Belgian_Waffle

Sorry for going even further off topic but since this thread is already pretty much a free for all: I completely forgot that the Bone Street Krew was even a thing. Was the perk of being a member basically that you wouldn't get fired (that is, as opposed to guaranteeing a push like the Kliq, the BSK basically guaranteed your job security at a time where guys were coming and going like crazy and maybe a ppv appearance at an In Your House or on a Survivor Series team? Not the most notable list of alumni...)?

I'm already scared enough at the prospect of Ospreay's fellow victim-denier-in-arns Gabriel Kidd showing up at some point.

This is so well put and pretty much reflects my feelings, less about Omega specifically, but more about the highly athletic style that has become the new gold standard since Omega and Ibushi became the big WON darlings around 2011 or whenever it really became the prominent "critic's choice" style. This was all I could think about during the Vikingo match last week, just like...are we really pushing for athletic ability alone to be the key metric of determining who deserves praise the most? I seem to be alone in actively hating the Vikingo match so I'll chalk that one up to maybe my needing to revisit it (if everyone is a dummy except you then it almost for sure means you're the dummy is a good rule of thumb for these things), but like...what about that match made people want to see Vikingo again right away? Just all the crazy dives he does? It's weird to me, especially when you have a guy like Bandido who can do all that crazy stuff but still has that super likeable character and is so expressive (also the difference between, say, Rush who oozes scary heel charisma vs Fenix who...goes in there and does all his stuff every match). And more to the point, do we start to disqualify guys like Kingston (or, say, Max Caster for a less extreme example) from high praise because their level of athleticism prevents them from having a "Kenny Omega-level match" in terms of the athletic feats of gravity defiance we've come to expect? I realize these types of arguments are dangerously close to the reactionary Cornette/Disco positions but I see it more like a binary distinction where on the one hand you have morons like Cornette who don't want any innovation and then the people who are basically cool with all different styles but reserve all their highest praise for Omega and Ospreay and people like that. It's the kind of thinking that warped everyone's perspective of the four AJPW pillars where Taue is always seen as the weak link of those four (or five, after Akiyama) but he was actually in a lot of respects the second best wrestler (after Kawada) of the three on many occasions, especially post-1995 when Misawa and Kobashi's stuff got more and more patterned. I think people are starting to tire of the repetitiveness to a certain degree. The shrug reaction to Action Andretti seems to suggest you need more than just the ability to do a standing moonsault to be seen as a (future) star. This post isn't as eloquent as it seemed in my head while I was writing it but basically I like most Omega matches a lot but I think his success is symptomatic of a bigger problem of which Will Ospreay is the final and most extreme manifestation of (the Return of the Repressed where Teddy Hart/DX-era Shawn comes back, is even worse, and main events the Tokyo Dome)

I'm hoping this is indeed what he learned. The television since Full Gear seems to suggest as much, since other than MJF throwing drinks on kids he's mostly focused his singles title pictures on guys he knows aren't gonna go bananas (Danielson, Joe, Wardlow, Hobbs, Orange, Darby, Jungle Boy...Sammy would be the potential exception to the rule there although I'm one of those naive types who chooses to believe Kingston's apology after piefacing him was a genuine acknowledgement that Sammy wasn't really at fault).

Dalton and the Boys are on paper the perfect foil for the BCC right now. With any luck this should end up looking something like, say, Doc, Johnny Ace and Richard Slinger/Johnny Smith vs Tamon Honda (clearly Dalton's spiritual predecessor), Kikuchi and Shiga.

This is a good point I didn't consider.

