The Idiot King
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Posts posted by The Idiot King
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Can Naito still go? I haven't kept up on NJPW stuff in ages, but in my mind, that would be a really fun match.
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15 minutes ago, Curt McGirt said:
This was a blast!
- The sleeper match of the night is Orange vs. Roddy. Orange's ribs are taped up to a "DDP In 1997" level and Roddy just goes insane using ten different kinds of backbreakers and all kinds of other ways to injure them more. Then he actually gets the pin! Cassidy has finally lost the title. A dishevelled Kyle O'Reilly (?!?!) shows up looking crazy to only smile and hug Roddy, reject an Undisputed shirt and walk off looking like he's gonna cry. His hair isn't ultra ginger red (except for his beard) so you know something's deeply wrong with this man.
Almost forgot, but yeah, Orange-Roddy was great and the Roddy/Wardlow wins made a ton of sense and maybe -- MAYBE -- could save the dumb Devil shit. Orange has not had a bad match in the last year and a half? Two years? Amazing work. The most I have ever cared about anything related to the Undisputed Era. Skeptical about Kyle O'Reilly stuff and was definitely handled in a very AEW way of "Oh, okay? Sure. Huh."
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5/5 PPV. AEW rules the world, etc. The worst match was probably the scramble, and the women's match had a tough spot with a totally OK performance. Ospreay/Soup was amazing (as someone who has been slowly warming to Will over the last year or two), the tag match and Eddie/Brian were all-timers and what a beautiful, dumb, silly, genuine send-off for Sting. I don't understand how you could hate this promotion.
Swerve/Ospreay at Wembley! Takeshita should be belted up! The crowd is finally booing Hangman! I am now 100% okay with Darby dying on live television because it seems like what he wants, and I should respect that! Daniel Garcia SHINED!
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Yeah, it seems like they are astro-turfing to save some face, and who knows where it'll go from here -- WWE is capable of rolling with the punches for a Wrestlemania moment and having things revert to the norm after a month or two when they feel like it -- but I cannot take anyone seriously who is like, "Ah yes, this was the brilliant plan all along. The audience is playing directly into their hands." Some people still say that about the Bryan Danielson run! As though he wasn't weirdly waffling around with the Wyatts for two months before Wrestlemania.
They've put themselves in a dumb position through bad storytelling that they are gonna have to wriggle their way out of one way or another and who knows, maybe it'll be compelling, but I refuse to attribute to genius puppeteering what is more than likely panicked flailing.
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I hope this recent WWE boom means that a whole new generation of fans will get to experience the excitement of getting to do the "Okay, but the THING IS, it's good that this sucks, in my opinion" two-step. Just spending hours a week talking themselves into believing anything other than the dumbest possible answer is true. It's a right of passage. I hope they will learn to let the stupidity of it just wash over them like a gentle bath and find pleasure in whatever the 2024 equivalent of Stevie Night Heat is.
That being said, if Cody comes out and wins the title off Roman after Rock softens him up -- not bad! But still, a ridiculous way of getting there that asks poor Cody to do an awful lot of conceptual heavy-lifting and only makes sense in the internal Stock Must Go Up logic of the WWE Branded Content Machine That Cannot Be Killed.
Excited for the women's title matches, tho!
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1 minute ago, NoFistsJustFlips said:
I think it's pretty clearly, now in hindsight, a switch because of the Punk injury. They had Roman v Cody and Set v Punk penciled in while kind of kicking the can down the road with The Rock. That's why Cody was emphatically pointing at Roman after winning. And they were just going to try and get The Rock to boost a different show. But now no Punk all of a sudden a big marquee double feature turned into a one match show. (I mean that in promotion only, there's gonna be a bunch of good stuff booked).
Feel like I'm the only one on board with this switch. I think it makes Mania more interesting. Plus it avoids how big of a tantrum people were gonna throw when Cody lost again. Now Cody gets a Mania main event crowning World Title win. Roman gets closer to Bruno and The Rocky gets to put over his family in his last match ever. It's a win-win-win thing all around.
