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Yes, they’re repackaging him as Adam Coal.

Bless the 1.3 million intrepid souls who hung around to watch Mox/Suzuki without having Suzuki’s Wikipedia entry read to them beforehand. There, but for the grace of God, go I.

Hard disagree. In fact, some of the biggest TV hits of the past decade have encouraged, and in some cases outright relied upon, viewers researching stuff on their own time to make sense of the show. Most TV producers consider shows requiring that type of engagement a feature, not a bug, these days.

Eh, I enjoy the ROH-style lack of handholding. Fuck em if they don't know who Minoru Suzuki is. I personally don't need context. I know who he is and why he deserves respect and the rest of those assholes need to get up to speed. The forbidden door is open. Study up. Broaden your pro wrestling horizon.

That's why the TBS Saturday Night show was so great. 6:05 to 8:05 you could drink some malt liquor and get ready to face the night!

"The Suzuki Incident" has been trending on Twitter. A worldwide response to AEW cutting off "Kaze Ni Nare".

We briefly interrupt this discussion for a wrestling crossword announcement! We now return you to your regularly scheduled Raw discussion.

I have exactly zero desire to see Crypt Keeper Ric Flair on TV ever again.

Things I don't want: Cancer Bills I didn't expect Ric Flair managing a new Horsemen knockoff group

I only knew Suzuki by name, and maybe I caught a match of his once or twice one of the times I tried to get more into puro. Things I learned during Suzuki’s segment: The audience knew who he was and they were very excited. Mox was freaked out that he was in the building. He’s a dangerous shoot fighter who’s fought Shamrock, and who scares the shit out of other wrestlers. He was trained by Billy Robinson. His entrance theme is very over and a lot of the crowd was familiar with it. His signature moves and that he’s stiff as hell. I wanted to see more of him ASAP.

How can they call this "PPV quality" when not a single 50+ retired wrestler is suiting up?

Yeah, but if you're going to try and use "You know too much about wrestling" as a way to dunk on somebody, this isn't really the place to do that, is it? Like, a lot of people here are proud to know so much about wrestling, so mocking one person for it is likely to unleash a disproportionate backlash, innit?

They LITERALLY started the show ith an All Out recap wherein, Suzuki literally choked out then Piledrove Moxley. That's a you thing, not an anyone else in here thing. Even the staunchest of AEW supporters on the forum will admit when they mess things up. And at the very least have constructive criticisms of what they think could be done better. So you might want to get off that high horse and mingle with us peons. You might find out that we're pretty rational and it's you that has the insufferable outlook. For fuck's sake dude. Pro wrestling is about telling stories. Not only telling the stories the exact way you think they should do it. You're in here telling us this R rated movie a bunch of us are enjoying are doing it wrong because the narrative needs to be more like Blue's Clues. I've never once seen a Suzuki match myself. But I've heard his name. I saw him choke out Moxley and Piledrive him. I don't need 40 paragraphs of exposition to be invested. It's pretty simple. oh this shit kicker dude from Japan just punked out Moxley then they're gonna fight. Pretty simple. And going a step further, doing 40 paragraphs of exposition is what's ruining WWE's story telling ability. They treat the viewers like idiots. That's not the assumption I'm angling for. All I'm saying is that you don't have to dumb down the storytelling to the dumbest degree. You can assume people are smart enough to understand the very simple story of this angry old man showed up and punked out Jon Moxley. Now Moxley wants to kick his ass. It's a one off match on one episode of Dynamite. Not the world title match at the PPV. Why in the world do they need to dumb it down and hold everyone's hand for a one off?

Flair coaching the Wingmen about exposing themselves to unwilling women, how to drop racial slurs, and the best ways to scam Highspots out of money, just really getting into it as the Wingmen exchange panicked glances, would be some sweet edgy, postmodern humor

Exactly. It's no different than people on twitter trying the whole "AEW fans are tribalistic" - while you then have those same fans suck Vinces nuts over every single minute decision he makes. Look, I've turned about 3 non wrestling fans into fans through AEW. I'll stream the shows I'm watching through the discord so they can watch with me and after about two years of them digesting occasional AEW and WWE, guess who they prefer? AEW. And the reason being the storylines make sense. My buddy said "MJF goes from being GI Cody (that's what he calls him) friend to where he is now. You can see clear story progrssion which you don't get with WWE. He said and I quote "they try to hit you over the head with the same information so much, you don't see anything new" and I kinda understand what he means. Granted this is a different scenario because if those casuals have any questions they can ask me, but I just love that AEW is what's gotten them to actually enjoy what we all love. I also showed them Beyond the Mat on Friday and him seeing Jake Roberts then vs. now gave him a whole new appreciation for Jake. I dont know what that has to do with any of this, but yeah. I'm just happy AEW is even getting my friends interested. That just tickles me pink. The more the merrier.

