AEW TV 2025 Discussion

[tiger_rick]

1 hour ago, Lorne Malvo said:

They're just really light on the babyface side at the moment with Swerve, Ospreay and Omega all out (although Kingston returning will go some way to rectifying that) and 90% of the heel roster is either with the Don Callis Family or the Death Riders.

They're really light on top level heels. MJF, whatever people think of him, and Moxley are the only heels on the level Hangman needs at the moment. Everyone else is someone he has to elevate and MJF & Mox are his last two opponents. They've plenty of star babyfaces out but they've got Allin, Briscoe, Brody King, Bandido, Joe, Hobbs and a returning Eddie as very popular faces who can work with any heel and are all ready to be moved up, except maybe Joe who's had his run. There's very little on the heel side that feels ready.

[Supremo]

Have they ever done Hangman Page vs. Eddie Kingston? I’d be bang up for that. Battle of the flawed, contemporary, progressive babyfaces. Real men.

Whilst I want my Cowboy to have a long, healthy reign as The Champion of the Fucking World, now that he’s had his moment surely all plans over the next year or two need to revolve around Eddie Kingston eventually winning the World Title? They’ve lost their minds if they don’t see that as a destination.

[Supremo]

Good Collision.

MJF’s, “you’re too poor to pay attention,” line made me laugh. Most frustrating talent alive. With an editor, he could be one of the greatest of all time. Match with Briscoe at the pay per view will almost certainly rule.

It speaks volumes considering how much I hated them last time they teamed together that I was really into The Acclaimed re-uniting. Bowens desperately needs it after floundering so badly, but any success they have is one hundred percent due to the charm of The Best Wrestler Alive. Caster has been so brilliant as the idiot heel that it’s breathed new life into everything he does, even tagging with Bowens again. Whichever way this ends up going, my main hope is they fuck off Billy Gunn. Man’s useless at this point. Won’t even put over his own sons.

Anyone else smell a Jamie Hayter heel turn, joining The Death Riders? That’s all I could see watching them push what I imagine is a red herring with Statlander. I’d be on board with Hayter in the Death Riders. They need a workhorse female and it’d finally be something for Hayter to sink her teeth into. Annoys me how long she’s been back, doing almost nothing other than that one match with Mercedes. I wouldn’t be against The Death Riders helping Hayter win the World Title, pulling Timeless Toni into their orbit. Perhaps build up a Mixed War Games where Toni can punch Moxley with Glass taped to her fists? He’d love that!

It’s quite fitting that Kyle O’Reilly and Roddy Strong are a team because the pair of them are the worst examples ever of guys I rate massively in the ring, but absolutely detest as characters. Kyle’s the weak link in the Conglomeration, somehow always managing to take the goofball comedy too far and just come off as an annoying prick, and at this point I don’t even know what Roddy is doing. I thought the dumb thing where he shouts everyone’s name and acts like a moron was a trick to convince MJF that Adam Cole wasn’t The Devil? Why are we still doing this nonsense almost a year on?!

The glitch onscreen giving Hologram a headache. Gloriously shit. I love it.

Toni Storm is the MVP of this entire company. Even on commentary, I’m terrified to fast forward anything she’s involved in because I know I’ll miss some daft one liner. “Tits and shit flying!” She’s fantastic.

I want the Random Tag Title Ladder Match to result in Jack Perry returning again, only this time knocking The Young Bucks off the ladder. Cute callback, leading to the reunion of Jurassic Express.

Really excited by Copeland/Christian vs. Jurassic Express and Copeland/Christian vs. The Young Bucks. 

As much as the heel turn improved FTR, it remains exhausting how much they always get in their own way. A week before arguably one of the biggest matches of their career - a genuine dream match - and instead of just going over someone in quick, devastating fashion, they go seventeen fucking minutes with two lads at the bottom of the division. I despair. Not every match you have has to go forever and challenge for Match of the Year, you pair of marks. Big Bill smashing up Max Caster in three minutes made him look better and sold his pay per view match a million more than FTR’s performance here. They’re their own worst enemies.

