Migs Posted February 25, 2023 Report Share Posted February 25, 2023 Aussie Open - Young Bucks was the best Rampage match in ages. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
strobogo Posted February 25, 2023 Report Share Posted February 25, 2023 Saw 10 seconds of the MJF promo and boy is that the worst possible direction to take his character. Just awful. Dude is supposed to be this super wealthy, super jacked, GENERATIONAL TALENT who fancies himself as the modern day Piper/Flair hybrid and this dude is straight up throwing out garbage straight from r/incel. The fuck. GARBAGE. Go back to Bubba Ray cheap heat bullshit man. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Embrodak Posted February 25, 2023 Report Share Posted February 25, 2023 Let’s not forget that this whole fucking feud was supposed to be premised on William Regal as the emotional lynchpin. Regal betraying his FCW protege Moxley to embrace a new young villain that he can mold in his own image, then having divided loyalties when his new ward immediately butts heads with his star pupil, Bryan Danielson. There was a *lot* of juice in that, whereas there is just not two months of material in MJF and Dragon building up to an Iron Man match where the premise is that Danielson thinks MJF is a scrub who can’t hang and was very mean to Regal before he left. MJF eating popcorn with the “only hot chick in Denver” or wherever in a skybox to watch Danielson wrestle is great, but that’s one week. They’re having to get a lot of blood out of a stone without Regal, and I think that explains why MJF is drawing from so many weird wells to try and get this thing to feel like there’s some substance. Re: the fellatio car accident promo, I think Brian Last made a good point on Corny’s show, that that’s the kind of promo MJF should have done in MLW as a 21-year-old, not in AEW as a 26 year old. It could sell a young wrestler in a small promotion as a real piece of shit and get some buzz, whereas it just comes across as awkward coming from someone almost a decade out of high school and the champ of the world’s #2 promotion. It’s not that it was *bad* in some absolute sense, it was just the wrong material for the wrong program at the wrong time in the guy’s life. And in kayfabe, why the fuck would someone confess to a *relatively recent* crime (that he could prob still be prosecuted for) on national television? MJF could do the “I got bullied and you abandoned me” shit against CM Punk and make it work, but you can’t keep talking about high school as an adult and not come across as juvenile. Is he going to be doing Tik Toks about how being in the gifted program fucked him up next? How *should* this program have been booked? Maybe the match could have been announced, with the stipulation that neither guy can touch the other until the PPV, and they each engineer proxy feuds for the other to take up the time until the PPV? That’s kinda what happened with Takeshita, and the MJF/Takeshita match went over well. Could they have expanded on that, conceptually? Maybe MJF could have gotten Hobbs to fuck BD up like he got Wardlow to fuck Punk up, while BD enlists Takeshita to give it back to MJF? Thus getting two young guys over as credible upper card players and not putting MJF in a position to have to get creative to try and imbue this thing with life? I’m just spitballing here, but there has to have been a better way than just asking MJF to invent emotional stakes where there clearly are none. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blehschmidt Posted February 25, 2023 Report Share Posted February 25, 2023 8 hours ago, Migs said: Aussie Open - Young Bucks was the best Rampage match in ages. Say that again louder for the folks that didn't watch it. That match was fantastic. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DMJ Posted February 27, 2023 Report Share Posted February 27, 2023 I had a lengthy post that I was writing when the page crashed so here it is, rewritten much faster: The MJF/Danielson match needed some suspense and question as to the outcome. I don't think it has any. Its really hard to sell any match when the only real questions are will it be good/bad and how it is going to be worked. Those questions are enough when Bryan is wrestling on TV, in the midcard, against a guy like Big Bill (Cass in WWE) or Bandido. As a genuine PPV main event (not a PLE), I want a big fight feel. MJF is the new World Champion that they have hitched the AEW wagon to. Daniel Bryan is the veteran who has made it clear, through actions and in some interviews IIRC, that he's in AEW to put over young guys and just wrestle, anywhere on the card, stakes or not, art for art's sake. I don't think the outcome of their match is in question. If I were TK, and I know that many