I think the kayfabe explanation got botched. Probably because Cody is legit hurt by all this and had trouble getting the story out. But he wants to take everything from Roman. So he's pressing the killswitch that will nuke The Bloodline. The infighting is gonna split up the group. Roman's gonna lose his crew, his family, and then World Champion will swoop in and take the last thing left, The WWE Title. In theory at least. I still think the penciled in idea is Roman breaking the Bruno reign. May of 2028 someone can finally beat him.This all rings 100% correct, but does not make any of it less thrown-together stupid and makes Cody look like a double geek, second place title or no. I would be very curious if Cody feels as though this is a win-win-win situation.
"This title and its legacy is my whole life, and I struggled back to the top of the mountain by beating out 29 other WWE Superstars in front of the whole WWE Universe and actually, uh, now that I think about it, The Rock really would be better at this whole thing than me because it'll destroy your family! Nobody's ever done this before, but I am. Because it's SMART, actually. Brave when you think about it. But I'll be here! You just wait! I'll just be over here. When you least expect it - BAM! Just over here, working on my story. Just storying away. Lots of story left to tell. Many chapters."
Me, I do not care. It is just very, very funny. Real "that's okay, I'll still keep drinking that garbage" expectations of the fans.
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5 hours ago, Dolfan in NYC said:
These signs are a little too good and well placed.
Don't reveal the secrets! Those stunt grannies have families to feed!
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Not a great one! Women's match was fun, if a little sloppy, and Jade looked great. Men's match was almost entirely whatever, up to and including the trudging across the finish line. Cody losing again at WM would be very, very funny.
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I don't love the Bucks, but also am realizing I 100% don't really care who Sting's final opponent(s) is/are, as long as it's not some kind of embarrassing Undertaker/Kane vs. HHH/Shawn Michaels fiasco. So, asking this in absolute good faith: Who would people, realistically, rather see him face?
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Two very very very good matches tonight. Swerve losing is fine. His shine is fine. Honestly, I tend to think he would only be hampered by anything less than the World Title, so I am not even sure he needs to get to the finals of this thing. As far as I'm concerned, the only question AEW should be asking itself at all at the moment is how do we get the belt onto Swerve.
I'll be sad when Andrade leaves because he is very much one of my favorite in-ring guys in the world today, and I do not understand why he has had such trouble breaking through time and time again. I doubt he'll fair much better in WWE for a second go round, but that seems INSANE to me because he's so charismatic and hits like a truck. Very excited for RUSH/Swerve and Danielson/Brody coming up, too.
The Devil (who very suspiciously seems to enjoy REAL GLASS) sucks. That whole thing sucks. Who cares. Go away. I hope Heel Hangman Page is fun whenever we get to it.
I didn't hate the Omega/Jericho Starks/Bill stuff half as much as everyone else. It felt loose and messy and was bad, but at least it felt natural and off-the-cuff and maybe got Ricky actually mad? I'll take that over a script any day.
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Hard disagree. Love adderrall-postin Tony. Picking petty feuds, talking shit, being weirdly defensive, making personal attacks on his perceived enemies. One of us! One of us!
Something I have been thinking about as it relates to AEW attendance cooling off and just using the old scientific anecdotal eyeball test: AEW is wrestling for like 30+ year old dorks. There is inherently a limit to how many of those there are (many of them, myself included are right here on this forum!). Whereas WWE, whether I (a definitely 30+ year old dork) like it or not, makes wrestling for kids which is, at least in my lifetime, who wrestling is for. I don’t get LA Knight, but he’s not FOR me. The kids love him. He says wacky stuff, he looks kinda like George Michael (the kids still dig him, right?) and he has perfectly serviceable punch and kick matches. It’s brand new stuff if you’re 10! And the only way to grow your base is making new fans out of little kids or the elusive (non-existant) casual.
The most casual exposure AEW has gotten (assuming nobody gets too mad about the quarters thing) is through the very WWE-ish Jade and through the very kid friendly Orange Cassidy. It may just be that you need kids to drive attendance because if you are 8, you gotta go with your parents. That’s at least double the tickets. I went to Wrestledream and had a blast but anyone under 15 looked like they would rather be in a library.
