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AEW - 2019


Dolfan in NYC

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45 minutes ago, Beech27 said:

Given twitter the last few days, I’m now half expecting Josh Barnett to sign up and take over this thread with a full throated defense of Inokiism. (Full disclosure: I love a lot of that stuff, for better and worse.)

In any case, there’s a big difference between sacrificing your champ to prime, non drug tested Cro Cop, and presenting fictional fights with in-universe stakes. And fwiw, WWE is the company currently doing the shooter-as-champ thing with two belts and big checks, so I think American audiences are used to that aspect. Do they like it? I really have no idea. My totally trite answer is that anything done well will be received well, where anything done poorly will be received poorly. I don’t think Kenny Omega’s gonna go challenge Jon Jones—even if Callis does like to sell that he won a local rec-leve Jiu-Jitsu tournament years and years ago. 

I was arguing the notion that New Japan is strictly successful because it's purely wins and losses are counted like the whole promotion is a real sport when in actuality, they (or just Gedo by himself) understand the delicate balance between seriousness and making storylines matter. Suzuki-gun jobs all the goddamn time, but that doesn't diminish Minoru Suzuki or KES or ZSJ. It matters when any of those four drop a fall because those guys rarely lose cleanly. There isn't any type of 50/50 booking.

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3 hours ago, Fallacy! said:

 

There's a lot of wiggle room between "wins and losses matter" and "we're going to have win-loss records and top 10 rankings and document every result every wrestler achieves." Hopefully they find a happy middle ground between those two, but if it veers more toward the latter, I think it's going to be a problem.

I don't really care how New Japan does it. American fans aren't conditioned to that and I think the cat is too far out of the bag on 'rasslin being fake in America for that kind of promotion to ever work on a mainstream level, and if AEW is presumably/hopefully/possibly/maybe getting a major TV deal, they're going to have to bring more to the table than "we're a bunch of wrestlers who wrestle because we love to wrestle and want to see who the best wrestler is."

And maybe they will. I mean, it's still all in its infancy, and they could very easily drop all this once they get a TV deal and find out what that network expects. Who knows. My opinion is just that considering what they've built their cult following on, switching gears to "we're real sports!" seems foolish.

This exactly.

There’s this pesky thing called ratings that whatever big time network they get on will have expectations on.

Pretending you’re a real sport and copying New Japan is all well and good until you put it on network TV and nobody watches. And believe me, nobody is tuning in on a weekly basis to watch that stuff for two hours. Especially when the wrestling style you out forward is the complete opposite of “real”. 

if that’s they’re game plan going into TNT, for example, they’re going have a very rough and rude awakening. 

He’s already out there saying they’re not gonna have any writers and that the wrestlers are the writers. Good luck with that.

 

 

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New Japan isn’t a ~pure sports~ promotion and hasn’t been for years, so even if AEW was copying it, which no one has indicated they will, they wouldn’t be pretending at being anything other than pro wrestling.

All we know is “wins and losses will matter” and some people within the company think keeping records/rankings would be a neat way to emphasize that. 

We know many of the key players have worked in Japan and thus we’ve surmised they might reasonably be influenced by that experience. 

No one has suggested they might or should ditch characters and angles or have a judoka worked-shoot on their champ.

And honestly, we have no idea what will get ratings. WWE is trending down, and so is nearly ever other live sport, as much as they’re valued. Other than big football games with star players, nothing is certain.

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5 hours ago, Raziel said:

Don't hate on rankings.  JCP got a lot of milage with Flair dening Funk a title shot because Funk wasn't ranked, then Funk got pissed and destroyed Steamboat because Funk finally got ranked 10 and he wanted Flair, so he nuked the #1 contender to get there.  

 

I get the whole "It can't just be 'I want the belt"" mentality, because you can do that boring, which is what Impact's problem is.  At the same time, yeah, focusing on winning/belts/getting paid is the basis of all sports because if you're not trying to win and get more money and belts, then what the fuck are you actually doing this shit for?  Actors act to get money and awards.  Athletes compete to win/win titles/get paid.  It's possible, just needs to be entertaining.

