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AEW - Feb 2020


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Media call with Cody, these notes are stolen from Ryan Satin. My words, but his summary.

  • On Jeff Cobb: "still in gestation" since he works with ROH and New Japan still, but would love to see him sign a long-term deal with AEW.
  • In between Double or Nothing on Saturday, and Dynamite the following Wednesday, AEW will "load things up" with events to keep fans in town and busy.
  • Cody and Taz want to attend the NCAA wrestling finals to scout talent that they could train, and that the Young Bucks are always looking at indie talent that can "go bell-to-bell".
  • Cody runs a school, called the Nightmare Factory - it's not affiliated with AEW, but Sadie Gibbs and Anthony Ogogo will be training there soon.
  • When asked about signing more wrestlers of color, he says he's been going down a YouTube hole of Chris Bey matches.
  • Says Val Venis' comments about Nyla Rose are disappointing, terrible and awful, but he doesn't think he means what he's saying either - likely doing it to get booked (by either AEW, or someone else). Adds that Nyla won the title because she's the best women's wrestler in AEW.
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20 hours ago, Oyaji said:

So, Nyla should absolutely 100% switch her finish from the Batista Bomb to that diving knee to the draped opponent, right? Poor Riho looked like she hit her neck and head whipping down from the aftermath of that. It gets a huge pop every time. It's the best looking thing Nyla has in her arsenal. Just win with that! Pull a Hangman and switch the ol' finish.

It often feels like she's struggling to get opponents, even Riho, up for the power bomb.  So I definitely endorse chaning it up.  But then again, I don't, because she should be doing power moves if she's going to be the big beast of the division.

10 hours ago, RolandTHTG said:

Could they run a Caster Semenya angle with Nyla and Britt trying to push the fictitious board of directors to put her through ridiculous standards and testing to ensure she's meeting the necessary testosterone angles to remain the champ?

I feel like if its done with the appropriate respect shown, it puts huge heat on Britt and sympathy for Nyla. On the other hand, one transphobic audience cheering for Britt and it's super messed up.

It must've been in the other thread where I mentioned I was thinking about what WWE would do with Nyla.  This is exactly the kind of hamfisted booking I was imagining.  There is no amount of "appropriate respect" you can show when running an angle about someone, even a heel, not wanted to fight a trans woman because "she's a man."  That kind of angle, especially with AEW's audience, would just put heat on the company, not the heel.

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People talking about Starrcast: AEW do meet and greets with three or four of the Wrestlers before every Dynamite. One made TV when Nyla attacked Shanna, and Jimmy Havoc just watched. They announce them on twitter the day of the show.

MJF and Wardlow were on the panel last week. Best Friends have done it loads of times, it feels like. Generally it's not the EVPs though. Probably too busy.

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24 minutes ago, odessasteps said:

Nothing says dastardly heel than doing a meet and greet. I hope MJF stays in character. 

There are many clips on Twitter of him calling fans fat and what not. I think of any professional wrestler on the face of the planet, you don't have to worry about MJF breaking kayfabe. 

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4 hours ago, LoneWolf&Subs said:

Anderson pulling the “Ric Flair promise to Sting” before the cage match? Arn’s fucking turning.

Arn fucken rules. I really don’t want a heel turn so early. I was hoping for a turn to usher in the Revival and a feud with the Rhodeses.  I suppose the history would make it interesting, but it’s so early that it makes Cody look like an idiot.  I guess he could be a nice mouthpiece for Wardlow, but MJF certainly doesn’t need him, and Arn would dwarf the beautiful little prick.

Anybody got a link to Flair’a similar promise to Stang?

 

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Yeah, fair enough. Terrible idea and sorry to bring it up. Apologies if anyone took offence, it wasn't intentional.

Terrible execution aside, I think the point I'm trying to make is that by refusing to mention that she's trans on TV, it becomes like every other real life thing that needs to be mentioned, in the same way Edge/Lita/Matt was.

Only a matter of time before it gets mentioned for cheap heat by some carney going into business for themselves (as Sean Morley is now), and once you do that, for mine anyway, you lose any opportunity to do something good with it. 

What that good is, clearly I have no idea.

Edited by RolandTHTG
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Re: Starrcast.

