Goodear
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Posts posted by Goodear
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1. I'd agree that they spend too much time double teaming in a traditional wrestling setting. But I'm not sure if I can really fault them when the most pushed tag team in the promotion The Young Bucks and the tag team champions The Lucha Brothers are notoriously worse when it comes to not recognizing traditional tag team match structure. I would concede 2point0 is better at getting in and out but they (much like FTR) aren't at the tippy top of the promotion. I'm guessing that S&O have read the room and realized that the room doesn't care if people are out of the ring at a count of 5. Now, from the perspective that you and I care much more deeply about structure, I can see your point. If I'm S&O I would adopt a smash mouth style while still holding onto traditional rules.
2. I would agree that head dropping is sort of silly. The DVD/DDT combination is more cool looking than dangerous (if that was really what you were referring to) with it really looking more like a controlled back bump than a head drop. Anyway, if I were to summarize my vision of S&O it would have significantly less frills and more substance built around aggression rather than constant double teaming and working in unnecessary movement.
3. Understood. I personally have a different takeaway having seen more of a evolution in S&O which (to me) has been generally positive. Personally, that it was only 2 minutes is a positive considering that most matches where out their welcome doing too much and taking too long. Hobbs is also good at getting in and out and making a point rather than hanging out doing longer matches that don't help him. S&O primarily need to up their aggression and put on an ass kicking. That they still need to cut more out of their presentation is probably true, but I think they are moving in a positive direction.
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1 hour ago, AxB said:
The contrasting approach that Santana & Ortiz, and FTR take to their squash matches is quite bizarre. How S&O just eat people alive and give them nothing, whilst FTR give the enhancement talent everything. Bump and sell, stooge for them, have to cheat to get on offense even.
I don't think its all that strange. Santana & Ortiz should be ruthless ass kickers especially as babyfaces akin to The Road Warriors or The Steiner Brothers and a lot less like the Rock 'n' Roll Express. FTR on the other hand seem to a paradigm where they try to have better matches on these Youtube shows where they likely have the ability to play around with the standard tag formula. This can happen more on the internet than it can on the television shows where their heat often gets eaten by commercial breaks.
I wanted to touch on @Matt D's commentary regarding S&O's squash matches. Watching this week, it seemed to me as though they had deviated from their previous structure which if anything was even more convoluted and required even more movement based tag work. I actually appreciated that they seemed more direct here than I've seen them in the past. I would agree the flippy finisher is a bit underwhelming or odd or whatever you would want to call it. S&O are one of those teams where they've never locked into a finisher for whatever reason with at least four of them being in play. I don't think any of them really have gotten over other than the street sweeper which is the one they probably use the least. If I were them, I would focus on their DVD/DDT combination.
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Watched all of Squid Game yesterday while puttering around the house doing chores.
I would recommend giving it a watch. It is eminently watchable with lots of good to great characters whose names I will not remember or bother to look up. The games themselves are visual treats and serve as highlights to the series. They do a fairly good job of making some of the early games moral choices that are interesting and conflicting. There are also some good derivations on the side of the people running the game not being total faceless monsters except when they are. There are issues with the plot conceptually that cause it to fall apart upon reflection.
Show wrecking Spoilers ahead.
SpoilerSo the game is presented as three different things that are in stark competition with each other. First, we are told through the Point Man that the game is meant to be an even competition where no one has any advantage over anyone else. Second, we are shown that it is a gambling event for rich people to watch. And third it is something for Player 001 (the founder of the game ) to participate in because he's dying and had fun playing on the schoolyard. The problem becomes that the first reason (which they totally murder people for violating) conflicts way too much with the other two. For example, 001 loses a game that other people also lose and is not murdered as a result. This means that, in fact, he was not an equal to the other participants and also came into the game understanding the stakes which kills about half of the other competitors. The gambling angle also screws up the game as it blows the sense of equality out of the water as VIPs openly disregard rules that would get other people killed. This also happens late in the series as The Point Man unmasks in front of his soldiers when he executed someone for the same violation earlier in the show. As it stands the Game is hypocritical to the extreme and while we can accept that people are hypocrites, it makes the concept weaker when holding to that first concept would have strengthened the show considerably. I also did not like the outside of the game killing as it again weakens the fairness that the concept is supposed to embody.
