AEW TV 06/01 - 06/03 strap the rockets to WARDLOW

[Stiva]

I feel like MJF always drops shoot bullshit into most of his feuds and it’s always come off as boring and annoying. This is the culmination of it. Just go to WWE, have 6 months of goodwill as Vince pops for you insulting AEW on air and have the overbooked Mania feud with Cody like you want, buddy.

Other than the needless after-match beat down by Britt Baker (she needs at least 2 months off TV), I actually liked the show. Punk’s sloppiness was counteracted by FTRs smoothness, I want to see a Hayter/Storm Best of 5 and MIRO IS BACK. The more I think about it, Miro and Punk could absolutely talk that match into being the All Out main event. 

This Wardlow angle feels like it could go either way. He probably shouldn’t be spending more time on shit like this than is really warranted when he could be beating Scorpio Sky. I do wonder if a TNT title reign where he proves he can have good, exciting AEW style matches might be what he needs before he’s generally accepted as World Title level. 

[Dav'oh]

2 hours ago, Johnny Sorrow said:

Seriously?

Yep. Speed is an "upper", a stimulant.

Caffeine is an "upper", a stimulant. They're in the same family.

Failing to see any similarities makes me ask, "seriously?".

Or are you saying caffeine is NOT a drug of dependance, and NOT a mood and mind altering drug?

2 hours ago, sek69 said:

Yeah that's a pretty big jump to make, caffeine =/= speed

You guys have got to stop taking me literally . It's wrestling, I use hyperbole and emotion. But caffeine is very much analagous to speed.

[sek69]

Caffeine is analogous to speed the same way a house cat is analogous to a lion. Same family, sure, worlds of difference. 

[Dav'oh]

Point is, Punk is as much of a junkie as the people he claims to be holier than. And I need to work on my analogies...

[strobogo]

That man is such an addict that he has a Pepsi tattoo

[NintendoLogic]

He even allowed himself to be humiliated in UFC out of desperation to fund his addiction.

[Embrodak]

6 hours ago, Stiva said:

I feel like MJF always drops shoot bullshit into most of his feuds and it’s always come off as boring and annoying. This is the culmination of it. Just go to WWE, have 6 months of goodwill as Vince pops for you insulting AEW on air and have the overbooked Mania feud with Cody like you want, buddy.

Other than the needless after-match beat down by Britt Baker (she needs at least 2 months off TV), I actually liked the show. Punk’s sloppiness was counteracted by FTRs smoothness, I want to see a Hayter/Storm Best of 5 and MIRO IS BACK. The more I think about it, Miro and Punk could absolutely talk that match into being the All Out main event. 

This Wardlow angle feels like it could go either way. He probably shouldn’t be spending more time on shit like this than is really warranted when he could be beating Scorpio Sky. I do wonder if a TNT title reign where he proves he can have good, exciting AEW style matches might be what he needs before he’s generally accepted as World Title level. 

The shoot stuff with Punk was fantastic. But the heel doing a pipe bomb worked shoot promo on the betrayal of Tony Khan (who should never ever ever be in front of a camera) makes zero sense to me, unless they wanna shoot for the moon and turn him into an antihero babyface somehow. Which would be *very* interesting if they somehow turn Punk her and have MJF as the one to dethrone him, from the opposite direction to what was expected, but I can’t imagine Tony having that kind of creative foresight or presenting it correctly. MJF rocks (this board is crazy in its dismissal of him), but this feels like a misstep at first blush. 

[KawadaSmile]

7 hours ago, RingoPlaysDrums said:

Some mad takes in here. That was a FANTASTIC episode of Dynamite. 

The episode was good, the main event was a banger, but three things left me with a bad taste in my mouth.

1. MJF's promo, we discussed this here.

2. Wardlow being free at last and his first program is with fucking Mark Sterling? It is too early to say it sucks or that it failed but I would just put him in the TNT Title picture asap.

