Jump to content
DVDVR Message Board

AEW - Feb 2020


Elsalvajeloco

Recommended Posts

14 hours ago, Brian Fowler said:

Big draw in UFC, yes.

But he has little of any impact on TV ratings or ticket sales for WWE, and literally by his third ppv back in 2012-13, he literally had no discernible impact on buyrates.

It'll never happen anyway, but I doubt he'd move ratings much at all for AEW either.

That’s indicative of the WWE’s incompetent booking, not his status as a draw. 

There’s a reason Daniel Cormier tried to get a fight with Lesnar when he was the champ last year—-he wanted the ppv points for that fight. He can sell ppvs.

And Brock doesn’t wrestle on tv. He just stands behind Paul Heyman while he talks and or beats someone up for a minute. The SD! he did wrestle on got high ratings for a WWE though.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, Bryan said:

That’s indicative of the WWE’s incompetent booking, not his status as a draw. 

There’s a reason Daniel Cormier tried to get a fight with Lesnar when he was the champ last year—-he wanted the ppv points for that fight. He can sell ppvs.

And Brock doesn’t wrestle on tv. He just stands behind Paul Heyman while he talks and or beats someone up for a minute. The SD! he did wrestle on got high ratings for a WWE though.

It was also the first SD on Fox. That rating was just as much for that than it was for Brock.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, MORELOCK said:


I don't think anyone was making that argument. Size and look matters moreso here and not as much in your examples because pro wrestling isn't actually based on who is the superior athlete. It's based on who's the most marketable.
 

Correct, I give zero shits about a wrestler's 40 time or actual fighting skill if it doesn't translate into their work. There is a component to wrestling that is highly dependent on casting much like movies.  You don't cast Clint Howard as your leading man and you don't cast Leonardo DiCaprio as your physically imposing heavy. The point I was attempting to make is that AEW doesn't have any heels on the roster who illicit fear. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 hours ago, MORELOCK said:

Not saying it's excessively vulgar or anything, just that if the company was trying to present an image that encouraged kids to watch, they wouldn't be looking for an excuse to say "shit" once per episode.

Is it stupid that anyone is offended by that word? Sure. But that's the status quo.

I don't think it's a wise policy - I can't imagine that whoever is being drawn in by "gonna cuss on the mic tonight!" is worth the amount of younger fans it could potentially cost them. I can't be the only one whose parents were like "Yeah, you're watching Nitro on Monday nights or you aren't watching wrestling" during the height of the Attitude Era. 

As cringeworthy as it sounds to say it today, a lot of Raw and Nitro's appeal to kids was their edginess.  Kids were tuning in in part specifically because the shows felt like something they shouldn't be watching.  Kids want their own thing.

As far as parents heavily monitoring and not letting their kids watch...there's a pretty good number of parents who will walk into Gamestop and buy Grand Theft Auto for their kids.  I mean I wouldn't, but I figure maybe half the parent in the country or more are just letting their kids do whatever. 

Source: anecdotal data, pulling stats out of my ass, raised that way myself

  • Like 2
  • Haha 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 minutes ago, matt925 said:

Tickets are sure going slower this time. 30 minutes in you can still get a pair in the lower bowl. 

It may be concerning if it doesn't sell out.  But DoN was their first ever AEW show which would explain why it sold out so darn fast.  But as long as it does sell out then all is well.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I agree with @MORELOCK on the vulgarity a bit, but at the same time, they do the graphic Southern wrestling violence and I would have more an issue with that. They have motherfuckers trying to poke eyes out with keys and spikes and brutal beatings with belts. Some tiny Japanese lady just got her tooth manually removed. Also, the crowd feeds into the cursing because they break out into pretty lewd chants now fairly often. That's nothing they have control over. I don't see them trying to censor the fans.

3 hours ago, Goodear said:

Correct, I give zero shits about a wrestler's 40 time or actual fighting skill if it doesn't translate into their work. There is a component to wrestling that is highly dependent on casting much like movies.  You don't cast Clint Howard as your leading man and you don't cast Leonardo DiCaprio as your physically imposing heavy. The point I was attempting to make is that AEW doesn't have any heels on the roster who illicit fear. 

If Leo DiCaprio as Hugh Glass survived a grotesque bear attack/mauling that should have killed him, survived for several days in the wilderness on his lonesome, and wanted to get back at me for revenge for killing his son, I would be pretty scared shitless.

Anyway, I don't think AEW was planning to have to the same roster they've started with six or seven months ago. The worst thing they could have done was drop people onto the show with no backstory or no meaningful storyline to put them in. It forces them to learn how to properly introduce people (as opposed to "THAT'S THE BUTCHER JR AND THAT'S THE BLADE!" with random people popping out of the mat from underneath the ring) whether it's a big scary monster heel or another character. I think everything leading up to Revolution is the really the first phase of AEW as a company so they really shouldn't be introducing new characters every week unless they have a big match for them in two weeks and day. Save all the shit until you build for your next quarterly PPV (Double or Nothing).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, Goodear said:

You don't cast Clint Howard as your leading man and you don't cast Leonardo DiCaprio as your physically imposing heavy. 

