Steventon

I can get some of this. I fell out of love with wrestling hard in the mid-2010s. I was a big indy & puro nerd, but the whole Bullet Club/Elite stuff showing up everywhere was a plague and made those places insufferable. I got back into things a couple years ago and made an effort to catch up on stuff I had missed, but found all the highly praised stuff like Okada vs Omega to be pretty tedious. I like AEW now, but when they first announced the promotion starting up, I had no interest as I didn't like Bucks, Page, thought Omega was alright, but the rest of all those indy guys largely sucked. I enjoy what they have going on now, though a lot of that is down to the booking, presentation and characters more than the actual wrestling content. I was a big Punk fan, following him back to IWA:MS, but I am keeping my expectations low here. I know that makes me look like a totally out of touch old man, but I guess the point is to say you're not entirely alone in those feelings, even if I am enjoying what AEW is doing.

this show gave me a lobotomy ok some more detailed ramblings - I did not watch everything in full length, because fuck that, but from what I saw the opener was my favourite match, and even that was criminally short for the amount of time they have spent building to it. Had to get that Rick Boogs guitar session and Miz watergun stuff in I guess, because that's what people want to see? AJ is massively wasted here but I can't complain too much as he is in his veteran years and is helping develop a new talent in Omos. Omos has the presence and personality, and he seems to be getting incrementally better every match, but he is a real ground zero project. I wouldn't be surprised if he is on the chopping block next year before he even gets 'good'. For me, the real waste here though is Matt Riddle - Sheamus is still a quality gatekeeper, but Priest is mediocre and didn't deliver in his big match. Next! - There is an alternative universe where Usos vs Mysterios delivers a barn-burner, but we aren't living in it. Another match cut criminally short - Becky returning to cut off Bianca's legs. Real stinky stuff. Reminded me how absurdly overrated Becky is because she has the fake Stone Cold gimmick. She is still massively over, but good grief that was dreadful. Her and Charlotte suffocating the women's division in this company is truly awful. - Pleasantly surprised Goldberg didn't gas in 90 seconds like he usually does, but the screwy finish to set up a Saudi match is more trash - Cena is still Cena, for better or worse. Goofball acting, but still 'gets it' and worked really hard to sell for Reigns and make him look great. Match was not good though, these two clearly don't have chemistry and just worked through the textbook WWE Epic playbook. Reigns is best when he is against guys who stylistically contrast with him. - Cool to see Brock back, and as a babyface. Less cool that he is going to be paired against a guy who he's already faced 10 million times already. He looked massive, but the hair and dad jeans look was about as un-intimidating as Brock could possibly be

Aren't Team Filthy contracted with MLW? I have no idea how that all works

Enjoyed the opener. I have no problem with how Ever-rise were used in WWE, but it's a point worth re-iterating how much better they've been treated by AEW, even as cannon fodder. Surprised they didn't have Darby cut a promo or do anything further to tease Punk though, especially as the Rampage trailer later in the show focused on the 'Darby is close to calling himself the best in the world' tagline. Missed opportunity there to add some more juice to it. Sammy vs Spears was enjoyable though definitely went overboard for the 2nd match on a run of the mill TV episode. Would rather see them save some of that stuff for high profile matches, but that would mean Sammy has to have more high profile matches. Dan Lambert was tremendous. This guy is made for pro wrestling in 2021. What an outstanding promo that was so good at targeting the stereotype of the AEW fanbase. The idea of Arlovski and JDS having a match is very exciting. Teasing them getting involved then switching to freaking Ethan Page and Scorpio Sky is a master troll job. I am interested if this actually leads to any of these MMA guys doing something in AEW, because if not then what is the point? Bucks vs JE was whatever. JB had some good moments but typical Bucks/Elite noise, but I did enjoy the beatdown afterwards. They're doing everything they can to make Omega vs Christian a hot match. I'm a big Big Show fan but am mixed about him having a match at ALL OUT. Cool to see him step in the ring, but him vs QT doesn't seem to lead to anything. Is Wright gonna have more big matches or is this a one-off? I'd be much more interested in a 6-man with The Factory vs Wright and 2 others. The Cage-Starks feud getting a completely rushed segment is becoming a running meme at this point. Have they even been given 10 minutes in total on Dynamite since Starks won the belt? I know Cage can't talk but Starks can, so it's a shame this program is treated as such an afterthought. Lucha Bros vs Bucks for the 87th time does zero for me, and the build for Andrade vs PAC has also been a wet fart so far. I'm willing to give Andrade time because all of AEW's acquisitions seem to have lukewarm feuds on arrival before hitting their mark. Speaking of - Miro vs Eddie Kingston!! Please can this be an actual rivalry with promos rather than just a one-off match? I can hope. Main event was whatever. Thought the finish was a bit dumb, the referee is distracted long enough for Jericho to use the bat, but he hesitates to use the Judas Effect why? Made him look a bit of an idiot. The Labours of Jericho has been a pretty hot angle over the last few weeks but the resulting match was entirely forgettable. MJF goes over clean, now what? Is he getting heated up for Punk or Bryan? Is Jericho just going to walk away now? Questions I am interested in seeing the answers to, but still feels like an anti-climax.

is there a reason why they are doing this on the Saturday and TakeOver on Sunday?

