Tim Healys Chutney Spoon Posted September 5 Share Posted September 5 2 minutes ago, Mr.Showtime said: . Also not a fan of the amount of "dodgy neck" stories going on - Ospreay, MJF & Garcia, and Danielson in general.  MRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!! MMMMMMMMMMRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR! It's neckstrong awareness month. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Chris B Posted September 5 Paid Members Share Posted September 5 Here's the thing with Hangman/Swerve. They make it easy to suspend my disbelief. There have been home invasion angles before, there have been 'burning house down' angles before, and they've never really worked (with the exception of Austin/Pillman, obvs). But this worked. Even the fact that Hangman was filming himself - we didn't have the 'invisible camera' making me aware I was watching something fake. It didn't feel like a set or overly produced - I'm reminded of the Orton/HHH invasion, which was fun, but nothing about it felt real. It felt like a set. This didn't. And yet, what a visual by the end - including Hangman casually picking up a glass from a table that is on fire while the flames lick up around his chair. God damn. And I know, logically, that this means that it was very carefully set up, and everything was very safe. But again, suspension of disbelief. They've developed the characters and the feud to the point where I'm all I'm thinking is 'but what does this mean for Hangman and Swerve' rather than 'oh, come on, this is nonsense'. Which rarely happens for me with something this over the top in wrestling. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Hannibal Scorch Posted September 5 Paid Members Share Posted September 5 The last shot did give me vibes. But that’s not a bad thing, it’s a good thing! I had sent the Swerve video to a WhatsApp group and said, You know what to do Hangman. But even I wasn’t expecting it. And it was glorious. I even liked Hangman poking fun at contract signings (we all know it’s going to happen I don’t need to sign it). I also like the crowd, lacklustre all night redeeming themselves with a This is Arson chant. Great stuff Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members LaGoosh Posted September 5 Paid Members Share Posted September 5 Watching that brilliant angle back there's two moments that really jumped out at me: 1.The look on Swerve's face when he realised how badly he's fucked up. He let just a sliver of the real Swerve out, not even thinking Hangman had the ability to stoop to that level but he was wrong, he's revealed a weakness and now Hangman will make him pay for it. 2. Then the reveal of the gasoline cannister. It's not a big showy sports entertainment reveal. It's casual and almost offscreen. It feels real. We all know what's coming now and there's nothing Swerve can do. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members JLM Posted September 5 Paid Members Share Posted September 5 (edited) 9 hours ago, JLM said:  Swerve video was lovely, or so I thought. I actually saw it on Youtube earlier in the day. What a brilliant way to throw me off the scent of the utter madness that was to come by putting it up way in advance of the show. Genuinely believed it was a completely unrelated non-kayfabe piece about Swerve having a nice life moment. I mean I guess it was that as well? But I legitimately did not have an inkling of where they'd go with it. Was thinking to myself when I first saw it that Prince Nana not saying "Who's House?" must have taken an unfathomable amount of will power, but he probably held back because it was a sincere moment. Turns out he was saving it for Hangman. How naive I was. My streak of never predicting Hangman's revenge attacks even though they seem 1000% obvious in hindsight continues.   Quoting myself wanker, but it’s been so interesting to look back at this today and see how many people saw it coming. I’ve seen comments on all the social media platforms, posted as soon as the Nana/Swerve video went up, about how Hangman is going to raid/invade/specifically burn down the house. It didn’t cross my mind for a second when I saw that video on YouTube earlier in the day and I’m so glad I didn’t read the comments! The Post Wrestling podcast hosts were a 50/50 split too. One of the hosts , like me, completely bought it as a thoroughly wholesome non-kayfabe video,  unrelated to any ongoing stories. The other immediately knew Hangman would be showing up there. Also I saw a firefighter who supervised the house burning scene and presumably helped to put it out afterwards leaked a photo online saying “filming for AEW today!” It naturally immediately ended up on Reddit but was thankfully removed quite rapidly. Would have been furious if I’d had it spoiled like that.  I know what Hangman’s going to do, it’s clear what Hangman’s going to do, he is on a staggeringly single minded path and he has frequently said out loud what he’s going to do. Somehow I still don’t see it coming! Bloody brilliant. Edited September 5 by JLM Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members LaGoosh Posted September 5 Paid Members Share Posted September 5 It's also such a great move because Hangman is right about Swerve and the fans but he's now pushed it too far where he's now the villain. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Hannibal Scorch Posted September 5 Paid Members Share Posted September 5 22 minutes ago, LaGoosh said: It's also such a great move because Hangman is right about Swerve and the fans but he's now pushed it too far where he's now the villain.  @JLM I didn’t even see it coming. I said it as a joke. There’s no way the anxious millennial cowboy could do such a thing. But he did, and now all bets are off. It’s a shame the build has been rushed but it also adds to the violent, unpredictable nature of it all. It’s going to indeed be a sloberknocker. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members I Bent My Wookie Posted September 5 Paid Members Share Posted September 5 How far can they push the violence on Saturday with it being PPV? I've thoughts of Bossman vs Taker with Bossman being hung from the cell and with how demonic Swerves mind can be and how unhinged Hangman has become, I do feel someone is getting hung from the cage or something equally as sick and twisted. A bloodied Swerve stating that Hangman may win battles but truly can never beat him or kill him as he leaves him there essentially to die. They'll be a forever feud the way Orton /Cena is, but it needs a cork in it after this for a while. Hangman has now cost Swerve everything he held dear after Swerve threatened to take away Hangmans whole life. Something has to finish this. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Hannibal Scorch Posted September 5 Paid Members Share Posted September 5 (edited) 11 minutes ago, I Bent My Wookie said: How far can they push the violence on Saturday with it being PPV? I've thoughts of Bossman vs Taker with Bossman being hung from the cell and with how demonic Swerves mind can be and how unhinged Hangman has become, I do feel someone is getting hung from the cage or something equally as sick and twisted. A bloodied Swerve stating that Hangman may win battles but truly can never beat him or kill him as he leaves him there essentially to die. They'll be a forever feud the way Orton /Cena is, but it needs a cork in it after this for a while. Hangman has now cost Swerve everything he held dear after Swerve threatened to take away Hangmans whole life. Something has to finish this. as long as they don't have an eye for an eye match, we're mustard Spoiler  Edited September 5 by Hannibal Scorch Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members BomberPat Posted September 5 Paid Members Share Posted September 5 1 hour ago, LaGoosh said: 2. Then the reveal of the gasoline cannister. It's not a big showy sports entertainment reveal. It's casual and almost offscreen. It feels real. We all know what's coming now and there's nothing Swerve can do. This was superb. A lot of people on Twitter talk about "subtlety" in Triple H's booking, that by any standards but through comparison with WWE under Vince McMahon would be about as unsubtle as a blaring klaxon, but this was subtlety done well. I could imagine if I was watching this with a group of people, someone turning to the person next to them and saying, "is that...?" as one catches it before the rest, and the anticipation building. It's the little things. It's a great character moment too - Hangman isn't doing this for the big flashy visual, though of course we get that at the end, he's doing it because he's singularly obsessed with Swerve. So he's not filming what he's doing, he's filming what he's saying, because he needs Swerve to hear it. There's a glimpse in the video too, where the angle changes slightly, and it's clear that Hangman's using a selfie stick. Now it's a little silly to think of somebody going to the trouble of burning down their rival's childhood home and not only filming themselves doing a monologue while they do it, but also making sure they had a teenage Instagram influencer accessory to frame it properly, but by the standards of wrestling, it's revelatory. Like @Chris B said, there's no question then of the invisible camera, of "why is there a film crew there?", or any of that. My only nitpicking is why, in kayfabe, it aired on Dynamite. Why was a video that Hangman was, presumably, recording live in that moment, fed into AEW's production and broadcast over a big screen in the arena and on the main TV feed? That's a little odd, and one of the only bits of "because wrestling" in all this. Give me one line of commentary to say that they've received an urgent call from Hangman that the production truck have been told to broadcast. That, or it didn't need to be happening "live", Hangman could have done this earlier in the evening while Swerve was at the arena. When Page didn't come out to his music, Tony Schiavone could have received a message on his earpiece to say "production have received a video from Hangman Page that you're going to want to see". Just one of those little bits of business to make it all make sense, which never takes much work, but which wrestling tends not to do any more.  