Accident Prone

9 hours ago, DavidB6937 said:

Shocker - AEW PPV that lacked build ended up being exceptional from top to bottom. That's never happened before. /sarcasm

Don't get me wrong - I still get frustrated by their PPV builds on the whole as I think they'd be even better, but at this point you can almost see why TK doesn't bother too much when they smash it out of the park like this.

Yep, and that's exactly why he's lost me as a regular viewer. He said during the post-All Out scrum that he doesn't listen to much critique of the TV shows because the PPVs always deliver, so I'm good to not bother watching the weekly TV then if that's the case. Such a backwards thing to come out and say.

Anyway, All Out was a consistently good show that felt like it was lacking something (which usually happens when you have a shoddily built card), but a nice 'two' to the one-two punch that was All In-All Out.

I'll be back on for Arthur Ashe and Dream Slam! Now to use those extra hours towards something more fulfilling, such as writing on wrestling forums.

25 minutes ago, Fanny Pack said:

Ive just come home from Florida, I went to Universal and went on the Jurassic Park ride. On that ride, a T Rex "lunged" at me, it was bigger than CM Punk aswell, and I didnt feel it threatened my life.

Like most disagreements on here I think we have come to the "agree to disagree" stage.

Different mentalities.

Bullshit.

You've never left the house in your life.

Acting like blood, a gross-out moment and a little plunder is somehow bad for children is really condescending. Just because WWE toned down their act to appeal to children, doesn't mean that it's the only (or best) option when it comes to the kids in the audience. If anything, what WWE did was to appeal to parents who don't like wrestling, whereas AEW appeals to parents who do like wrestling and also aren't clutching their pearls at anything you wouldn't see in your average modern superhero flick.

I had a lot of fun at the show but I didn't come away with my opinion changed. Felt like more of a house show than the biggest wrestling show of all time as a lot of the matches felt undercooked due to the lackluster build, and they're clearly heading in a direction that'll make the weekly TV more of a pain to sit through.

Also while the crowd was loud at various points they also didn't have much to root for in terms of emotional investment in a longterm story (apart from the main event, which they all loved and I scratched my head at mostly). Seeing the pop that Hangman and Omega got, and it being wasted on a slapdash 6-man tag, was a massive waste of those two.

Joe/Punk and the coffin match were my MOTN (lost my fucking mind to Seek & Destroy) and the Stampede was very enjoyable as well. I'd go 3 on the main event, nowhere near the 5-star ratings that I heard from other people as I exited up the stadium stairs (I overheard lots of positive praise for the STORY).

I'll probably be at the next All In as my one live wrestling show per year, but I'm happy with putting AEW on the backburner for now and just sticking to the PPVs and TV specials.

Also:

6 minutes ago, DavidB6937 said:

Yeah good luck not having the crowd shit all over him.

Yeah, might want to throw the kids to bed early, as the crowd might get really nasty and sing songs about him where they replace the words in the lyrics with puns that make fun of the situation! They might even BOO, and boy will those two tag-teams with all that experience have NO IDEA how to handle all that. Woof, it's gonna be rough one, better alert the security in advance as a melody of 70s and 80s ballads get sung with puns directly at Cash himself. Oh the horror.

Whenever I go to the post office with a handful of packages to send, I ALWAYS get a huff and a puff from the clerk. One or two, it's fine, but if you have to take up more than 5 minutes of their time then they look at you with scorn. I took in eight parcels yesterday, all super simple DVD-sized packages, and you'd think I'd barged into the clerk's house on Easter Sunday and shat in her chocolate eggs.

I don't do those "big" deliveries often, maybe once a year at most, but I still dread going there because it means I get the daggers and the long, drawn-out breath and the same old speech about getting an account so I can dump them in a bag and get charged later (which would ultimately cost me MORE). I've never known customer service like it.

58 minutes ago, Merzbow said:

AR Fox has that flippy guy that never got past CZW "Best of the Best" level vibe about him, it's proper indie stuff and I don't see why he's given legit TV time over so many other workers in the company.

Yeah, I've got fond memories of AR Fox's CZW/PWG run, but a lot of his stuff doesn't play well in front of arenas and big, sparkly, 4K cameras. He snared the crowd with his best stuff against OC, but his more indy-riffic habits still got a spotlight, such as that dumb skin-the-cat dropkick that has all the impact of an ant landing on a bouncy castle.

