AEW Dynamite - January 19, 2022

[MoS]

This is complete speculation but I also think the Hangman-Danielson draw infused some momentum in the show's ratings. That match itself didn't do great but every week since then, the ratings have been great, which imo points to positive word of mouth from the hour draw working in AEW's favour. This coinciding with Punk-MJF picking steam and Jade Cargill clearly having some drawing power has given AEW some real stong momentum going into 2022.

[Tetsujin]

Mox is a draw. He should have stayed champion for most 2021. Give him a huge storyline (but keep him away from any Elite members please) and then throw him against Hangman.

[rovert]

15 minutes ago, Tetsujin said:

Mox is a draw. He should have stayed champion for most 2021. Give him a huge storyline (but keep him away from any Elite members please) and then throw him against Hangman.

https://twitter.com/wai0937/status/1484321651135111169

A star and star for 2022. Hopefully, we get a shot of the pandemic and the whole load when it comes to Moxley dream matches - Danielson, Punk, Okada - all of them. We are 2 years into a new decade lets fucking make up for it. 

[sek69]

33 minutes ago, rovert said:

https://twitter.com/wai0937/status/1484321651135111169

A star and star for 2022. Hopefully, we get a shot of the pandemic and the whole load when it comes to Moxley dream matches - Danielson, Punk, Okada - all of them. We are 2 years into a new decade lets fucking make up for it. 

Okada really wants to have dream matches with Punk and Danielson, and I'm sure he'd like to work with pretty much everyone else in AEW. 

[MoS]

Hangman-Mox was the natural program building before Mox took his hiatus, but I don't know how they get to it now. There's no way Mox is getting booed now, even though he got booed against Hangman as recently as that ladder match. 

[MoS]

11 hours ago, Stiva said:

Yeah, you’re probably right. To be fair to AEW, I’d probably put Cole and Baker together on screen too but where does this leave our girl, Jamie Hayter?!

She can squash Adam Cole en route to beating Britt when they finally split up

[El-P]

12 hours ago, MoS said:

I think AEW fans care about stuff like Cole-Cassidy, power couples, Elite drama, and even Dan Lambert far more than we generally do here at PWO. 

There's no "we" in PWO, thankfully. I mean, there shouldn't be...  

So yeah, I'm loving Cole/Cassidy, the Elite drama was some of the best stuff last year, Dan Lambert is always awesome. And Kenny Omega is the GOAT of course.

And I must say, as rambling as it was, I was quite entertained by the Cody promo, which was totally "Cena loses his mind and trolls the audience while trying to get their love and attention at the same time" crazy shit. At the very least, this guy is *interesting* to watch.

Also, Sting channeling his inner Terry Funk is quite incredible. The "gory self-mutilation" and "Starrcade 97" ref killed me. That being said, no way The Acclaimed should get the tag team titles. Bowens has gotten really good and Caster is funny, but they still are 2 Cold Scorpio & Marcus Bagwell level. So many teams ahead of them, Sting & Darby being one of them really.

"Go fuck yourself". Did Mox just stole Jericho's new gimmick ?   That was pretty awesome though, the perfect promo. He looks like he has lost quite a bit of weigh too, you can see it in his face too. 

On 1/20/2022 at 9:50 AM, MoS said:

I liked the Archer backstage promo though, and I love Hangman and I am an Archer fan, so I really liked the entire thing. You Americans didn't catch it, but during the break, Archer jawed off with a young girl in the front row, leading the fans to chant "Piece of shit" at him. He immediately looked at the fans and inquiringly pointed at the little girl, which got a massive pop out of me. He continued jawing with the little girl after going to the ring too, which is why the fans also briefly chanted "piece of shit" at him just after the break. 

God WHY is Every. Single. Women's. Backstage. Segment. the EXACT SAME. It's beyond parody at this point 

Archer also made a Japanese baby cry on a show in NJPW, I remember. He's so awesome at this and this was such a great spot (not to mention he kept on jawing that little girl the whole match). Archer vs Page should be terrific.

And yeah, the women-get-interviewed-backstage-and-then-there's-a-brawl spot cracks me up now. TK should watch IMPACT and get pointers from D'Amore, the girls over there have so much more stuff to do in term of angles and characters and bits. On the other hand, Serena Deeb fucking bitches up is turning into my favorite thing. Crazy this woman was basically stuck to being a trainer forever in WWE when she had *that* run in her.

Overall quite the rebound from last week's show, which was one of the worst Dynamite in a long time (apart from Brodie Lee debuting, which was really cool).

Next week's show is ridiculously stacked too. Way too much talent in that company already. 

12 hours ago, KawadaSmile said:

I think Guevara and Conti could turn out to be popular as well. People like romance.

