A_K

.

It was a narrative experiment that failed. It clearly failed because D.O don’t even get on TV anymore unless to job in multi-tags (some are already on way out of the company). Page had a character that worked & was over then they fucked with it in a drawn out tedious way. He may still be over - but clearly not to the same degree or to the extent they want, or else they wouldn’t be reconcepting him again barely 6 months after he took the belt on a program that lasted forever to reach a resolution. 15 months build dedicated to get to a coming out defense against Danielson then .. the almighty pay offs of programs with Lance Archer & Adam Cole before presumably dropping the belt? Yeah - that’s a complete failure, whatever the political mumbo jumbo you try to obscure the conversation with. As mentioned before, other than Jades all these belts need a complete rebuild. Then people ask why there’s no proper heat in the program.

Booking is bad - they fucked his character up associating him with the Dark Order jobbers/crying-cowboy gibberish. Everybody pontificated and tried to super-intellectualise the "millennial cowboy" stuff but .. nah, that ain't it. Best Hangman was Beer Chugging Hangman. They hollowed out his character -- not deepened his character -- and he's fallen by the wayside in the middle of the pack as a result. Its an enormous pity. Imagine in '98 they started having SCSA run around trying to make pals, protect & redeem Mosh and Thrasher - my god.

They strapped the rocket to Page but if everyone is being honest with themselves, for whatever reason he never really delivered the goods. A nice transitional champ but they need someone who makes the belt feel like a big deal. The belt has never had a smaller profile than when it’s been on him so far.

He's not, nor was he ever, a bad person. He is the manifestation of others internal frustrations. Won't be surprised if this storyline ends with him committing suicide.

A lot of them are super tiny. Watching Bobby Fish be dwarfed by Jeff Hardy right now of all people. RE: DO/SG - only so long you can have guys running around in gimp masks on national TV, let alone be interacting with your world champ of all people when you're negotiating for new deals. They should have re-wardrobed/concepted them as they have (successfully) with a lot of other talent. Gone the way of the dinosaurs now: think as a collective they've had maybe 3 or 4 TV features this year, all losses of course.

Have said since they first appeared: Acclaimed have the highest of ceilings. It’s good to see wider community catch on over past 6 months, esp since Caster return from ignominy. You have them champs in the NAO “tweener” role. You certainly do not make them soft faces. Danhausen/Hook stuff great. Carny but whimsically genuinely amusing. What’s not to love.

Low IQ scumbag in being low IQ scumbag shocker.

Maybe not ready to split Orton / Riddle. Hugely over. Prolong this some more.

Meltzer won’t have a single remote clue as to AEW status w/ the network - it’s a bit of the old psychic con artist trick or throw a lot of statements up in the air and maybe one will stick. Frankly in this volatile economic climate where cash flow is strapped and valuations are getting shredded, the network probably don’t know themselves yet, either. I’d think growth YOY will be a bit of a concern for them (as it is for every business in all walks of life at the moment), which is why AEW will strap the title to Punk and possibly move the tag titles to a more mainstream name pairing too. Whoever is talking about streaming as make or break clearly is living in the 2020 universe again - media companies will be actively moving out of the cash-burning business.

Wasn't Disco the TV Champion literally a few weeks before dropping the fall to Jackie? Why was he fired (work or real)? RE: Jarrett -- not so much the gimmick thing, I'd always just understood that he'd considered loosing to Chyna as being bad for his 'brand', and therefore he was reluctant to do it unless he was especially compensated (that may tie back into the money issue element .. could be conflation of stories).

Given the reticence of Jarrett to job to Chyna in '99, Disco probably deserves a fair amount of dues for giving Jackie the rub then as early as '97. Jackie went over soundly at the time.

Jackie / Chyna stuff was interesting parallel .. I'd always presumed that Jackie beating Disco had been in response to Chyna too, but did Chyna have any significant pinfall wins over male talent prior to Jackie beating Disco in October '97? The significant stuff with Jarrett would come some time later.

Bingo. Brett was (is?) always a very earnest character from the very start .. and contemporary fandom widely speaking is as earnest at the moment as it has been in living memory. This lends a hyperbolic treatment to him in the memory (the non-stop fawning of late with in ring tributes, for example, is nothing I can remember attributable to any other major star, ever) - but the fact remains that while he was certainly a big player in the 90s, romance aside he was left-behind both in the WWF and the WCW zeniths consecutively. The big run was built on the ashes of the Screwjob, commercially speaking probably the biggest legacy he left the Fed (sad as it is to say) as there was very very little harking back to him in the years that followed otherwise.

