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AEW - SEP 2021


The Natural

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1 hour ago, NoFistsJustFlips said:

The TNA meme is inaccurate tho. Especially since the original instance of this was WCW. They signed a shiiittttttt ton of WWE guys between 1994-1996. Hogan wasn't alone. It was Hogan, Bossman, Earthquake, Duggan, Nasty Boys, Brutus, Honkytonk Man, & Savage. Then Nitro starts with Luger. Then the hits keep on coming. Hall & Nash. Plus random undercard guys showing up out of nowhere like Martel & Janetty on a consistent basis.

So the TNA talking point is clearly just for those not well versed in the history of wrestling. This is the strategy that wins. You get as many guys with TV hours under their belt as possible to mix in with top tier original guys. That's what creates the spark. Known dudes in a new environment vs the brand new hotness. nWo Hogan vs Sting. TNA was following the right plan, they just had terrible writing and kept shooting themselves in the foot with shitty management. That first Hogan show got 1.4 million viewers. It's just they couldn't sustain it with Russo's shit writing and Dixie's shit management.

The method was fine, it was their unique brand of awful management that ruined it. Not the method of signing known quantities. And the quicker people stop with this uneducated hot take, the better off we will all be.

Did it occur to you the reason WCW and TNA went down the path it did was because they had such a large roster with only a limited amount of spots inevitably led to politicking and then bad creative?

Once again, I’m not opposed to any of the former WWE guys they have already signed right now. I just think they have enough for awhile. Look at all of the talented guys that were not on the ppv or preshow. And that was before two more big names were added.

But at the end of the day, you cited two companies that failed utilizing the strategy of signing as much WWE talent as possible. It’s not a strategy that has actually worked long term.

Also, what matters most in this situation is perception—and there is a perception that “AEW is just a bunch of guys Vince fired (that’s a literal quote I saw online recently)” among some casual WWE fans.

If the goal is to expand the audience to casuals and even convert WWE fans, (which it obviously is) you have to avoid that perception. In my view, the best way to avoid that perception is to start elevating the homegrown talent. Something TNA didn’t really do since WWE guys tended to immediately go to the top.

Finally, let’s be real: Kevin Owens is not Hulk Hogan. No regular wrestler in the WWE right now is going to move the ratings needle like that. CM Punk was probably the last person not named The Rock or Austin that could even really move the ratings needle.

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2 minutes ago, Bryan said:

Also, what matters most in this situation is perception—and there is a perception that “AEW is just a bunch of guys Vince fired (that’s a literal quote I saw online recently)” among some casual WWE fans.

Their current champion is Kenny Omega. Their next champion is likely to be Adam Page. Maybe you're the one who needs to stop acting like Twitter takes are the real world. 

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Why would anyone give a flying fuck about casual WWE fans? Casual WWE fans don't even fucking watch WWE.

Again, get the fuck off of Twitter. Twitter is shit. As someone from here once said, it's the collection of farts from a million assholes. 

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8 minutes ago, John from Cincinnati said:

Their current champion is Kenny Omega. Their next champion is likely to be Adam Page. Maybe you're the one who needs to stop acting like Twitter takes are the real world. 

In an upstart promotion with a niche audience in which breaking 1 million viewers is still viewed as an accomplishment.

Based on the comments from some AEW talent the goal is to beat Raw. I don’t think “TNA’s strategy was actually a good one, Dixie Carter just ruined it,” is a sound plan to achieve that.

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And to be clear for the 1000th time, I think both sides of the WWE stars vs "homegrown" talent discussion are silly. Push the best people. Anyone who thinks they know the appropriate balance is probably taking the wrong lessons from erroneously-interpreted half-remembered history. People want the best wrestling stars, regardless of where they did or didn't come from. 

Anyone worried about the possibility of too much former WWE talent after a big event where the most acclaimed match involved four dudes who've never wrestled in that company should consider engaging less with Twitter and more with what's actually on these shows. 

Edited by John from Cincinnati
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The thing that killed the TNA brand wasn't that they were bringing in WWE guys, but that the guys they were bringing in clearly did not give a shit about the present or the future of the company. That is not the case with AEW.

Edited by Hector
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And I laugh at the thought of too much WWE talent because their roster has been incredible for the past 8 or so years. The talent there was never the problem since they started NXT and raiding Japan and the indies. Miro is one of the best guys going right now and he wasted away in WWE midcard purgatory for how long?

