Gordi the BJW fan

Cheers, brother! You get (more of) my respect for that. To be clear: I actually REALLY LIKE the idea of The Hounds learning the mist from Julia. Just... Not in this "division" and not against Okada and in particular not leading directly to the finish. AEW has ALWAYS had a lot of run-ins and interference but they used to be really good about using it to set up a completely credible near-fall rather than a straight fuck (the fans) finish. Also: I genuinely don't get the "neither guy can afford a loss here" taking point. My FAVOURITE wrestlers in AEW lose a ton and I love them more because of it! Not just the goofy fun lower card guys, the Sakazakis and Abadons, or the reliable old hands, the Dustins and Rockies, either. Wrestlers like Bryan, Eddie Kingston, Briscoe, etc etc are on almost everyone's list of favourites and none of them are afraid to do a clean job. I like Will Ospreay WAY MORE because he's shown such a willingness to put guys over in AEW. Obvious to me: If you're great, you can lose a match without losing fans. Conversely, my LEAST favourite wrestlers (Hogan, reign of terror HHH, Big Daddy, TNA Jarrett, etc etc) are ALWAYS the ones who refuse to do clean jobs when they should. I like Punk WAY LESS because he talked a big game about working with the young guys in AEW but in fact made sure he "got his win back" from all (I think it was) three guys who beat him in singles competition before he fucked off And the same thing is (surprisingly and disappointingly) happening for me with Mox (who I used to love watching) working on top now. And, as long as I am here... I was crushed to learn that Bear Boulder is yet another pro wrestler who's a piece of shit as a human being. I know it's naive and unrealistic and possibly beside the point... but when I really like a wrestler I want to believe that they are a nice kind reasonable person away from the ring. The thing is, I have met SO MANY wrestlers who certainly (seem to?) live up to that ideal. From wrestlers who mainly do the job on local indie shows to internationally famous superstar wrestlers to straight up living legends... SO MANY of them with OBVIOUSLY big and warm and kind hearts. SO MANY wrestlers who were intelligent and/or witty and/or incredibly patient and giving. They exist. They are very much in the majority, at least in my experience.

I'm just one dude but: "Mostly clean finishes" and "wrestlers willing to actually do clean jobs" was a HUGE part of why I loved 2019 through, let's say, 2021 AEW so very very much. "A nonstop parade of fuck finishes" because "Our superstars need to be protected from actually doing the job" and "Death Riders House of Torture Bullshit" are a HUGE part of what murdered that sweet and tender love. So, small sample size but yeah. tbarrie absolutely has a point, and that kind of bullshit bleeding into the Continental Classic/Title scene breaks my mighty heart. Is that what you want, Zakk? (And Technico)? To break poor Gordlow's mighty heart?

Good to know! Well, not good to know that the Stone Pitbull is hurt... but certainly it makes me feel better if a short crappy let-down of a match with a lame finish wasn't the original plan. I'm still gonna take a little break from AEW, though. While I am here: I heard a rumour that The Righteous... want to... Alongside Elias, Wander.

I just suddenly realised why the ending to Okada/Ishii damn near killed AEW for me. With the Royal Rumble tomorrow, I was chatting with some wrestling buddies about stuff like how something like 30 of the 38 (There were co-winners one year) Men's Rumble winners so far were disappointing to us personally but the Rumble is usually worth watching anyway for the stuff that goes on before the finish... And, there was a general consensus among us that the last time any of us REALLY marked out for the Rumble was when Shinsuke and Asuka both won... But how the way WWE followed up on that essentially killed the company for most of us. Friend-of-a-friend Satoshi actually travelled to Mania that year (2018? I think 2018 sounds right) specifically for Styles/Shinsuke. Imagine how disappointing that was! ANYway... THAT'S why Okada vs Ishii killed me. It subliminally reminded me of AJ/Shinsuke. Two guys who proved they could work an all-timer together in New Japan being given a match in America and having it end with a nut shot. Chances of me watching the Rumble while chatting with my buddies online: About 90% of me sleeping in and missing some of it: About 60% of me skipping Collision: 99.5% of me at least watching Collision highlights on YT: 50/50. Depends on what people post about it on here. of me making an "If AEW means All Ex WWE, then I guess WWE stands for We Were Elite" joke if Cody wins again or if Punk wins: I more or less just did. of me generally enjoying the Rumble matches themselves: Probably pretty good. of me therefore getting back into WWE and becoming a member of the WWE Universe: Less than zero. of me eventually getting back into AEW: Pretty likely

