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AEW Dynamite - March 10, 2021


MoS

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It's become worse this year, which made them hotshot to a career-ender gimmick match in the first place. I think at least for a while, they need to stop worrying about anymore signings, give themselves 6 months and a specified number of guys and girls who they want to push and elevate to the next level, and then spend every minute from now until All Out to do exactly that.

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2 hours ago, El-P said:

Honestly, the balance of "awesome" and "problematic" weighs so much toward the former to me that I can totally bear with the later. No pro-wrestling promotion is gonna be perfect. I loved Lucha Underground, but I still thought some of it sucked. Ditto ECW. Ditto current IMPACT (to a lesser extent, apart from the AEW deal, they are clearly not as fun as they were in 2019/early 00)

I had a big long diatribe ready to be written about why I want to see AEW succeed & why I'm on board with them but ultimately, it was a lot of words to basically say that AEW still has goodwill because they're new & WWE has spent the last two decades killing all of my expectations for that company as a whole.

I think it's also why I was more willing to give NWA Powerrr a chance & want to love MLW. 

I was using Nikki Cross as an example, due to how she was good, fun & got over lately only to basically fall off of TV when they decided to make Alexa "Miss Fiend". I could write pages on just the women in WWE & how WWE made me care about women's wrestling to then only turn around & treat a lot of them as a waste of time & effort. All the people that I seemingly enjoyed & wanted to become invested in, like Nikki, Becky, Ronda, Asuka... they take a back seat (or left) to the likes of Lacey Evans, Carmella & Nia Jax & it just got to the point where I became indifferent to that too.

AEW Revolution had some misses, yes, and I do think that it damaged them. However, that was really the first time that I have felt that way about AEW. In the past, there's been some disappointment but that wasn't on the company as much as it was the expectations of the fans: like C.M. Punk not showing up. But the shows, the actual shows that are on TV, are still fun to watch. WWE is a chore to watch. Even the PPVs drag on because more than half the card I don't care about & the other half the card WWE themselves don't care about. Yet, they won't let anyone leave to go elsewhere so they just have this giant mega-roster of people sitting in catering 

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The tribalism - which I'm also very guilty of myself - is a big hinderance to my professional wrestling enjoyment anymore. Part of it is because of social media but everything becomes this side against that side.

From the jump, it wasn't "Oh, look, new promotion, that's cool!" It was WEDNESDAY NIGHT WARS: AEW VS WWE - DYNAMITE VS NXT. CAN AEW COMPETE WITH WWE???

It's the Jim Cornette, Cult of Cornette & Brian Last against all the people that dislike Jim Cornette.

It's the Dave Meltzer fans Vs. the Dave Meltzer critics. Or the Eric Bischoff fans Vs. the Eric Bischoff critics. Or Brian Alverez, or whomever.

Everything is having to pick a fucking side. Why do we have to pick a side at all?

There's whataboutism every fucking day. Have you ever tried to read the Twitter replies on Thursday when Alvarez posts the ratings for Dynamite & NXT? The comments are just full of "WWE did this" & "AEW did that." Like, who the fuck cares? Can we just watch & enjoy wrestling? When did it become more about tearing down what others enjoy instead of just being excited about what you like? It's really hurt my interest & enjoyment of wrestling, especially modern, present, current, still-on-the-air wrestling. 

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I should be crystal clear that I absolutely want AEW to succeed. I want them to be as successful as possible and make tons of money and demonstrate that there's more than one way to be successful presenting pro wrestling in America on a national level. I don't expect them to ever overtake WWE, but I do think they can make life uncomfortable for WWE in some interesting ways. It's not out of the realm of possibility that they could eventually beat them consistently in 18-49, and that TV executives will then wonder why they're paying more for less ratings. In fact, I would have even said a few months ago that seemed likely to happen at some point. It was just a matter of when. No, WWE has continuously shifted its business model away from fans over the last two decades. It has worked out for them, but they are also an arrogant company that seems to always get the last laugh, and it would be nice if every once in a while, that didn't happen. It's petty, but that's the main reason I root for AEW. I've only even liked a handful of matches, but I appreciate that at their best, they are working hard to give their fans what they want, and they seem to do it most of the time. It's nice that someone somewhere still tries to do that.

