Jump to content
DVDVR Message Board

AEW - OCTOBER 2022


The Natural

Recommended Posts

2 minutes ago, Jiji said:

He beefed with QT Marshall and Anthony Ogogo for what felt like an entire year (probably closer to six months). He then moved on to the Andrade, Pac, Black bubble.

If Penta and Jade and FTR and Dante Martin can enter the bubble, I just don't see how he's any more isolated than just about everyone else on these shows. He just stopped being close with some people, and the audience at large experienced that in a way which is out of sync with how they experience everything else on these shows. The Codyverse was more a narrative about the handful of people he wasn't interacting with anymore rather than a firm reality.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Cody gave an interview a few years ago where he made some comment like "when I first met Brandi I told her I didn't see color, and I learned how ignorant that was of me since by saying that I diminished her struggle" and I was really impressed

But then he turned his marriage into a prop - like, dude, yeah you're in a interracial relationship and have a beautiful wife - but who is mad about that? He cut the promo about his kid in front of a loving and supportive crowd, so it was very out of left field. Maybe he had been hurt recently and needed to vent, but there's better ways to channel that.

 

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

40 minutes ago, John from Cincinnati said:

If Penta and Jade and FTR and Dante Martin can enter the bubble, I just don't see how he's any more isolated than just about everyone else on these shows. He just stopped being close with some people, and the audience at large experienced that in a way which is out of sync with how they experience everything else on these shows. The Codyverse was more a narrative about the handful of people he wasn't interacting with anymore rather than a firm reality.

Have you not seen the complaints about HoB-DT running forever, and how stale Jade's angle is? 

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

8 minutes ago, JLowe said:

Have you not seen the complaints about HoB-DT running forever, and how stale Jade's angle is? 

These are great examples of what I mean. Cody was brought into this conversation with regard to how AEW feels different now only insomuch as he's not off doing his own thing disconnected from everything else. Which I find to be a strange framing when this is how Tony books a lot of his shows. Jericho and MJF and their guys are over here, and they will touch little else for like a year. Jungle Boy and Christian are just trapped in their thing. Cody wasn't more disconnected from the show than most other people. His run was pretty representative of how Tony structures his product. 

Edited by John from Cincinnati
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

https://411mania.com/wrestling/matt-hardy-on-jeff-hardy-learning-about-creative-freedom-in-aew/

Quote

Matt on Jeff learning about the creative freedom they have in AEW: “AEW is on a higher platform than a Ring of Honor or TNA. Especially with their television deal, which is lovely and is fantastic to have, and here, just being able to have input and help control your own destiny, it’s just an amazing feeling. Like my brother when he came in yesterday, or last week and we were talking about the segment I was doing with Andrade, he was like ‘oh, you know, do the writers have it how they want this to go?’ ‘Dude, there’s no writers here. They don’t have writers in AEW, that doesn’t happen. Literally, there’s a segment and this is kind of outline of what they’re thinking, and then you put the meat on the bone. You and your crew.’ And that’s what we did. The little segment that myself and Andrade with Private Party, I was really happy with that. Especially when Private Party did the whole thumbs deal and they went down. Just the fact that people were invested in the relationship of Matt Hardy and Private Party, which are two guys that I genuinely do love and really do like a whole lot. The fact that they reacted so strongly to that was very rewarding to me. It was the ultimate compliment.”

The inmates run the asylum

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, Matt D said:

Weirdly, Punk felt sort of like the guy who could wrestle anyone?

Might that feeling be a result of the variety of opponents Punk was wrestling on TV to get his groove back? It certainly was an eclectic group, and wrestling so consistently on TV against a Dustin or a Silver or a Moriarty or a Penta or a Sydal really did make him seem less tethered than some other acts. 

Mox has some of this too just based on that run he had with the interim belt and now the main one, continuing with an out of nowhere Penta bout this week. 

The TNT should still have this vibe. 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

13 minutes ago, Dolphman 3000 said:

Not sure if serious?

