SovietShooter

Goddamn, that was like my dream when I was in college. We had a low low low power radio station for the students to run (The actual campus radio station was WOSU, which was the local NPR station, and was 100% off limit to students), and I signed up right after arriving on campus in '96. I got a two hour Sunday morning shift at 7am, and I had to play weird industrial shit, and only that weird industrial shit. The only hip-hop CD we had was an uncensored Public Enemy album we couldn't play over the air. We had a nice set of Tecnico's turntables, but no fn vinyl. No one listened to the station, it sucked, and I quit.

A huge peeve that I have is when big feud ending gimmick matches are given a permanent date on a schedule/calendar. Great, so every July we have to have B&G just because it is in the calendar, and not because a feud is so heated that the stipulation is called for.

I believe Hobbs/Wardlow are friends & lifting partners. The one style of tag team that AEW has never seemed to have (or get behind) is a Road Warriors-esqe tag team of two big motherfuckers wrecking fools. When Hobbs & Wardlow heal up, I am all for it.

Wardlow and Lashley wearing suits and beating the shit out of fools together as a tag team would be pretty damn epic.

"local competitor" When I was working the indies, I used to hate when people called me an "amateur" or "semi pro", although semi-pro was probably the best description when you're not at a level to make a living at it.

We called them the equally disrespectful "nobodies".

If I had the book, I'd let Hologram get a few more wins like the one he had against Loco, so he gets established, and then I marry him to Mortos until the end of time. Mortos needs to start squashing guys on Rampage, and getting wins over guys like Private Party and Premier Athletes.

Honestly, I think Shane Douglas, as a worker, is a lot like Jeff Jarrett. He is a guy that is going to go out there and have a good match with almost anyone, but was missing a certain something to be a bonafide main event guy for a major national touring promotion. Like, go back to his WCW run alongside Steamboat, working teams like the Hollywood Blondes... was he stinking up the joint, or were those matches actually good? Look at his ECW runs, he was actually having solid wrestling matches (often with stiffs) while everything around him was "hardcore" and "extreme". He was a very good worker.

After he dropped the title to Taz, Douglas was gone for a bit to let his arm injury heal up. He came back and cut a promo that was strongly hinting that he was going to retired (with Francine in tears), when Justin Credible cut him off and said he was going to retire the "old man" and become the new franchise of ECW, and beat Douglas down with his Singapore cane. This led to a pretty damn good but short feud between Douglas & Dreamer vs Impact Players, until Douglas jumped to WCW. This was how Francine ended up with Dreamer, and how Dreamer didn't have a partner to fight the Dudleys, which led to Raven returning from WCW as his partner.

Another pretty successful show built like that was The Andy Griffith Show. Griffith rose to fame as a comedian telling humorous folksy stories, such as "What it was, was Football". When they tried to adapt those types of stories to the show, they realized that for this to work that Andy Taylor had to play it straight, and all the folks around him had to be batshit crazy so he could react to it.

After the match, as Christian was in the ring with all three of the trios belts, the lights flickered a bit, and it was mentioned on commentary. Foreshadowing.

Because he left, twice. Once on "bad terms". He was the original cornerstone that ECW was built around, when he was fresh off his WCW stint tagging with Steamboat and such. But then he left for the disasterous "Dean Douglas" run in the WWF. Obviously Paul E welcomed him back and pushed him to the moon again after that, but when he got hurt in '98 and Paul E stopped paying him (or at least paying him on time) and he held the title hostage before jumping to WCW, that didn't seem to make Paul E too happy, and he was the one that controlled the narrative at that time. And since he burned all his WWE bridges, no one over there ever had any interest in rehabbing his rep for monetization purposes.

Newhart despite being the "star" of both shows, was really just a straight man for the antics of the characters around him. Only he was like a god-tier straight man. In wrestling terms, Bob sold his ass off to get everyone else over.

The "heat" came from when I insinuated that Obama wanted to know if the people of Springfield all got their stimulus checks, and I looked around at the crowd and said back into my phone "No, no one here looks like they have any money". Five minutes on a non-tv show isn't a big deal, especially if you don't have fans conditioned to 10min matches. We regularly ran 2.5hr shows with 6 matches.

