AEW - JANUARY 2024

[Stefanie Sparkleface]

58 minutes ago, Zakk_Sabbath said:

That's an interesting statement - I'm sure it's something innocuous like protecting HIPAA rights or something, but it's certainly curious phrasing as you noted; I'm sure if there's anything beyond that in play, the brilliant detectives on Reddit and Twitter will get to the bottom of it in short order

HIPAA rights just means a diagnosis is protected health information. If you decide you want to disclose your own diagnosis, and then your employer does so - like most sports teams do - that's your choice, but it cannot be disclosed without your permission.

Also, AEW is a TV show. If they want to say someone's injured, I doubt the federal government's gonna bust in the door and say "nuh uh!"

[Zakk_Sabbath]

11 minutes ago, Stefanie Sparkleface said:

HIPAA rights just means a diagnosis is protected health information. If you decide you want to disclose your own diagnosis, and then your employer does so - like most sports teams do - that's your choice, but it cannot be disclosed without your permission.

Also, AEW is a TV show. If they want to say someone's injured, I doubt the federal government's gonna bust in the door and say "nuh uh!"

Right exactly, that's more or less what I was getting at - questioning whether there's any red tape with the PHI being released by the 'employer' as opposed to the 'provider' (or further, if there's any kind of blurred line there with using an AEW doctor for the initial encounter, or something)

[Technico Support]

With one secondary title, you could do something like this: the holder of that belt is automatically ranked #5 or something, and can go higher with successful defenses.  So then unranked guys have a reason to gun for belt #2, as it's a shortcut into the top 10.  BUT then does that secondary belt have its own top 10?  Or is it an open challenge belt?  It's a decent idea here, but it falls apart when you have three lower-tier belts with, as you said, no identities.

[Go2Sleep]

My idea to improve the "rankings" idea is that they need to be viewed more like NFL standings than MMA rankings. The idea that you can only get a title shot on a 4+ win streak and one loss to anyone decent derails your title shot hopes shouldn't be applied to wrestling. That just leads to shows full of foregone conclusion matches like last night to get a desired booking outcome. Functionally, last night's show was no different than Worldwide or Velocity. Good matches, sure, but no real excitement tied to the major angles.

If they replaced the idea of "rankings" with "standings," there's a lot more creative freedom. The 49ers lost to the Vikings this year and the Ravens lost to the Colts. No one right now thinks the Vikings or Colts have a legitimate claim to playing in the Super Bowl in 2 weeks. If Hangman goes 8-2 en route to Revolution, why couldn't one of those 2 losses be to someone like Penta who goes 5-5 in the same stretch? Rebuilding the perception that there's even 20% chance any of these move for move TV epics could actually go either way would go a long way to generate interest in the AEW format. When the result is a lock, AEW's style becomes kinda what all the old-timers complain about with modern wrestling: Big stunts with no heart.

[Stefanie Sparkleface]

7 minutes ago, Zakk_Sabbath said:

Right exactly, that's more or less what I was getting at - questioning whether there's any red tape with the PHI being released by the 'employer' as opposed to the 'provider' (or further, if there's any kind of blurred line there with using an AEW doctor for the initial encounter, or something)

So there's two ways to look at it:

1) It's a sports-based presentation, in which case you're discussing whether it's okay for a sport to discuss an injury to one of the competitors, and if you're that worried about Twitter geeks calling in the government on you, do what the NHL does and go with "upper body injury"/"lower body injury" or whatever.

2) It's a TV show, and I can't imagine the Reddit for Chicago Med wonders about HIPAA violations for the patients on that show. I mean, they could, but Reddit is a sewer so who takes any of that seriously.

I also, quite frankly, don't need to think about HIPAA with pro wrestling because when has anyone ever cared about that with a sport.

[Godfrey]

To Tecnico's point about rankings and titles, they could have wrestlers with good standings declare themselves as a challenger for a specific title and only then enter the top 5 ranking for that title. That gives some looseness to most of the card but wins and losses would be concrete for title contenders

[Zakk_Sabbath]

27 minutes ago, Stefanie Sparkleface said:

So there's two ways to look at it:

1) It's a sports-based presentation, in which case you're discussing whether it's okay for a sport to discuss an injury to one of the competitors, and if you're that worried about Twitter geeks calling in the government on you, do what the NHL does and go with "upper body injury"/"lower body injury" or whatever.

2) It's a TV show, and I can't imagine the Reddit for Chicago Med wonders about HIPAA violations for the patients on that show. I mean, they could, but Reddit is a sewer so who takes any of that seriously.

I also, quite frankly, don't need to think about HIPAA with pro wrestling because when has anyone ever cared about that with a sport.