3. Britt being pinned by Ruby. You just know it went down to give her a charity W, because she immediatly came back and was left standing. All the "miscommunication" spots with Hayter looked pretty bad. I know Baker is over but I am not sure revolving your division around her is smart when she has zero in-ring chemistry with essentially everyone.

Bonus: Athena NEEDS a mouthpiece. Never was a good talker and her being put up against people who have charisma accentuates that further.

[C.S.]

10 hours ago, Dav'oh said:

"I've never taken drugs"? Fuck off Punk. You're a caffeine addict, and therefore a speedhead.

6 hours ago, Dav'oh said:

Yep. Speed is an "upper", a stimulant.

Caffeine is an "upper", a stimulant. They're in the same family.

Failing to see any similarities makes me ask, "seriously?".

Or are you saying caffeine is NOT a drug of dependance, and NOT a mood and mind altering drug?

You guys have got to stop taking me literally . It's wrestling, I use hyperbole and emotion. But caffeine is very much analagous to speed.

Y'all need to stop making fun of my main man @Dav'oh for speaking the hard truth.

Back in the '80s, I once knew a girl. Her name was Jessie Spano, and she was addicted to caffeine pills. Don't you dare minimize her struggles.

  

[DMJ]

As with many of MJF's promos, the conviction was strong enough for me to like it (though I don't think it was an "all-time great promo"). I agree that I wish he would've "named names" a bit, but I can understand why Tony Khan would've been angry about doing it. The last thing a Keith Lee or Swerve or some other "ex-WWE" babyface needs is to have one of your best mic workers and biggest stars come out and say these guys have bigger deals than they're worth. You already have plenty of internet voices calling Andrade and Lee and the others "flops," you don't need to put that on TV.

Whoever said this reminded them of Flair's "Fire Me! I'm Already Fired!" promo, I got the same vibes, though this was more coherent. I'm also willing to see where this goes before I call it a huge misfire. The live audience clearly was engaged. There is a "buzz" around the promo and I think the majority of the AEW audience on social media/rSC liked it. It could be unpopular here, but I always remember that when I first started reading/posting here how shocked I was to read educated, well-explained criticisms about how Shawn Michaels and Kurt Angle were overrated. I soon grew to see those criticisms as valid despite years of hearing/believing they were among the greatest workers of all time. God bless PWO, but I think the "objective truth" is probably somewhere in the middle re: MJF's promo. It wasn't an all-time great promo, but don't tell me it wasn't riveting or over with the crowd. 

I'm hoping that this leads to MJF trying to get fired every couple weeks (not every week, mind you) by doing run-ins and using his money to buy airtime ala the nWo. I know that sounds really WCW-ish and stupid, but its clear now that this is all a scripted work so, to me, it's better to "go for it" than to try to fool me into thinking MJF is going to be given a live mic despite telling the Boss to fuck off. For example, have MJF come out and decimate a Dustin Rhodes (we know Dustin will bleed for him and is still capable of great matches) or Christian one week. Then, someone like Kyle O'Reilly so that its not just babyfaces/heels - he's going after anyone who he sees as ex-WWE or undeserving of their contract or as one of "Tony's guys." The idea that there are no matches that can come from this seems a bit premature. 


As for Wardlow...I really wish they would've had him answer John Morrison's challenge. I know they were in LA so Morrison was likely to be more over with the "hometown" crowd than in other cities, but I like the idea of Wardlow maybe being a bit of a tweener for now, just taking out whoever (especially someone like Morrison, who has at least some name value). 