The window pane game is also completely unfair and depended almost entirely on the order of participation in terms of success.
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30 minutes ago, Matt D said:
I'd say put it on Emi Sakura and toss a bunch of young up and coming babyfaces at her leading to an eventual Lulu babyface push, but you might not want heels holding both titles. In that scenario you can have Anna and Tay go after Britt on the idea that they'd counter her seconds.
I think with Britt they really don't have to worry about that math since she's so very over regardless and people enjoy seeing her win.
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1 hour ago, Matt D said:
I know you guys have had a while to get use to the TNT championship and that it's been fairly successful, but it feels a little wonky to me that these don't have clear definitions of just what they are. I suppose on some level neither does the IC or US title, though.
The TNT title has evolved into a random open challenge title where anyone whether they have ever won a match in their life or not can get title shots just by asking.
I would agree absolutely that the IC and US titles have evolved into being of very little worth from their prior histories. The IC title's former identity evolved from "B Show" main event title to "will be a World Champion in a few years" title while the US Title was nominally the Number One contender to the World Title and led to direct title shots before it became more of a belt for belt's sake. Which is really what both of them are now.
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If I were Spears, I'd have a super hot wife but that's besides the point. ANYWAY, if I were Spears I'd maybe lean into some Larry Zbyszko for my influence as a lower level heel in a faction with bigger stars. Larry could do all the things Spears needs to do in draw heat as an illegitimate threat to the top stars while being cruel to the Marcus Alexander Bagwells of the world. He needs to walk a tightrope of not being a killer while not being a complete joke and the way Shawn does that is too inconsistent.
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3 minutes ago, Matt D said:
All of this is reasonable and frustrating and not surprising considering what I had previously heard. I had been surprised while watching the match. The airtime on the lift up by Wardlow was amazing and Eddie asking for a replay and getting it was great. As for Spears, I was buying into Eddie's explanation of his character, and the fact he was becoming unglued and that played into that, but who knows if Kingston wasn't just freestyling.
Honestly I watch most everything on mute on my phone anymore so I cannot speak to commentary choices. I think there is a way to play unhinged and mean and it's not really to do comedy spots as the butt of the joke. I brought up Rick Steiner a while ago in relation to Ortiz and I think it holds true that characters can 'play around' and still be a dangerous threat because what they find funny is terrible for the other person. Spears in general has such a bad case of booking schizophrenia in that he's going in so many directions at one time that he lacks focus.
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Spears/Wardlow vs Stunt/Fuego: Hey, Fuego went for the French Catch up and over. He did it as part of an exchange instead of a counter to a top wristlock and because the motion of it was different and the basing of it was different, he didn't quite get it. Good thought though. Spears coming out with the Brodie shirt was his right and if he's going to do it, Elevation's a great place for it, but I think it disrupted his heel reaction a bit. When he did his "10!" thing it wasn't heelish enough and that hurt Fuego doing it in response. He's basically Borne Again but as a bunch of WWE lower-card acts instead. It works but boy does it have a ceiling. People really complain about Marko Stunt? He was used perfectly here, as a foil for guys like Wardlow to have bounce off them. Even when Marko started to get some momentum on him, it was only enough to get a quick hot tag and then work with Fuego. His big offensive move on Spears was just rolling away from him repeatedly. Maybe it was worse a year ago, but everyone in that ring understood who he was and what he was and how he should fit into the match. I was especially impressed with Wardlow's reactions to him. The double death valley driver was set up well (as in it didn't feel contrived) and Wardlow's finish looked a million times better than when he does it out of the corner.