One thing strikes me with Fox, and that's his footwork and running the ropes always looks so rough. He's constantly shovelling about and gingerly getting into position, but I think he's ironed those out for his big chance here. I do hope he can make the most of this opportunity though, as I was a massive mark for his reckless indy work.

Under 8 hours left for these. There's a lot of bids going already, so be sure to put one in so you don't miss out. Thanks!

22 minutes ago, SuperBacon said:

Sorry, but this is unachievable based off one event. You could have Orange Cassidy present The One Show for a month, and WWE would STILL be the number one brand whenever wrestling is 'brought up at the pub' as it has over 30 odd years of exposure over here, and is the biggest brand in the world. 

I know lots of people that know I like wrestling and they often ask me about it, and they still always just bring up WWE and not AEW. It's just not there yet.

It just cannot compete on that level. I'm not saying it couldn't after it's own level of longevity and exposure, but that's just mad talk mate.

I'm not saying they could replace WWF/WWE (nowhere in my post did I suggest that), but they could become a name that's brought up alongside them.

And even if there is no chance of that happening, you still miss every shot you don't take. AEW should be leaving the UK with every non-wrestling fan in the country thinking, "So wait...that wasn't WWF then? And they filled Wembley Stadium with 70 thousand people??"

17 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

Any company will always have to struggle against the brand dominance of the WWE, and AEW are never going to get to that point (I doubt anyone ever will). But they can be the Subway to their McDonalds - Tony Khan talks about being a "challenger brand" all the time - and that requires much better merchandising than they have, and it all comes down to the Elite jobs for the boys mentality. As far as I know, their T-shirt fulfilment all comes through ProWrestlingTees, who just aren't equipped to deal with a major touring operation - they're print-on-demand, which is great if you're an indie wrestler who doesn't want to fork out to get a thousand T-shirts printed and risk only selling four, or if AEW want to sell a shirt based on one match or a catchphrase that becomes a meme for a week, because it means not having a warehouse full of old stock. But everything I hear about their merch at live shows is that it's woefully inadequate. They can't rock up to a show the size of Wembley with a couple of boxes of generic Ts. 

And this is it, really. But they're not going to sack off the all the Jackson family members and mates because that'll really set them off, and sneaky whingy one-liners in BTE videos won't be the end of it this time.

1 hour ago, Supremo said:

Meltzer reckons the biggest story coming out of this show will be how badly they drop the bag with merchandise. He reckons they'll struggle to meet demand and leave a lot of money on the table.

Blows my mind if this ends up being the case. This show hasn't been sprung on them. The moment they announced the date they should have put an order in for at least 60,000 Orange Cassidy T-shirts.

It's not that they'll struggle to meet demand, it's that they don't care to meet the demand. They'd rather everyone just go online and order their shirts, but even then they don't really care if you do or don't.

It's not just leaving money on the table either, it's also disappointing the live fanbase, and probably most importantly, not representing yourself properly. Perception is 9/10ths of the law; if you act and look like the biggest deal in town, then people will recognise you as the biggest deal in town.

When WCW were trouncing WWF pre-1998, you wouldn't know it in the UK as shop shelves were filled to the brim with WWF merch, whereas WCW merch was squeezed in at the end. It's totally anecdotal of course, but I had more WWF merch than WCW merch as a kid growing up in the 90's (be it magazines, shirts, or toys), and when I started bagging pocket money I bought more WWF merch than WCW merch because it was more widely available in shops, and when it came to circling the Argos and Index catalogues for Christmas I would mainly slap that pen around the WWF lines because they were presented better than WCW. WWF effectively cornered the market here and presented themselves as the number fucking one, and you believed it. Look at them now, the bastards.

This is AEW's chance to make the letters "AEW" spring to mind with "WWF" whenever wrestling is brought up at the pub, to become really ingrained in the history and culture here, but to AEW it's just another show in another town (albeit a really, really big show that will shatter most WWF/WWE attendance records...). It's frustrating; they're ticking most of the boxes for this landmark event, but what's the point in running Wembley stadium if the entire country still doesn't know who you are when you fly back home?

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If Claudio/PAC is anything like their '07 CHIKARA and PWG matches, then we are in for an excellent bit of wrestling. Back then, PAC was the pure-fire babyface and Claudio was the HEY! euro strongman, but a 2023 version with their angry, bitter, too-old-for-this-shit attitudes and 15 years of experience on top...woo, I'm getting all giddy just thinking about it!

2 hours ago, Arch Stanton said:

Turned into?! When was he ever anything but a massive fucking dork? He's an awful signing for AEW.

