Bryan
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Posts posted by Bryan
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1 hour ago, Eoae said:
Does Jungle Boy not cut promos? There was a segment about that on Wrestling Observer a month or so back, and I kinda just dismissed it and didn't pay much attention. But.... I can't remember him talking in any of the segments I've seen lately. Is my memory just bad or is he not cutting promos at all? Metlzer or Alvarez said something about him not being comfortable on the mic and not wanting to do it, and kinda implied that would hold him back.
I feel like not talking could fit the gimmick (I kinda wish Sabu had never talked on camera), but it also doesn't make sense when the guy with the Dinosaur gimmick cuts promos.
I think he had some talking segments with Kenny Omega leading up to their match (they weren’t memorable). I’m not sure I’ve ever seen someone who has a such a cool aura about them be so dull when he opens his mouth. It’s kind of crazy.
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I hope Max Caster isn’t actually suspended. I saw some a wrestling journalist that is usually credible report the Acclaimed were on ice, less reputable sites the suspension.
When it was a taped show and he was trending because of the promo days before Dark (and even discussed here) and you still air it…The negative backlash isn’t Caster’s fault, it’s AEW managements fault.
That said The Acclaimed being away for awhile while of these rumored debuts are scheduled to happen the next month might actually benefit them in the long run since they’d likely be overshadowed by the debuting stars.
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2 minutes ago, Jiji said:
This show doesn't seem very good in paper. Fine but not good. Here's hoping Darby and Garcia get a good chunk of time.
It seems like a “calm before the storm.”
Kris Statlander vs Nyla is almost certainly going to be awful again. Hopefully, it’s just a showcase for Statlander to get her ready to face Dr. Britt at the ppv, so doesn’t go on too long.
I agree with Craig you can almost see the Jericho match ending in a DQ to protect Wardlow. And that’s probably the smart thing to do since Jericho needs to win to progress the storyline.
Pretty meh on paper but maybe it’ll exceed expectations.
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19 hours ago, LoneWolf&Subs said:
I actually just noticed they’ve been airing new ads on Dark that look like ads you see in a local market, so they might finally be doing it.
A little off topic but I actually came across an article the other day that noted how ineffective advertising proves to be when it’s looked into, and it kind of blew my mind.
Given your advocacy for an AEW ad campaign, you might find it interesting: https://www.unz.com/isteve/what-if-advertising-on-google-and-facebook-or-tv-doesnt-much-work/
Anyway, I almost didn’t recognize the Young Bucks on that ad. I think they were air brushed in an odd way or something. Weird.
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2 hours ago, Craig H said:
FWIW, I still would rather see him exclusively work NJPW. I'm worried that he would just get lost in shuffle with everything else in AEW and everything that's to come, but TK has also been pretty diligent about rotating workers in and out throughout the year.
He just seems like someone that could go to NJPW and immediately start having classics with everyone.
He said in an interview that he’d recently bought a house has pets and his work visa expires at the end of his 90 days, so I doubt the risk of getting lost in the shuffle is a big of a concern as being able to secure his presence in the US.
Signing with AEW and being able to work with NJPW is probably the dream scenario for him.
Anyway, I’m a fan of these vignettes guys are doing on their own and hope wrestlers keep doing them. I can’t even imagine what someone like Bray Wyatt would do with complete creative freedom.
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6 minutes ago, TheVileOne said:
Whoever hit the referee.
I've yet to see any really egregious refereeing in AEW, especially when we're expected to believe for decades that a referee literally can't see Mr. Perfect or a heel putting his feet on the top ropes or his hands on the tights to cheat his way to victory.
Who hit the referee in that situation, you for inadvertently causing the contact trying to perform the move, or your opponent who actually made physical contact?
If it’s the latter that seems like a loophole that could be exploited by heels to get a cheap wins. If it’s the former, it’s not really fair you’re punished for a referee being out of position.
You have a 5 count (although I think AEW might have changed it to 10 a few weeks after it debuted because nobody abided by it) and a 10 count to get back in the ring from the outside. In non FTR matches these rules are usually ignored for stretches of the match. With the Young Bucks it’s sometimes comical how long the double team high spots go on after a tag.
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57 minutes ago, TheVileOne said:
Referee's discretion, or referee leniency. Just chalk it up to that.
Secondly, wrestling referees have been incompetent and virtually blind for 30-40 years, if not longer. This has been ingrained in professional wrestling refereeing for decades.
Why are we suddenly all acting like this is a new thing?
Also, look at any title match that has a ref bump in it. By the time the referee is bumped and gets hit, that's basically a disqualification right there. Or at the very least it should be. No match should continue after the referee gets attacked and knocked out.
I’m not acting like referee incompetence is a new thing but I’m also not acting like announcers calling out bad refereeing is a new thing either. Or that incompetent refs should not be criticized.