Also, as much improved as FTR are as heels, this new thing where they act like Scott Steiner and try and get someone in the crowd to swing at them doesn’t work at all. I just don’t buy it. Even knowing that later on that night there’s a solid chance Cash Wheeler could genuinely pull a gun on someone if they cut him up in traffic getting out of there. On TV, they’re completely unconvincing as the loose cannons. Dax especially. Even if a fan/plant did take a swing at him, he’d still somehow counter it into a wrist lock that then took them into three drawn-out heat sequences that spanned two to three ad breaks. Man can’t help himself. I’m dreading them going forty five to sixty minutes at the pay per view.

I wasn’t hugely into the Daniel Garcia heel turn originally, but seeing how it’s affected Daddy Magic saved it. There’s an all-timer blade job in Daddy Magic’s future. I’ll never forgive Garcia when it comes.

Edited September 15, 2025 by Supremo

[LaGoosh]

7 hours ago, Supremo said:

MJF’s, “you’re too poor to pay attention,” line made me laugh. Most frustrating talent alive. With an editor, he could be one of the greatest of all time.

Yeah I'm getting increasingly tired of MJF. He just seems 100% dedicated to "getting heat" at the moment at all costs rather than actually doing anything that has any depth, creativity or artistic merit. There's absolutely nothing going on under the hood right now. And the thing is none of the heat he gets from the crowd isn't even genuine - the fans would much rather be cheering for him! When he first turned heel it felt like a massive step backwards for the character now he just seems to be sprinting backwards.

And as you say, it's frustrating because every now and again he shows you how good he can be. This is the guy that single handedly got over a rematch as Adam Cole as legitimate main event of one of the biggest wrestling shows of all time. These days I can't think of anything I would want to see him do. His stubborn refusal to develop or evolve his act is baffling.

Anyhoo, on a positive note Queen AMinata and Thekla 3 is happening on Dynamite this week and is no holds barred. I'm very excited for that one. They are going to beat the absolute fuck out of each other.

Edited September 16, 2025 by LaGoosh

[tiger_rick]

Two great posts. I disagree with the "with an editor" line though. I'd rather see him live or die under his own steam than change some of the fundamentals of why they're different. He's not The Rock. 

Reminds me of the Russo with McMahon filtering the content lie that used to be peddled. Not only bullshit because post-Russo WWF had 100 examples of his level of supidity, "humour" and gratuitous tits on TV but also because Russo, filtered or unfiltered, is fucking useless because he doesn't understand wrestling at it's core. Even modern WWE, which is a movie about wrestling, remember, is still fundamentally about building to matches people want to see between people they like and dislike - or often like and like.

[LaGoosh]

My impression from the Russo/Attitude era is that all the top feuds that were building up to matches were still mostly booked by Vince, Pat and the old heads with Russo/Ferrara's input while Russo was left to his own devices on the under card to just fill it up with whatever mad stupid shit he wanted to do to create buzz/controversy.

[BomberPat]

53 minutes ago, LaGoosh said:

My impression from the Russo/Attitude era is that all the top feuds that were building up to matches were still mostly booked by Vince, Pat and the old heads with Russo/Ferrara's input while Russo was left to his own devices on the under card to just fill it up with whatever mad stupid shit he wanted to do to create buzz/controversy.

I think that's true, and also that even if the endgame was laid out by the top brass, Russo was still coming up with some of the week-to-week stuff. 

He is obviously fucking awful and has no idea how wrestling works, but there were a bunch of stories from TNA about people chanting "FIRE RUSSO" at shit booked by Dutch Mantell, and we've seen plenty from WWE post-Russo that's just as terrible and nonsensical as anything he ever came up with.

Russo reminds me of kids who watched wrestling, and would lie about it all the time. The day after the 2001 Royal Rumble, a kid at school told me that the final two had been the APA, and they agreed to eliminate themselves at the same time, but one of them stopped and won the whole thing. It's the sort of thing you think of when all you know about the match is the rules, and not the stakes, or how it should be booked. Russo's booking was full of that kind of thing - in a multi-team match, what happens if two members of the same team end up tagged in at once? In a tag team ladder match, what if members of two different teams grab the belts? What if someone not in the match takes the belts down?  How do you pin a mannequin head if it's a legal participant in a match? Part of it is that they're swerves, and trying to come up with finishes that the audience wouldn't expect, but beyond that, they're really unsatisfying finishes that come from looking at the concept of a match and picking it apart to find the loopholes. That voice can be a useful one to have in a booking team, not to actually use their ideas, but to figure out how to idiot-proof stipulations and gimmicks to justify why those things don't happen. The mistake with Russo was given him free reign to just explore all those ideas, rather than using him as the filter.