I'm right there with you in terms of making winning/belts important, but rankings, top 10, win-loss records, etc. is where I start to lose interest. There's a way to make that stuff meaningful while still intertwining good storytelling. How does 1-2-3 Kid ever get in the ring with Razor Ramon if we're matchmaking a fake sport based on fake rankings?

My completely untested theory on wrestling in 2019 is that the more reality, the better. Not necessarily presenting it as "real" because everyone knows it's not, but to give us reality in storylines. Wrestling fans are more knowledgeable than ever about what goes on backstage and wrestling is probably the only entertainment medium where the drama that plays out behind the scenes is usually more interesting than what you see on the screen. AEW is such a perfect opportunity to play out something like that because they're kind of already doing it. Part of what makes BTE so cool is that you get a peek into glimpses of their real life, or at least you feel like you are. The Kenny-Cody storyline was great because it was totally believable that there could be friction with those two guys with Cody coming in and quickly assuming a leadership role.

I guess at the end of the day, my point is that I hope they don't forget what got them to the dance. Tony Khan seems really, really invested in this "real sport" concept and that's cool, but it feels like it flies in the face of everything The Elite did to gain their notoriety. 

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13 minutes ago, Fallacy! said:

I'm right there with you in terms of making winning/belts important, but rankings, top 10, win-loss records, etc. is where I start to lose interest. There's a way to make that stuff meaningful while still intertwining good storytelling. How does 1-2-3 Kid ever get in the ring with Razor Ramon if we're matchmaking a fake sport based on fake rankings?

My completely untested theory on wrestling in 2019 is that the more reality, the better. Not necessarily presenting it as "real" because everyone knows it's not, but to give us reality in storylines. Wrestling fans are more knowledgeable than ever about what goes on backstage and wrestling is probably the only entertainment medium where the drama that plays out behind the scenes is usually more interesting than what you see on the screen. AEW is such a perfect opportunity to play out something like that because they're kind of already doing it. Part of what makes BTE so cool is that you get a peek into glimpses of their real life, or at least you feel like you are. The Kenny-Cody storyline was great because it was totally believable that there could be friction with those two guys with Cody coming in and quickly assuming a leadership role.

I guess at the end of the day, my point is that I hope they don't forget what got them to the dance. Tony Khan seems really, really invested in this "real sport" concept and that's cool, but it feels like it flies in the face of everything The Elite did to gain their notoriety. 

Is it really an untested theory though? That’s what a lot of the 90’s was built on. Impact did a throwback to that with Aries/Johnny and it was the most interesting thing they did all year. 

And I totally agree with going in a direction like that. I want them to focus on the old Eric Bischoff SARSA deal. Story, anticipation, reality, surprise and action. 

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3 hours ago, Thibs said:

He’s already out there saying they’re not gonna have any writers and that the wrestlers are the writers. Good luck with that.

Feels like they are saying stuff that WWE fans complain about. Wins and loses do not matter also came from WWE despite their top guys losing very, very rarely. So you know, fans complain about writers writing stupid stuff so what we are going to do? Hire better writers? No, we are not going to have any writers at all! Reality is that Cody and Bucks will probably write most of the show, but I guess they won't count as writers because they are not employed as writers. Only real difference is probably going to be promos, they'll write what you need to say but they won't write the promo itself.

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9 hours ago, Elsalvajeloco said:

I was arguing the notion that New Japan is strictly successful because it's purely wins and losses are counted like the whole promotion is a real sport when in actuality, they (or just Gedo by himself) understand the delicate balance between seriousness and making storylines matter. Suzuki-gun jobs all the goddamn time, but that doesn't diminish Minoru Suzuki or KES or ZSJ. It matters when any of those four drop a fall because those guys rarely lose cleanly. There isn't any type of 50/50 booking.

This is why I feel sorry for Taichi, He's going to be doing all the jobbing now instead of Iizuka.

 

Best way for wins and losses to matter are all the Cups NJPW does- the G1/BOSJ wins and losses matter.

