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Here's the fatal flaw of this lame *BRAND SUPREMACY* stuff... who are the crowd supposed to cheer for? In previous years it made no sense because if you're a WWE fan, Raw & Smackdown are both WWE. And the rosters rotate so often there is NO DIFFERENCE. So who do the fans cheer for? Who is the face? Who is the heel? Now you throw in NXT. Okay in theory I could get behind WWE vs NXT because it's plausible main roster guys *could* dislike the "minor leagues" and NXT guys *could* dislike the main roster making more money or whatever. But it's Raw vs Smackdown vs NXT instead. It's too muddy. It's too artificial. There's no real brand to cheer. Its like a Survivor Series Match in the 90s that's Superstars vs Wrestling Challenge vs Action Zone. So then it comes down to okay you're supposed to cheer for the performers you like. Shades of grey. All of that is fine in theory, but then the make the wrestlers really fucking stupid. Why would Shayna and her crew team up with their hated fucking rivals that they're fighting in a cage just cause some women with blue shirts and red shows show up? Makes me not want to cheer for any of those performers because there is no logic in that. No one wants to root for idiots. Characters that make out of character choices that don't make sense tend to turn off the audience, see Stone Cold joining McMahon and him cooling wayyyyy off immediately. A heel tun that made sense would have been fine, but they chose for him to join up with the one guy that his character would never logically team up with. This show more than any other soured me on NXT as an alternative brand. They are literally no different than Raw or Smackdown now. Same formula. Same sound byte yelling commentary. Same illogical *BRAND SUPREMACY* booking. Listen there were some really good matches tonight. And some really fun moments. But I just can't get behind a show full of characters that do stupid things. That was never NXT before they decided to become an official third brand. Maybe I'm wrong, but a year or two years down the road this is going to be seen as a major mistake. AEW has the money to fight long term. And WWE just swallowed up their own alternative and decided to make it more like the rest of the sloppy illogical main roster brands. Which kills the edgy vibe NXT had. And it also further dilutes Raw & Smackdown because there's now three brands doing the same thing. For clarification I'm not stating all of this as fact. This is just my opinion. There will be differing opinions and I'm okay with that. But just for me, this Survivor Series stuff is what officially turned me off of the NXT as an alternative. It's just WWECW again.

Orange casually lowering his sunglasses to get a better look at Kiss's ass was great as well

I was ill prepared to read this tweet and now I can't explain the laughter coming from my office

Even when he isn't the main emphasis Orange Cassidy still provides the best moment

I make a quick chart for anybody wanting a week by week of the whole AEW/NXT thing 2.3M viewers on October 2nd. 1.8M last night. Last night may have had second most combined viewers of a Wednesday night over the AEW Dynamite run. The sequence has been: 2.3, 1.808, 1.73, 1.66, 1.34, 1.635, 1.71, and 1.809. Although I believe the official line from some accounts is that the only reason NXT won is because Mr. Burns recruited baseball all-stars to beat the Shelbyville plant team in a softball game and old people gave NXT the win over the slightly less old AEW fanbase.

I thought that was the guy pretending to be a black man on Twitter defending Cornette.

It hit me last night that the double team combo Camel Clutch/Boston Crab should be called the "Reqiuem for a Dream"

Thorry! ? I know they're in a ratings war but I can't stand the split screen. Just psychologically, it takes me out of the match because I feel like, right or wrong, nothing important is going to happen during the break. I feel like the Private Party/PnP match was not as great as I'd hoped for, but maybe it was good and the split screen for a large chunk of it just killed it for me. Other stuff: SCU goading cartoon villain Jericho into getting what they want was tremendous. Who knew the smarky smark wrestling company would be the one bringing back the buffoonish heel? Britt Baker and MJF have seriously got to lay off the spray tan. Baker looked like Trump out there. I say that with no hyperbole at all. Girl was orange like Ben Grimm. MJF was slightly less orange but still edging in to Oompa Loompa territory. Billy Gunn admiring Sunny Kiss' ass was somethign else. Who knew 2019 would give us a new, non-binary, non hetero normative ass man? Jackson vs Rey Fenix was balls-out amazing. This is the style of AEW; essentially PWG dialed back just a bit. I can understand traditionalists not being into it but I love me some video game wrestling, I guess I'm still traditional enough to not really love a wrestling dinosaur, among the biggest guys on the roster, working a kung fu gimmick instead of chokeslamming dudes to death Kenny Omega's decent promo about needing to get back on track by defeating Pac (fuck you, that rhymes!) was derailed by his bench press humor. Real misfire there. Ortiz went full heal by wrestling in those gross "five finger" shoes Mox vs Allin was really good. I enjoyed Allin's vignette that led directly to him being brought into the arena in a body bag They've done a tremendous job of giving us just enough Orange Cassidy every week without overexposing his somewhat limiting gimmick Baker vs Shida was acceptable. Shida is a fucking STAR. Baker hung with her well enough, but after Fenix/Jackson, she just looked so slow and clumsy Great show overall. I like how they understand that you don;t need every single wrestler on every single show every single week