That's what pro wrestling has always been (except for this overly scripted era of WWE the last 20 years). Writers weren't handing Hogan or Piper or Flair pages and pages of dialogue using ridiculous approved words only. Wrestling is for sure an art form. But it's not quite like Hollywood where the writers create the characters and know the arcs and the actors just go out and perform it. At it's core wrestling is about the artist creating the character and bringing him / her to life off the page themself. Who do you think understands the character of Raven more, Scott Levy or a writer like Freddie Prinze?

You may have just been being facetious and I didn't pick up on it. So apologies if that's the case. But if that was a sincere comment, you're off the mark by a few hundred thousand miles.

  • Like 9
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The truth is there's a happy medium. Collaboration is key. Having a "booker" / "show runner" / "writer" to plot out the stories and make all the archs conclude in satisfying ways makes a ton of sense. But as far as putting the dialogue in a character's mouth, there's always going to be higher highs letting the talent put the paint on the canvas in the wrestling business. Compare The Ring Master promos to Stone Cold promos. One was heavily influenced by the talent, the other was heavily influenced by the office. I don't think I have to say too much more after that.

  • Like 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites

33 minutes ago, John from Cincinnati said:

These are great examples of what I mean. Cody was brought into this conversation with regard to how AEW feels different now only insomuch as he's not off doing his own thing disconnected from everything else. Which I find to be a strange framing when this is how Tony books a lot of his shows. Jericho and MJF and their guys are over here, and they will touch little else for like a year. Jungle Boy and Christian are just trapped in their thing. Cody wasn't more disconnected from the show than most other people. His run was pretty representative of how Tony structures his product. 

Man, I tend to agree with you about a lot of things, but Cody was in a bubble. He was allowed to play Dime Store Cena in his own segments. His booking of himself as conquering hero set Malakai Black & Andrade back so badly that Malakai needed a year to get the stench off of him and Andrade still hasn’t recovered. His staggering lack of self awareness was on full display in Gwinnett county during the street fight with Andrade. He (very publicly) lives 15 minutes from that arena and he got booed out of the building because he either a) didn’t grasp how the audience perceived him or b) didn’t care as long as he was getting his. The CodyVerse was as real as the CodyVator.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 minutes ago, NoFistsJustFlips said:

The truth is there's a happy medium. Collaboration is key. Having a "booker" / "show runner" / "writer" to plot out the stories and make all the archs conclude in satisfying ways makes a ton of sense. But as far as putting the dialogue in a character's mouth, there's always going to be higher highs letting the talent put the paint on the canvas in the wrestling business. Compare The Ring Master promos to Stone Cold promos. One was heavily influenced by the talent, the other was heavily influenced by the office. I don't think I have to say too much more after that.

Whoa, whoa, whoa...

You just used my one-liner to expound further upon your thoughts without technically double posting, all within a matter of minutes.

Don't think we didn't see that.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

10 minutes ago, NoFistsJustFlips said:

Not sure if serious?

That's what pro wrestling has always been (except for this overly scripted era of WWE the last 20 years). Writers weren't handing Hogan or Piper or Flair pages and pages of dialogue using ridiculous approved words only. Wrestling is for sure an art form. But it's not quite like Hollywood where the writers create the characters and know the arcs and the actors just go out and perform it. At it's core wrestling is about the artist creating the character and bringing him / her to life off the page themself. Who do you think understands the character of Raven more, Scott Levy or a writer like Freddie Prinze?

You may have just been being facetious and I didn't pick up on it. So apologies if that's the case. But if that was a sincere comment, you're off the mark by a few hundred thousand miles.

Cody's last 5 years: coasted in on goodwill of "fuck HHH", started getting booed because he was acting like HHH, aligned himself with his dead father's real-life friend Arn Anderson on-camera leading to more boos since Arn has always been a heel, literally said "I will not turn heel" on-camera, became star of a reality show where the other EVP's wouldn't allow their likenesses used on camera, left AEW and cut a promo on RAW to no reaction about how his father had a picture in his bedroom holding the WWE title after winning a match by countout, explained in said promo that his character's motivation is to avenge his father being "robbed" of the title because young Cody was too dumb to understand that titles don't change hands outside of pinfalls and submission

Cody's a superhero in his mind, but the way he stretches stories to try and make people care is very, very bad - the racism promo never should have made TV and there's no way he would have explained that promo beforehand to Paul Heyman and not had Heyman intervene to restructure it

