AEW Double or Nothing

[BomberPat]

14 hours ago, Seratonin said:

You're right it makes no sense to have the big boys face guys new viewers have no idea of. Cody and Mox are big names.

If they book Cody vs. Moxley, that's one big match. If they book Cody vs. someone else and Moxley vs. someone else, that's two matches that'll people will want to watch, rather than just one. Not everyone on their roster is a star yet, but no one will become one if they're not booked as on the same level as the people you already know.

 

I don't put a lot of stock in the "serious wrestling" shit from Tony Khan. At the end of the day, Khan is a wrestling fan, and wrestling fans are an Itchy & Scratchy focus group.

What bothers me about the "we're going to make wins and losses matter here" rhetoric is that it's telling the audience you're making a conscious effort to make them matter, rather than them just inherently being important. They're telling, not showing. It's basically saying "it's all pretend, but we pretend better".

[Liam O'Rourke]

15 minutes ago, tiger_rick said:

Did you need a mop?

We both did.

[FailedPromoter]

9 hours ago, IANdrewDiceClay said:

@Devon Malcolm mate dont rise to it!

 

Well his botches are very Gerrard slip-esque in their hilarity. 

[digitalversicolor]

I assume the 'more sports oriented' comment that was made by Tony Khan is in reference to them being more focused on wrestling and matches than the 'sports enterainment' variety show that WWE is trying to be. AEW will be a 'wrestling' company, whereas WWE are an 'entertainment' company.

[BomberPat]

7 minutes ago, digitalversicolor said:

I assume the 'more sports oriented' comment that was made by Tony Khan is in reference to them being more focused on wrestling and matches than the 'sports enterainment' variety show that WWE is trying to be. AEW will be a 'wrestling' company, whereas WWE are an 'entertainment' company.

Which is a criticism a good decade out of date. 

With the exception of this week's RAW, which sounds like it was particularly light on matches, the main criticism of WWE has been that it's all wrestling with no reason to care about the stories or characters. 

[digitalversicolor]

1 minute ago, BomberPat said:

Which is a criticism a good decade out of date. 

With the exception of this week's RAW, which sounds like it was particularly light on matches, the main criticism of WWE has been that it's all wrestling with no reason to care about the stories or characters. 

I guess that's true, but I don't follow current WWE so I have no idea what it's like as a show these days, forgive my ignorance. I just catch the clips and such of anything that looks interesting and keep up with the headlines.

As long as we can get good and meaningful characters and storylines, along with great matches, that's all we can ask for at the end of the day. Something to focus on and enjoy instead of WWE. I don't mind which way they go with it as long as they tick those boxes, and I think a lot of people just want a 'big budget' alternative to the 'E at this point in time.

[Accident Prone]

The last four pages being almost non-stop praise for Orange Cassidy is very promising. A wrestling company needs talent that the fans care about on every level; whether it's you main event players or your comedy act openers.

What was great about 2000 WWF is that you had pretty much exactly that. Part of the fun and intrigue was seeing all these characters bounce off each other. I mean, look at that red hot RAW tag from early 2000 with the Radicals and DX against The Rock, Cactus Jack and Too Cool. You've got your main eventers, upper-carders, mid-carders and lower-carders (thanks EWR) all mixing together and it was fantastic.

Edited May 30, 2019 by Accident Prone

[JNLister]

Interesting piece on the show winning over new/non-stereotypical fans https://uproxx.com/prowrestling/glow-aew-nontraditional-fans/4/

[tiger_rick]

1 hour ago, BomberPat said:

What bothers me about the "we're going to make wins and losses matter here" rhetoric is that it's telling the audience you're making a conscious effort to make them matter, rather than them just inherently being important. They're telling, not showing. It's basically saying "it's all pretend, but we pretend better".

They've run one show. Everything is them telling rather than showing. It is rhetoric but what else would it be until they're up and running.

They've done a great job engaging wrestling media but that brings a load of questions from people that are hard to answer when you're still months away from having a weekly product. So you get these meaningless soundbytes and people spend too long thinking about it.

Again, it's that WWE crib sheet. WWE think wins and losses don't matter. So AEW do. Will they prove it or book the same as WWE in 6 months time? Who knows. regardless, they're not reinventing wrestling. Anyone who thinks they are is a moron. The only thing revolutionary is having a company that has young, working guys in key managerial positions. And that isn't that far removed from the days when a Watts or Fritz would run and work his own territory. But compared to anything big on the current scene, it's fresh.

[Chris B]

1 hour ago, BomberPat said:

What bothers me about the "we're going to make wins and losses matter here" rhetoric is that it's telling the audience you're making a conscious effort to make them matter, rather than them just inherently being important. They're telling, not showing. It's basically saying "it's all pretend, but we pretend better".

I'm fine with that - it can be interpreted in a kayfabe way easily enough, in a 'we'll reward people who win with more opportunities' way.

[BomberPat]

25 minutes ago, tiger_rick said:

They've run one show. Everything is them telling rather than showing. It is rhetoric but what else would it be until they're up and running

All very true, but that's where we are - in the fallout of a well regarded show, there's nothing to talk about but the "What Ifs?" and possibilities. When the TV show starts will be the real test.

