AEW Dynamite Thread 2023

[tiger_rick]

24 minutes ago, mim731 said:

In fairness, that's a matter of personal taste and preference. You are supposing that your criteria for a "good match" is the same as someone else's. I'm not even necessarily saying I disagree with your assertion, it's just a little too subjective to quantify what is "good" when really it's a matter of opinion rather than fact. 

This is definitely true. Those losers on Twitter who think they're part of one company or the other are always going on about absolute bangers they've seen on the latest 15 hour TV show.

Wrestling died the day it became about "good matches". I want 20 years of my life back.

[RedRooster]

52 minutes ago, LaGoosh said:

On a slightly different note, I saw a ladder match this year from NXT which featured some fairly green looking womens wrestlers taking some absolutely horrific shit. The worst thing I've seen in wrestling this year was Ricochet doing a spot with Logan Paul where he did a backflip on his head from the ring directly onto a table on the floor on the outside where he nearly died. So let's not pretend WWE are innocent here.

No one's pretending that WWE hasn't had its share of scary moments, but that's whataboutery. It doesn't change my overall point - WWE rightly changed its approach to wrestling when the neck injuries started to mount up, whereas AEW doesn't appear - as of yet - to have taken any sort of approach to try and mitigate the kind of things that may be leading to its backlog of injuries. 

52 minutes ago, LaGoosh said:

You could make this accusation against any period of any wrestling company ever. Wrestling is by its nature very repetitive. However as you yourself said, there is a modern WWE style and while not a consistent watcher I feel comfortable saying that it's made the majority of WWE matches pretty generic and average. I didn't say WWE don't have good matches, of course they do. I've seen all the ones you listed (though outside Gunter vs Gable which I very much enjoyed, I wouldn't rate them as highly you clearly do). However AEW has definitely had significantly more good matches on their shows than WWE have.

WWE vs. AEW is a bit boring so I won't dwell on this, but as has been pointed out, it's all subjective. I'd say there's a difference between good wrestling and good matches. Personally, I need that underpinning storyline to get invested in a match. It's why Kenny Omega vs. Hangman Page and MJF/CM Punk worked so well for me, and the same goes for much of what Swerve Strickland has been doing recently, and MJF/Cole at All In. It's probably fair to say that WWE is better at ensuring most major matches have a storyline reason for taking place. That's not a comment on the quality of the storylines in question, I should add. It's just that this approach is more to my taste. 

52 minutes ago, LaGoosh said:

And yes of course wrestlers are their own worst enemies. But the level of risk they take is up to them, the producers, the company...basically anyone involved in the production of the match from start to finish. No amount of internet hand-wringing makes any difference. And if watching wrestlers take risks makes you uncomfortable as a viewer then perhaps wrestling isn't for you because literally every single thing they do out there can lead to long term injury.

Again, I'm not saying it makes me uncomfortable, I just think that AEW should take a look at its own injury record and adjust accordingly. Even Jon Moxley has criticised their approach to concussions, which I hope has made Tony Khan take notice. I'm not necessarily saying you're guilty of this or even that people are doing this intentionally, but I think people contort a little to defend AEW's track record on this simply because they like the AEW product; and given that Tony Khan seems to pay attention to this, I suspect that plays a part in why nothing changes. 

54 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

Just looking at AEW's roster on Wikipedia to get a sense of the injuries currently affecting them - Adam Cole's was a freak accident, and beyond that most of the people currently inactive are with injuries that are fairly routine in wrestling; wrist and shoulder issues, most picked up during the course of an ordinary match.

But it's not just about the injuries AEW has at this very moment. Throughout its history AEW has been plagued by injury. It's consistent to the point I don't think it can be dismissed. It's not career ending stuff, thankfully, but it's clearly disruptive. 

Edited November 22, 2023 by RedRooster

[Loki]

1 hour ago, RedRooster said:

and WWE took action.

Whilst I'm really not interested in a whattabout discussion AGAIN about WWE v AEW, and think that WWE shares many issues with AEW, the longevity of WWE means that they have learnt, at great cost - they've had people die in their ring and on their roster.  They have at various times banned certain moves, banned certain stunts and dialled back on particular fetishes in an attempt to reduce the injuries their performers seemed willing to accept.  Even their ring has gone through evolutions to reduce injury.

And not just to reduce risk, also to create more dynamic range in their events.  One of my favourite extremely irrelevant ones was when Vince or someone in management got SO bored of the leg-slapping that was happening a dozen times a match that they banned it completely for about a month so the wrestlers would be forced to not lean on it as a crutch.

Again - very easy to point out individual moments of madness in any wrestling company - and Ricochet is definitely someone whose only upside is his risk-taking - but this discussion originated in the fact that the AEW champ injured himself unnecessarily in a match, at a time when an unusually large number of their top guys are either injured, returning from injury or retiring completely.  Wrestlers make poor life choices, but companies can take a longer-term view.

Edit: @RedRooster making the very same points at the same time.

Edited November 22, 2023 by Loki

[Infinity Land]

27 minutes ago, RedRooster said:

No one's pretending that WWE hasn't had its share of scary moments, but that's whataboutery. It doesn't change my overall point - WWE rightly changed its approach to wrestling when the neck injuries started to mount up, whereas AEW doesn't appear - as of yet - to have taken any sort of approach to try and mitigate the kind of things that may be leading to its backlog of injuries.

That's the problem. There isn't a clear specific issue to target.