I thought it was cool to pair it with one event every year like Wrestlemania and Axxess. I assume that would be All Out for them but I agree, they went for the short term money and kind of killed long term interest. Then again, nobody was sure this whole venture would fly so that was a smart move. Let the field lay fallow another year and you could do Starrcast 2021 with All Out and interest would be more than renewed, especially if there's a bunch of WWE layoffs in the meantime.

Interesting Sadie Gibbs is at the NF (Nightmare Factory, may as well start abbreviating it). I thought she'd be around a while but it's only been two years. Smart move and I hope more of their performers take advantage.

And I knew somebody was going to be a dick about Nyla's victory, sad it's Val Venis but also glad it's not somebody even remotely relevant or entertaining so he's easy to ignore.

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5 hours ago, Dewar said:

Conrad ran Starrcast into the ground by running four of them within a 16 month period. If they were losing money as well, it's definitely not worth the extra work for him and his staff. 

Granted it's more just an expo than what Conrad does, but UFC tried doing these big type events in association with their cards. I mean it's great that they do them for International Fight Week (usually every Fourth of July weekend or the week after if the first Saturday is the 4th) or doing it in conjunction with the Arnold Classic in March in Ohio years back. After the success of one event in Vegas during IFW, I think they started doing it for their cards in London or other cities. Their staff was already overworked to begin with nevermind the logistics of all that.

If Conrad is the only point of contact and he has to deal with all these personalities (we're talking about the most carny profession of them all) asking for god knows what, I wouldn't be surprised if Conrad said fuck it because he wasn't enjoying it himself anymore. 

 

 

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Man, I just want to go to Vegas to watch a wrestling show, and have an excuse to visit the city for the first time. I don’t really care for expo events. My enjoyment of that ended when I went to the NFL Experience, and felt severally disappointed that it was nothing but a card collection show, and shitty marketing. Although that PlayStation trailer with all those free games was pretty fucking sweet. I remember as soon as my time was up in that trailer I jumped right back in line for that, and repeated that several times. Still my point stands, what a waist of my time when I could be experiencing Vegas. 
 

Although I’ll say this... Next year, I’ll just do All Out. Never visited Chicago, and I don’t think I want to visit Vegas twice in two years so soon. I wonder if other fans are feeling the same way I’m potentially feeling about Vegas this year.

Edited by LoneWolf&Subs
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Guest Stefanie Without Stefanie

Hi! I guess I should speak from learned experience here, having spent years discussing with people the validity of my own gender. (How would they know anyway? It's my gender.)

Doing any sort of story that calls a trans woman's gender into question serves exactly one purpose: to humiliate the trans woman. Period. Will it suddenly make the transphobic people going off on social media and message boards about Nyla winning the title stop? No. Will even mentioning that Nyla is trans, without calling her gender into question, make them stop? They'll just scream louder about her being trans getting shoved down their throats. You can't win with them. You can't reason with them. They'll keep screaming about elementary school level biology and telling that one joke they know about attack helicopters.

And I say that because, as mentioned, I know from experience. I used to argue with internet trolls about my own validity. I used to try to explain that a significant majority of trans women actually have lower testosterone and higher estrogen on average than cis women. I mean, if we're on hormone replacement therapy and haven't had bottom surgery, we're on a medication that actively prevents testosterone from taking effect in our bodies. If we've had bottom surgery, we've removed the parts of our body that produce about 95-98% of the testosterone that we used to produce, which still puts us in line with or below the production levels of cis women. It's very difficult for us to build and maintain muscle mass while on that medication. I lost a lot of grip strength as well.

So the argument that we maintain a natural advantage doesn't make sense as we're either actively blocking all testosterone effects or we've had a surgery that puts us down to the same levels at best. And the response I would almost always get back is "well, your chromosomes are still XY so you still have an advantage" (the only other thing they retain from their biology classes, it seems). Which 1) didn't make sense, as chromosomes don't matter in this equation, especially if you're actively replacing your hormones via medication, and 2) my chromosomes actually aren't XY, I have Klinefelter syndrome (or XXY chromosomes), which really means that Y is just there for funsies according to my endocrinologist.

What does any of this have to do with pro wrestling? Not a dang thing. It's scripted. Use the MST3K mantra if you have to. But there are way too many things that could go wrong by calling Nyla's gender into question on the air like that, for very little (if any) benefit.

