AEW Fyter Fest

[Accident Prone]

This is excellent. This is the kind of stuff I want to see AEW do more of. Not the Bucks weaving in-and-out of character, but proper post-match interviews that cement and elaborate on what has happened. 

Edited July 2, 2019 by Accident Prone

[Supremo]

Holy shit. He might be the best heel in the business today. A proper dickhead that you want to see get battered. Not someone who makes you fast-forward or stop watching the show.

[Hannibal Scorch]

1 hour ago, Supremo said:

Holy shit. He might be the best heel in the business today. A proper dickhead that you want to see get battered. Not someone who makes you fast-forward or stop watching the show.

One minute he is talking like a face then BAM, back to asshole mode. He is certainly impressive

[DavidB6937]

Yep, that's exactly what we need - a heel that we actually want to watch and enjoy rooting against. Rather than (a) 'cool' heels that people support or (b) shit heels that people just want to skip. Baron Corbin falls into the latter, for example. No one enjoys him.

[Hannibal Scorch]

30 minutes ago, DavidB6937 said:

Yep, that's exactly what we need - a heel that we actually want to watch and enjoy rooting against. Rather than (a) 'cool' heels that people support or (b) shit heels that people just want to skip. Baron Corbin falls into the latter, for example. No one enjoys him.

Well, except Vince

[DEF]

I just can't understand why the preshow wasn't chock full of their absolutely amazing build up videos. 

Check that out. AEW are so damn good at these and yet they fail to actually put them in their product. It's mind boggling. I actually don't mind the Being The Elite comedy stuff. It's what got the Bucks to the dance after all. However there's no way it's more effective than these types of videos and selling your product. I also don't see why the two styles can't work together. I mean they are shot differently after all. They just need to make sure the BTE stuff doesn't lampoon and therefore hurt everything they build in these types of things.

[IANdrewDiceClay]

Jim Cornette did a podcast on the pre-show. A teaser for the full review coming on Thursday. And Cornette certainly has his mad old cunt points, but he's so spot on about the bigger picture stuff. He says MJF is the most talented guy to come along in decades and says eventually he'll be a power player in a big company "unless he leaves the business and does more important things." He raved about MJF for ages. Then he says he say the post-event interviews and sees MJF in full character, followed by the Young Bucks telling everyone "the chair was gimmicked, we're sorry." One guy protecting the business and getting over the legitimacy of his gimmick and a bunch of others taking the heat off the shows main angle.

Goes back to that argument - what does this company want to be? Cody Rhodes is booking himself like Dusty. Friends turning on him, raw emotion within his feuds, serious bouts where results matter (usually him winning, just like his Dad.) MJF is a amazing character. He can lose every match, yet he remains as over as he was. Chris Jericho calls his opponents cunts online, really wants to get over how he's "Hulk Hogan" of this promotion. This is a solid base for a top promotion. Then you have the Young Bucks and Kenny Omega playing in their own sandbox doing this Being the Elite shit.

This could be a fantastic promotion. The way they present certain things (like the video above) its got a special feel to it. Like what I loved about wrestling when I first got into it. But there's another side to the promotion which is just fucking dumb. Here's hoping when it hits TNT, all the goofy shite is gone. Tony Khan certainly looked like a shitting dog after the event, stressing how a lot of these things wont be on the weekly show. He owns the company afterall. He didnt want intergender wrestling. He didnt like Joey Ryan. That's two things he's overruled. Hopefully he puts his foot down a bit more.

[Michael_3165]

Love ol' Cornette and agree with him on almost everything he says. He is spot on with his attitude toward the pre-show, it was a joke and wouldn't have convinced anyone to pay for the event. The whole company could be wonderful but they MUST take things more seriously than they do. Michael Nakazawa and co need to get off TV or act more professionally... most people won't have heard of these guys and they need to sell them as stars. 

[The King Of Swing]

Cornette being more upset over the pre show (I'm not defending it, it was shit) than he was Cody risking brain damage (bet he shits all over Darby's bumps though) sums up the cunt perfectly.

He knows his audience though, I'll give him that.

[Mr Butternut Squash]

Holy shit, Cody's booking is exactly like his dad's. Him being the main focus of the Darby Allin match by the end was a classic Dusty move. And I don't hate it, he's delivered on these shows so far.

I think Hangman Page needs a bit of a leg up before All Out. Sticking him in that four way at Fyter Fest and the joke battle royal at DoN hasn't helped him shine at all and it's not like he's dripping with charisma. Hopefully Jericho can pull something out the bag to heat him up a bit because he doesn't feel like he's world championship material yet.

Corny's old man yelling at the clouds schtick hurts any credibility he might've had but I enjoy listening to him. Don't always agree but I find he's generally spot on. 

Edited July 2, 2019 by Mr Butternut Squash

[The King Of Swing]

I have enjoyed Cornette's stories about the past, have zero time for anything else though.

[Guest]

this backs up what I was saying earlier. Darby's one of those lifelong thrill-seekers, just like Jeff Hardy. if they'd never seen a wrestling ring they'd still be throwing themselves off shit. no need to shit on guys like that.

[BomberPat]

Watched the pre-show last night. Haven't watched the main show yet, because the pre-show was (tag match aside) so awful that I wasn't in the mood to watch any more. 

Have seen some GIFs floating around.

Arguably the worst thing about that chairshot on Cody is that they did on their second show. The next time they need to make that much of an impression, where do they go? 

