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AEW TV 11/9-11/11


Tenese Sarwieh

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The amount of replies to this thread pretty much sum up how much AEW has fallen lately. It seems the majority of the interest in AEW is gone & certainly their honeymoon phase is over. The JAS Vs. BCC never-ending feud is not doing them any favors. Consistently using Wheeler Yuta, Daniel Garcia & Sammy Guevara, I think, is really hurting them. The ROH stuff is hurting them. Obviously losing Punk, Omega & The Young Bucks isn't helping. I think they've burned a lot of goodwill from the fans. That spark is gone. I don't know how they get it back. There was a lot of hype & excitement around AEW for at least a couple of years. The crowds were rabid & forgiving. Now, well, it just kind of feels like WWE Livewire. 

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I mean, here on a message board in 2022 with less than a hundred regular posters? And like, 13 actively complaining ? Yeah. It's not the end of the world. They still do good in the ratings and have an audience. They clearly need to get it together, but a passionate fanbase is willing to get through the shit times, especially when there's an act as hot as The Acclaimed getting mainstream attention.

That got me wondering, I can totally picture HHH eventually trying to bring them and Daddy Ass in.

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The booking of Eddie Kingston has been criminal. 

I have a feeling Britt gets cheered against Saraya in their match. The fans did NOT like Saraya telling Britt that she's not a star. I don't think any AEW fan would appreciate someone who was released by WWE cuz they were no longer wanted there talking down to a homegrown star.

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3 hours ago, Coffey said:

The amount of replies to this thread pretty much sum up how much AEW has fallen lately. It seems the majority of the interest in AEW is gone & certainly their honeymoon phase is over. The JAS Vs. BCC never-ending feud is not doing them any favors. Consistently using Wheeler Yuta, Daniel Garcia & Sammy Guevara, I think, is really hurting them. The ROH stuff is hurting them. Obviously losing Punk, Omega & The Young Bucks isn't helping. I think they've burned a lot of goodwill from the fans. That spark is gone. I don't know how they get it back. There was a lot of hype & excitement around AEW for at least a couple of years. The crowds were rabid & forgiving. Now, well, it just kind of feels like WWE Livewire. 

The crowds are still rabid, and Yuta, Sammy and Garcia get consistently loud reactions. Given how many complaints we see about WWE crowds being dead every week, I am sure the AEW wrestlers are quite happy with their reactions. 

The ROH stuff needs to go though, that just plays out in front of dead crowds while losing TV viewers.

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1 minute ago, Tetsujin said:

Why the fuck did Eddie Kingston lose?

Got in a fight with a friend of the top star who's closer to the owner. Notice said friend of a top star was in a main event w/ Bryan Danielson while Eddie's jobbing to a guy whose done nothing special in his career, ever? I say all that as somebody whose on the low end on the Internet of thinking Eddie Kingston is anything special, but compared to Ethan Page, he's freaking Dusty Rhodes. 

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I've personally lost a lot of interest in AEW since All Out, however JAS vs. BCC is hardly a big reason why. Definitely has overstayed its welcome, and I'd love to not see Jericho wrestling guys like Bryan and Moxley, but things like FTR being kept away from TV, Eddie Kingston cooling off, the implementation of ROH titles/talent, and MJF being this terrible example of playing the cool kids' heel have done more to sour my perception of the company.

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I don't really understand why they decided to cool Kingston so much, but I do think it is the service of heating him back up following some "he lost his way" or "hit rock bottom" kinda storyline. It sort of feels like when Andrade was losing in NXT and they clearly had a plan for him, but it was still frustrating to folks. It isn't my favorite wrestling trope, but they are "keeping him strong".  He beat Sammy before they overturned it. He had Page beat with a visible tap. They hyped that he has won quite a few matches in a row on Dark I believe. I'm not sure I think this is about punishing him. TK seems to get fixated on things and I think he got fixated on using using rumors/backstage news to inform stories around the time Kingston got into it with Sammy. I suspect he suspension was his punishment and then TK got the bright idea of doing this slow downward spiral and then redemption arch out of it. Regardless, it feels like they have a plan for him post Full Gear.

