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Or maybe AEW just isn't for you? I don't mean that to sound as condescending as it does. But me personally, I can not stand how WWE beats their viewers over the head about every single thing as if we're all first time viewers. So I love AEW not doing constant replays and doing things in hopes of keeping someone new that just clicked the wrong number on the remote. Plus we're in the digital age now. If you wanted to know more about Suzuki, take 10 seconds and type his name into a google search on your phone. At this point you not knowing about him is due to your own laziness, not AEW's presentation. The TV industry does a quick episode recap at the beginning episode. AEW did that. They did the quick recap of what happened at All Out. Beyond that if you have a question it's not out of the realm of possibility to assume you're smart enough to do a google search. Just like if I tuned into Breaking Bad season 4 episode 1 for the first time and wanted to know who Gale Boetticher was (like I just had to do to get the correct spelling).

You're welcome.

I was trying to not clog up the thread with PWI 500 talk because I am too lazy to make its own thread but Meltzer saying there are some wrestlers who take the 500 way too seriously and then two minutes later losing his mind because Tanahashi was behind Braun Strowman is the reason I can never stop listening to the radio show.

Ah, gotcha, I hadn't seen it before. E: OK, yes, Suzuki-gun vs Mox and King please.

All these old farts talking about getting heat but how many of them got such good heat they induced labor ?

No, it's actually this

Why would you want us to cater to people who don’t like Powerhouse Hobbs??!!? This man is against your religion.

Sky and Page attacked Lance Archer a few weeks ago, so I guess there'd be some kind of follow up to that. Give me Archer and Minoru Suzuki vs. The Men of the Year with Dan Lambert eating a Gotch-style piledriver.

I know where Don Callis got that suit idea from:

No, that's a pretty fair shot I'll allow it lol. All I'm saying is this is a wrestling bubble talking point that doesn't exist in regular episodic TV. Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, The Wire, Sons Of Anarchy, Dexter... whatever the episodic TV show is they reward viewers that pay attention. They don't hold anyone's hand and explain why you need to pay attention to whoever. Like Game of Thrones didn't role a clip show to people tuning into the last season to explain who Gendry is while Arya is trying to bang him. They did a recap before the show. If that isn't enough, it's on you to figure it out. And I'm in that boat as well. Sometimes there are things I don't remember and I look it up. AEW already did that opening video. They did a recap of All Out. They did show Suzuki. They talked about him being a multi time world champion. Punk put over he was trained by Karl Gotch. JR put over how surly he is. His name plate had 4 time world champion and New Japan legend. If you need more than that then this isn't the product for you. They aren't gonna slow down to the slowest person's cognitive function (that's not you, I'm meaning in general) and make everyone go at that pace. If that's what you enjoy you won't find it in AEW.

Speaking of Suzuki-Gun, how long until AEW can make a move for Zack Sabre Jr? Dude is wasting prime years of his career shackled to a dog turd in New Japan and is stale as hell there. A move back to the States would be good for him and be another big get who isn't an ex-WWE guy.

Make him Keith Lee's manager.

Damn u

Jim Ross made it perfectly clear that Malakai Black's preferred Martial Art is Kickfighting. And that's not hyperbowl.

Tony Khan on Twitter (later, maybe): “I apologize that Kaze Ni Nare was cut off too soon. It was an outside contractor at the controls, and the whole song sounded great at rehearsal. We will never work with them again, and I will now be personally handling all music cues from this point forward.”

Oh I just read that the reason Excalibur missed the show is because he’s getting married. HE DID THE DEAL! EXCALIBUR IS A BIG BOY!

Britt still needs a mascot in a giant tooth costume.

Dammit, why do the Creed brothers have to be in the wrong promotion? Because Dan Lambert managing THOSE GUYS with their Steiner Bros squash shtick are an infinitely better fit than Sky and Page in this role. As it is, I love Lambert but I’m not sure where this is going. Who is getting that heat here and how does that get resolved?

Omg it's true. We love Wardlow. They've been so patient with this turn but it does feel like we are in the home stretch.

"So, his heart can't handle the roids and coke? I knew he didn't have it in him." "Vince it was a genetic thing." "Bad genetics??? That's it fire everyone in NXT, Bruce we're taking over." "Yes, sir." "And while you're down there see if you can find a working vein between any of my toes to stick this into."

