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AEW - DEC 2021


The Natural

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9 minutes ago, Dog said:

It's time for the Christian/Jungle Boy feud. Jungle Man is a temporary bridge between Jungle Boy and Jungle Superstar.

I've said this before so apologies for being repetitive, but I would love if AEW kind of spun this one on its head, and had Jungle Boy turn on Christian instead. "You think I don't know what you're trying to do?" 

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5 minutes ago, Zakk_Sabbath said:

I've said this before so apologies for being repetitive, but I would love if AEW kind of spun this one on its head, and had Jungle Boy turn on Christian instead. "You think I don't know what you're trying to do?" 

Eh, with the support for Eddie over Punk, and Hangman over Dragon, AEW's done a remarkable job of getting crowds behind homegrown talent, when you'd think there's no way they'd boo those particular "WWE guys." I'd like to see the trend continue. That's how you avoid the TNA stigma.

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4 hours ago, JLowe said:

As a casual at best watcher for the last 2 decades, I'm at least aware of who Kevin Steen and Keith Lee are (helps that I have friends who are big indie fans and Lee wrestled in Texas often) and they would stand out some because they're athletic husky guys. 

It seems like AEW is trying to show up WWE by bringing in discarded NTX talent and turning them into big timers. But at some point, they might run the risk of being looked at as "a place for WWE rejects" rather than a "real wrestling alternative".

I am somewhere between you and the rest of the board in terms of staying on top of wrestling fandom. But in terms of who AEW has brought over — they have done a really good job with a lot of really misused talent that did not get a chance to shine.

FTR had some of the best tag matches in decades in NXT — all of their stuff against American Alpha and DIY is just about perfection. But they sank on the main roster and left for a promotion where they can get good segments and times for matches. One of my favorite acts ever.

Miro is one of the biggest WWE mistakes ever. He is a perfect WWE wrestler — an athletic freak who can be a monster or comedy worker who should have had a career at least like The Miz where he could be on any spot on the card for 20 years. And, on top of it, his wife/valet Lana is also really talented at the heel manager role, but she has not showed up yet.

Ruby Soho has a really great character. She is not the best in-ring performer, and she was a level below The Four Horsewomen and Asuka in the WWE, but the character stuff she nails. She is a really great baby face for AEW’s women’s division, which is pretty good (Britt Baker rules) but not scorching hot yet.

But the miscast people have been great. 

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16 minutes ago, Zakk_Sabbath said:

I've said this before so apologies for being repetitive, but I would love if AEW kind of spun this one on its head, and had Jungle Boy turn on Christian instead. "You think I don't know what you're trying to do?" 

Nobody should ever be able to put one over on Jungle Boy. Marko Stunt as his reconnaissance division, hiding in mini-fridges, plant pots and gym bags practically writes itself.

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7 minutes ago, Dog said:

Eh, with the support for Eddie over Punk, and Hangman over Dragon, AEW's done a remarkable job of getting crowds behind homegrown talent, when you'd think there's no way they'd boo those particular "WWE guys." I'd like to see the trend continue. That's how you avoid the TNA stigma.

That's a great point. I guess what I'm describing is more "Babyface being intelligent and seeing it coming" than it is a turn, that's my bad, I shouldnt have used that term. I figured you'd still end up in the same place, but with just a hint of subversion. Maybe they become allies again in the end with Christian resigned to the fact that he taught Jungle Boy too well. 

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Just now, tbarrie said:

Abadon understood the tag rules better than I would have thought.

She was the best Robert Gibson ever!  (Not Ricky Morton as I excitedly typed after watching the match.)  She was awesome on the apron, getting the fans ready for the hot tag.  Excellent!

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We now (probably) know why Peter Avalon was missing from AEW for five long months up until returning in august this year (and we also get to know what Diamante does when she's not wrestling).

Fellow film conniseurs rejoice - he's starring in the new Len Kabasinski movie Pact of Vengeance!

 

 

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6 hours ago, Zakk_Sabbath said:

Excellent points. Another thing I want to add: TK and everyone else in charge are probably acutely aware of that perception. To that end, they've done a great job of course-correcting. The way they've handled 2.0, Tony Nese, and Bobby Fish is night and day better compared to, for example, Matt Cardona's brief six match deal last year. I think that's the closest they've ever come to "we know who that is!" territory. The argument could be made for Christian, I guess, but 1) he can still go, and go well and 2) he had just returned at the Rumble so there were extenuating circumstances

What a serendipitous thing for both parties that AEW didn't sign Cardona full time. Cardona hit the indies, found a gear he forgot he had, and became the most over heel in America feuding with Nick Gage. Cardona said recently in an interview that he talks to TK regularly, so I imagine he'll be in AEW full time eventually, but Cardona doesn't fina any of that on the indies if he's snatched up full time. Now he's anchoring Impact PPV and looks like he's gonna do a thing with NWA. Wouldn't shock me if he answered an open challenge from whoever the TNT champion is sometime in 2022.