I think this is the ideal use for Stunt as a punching bag to gain sympathy and it really wasn't how they've used him historically. They really gave his first win away as he went over in a meaningless tag match on Dark rather than milking the moment for something with more punch like the way WWF used 1-2-3 Kid going over Razor Ramon and used it for meaningful development for both characters. Taking this match in a vacuum and placing it earlier in his run, this sort of rag dolling would allow him to give others big offensive moments while building to his triumph. Unfortunately, he has already been built beyond that moment as a person we were meant to take more seriously being the third in Jurassic Express. So we have AEW having to tear down his development in order to get back to a starting point from which he can build. I found the rolling away from Spears to be a bit hacky and it undercuts Spears' general character who typically does small things well such as stomps and knees. Wardlow was better in this particular outing as he only 'played the fool' in short bursts that didn't make him look anything more than off balance. As a whole picture, Spears and Wardlow actually form a pretty good unit who could do something in the tag ranks operating in a under a hammer and tongs structure which AEW doesn't have with it's other teams.
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Just a random shower thought I had the other day, Miro's kryptonite being the DDT should totally run into someone being tutored by Jake in order to finally put him down.
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Lots of interesting stuff here with a high percentage of matches where the winner isn't readily obvious. I'll give percentages here just for giggles.
CM Punk Interview - Probably time to move away from "I love you all" material and have Punk cut something on Team Taz that both has the CM Punk trademark bite without burying them too hard considering Hobbs and Stark really haven't gotten the push behind them at this point to make them invulnerable to calling them losers. Snarky but not smarty.
FTR vs Sting & Darby - Darby should be really good in selling for FTR if they want to do a traditional heat build with Sting coming in for the hot tag. I'd expect FTR to also be able to safely handle Sting so I wouldn't be terribly surprised if he actually took a move or two. Moving from Spears to FTR makes it seem like the logical next step would be to start a Darby-MJF feud which would be fine with me. I don't think they really need to sacrifice FTR to do that and could screw the babyfaces out here to continue the FTR rebuild. "Bigger Stars win" makes me call Sting and Darby 65% favorites.
Britt Baker vs. Ruby Soho - Baker is unlikely to drop the belt here in my opinion as she (like Miro) still feels fresh with the strap regardless of the amount of time they've actually had them. I don't think they should move Soho away from her yet so I would give her an out but AEW typically doesn't book that way. One of the problems with AEW's women division is that they've slowly built up some babyfaces (Soho, Rosa, Statlander, Anna, Tay) but they don't have good heels to work with outside of Baker as Bunny, Penelope and Rose don't have any rubs to give. I suspect the division is going to continue to revolve around Britt for a while. Baker 85%
MJF vs Pillman - AEW does have a habit of putting babyfaces over sometimes to end angles, but they also have a habit of beating Pillman to death over and over again. I'd be shocked if he went over especially considering they need to reheat MJF now that he's away from Jericho. MJF 98%
Cody vs Malakai - Conventional wisdom would be that Cody loves to come back from short breaks and beat his current rival. I'm thinking they might buck the trend this time though as Black has more upside than some of the people that Cody has done that to like QT Marshall. I want to think that Cody is bright enough that there is more money to be made from a longer feud with Black than to just blow through him in a routine manner. Although on the other hand... people are dumb. Black 55%
Kenny vs Danielson - Bringing Danielson in just to have him lose first match out seems really kind of silly. Also, AEW is really, really adverse to non definitive finishes so I'm guessing they won't bust out their first disqualification finish ever here. I want to say they'll just put over Bryan here but it seems odd to have Kenny dropping even two falls on television in the last few months. Bryan 70%
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11 hours ago, AxB said:
In the 80s, all wrestlers had jobs. Or at least, their gimmick was that they were a race car driver or a trash collector or an evil Gym Teacher or something. And now 30 years later, it's come full circle. Only with shoot jobs this time.
Is Butcher's work job supposed to be that he's an actual butcher?
My interpretation was that Butcher and Blade were (are?) mercenaries with a butcher shop being the 'front' business where you go to contact them. So while they do actual butcher work, its the way they launder the money from the illicit business. The characters are a little muddy in that they have added in S&M apparel (especially Blade and Bunny) and the association with the Hardy Family which its unclear if Matt is paying them or vice versa like how he is explicitly taking money from Private Party.
