They could do without the entourage, the entrance looks decent until the lights come on and suddenly it's double the dorks.
Callis is ok for what he is but Cutler and Nakazawa are so small time. No casual fan will take them seriously with those two goofs in tow.
The Americans like to take TV ratings seriously and 10-15% are tuning out every time they’re on TV. Not a good look.
Lame goons only really work for heels. Cutler is at least good at being inept and it's a thousand times better than the dungeons and dragons gimmick he had before.
+1 for not liking lame goons.
Even Danhausen is pretty irrelevant now.
I'm a twit
Death triangle as well, great looking entrance all mean and moody and then some other fella runs out waving at everybody and killing the entire thing. I swear AEW could sack half their staff and you'd be hard pressed to notice.
I just watched the Women’s title match from Dynamite this week. It was a really good TV match but it wasn’t as great as Twitter is making it out to be (nowhere near the Storm match at Full Gear). But Hayter is the future of women’s wrestling. She’s got the basics, psychology, timing, positioning, look, size. Hardly anyone in wrestling, male or female, has that these days unfortunately. Other than MJF, I don’t think there’s anyone I look forward to seeing more (I would say FTR but they’ve been ruined and I would say Starks but he’s feuding with Jericho now and I don’t have the confidence that they’ll put him over).
Just have a look through the amount of matches on the Dark tapings, there must be 200 under contract. Tony can barely write storylines to entertain 10 of them, no wonder there are so many “stars” in purgatory.
Is there going to be a situation where AEW's hour count of TV hits WWE's? 'cos fuck that.
Dunno if this is much of a contributing factor but I saw somebody (Meltzer? Alvarez?) talking about Miro and saying he in particular but also other ex-WWE guys are a bit "leery" of doing jobs for no obvious reason on TV but with promises of getting something back down the road because, y'know, WWE. So there's possibly a group of his roster who he's signed with promises that "nah we're not like that other place! You're gonna do great here! Big plans!" only to then either get nothing or bad plans for you.
The roster bloat is real. I dunno if it's worse than WWE's was before Vince started firing everybody but if not it must be getting there and now HHH is doing it again as well. I'll be interested to see if his comments on people needing to do well within a certain amount of time or their contracts will be allowed to run down will actually come to anything. He must be a bit disappointed in how some of them have performed. Kross and Hit Row in particular. But then bringing back the latter sans-Swerve was always going to be a risk, especially direct to main roster.
Hit Row would be fine without Swerve if he was replaced, just having him not there made it feel like there was a massive hole.
Also, yeah Triple H has started the bloat and I think that's why I've stopped watching the weekly shows, they were very good when he first came in as they were fairly precise in what they were doing but it's now a bit flabby.
I’m on the side of the wrestlers in that doing jobs on TV for no reason is bad because Tony thinks booking random matches on TV with no rhyme or reason but good workers is good booking which is absolute nonsense, but then at the same time these guys will probably go back to WWE and do the same thing so whatever. But at least Triple H is incapable of booking clean finishes on TV so they might get protected a bit.
People wanking themselves silly over Bray Wyatt having a 3 minute match with Jinder Mahal
They'll never learn.
I finally got round to watching that Gunther vs. Ricochet match from Smackdown a few weeks ago. Readers of this thread might be surprised to learn Ricochet isn't really my cup of tea but this match was great considering it was a TV match and Gunther made Ricochet look really good. The high flying was toned down so when he did it, it actually meant something (that SSP was glorious). Funny how an actual wrestling match as opposed to mindless flips gets the crowd engaged (when was the last time a WWE crowd popped hard for a suplex and two count?). I can't recall a better TV match in WWE this year.
Ricochet has never really been egregiously flippy in his NXT/ WWE work. I mean he is a high flyer obviously but it's not been gymnastics dressed up as a wrestling match.
It was a really fun match though. They're obvious foils for each other and I wouldn't be against them getting a proper big PPV match at some point.
I was there live and near the front for Ricochet/Ospreay when the top rope broke. About as flippy as they come… and it was immense.
Acclaimed burying Jarrett
Dragon Lee has signed for WWE. Of all the flippy guys out there, he’s one of the best. But he doesn’t speak English so I guess he’s confined to NXT.
Shame that. He’s one of the best sellers I’ve ever seen.
I still swear he was out cold for the one-winged angel.
I'm a twit
Apparently there is a bit more to this. Lee wanted to work New Japan but can’t as long as he works with AAA because of NJPW’s deal with CMLL (big rivalry between those two Mexican companies). Lee burned his bridges with CMLL so NJPW won’t sign him out of respect for that partnership. And now Dorian Roldan (AAA owner) has praised WWE’s signing of Lee because apparently he wants to dump AEW and partner with WWE.
