LaGoosh

23 hours ago, Loki said:

Steiner's definitely lacking ring fitness and starts sucking oxygen in so hard the front row begin to pass out.

I'm pretty sure one of Steiner's feet was absolutely fucked as well during this period to the point it basically barely worked. But yeah, diabolic that Steiner was completely blamed for their bad matches considering how generally shit Triple H was during this time.

Card looks pretty spectacular with numerous potential classics. The only negative is MEAT MADNESS not being remotely mad enough. A triple threat with Lance Archer 100% guaranteed to take the pin does not scream madness to me. They should add as many guys as possible to this and make it no dq - Brody King, Kill Switch, Jake Hager, JD Drake, Killswitch, Brian Cage, Toa Liona, Shane Taylor, even throw in Johnny Hungee for a laugh. Just go absolutely fucking bananas with it.

When I joined Paid the first thing I did was do a search to see if anyone had slagged me off previously. There was only one post that did and it was from a few years previous, it was a pretty brutal drumming but the reasoning was solid so I couldn't really get upset about it. I actually found it pretty helpful, I think.

Overall though Paid is a nice little perk but not really the hive of activity some people probably assume it is.

8 hours ago, waters44 said:

This then sent a shiver down my spine because my Grandma, who’s name was Victoria Mary had died a year earlier, which was maybe five years after her daughter, my Auntie Cath died. 

My nan was also called Mary and I also have an Aunt called Kathleen. Everyone from that fucking generation was called Mary and Cath.

Thing is this woman may genuinely believe that she can talk to the dead. She can't though.

If someone from beyond the grave ever passes a message to me I hope it's not as boring as the "so and so wants to let you know they are ok!" message it always seems to be. I want them to tell me something that's either completely mental or something incredibly useful - like where I can find some buried money or something.

First show back with a full crowd. Just pure energy, Mox is pumped up beyond belief, Eddie's having a blast. Badass.

Another good show, loving AEW at the moment.

- Sammy/Hobbs was a fun plunder match. I'm not a Sammy fan at all, he's been far overpushed past his talent level but the ONE thing he is good at is these mid-card hardcore matches. He's rubbish at everything else. Hobbs looked great here. Some people are no doubt complaining that AEW is doing too many no dq matches at the moment which is the most boring complaint I can imagine anyone making when the matches are as fun as this.

- Mox and Claudio cut probably the worst promos of their careers. Fucking thing went on forever.

- Speaking of promos, Dax talks 90% bollocks in every promo he does but he delivers with enough conviction and passion that I always enjoy them. Good job hyping the BCC/FTR rematch.

- Shane Taylor is fat and throws a great punch which makes him a top level guy in my book. I like STP - they should add a third guy and be a trios act I reckon. Add a highflyer then STP can stand for Speed, Technical, Power covering all three guys (you can have that one for free, TK).

- Bang Bang Scissor Gang needs to get where it's going quickly as it's a waste of Bullet Club Gold and painful to watch. BCG unite the trios titles and having a run as champs would be the ideal ending. The Acclaimed probably need to split up and move on to something else - no idea what that could be. I can't stand the Iron Savages either.

- Malakai Black has tremendous presence, look and offence. This makes him perfect for the leader role of a trios. But he's never been up to much as a singles wrestler and his uniqueness and positives have always covered for the fact that he's never had a memorably good singles match ever. Him slogging his way through a flat, dull singles match with the worlds smallest wrestler Bryan Keith was not enjoyable to watch at all. I liked Mark Briscoe's attack at the end but it felt like it ended quite awkwardly and abruptly - the House of Black needed to escalate the violence if anything.

- Cracking main event with top level Bryan Danielson shithousery at the end. What's left to say about this story? It's been an absolutely beautiful piece of work spread out naturally over 3 months. 

- Opening the show on a nutty hardcore match and finishing on a traditional old school pro wrasslin' bout with two legends is exactly why AEW is the best thing to happen to wrestling.