 

 

[Supremo]

Similar to everyone else, I don’t want to get into a tribal WWE vs. AEW discussion, but I just don’t jive with this idea that WWE is a safe haven for wrestlers that helps avoid injury, at least in the year of our Lord, 2023.

I mean, every single time anyone gets injured in AEW the discourse is always, “they need a Performance Center!” and yet every time I tune into NXT - aired live from the Performance Center - I see extremely inexperienced men and women being put in ridiculously dangerous matches, usually involving a ladder, being expected to pull off stunts and bumps you’d normally save for Wrestlemania.

For instance, how long have the Creed brothers been wrestling? Literally the week they get their big break and move to main roster, they’re already back at the Performance Center the following night, taking bumps on a ladder similar to when HBK broke his back on the casket at Royal Rumble 1998. Hardly the bastion of health and safety it’s proclaimed to be, even without considering the Olympic lifts they’re having everyone do.

[BomberPat]

18 minutes ago, Supremo said:

I mean, every single time anyone gets injured in AEW the discourse is always, “they need a Performance Center!” and yet every time I tune into NXT

One for the pet hates thread perhaps, but it shows how WWE-brained people are that they even say "a Performance Center". It's a completely meaningless phrase that nobody would have called a wrestling training school before WWE did it in 2013. People using WWE language outside of WWE gets on my tits.

100% agreed on everything else - I checked Cagematch, and the Creed Brothers have fewer than 75 matches, and debuted in 2021, but have had ladder matches and cage matches during that time. Not that there's any magic number of years or matches, but it blows my mind how often I see clips from NXT and it's mad high spots and stunt bumps, for what's meant to be the developmental product. I find that far more concerning than injuries in AEW.

Edited November 22, 2023 by BomberPat

[d-d-d-dAz]

Cody Rhodes wrestled a PPV main event with his arm hanging off. Neither of the W’s in WWE stand for welfare, so that might as well be parked from the off.

[RedRooster]

50 minutes ago, Supremo said:

Similar to everyone else, I don’t want to get into a tribal WWE vs. AEW discussion, but I just don’t jive with this idea that WWE is a safe haven for wrestlers that helps avoid injury, at least in the year of our Lord, 2023.

Where has anyone said that it is? The only point that has been made here is that AEW's style is more intense and high risk than WWE's and is likely a contributing factor to their long injury list.

56 minutes ago, Infinity Land said:

That's the problem. There isn't a clear specific issue to target.

Oh come on now, it's not an unsolvable riddle. The clear, specific issue is that AEW has consistent injury problems. Now, I'm no expert but for starters, maybe they cut down on the number of punishing bumps taken in matches that just don't matter? Maybe they tone down the style on free TV a little - or at the very least on the shows that are viewed less. Where's the value in going balls-to-the-wall on ROH TV, for example? Maybe they put clear concussion protocols in place, and protocols in which matches are immediately brought to an end if a serious injury may have taken place? I'm not saying there's one clear answer, but the idea that there are no steps that can be taken is, in my opinion, nonsense. If you want to argue that they don't need to, then fair enough but let's not pretend that there's absolutely nothing that can be done. 

Edited November 22, 2023 by RedRooster

[Lorne Malvo]

2 minutes ago, RedRooster said:

Where's the value in going balls-to-the-wall on ROH TV, for example?

This hardly ever happens. I'd be hard-pressed to name any mad bumps or spots in the last 3-4 months of ROH TV. A lot of it is a more Pure/submission or lucha based style now, and the majority of it is squash matches akin to Dark.

[LaGoosh]

47 minutes ago, RedRooster said:

Now, I'm no expert but for starters, maybe they cut down on the number of punishing bumps taken in matches that just don't matter? Maybe they tone down the style on free TV a little - or at the very least on the shows that are viewed less. Where's the value in going balls-to-the-wall on ROH TV, for example? Maybe they put clear concussion protocols in place, and protocols in which matches are immediately brought to an end if a serious injury may have taken place?

Should AEW have clear procedures in place for when someone is injured mid-match? Yes, absolutely. No one would dispute that.

Should AEW tone down its ring style? Well, that's up for debate. I don't think so necessarily. There's only a small handful of injuries in their 4 year history that you could say were directly caused by a high risk bump. The overwhelming majority of injuries are from pretty standard pro wrestling stuff.

Anyways, moving on:

This might be the best segment of the year. The obvious outcome is renaming Nick Wayne to Nick Cage (which will be great) but I hope they start calling him Christian Cage Jnr.

Edited November 22, 2023 by LaGoosh

[ReturnOfTheMack]

God, I don't know if i love or hate the idea of Cageasaurus.

[BomberPat]

I hope they land on a good name for Luchasaurus, I hate that name for a serious heel threat, and wish that AEW had either renamed him when they signed him in the first place, or when he turned heel.

[Merzbow]

They should just rename Nick Wayne to Edge..

[BomberPat]

1 minute ago, Merzbow said:

They should just rename Nick Wayne to Edge..

I'm not against them renaming him Sexton Hardcastle, come to think of it.

[JLM]

5 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

I hope they land on a good name for Luchasaurus, I hate that name for a serious heel threat, and wish that AEW had either renamed him when they signed him in the first place, or when he turned heel.

Yeah exactly that. My casual fan friend who watches AEW sporadically and went to All In with me laughed out loud when he saw that their Kane knock off was called Luchasaurus. Great opportunity to fix it.