Fuck no. Nothing worse than having two young hot people make out in public, this is heel shit.  Plus, Guevara is really  a natural heel and Conti a natural babyface.

 

[MoS]

I added 'generally' to make sure I conveyed that it was a general opinion held amongst a bunch of posters here, not a unanimous consensus. I sure as fuck don't believe in the infamous PWO hivemind 

[MoS]

1 hour ago, El-P said:

Sting channeling his inner Terry Funk is quite incredible.

@Loss made a great point on Twitter about Sting's evolution as a worker, or the lack thereof, which I believe we have also talked about PWO albeit a long time ago. 

 

[NintendoLogic]

Another factor in the recent ratings uptick that can't be overlooked is the move to TBS, particularly having Big Bang Theory as a lead-in. In fact, it could be argued that it causes Q1 numbers to be artificially inflated and makes the dropoffs in later quarters seem worse than they really are.

[Matt D]

14 minutes ago, NintendoLogic said:

Another factor in the recent ratings uptick that can't be overlooked is the move to TBS, particularly having Big Bang Theory as a lead-in. In fact, it could be argued that it causes Q1 numbers to be artificially inflated and makes the dropoffs in later quarters seem worse than they really are.

Time to bring back the Librarian gimmick I guess.

[MoS]

29 minutes ago, NintendoLogic said:

Another factor in the recent ratings uptick that can't be overlooked is the move to TBS, particularly having Big Bang Theory as a lead-in. In fact, it could be argued that it causes Q1 numbers to be artificially inflated and makes the dropoffs in later quarters seem worse than they really are.

First to second quarter drop has definitely been big the last two weeks, but the show seems to sustain much of its audience until well into the 2nd hour, which is a good sign. Dynamite was the one wrestling show until very recently that used to buck the recent trend of each subsequent wrestling hour being less watched than the previous one, and would actually grow through two hours, but with TBBT as the lead-in now, the first hour will generally probably be bigger unless there's a massive marquee match in the 2nd hour. 

[El-P]

53 minutes ago, MoS said:

I added 'generally' to make sure I conveyed that it was a general opinion held amongst a bunch of posters here, not a unanimous consensus.

Yes, that was understood.

49 minutes ago, MoS said:

@Loss made a great point on Twitter about Sting's evolution as a worker, or the lack thereof, which I believe we have also talked about PWO albeit a long time ago. 

That's a good point. It's also one reason I think Flair was always overrated (still one of the GOAT obviously, but overrated in that field nonetheless), he always tried to fit his opponents into his own formula, including forcing offensive (and some defensive) spots they would never do otherwise, which is one of my pet peeve still. Beating a great match out of someone is always cool (Hansen says hello), but force-feeding the way your opponent is gonna work with you by trapping him in a formula is not so good. 

Has anyone past 60 had a run like Sting on weekly TV ever before ? Of course he's protected most of the time, and I sure don't want to see a long single match with him, but still. Guy is 62 and has proven everybody wrong, I know there was a lot of doubters, me included, when he was signed as a full-time performer in the company. This guy has had the most interesting and singular career honestly. The fact he's involved yet another time, at his age, in the hot new promotion getting competitive with WWE is fascinating.

[strobogo]

The Sting/Flair formula match is super fun though, and stayed hot and enjoyable even into the late 90s. I don't think it inhibited Sting at all as a worker, as he was always game to work hard and make his opponents look good with their own styles. Sting vs Flair is very different from Sting vs Vader, or Cactus Jack, or DDP, or Lex, or the Steiners, or Giant, etc. The only guy I ever saw Sting sandbag and not do his best to make them look their best was Vampiro, and honestly fuck Vampiro he sucked.

[KawadaSmile]

3 hours ago, El-P said:

Fuck no. Nothing worse than having two young hot people make out in public, this is heel shit.  Plus, Guevara is really  a natural heel and Conti a natural babyface.

While you are right that hot people making out in public is heel shit, I am talking more about the courtship part. Think of the Emma Stone/Andrew Garfield scenes in The Amazing Spider-Man movies: people love that stuff to this day, regardless if it still holds up, and it's mostly friendly banter, light flirting, the two being awkward etc.

People were interested in Nia/Enzo, and that barely had any physical contact. Having Conti and Guevara hang around, be cutesy, hint at their relationship etc wouldn't hurt. Them vs Cole/Baker could be a fun feud, if you want to give them a reason to be an on-screen couple.

[MoS]

There's a good argument to be made that Flair deliberately made sure Sting and Luger only wrestled one kind of match with him to ensure he was always needed in the main event to get matches like that out of them. This way the fans get an exciting match and the young stars are completely dependent on him as workers. Win-win for Flair. 

