AEW Dynamite Thread 2024

[tiger_rick]

5 minutes ago, Loki said:

The Dynamite Merch Stand last night.  That was the full product line.  Whoever is in charge of their merch division needs to be fired!

This seems insane given that the range of AEW shirts you could get on PWT was absolutely massive at one point. Is that part of the problem though, allowing all these guys to sort their own shit? It's consistently a massive missed opportunity, although from the pics I've seen, they appear to have one shirt for every member of the crowd last night. 

We went to an NXT show in Sheffield a few years ago and our kid was excited to get some shirts. The merch offering was dreadful. And it was still better than that.

[Lion_of_the_Midlands]

43 minutes ago, Chili said:

Terrible, woeful, and it really brought the down the quality of the show.

That looks like enough merch for the total of last night's crowd to be fair, and that does bring down the quality of the show. That tinny crowd noise of not many people in a big arena really detracts from the quality of the show. There were some enjoyable matches that would have been even better if they weren't put on in front of one man and his dog. 

One thing that stood out as dogshite in an otherwise good match was that dive over the top rope to hand stand on the apron, to hurricanrana that Swerve did. That looked fucking awful and does not need to be repeated. 

[RedRooster]

Rick fucking Knox...if they need a referee to look incompetent, he seems to be the go-to person to roll out. At this stage, I just brace myself for a screwy finish if he's standing in the ring. He's right up there with TNA's Mark Johnson as far as irritating referees go. 

Overall, it was a decent Dynamite, with a bit too little in the way of variety for my tastes - I typically prefer the format they'd run with over the previous few weeks, with a mix of promo segments and matches. Hopefully they'll go back to that. 

AEW was incredibly lucky to land Ospreay - he feels like a megastar, to the point that if WWE had signed him, I suspect he'd be viewed as a potential successor to Roman Reigns as far as 'face of the company' potential goes. AEW should build around him. 

I'm curious about the decision to give Swerve another title shot - I honestly thought Takeshita would win, simply because it seems too soon for Joe to lose the title, and too early to bring Strickland's journey towards being World Champion to an end. My guess is that Hangman interferes to cost him the match for those very reasons. 

[Factotum]

Khan needs to start booking smaller venues and then go big for the PPVs. AEW with a rabid audience is always the best. He needs to do it quickly.

I think AEW is slightly coasting at the moment on good shows, probably given that it's WRESTLEMANIA season as well. I think the weeks building into DYNASTY could be tasty.

I want Swerve with the belt, but Joe is so good.

[Hannibal Scorch]

1 hour ago, RedRooster said:

AEW was incredibly lucky to land Ospreay - he feels like a megastar, to the point that if WWE had signed him, I suspect he'd be viewed as a potential successor to Roman Reigns as far as 'face of the company' potential goes. AEW should build around him. 

No luck in my eyes. Ospreay had no interest in the WWE lifestyle. Knock him for his faults, but one thing TK does well, especially with non US talent, is allows them flexibility. Becky Lynch was only moaning the other day about wanting to see her brother in Ireland and not being able to, and I read it was one of the reasons PAC left WWE (and we know from his AEW run he spends plenty of time back in the Toon). Ospreay is able to live the life he wants and get paid handsomely to do so.
 

Ospreay doesn’t fit the in ring style, they also wouldn’t have given him the mic time AEW have afforded him. WWE would have been lucky to have him, but I don’t think he’d be getting anywhere near the reactions he’s had in AEW. Besides, WWE have talent to build their company round, let Cody have his time.

Edited March 28 by Hannibal Scorch
One thing

[Merzbow]

7 minutes ago, Hannibal Scorch said:

Ospreay doesn’t fit the in ring style

That could have also been said at one point for guys like AJ, Sami and Owens etc. If anything be has a whole host of guys he could mesh well with in WWE's current style plus he's already shown in his move to the heavyweights in New Japan that he can change things up perfectly when needed. People still sleep on his versatility.

I agree with the rest though, he's not after that lifestyle.

Edited March 28 by Merzbow

[SuperBacon]

Will Osprey is one of the top 5 wrestlers in the world. He would adapt to any companies style or presentation easily. That's why he's one of the top 5 wrestlers in the world. 