A referee being attacked should always result in a dq. But a referee being inadvertently hit is a gray area because it wasn’t intentional. And if say, your feet swing into a refs head when your opponent was performing a maneuver incapacitating the ref, who would stop it and who would be disqualified in that situation?
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29 minutes ago, HarryArchieGus said:
I agree on the JR needs to stop calling attention to problems. No matter what they are. But even more so I don’t understand (other than speculation) why TKhan hasn’t instructed him to fucking cool it.
Rick Knox is very poor at acting ‘being distracted’ and seems to sometimes miss his cues completely. He also, too often, fails to show any discernment towards blatant rule breaking spots. Small details but they go a long way in establishing credibility.
Id love to see Knox go heel and then get moved full time to his backstage role. I dream of the same fate minus a heel turn for Bryce Remsburg.
I’m not a Bully Raymond fan, but was sad to hear his fair inquiry, on busted open, concerning the poor officiating met with resistance to even a conversation by Coach Tony. Commentary and the officiating are two blind spots that I don’t see ever being properly addressed. But obviously, as titan sports reminds us, it could always be far worse.
ps I have a pal who spent some time hanging with Knox, and he has nothing but nice things to say about him. That said, being a nice guy and having performed some fun indie spots don’t make him deserved of an on camera position he is clearly weak at.
If Tony Khan is going to lay down the law it should be to the talent that is disregarding the rules to do what they consider to be “cool stuff” which buries the referee.
Imagine a 9 year old that had never watched wrestling stumbled upon AEW last week and saw Cody just barely beat the 10 count just to walk into Black’s finisher.
Then imagine that next week the Young Bucks go outside and do a bunch of stuff outside for way longer than a 10 count (never mind the double team spots where everyone is in the ring). It could be confusing to a new viewer why they don’t have to get back in before 10.
AEW has made it clear that there goal is not to exclusively cater to the PWG fans, but that they want to grow their audience. And part of doing that is making the product accessible to new viewers. Having easy to follow rules that are actually followed is a simple tried and true way of doing this.
If they’re not going to do this, JR mentioning the ref has lost control or whatever at least explains to someone not as familiar with wrestling why rules seem to be more important in some matches than others.
And honestly, if the talent, including some of the EVPs, are going to bury the referees with their work, I don’t see why anyone would have an issue with JR piling on, least of all Tony Khan.
Rick Knox being incompetent and terrible at his job is at least a plausible explanation for now as to why rules are not enforced the same in different matches.
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45 minutes ago, Jiji said:
Malakai Black: confirmed draw! Really impressed with that number. Great for them. Let's keep it going, bb!
I can only imagine what his joints feel like, especially in the morning. Real tough.
Are they really gonna give us a JR/Tony booth on Dynamite? That would be tragic. Tony is great at his limited role, don't get me wrong! Excalibur feels like the only one connecting storyline dots and is aware of what wrestling is in the 21st century. He's not flawless by any means, but he's the most important member of the trio mechanically.
It’d be pretty weird for them to have a 4 man booth for Rampage to go to a 2 man booth for Dynamite.
And IMO, if they’re going continue to have Young Buck style matches where wrestlers completely disregard the rules to do tons of spots, they’d need to bring in someone to carry those portions.
Maybe they could get the ROH play by play guy. Don’t watch a lot of ROH but I always thought he was good when I have.
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8 hours ago, John from Cincinnati said:
So it’s a win-win.
Unless you’re goal is actually selling ppvs.
If the Hangman and Omega reports are true the only feud they’ve built for the ppv in exactly a month from today is Jericho vs MJF.
My prediction is that Wardlow dominates the match but doesn’t pick up the win after several minutes, so MJF gets frustrated and either orders him to use a weapon or intervenes himself resulting in Jericho winning by dq (I believe TK said in an interview he didn’t think they utilized dq’s enough) but Wardlow still looking strong.
That way they still get the ppv match they’ve been building towards for almost a year and you’ve planted more seeds for Wardlow eventually splitting with MJF.
Anyway, this was a decent show but I’m really looking forward to next week (I assume they’re going to try and make a really good impression with the debut of Rampage) and especially the week after.
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37 minutes ago, J.T. said:
You do know that the Cane Dewey sign was some wrong shit regardless of how great of a ring heel that Foley was, right?
Pro wrestling is patently offensive so that we can all make fun of the shit together and maybe have some not quite so uncomfortable conversations about the stuff. This is pro wrestling's highest calling and I fully support crazy ass and horribly stereotypical wrestling tropes like the International Hierarchy of Headbutting with Samoans and Pacific Islanders at the apex.
However, we're just coming around to properly treating mental illness as something that deserves concern and treatment rather than ridicule and ostracization. Jokes in poor taste about mental illnesss just set us all back and those jokes are always funny until its someone you know or love that is the fucking punch line.
