Paid Members Supremo Posted October 16, 2025 Paid Members Posted October 16, 2025 If William Hill still do bets on the Royal Rumble, I’m putting a Double on Chris Jericho and Andrade entering. Quote
Paid Members LaGoosh Posted October 16, 2025 Author Paid Members Posted October 16, 2025 12 minutes ago, RedTwoster said: Mercedes, on the other hand, is growing in confidence on the mic. I imagine her house of cards is set to collapse sooner rather than later, though. Yeah her promo was really great and I love the "Ultimo Mone" nickname and hope they run with that. She's another person they should be doing more with right now. 13 minutes ago, RedTwoster said: Eddie Kingston and Hook going into the tag division seems like a huge waste It's crazy how fans have been desperate for Eddie to come back for so long and they're just doing the most uninteresting stuff possible with him. He already feels like a complete non entity. Eddie is one of the easiest people you can book so the lack of urgency around him is baffling. Quote
Paid Members tiger_rick Posted October 16, 2025 Paid Members Posted October 16, 2025 That opening rundown was as rough as a badger's arse. A production lowpoint. Right off the bat, a Collision recap. Hi, Tony! I liked the attempts to do something different on the show. It didn't all land but it was creative. I'm a fan of trying something different. Mox & Darby across the full 3 hours was quite confusing though. Great premise. The Pac attack felt brutal. The language around the feud is all over the place though. The two biggest points, that Mox saying I Quit will bring his world crumbling and the fight for the soul of AEW were there but weren't the focus they should have been. Generally, I thought the show was fine. Everything going into WrestleDream had a little tickle. Absolutely nothing of any consequence or any stakes were added though. A fine TV show that didn't feel like a waste of my time but not a thrilling go home show. If you weren't buying WD before, I don't think you are now. Quote
Paid Members LaGoosh Posted October 16, 2025 Author Paid Members Posted October 16, 2025 24 minutes ago, tiger_rick said: That opening rundown was as rough as a badger's arse. A production lowpoint. Agreed. Excalibur has been pretty bad recently and seems to be getting worse at this type of thing not better. Your announcer bumbling through the match schedule isn't the most exciting way to start off your episode. Also they've been doing a lot of cutting to the announce table in between matches/segments and the announcers always look a bit lost at what to do and say. Looks bad! Just go straight to the action! Quote
Paid Members RedTwoster Posted October 16, 2025 Paid Members Posted October 16, 2025 5 minutes ago, LaGoosh said: Agreed. Excalibur has been pretty bad recently and seems to be getting worse at this type of thing not better. Your announcer bumbling through the match schedule isn't the most exciting way to start off your episode. Also they've been doing a lot of cutting to the announce table in between matches/segments and the announcers always look a bit lost at what to do and say. Looks bad! Just go straight to the action! I think he needs a break. Has he ever missed an episode of Dynamite? Doing that much commentary is going to leave you burned out, and possibly even struggling to freshen up your approach. I’m not saying they should ditch him forever, just give him a month or two off to recharge his batteries. I’d advocate for that for every AEW employee throughout the year, though. That much travelling is going to take it out of you. Quote
Paid Members tiger_rick Posted October 16, 2025 Paid Members Posted October 16, 2025 I'm not sure he was the problem with the rundown. It felt like they'd printed the running order and then re-edited the package. Either way, it was amateur hour. Quote
Paid Members RedTwoster Posted October 16, 2025 Paid Members Posted October 16, 2025 25 minutes ago, tiger_rick said: I'm not sure he was the problem with the rundown. It felt like they'd printed the running order and then re-edited the package. Either way, it was amateur hour. I don’t think he was either, but I do agree that he’s not been great recently. He’s not been terrible either, but something seems a bit off with his announcing. Quote