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Tony Kahn on Busted Open Radio, as quoted on some bullshit newz site or other:

“Like we have a great audience right now,” Khan said. “People get so caught up in like micro trends. I’ll give you a great example. Like there are a lot of people out on Black Friday and also on Thanksgiving Eve. And so for Dynamite in particular, I was just getting DVR numbers back today. And the Thanksgiving Eve episode, you know, a lot of people are out that day. And we did a great audience. It was by far the biggest audience we’ve done on Thanksgiving Eve. It’s our third show on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and it was our biggest live audience yet. And it wasn’t quite as big as some of the other audiences we’ve had recently because I think of the holiday. And then I got the DVR numbers back this morning and it was the most watched episode when you factor in the DVR in a long time. So with that plus seven lift, the Thanksgiving Eve episode was a huge, huge, huge rating success. And, you know, a lot of times people get so caught up in these trends, the show this week, finished third on cable and that’s massive for us. Anytime we finished that high, everybody’s very happy with it and our share was really, really good for the night. And it was a really strong number put up this week. And the fact is, there are tons of people growing up on AEW. Anytime I come on with you guys like all the aggregation sites will pick it up and pull the quotes out and look for anything juicy to say and often they’ll intentionally take the stuff out of context. They probably won’t use this quote because it talks about what they do. So I’m guessing this won’t make it onto the aggregation sites because it’s actually a very process oriented quote describing the process of running a wrestling aggregation site and taking people out of context, which is an art that they’ve mastered.

So in this case, I think the fans, there’s a lot of people that have grown up with GCW, as maybe their third alternative. There’s a lot of people that have grown up with AEW. And we have taken a place in the wrestling universe that didn’t exist for a long time. There wasn’t a viable second national company with all due respect to the other companies that have been out there or were out there trying to fill that space. For a long time, there hasn’t been a viable national alternative. Nothing that’s ever gotten the kind of penetration we have, you know, on great channels like TNT and TBS, since the death of WCW, over 20 years ago. So the fans have been waiting over 20 years ago, for a time like this and now, Dynamite has been on over two years, we’re going on year three, as a company with AEW. There’s a lot of people that watch AEW and instead of getting caught up on whether the number goes up by .02 or .03 each week, I think I don’t want to lose the forest for the trees. We have a lot of fans, and they’re pro wrestling fans.

One of the mistakes WCW did is they had a great audience with pro wrestling, on television, and then around 97, the WWF I guess around maybe late 96, the WWF started doing stuff that was just as good or better. And they had great main event talent, but they weren’t the biggest names yet and they built those people up. And you saw slowly but surely, the fans responded to what was great pro wrestling, and then WCW instead of responding to that by continuing on doing more great pro wrestling, maintaining the great audience and base that they had, they got away from it. And I don’t want to do that. So one thing you can always count on with AEW is if you tune in to Dynamite on a Wednesday, or tonight, if you tune into Rampage on a Friday like tonight on TNT, you’re going to see a lot of great wrestling, I promise, I’m not going to make it a whole show with talking. The only show I can ever think of where a large percentage of the total volume of the show was taken up with the talking is the First Dance, which was a very, very special case. And I don’t think anybody there that night or anybody that watched it was upset that one time a few months ago when a lot of the show was [talking] but for the most part I would say literally 99% of the time on our TV shows, you can count on a lot of great wrestling. And for me as a fan that would always be enough to get me to support a company because if I knew that a few times a week, I could tune in and I was gonna see great wrestling matches and wrestlers I cared about that means so much. And for a long time people didn’t have that, and at least not consistently. And I think there have been times in the last two decades where WWE did offer that consistently and has had good runs of doing that but when AEW started there was a reason why the fans [clamored for it] and there’s a reason why I think we’ve had the success we’ve had and it’s because of the fans and it’s because there’s a huge appetite in this country for pro wrestling and great pro wrestling matches every week.

Khan was asked about people getting caught up on the live TV numbers when there are several ways to watch AEW:

“Ratings are a huge piece of it and it is a big deal when they come out the next day but you know, there is some context that goes into it. You really need to watch the next week as the DVR numbers come in. So for the Thanksgiving Eve episode, the DVR numbers tell a really interesting story that there was a ton of delayed viewing but people did catch up on the show and they really wanted to see it and it ended up being our most watched show of the month…”

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Not sure if this belongs here or in the lucha thread, but there is so much goodness in this handheld from the FTR match last night. Vicki's outfit is stupendous. Cash showing patriotism at his finest around the 3:35 mark is also great. FTR is number one and the best.

 

 

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5 hours ago, DEAN said:

 

The spot where Emi secures the Dragon Sleeper more out of fear of Abadon tagging in than she is of trying to win the match is totally great.

Ryo choosing to celebrate the win at distance was also awesome.  Eddie Kingston - "Yeah, don't get too close.  Just clap it out."

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