It’a a tough needle to thread. I tend to think that the more different the alternative to WWE is, the better, but financially I may be wrong. I tend to love beautiful failures and not taking a dump truck of cash from the Saudis, so nobody should come to me looking to fix their business decisions, but it’s definitely been a strange feeling to go to live events and be missing that vibe of young true believers.
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Half-assed live report, here:
Swerve-Hangman was easily the most fun live, hitting right in the sweet spot of a 4 hour (not including the Zero Hour) show. Crowd was way hotter for Swerve than anyone else all night. Easily my MOTN.
FTR-Aussie was fun and well put together, with Aussie Open having a more sizeable following than I would have guessed for a very talented in-ring but otherwise sort of generic team.
Danielson/ZSJ was conceptually very impressive (and compelling!) for a style that isn’t really my cup of tea. I feel very lucky to have gotten to see Danielson live post-comeback. Last time I saw him was the Ryback/Team Hell No v. Shield TLC(?) match whenever that was.
Poor Ricky Starks was working to crickets after everyone spent their energy on Swerve/Page but he and Yuta put together a tight, hard-hitting match.
Julia Hart and Stat did an amazing job. Wanna echo what other people are saying about her growth and how much people were buying into her character.
Always impressed with how over the usual crew are: Bucks, Kenny, Jericho and the Lucha Bros. Every time I’ve been in person, the energy hasn’t waned a bit, but I am now firmly on the side of Orange Cassidy’s momentum having been wasted.
The main event was fun, classic, big time wrestling. That third bump on the stairs was gross. Christian’s the best and it was exciting to see Edge literally anywhere besides WWE. Am I looking forward to an Edge-Adam Cole classic? No. Do I think it would be neat to see Edge and Christian team up one last time? Sure, why not. Keeps things feeling lively even if it’s just a quick hit of nostalgia. I don’t imagine they are gonna put the world title on him or anything.
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Jade (potentially? definitely?) leaving is a huge loss to AEW but makes perfect sense for Jade, so I hope it suits her well and I can't imagine her being anything less than a huge star wherever she is. There are lots of fresh and exciting match-ups for her in WWE and I cannot imagine they could somehow fuck this up, but you never know. AEW is big and established enough now that I don't think losing any one wrestler to WWE is going to tank the company, but I do worry that over time if enough people start to see AEW as simply a stepping stone to WWE fame, it will take its toll. It would suck to lose MJF (who would do great in WWE) or Starks (who would 100% end up in sub-midcard-hell), but the roster is so stacked that you have a lot of great pieces to play with even if there were a fairly large exodus. WWE is just starting to really get back on track with making stars again (Rhea and Bianca are the only two who immediately come to mind) and having AEW suddenly function as a star-making feeder system would be a huge boon to them. It's fun to be in a period of shake-ups and people jumping ship back and forth again, with all the attendant drama, so long as we don't end up in another decades-long period of monopoly.
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Man. What a bummer. Marty was up there with Warrior and Hawk as a kid where I was hoping that whenever they came back it would be for real this time. I think also, importantly (if only superficially) the more-than-friends relationship between Shawn and Marty was explored some. Maybe it's a little taboo or still seen as a slight in some way, but to hear them both tell it, there's a complicated romance there. More than anything else, this episode made me want to see a deep dive on Pat Tanaka.
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Just watched Forbidden Door and wanna drop in here and say that MJF is a better Flair/Race than HHH ever was. Not sure if that's even controversial, but it really hinges on his ability to look like a goof while also being indisputably one of the best technical wrestlers working today.
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Am I crazy for thinking this is all pretty benign? Alvarez is like, "Who knows what's going on with Punk! Could be anything, really!" and then Punk was like, "Shut the fuck up" and then...that's it? Seems like pretty thin gruel to extrapolate into the backstage disaster some people are spinning it into. I'll believe Punk isn't coming back when he's released from his contract.
