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AEW - DEC 2021


The Natural

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7 minutes ago, Matt D said:

As they run a lot of tournaments, I’d like to see something different here. Maybe a Round Robin? 

For American audiences with shorter attention spans, I don't think a Round Robin format would ever work. I mean, we would all love it, it would give us some more new matches and a reason for those matches each week, but I think the attention span of the audience is too short to make it work. It would be deemed confusing, difficult to keep track of, and people would think it was a flop. We're all just more accustomed to the traditional single elimination tournament style since it's the style used in every major sport in the country. 

That said, I would still like to see them try it, but I just don't think it would work. 

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I loved when TNA would have Wold X Division Cups and you’d have wrestlers from other companies representing their country. And CHIKARA’s King of Trios was such a spectacle that had people from all over. With how many companies AEW has relationships, I’m sure they could host a pretty expansive Trios Tournament. Or even have their own version of a Young Lions Cup on Dark with young future stars from New Japan and even AAA.

The Owen Cup should be cool and hopefully focuses on some top notch wrestling. 

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13 hours ago, HarryArchieGus said:

Cole is an all around top flight talent as you are suggesting.  I'm sure you could compare him to a number of talents and propose an 'outclassing'.  The Bucks have a next level attribute you seem to be overlooking in your post - they make everybody they're in the ring with look their best.  Not sure where you began catching up, but (likely wrongly) assuming you aren't a boo-hoo-Bucks-suck-irrational-hater you might wanna check out their outstanding run of tag title defenses from this past year.  The idea that this fantastic Super Kliq is failing in any way as a consistently super-entertaining/successful triple threat, or that Cole is less for being a part of it, is a reminder 'to each their own'.

I'm sure I'll catch heat for this, and I'm 100% sure I'm one of those haters you're talking about, but this just isn't true, and I call bullshit. Other than the Lucha brothers, name a single tag team that's come out of a feud with the Young Bucks looking better than they did going in. My definition of "making guys look good" might be a bit old school, but I'll die on this hill. It's impossible to make someone look good while actively undermining their offense with your own asinine midmatch behavior. You can't make someone look good while neglecting to sell the moves you've just taken because it cuts into your "smirk into the camera over how good your choreographed flips were" time, or because you rush to get into place for your next business exposing spot. It's hard to make a team look good when you stop selling the second the bell rings and start mugging for the cameras instead of even attempting to look like you were just in a fight. They made CHAOS look like assholes last night while putting them over. That's hard to do. This myth that the Bucks are some standard bearer for wrestling in the 21st century is one that can't die soon enough. 

Edited by just drew
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I love it, I totally love it. We have a great relationship, we obviously go back a long way and we did some really good business together over the years. I met Punk in, I want to say 2005 at OVW when he first reported there and Paul Heyman was booking the show and Punk was his guy.

Punk was the driving force behind getting me to Shimmer for the first time, which at the time was, as a female wrestler, that was the indie that you aspire to go to because that was the best. From Shimmer that got me to Ring of Honor. Punk really guided me and really helped support me in getting to all these places before WWE.

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On 12/16/2021 at 11:31 AM, supremebve said:

The problem with almost every industry in the world is that no one really understands how to recognize talent. Kylie Rae is a perfectly serviceable professional wrestler,  but I can't see her a the female face of a company this size. When Brit Baker was first put into the top woman spot,  I would have definitely picked Kylie Rae over her and I would have been 100% wrong. Baker isn't the best women's wrestler in the world,  but she's the absolute best person on Earth for her role. That division needed someone to carry the load so that the rest of the roster could play catch up. Baker needed to be someone that everyone could chase even though we knew none of the women were ready to catch her. She has to be the type of character people wanted to watch no matter who was on the other side.  As time has gone on,  the division has improved by leaps and bounds,  but she's still the most complete worker in the division. She goes out of her way to make all of her opponents more credible and everyone is better off after interacting with her. WWE has multiple women who are more talented than Brit Baker, but I don't think any of them could have done what she's done in this division. All of those women know how to get themselves over,  I don't know if any of them could carry an entire division in a way that gives everyone else a chance to get over better than Baker. 

you sayin Britt Baker is the Honky Tonk Man? ?