He comes across as a massive star in AEW, just like he would've come across as a massive star in WWE. This constant argument that he wouldn't have is ridiculous.

Sure he might not have been at the very top of the card, but there's zero chance he'd have been mixing it with Tozawa in the mid card (sorry Tozawa, no idea if you're even there anymore, you were just the first person to come to mind)

At some point I really need to see him vs Logan Paul. Don't care where. Someone just book it.

[air_raid]

25 minutes ago, Hannibal Scorch said:

I read it was one of the reasons PAC left WWE (and we know from his AEW run he spends plenty of time back in the Toon).

It wasn't, according to every time the man himself has made comment about his departure. So unless the sources know something he's disclosed privately, I'd dismiss it.

On 1/26/2024 at 4:41 PM, air_raid said:

Casper is the last WWE match for Adrian Neville, b/k/a Pac. He'll allegedly be asked to lose to Enzo on the 9/10 Raw and refuse, get into a heated argument with Vince himself, and walk out. During his time off and "contract negotiations" he'll rehab his neck which has been giving him grief but eventually - stories vary - either find himself frozen out or choose to sit out the rest of his contract, getting a release in August and finally returning to the ring in November 2018. He'll later state that it was general dissatisfaction with his creative, that they ran out of ideas for him, and while on the one hand insist it wasn't solely about Enzo who he found "annoying" but nothing more, he'll also give a quote about believing his worth to be above "being jobbed out to jobbers." So probably a little to do with Enzo, then.

 

[Loki]

4 minutes ago, SuperBacon said:

 

At some point I really need to see him vs Logan Paul.

 

 

Ospreay is great.  He and Joe bookended the show nicely as the two biggest AEW stars right now. So much charisma in very different ways, keep them apart for a bit and that should be an amazing match.  Takeshita continues to look like the future as well.  How long have they been calling him "the Alpha" as opposed to "the Ace"?  A reference to Kenny Omega I guess, it reminds me that he's missing from all this at the moment.

Clearly, he'd do brilliantly in WWE but it's interesting that so many free agents have landed in AEW - the overall package is too good.  It will be VERY interesting to see what happens when Becky Lynch is out of contract after Wrestlemania.  At the very least she can get a lot more money post-Moné but I wonder if a lighter schedule and more regular trips home might tempt her too.

 

[Hannibal Scorch]

48 minutes ago, Merzbow said:

That could have also been said at one point for guys like AJ, Sami and Owens etc. If anything be has a whole host of guys he could mesh well with in WWE's current style plus he's already shown in his move to the heavyweights in New Japan that he can change things up perfectly when needed. People still sleep on his versatility.

I agree with the rest though, he's not after that lifestyle.

Which one of those wrestlers is at the top of the card, and which one is the company being built around? Ricochet is another good example, historically with Ospreay, who is in the mid card shuffle. I think Ospreay is a better all round asset, and those other wrestlers are great examples, but I think my point stands.

@SuperBaconthats kind of my point. It’s not he wouldn’t fit in, it’s just he’s a big fish in a smaller pond (the pond is also full of a load of guppies but I digress) in AEW. He also gets to headline Wembley Stadium! But he also has always spoken of his love of TNA and NJPW, he never had his eyes set on WWE, and whilst those thoughts may change as you get older, he’s stuck to his gun

Edited March 28 by Hannibal Scorch
For Superbacon

[RedRooster]

42 minutes ago, Hannibal Scorch said:

No luck in my eyes. Ospreay had no interest in the WWE lifestyle. Knock him for his faults, but one thing TK does well, especially with non US talent, is allows them flexibility.

To be clear, that wasn't a dig at AEW, or a suggestion that I'm surprised that he ended up there. Khan is clearly willing to pay wrestlers well and offer flexibility as you say. Hopefully this will lead to a similar approach from WWE, as contract negotiations arise. Would it really hurt the on air product to offer all talent mandatory annual leave, for example?

