AEW Dynamite Thread 2024

[Hannibal Scorch]

48 minutes ago, Loki said:

They do seem to be struggling with AEW fatigue.  The house for Dynamite this week was less than 2,000 people, and apparently their ticket price is higher than WWE in a lot of towns.

 They’re not the maverick renegades any more, they’re in danger if becoming their own worst enemy in some respects.

Doesn’t help in recent weeks they have also run the same towns WWE have within a week or two. Going to live shows is expensive anyway, so you have to assume WWE fans are unlikely to go to another wrestling show that close together from the last.

[The Gaffer]

22 minutes ago, Duke said:

How could anyone look at how they're dressed and not know the answer to that question?

I mean I get it, but I'm also not convinced if they were playing it straight this isn't how they'd do it. It's a marmite thing with their character work, I guess, and that blurring of "Everything we do's a kind of zany pisstake" schtick's not for me. 

[RedRooster]

23 minutes ago, LaGoosh said:

I think you could do a relatively unofficial light roster split which could still be very effective without having to do a hard split that limits storylines and creativity.

I think, as you acknowledge, they kind of do that already and it's not helped much. For me, a roster split, when done right actually forces creativity. Look at the early days of the original WWE brand split - you had the emergence of new talent such as Lesnar, Cena, Batista and Randy Orton; the split roster creating opportunities for midcard and upper midcard talent to become main eventers - I'd point to Guerrero, Mysterio, JBL, Benoit, Mark Henry and Edge as examples of that - and both Raw and Smackdown ended up feeling pretty distinct. It also meant you could have 'dream matches' within your own company - Angle/Michaels being a good example of that. 

Apply that to AEW, and you could remove the feeling of title fatigue and faction stagnation quite quickly by divvying them up. You reduce the travel schedule. You can freshen up a stale act, simply by having them move show. There are opportunities to push certain wrestlers to a greater degree - Daniel Garcia, Big Bill, Takeshita, Powerhouse Hobbs, Hook, Willow Nightingale, Billie Starkz, Athena, Dalton Castle - the list goes on. You could experiment by having tag wrestlers end up on separate brands - how would Anthony Bowens and Max Caster fare as singles wrestlers? What about The Young Bucks? 

There are so many interesting things you could do - and given that all of the wrestlers belong to AEW, if there's an angle you really want to do now involving wrestlers from separate brands, you could just have them switch. Tony Khan has been inspired by football before in how he presents wrestling - maybe he could have two yearly transfer windows, as opposed to how WWE shakes things up; keeping things relatively dynamic. 

[Snitsky's back acne]

4 hours ago, RedRooster said:

 

Another major Tony Khan announcement next week, presumably it's either Mercedes Mone or Okada? Or maybe both?

I'd honestly be shocked if Okada goes to AEW.
I can't see him officially leaving New Japan, relinquishing whatever title he had and (apparently) moving to America to go to AEW.
I know money talks and all the reports are saying he's going to AEW but I just can't see it.

[RedRooster]

4 minutes ago, Snitsky's back acne said:

I'd honestly be shocked if Okada goes to AEW.
I can't see him officially leaving New Japan, relinquishing whatever title he had and (apparently) moving to America to go to AEW.
I know money talks and all the reports are saying he's going to AEW but I just can't see it.

I mean, his contract has already expired and they've already announced that he's leaving New Japan. Do you mean you think he'll work for them as a free agent? It would make the decision to announce his impending departure a bit strange.

I would imagine that Tony Khan would be willing to give him some level of flexibility that WWE might not, allowing him to split his time between Japan and the US. I'd imagine he'd also get a substantial pay increase. 

[Duke]

31 minutes ago, The Gaffer said:

I mean I get it, but I'm also not convinced if they were playing it straight this isn't how they'd do it. It's a marmite thing with their character work, I guess, and that blurring of "Everything we do's a kind of zany pisstake" schtick's not for me. 

 

I think the inherent problem here is trying to picture the Bucks playing any gimmick totally straight. It's just not their style.

Totally get that the Bucks style isn't for you. I'm actually amazed they're as popular as they are with it as it feels so niche.

[Infinity Land]

7 minutes ago, RedRooster said:

I think, as you acknowledge, they kind of do that already and it's not helped much. For me, a roster split, when done right actually forces creativity. Look at the early days of the original WWE brand split - you had the emergence of new talent such as Lesnar, Cena, Batista and Randy Orton; the split roster creating opportunities for midcard and upper midcard talent to become main eventers - I'd point to Guerrero, Mysterio, JBL, Benoit, Mark Henry and Edge as examples of that - and both Raw and Smackdown ended up feeling pretty distinct. It also meant you could have 'dream matches' within your own company - Angle/Michaels being a good example of that. 