There's a New Jack vs Bam Bam Bigelow match which is a complete mess but I love watching it. It's from Wrestlepalooza 98 I think. New Jack does his usual weapons schtick but a few minutes in Bigelow quite visibly gets annoyed and fed up with being hit with stuff so just relentlessly clobbers Jack with audience chairs knocking New Jack out for real. Everything from that point on falls apart insanely quickly. The highlight is New Jack doing a balcony dive holding a guitar while clearly having no fucking clue where is or what he's doing. Eventually Bam Bam just deadweight picks him up, carried him back to the ring and hits his finish for the win. It's an absolute cluster fuck of a match but the chaotic energy and weirdness of seeing such a styles clash between Bigelow and Jack makes it highly enjoyable in my book.

I also think the Sting/Triple H match is tons of fun even if it's completely nonsensical. The ending of it is horrible though - it builds up pretty perfect to a babyface Sting victory but then it just...keeps going and Triple H wins. Wet fart ending.

19 minutes ago, Loki said:

The actual quality of the women's wrestling matches remains stubbornly poor though.  If you look at their roster they seem to have a much more rounded crew nowadays but a lot of the in-ring action is miles behind say TNA and WWE.

They put on a lot of established star vs undercard jobber matches which I think seems to be the problem. So you get a lot of say Kris Statlander vs Anna Jay and Toni Storm vs Red Velvet or whatever type matches which are always going to be a bit rubbish, when really they should just fuck all that off and book Kris Statlander vs Toni Storm. It feels like the cream of the crop very rarely actually face off or put into long term programmes against one another. Or they've shipped them off to ROH (Athena) or they are just sitting around doing nothing (SHIDA).

They've got at least 10 good women on the pay roll, with 3-4 womens matches per week on TV there's loads of fun stuff they could be putting on if they felt so inclined.

13 minutes ago, Chili said:

I'm happy with the multiple angles the women have spread over the shows at the moment.

Me too! I prefer womens divisions to be more angle/character based than match focused anyways and there's some fun stuff going on right now. It's working for me.

Two observations about the womens segment.

- There was a really great production moment where in a single shot they were focused on Toni Storm in black and white, then as Deonna came out the camera panned over and split in half so the half of the screen Toni was on was black and white but the other half was colour then as the camera followed Deonna away from Toni the screen went full colour. Just a cool little production trick that felt very fluid and dynamic. AEW's production has been much improved the past few weeks.

- Deonna should have tapped out Madison Rayne in less than 60 seconds, maybe even less than 10 seconds. That would have really cemented her as a threat to Toni and would have got rid of an utterly pointless match the fans had no reason to care about which turned out to be terrible. They could have then used the 5-7 minutes they would have saved to feature some other talents or cool shit. Really maximise those TV time minutes.

It's hardly an angle, it was 5 seconds of TV time.

The Garcia/Christian segment was absolutely perfect. Garcia has been MY BOY for ages now and it's a joy to see him given the ball and running with it. Him being able to transition the dance from comedic heel gaga to a defiant babyface taunt shows how good he is. Hope they run Garcia/Menard vs Killshot/Wayne next week.

23 minutes ago, RedRooster said:

I would say that's excusing it a little - the ingredients are there for this not to have been inevitable.

Definitely not excusing it. It's annoying when a hot product goes cold - especially when the reasons for it are usually pretty obvious and should be obvious to the people in charge.

Wardlow's promo was so goddamn good, where has that guy been hiding? Proper main eventer shit right there, get him away from the Undisputed Kingdom asap. 

And I don't know what MEAT MADNESS is but I'm extremely excited and happy about it. 

10 minutes ago, RedRooster said:

The wheels fell off

Yeah of course. They always do. Sadly I can't think of any wrestling company that has managed to put together consistently good and exciting wrestling TV for longer than 2-3 years at a time before the wheels falls off and the product loses it's shine. I think Revolution 2022 was the peak of the company and things started to go down the toilet after that.

31 minutes ago, RedRooster said:

I'd love for them to find a way of recapturing the feeling I got back in 2021 and early 2022, when it felt like anything could happen, and Dynamite felt like an 'event'.

I think all it takes is a hot story or two to capture that "must see" feeling. They were almost there with the start of the Elite/BCC feud and the MJF/Cole stuff but never quite nailed it. AEW is telling some extremely solid stories at the moment which they should be commended for but they're not telling a story that really pops with a "what's going to happen next?" level of excitement right now. If they can come up with 1 or 2 angle heavy stories that hit that (easier said than done of course) and fill out the rest of the show with the really solid and consistent stuff they are doing at the moment then that should put them in a good place.