The sad/frustrating thing for me is that presumably bringing in all these "big names" from outside is being done with an eye toward them bringing fans in with them and increasing ticket sales and viewing numbers... but it 100% seems to be having entirely the opposite effect. If the "mainstreaming" of AEW's roster, production, storytelling, and presentation were having a clear positive effect on viewership, tickets, etc I'd probably be a lot more willing to just shut up and accept it as "what's best for the company." And I would not have guessed that a roster full of relative "unknowns" a rough production style, goofy positive friends-first storytelling and a laid back less professional type of presentation were in fact "what's best for business" despite it being exactly what I personally wanted... But as it turns out ratings and ticket sales were both WAY better when AEW was our scrappy little underdog indie/international wrestling nerd dream program, and they are WAY worse now that AEW has shifted hard into being a second-rate corporate sports entertainment behemoth. And I am 100% convinced that the road back to success is NOT bringing in even more "big names" from outside and getting even more slick and corporate in how you present those names.

For whatever it's worth, I 100% agree with sabremike here. In my specific case (and by no means am I implying it's the same for sabremike or anyone else) I straight up despise WWE to an unreasonable degree. To me, it is a mistake to bring anyone into AEW straight out of WWE who doesn't have a serious prior-to-WWE background travelling the world and/or working the indies honing their craft. I tend to think of it as "Wrestlers who love wrestling" as opposed to "Would-be superstars who wanted to be rich and famous." And I don't give a fuck if there are obvious exceptions. The general principle still stands, for me. And I don't care if the wrestlers coming in were used wrong in WWE (Miro cured me of that line of thinking) or if they can still go or if their matches are good. It's a hardcore type indie-vs-mainstream issue in my heart, and the message AEW has clearly been sending with their recent booking is "Any kind of mainstream stamp of approval is WAY more important to us than any kind of indie cred." And, therefore, "No point in doing your best or giving your all if you came here from the indies. You're automatically lower on the card than anyone who ever had Vince's stamp of approval, however briefly." And, most sadly for me personally, "This isn't, as you once believed, a company run by a guy who loves indie, Japanese, and Mexican wrestling as much as or more than you do, but rather a company run by a guy who was willing to use indie, Japanese, and Mexican wrestlers as place-holders until he could bring some REAL stars in. From WWE." And Hurt Business being good tag champs who will have good matches is therefore irrelevant to me. And, also, WWE is a straight up evil cesspit. And also a place that tries real hard to drum the love of wrestling out of you and teach you to be selfish. As I said, this isn't a reasonable or rational way of thinking about things. It's a feeling deep in my gut. Sadly, that means there isn't much point discussing it with me. You will never talk me into accepting WWE>Indie booking in AEW, or "Vince is gone so it's not bad there any more." Or, "these particular guys aren't going to track that shit all over the floor once they arrive here." So in order to avoid being like (pick any poster who just cannot stop posting negative shit about whatever they hate in AEW at the moment)'I tend to withdraw from the discussion here whenever the pendulum swings too far that way. But I didn't want to leave sabremike hanging, and I hope it's possible to get some of y'all to understand something about why a few of us (or at least why I personally) can NOT accept the WWE-ification of AEW in any way at any level.

