AEW Dynamite Thread 2022

[The King of Old School]

I'm same with Danhausen. Thought putting Hook with him was a ridiculous call, but it somehow works and the crowds I the arenas love it.

Fair play.

[The King Of Swing]

Putting Smart Mark Sterling with Nese was a smart move.

Nese is never going to be a top star and is perfect fodder for HOOK but he also is just good enough that you can see him giving HOOK a tough fight.

Like how Sterling has multiple gigs on the go that don't really connect to each other but all still fit his character. 

[Merzbow]

Sterling is low key doing the best out of the wrestling figure podcast lot, it's mad that he had multiple WWE try-outs and they didn't see enough in him. He's a great character.

[HarmonicGenerator]

I think they should start the build to Hookhausen winning the tag titles now. 

Make Jurassic Express vs Team Taz vs Swerve/Lee for the PPV, and have Starks & Hobbs win. Jungle Boy spins off to finally have that feud with Christian, and your pieces are in place for Hookhausen vs Starks & Hobbs at All Out. Hookhausen win, much rejoicing.

[d-d-d-dAz]

Why isn’t Tony Nese more interesting?

I genuinely don’t get it. I find him utterly dull but can’t really pinpoint why… he looks the part, his wrestling is fine and he can seemingly cut a promo.

But… nothing clicks, does it?

[WeeAl]

1 hour ago, d-d-d-dAz said:

Why isn’t Tony Nese more interesting?

I genuinely don’t get it. I find him utterly dull but can’t really pinpoint why… he looks the part, his wrestling is fine and he can seemingly cut a promo.

But… nothing clicks, does it?

Personality black hole. There's more charisma in a set of used toothpicks. They wouldn't have even had to belong to Razor. 

[Duke]

1 hour ago, d-d-d-dAz said:

Why isn’t Tony Nese more interesting?

I genuinely don’t get it. I find him utterly dull but can’t really pinpoint why… he looks the part, his wrestling is fine and he can seemingly cut a promo.

But… nothing clicks, does it?

He's incredibly generic and absolutely nothing stands out about him. He's a good worker but not spectacular, he's capable of a mediocre promo and his character is absolutely nothing. He has an opportunity in AEW to be a bit more creative, but he's not taking it and just seems to be showing that WWE were right to let him go.

 

He's helpful for exactly this kind of feud, where he can be second fiddle and lose to a guy that needs to be made to look good, but no more.

[Loki]

44 minutes ago, Duke said:

He has an opportunity in AEW to be a bit more creative, but he's not taking it and just seems to be showing that WWE were right to let him go.

This is quite a familiar story with AEW signings, in some respect.  When WWE was the only gig in town, everyone who wasn't making it to the top in the company could claim they were being held back by the writers/Vince/HHH and then spend some time on the Indies.

Now they get snapped up by Money Tony and given all the freedom they wanted.  Some definitely swim, like Moxley.  But look at Malakai Black - turns out he is basically quite dull.  Ironically, the most interesting he's ever been to me was the odd serial killer promos they started running for him before he left WWE.

Same with Keith Lee, Tony Nese, Matt Hardy, (tbf he's knackered out), Shawn Spears...  And I know he's popular here but strictly in my opinion, I find Andrade to have been really disappointing as well.

One of ECW's real strengths was taking WCW or WWE rejects and rehabilitating or in fact creating their careers.  But they had Heyman working on people's characters.  I do sometimes think AEW just signs wrestlers and says "crack on then", which certainly separates the truly held back from the plain average.

[HarmonicGenerator]

34 minutes ago, Loki said:

Same with Keith Lee, Tony Nese, Matt Hardy, (tbf he's knackered out), Shawn Spears...  And I know he's popular here but strictly in my opinion, I find Andrade to have been really disappointing as well.

I’m with you on Andrade. He’s been there a year and still hasn’t started clicking yet, apart from a couple of great matches with PAC - but who doesn’t have great matches against the Bastard?

Spears though, I think is doing okay, especially since the MJF association. He’s a good henchman and has a bit more to him than just doing “TEN” all the time, which is definitely the one note he’d have played on the indies, or in WWE for that matter.

[Loki]

27 minutes ago, HarmonicGenerator said:

Spears though, I think is doing okay, especially since the MJF association.

A rising tide lifts all boats!  But yeah, the Wardlow feud is the most interesting Spears has been.  

[d-d-d-dAz]

Yeah, I think Shawn Spears has been great recently.