 

An AEW version of G1 would also be a great way to get say, 55 singles matches you can have in a short time and fill up 8-10 weeks of TV with a small roster. 

They could use it to pick their first champ, and the Bucks could do a tag version six months down the line.

I also hope they keep the NJPW post-match comments and put those on the internet.  That's one of the most fun parts of NJPW.

 

That can't be your whole promotion, and I really enjoyed the whole Kenny/Tana "it's how you win" aspect of it a lot more than I should have (probably because I prefer Tana's way 100% despite also liking Kenny), but I think it's a great easy way to keep things interesting for half the year, and then you got the other half for storylines.   Didn't Memphis have something like this where Jarrett booked it one way for six months, then Lawler got to fight movie monsters and aliens for six months?

 

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To me G1 (and other puroresu tournaments) works only because it happens in the span of, more or less, one month. Suppose you take 55 singles matches and you have one hour of television. How many matches are you going to cram into that? 3-4? So thats something like 16 weeks of television. Or 4 months. I'm not sure if people would really be able to sustain interest so long.

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8 hours ago, Fallacy! said:

I'm right there with you in terms of making winning/belts important, but rankings, top 10, win-loss records, etc. is where I start to lose interest. There's a way to make that stuff meaningful while still intertwining good storytelling. How does 1-2-3 Kid ever get in the ring with Razor Ramon if we're matchmaking a fake sport based on fake rankings?

I think you're making a big jump from "there will be rankings" to "every single match will be based only on rankings and no other matches will be possible."

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3 hours ago, alstein said:

This is why I feel sorry for Taichi, He's going to be doing all the jobbing now instead of Iizuka

Nah, I think Taka and Kanemaru will likely be picking up the slack from now on.  I actually think Taichi may be more protected going forward.  

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Seems like the wins and losses comment is being taken more literally than it is probably meant to be. I think the issue is avoiding the WWE 50/50 booking philosophy where wins and losses literally don't affect slotting for the majority of the roster. Not really a radical issue as every other company on Earth has a similar idea. 

I think people lose sight of how anachronistic WWE booking is these days and view it as the norm. 

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So apparently Ziggler, Mike and Maria, and the Revival are all looking to leave WWE. Ziggler’s contract is up while the other two are asking for releases.

No doubt Revival goes to AEW. I’m sure they’d want Ziggler as well. Not sure about Mike and Maria. 

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I’d still be shocked if the Revival are actually released. That said, if they are, they’d be a big asset for AEW not only because of the Bucks/Revival feud, but because Dawson has NXT training as an agent/producer which would give AEW another person with experience.

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Spoiler: anyone asking for a release isn't...and this may shock you...going to get their release. WWE isn't just going to willfully let go of talent to help essentially help another promotion get off the ground. So anyone who wants and asks for a release can probably do the Neville thing or get spoon fed the big pile of shit Vince is about to force feed them.

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One of the things I’m hoping for going forward is that they diversify the roster. Would like to see some big powerhouse type wrestlers. 

They already have too many people that look and feel like cookie cutter versions of each other IMO.

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6 hours ago, MORELOCK said:

I think you're making a big jump from "there will be rankings" to "every single match will be based only on rankings and no other matches will be possible."

 

Well if we're talking about rankings, standings, and win-loss records (these are all Cody's words) - what sense would it make to have these and then not abide by them in terms of matchmaking? That's usually how stuff like this falls apart in wrestling.

I'm not holding them to any of this, just spitballing about it because it's something they put out there in public. We'll see how it plays out, or if they end up doing it at all.

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19 minutes ago, Fallacy! said:

 

Well if we're talking about rankings, standings, and win-loss records (these are all Cody's words) - what sense would it make to have these and then not abide by them in terms of matchmaking? That's usually how stuff like this falls apart in wrestling.

I'm not holding them to any of this, just spitballing about it because it's something they put out there in public. We'll see how it plays out, or if they end up doing it at all.

That and the whole “we’re not gonna have writers, the wrestlers are gonna be the writers” stuff 

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