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AEW - OCT 2020


Flair’s Shadow

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On 10/21/2020 at 4:14 PM, Ultimo Necro said:

Brandi suffers from a lot of fans genuinely liking her public persona. She’s great in everything that isn’t Dynamite, A shot of Brandi, her PR appearances, she’s fantastic.  So when she has tried something out of the box on the show a lot of fans just wont buy it.

Traditionally, I would think that being more beloved by the crowd should make a heel turn more effective, but we’ve obviously seen plenty of examples in WWE of fans rejecting heel turns outright.

I think Brandi’s problem, and to a lesser extent Cody’s, is that they seem to be the faces of the company, moreso than the other EVPs, so her heel turns have seemed incongruous with all her other appearances. Being a voodoo priestess or whatever she was before doesn’t mesh with her corporate appearances the same way Stephanie’s evil heel boss spewing corporate platitudes does with her actual corp role.

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2 hours ago, Shartnado said:

Oh yeah, no! Tyler can't be much more than 5'3 or 5'4, if that. He stood along side Seven and Dunne behind the merch table when I bought Dunne's "Everything Is Mine" T-shirt and a DVD and if I'm not 5'7", neither is he.

I'm 5'9" and when I saw Dunne and Austin Aries wrestle I was surprised they were both so much shorter than me. I'm used to being the short guy around too.

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I’m one who enjoys Brandi as a person. She seems genuine and cool. My big issue with her Dynamite moments is how awkwardly they are booked. Her as a Mrs. Sinister with Dr Luther and the gang is neat and she’d be able to pull it off but the Dark Order was doing a similar act (or what was appeared to be at first) with more build up. Also, as @JonnyLaw points out was still having Cody’s back and the Chief Brand Officer. The build up to her tension with Allie involved her acting arrogant, and then switching to sympathetic about ice skating, and then back to heel turn. Then after the Nightmare Collective and Allie having a gimmick change I guess they switched them to being friends but they don’t fully trust each other and now have dropped that. Or at least I’m confused. AEW does such a wonderful job with some of their long term booking but a terrible job with some of their short term booking. Brandi is an example of the later. 

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59 minutes ago, Octopus said:

I’m one who enjoys Brandi as a person. She seems genuine and cool. My big issue with her Dynamite moments is how awkwardly they are booked. Her as a Mrs. Sinister with Dr Luther and the gang is neat and she’d be able to pull it off but the Dark Order was doing a similar act (or what was appeared to be at first) with more build up. Also, as @JonnyLaw points out was still having Cody’s back and the Chief Brand Officer. The build up to her tension with Allie involved her acting arrogant, and then switching to sympathetic about ice skating, and then back to heel turn. Then after the Nightmare Collective and Allie having a gimmick change I guess they switched them to being friends but they don’t fully trust each other and now have dropped that. Or at least I’m confused. AEW does such a wonderful job with some of their long term booking but a terrible job with some of their short term booking. Brandi is an example of the later. 

Brandi's value is her connection to Cody. They have chemistry together and she provides Cody with something to fight for and something to protect. She plays well into that and can generate actually sympathy in that instance. We saw that in the whipping angle and the Dark Order attack. Her without Cody has been universally terrible and nonsensical. 

The Nightmare Collective was never cool. Awesome Kong was obviously broken down and the scalping gimmick never went anywhere. She was in Andre the Giant territory not being able to get up or down. Mel never even got a little over and still isn't. Luther pointed to his own head for months and added nothing to the group. They were never good or interesting. Stop it.

So to AEW's credit, they dropped the unit on Dark where most people wouldn't see it. Brandi was just with Dustin and QT now. Okay, fine because Cody had three other managers, two best friends and a dog to take him to the ring so I could see why that space was full.  So then they add Allie to the group as the obvious turncoat except she never turns on them for months and months until, she just walks out on stage in her old gear. Clearly whatever this was supposed to be got dropped because everyone realized it was dumb. 

But lest we forget, before Allie can "turn", BRANDI started to turn heel by being obsessed with her own action figure. That also got dropped eventually with no pay off because they have great long term booking.

But before that, Brandi tries to save Cody only to get choked out by Ana Jay to have her own section of the Dark Order feud. Which is where she should actually be in a supporting role in Cody feuds. They've since blown off the Cody portion of the feud (where Brandi took out like 6 guys at once because I hate my life) but are evidently continuing the Brandi portion based off her cooking and drinking show. She's also trying to court Red Velvet into her 'group' and I don't know why she needs a group at all as she has chemistry with no one other than Cody. 