It's a pretty misunderstood term, but "heavy" isn't in reference to the size of the villain, it's in reference to the size of the script. The big scary muscle isn't usually the baddest bad guy, it's the person hiding behind them who has way more lines than anyone else in the play.

Most heavies aren't heavy. Go to the most recent run of AFI's Top Villains in the history of cinema and it's Hannibal Lecter, Norman Bates, the Wicked Witch, Mr. Potter, HAL, Linda Friggin' Blair. The only mentions in the Top 25 that are significantly larger than your average human are the shark from Jaws, the alien from Alien, and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

I love monster heels. I love that pro wrestling is this larger-than-life thing where regular sized people have to get beat up / beat up gigantic people. But to think that gigantic = best isn't held up by the best examples within real life or fiction.

Edited by John E. Dynamite
Link to comment
Share on other sites

35 minutes ago, Technico Support said:

Considering how well the strapping went, it's obvious the audience loves them some strappination.  I'm voting for the secondary title be contested solely in Yapapi Starp Matches.  RATINGS!!!!!

Maybe a good ole Country Whipping Match as well.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

38 minutes ago, Elsalvajeloco said:

FWIW The rating drop is being attributed to the poor lead in (iirc Pain & Gain which TNT has replayed a thousand times this past week). The ratings steadily rose throughout the show.

Why not just go with the good old standbys like Law & Order, or whatever the popular procedurals are now?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

TNT doesn't exactly have a deep bench in terms of programming.

They showed a commercial hyping up the new seasons of their big shows (Claws, The Alienist, whatever the name of David Michod's film they made an American TV version of, etc.). Not exactly must see TV. Dynamite and NBA on TNT seemed to be best out of all them, but then I again I watch both so clear bias.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

19 minutes ago, LoneWolf&Subs said:

Animal Kingdom is pretty rad, but it’s not like a 500+ episode detective show that can hold an audience into your prime time programming.

THAT'S IT!

If it was that rad, with TNT having entered the prestige TV race, that would be their big centerpiece. As someone who loved the film, it just looks like the Dollar General version of Sons of Anarchy. 

Anyway, there is a reason they have to show the same movie 700 times. If TNT ever decided to put one of their few notable original programs before Dynamite and move Dynamite back an hour, it would be very intriguing. Instead of NXT having an overrun after the end of Dynamite, that overrun would be at the top of the hour for Dynamite's second hour.

Edited by Elsalvajeloco
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Obviously going head to head is a Vince decision (with everything that implies), but you have to think the smarter play would have been for NXT to run from 6-8pm and AEW to be from 8-10. Or whatever. Obviously a lot of people wind up watching both anyway, but when you've got a PG Wrestling show and a TV-14 show, why compete head to head for the less than 2 million viewers, thus cutting your possible live audience into (potentially less than) half?

If AEW ever gets an overrun or an extension to 150 minutes, Vince would be wanting to match that too. Even though regular (non-Takeover) NXT feels too long at 2 hours.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

8 minutes ago, AxB said:

Obviously going head to head is a Vince decision (with everything that implies), but you have to think the smarter play would have been for NXT to run from 6-8pm and AEW to be from 8-10. Or whatever. Obviously a lot of people wind up watching both anyway, but when you've got a PG Wrestling show and a TV-14 show, why compete head to head for the less than 2 million viewers, thus cutting your possible live audience into (potentially less than) half?

If AEW ever gets an overrun or an extension to 150 minutes, Vince would be wanting to match that too. Even though regular (non-Takeover) NXT feels too long at 2 hours.

Moral victory: We're also cutting into their audience. I dunno.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I know you guys love my hot takes, so here's another one: no one should bleed in that cage match.

Really, it shouldn't be a cage match at all, but mainly what I mean is that if there's blood in every cage match that just becomes another predictable spot in the creeping automation of modern professional wrestling, and as such will eventually mean nothing at all.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Actually the lack of blood in TV cage matches(Although WWE has been the only real TV wrestling for the past two decades) has desensitized people on the cage gimmick. Putting blood back in it would juice it up for nostalgic, and new fans. But at the same time I feel the blood should be saved for PPV. Not just for sensitive advertisers, but to save the gimmick of blood being overexposed to a national audience, and keep it special. 

Edited by LoneWolf&Subs
  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Reading a few pages this morning and man, it's a testament to how badly they bungled The Butcher and The Blade when there's hoss-talk* and nobody's mentioned Andy Williams...

 

* If anybody wants to name their podcast Hoss Talk, have at it. 

Edited by christopher.annino
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

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