There was a big AAA show last night in which FTR lost their titles and Sammy/Tay were stripped of theirs (for supposedly no-showing three times) so now AAA has no outstanding obligations to AEW contracted wrestlers.
The deal for Lee to WWE has supposedly been finalised a while but AAA wanted to wait until they jettisoned the AEW talent before announcing it. Lee won a title last night so winning a title on his way out would have looked really odd if all this wasn’t transpiring behind the scenes.
Is he the guy they unmasked after a match on AEW and never referred to it again?
Yeah that’s him.
Tony Khan Booker of the Year.
This is what I was referring to by the way. Lots of fun little lines in there.
Probably would have worked better without Billy Gunn being there.
I watched some wrestling last night and this morning. Here are some of my thoughts.
AAA: I scanned through the show because of the FTR match (also involving Dragon Lee) but it was shite. Proper wrestlers can't cut it in AAA, it's a world to itself. They also mentioned Dragon Lee would be wrestling for WWE "on Tuesdays" so maybe he's got a dual contract. There was also a mental match in the middle involving a clown called Dave, a crossdresser called Jessy Ventura and a fat terrible wrestler called Hamburgesa. El Hijo del Vikingo could be great.
AEW: if it takes Danielson 16 minutes to beat Ethan Page then there's no way he beats MJF so why should I care about that feud? Also Ethan Page is pretty crap in the ring, he's just a moves guy who doesn't know why he's doing them, they should keep him to short matches and heel promos. He's actually good on the mic so why does he need Stokely? He should just fuck off. Speaking of fucking off, these continued backstage health check skits with Hangman and the fat goofy cunt in the background are awful. The BCC vs. Top Flight match was good because the young kids could bump around but it was too long, two main event guys should be putting these kids away a lot quicker. Tony ignores logic in the pursuit of Meltzer stars. The crowd goes mad for Hook but I don't get the hype. Same for Jungle Boy who just has no fire in his mannerisms despite having the look of the quintessential fiery underdog babyface. Big Bill (I guess that's his name now) looks fucking awesome but his inevitable match will be pants. Starks is ruined now he's feuding with Jericho. You all know my opinions on the Best of Seven stuff and the stip made this even worse because these guys can't do the walk and brawl thing. I hope Omega is saving himself for the Ospreay match at WK next week because he was tragic here. I skipped after PAC kicked out of a powerbomb onto a garbage can (how is that not a three count?). Samoa Joe is a proper badass heel now and it's great but they've ruined my boy Wardlow to get there.
WWE: Raw being a Best of 2022 was a pleasant surprise.
NJPW: the final Suzuki-gun match was brilliant if you're into them and know their history.
Need to watch yesterday's Stardom show because apparently the World title match is great.
Do you mean re: WWE because it's nice that they're actually giving people some time off over Christmas now?
No because otherwise Raw would be shite.
But yeah sure that too.
Guessing Big Bill is the old Big Cass? Good move if so because 'W Morrissey' is such a clunky name.
Surely it's Goldberg.
Don West has died. Kind of coincidental considering he named AJ Styles’ Pele Kick.
He used to get mixed reviews back in the day but my God he was the best hypeman going. He’d get you invested in all of the crap Russo dreamed up.
Wait until Lewis sees Cena's bald spot.
Just skimmed through Smackdown. His bald spot gets bigger every time you see it. And that's some shiner Owens got.
Similarly earlier Gunther appears to have taken an inadvertent chairshot to the head and got BUSTED WIDE OPEN as well.
Lastly, that is about the most Charlotte title win imaginable.
When did Jordan Devlin and Zack Gibson fall victim to the NXT random name generator? Just awful.
Rise above hat.
Around the same time a few months ago I think.
I've decided to accept Gunther since they've changed the name but are, now Vince is gone, treating him seriously, but the GYV name and now gimmick changes are grim.
They weren't the level of the peak NXT tag division but they were really good.
I loved the Grizzled Young Vets, they were great and part of a seriously strong NXT UK tag division.
Even Pretty Deadly who look like twats are seriously talented.
So is it Bo Dallas playing Uncle Howdy?
It was me all along, Austin.
The new names are shit as per but one small plus is that they are back to wearing wrestling gear when actually wrestling. Joe Gacy spent the last year just looking like a fat estate agent in every match
I should really add some NXT back into the rotation. Vince’s version drove me away.
Nope.
Who needs all those vertebrae anyway.
You can get by with one kidney.
What is he trying to do there?