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A_K

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  1. A_K
    Most of the videos being cited are clearly bots or fake views, as a casual look at the comments sections show.
  2. A_K
    Hmm .. don't buy it. Certainly not top 10. Not when 2 of your 4 wins come against 36 year old vets at the very end of long & damaging careers. But to each their own. I definitely bought into the Gaethje hype myself leading up to this fight but in hindsight it was a bit of a fool's errand .. the resume just isn't there. If Khabib stays retired however there's no reason he can't still go on to make a claim & become champion .. McGregor / Gaethje would be a great fight to see. But the rabbit-in-a-headlights nature of this fight left a very sore impression. Khabib is a true great, but this one looked like more of an utter exhibition than it should have done.
  3. A_K
    Sure - but sort of my point, which is that lightweight isn't the division it was 4 or 5 years ago. A lot of contenders have aged out of recognition. Tony's writing was on the wall a while before Gaethje ever got to him for example .. you can go back to 2018 & Pettis was close to getting him out of there. Some of the names have stayed the same, but in terms of peak performance the division feels some way off now where it was in 2015/16 time. Don't think Gaethje & Poirier (for example) get as deep down the line in that timeframe as they have now. Ferguson endured some terrible, terrible luck in his prime years.
  4. A_K
    Gaethje's gone what, 4 and 3 in 7 in the UFC? Of those 3 wins, he's got what .. 1 against 36 year old Cerrone in his 50th fight, 1 against 36 year old Ferguson, 1 against 33 year old Barboza. In the cold light of day the case is light. Eddie pre-2016? Sure. Eddie Post-Conor fight which is when Poirier beat him? Hmm .. debatable.
  5. A_K
    Conor had, what, 7 of 12 UFC fights at Featherweight? If anything with McGregor, his reputation seems to have been tarred by his eagerness at going up. Ultimately he's a 5 ft 9 striker .. there was always capacity for trouble going up against wrestlers esp. in the higher divisions. Poirier .. his victories are pretty much split between the divisions. Most impressive wins at lightweight are .. Gaethje? Alvarez? I mean, decent fighters, but neither of those are greats. Lost to Michael Johnson at lightweight. Won the interim title against uber-featherweight Holloway. Khabib looked great against a set of contenders who really have been much-of-a-muchness amongst each other, trading losses and wins over the years across this division and the division lower. As said, no doubt utterly dominant. But a black mark that he never went up a division, in the same way to be honest there's a black mark that Jones hasn't ever gone up to heavyweight. Would love to have seen how Khabib's style would have translated a division up against the Usman & Colbys of this world (who really aren't that much his physical superiors - at least in terms of height). GSP took on that challenge; as yet, Khabib hasn't.
  6. A_K
    GSP's resume sits squarely above for taking the Middleweight title. Khabib has been dominant .. but much of that against souped up featherweights fighting at lightweight. McGregor, Poirier, Johnson .. his style is perfectly suited to fights who he physically over-awes. Hard to buy this so called depth of the lightweight division when many of the top contenders were fighting a division below not that long ago. Would Khabib's tactics work against the naturally larger man? Who knows .. we've never seen him go up. GSP took on that challenge at 36 (years older than Khabib is now) and bossed it. Such a shame we never saw prime-Ferguson vs Khabib.
  7. A_K
    Superb, magical performance by Khabib .. but anyone else disappointed with Gaethje's performance? He seemed way over-excited / over-awed by the occasion; like a dynamo on the stool after R1, couldn't sit still, eyes darting everywhere. Shame as while Khabib was clearly prohibitive favourite for a reason, hoped Gaethje would offer something & this was probably Khabib's most straightforward win since .. not sure when.
  8. A_K
    Yup. Brodie + Archer as a KroniK/APA type pair who, disillusioned with falling short of the big titles & carrying mediocrities/past it stars on their backs, become killers-for-hire just smashing their way through the roster has a ring to it too. Gotta salvage the big guys - they've got all the tools to look like a million bucks.
  9. A_K
    It was a pretty conclusive finish though. Archer hit him with his bomb; Moxley rolled it up. Not really anywhere to go from there. They've assembled a roster of really cool characters but my god is the booking haphazard / over-wrought at times.
  10. A_K
    Like, I get it if the arrogant monster is rolled-up by a more nimble & cunning foe while showboating / distracted. But booking him to be rolled up right off his mega-physical finisher (has anyone kicked out of it before?) .. I don't have any idea where the head is at on that booking.
