ALL IN III - 8/25/2024

[tbarrie]

1 hour ago, StuntmanCrowley said:

I know it's been rumored that Okada/Hangman is happening, but with all of the JArrett interaction, I wouldn't mind if they ran back Hangman/JJ at Wembley.

I was going to ask whether, after last night, Hagman vs Jarrett should be pencilled into the main post under "Probable".

I hadn't heard rumours of Hangman vs Okada, but I could see them getting there before Wembley too.

[NoFistsJustFlips]

On 7/26/2024 at 12:34 PM, tbarrie said:

Plus it's not likely they're going to put three women's matches on the main PPV. What promotion do you think we're talking about here?

Could we get a women's Anarchy in the Arena? Teams led by Stat & Willow? Would get a lot of the women an opportunity to work the huge show. Then you clearly have two women's follow up matches for All Out. Mercedes & Kamila vs Britt & Hayter, and Willow vs Stat blowoff. I know that's still 3 women's matches on the PPV. But I think it would be a great showcase for the women. Willow has already had a few bangers in street fights. Something like Stat, Syraya, Harley Cameron, Taya, & Deonna vs Willow, Shida, Rosa, and two more. I'd say Julia Hart & Skye Blue, even Riho. But injuries. Probably Nyla & Anna Jay.

9 hours ago, Sex Machine Gun said:

You've got a PPV two weeks later, let him put someone over there that the company wants to be THE guy.

I'd be shocked if Danielson doesn't win. WrestleDream is in Seattle. Wins at All In, puts Swerve back over in Seattle. Gets a Darby match at Grand Slam & one more possible defense (Hangman?) at All Out. Feels like the right move, Danielson's wants be damned.

[Go2Sleep]

I'll be honest, I don't see much reason for Danielson to win the belt at All In, even though I wouldn't really hate it. Giving him a feel-good moment just to job it back to Swerve a couple months later is predictable and doesn't do anyone much good. It'd be one thing if Danielson never had that type of moment before, but he has, and he doesn't need a lesser version of it right before he (kinda) hangs 'em up. Doing it with Hangman interference would be even worse because then you don't even get the feel-good part for Bryan. You already have Ospreay going over MJF for the huge babyface triumph moment.

 

[Just Adam Bay Bay]

I’m with @Go2Sleep I don’t get all this talk about screw Bryan’s wishes. He’s a professional and if he doesn’t want the belt you don’t force it on him just to please his super fans from this board. 

I also feel like if Hangman is to “screw” Swerve out of the belt the more likely time is Grand Slam considering the history between Swerve and Darby anyhow. Swerve can lose the belt and say something along the lines of “keep it warm, I’ll be back for it” to let Darby know the issue is still unresolved, but he’s got to deal with Hangman first. That way Wrestle Dream gets a world title match, whatever Bryan gets for his send off to full time, and Swerve and Hangman in a stipulation match of some type. 

[NoFistsJustFlips]

10 hours ago, Just Adam Bay Bay said:

I’m with @Go2Sleep I don’t get all this talk about screw Bryan’s wishes. He’s a professional and if he doesn’t want the belt you don’t force it on him just to please his super fans from this board.

There's a conversation to be had here. It's not black and white. But my counterpoint to this is do you have to script out movies the way actors would like them to go? If Robert Pattison doesn't want to win as Batman, should the writers honor that? This is storytelling. Bryan is a performer going out there and doing his best to tell the story everyone agrees to. Is it better storytelling to build up how this beloved character has been on a losing streak and hurt, having him win a tournament and get his mojo back leading to one last shot at winning the big at the biggest show of the year and have him win... or lose?

Like I get you. You shouldn't force the top spot and the grind on someone who just wants to spend time with his family. But Bryan winning the title and holding it from August to October doesn't add any more miles to his travel. He's already working the Seattle PPV, that I'm almost certain of. So why not do a story that pays off in a great triumphant moment? Then do a well told story of the old gunslinger hanging on as long as he can and getting bested by someone in their hometown, giving them this huge moment in front of their family and friends.

They don't HAVE to go this route. I just think it does more for the audience (and Swerve himself). Right now the story with Swerve seems to just be we're putting him over all the stars one by one every month. He beat Christina, then he beat Ospreay, then he beats Bryan, then he beats Darby.... all without a lot of storytelling... isn't exactly giving him much to work with. Great matches, sure. But great matches don't cement you as a top star. Great stories do.
 