Paid Members Supremo Posted October 16, 2025 Paid Members Posted October 16, 2025 (edited) Probably my WWE palate showing, because I quite liked the cinematic angle with Darby and Mox in the prison. I won’t argue against the spooky music being corny as fuck, and my biggest pet peeve in pro-wrestling is wrestlers arbitrarily talking about fighting for, “the future,” of the industry or whatever, but the actual substance felt quite effective. Mox sitting stoically, staring into space as Pac violently murdered Darby, smashing his bloody face against the glass? Good shit. I want to see these two fight at the pay per view. Take the progress where you can get it. We’ve come a long way from Moxley kidnapping the Midnight Express in a Disney Channel movie. This would at least air on Bravo or Men & Motors. Edited October 16, 2025 by Supremo Quote
Paid Members RedTwoster Posted October 16, 2025 Paid Members Posted October 16, 2025 50 minutes ago, Supremo said: Probably my WWE palate showing, because I quite liked the cinematic angle with Darby and Mox in the prison. I think I’d have liked it if I was invested in the story. Swap Darby for Hangman and run this in the run-up to All In, I’d probably have loved it. AEW has really been experimenting with their angles recently, doing new and interesting things - this, the Statlander/Storm promo where they lay down, last night’s Storm/Stat interview into brawl - it’s good stuff, but none of it is built into a hot storyline. It means you have a weird situation in that the programming is entertaining, yet it feels like they need a spark. They may well be laying the groundwork for that next big story arc though, so it’s not something that I’m particularly worried about. Ultimately, I’m not sure there’s been an episode of Dynamite that I’ve not enjoyed in a long, long time so it’s hard to be down on what they’re doing. Quote
Paid Members BomberPat Posted October 16, 2025 Paid Members Posted October 16, 2025 (edited) I thought that was a really rough show, particularly as the go-home for the PPV. I figured last week being on a Tuesday was a write-off and they'd make it up for it with PPV build this week, but they really didn't. Samoa Joe was a good choice of World Champion challenger, because he and Hangman are both really good at making things seem credible within one or two promos, and because Darby vs. Mox is presumably headlining, so they can afford to have a weaker World Title match this month. But for that to work, they needed to keep Samoa Joe credible, and the way to do that is not by having him involved in a midcard match for his midcard title, not getting any promo time, and having the most generic of interactions with Hangman that doesn't escalate it beyond where the story already was. That wasn't a go-home show angle, and if anything made me want to see Hangman vs. Rush more than Hangman vs. Joe. That match in particular just summed up so much wrong with AEW at the moment, because it was a graveyard of storylines and storyline opportunities. When Joe first snapped at Hangman, Powerhouse Hobbs looked set to play peacemaker, but has just been completely in the background ever since. There's a story there about Joe blindsiding his partners about wanting to go for the World Title, and about him being more focused on his singles career than the team, but it's a story they're not telling. Similarly, LFI are the challengers, despite this line-up of the team having not won a match in months, and two of them having most recently lost to Eddie Kingston. Eddie Kingston, meanwhile, just did a promo declaring that he's not feuding with LFI any more because he's just sick of doing it - and before they even got to a match with Rush, or with Sammy, who was the main person Eddie was angry at? Speaking of Eddie, he's teaming with Hook, who I guess is therefore also sort of feuding with LFI, and was a former member of The Opps - Hook left The Opps because they replaced him with Hobbs when he was injured, but now Shibata is injured, and they were happy to wait for him to return, so what's Hook's thoughts on that? Alongside all of that, you have an actual Trios feud going on between The Demand and The Hurt Syndicate. Would it not have made more sense to get the Trios belts involved in that feud, rather being an unnecessary distraction from the World Title match? Getting the belts in the mix might even make sense of the feud continuing after the Street Fight, and in a regular match at the PPV. They could have beaten The Opps because Joe's focus was on Hangman, or if they didn't want The Opps taking falls, they could have vacated the titles because Shibata was injured. There's precedent for that - the belts were vacated when Jay White got hurt. Meanwhile, Andrade has disappeared into thin air, but was seemingly never going to wrestle Kenny Omega at the PPV anyway, because he has a match in Puerto Rico that day. But