AEW AEW TV (Week of July 24, 2023)

[Nineteen]

17 hours ago, zendragon said:

AR Fox is 35, OC is 38, Eddie Kingston is getting his big G1 dream, LA Knight is getting over like gangbusters in the other place. Cool to see these guys getting breaks later in their athletic/ professional lives

King also got to meet Kawada(~!) and made it to Ribera. He posted pics on his insta and got the jacket.
 

[Gordi the BJW fan]

5 minutes ago, HarryArchieGus said:

All that said, I'd actually like to see what Sabian might look like after a couple years in Japan.

I am only one person, and I am not actually Japanese, but I think it's safe to assume that I am speaking for the entire country when I say, "No, thank you."

[Stefanie Sparkleface]

3 minutes ago, AxB said:

Perhaps we were too harsh on Painted Pedro.

Nah, one can never be too harsh on creeps, and that guy was a CREEP.

[AxB]

If he had just mentioned once that he knew Britt from the Pittsburgh indie scene and she wasn't well liked there, then that would have been "Well, we didn't ask, but thanks I suppose". The fact that he felt the need to keep bringing it up, crowbarring it into every possible conversation he could, that was really fucking annoying. And he couldn't say it without coming off like a weird woman hater.

That and his bizarre clout chasing "I tweeted negatively about J-Rose and J-Rose acknowledged it, so I win!" thing. I have no clue how he thought that made him look good, but he clearly thought he was Billy Big Balls after it happened.

[Stefanie Sparkleface]

Just now, AxB said:

And he couldn't say it without coming off like a weird woman hater.

He made a bunch of other super-creepy posts about women (his tangent about how mean Mickie James was to him comes to mind), they just got lost in a sea of "by the way, did you know Britt Baker is totes a fugly slut?!'

The less said about that guy the better though. Feels like we're summoning him at this point.

[JLowe]

Watching Rampage really made me aware of how much AEW is missing the YouTube shows for character and story development. Instead, Tony keeps putting together random battle Royales to develop angles. I didn’t think it was nearly as bad as some did, but I was only half tuned in to the early part. I liked Satnam in the classic Andre role, and thought he did pretty good in that character. That said, he did a bad job dumping Zay and Matt Hardy, both could’ve been injured. Big Bill really studied his Big Daddy Cool tapes and its working for him. Brian Cage continues to do nothing for me. The brief team-up of Magic Meat was fun.

Recap central, in case you weren’t clear this is now AEW’s c-show.

I am another who does not care for Kip Sabian, and I assumed they were heating him up for the Wembley show so I was a bit surprised when he put Komander over. I guess having him as “AEW original/familiar face who is a jobber to the lower card” is fine, given what he and Penelope have been through recently.

Kingdom squash was just that. Was Adam Cole with them in ROH? If so, I could conceivably see Kingdom getting warmed up for a feud with MJF and Cole in a “Cole has history with these guys” way. Of course, that’s all dependent on that angle continuing.

Shida-Nyla was a perfectly good main event women’s match. Notable in that it didn’t have any noticeable edits or commercial breaks, compared to some recent Rampage women’s matches (or any Jade match longer than 3 minutes). Very much a nostalgia match.

[COLETTI]

48 minutes ago, JLowe said:

I am another who does not care for Kip Sabian, and I assumed they were heating him up for the Wembley show so I was a bit surprised when he put Komander over. I guess having him as “AEW original/familiar face who is a jobber to the lower card” is fine, given what he and Penelope have been through recently.

I read somewhere that originally it was going to be Scorpio Sky going against Kip, by SS got injured in some "freak accident." Him defeating Sabian makes more sense than Komander but who knows what the plan is?

[porksweats]

4 minutes ago, christopher.annino said:

I read somewhere that originally it was going to be Scorpio Sky going against Kip, by SS got injured in some "freak accident." Him defeating Sabian makes more sense than Komander but who knows what the plan is?

Yeah on Dynamite itself Excalibur announced it during his big rundown and there was a graphic for Scorpio Sky vs Kip Sabian.

[Matt D]

Have you ever seen Scorpio Sky and Komander in the same place?

[Zakk_Sabbath]

18 hours ago, Casey said:

Kiera/Martinez on Collision will be really good too, hopefully. I suspect the crowd will be pretty silent for it however.

FWIW, Mercedes has been on two or three AEW cards I've been to in Connecticut and usually gets a good 'hometown' reaction - same for AR Fox. I know we've covered it before, but It's a real breath of fresh air compared to 'Hey, we're in Oklahoma tonight, let's make fun of J.R.'s cancer and have Kane set him on fire'

[John from Cincinnati]

Per SRS, free agent (and hopefully soon-to-be Collider) backstage at today’s show:

Spoiler

Richard Holliday 

 

[Dog]

5 hours ago, christopher.annino said:

I read somewhere that originally it was going to be Scorpio Sky going against Kip, by SS got injured in some "freak accident." Him defeating Sabian makes more sense than Komander but who knows what the plan is?

