Belgian_Waffle

Between eliminating Lee and Darby I'm thinking Swerve is turning, if he hasn't already turned, heel. Keith Lee and Darby as a big man/little man tag team would be fun, even if their promo dynamic would be weird af. Now they would just need a big heel partner for Swerve...

Lmao this is extremely apt. I think I loved this match *because* it got freaky? Almost like when non-shooty guys would show up in Battlarts (or, say, Makoto Hashi in Futen).

Not really? Since it's the promoter who blackballed Pollyanna anyway and initially confirmed it was because Ospreay told him to then, when things got ugly, said no it was actually the venue? If you want to die on that hill be my guest. Here's a fairly extensive article about the whole shitshow prior to the promoter suddenly changing his story. https://www.fanbyte.com/wrestling/njpw-ignores-speaking-out-g1-climax-30/

The allegations against him re: blackballing Pollyanna were recanted by the promotor involved in the blackballing rather than the actual victim. Given his long history of badgering women on social media it doesn't go a long way to clearing his name (except in the opinions of fans who just want to hear what they want to hear).

Maybe now that Ospreay is on their tv they can bring in Gabriel Kidd too. They can "shoot" like MJF did except about how they don't believe survivors.

I don't know. Maybe I'm overly emphasizing the booking vs the match quality but I just don't want to see KOR do much outside of ReDragon where he has the actually-much-better-overall-but-admittedly-less-spectacular Bobby Fish to rein him in. He was a very uninteresting opponent for Moxley in that he had no chance of going over but also isn't a young pup who could have used the rub of losing to Moxley. Hey this is exactly why he should have never been anywhere near the Owen semifinals either. Or anywhere near beating Darby. Also New Japan is so much easier to avoid than AEW in terms of keeping Will Ospreay off my TV. Hopefully he's gone after Forbidden Door but the rest of the NJPW guys keep making appearances. Battle royal was weird in that besides Wardlow and MJF not being in it there was also no Hangman, Cole, Danielson, Jericho, Jurassic Express, Christian, FTR...it's over the top rope eliminations, are we really this worried about damaging guys buy not having them win? Also Wardlow basically acknowledging the interim title is a scrub title and that Sammy and Scorpio have fucked up the TNT title were born questionable moves, even if totally defensible opinions outside of, y'know, kayfabe. That said, I know "less belts" is usually the rule but I'm weirdly excited for the All Atlantic title, even if it feels like it will initially be a thing they're implementing so that Death Triangle and House of Black have something to fight over as they continue to endlessly feud with one another. But they have SO MUCH TALENT on the roster, and the WCW TV title was a well-utilized third-tier singles title for much of its existence, so there's a good example to follow. Putting Hangman and Finlay in there together was a good case study in "has the influence of post-Okada/Omega NJPW style wrestling run its course? We've booked a match between these two men who look, dress, and wrestle very much alike one another in order to see if this type of thing is still interesting". On less whiny notes I thought the PAC/Buddy and Rosa/Shafir were both awesome, and the Bucks/Hardyz/JE+Christian promo was a hoot. I'm worried about what Jeff Hardy is gonna do in that match next week but I'm betting it'll be something to see. Normally I Iove Dynamite even on an off night but I was a big thumbs down on this show.

So maybe Wardlow is more like Rikishi after it was revealed he ran over Stone Cold.

They probably should have done a casino battle royal with Wardlow as the Joker. And have him beat Moxley? And Tanahashi? I'm doubting the value of this as I write it but I'm sticking to it. Wardlow went from Goldberg to Wrath between Double or Nothing and Dynamite so they should not be adverse to radically keeping his push going.

WCW was holding it down in those days where the two most hated heels in the company (Rude and Vader) were also dominating the singles title picture.

Marko Stunt is hoping they sign a deal with Discovery because his only hope for getting rehired is to feud with Big Ed.

Re: Moxley as arbitrary finalist, I don't like it either from a kayfabe logic standpoint but at least it makes more sense than Dustin Rhodes.

Sort of a joke question but actually also seriously what do title histories for these interim titles end up looking like as the years go by? Like will this interim world title have a standalone history or is it like the next time the champ gets hurt and they declare a new interim champ that interim champ will be the "second" person to hold the interim belt and the title history will show the interim title as having been vacant since the previous unification with the actual world title? Could we potentially have an AEW figure who's won the interim title a bunch of times but never the world title, kind of akin to Goto with all his tournament wins but no IWGP?