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People were posting in the comments of his vlog that he and Tay were together, to the point that they responded on the vlog, denying it. Then Sammy says he and Pam split up, and the internet detectives went "Aha! I was right all along! (and it is completely emotionally healthy for me to think and act like a complete twat about other people's lives)".

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On 12/17/2021 at 2:32 AM, Elsalvajeloco said:

Re: Sam Bowie

It's funny because for some reason I've been thinking about the Bobby Knight quote around the 1984 NBA draft for the past few days. This goes especially since Johnny Flynn, a player who was drafted before Steph Curry, was trending when Steph broke Ray Allen's 3 pt record the other night. FYI this is the quote:

So yeah. However, IMO, NBA is also a crap shoot but at the other end of the spectrum. People knew Jordan was going to be good and possibly a franchise player but they didn't know he was going to be otherworldly to the point where he was an icon less than ten years into his NBA career. People thought Steph Curry was going to be a good player but NO ONE saw greatest shooter in the history of the NBA out of DAVIDSON. People thought Kevin Durant was going to be good but not perennial #1 or #2 player in the league for several years and basically an unstoppable monster. The ceiling, especially in an era with less physicality, is so high now. 

If some of those busts like a Sam Bowie or even more recently Kwame Brown (where in hindsight he was put in an unwinnable situation) were in different drafts or different situations, they wouldn't be pariahs. As is, they're going to be forever attached to the players that ended up great or historically great and were drafted after them.

In terms of pro wrestling, a similar situation would be like Alex Wright and Paul Levesque. People diss Bischoff (to be fair, Triple H always jokes with Eric about it so include him specifically as well) and WCW for taking and pushing the wrong guy when in actuality Levesque was going to be WWF bound ANYWAY.

According to (Bruce) Prichard, they had put out feelers and reached out to Paul before he went to WCW. However, Paul had already agreed to work with WCW. Prichard told him to give them a call if it doesn't work out. Fortunately for all the parties involved, WCW signed him to a short deal and by the time he came in, Bischoff had more power beyond TV production. Bischoff was cutting expenses, which included eliminating "geographic undesirables". The undesirables would be anyone who was lower on the totem pole who didn't live in or around Atlanta or Orlando where they were doing regular TV tapings or within reasonable traveling distance where WCW wouldn't be hit with big costs. Levesque was one of the people on that list since he was still living in the Northeast and likely had no plans of relocating. Truthfully, Levesque really had no plans of being with WCW for long anyway and was just using that as a stepping stone to WWF. In the end, it worked out because Levesque ending up signing with WWF where folks were already in love with him and from literally his first day in March of 1995 he was being mentored and taken under the wing of the top guys like Hall, Nash, and Shawn Michaels. He was in a "too big to fail" position and made man from his first day in the company. Juxtapose that with Alex Wright who was coming from another country that hadn't really produced big time stars in the US in the modern, post WWF national expansion era at least and basically didn't have the support of the wrestlers in the back (see the Paul Roma PPV match from early in his run) due to being pushed so young. In addition, by the time he did improve in ring, that was when WCW was signing everyone and their mom (hell, literally because we ended up with the late Judy Bagwell getting signed lol) to sweet deals. He was going to get lost in the shuffle eventually. That has and will happen to a lot of talented folks in WWE and AEW today. That's the cruelty of the business sadly. How big of a star was Alex Wright going to be or suppose to be? He was a decent midcarder and had a solid run. Nothing to be ashamed of when you think about it.