LEMME TELLYA SOMTHIN' BROTHER!! Who was that jabronie on here who was complaining that The Moxter wasn't keeping his promise to use his endless push to get younger wrestlers over? Just look at this list, BROTHER: Cope! He's coming for the title! Guy has a nickname for a name! What's younger than that? Christian Cage! When will he cash in? Everyone's on tenterhooks! Jeff Jarrett! He's gonna go over Brother Claudi, then he's coming after The Moxter! That's how you get the young boys over, BROTHER! The Hurt Syndicate! Combined age a sprightly 97! (EDIT: And Canadian Young Lad Chris Jericho! Obviously The Moxter's vision of a grimdark and serious AEW needs to include a team-up with Brother Lionheart, brrrrrother! WHATCHYA GONNA DO?!?! AEW stands for All Ex WWE! (To be clear, I myself am f'n 59 years aulde, and Shelton Benjamin has obviously been excellent in AEW thus far) BUT: Damn, I loved All Elite Wrestling. A mix of 90s All Japan, FMW, and goofy indie wrestling, not afraid to take big risks, emphasising the tag division, giving "unknown" indie wrestlers a real chance to grow and shine and "climb that ladder" and respecting the knowledge and intelligence of their fan base. I'd been dreaming of something like that, for years. I still kind of enjoyed the "challenge brand" version, SESE (Some Elite Sports Entertainment) though every step toward the mainstream, every attempt to seem more polished and professional, and *particularly* every time they brought in a new wrestler with "star power" and pushed loveable goofs like John Silver and Nicky Boy and Abadon further down (and, eventually, off) the card it killed me a little. There was still a ton of great wrestling and room in the booking for an occasional surprise. I genuinely dislike All Ex WWE. Particularly the boring and predictable booking where the heels ALWAYS have to cheat to win and if a heel loses they IMMEDIATELY get their heat back. It's dispiriting. And: Fuck the constant grimdark edgelord bullshit. Quit trying to be Game of Thrones. You were SO GOOD at being Ted Lasso. The world could really use a little extra joy right now. Why you wanna end every show with yet another boring predictable dispiriting heel beat-down. We are WAY past the point of building toward a sufficient catharsis. Best possible outcome reaction now is "Thank fuck that's over." It's in that spirit that Okada vs Ishii became the straw that broke the back of the last lingering threads of my love for All Elite Wrestling. The whole idea of that metaphor is that final straws are not big things. They are just one little thing too many. (How far has my love fallen? I couldn't be arsed to go to see Wrestle Dynasty live even though I could have stayed with wrestling friends in the Tokyo area and had a great time around the show. Three years ago, nothing could have kept me away). Okada and Ishii had one of the greatest G1 matches EVER. Which is REALLY saying something. And obviously it was setting my hopes too high to wish for something similar. But sacrificing that possibility on the altar of "Heels ALWAYS have to cheat to win" was my last straw. (For now?) Also: I hate to say it, but "Hurr hurr hurr, he kicked him in the balls, flipped him the bird, and called him a bitch!" is some VERY Vince-ian bullshit. Was Chris Charleton right? Fucks sake. Anyway, someone please pm me when the pendulum swings the other way again. EDIT: Fuck it, let's end on a positive note. My complaints here are 100% sincere, and I am legit done being a regular viewer until things change, but I really appreciate that AEW will still give us stuff like this:

A-ha have released MORE THAN SEVEN CDs? In my opinion: That's better than bad. It's good

Fuck's sake. They gave Ishii vs Okada a Sports Entertainment finish. That might be the last nail in the coffin of my lingering AEW fandom I can't stand what this company has become now. What a massive fucking let-down. Somebody PM me when they shift back toward actual pro wrestling (edit: with mostly clean finishes) again.

My only thought on Malakai Blech is that I am really gonna miss singing along to his catchy singles entrance theme.

She's Bane's wife, Megan. I mean, most of her scenes from Dark Knight Rises ended up on the cutting room floor and the movie was 12 years ago, but there's a significant enough crossover between Batman and AEW fandom (high fives Natural) that I don't think they needed to overexplain who she is.

