF, Jungle Boy, Luchasaurus and Darby Allin are the standouts among that group and I'm excited to see them on weekly television.

[peachchaos]

It was an average show but I seem to have enjoyed it more than most since I had tabled my expectations for this being anything other than the charity event it was presented as by the promotion. We knew going in this wasn't going to have the Big Event feel of All In or Double or Nothing even if there were some dream matches on the card. When it was over, I felt like I had watched a pretty good Nitro and not a Bash at the Beach, which is honestly promising in terms of the future for AEW. Between this and Fyter Fest, they're sort of working out how to do smaller shows in frequency with good in ring action and storyline advancement without blowing their load prematurely. Of course the internet must critique and there were certainly plenty of flaws here, both in terms of production and performance, but in the end this was a solid block of wrestling for the most part. Not every show needs to be filled with MOTYCs in order to be a success. Really looking forward to this promotion going full time.

[Zoo Enthusiast]

2 hours ago, peachchaos said:

It was an average show but I seem to have enjoyed it more than most since I had tabled my expectations for this being anything other than the charity event it was presented as by the promotion. We knew going in this wasn't going to have the Big Event feel of All In or Double or Nothing even if there were some dream matches on the card. When it was over, I felt like I had watched a pretty good Nitro and not a Bash at the Beach, which is honestly promising in terms of the future for AEW. Between this and Fyter Fest, they're sort of working out how to do smaller shows in frequency with good in ring action and storyline advancement without blowing their load prematurely. Of course the internet must critique and there were certainly plenty of flaws here, both in terms of production and performance, but in the end this was a solid block of wrestling for the most part. Not every show needs to be filled with MOTYCs in order to be a success. Really looking forward to this promotion going full time.

This was pretty much exactly how I felt, as well.  I thought it was just a solid show.  It seems I liked the main event more than the consensus here, and that probably explains it.

[El-P]

So, honeymoon's over.

Ok, there's much to say about this show, but I'm burned out after 4 days of G1 + this. And G1 goes back on track tomorrow, and Liger in CMLL on Friday, and iMPACT going on another cycle ? Jeez, too much good wrestling...

The setting is awesome. Way too fucking hot apparently, but it looked terrific and really different, which is something you want.

The pre-show was pretty good this time around. The Librarian's theme being "shhhhhhh" so the people make noise works. "Reading sucks !" was pretty funny (and sad). I've gotta say, Sonny Kiss looked *way* better in Lucha Underground, I guess the awesome production over there helped. He was okay, but kinda sloppy at times and very choreographic. Maybe he didn't click with Avalon, who looks solid.

I really enjoyed the female tag match, especially the joshi gals. But this :

On 7/15/2019 at 10:28 PM, KawadaSmile said:

 

 

looks pretty damn stupid. You don't give a stiff kick to the *side* of the head of someone who isn't looking and doesn't expect it. Reminds me of the infamous Yumiko Hotta kick to Plum Mariko. Yep, awful for Britt Baker, hopefully she makes a recovery.

Really enjoyed the 6-men tag. Jimmy Havoc actually wrestling >>>> paper cuts and comedy garbage. Shawn Spears looks good. He got a Perry Saturn vibe going on. Guevarra is such a  millenial Youtube influencer douchebag, you want him to get slapped over and over. That's a compliment. I admit, Janella's fuck off to Corny was funny to me. Plus, knowing what we know now about the whole Callihan debacle, they may work an angle to sell podcasts and Twitter hits...

Yeah, Brandi in the ring (first time I saw her) was kinda... okayish at best, and it doesn't help Allie that she doesn't get to work with someone really good, she was quite good in iMPACT. However, Awesome Kong showing up and Brandi being a bitch after all = good. And AJA KONG confronting AWESOME KONG would be the biggest mark out moment of the show for me. Old joshi fan, and huge Khia Stevens fan. With the season 3 of GLOW coming up, it would be cool to see some joint promotion. Zoya the Destructor showing up in AEW for a special match ? Oh, please, please, please...

The multi-tag match was really good. Dark Order look like complete jobbers but their work is terrific. This gimmick is really hurting their heat. It's obvious despite having the cheapest Super Strong Machine cosplay costume ever, Evil Uno has shitload of charisma and knows what the hell he's doing. Plus I love fat guy in mask who can move, in a Super Porky or early Dick Togo way. But he looks like Fat Shark Boy. Amazing to see how over Luchasaurus & Jungle Boy are already. Marko Stunt was a nice touch. He needs a Hobbit gimmick. Angelico & Evans also looked terrific, although a bit in the background. Love all these teams, but the Dark Order need a revamping, at least in term of looks.

Hangman Page vs Kip Sabian was a good solid match. I understand the predictability criticism, I thought the same thing watching the match, but really they still are at the stage of establishing workers and rankings, so they can't have Page squash this guy. I guess more intricate booking can occur (hopefully) when the TV show begins. Page may not be ready yet for the main event spot, but he's gonna get there. He's got the look and he's got the in-ring talent.

SCU vs Lucha Brothers was a cool spotfest, as expected, but I thought Fenix was kinda off at points (a rare occurence). So overall, one of the lesser Lucha Brothers match I've seen in the recent months (not even blaming SCU). A ladder match against the Bucks could be insane.

CIMA vs Kenny Omega was clearly the MOTN to me, and although it was predictable again, to me it built and built to a truly great finishing stretch in which I actually wonder if CIMA would not win after all. This would have made a terrific G1 match. This is the Omega I want to see again. Impressed with CIMA too, as I'm not exactly familiar with his work (I had seen a few stuff from the Crazy Max era almost 20 years ago and that's it). In the end, great match.

The main event had great moments, but it was *way* too long. They could have had a killer match lasting 15-20 minutes. Great selling by Matt. Dustin looked terrific again. But at some point, the match lost its steam. The actual heat surely didn't help, as it kinda burned the crowd too, but still, match went too long, lost its energy and pacing toward the end and fell apart, despite some great spots again. I really like the Bucks, but the Meltz driver is kind of a goofy finish, really (well, it's a brutal tombstone, so it's believable, but the second guy doing the rotation really isn't adding anything).

Classic bad WCW moment was the announcer not recognizing Jericho under the mask. As funny and dumb as Schiavone pretending Kevin Nash dressed as Sting could actually be Sting. Hey, I guess you need vintage bad pro-wrestling stuff... 

Too long of a show, honestly. Mostly good stuff though, Allie vs Brandi and Kiss vs Avalon being the worst matches and Omega vs CIMA being great. And the Aja vs Awesome face-off was so cool.