As far as casuals go, again, chasing casuals is death. It's a fool's errand. I don't know why this needs to be re-stated and re-explained. EDIT: The only thing I will add to this is that from what I know, AEW has a very robust media team that manages it's YouTube channel. I said it before, but what NJPW did with the history of the Bullet Club stuff and history of other wrestlers is fucking fantastic. They're the ones narrated by Kevin Kelly. AEW SHOULD DO THAT! Make those, throw up a QR code on the tv, tell people to check it out, whatever. Shit, Excalibur probably wouldn't mind talking over shit like that. And that isn't even something to help the casuals. It's just backfilling content and giving someone like me more time to waste their energy on.

Total strawman argument here. His "small minority criticism" morphed into shit talking about insufferable fans when his view point was disagreed with. He likes a bunch of exposition and narrative. That's fine. He can like what he likes. But calling people insufferable because we don't agree with him is not the same as just stating his opinion and wanting more exposition.

Sorry. One person argued for the first point. My god this place is fucking tedious sometimes. I can summarize this whole argument: @Greggulator: AEW didn't explain Suziki as well as I would have liked @NoFistsJustFlips: but they did explain him. Here's how they did it @Greggulator: but they didn't explain it the way I think they should have @NoFistsJustFlips: but they did explain him. Back to step one. Repeat. Something it's taken me 3-4 dumb arguments here to realize...after you've said your piece maybe twice, you're just banging your head against the wall and you should probably just give up. No explanation or justification is enough for either party here.

Here’s what gets me about the Suzuki debate: I don’t think you even NEED to know anything about his background for the story to work. He showed up and picked a fight with Moxley, kicked his ass, and now Mox wants to kick his ass in a match. I don’t think any secret knowledge is required to understand what is going on here. It’s pretty straightforward. Countless wrestling storylines since time immemorial have introduced new faces the exact same way.

I get your point, but this is some wild hyperbole. He's a multiple-time world-champ (which they told us) and has been once of the most famous Japanese pro-wrestlers/MMA pioneers (which they told us) for the last 25 years. You don't need anything approaching encyclopedic knowledge of the puro scene to know who Minoru Suzuki is. You need... basically, more than zero knowledge. Of course, plenty of viewers do have zero knowledge of that scene, which is fine. But you can't explain everything at the level of the least-knowledgeable hypothetical viewer. That would be incredibly tedious.

Pretty sure it's Gargano?

Oh, some new posts in the Dynamite Thread? I have to read them! 2 pages later:

I didn't realize things had gotten that bad.

Anyone who has seen Suzuki's promos will know that his intentions might be better off left unsaid.

I would watch the hell out of Rogers the Musical

The Freebabes (Jazzy Yang, Hollyhood Haley J, & Miranda Gordy)

Chuck's conundrum

Capitalizing on 9/11 having the show in NYC is sketchy sure. Having the show in NYC and not having Zelina on the show is absolutely fucking disgusting and why? Do we need the bloodline taking up 45 mins of a 2 hr show? Zelina's IG posts all throughout the week were positive. She had gear made, she was with family whom she rarely sees and all were looking forward to her having a match where she would look out and see where her and her dad sat decades earlier. But WWE had to WWE and fuck it up. Now I am sure someone will pipe in with "well it's a business" Yeah it is a fucking business but Vince will be the first to show Thea reading the names on Sept 11 since it benefits him. Fuck this company I hope AEW wipes them off the planet

"What's this? Extremely high voltage! Well, I don't need safety gloves because I'm Vince McMah..." *is electrocuted*

.... Also now I remember why I've mostly stayed out of the wrestling discussion around here lately.

a few years ago, i took my nephew to the a small local comic con-type event. I'm a big Batman fan. i've watched every movie, tv show, and cartoon. i read EVERY Batman comic published from 1939-2011. i have a gigantic Batman cardboard cutout on my basement wall. i think that probably puts me in the upper echelon, if you measure by those kind of metrics. My nephew is a bigger Batman fan than i am. he likes a couple of the Batman cartoons and has played one of the games (i think it was a Lego Batman game, but i don't know for sure). he's never read a Batman comic to my knowledge. some asshole saw my nephew's Batman shirt & mask and tried to belittle him by asking if he's read *insert some comic here*. my nephew was upset. i could have easily contributed to the toxic fanship this prick was exhibiting by making some obscure Batman reference that this guy didn't get. Instead, i told my nephew that this guy was a lot like Harvey Dent. sometimes, he pretends he's nice, but really he's a jerk. It made my nephew feel better and this guy feel bad. worth it. this shit ain't rocket science. People are allowed to like what you like in ways other than how you like it. Once more people realize that, the better off everyone will be.