 

To bring it back to MJF, I don't think it's so much that he needs an editor as he needs the right opponent. His best work on the mic has been when he's been against people who don't let him rely on his tropes, and drag something better out of him, or force him down a path where he has to make sense. Now, he's just doing scattershot stuff in the hope that something lands, while also always working three stories at once, so he never gets his teeth into anything. The Briscoe feud would be far better if MJF hadn't been dicking around with the Hurt Syndicate, hadn't taken a detour out of this feud to renew hostilities with Hangman, or to beef with Mistico, or whatever else he's been doing. He just needs focus, wherever that might come from.

If you think back to his feud with Ospreay, in one promo he tried to get five different motivations over - it was about the International Title, then it was an America vs. UK thing, then it was MJF as the guy who will always take the easiest route to get what he wants and doesn't care what anyone thinks of him vs. Ospreay who takes risks and does flashy things to pop the audience, then he was bringing up Ospreay's family to get under his skin, and then on top of that, it had to be about whether Ospreay had the guts to hit the Tiger Driver '91. If he had just drilled down deeper into one of those talking points, the story would be more coherent, and better for it, and you can start layering in the other factors over time, or bring them in if you revisit that feud later down the line, but instead he burns through all of them in one promo. And he's been doing that in pretty much every feud since, never doing one thing when three or four will do.

[The King Of Swing]

Worst thing about the FTR match on Collision, was Cash coming dangerously close to fucking his arm/hand up, when he caught it in the ropes. 

Almost fucked up the upcoming PPV main event, during a match everyone will have forgotten about by Wednesday. 

[RedTwoster]

8 hours ago, BomberPat said:

To bring it back to MJF, I don't think it's so much that he needs an editor as he needs the right opponent.

The thing is, who would that be? There’s really no one better than Hangman on the AEW roster, when it comes to bringing out depth and nuance in an opponent, and so far, that’s not happened.

I think he needs a complete character overhaul. He’s shown nuance in the past, by showing that he’s damaged on the inside, but he’s kind of exhausted that well. So if he’s going to feel anything other than repetitive, he needs to be someone else. 

[Infinity Land]

MJF v. Eddie Kingston. 

[LaGoosh]

1 hour ago, RedTwoster said:

The thing is, who would that be? There’s really no one better than Hangman on the AEW roster, when it comes to bringing out depth and nuance in an opponent, and so far, that’s not happened

When Mark Briscoe came out and interrupted MJF that first time I was like "of course! This is the perfect pairing!" Unfortunately we all know how that turned out. I'm absolutely stumped as to what to do with him next. A tag team with Ricochet might be fun but there's a risk he drags Ricochet down to his level.

[LaGoosh]

1 hour ago, RedTwoster said:

The thing is, who would that be? There’s really no one better than Hangman on the AEW roster, when it comes to bringing out depth and nuance in an opponent, and so far, that’s not happened

When Mark Briscoe came out and interrupted MJF that first time I was like "of course! This is the perfect pairing!" Unfortunately we all know how that turned out. I'm absolutely stumped as to what to do with him next. A tag team with Ricochet might be fun but there's a risk he drags Ricochet down to his level.

[Kamran]

It's a special 3-hour September to Remember Dynamite this week:

Edited September 17, 2025 by Kamran

[tiger_rick]

Love the name, logo and graphics. Love that they're giving Ontario a supershow too. 

If Jon Moxley puts Roddy in a crate labelled NXT, he'll wrap up all the awards for 2025. ?

[Supremo]

That bit in Trainspotting where Ewan McGregor goes mad trying to quit heroin, only it’s just Tony Khan trying to make it until the start of tonight’s Dynamite without announcing a $500,000 All Star Tag.