Not to derail things but figured I'd post this here instead of the ROH thread. So as stated in the LoC section we're moving from Baltimore to Harford County. It's kind of bittersweet but we're looking forward to it. But between the legal shit and the packing it was a ton more stressful then we anticipated. But settlement's tomorrow and we finally got all the BS done with so tonight was a big ol' sigh of relief. Instead of just chilling at home we decided to go to Jimmy's Seafood one more time (at least for quite awhile) We get there and are just chilling out with drinks when the owner comes around. He's a homophobic asshat and I couldn't care less about him, but we had pleasant small talk anyway since "Fuck it, we're leaving anyway!" At the end he points out Marty Scurll's at the a table by the door. Sure enough we look over and it's him, Josh Woods, Matt Taven and Vinny Marsagelia (sp?) The other three are nice to see but my wife just was beside herself over the fact Marty was there for...reasons. And I had quite a bit of man-crush for Marty but seeing him in person only intensified that (no shame here, folks, he is quite lovely in person) Anyway, we finish up and are on our way out and with a bit of trepidation we say hi to them and they couldn't have been nicer. They were filming stuff for ROH TV and Final Battle and had to stop by at Jimmys because it's "Good shit, pal!" We chatted for a bit and wished them the best and left on quite the emotional high. Long story short moving is stressful and scary at points. But if our last night in Baltimore was being in the same room as Marty and others (and meeting them on our way out) then we're leaving on one helluva high note. And if Marty does indeed go to AEW then it was delightful meeting him before he moves on.

@Cobra Commander I said in the AEW thread that the fact that the combined Wednesday viewership is higher than some 3rd hours of Raw hopefully bodes well for the sustainability of great midweek wrestling (or speaks to the shocking recent Raw viewer retention, YMMV), albeit there is some hotshotting on the NXT side. On another note, this week’s best wrestler reaction is a hotly run contest between Peyton Royce’s roar and ‘hang loose’ at Joes entrance, and Jungle Boy covering his eyes in horror as Orange Cassidy winds up to decapitate Billy Gunn with a brutal kick. I’m an unashamed fan of the IIconics act, and Jungle Boy is so entertaining with his non-wrestling body language.

Because older folks have been watching the WWE since probably the 70's or got into in the 80's when their kids (us) were into it. I don't think this was so much a win for NXT. Maybe if they promoted who would be there and told us ahead of time Becky vs. Rhea, that number would have been over a million. It's kinda the same reason some people stick with soaps despite how bad it might have gotten. "Well, I've been watching since X date so I don't want to give up now just cause it's bad". AEW is so refreshing to watch though. It's not perfect, but stylistically is just so different than the WWE. Like in AEW I can think of at least five guys who could actually be World Champion and if those same 5 guys were in the WWE, they'd be lucky to get on Main Event. AEW is fantastic with presentation like that.

Former Vikings kicker Fred Cox passed away. While he was a very good kicker in the late 60's and 70's; his real claim to fame is that he was the inventor of the NERF football. Where would America be without that foam toy in our lives

Weird, random thought, but does it bug anyone else that there's a Kay Lee Ray and a Kylie Rae?

this match <3

That was one of my favorite episodes. Loved pretty much everything. Great matches and great setting up for the future.

Peter Avalon reading a children's book about dinosaurs to prepare for his match later on in the night against Luchasaurus was amazing.