But on the other hand, AEW in 2021/22 was the exciting new thing. It was the first good US TV wrestling we had been given in years and years. I don't think they'll ever be able to recapture that fresh vibe.

Madison Rayne putting in one of the worst performances I've ever seen. 

11 minutes ago, DavidB6937 said:

They needed to program him better then because I genuinely don't understand half of what he said.

Cena always talks in weird corporate drone/ motivational speaker shit robot mode. Except for when it's time to absolutely bury his opponents in a promo, where he briefly becomes human again and calls everyone Jack for some reason. 

Cena comments on it:

Appearing on the Howard Stern Show, Cena was asked about the allegations against Vince and how Cena handles them. Stern called the allegations "hot water."

"I don't think it's complicated to talk about. It's complicated to listen to. That's why I don't necessarily put a lot of time and equity into it. There’s still a long way to go. I can say this, I’m a big advocate of love and friendship and honesty, and communication, in the same breath, I’m also a big advocate of accountability. If someone's behavior lies so far outside of your value system that the balance shifts of, 'I can't operate in a world where this works.' That's the end result of being accountable. Right now, I’m gonna love the person I love, be their friend. 'I love you, you have a hill to climb.' There is the saying of, 'You don’t know who your friends are until shit hits the fan or your back is against the wall.' That doesn't make any of what's going on any easier to swallow. Just telling someone you love them, it’s a hill to climb, and we’ll see what happens.' That's that. It sounds so cliche, but it has to be one day at a time. I've openly said, I love the guy, I have a great relationship with the guy, and that’s that. It's largely my construct of operating with honesty and communication. Those are strong leads to handling any problem or achievement. The whole thing is super unfortunate and it sucks. It deals with an individual I love and an entity I love. I want everyone to have the experience that I have," said Cena. "Not only do I tell a friend that I love them, but I switch to the entity and say, 'How can I help?

"How can I help?" fucking hell John, he's a rapist!

1 hour ago, no user name said:

Aew may end up in to much debt. Also it is nice to have some big stars. If aew isn't making enough money it won't be able to afford them

Sometimes people forget how much money the Khan's have. They don't have debt! He pays for everything that the company income doesn't cover out of his own insanely massive pockets. 

The educated assumption is that they're going to probably score a big TV rights increase this year which will likely make the company profitable finally.

Season 3 of True Detective is very good, highly underrated mainly due to how much season 2 sucked.

I gave up on Night Country two and a half episodes in. Awful.

Listening to the podcast I get the sense that Rob is a natural leader and someone who likes vigorous challenge and debate. People like that naturally piss other people off on occasion. 

My main takeaway though is that I bloody love them and wish they were my mates.

On 2/16/2024 at 12:54 PM, BomberPat said:

Dolph Ziggler didn't become a tedious time-filler just because he'd been there for so long, but because he'd been doing the exact same schtick the entire time.

Well that's not entirely true. There was that time he cut his hair, dyed it black and was the new super serious black trunks Ziggler. But then a couple weeks later he dyed it back to blonde, got his sparkly pants back out of the cupboard and pretended that never happened.

2 hours ago, BomberPat said:

I'm all for protecting the referee's credibility, but not at the expense of heat.

"Don't bury the ref" seems to be a weird sticking point with the higher ups at WWE. Even recently that prick Bruce Pritchard on his podcast in reference to the 3D (one of the most popular and coolest wrestling moves ever) said he never really liked tag team finishes because they broke the rules and "buried the ref". It's absolutely ridiculous. Who gives a fuck about the ref? Really, the rules of any match are just another story telling device and should be bent and used according to whatever story you want to tell. That's what the fans will remember, no one will come out upset the ref doesn't appear to have the required authority.

1 hour ago, BomberPat said:

and really bought into the "keys" to making sense of it, and had that tedious personality trait that half the internet seems to have these days of treating a film like a puzzle to be solved

A lot of people react like that to Lynch. I used to too, but eventually I realised that his work isn't meant to be deciphered into plot/story. In the simplest way to describe it, the only thing that matters when watching his work is how it makes you feel. The what and why is basically irrelevant.