Beaut of a show today. Cole/MJF at All In, while historically not a match I'd have had much interest watching in that slot, works perfectly given the story they're going for. I suppose this means that we'll have CM Punk's off-brand world title being a separate entity longer than All-In, which is perfectly good, that story's got some legs on it for sure. I've had an inkling this eventually ends with Cole betraying MJF and validating everything he's always felt about not trusting people, which is a compelling story, but the concept of them actually staying friends after and proving to MJF that there's good in the world is equally compelling, could be fun.
So happy for Shida, she deserves a run in front of fans and the division needs a shake-up. I wasn't sure whether they'd be willing to do it tonight so it was a pleasant surprise.
Swerve getting the promo we've all been waiting for him to get. A true mega-heel promo that makes him look legit as hell. This is how you start getting his character to the levels we've all wanted him to get to.
And a win for Trent? Over Moxley/Penta? That's a heck of a win, glad for him.
The first bits of All In hype levels are starting to set in, and that's good.
This is pretty much it. They need to be willing to commit more time slots to the division. Right now it's like they're afraid to give the division any more time because it has historically got lower ratings than the men's, but it's a chicken and egg situation, since they've always been shucked off to the worst timeslot and never given investment. So of course people are going to become accustomed to tuning out for that section.
Make a concerted effort to allocate more of the show's time to the division and better booking and more focus will inherently come, since they'll have a larger portion of the show 'on the line' depending on the division being good television. It was a rough transition at the start for WWE too - the first women's rumble was weak because the division was tiny, and it felt forced to give a women's version of every big match. After a couple years though, it was the norm and the strength of the division started to shine through. They've still got a ways to go on their side of things as well on the main roster nowadays, but it's in a better state than AEW for sure.
Now's the best time to do it with the brand split - there's more television time to go around than ever.
Wonderful news! They're the heart and soul of the company and it would be a gigantic hit to lose them at this stage of their career and AEW's lifecycle.
Crazy good show this week. MJF and Adam Cole are obviously the highlight, and not much to say there that hasn't already been covered. Best storyline they've got right now by a country mile.
The CM Punk stuff is interesting, I'm a fan of any belt defacing and/or duplicate belt angle, so this is right up my alley. Pleased to see they're finally making strides toward All In.
The ladder match was crazy, they put it all out there and created a hell of a fun match.
The upcoming dynamite card is weirdly un-exciting for a special dynamite 200 in my opinion, outside of Storm/Shida which should be a banger. But sometimes the best shows are the ones with the least exciting cards.
I'm here, I just don't watch shows live personally so I pop in for the post-show comments
I found this week's to be a bit of a step below the last stretch. They've been on a real hot streak though lately so a down week one of these days was sure to come. With all of The Elite getting the week off though and them holding significant MJF/Cole developments for Saturday this was bound to happen. The in-ring action was really good though, as always. Swerve/Darby is such a good pairing that you can never complain about a Wednesday when you get to see them do what they do.
That sign about the Women's division says it all though regarding them. I can't help but wonder what the root cause here is, is it a WBD thing by any chance or just a Tony thing? You've heard scattered reports over the years about how WBD does have an influence on who gets screentime and whatnot and in ROH you're seeing a much better booked women's division. I can't help but wonder if it's a WBD directive to limit their minutes due to historically lower ratings for their segments and to focus primarily on the marketable women like Britt/Jade/etc which is hurting the division at large.
Now that Pac is about to become remembered by gravity, Andrade will fill the role as The Man Announcers Forgot
I'd second this, provided they're interested in the role. They've been doing a wonderful job kick-starting activity into the magazine and taking the reigns in getting all the threads started, much better of a job than I could dream of doing.
I think it was entirely real, and I vaguely recall Tony Khan himself acknowledging it, it's just that it's more of codifying rules they've informally had for a long time and that there's no shortage of exceptions made for the talent they trust. Anyone thinking it would significantly affect the on-screen product like a night and day difference was out to lunch for sure.
It was a fun show, but dare I say the blood and guts match didn't quite match my expectations, mostly due to production errors. It felt like the cameras were missing lots of important spots, which took it out of it a little bit. I get it, it's a tough match to get everything right with how chaotic it is, just a bit unfortunate. The storyline within it was good though, BCC losing because their extras weren't fully invested in the relationship whereas Elite is all close thus sticks together, Mox surrendering to save Yuta, showing his first ounce of humanity since joining BCC.
The tag match was fun though! My fiancé got a huge kick out of the dance-off, I appreciate how MJF is intimately familiar with the special secret disco button. Very interested to see where things go from here.