Starting out hot and ending on a bummer is such a weird formula, but they keep going back to it again and again.

If I were a gifted and talented pro wrestler, my in-ring style would absolutely bear a close resemblance to The Kingston's Road Tribute Style. I f'n LOVE it and hope he never changes. I'm excited for two Cage matches on Dynamite! (Kenny vs Brian and Hook vs Christian)! I have a whole "The Moxter, BROTHER!" bit worked out for the Powerhouse match, but I think it just isn't funny any more (which, yeah, assumes it ever was funny in the first place). I am legit worried that Likable Jon has actually become A Selfish Wrestler which would legit bum me out. on the upside: I'm legit excited for the interview Gormless Toni cuts after winning the Gauntlet. (Considering the winner gets a title shot in Oz, it would be INSANE if anyone else won). Toni The Excited Rookie thrilled to get a shot at The Glamour this early in her young career should be really fun. w/r/t the controversial Collision tag: Since a major complaint about Mox World Order House of Moxture is the whole "I thought this was supposed to be about putting younger wrestlers over, BROTHER!" stuff... If Mox (haha who are we kidding? If... let's say, The Bad Apple) puts over one of THE YOUNGEST MEN ALIVE that will go a long way toward proving me and my fellow haters wrong... Right?

There is a SLIM chance they could use this match to put over The Youngest Men Alive, which would totally prove The Moxter right and me (and all my fellow haters) wrong and justify the whole angle. I guess we'll see! (To be clear, the joke is that Mox said he was doing this "to put young wrestlers over").

I do 100% unironically, my best version of AEW would be ZERO blahblahblah segments, nonstop tournaments, regular Gauntlet matches and Battles Royale, a few MORE belts (Cagematch title that's only defended in cage matches, for example), and ALL the storytelling done either in the ring or on optional YouTube and vlog channels. Also, rather than hiring all the best wrestlers from New Japan and Mexico, my best version of AEW would have a constant stream of guest wrestlers. And rather than hiring a bunch of WWE cast-offs and putting them on top of the card you'd bring them in as guests, mostly to put your indie guys and "originals" over. And the tag titles could main event a PPV once in a while. And the video game would be great and updates would be free. And all clean finishes, all the time. And you'd educate your fans to appreciate this new version of pro wrestling, Giant Baba style, rather than giving in to the pro wrestling grandpas crying about how It's different. But mostly the tournaments. I REALLY like tournaments.

Fucking hate it. "Stop the Moxunaga" could have been the greatest thing ever. "Mox World Order" would have been more nostalgia pandering, so not for me particularly. But other people here would likely have loved it, and at least taking a shot at that would have made some sense. But we have sadly ended up with lame predictable go-nowhere repetitive House of Torture bullshit. The absolute WORST possible direction they could have chosen for this. The grimdark promos do zero for me, personally. Mox is such an obviously likable dude, I don't buy him as angry brooding and evil (or, worse, EVIL). It'd totally work for me if he was taking psychotic JOY in destroying ... uh... Whatever it is The House of Moxture is trying to destroy. Beat dudes down, make the good guys look like fools, and LAUGH about it. Don't glower about it. Nobody has been meaningfully elevated out of this, so far. For example, Private Party hold the tag straps but it doesn't seem like anybody, anywhere, in or out of kayfabe, is taking them seriously as a top tag team. There's still a real chance they save this whole angle with a GREAT ending where someone who deserves it gets put over clean in a huge way, but sadly I am getting the feeling that the end of this arc will come more as a *relief* than a *triumph* That the payoff is more likely to be "Thank fuck that's finally over, at last we can move on" rather than " Hooray for the deserving saviour of AEW being elevated to a top position!" For the record, I REALLY hope that I am wrong.

Honestly, since there's no use arguing against nostalgia pandering and since Buddy and Brody are broadly beloved right now, put them in yellow and black striped gear and repackage them as The New Killer Bees. I'm pretty sure you could get B. Brian Blair to bestow his blessing. And doing the "ref is befuddled by which bee in in the ring" thing (with masks?) would be good for a chuckle with those two.