[Just Adam Bay Bay]

5 minutes ago, NoFistsJustFlips said:

There's a conversation to be had here. It's not black and white. But my counterpoint to this is do you have to script out movies the way actors would like them to go? If Robert Pattison doesn't want to win as Batman, should the writers honor that? This is storytelling. Bryan is a performer going out there and doing his best to tell the story everyone agrees to. Is it better storytelling to build up how this beloved character has been on a losing streak and hurt, having him win a tournament and get his mojo back leading to one last shot at winning the big at the biggest show of the year and have him win... or lose?

Like I get you. You shouldn't force the top spot and the grind on someone who just wants to spend time with his family. But Bryan winning the title and holding it from August to October doesn't add any more miles to his travel. He's already working the Seattle PPV, that I'm almost certain of. So why not do a story that pays off in a great triumphant moment? Then do a well told story of the old gunslinger hanging on as long as he can and getting bested by someone in their hometown, giving them this huge moment in front of their family and friends.

They don't HAVE to go this route. I just think it does more for the audience (and Swerve himself). Right now the story with Swerve seems to just be we're putting him over all the stars one by one every month. He beat Christina, then he beat Ospreay, then he beats Bryan, then he beats Darby.... all without a lot of storytelling... isn't exactly giving him much to work with. Great matches, sure. But great matches don't cement you as a top star. Great stories do.
 

I respect and agree with a lot of what you said, but at the same time they are telling a story with Swerve right now, and it’s not about him and Bryan or even him and Darby. It’s about the former Anxious Millennial Cowboy. So I still think it’s most likely if Swerve drops the belt between now and Seattle he’ll do it to Darby. Because as others pointed out All In shouldn’t end on a run in or distraction pin.

Hell before they ran Ospreay and Swerve I think I pitched a pretty damn good story idea that would’ve had Bryan winning the belt in London and dropping it in Seattle plus it had the built in storytelling of Ospreay refusing to hit his “death move” on Bryan and it costing him everything. Once they moved on from that it felt to me like Swerve’s keeping the belt until he fights Hangman again or until Hangman screws him out of the belt. 

Edited July 29 by Just Adam Bay Bay

[Go2Sleep]

For Swerve, his run is about cementing him as a lifetime top guy. Going over other top guys strong and the company showing they trust him in the top spot on big shows is how they do that. The big storyline beat for him will going back to the Hangman well, but I don't think they need to rush that. Swerve/Darby at Grand Slam is a perfect TV defense, and they can run MJF vs. Swerve at Wrestledream. The Hangman blow off at Full Gear on the anniversary of the TDM feels right.

[username]

I think we have to consider the dimension of is Danielson physically up for being champ as well. Word going around is he is working under "significant restrictions" (per SRS) just to get him to All In, and none of us believe that Danielson as champ will not go 100% no matter what, so it may simply be that as nice of a moment it would make it would just not be a good idea given everything.

[Log]

Danielson is one of my favorite wrestlers of all time. I’d like to see him win the AEW championship. He has a chance to do that coming up. I will be rooting for him to win that match. Why is that weird or wrong? 

[odessasteps]

To take nothing against Swerve, but isn’t this also the thing where all the “top stars” are doing other things or are injured, so he’s the best of the rest? Danielson, Kenny, MJF, and now Osprey and Okada. I don’t know if it’s Ron Garvin as NWA champion optics, but maybe? 

[Log]

31 minutes ago, odessasteps said:

To take nothing against Swerve, but isn’t this also the thing where all the “top stars” are doing other things or are injured, so he’s the best of the rest? Danielson, Kenny, MJF, and now Osprey and Okada. I don’t know if it’s Ron Garvin as NWA champion optics, but maybe? 

I don't think so at all. Swerve was positioned for his win leading up to it. It wasn't just a case of "there's no one else". He was on a hot streak and the fans were ready for him to win the title. It didn't come out of nowhere.

[Just Adam Bay Bay]

2 hours ago, Log said:

Danielson is one of my favorite wrestlers of all time. I’d like to see him win the AEW championship. He has a chance to do that coming up. I will be rooting for him to win that match. Why is that weird or wrong? 

I didn’t say it was weird or wrong. Nor do I feel like you’re pushing hard for it. I feel like some of the biggest Danielson fans are beating the drum extra hard though that his wishes shouldn’t be respected, and he should be forced into being champion. As @username pointed out his body’s badly broken, so making him the champion isn’t something I’d personally wish on him. Again my opinions.

Hell I like the performers I like too, but I’d never say they should force the belt onto Will Ospreay, Jay White or Adam Cole (there’s others I like too, but they’re the three main ones that haven’t held the world title before now). Hell I’d also be extremely pleased if once Hangman gets the belt again if they give Jeff Jarrett a title shot against him. It would be super easy to build The Hangman against The Last Outlaw as a big tv main event some week especially in Tennessee. 