Hook/Jack was interesting. The match itself was good and Hook will seemingly always impress me, Perry needs to keep tweaking his heel persona for sure but he's getting crazy boos in the arena so the fans are responding well to him which is good.
All in all decent show, I'm excited to see how they start to build towards All In now that we're past Blood & Guts.
It was a fun show, but dare I say the blood and guts match didn't quite match my expectations, mostly due to production errors. It felt like the cameras were missing lots of important spots, which took it out of it a little bit. I get it, it's a tough match to get everything right with how chaotic it is, just a bit unfortunate.
The tag match was fun though! My fiancé got a huge kick out of the dance-off, I appreciate how MJF is intimately familiar with the special secret disco button. Very interested to see where things go from here.
Hook/Jack was interesting. The match itself was good and Hook will seemingly always impress me, Perry needs to keep tweaking his heel persona for sure but he's getting crazy boos in the arena so the fans are responding well to him which is good.
All in all decent show, I'm excited to see how they start to build towards All In now that we're past Blood & Guts.
I think most everyone else has covered my thoughts, what with the rules as they stand being pretty good.
I'll echo the sentiment of a meme Thursday or something being a good way to fill the gap on a day where there aren't any prominent shows going on.
I can see where you're coming from there for sure, but I guess it's more the sense that it was a tad silly that there wasn't anyone from England in a faction named Blackpool Combat Club ever since Regal left. Regionally named factions without anyone in the faction being at least presented as being vaguely from the area is an odd concept to me.
I would remark that it would be equally silly if there wasn't any American or anyone presented as being vaguely American in style in the Hollywood Hunks and would probably make the same note if they finally added an American to that faction.
It's probably a matter of how Kbin and Lemmy interact. On Kbin I see two moderators listed.
Pac honestly makes perfect sense there in hindsight, and he did a wonderful job in his short promo time last night. Obviously, being from England the Blackpool aspect of it is a natural fit, his style both in-ring and as a character fits perfectly with the group, and he's extremely ready for a strong heel run after being in the background for a bit for the last little while. I hope his addition to BCC is permanent and not just for this match.
I find it particularly interesting how MJF translates so well in both our cases. I always would have thought that he would have been much more of a 'smark hit' than someone who would come across well to brand new watchers. Exact same thing here, without having any idea who he is and even his history as a massive asshole (given her first exposure to him was when he was already into the 'fake babyface' role last week), the moment he's on screen her interest is at 100%. His natural charisma and ability to work in any role (be it comedy, reluctant temporary face, serious heel, etc) must be really translating really well and it says a lot about just how special of a talent he is that he can capture new fans right off the bat while keeping his stuff interesting to the hardcores as well by backing it up with great in-ring psychology and whatnot.
So, I've found myself observing an interesting situation recently. I don't know if any of this is interesting to folks or just ramblings, but I figure in a community which could use more content there could be some interesting bits and pieces in there.
Backstory: I went to the Dynamite/Rampage show last week in Edmonton and my Fiance' came along since somebody else dropped out last minute. She's never watched wrestling before outside of 30 seconds here and there when I'm watching. To my surprise, she's become hooked on wrestling and has been watching every show with me since.
I figure since people on the internet are always particularly interested in discussing a promotion's 'casual appeal', but it's always hard to actually gauge what a truly casual fan would enjoy due to our perspective of being engrossed in the product so deeply, it might be interesting to hear what's particularly interesting and not interesting to somebody who is well and truly going into this blind.
Her favorite storyline: She's been absolutely all over the MJF/Adam Cole story - I think it's accessible since you can tell the dynamic without any context. A reluctant bromance where hilarity ensues - I've found that the comedy angles, in general, hit the right beats and capture her attention whereas other areas of the show more reliant on background knowledge start to lose her attention.
Favorite wrestlers: She's a big fan of Darby Allin, Adam Cole/MJF, Orange Cassidy, and Ruby Soho so far. I think the common thread here is these are all the people who have a really distinctive look or presentation. She always talks about how she thinks Darby's entrance is the coolest thing ever.
Biggest surprise: Double J is a hit - I believe the quote is "Why is this old man so entertaining, he has no right being that good" when we were at the show
Other random insights:
- She's more interested in the matches themselves than I expected a new fan to be - I always pictured lots of the angles would be where you hook people and the matches are where you keep them, but the crazy moves are seemingly what particularly draws her interest in the first place and the storylines are a bit of an afterthought
- Building on the note above that it seems comedy-related storylines hit well here, she's very into the Jack Perry recurring storyline of him running from Hook. I find that interesting given how cold of a reception his first promo got from the more hardcore fans online
- Elite/BCC is doing absolutely nothing for her - not a huge surprise since the last 2 weeks of it hasn't had much in the way of huge explanations on their history and has just been lots of run-ins. I believe the quote I got last night was "wait, so why is Kenny Omega your favorite wrestler again?"