 

The JAS/BCC stuff has lingered a bit too long for me as well. However, they introduced some interesting dynamics into this match at Full Gear. I'm less interested in from a "great match" perspective than I am what happens between Dragon and Claudio and what happens between Sammy and Jericho. Hopefully it sort of pushes the groups away from one another. As much as I love the BCC (in theory and in practice), I think they may begin to implode or at least splinter off at Full Gear.

Britt absolutely cooked Saraya and no amount of emotion or vulnerability or wink-nod turns of phrase could fix that. Saraya coming in with the "I started this and this is my house" thing was a misfire.

Mox v MJF is really hitting its stride. There are so many ways it can go, so many unknowns. It is going to be a blast. Whatever way it goes, I believe MJF does something to solidify his heel status. It was sort of smart to give fans some time and a way to cheer MJF because they wanted to do it, but I don't think this is going to lead to him being a face. At most it is a little preview of what that may look like down the road if/when it is time.

I think I might have to come to terms with the fact that I like Jeff Jarrett, at least in small doses. I never really thought of myself as a guy who likes Jeff Jarrett, but I sort of dug his whole promo and presentation last night and I'm kind of excited for his tag match. I have no real interest in Jay Lethal and remain absolutely dumbfounded that he is continuously featured on my TV (which they went out of their way to do this week), but other than that, I'm weirdly into the match. This is all based on the optimism that Jarrett will be a short term TV personality and may do stuff sporadically at best. I have zero interest in him being a staple of the show

Also, I genuinely want Dutt v Danhausen on the buy in.

Bryan Danielson is so casually the best wrestler in the world. It is absolutely bonkers. That 2/3 falls match was quite good. For the most part, most of the things that feel like contrivances in Sammy's matches worked well here. I know a lot of folks are having better, or at least more shiny years, but I remain steadfast that there is no better wrestler in the world than Danielson and he can prove it at the drop of a hat.

 

Joe turning on wardlow and presumably joining the TNT title match at Full Gear is another example of TK stuffing talent onto the PPV, but I am way down for that three way hoss fight.

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Yeah, it's not like weekly AEW talk was ever through the roof though.

I haven't seen the main yet and thought Saraya's promo was very, very bad, but otherwise, I thought it was a really good show. In some ways it was "just" a really good wrestling show, but that's the kind of thing I want to see, so I'm not going to complain. Jericho can tour Europe for another month and the Elite (everyone but Cutler; I like Cutler in small doses) could stay home for another decade and I'd be ok with it. 

Here are my DVDVR bulletpoint thoughts so I can show my work.

Spoiler
  • MJF thing was pretty good. It came from a place of honesty and connected a lot of dots instead of trying to just inflate one dot which is how it often is with him. They're not making him rah rah babyface. He's still a jerk. He's just trying to be a jerk who can look himself in the mirror maybe.
  • 8 Man worked for me. Best Gunns match ever. Good for them. I loved Colton's intensity right off the bat because in storyline, they have been just dying to get noticed by FTR and now they finally were and he made the most of it. Austin was more there for the atomic drop sell, the taunting after Big Bill interfered, the DX Sports Entertainer stuff (though the JAS should do more of that and everyone else less, but what are you going to do?). Every now and again Cash does something that really, really makes him standout. Here it was during the punching in the corner bit before they went to commercial. He was just raining them down. Finishing stretch felt like one of those WWE house show celebratory ten men tags. I kind of wish FTR didn't get the big rig on but it was good that Acclaimed pinned the Gunns and not them. I can't believe they missed the shot on FTR and Acclaimed doing the scissor thing! That was the main thing they had to hit!
  • Kingston vs Page worked for me. I probably would have liked protecting Eddie more but at some point you either have to go with Page and elevate him or not and you shouldn't hedge when elevating a guy. Throughout the match, they didn't work classic shine/heat/comeback but instead Page would get an opening and Eddie would fire back. You got the sense that Eddie had his number but Page survived long enough to capitalize on Stoke. Finish was pretty perilous but hit perfectly clean. I'll have three (3) Kingston matches to write up for Monday. 
  • Wardlow thing covered a lot of ground in a short amount of time. I would have liked him to be able to hit another power bomb or two and really get the fans going but what are you going to do? Joe turn could have come at the PPV or after it? I think about the people I want to see challenge Joe for the TV title at Final Battle and they're mostly babyfaces so it makes sense he's a heel. They missed the shot on Joe's turn too btw! AEW production really needs some help.
  • Yeah, I don't know. I think Saraya's speech was terrible and the crowd is going to turn on her hard at the PPV. Saraya wasn't just shitting on Britt. She was shitting on AEW as a whole. Read the room. 
  • It was downright criminal that they didn't show 30 seconds of Lee Johnson turning on Danhausen and rejoining the factory. That backstage promo should have been earlier in the night too. Lethal vs Trent was good though. Great bodypart stuff, Trent working well with one leg. Intense bastard Lethal is the best Lethal. His bump into the corner was nuts. The announcers were ridiculous during PiP all night. I think this is the match where Taz said there were too many Tonys in AEW and that Tony S should be Tom or Matt. The Jarrett bit where his gimmick is that he knows how a pro wrestling show is produced and brings that up every time is not great. The song still is though. I remain way more interested in Darby/Sting vs Lethal/Satnam than Jarrett being involved. 
  • Skye Blue and Hayter beat the crap out of each other. That's all I wanted. Now I want Skye vs Athena!
  • Show is so much better and more palatable without the elite. I can't say I missed Jericho this week either, even if I think he's had a great year.
  • Main on the way home later.

