The AEW Wednesday Night Dynamite Thread

[Grecian]

I can't help thinking that if they did have Punk, surely they'd be advertising the hell out of it? I mean, they're going to get a decent enough audience to start with, with it being a new show and all. But if all the talk Punk is heading back to the 'E is all a smokescreen, and they have signed the biggest name in wrestling not currently attached to a promotion, that shit is going to be everywhere. Ambrose was a great surprise, but it was an unopposed PPV, from what I remember.

If the choice is NXT or AEW with some surprise names rumoured, or NXT or AEW with CM Punk, what are you going to watch?

[Richard]

and surely if Punk had been secured by AEW on the sly, he wouldn't be trying out for the Fox WWE backstage show?. WWE aren't thick, if they knew they were getting played they would have vetoed it before it leaked out online.

 

Edited October 2, 2019 by Richard

[garynysmon]

7 minutes ago, Grecian said:

I can't help thinking that if they did have Punk, surely they'd be advertising the hell out of it? I mean, they're going to get a decent enough audience to start with, with it being a new show and all. But if all the talk Punk is heading back to the 'E is all a smokescreen, and they have signed the biggest name in wrestling not currently attached to a promotion, that shit is going to be everywhere. Ambrose was a great surprise, but it was an unopposed PPV, from what I remember.

If the choice is NXT or AEW with some surprise names rumoured, or NXT or AEW with CM Punk, what are you going to watch?

Pure speculation here, but a surprise Punk appearance would add to the "anything can happen" vibe, which would work out well in the long run.

Think Luger's appearance on the first Nitro in 1995.

Mind you, I think its a big smokescreen and Punk won't show up anywhere.

[DavidB6937]

19 minutes ago, garynysmon said:

Pure speculation here, but a surprise Punk appearance would add to the "anything can happen" vibe, which would work out well in the long run.

If they have a name as big as Punk coming in, and they don't advertise it then they're fucking idiots.

You can have the 'anything can happen' vibe with someone else, but Punk? That's a guy that will make people choose to watch AEW over NXT, or even if you're a lapsed fan.

There is absolutely no way they should be sitting on a name like that.

[BrodyGraham]

If nothing else, all the hubbub around Punk has turned at least one person on to the fact he has two movies coming out this month.

Probably won't watch 'em, but I know about them.

[Accident Prone]

Surprises and an 'anything can happen' vibe is great, but not announcing a big star's return in advance is totally backwards. 

Triple H's 2002 return was hyped for weeks and did big numbers, and so will The Rock's Smackdown appearance this coming Friday. 

Carlito or John Morrison returning unannounced? Fine. Not advertising someone as as big as CM Punk is just throwing money away. Fuck, I'd even have that on PPV.

 

[BomberPat]

10 minutes ago, DavidB6937 said:

You can have the 'anything can happen' vibe with someone else, but Punk? That's a guy that will make people choose to watch AEW over NXT, or even if you're a lapsed fan.

Broadly, I'd agree.

But, thinking only slightly outside the box, it's a way to get people to watch next week. Tonight already has the hype and the intrigue of being the first episode, but episode two can't rely on that. Ending episode one with as big a shock/surprise as CM Punk showing up, though? That's going to make you tune in again, and potentially make every episode "must see".

I saw people complaining that they revealed LAX as Jericho's partners early, rather than on the show. But the hype in some quarters around this company is such that people will have worked themselves up into believing just about anyone could be partnered with Jericho, so it would have been a disappointment to have the "surprise" turn out to be two guys already on the roster. They would run the risk of becoming TNA, over-promising and under-delivering on every "surprise".

[DavidB6937]

4 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

Broadly, I'd agree.

But, thinking only slightly outside the box, it's a way to get people to watch next week. Tonight already has the hype and the intrigue of being the first episode, but episode two can't rely on that. Ending episode one with as big a shock/surprise as CM Punk showing up, though? That's going to make you tune in again, and potentially make every episode "must see".

I saw people complaining that they revealed LAX as Jericho's partners early, rather than on the show. But the hype in some quarters around this company is such that people will have worked themselves up into believing just about anyone could be partnered with Jericho, so it would have been a disappointment to have the "surprise" turn out to be two guys already on the roster. They would run the risk of becoming TNA, over-promising and under-delivering on every "surprise".

It's a difficult one. And actually something that both AEW and NXT need to think about going forward. NXT has been so stacked the last few weeks, as well as this week, but it can't last like that forever. Same with AEW. It has the intrigue etc but eventually it has to settle down into being just a regular decent TV show.. hopefully. That's not to say they can't fire their shots every so often but it's not sustainable long term.

[BomberPat]

It's difficult to say with AEW, as we have no frame of reference for what AEW weekly TV looks like, but from their PPVs, I'd say they're not risking overplaying their hand. 

When AEW first formed, the rumours around who they were interested in signing were insane. You had your CM Punk, of course, but there was Meltzer suggesting that half the WWE roster wanted to jump ship, gossip sites saying that they were talking to Randy Orton, Undertaker being booked for Starrcast had some people convinced he'd show up in AEW, with the Sportskeeda-type sites even suggesting that we might get Undertaker vs. Sting in AEW. I even saw someone on Twitter say that they were "confident" John Cena would go to AEW because he was friends with Cody Rhodes.