My dad suffered from dementia for years before he died so yeah, not cool. Max Caster can take his Simone Biles verse, write it on a tiny sheet of paper, roll it up really tight, and shove it up his ass.
You’re entitled to your opinion and to be offended by whatever you want but making things taboo because someone might be offended would be creatively stifling and lead to a very boring show.
For instance, they’re telling a story about Adam Page having self confidence issues and clearly coping with alcohol abuse. Should they abandon that storyline because a viewer might be an alcoholic and triggered by it, or having self confidence issues and be inspired to abuse alcohol?
There’s lots of lines you can make an argument for drawing especially in today’s society. And once you start going down that road you can easily end up producing a boring watered down show because you’re afraid of offending someone.
And at it’s best wrestling has been about pushing boundaries and wish fulfillment. The asshole that makes distasteful comments or does distasteful things and then eventually get his comeuppance.
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1 hour ago, J.T. said:
But he has not figured out the difference between ring heat and X-Pac heat, has he? Neither has MJF.
There is a difference between heat that sells tickets and heat that pisses people off and gets your rental car tires slashed.
And then he gets into the ring and rag dolls guys like Darby and Dante Martin. Miro is awesome because he backs up his heel promos with merciless assbeatings.
If people are slashing his tires that actually means he’s getting good, real heat because people care and so will pay to see him get his ass kicked.
X-PAC heat is when your presence is annoying because people don’t care about you and don’t want to see you on tv.
People are reacting to his raps live in the way he wants and people are upset about them online days lay, so I’d say he’s actually pretty close to being over the target.
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17 minutes ago, Craig H said:
Woah...What in the fuck. It's so much worse actually hearing it instead of reading what @Dolfan in NYCsaid it was.
He shouldn't be outright fired for this, but he should at least be suspended and have to go to some kind of sensitivity training. I'm also not interested in hearing excuses like, "it's wrestling though!" Yeah, it's wrestling, but if you have the skills to put rhymes together like that then you don't have to sink to the absolute bottom of the barrel to get heat. Be better and be more creative.
Sensitivity training for what? The Duke lacrosse players were exonerated. But the false accusation led to a national embarrassment for a North Carolina school. So bringing it up was actually meant to tweak the North Carolina audience by implying he believed the false accusations about students at one of their schools.
The Simone Biles stuff is fine. It’s topically relevant and Scottie Pippen is still shit on for stuff from the early 90’s. Part of being a pro athlete is getting attacked by people on their couches when you don’t live up to their expectations.
PCR tests were at one point giving a lot of false positives—that’s not denying COVID.
He should absolutely not be suspended or sent to sensitive training for that promo.
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55 minutes ago, LoneWolf&Subs said:
Taz, Excalibur, and Flair on commentary could work too well, to be exact.
Based on how goofy I’ve seen Excalibur and Tax get on the occasions I’ve actually watched Dark…I could very easily envision that turning into a train wreck pretty quickly.
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17 hours ago, TheVileOne said:
If they start abandoning the clear build they were doing toward Page being the guy to unseat Omega, then they aren't 1990s WCW. They're much worse. They're post WrestleMania 17 WWE.
Counterpoint: If Page wins the title at the ppv Punk makes his in ring return and Bryan Danielson debuts two weeks after it, his title victory and early reign would be overshadowed by bigger names in the industry and new to AEW.
If they could keep him as over until the next ppv when Punk and Bryan are integrated, I think a Page win would be even bigger.
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I could be wrong but I really don’t think they’re abandoning the Adam Page storyline just to hot shot CM Punk or Danielson into the title picture.
To me, it just seems a little too soon to be taking the title off Omega. Personally, I think he only recently hit his stride as Champion with the heel Elite/Belt Collector stuff. I think Khan/AEW could feel the same way.
We’ll see on Wednesday but I really think they’ll be continuing Hangman’s story arc towards the title.
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3 minutes ago, matt925 said:
I know the unfortunate news about ryo mizunami but she would be perfect. Maybe they can do something with legit leyla? Britt needs a shooter.
I think having someone in a bodyguard role “protecting” someone bigger than them would look visually awkward on tv.
I also selfishly want to be surprised with someone new.
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7 hours ago, Craig H said:
I'm probably one of the few that actually likes the Painmaker gimmick, but Jericho isn't going to be able to go full Painmaker because a lot of that was the awesome shit after matches or during press conferences where he would be throwing chairs and calling scared looking people "fuckfaces." Also, part of me wonders if more people watching are aware of Gage than the Painmaker gimmick. It's a gimmick that probably few saw in NJPW. Gage has been a part of at least two big documentaries now, each of which that were seen by a lot of people (You Can't Kill David Arquette and Dark Side of the Ring).
Painmaker Jericho fought Darby early on in Dynamite history, so I’d say it’s 100% that more of the AEW audience is more familiar with Painmaker Jericho.
