HumanChessgame

I didn't know what you were talking about and decided to look it up - https://www.cagesideseats.com/aew/2023/12/25/24014544/chris-jericho-claims-witnessed-brawl-out-twitter-feud-stephen-p-new-cm-punk-attorney-christmas Jericho has been one of my favorite guys ever since seeing him in ECW forever ago, but man has he ever crawled up his own ass in the past several years. Every time he does one halfway decent thing, is involved in a quality match, or provides some other type of veteran leadership he takes two steps back with an inversely awful storyline or some carny bullshit like this.

Mustafa Ali making his indy return.

Looking at the ticket site for the event the sales look pretty good for a show that's still a few months off. I can't tell if the upper 200s are on the hard cam site and intended to be dark unless the demand dictates otherwise or have already been sold. With the stage setup the venue could probably max at 14k-ish.

Raw is usually just background noise while I'm working, but this was actually a really good show from an in-ring standpoint. Miz-Gunther and both tag title matches were all great, especially the men's tag match. The Creeds are really starting to show they belong here. Most of the promo and backstage segments were tune-out-able as usual but for the first time in a while I found myself engrossed on what was going on in the ring.

Well that was a damn good two hours of wrestling. All three CC matches were great. Much like last week, Andrade meshed well with a larger, stronger opponent. Despite his size and style, Eddie wrestles from underneath really well and is at his best when it looks like he's going to lose and then finds a way to pull out a victory. Between his match last night and this match with Brody, Danielson's eye looked swollen shut. The two of them kicked the crap out of eachother in a most entertaining way. Two women's matches! Granted one was just a squash to set up an angle, but it did what it set out to do and the post-match segment worked really well. We got some progress on Skye Blue and Thunder Rosa comes back! I don't know what the deal was with the teams' getups in the tag match but whatever. There were a few rough bits in there. Kris almost landed really badly on that suplex on the ramp and Willow overshot the table by quite a bit. I've always enjoyed seeing Bryan Keith on the indies and after this weekend I hope he's All Elite.

Speaking of Liv, is she injured or something? Up until this conversation I thought she had been future endeavored as according to cagematch she hasn't wrestled since early July.

I agree with the general consensus about most of the matches and don't have a lot to add to most of the points already made, and emphasize that Billie/Athena was the match of the night and worth seeing. I think Fletcher was one of the less interesting choices to win the TV title. Lee Moriarty really should have gotten either Lethal or Moxley's spot in the CC and he was my pick to win here. Having your world champ compete in the cooler match in a non-title bout set up last minute isn't a good look even if the women's title match and the six man were the main attractions to the show. Even though I liked the six man match, I almost feel like it didn't need to be two matches in one. I think they could have had the faces win for the BCC to jump them after and set up a Fight Without Honor at the next show. Like with a majority of ROH/AEW PPVs this has a lackluster build but a solid final product. I get ROH is a pretty marginal property and maybe some people or situations were iffy and had to be rebooked but I don't see how hard it would have been to set up most of these matches a few weeks beforehand to get some solid hype around them. Caprice and Ian are also the best commentary team across the whole property.

You mean like a...

Andrade/Brody was awesome and as much as I wanted Brody to win I'm fine with the finish. Andrade looked like he was genuinely struggling and his win looked earned. Hangman/Roddy was what it was. Joe's promo was great as is most things he does. They've done Mark dirty from the get-go and especially in this tournament. I get he was injured for a while, but the guy is such a good character in addition to great in the ring and deserved to get at least one win in this whole thing. Speaking of Ruby, it was obvious she was going to lose here but I'd like to see her get more time and a win at some point. I can't take Riho seriously. The segment between Bill/Starks and the Golden Jets was rough. The "soft" comment towards Bill was fine, but bringing up Enzo just came off as cheap heat and wasn't even funny. As good as Starks is, they seem bound and determined to bury him. Mox/Swerve goes over because of course it does. Moxley didn't need to be in the tournament in the first place and didn't need to win here.