- I was a bit surprised at how quickly a brand new person picks up everyone's 'shtick' for the most part. You really don't need any long-term context to have fun going along with the Acclaimed doing what they do or hating Don Callis for fun.
- Not a surprise here, but as a women she's way more interested in womens matches and I can definitely see how AEW is missing out by only having the one women's segment each week.
- Physique and 'believability' and whatnot of a wrestler doesn't matter to her whatsoever. You often see people on the internet talk about how you might lose casuals if you have little guys getting wins over bigger guys because it stops being believable. I don't think she noticed or cared about a big beefy guy once outside of being shocked at how tall Big Bill is.
- Video packages seem real good for helping with a new fan. Just getting 2 weeks of pretty simple but effective packages about Nick Wayne made her super excited to watch his match. They did a great job at filling her in as to why we should cheer for him and why he's one to watch for the future
Takeaways: Not sure there's anything we didn't specifically already know - mostly that AEW can lose the casual viewers when they over-rely on the audience already knowing what's going on for things and they might be leaving some long-term viewers on the table by not focusing enough on women's wrestling. I suppose the extent to which comedy-related angles and gimmicks are over with her interested me. It's no surprise they open the show almost every week with Orange Cassidy - his entire shtick is extremely digestible with little to no context.
If you have any other questions about things that didn't get touched on that you're curious about what a brand new fan thought of it, feel free to ask away.
Fun show! Not a whole lot comes to mind to note outside of wanting to point out that Nick Wayne had a great showing and they've done a wonderful job hyping up his debut. Kid's got an incredible future ahead of him for sure.
Yeah, it's tough. I think most of us would love to also throw in some WWE discussions, but it just so happens that most of the active folks here at the moment are watching only AEW, myself included. I'd love to see some WWE discussions in there but as somebody who isn't watching it personally, I feel a little disingenuous posting about something of which I don't have much of substance to add. I imagine it's a pretty similar situation for most of us here.
It's very welcome content though! I hope nobody is seeing the AEW-heavy content there and thinking their WWE thoughts are better taken elsewhere.
Looking forward to this one - I get the sense some people have soured already on Kommander, but I'm always going to be a fan of my good ol' flippy boys.
I never followed Japan so don't know anything about Ibushi outside of the general history with Omega and bits and pieces I've read over the years, but people are excited to see him so if it's him I'm looking forward to seeing what he's about.
BCC could be anyone - obviously Jerhicho is in the mix since they had a promo last week, but it seems like they're going a different direction with a surprise. Honestly have no idea. I don't know if Ospreay is back in Japan now but I feel like if they're gunning for Omega/Ospeay at All-In, that could be a fun way to keep him in the mix.
I've found that the encounter builder is usually fine, but I would spend lots of extra time setting up encounters using it only to find that the things I plucked haphazardly were only about, say, 20% less balanced on average.
At the end of the day it became a question on if it was worth it to run every encounter through that for being only marginally better than just grabbing and going. For some, they have the time to spare and it is worth it, and that's perfectly great! For myself I found that the extra variance just made things interesting and that 20% extra imbalance could be made up by the odd sneaky adjustment on the fly if I was ridiculously off base in where I expected the fight to end up in difficulty.
Just curious on what everyone's high-level thoughts are on how they're feeling on AEW's current path/decisions/roster/etc. now that we've had a taste on how they're going to go forward in this new situation of two 'primary' shows.
It's seeming like there won't be too much of a 'brand split' in the traditional sense, what with Acclaimed and Punk both being implied to be at Dynamite this Wednesday, so I'm curious as to how they handle things in that regard going forward, whether there will be relatively stable rosters for each that just tend to be on each show and some crossovers, or if it will be entirely freeball with the shows just filling up more haphazardly.
All things considered, personally I'm a fan of the structure that comes with a more hardline brand split, and how it forces shows to make more space for the lowercard just by necessity, so I was a bit sad to see it doesn't appear to be going that way, but I'm hopeful they can go an interesting direction with things under the current arrangement.
I don't have a fancy post with all the match results and everything like SquaredCircle normally gets - just figured someone might as well toss a thread together for this.
Thoughts on tonight's show?