[Egg Shen]

13 hours ago, sj5522 said:

this backs up what I was saying earlier. Darby's one of those lifelong thrill-seekers, just like Jeff Hardy. if they'd never seen a wrestling ring they'd still be throwing themselves off shit. no need to shit on guys like that.

in a day and age when there are more thrillseekers than ever with the rise of instant gratification through social media, its no surprise that that sort of thing has wound up in pro wrestling, if it makes a good potential viral gif. its a win for these types of people.

[BomberPat]

Finally got around to watching this yesterday.

AEW's biggest problem remains their identity crisis, and I'd be curious to see how (if) that resolves themselves once they go to TV, rather than the build being a hodgepodge of social media and YouTube shows on various channels.

The pre-show was, tag match aside, dreadful, and overly reliant on hokey comedy that just didn't land. If you'd not seen the Fyre Festival documentary, the running jokes about "the documentary" and about how the show was a disaster would have been at best confusing, and at worst, late WCW levels of shitting on their own product - a commentator saying "this show has been a disaster", or words to that effect, must have seemed mental to anyone unfamiliar with what they're referencing. To those of us who have seen the documentary, it's old hat, no one's talking about it any more, so it all felt a bit out of step and self-indulgent. 

What makes it stranger is that, much like Double or Nothing, that comedy is almost nowhere to be found on the main show, outside of the Elite's entrance. The opening video package was great, and entirely serious in recapping and building on the previous show. So the pre-show isn't just doing a bad job of selling the PPV on account of it being awful, it's also not representative of the kind of content the main show is giving you.

A lot of matches felt like they had contrived aftermaths or finishes - trying to get Nyla her heat back after losing to Riho, but then also keeping Yuka involved, the tag match having a stipulation that makes it sound important, but with no real consequence to the losing teams, time limit draws and multi-man matches so the star doesn't have to take the fall...it all feels like a company that's scared to see any of its stars lose, so tries to protect everyone. But when everyone's a star, no one is. It was most glaring in the 4 Way - it seemed like a promotion who recognised the potential in an MJF/Hangman Page feud, rushed to set it up on their first show even though Page already had his own story with the number one contendership, then realised they can't afford to have either man lose yet, so had to book them in a multi-man match to save face. 

Cody vs. Darby Allin was good - only two matches in, but Cody seems to have upped his game in AEW, or at least has the creative control to dictate exactly the kind of match he's having, and worked that to his benefit. Darby Allin really impressed me, though the gimmick is still a little too early 2000s indie cringe, particularly in a company that already has the Super Smash Bros doing a black-and-white promo broody goth gimmick, and Jimmy Havoc knocking about. GIFs of the apron bump are getting a ton of mileage, but a bump Allin took early into the match, being flung into the ringpost and to the floor, was equally bonkers.

The time limit draw, in theory, could have done a lot to put Darby over by presenting him as on Cody's level, and the announce team did a great job in putting over what an opportunity this was for him, and questioning Cody's logic in accepting the match. What didn't work is that it was Cody going for the pin as the time ran out, so the visual wasn't "Darby would have had this won, if only...", it was just the match ending on a technicality. Shawn Spears showing up to brain Cody with a chair also meant that, if it had effectively put Darby Allin over, seconds later we're not talking about him any more anyway.

Another issue with this match, and Cody in general, is that his face/heel dynamic is utterly confused. As the public face of AEW, he's a principled babyface. Video packages on this show highlighted his "big brother" babyface promo. Yet he still wrestles as a heel. But then Shawn Spears turns heel by attacking him, even though we were effectively being encouraged to root against Cody during the match. So we're supposed to want to see him lose one moment, then have sympathy for him the next. Then the first person down to help him is MJF, the most overt heel on the roster. It's all messed up.

Six-man tag was my favourite match of the night, hokey comedy in the intro aside. A superb "human highlight reel" kind of match, where my only complaints are that it was maybe a little overlong for the style they were wrestling, and that I wished the finish came a few seconds earlier - Kenny catching Laredo Kid with a knee in mid-air was such a great spot, the biggest reaction of the match, and really the emotional climax of the whole thing, and it felt like it slowed things down to have him then set up the One Winged Angel for the finish a matter of seconds later. That's nit-picking, though.

I'm not a fan of the "Unsanctioned Match" gimmick. I'm willing to suspend my disbelief that a match not sanctioned by the company would still air on their PPV as just a "well, it's wrestling" quirk, but for them to make a point of "the lights are going out, the next match isn't part of the AEW show, AEW want nothing to do with this", that stipulation's immediately buried when both wrestlers make their entrance with AEW branded chyrons on screen, wrestle with giant AEW logos on the screen behind them, and absolutely nothing about the presentation of the match itself suggests AEW want nothing to do with it. If it's an unsanctioned match, why is there an AEW referee in AEW branded gear? When NXT did an unsanctioned match, Drake Younger wore a plain black shirt to ref it. When CHIKARA did one, they removed all CHIKARA branding from the ring beforehand. If you go the extra mile to put the gimmick over, it can be a really interesting dynamic, and this wasn't that.

Fun match, though, probably the right level of "deathmatch" to show that they're more intense than WWE, but not so far into scissors, staples and broken glass territory that it'll scare people off. Daft to do this match on the same show as Cody taking an unprotected chairshot, though, as one was bound to overshadow the other, so you either have a hardcore match that looks less hardcore than something else on the same show, or one of the executives risking brain damage for a spot that will be overshadowed half an hour later.

 

It felt like a holding pattern show. Nothing really built on Double or Nothing, didn't feel like we came out of this with any more forward momentum than we went in with. Enjoyable, but nothing like the "oh, this is a gamechanger" feeling I had watching Double or Nothing. Better than All-In, though.