here hate the idea of "working the sheets" to get a match over (a discussion that might be worth its own thread), but I would've maybe done a few things: 1) Had Danielson do a few interviews where he states that its a misconception that he's just in AEW to "put over" younger guys. Have him say something like, "When I signed, I couldn't be away from my kids to devote my time to AEW, but the plan was always to be that guy once the kids are older. The kids are now at an age where I can be used more for the brand and Tony knows that now." 2) Leak a fake story about TBS/TNT being upset that the guy who main evented WrestleMania two years ago hasn't been prominently featured and that CM Punk is likely not coming back. Mox is due for a vacation and Kenny Omega's deal is unclear so TBS/TNT has now put pressure on TK to utilize Danielson more. Basically, Danielson is who TBS/TNT want in the "CM Punk role." 3) Leak a fake story about TBS/TNT not being happy with how MJF has essentially put over the WWE with all his free agent talk. I don't think this would've necessarily saved the program and I typically think this sort of "working the sheets" stuff is not a great idea compared to actually building a story on-screen, but with the hand they were dealt, I wish they would've tried something. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coffey Posted February 28, 2023 Report Share Posted February 28, 2023 I don't dislike MJF. That being said, several months to maybe a year ago, there was a lot of talks about cosplaying wrestlers in AEW. That's what MJF feels like to me. Not that he's a vicious or vile heel, but that he's acting like he's a bad guy. It comes off as phony. He's done a great job getting himself into pretty spectacular shape & I like that AEW took a chance on him as the top guy but like Hangman Page before him, I just don't think it is working. There's also zero that they can do to make me care about an Ironman match in 2023. Even if it didn't involve MJF. I just think that gimmick has jumped the shark. After the last one that I remember in the WWE, where the fans were more interested in doing a Royal Rumble style countdown for every minute of the match, I don't know why anyone would try to go back to that well again. It's the wrestling match equivalent to filler. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jmare007 Posted February 28, 2023 Report Share Posted February 28, 2023 It is kinda crazy how both Hangman and MJF have had very similar title reigns in terms of impact/perception. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KawadaSmile Posted February 28, 2023 Report Share Posted February 28, 2023 It's a bit peculiar to me. Like, which one was treated worse? Hangman's reign took a backseat to MJF/Punk, so there was something going at that time, but to his detriment. Now, MJF is just having a nothing reign, but it's not like there is a massive, eye-grabbing storyline going on either. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NintendoLogic Posted February 28, 2023 Author Report Share Posted February 28, 2023 It's not enough to simply book a compelling title chase. You also have to build up compelling challengers for the champ to face after the chase is over. The later has been a major recurring issue for AEW. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Embrodak Posted February 28, 2023 Report Share Posted February 28, 2023 1 hour ago, KawadaSmile said: It's a bit peculiar to me. Like, which one was treated worse? Hangman's reign took a backseat to MJF/Punk, so there was something going at that time, but to his detriment. Now, MJF is just having a nothing reign, but it's not like there is a massive, eye-grabbing storyline going on either. See my post above. Tony let the emotional and psychological core of the feud go back to WWE, and they’re just rehashing a storyline MJF has done before. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jmare007 Posted February 28, 2023 Report Share Posted February 28, 2023 1 hour ago, NintendoLogic said: It's not enough to simply book a compelling title chase. You also have to build up compelling challengers for the champ to face after the chase is over. The later has been a major recurring issue for AEW. Yup, and after the PPV there's still no compelling challenger waiting for a shot, even though there 3 whole months to give people some momentum. I guess Hangman vs Mox is supposed to be that program but I don't see Page vs MJF being a big attraction at this point. They had something with Starks but he'll need a palate cleanser after the Jericho feud. I guess Revolution could end with another Tony Khan voice mail, this timed aimed at Punk before so he can return the same way MJF did or some shit Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Man