From day one, they've been a company having to manage expectations that they never realistically gave anyone - and I think they've done a good job of it. They talk a big game, but generally on things they can back up. They're not presenting themselves, by and large, as bigger than WWE, or as somewhere where anyone could show up a la '90s WCW. I think walking that line of balancing expectations while still delivering an impressive product is going to be one of their first stumbling blocks, though they've managed reasonably well thus far, along with their ongoing identity crisis. Cody is one person I can see suffering from weekly TV - he's developed the reputation as being the more "old school" guy and the "storyteller", but the "stories" he's had to manage have worked in isolation - Cody vs Dustin was a set-up and a match, Cody vs. Spears was a set-up and a match. The "story" was one and done. I'm curious how he's going to adapt to more long-form storytelling.

[PowerButchi]

But even the set-ups haven't neccessarily been great. The Dustin vs Cody story was some arse water about killing off the attitude era when the match itself told the story that should have been told alll along. That of the aging gunslinger trying to turn back the years one more time.

[HarmonicGenerator]

On the ‘announce vs surprise’ front, The Rock being on this week’s SmackDown was big enough news to make it onto the big news screens at Edinburgh train station this morning.

The screen also said he retired in 2004, but the fact he was on there suggests a certain level of importance you wouldn’t get from a surprise.

I’m not suggesting Punk would command anywhere near that level of attention, but an announcement gets your eyes on the product in advance of the moment. You can’t miss out on it like if it was a surprise and you found out later on Twitter.

[BomberPat]

8 minutes ago, PowerButchi said:

But even the set-ups haven't neccessarily been great. The Dustin vs Cody story was some arse water about killing off the attitude era when the match itself told the story that should have been told alll along. That of the aging gunslinger trying to turn back the years one more time.

You're not wrong. Wrestling so rarely gives you a genuine, compelling story with that much truth behind it, and that many layers behind it - you had Dustin as the old-timer trying to prove he could still go, Cody as the younger wrestler wanting to prove that he had made it to the top, but layered with decades of real life drama; Cody as the "favourite son", Dustin as the fuck-up, fighting over Dusty's legacy, decades of unresolved step-sibling tensions and generational struggle, plus the added backstory of their WWE run, Dustin having come to terms with the role Goldust plays in his career, while Cody has never fully accepted Stardust as part of him in the same way...then instead we get this "killing the Attitude Era" bollocks from Cody, and him effectively positioning it as Cody vs. Triple H by proxy. A real mis-step, that one.

By the end, though, you could reduce it all to Dustin's promo package, the match, and the "I need my older brother" aftermath, and it's a great self-contained piece. But, like the Spears angle, like the match with Nick Aldis at All-In, they're on and done. They're "here's why we're having the match, here's the match", and then on to the next one. You can do that when you're working PPV to PPV, but it's not a good sign for working weekly TV, or trying to drag one of those feuds beyond one match and into a three match series or beyond.

 

3 minutes ago, HarmonicGenerator said:

On the ‘announce vs surprise’ front, The Rock being on this week’s SmackDown was big enough news to make it onto the big news screens at Edinburgh train station this morning.

The screen also said he retired in 2004, but the fact he was on there suggests a certain level of importance you wouldn’t get from a surprise.

I’m not suggesting Punk would command anywhere near that level of attention, but an announcement gets your eyes on the product in advance of the moment. You can’t miss out on it like if it was a surprise and you found out later on Twitter.

I don't disagree but, again, this is AEW's first TV show, with a lot of hype behind it. Smackdown has been on the air for 20 years, and the hype of this week's episode being a "series premiere" doesn't make sense outside of the US market, so you're much less likely to look to Smackdown for "must see TV" after years of it being an afterthought. So WWE need to go the extra mile to say, "this show that hasn't been important enough to watch live for a decade, you should make an exception and watch live this week", in a way that, "AEW TV for the first time ever" doesn't.

I suppose the question is that if you hype CM Punk for show one, where do you go for show two? You need the mixture of hooks and cliffhangers. You want to get people watching, but you also need to get them to come back. Where WWE routinely go wrong in wheeling out the legends for the big shows is that it rarely if ever translates into an ongoing narrative, so they don't give you a reason to watch the next episode.

Edited October 2, 2019 by BomberPat

[tiger_rick]

Yeah, but that was their first show and they had no history 😆

[Chris B]

Thing is, I think they did that story really well from Dustin's point of view. His videos were mainly about the ageing gunslinger proving he had one more go left in him. But as a storyline reason for Cody to want to put him down (while reuniting with him afterwards) that you could understand, the idea of what Dustin represented, rather than who he was... I seem to have been more fine with that than most. I don't think it was entirely successful, but I didn't hate it like some seem to. I liked the promo Cody did for it a lot, even if that then went away as a storyline point.

The chair entrance was nonsense though.

[gmoney]

It looks like the crybabies have banged their rattles hard enough and got their way.