 

Raw and Smackdown were roughly equal when they did the brand split, what's been quite apparent after is that Collision is a distant 2nd and sometimes 3rd ratings wise. The show is also about to hit the NBA All Star Weekend/March Madness/NHL Playoffs run in the coming months where its pre-empted if not off entirely.

A hard brand split may work once the potential WWE reshuffle of shows takes place, allowing Collision to grab a weekday spot. While its on Saturdays it seems like the usual thing with AEW and hoping they book it better.

--------------

Bit of a sidenote but follows on from the general discussion of the thread. There's still a place for Ring of Honor but only if they go back to their own tapings. At the Bossier City taping they had 12 matches. Proper Dark lockdown special going by most of the card. People that wonder about the poor turn outs when AEW returns to town. Mammoth inconsequential tapings  certainly doesn't help. There used to be the idea you would go to an AEW taping and get go home speech from the main eventers. Now it seems like chinwagging with the cleaners, while two unknowns are having a training match in the ring.

[Duke]

17 minutes ago, Snitsky's back acne said:

I'd honestly be shocked if Okada goes to AEW.
I can't see him officially leaving New Japan, relinquishing whatever title he had and (apparently) moving to America to go to AEW.
I know money talks and all the reports are saying he's going to AEW but I just can't see it.

Because he'd likely to be paid more for an easier schedule, because they'd let him go home a lot more, because he'd probably have more top matches or because he's got a load of mates there?

WWE is miles more prestigious, no doubt and if they pushed to main event a mania, come up with a story and finish it its undoubtedly the biggest thing he can do, but he might not be pursuing that. Fair play to him either way for making the billionaires dance for him.

[LaGoosh]

33 minutes ago, RedRooster said:

Apply that to AEW, and you could remove the feeling of title fatigue and faction stagnation quite quickly by divvying them up. You reduce the travel schedule. You can freshen up a stale act, simply by having them move show. There are opportunities to push certain wrestlers to a greater degree - Daniel Garcia, Big Bill, Takeshita, Powerhouse Hobbs, Hook, Willow Nightingale, Billie Starkz, Athena, Dalton Castle - the list goes on.

They could do all that stuff now without a hard roster split. It just requires them to be more creative and more consistent with their booking. An actual proper split isn't required and is actually harmful. And I don't think a roster split has actually ever been successful in WWE except the very first one. And that was only halfway successful - Smackdown was bloody great but Raw was the absolute shits.

[RedRooster]

8 minutes ago, LaGoosh said:

They could do all that stuff now without a hard roster split. It just requires them to be more creative and more consistent with their booking. An actual proper split isn't required and is actually harmful. And I don't think a roster split has actually ever been successful in WWE except the very first one. And that was only halfway successful - Smackdown was bloody great but Raw was the absolute shits.

What makes you think it would be harmful? For me, the pros outweigh the cons. You're right in your assessment of both brands in WWE - but that's more down to booking than anything else. 

I started watching wrestling during the original brand split - so I've never known a wrestling world in which the concept did not exist. Obviously WWE briefly ditched it - but I've not been a viewer when the concept of it was alien. It's made me a big fan of the idea - but it can definitely be done better, and I'd love to see someone try to do it right. 

25 minutes ago, Infinity Land said:

Raw and Smackdown were roughly equal when they did the brand split, what's been quite apparent after is that Collision is a distant 2nd and sometimes 3rd ratings wise. The show is also about to hit the NBA All Star Weekend/March Madness/NHL Playoffs run in the coming months where its pre-empted if not off entirely.

True, but you could treat it in a similar way to how WWE has Smackdown in the past, where it houses 'newer' stars and one or two main eventers. It can be the place where stars are made, even if you don't call it that. I don't mean turn it into NXT; rather, it doesn't necessarily have to be an even split as far as star power is concerned. And I don't think that's a bad thing - imagine a world in which Eddie Kingston is your top champion, with Takeshita, Daniel Garcia, Anthony Bowens, Brodie King, Kyle Fletcher, Big Bill, Wheeler Yuta and Powerhouse Hobbs among the rising stars. Maybe you have Jeff Jarrett on the roster, and Christian Cage as your top heel. Maybe Bryan Danielson is the 'Undertaker' of that roster, wrestling a part-time schedule. I'd watch that, and I reckon other people might too - and you'd still have plenty of star power over on Dynamite. 