 

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 minutes ago, just drew said:

Man, I tend to agree with you about a lot of things, but Cody was in a bubble. He was allowed to play Dime Store Cena in his own segments. His booking of himself as conquering hero set Malakai Black & Andrade back so badly that Malakai needed a year to get the stench off of him and Andrade still hasn’t recovered. His staggering lack of self awareness was on full display in Gwinnett county during the street fight with Andrade. He (very publicly) lives 15 minutes from that arena and he got booed out of the building because he either a) didn’t grasp how the audience perceived him or b) didn’t care as long as he was getting his. The CodyVerse was as real as the CodyVator.

I mean Tony frequently takes credit as the booker and Cody's said he wasn't wild being the guy they roll out to be the first feud for new hires, so maybe you're putting too much of your feelings on Dime Store Cena himself and not enough on the one actually booking him. 

Putting aside your feelings on Cody, if Andrade's profile isn't what it was a year ago when he came in, then he's in good company. That's not about a loss to Cody or working with him at all. That's reflective of what's happened to a lot of people who were brought in and subsequently cooled off. It's on either Andrade or his booking, take your pick. One wonders if Andrade might be in a better position if his father in law came in as his manager or tag partner for a match with Sting like seemed to be on the horizon before those chickens came home to roost. We'll never know. 

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think one reason it felt like a bubble is in part down to him removing himself from the title picture right at the start. Once they established the TNT title you got the feeling that it was the "Cody" title. It didn't feel like a secondary title, like the Intercontinental title or US title. It didn't have a unique constraint to it, like the old TV title or the Cruiserweight title. It wasn't associated with a particular style, like the X-Division title or the Hardcore title. It just felt like "This is Cody's because he can't have the world title."

This was particularly true at the start, when it went Cody->Brody->Cody in under two months. None of the other titles had changed hands that quickly to that point, and the reigns for the two other singles titles AEW were all in the triple digits prior to that.

They've been running into a similar problem with the TBS title becoming the Jade title until Nyla's angle started.

I also think that if Brodie hadn't passed away it would have felt less like a bubble. Because he disappeared basically right after he lost the belt, it resulted in a disconnect I don't think we'd have felt if Brodie had proceeded to feud with Hangman as was expected. So you had a chunk of time where Cody was feuding with Brodie, with a stable that was basically  never on tv (the Factory), and with a bunch of people who mostly weren't even wrestlers (Lambert et al).

I'm not blaming anyone, I'm not saying a particular person made a particular decision or another person was at fault for the booking. I'm not passing a value judgement on Cody or anything. Just trying to pin down why it felt, to some of us, like it was its own bubble.

  • Like 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 minutes ago, kafkonia said:

This was particularly true at the start, when it went Cody->Brody->Cody in under two months. None of the other titles had changed hands that quickly to that point, and the reigns for the two other singles titles AEW were all in the triple digits prior to that.

The perils of being the first to do something in a new company that some fans can be weird about but was going to happen eventually. At least now the company has matured into a place where the precedent has been set and we can have a 28 day Young Bucks run, an 11 day official Moxley reign, and the chaos of Sammy->Cody->Sammy->Scorpio->Sammy->Scorpio. 

Watch out, women's championship! You're next! 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 10/24/2022 at 1:14 AM, Jiji said:

I will never forget him pulling the cord to start up a sanctimonious cody promo only to get kicked in the face by Black backstage. "State of the world..." *kick*

It's when the AI became self-aware.

I'm still leaning to Omega leaving whenever his deal is up even with Punk out of the picture. I hope I'm wrong. I don't want to have to watch NJPW with the state it's in and I will never watch WWE.

