tbarrie

I don't think so, no. Me, I'm still annoyed Mike Bailey didn't start wearing shoes after his win.

I liked Thekla joining up with Skye and Julia. Might as well get all the spooky chicks in one faction.

I mean, it totally does reward opportunism and cowardice. And as Technico pointed out, using it that way was totally in character for Edge at the time. But logically/realistically (which I realize are questionable words to ever try to apply to pro wrestling), that loophole should have been closed after Edge did that and future MitB contracts been worded more carefully. The fact that it wasn't was fun for a little while, but it's very much worn out its welcome by now.

But that's exactly like Money in the Bank, isn't it? Maybe they've changed the rules since I stopped watching WWE, but the original concept is that the briefcase holder gets to pick the time and place their title match takes place. Edge, the first such holder, realized that picking the time and place could mean "Right here, right now, after the champ has just gone through a gruelling match", and most subsequent holders have followed his lead - but not all. Some did essentially what MJF did with the poker chip.

Some might, but I doubt many would. The general consensus seems to be that Avengers 2 botched Ultron, and the MCU version of Loki is well-loved as far as I can tell. (Now if you're talking comics, it's trickier. Ultron and Loki have both been involved in some great stories.) And getting back to Kang - I thought he was a perfectly acceptable palate-cleanser big bad to slot between Thanos and Doom. It's not like the character is a nobody in the comics, after all; he and Ultron are generally regarded as the top two Avengers villains. I wasn't expected his tenure as big bad to last twenty movies like Thanos's did. Caveat, though: I'm still not nearly caught up on the MCU - I have to watch Spider-Man: No Way Home next - so I have no idea how well-executed Kang was in Quantumania. I thought the tease for the character at the end of Loki Season One was good, though.

When I mentioned (over in the AEW News thread) how the announcers never specified when the casino gauntlet winners would get their title shots, the thought did occur to me that it might because they were going to handle them MitB-style. But I didn't mention that, because I didn't want to put such a horrible thought out into the universe. So, you know. Thanks, Dolfan.

The problem I see with that is I don't think Thekla is established enough to do that. I mean, she had all of one match in AEW before facing Aminata. As I may or may not have explicitly said a while back when discussing Anthony Bowens's match with Blake Christian and Kenny Omega's earlier match with Alan Angels - in my opinion, if you're established as a top act, giving a lot to an lower-tier character is a great way to help build that character up. But if you're not established and the office is trying to build you to a higher level, then doing the same is just counter-productive. In this specific case, my assumption from her debut was that they wanted to establish Thekla as a big deal quickly. Giving her a much more one-sided match against Lady Frost than most of the women get against Frost contributed to that. But then having her go fifty-fifty with somebody who's well established as a bottom-carder kind of puts the brakes on it. (I mean, I know Aminta has beaten Julia Hart once. Does she even have a second win in AEW?) If they wanted to build Aminata up, I think having her stand up to Megan Bayne (with some success) would be a better way to do it. Megan's not in the top echelon yet, but they've done an excellent job presenting as an awesome force even after she lost to Toni. She has enough credibility with the AEW audience that she can afford to give Aminata a rub, whereas Thekla in my opinion doesn't yet. (Bayne also regularly annihilates jobbers, sometimes two at a time, so having Aminata credibly fight back would provide a good contrast, leading the audience to conclude that Aminata is not just a jobber.) I hadn't seen anything of Thekla prior to arrival in AEW either, but I must say I was pretty impressed by her debut. She looks cool, has some neat spots, and oozes charisma. I think her ceiling's pretty high. So if you want to take my earlier analysis with a grain of salt on the basis that I'm something of a Thekla mark, well, fair enough.

Great, thanks! So that being said - MJF and Athena have each earned title shots. But they've carefully avoided saying when they get those title shots. Both Hangman vs MJF and Toni vs Athena are PPV-worthy bouts in my opinion, so it would make sense to assume they'll happen at the next PPV. Except I believe the next PPV is Forbidden Door, where traditionally those titles would be defended against from outside AEW. So do MJF and Athena wait until All Out in September? Or do they get their shots at a named Dynamite before then? That would be a pretty loaded Dynamite, but it would seem odd to award the shots a full two months after they were earned.

So is All In far enough in the past now that we can mention results outside the All In thread without spoiler tags? Because I'd like to discuss the future of the men's and women's singles world titles.

Small question about yesterday's show: after Samoa Joe got brutalized, did they show Shibata and Hobbs accompanying him to a hospital? Or mention it on commentary? I thought it was odd that those two didn't help out during the main event.

That's a pretty fine distinction. To one-up you, I'm going to have to break out the ancient Egyptian nine parts of the soul and identify which wrestler corresponds to which. ...this may take me a while.

Fair. And there were definitely narrative possibilities if Ospreay's stipulation cost Swerve the chance to challenge Hangman, which is why I wouldn't have been shocked had the Bucks won. But I also figured the "Bucks as evil authority figures" story had run its course.

Presumably. To me, the big question is: do FTR win the tag titles before facing Cope & Cage at All Out here in Toronto? I suspect they do.

Not to be overly smug, but I figured the Bucks were probably losing. Though I wouldn't have been shocked had they won. My only quibble with the main event was that, with ten thousand run-ins already planned, they could have found room for the Dark Order to come to Hangman's aid. And personally I had a stronger emotional reaction to Toni winning than Hangman, because as you say, Toni seemed likely to lose. There was never much of a chance Hangman would lose.

I was just thinking, as somebody who lives in Eastern Time, I'm really fucking happy they started this one at 15:00 and not 20:00. Not the only reason I'm really fucking happy, though. Great show. Near perfectly booked.