4 man booth is two men too much. Really enjoyed Christian vs Omega, probably the best Omega match since against Fenix. He is really, really obvious when he's just killing time for ad breaks, but he's also a tremendous bumper and made all of Christian's stuff look great. Really good use of the protected moves for big nearfalls and I thought Christian winning was a great move. The belt collector stuff has been forced from the start, this certainly adds more juice to the ALL OUT match and it's cool for Impact to have Christian come back with the belt. I like Britt, she has put in a lot of work to improve, but that match with Velvet was pretty fugly. The early chain wrestling stuff and finisher teasing looked so amateur hour after Christian and Omega did the same stuff. Cool finish at least. Post-match was a typical laughably bad AEW debut complete with no one knowing who Jamie Hayter was.

I like this idea. Then they would have a big post-match beat-down from the Elite on Cage and Jurassic Express, leading to Bryan (or Punk) making the save for his debut. The pop would be incredible.

Could be setting up Jungle Boy for Miro at one of the big shows coming up?

Oh shit, Black came out to the new AmenRa!! That alone made me pop bigger than anything he's done before in his career. Awesome. Cool that they put him over so strong in his debut but his entrance continues to be the best thing about him. Cody teasing a retirement we know wasn't coming was an odd choice, did anyone buy that a second? Jericho vs Juvy was alright when they were just wailing on each other, but all the flying and lucha stuff was fugly. Not sure if Juvy is a full-time active wrestler these days but they looked like they weren't on the same page with a lot of stuff. Finish looked good at least and Jericho does look like an old, tired, beat up guy right now, which is fitting for the story. Trios was fun. I really hope they learn from other promotions that trios titles are utterly pointless, but I'd absolutely be down for a one-off tourney at least. Darby, Moxley & Kingston is a dream team. Frankie Kazarian being your Babyface Making The Big Save in 2021 is..... a choice Decent show

AEW giving Ric one more title win after WWE get Chalotte to 16 would be the most tremendous piece of trolling in wrestling history

Very different characters though. Caster as far as I can tell is a shithead mid-card geek you want to see get his lunch fed to him, Miro is an unstoppable monster. I didn't really hear the Julia Hart line, but the line about Biles was just topical internet troll stuff. I'm not saying nothing should be taboo, but he was hardly ripping on mental health. He was basically doing the pro wrestling equal of -

How do we know he's a dick in real life? He's a heel saying outrageous stuff to rile people up, it's a character and it looks like it's worked.

Would AEW want Alexa Bliss? Would she even want to continue being a wrestler? She's pretty bad in the ring and has a history of getting hurt easily. She has name value and is good at playing a character, but how much value does that bring to AEW women's division? Feels like she'd be better going into some other form of entertainment.

Are AEW going to so So Cal any time soon? That would be ideal for a Super Dragon one shot

If you thought the over-pushing of Charlotte was bad before.....

WWE has spent the last 5 or so years building up a pipeline of talent, only to have nowhere for that talent to go. Still relying part-timers for your big matches. Now all that talent has somewhere better to go, but the pipeline is just so big. There's almost enough for ANOTHER major player to swoop in and pick up some big names. No idea what ROH's coffers are like these days but they should be angling for some of these guys.

Cole will obviously end up in AEW as he's boys with the Elite, but seriously - he sucks. We have seen everything he has to offer the wrestling world. And do they need ANOTHER big name if they are already getting Punk and Bryan, on top of under-utilized guys like Black, Andrade and Miro. How long until the start focusing too much on these new acquisitions and guys like Page, Darby, MJF, Jungle Boy end up getting short-changed? I would 100% rather see what AEW could do with Bray Wyatt than Adam Cole.

Angle as a manager is such a perfect use of him, it's mind-boggling WWE didn't do it last time round. Then again it is WWE, so you know, Baron Corbin. Trials of Jericho definitely feels like him ticking some stuff off his bucket list before he hangs it up, but I get the vibe Jericho will only 'retire' like most wrestlers 'retire'. He'll be back, even if he hangs it up as a full-time gig. If that is the case, strange that the first one was so innocuously against Spears.