I went from being incredibly skeptical of the whole thing to being quite excited about it, despite my misgivings, but still feel a lot of the rhetoric feels like they're just saying what disgruntled WWE fans want to hear. Most of Khan's examples of what they'll do differently are just age-old IWC buzzwords. He'll be saying Hogan was better in Japan next.

Long-term, I think the things they will benefit from most will be having a better relationship with the press/media than WWE do, and being able to present themselves as a "woke" alternative to WWE. With stuff like Saudi Arabia shows and the Ashley Massaro scandal, more and more people are watching WWE through gritted teeth, and I wonder how many would be prepared to cut them off once there's another promotion they could follow week-by-week with minimal effort.

[tiger_rick]

16 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

still feel a lot of the rhetoric feels like they're just saying what disgruntled WWE fans want to hear.

They absolutely are and it's fine to call them on that. I just think that those desperately looking for clues from one show are wasting their time. I enjoy the speculation, it's nice to have some in US wrestling again. But there are too many people who seem desperate for this to fail for my liking. There have been from the start. As much as TNA was always a shambles, I never got the desire for it to fail.

[BomberPat]

1 minute ago, tiger_rick said:

They absolutely are and it's fine to call them on that. I just think that those desperately looking for clues from one show are wasting their time. I enjoy the speculation, it's nice to have some in US wrestling again. But there are too many people who seem desperate for this to fail for my liking. There have been from the start. As much as TNA was always a shambles, I never got the desire for it to fail.

I think it shows how polarising "The Elite" are in general, which I hadn't really recognised until this show. There are people who buy full into the Cornette-isms about Omega and the Young Bucks being the worst thing to ever happen to wrestling, and you have people for whom they're the be-all and end-all.

What I hadn't really realised until this show is that there's a huge section of the fanbase who follow the Elite while having no interest in indie wrestling beyond that. There were people on the card who I'm reasonably au fait with and would consider indie "big names", and I don't watch half the indie stuff out there, who a lot of the Elite fans didn't know because they've not been on their YouTube show. They're the same people who think NJPW are struggling, or lacking star power, without Omega and the Bucks, because that's the only lens they ever saw it through. So there's people coming at AEW from three or four different directions, struggling to have the same conversation, because they all see it differently. To some it's "alternative to WWE", to some it's the shiny new thing, to some it's the culmination of the efforts of a group they follow closely, to some it's everything wrong with wrestling.
In terms of the silo-ing of the fanbase, the range of T-shirts in the crowd was very telling. Every fucker in either AEW, Bullet Club or Undisputed Era/Adam Cole merch.

There's also a ton of polarising either/or rhetoric, which I think is par for the course online, but doubly so for wrestling. We all either grew up with WWF vs. WCW, or the younger lot grew up with WWE lionising that era, to the point that a lot of people assume that's wrestling's default state - it needs to be one company "at war" with another. 

[Chris B]

18 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

They're the same people who think NJPW are struggling, or lacking star power, without Omega and the Bucks, because that's the only lens they ever saw it through.

I'm under the impression Kenny Omega was a genuine draw for them, so losing him plus the Bucks, plus Jericho, plus Cody was a pretty big blow for them - not sure if that's a controversial point, especially when they were openly talking a lot about expanding into the US. However 'struggling' would be a massive overstatement.

That said, with Jericho and now Moxley in, they're pretty clearly just waiting until they can partner with AEW anyway.

[tiger_rick]

14 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

There's also a ton of polarising either/or rhetoric, which I think is par for the course online, but doubly so for wrestling. We all either grew up with WWF vs. WCW, or the younger lot grew up with WWE lionising that era, to the point that a lot of people assume that's wrestling's default state - it needs to be one company "at war" with another. 

That came up before. I think it's natural because of the mean age of the fan base and the fact that Vince McMahon cannot fucking let it go. You'd have to have been watching wrestling for about five minutes not to have seen their obsession with it because WCW were beating them until 21 years ago.

I'd love to think this lot are too bright to not have learnt that it's ancient history and to have seen and learned from TNA's daft attempt to recreate it in 2010. I'll reserve judgement on that.

I get the polarising nature of "The Elite". Wrestling is generally polarising anyway. There's no way this thing can be all things to all people. That's a big part of the reason you get them spitting out soundbytes to be attractive to people who think WWE is shit while putting on a show that looks like WWE because they recognise what they do well.

This will be about finding the middle ground. For instance, lots of people think WWE is over-produced. Dean ambrose said the same thing on Jericho's podcast so that's not a theory limited to fans. Yet there are complaints from this show that it wasn't produced enough, in terms of matches. Finding the balance will be important.

It's also important to ignore the ill-informed. Forget who but someone was spouting about WWE not having the same moves in every match when that's something they absolutely do. I'd love to think they have a feel for what they want to see from wrestling rather than just doing what they think a noisy group of people want. That's a big part of what has got WWE in the mess they're in.