There's an argument that Roddy has been booked real bad ever since the pandemic hit and when all his mates left NXT (and also that short period where he tagged with Pete Dunne in 2018), but other than that he's always been booked as an arse-kicking chad/jock-type. He's one of the most consistently great pro wrestlers of the last 10 years, with his excellent PWG run as the heavyweight champ whilst backed-up by Cole and the Bucks, being the crown jewel of his CV.

I agree that he's an awful signing for AEW, because they clearly have no clue how to use him. He's a natural bad guy, and contrary to popular belief he's actually okay on the mic in short bursts when he's allowed to play up to that high school bully character, and can fit his style to match any wrestler of any level because all his opponent has to do is sell the back.

Dork? Only when booked to be one. There's a high ceiling on Roddy, and he's already got the body of work to prove that he can carry an entire storyline and/or division.

18 minutes ago, Samblaze said:

I'm starting a new collection up and wondering if anyone is still selling dvds. 

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Roderick Strong has been turned into such a fucking dork that he has to be turning soon. There's no fucking way that you'd cuck a man that badly on national TV without a plan to turn him heel because no one is gonna cheer for him now that he's been presented as the world's biggest loser. Fucking hell, at least Joel Gertner looked good in a neck brace and talked about shagging your mum. This has to lead to Roddy either costing Cole the tag straps or costing him the heavyweight strap, it has to. Otherwise Rod would've been better off in Impact.

20 hours ago, RedRooster said:

Oh I’m not disputing that - but I don’t think the top-10 best sellers are a good way to measure whether people care or not. I’d totally forgotten about Jaime Hayter until you made that post, and I’m kind of amazed at that. I also forgot about Serena Deeb, Taya Valkyrie, Layla Hirsch and even Tay Melo, who can have a solid match with the right opponent. The women’s roster in AEW has an embarrassment of riches these days. 

I'm sorry, you lost me at Taya Valkyrie, who is absolutely a wrestler that I'd like to forget exists.

What are we thinking with the potential fallout of Blood'n'Guts then? That's bound to mark the build towards All In and All Out. I wouldn't mind seeing the BnG match broken down into 3-5 matches for the top of the All In card. Something like;

PAC vs Ibushi

Hangman vs Mox

Omega vs Takeshita

Bucks vs Claudio & Yuta

Then fill the rest out with:

MJF vs Adam Cole

Bullet Club Gold vs The Acclaimed

CMFTR vs Joe, Hobbs & Starks (yes I'm predicting that he and Hobbs join forces again during the Owen Finals)

Casino Battle Royal

Raffle

4 hours ago, David said:

I guess it depends on who they're trying to market to really, doesn't it?

I'm much like you, in that I want to see in-ring storytelling, proper interviews, and so on, but as we've been told numerous times by people in the business, AEW can't survive on just appealing to the nerds who post on message boards and mark out at NJPW appearances. 

I'm not watching AEW as if it's business that I'm invested in. I'm watching AEW because I'm a message board pro wrestling nerd, and AEW hit a certain sweet spot when it came to scratching those wrestling nerd itches.

So I don't care about what "people in the business" say. I'm not going to watch some sub-par cheesey garbage whilst faking a smile and muttering some empty-pleasantries about casual fans. I'm not watching for anybody else but myself.

Also, it's weird how these arguments about not catering to the internet nerds get trotted out only a few weeks after the critical and commercial success that was Forbidden Door. Almost like people will recognise a good wrestling show as a good wrestling show regardless of how "nerdy" it is. Fuck Max Landis and his "wREStliNG ISnt WREStlinG" bootlicking bollocks.

4 hours ago, David said:

I can only go on what I'm seeing, but what they're doing is clearly working. And the truth is, guys like you and me are gonna be watching regardless. People like my other half? They will just stop watching if shit gets too serious or nerdy. 

Just my take on it.

Clearly working? That's something you're going to have to explain. You got some stats to go with that? Clearly working as in "Well they're still on the air..." or clearly working as in "Well RATINGS ARE THROUGH THE ROOF for MJF and Adam Cole's segments that are filmed like a run-of-the-mill porno!".

The part in bold I had to highlight too, because the days of watching wrestling just because it's wrestling are behind me. I haven't watched WWE in years. I haven't touched TNA with a bargepole (Peter Kay wink) in God knows how long. The indies lost me when they went all meme-heavy (and then half of them turned out to be abusive shits). I feel like I haven't been this disinterested in wrestling in as long as I can remember. Like a lot of people, AEW is really the only modern wrestling that I consistently watch. I know this is all very 'old man shouts at cloud' but God fucking damn those clouds used to be fucking GOOD.