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Dub is dead. Real end days of WCW numbers. Punk and Kenny no-show locked in for sure. Can't even sell out a 90k seater.
On a more grave and serious note: I'm hearing that Dark is done? Is that true? That breaks my heart! They at least deserve a send-off. I am game for the new Saturday show (if a little wary of the Friends of Punk/Friends of Elite divide), but Dark is really something special and unique that will leave a big hole in terms of national exposure for independent workers. I hope once the dust has settled a little with all the new changes, they find the money/time/space for a new Youtube show.
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I think as far as historical years to base your company around, you could do a lot worse than 1997 WWF. I'm not sure if it's something you could create self-consciously, but it was still a "down period" (for WWE at least), there weren't a host of hot new stars "showing up unexpectedly," and there were definitely huge chunks of it that sucked as bad as anything I've ever watched, but overall it felt really alive and unpredictable in a way that would become more standardized and rote through the boom period of what was properly "The Attitude Era." There was just so much stuff being thrown at the wall, mostly utilizing by-then established WWE guys, that everything felt like it was always on the verge of exploding or going off the rails. Sometimes it was raggedy but it was usually compelling, and the undercard was so, so much weaker than what AEW has to play with right now. I'm not suggesting that the cure for AEW's (relatively minor, I think) woes is to let Sammy Guevara start saying fuck on TV or by going on all in on a Sid/Undertaker-calibre main event and just hope someone magically becomes Stone Cold, but I do think that there's something to be said for kind of messing around a little and making mistakes and seeing if something doesn't just happen to catch fire. It's an advantage AEW has over WWE, so why not use it?
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1 hour ago, worldcupfever said:
We need to get away from the idea of "tarnished by losing to the champ" - an individual or a team going back to the drawing board and redefining themselves, especially if it's specifically to defeat a certain roadblock (not Rochester) is one of the best stories you can tell in any sports-related medium. We're not automatically devaluing half the NFL because they lost to the Chiefs last year, we're looking forward to seeing what they've all done to adjust to the task of beating the Chiefs and/or winning the Super Bowl.
Let's not focus on the tarnish, let's focus on the retooling:
I appreciate this thought, and it's a valid point, because it is easy to forget how long a year is and how much can change/be forgiven and forgotten in that time. I think where it's tricky is some of the people who are most naturally in line to be challengers have already been beaten either very decisively, or multiple times. I think Bianca's in another tough spot with how dominant she's been, but I think the easy solution here is that you just turn her, which isn't really an option with Roman at this point. I think you have a couple of match-ups for Roman that they'll probably run while Cody is off dealing with Brock -- Riddle (for a second time), Orton, Rollins (for a second time) -- but in the end, truly, it's going to be Cody who beats him, just at a different PPV, which is what I ultimately don't really understand as a decision. I think a lot will depend on how Cody's booked from now until then, and I'm pretty sure he'll be fine and kept safe to ultimately take the belt off Roman, but he has certainly looked like a geek this weekend. It is just such a mixed-up, all-over-the-place, messy kind of decision-making that doesn't seem to really leave anybody happy or wanting more. Wrestling fans are FICKLE but it is always interesting to see what causes the wind to blow in a certain direction, even if it's not hugely based in reality (i.e. the company is still currently making more money than god), but this (and Vince's return) seems to have blown away a lot of the good will that they've accumulated over the last year or so.
Will it ultimately matter? Probably not. WWE is too big to fail at this point. But what good is it to be on a wrestling message board if not to hand-wring and pore over the sacred texts and what-if and fantasy book. Why, maybe the next great son-of-a-billionaire wrestling promotor is sitting amongst us as we speak.
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Just echoing others at this point, but wow, what a choice for that ending. Completely baffling. I am not into Cody, particularly, but I don't understand what they're doing here at all and it doesn't entice me to keep watching. Cody, at least, would have been a new thing -- a poor substitute for Sami, but still, new. I've said it before and repeat myself here, but WWE can only ever revert to the norm because they have shareholders to appease and so are allergic to change or risks. They are in the CONTENT business these days. I will also stave off any claims of hypocrisy by saying I also do not understand Eddie losing to Claudio or Mark losing to Samoa Joe. I have slightly more faith, based on track record, that something useful and interesting will be salvaged out of those losses, but I certainly can't piece it together from here.