It's been three dropped angles, one angle continuing after the main event players are out of the feud and between 3-4 turns of indeterminate origin. 

It's shit.

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On 10/22/2020 at 10:22 PM, Peck said:

Serpentico has officially signed with AEW.

Why?  Were they worried they were going to run out of 160 pound white guys pretending to be luchadores? 

Let's discus Miro for a second. If he's not a giant warning sign that AEW is not this land of milk and awesome I don't know what is. He's been on the show a month and is already an afterthought. He's been devalued immediately being saddled with jobber to the jobber to the stars Kip Sabian now feuding with The Best Friends over an arcade cabinet. Which is right there with shampoo and coffee for dumb feud reasons. And why is his gimmick that he likes video games? He's a heel. People like video games. This is like making FTR heels who like beer and trucks. 

He's done two tag matches beating a job team and Joey and Sonny who are also super low on the totem pole. He's got nothing interesting happen so we can concentrate on dance numbers with our two biggest heels and tournaments that place newly turned heels against other heels.

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Miro’s reintroduction in AEW has been a mess. The two matches were fine but had glaring mistakes in them, nobody gives a shit about Kip and Penelope’s wedding, and they seem more focussed on promoting Twitch than anything else. If they can’t turn it up agains the Best Friends then who can they have good matches with?

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I think Miro and Trent will do okay together because Trent is actually really good at projecting anger when he wrestles. I just don’t see the point, there is a glut of tag teams in the promotion. They didn’t need to put Miro in one with a guy with little upside and no heat to speak of. Kip also seems to be one of the few humans on earth who doesn’t have any chemistry with Miro which is amazing considering they have a 95% chance of finding someone randomly off the street.

if they had a mid card, Miro could be wreaking the AEW equivalent of Koko B Ware to start his warm up for Mox.

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A friend of mine who is a pretty acclaimed video producer (MTV award winner, had a documentary on Netflix) was in Jacksonville this week at Dynamite and was working on some stuff with Miro. I think it's way early to panic on his run.

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They did drop the ball with Miro after his fine but cliched introductory promo. But I have zero worries that long-term he won't be just fine in the main event scene or at worst upper midcard as an over solo act. The sooner this fucking stupid wedding angle happens and he can split from Kip Sabian, the better tho.

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But it’s a self inflicted wound that tells the audience that he’s not a big deal, he’s just another guy and that they don’t need to pay attention to him. Why do that rather than make him this looming shadow that hangs over the promotion? 

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I agree. And we along with a lot of people are questioning the Young Bucks U turn too. AEW is not perfect. I wish by now there was more of a Bill Watts common sense approach to big picture stuff like this at this point. Sometimes it's clear there are too many chefs in the kitchen, but it's on Tony to have a unified vision that tells logical long-term stories. The Hangman stuff has been perfect imo. It's not as if they can't do it. Doing it all of the time with 100% execution rate is impossible too. Especially when you're telling way more complex stories than the stuff of Mid-South 1985.

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The issue with Adam is that they dialed down his heat for no reason. They were better off when he was a walking tall babyface who drank with the fans and was an overall badass. Then they made him a sad drunk who didn't get along with his pals The Bucks and Kenny. Then he tried being friends with FTR but they were setting him up so he got sadder. And then all his buddies turned heel for reasons I don't think they really adequately explained AND they didn't turn on him. So now he's needs to turn a corner and get back to where he already was at the start of this development. The Page-Omega-Bucks angle had the potential to be the first classic AEW angle coming out of their tag title match but I think they fumbled it. 

They don't need to be super complex at this point. They've been successful when they've been simple.

Moxley wants to get back at Jericho for trying to blind him.

Cody wants to get back at MJF for turning on him.

The Inner Circle and The Elite are fighting for dominance.

Where they have problems is when it looks like they try to be cute about stuff and it explodes in their face.

 

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2 hours ago, Goodear said:

But it’s a self inflicted wound that tells the audience that he’s not a big deal, he’s just another guy and that they don’t need to pay attention to him. Why do that rather than make him this looming shadow that hangs over the promotion? 

I'm gonna catch hell for this, but he's not, he is, and they don't. When he started on the main roster, he wasn't all that over except through the inherent jingoism of American audiences.

Over time he got over and was entertaining, but a lot of that was through the chemistry he had with his seconds, neither of whom came with him to AEW. And don't pretend that the whole Rusev Day push wasn't goofy. Sure, the fans loved it and latched onto it, but it was a comedy gimmick. He seems like a really cool guy, what with offering to pay people while they were furloughed, and he definitely deserved better than he got from the WWE at the end. But without some serious rehabilitation, he's hardly an instant-slot-into-the-main-event star. That would have been a TNA-style signing.