Don't think I've ever seen that spot before.

Couldn't you say that about literally everything? There are always going to be "toxic" views/opinions/people and there are always going to be people with differing levels of sensitivity to those "toxic" views/opinions/people.

Dave also was saying he wouldn't be shocked at Orton winning the title I really don't want to go back and listen but it was something like "When Vince panics - he will put the title on Orton." Something like Randy Orton is the perfect guy for who Vince things should be champ. God Dammit I am gonna have to relisten

From Today in the WWE freaking out over one rating that everyone but them saw coming As Meltzer said today - they are loading up RAW tonight to be "PPV quality" (the #1 reason they moved Lashley/Orton to tonight) And to add to it - they had Big E tweet that he is going to cash in MITB tonight

I have to admit that I'm not 100% sure how casual TV watching even works for people under 35 or so. Do people watch things without following them? Are people watching football without also watching ESPN or reading things online? Does anyone watch the CW superhero shows without reading about casting and what not? If you're on social media at all, this stuff comes to you. I'm not sure what people are doing with their time, especially during a pandemic. I get that not everyone under a certain age uses Facebook, but they've been pushing the news feature on that and just from my online activity, I can't not know about Vince changing the script to Raw or Marvel picking up foir more slots for movies in 2024 or way too much about Joe Manchin. I can tell you that my 19 year old simply doesn't watch TV. He follows everything online through youtube or streaming service and then never on our TV but on his phone or the computer. We watch stuff on TV every night. He simply does not, even if we're watching some of the same things. Edit: Social media just told me, without me looking for it, that Samoa Joe was supposed to be on Raw tonight.

Stop acting like victims, people.

Bah. If you don't know who Minoru Suzuki is, you haven't been watching enough pro wrestling. I could see if we were back in the days of tape trading and we were all like, "Holy shit, dude. Have you heard of this guy Sabu that moonsaults into tables on purpose?" But we're not. We have YouTube and Dailymotion and stuff. If your pro wrestling acumen exists between the Rio Grande River and the 48th Parallel North, that's not really my fault.

I do believe it's possible to watch and enjoy a TV show while declining to talk about it with weirdos on the internet.

They need to be grabbing people like Gregg now if they want to grow and people a lot less weird and wacky and willing to really dive into something than him too. I think the best way to do it is to use their youtube channel (they're trying to grab 18-49 year olds after all) instead of hammering people over the head with it. The pacing of Dynamite seems to be an issue where they're rushing too quickly to the next thing so trying to fit more in there would be problematic.

You’re right. My not liking AEW’s decision to not tell the audience who one half of the main event is because of deep-seeded pathos buried in my soul, and I can only have it cured by having an encyclopedic knowledge of every winner of the NJPW/ROH Battledome Spectacular Fight Or Die Never Surrender Night 2 Tournament from 2004 to know who the hell I am watching.

I'll have to quibble on the "Criminal Complaints" -- a complaint is a formal charge prior to indictment, there's none of those right now. HPD has talked to 10 of the 22 plaintiffs. Per the Harris County DA, they'll present the cases straight to the grand jury. They'll all be no-billed. Going straight to the grand jury gives the DA political cover when the grand jury declines charges. She can say "Well we tried, but the grand jury is the will of the people ..." which is all horse shit since a grand jury will indict just about anyone for just about anything. But then there's this: Cue that AJ / Undertaker gif

Let's not fight forever.

They couldn't have him drop it on the reboot show and give the new champion the rub of defeating Joe?

So I think I noticed a little board tribute on the show. When Voach Tony K used to post here, that time period overlaps with the brief time when our dear departed Old School John had mod powers. And John's go to phrase for giving people a warning was "You're on thin ice, (last name)". Which is exactly the phrase Bowens used to silence Caster. Assuming TK is paying enough attention here to know that John passed, that's quite a nice tribute. Or a coincidence. Who can say?