Eddie feels very much like Akira Taue to me, in that he's the best wrestler in the company (Taue was technically 2nd best after Kawada...I guess Fax can be AEW's Kawada) but people don't see him in that light because his body and technique are "unconventional" or whatever vague word you want to use for not athletic on the level of Omega/Misawa or Hangman/Kobashi. Ishii is also like this, and similarly bypassed for more acrobatic guys But in terms of having a great, unique match every night and winning the fans hearts every time, Eddie is the guy you want on top. AJPW and NJPW both recycled the same champs over and over again because they didn't have faith in the HEART of Taue (whose only reign was brief and transitional) or Ishii (who is still a viable champ at 50 or however old he is but will clearly never get the belt). It's worth noting also that Take and Ishii haven't had to vacate titles/take prolonged time off multiple times due to injuries like their more athletic peers have. I'm rambling but Eddie is the guy to build around, the same way Austin (the anti-Shawn, in the same way Eddie is the anti-Omega/Hangman) was clearly the guy to build around in 97.

I think the parity goes a long way, even if it's grossly superficial at times. Ever since Cody left and the very mature and comfortable-with-themselves fans turned on Sammy for having a girlfriend, the TNT title has meant less than the TBS title anyway (nothing against Scorpio, who's great, but the hot potatoing of the belt and the confusing heel/face ambiguity has severely devalued that belt). So if we're going to talk about unifying singles titles we may as well talk about unifying both of them. I know it's a tough sell because of what the segment by segment ratings show but I watch every week and don't see how the women's division is ever going to get over if it's constantly given so little tv time. If the ratings indicate a lack of interest that's largely by design and can be rectified. The voice of populist America, Pro Wrestling Illustrated, voted Lights Out as MOTY for crying out loud...clearly theres an unanswered demand there. I was really heartened by the long Rosa/Deeb interview segments, even if they lacked crispness--felt like TK was finally pulling the switch on the women and moving toward equal screen time. Seeing this from Rosa bums me out, and hopefully the company takes it to heart.

As soon as they announced this show I assumed Omega vs Okada was headlining but now that we're less than four weeks away I'm assuming the show ends with Omega returning and staring down Okada (and I'll probably be wrong in that assumption as well).

Just to jump back into the Voodoo Murder discussion briefly: we can more or less agree that Suwama being at the top of the card forever is a good thing though, right??

Maybe I'm spending too much time enjoying this thread since migrating over from the Japan board because nobody talks about All Japan and I hate New Japan but: the hotter the debate becomes re: MJF work vs shoot and now Punk botching flips work vs shoot, the more I'm becoming convinced TK really has opened Russo's Box in terms of how quickly these kinds of shooty angles fuck everything up (also I guess it's Inoki's Box historically, right? Doesn't Hashimoto/Ogawa shoot bananas pre-date Russo playing with fire?)

My non-wrestling fan friend has weighed in to say he thought Vince Vaughn was Matthew Lillard when I sent him the screencap with no context.

Not to be the resident Woke Joke around these parts but it feels insensitive to Ibushi to be doing a crass worked-shoot storyline where a top guy is unhappy with the company--that is, it risks de-legitimizing by way of carny-fying actual abusive workplaces in wrestling (i.e., New Japan according to Ibushi, which as a partner company to AEW makes the whole thing extra icky).

Hayter stomping Ruby outside the ring looked convincing enough that I feel like Hayter has probably stomped women IRL too. Count me in for her, Toni, Deeb, Athena and Stat on top by this time next year.

Vince Vaughn looked like a Frankenstein monster stitched together from John Heard and Dirk Nowitzki. Yet Culkin looked healthy and happy.

What are the odds that MJF just accidentally (or maybe intentionally) turned himself face? Kind of hard to root AGAINST the guy who hates on his billionaire boss, as evidenced by much of the crowd reaction tonight. Alternately, if he remains a heel, I agree with others who have said this doesn't exactly have a lot of legs moving forward. I guess MJF can go through all the ex-WWE guys one by one on his way to beating Punk as a way of proving his worth...but then again, with the crowd being so anti-WWE you run the risk of turning, say, Moxley heel by framing the dynamic that way. That being said, if they were to go that route you could definitely turn Page (as the other top 'never been in WWE' guy) heel and have him sell his soul by teaming with MJF to become heel warlords of the sort Austin and HHH were after WMX7. Fun fantasy booking aside it's probably best they just never directly acknowledge WWE on air again.

That was extremely entertaining/fascinating but probably bad for business on multiple levels.

I love Malakai Black but it's odd he's being paid that much given he seems to be permanent fixture of upper-mid trios matches. Maybe they envisioned bigger things when they signed him (i.e., before they also signed a ton of other guys).