AEW Dynamite Thread 2024

[mim731]

Even if it's a kayfabe number, you probably have to at least make it seem like you're paying an outlandish amount of money to someone who literally has the nickname "The Rainmaker". 

[SuperBacon]

A new player has entered the game.

Contract value chat joins ratings chat on an equal pegging, but still not as shit as share price chat.

[Nick James]

Who gives a fuck what a wrestler is paid, as long as it's enough and not a hot dog and glass of orange juice. If Tony is paying Okada that or more, who cares? Same with Mercedes, if they're getting a shit tonne of money, good on them.

[air_raid]

10 minutes ago, Infinity Land said:

No doubt he's in a better financial position than before.

Well, yeah. If the $2m was accurate (<</salt>>) then it means he'd have to beat Y218m at the exchange rate at the time. There's plenty of wiggle room between that and the "reported" Y666.66m per year, to find the true number in there somewhere.

I've planted my flag on "typical Japanese wrestling media bullshit" and I'm leaving it there.

[Merzbow]

Call me when they sign Shera for fifteen million, then we can talk contracts.

[Chili]

I think contract chat might be what melts my intelligence circuits.

[Lion_of_the_Midlands]

2 minutes ago, air_raid said:

(<</salt>>)

Racist, just because he's Japanese you think he'll throw salt like a sumo. I bet you were doing "The eyes" as you posted. 

[air_raid]

11 minutes ago, Lion_of_the_Midlands said:

Racist, just because he's Japanese you think he'll throw salt like a sumo. I bet you were doing "The eyes" as you posted. 

[Mr_Danger]

29 minutes ago, Nick James said:

Who gives a fuck what a wrestler is paid, as long as it's enough and not a hot dog and glass of orange juice. If Tony is paying Okada that or more, who cares? Same with Mercedes, if they're getting a shit tonne of money, good on them.

Hyper tribalism innit. Can’t have WWE having cleaner books than AEW.

[air_raid]

On 3/7/2024 at 3:50 PM, Supremo said:

I’m fascinated by this new criticism that’s started cropping up about guys not selling enough. It seems to mostly be directed at AEW talent, so you assume it’s a tribal thing, but the whole idea that guys aren’t selling enough is stupid.

I'm not sure its that new, or targeted towards a particular promotion. I remember the outcry about that awful slice of shite where Lio Rush stood right up after a package piledriver off a ladder through a table. IIRC it was about the same time I went to an indy show where a Lucha Bros match had a crucifix bomb-Destroyer combo yield only a 2 count, that drew an audible "bullshit" out of me. Probably marked it down even further because that shitehawk Sami Callihan was in the match, to be fair, but the nonsense has been going on for a while now. It's not even "evolution of the business" stuff, the way people love to say that the DDT used to work for Jake but you wouldn't end a match with it today. Guys are killing piledrivers and vertical head drops - if you do dropping someone on their head as a mid match move then it kind of makes it hard to suspend disbelief for finishes that AREN'T dropping someone on their head, does it not?? You got poor sods trying to get their backfist or knee strike over, and people are devaluing big moves everywhere.

If the part people are ragging on is that sequence I've seen from the Ospreay match where a piledriver (again) is brushed off in the middle of a sequence, then I'm fine with the criticism. It's moving away from the moves meaning anything, in favour of trying to do as many moves in a short amount of time where only the last move and the guy that does it actually means anything, rendering the previous four or five moves pointless. Piledrivers shouldn't be pointless, should they? Of course, I'm naturally going to be biased against Ospreay, because his bit of ballet with Ricochet that ended in "spontaneous" springboards and superhero poses was the WORST bit of pro wrestling I'd ever seen, until I saw that Lio Rush no sell.

For fairness however... WWE are prone to it too, and HBK taking a Tombstone on the fucking floor at Mania 26 without getting rolled into the ring and pinned straight away was also bullshit.

[Keith Houchen]

39 minutes ago, air_raid said:

the way people love to say that the DDT used to work for Jake but you wouldn't end a match with it today. Guys are killing piledrivers and vertical head drops - if you do dropping someone on their head as a mid match move then it kind of makes it hard to suspend disbelief for finishes that AREN'T dropping someone on their head, does it not??