Edited July 29 by Just Adam Bay Bay

[Just Adam Bay Bay]

1 hour ago, odessasteps said:

To take nothing against Swerve, but isn’t this also the thing where all the “top stars” are doing other things or are injured, so he’s the best of the rest? Danielson, Kenny, MJF, and now Osprey and Okada. I don’t know if it’s Ron Garvin as NWA champion optics, but maybe? 

Danielson doesn’t want it, Kenny’s been hurt the entire time, Max literally just came back, Okada has been in The Elite company takedown angle so targeting another heel in Samoa Joe wouldn’t have fit, and Ospreay I agree on, but his time will come obviously. Ospreay is way too good to not get a run by All In 2025.

[Shartnado]

51 minutes ago, Log said:

I don't think so at all. Swerve was positioned for his win leading up to it. It wasn't just a case of "there's no one else". He was on a hot streak and the fans were ready for him to win the title. It didn't come out of nowhere.

This is true. There was just some question whether they would pull the trigger on him or not? They did and it has been the correct move. Swerve is really coming to his own and he absolutely became the man after beating Ospreay. IF he survives Danielson and Allin, he's one of their top 5 champions up to this point.

[Go2Sleep]

1 hour ago, odessasteps said:

To take nothing against Swerve, but isn’t this also the thing where all the “top stars” are doing other things or are injured, so he’s the best of the rest? Danielson, Kenny, MJF, and now Osprey and Okada. I don’t know if it’s Ron Garvin as NWA champion optics, but maybe? 

I think that describes Joe's reign more than Swerve's, when Ospreay and Okada hadn't debuted (full time) yet. Kenny is the only one of those guys still out, and he was in the tag division before he had step down. Swerve already took the next step in the TDM, and probably should've been the one to dethrone MJF, but he was in the CC and MJF's body gave out before they could wrap up all his stories. They even had teaser where MJF and Swerve ran into each other backstage and it was a real "oh shit" moment.

[Just Adam Bay Bay]

Here’s a question that I’ll ask in general but also to @The Natural how is it people just last week were talking about whatever stunt Darby might pull during Blood and Guts and basically putting him in the same breath as like Jeff Hardy and Mick Foley, but nobody seems worried about Bryan Danielson? If the reports about his body being broken down are true then shouldn’t his most ardent of fans care more about his quality of life going forward than making posts about how he needs to be forced into being AEW World Champion? Especially considering how physically demanding a match against Darby at Grand Slam would be. We should all be able to figure out Bryan would want to go dive for dive with Darby, and also go for the god awful diving headbutt too. 

Edited July 29 by Just Adam Bay Bay

[SirFozzie]

Just a bit of a distraction/redirect, the Wikipedia discussion at the beginning of the thread had me reminiscing...

Even a decade after I stopped using it, it amuses me to think of all the stuff that went on during my time at Wikipedia, but that was a lot because A) I was entrusted with dispute resolution tools (first administrator access, and then the Arbitration Committee, which is the highest level of dispute resolution between editors on Wikipedia) and B ) I was involved in some of the craziest disputes I can remember (Scientology, Climate Change, even the Fucking Monty Hall Problem!)

 

The thing that sticks with me the most was a case that started when I was an administrator, and it involved a corporate CEO and a financial writer going to war over articles about naked short selling (No, get your minds out of the gutter, nothing porn related, just a market tactic of questionable legality to drive down the price of a stock to try to make money). The Financial Writer was using a variety of techniques to try to control the articles  (multiple accounts, using different dial up accounts and VPN's to hide this fact.. and the corporate CEO was breaking all kinds of rules to try to reveal this. It was.. stressful. I really should write a full article about it.

[Log]

I would also like to point out (via - @Matt D) that Danielson has gone on record that he likes to lie. Could he be playing up his injuries to better tell the story of his last days? Could he be fine (or as fine as a full-time wrestler ever is) and is just using this to add realism to his matches? Could he really be hurt and he's telling the truth and is simply working real life into his story? Could him saying that he likes to lie be a lie itself and therefore he really enjoys telling the truth, but lied just this one time to throw us off? Could I be totally overthinking this? All are possibilities.

[Gramsci]

Bryan is not as fucked up as people say, he has had some pain in his neck since April and no one wants him to get injured considering that he is going to be in the Main Event of All In. His run as a full-timer will continue until WrestleDream.

Knowing Tony's booking style, he definitely wants The Final Countdown to play at Wembley to close the show, especially with Bryan winning the last title of his career. It's perfect and we are going to enjoy it. The only reason Danielson is going to wrestle for the World Heavyweight title at Wembley instead of having another random Dream Match is because he is going to win it.