Komander needed to beat SOMEBODY. In kayfabe, Tony Khan should be awfully embarrassed that he threw a bunch of money at a guy who just now got his first win.

[Curt McGirt]

Uh oh. Looks like a certain someone might just have a new toadie.

[Niners Fan in CT]

MJF/Punk at All In for the "Real" World's Championship and the winner faces Adam Cole at All Out?   Am I crazy?

[Greggulator]

That the main event was so much fun and completely weird. It felt a lot like a parody of tag wrestling with MJF and Cole hamming up the babyface shtick, but it was also a really great match. I also think they did only one move before the commercial break (a bodyslam) but had a whole bunch of struts and things like that. MJF also had a blast doing the Ricky Morton role.

[Casey]

This is cinema.

[Gordi the BJW fan]

Well, that was a GREAT two hours of pro wrestling TV.

I was literally just saying to my friend on a chat that I don't personally care for the Collision announce team, that them repeatedly overexplaining lucha libre/masks and Nigel's forced/unnatural heel commentary feel way too WWE for me... but in my opinion Collision is the show for everyone who wishes AEW could be more like WWE so that's OK...

Then Minoru Suzuki came out to fight Darby Allin.

I stand corrected.

It's kind of funny how often I end up feeling "happy to have been proven wrong."

This was certainly one of those times! Suzuki vs Darby has to be the LEAST WWE pro wrestling match possible. 

Of course, I LOVED it. And the ladder match was NUTS. 

And the storytelling in the tag title match was impeccable. Just tremendous pro wrestling TV.

I have two chat buddies who are going to next week's Collision. They were eating their hearts out that Hartford got such a great show. Hartford deserved it, though. That crowd was GREAT all night. Who could have predicted, after the first Collision, that Punk would get a totally mixed reaction, MJF would get a massive face pop, and FTR would get BOOED just a few weeks later. Crazy stuff.

Too much shadenfreude.

Also: Starks and Joe both legit cracked me up today.

Pro Wrestling is so great!

 

 

Edited July 30, 2023 by Gordlow

[Curt McGirt]

MAN that was an extremely entertaining two hours. The end of the ladder match was convoluted (and usage of handcuffs in any wrestling match should be an infamnia) but it was pretty brutal. I for one believe the dislocated shoulder was real but we'll see. Something just looked... wrong... with the left arm afterwards. Darby comes out for a mystery opponent and it's SUZUKI~! He is over as fuck and they have a sweet little match. They hilariously save a botched Code Red into a rollup because Suzuki is old. Joe squashes Gravity and mocks his stupid space-walk by turning it into a Fargo Strut. Ricky Starks owns CM Punk on the microphone after he introduces the new Being CM Punk/AEW X-Division (TM geohellraiser on the Discord) title. Juice and all the young boys have a solid six man and Mercedes gets to bang out AND set up Stat/Mercedes which is gonna rule. And then we get a tag where the crowd is absolutely slavering over every single pinfall, of which there are like twenty, and we have a perfect finish and post-match. This totally made up for the crapulousness from yesterday. 

[John E. Dynamite]

That was a succulent episode of teevee wrestling. I'm gonna highlight the finish to Andrade/Buddy - the big powerbomb was clean, the handcuffs worked, the key worked, the bolt cutters worked, Julia stayed on Andrade's back + maneuvered to the ladder perfectly (and her facial expressions were money), the push and the table spot was clean as anything, the mask came down easily. A lot of things could have went wrong but other than some camera gripes they nailed every single part of it.

[Curt McGirt]

Despite me not being a fan of how contrived the whole setup was (the table in the corner was such a Chekhov's gun), I'm with you on all that -- everything went off smooth as butter. 

[Casey]

Starks, MJF & Cole versus CMFTR for Wembley, who’s with me?

[John E. Dynamite]

5 minutes ago, Casey said:

Starks, MJF & Cole versus CMFTR for Wembley, who’s with me?

And run the turn (whether it's Cole on MJF or the less-fun MJF on Cole) there to set up the AEW Title match. I don't hate it.

[JLowe]

For real, this Cole-MJF team has been absolutely perfect story-telling and the match was perfectly laid out. Heat off the charts. Still glad FTR won

[HumanChessgame]

1 hour ago, Niners Fan in CT said:

MJF/Punk at All In for the "Real" World's Championship and the winner faces Adam Cole at All Out?   Am I crazy?

I'd rather Starks win the FTaeW title off Punk and be the one to face MJF in the unification match, but a) MJF/Punk would be a bigger draw and b) like you said MJF defending against his new friend Cole and trying to decide if he wants to play by the rules or not is also the big money angle. Starks can go on to face whoever wins that match.

[Curt McGirt]

Crystal ball says there is definitely gonna be a rematch of that main, so that needs to be worked into whatever plans are fantasy booked here.