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On 9/9/2021 at 8:00 PM, NoFistsJustFlips said:
No, that's a pretty fair shot I'll allow it lol.
All I'm saying is this is a wrestling bubble talking point that doesn't exist in regular episodic TV. Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, The Wire, Sons Of Anarchy, Dexter... whatever the episodic TV show is they reward viewers that pay attention. They don't hold anyone's hand and explain why you need to pay attention to whoever. Like Game of Thrones didn't role a clip show to people tuning into the last season to explain who Gendry is while Arya is trying to bang him. They did a recap before the show. If that isn't enough, it's on you to figure it out. And I'm in that boat as well. Sometimes there are things I don't remember and I look it up.I wanted to address this 'prestige' television concept as it came up later in the next few pages. I think one of the issues with treating wrestling in that format is that wrestling as a story is always ongoing. Television shows like Game of Thrones or Breaking Bad have a season of new episodes, stop and then start up again. This gives us a chance to go back and study the limited content in whole as there is nothing new to engage the audience. I think its much more rare for someone to go back and watch a whole wrestling television show although I certainly think people go back to segments or matches. This ala cart veiwing may actually hurt my argument, I'm not sure as there are so many narratives going at the same time so I could possibly examine "Cameron Grimes being rich" in depth much more quickly than I could watch a whole season of Breaking Bad (but it might take more time to find all of those individual segments and order them correctly).
But I think in general, wrestling is a nesesarily disposable from of entertainment where you watch the show once and never watch the whole show ever again. Because there's another show coming on in less than a week and then another every week forever. A hardcore AEW fan has 4 shows of wrestling a week plus Sammy Vlogs plus BTE plus whatever else content. How are they going to go back to study nuances when its a marathon just to keep up with the current output?
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8 hours ago, S.K.o.S. said:
Honestly for all of WWE being terrible, one thing you cannot deny is that their roster is highly representative both racialy and nationally. Finding a WWE star who looks like you or is from your home country has never been more easy. Just to illustrate the point, there are 13 main roster champions and 3 are white Americans (Charlotte, Randy, Riddle) and 2 are white Internationals (Nattie and Becky) if you add in the NXT Champions it only helps the ratio in terms of representation.
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17 minutes ago, LoneWolf&Subs said:
Take it back, now.
I love that it's open to interpretation that he wants more Good Brothers on AEW or that he never wants to see Good Brothers again even on Impact.
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1 hour ago, Craig H said:
Let's be real, Brian Cage is Vince's wet dream. Let him go to WWE.
Brian Cage is the definition of a big guy who doesn't know how to work as a big guy. Vince would hate his work.
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1 hour ago, eikerir said:
LMAO at The Acclaimed throwing the ice at Griff’s face. What’s with Pillman getting all these singles matches? He has the name but I feel Griff is the better one of that team easily, throw him a bone.
Griff seems like such a longer term project that they don't really trust yet. Pillman usually is tasked with the majority of the ring time as well as the finishes for the Varsity Blondes. Garrison is pretty much locked into the hot tag run but not a whole lot else. I'd personally be totally fine with them changing up the Blondes formula personally every so often as both have upside but Pillman seems to eat a lot of the pins.
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15 hours ago, EVA said:
GET HIS ASS @Goodear
To be fair, a match where Hobbs gets his bell rung is likely not going to be his best opportunity to showcase his talents but let’s not ignore @Greggulators criticism that Hobbs does a lot of sneering in between his moves.
I would argue that the wider issue I have with the stereotypical “indy worker” is that they place a high value on athletics and ignore the more nuanced stuff like facials. And while Hobbs does lean on two main facial expressions (his sneer and his big toothy grin) I would say his pacing is far more productive than going move to move. I don’t often feel like they are misplaced in a match’s context but I could see how someone could look at it as spamming.