46 minutes ago, Hannibal Scorch said:

Ospreay doesn’t fit the in ring style, they also wouldn’t have given him the mic time AEW have afforded him. WWE would have been lucky to have him, but I don’t think he’d be getting anywhere near the reactions he’s had in AEW. Besides, WWE have talent to build their company round, let Cody have his time.

You're doing Ospreay a bit of a disservice here, I think. As far as ring style goes, Triple H has demonstrated a degree of flexibility that McMahon did not - he'd fit in just fine as fas as that is concerned. Your point about the reactions - The reaction that Jade Cargill got at the Royal Rumble suggests to me that Ospreay would have been just fine. There are plenty of WWE viewers who are aware of what's going on outside of the company. But initial reactions don't matter much - even if he debuted to crickets, he'd have quickly won people over. 

16 minutes ago, Loki said:

It will be VERY interesting to see what happens when Becky Lynch is out of contract after Wrestlemania.  At the very least she can get a lot more money post-Moné but I wonder if a lighter schedule and more regular trips home might tempt her too.

The fact she's married to Seth Rollins might encourage her to stay put; it would surely be a nightmare having to work a different schedule from your wife for a different touring company. But if AEW did manage to land her, that would be a real statement of intent as far as women's wrestling is concerned. I'd love to see a women's match main event an AEW PPV this year, and feel like it belongs. 

[The Gaffer]

Man, I can't get over how low energy Mone is.

It's early days I guess but divorced from the rest of the Horsewomen, the I Made It theme and the whole ascendancy feeling of her being a massive face even when she was heel she seems to just be coasting along all indica as that cousin of hers would say. 

She's in a business that's full of people right now who are revealing themselves to be really clever, endearing and funny whether it be in small on screen moments or supplementary/social content and last night she picked up the Jim Ross award for unenthused commentary. 

Osprey? Not going to lie, the better he looks in AEW - and as someone who has not followed his career until now he looks very, very good - the more it's going to make me salivate over him getting the red carpet treatment where the big boys play. Can't help it. Not a knock on what he might do in AEW, but you can already kind of see the ceiling. Becomes their champ, has bangers with puroresu guys. But the potential of him entangled with Reigns, Rhodes, Drew, Punk and President CyberRock in a few years? randymarshcum.gif 

[BomberPat]

3 hours ago, tiger_rick said:

This seems insane given that the range of AEW shirts you could get on PWT was absolutely massive at one point. Is that part of the problem though, allowing all these guys to sort their own shit? It's consistently a massive missed opportunity, although from the pics I've seen, they appear to have one shirt for every member of the crowd last night. 

I think PWT (which, as I understand it, is still basically the back-end of the AEW official merch store) is part of the reason why their merch at events is so awful. PWT is all print-on-demand, so you can rattle off as many shitty designs as you like without losing your arse on them when they don't sell. But the flipside of that is that it's not a business model that supports having a solid back catalogue of different shirts in a range of sizes, having decent stock management, and so on. It's leaving money on the table, and it makes the live experience worse, but it's the way it is.

[Hannibal Scorch]

Just now, BomberPat said:

I think PWT (which, as I understand it, is still basically the back-end of the AEW official merch store) is part of the reason why their merch at events is so awful. PWT is all print-on-demand, so you can rattle off as many shitty designs as you like without losing your arse on them when they don't sell. But the flipside of that is that it's not a business model that supports having a solid back catalogue of different shirts in a range of sizes, having decent stock management, and so on. It's leaving money on the table, and it makes the live experience worse, but it's the way it is.

You're not wrong. But those guys know what sells and what doesn't. So you print up a load of the top selling merch, throw in whoever is booked on that episode, and boom, you're mustard. It shouldn't be difficult, and they seemed to do an OK job at Wembley in comparison to their usual, but this is what happens when you work with companies like PWT and Jazwares over Fanatics and Mattel, you get second rate returns. If I was in charge I would allow PWT to run the online operations but get an events company to run live events merchandise.

[air_raid]

Wait....

18 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

((a post))

 

14 minutes ago, Hannibal Scorch said:

You're not wrong. But those guys know what sells and what doesn't. So you print up a load of the top selling merch, throw in whoever is booked on that episode, and boom, you're mustard.