[Clayton Jones]

While I'm not disagreeing with any of that, the Flair feud also seemingly improved Sting's approach to pro wrestling leaps and bounds. From what I've seen previous to that era of Sting he was fairly interchangeable with Hellwig.

[NintendoLogic]

The thing about Sting and Luger is that neither grew up watching wrestling and both got big pushes early in their careers due to their physiques. Guys with that kind of background almost never develop into elite workers.

[Stiva]

Moxley coming back has to lead to him winning the belt again, surely?  Not to be too cynical but it’s an ideal story and the way the live audience reacted to him coming back paired with the rating shows that he’s still the fucking man. Saying that, a 6 month Moxley/Danielson blood feud sounds pretty appealing too.

This leads me to another hypothetical for you all. Obviously TK is doing the Batista slow burn with Wardlow and MJF but you also have HOOK getting superstar reactions every time he squashes another dweeb. If, as could happen, Wardlow and HOOK continue at this rate, what do you do? I don’t think HOOK is ready for a title but, if you were to team him with Ricky Starks, it weakens both of their auras and it’s fairly clear MJF is going to be the one that beats Hangman so how does Wardlow fill time in the meantime? 
 

As much as you can rightfully criticise AEW, the fact that these questions are things you can ask are a testament to them

[Loss]

I think we are probably only a few weeks away from paying off MJF-Wardlow. They've been teasing it for over two years and I don't see how they can stretch it out much longer. And the audience is very much ready for it. I would even say that after the Punk-Wardlow match, the interest in MJF-Wardlow became higher than MJF-Punk, at least until Punk and MJF start doing promos again.

I don't even know that HOOK needs a huge issue right now. He just needs to be featured. I think the key is him having a match every week. He does most weeks at this point.

[ragemaster]

Anyone else think Sting role this year should be to pass the torch in a match with Darby, maybe ending with sting retirement.

[El-P]

4 hours ago, ragemaster said:

Anyone else think Sting role this year should be to pass the torch in a match with Darby, maybe ending with sting retirement.

Yes.

I get the Wardlow angle and all and it is obviously working, but as a character and a worker, I have don't have a lot of interest in Wardlow. His match with Punk was very underwhelming I thought, they went way overboard with the powerbombs to the point of making Punk look too weak (really, who has Wardlow ever beat that meant anything ? And he pretty much destroyed CM Punk from nowhere ?). He's a meathead who stick his tongue out and grabs his suspenders. Ok. He's not a very good worker yet, when he's in control he's really kinda meh and only shines in big spots, including big athletic ones. The positive thing is that he's actually quite charming if you ever saw him in BTE, so once he gets the babyface turn he'll be able to showcase that aspect to him personality. 

Speaking of people not ready for their spots, I was surprised in a good way by the Anna Jay vs Jade Cargill match, although it was pretty shaky at points it was much better than I expected after the really *bad* match between Jade & Ruby. Dunno what that tells about Soho... Like I said, I love Jade's presentation, but she has been exposed by going longer. She's a rookie, no big deal, but she's in a featured spot and it can be dangerous. The good thing is that she apparently is getting quite over and also she displays some really good instincts in term of carrying herself (the way she pins her opponents for instance, she has that body rhythm going along the count and flexing with the 3 which flows along so well) and doing little stuff that makes her compelling to watch (that kiss on the cheek spot was glorious, love the shit-talking too), so I'm pretty optimistic. 

[Loss]

I do think there's a risk of Wardlow becoming like Virgil in 1991, where he does the big angle people want and then that's really all people want him to do and he's done. That said, they still have to try and hope for the best.

[sek69]

The thing about doing a torch passing Sting/Darby match is how would you set it up? You probably couldn't turn Sting heel if you tried and turning Darby would seem to defeat the purpose entirely. Babyface vs babyface is risky since you run the risk of killing the crowd since they want to cheer for both and end up cheering for neither. 

[ragemaster]

Have them challenge for the tag titles and Darcy sacrifice's himself to save sting, then they lose the match. The next week have them in the ring for an interview and sting drops Darby with the death drop, Sting says Darby I love you like a son, but there's one lesson you have still to learn. You have heart, but you need the killer instinct, that's why we lost the tag team titles, you put me before the titles.

For the next few weeks Sting confronts him in the ring/backstage trying to get Darby to hit him, show him that killer side, but Darby refuses. So Sting keeps dropping him with the death drop.

Darby finally does his interview saying the reason he won't hit back is because Sting to old to hang with him and he doesn't want to end Sting career, as Darby wrestlers at a different level and if he brings that killer instinct sting won't be able to leave the ring. 

Pisses Sting off and he destroys Darby with a chair, bloodying up Darby and saying am I old now.

Leads to a if Darby beats Sting, Sting retires and if Darby loses he has to give up his face paint match.