AEW Dynamite - March 17, 2021

[MoS]

2021 hasn't been great for WWE women, but nothing in AEW women's division history can match what Bayley and Sasha did last year. All the Reginald stuff going on right now is putrid though

[El-P]

On 3/18/2021 at 3:35 AM, joeg said:

To me AEW is a weird blend of WCW Nitro, FMW and old school studio wrestling, mixed together with a modern twists. Its the entertaining yet disjointed, disorganized TV show that Nitro was. The in ring style is big budget garbage wrestling like FMW. And they run old school angles and have quality promos like old school studio wrestling.

Wow. I pretty much could not have put it better as to why AEW often looks like it's booked "just for me", but there you go, you pretty much nailed it. I like the kinda disjointed feel of it too (including in the way characters are not strictly defined), because it makes it way more organic (because it is) and lively (because life is disjointed). I of course love the FMW/ECW aspect of it, I love the "a bit of everything for everybody" (although the one thing AEW misses is more shoot-style based stuff, they would need some guys like SZJ or Suzuki) Nitro buffet, I love the old-school studio wrestling promos, and I'll add I love the wacky shit straight out of LU (although they don't go nearly as far as IMPACT would at times) and love the interpromotionnal shit that is happening right now obviously.

Do I really need to go on and on and on about Britt Baker vs Thunder Rosa ? Someone mentioned LCO vs HamaKINO, which was a legendary match in my little circle back then, and yeah, that's pretty much it. Blood & guts. Mayumi Ozaki & Megumi Kudo would be proud. Want inclusivity, you got it. First women's match in AEW that I'd very comfortably call a MOTYC.

[joeg]

@El-P Yeah. Its not what I envisioned when AEW was first announced. Cody Rhodes and Tony Khan were doing interviews talking about a sports based wrestling presentation. And Khan talked about being a big football fan and a big Bill Watts fan. I expected something totally different. I was expecting time limits, work that looked believable, weight classes, etc. Basically I was expecting some sort of cross between UWFi, Inokism and Mid South. Had those that early marketing been like we are going for a entertaining product and Khan is a huge fan of Memphis wrestling, ECW, FMW, NWO era Nitro and Vince Russo's booking style, then yeah this is what I would have have expected. 

[NintendoLogic]

Sports-based means wins and losses mattering for rankings and title shots. Cody said from the very beginning that the in-ring aspect would be a buffet. If you thought AEW was going to be The Young Bucks Present UWFi 2.0, that's on you.

[El-P]

Yeah, I always was under the impression that people worked themselves up about references to Mid-South (which also has been way romanticized as a promotion). Anyone even only semi-familiar (as I was) with the Elite in Japan and ROH should have known better. 

Hey, you still got JR. That's very Bill Watts.