7 minutes ago, Hector said:

The thing that killed the TNA brand wasn't that they were bringing in WWE guys, but that the guys they were bringing in clearly did not give a shit about the present or the future of the company. That is not the case with AEW.

They also gave us Black Snow, so you gotta weigh the benefits as well as the cons.

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5 minutes ago, John from Cincinnati said:

And to be clear for the 1000th time, I think both sides of the WWE stars vs "homegrown" talent discussion are silly. Push the best people. Anyone who thinks they know the appropriate balance is probably taking the wrong lessons from erroneously-interpreted half-remembered history. People want the best wrestling stars, regardless of where they did or didn't come from. 

Anyone worried about the possibility of too much former WWE talent after a big event where the most acclaimed match involved four dudes who've never wrestled in that company should consider engaging less with Twitter and more with what's actually on these shows. 

All Out did not feature the following non-jobber wrestlers doing any wrestling: Adam Page, Andrade, Brian Cage, Cody Rhodes, FTR, Ethan Page, Lance Archer Malakai Black, Pac, Ricky Starks, Sammy G, Santana and Ortiz, Scorpio Sky, Wardlow, Will Hobbs.

And that’s before they added Adam Cole and Bryan Danielson.

Obviously, Adam Page and Cody are on paternity or reality tv leave, and Pac had travel issues but they won’t be gone forever, so it’s going to be impossible to prominently feature everyone regardless of how good they are.

Push the best people is a fine sentiment but there only so many spots to push guys into.

It’s not a video game and so the reaction to not being featured on two consecutive ppvs and learning they’re bringing in even more guys who are friends with the evp’s is generally not, “you’re better than me, come take my spot.” 

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2 minutes ago, LoneWolf&Subs said:

You know what? It’s time for Team Taz to move on from Bryan Cage. They are great foils to great performers. Cage just isn’t good enough. Time for Punk to get a run against them.

They really feel like they've entered Inner Circle/Pinnacle levels of a stale feud. Have Starks beat Cage again and move on. Not sure where you go with Cage but we gotta get Ricky some more screen time and against fresh opponents. This bitesized shit ain't doing it. 

So does Hook debut by beating Punk or Danielson?

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8 minutes ago, Bryan said:

All Out did not feature the following non-jobber wrestlers doing any wrestling: Adam Page, Andrade, Brian Cage, Cody Rhodes, FTR, Ethan Page, Lance Archer Malakai Black, Pac, Ricky Starks, Sammy G, Santana and Ortiz, Scorpio Sky, Wardlow, Will Hobbs.

And that’s before they added Adam Cole and Bryan Danielson.

Obviously, Adam Page and Cody are on paternity or reality tv leave, and Pac had travel issues but they won’t be gone forever, so it’s going to be impossible to prominently feature everyone regardless of how good they are.

Push the best people is a fine sentiment but there only so many spots to push guys into.

It’s not a video game and so the reaction to not being featured on two consecutive ppvs and learning they’re bringing in even more guys who are friends with the evp’s is generally not, “you’re better than me, come take my spot.” 

At least we've moved on from misremembering TNA. My work here is done. 

Edited by John from Cincinnati
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21 minutes ago, Bryan said:

It’s not a video game and so the reaction to not being featured on two consecutive ppvs and learning they’re bringing in even more guys who are friends with the evp’s is generally not, “you’re better than me, come take my spot.” 

I'm not a huge Steen/Owens fan, but no one could rationally argue he'd be a nepotism hire. If your point is that reason needn't enter into it, that people will feel aggrieved... sure. That's always been the business. 

Wrestlers will compete for spots, and/or go other places where they can get the spots and money they think they deserve, (maybe there will be enough leverage to form a union!),  and companies will have to compete for the wrestlers they want. Everyone won't come out making a fortune in main events, but this is still way better than what the status quo has been for years. (And if the pandemic ever really ends, the indies/ROH/NJPW will have more room, too.)

Edited by Beech27
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I'm pretty sure TNA's issue has never been lack of talent, it's the ongoing Jerry and Jeff thinks Jeff was a main eventer to stranglehold the title to Jeff and Dixie thinking Russo was a good booker to thinking Hogan and Bischoff would solve all their problems to thinking Dixie's dad would keep proping the company up.