It also doesn't help that the blonde buzzcut looks horrible on him.

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I've got free time tonight if you couldn't tell.

Like, the very point of the Dark Order is that there are a hundred of them. The heat comes from them swarming people with numbers. And when Cody (ha ha) "finally" gets his hands on their leader in his first match back, his wife takes out 60% of the goons on her own instead of getting individual revenge on Ana Jay. Can't you just picture Jay standing in Cody's way or low blowing him or something and having Brandi run her off or choke her out or something?

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On 10/23/2020 at 8:02 PM, Casey said:

I don't even know if this is spoilers for next week since the match might not air now, but Abadon was seriously injured in her match with Tay Conti and had to be hospitalized.

Zombae is going to be okay, it was concern over a possible throat injury, but she's okay now.

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I have actually enjoyed the Young Bucks attitude issues story and do not think it is just to tease a heel turn. Now, I will admit that a good part is that is also following along with Being the Elite, and they should feature a little more of that story on Dynamite to flesh things out (especially their attempt to reconcile with Hangman and angry texts back from whoever found Hangman's phone). However, they have a right to be bitter with Hangman's mistake costing them the title shot and the subsequent issues with him and even more so with Kenny Omega basically leaving them high and dry at All Out (which also needs to be fleshed out a little more on TV, but think that will happen after Full Gear). They are focusing on the Omega-Hangman relationship on Dynamite, but have not tied in the Bucks story in the whole Elite falling apart. To further tie things together with the Bucks's world crumbling around them, I actually think that the masked guy attacking them post-match last week should have been Brandon Cutler.

Big fan of Miro/Rusev, but not that concerned with him not making a huge impact yet. With Kingston-Mox, Bucks-FTR, Hangman-Omega, Jericho-MJF, and the Cody-Dark Order storyline, there was not room was him to jump right into a big program. I agree that he will turn on Sabian in fairly short order, and would not be surprised if he faces Mox or more likely Omega for the title in a big program in 2021. Also, with Archer, Brodie, and Cage all immediately vaulting into big programs from the start, it is good that they did do that again with Miro.

I am enjoying most of the all the current storylines, and the action continues to be top notch (and outside of the G1, the best overall action among major companies). Yes, sometimes the stories meander a bit, and I agree that they cannot expect everyone to watch BTE as a supplemental piece to Dynamite (that's where a second program will really help when key parts of a story like Bucks/Hangman/Elite dissolution are missed by a good number of Dynamite viewers). Also, there is some sloppiness with not stopping matches with serious injuries and some unnecessary risks leading to injuries (and not to excuse AEW, but that seems to almost be an industry wide issue, and New Japan with all of their history is about the worst with that). On the whole, while AEW has been damn good in the first year-plus, think they are also just scratching the surface of their potential, especially when things hopefully get back close to normal in the world as 2021 progresses.

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The thing that makes me nervous is that it feels like we’re headed to the Elite holding all the belts as heels and that sounds awful. Maybe that’s reading too much into things because Cody’s return has been pretty self-indulgent and the Bucks seem intent on making a dream match heatless, it’s bizarre. Omega is the only one who seems to have a handle on what he’s doing right now with Page somewhat treading water until they face off.

I’ll disagree with @kafkoniaI think Miro has a lot of charisma and can turn it up when needed. Rusev Day was silly as was the TV Title and throwing a fish but it’s all they gave him and he still got it over so I’m not worried about him in AEW just yet. He’s not going to light the rings on fire (as his two matches thus far have proven) but he pulls off goofy berserker really well. I just want to see the berserker part more. 

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I guess what’s weird about the Miro stuff to me is that they brought him in as part of this Kip/Penelope wedding angle...but there’s been virtually no forward momentum on that angle since he showed up.  I feel like if there was some more direction to what he was doing right now and he had something substantive to play off of, that would improve things immensely.

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1 hour ago, EVA said:

I guess what’s weird about the Miro stuff to me is that they brought him in as part of this Kip/Penelope wedding angle...but there’s been virtually no forward momentum on that angle since he showed up.  I feel like if there was some more direction to what he was doing right now and he had something substantive to play off of, that would improve things immensely.

It could be they sensed the wedding angle wasn't catching on so they pivoted to Best Friends as a way to heat things up. I was assuming all the video game stuff was hitting for people who get the references to King of Kong etc (which is not me) but if not I can see them shifting the focus.

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