The more that comes out about All Out 2022 the more and more the whole saga feels like an even bigger "heel program" than Montreal was. Hangman: shot on Punk on live TV and in the process confused the fans by alluding to a bunch of insider feud shit nobody cares about. Dave and Bryan: talked about the Hangman promo salaciously on the Observer, comparing it to Bret vs Shawn in a favourable way, didn't condemn Hangman for what was both an unprofessional and uninteresting way of dealing with backstage heat with Punk. Also both went on to praise Ace Steele's stupid promo and his involvement in the angle leading up to All Out. Have continued to make matters worse with each passing instance of weighing in. Tony Khan: (presumably) didn't reprimand Hangman for going off script and confronting the future world champ on live tv. Punk: shoots on Hangman on live TV after Hangman was at least willing to do business and drop the title at Double or Nothing. Confuses the fans, makes himself look pretty and makes Hangman look like a doofus. Proceeds to feel emboldened by this act to the point where he goes nuts at the All Out scrum and publicly bashes everyone. Has proceeded to make matters worse every time he gets near a keyboard. Omega and the Bucks: whatever happened in the All Out brawl shouldn't have happened and they bear partial responsibility. Also whatever all the backstage heat was leading up to the initial Hangman promo, I assume they played a big part in stoking those flames. Ace Steele: the biggest heel of the whole thing. Got handed an Ed Leslie high profile tv appearance, cut an absolutely grating promo, threw a chair at people to defend his bro's honor. Dumb goatee, seems Iike a bully, wasn't any good as a wrestler. Moxley: has some plausible deniability for fault in that I could see him being perceptive enough to not want to job to Punk without Punk doing the job first. Things were so chaotic backstage and there was so much heat on Punk, I could totally buy that for his own sake and the sake of the company he didn't want to hand too many wins to Punk if he suspected Punk was on his way out and/or being uncooperative. That being said, it's not like Moxley needs to be that protected and the squash title change on Dynamite really made an already cold program feel even more disjointed and out of control. Obviously I'm picking and choosing my points of contention here but I really can't imagine anyone coming up with a coherent argument for any party being free of blame. The whole thing has been so ugly and exhausting and only occasionally interesting/entertaining. I think the best argument for not bringing Punk back is simply that his being there would be the most material reminder possible that all of this happened and continues to drag out in the first place.

Is there anything to the idea of just making Punk the face of the new ROH until he alienates everyone there too? Mark Briscoe and Joe are two of the only guys I can imagine him working long programs with and agreeing to do jobs to.

I thought so too. I mentioned last year how Mox was starting to sound more and more like Dice Clay but Garcia is starting to even get the look down.

DOUBLE POST SORRY

I know it's a trope to be a grouch and hate on crazy matches with lots of flips these days but I was really stunned at how much I thought the main sucked. Most of Vikingo's "insane" dives and spots required Omega standing there waiting while Vikingo got his footing or gauging his positioning or something. I wasn't feeling any emotion or story or chemistry between them, it was just like let's run though as much crazy, contrived shit as we can in 20 minutes. I like Omega a lot too and wasn't expecting to hate this (as I do with, say, his matches with Ospreay), but I gotta believe the hype around Vikingo is based around a body of work with more substance to it than was indicated by this match. Also for the people defending QTV last week because "it's just a fun goofy ol' fashioned wrasslin angle"--the jokes on you! It got shooty this week!! Now we can all hate it equally. Overall just wasn't a big fan of the show. Really liked the opener though, and was glad to see Sabian doing the job instead of Butcher or Blade. Daniel Garcia was tremendous even if I'm not super interested in him vs Cole. Stokely was incredible and Hook should maybe be the guy to beat MJF for the belt a year from now. Moxley vs Stu was very good but never quite clicked. Maybe just overshadowed by the incredible six man on last week's show. Not gonna lie, I kind of wanted Goldberg to be the one driving the ambulance at the end.

It should be either Darby in 6 months or Ricky Starks in 12 months.

Yup not to drag this detour out too much further but on top of the political ugliness it's also become pretty much unaffordable. Although Sonny Kiss was here recently for Greek Town Wrestling and from what I gathered got a warm reception so maybe the wrasslin scene isn't as conservative as I thought (that being said, Madman Pondo makes semi regular appearances here at some indy to sign bloody dollar bills and hock some book he's promoting and always seems to bring out the worst of the meatheads).

