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AEW Dark Megathread


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1 hour ago, TheDuke said:

-1 did commentary on like 2 or 3 of the matches last night. It was kind of funny. 

I had a good time listening to -1, him "playing a character" while still being a little boy watching wrestling with all the Oohs, Aahs, and Woahs brought a smile to my face and made me laugh more than once.

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  • 2 weeks later...

That Tay Conti squash this week was excellent, the submissions, the stiff kicks (she sure ain't kicking her tighs) and that knee in the face in the corner ! She is slowly but surely becoming a favourite of mine... She is so much better now than when she debuted a few months ago (sure speaks a lot about Dustin & QT, while it says a lot also about the four years she spent in NXT learning not that much apparently). Her, Anna Jay & Britt Baker, at the rate they improve, can be something really big in just a few years.

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I think if there has been anything the NXT v. AEW feud has proven indisputably, it is that QT's wrestling school and the Nightmare Factory's training for rookie wrestlers is far far far superior to WWE's performance centre and developmental's best shot. And it's not even slightly close

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 2/9/2021 at 11:59 PM, MoS said:

I think if there has been anything the NXT v. AEW feud has proven indisputably, it is that QT's wrestling school and the Nightmare Factory's training for rookie wrestlers is far far far superior to WWE's performance centre and developmental's best shot. And it's not even slightly close

Serious question: Has the Performance Center produced any stars?  Did Bayley, Sasha and Charlotte come through there?

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On their website they have them all listed as "success stories". But then they have everyone who has come through NXT listed. However, in Sasha's case at least, in her appearance on the Broken Skull Sessions she was particularly effusive about her time there and what she learnt from the likes of Norman Smiley and Dusty Rhodes. I suppose it's not really as if they've even tried to push many of the true Performance Center graduates yet - those names who hadn't previously trained and been wrestling elsewhere. The two biggest ones that come to mind as graduates with star potential are Velveteen Dream and Jason Jordan - and it looks as though their careers have been derailed, for very different reasons.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I guess the six man belts will need a JTTS team but dang nabbit Pretty Picture with Ryan Nemeth are fuller than dish water. Peter Avalon, as the librarian, is so much more interesting than whatever he is throwing at the wall this week.  Bononi hasn’t done enough to be bad.  They should have just thrown him back after his audition and let him quietly by known hoarder, WWE.  Had AEW waited Bononi would probably be resigned like the others they released last year.

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The first episode might get more than the normal amount of Dark talk.  Hopefully they don’t have Wight doing standing interviews next to shorter wrestlers...which is theoretically anyone and everyone.

I love the Dark formula.  They are going to continue to sign more talent than they have feuds or stories to put them in.  Other companies are making it an arms race and AEW has to sign new talent continually or WWE will just grab everyone.  Don’t hate the playa...or something.  I wish they would both leave some experienced talent for MLW, ROH, Impact or Japanese promotions that probably like having non-rookie gaijin.

Dark introduces new wrestlers and gives time to establish a wrestler’s style.  They SHOULD do more promos or profiles though.  

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Uhhhhh.... So this is basically just more Dark matches with only a different announcing team ? I expected something else. Dunno why, but something different in term of format. Gonna watch the main event eventually, but I was barely watching Dark at all anymore, I'm not gonna watch more of the same. It's a good thing Dynamite really delivered this week, otherwise it would have been a streak of letdowns.

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It is a little harder on the ears than Original Recipe Dark.  As good as Schiavone has been on commentary he is not Excalibur.  Tony calls a lot of moves...ambiguously.  If you aren’t looking at the screen you would have no idea what he is describing. Paul Wight is good.  Unfortunately he isn’t Taz either.  
 

Excalibur and Taz have a nice chemistry together.  They can switch their tone to fit some jokes, history, match pbp and put over angles all within the same match. Schiavone & Wight need more time before I would actually call them entertaining.

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11 minutes ago, Ryan Faulconer said:

Excalibur and Taz have a nice chemistry together.  They can switch their tone to fit some jokes, history, match pbp and put over angles all within the same match.

Yep. They were the main reason I still watched part of the show, but lately there's just too much too watch and I don't want to get burned out. I usually watch a match or two if I have some interest in them.

Put Taz instead of JR on Dynamite and you have a killer trio.

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1 hour ago, El-P said:

Uhhhhh.... So this is basically just more Dark matches with only a different announcing team ? I expected something else. Dunno why, but something different in term of format. Gonna watch the main event eventually, but I was barely watching Dark at all anymore, I'm not gonna watch more of the same. It's a good thing Dynamite really delivered this week, otherwise it would have been a streak of letdowns.

Yeah - I really liked the Lee Johnson segment; would love to see a show which was half stuff like that and half matches. Having said that, really DISLIKED the Sydal/Omega stuff. 

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And so I expect people to bitch about Coach Tony K. showing in face on "TV" in a very Scott D'Amore way (although there's a lot worse things than being influenced by D'Amore, hey, here's a guy you'd want as a script doctor for your booking).

I see the show is 2 hours long. Yeah, no. Dynamite + BTE + a few matches here and there on either Dark will do. With eventually another show on TV (which I expect to be really different this time), that's just too much content to watch for a single promotion. Too much time to invest if I want to also check out other wrestling stuff. They should be careful of not driving themselves into complete mental overdrive like WCW did, many have said that Thunder is what killed the booking because it was just too much work. 

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Super disappointed in Elevation. The last thing we needed was another two hour show filled with squash matches. Dark has been way too long since the pandemic started, and as was stated above, this is pretty much just more Dark (with a fancy main event)

Tony and Show were fine, they'll gel more as time goes on.

But, I was already picking and choosing matches on Dark with just the people I really like. Guess I will be doing the same here.

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Unless they hire or assign another booker this is probably what AEW is.  So far I am fine with that.  I’m not really certain what else they can do to make shows a bit more complimentary to the talent wrestling on it.

Originally there was the obvious misdirect when they said AEW would be sports based product.  Nobody had ever done that in the US wrestling world.  There was no possible way a first time booker could have pulled that off.  It works better in Japan.   Instead of having Antonio Inoki and Giant Baba the American boom was influenced by two Vinces, Kevin Dunn, Bischoff, Patterson, Pritchard and Heman.

People like Gabe Sapolsky tried a sporting approach to wrestling.  It took them only two years to really break with that idea for ROH. They had their peaks but most were in the 05-08 years after they distanced from records and the Code of Honor.

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I agree that no one has (and probably won’t ever) booked a compelling “sports-based” promotion. I mean, the whole reason wrestling became worked in the first place was to control the outcomes. The problem with booking it like a sport is you end up getting locked into matchups that maybe aren’t the most desirable. 

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ROH probably has come up with the best way it could be done with how they brought back the Pure title and pretty much treat that as the "real sports" section of the show.

Plus we've seen in UFC where sometimes they bypass the matchups based on rankings with ones that would be more entertaining and/or more marketable. Even real sports know you can't book strictly on records, 

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On 3/19/2021 at 5:53 PM, Log said:

I agree that no one has (and probably won’t ever) booked a compelling “sports-based” promotion. I mean, the whole reason wrestling became worked in the first place was to control the outcomes. The problem with booking it like a sport is you end up getting locked into matchups that maybe aren’t the most desirable. 

I think the presentation on "World of Sport" in the UK is about as close as you're going to get to it, seeing as it was basically a facsimile of boxing presentation at the time. 

I would love to watch a modern equivalent but the skillset isnt really there anymore I don't think. Would be good to see someone try. 

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