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Jim Cornette and Brian Last's latest claim to put out there is that Tony Khan is on "something" and Jim specifically said it is Adderall. If true it would explain how he is able to fill so many roles across numerous businesses. And of course, his spurious booking output that often lacks details or the very weak middles to his start, middle and ends of his storylines.

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32 minutes ago, rovert said:

Jim Cornette and Brian Last's latest claim to put out there is that Tony Khan is on "something" and Jim specifically said it is Adderall. If true it would explain how he is able to fill so many roles across numerous businesses. And of course, his spurious booking output that often lacks details or the very weak middles to his start, middle and ends of his storylines. 

Are they his storylines though? Or are the 'boys' coming up with them and TK is merely just giving them the green light?

I could be completely off base but let's take the Inner Circle storyline as an example. I get the feeling that Jericho pitched all the major plot beats which TK signed off on and it bought Jericho enough trust to do some of those comedy segments that proved fairly divisive. I doubt all those were pitched initially and were only thought of a week or two ahead of time with the boys doing all the heavy lifting.

That's why you get something like the Papa Buck beatdown which was obviously really cheesy and didn't look great. They just needed something to help spice up the Bucks angle and without racking their brains over the finer details that was the best they could come up with.

Meanwhile I could see something like Lance Archer vs. Rey Fenix to qualify for the Face of the Revolution ladder match 100% being a TK idea.

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For the people who want AEW to be successful, well, rejoice because they already are. There's no doom & gloom in AEW's future.

8 hours ago, Coffey said:

The tribalism - which I'm also very guilty of myself - is a big hinderance to my professional wrestling enjoyment anymore. Part of it is because of social media but everything becomes this side against that side.

Imagine social media during the Monday Night Wars. It would have been brutal.

The echo-chamber effect of social media is making everything worse, but you gotta admit the negativity about AEW comes from a crowd of haters who either just won't admit than anything current or forward looking can be good or successful ever (the Cornette crowd) and people who consider that anything un-WWE is worthless. The über-tribalism really is more into the negative aspect of things. To sometime ridiculous degree that has absolutely no connection whatsoever with reality, as showed by the way NWA Powerr & Dark shared a large part of their audience (so the comments about everything modern sucking and thank god NWA was back to do real wrestling in the Youtube comments weren't meaning anything since a lot of people would watch both NWA & AEW on Youtube that day). Everything is polarized, but when you see AEW, IMPACT, NWA, NJPW and whatever joshi promotion Itoh and Ryo come from working cross promotion stuff and people getting excited about it (I know I am), it also means there's this thirst for someone bigger than just supporting one promotion but rather having fun with the entire pro-wrestling landscape, because it opens so much more. And you can only get that outside of WWE.

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11 minutes ago, Big Pete said:

Are they his storylines though? Or are the 'boys' coming up with them and TK is merely just giving them the green light?

Tony's answer last May: 

 

AEW/Dynamite completely went off the rails in this segment and after a lot of bad Creative that December so Tony tightened the reins but he's still very approachable and open to suggestion: 

 

 

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Would it be fair to say that Khan is putting forward suggestions to his EVPs who are happy to accommodate him as long as they can add their own personal flourishes. And since TK is learning on the job, he's happy to give them that opportunity and when it bombs like it did when the Dark Order he intervenes and tells them we need to go in another direction.

I just get the impression that the boys have a lot more control over their own segments, which is why sometimes the show has a unique flow to it because it's formatted more like an anthology show than a traditional wrestling show.