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AEW is certainly blessed to have the former WWE talent they have.  Because while some like Miro have a lot of miles left to run.  Guys like Punk and Bryan do not.  So it’ll be really good that when the time comes.  Whatever credit they have to pass the torch to the next gen up and comers… they’ll spend it on the legacy of the company.  
 

Mid-2000s ROH really could have used a few guys like that.  They might not have dead ended like they did.

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What's funny is how long Jarrett's stink lasted.  Looking through the history of TNA's title, Jarrett was only in the championship picture from 2002 to 2006 and never held the title after the association with the NWA ended.  But we think of TNA, we think "career midcarder Jeff Jarrett's vanity promotion" even though the company had more years without him than with him.  That old chestnut about first impressions and all that.  If AEW were truly comparable to TNA, Cody would have been the world champion four times already and fans would be begging for him to go away.

Edited by Technico Support
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1 hour ago, Bryan said:

Did it occur to you the reason WCW and TNA went down the path it did was because they had such a large roster with only a limited amount of spots inevitably led to politicking and then bad creative?

Once again, I’m not opposed to any of the former WWE guys they have already signed right now. I just think they have enough for awhile. Look at all of the talented guys that were not on the ppv or preshow. And that was before two more big names were added.

But at the end of the day, you cited two companies that failed utilizing the strategy of signing as much WWE talent as possible. It’s not a strategy that has actually worked long term.

Also, what matters most in this situation is perception—and there is a perception that “AEW is just a bunch of guys Vince fired (that’s a literal quote I saw online recently)” among some casual WWE fans.

If the goal is to expand the audience to casuals and even convert WWE fans, (which it obviously is) you have to avoid that perception. In my view, the best way to avoid that perception is to start elevating the homegrown talent. Something TNA didn’t really do since WWE guys tended to immediately go to the top.

Finally, let’s be real: Kevin Owens is not Hulk Hogan. No regular wrestler in the WWE right now is going to move the ratings needle like that. CM Punk was probably the last person not named The Rock or Austin that could even really move the ratings needle.

I'll grant you TNA failed. But in what world did WCW becoming super successful and over taking the number one spot for about two years (and going from losing money to mega profitable) a failure to you? Yes WCW went out of business. But your narrative isn't the reason why. The purse strings got closed. The handcuffs went onto the creative team. WCW was still kicking ass in 1998, even if WWE had pulled ahead. The corporate mergers / standards & practices handcuffs stopped them from continuing to sign big names and book more reality based gritty realism. They had to tone it down and go more PG on screen and it was not good. Then all the really bad management and booking changes accelerated things. They didn't fail because they signed too many big names. They went out of business because Turner stopped letting Bischoff do his thing without restrictions. And a neutered WCW vs the full on attitude era was a massacre.

 

34 minutes ago, Bryan said:

All Out did not feature the following non-jobber wrestlers doing any wrestling: Adam Page, Andrade, Brian Cage, Cody Rhodes, FTR, Ethan Page, Lance Archer Malakai Black, Pac, Ricky Starks, Sammy G, Santana and Ortiz, Scorpio Sky, Wardlow, Will Hobbs.

And that’s before they added Adam Cole and Bryan Danielson.

Obviously, Adam Page and Cody are on paternity or reality tv leave, and Pac had travel issues but they won’t be gone forever, so it’s going to be impossible to prominently feature everyone regardless of how good they are.

Push the best people is a fine sentiment but there only so many spots to push guys into.

It’s not a video game and so the reaction to not being featured on two consecutive ppvs and learning they’re bringing in even more guys who are friends with the evp’s is generally not, “you’re better than me, come take my spot.” 

Another historically inaccurate take. The ultra successful WWE 80s expansion did this exact thing to great success. They rotated all of the big stars so none of them got over exposed. Hogan had less than 10 TV matches per year from 1984-1993. Is that a cause for alarm? No. Because 15 of those remaining TV weeks had a Savage match. 10 of the remaining TV weeks had a Bobby Heenan guy match building up a Hogan challenger. 10 of the remaining TV weeks was anchored by the tag title story. The last 7 weeks would feature some of the biggest stars they took from other territories.

You're showing your recency bias by saying these doom and gloom things about a strategy that's worked incredibly well historically. Just because Hangman didn't work this PPV, doesn't mean the viewing audience has totally forgotten who he was. He still retains all of his value. Same with Cody / et all. Now I'm not saying AEW has things balanced perfectly by any means. There is room to improve for sure. But to assert that people like Ricky Starks that didn't make the PPV is now so far down the pecking order fans can't / won't care about them is so off the mark it's not even funny. Did fans of the 80s expansion forget about Savage or Steamboat (comparable to Stark's current position) if they didn't have a PPV match? Of course not.