I just think I'm vibing on an entirely different plane of existence than you guys. Which is ok. I didn't watch any AEW at all for the first two years, wasn't interested, and that was what a lot of you liked. I do see problems (injuries derailing booking plans, too many turns, poor use of capitalizing on the really fun webshows) but in some other ways, I don't see some of the same problems you see (ROH is fine. The number of belts and tournaments is probably fine since it's a crutch for Tony's booking lapses; at the end of the day, it's a promotion built around the idea of good matches, so it's fine). 

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26 minutes ago, NintendoLogic said:

Kingston already served a suspension. Does pie-facing someone backstage really warrant the additional punishment of being jobbed out in perpetuity? Then again, I don't know if a losing streak/downward spiral storyline is much better. That sort of thing has an abysmal track record when it comes to getting someone over.

 

Ohh yeah, I think it is a bad idea, but it is so very TK right now. Kingston is the man. If they give him a chance he will be fine, but it all does feel like some wasted time given how white hot he was.

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As for Saraya, I think a bigger issue is that having her feud with Britt Baker right off the bat is setting her up for failure. Britt may be the top heel in the women's division, but she's also the division's biggest homegrown star, which means a portion of the audience is naturally going to side with her over a WWE refugee. She also makes it incredibly difficult for opponents to get over at her expense in promo battles. Being cocky and running people down is fine, but at least serve up some softballs for the babyface to tee off on.

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If Kingston never winning a meaningful match is a long term storyline, what meaningful match is it building towards him actually winning? As Nintendo said, these angles very rarely work so there's a chance this all ends up with him winning a nothing belt and having a lesser position than he had before the Jericho feud.

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It truly feels like Eddie has been doing the same "down bad" angle for like years now. He's always on a downward spiral. Never really gets a moment that he could cherish.

It sucks, man. They had everything in place for him to get that massive W over Jericho at Blood and Guts, yet they trolled the audience by having Claudio get the tap.

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37 minutes ago, KawadaSmile said:

It truly feels like Eddie has been doing the same "down bad" angle for like years now. He's always on a downward spiral. Never really gets a moment that he could cherish.

It sucks, man. They had everything in place for him to get that massive W over Jericho at Blood and Guts, yet they trolled the audience by having Claudio get the tap.

And even after Blood and Guts they had that main event were he lost the barb wire match to Jericho and had that horrible, rushed, WWE-like post match beating "to keep Eddie over" that  failed miserably.

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Regarding Saraya, I agree that putting her against Britt wasn't a great idea. Honestly, the pressure is really on her come Full Gear. They have framed her as this top babyface,  pitted her against the top heel along with the misguided dynamics NL pointed out, and built it all around her comeback match. I think lots of folks are going to have unreasonable expectations about this match. I'm not one of them. If this match is a disaster it could really derail Saraya in a big way.

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