I mean, its subjective in the same way a Major League player could be judged superior to someone in Triple A. Sure, there may be some diamonds (or Jades) in the rough, but hard time suggesting AEW has depth remotely resembling Bianca, Becky, Sasha, Charlotte et al

Shida is great - very under utilised. Kendo stick (or whatever she comes out with) looks v lame and out of place with her aesthetics .. otherwise just badly booked for too long.

But the ratings just don’t show this? Categorically, they had the real explosion on the McMahon/Austin angle almost half a year later .. which wouldn’t have materialised without the “evil McMahon” narrative generated by the Screwjob. So, irony of ironies, it was the Screwjob more so than the wrestling classics that really led to lift off for SCSA. As ever in PW, commercial success at absolute zeniths (Hogan in 80s; Attitude era etc) storylines>in ring performance. Bret became sacrificial lamb to take Fed to next level: sad for him.

Nah .. like I said, 96 was bad (Michaels was never a solid ace, ever) .. and 97 Bret didn’t move the ratings needle .. from the very day he left onwards they recorded 1 solitary rating weaker than when he was there. One might say .. the Screwjob is what saved the Fed .. the Screwjob, not Bret, is what led to the SCSA ascendancy (thematically and otherwise).

Becky loves a little wind up. Bit of Irish mischief.

Pretty remarkable Orton has the most matches in Raw history. Not sure anyone would have had him pegged as their most consistent performer in history when he was up to antics when younger !

Well what I would say is that Hart left, when, November' 97? They did their highest number in several years the night after (makes sense - big story point). In the 2 years immediately thereafter, I believe they recorded only 1 show with a lower rating than the prior 2 years before he moved off. Given this was still some time before the Austin coming-out party at WM w/ Tyson, that's pretty remarkable. There was absolutely no drop off - nothing, on any show, whatsoever. The SS '96 bout w/ Austin (heralded as, critically, one of the greats) basically had ratings identical to the months preceding, topped out in the mid-2's, and they'd be back in the 1s again by December / January '96. Objectively, there's nothing there that says Bret/Austin made the Stone Cold momentum .. if everyone is being honest with themselves, they'll admit it was the McMahon/Austin narrative really. Conversely, WCW had a 10% or so pop after Starrcade '97 but that'd flag pretty quickly, and come the winter they'd never really mount the heights they'd set back in autumn '97. Honestly, the Canadian element probably held Hart back from being a face-of-the-promotion lead in the US in the atmosphere of the 90s vs a full blooded Texan. Its a pretty interesting conversation, because it seems that the more time passes, the more prevalent the impact BH/SM are perceived to have (I don't remember any of these tributes to impact back in the early-mid-2000s when Hart was out of the industry and Michaels would periodically pop up as a novelty GM or guest referee character prior to his comeback tour). But objectively speaking? Yeah, never really led the pack commercially.

Oh - you can’t. But neither of them were part of the antidote, either (one of them actively wasn’t).

Punk takes the title through rest of ‘22 while they try to renegotiate the TV deal

That's an interesting take, but .. Hogan/Savage were gone by, what, '94? To the 'rival' promotion, no less - so hardly squarely leaving the industry. Despite this, Raw would still numerically beat Nitro more often than not throughout the '95 // 1H '96 period. Its not like Shawn/Bret 'grew into' the role as the Fed leaders .. if anything WWF was OK for the initial period that Hogan/Savage left, but once Shawn/Hart were front and centre that's when it began to really fade badly against resurgent Hogan (WCW'd be pulling 2x numbers w/ '97 Hogan vs. the 95 led version). The Bret/Shawn era of '96-'97 was really the Fed on its last legs .. and it took Austin's ascendancy to save it at the same time Hart shuffled on over to WCW where he was pretty ineffectual as a star. Vince probably thanks his lucky stars for the Screwjob really .. they've had such enormous amounts of narrative mileage out of it over the decades & it precipitated an almost immediate boon in business as over stars took center stage.

Hart had the pretty underwhelming distinction of being WWF face when it clearly played second fiddle promotion, then basically not moving the needle in any way shape or form when he moved to WCW, and being an underwhelming-part of an underwhelming-promotion that slid to second fiddle within a few months of him being there. The “Michaels/Hart” competition is always a bit odd, in the sense it’s akin to debating who of a host of second-fiddle NBA HOFers were superior to each other. Neither were ever really the man - not really for any prolonged period of time anyway.