Angelico vs,Evil Uno? Or: Taven/Angel(ico)? My good friend Chris went back to Scotland for The Holidays. When he gets back, we have already set aside over two hours to grab a bite and overanalyse Wrestle Kingdom, Wrestle Dynasty, and everything else in painstaking detail. I am super lookng forward to it. (My takes pretty much align with the general consensus: Night 2 was better, Zack vs Shota was overlong and aimless, get well soon Douki, Kenny is 100% back and Gabe is a f'n STAR now, Thank you for Takeshita vs Ishii (and vs Shingo), womens matches were all reallygood, etc etc). I am calling this "Stop The World and Meltz With You"

Just wait. I think it was on the 5/18/22 Dynamite (Takeshita vs Hangman match) where he straight up said Takeshita is "from The Orient." That became a running bit for me for a couple of months (It's OK, you see, because I live in the mysterious Orient myself, and my beloved wife is Oriental...). I remember praising JR for not announcing Tana as being from The Orient when he dropped by and just trusting that people here would get the reference. I am very curious if they will edit that out when that ep goes up for streaming. Can someone please check that for me, if and when? If memory serves, that was a predictably excellent match that everyone but our boy Matt enjoyed. I joked about it so much that I legit can't remember if that was the only time JR referred to a Japanese wrestler as Oriental. I had forgotten about the "these men from China" thing. Dang! That's bowling shoe racist EDIT: JINX! Yeah! I forgot about Emi. That was probably the first time. Thanks, Sparkleface, for remembering that.

O'Shea : Sir, I need to know where I can get some gold scissors. TK : Gold scissors? My goodness, what an idea. Why didn't I think of that? Gold Scissors! Rick, there's four places. There's the Scissors Hut, that's on third. O'Shea : Uh-huh. TK : There's Scissors-R-Us, that's on third too. You got Snip-Your-Stuff-There. O'Shea : Mm-Hmm. TK : That's on third. Snip Low, Sweet Chariot... Matter of fact, they're all in the same complex; it's the scissors complex on third. O'Shea: Oh, the scissors district! TK : That's right.

For my money, the top three Johnny Cash songs are Folsom Prison Blues, Ring of Fire, and (perhaps surprisingly?) the cover version of Hurt. What are your favourite Johnny Cash songs?

OK. So. In last week's thread, in a post where I was otherwise lavishly praising Christmas Dynamite, I said this: TK's recent obsession with making the absolute crowd-pleasing *****+ match the opener and ending the big show with a heel or heels standing tall is kind of baffling to me. As always, I vastly prefer how the "old" AEW would strive to send the fans home happy. And... Dang! That PPV was almost like an exaggerated parody version of that! And I have been doing my "Lemme tellya something, BROTHER!" Moxter bits for a couple of weeks now and to be honest I really didn't think Mox was exercising "creative control" backstage to make sure "this is where the power lies! " or whatever... But golly dang this whole mWo House of Moxture thing has already devolved into dispiriting self-parody territory. So the "in-ring work, per se" continues to be f'n amazing week in and week out but the endless repetition of betrayal and backstabbing and cheating to win "storytelling" and the bizarre refusal to let the good guys win the big one or to end things on a happy note seem to be wearing thin with more than a few of us. On the other hand: Orange vs Hangman, and Hayter vs Julia! I mean, I complain... but it's not like I am going to skip this one! I had a wonderful New Year's Eve in Osaka with some of my wrestling friends, drinking and feasting from early evening until the first morning trains started up around 5 am and we made our sleepy, happy ways home. ( And the wife and daughters and dog and hamster had a good time at grandma's house in the countryside also). I thank almost all y'all for the very enjoyable AEW discussion here in 2024 and genuinely hope you all had and/or have as safe and happy a new year celebration as I did.