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8 days removed and it feels surreal to me that all this happened. A show that was in some way run by and mainly for a bunch of folks on a message board and it just happened to have some really fucking incredible stuff going on. Like I've been trying to comment on this throughout the week and stopped because it was hard to wrap my head around it all. Yet when watching it back I realize two things. One, my fat ass was on the screen way more than I intended (I thought chilling in the corner would get me out of hard cam view) and two it did happen and it was fucking awesome. I can't say enough how great it was to finally meet @Rev Ray, @Pete, @Phil Schneiderand @Johnny Sorrowto thank them for all the years of awesomeness. And it was great to meet @S.K.o.S.and @Danwho was near me the whole time yet I didn't know until he mentioned in the Discord chat. I was a bit shy for a bit and wish I met more people but I felt a comfort in knowing whoever was there was taking in a wild show and it was for Dean. I also experienced a first in that for the first time ever a hardcore tag match got me oddly emotional. But when Tank and Manders are battling on chairs in front of Dean's chair and the crowd chanting his name how the hell can you not be? As for the show itself I have seen a couple folks when watching random indy stuff but the only one I saw before this was Slim J. So it made me compare this to a concert. There's many a concert where I would go to let's say Metallica and you know what you're getting. But then there's random concerts that sound neat that all goes well end up fucking incredible. This was an instance of the latter for me and I became a fan that night of folks like Krule and of all teams the Ugly Sucklings. I definitely need to keep an eye out for them. And I sure as hell didn't expect Violence if Forever to show up but holy bats there they were so that's cool to say I finally saw them live. If I thought about this more maybe I could have tried a road report like I've been reading all these years. But I wouldn't do it justice so hopefully the truncated version of everything works. Anyway it was a fucking great time and I'll be looking forward to the DVD.

Dynamite is Triple H led Raw with more workrate. Collision is Smackdown Six era Smackdown. Rampage is Heat. ROH is FCW/OVW/Deep South.

In a mild defense of Tony. He watched Punk lose his shit and go after Jack Perry, of all people. Then Punk goes towards Tony, still losing his shit, and two guys have to hold him back. So in that chaotic moment, it's not unreasonable to be scared, perhaps even afraid for your life. When violence happens you don't really know when it's going to stop. As outsiders we can say that might be an over reaction. And we can certainly say he was being a little melodramatic by repeating those feelings to a live audience after time to reflect. But I'm sure in that moment he felt scared and I don't blame him.

Hits keep coming:

Gonna be honest, I saw a couple of people online asking where they can go that’s not the Twitter/Reddit/normal websites and I didn’t share our fortune.

Turns out I have the last year of every AEW show recorded on my Hulu account. So I just watched this. Great time. Thanks. Sonjay pouncing Buddy Matthews off the stage was probably the last thing I expected out of this match.

I've had enough of the weirdo online posters. I've basically unsubscribed from all the FB wrestling groups I had joined. The DVDVR is the only group of online wrestling weirdos I need.

Still hilarious to me that hhh complains about "the grind" and cushy schedules when his champion wrestled 15 times last year lol

Gimmick? His party has been shoot Russian sympathizers for a few years now.

…and when’s the release on twice-taped over VHS? Instead of $10, can we send in a copy of the 1995 Dallas Cowboy Super Bowl Champions VHS?

There are weeks with almost nothing I want to see. There are weeks where I want to see almost everything. Usually it's a Dynamite/Collision split with Rampage in the middle though. The next few TVs are looking pretty fun though.

Am I the only one who finds it weird that the memo uses his character's name and not his actual name? "I'm sorry, Mr. Kross, but your services will no longer be required by TKO." "We wish you the best in your future endeavors."

On the positive front, add me to the crowd that had fairly low expectations for Copeland in AEW. I was fine with him coming in and having one last showdown with Christian or whatever, but the TNT run has been a pleasantly good surprise. The Penta match was a ton of fun.

And for the record, WCW 2000 wasn't having great matches on the level of AEW. These two are not the same no matter how many weirdo online posters try to say it is.

The answer to the Frankie Lancaster question will be someone you can't remember right now. You won't know who the Frankie Lancaster is until the next time you watch the show and go "Oh shit that guy's been here a while, why didn't I think of him?"

See I half think that’s ROH instead. Rampage is more of a Worldwide.

