AEW Dynamite Week 10 - Dec 4, 2019

[MoS]

14 hours ago, Slasher said:

 Moxley and Jericho (and Cody for a while) are the only guys who look like bonafide stars, and that is something you do need, whether its for the hardcores or mainstream audience (and by the way, by putting it on national television, you kinda have to make it mainstream appealing, you're deluding yourself if you think otherwise).

No one will look like a bonafide star if they are not built and pushed to be bonafide stars. Saying "They don't look like stars" is precisely what the old guard in WCW said about the new blood again and again, even as the ship kept sinking. No one who saw Dean Ambrose get squashed by Brock Lesnar thought he could ever look like a star, yet here we are. Hell, they said the exact same thing about Jericho 20 years ago in 2 different promotions. 

They need to have more promos and segments featuring young talents with established stars. I would rather they not try too many things right now - like Dark Order, Brandi Kong etc - and focus on 3-4 storylines while finding a way to have the stars interact with the wrestlers they want to push. 

[Slasher]

I agree. I am saying they should be leaning on those stars right now doing star things and developing guys underneath. They should be building up two to three guys consistently and telling the fans "these guys are the ones to look out for". To their credit, they are sort of doing that with guys like MJF. But my issue is the fact that they feel all over the place to the degree that no one is really standing out besides the super obvious talents, and these guys aren't being featured enough. Darby Allin would be an example. He has a good match with Jericho, then he isn't even on TV the next week. Or MJF turns on Cody in what could be a star making angle, but he is left off, and this Blade and Butcher trio debuts with no discernable ties to MJF (it was only established on social media). They're supposedly in on Page but his booking is inconsistent. The Lucha Bros should be pushed way more but they're not. AEW to me feels like a kid at the controls, pressing every different button each week, and then moving to another the next. The only guy who is getting consistent exposure is a 50 year old who is killing it and the show is clearly revolving around him, and then you have Moxley who is also heavily featured but is being put in weird positions like main eventing against a goof like Janela. I realize they don't want to feed all the top guys to Moxley, but it comes across like wasting his time with goofs while his true opponent is in the periphery of the scene, whether its Jericho now or Omega recently. Maybe its just me being used to WWE putting together stacked cards weekly (and resulting in less stars in the process), but AEW Dynamite feels like a supercharged WCW Saturday Night/Power Hour or WWF Prime Time Wrestling/SNME. Now I don't really feel like what they are doing is really all that wrong, but me being spoiled by weekly Raw shows for years, this stuff just isn't as compelling. I want to like AEW and I do appreciate them being around to provide a real alternative, and they are still finding their way and working on establishing some things, but I am finding I have less patience than I should/thought I would.

[El-P]

29 minutes ago, Slasher said:

Maybe its just me being used to WWE putting together stacked cards weekly (and resulting in less stars in the process), but AEW Dynamite feels like a supercharged WCW Saturday Night/Power Hour or WWF Prime Time Wrestling/SNME. 

This is confusing to me. People (maybe not you, I have no idea) have been complaining forever about the WWE TV being what it is, and now that AEW clearly is not using the same formula, and I think you're absolutely on the right track when you talk about older WCW programs or even Nitro (which had that revolving doors of characters and feuds mixed up together instead of guy A married to guy B and guy C married to guy D without anyone crossing paths which is WWE style booking), people are gonna complain about that too ? I'm definitely getting that older-school way of booking from Dynamite, where everything is not systematic, underlined and overproduced/overexplained. More space for the audience to actually think, fill up the blanks and breathe.

It sometimes seems to me that a lot of people react and think about AEW like they are WWE and like the WWE way is the only existing way (as far as booking, working big matches, looks etc...). For instance, Shida doing a job this week doesn't mean it's 50/50 booking nor the fact they have "already given up on her", which is typically the WWE way of thinking. You want a more sports-like approach as far as win/loss mattering, well, this is how it works. NJPW worked that way for ever. You can have people winning some and losing some, the difference is that the wins and loss have to matter, whereas 50/50 means nothing ever matters.

[Slasher]

Yeah like I thought I was admitting, this is more on me than on AEW. I appreciate what they are doing and I understand the intention, I am just too used to the WWE way. I would never think someone is being buried because they lost a match though. To me a burial is a consistent effort to devalue the performer/character with weeks or months of poor booking decisions. 