I thought this when I saw it in the first battle royal. Billy Gunn needs to stay the fuck away from anything AEW. Fans losing their shit over a guy who was a WWE C-teamer fifteen years ago and then destroying everyone in the ring is not a good look. That being said, I wish I could look even 1/3 as good when I hit 50. Jesus Christ, he's 56????

Going to close this for a day. Nerves are too raw right now. Y'all are just lucky @RIPPAis asleep.

I'm 62, so I'm old enough to fall on the far side of the "50+" demo. I grew up watching Florida and Georgia wrestling, stuck with NWA through the Crockett era, and thought WWF was a dogshit clown show during their initial national push. I didn't come around at all to Vince's product until he put Bret Hart on top. The time came when WWF was the only game in town and so I watched it, fitfully. I haven't followed the current product on any kind of a regular basis for several years, aside from what I read about it on this site. For the last two weeks, I've just happened to be alone in hotel rooms on Wednesday night and, with nothing better to do, have toggled back and forth between AEW and NXT. To me, the AEW show has been consistently better, both in presentation of angles and in-ring work. I'm not sure why my fellow old farts disagree, other than that they've never watched anything other than McMahon's product and so have no tools with which to evaluate professional wrestling.

AEW Dream Match: Moxley vs Nick Jackson in a Hair vs Hair match. Ends in a draw, so they both have to shave their heads.

Just watched Moxely v Darby and I really liked it. Darby’s punches were wild and shitty and totally appropriate for someone in his position fighting for their lives. I’m not sure the hand work really got as over as it deserved to but I appreciated it. These are the types of matches that get hurt in the AEW universe from spot blowing as the paradigm shift off the top was a big deal but would be even bigger if Janella wasn’t doing avalanche package piledrivers to Marko Stunt. I liked the flow of the ending sequences of the coffin drop counter to the sleeper counter to the finish. It never felt ridiculous by overdoing kick outs while still making both guys look tough/clever. I would show people this match to sell them on Darby as a up and comer and Mox as a superstar.

Random thoughts from the show: - That opening match was so so good and absolutely delivered. I hope they go with a single Fenix run because he's just breathtaking to watch. Nick was excellent as expected too and made sense that he took the loss as Rey is the more experienced singles competitor. Best match of the night by far. - Its crazy how much bigger wrestlers from the previous eras were compared to know. Even MJF who looks like a pretty built guy looked tiny next to Billy Gunn. When Gunn was standing right behind him it looked like an Incredible Hulk cover with the before and after transformation. - Jericho's segment was great as usual, loved the use of Hager saying "sorry", funniest thing he's ever done. I was worried about Scorpio Sky being in the mic against Jericho but he came off really well. The reverse psychology they used to get Chris to make it a title match next week was great and Jericho's grin and delivery of "we shook hand! it's official" was just perfect. Marko stunt coming out after Jericho bullied him a bit backstage (during a commercial break I think) made sense and led to the big pop and stare down between Luchasaurus and Hager. - PP vs PP dragged a bit for me. Had some good spots but it got a bit boring. I watch on Fite but did they really took 2 commercial breaks during this? Seems badly timed if that's the case. - After the Omega match and last week's promo Moxley just feels on another level and comes off as a HUGE star. His entrance alone just makes him seem like a big deal. Loved that Darby brought the fight and they had a good match with a sick ending. Great show again and not a bad episode so far.

Holy fucking shit. Jimmy Garvin has been lurking as an Easter Egg on Simon Cowell's "Wrestlemania The Album" for 25 years.

I echo all the statements here. They need to time those commercials better for sure. Shida is great, Britt is not. I could hear her telling Shida not to hit so hard during the match, and considering she got a bloody nose from it she wasn’t wrong. I can’t comment on her backstage stuff either as I’ve never heard much that I trust but if she’s a negative force in the back and isn’t setting the world on in the ring it’s time to move on. Can AEW wrestlers take outside bookings? Or is that just for Jericho and Moxley? Baker needs to tour the indies more and come back as a heel. I thought Scorpio Sky came across pretty well against Jericho, better than I thought. Not make or break for him next week but it’s a good test for sure. Jericho and Sky as the new Flair and Sting? I’ve seen crazier. Lastly, that’s the second non 3 count for no reason on live TV and it’s bad. They covered okay on commentary but this is basic shit that needs to work. A third botch like this is pretty unforgivable at this point. Huge Show next week! Should be rad and since it’s just another Wednesday in Canada I don’t need to worry about travelling for the holidays and can just drink it in, man.

seeing a Copper Fit Compression Glove commercial on ESPNU really made me think of 1980s Mid South Ted DiBiase. The commercial didn't have anybody using a glove to knock out the JYD though.

