Timbo Slice Posted October 4, 2023 Report Share Posted October 4, 2023 Only question is who Cardblade will end up dressing as for Halloween. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WingedEagle Posted October 5, 2023 Report Share Posted October 5, 2023 That Cole/Roddy video was terrific content, a riot and absolutely not what I want from AEW. But Fenix/Nick Jax more than makes up for it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Timbo Slice Posted October 5, 2023 Author Report Share Posted October 5, 2023 I know this isn’t what most folks want from AEW but this is good shit right here. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MLB Posted October 5, 2023 Report Share Posted October 5, 2023 Great promo from Copeland, I thought. Adam's bringing very positive vibes and Tony must be happy as a consolation for the Punk fiasco. Copeland raises up the promotion by being there, I can't see why any AEW fan would bristle about him coming in (who are these people?). With Punk and Jade leaving and Dragon cutting back, Copeland is the knight in shining armor AEW needed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sek69 Posted October 5, 2023 Report Share Posted October 5, 2023 It's funny how quickly most wrestling fans forgot that people going from company to company was what made things better. If someone was getting stale, they'd move to a new promotion and get a boost just from being in a new environment. Now everyone's so tribalistic someone jumping to a new company is seen as a traitor the crazies. Dynamite was a fun show, and I'm wondering who will end up being the one who attacked Jay White. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Thread Killer Posted October 5, 2023 Report Share Posted October 5, 2023 I thought this week’s Dynamite was just okay, at best. I found it way too talky, and there seemed to be a disproportionate amount of segments involving “character development.” Poor Tony K can’t seem to strike a balance between talk and action. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
strobogo Posted October 5, 2023 Report Share Posted October 5, 2023 4 hours ago, MLB said: Great promo from Copeland, I thought. Adam's bringing very positive vibes and Tony must be happy as a consolation for the Punk fiasco. Copeland raises up the promotion by being there, I can't see why any AEW fan would bristle about him coming in (who are these people?). With Punk and Jade leaving and Dragon cutting back, Copeland is the knight in shining armor AEW needed. There's always the TNA syndrome (or perhaps WCW) fears of bringing in WWE exiles, but also Edge is 50, has always been injury prone, and a lot of people weren't all that interested in Edge's return to WWE, either. I will say that for the most part I thought 2021-22 was some of the best in ring stuff Edge had done. However, I also thought his stuff with Orton, Rollins, and Balor was trash and a lot of Edge's stuff was the worst stuff in WWE for much of the mid to late 00s. The idea that AEW needed Edge, or Edge is some kind of savior for them is weird. I don't think Edge is going to make much of a difference in the sense of tickets/buys/ratings, because really outside of Punk, none of the big debuts really did any sustained metric boosts, and it seems like audience size for TV seems to do higher numbers when it features non-WWE talent in bigger roles. It will be interesting to see how Edge works, as unlike all the other big name WWE talent in AEW, he doesn't have any non-WWE history and has only worked that style for 25 years. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NintendoLogic Posted October 5, 2023 Report Share Posted October 5, 2023 From what I've seen, skepticism of Copeland in AEW is due to how bad his last WWE run was as well as lingering PTSD from the history of ex-WWE guys in TNA. Also, a large part of the appeal of talent in a different company comes from the possibility of fresh matchups and new interactions. A feud with Christian isn't exactly that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheDuke Posted October 5, 2023 Report Share Posted October 5, 2023 I think Edge should join the BCC, maybe after the Christian feud is done. It's such a weird grouping of guys, I think Edgr would fit well in there. I also I am surprised they didn't test the Duct tape spot before doing it on live TV. Stuff involving the ring ropes seem like it can be tricky. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
strobogo Posted October 5, 2023 Report Share Posted October 5, 2023 1 hour ago, TheDuke said: I think Edge should join the BCC, maybe after the Christian feud is done. It's such a weird grouping of guys, I think Edgr would fit well in there. I also I am surprised they didn't test the Duct tape spot before doing it on live TV. Stuff involving the ring ropes seem like it can be tricky. BCC isn't that weird of a grouping of guys, it's 3 dudes who had a connection to Regal and train in catch bullshit, plus their young boy. Edge would not fit into that in any way whatsoever. If the BCC is going to expand, they very much need another young talent, not another ex-WWE guy who is 50 and has zero association with the style or really Regal either. I wouldn't mind Yuta either graduating and going solo, or having his own young boy kind of deal. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