One of the things I love about Hobbs is that he makes his stuff matter and let’s it settle after he nails someone. He’s not typically in a rush and he also doesn’t go in for overkill. He’s got his spots he does super well and doesn’t reach to do stuff he can’t do.
Honestly lot of my admiration for Hobbs comes from him being smart in that he knew how to get other people over when he was Dark enhancement talent, get himself over when he started working those types of matches and is now really solid as Team Tazz’s muscle. One thing that separates him from someone like Brian Cage is that Hobbs is able to develop a chemistry with Hook and Starks that solidifies their team structure.-
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This was the type of person I was talking about catering to by the way.
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Just a poor showing featuring multiple injuries, hard way bleeding and blown spots. I think the only match that was clean was the Dark Order vs. Spears/FTR match and even that didn't feel like FTR was really giving it their all. Everything else felt really off pace and sloppy. Hopefully Soho and Hobbs didn't get dinged too badly. I'm not sure who put the pirate curse on Brian Pillman Jr. but I have no doubt that he's going to get humiliated some more before he gets shoved back to his tag team just like every other time they put him on TV. Best parts of the shows were the Lucha Brothers and The Best, The Best, The Best insert videos.
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16 minutes ago, Curt McGirt said:
I'm officially done with this "the casuals won't get it" bullshit talking point. If you're watching AEW, you're gonna take what they got and if you don't like it there's plenty of people to take your place. And in no world is a card with (and I'll keep the descriptions as basic as possible)
- a huge WWE star vs. a huge Japanese star
- a brand new WWE star vs. an up and coming talent
- a classic WWE star vs. a former WWE star
combined with the appearances of THREE OTHER WWE STARS after A GIANT PPV NOT something "casual fans" would watch.
And for the already-fans, it's a show with Dustin Rhodes on it so you better be tuning in anyway.
Capturing the bump of audience you are going to get from the PPV should be job one. Any of this talk about this being a bullshit talking point ignores what's happened every other time AEW got a bump and didn't hold it.
I can't believe I'm the asshole for advocating that they should fire some big guns tonight with their new signees and biggest stars.
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AEW has an audience that is super tied into the wrestling bubble that will love them some Moxley/Suzuki. Those are the people that turn in every week already. You are trying to capture the people that heard about all the awesome stars that turned up at All Out and keep them hooked on your product going forward. Those people that turned into Rampage for CM Punk and didn't come back the following week. Those people will not know who Karl Gotch is or have any idea Pancrase exists. Now, they might see Suzuki and see an awesome bastard and be happy about that but the likely thing is that they are turning in to see all these cool people that they already know and love. I say feed that and convert them to regular viewers.
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Everyone, when they have matches, gets time. I would expect it to go through a commercial.
This doesn't feel like a particularly strong follow up to a strong show. If they wanted to capitalize on the momentum of the PPV, they would make sure they have matched announced in order to highlight new talent and deal with the fallout. Moxley v Susuki and Soho v Jamie do that to some extent but I would think they need to break out big guns for the purpose of keeping eyes on the product.
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1 hour ago, RIPPA said:
Why do they need to talk? It is the entire reason Malcolm Bivens is there
Based on their mouths in that match? I'm guessing we are in store for dumb jock dialogue to make the heart sing.
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I've decided to enlist a new "No Elite Wrestling" policy in that I skip anything involving Kenny, The Bucks and The Good Brothers. It makes the shows much better for me and fits my "I don't watch stuff I don't like" principles. Please respect my new religion.
Eddie vs Miro was a nice slobber fight and did well setting the stage as Miro being an stoppable monster if you put the pieces puzzle pieces together correctly. Eddie is a great, great seller and manages to be simultaneously both sympathetic and intimidating. That's a notoriously hard line to walk. I would guess Mick Foley would be the closest but he tended to hop back and forth over the line easily rather than be on the line at the same time. I am ready for a rematch for this one. My one note would be that they put the heat on the referee at the end when Eddie got a visual three count but Bryce was distracted. We don't want to create a feeling that the faces have their greatest issues overcoming bad calls rather than overcoming bad people.