How many times did you hear that argument; "It doesn't matter, you'll still watch regardless". Trust me when I say, I've got no qualms with dropping AEW like a dribbly catshit kebab if the product continues down this path of emulating WWE and NXT (not even GOOD WWE and GOOD NXT, for fucks sake).

I've got faith that they won't swallow the fed-pill, that they'll still keep an even balance between the good and the bad, but the second that balance shifts in the direction of more overly-scripted, cringey skits and overly-long non-wrestling segments (I don't want to see a forty fucking minute TRIBAL CHEIF segment, for example) then I'm gone and so is my interest in any of the current offerings.

So while it's good for them that they'll sell a few t-shirts and get some more advertisers because they look more like what's on the other channel, I'll just see it as another casualty of something promising chasing the leader in today's modern media hellscape instead of forging their own path and sticking to it.

8 minutes ago, DavidB6937 said:

The thing is MJF was fucking BORING before this stuff. I get where you're coming from but this partnership with Cole has absolutely been the most entertaining he's been and the most watchable in ages.

He fucked it during the Sammy/Darby/Jungle boy feud, but I've been a big fan MJF's character all the way up until this point. From the "YOU FUCKING MARK" promo to MJF Day in Long Island, and the entire Wardlow saga and his mini-programs in between, he's been great. It feels to me as though there's been a shift in how to present him, and that's fine but it shouldn't done while he is carrying the big boy strap.

I don't want to lift the lid on paywalled content, but on the Flagship Dynamite review last week, they said that several people in the AEW creative room are either a) Intimidated by the massive success of the Bloodline angle, b) made up of people who love the WWE method of "telling stories", or c) Both. The Flagship have been bang-on with their sources when it comes to the more detailed-tidbits like this (they were usually first on any CM Punk drama, for example), so I've been inclined to believe them.

These consistent Adam Cole/MJF and QTV skits are the biggest smoke-to-fire danger signs of that being true. I've been getting proper "Four sides only got you so far, brother!" vibes from the past few shows; instead of trying to be a WWE alternative by offering a product that is largely the anthesis to WWE, they are trying to be just like WWE and looking incredibly bush league in the process.

I don't watch AEW for skits and comedy segments and backstage angles, I watch it because they used to promote the important chunks of the card with in-ring storytelling, proper interviews, post-match angles and video packages. They had silly shite every now and again, but it was mostly relegated to guys who weren't important. But now we have the world heavyweight champion dabbling in segments that even NXT staff would scoff at, and we've got the most over tag team in the company (who have been cooled off a lot since their peak) embroiled with the instant death that is QTV.

There's still good stuff up and down the roster, but having your World Heavyweight Champion wasting his time with this Vince McMahon-engorged guff is such a waste.

36 minutes ago, westlondonmist said:

Maybe have an undercard with some UK indy talent vs AEW wrestlers. 

I'd rather shit in my hands and clap than watch that, thanks.

31 minutes ago, DavidB6937 said:

So we started off arguing about how many tickets they may or may not sell.

Now we're speculating about it being a glorified house show despite there being absolutely nothing to say anything like that whatsoever.

This is a great topic.

"Glorified house show" is just another example of the goal posts being moved. AEW could sell a show out on the moon and there'd still be people going "Yeah but it's not on Ganymede".

Punk vs Andrade sounds fucking great. Two proper pro wrestlers who refuse to lose unless it's absolutely fucking necessary because they both want to look strong and keep their spot. None of this trading wins bollocks, none of this all-mates all-lovely resslin', just two highly-strung narcissists full-on battering each other until we get a screwy finish, and then repeat. Sign me up!

4 minutes ago, Merzbow said:

Oh god, Kasai working for both New Japan and AEW in the same month would be crazy.

Kasai atop of the cage, putting on the goggles and doing the salute before leaping off in a spectacular blaze of glory...

I have three predictions for BCC's 5th man:

The Good - Jun Kasai

The Bad - Chris Jericho

The Ugly - Evil Uno

I'd love for it to be Kasai, who Mox has recently bled with at Korakuen Hall.

I'd be apathetic for Jericho, who needs a refresh but not at the expense of this story.

I'd hate for it to be Evil Uno, but he got a pinfall win over Adam Page on Rampage so it looks like those YouTube nerds might actually be brute forced into this.