Normally I'd think something like this was silly, that it was an escalation too far for a wrestling story, that you're left wondering why AEW are being allowed to police this situation themselves rather than Hangman facing actual legal repercussions, or asking where you take a wrestling storyline from this, how, after that, anyone would buy one man pinning another in a wrestling match as sufficient revenge. But with these two it works. I believe that Swerve would be angry enough to refuse to press charges and want to get revenge himself. I believe that the two of them can get genuinely violent and creative enough to make whatever happens in the match feel like an escalation from burning down a man's house. In character terms, I believe that Hangman Page still feels justified in doing what he's done, that to him this is no different to what Swerve put him through, whereas to everyone else this is where he passed the threshold from being right about Swerve but being unreasonable in how he dealt it with to becoming worse than Swerve ever was, and now Swerve should be scared because he's turned Hangman into something, and he doesn't know what his limits are. Hook it into my veins. Sidenote: It was genuinely great to hear Excalibur and Tony talking about how violent the Texas Deathmatch was, because that's the only word for it. But it's a word you never hear in wrestling, because it was one of Vince McMahon's banned words. You never hear Michael Cole talk about how violent a match was, it's always "disturbing" or "hard to watch". But violent gets the point across about that match and this feud in ways that stupid synonyms can't. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Chris B Posted September 5 Paid Members Share Posted September 5 39 minutes ago, BomberPat said: My only nitpicking is why, in kayfabe, it aired on Dynamite. Why was a video that Hangman was, presumably, recording live in that moment, fed into AEW's production and broadcast over a big screen in the arena and on the main TV feed? That's a little odd, and one of the only bits of "because wrestling" in all this. Give me one line of commentary to say that they've received an urgent call from Hangman that the production truck have been told to broadcast. That, or it didn't need to be happening "live", Hangman could have done this earlier in the evening while Swerve was at the arena. When Page didn't come out to his music, Tony Schiavone could have received a message on his earpiece to say "production have received a video from Hangman Page that you're going to want to see". Just one of those little bits of business to make it all make sense, which never takes much work, but which wrestling tends not to do any more. While I agree, I think this goes into the territory of 'No-Prizes' (which Marvel used to give out for people who spotted errors, but could then come up with a reason it wasn't an error) for me - Hangman's been shown to have a close relationship with the tech guys (with the lower thirds, etc), so I can entirely believe he knows who to call to have it happen, either at short notice, or just a 'hey, I'm not going to be there, but I want to face-time a surprise onto the big screen, will you help me out?'' kind of thing. So, basically, I agree, but I'm invested enough in it that I can come up with solutions that solve it for me enough to just carry on. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Snitsky's back acne Posted September 5 Share Posted September 5 4 hours ago, LaGoosh said: Well, wait and see rather than being down on it before it's even happened. Have either man disappointed in big matches yet? Not saying they have, just expressing caution that they may have set impossibly high standards. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RedTwoster Posted September 5 Share Posted September 5 5 hours ago, Tim Healys Chutney Spoon said: MRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!! MMMMMMMMMMRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR! It's neckstrong awareness month. On that note, I still hate Roddy Strong. If Chris Jericho didn't exist, he'd be getting my vote for Worst Wrestler at the UKFF Awards this year. it's rare that a wrestler has grated on me as much as he does. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members LaGoosh Posted September 5 Paid Members Share Posted September 5 7 minutes ago, RedTwoster said: On that note, I still hate Roddy Strong. If Chris Jericho didn't exist, he'd be getting my vote for Worst Wrestler at the UKFF Awards this year. it's rare that a wrestler has grated on me as much as he does. Ha, Strong is a weird one in that his character is absolutely terrible but in ring he's absolutely brilliant. Unfortunately his character is so shit it kinda stops anyone from even noticing how good a wrestler he is or care about his matches at all. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members JLM Posted September 5 Paid Members Share Posted September 5 (edited) When the gimmick is Flanderised and he’s just doing the shouting bit it can be pretty annoying. However, I enjoy him being a petty little bastard at times, particularly when on commentary. Also little details like remembering it had been 3,059 days since he lost his TV title to Ishii. Aside from that, his in-ring 2024 has been bloody marvellous. Cracking little matches against local heroes with Jake Haeger, London Lightning and Daddy Magic. Delivering in singles matches ranging from good to outstanding against OC, O’Reilly, Lio Rush, Swerve, Mark Briscoe, Ospreay, Ishii. Consistently excelling in all manner of multiman and tag matches.  Can see why his schtick would be thoroughly off putting but yeah, Roddy’s alright with me.  Edited September 5 by JLM Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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