I don't think Cody's totally cooked or anything, but I don't see any upside from this for him and I think we are now, legitimately, out of viable contenders for Roman's belt. Any win over him at this point will feel like a pittance. All I can imagine is CM Punk coming back and doing what Cody couldn't, which would be the funniest possible outcome from all of this, so that is what I am now rooting for.
More generally, thought Night 1 was among the best nights of Wrestlemania since they split it into two days, and Night 2 was just okay (as is usually the case). Thought Rhea/Charlotte was the best match of the weekend, and thoroughly enjoyed the Gunther slapfest. Relatively sports entertaining, overall.
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Love heel BCC. It's tough because the crowd never wants to boo them, but are willing to as long as they are against Hangman (still so over! still such a classic white meat babyface!) and Kenny (a great wrestler). So, tough to make undercard guys off them, because of how beloved they are, but I like them as realistic obstacles for Page etc. I think the Elite are best as heels, but the crowd never wants to let them be that for some reason. Adam Cole should be a face, so I am excited to see him do that even though he is not my cup of tea.
Who is the better casual bisexual in AEW? Ricky Starks or Daniel Garcia? Maybe they are both straight! Just going on vibes here. Both charming and terrifying and I think are natural enemies. Would love to see them talk shit at each other and then grapple at a high level. A lot of business with jackets and sunglasses.
Toni has a classic "Dick Jacket." I am pro Dick Jackets. Only dicks have these jackets and you know they are dicks because they wear them. Doesn't always work but it does let you know how you should feel about the performer. Billy Kidman's WWE run was a classic example. Love the development of Skye Blue. She has had a really natural growth. Love Pipe Riho. Hope this all becomes Blood and Guts.
GTV is stupid but fine. A little dated but that is the nature of pro wrestling. Pulling from Popstar: Never Stop Not Stopping etc. Anything that allows Hobbs to be on the show every week and have people around him to make him a heel is good because nobody wants to boo him because he kicks ass and his book thing is so vague as to be meaningless.
Vikingo and Kenny was a delight. I love Kenny (and AJ, in this same way) as a guy you throw into dream matches that the audience will show up to watch. He is not my favorite pro wrestler (or sports entertainer) but I absolutely want to see him wrestle Vikingo or Ibushi or Claudio or Ospreay or many, many other people. But the real superstar who can do any style of match with anyone who shows up from anywhere in the world is Orange Cassidy.
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Brody King's an all-time beast. Love that his finisher was the killer, ultimately, in a very, very good trios match.
Mox/Hangman lived up to the hype and Danielson/MJF exceeded it by some measure. I love Max, love his schtick. Hasn't worn off on me yet. Everything else was at least pretty fuckin good. Loved the pacing, as others have said.
It's insane how good Jarrett has been in his role. Just pitch perfect. Glad FTR seem to be sticking around. The Acclaimed are fine without the belts and will only cool off once the half-life of how funny people find the phrase "Scissor Me Daddy Ass" has run its course. AEW has easily the best tag division on the planet. Makes me feel for The Best Friends and Silver/Reynolds who both deserve runs on top.
No complaints about anything, honestly, except that we are back to square one with the TNT title and the time to pull the trigger on Hobbs was yesterday. Maybe give him the All-Atlantic? Feed OC to MJF in a ladder match or something? Who knows!
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25 minutes ago, Niners Fan in CT said:
See and again I completely disagree because 5 years ago WWE saw nothing in Cody at all and here he is.. so how can you say nothing changed ?
As far as Sami goes, do you believe he was slated to face Roman Reigns at Elimination Chamber 5 or 6 months ago? Pretty sure they completely changed whatever tentative plan there was to give Sami the ball these past few months.