[JNLister]

2 hours ago, RedRooster said:

100% this - I was thinking something similar watching the show, actually - if you took the best parts of Dynamite, Collision, Rampage and ROH on a weekly basis and merged it together into one show, you'd have an unmissable TV show. And that's obviously what AEW was when it was at its best, all of the good idea in the one place. Creatively, I think AEW would benefit from losing two out of these four shows (aside from Dynamite obviously, that would be catastrophic) - there's still a hell of a lot of great AEW content each week, it's just...very spread out. 

Which is how I went to "I watch every moment of Dynamite and Rampage" to "I only have time to pick and choose what to watch" to "I now watch less overall than I was watching to start with" to "You've cancelled my Fite+ membership and want me to manually renew? Nope, I'm checking out your YouTube channel and that's enough for me."

It's the same as UFC and WWE PPVs where people would buy every show until it got to more than one a month, they started picking and choosing, and then they were buying fewer than before. The amount of time/money you're willing to spend if it means consuming the entire product is not the amount of time/money you'll spend on watching just the "best bits".

[DavidB6937]

If TK gets Okada, it really just feels like he's stockpiling talent at this point - something WWE went through with NXT and NXT UK etc.

You can't sign guys like White, Ospreay AND Okada and give them all top tiering alongside the other guys you've already got. There's just too many of them. Now maybe Okada doesn't care but it feels like he'd only leave Japan to test himself and see what else he can achieve elsewhere, and is there room in AEW for that? I honestly don't know.

[LaGoosh]

8 minutes ago, RedRooster said:

What makes you think it would be harmful? For me, the pros outweigh the cons. You're right in your assessment of both brands in WWE - but that's more down to booking than anything else. 

How can forcefully seperating your top acts and putting up a barrier stopping them from interacting with eachother not be harmful? Let me give you a scenario - you have Eddie Kingston on Collision and Samoa Joe on Dynamite...now they can't feud with eachother because of a "brand split". Why would you intentionally put up a brick wall to stop Kingston and Joe feuding? I want to see Joe/Eddie feuding!

All the positives you've listed you can absolutely do without a brand split. Brand splits are shit! And the second you start "trading" people over to the other show the whole concept becomes pointless anyway. 

Edited February 1 by LaGoosh

[Factotum]

7 minutes ago, DavidB6937 said:

You can't sign guys like White, Ospreay AND Okada and give them all top tiering alongside the other guys you've already got. There's just too many of them. Now maybe Okada doesn't care but it feels like he'd only leave Japan to test himself and see what else he can achieve elsewhere, and is there room in AEW for that? I honestly don't know.

Okada going to AEW makes perfect sense. Big fanfare and treated like a mega star straight off. He'll get the red carpet rolled out and be in high profile matches. He can basically use it as a springboard to WWE in 2-3 years if he chooses to, rather than piddle about on NXT for ages, or debut to indifference on the main show. It's a subtle way for audiences who don't know him to discover him. Even WWE drones who slag off AEW will know who he is now.

Also I don't see it stockpiling. Chances are you'll get some big AEW cuts at some point and a reorganising of the rosters. With the WB deal coming up soon as well, having international names and markets is only going to help. No doubt AEW do Japan at some point and try to launch on TV over there. What a name to have do that. Plus they're 'stars' which is what you need.

[DavidB6937]

1 minute ago, Factotum said:

Okada going to AEW makes perfect sense. Big fanfare and treated like a mega star straight off. He'll get the red carpet rolled out and be in high profile matches. He can basically use it as a springboard to WWE in 2-3 years if he chooses to, rather than piddle about on NXT for ages, or debut to indifference on the main show. It's a subtle way for audiences who don't know him to discover him. Even WWE drones who slag off AEW will know who he is now.

Also I don't see it stockpiling. Chances are you'll get some big AEW cuts at some point and a reorganising of the rosters. With the WB deal coming up soon as well, having international names and markets is only going to help. No doubt AEW do Japan at some point and try to launch on TV over there. What a name to have do that. Plus they're 'stars' which is what you need.

Sure, it makes sense, and it's obvious that he'd fit right in and the audience would be more into him from the start, but when they struggle to find consistency with the people they've already got, I'm just not seeing how adding another one helps anything. And it's something they've been criticised for quite often in terms of losing interest in someone, slowing a push or getting distracted by a new signing. I just think either he'll suffer as a consequence or others will, and that's a shame. I'll be happy if it all works okay but it just seems like piling on to an existing problem.