Especially when Jericho has an ex-WWE star on and they talk about how different the creative process is at AEW than it is in the WWE and how much responsibility they have.

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First off, I'm one of those "wants AEW to succeed" guys.  

I have one issue with their booking, though.  I feel like most of their booking starts with "Wouldn't it be cool if..." and goes from there.

There's nothing wrong with booking "cool" things.  Cool things are, well, cool.  It's just that sometimes I don't feel like they get past that.  

"Wouldn't it be cool if Cody and Penta feuded?"  Yes, but how/why?  

"Wouldn't it be cool if we did an exploding barb wire deathmatch?" Yes!  That would be amazing!  But then what?

I like the suggestion that Kahn needs his "Patterson".  They (whoever is coming up with ideas in AEW) have a lot of cool ideas.  They just need someone to shepherd them through.

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18 minutes ago, Log said:

"Wouldn't it be cool if..." and goes from there.

Best reason ever. Don't need more. 

Also, to the "I want them to succeed" crowd, newsflash : that's what they do. Maybe not the way you'd want them to, but they are already succeeding. They won the war with NXT, they have a great TV deal, they just made the biggest non WWE PPV in 22 years, workers want to sign with them. Things are going quite ok, really. There's no impending gloom & doom because of some booking issues (which are greatly overstated, really, as I have mostly loved their TV shows lately apart from the terrible build for the Shaq match and some minor stuff) and two big mistakes on a PPV, one of which being an accident (the other one could have been prevented, BTW Christian meant nothing in term of ratings on Dynamite, so there goes the narrative of "huge huge star" and whatnot). At some point, how many goalpost can one move before accepting that they are actually doing quite well, especially considering the context ? They are not doing Attitude Era numbers ? Good. I don't want another Attitude Era. I don't care if they go mainstream or not. I want a healthy pro-wrestling promotion presenting a product that I enjoy. This is the case *now*. 

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Also, I would always rather watch something that isn't successful but that I enjoy (ie IMPACT/Lucha Underground) than something that is successful but that I don't enjoy (WWE). Of course something that isn't successful has more chance to end (LU), but everything has to end eventually. And if something gets successful but I don't like it anymore (WWF in 99), then I don't watch it anymore so it ends anyway.^_^

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2 hours ago, Log said:

I have one issue with their booking, though.  I feel like most of their booking starts with "Wouldn't it be cool if..." and goes from there.

There's nothing wrong with booking "cool" things.  Cool things are, well, cool.  It's just that sometimes I don't feel like they get past that.  

"Wouldn't it be cool if Cody and Penta feuded?"  Yes, but how/why?  

"Wouldn't it be cool if we did an exploding barb wire deathmatch?" Yes!  That would be amazing!  But then what?

 

Completely agreed and as I said earlier, it's thd booking equivalent of laying out a match as a spotfest with nothing but spots designed to pop the audience

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2 hours ago, MoS said:

Completely agreed and as I said earlier, it's thd booking equivalent of laying out a match as a spotfest with nothing but spots designed to pop the audience

And the thing is, I really think they have great ideas. They just need someone to flesh them out a bit. Like a script doctor in Hollywood. I like the idea of talent being heavily involved in their storylines, but not everyone is going to be good at that. They just need that guidance. 

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On 3/15/2021 at 8:36 AM, rovert said:

Jim Cornette and Brian Last's latest claim to put out there is that Tony Khan is on "something" and Jim specifically said it is Adderall. If true it would explain how he is able to fill so many roles across numerous businesses. And of course, his spurious booking output that often lacks details or the very weak middles to his start, middle and ends of his storylines.

I honestly don't know how Tony Khan does it, balancing his three business interests. As a football fan, I'd be furious if the Coventry chairman was flying to America every week, trying to find ways to make Shawn Spears relevant instead of concentrating on the team, and Tony has his NFL team to worry about too. That feels like an insane amount to juggle if he's really getting as deep in the weeds as he says.

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