The truth is they are booking in a way you are not familiar with. You can certainly have an opinion on if you like it or not. But to state arguments framed about how they are doing it "wrong" or making "mistakes" or that they are going to "fail like TNA & WCW did" is just being historically ignorant. They may still fail. But it's not going to be because some of their good talent miss PPVs sometimes. Or because they signed too many great attractions.

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TNA was a mixture of wrong place-wrong time & shocking production values. Even the name was fucking ludicrous. AEW looked high class from the beginning; if carny shit like the gimp mask guys & Luchasaurus was taking place in that farcical six-sided-ring in a Disney studio with grainy camera work week after week, AEW would have blown itself up as soon as the pandemic hit. As it is, even at the worst times the prod values have approached WWE’s, which is insane given WWE have been the only show in town for so long. RE: talent — the stink of  recently-departed 2001 WCW was also all over TNA at that time, and WCW hadn’t yet evolved into nostalgic status. A Punk or Danielson signing for AEW now feels akin to what would have been an Austin or Jericho signing then in those years for TNA; instead, even the superstars they got were that rung below or way over the hill, and then they lampooned them with said shitty production values.

TNA was also positioned against All-Conqueror WWE fresh from WWF led by Stedded Up King of the World Vince; AEW is against Limp Dicked Decidedly-Human Old Man Vince led WWE. Very different playing field. 

Edited by A_K
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30 minutes ago, Beech27 said:

I'm not a huge Steen/Owens fan, but no one could rationally argue he'd be a nepotism hire. If your point is that reason needn't enter into it, that people will feel aggrieved... sure. That's always been the business. 

Wrestlers will compete for spots, and/or go other places where they can get the spots and money they think they deserve, (maybe there will be enough leverage to form a union!),  and companies will have to compete for the wrestlers they want. Everyone won't come out making a fortune in main events, but this is still way better than what the status quo has been for years. (And if the pandemic ever really ends, the indies/ROH/NJPW will have more room, too.)

My point is people feeling aggrieved hasn’t been the AEW locker room by all accounts.

And that you risk upsetting that by bringing in too many people, too soon. Which I think would be unfortunate.

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These signings are also great for AEW. Ricky Starks, Best Friends, Sammy G etc are prime lower-to-mid-card material at the moment (maybe one day they’ll be more .. if not, it’s not a bad position to occupy in a national promotion). The only bad part is if those guys don’t make the card at all, and instead we get dross like the Gunns or Matt Hardy or QT Marshall stinking up the joint. Those guys shouldn’t be anywhere near the Dynamite / Rampage cameras given the depth of the roster talent. 

Edited by A_K
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I think you're maybe a little off-base in thinking that their locker room is going to resent having iconic wrestlers like Punk, Cole, AmDrag, Ruby, Christian, and Steen come in. That is more money in everyone's pockets and an opportunity to raise their own profile by working higher profile opponents.

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This discussion seems to be happening in multiple threads, but I’ll guess I’ll leave my thoughts here:

Chasing the mythical casual viewer is a road to nowhere. Trying to appeal to every possible viewer is the quickest way to create worthless art that appeals to no one in particular. Most successful art is driven by creators chasing their own, very specific, creative Id. Make something hyper specific that you’re passionate about and let your audience come to you.

I mean, there was not a massive casual audience waiting for a TV show about medieval political intrigue and magic and ultra violence and sex prior to Game of Thrones. They created their own audience, and it became a cultural phenomenon anyway.

Hell, the era of modern wrestling most frequently held up as the ideal in terms of appealing to “casual” fans could not have been less casual—it was a desperate, apocalyptic Vince McMahon chasing his Id into a pretty fucked up place for which there was no precedent for massive mainstream success beforehand. Again, he created his own audience.

Is there a significantly larger audience out there for the type of wrestling show Tony Khan is interested in making (emphasis on the in-ring action with long-form storytelling that rewards patience, attention to detail, and potentially esoteric knowledge)? I dunno. Maybe not! But he should 100% keep making the show he feels passionate about, and let the audience who’s interested in that sort of thing come to him.

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