No argument from me on any of that, especially the last point - I really *only* brought it up to say that I bet it's something boring no one gives a shit about, as opposed to some juicy cover-up or whatever that the overzealous/highly imaginative may run with

12 minutes ago, Godfrey said:

To Tecnico's point about rankings and titles, they could have wrestlers with good standings declare themselves as a challenger for a specific title and only then enter the top 5 ranking for that title. That gives some looseness to most of the card but wins and losses would be concrete for title contenders

This is another great idea, and is more or less in line with my thoughts on it being a "best of both worlds" situation - the rankings should only add possibilities to the booking, instead of stifling them. The looseness you mention is exactly the kind of thing I think is most necessary here - spitting out random names here, but you never wanna be in a situation where the crowd is clamoring for say Fenix vs Kingston for the ROH/CC title, but you either miss it or it takes too long to get to because Fenix is only #7 of the top 10 or something

Edit: Also want to shout @Go2SleepI could get down on all of that.

Edited January 25 by Zakk_Sabbath

[Technico Support]

2 hours ago, Go2Sleep said:

My idea to improve the "rankings" idea is that they need to be viewed more like NFL standings than MMA rankings. The idea that you can only get a title shot on a 4+ win streak and one loss to anyone decent derails your title shot hopes shouldn't be applied to wrestling. That just leads to shows full of foregone conclusion matches like last night to get a desired booking outcome. Functionally, last night's show was no different than Worldwide or Velocity. Good matches, sure, but no real excitement tied to the major angles.

If they replaced the idea of "rankings" with "standings," there's a lot more creative freedom. The 49ers lost to the Vikings this year and the Ravens lost to the Colts. No one right now thinks the Vikings or Colts have a legitimate claim to playing in the Super Bowl in 2 weeks. If Hangman goes 8-2 en route to Revolution, why couldn't one of those 2 losses be to someone like Penta who goes 5-5 in the same stretch? Rebuilding the perception that there's even 20% chance any of these move for move TV epics could actually go either way would go a long way to generate interest in the AEW format. When the result is a lock, AEW's style becomes kinda what all the old-timers complain about with modern wrestling: Big stunts with no heart.

 That's a great idea and, honestly, I sort of remember that this is exactly what the AEW rankings used to be.  Anyone in the top 5 could get a shot.  I could be wrong, though.  But yeah, having multiple wrestlers clear a certain threshold, and then the "championship committee" decides who gets the shot, would be cool.

Really, having rankings based solely on win/loss percentage isn't the best.  I mean if Hook is 28-1 or whatever, loses to Joe, and falls to 28-2, he probably still has a better winning percentage than anyone else.  Shouldn't he keep getting shots until someone else is ranked higher? 

Really, it feels like we're all giving this more thought than TK.

Edited January 25 by Technico Support

[AxB]

UFC has a secondary title, it’s called the BMF title and it’s just randomly put on the line occasionally for no apparent reason.

And if you think AEW has too many titles, you should see the state of Boxing. Let alone Kickboxing.

Edited January 25 by AxB

[Go2Sleep]

As weird as it this is to say, the pre-playoff NCAA football ranking system might actually be perfect for AEW. You might not get in the national championship game, but you could end up in the Rose Bowl (TNT title), Sugar Bowl (CC), or even the Papajohns.com Bowl (ROH 6-man).

[tbarrie]

2 hours ago, Technico Support said:

So from a ratings perspective, does the TNT, International, or Continental Crown champ automatically get ranked in a certain spot in the top 10?  That might work, I guess.  But not automatically #1 like the Apter mags would treat the US (NWA) or IC (WWF) titles back in the day, because that makes no sense.  Those belts aren't "#1 contender trophies" like ROH used to have.  So what's the role of a secondary or tertiary, or whatever the word for four-tiary is, title in this ratings system?

Before the rankings went away the first time, the AEW champ and the TNT champ were both listed as champions at the top of the men's singles division rankings. So there was only one set of contenders for both belts. That might look strange now that there are approximately 46 men's singles titles in AEW, though.

And with Swerve, Hangman, and Wardlow all gunning for the #1 contendership for the AEW title while Copeland is simultaneously working his way up the rankings for a TNT title shot, it might get confusing unless they go with a separate list of contenders for each title. Which brings up the questions of who gets listed as contenders for which title and who decides that. But those are arguably the sort of questions best quietly ignored.

 

[Just Dave]

I've always thought a good alternative to having an off-season would be a rotating 9 month on, three month off schedule. It's staggered, so you aren't missing all your main eventers at once. Idk how realistic it would be, but I think it would be worth a shot.

[Godfrey]

14 minutes ago, Just Dave said:

I've always thought a good alternative to having an off-season would be a rotating 9 month on, three month off schedule. It's staggered, so you aren't missing all your main eventers at once. Idk how realistic it would be, but I think it would be worth a shot.

I've thought about this too. You can't do injury angles every time someone has booked time off though, maybe just be up front about wrestlers having a "season" and then a mandatory break to heal up

(But then what do you do when you want someone there year-round? 3 months of commentary? idk)

[Zakk_Sabbath]

52 minutes ago, Just Dave said:

I've always thought a good alternative to having an off-season would be a rotating 9 month on, three month off schedule. It's staggered, so you aren't missing all your main eventers at once. Idk how realistic it would be, but I think it would be worth a shot.