I mean, we cleaned up city hall to a degree in the last municipal election and did just last night elect a very far left NDP councilor to Queen's Park. So hopefully stuff is changing. But the amount of organized hate and far-right/alt-right groups and activities is legit alarming, to say nothing about the fact you can't turn a corner without seeing a Hummer decked out in the flag and "I burn carbon" decals.

When was the last time anybody did a tuxedo match on television (or not on television)? Jeff showing up prepared in a full white tux and Orange pissing him off by showing up in a tie dye suit or something... Jeff loses and he's wearing TNA boxers...lots of material there...

God damn this show rules. 3 episodes, 6 hours of great wrestling. I'm not big on the Pure title stuff but everything else tremendous. Reminds me a lot of modern day hoss-heavy AJPW. If only they could fly in Suwama and Ishikawa to feud with the Gates of Agony...Zeus vs Brian Cage...the Bodyguard vs Willie Mack...TK is definitely in cahoots with the wrong Japanese promotion(s).

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/hate-crime-statistics-canada-hamilton-1.5221663 I slightly misspoke, hate crime not group (also I think I used the wrong form of capital).

Fair enough. I just think another perennial story in pro wrestling is that you go through a hot period and then don't main event new guys and then you crash and burn. I'm not even thinking of WCW, New Japan has been going through the same thing for years, WWF went through it when they couldn't get away from Austin, Rock, Undertaker and Helmsley. Like you said, Jungle Boy has already been someone's B-defence and was thusly elevated, we don't really need to see that story play out again with MJF. I'd rather they treat last night as a jumping-off point for a series of major programs (ie, build up MJF vs Jack Perry for the next PPV while Darby and Sammy feud to see who gets the next shot or some variation of such). At the time it made perfect sense but I really think going back to Moxley when Punk got hurt actually played a significant part in cooling things off in AEW, especially when they went back to him a second time (first after Punk's injury, then after the fisticuffs). To a certain degree it cemented that they weren't ready to treat anyone other than MJF as being a threat to the already-established guys.

Agreed with the first sentence. Not sure how anyone ever gets elevated beyond "B-level" if they don't get title shots on ppvs as part of a major program though. Not to mention by this logic then pretty much Jericho, Hangman and Omega are the only viable next contenders.

Exactly. My introduction to AEW was the All Out 2021 pre-show that culminated with the Dark Order and the Best Friends all hugging. Retroactively it summed up everything I came to love about the company. Maybe the slogan for the rest of 2023 should be "AEW: Less Turns; More Friends".

As long as when Hangman finally rejoins the Elite he does it by handing Omega a card with a picture of a train on it that says "I Choo Choo Choose You", I'll be happy.

Do we think they're rebuilding the Dark Order just so they can turn heel on Hangman when he chooses the Elite over them (I really really hope not)?

I was thinking about this this morning too. It's weird how much they avoid having Omega and the Bucks cut any big in-ring promos given how much their storylines are wrapped up in history and real life. Aside from goofy backstage segments,(and possibly "Be The Elite" or whatever their streaming show Is called, I've never seen it but I presume it incorporates their AEW storylines to a degree) we haven't heard from them at all about why Omega took a year off, why he decided to come back, why they were gone after the Punk incident, are they heels or faces, have they thought about Hangman much, etc etc. Obviously not everything needs an explicit kayfabe explanation and not every storyline needs to be spelled out in promos but it seems like we haven't heard from Omega *at all* since he lost the title and went on sabbatical.

Because he's been running on a treadmill since Christian turned on him and his promos were real bad.

Aw c'mon. Saraya sure, but with all due respect to Your Gordliness, Jarrett has been (against all odds) entertaining as hell and super over. Gotta give the devil his due.