About what? The part where you publicly insinuated she exchanged sexual favours for training? http://deathvalleydriver.com/forum/index.php?/topic/7257-nxt-oct-17-2018-tv-spoilers-taped-920/

Darby/Mox (AEW EDITION) is my second favourite match in the promotion's history after, obviously, the Rhodes' bloody brawl. Way better than their match in a dumpy indie. Darby getting 50/50 reactions against Jon fucking Moxley! That woman in the front row with the Allin makeup too. Yaaaaay! Great storytelling with both guys weaving their very well defined characters into the match's narrative. Darby's worked the fingers both matches v. Moxley and he has some fantastic offense for it. I disagree with the idea this was a weaker episode. Hot opener that had a bit of storytelling in it with Nick not adapting to singles action as well as Fenix. I marked out hard for a lot of that battle royal even if it started with too much shit going on and the production team missing some of it. Ass man vs. Sonny Kiss and then OC? Hell yah. Billy Gunn should get squashed hard by Wardlow in December to put him on the shelf "permanently" and establish Wardlow as a killer. How great was that Jungle Boy elimination, btw? Once it settled down, it was a very fun battle royal with lots of guys shining and Mjeff doing Mjeff things. Mjeff gonna win Battlebowl, you guys. Great Jericho promo with Scorpio looking as close to a star to date in the build to the biggest match of his career. Nice bit of interconnecting angles leading to the Luchasaurus squash. Only downside was a second ref count botch in a month during that Private Party/Proud & Powerful tag that was moving along nicely up to that point. Come on now... I feel like the mandate needs to be count the three if you're a ref even if it's not the planned finish. The botch just completely pulls the audience out of its immersion. Oh and that Dark Order vignette? Thing of fucking beauty. Well shot and it finally gives the Dark Order a purpose, further explaining why they would try to tempt little Marko Stunt. I love it so much. Just get them putties some real putty gear and we are good to fucking go, baby! OH OH, Shida got the best match out of Britt yet! After she got busted up she started to look a little emotionally engaged even if her offense was mostly still dog shit. Let's hope that this is them starting to shift away from Baker, #1 All American babyface that is a dentist, don't you know. Turn her heel and have her cheat to win and not do a whole lot on offense other than shitty heel things until she can get better (problem with house shows though is that she can't experiment). Shida brought it tonight. Hell ya. For me, it was one of my favourite editions so far. Next week has one of the stronger line-ups on paper. I'll be glued to the TV for it.

I'm pretty upset that Becky/Rhea didn't get any proper amount of time. Rhea is one of my favorites currently, and Becky is Becky. Goddamnit. I just finished the tag match, so I'm about to see KLR vs Dakota Kai, which sounds fantastic. I'll probably fast forward after that to the end of the ladder match, since nothing else interests me on the show. I don't know why it's RAW vs Smackdown vs NXT when it's been established for years that NXT is better than the main roster. RAW and Smackdown should be uniting against NXT, not everyone fighting everyone. WWE vs NXT plays better for the month than three bands battling (and, yes, I know NXT is WWE, but you get the point). --- EDIT: Case in point - the main roster women attack KLR and Dakota Kai. Who saves them? The face and heel teams for the women's WarGames match. IT MAKES NO SENSE. These women hate each other enough that Regal put them into a match like WarGames, but they can put that aside because brand supremacy? Fuck outta here with that shit. They could have went so many different ways with NXT being involved in Survivor Series, and they just do the same old tired stuff. We could have had a two night supercard of NXT vs WWE, culminating in a WarGames match on each show (Men on one, Women on the other). That's just one example of the route they could have taken. I mean, why do the midcard and tag champions of all the brands have to face each other, but the top champions (Cole, Lesnar, Wyatt) don't? Why was NXT: UK only involved for one week if they aren't involved at Survivor Series? Why isn't KLR in the match with Bayley, Becky and Shayna? I'm going to lose. my. shit. if Ciampa and Cole's teams fight off the main roster workers at the end.