To me, when it comes to talent evaluation, I think it can be summed up somewhat succinctly by something I heard in an old Youtube interview or old shoot someone uploaded to Youtube. I think it came from like Jody Hamilton, Jesse Hernandez, and maybe even Dr. Tom Prichard. Either way, it was one of these respected old school wrestling trainers that have been around for awhile. Basically, it's that everyone whether it's an agent/producer/promoter/booker (that these trainers work under and give their honest critique about future talent to) is infatuated with "the look" and bringing in people who have "the look" that they feel their promotion can make tons of money off of. That's all fine and dandy. However, when the wrestlers with "the look" walk into one of these wrestling schools or developmental programs, it becomes clear who is who after they work with one of these trainers for about 8-12 weeks. With four out of ten wrestlers with "the look", they're going to work hard overall, ask where they can improve, work on their mechanics and promos, don't take criticism personally, adapt, etc. and develop something outside of "the look". The sentiment is once they get to the big show, you're (meaning one of the higher ups mentioned above) going to want to push them up the card. The other six of the ten wrestlers with "the look"? They're not going to do any of that shit, sit on their ass for the most part, rest on their laurels, don't give a damn about protecting the people they're in the ring with, and/or just show up when they feel like because they KNOW they have a big check waiting for them once they're done with the developmental phase of their career. The sentiment is once those wrestlers get to the big show and people have to endure their bullshit, the only push the folks in charge will want to give them is out of a fifth story window.

Now every now and then, one of those six will eventually turn it around and through experiences or realizing they only have so many chances, they will get their shit together and contribute positively. And that's not even trying to eliminate the faults and the shortcomings of the promotion or the creative minds behind the promotion. However, AT BEST, it's 50/50. 

Now this was a thorough, an insightful and well-written piece of analysis to go with my morning coffee! Thank you! I could read stuff like this for hours on end!

As far as Alex Wright goes, once he turned heel in '97, he won the cruiser and TV titles in short order, and if you think about it, that's like a Chris Jericho or Ultimo Dragon trajectory, which in WCW would have been his ceiling at very best. So, no shame there, whatsoever!

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I always laugh to myself when they do the promo copy for Mox's book and end with "for sale wherever books are sold."  Because it's Mox and my weird mind takes it literally, like someone said to Mox, "hey man, where can I buy this book?"  And he answered, "I dunno man, wherever books are sold" like he has no idea where to get a book.

And true to the Mox aesthetic, the tagline should actually be "the new John Moxley book: get some coke and go read it at your local library today!"

 

Edited by Technico Support
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There's also a random Nyla/Bunny/Emi vs enhancement talent match. I get why they'd run them against various mid-carders over and over but not sure why they'd get an enhancement trios as a unit.

Also, I should have given Mei more credit last week for wrestling so distinctly different a style from her TJPW gimmick. She's got both Cody and Bryan beat on that so far.

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4 hours ago, Technico Support said:

I always laugh to myself when they do the promo copy for Mox's book and end with "for sale wherever books are sold."  Because it's Mox and my weird mind takes it literally, like someone said to Mox, "hey man, where can I buy this book?"  And he answered, "I dunno man, wherever books are sold" like he has no idea where to get a book.

And true to the Mox aesthetic, the tagline should actually be "the new John Moxley book: get some coke and go read it at your local library today!"

 

I can't remember whether it was Dark or Rampage but Excalibur had a great line last week on one of them. He either lost his train of thought or wanted to mix it up a bit, and went with "...or wherever you get your literature." Cracked me right up.

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Dark Elevation was just kind of there today. Red Velvet match was maybe the best. Bear Boulder had a really awesome move. Thunder Rosa billed from Tijuana but waving a Texas flag and getting cheered by that weird-ass Texas crowd. Overall a series of relative squashes, and a serviceable 6-man tag main event that was maybe 3/4 Worldwide Point.

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9 minutes ago, Zakk_Sabbath said:

That's a bummer. I imagine they're going to tape Dark and/or Rampage that night as well, but if not, I wonder if there will be a Buy In

The 1/5 Dynamite from Newark, NJ is advertised as a dual Dynamite/Rampage taping. If I had to guess, they might do a Buy-In. But I wouldn't count on it, since we'd already be at four hours of AEW content for the week on TV.

Edited by Casey
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