[El-P]

The PWO reaction to MJF's stuff is exactly what I expected. To me, it's a matter of seeing where it's gonna lead. If the end destination ends up working, whatever it is, then it's good. If not, then it's basically WCW shooty stuff. One interesting thing is the announcers and basically the entire show following it up as if it did not even happened. That was a nice touch. The thing is, context matters, and we're in 2022 in AEW, not in 2000 WCW. *Everybody knows* that this is a work. So we've almost reached the level of meta worked-shoot (as in, it's not a work that is trying to look as a shoot, but it's a variation on shoot-promo as a inherent part of pro-wrestling history, for better or worse, usually worse), because if they have studied their history, they know this doesn't work well if you don't have a legit interesting in-ring match at the end. They are not Russo, nor Bischoff. So, basically, everybody knows what they are doing now and people have to remember why it almost never works (the Pipe Bomb was great, then the follow-up was pathetic, and even TNA did a much better job with their copycat angle with AJ Styles. Well, that is, until they actually did not resign him, but as far as production went and leading up to AJ vs Magnus, that was better than anything WWE did with Punk after the Cena win). Now, it's either a matter of, they find a good destination for it or not. And yeah, it absolutely had Ric Flair on Bischoff vibes, which back then was considered an all-time great moment on Nitro. 

In term of follow-up :

12 hours ago, ragemaster said:

The whole thing of Wardlow was the chase to get to MJF, I think now that's done with, the shine is off the rose. Don't want to write him off on his first week, but think in the long run, it will show that MJF was the reason he got those reactions. 

I said it since day one and although I think he still has winds in his sails, it was obvious to me he would not sustain the massive heat he got from the MJF angle, which mostly stemmed from, well, MJF himself. They have to find something for the guy to do, but he's absolutely not a guy who's gonna get thrown in the main event mix tomorrow. There's only so much about a big guy who does multiple powerbombs in a row in 2022 (of course he does a bit more than this obviously, but still, this is why he got as over as he has).

Miro coming back was terrific. Tanahashi of course. Mox vs Garcia was an awesome main event, star performance by Daniel Garcia here, I legit bought he could beat Mox several times. The multi-men match was awesome too in a totally different (opposite) way. Damn, say what you want about Matt Hardy, but that bang heads in the corners Delete spot was ridiculously over. It's quite obvious where they are going with Jungle Boy & Christian Cage. Just hope they won't wait too long to pull the trigger (aka don't Julia Hart this). Overall I'd agree with this :

8 hours ago, RingoPlaysDrums said:

Some mad takes in here. That was a FANTASTIC episode of Dynamite. 

About coffee, caffeine don't do jackshit to me I guess. I say I drink coffee to "wake me up" at work, but actually, I can yawn and feel just as asleep just the same. Never felt anything from drinking a coffee (and I drink 2-3 a day usually). And I drink actual coffee, not what passes for coffee in North America (let's talk real now).

[Embrodak]

Was Wardlow starting from a 0-0 or 1-0 record when he came out last night? Would be interesting if his wins prior to escaping the contract didn’t count, since he wasn’t technically ALL ELITE.

[KB8]

I'll echo the "Fire me! I'm already fired!" Flair vibes from the MJF promo, although the heel who was possibly Ultimate Warrior style holding up the company for money doing it on the boss of said company who's very well liked because he's basically an internet wrestling nerd in line with the promotion's primary fan base is sort of weird and ass backwards but then it's 2022 and everything's all meta and shades of gray and he swore a bunch so 12-year-old me would've dug it. Prolly. I actually like him more as an in-ring guy than a promo guy but he at least said everything with his fucking chest and, you know, hopefully wherever they go from here doesn't suck. 

Hopefully Jericho saw that bald spot of his and figured the best course of action is to go full 1980 Buddy Rose with the head-shaving and mask/wig combo for a while. 

[strobogo]

I gotta lol that what TK chose to impress the WBD/TBS/TNT execs in a time of merger that might put the company's tv slots at risk was to do a full Russo worked shoot with a talent in the ring screaming shit and fuck while ranting about how terrible it is to work there.

[El-P]

The fact "swear words" are still considered a big deal on american TV is completely baffling to me, I've gotta say. This whole idea of "bad words" is so infantile. Unless you're doing a kid's show, just have people talk like in real life already. 