So with all this talk of cage matches, is this a safe space to admit that I thought Kenny Omega and Christian were fighting in a cage on Sunday. I didn't realize Christian's last name was Cage. I read it as, "Kenny Omega vs Christian, Cage" like cage was the type of match.

I don't get why Griff didn't come out with Pillman, do like a double dropkick to Wardlow, have MJF scurry away and have Pillman make the challenge for Arthur Ashe instead of having the prolonged talking segment and having the faces look like dweebs.

There is a picture of Suzuki with (Masakatsu) Funaki from that time period where they look like the Japanese version of Al Neri and Rocco Lampone. Some poor sap probably woke up next to the bloody head of his prized racehorse that day.

New Way of the Blade with Steve Keirn of the Fabulous Ones! Discussing their match against the Moondogs from 6/13/83. Tons of wild stories in this pod, apartment blading with Stan Hansen, shooting on the Road Warriors, almost dying in the ring in Memphis. https://redcircle.com/shows/be34c05b-8483-4797-af55-5ec4bd254611/episodes/9227f245-0fe9-48f6-9991-0a094f6c86e4

Re-watched the entire Matrix trilogy earlier this year because I knew this was coming. All I could do was marvel at how a studio let them make those sequels to something that landed as big as the original film. Mock big studios as we should for the scared shitless bets they're constantly making on bland/safe existing IP, I just think it's wild that those movies exist the way they do. As frustrating as they are, they're fascinating. Been waiting to see what one of these looks like in 2021. Excited.

You are the reason WWE wrestlers can't have surnames, dammit.

Think you will all appreciate this

Fun fact, but Napoleon was not actually short. His height was measured by a military physician as 5 pieds 2 pouces. English political cartoonists took that at face value assuming that the French pouce was the same as the Imperial inch, but the pouce was actually slightly longer than the inch. They went wild with depicting him as tiny and it became the gospel. Adjusting it to Imperial, his height was actually about 5 foot 6 inches, certainly not tall but right in line with the average European male height of the time (about 5'7"). Just goes to show that if something is repeated often enough, it eventually becomes the truth.

I doubt Sabre ever lived in the States - though promos of him moaning about having to live there would probably be pretty funny.

Damn it feels good to be elite. Suzuki-gun vs. Kingston and Moxley would be delightful. Glad it wasn't a one off and he's going to be around hopefully as long as he's stateside.

Seriously though, what is Harbaugh doing over there.

Oh, I know that wasn't their mindset. That's my dig at @NoFistsJustFlips-- hopefully it isn't too condescending. But thinking that the viewer at home should "do the work" is just beyond stupid, since I'm going to do the work during the commercials. Make it fucking as easy as possible for me to watch your show and know what I should expect.

Another thing that really killed the MJF stuff for me, as well as most times a heel is directing insults at somebody in the audience, is that the intended targets completely no sold the barbs. With the assumption that the non wrestlers are in on what's going to happen with them, maybe at least ask them to look upset or pissed off or annoyed? Anything besides mildly smiling...