The Acclaimed's raps were hit or miss for me, but they were an act where I came for the comedy and stuck around when they started to get good in the ring. Their first match with Swerve and Lee where they almost won was a total MOTYC and a sign they'd crossed over to becoming legit good wrestlers. Ever since they aligned themselves with Billy Gunn and started doing the "Scissor Me" segments, they've regressed to being comedy workers again. A lot of their recent bits have been Attitude Era DX skit level of cringe. Someone upthread mentioned that they weren't into something, but glad it made the fanbase as a whole happy and hoped it continued. I get that their antics sell merch and are over with a demographic, but it makes them actively worse in my book.

This is his normal finisher- Dude is awesome and I hope they use him more often.

Is there an "Eddie is a bum" shirt out yet?

This was a damn good two hours of wrestling. Brody/Claudio were two guys whaling on eachother and making it seem like they were both actually struggling with eachother. Abbadon shows up and actually wins, plus there's an indication of a Julia Hart Program which should be great. The Iron Savages are there too and I would have much rather have heard them do one of their tribute promos to coked up 80s hosses than Roddy's attempts at comedy. The HOB match was your average JTTS match, but the setup of a program with FTR is all kinds of awesome. Toni Storm is still awesome. I thought Garcia might get an upset victory here, but nah. Match was fine though. Danielson and Eddie predictably beat the piss out of eachother for all our enjoyment. If he turns but Wheeler doesn't, does he rebrand the team as FTR, Inc?

Swerve doesn't work as The Devil to me because doing something covertly like that just seems out of character for him. He has no problem breaking into peoples' houses and attacking them or ominously threatening their kids, so if he wanted a piece of MJF he'd get directly in his face to do it.

There are like three world titles right now. If it means Punk wins one of them then I'm fine with that as long as they get them off Reigns and do something with them. The potato chip commercial backstage segment was funnier than it had any right to be. I'm glad Tozawa is getting a check even if it is mostly for goofy skits.

Survivor Series quickly became one of my favorite events when I started watching wrestling. I liked all the random pairings of faces and heels, some of which furthered angles and others were just thrown together out of convenience. I rented all the 80s events and would look forward to it every year. When they started phasing out the 4 on 4/5 on 5 elimination matches in the 00s I was really bummed. The Only Time Raw And Smackdown Go Head To Head brought them back, but the forced brand loyalty was always annoying. If they want to do Wargames matches now then fine, but that makes three PPVs with cage-centric gimmick matches and like Eivion said upthread, booking the angle to fit the event rather than letting it come up as a logical feud blowoff also diminishes it. The women's match was nothing memorable but there weren't any serious botches or anything either. There was a bit too much of various members laying around while the other wrestlers hit their spots, as is typical of a lot of these matches. Miz/Gunther overdelivered. The story of Gunther taking Miz too lightly and leaving himself open to underhanded tactics was a nice story. Gunther gets credit for his brutish intensity while on offense (a simple powerslam looks devastating when he does it) but I don't think he gets enough credit for how good he sells. Dragon Lee/Santos was a fun match showcasing what both guys can do. The women's title match had a pretty foregone conclusion, but Stark was able to hang in there. The men's Wargames went about as predicted with the heel team dominating until the "will he or won't he" return of Orton. The possible MITB cash-in was an interesting wrinkle, even if a match between two guys already in a match is a little hard to wrap your head around. If Orton was going to come back I'd hoped it would be to put over some new guy (perhaps a debuting Bron Breaker) their first feud. He got a good pop and this ended up being a wise choice to bring him back. Once the sides evened up, the faces pretty much ran through everyone else. I get they wanted the faces standing tall and Orton to have a successful comeback, but the last of it was too one sided for my liking. I thought the end was a bit anticlimactic and then...holy shit...

I tuned into Rampage before switching over to Survivor Series. Romero is still a great utility guy and had one of Hook's longer matches. Statlander/Diamante was really good and set up Kris' next program with Mercedes Martinez, which should be good. Yuta won the pure title again in a nice outing with Shibata so that's one BCC guy with gold.

Ruby Soho vs Anna Jay vs Skye Blue is also on the card.

I'd much rather see Buddy Matthews and Lee Moriarty in there than Moxley and Lethal, but it's a solid field overall. They're making yet another belt for this? I was under the impression it was just going to be a trophy or something like the Owen Hart cup.

