AEW - DEC 2021

[supremebve]

2 minutes ago, Zakk_Sabbath said:

Agreed entirely. They put out 20 which was broken, skipped a year, and now '22 will likely be gutted due to releases. Of course GM mode is back for the year that half the rosters cut. And the funny thing is, WCW hadn't put out a good game for 2-3 years by the time they closed! (Yes, I was one of the idiots who tried playing Backstage Assault).

It makes no sense that they do nothing to improve these games,  but they still ship broken. I stopped paying Madden when I "threw an interception," where the the ball bounced, the defender was standing with one foot out of bounds, and then returned it for a touchdown. I reviewed the play,  and it was upheld. I turned the game off and never played again. It was so many things that just shouldn't happen at the same time and I realized,  I can't give these people any more time or money. 

[Curt McGirt]

I just finished the last Dynamite (damn am I lazy) and since the thread is closed I would just like to note that Danielson giving ostensibly the best workers in the Dark Order "the rub", as it were, is really cool of him. Everyone gets caught up in them losing but losing to Danielson is winning anyway. 

[Jiji]

So, apparently Omega wanted one woman more than any other when AEW was starting up and that was Kairi Hojo. Her contract with WWE expired this week. Is she fully settled back in Japan? If we aren't getting KO and Zayn, that would be an incredible pickup if it's even possible. It would only work once quarantined are no longer in place if she's settled but she could come over like once or twice a month. I can dream, can't I? 

[tbarrie]

6 minutes ago, Jiji said:

So, apparently Omega wanted one woman more than any other

I can empathize, but his personal life is really none of our business.

[Go2Sleep]

6 hours ago, Zakk_Sabbath said:

Agreed entirely. They put out 20 which was broken, skipped a year, and now '22 will likely be gutted due to releases. Of course GM mode is back for the year that half the rosters cut. And the funny thing is, WCW hadn't put out a good game for 2-3 years by the time they closed! (Yes, I was one of the idiots who tried playing Backstage Assault).

I don't think WCW made good wrestling games, as much as THQ made good wrestling games and put WCW wrestlers in them. World Tour was a revelation and Revenge and WM built on it until the concept was perfected with No Mercy, but the other wrestling games from that time period were damn near unplayable whether they were WWF or WCW.

The last good WWE game was like 07 or 08 maybe. The 1-2 punch of the PG effect and the repetition really setting in made the last decade's worth of games progressively less exciting.

[The Natural]

• Pro Wrestling Tees announced that Hook had their best-selling T-shirt this past week, marking the first time since August 20 that CM Punk hasn’t had the top-selling shirt: “For the first time since Aug 20th, @cmpunk is no longer the top selling shirt of the week on @shopaew. That now belongs to @730hook!

[Casey]

8 hours ago, Jiji said:

So, apparently Omega wanted one woman more than any other when AEW was starting up and that was Kairi Hojo. Her contract with WWE expired this week. Is she fully settled back in Japan? If we aren't getting KO and Zayn, that would be an incredible pickup if it's even possible. It would only work once quarantined are no longer in place if she's settled but she could come over like once or twice a month. I can dream, can't I? 

She's been back and settled in Japan for a while now, I believe. I know she just recently opened a gym there too. I think I read something from Meltzer saying she wants to wrestle again, and that it'll likely be for Stardom.

I saw the news about KO re-signing, but did anything come out about Zayn that I missed? I think he's more likely to leave, tbh. But I'm a little disappointed that KO is staying with WWE if I'm being honest. I'll trade violence artist Kevin Steen for Gargano, Fish, O'Reilly, Cole, etc. in a heartbeat.

[The Natural]

Happy Birthday to the late, great, much loved and missed Mr. Brodie Lee xxx.

[Technico Support]

19 hours ago, Jiji said:

So, apparently Omega wanted one woman more than any other when AEW was starting up and that was Kairi Hojo.