  11. A_K
    So Archer's now finished as a credible threat, right? 43 year old; beaten by Cody in a physical battle to take the initial rug from under him. Now just had his finisher no-sold into a roll up pin. Put him in a squash monster-tag team otherwise he's pretty much pointless here now.
  12. A_K
    This works. The Jericho heel-act doesn't work well in the mid-card. Good Face-story to explore with Jericho being supplanted by the younger MJF. A lot of Jericho in MJF to be honest (far more than The Rock, which is a comparison I think has been made before - maybe by Meltzer?).
  13. A_K
    I mean, come on, the only humour here is the bolded revisionism. One main-evented 13 consecutive PPVs at the WWF height in 99/00 before any of the mid-00s stuff, the other quite literally bounced around mid-card for 9 years on a pale imitiation of what the WWE used-to-be, culiminating in the Stardust gimmick and is now spearheading a show that, ultimately for whatever reason, has lost 15-20% viewership from its opening month(s) of being on. Would be great to see AEW back in the million + bracket, but until the numbers bear it out, no one is buying him as a "top star" and it certainly doesn't merit any comparison with that period of wrestling ..
  14. A_K
    Ok, so let's break this down: - You have the opinion of a number pretty articulate contributors on here - You have an evidential groundswell of online opinion (albeit expressed in less characters) So, from that point you have two options. You can concede that perhaps your definition of "I know Cody isn’t a big babyface with this board, but I don’t think the consensus opinion here is at all representative of the AEW fabnase at large" has gone a bit awry, and that in fact there is quite a fair portion of observers who think it is poor product & poor storytelling, or you can aggressive lash out with "LOL we all know Twitter is real life, and social media discourse is never dominated by a vocal minority of Mad Online types. Shit, I ain’t reading it all, but I’d guess at least half of the negative responses are from partisan WWE fanboys who are always looking for an excuse to hate on everything AEW anyway." Interesting insight into your character. FWIW, I haven't watched WWE consistently in nigh on 15 years. Nor, do I think, I am a "Mad Online vocal minority type". To be honest, you're the only one that comes across as pretty aggressive in this scenario. FWIW, your self-professed "inarguable" viewpoint is flawed by an "inarguable" reality of stadiums having been empty for nigh-on 8 months (or 2/3rds of the life of the company), pretty much the length of time people have had problems with the way he has been written.
  15. A_K
    Nope. Have a look at the reaction on the Twitter feed: The idea of ever letting someone actively involved in the product have influence in scripting it always seemed laughable to me. Akin to letting a striker script a soccer game, or QB script a football game. I wonder how those games would go?? Wrestlers are such an incredibly carny bunch (they almost have to be by definition given the demands of the job) that its like letting the fox into the hen house when one is given the book. This mediocrity who bounced through years of underwhelming WWE scenarios now gets the time of his life writing himself as the conquering hero. Why not? Good for him creatively & financially. He also pulled the rug from under Archer, FWIW. Loves writing himself as the monster-slayer, so he does!
  16. A_K
    Ok, still exceptionally weak story-telling: He was overwhelmed in the first bout because he went hell-for-leather against a guy about 25 kg & 5 inches bigger than him. Hubris hurts. Adding more muscle and being even slower is not the way to overcome someone so colossally bigger (Esp. with narrative of Lee as the strongest big-man in the company). If anything it shows he learned nothing and thinks he can just out-gun anyone in his way. The build for the second bout had foundations as sturdy as a sandcastle. No introspectiveness from Rhodes. No meaningful anxiety from his group at the permanent damage that could be weaked. No "PTSD" at having been utterly annihilated previously. Nope, just right back on the horse. Zero believability. To clarify I have no real issue with Rhodes taking the title back (although in of itself its completely unnecessary). There should have been a long build however, and certainly not in this epitome-of-vanity gimmick match. It would be akin to Kurt Angle having a chain match with The Big Show or something and trying to out-brawn him. Beyond all else however it just completely buries the Dark Order. I never liked the group, but after actually giving them a meaningful momentum before they've just swiped the rug clean out from under them. How utterly short-sighted. Lee's qualities -- his brawniness -- have been exposed against a man far smaller than him. What is his possible purpose or upside as a character now? EDIT: As for the Rhodes / Triple H comparison further up page, to this point Rhodes is way worse. It took a number of years for Triple H to get to the really irksome booking point by which time he had a great backlogue of work sort-of-justifiying it behind him. Rhodes has kinda nailed it in year 1 with a pretty "meh" performance front-to-back outside some cool MJF work.
