The King Of Swing Posted May 27, 2020 Share Posted May 27, 2020 Also helps that he's business savvy and got all of his ducks lined up. I don't think that he's as naive as people think he is, just willing to give things a chance but smart enough to see or be talked into seeing when something isn't working. The Dark Order will probably be the next thing dropped or massively overhauled over the next few weeks. The Nightmare Collective would have probably gone on for a year in TNA complete with about 200 turns and swerves. Saying that though The Natural Nightmares are also pretty naff imo and feels like they are just throwing Brandi a bone. If anything "nightmare" needs fucking off in general and I'm sick of the word. I'm actually open to Dustin taking QT under his wing but the whole nightmare (that word again) connection just puts me right off. Oh yeah Marko Stunt did the forced kiss spot on Dark this week. Ugh someone backstage seems to like that horribly dated spot and someone needs to have a word. Little Marko doing it doesn't make it funny (thought he was just going to do that shitty dance at first) and he needs binning off. Getting proper fuck off heat with me now. I do like using indie talent as jobbers (though some are a little too competitive for my taste) and it greatly helps to establish an actual pecking order. Hope it continues post pandemic. Well that turned into a bit of a ramble. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Lorne Malvo Posted May 27, 2020 Paid Members Share Posted May 27, 2020 2 minutes ago, The King Of Swing said: Oh yeah Marko Stunt did the forced kiss spot on Dark this week. Ugh someone backstage seems to like that horribly dated spot and someone needs to have a word. I was just coming on here to post about this. Following a cracking PPV and a lot of optimism around the future of AEW, there's nothing like a bit of sexual assault (from a babyface!) to bring you back down to earth in remembering just how out of touch this shit is at times. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members garynysmon Posted May 27, 2020 Paid Members Share Posted May 27, 2020 (edited) While AEW isn't perfect, the show has been entertaining enough to keep me watching on a semi-regular basis which is quite an achievement in 2020 tbh. I haven't watched any of the PPV's mind, but am happy enough watching the weekly stuff on ITV4. What I like about it most it, pre-Coronavirus of course, is that the show has that big time feel to it. It has enough big names and held in such sized arenas that it feels major league in a way where I can happily discard of the WWE altogether without feeling that I'm missing out on anything substantial. Even when TNA was in its pomp, the size of the Impact Zone immediately stood out and looked a bit bush league if you were used to watching RAW every week. AEW doesn't feel like a step down in terms of production etc, and is also willing to take more risks and chances with the TV presentation in a way that the WWE has doggedly refused to over recent years, much to the chargrin of many fans. Still feel that many of the matches are too spotty and tag matches, in particular, look way too phoney to be taken seriously. But other than that, its turned out much better than I initially hoped. But notwithstanding that, the crowds at the arenas are inherently less annoying than I'd anticipated and while some dislike the commentary, I quite like the reassuring and homely tones of Jim Ross and Schiavone. Plus, most storylines don't make me feel like my intelligence is being insulted as opposed to what's being presented on the other side more often than not. Edited May 27, 2020 by garynysmon Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Merzbow Posted May 27, 2020 Share Posted May 27, 2020 Watching Dark and why the hell is Nakazawa's attire falling apart? Both his tights and kneepads are ripped to shreds and he looks like a right twat, is his boy Omega taking all his money for himself? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The King Of Swing Posted May 27, 2020 Share Posted May 27, 2020 Imagine being so low in the pecking order that you can't even beat Nakazawa. Two guys fighting over who is the biggest loser in AEW is pure garbage, thankfully it's only stinking Dark up at the moment. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
UK Kat Von D Posted May 27, 2020 Share Posted May 27, 2020 Marko Stunt forcing a kiss was lame and unnecessary. Looking forward to his inevitable match with Brian Cage though, that should be all kinds of fun Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members I Bent My Wookie Posted May 27, 2020 Paid Members Share Posted May 27, 2020 Yeah the Stunt bit wasn't great at all, would have been better just having Lucha walk away with her on his shoulders so she couldn't get involved. I'd like the who's the biggest loser storyline but I can't work out if Cutler is a heel or face and both their promo work needs a lot of training. I guess that's what something like Dark can be used for. The Nakazawa gear breaking apart was all a bit weird too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RedRooster Posted May 28, 2020 Share Posted May 28, 2020 Jeez that final segment was messy. It had a lot of the elements of a memorable segment, but without laughter from a live crowd (couldn’t the ringside wrestlers have faked it?) the jokes felt awkward as fuck. Starting what presumably is a feud between Jericho and Tyson in the way that they did is plain odd. Basing it around a barely remembered moment that they can’t show footage from is strange. Jericho and Tyson at all out is certainly intriguing, but Tyson is a convicted rapist and booking him in any way goes against the progressive values AEW likes to champion. The Britt Baker promo also suffered from the lack of an audience. They’d have been better off taping it in her surgery or something as the material was decent. I hope she challenges for the Women’s title at All Out, and the Shida victory is building towards a lengthy Britt Baker title reign. Taz’s promo was solid, and Cody’s open challenge should be fun, particularly if they bring in outside wrestlers. The battle royale was messy and probably isn’t the kind of thing you should do during a pandemic. All in all it was a mixed show that would likely have been better in front of a live crowd, or if more of the in ring segments were taped elsewhere. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members mim731 Posted May 28, 2020 Paid Members Share Posted May 28, 2020 14 minutes ago, RedRooster said: but Tyson is a convicted rapist and booking him in any way goes against the progressive values AEW likes to champion. If you wanted to play devils advocate, I suppose you could theoretically argue that a truly progressive company believes in rehabilitation and Tyson served his time and paid his debt to society for his crime. Not saying I agree, but I suppose that might be the rationale if they had to defend it. It's probably a moot point though, Tyson has long-since been re-accepted into the bosom of the mainstream and his past crimes are ignored on a widespread, near ubiquitous scale. The angle was derivative shite though, and does nothing for me personally. I have very much enjoyed Jericho's AEW run, and if anyone can make something good out of this, it will be him, but essentially re-running an old WWF angle years later, in an empty arena, with an ageing irrelevant Mike Tyson is not a great start. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RedRooster Posted May 28, 2020 Share Posted May 28, 2020 1 minute ago, mim731 said: The angle was derivative shite though, and does nothing for me personally. I have very much enjoyed Jericho's AEW run, and if anyone can make something good out of this, it will be him, but essentially re-running an old WWF angle years later, in an empty arena, with an ageing irrelevant Mike Tyson is not a great start. Rightly or wrongly, he's far from irrelevant. His appearance at Double or Nothing made mainstream news (more for the fact he was caught on camera yawning than anything else), and Tyson Fury has agreed to fight him. So in some ways it's quite the get for AEW. In other ways, it isn't because he's a convicted rapist. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
King Pitcos Posted May 28, 2020 Share Posted May 28, 2020 (edited) Given the lack of main event heel challengers and his own limitations, Ambrose was always going to struggle to be in the most important storyline on the show. But fucking hell, he’s playing second fiddle to the latest amdram performance of Attitude Era Theatre. The ill-fitting build to the Cody vs Dustin match (“I’m going to defeat the attitude era”) last year seemed like it was at least there to signify moving away from the Praise Holy Tank Segment nostalgia wankery of WWE, but now it seems like it was just there due to an incessant need to reference the attitude era. Ten years since Jericho and Tyson had a forgettable Raw moment that played on the attitude era bit. This is third-hand nostalgia shit, it ain’t the kind of thing AEW should be building main event angles on. That said, Y2J will probably make it funnier than anything the champion is doing. Cody’s McDonalds belt, because it’s new and because of who holds it, is probably more prestigious and interesting than the world title at the moment. Ambrose vs Cage is intriguing though, because (like Archer at the PPV) it seems very early to be beating Cage. I wouldn’t want to see Cage as the champion though, for completely unfair reasons - he proper reminds me of the late-WCW (and mid-2000s WWE) useless meatheads. I know he’s way better than them, but I can’t shake the notion every time I see him. I feel the same way about Karrion Kross in NXT as well, like he’s been picked up off the power plant production line and put in the “Bit of a Goth” packaging. Edited May 28, 2020 by King Pitcos Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cobra_gordo Posted May 28, 2020 Share Posted May 28, 2020 I'm also really intrigued by Cage vs Moxley. I like Cage a lot but he has to be presented properly. Lucha Underground made him look like an absolute murderer with their vignettes of him battering jobbers, something that looked to have influenced Archer's vignette where he destroyed all those backyarders. What does he do for 3 months though to keep the interest in him facing Mox? I'd have assumed, like a lot of others, that Darby would have been the obvious fued, building from him rejecting Tazz's advice and whatnot but surely there's a risk if they go with that between now and All Out that they make Mox look like the side-quest and not the other way round. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Cutting Edge Posted May 28, 2020 Share Posted May 28, 2020 AEW's future will be interesting when in a few years time they can't rely on The Elite, Jericho and maybe Even Mox. Not saying these guys are broken and ready to retire yet but AEW will need to make sure they don't build an audience around things being too wacky or unique if next gen can't do it and audiences dwindle. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members mim731 Posted May 28, 2020 Paid Members Share Posted May 28, 2020 8 minutes ago, RedRooster said: Rightly or wrongly, he's far from irrelevant. His appearance at Double or Nothing made mainstream news (more for the fact he was caught on camera yawning than anything else), and Tyson Fury has agreed to fight him. So in some ways it's quite the get for AEW. In other ways, it isn't because he's a convicted rapist. Ok, perhaps "irrelevant" is an overstatement, but he's hardly the megastar he was when WWE tapped him up in 1998. I don't think anyone in their right mind believes this moves the needle for AEW in a game-changing way. As mentioned previously, his past is only an issue if there is a collective moral outrage about it, and the mainstream has long since chosen to ignore his crimes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RedRooster Posted May 28, 2020 Share Posted May 28, 2020 22 minutes ago, The Cutting Edge said: AEW's future will be interesting when in a few years time they can't rely on The Elite, Jericho and maybe Even Mox. Not saying these guys are broken and ready to retire yet but AEW will need to make sure they don't build an audience around things being too wacky or unique if next gen can't do it and audiences dwindle. No offence, but this is a really odd thing to say. Where are the signs that this is the case? The Elite and Mox are nowhere near comparable to Jericho in terms of age, so you can't exactly group them together. But even if you could, the roster has loads of depth to it. MJF, Jurassic Express, Darby, Wardlow, Sammy, OC, Lucha Bros, Santana & Ortiz - they're doing a phenomenal job of building most if not all of these people up. Not to mention they'll obviously continue to sign wrestlers as time goes on. Ok, perhaps "irrelevant" is an overstatement, but he's hardly the megastar he was when WWE tapped him up in 1998. I don't think anyone in their right mind believes this moves the needle for AEW in a game-changing way. @mim731 - I don't think anything during a pandemic will move the needle for anyone in a 'game changing way', but if you overlook the fact he's a convicted rapist (which you shouldn't), Tyson/Jericho has a better chance of creating a mainstream buzz around AEW than pretty much anything else they can do right now. As mentioned previously, his past is only an issue if there is a collective moral outrage about it, and the mainstream has long since chosen to ignore his crimes. I can't imagine his victim or her family would agree with that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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