El-P Posted October 5, 2023 Report Share Posted October 5, 2023 4 years is a lifetime. 4 years is more than Nitro's reign of terror, 4 years after it began kicking the WWF's ass, Nitro was at the point they hired Vince Russo to try and save the Titanic (which was akin to hire a pyromaniac to fight a fire). 4 years is more than the entire Attitude Era. 4 years is more than ECW's peak. AEW was born out of the exhaustion of WWE's sucky, corporate, sterile style of work and booking (although a dent had been dealt from within with the NXT, which was basically WWE trying to kill the indies by co-opting the style to a degree and getting people they would never have gotten 5 years before) and the spirit of the indies, of love for lucha libre and puroresu. If you thought about how it started, you could picture what may have been the 4 year Anniversary Dynamite. And it would certainly not have been capped off by an angle between 49 years old Edge & Christian. From that perspective alone, AEW has failed. Don't get me wrong, I did enjoy the angle, mostly because Christian Cage is doing probably the best work of his career, and I'm intrigued about how a WWE lifer like Copeland will fit into AEW, which is a much different environment. The fact a guy who's such a product of WWE monopoly and a staple of the late Attitude and Cena era is now *somewhere else* is mind boggling on its own, it's very different from Danielson or Punk, who where products of the indies first and foremost before they became WWE stars. But still. This is where we're at right now, the alternative of WWE having its 4 years anniversary with a final segment based on Edge & Christian and not Darby Allin vs MJF for the AEW title, or Jay White vs Kenny Omega, or FTR vs Young Bucks. Nope. Edge & Christian. Anther part where AEW has totally failed to me, and I gave them the benefit of the doubt forever about it, is the fact that we're 4 years in, and there's still only ONE women segment on each show. No wonder the women division still can't seem to feel important in the grand scheme of things. This has reached a self-fulfilling prophecy level. And why is the best women performer not on EITHER big TV shows and instead kept on the useless ROH service ? Yeah, I'm taking Athena. And actually, they have been doing much better giving time and character developments to women on ROH, why can't they do this on the actual promotion that matters ? Now, I've been enjoying some of the stuff very much, like the ridiculous and awesome Toni Storm character (which is basically Goldust X Hot Mess Chelsea Green), the progress of Skye Blue and Julia Hart, but the complete lack of followup because of such ridiculous time constraints totally prevents them from getting a bigger and more over part of the show, and that sucks. IMPACT is STILL doing much, MUCH better. (BTW, where the fuck was Britt Baker ? Whatever happened to her awesome self from 2020 when she was an hilarious toxic bullying friend to Tony Schiavone and had Rebel-not-Reba as a funny sidekick ?) Of course AEW is still delivering mind-blowing PPV's and even weekly TV matches. On that front, they are the biggest success ever, and they are also the reason why WWE had to kick themselves in the ass, and although I don't watch any of their stuff (I have my limits, you see), the consensus everywhere seems like WWE has never been better in term of in-ring stuff. So yeah, 4 years in, and AEW had been my favorite promotion ever for about 2 years and a half of it, totally got me through the pandemic. Right now, it's like the best WCW-as-secondary-promotion ever or something, or TNA-if-it-was-successful. It's fine. As long as they deliver really great matches with workers I really love to watch, I'm there I guess. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KawadaSmile Posted October 5, 2023 Report Share Posted October 5, 2023 Gotta say tho, Christian telling Edge to go fuck himself got a pop outta me. Bubba @C.S.knows ball Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MLB Posted October 5, 2023 Report Share Posted October 5, 2023 7 hours ago, strobogo said: The idea that AEW needed Edge, or Edge is some kind of savior for them is weird. I don't think Edge is going to make much of a difference in the sense of tickets/buys/ratings, because really outside of Punk, none of the big debuts really did any sustained metric boosts, and it seems like audience size for TV seems to do higher numbers when it features non-WWE talent in bigger roles. AEW is still running shows based on ticket sales from when Punk was there, it's difficult to gauge how bad it could've been without the Copeland signing. Maybe it wasn't a boost to AEW but TK had to do something fast to stay above water. I feel like Copeland is a bigger name than people are giving credit, Cardi B knows Edge. You can't be a national company promoting a part-time Danielson as your top guy with Cody and Punk out of the picture. We've already had title runs with Moxley, Jericho and Omega. MJF and maybe Cole are the only ones that stepped up. People aren't paying to see Wardlow. I asked who should take the belt off MJF and nobody here really gave me a solid answer. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MLB Posted October 5, 2023 Report Share Posted October 5, 2023 5 hours ago, El-P said: This is where we're at right now, the alternative of WWE having its 4 years anniversary with a final segment based on Edge & Christian and not Darby Allin vs MJF for the AEW title, or Jay White vs Kenny Omega, or FTR vs Young Bucks. Nope. Edge & Christian. Give it time...I have a feeling Copeland is going to side with Cage rather than vice versa. The only direction to go now is a transitional heel title reign for Copeland into Cole, OC or Darby winning it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MLB Posted October 5, 2023 Report Share Posted October 5, 2023 One could argue that AEW was stable during Punk and the Elite's suspensions...but the fallout was the talk of the wrestling world and there was still anticipation of Punk's return with the title that ended abruptly. In between, you had Ethan Page and Tanahashi challenging MJF for the AEW championship. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Timbo Slice Posted October 5, 2023 Author Report Share Posted October 5, 2023 Here are the YouTube views for Dynamite segments last night: -Cole/Roddy skit: 32K -Storm/Blue: 145K -Omega/Jericho tag: 151K -MJF Beatdown: 343K -MJF/Cole skit: 140K -Acclaimed: 42K -Wardlow: 181K -Toni segment: 64K -Fenix/Nick Jackson: 120K -Edge segment: 1.7M -Edge overrun: 639K Look, I know people want some of the long-time AEW folks to get their shine, but one of the great ways of determining interest is looking at baseline engagement numbers. Those aren’t just a tiny bit better than the top acts; those are 5-10 standard deviations above the norm for AEW vids. That’s what Edge brings. That’s basically where Punk was trending. It’s what got LA Knight his push. This shit matters and it’s why certain moves are made. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Man in Blak Posted October 5, 2023 Report Share Posted October 5, 2023 48 minutes ago, MLB said: One could argue that AEW was stable during Punk and the Elite's suspensions...but the fallout was the talk of the wrestling world and there was still anticipation of Punk's return with the title that ended abruptly. In between, you had Ethan Page and Tanahashi challenging MJF for the AEW championship. AEW arguably hasn't had a coherent direction since the 1-2 punch of the ROH acquisition and Cody leaving. There have been blips here and there where things looked like they might finally be stabilizing -- most notably on PPVs, where it feels like 80% of the roster could be killed in a tragic bus accident and they'd still put on a good show somehow -- but those moments of promise have always been just that: moments, anomalies and outliers in an overall trend of stagnation. I don't really see Copeland as a remedy for this either, though he's certainly the freshest name that they've featured in a while. These YT segments are the first showings he's had in AEW, outside of social media posts of footage from his debut on Wrestledream - the numbers aren't going to get any higher than this without AEW making some significant changes in how it handles itself as a company. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Man in Blak Posted October 5, 2023 Report Share Posted October 5, 2023 2 hours ago, MLB said: You can't be a national company promoting a part-time Danielson as your top guy with Cody and Punk out of the picture. They absolutely could have done this if they had anything resembling consistent and coherent booking around Danielson up to this point. Roman Reigns only occasionally descends from the heavens to grace Smackdown or a PPV in WWE and that company is in one of its hottest periods in recent history. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