  17. A_K
    The Rhodes/Lee direction is the weirdest thing I've seen on this show. So Lee physically dominates the man, to the point where he puts in zero offense then his team of to-date comical misfits show they can actually bite by demolishing the entire Rhodes faction. Ok, great. Interesting perspective on what happens when the bullied-kids at school congregate en-mass. Fast forward an inch over a month and Rhodes comes back and within one TV appearance, with no appropriate build, takes on the man that completely & utterly physically dominated him in ... a gimmick match that thrives on physicality. And beats him? Reduces the DO to mockery, also makes the match non-sensical (if Rhodes had to beat him, it could have at least been a Rocky-type scenario where he shows great appreciation for Lee's physicality and stick-and-moves .. doesn't literally tie himself to him!). Self aggrandising nonsense.
  18. A_K
    By the time he was OC's age, the Undertaker was already onto the American Badass gimmick. The more you know.
  19. A_K
    No way. He's on a weekly show that gets up to 1 mil viewers running for less than a year with a very defined niche audience, having been off any legitimate form of American television for years prior to that. This appearance is definitely a coup for him.
  20. A_K
    Not that there's something wrong with you, but yeah, its incredibly smalltime and early-10s TNAish to trot new arrivals out in that manner. There's no greater way to ensure you one keeps living in another's shadow than to frequently reference it. I believe "rent free" is the term?
  21. A_K
    Triple H and the general programming / storylines were exceptional in 2000 - especially first part of the year. AEW wishes on a star they could capture that lightning in a bottle. To be honest don't even see much comparison in the MJF approach & Triple H's. For one Triple H had about 4 inches & 20 kgs on him -- their promo style is also very different. Don't really know who of times-past MJF would be a comparison to .. I've mentioned early-Angle on here before, he's a different character of course but maybe his pomposity/physicality is more suited there. Bit of a tricky route for how they take MJF now. Huge fan of him, but actually think of the two Wardlow may have the higher ceiling so they can't really sacrifice either in a feud. TBH would probably just extend the MJF program with Moxley and have a second match. There's already a lot of half baked / loose-end storylines hanging around the place, they probably don't really want to start another one.
  22. A_K
    Out of curiosity does anyone remember where peak Impact would place in the evening rankings when they were hitting 1 mil + numbers? Would be interested to know if AEW outperforms them relative to rankings on the evening (in pure numerical terms they are lower, right?).
  23. A_K
    Not really. The Brodie/Cody skit could be explained as Cody being used to running over the amateur talents he was facing in his weekly challenge, becoming "complacent", then being utterly wrecked when contending with a serious foe who he tried to meet head-on. Brodie didn't really psychologically defeat Cody and Cody's gameplan wasn't psychologically based, Brodie just ran him over when Cody attempted a battle of brawn. If the same style of match played out with MJF/Moxley then it could be a story of MJF's psychological mind-games not being enough to elevate him to that top eschelon. Which, as others have said, could push him on a road towards seriousness. Could kind of be like Triple H of the 90s becomming the "Game" character through the wars with Foley etc after he'd earlier had the posh boy gimmick. I like MJF a lot but agree with the sentiment he needs more battle wounds to convincingly be the guy. Gotta earn those stripes. I think the Bucks are pretty lame anyway, but agree with the other sentiment on not liking the sort-of neutering of Hangman's character. It feels very much like virtue-signalling politics. He never really came across like a drunk with a paranoia problem before; really not sure why that needs to happen now. Hope they don't fuck his portrayal up as he was a huge brightspot.
  24. A_K
    I don't think it needs to be an either/or scenario but its more the idea of one of the bosses being written as valiant all conquering hero. For that to happen it has to be at someone else's expense, who wouldnt be one of the bosses. If he was just a standard talent it'd sit fine and perhaps the thing to do is watch it ignoring the influence he holds over production of the show. But hey this is all way down the line anyway so let's see how they play it.
  25. A_K
    Yeah. They made a point of showing Cody go straight to Brodie at the beginning of the bout, playing into his hands. Presumably next time he will stick-and-move. The storyline can play out well independently but if the EVP of the company and presumably total wrestling mark (I mean, that's the vibe he has always given off, and why wouldn't he given how submerged in the industry his family is? Its completely understandable) writes himself as a Rocky Balboa-esque character then it would be incredibly, incredibly trite & hackneyed. I really hope they take it in another direction.
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