My favourite thing about him is, he's cutting quite serious promos like a top guy, has a serious entrance - and then he's a lacky and a job guy. It's actually quite a nice juxtaposition and I really hope he's in on the gag.

I've never really seen that as an angle before, where because of his associations with a money guy (MJF) he can present himself like a top star, but actually he's useless.

[Loki]

When a star is hot, and angle is hot, or a whole company is hot, everyone associated looks good. 

There's a lot of nostalgia for the Attitude era, and when you look back at the footage of fans going absolutely batshit for Too Cool v Test and Albert you can see why.  But a lot of it was on the face of it quite shit and a lot of the wrestlers were no better than modern midcarders.  But the PRODUCT was hot and so everyone basked in the reflected glow of Austin, The Rock, Mankind, HHH.  Get out there, do the Worm, pick up a big paycheck.

That's what you see with MJF.  Wardlow looks like the next Goldberg in this angle, if his next feud is with the House Of Black it might be a different story. 

 

[Infinity Land]

1 hour ago, Loki said:

But look at Malakai Black - turns out he is basically quite dull.  Ironically, the most interesting he's ever been to me was the odd serial killer promos they started running for him before he left WWE.

 

Malakai as a singles or tagging with Brody as a killer tag team would have been decent. Adding Buddy Matthes and the drawn out Julia Hart storyline has diluted them right down.

 

[Duke]

2 hours ago, Loki said:

This is quite a familiar story with AEW signings, in some respect.  When WWE was the only gig in town, everyone who wasn't making it to the top in the company could claim they were being held back by the writers/Vince/HHH and then spend some time on the Indies.

Now they get snapped up by Money Tony and given all the freedom they wanted.  Some definitely swim, like Moxley.  But look at Malakai Black - turns out he is basically quite dull.  Ironically, the most interesting he's ever been to me was the odd serial killer promos they started running for him before he left WWE.

Same with Keith Lee, Tony Nese, Matt Hardy, (tbf he's knackered out), Shawn Spears...  And I know he's popular here but strictly in my opinion, I find Andrade to have been really disappointing as well.

One of ECW's real strengths was taking WCW or WWE rejects and rehabilitating or in fact creating their careers.  But they had Heyman working on people's characters.  I do sometimes think AEW just signs wrestlers and says "crack on then", which certainly separates the truly held back from the plain average.

I'm...mostly with you, but some of these specifics I'd argue

Malakai Black was brilliant in his early days against Cody, and was good for a bit since. His problem has been that he's not really going anywhere and his feuds have dragged out way too long. The focal point of his recent career has been Julia Hart, so I hardly think that's his fault. 

Keith Lee seems to still be recovering from his illness, so sticking him in a tag team is a good idea. Like Black (and Andrade), he was super over and great value in NXT. In all cases the reason people complained about htem on the main roster is because NXT was the blueprint to get all of them over.

Totally with you on Andrade, he's done nothing so far, but again he's not had a huge amount of opportunity to. He's been in rubbish feuds that have dragged.

Honestly, this is a problem of the entire AEW singles mid card. The tag teams get good focus but outside of MJF, Jericho and the BCC, there's a lot of stagnancy in the feuds there. It's like they're waiting for an opportunity to do a big pay off that won't come. I assume it's a side effect of Tony doing the lion's share of the booking, he hasn't got time for all these feuds so he's just focussing on a few, leaving the rest on auto pilot until he can get to them.

[Nick James]

34 minutes ago, Infinity Land said:

Malakai as a singles or tagging with Brody as a killer tag team would have been decent. Adding Buddy Matthes and the drawn out Julia Hart storyline has diluted them right down.

 

Diluted from where, though? Malakai looked good on his debut and the start of the Cody situation, but other than that, he's been pretty shite. Malakai is no different now, than when he was fannying about on Raw doing next to nothing, other than he has a fancy mask and paints half of his face. 

Similar situation, Keith Lee was one of the hottest free agents when he was released, looked like he could be a real game changer, but he has the personality of a boot and it shows. Other than chucking one of Private Party to the moon, again, what has he done? Same with Swerve and the shoe-horned tag team with Keith Lee. 

It's interesting that the hottest acts in the company are 'home grown' talent, such as MJF, Wardlow, Darby (groan), Hangman etc, whereas other than Mox, Punk and Danielson (one or two others I can't think of), the rest are good for an initial debut pop then do nothing other than drag others down (Undisputed Elite, I'm looking at you!).

Edited May 16, 2022 by Nick James