I didn't. I saw it once, with commercials, so it's hard to judge structurally and I don't want to go back for it. It went two breaks, which was a lot. At times, I thought Copeland felt like he was wrestling "random luchador" for the first time and he was doing stuff that would have made more sense against Fenix, but then because of the size differential, that wouldn't have worked, so it was kind of awkward and performative but also still just snuck into the "What worked" category when they ran those spots. You could buy Adam Copeland, the character, trying to pull this stuff given the opportunity. It's funny how Excalibur has no idea what to call most of Copeland's moveset. Not calling the Edgucator is fine (though not being familiar with it isn't), I get that, but call the Electric Chair Drop! That was almost nostalgia seeing him pull that out, and it's weird to have Edge nostalia but it's probably more Smackdown: Here Comes the Pain nostalgia, you know? The apron powerslam was neat but there's just too much apron offense in general. It's every match almost. That's not their fault here. I think it overachieved but it overachieved against a lower baseline given the pairing. It's definitely a positive check in the "Copeland stretches outside the WWE system" column.

“Miseria Cantare” for Punk, “The Champ is Here” for Joe, “Personal Jesus” for Aries. “Gimme Back my Bullets” for the Briscoes. ”Copacabana”, “The Final Countdown” obviously. Jack Evans theme was pretty good. The Embassy theme kicked ass too.

The company had 6/7 bad years (depending on how you classify 1989) and then had 2 red hot years. Easy to belive the bubble would burst (finger poked).

Putting a championship on Penta ;).

Well, the thing about Seth Rollins...he's a tool.

After thinking about it a bit more, I have one more thing to say, and that's that I kinda do like that they showed the footage just because it's a finger in Punk's eye. He brought up the shit again after all this time, they hit back the only way they could and at least are using it to further an angle, instead of further an argument. It's not as bad a way to handle the situation as it could be.

that Styles Clash off of the top off of Kevin Owens was a cool looking spot (as was the 3 man German Suplex)

Meltzer said that was the case, so you get that section on your bingo card. But he’s also saying there were loud Fuck CM Punk chants the moment Perry got shoved in the video, and I’ve watched a few in-arena videos at this point and all I hear are loud chants for Punk. So, like… I dunno. You’d think a guy who has an online only business and has a live YouTube show would be able to use that platform to verify, but…

This is a thing you missed:

That's kinda what makes WCW being sold for a song so unbelievable in late 1996, early 1997, though. WCW had access to a myriad of revenue streams. What's really shocking is that they didn't use them. No one in WCW or at Turner recognized that hiring an in-house composer and then selling wrestler theme songs back to consumers was a good idea. We instead got Jimmy Hart pop song knockoffs and catalog music already licensed by Turner. They did well enough with video games and okay with selling nWo t-shirts, but their merchandising was mediocre for the time period and they really wasted a lot of licensing opportunities. To swing this back around to Vince, one thing he understood was how to extract maximum dollars for his asset, whether that meant a book deal with fictionalized backstories for some of his characters or getting some of that Gulf State oil money. Bischoff/Schiller/Sassa/Turner as an entity didn't come anywhere near that. Now, had I known more of the backstory at the time that Turner didn't see WCW as something to exploit along multiple revenue streams or a low-cost in-house fountain of programming with a bunch of past shows to sell and re-sell to interested wrestling fanatics, then it wouldn't have been so shocking. But without that knowledge, I think in the post-territories era of pro wrestling, yeah, I would have been baffled to hear that they went out of business and disappointed that they only went out of business because zero people at Turner/AOL Time Warner understood how valuable WCW was even if Nitro was pulling low 2s in the ratings by the time they died.

You guys are putting way more thought into this than Punk and Tony combined. They're both reacting instinctively because their egos were hurt, that's it. Then they have to continuously double down every time someone brings it up because the idea of being wrong about something doesn't exist in their minds.

I would say it's always tough when you basically inherited another business that wasn't doing well. To me, WCW truly begins at 1990 when most of the Crockett stuff in terms of talent has been shaken out. Most of the people who wanted to go work for Vince have. Most of the stuff you identify with JCP is gone. So the first few years were really rough though IIRC the TV ratings were pretty good. It picks up in the second half of 1994 when they acquire the services of Hogan and then pick up Savage at the end of the year. 1995 they do solid business mostly off Hogan. The next 2 and 1/2 years are stellar. Then, the rollercoaster starts slowly clicking down in the 2nd half of 1998. Then, it's an outright free fall by the middle of 1999. But yeah, IMO, if you tell them they're going out of business in November 1996, they probably wouldn't believe you. However, if you provide some level of context, they probably would. And to be fair, WWF's hot run during the Attitude era was roughly the same as WCW in terms of length. Like how long do you expect businesses to stay red hot realistically? I think it's easier now when you have the comfort of people paying to put you on TV and you're able to explore different routes to bring in revenue and potentially turn a profit. However, at the same time, TV is structured in a way now where an average wrestling show isn't going to be averaging 5 or 6 million viewers weekly. You're not going to be galvanize people at a level you did before. Weekly live TV is no longer a novelty. Having an overrun is no longer a novelty. You have to take the good with the bad.