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18 hours ago, tbarrie said:
But Tony Khan is okay with something as one-sided as "one guy can use a chair"?
I'm pretty sure "Shawn Spears and only Shawn Spears can use a chair" was not a pre-existing match type.
Yes, lopsided match stipulations (e.g. handicap matches) have a long history in wrestling. An opponent can’t win stipulation makes no sense and is anti-competitive making the match pointless and something that would never happen.
Anyway, I’m glad Lance Archer finally got a big win in AEW. Although I guess they probably did it so he could job to that New Japan guy. Hopefully, that happens on a NJPW show though.
Brit Baker going up against a heel was weird booking from the start and it didn’t lead to anything surprising because Nyla Rose still isn’t actually good at wrestling. Maybe they were just using it as a placeholder until one of the WWE girls non compete clauses expires but it doesn’t seem like they have a plan in place for her. And that’s a little concerning considering she’s one of their biggest stars.
I can’t really think of anyone I’d care about her facing at the ppv. Maybe if Thunder Rosa comes back…Tessa Blanchard maybe. Anyone they have signed doesn’t seem that interesting right now. No wonder the crowd is turning her face.
I don’t know who Nick Gage is but I did not find the comments that he died in a match and wanted to continue when revived or that he robbed a bank without a mask enthralling—I thought “Wow, this guy must be a fucking idiot,” some people seem excited though so I guess he has fans. I expect a train wreck of a match though.
I kind of think this show was overshadowed by all of the CM Punk and Daniel Bryan rumors swirling which is a bummer.
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6 minutes ago, tbarrie said:
Yeah, that stipulation only works if there's at least an unstated assumption that the rules have to apply equally to both competitors. That would still let the heel stack the deck, but they'd have to be slightly clever about it. Otherwise, why not just make the final labour a "Jericho can't win" match?
Because this isn’t WWE where wrestlers can just come out and make matches on their own right before they happen—it’s been pretty consistent that they can make challenges but Tony Khan has to actually approve them. Khan probably wouldn’t sign a match in which the stipulation was that one of them can’t win.
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19 hours ago, Casey said:
Gee, sure is weird that they’re calling him Malakai Black aka Tommy End on their social media then, even in the signing announcement.
From what I’ve seen, it’s in the context of his social media handles having a different name than his AEW name.
I’m skeptical that AEW is going to embrace his personal storyline that Black is an escaped mental patient that hallucinated his WWE career (that we all somehow saw) and may now be possessed by Satan.
And if they are, Excalibur still did a terrible job introducing him because he didn’t provide any context which made it confusing to people not following Tommy End on social media. Just like when he mentioned he’d wrestled him 10 years ago. Nobody cares, tell us you still wear your stupid mask in public today because of how badly he disfigured you or something.
Excalibur is horrible at introducing debuting talent and needs to get a lot better.
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3 hours ago, Casey said:
For right now I'm choosing to believe that Malakai Black is actually two different characters. I mean, we already have a wrestling zombie and alien on the same show, why not add in a good ol' fashioned possession angle too? That could play into the "bruises" on his face and whatnot as well.
To follow up on the 10 page AEW Jim Ross Dynamite thread from last week: I did hate the "Tommy End, or whatever he ends up calling himself" line from JR. And him always saying "Cowboy Shiznit" when Hangman is on the screen is really cringe, too.
The Tommy End thing is a direct product of Excalibur once again stepping on a debut and making it worse with his know it all shtick.
Based on the merchandise it appears he is just going to be called Malakai but you’re talking about him having multiple personalities or something, I saw other people talking about him being possessed. Bringing up the name Tommy End just caused needless confusion.
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16 minutes ago, AxB said:
If Tommy End's WWE name was Aleister Black, can he actually be called Malachai Black in AEW? Because one of the names is the same, innit? Unless it's pronounced Black but it's spelt Bloch or something. Anyway.
Amanda Nunes was there and they mentioned she was a two weight UFC Champion, but they never said anything about how she destroyed Ronda Rousey in a couple of minutes without particularly trying.
Christian was Christian in WWE he’s been Christian Cage in TNA and now AEW. I don’t think it would be any different than that.
AEW Dynamite - 8/11/21
in ALL ELITE WRESTLING
Posted
Well, this show sure could have used a rap from the Acclaimed to make things more interesting.
I thought Christian did a good job of getting the crowd behind him—but the initial reaction suggests the AEW audience isn’t too keen on him vs Omega as a ppv main event.
The trios matches were cluster F’s as typical of most AEW tags. Did Rick Knox stop his count early at one point in the Elite tag opener?
Disappointed they had Wardlow take another pin fall.
Surprised they’re doing Jericho vs MJF on tv. They must really be banking on CM Punk selling the ppv because it doesn’t seem like any of the matches are going to have serious builds.