I hear you, and I don't want to make it sound like there are never audibles called at any step along the way. We've seen that! It's just, again, that it always reverts to the mean. They are unwilling to invest in using their ability to shape narratives to create non-traditional stars that are born from that story-telling. They don't have faith in the story over the demands of the market. It's scared money. Which, again, is fine. I am not in charge and I do not want to be, but to pretend that this allows for a dynamic range in the kind of stories they tell and to use Cody as an example doesn't really hit with me. Cody, at this point, is a safe bet.
Cody has done good work in getting to where he is, and he was absolutely doing nothing at the bottom of the mid-card for years before he took it into his own hands. He will be a "new face" holding the belt. But none of it is through WWE's doing, really. None of it is really about the story, so much as capitalizing on a story the guy already made for himself. It's like Google buying Youtube and being like, "Look what we made!" If they brought in Kenny Omega and he beat Roman Reigns, I would probably feel about the same (though at least he's small and flippy and wants to kiss Kota Ibushi).
The WWE story with Cody is that he is marketable (which isn't a bad thing!!) and that he got way more over someplace else and now he's back in the red white and blue and he's gonna beat Roman Reigns. Ta da. Nothing wrong with that. I just don't like being snowed by the internet that this is as good or compelling of a story as the one they already had on their hands, which they ultimately COULD NOT capitalize on because of how the WWE (or any large entertainment company) operates.
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MARCH 2024 Wrestling Talk
in The PROFESSIONAL WRESTLING
Posted
I think pro wrestling discourse on the internet has always been pretty dumb, but I think what you're seeing a lot of right now (going wholly on vibes here), is a couple of things:
1. You, me, probably most people on this board are old now. We have seen a lot of wrestling. We have lived through a lot of wrestling. More than new international markets, I think there is a whole generation of young fans coming online now who grew up in a post-WCW era where there was nothing but WWE, and who are YOU to tell them that your love of Steamboat-Flair is an iron-clad truth while their love of the General Manager era of RAW is dumb nostalgic revisionism. They don't want to be told that the things they loved when they were younger fucking sucked any more than any one else, so there's a real "Get out of my way old man" attitude -- which is good, honestly! -- but instead of it being applied in defense of more obscure, unheralded wrestling that you might have otherwise overlooked, it's about some real historic low points of American Wrestling.
2. As an extension of that, I would guess that maybe that same cohort are at about the age where you really push back against the idea of being seen as pretentious, and you learn the really fun judo move of being like, "Actually, I love dumb shit! Dumb shit is GOOD, and all that arty-farty crap that critics say is good is BAD." Which, again, is a totally fine way to approach things, but I think mellows out with age as you realize that there's more to appreciating the world than being contrary. Because the internet wrestling world has had to slog through, god, two decades(?) of there being an American Wrestling monopoly, not much kind has been said about WWE for a very long time on here, which results in there being sort of a clear consensus that can be bucked.
3. This has resulted in a lot of dumb culture war stuff bleeding into wrestling. Not in terms of political parties or anything, but in the sense that people are really defining who they are or are not as consumers. Like Marvel fans screeching about Martin Scorcese, there is this sense of identity that people are tacking onto their fandom. An AEW fan is THIS kind of person (fill in your own blanks here) and a WWE fan is THIS kind of person, and all arguments originate based around these fixed ideas of defining yourself in opposition to something else (nevermind the stupid binary that this creates). This results in really boring back and forths that never seem to be in good faith at all and are mostly defensive posturing.
4. Which also results in the very cool, very interesting people whose entire worldview seems to be, "In my opinion, everything is good and nothing is bad and nobody should ever say anything bad about anybody or anything." The most interesting people who talk about wrestling, I think, are people who have very specific, idiosyncratic viewpoints. Like, if you can write (or speak) compellingly about how JBL's Cabinet was the greatest faction of all time, I'm all ears, I would love to be convinced of this, but I need to actually believe that you believe that and not feel like you're just saying it because you're worried that liking Kenny Omega would make you look like a huge dork (it would, incidentally).
5. The internet is just worse than it's ever been. A total ramshackle, decaying version of itself that is breaking everyone's brain more every day.