El-P Posted October 5, 2023 Report Share Posted October 5, 2023 incidentally, ratings for Dynamite just came in. Second lowest Dynamite from 2023. Says a lot about how Youtube numbers don't mean jackshit, never had, never will. Looks like Adam Copeland is one hell of a non-draw already to the AEW audience. It's not like it's a shocker either, he made no difference whatsoever during his comeback to WWE. AEW is doing fine. Not great, but fine, in term of TV ratings and PPV buys. Be AEW. Don't be TNA nor WCW circa 1999, and everything is gonna be fine. Give AEW fans some AEW spirited content. Celebrate AEW with something that actually matters to the AEW fans. But it's too late. The angle, as fun as the final line was, reeked of TNA syndrome. The show felt very flat in term of an actual celebration of the 4th anniversary. And it bombed in the ratings, one week before what will most probably be a slaughter (I mean, WWE are piling up stars to a ridiculous degree just to prove a point which doesn't even need to be made, and is even counterproductive when you think about how getting Cody was such a turnaroud in perception. The fact Jade seems to be such a big deal to them is another proof that they actually need a healthy competition much more than they need to eliminate it). Lesson learned, I sure hope. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Timbo Slice Posted October 5, 2023 Author Report Share Posted October 5, 2023 Ratings barely matter too (blown out of proportion relative to TV contracts), but whatever allows you to back up the narrative. MLB playoffs were all over last night, too, and Dynamite is moving next week to accommodate. Both matter as much as you want them, too, and my qualifier is that when you see SUCH a discrepancy, it should be a red flag as to why that’s the case. Context matters for ratings just like the YT numbers. If the game is to just cherry pick things to make a point, the discussion goes nowhere. There aren’t “lessons” to be learned here. It’s clear that Tony is hands-off with a lot and trusts talent to come up with most things, which is highly beneficial for on-screen, but not great for business. He books in bunches and only has a long-term view on a couple of stories. He’s also overly reactive, if not impulsive in a lot of ways. That’s not a good recipe for success if you’re constantly burning through things just because you want to see the matchup. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
El-P Posted October 6, 2023 Report Share Posted October 6, 2023 Sure, ratings don't matter in a context where pretty much *everything* is linked with TV right fees, that is unless you get a ridiculous contract from a streaming service... Hey, maybe this week means nothing and Copeland will end up being a ratings draw or at least a positive in term of attendance and whatnot. And good for them if that's the case. But I kinda doubt that a guy like Adam Copeland, who meant *nothing* in term of making a difference with WWE when he came back, is gonna have much effect in AEW when even CM Punk was already showing clear signs of diminishing returns, where Brian Danielson, who's much, much more in tune with AEW audience, has not made much difference either, included in his own hometown. The fact is, AEW is cold right now. And it's a vicious circle. Being cold means it's a lot harder to get something over to the point of it making a difference and warming the product again. It's even tougher when the n°1 company is hot. The signal sent by E&C ending that 4th anniversary show red like the old TNA way of thinking, not something that is gonna make AEW hot and cool again. MJF vs Jay White is thankfully the main program for the next PPV. That's the way to go, that's the one. I have enjoyed MJF on top quite a bit, he has totally overdelivered in big matches, but I would gladly switch into a direction that suits my personal tastes a bit better. Just a change of scenery and style. It's been a while now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
strobogo Posted October 6, 2023 Report Share Posted October 6, 2023 Go all in on the Bang Bang Gang baybay Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
El-P Posted October 6, 2023 Report Share Posted October 6, 2023 16 minutes ago, strobogo said: Go all in on the Bang Bang Gang baybay No shit ! And really now, give me a Youtube show "At home with Rock Hard Juice Robinson & Timeless Toni Storm". NOW. DO IT. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Timbo Slice Posted October 6, 2023 Author Report Share Posted October 6, 2023 Cardblade the best draw they have anyways Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Big Pete Posted October 6, 2023 Report Share Posted October 6, 2023 Wasn't the only advertised match Nick Jackson vs. Rey Fenix, with Copeland vs. Luchasaurus being announced for next week's show? I could see that Copeland/Luchasaurus match sending mixed messages and since the show wasn't heavily promoted and they were all coming off a five hour bonanza, I could see most fans having their fill for the week. That's one of the big issues with adding all these supplemental shows. It was easy to give Dynamite two hours of your time each week, when they started adding two additional nights and three hours (sometimes four) it diluted the show and fragmented their core audience. It's the WCW problem of 1998, when you add an additional three hours it takes it's toll on quality and engagement. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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