In ROH back in 2007 Jimmy Jacobs hung Jay Briscoe upside down while he was gushing blood and cut a promo while standing under him and swallowing his blood at one point. It was a good deal more graphic than what happened here, though I'd think ROH had some level of health codes in place.

So Cage becomes Akeem 2.0?

Kingston/Lethal was fine. I've never been much of a Jay Lethal fan but he does well in a JTTS role. Interested to see where Ortiz re-aligning himself with Eddie goes. Sometimes you can just tell two guys decided they'd just go out and lay into eachother and figure out how to make it look good as they went. Claudio and Matthews compliment eachother so well. They're both really physical wrestlers with Matthews being the faster of the two and Claudio is one of the better bases for guys like that. Give me a best of seven series between these guys. There wasn't anything wrong with the ROH tag title match but I thought The Gunns could have used the rub here. I get they're going for the uneasy champions pairing with Joe and MJF (assuming Joe is actually his partner and officially the champ?) but the Ass Boys would be a good fit as champs in ROH. I wasn't really a fan of MJF getting stretchered out as the whole "injured face comes back from the local medical facility all banged up and still manages to win" trope annoys me. Well, nobody turned on Sting Cassidy/Moxley was definitely a match between the two. Mark Briscoe is in the Not G8 and he's continental AF Shida's Jushin Liger gear was pretty cool. Toni managed to balance her comedy bits with a lot of overall good wrestling and the match was decent and marred by a really dumb finish. I don't mind Toni winning via shenanigans but the metal gimmick was just barely still in her tights and plainly visible during the bump. An AEW ppv has a ladder match because of course it does. I cringed when Black and Dralistico took piledrivers on ladders but other than that there wasn't as much absurdity as some of the other ladder matches have had. I'm here for Skye's new look. She always had such natural upbeat babyface energy I didn't think she'd work as a heel, but then again Julia Hart started off as a cheerleader. This was the best match of the night at this point. While I like Julia having a title, I really liked Stat as champ. Osprey being signed didn't really come off as that big a of a deal to me considering he's been there a few times before and clearly had some type of working agreement already. Damn, Swerve caught an absolute gusher in there. Most of the garbage matches in AEW have either been comical or just poorly executed and pale in comparison when you actually watch deathmatches regularly, but this actually delivered. The barbed wire spots actually looked painful and had some decent innovation (the arm trap SOS slam and moonsault). It was a bit odd not to see the face win after all the shit Swerve has done, but I'm fine with it as long as it leads to Swerve moving up the card. The cooler tag match went way too long, or at least seemed to with the four guys doing their usual shit-in-getting. The Young Bucks went full heel by the end which suits them better. MJF stole an ambulance and hobbled to the ring. Despite selling to the point he could barely walk throughtout the match, MJF and White still have a competitive bout. I get MJF is desperate and pulling out whatever he can to save his title and fight off the pain, but the multiple high spots and MJF more than holding his own for 20+ minutes made it hard to really get into. The longer this went on and more dog and pony show bits that kept going on (Cole teasing the towel, ref bump, belt shots, run ins, etc) put a damper on it for me. Jay White looked like a wuss because he couldn't beat a guy with one leg even when cheating and the match was overbooked to hell. I kept thinking that Cole was going to reveal he was faking his injury and he was The Devil all along, but no, no payoff to that storyline yet. Swerve/Page and the women's three way were my favorites of the night. Overall this was not one of their stronger PPVs.

GCW held a show in Wyoming in 2021 at a barn type structure at a fairgrounds. It featured Manders riding a horse to the ring only for the horse to refuse to walk out, Mance Warner doing a "pocket sand" spot, and someone in the audience calling the police because they thought the main event brawl was a shoot.

I assumed he was going to return last weekend, but then the only thing he did was pop up on one of RJ City's bits and say "Nope, not this week" or something like that. It makes me wonder if he's not cleared yet or what's going on, but the shows would certainly be better with him around.

Is Danielson's injury legit? I assumed it was just kayfabe, especially after the promo with all the gauze over his eye.