Finally got around to watching Dynamite. I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed. The video did nothing to dissuade either side and you got people chanting for a WWE guy on TV. Not as disastrous as it could've been, but solidly bad. The most underrated wrestlecrap part though was Cash's "Rod and Todd Flanders" line hitting the mute button on the live audience. He actually had a nice fired up promo going (given the circumstances) before that, and you know with his Simpsons shirt, he was so proud of coming up with that. Sorry pal, a good chunk of that audience wasn't even alive when The Simpsons was good, time comes for us all. Fittingly, you could do a frame by frame of when his heart got ripped in half by the line getting no reaction. More broadly, though, I'm disappointed with the show layout. If your goal of this stunt is to get more viewers, you should be putting your best foot forward the rest of the show. This is a week you run Ospreay/Vikingo or some shit, Swerve/Fletcher, run a fucking Billie Starkz vs. Kris Statlander match for no reason, etc. Basically show what you actually offer as an alternative. All due respect to Joe and Dustin, but putting two guys of varying degrees of past their primes in the main event spot ain't gonna turn any heads. The majority of the show was fine for story building purposes, but I couldn't imagine any of it hooking a casual viewer. All promos, lots of focus on guys known for their time in WWE, and none of the unique talents really got to show much. I don't get the thought process of trying to pop a rating on a filler show, but I'm not a thin-skinned billionaire so...

Shit, it's believable. Look at World Class, Mid South, and Jim Crockett. Probably one or two I'm leaving out. All had banner years and out of business, sold, or downhill shortly afterwards. Tough business pre TV rights and other consistent revenue streams.

I had checked to and honestly its impressive how much Cody Rhodes is wrestling. And not just wrestling but putting the extra effort in being the super friendly fan favorite at every event (at the house show I went to, during intermission he signed autographs for anyone close to the guard rail). While I think Cody is a little carny sometimes (who isn't?), the work he is putting into his current run is top notch, definitely maximum effort to show he's ready to be the face of the biggest wrestling promotion in the world.

Was Ready to Rumble based off of WCW 2000? If so, WCW 2000 > all promotions

The only way that AEW is reminiscent of WCW 2000 is, they went from having 2 hours of TV a week, to having 5 hours of TV a week. They used to always leave us wanting more, and now they feed us more than we (well, a lot of us) can eat.

Some people are going to roll their eyes at this but another Willow match to watch is her match with Mercedes Mone'! Yes, the match that Mercedes was injured in. It's about 13 minutes or so. They were cookin until the ankle injury.

Yeah, this isn’t the end of AEW at all. It’s just really indicative of the problems they have as a company and it’s a self-inflicted wound that could not have come at the worst time. It’s such a stupid idea. WCW was awful before 2000 and before Vince Russo took over. In my memory, WCW from the nWo onwards had a decent amount of good matches, occasionally something fun from someone like Jericho, a lot of stuff involving people like High Voltage and Sonny Ohno, and about 75 percent really annoying and repetitive stuff with the nWo, especially the Wolfpack vs. Black and White split. How many Scott Steiner insinuates he enjoys sexual assault while Buff Bagwell prances around with a top hat with his face on it promos can one promotion have? WCW in that era was good and interesting for like 6 months before it became annoying. (And I say that as someone who loves older WCW.) AEW is better written with a more organized show and product. It’s not even close to the dregs of WCW.

Not to pile on and be a negative Nancy, but I really wasn't able to pinpoint this until you mentioned it, so I think it bears emphasizing: two crucial things missing from the early AEW recipe - moreso than rankings, Cody Rhodes, the friggin' tunnels, whatever - are the advance announcement of matches (sometimes two or more weeks ahead) and perhaps more importantly, more frequent cliffhanger-type endings. I'm not advocating for burning cash on constant shock debuts or anything like that, but it's gotta be more than Excalibur running down Rampage after a pin from time to time. Dark Order beating down Cody, with Brodie smashing the title and Anna Jay first becoming the Queenslayer on Brandi, Don Callis arriving and bringing Kenny over to Impact, having the Good Brothers and KENTA show up. Things like that

Hey everyone So.............I will have a ton more notes. But I wanted to announce that DEAN~!!! will be released on DVD/Blu Ray through Smart Mark Video. We are working on it now, and the cover art is absolutely incredible. I have tons more thoughts and pictures to share, I'm still humbled by it all Anyone who does pick up IWTV, just a reminder for promo code "ACTION" Appreciate you tons. I think Dean Rasmussen would've given this show 5 BILLIONSTARSSSSS~!!!!!!!