[MoS]

I definitely agree with you regarding them doing more to follow up on guys who get over and build some momentum. Meltzer made the point that for all the talk about their roster not having enough depth, they actually have far too many acts for a 2-hour show, and as a result, so many of them do not get featured. You pointed out Allin. I would also point to Nyla Rose being someone who was getting over as a monster heel, with a good performance on the debut episode, and then was promptly not seen on TV for weeks. 

[El-P]

The momentum issue is interesting. To me you have to take in account that they are not only working for the long-term, but also working at a slower pace than WWE in term of how their storytelling is put together because they only have four or maybe five PPV a year. You can't work at the same frantic pace when you have to stretch the biggest issues and feuds to build to those PPV matches. You have to take it slower. Thus far they are not doing as good of a job as IMPACT is doing (same structure of a few PPV's a year with an even more limited roster) and it seems like they do have trouble keeping momentum sometimes for their hot acts like Allin. They are also learning on the job, while D'Amore and Callis are veterans (at least D'Amore as a booker who has been responsible for the best year and a half TNA had in the 00's in term of actual product). They need to find the right pacing for their main event feuds and the best way to fill up, structure (as in, not do *three* kinda cultish act/promos the same week, although I enjoyed the three of them) and keep midcards feuds going quicker, while also building the most important people with the most important matches for the PPVs.

[The Thread Killer]

3 hours ago, El-P said:

Thus far they are not doing as good of a job as IMPACT is doing (same structure of a few PPV's a year with an even more limited roster) and it seems like they do have trouble keeping momentum sometimes for their hot acts like Allin.

That is one of the things that has frustrated me a bit about AEW.  I feel like just when I start to get invested in a Pro Wrestler, they vanish from TV for a couple of weeks.  I hear that Darby Allin is banged up after his match with Moxley, but I wish they aired some promos or vignettes about him to keep him hot and in the public eye. I don't think he should be wrestling on television every single week, for two reasons.  Firstly, I don't want to see him get overexposed, not to mention that the way he wrestles he will get injured if he works too often.  But I would like to at least see him more often.

[War is Raw]

On 12/6/2019 at 1:57 PM, El-P said:

She was a great valet for Cody and absolutely helped him redefine himself and get over on the indies and NJPW. She's a terrific promo but a passable in-ring wrestler, so manager is her best role. She's also hot as fuck. Put that all together and put her with Kong, who is past her prime but was an amazing (pun intended) worker and just has IT in term of aura and charisma and you've got a winner act to me, as it's the best of both world. The whole kinda New Orleans witch image is also super cool. Gotta love that.

As far as I go, I will always prefer a promotion for the hardcores any day over any kind of mainstream appeal. Hulkamania and Attitude Era sucked in term of in-ring content.

I think Brandi has "go away" heat from fandom. She knows it, which is why her promos are so personal against haters. Even her mother-in-law gives her the cold shoulder on camera. Guys turn the channel when she's on, which shows hardcore fans are not entranced by women's looks. It's amazing how many times I have heard she has no talent yet has her position due to nepotism.

Just focusing on the 10 Dynamites/Darks or even the previous PPVs, her character has been inconsistent. I will agree she is very attractive, was important to Cody in the past, and can act well on the mic. I personally wouldn't say she's passable in the ring- she's more like a pre-AJ Lee diva, so yes, a valet is her best bet, although just doing Youtube skits as Marketing Director is even better. Maybe they should have made her a GM to make matches and levy fines. Cody is the mega babyface and it didn't make sense for her to interfere in his AEW matches.

Her voodoo stuff hasn't been explained yet, and doesn't fit with Cody. I have faith in the product, but it seems like Brandi's stuff since Double or Nothing has been done on the fly. I still don't know if Allie losing her hair to Kong/Brandi is related to babyface Allie becoming Bunny, who was hired by MJF, or why Jamie and Bea's hair were cut, but never mentioned again. I'm OK if all will be revealed- I like a good mystery. But I feel Brandi has been scrambling to figure out what her role is. I thought she was going to get behind AEW's women's revolution to outdo Stephanie, but it seems Omega is doing all the heavy lifting, but had no time to book it effectively in 2019.