Mox vs Kojima - This match featured very respectful but not particularly engaged fans who are willing to give AEW the benefit of the doubt in terms of giving Kojima a chance but not so well informed that they know him well enough to have automatic buy in. For example, you got a lot of chanting for Kojima but no one in the live audience bit on the hook that he has a super devastating lariat. They would have likely needed to put together packages earlier in order to establish Kojima and what he does more effectively. Susuki has a more interesting look and demeanor so he's more likely to catch on more quickly with less build. JR really hammered Susuki over and did a great job selling him. Excalibur seemed to be stepping on the moment more, he needs to be aware that it takes the sting out of surprises when he has his wrestling encyclopedia open to their page immediately and starts rattling off bullet points.
Statlander vs Britt - This was well placed on the card, putting it before the top contender battle royal as it may have spoiled the winner of this match was a good idea (although I don't think the battle royal actually did that). I think AEW has now as a whole brought up a bad trope of people laying unmoving for 9 seconds to tease a count out before popping up to beat the count. It happened three times on this card and that's too many especially as AEW has never had a count out in a non elimination match that I can recall outside of a double count out during the Avalon-Cutler series. I found the finishing stretch where Britt put together a bunch of stomps (really effective ones), the sunrise, the curb stomp and the lock jaw to be effective even though I don't normally go in for multiple near falls going into a finish. Not sure exactly why, but this didn't feel as flat. Orange Cassidy firing up might have been better spent as something more impactful to really pay off.
Battle Royal - The card suit thing is just a failed format at this point. It ruins the run in pop as they are stacked on top of each other. The card suit reveal is pointless as no one knows who is in what suit. It may be more impactful and give us some more television if they revealed the suits and ran something to determine the entrance order. Some of the action was really off putting like Riho's elimination that wasn't, Shida's obvious demotion and too many elimination chains where one person would eliminate someone and then get eliminated because they were looking outside the ring. There were nuggets of good ideas and Ruby Soho was over immediately but the meat wasn't there.
Jericho vs MJF - One of Jericho's better recent showings where he stepped up his game. MJF's back selling was on point if a little too on the nose for the finish. They almost put the heat on the referees again here for the restart and I think it would work better if MJF did something shitty and got caught rather than the foot on the ropes deal. They need to separate these two finally and move them on to something else as it has worn out its welcome. I'm not sure where else either guy can go as AEW sometimes locks people into working only with certain people for extended periods and I'm not sure what else you can do with two 6 man factions (assuming they still exist).
CM Punk vs Darby - Punk's slower style helped punctuate Darby's acceleration and CM really did capture a Bret Hart sense of veteran presence here. I'm not sure I would have had the first Go 2 Sleep send Darby out of the ring because its Punk's first match but it was such a great spot, I understand why they would have done it. Watching what I watched of this show, the typical AEW pace feels much slower and more my speed where it's not 100 mph and more palatable for me.
Paul Wight vs QT - Breather match to give people a chance to catch up for the main event I didn't watch. Paul looked physically bad and the new gear didn't help. Not sure why you'd turn the Gunn Club on Wight last week and have them not show up for the PPV.
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AEW - OCT 2021
in ALL ELITE WRESTLING
Posted
Honestly, I've somewhat divorced from the main shows at this point and am not really engaging with Rampage and Dynamite except in bite sized chunks. I probably wouldn't be watching any Dark or Dynamite if it wasn't for you writing up your thoughts as I feel like your content is worth discussion and a back-and-forth. AEW for the most point doesn't provide enough narrative for me to really invest in so I'm finding watching matches for matches sake like I would WCW B Shows to be an adjustment.
I'm right with you in terms of rule enforcement and the importance of wrestling mores. I'm enjoying FTR much more in this internet environment where they can play with ring positioning and coming from different angles. I would agree that S&O would be better off for my perspective of enjoyment if they went the direction you are advocating. I'm just more understanding of why they don't seem to be going that direction.