 

I do think Kenny's legit about revolution.  IF he feels like he can't do that in AEW, I'd expect him to freelance or go start something new.  I don't really see him going to WWE ever.  He wouldn't be able to do CEO x NJPW type events.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

41 minutes ago, Dolphman 3000 said:

Cody's last 5 years: coasted in on goodwill of "fuck HHH", started getting booed because he was acting like HHH, aligned himself with his dead father's real-life friend Arn Anderson on-camera leading to more boos since Arn has always been a heel, literally said "I will not turn heel" on-camera, became star of a reality show where the other EVP's wouldn't allow their likenesses used on camera, left AEW and cut a promo on RAW to no reaction about how his father had a picture in his bedroom holding the WWE title after winning a match by countout, explained in said promo that his character's motivation is to avenge his father being "robbed" of the title because young Cody was too dumb to understand that titles don't change hands outside of pinfalls and submission

Cody's a superhero in his mind, but the way he stretches stories to try and make people care is very, very bad - the racism promo never should have made TV and there's no way he would have explained that promo beforehand to Paul Heyman and not had Heyman intervene to restructure it

 

I literally don't disagree with anything you've typed here. Pretty spot on in regards to Cody. But one performer's failure to convert his character to a compelling on screen presentation doesn't mean all wrestlers should be shoe-horned into word for word scripted promos.

I do contend that if Cody was savy enough to be in on the meta commentary he was presenting on air, all it would have taken was for him to flip the switch hard ONCE to really convert that character into a super over heel that would have been very compelling. A Hogan-esque 'I tried to be the good guy brother but it's you guys that turned on me. You can all stick it.' deal would have been great. Bonus points for going back on his word and winning the World Title during that.

The racism promo was dog shit. The Ogogo feud was terrible. But I don't think that made Cody irredeemable. He was just in a rut. One that he could have dug himself out of.

  • Like 4
  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't think the Codyverse is disputable at all as far as its existence. What's debatable is why it continued to exist long after it was relevant.

I disagree that it occurred after the COVID lockdown/Wargames cancelled/no longer interacting with the Elite on air. It happened after he was no longer allowed to challenge for the title. 

You had the MJF program inside itself, and that was perfectly acceptable. Then the Being Cody Rhodes title became legitimized as the TNT title. Then he dropped that, and it was the Shaq program. The never ending stuff with QT. The pocket dimension with Black/Andrade. It all progressively mattered less and less. 

At any point in that, they could have pulled the trigger and challenged the stipulation to never challenge for the title, when they realized his stuff was awful, fast forward worthy and had no direction. They chose not to for whatever reason. 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, A_K said:

They lost Cody and seemingly Punk without ever running either as top-of-the-show heels. Most pig-thick, biggest lost opportunity in the modern history of the business.

It's a work.

  • Like 1
  • Haha 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 hours ago, John from Cincinnati said:

While the Codyverse is a funny concept, it's become too widely accepted that Cody was in a bubble. He wasn't. He was doing his own stuff just like everyone else, and like most segments of the show it was immediately moved on from once it was over. The only reason people look at it like a bubble is because one week he was booked in a War Games match with the Elite, and the next he was conspicuously not and had never interacted with those people on-screen again. But I'm not sure a lack of interaction with Omega and the Bucks qualifies as being in a bubble. If that were the standard, Punk was in a bubble, Miro's been in a bubble, Malakai's been in a bubble, Wardlow's been in a bubble, Ethan Page and Brian Cage have been in bubbles. I guess Darby and Sting briefly got out of their bubble and got to work with the Bucks at Forbidden Door. Maybe Starks and Hobbs were in a bubble until they got to take the fall in the Bucks' last title loss. But I think the bubble talk is overblown. Cody was as connected other parts of the show as most people were. He just wasn't connected to his former stablemates. 

This promo fucking sucked. 

https://youtu.be/h4Ue6pON9yY

"The Lethal Injection is the one Cutter in the business that people don't kick out of. Avoid. Avoid. Avoid." WHAT THE FRELLING HELL IS THIS GARBAGE?! "I know we're not in the business of renaming people like Gunnar McGillibuddy or whatever the hell it is! Because if you come to AEW and call yourself Brodie, you've got balls!"

Like he's basically cutting a heel promo on CM Punk but he's not even interacting with Punk and he literally won't turn heel. 

The crowd is absolutely shitting on him in the first half. Then at one point he almost gets them back, then he starts rambling and losing them again. This was like one of the worst rambling Super Cena or The Guy Roman Reigns times a million.

Edited by TheVileOne
  • Like 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
×
×
  • Create New...