I believe AEW firing CM Punk was the correct decision. He clearly didn't want to be there, and his presence backstage was a problem. And frankly, I think Tony Khan announcing his termination and doing it live in front of the fans in Chicago right before All Out was also a gutsy move. He went in front of a hostile pro-Punk crowd and laid the whole thing out, and I think that was the best way to address it at the time. Otherwise, the fans could've hijacked and ruined the whole show. Khan addressing it right then basically nipped it in the bud and let the fans get out all their aggression and disappointment about Punk right then. That should've been the end of it. Wrestling fans being what they are are never going to let this go. This is going to continue being a story 25 years from now just like the Montreal Screwjob. You will have this side going with this side, this side going with that side. However, AEW dredging this up again when almost everyone wants to move on did not help. Tony Khan is clearly taking Punk going back to WWE personally. He's taking that Helwani interview personally and it shows. Khan letting everyone know he's shaken by all this and letting it affect his product is a waste of time. AEW used to be the shiny new toy and internet darling. That period is over, and Tony Khan can't stand it.

Cage has been a pretty solid utility guy for the last few years so I have no problem with that. There's a lot by the people I would cut before him and he is far from my favorite dude named Brian or Cage.

It's pretty weird that Tom Zenk had Brady Boone's high school hairdo for much of his career, while Boone himself went with more of a mullet.

Hell yeah, man. I rewound it to hear it again. If you haven't seen it, imagine how loud you think a chop can be. Now realize it was louder than that.

Man, MOTN honours for AEW Dynasty is going to be hard fought for with Bryan Danielson/Will Ospreay, Samoa Joe vs. Swerve Strickland, FTR vs. The Young Bucks IV and Kazuchika Okada vs. PAC.

Hasn’t it been said numerous times that the confrontation with Tony was a separate incident (later) and may not even have been taped? oops, sorry. I forgot….

If I was fantasy booking Wembley, the top 3 matches I'd have to have would be Ospreay/Swerve for the title/Main Event Danielson/McGuiness and if Omega is healthy Hangman and Omega v The Young Bucks. Those three matches would be incredible.

So this is a bit disingenuous IMO. Yeah, Mina worked a Youtube preshow that's sitting at 22K views for the secondary brand of the main company then came out in a city that isn't a mainstay of the promotion and most likely doesn't have fans that are tapped into Stardom. Comparing that to an onscreen appearance at a tentpole event where your crowd is going to lean more into other promotions isn't the same. With that said, I know who Mina is because DZ used to post pictures of her before so I followed her on IG. Also that theme music is a Jimmy Hart style rip off of something that's played at sporting events all the time which I thought was hilarious.

I'd be engrossed to see how that all turns out and then be disappointed at how stupid it all was (and, in Vince's case, disgusting).

Fuck Eric Bischoff. Lost three of my family to Dementia.

Takes! I think Ospreay is the biggest HHH-wishlist guy that he's ever failed to get. I think he's going to try the global expansion/territorial NXT thing again. Not saying that Will wouldn't be a main roster guy but I think he factored into their broader European plans. Japan and Mexico have more talent to poach. I also think either A) they didn't know Will was this good of a promo and they're pissed about it, or, B) they knew Will was this good of a promo and they're pissed about it. I am the furthest thing from an Ospreay guy but his mic work is leaps and bounds better than I assumed it would be and it makes Will way more valuable than Okada and Mercedes right off the bat. Last take - Ospreay vs. Seth on Twitter was 90% a work, and WWE guys are gonna continue to start fake Twitter beef with potential future signees so they can score an early feud.

Honestly, I feel like that Omega/Mox exploding deathmatch ending was worse than making this Punk/Perry stuff an angle. This wasn't anywhere near as bad as Steph leading the crowd to celebrate her dad after he was kicked out the first time. I've seen decades of bad wrestling and comically bad angles, gimmicks and stories. This doesn't really compare. No one's career is over after this. And the more I think of it, I think short term this sucks for AEW, but may work out long term because the mystery is dead. They'll get dunked on for now because people were ready to dunk on them for doing it anyway. But now that we've seen it, it's not interesting. It doesn't make Punk look cool. Jack didn't shoulder check him walking into the back, like I recall one report claimed. It's a weird little scuffle that ends about as quick as it began. They took a bizarre story that captured people's imaginations, and turned it into nothing by showing them the reality. Now we all want to move on from it. And we will. After about 3-6 more months of Punk chants.