[strobogo]

They're really not too much anymore. The FCC doesn't really have any say over content on cable. In theory, they could have aired MJF screaming "fucking" without any issue, much like they didn't bleep it out when Moxley said it.  It's usually down to sponsors and not wanting to get complaints, but plenty of shows on regular cable say all kinds of words that would have been relegated strictly to subscription channels 15 years ago. Most of the networks doing spooky movies for Halloween season just blur out nudity but otherwise leave everything intact. And they could air the nudity if they wanted to.

[NintendoLogic]

There was a controversy some years ago when a Simpsons episode that used the word "wanker" aired in the UK during pre-watershed hours.

[The Man in Blak]

I'll be in the minority on this: I thought MJF's promo was great, if only because he looked like he might literally burst into flames in the ring while he was delivering it. Worked shoots generally leave me cold, but the delivery -- which definitely drew some parallels to me with the Flair rant on Bischoff and immediately distinguished it from virtually anything that Russo and co. spewed in WCW -- carried this over the finish line. The camera work, the commentators completely laying out and the mic cut to a hard commercial break -- no picture-in-picture trickery -- all set up things perfectly from a production standpoint.

To me, it was a hell of a highwire act - MJF had to build an anti-authority storyline, which always treads into babyface territory, while also remaining a smarmy and narcissistic heel, and I thought he took the crowd on the rollercoaster ride between both ends of the spectrum very effectively. It certainly helps that MJF has been toeing the worked shoot line with things for a while, mostly notably with his feud with Punk.

The bigger question for me, of course, is where they take it from here. Punk, Pillman, and Flair/Bischoff have come up, but the other thing that jumped to mind for me (specifically with the comments about New Japan and not having to do flippy shit to get a pop) was Cactus Jack's heel turn in ECW, where he waged a war against the identity and the philosophy of the promotion itself. He can immediately transition into a build against somebody from New Japan for Forbidden Door -- I actually think Tanahashi would have been better for MJF than Punk, but that's beside the point -- without having to shake up anything that he said here. Where do they go after that, though?

[Timbo Slice]

The issue here isn’t the promo or delivery: It’s how information was disseminated beforehand. The fact this all began with MJF and Tony trying to “work the sheets” puts this into a territory that leaves little to be desired, and so now they’re working from behind on this in a way that will leave whatever the result of this is extremely cold.
 

The reason why the Punk pipe bomb worked was that everything going on was authentic: His contract was coming up, he was underutilized in a way that played that way on TV, and he was going up against someone who was so completely manufactured by the company he eventually ran down that everything fit into place. 
 

The MJF stuff is instead extremely forced from the get go from something that is as inauthentic as it gets. Page was already doing the “protect AEW from former WWE guys” shtick with Punk, albeit a bit more subtle. Here it screams out in a way that says, “Creative doesn’t have anything for me now.” There isn’t a single avenue this can go down where something beneficial comes out of it; it’s in a vacuum that completely takes away from everything else he could do at this point. And if it leads to more Tony on camera? It’s even worse, because he’s not good on camera at all, and this company has proven stories like this don’t need to exist. 

[Jmare007]

The Punk stuff is a perfect example because the "pipe bomb" worked wonders as it built to a WWE title match. After that it continued into nonsense or stuff nobody wanted to actually see, like "Phil Brooks talking to Paul Levesque".

This MJF stuff is basically someone bitching about not being treated fairly and wanting out of the company. That does not sound compelling at all to me nor something that's very new. Who could come to AEW's "rescue" and face MJF that could make all this worked shoot stuff worth it? I honestly have no answer.