Other issues I had as a first-time live viewer of the show: 1) Did they do any sort of introductory video explaining who Minoru Suzuki is and what he can do? I don't remember if they did, since I missed a few minutes here and there. But there was nothing I saw. I'm someone tuning in for the first time after hearing about the buzz from the night before. I have no idea who he is. I don't follow Japanese wrestling. I stuck around for it to see Mox in front of his crowd. But I have no idea who Minoru is or why I should be excited to see him. I know Punk talked about him during his promo, but he was talking about Pancrase and stuff I know only in passing. You have to show people like me why I need to want to watch this match -- even if it's just a 10-15 second segment of him beating the crap out of someone. They kept on teasing "Bryan Danielson coming up next!" and that makes sense. But you also need to do some explanation to an audience who does not know the AEW personalities yet, let alone a guest star from Japan. 2) The more I think about that MJF thing, the more I hate it. I don't care about the content even though it's stupid cheap heat. I just hate the layout of the segment. They needed to do another way of introducing her to the audience besides Punk namedropping Aunt Linda and not going into details except something about the Dark Side of Wrestling. Even a lot of the live audience wouldn't know who she was just based off of that. Here's a good way to have done the whole segment: 1) They show Aunt Linda and Pillman's sister. Tony or JR or whoever explain who they are. It's also on their version of the TItantron or the ring announcer introduces them to the audience. They get the respectful applause from the crowd. It's like 60 seconds, total, at tops, and you've introduced them. LIke when the WWE shows a new HOF inductee in the audience and the like. Also, it gives Punk less work to do in his promo and can get more focus on building to Team Taz. 2) Later on, MJF comes out and does his thing. Now everyone already knows who they are and has a reason to care, and you don't get the awkward "I AM HIS SISTER!" thing. 3) Pillman comes running in to beat the hell out of MJF. He gets his licks in, but then Wardlow gets him. Then his tag partner comes out to even the odds and MJF knocks him out with the ring and then flees like a coward. Pillman goes to check on his family and makes "I WILL GET REVENGE ON YOU!" faces and the like. Boom. So nice and simple. But this just got too complicated -- sloppy introduction of Aunt Linda/the sister and a bad way to use Pillman by having him try and speak live instead of just not having this lunkhead with a mullet try and beat the f out of the rich snob a-hole who just called his mom a meth addict and insulted his hometown. There is so much about AEW that I like. Hearing the freedom given on the promos is really great. They have stories that build from A to B to C. Everyone looks different. But there are some really bad issues with producing segments and thinking of this as a TV show. Freedom on promos is great until people go on for too long and now you have to cut from the main event or take something else out of the show. (A reason why you script things for any performance -- including the WWE -- is to make sure it fits into time constraints.) Not introducing important characters to that evening's climax to an audience with unfamiliar people is not good. Making segments a bit too complicated is not good. Some of the performances will be good/awesome. Some of the performers are going to not be as great or even bad. But that's all acceptable because that's just wrestling. But they've only been making live TV for a year. It's fucking HARD and there are so many moving parts -- on top of the serialized plots already unfolding, now you have to introduce new characters like Ruby Soho and Bryan Danielson; it's live TV and there's so many things like an injury or just someone blabbing away too long that can mess up the formatting; etc. All of that is completely forgivable and they'll figure it out hopefully and make it their own. One of the things that I took away from watching AEW live the most was just that the WWE really does know how to structure a TV show. Maybe you're not into the performers or the stories or Kevin Dunn's camera cuts, but they do have a format in place and they for the most part know how to use that efficiently.

Universal tapings begin Saturday. Two three-hour taping blocks with ninety minutes in between.

While watching Elevation, I had another thought about the roster size. Emi Sakura is just there with Lulu, with a clear gimmick, with her music, a dominant force. She's there to train people and to work the up and coming females, but she's also THERE. You can't really see her in with main program on the immediate horizon but you can see them cycle her in a few months from now to wrestle Ruby or Britt or Tay/Anna or whoever and it'd probably be great. And in the meantime, she can just keep wrestling the kids on Elevation/Dark and get their reps in. And the roster is just full of people like that who they can heat up and give some shine to over the span of a few weeks and immediately showcase for a month and then cycle back down until they need them again. Or to keep them cycled up for a few feuds as they cycle someone back down for a while. I guess on some level this isn't all that different from what they do in WWE but with the brand splits and the sheer amount of TV time they have, everyone ends up spinning their wheels instead of cycling up or down to being featured.

Just go read the Wikipedia. That's pretty much what I told my kid to do. Watch the first one / read the wiki on the other two. The first Matrix movie has one of the best endings in movie history. Don't sully it by actually sitting down and watching the sequels.

OMG! WTF?

They need to stop talking at the beginning of Black's entrance. They fumbled all around over it on Rampage too. Just shut the fuck up Tony, you nerd! Also, I'm gonna state the obvious to all in this thread - Jamie Hayter is a tremendous talent.

Adam Cole bullying Schiavone was the highlight of the show. Laugh out loud beautiful stuff. That whole Elite segment was pretty fantastic.

Also if we're all going to go and get upset about Caster's poor-taste rap, how the fuck do you let making fun of somebody's mother's drug addiction slide and then top it off with saying she should have aborted her son? Seriously, gross cheap fucking heat.

I know people are going to have thoughts on the MJF segment, but let's take a minute to look at the positives: The Jericho feud is really, finally over!

Dark Elevation spoilers:

I think you'll find that it's actually called "New Haven Local Medical Facility", Pal!