Back when I was working (so this was like 2010ish) the company I was working for had me start a show in Springfield, OH with a mic spot. It was when the big thing in the news was "stimulus checks" and such. So I kinda went out and did a Bob Newhart "Abe Lincoln" routine. I had one of the boys call my phone while I was in the ring, and then I answered it, pretending it was Barack Obama, or as I called him "Barry". This "conversation" went on about five minutes, and I had so much frigging heat when it was over. All 175 paid fans wanted to kill me.

TheCubsFan confirmed on the LuchaBlog a couple weeks ago not only that it is in fact Aramis, but that he was supposed to come in almost a year ago and it just never worked out. FWIW, Aramis also formally quit AAA earlier this year too. He was another one of those bottom-of-the-card talents AAA never does anything with and only books occasionally, that can make more money on the indies without AAA, if they have a visa.

Booking their own stuff, or just laying out their own matches, or coming up with their own finishes? Big difference.

I think AEW calls them "coaches", rather than road agents or producers. I am not sure who is actually responsible for what, but here is who are listed as coaches: Chris Hero Dean Maleko Ray Lloyd Jerry Lynn Jimmy Jacobs Kevin Matthews Michael Nakazawa Bob Evans Sarah Stock Scott Taylor Tony Chimel Ari Daivari Billy Gunn Colt Cabana Dustin Rhodes Orange Cassidy Rocky Romero Jon Cruz Madison Rayne Serena Dee Jake Roberts Luther Sonjay Dutt Renee Paquette Chris Daniels Pat Buck QT Marshall That's a lot of coaches, which may be part of the issue... too many cooks! This is just a public list, so who knows if it is actually accurate. And it also doesn't take into account folks that we know have a hand in things... such as Jon Moxley or Chris Jericho, or the EVPs.

I just think if you can make the ROH belt the secondary singles title, just do it, and scrap the others. There is a lot more history and prestige to that title than the randos they just made up. Keep the TNT as a traditional "TV title" with open challenges like they've regularly done. AEW World Title ROH Heavyweight AEW Tag AEW Trios AEW TNT That is all you need, especially when random titles from abroad pop up regularly. For the ladies, just the singles & tags. No TBS and ROH and ROH TV, etc...

How long was that FTR vs White/Robinson 2/3 falls tag match on Collision? 55ish?

However, TK has done a fine job of diluting the AEW titles with other AEW titles and NJPW titles, even without the ROH titles. There was no need to introduce the Continental or International titles.

Kind of a tangent, but on a Reddit thread the other day about Stephanie Vaquer and CMLL, someone asked about AEW ladies that could go down to CMLL and fit in, like Willow has. At first I was going to say that I think Nyla would really get over in CMLL and could use those kind of reps, but then I remembered that she is trans, and her competing in the ladies division in a straight-laced promotion like CMLL would probably never happen. Conversely, if she were to work AAA, I'd see her being treated like an exotico by the fans, which would probably be a bad thing (homophobic chants and such). She has some limited options unfortunately.

AEW has always been built around factions & stables, so I do not have a problem with "regular" teams being in the Trios Title scene... to me it is no different than when two random dudes from a group of 3+ win the regular tag titles. I think the actual trios titles need to be be booked as a "lesser" title that is harder to defend, and thus is just passed around a lot more often. Not as willy-nilly as something like a 24/7 title or anything, but just get over the fact it is really hard to defend it successfully. Then you can sell the regular tag division as being for seasoned established teams that work well together, and push it to the PPV main event level that is was (and should be) at. TANGENT: I really wonder if a few key injuries have stalled some plans in the tag division. The Bucks aren't defending the titles at all, and Dax is out hurt. I'm wondering if the plan was for Copeland to drop the TNT strap to Perry, the Bucks to lose the straps to FTR, and then somehow pivot to FTR vs Edge & Christian for the tag titles at Wembley. We know TK sucks at pivoting, and this fits that profile.

You're probably correct...