in Blak Posted March 1, 2023 Report Share Posted March 1, 2023 20 hours ago, NintendoLogic said: It's not enough to simply book a compelling title chase. You also have to build up compelling challengers for the champ to face after the chase is over. The later has been a major recurring issue for AEW. I think this is worth bringing into even sharper focus with the current MJF title reign. It's kind of stunning how little TK is actually asking Danielson to do here - Brian Danielson is one of the greatest of all time, but you could put literally anybody else in this spot and it would not change the shape of this program, which is why it feels like a foregone conclusion before the match has even happened. It's a placeholder program that's more of a vehicle for TK to fantasy book Danielson into "dream matches" than an actual legitimate world title build. I know a lot of people are getting tired of MJF but, to me, that's a byproduct of the booking, which has been an absolute disaster. When one wrestler is being asked to carry the entire narrative load for a program week after week after week for months with basically nothing to work with, anybody is going to get over-exposed. That's when you get things like MJF frantically trying, week after week, to connect with something - anything - as a narrative foundation for this thing other than TK smashing his MJF and Danielson action figures together. I still think MJF's reign has been better than Page's run with the belt, but I would concede that the Page title reign had a similar root cause -- it even had Danielson as a placeholder challenger to build up Page as a credible champion! Even Omega's run didn't really have a compelling follow-up after he won the belt from Moxley: they had the disastrous exploding barbwire rematch, an out-of-left-field three way match with Orange Cassidy and Pac (with virtually no build, again) and a weak run with Christian Cage that centered more on the IMPACT championship than the AEW strap. So, yeah, I don't think it's unreasonable to argue that this has been an issue with the world title (maybe even the company as a whole) ever since Moxley won the belt for the first time. Even in TEW, you can't build dream match cards forever. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stiva Posted March 1, 2023 Report Share Posted March 1, 2023 There hasn’t been anything to hook me personally on AEW TV for a good month and a half at this point and I can only say that the whole company feels like it’s oddly spinning it’s wheels and stuck in a pretty cold place. To the point where I’m way more interested in seeing how the ROH rebirth starts Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coffey Posted March 1, 2023 Report Share Posted March 1, 2023 Well, the card tonight, for the third week in a row, certainly isn't anything special either, Stiva. I'm in the same boat as you. They're doing another tag team battle royal. That ladder match could be pretty sweet. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RocknWrestling Posted March 1, 2023 Report Share Posted March 1, 2023 I will be in attendance tonight and will try to post specifics sometime after I get home. Looking forward to the experience of rassling at the Cow Palace and seeing specific wrestlers more than the actual matches, but that's fine. Should be fun regardless! New poster here as well. There's an intro in the intro thread too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Thread Killer Posted March 1, 2023 Report Share Posted March 1, 2023 51 minutes ago, RocknWrestling said: New poster here as well. There's an intro in the intro thread too. Welcome to PWO! In order to make your membership at PWO official however, you are required to acknowledge our Tribal Chief, Good Bubba @KawadaSmile Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KawadaSmile Posted March 1, 2023 Report Share Posted March 1, 2023 38 minutes ago, The Thread Killer said: Welcome to PWO! In order to make your membership at PWO official however, you are required to acknowledge our Tribal Chief, Good Bubba @KawadaSmile All they need to do is send me 15 bucks on cashapp and we're cool (just kidding. welcome, bubba @RocknWrestling) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alucard Posted March 2, 2023 Report Share Posted March 2, 2023 On 2/23/2023 at 12:41 PM, El-P said: Where is Anna Jay ? She ok after that awful bump ? She had dislocated ribs and has been out since, while Tay has been dealing with a recurring protrusion in her back and is not medically cleared. Thinking back to last year's Revolution, Tay vs Jade there was still my favorite Jade match and now there's no challengers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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