Swerve's drawing power and the vision of his championship reign won't change because he's losing to Danielson, in fact it will allow the creation of other narratives that will be much more interesting for his character. It must be normal, narratively speaking, that someone in his first reign as world champion cannot handle the pressure of wrestling in the Main Event of a show as big as All In, especially against someone much more experienced and who is a 6-time world champion.

[Matt D]

I think the best way to put it is that whether or not Danielson is severely injured or was severely injured or may or may not be feeling better, he is going to lean as hard as possible into the kernel of truth for the sake of creating the most dramatic retirement-themed story imaginable. I suggest people go along for the ride and appreciate any bit of physicality we do get from him over the next few months.

[Curt McGirt]

Re: Ospreay, what I worry about if they give him the belt is who could possibly be the Doomsday to his Superman. Sure, he can lose via BS (like with Max) but man they have built this dude up like he will be impossible to beat. He seems good at working other people's matches but no one can really match him at his own style. That is probably the problem I have with him most as a wrestler. ANYTHING he does is a liable finisher. How do you compete with that? If I had him in my own promotion I couldn't see using him as anything but a special attraction. It would be like bringing in Andre.

[Sex Machine Gun]

For one, we don't see videos of Danielson trying to launch himself over houses or hear stories about wanting to climb Everest. Bryan may take a wild bump here and there but he isn't flying off a tall ladder and landing on whatever combination of chairs and glass and tables and tacks or whatever that Darby does. 

Secondly, we're all assuming Danielson would be some Bret Hart-like champ in the early 90s who has a workhorse match schedule. Bret needed that to establish himself in the early 90s, Bryan doesn't. No one will be complaining that he only works once every several weeks because he also has the ability to talk a lot better than Bret (sorry everyone, '97 heel Bret was during a time I gave up on wrestling but even then the WWE 2018-19 heel Bryan was amazing). 

Finally, the reign doesn't even have to be long. Not every one has to be. There's a far greater AEW PPV density than just two years ago but they haven't been reduced to In Your House sideshows. You can have him lose fairly soon in a heavily promoted card or a rematch with Swerve or Hangman. Why not even have Darby be the one? Who better to beat the ultimate underdog than an even more ultimate-er underdog? Grand Slam doesn't even have to be crazy. Good workers like Danielson can rein in the worst aspects of other guys and make a match with them into gold (see: MJF/Ospreay which made Ospreay slow down and sell to create magic).

Edited July 30 by Sex Machine Gun

[Dolfan in NYC]

I often wonder what kind of career Danielson would have had if he'd started 10 years earlier, in the pre-Benoit murders era.  That really did seem to be the thing that made people in the wrestling industry realize that CTE was real and a horrible problem. 

Danielson is an all-time great potential, but obviously derailed by injuries, be they his body or his brain. Because of that he never really could establish himself in that next S-Tier echelon, where he crossed over and became famous outside of the wrestling bubble.   I always hate seeing him make light of it when he does the fake injury angles in like ALL his big AEW matches.  But its mainly because it makes me sad to think what could have been, rather than what reality holds. 

Maybe it's just me. 

[Stefanie Sparkleface]

41 minutes ago, Dolfan in NYC said:

I always hate seeing him make light of it when he does the fake injury angles in like ALL his big AEW matches.  But its mainly because it makes me sad to think what could have been, rather than what reality holds. 

Maybe it's just me. 

No, I'm the same. I get uncomfortable watching Danielson matches because I know how injured he's been in the past, and to see him tease those kinds of injuries again just breaks me out of the enjoyment of the show. I want him to have a happy, healthy life. I don't want him to be injured. I don't need a bunch of great matches if it means he's sacrificing his health to get them.

It's a nuanced argument because I see a lot of people going "well shouldn't you want to see people get hurt if they're the heel". No? Maybe you can dislike the character a person is playing and want to see them get their comeuppance, but at the same time want to see them be able to go home to their families and live a productive life.

I dunno. I think Bryan Danielson has given us enough. He doesn't HAVE to be given a title if he doesn't want one. He doesn't HAVE to be forced into a main event if he feels his body isn't capable of performing to the standards he feels are acceptable anymore. The only thing he owes is to his family to be there for them in the future.

[Shartnado]

On 7/29/2024 at 4:44 AM, Go2Sleep said:

For Swerve, his run is about cementing him as a lifetime top guy. Going over other top guys strong and the company showing they trust him in the top spot on big shows is how they do that. The big storyline beat for him will going back to the Hangman well, but I don't think they need to rush that. Swerve/Darby at Grand Slam is a perfect TV defense, and they can run MJF vs. Swerve at Wrestledream. The Hangman blow off at Full Gear on the anniversary of the TDM feels right.

I would really like it, if that was what they were going for! Swerve as a lifetime top guy!