Another fun show. I think one of the things I appreciate about AEW is how they make so many of the weekly TV shows feel must-see and important. Sort of like peak-ROH, every show was worth watching. I am a known low-voter on Adam Page and think he's a pet project, but credit to AEW they have really made him feel like a star and big deal since crowds have come back. Entrances were great, though they were also probably the best thing about the opener. I appreciate that it was the douchey money-hungry EVPs who were cashing in on the Space Jam sponsership. Not that it wasn't good, but it wasn't a barn-burner either. Johnny Hungee clearly the best guy in it, they should have let him eliminate one of the Bucks ti give him a moment. Cool swerve with the finish, very unpredictable booking move. Wonder if they pivot away from Page and return to him for ALL OUT or find a way out of that call. The FTW segement was super short, hopefully the second show will give the mid-card guys more time to play with. Starks is great and one of the best talkers they have, the only problem with his promo was that everything he said about Cage was true. And mentioning him not seeing Starks when he broke his neck just made him look like a dick too. Hopefully Starks goes over Cage and can move on to more exciting programs because Cage is super limited. Santana/Ortiz vs FTR was a perfectly fine is unspectacular TV match. I like both teams and they are good, but I think the talk of them being 'best in the world' level needs to end. They aren't and matches like this showed it. Horrible injury to Wheeler, hopefully he is OK but it looked pretty bad when blood is coming out of the arm, surely that was a bad break. Would be awful for them to have another big injury and be stalled for months. Archer vs Hikuleo was a dead match, fitting like something you'd see in a New Japan mid-card. Tanahashi coming to AEW is interesting, though I can't see him vs Archer excites me. The Moxley promo at the end makes Mox vs Tanahashi a FAR more exciting match. Loud CM Punk chants and Darby drops the 'best in the world' line. You can't tease that if you don't have Punk or Bryan under contract. Either vs Darby sounds awesome to me. Main event was something. I'm not sure I'd call it good, but I thought it was fun. That it was Chris Jericho getting sliced open and smashed with tubes was a big part of the novelty. Two GCW backyarders having the same match would be trash, but seeing a guy like Jericho in that environment was a spectacle. He can tick that off his bucket list now. I dig how AEW brings in these outsiders for one-shots, I don't want to see a Gage or Jeff Cobb on a regular basis, but one-off matches here and there are cool and keep things fresh. Gage kicking out at 3.2 made me laugh too. Juvy next week should be fun. I mean, I have no idea how good he is these days and those Jericho matches in the day were pretty whatever, but I am here for the more AEW bizarro matches.

Has Jade Cargill dropped off the face of the Earth?

I am not a Nick Gage guy at all, but I still popped big time for that. Nick Gage vs Jericho on TV is the sort of madness I appreciate AEW bringing to the table. Jericho doing his clown make up and weeb top hat was super lame though. Sting and OC killed me A lot of the actual wrestling on this show was pretty bleh, with the womens match being particularly mediocre, but I had fun thanks to the angles and hot crowd. Andrade bringing in Chavo was a good move and I think Death Triangle is an interesting first major program for him FTR vs Santana and Ortiz is a real step up or shut up match for me. Both teams have been hyped and praised for years with very few actual memorable matches to show for it. If that isn't a barnburner, I think those trains need to go away Main event was a fun garbage match. Didn't think Archer was particularly impressive in his big win, but it was better than their first match and I appreciate how they laid this out with Archer working from beneath in front of his home crowd leading to his victory

Has anyone in the history of wrestling (or atleast WWE) had more forced title wins/runs than Charlotte? I mean hell I think she is a solid-to-good worker but she has to be the most over-pushed worker of the last 20 years. The idea that she is an all-time great, let alone in the same league as Ric, is mind-boggling. Maybe I am reading too much into it, but it almost feels like they want her to go down as the greatest member of the Flair family because she's their creation.

I'm surprised they haven't ran Omega vs Christian before going to the Page feud. Even if the outcome wouldn't be in doubt, Christian would be the biggest name (well, maybe not bigger than Mox) for Omega to face and it would probably draw way more eyes on it than any of the other AEW title defences. They seemed to be setting it up a few times with interactions between them but it's been dropped.

Oh, I'm not dissing nerds. I'm 100% one. And I'm not saying this wasn't the planned story-line all along, I think it is clear it is. I'm not a big Page fan, but Cowboy Shit Page I can get behind. A top babyface who's afraid of stepping up and cries when his friends issue the challenge he should be making does not vibe with me personally, though. I get it, it's just not for me.

Solid show this week. I may be alone in this, but they are presenting Page as too beta. In an attempt to make him 'relatable' to their core fanbase (nerds) they've made him look like a massive wet fuck. They need to attach some balls to him for me to be remotely interested in the idea of him beating Omega. They really need to give Jungle Boy some promo time, even if it's on Dark or BTE if not TV. He is improving as a wrestler and they clearly see something in him, but him being a mute feels like it's going to put a ceiling on him. I am digging Christian working with him as a veteran, but I thought the logical next step was Omega vs Christian. Sammy vs MJF was a good TV Main event without ever becoming anything great. 2 guys with great physical skillsets but not the experience or ring-smarts to put together a coherent, long match. Crazy dive by Sammy. Wardlow was obviously meant to throw Jericho through the table and they didn't get the positioning right, but not a big deal. Was perfectly happy with the finish, hopefully we get Sammy vs Spears in some sort of gimmick match where Sammy gets his revenge.