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4 hours ago, odessasteps said:

Nothing says dastardly heel than doing a meet and greet. I hope MJF stays in character. 

Dave Starr told a story of doing a Meet & Greet with MJF, and Friedman stayed in character the whole time. At one point, someone wanted to buy some merch off him, but only had $20 cash on them, and the shirt (or whatever) was $25. So rather than give him a discount, MJF asked if the guy had paypal on his phone. He did. So MJF gets the guy to hand his phone over, and then paypals $325 to himself.

Also:

 

Edited by AxB
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Another good episode of Dark. They’ve really hit their stride with these last two episodes. Statlander’s squash against Dinamite was a great way to display her power, and the spots that we need to remember. No stupid 2.9 fest on a pre-taped match. The Hybrid 2 Vs. Best Friends match was the only bad match on the program. H2 are just too obsessed with getting their shit in, and it’s hurting all their TV matches. Interestingly enough their best match was them getting crushed by the Elite. Christi Jaynes looked very impressive in her debut against Big Swole. She stayed heel the entire time, and made Big Swole look like the established babyface she’s supposed to be playing. This was also easily Big Swole’s best match. No cutesy stuff from her, she just won a hard fought match vanquishing an up and coming heel. The main event was a Young Bucks crowd pleaser. Went a little long, but a more focused tag match compared to the sloppy H2 match.

Edited by LoneWolf&Subs
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Featuring a brief clip of last week's Meet and Greet. And a longer clip of the wrestlers mostly out of character, messing about in the ring before the doors open:

This vlog series is becoming a lot more BTE-like than it used to be.

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7 minutes ago, Niners Fan in CT said:

I must have missed it but how well is Double or Nothing selling this time around?   Also, you think there's a chance for blood in the cage match? 

Close to half the upper level is still available. Looks like over 2k seats. 

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3 hours ago, LoneWolf&Subs said:

Another good episode of Dark. They’ve really hit their stride with these last two episodes. Statlander’s squash against Dinamite was a great way to display her power, and the spots that we need to remember. No stupid 2.9 fest on a pre-taped match. 

Hoped Statlanders squash would have been on AEW Dyamante though.

Edited by MoeCristyV.1.6
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9 hours ago, Casey said:

Media call with Cody, these notes are stolen from Ryan Satin. My words, but his summary.

  • On Jeff Cobb: "still in gestation" since he works with ROH and New Japan still, but would love to see him sign a long-term deal with AEW.
  • In between Double or Nothing on Saturday, and Dynamite the following Wednesday, AEW will "load things up" with events to keep fans in town and busy.
  • Cody and Taz want to attend the NCAA wrestling finals to scout talent that they could train, and that the Young Bucks are always looking at indie talent that can "go bell-to-bell".
  • Cody runs a school, called the Nightmare Factory - it's not affiliated with AEW, but Sadie Gibbs and Anthony Ogogo will be training there soon.
  • When asked about signing more wrestlers of color, he says he's been going down a YouTube hole of Chris Bey matches.
  • Says Val Venis' comments about Nyla Rose are disappointing, terrible and awful, but he doesn't think he means what he's saying either - likely doing it to get booked (by either AEW, or someone else). Adds that Nyla won the title because she's the best women's wrestler in AEW.

I guess Impact! was on the media call as they have since signed Chris Bey, apparently just hours after this story came out.

Also, I had no idea Nyla was transgendered.  It doesn't change my opinion of her or anything.

Val Venis is a weird dude.  One time he worked an indy here in Kelowna, left before his match to come back with a towel with the Canadian flag featuring a marijuana leaf and walked it all around the ring.  After losing his match, he got on the house microphone and gave a long, weird rambly speech about the Big Valbowski's rules for success (which was really funny as he was in this tiny rec center, could no longer wear his tights because he's so out of WWE-shape so he wears a pair of shorts that hang below the towel he still wears and a t-shirt) and you could see the people in charge scrambling around, trying to figure out if they could turn off his mic or get him to wrap it up.  After that appearance, I 100% believe that he beleives what he said about Nyla is okay, but that he also might not remember having said it.  (PS: He signed a photo for my brother and it was so illegible, the ongoing joke is that he wrote "Buttfully yours, Val Venis."

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