Omega is now seemingly doing nothing at the PPV. I liked Jack Perry taking a bullet for Kenny to earn his trust, but there wasn't enough reluctance on Kenny's part to work with him before that to really make it land. Then after the match, Kenny was reluctant to fight the Young Bucks, and vice-versa...but why? He's still angry at Jack Perry for trying to end his career, but not at the Young Bucks for being part of the exact same angle? If he still has a complicated relationship with both sides, maybe involve him in the match, as a special referee or something? Why are the Death Riders just having competent workrate wrestling matches? Surely at this point, leading into the match with Darby, they should be presented as being uniquely dangerous and single-minded, not going move-for-move in a clean match with Roderick Strong? I quite liked the set-up of Darby and Moxley being in prison as a means to explain why they could talk to each other without trying to kill each other, but why were they in prison? And did the promo need to happen - it was endless exposition and speaking their motivations out loud, and a good story shouldn't need that. The worst part, though, was Darby crawling to the ring covered in blood later - because that meant that the prison angle aired live. The spooky music, the multiple camera shoot, the arty camerawork, all of that was happening live, it wasn't a pre-tape. And where was the prison in relation to the venue? Did Darby crawl all the way there? Same thing to a lesser extent later on, one of my booking pet hates - there was supposed to be a Megan Bayne/Harley Cameron match, and before it FTR made an unscheduled appearance to do a promo. Commentary were explicitly selling that they were surprised to see FTR. But then FTR's promo is interrupted by a JetSpeed/Willow/Harley promo responding to them. That promo then turns out to be a pre-tape, because JetSpeed appear in the ring immediately after it. Which means that the babyfaces knew that FTR were going to do an unscheduled, impromptu promo, they knew that they were going to talk about them in said promo, and they went and got a camera crew to record their response to that promo ahead of time, got production to fit it into the TV schedule at short notice, and to time it well enough that they could get to the ring in time to attack FTR when it ended. Nonsense. Edited October 16, 2025 by BomberPat Quote
Paid Members RedTwoster Posted October 16, 2025 Paid Members Posted October 16, 2025 (edited) 9 minutes ago, BomberPat said: Meanwhile, Andrade has disappeared into thin air, but was seemingly never going to wrestle Kenny Omega at the PPV anyway, because he has a match in Puerto Rico that day. According to Meltzer, his absence is due to confusion surrounding a no-compete clause. He didn’t believe he had one, WWE is insisting that he does. Depending on the outcome - if this is accurate - it might be a while before we see him again. Edited October 16, 2025 by RedTwoster Quote
Paid Members Supremo Posted October 16, 2025 Paid Members Posted October 16, 2025 (edited) I’d forgotten until watching this show that within the fiction the entire Don Callis Family live in a big mansion together. I hope they write away Adrade’s legally-enforced absence as him getting lost trying to pick a room. Andrade getting paid his new AEW contract whilst still cashing in a 90 day non-compete from WWE. Time to bump that thread, “Who is the best Wrestler in the World,” because we have a new contender. Edited October 16, 2025 by Supremo Quote
mrtrickio Posted October 16, 2025 Posted October 16, 2025 5 hours ago, Supremo said: Andrade getting paid his new AEW contract whilst still cashing in a 90 day non-compete from WWE. Time to bump that thread, “Who is the best Wrestler in the World,” because we have a new contender. I'm not sure how legal this is, but USA... However, the latest is that the non compete is unpaid and it could be for up to 12 months !!! Quote
Liam O'Rourke Posted October 16, 2025 Posted October 16, 2025 14 minutes ago, mrtrickio said: I'm not sure how legal this is, but USA... However, the latest is that the non compete is unpaid and it could be for up to 12 months !!! If that story is true, there's no fucking way they can enforce that. Quote
digforvictory Posted October 16, 2025 Posted October 16, 2025 You surely cannot fire someone and then prevent them from getting another job for 12 months without paying them a fucking penny? Even for the capitalist nightmare that is the USA that would be fucking ridiculous. Quote
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