Moderators PowerButchi Posted December 17, 2020 Moderators Share Posted December 17, 2020 I'm not sure I'm understanding you here. So people who think the AEW women's division is dogshit are racist? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members LaGoosh Posted December 17, 2020 Paid Members Share Posted December 17, 2020 14 minutes ago, Chili said: I quite enjoyed it to be honest. Seems everyone is having a bit or nark about it, though at least its a different criticism to the women being booked and the 'when are we gonna get to the fireworks factory' reaction every week to it. Because I don't really read about WWE so I can't judge and it's a tightrope to bring up. But the acts in AEW I see getting the most stick online besides Matt Hardy and his fucking penguin knees are Brandi, Swole and when Jade Cargill made her debut you couldn't help but feel how uncomfortable it made so people. 'Well she suckssss, they need to abort that angle, she's so not ready' and then reel off a load of green women you'd get on DARK who should get the spot etc. Bit unnerving occasionally. It's extremely noticible with Brandi though.  Brandi is a terrible wrestling act. Swole isn't particularly good. Cargill has done one promo and it was shite. That's probably why people complain about them. Not because they are racists. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chili Posted December 17, 2020 Share Posted December 17, 2020 Oh god I'm not saying anyone on here outright says it (or elsewhere) but I can't not read some of the criticism about Brandi Rhodes and feel it's a bit off sometimes. Kinda like some of the strange characters who don't like Nyla Rose. I think the division is fine now. It had a tough period with the pandemic/injuries and other big stories took over so the division got iced while they got Thunder Rosa in. Since then I think it's been a fun division. I don't see a problem with it, but I don't know how any other promotions are booking them these days. Do WWE still do the progressive PR angle with them? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members LaGoosh Posted December 17, 2020 Paid Members Share Posted December 17, 2020 They just need to get the belt off Shida and on to Britt Baker. Should be pretty easy to build a half decent division around a good cowardly cheating heel like Baker. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members BomberPat Posted December 17, 2020 Paid Members Share Posted December 17, 2020 Brandi is fucking terrible, there's really nothing more to it than that. She's good in the role of a babyface authority figure when it comes to press conferences and lauding the company's achieved - the exact opposite of Stephanie McMahon, for whom that's her least believable responsibility - but she seems adamant on playing roles that she's not good at, and stand in direct contradiction to anything else going on. She was trying to juggle being Cody's babyface manager while also being an evil voodoo heel, hiding behind Awesome Kong as the cowardly heel, but then not playing up to that role at all when it was time to actually wrestle, and just in general detracting far more from any angle she's been involved in - bar one exception I can think of - than she has ever added to anything. I can think of multiple examples where Brandi's apparent need to get her shit in has actively detracted from the story of a match she's involved in, usually while she's working as Cody's manager. None of that has anything to do with her race, or anything like that.  In terms of whether the division's any good - it's not as good as it should be, and that's a better metric for me than comparing them to WWE. It's still one match on any given episode of Dynamite, and often the shortest match of the night - looking through the results on Cagematch, there are multiple examples of the only women's match on a show going two minutes or less. There have been at least three episodes of Dynamite with no women's matches whatsoever. The last time an episode of Dynamite featured more than one women's match was 18th December 2019 - almost exactly a full year ago. Outside of the raw stats of the number of matches and how long they go - who are half of the women on the roster? What's Anna Jay's deal with being in the Dark Order? What's Serena Deeb's motivation? Who is Tay Conti? And so on - they're not given promo time, they're not given video packages, they don't have angles to explain who they are or why they're here. There's been no real long-term storytelling - Nyla Rose shows up and wrecks some people, disappears, comes back and does the exact same thing. Argues with Vickie Guerrero, nothing comes of it, does it again, nothing comes of it. It's no wonder Britt Baker stands out so much when she's the only woman they've invested any time in, bar Brandi Rhodes. They could have a far better division than the one they have just by better utilising the talent they already have under contract, and could have a far better division had they not let the likes of Mercedes Martinez slip through their fingers, if they'd made more use of some of the people like Jazz when they brought them in for Battle Royals, had actually capitalised on the Joshi stars they had working with them before lockdown - they flew in Aja Kong for a staredown and never did anything with her again, they threw great talent like Emi Sakura and Yuka Sakazaki out cold and then threw up their hands when people didn't immediately buy into them.  Basically, they make it clear they don't give a shit about the division, so why should we? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AVM Posted December 17, 2020 Share Posted December 17, 2020 The Women's division can be fixed I think. Bring in Awesome Kong, Jordynne Grace, Tessa Blanchard, Sara del Ray, Tenille Dashwood - that would add some star power to the division. I haven't watched this week's show to comment, but the 'car crash' TV comments aren't fair I don't think. There was a lot of action but that's what you need to keep attention on the product. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chili Posted December 17, 2020 Share Posted December 17, 2020 Yeah for tag 'car crash' in wrestling, while it had a lot going on, at least it made sense. They juggle maybe a arc too much week to week but at least it still has some logic. It's nowhere near what you'd classically associate with it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Chris B Posted December 17, 2020 Paid Members Share Posted December 17, 2020 1 minute ago, AVM said: I haven't watched this week's show to comment, but the 'car crash' TV comments aren't fair I don't think. There was a lot of action but that's what you need to keep attention on the product. 'Crash TV', not 'Car-crash TV'. They're different things. Car Crash TV would be some terrible thing that you only end up continuing to watch out of morbid curiosity. Think that time Jeff Hardy was really high but had to drop the belt to Sting in TNA. 'Crash TV' appears to be a wrestling-specific term, although I thought it was more common than that. I thought it was referring to the old videogame, 'Smash TV', but I'd misremembered the title... but the association I was making still makes some sense. It's about constantly going full-on, fast-moving, and always having something happening. So, every match has an angle and a run-in and an attack, and everything immediately leads to something. It's about keeping people's attention by constantly showing something new and surprising. The issue with Crash TV isn't that it's terrible - it's that it leads to burn-out. You either need to slow it down (and be criticised for it, after the high of the constant crashing) or you end up totally losing control (2000-era WCW). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RedRooster Posted December 17, 2020 Share Posted December 17, 2020 20 minutes ago, BomberPat said: Outside of the raw stats of the number of matches and how long they go - who are half of the women on the roster? What's Anna Jay's deal with being in the Dark Order? What's Serena Deeb's motivation? Who is Tay Conti? And so on - they're not given promo time, they're not given video packages, they don't have angles to explain who they are or why they're here. There's been no real long-term storytelling - Nyla Rose shows up and wrecks some people, disappears, comes back and does the exact same thing. Argues with Vickie Guerrero, nothing comes of it, does it again, nothing comes of it. It's no wonder Britt Baker stands out so much when she's the only woman they've invested any time in, bar Brandi Rhodes. Even Britt feels underutilised. Since her feud with Swole came to a close, her Dynamite appearances have been pretty sporadic. There are male acts you couldn't imagine missing an episode of Dynamite each week, but there's not one women outside of Aubrey Edwards who you could say that about. I'm not sure how you can turn the division around when that's how arguably the best established female wrestler is treated. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CavemanLynn Posted December 17, 2020 Share Posted December 17, 2020 23 minutes ago, AVM said: The Women's division can be fixed I think. Bring in Awesome Kong, Jordynne Grace, Tessa Blanchard, Sara del Ray, Tenille Dashwood - that would add some star power to the division. Nope. That's just taking their current problem of chucking people out there with no introduction or reason, and throwing even more money at it. They've got a perfectly fine women's division; AEW has just invested little to no time in establishing who's in it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members BomberPat Posted December 17, 2020 Paid Members Share Posted December 17, 2020 1 hour ago, AVM said: The Women's division can be fixed I think. Bring in Awesome Kong, Jordynne Grace, Tessa Blanchard, Sara del Ray, Tenille Dashwood - that would add some star power to the division. I haven't watched this week's show to comment, but the 'car crash' TV comments aren't fair I don't think. There was a lot of action but that's what you need to keep attention on the product. Tessa is a racist bully, Kong already works there, Sara works for WWE and has been retired for years. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NavigatorFan Posted December 17, 2020 Share Posted December 17, 2020 How do the women's segments do on the ratings? People seem to want more from the division but maybe the ratings are just not there to dedicate more time per week or feature a womens bout as a main event. Im not a huge fan of women's matches and tend to fast forward to the end unless I'm watching live. However if I was an American watching live I'm pretty sure I'd channel surf. Women's main event matches would undoubtedly affect my enjoyment of the show. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jackpot Posted December 17, 2020 Share Posted December 17, 2020 12 hours ago, RedRooster said: Do you ever watch anything simply because a lead star is attractive? Countdown for about two or three minutes to see Rachel Riley's arse and the introduction of Dancing On Ice each week to see Holly's tits bursting out of her latest dress. And there'll be fellas up and down the country doing the same thing. And there'll be millions of birds tuning into Super Sunday to see how tight Jamie Redknapp's kecks are this week or A League Of Their Own to see if Jamie Redknapp's got his kit off on that episode. The producers of telly shows know that good looking people are gonna get more eyes onto their shows (even if just briefly) just because of their looks. It's an old adage that will stand true until the end of time - sex sells. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Lorne Malvo Posted December 18, 2020 Paid Members Share Posted December 18, 2020 The amount of good-looking blokes on telly and the best you could come up with is Jamie Redknapp twice. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jackpot Posted December 18, 2020 Share Posted December 18, 2020 I don't watch much telly other than the footy/cricket/snooker and Gary Neville, Peter Crouch, Rob Key, Jimmy White etc don't really top me bird's list of fellas she fancies. She's had a thing for Redknapp since we were kids on the Kop. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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