I’ve always been of the mindset of people who use a move as a finisher do so because they’re better at using it than other wrestlers, if that makes sense. I do agree with big moves being used any time during a match can devalue it as a big move, but you can pass it off by saying they are just shit at that move compared to someone who can finish a match with it. 

[Loki]

1 hour ago, air_raid said:

Guys are killing piledrivers and vertical head drops - if you do dropping someone on their head as a mid match move then it kind of makes it hard to suspend disbelief for finishes that AREN'T dropping someone on their head, does it not?? You got poor sods trying to get their backfist or knee strike over, and people are devaluing big moves everywhere.

That was the beauty of the piledriver ban in WWE.  If only the Undertaker ever does the piledriver, and it's his finisher, then it's this devastating final move that nobody kicks out of.  If Moxley was piledriving people in the middle of the match before and his opponents were kicking out at 2, then either he's shit at the piledriver, or his opponent is tougher than the Undertaker's.  It creates too much confusion.

I have no issue with no-selling, it has its place.  Legendary main eventer Sting no-selling in his final match - awesome.  Brian Cage no-selling in the middle of a throwaway match on Dynamite - less ok.  Context is everything and as with ANY move or spot, overuse diminishes its effectiveness.

Whenever this conversation comes up I think about the rise of hardcore - first of all you were hitting someone with a chair and finishing the match.  Then you kicked out of a chairshot so the next match you put them through a table.  And so on.  It really didn't take many years before you were having to throw someone through a pane of glass off a balcony just to get a pin.  And the actual real-world damage taken in each match increased alongside that.

AEW have become a lot better at pacing their cards than they used to be, but you still see instances of people in the lower card kicking out of finishers that will be used for the pin later on.  WWE had that massive reset in the early noughties where people stopped kicking out of finishers and it reset the whole finisher spamming issue quite quickly so that even now, kicking out of someone's finisher is a big deal rather than the end of every match (NXT excepted sadly).  I would love them and AEW to do something similar with dives to the outside which really should be something cool but is now something EVERYONE on the card does in every match.

 

 

 

[air_raid]

4 minutes ago, Loki said:

WWE had that massive reset in the early noughties where people stopped kicking out of finishers and it reset the whole finisher spamming issue quite quickly so that even now, kicking out of someone's finisher is a big deal rather than the end of every match (NXT excepted sadly).

I wish they’d applied that to Lesnar. Reigns kicking out of five F5s at Mania 34 but then losing to a sixth managed to make Brock, Roman AND the move look weak all in one go.

[JLM]

Yeah it all depends on context and what you’re trying to achieve. Kingston vs Danielson where the story of the match is all about Danielson working a limb to remove Eddie’s striking game and set him up for a submission? Eddie selling the right arm throughout and having to try and do stuff with his left hand is essential there. The whole point of the match is lost if Eddie shows no ill effects to the arm. 

Sting’s retirement match where the people want to see him be a larger than life superhero one last time? Absolutely no sell a double super kick to the face and kick out at one after multiple finishers. 

Osprey and Takeshita was two super humans trying to one up each other and put on a show that nobody else could. Those two doing insane video game shit to one another was what was advertised, and in that context I thought it was fine. They brought an extra level of fighting spirit out of each other or something, whatever. 

I would like to see fewer kick outs from finishing moves specifically though, so for special occasions when it happens it feels special. I never expect the first time a finisher hits to end a match any more, which in turn devalues the kick outs themselves, and of course devalues the finisher. I think they’re an important story telling device and I’d prefer it to be a huuuuge deal whenever someone kicks out of them. Then you get fun stuff where people have to have special occasion super finishers, or have to try something else. 
 

I would also like it if signature 2-count moves sometimes got the win. If Sami or Takeshita just one single time could get the 3 with a blue thunder bomb it would make me very happy. 

Edited March 8, 2024 by JLM

[Callum1993]

2 hours ago, air_raid said:

I wish they’d applied that to Lesnar. Reigns kicking out of five F5s at Mania 34 but then losing to a sixth managed to make Brock, Roman AND the move look weak all in one go.

The strange thing with that was they had protected the F5 for a couple of years before that. Like it became a once and done against Goldberg, Joe, Strowman in the year before that Roman match. I think it was another attempt at the time to get Roman over strong in defeat which obviously didn’t work once again.