[El-P]

Maybe they can develop a slow build toward CM Punk vs MJF at All Out, with MJF winning the title there. That is, if MJF resigns with an extension, because there's no upside building someone on worked shoot angles in which he buries the company up to the big star status so he can leave one year after. They should gently transition from this starting point, which has roots in reality, toward something else as an ending goal. And do not, I repeat DO NOT, make any authority figure angle out of it. I'm diving right into the DIxieland era of TNA, and although the cringe factor is amusing enough and actually way more fun to watch than the previous 2 years of Brucie booked boredom, AEW needs to stay far away from such creative for, say at least ten more years or so, when maybe this will seem fresh again and be done in a brand new way. Maybe.

[Timbo Slice]

The only, and I mean ONLY possible payoff that would make sense to me, is if the “Four Pillars” turn this into a generational thing. Which absolutely could happen. I think it’s the only thing that makes any plausible sense given how the company is constructed. Page having been the champ already, his redemption could come through this. Plus MJF and Sammy are kind of in limbo, and Darby can easily be plugged in after his time with Sting is done. The booking, either inadvertently or in reality, has leaned towards all four of them being deprioritized, so I think this could only work if it somehow grew. 

[DMJ]

5 minutes ago, Jmare007 said:

Who could come to AEW's "rescue" and face MJF that could make all this worked shoot stuff worth it? I honestly have no answer.

I alluded to what I would do above, but I'll fantasy book a little here just because...

MJF randomly pops up every couple of weeks, sneak attacking and bloodying "Tony's guys"/ex-WWE guys - babyfaces like Dustin Rhodes and Matt Sydal, but also heels like Bobby Fish. He could also use his "millions" to buy airtime on the show ala the nWo. This would, of course, make it even clearer that this is not really a "shoot" of any kind, but as someone else posted above, the cat is out of the bag with that after last night anyway.

Then maybe he goes after Keith Lee and Lee, tired of the attacks, tells Tony Khan to book a match between himself and MJF. You don't even need Tony Khan to appear on-screen for that and it doesn't break the storyline at all. Then you can even run the same story as before on a smaller scale: Will MJF actually show up to face Keith Lee? Or will he no-show to try to get himself fired? The tricky thing there is that you don't want to go the Russo way and make it about "following scripts" or laying down. That is where these angles become the stuff that kills a company (see Jarrett/Hogan at Bash at the Beach). If MJF is going to wrestle, it needs to be clear that he still wants to prove he's the best against any opponent because that's also part of his mission.

I also read one fan posit that it would be beautiful if FTR turned on Punk to help MJF win the title some time down the line, but I could also see Hangman eventually coming down and being the "Who's Side Is He On?" Guy. That being said, I hope that they keep this storyline insular and don't overcrowd it. You don't need to revamp the entire company around one storyline.

[KawadaSmile]

2 hours ago, Timbo Slice said:

The only, and I mean ONLY possible payoff that would make sense to me, is if the “Four Pillars” turn this into a generational thing. Which absolutely could happen. I think it’s the only thing that makes any plausible sense given how the company is constructed. Page having been the champ already, his redemption could come through this. Plus MJF and Sammy are kind of in limbo, and Darby can easily be plugged in after his time with Sting is done. The booking, either inadvertently or in reality, has leaned towards all four of them being deprioritized, so I think this could only work if it somehow grew. 

My issue is that half the pillars have seen Championship gold, therefore better booking. In fact you could argue both Sammy and Jungle Boy have been prioritized over talent despite visible issues (shitty storylines for the former, shitty partner for the latter). How would they fit?

[The Thread Killer]

7 hours ago, El-P said:

About coffee, caffeine don't do jackshit to me I guess. I say I drink coffee to "wake me up" at work, but actually, I can yawn and feel just as asleep just the same. Never felt anything from drinking a coffee (and I drink 2-3 a day usually). And I drink actual coffee, not what passes for coffee in North America (let's talk real now).

Back in the 80’s we used to snort lines of caffeine right off the bare backsides of strippers, 300 nights a year and twice daily on weekends, brother. Nowadays, all these kids want to do is play video games in the locker room while sipping their no-caff, non-fat lattes.