 

24 minutes ago, Godfrey said:

I've thought about this too. You can't do injury angles every time someone has booked time off though, maybe just be up front about wrestlers having a "season" and then a mandatory break to heal up

(But then what do you do when you want someone there year-round? 3 months of commentary? idk)

Exactly - it's not a terrible idea in theory, but I also think it would lead to a lot of repititiousness and folks' characters treading water, maybe even moreso than if they had to write people off with an angle every time.

If anything, handle it like the "brand split" era of Collision: no hard/fast rules, just a sort of internal guideline/suggestion

[odessasteps]

If TK comes on TV and says “Chris Jericho has a knee sprain and will be out 2 weeks,” is he talking a real injury to Chris Irvine  or the character Chris Jericho? 

[tbarrie]

6 minutes ago, odessasteps said:

If TK comes on TV and says “Chris Jericho has a knee sprain and will be out 2 weeks,” is he talking a real injury to Chris Irvine  or the character Chris Jericho? 

I would say if it's presented as part of the show, he's talking about the character. If it's at a press conference or something like that, he's talking about the performer.

But the fact that wrestling hasn't yet worked out a clear protocol to let the audience know which they're dealing with is one of my peeves with the industry. It's one of the ways the industry is still haunted by the ghost of kayfabe (to its detriment, in my opinion).

[odessasteps]

I presume the worst example of that is having to scrap the Vince limo angle because of how it might effect the stick because some people were confused. 

[Technico Support]

"Hi it's Donald, just calling to see if Vince is okay."

I always laugh at the story of Wall Street dropping WWE's price due to not understanding that Trump taking over was just a storyline, as well.  Because of the implication that Wall Street wouldn't trust this guy to run a fake fighting company, and then a good deal of our country elected this goof president.

[tbarrie]

1 hour ago, odessasteps said:

I presume the worst example of that is having to scrap the Vince limo angle because of how it might effect the stick because some people were confused. 

My recollection was that they scrapped the angle because of the Benoit murders/suicide; they thought it would be in poor taste to go forward with a story about a major character's death in the wake of an actual tragedy in the wrestling world. Wasn't Vince's funeral scheduled for the Raw right after the deaths?

3 minutes ago, Technico Support said:

I always laugh at the story of Wall Street dropping WWE's price due to not understanding that Trump taking over was just a storyline, as well.  Because of the implication that Wall Street wouldn't trust this guy to run a fake fighting company, and then a good deal of our country elected this goof president.

Everything's relative. Even Wall Street investors were smart enough to know that Trump was a buffoon who had never successfully run anything, but "smart enough to know wrestling storylines aren't real" is a higher bar that they apparently couldn't make it over.

[zendragon]

7 hours ago, AxB said:

UFC has a secondary title, it’s called the BMF title and it’s just randomly put on the line occasionally for no apparent reason.

And if you think AEW has too many titles, you should see the state of Boxing. Let alone Kickboxing.

I’m Boxing The WBC has stuff like a Caribbean title

 

6 hours ago, Just Dave said:

I've always thought a good alternative to having an off-season would be a rotating 9 month on, three month off schedule. It's staggered, so you aren't missing all your main eventers at once. Idk how realistic it would be, but I think it would be worth a shot.

Long agreed on rolling off season for wrestling 

 

3 hours ago, odessasteps said:

I presume the worst example of that is having to scrap the Vince limo angle because of how it might affect the stick because some people were confused. 

Still salty we missed out on Rod Macmahon running the WWE

[Curt McGirt]

It would have been Vince again only with his current Errol Flynn sexual predator flashing red light mustache, as a "twin". Like Flexo on Futurama. And yeah I remember the limo explosion was right before the news broke.

Edited January 26 by Curt McGirt

[Octopus]

Just a reminder to anyone that needs a pick up: SAMOA JOE IS CHAMPION

[Jenalysis]

22 hours ago, zendragon said:

I’m Boxing The WBC has stuff like a Caribbean title

 

Long agreed on rolling off season for wrestling 

 

Still salty we missed out on Rod Macmahon running the WWE

 

MLW had a Caribbean title at some point.  Florida wrestling had a Bahamas title at one point.

 

[hobo joe]

I was working an indy show the weekend after the Vince limo angle and one of the ring crew guys was insistent that the stunt went wrong and Vince was actually dead. I wish I could've seen his reaction when Vince showed up in the ring the following Monday.

[Casey]

16 minutes ago, hobo joe said:

I was working an indy show the weekend after the Vince limo angle and one of the ring crew guys was insistent that the stunt went wrong and Vince was actually dead. I wish I could've seen his reaction when Vince showed up in the ring the following Monday.

Vince wasn’t on Raw the following week. I think most people’s memory of that time is hazy, rightfully so, but the limo angle was 2 weeks before the Benoit stuff.