[goodhelmet]

On 12/7/2019 at 6:27 AM, Slasher said:

I agree. I am saying they should be leaning on those stars right now doing star things and developing guys underneath. They should be building up two to three guys consistently and telling the fans "these guys are the ones to look out for". To their credit, they are sort of doing that with guys like MJF. But my issue is the fact that they feel all over the place to the degree that no one is really standing out besides the super obvious talents, and these guys aren't being featured enough. Darby Allin would be an example. He has a good match with Jericho, then he isn't even on TV the next week. Or MJF turns on Cody in what could be a star making angle, but he is left off, and this Blade and Butcher trio debuts with no discernable ties to MJF (it was only established on social media). They're supposedly in on Page but his booking is inconsistent. The Lucha Bros should be pushed way more but they're not. AEW to me feels like a kid at the controls, pressing every different button each week, and then moving to another the next. The only guy who is getting consistent exposure is a 50 year old who is killing it and the show is clearly revolving around him, and then you have Moxley who is also heavily featured but is being put in weird positions like main eventing against a goof like Janela. I realize they don't want to feed all the top guys to Moxley, but it comes across like wasting his time with goofs while his true opponent is in the periphery of the scene, whether its Jericho now or Omega recently. Maybe its just me being used to WWE putting together stacked cards weekly (and resulting in less stars in the process), but AEW Dynamite feels like a supercharged WCW Saturday Night/Power Hour or WWF Prime Time Wrestling/SNME. Now I don't really feel like what they are doing is really all that wrong, but me being spoiled by weekly Raw shows for years, this stuff just isn't as compelling. I want to like AEW and I do appreciate them being around to provide a real alternative, and they are still finding their way and working on establishing some things, but I am finding I have less patience than I should/thought I would.

You had me until this line. How can you be spoiled by weekly WWE TV? 

[Slasher]

star vs star matchups? Pretty sure that was obvious. Not referring to actual quality of the booking.

[gordi]

For me, AEW's "everybody gets an opportunity" booking is way preferable to WWE's "This handful of guys is who we are pushing as stars right now and nobody else matters" booking. I also think I prefer "we are booking everyone so that they get time off to rest up and heal or go perform elsewhere as the case may be" to "we are going to push these wrestlers down your throat until you absolutely hate them."

Also the "not everyone is on TV every week" booking style fits pretty well with the "Take huge risks and big bumps" in-ring style, if you think about it. I believe that they know what they are doing. 

I think it's a feature, not a bug. It is them living up to what they have been promising to do. It's an area where AEW clearly stands out to me as being different from WWE. In my opinion, it's an area where AEW clearly stands out to me as being better than WWE.

It makes perfect sense, though, if it is going to take some time to get used to that. It really does give a different week-to-week feeling and flow compared to what a lot of pro wrestling fans have grown used to. 

I like it. I prefer it. I hope they don't move away from what they are doing.  

I agree, though, that they could be doing a lot more with video clips and vignettes and so forth, on the actual TV show, to get the various characters over to more casual viewers (i.e. people who don't watch every episode of Dark, BTE, and Wrestlers on the Road Getting Room Service. 

They do make all of those supplementary materials available free and easy on YouTube, though. I strongly recommend Wrestlers on the Road Getting Room Service to anyone who would like to get to know some of the wrestlers better. I think watching those has made me a much bigger AEW fan than I might be otherwise,

[Slasher]

Problem for me, as a hearing impaired person, is that most of the content on Youtube does not have official subtitles. I could turn on the beta captions but they make enough mistakes that I don't think it's worth it. 

 

You're right though it takes time to get used to it, and I am sure eventually I'll get there.

[gordi]

18 minutes ago, Slasher said:

Problem for me, as a hearing impaired person, is that most of the content on Youtube does not have official subtitles. I could turn on the beta captions but they make enough mistakes that I don't think it's worth it. 

 

It strikes me as genuinely weird that a company as openly concerned with inclusiveness as AEW wouldn't have official subtitles on their youtube channel!

[tallmike]

4 hours ago, gordi said:

For me, AEW's "everybody gets an opportunity" booking is way preferable to WWE's "This handful of guys is who we are pushing as stars right now and nobody else matters" booking. I also think I prefer "we are booking everyone so that they get time off to rest up and heal or go perform elsewhere as the case may be" to "we are going to push these wrestlers down your throat until you absolutely hate them."

Does everybody really get an opportunity if only Cody, Jericho, and Brandi get regular promo time on Dynamite?

[goodhelmet]

15 hours ago, Slasher said:

star vs star matchups? Pretty sure that was obvious. Not referring to actual quality of the booking.

I see where you are coming from.... sort of.