Was the board always this thirsty and I just didn't notice?

I did hear it. You didn't miss anything besides bad ad-libbing that went far too long. The only good thing about it was the fact that Avalon was using dinosaur books to try to plan his match with Luchasaurus.

For context, NXT did 916k. AEW won every demo except 50+.

Damn, man. Way to fuck things up, Greg. But that's just one more reason to say "Fuck ROH!"

God, can we PLEASE get them back in NXT? Are they doing anything on the main roster that is so important we couldn’t have them back in the one show where they actually were over and get to do shit like this match on the regular?

I won’t comment about any backstage kerfuffle that happened with Baker, because I haven’t read about any extra stuff with her. But I’ll say after last night I hope she isn’t put in any position to be in a potential contenders match. She wasn’t good at all, and only figured it out in the last few moments with Shida. Time to move Shanna into her spot now, or regret putting her here again.

People have said that Baker has lack of experience. She's been doing this for 5 yrs. She has more experience than Darby Allin. I've seen her since her first match and about a year ago I posted about her when people thought she would be in NXT. A few people got pissy with me about it but what I said was true. She has a horrible ego and in general is a shitty person. She wrestled for IWC and initially trained with them (same school that trained DJ Z, Elias, Wardlow,) she eventually went on to AIW and picked up some training from Gargano and Candice. She would shit talk AIW to everyone at IWC and in return shit talk IWC at AIW shows. She would act and I believe still does like she was never trained by IWC. She would make rumors up about female talent and refuse to work with them. When ROH had the women of honor tournament she begged them to be in it all over social media and they still didn't use her. She was supposed to work a show in the UK and claimed she missed the plain due to bad weather and then posted pics at some formal dance here in Pittsburgh (we had no snow by the way). It would be one thing if AEW didn't have other women they could use or depend on but they do. Why they go back to Brit all the time I'l never know. She hasn't improved in 5 yrs. I'd be shocked if anyone could name 3 good matches that Brit was in that she made better. She had 1 good promo in 5 years. I'd love to see Ally, Penelope, Riho get more tv time to develop but instead we got Botch Baker every week.

I’m just going to assume that Dolfan forgot that the thread was locked.

Add Brianna Van Buren to the list of names who would be a good candidate for a UFC atomweight division.

The Dynamite Thread is still closed, boooo. I thought Fenix vs Merch Freak was a fun opener. They did some really cool stuff. That crowd was HOT too. Did anyone else have trouble hearing the commentary? The audio mix has been weird the last couple weeks and it's hard to actually hear the announcers over the music and the crowd. That isn't just me is it? Jericho promo was great. The execution of the SCU stuff was a little rough. But I liked the idea in theory of them doing something different and having the face lull the heel into a title match by pretending to not want one. Playing off the heel's ego and contrarian nature. The beat down and saves were a little awkward but the crowd reacted big to them. God damn Billy Gunn is 56 and jacckkkkeddd. I didn't mind him being in here. You need surprises from the past to keep that anything can happen feel. But yeah he probably shouldn't have gotten so many eliminations. The outcome here was pretty obvious. Them missing the camera shot in PnP vs Private Party saved their ass. Santana def forget to interrupt the count. They totally lost the live crowd with that fuck up. Luckily the tv audience didn't see that the ref stopped for a ghost, and they covered for it okay. Mox vs Darby was my kinda shit man. Two dudes OVER AS FUCK. Going out there and knowing who they are and being allowed to do what makes them so over. It felt alive. It felt organic. That is what I want out of pro wrestling. Hook it to my veins. That finish was gnarly as fuck tho. Hope Mox's torso was big enough to cousin Darby's neck.

The Revival. Best tag team in NXT history. Say yeah! Yeah!

Jawas are dicks. I mean, Tattooine (yes, I know Mando wasn't on Tattooine) also has Tusken Raiders on it and the Jawas are bigger dicks than those guys. Just think about that.

Better than Firefly / Serenity? That's fucking crazy talk. And yeah, despite his rep for having strong and complicated female characters, Whedon's real-life views on women are bordering on rutabaga. I guess he only believes in equality for fictional women, maybe?