Speaking of, it's wild to think about what might have been...Kylie Ray was supposed to be the face of the women's division but then she had her issues, left, and they had to scramble.  They ended up with Brit's overpushed (SHE'S A DENTIST YOU KNOW) babyface run, which led to her amazing heel run.  Without Kylie ducking out, where would we have been?

And absolutely all the credit in the world to Brit for improving so much and running with this thing.

Edited December 16, 2021 by Technico Support

[supremebve]

4 minutes ago, Technico Support said:

Speaking of, it's wild to think about what might have been...Kylie Ray was supposed to be the face of the women's division but then she had her issues, left, and they had to scramble.  They ended up with Brit's overpushed (SHE'S A DENTIST YOU KNOW) babyface run, which led to her amazing heel run.  Without Kylie ducking out, where would we have been?

And absolutely all the credit in the world to Brit for improving so much and running with this thing.

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. 

[zendragon]

On 12/14/2021 at 2:56 PM, Matt D said:

Or he needs to steal the HFO from Matt over the span of six months and dozens of skits.

I think the best case for bringing him in would be a similar wrestler/mouth piece role like they've been using Hardy and a lesser extent 2.0. I think Drake Maverick would also be good in a role like this

[matt925]

I remember JR saying, before aew had run their first show, that some people who you think are can’t miss prospects won’t amount to much. And some people will come out of nowhere. That’s just how it is. Sam Bowie, and all that. 

[supremebve]

7 minutes ago, matt925 said:

I remember JR saying, before aew had run their first show, that some people who you think are can’t miss prospects won’t amount to much. And some people will come out of nowhere. That’s just how it is. Sam Bowie, and all that. 

I think wrestling is a much bigger guessing game than the NBA or any other mainstream sport. Sam Bowie was a talented person who's body failed,  he probably would have been a quality pro if healthy. Wrestling is kind of a crap shoot.  Wrestling more than any other "sport" is based on connecting with people. Not everyone can connect with an audience. You don't know who can do it and do it well until it actually happens. By the time you get to the NBA draft everyone has seen what you can do on a basketball court. We don't know if Brit Baker can be Brit Baker until you put her in a position to be Brit Baker.  She could have spent her entire career as the pretty dentist babyface and no one would have gave a fuck. We wouldn't even know what we were missing. If the NWO didn't happen and push Vince to give guys like Austin the opportunity to create more edgy characters we may never get Stone Cold. All of this is lightning in the bottle,  sieze the moment type shit,  and predicting sometimes stardom is like playing the lotto. We're really just guessing until the numbers hit. 

[zendragon]

Wrestling is probably closer to trying to draft and NFL QB everybody acts like they know but if anyone really knew Tom Brady wouldn't have gone at 199.

 

I want to see a Long Island Street fight where MJF wears a pair of pink side winders and a bright orange pair of pants. And someone breaks a Billy Joel record over his head

[Elsalvajeloco]

6 hours ago, supremebve said:

I think wrestling is a much bigger guessing game than the NBA or any other mainstream sport. Sam Bowie was a talented person who's body failed,  he probably would have been a quality pro if healthy. Wrestling is kind of a crap shoot.  Wrestling more than any other "sport" is based on connecting with people. Not everyone can connect with an audience. You don't know who can do it and do it well until it actually happens. By the time you get to the NBA draft everyone has seen what you can do on a basketball court. We don't know if Brit Baker can be Brit Baker until you put her in a position to be Brit Baker.  She could have spent her entire career as the pretty dentist babyface and no one would have gave a fuck. We wouldn't even know what we were missing. If the NWO didn't happen and push Vince to give guys like Austin the opportunity to create more edgy characters we may never get Stone Cold. All of this is lightning in the bottle,  sieze the moment type shit,  and predicting sometimes stardom is like playing the lotto. We're really just guessing until the numbers hit. 

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:

Quote

Bobby Knight, who'd coached MJ at the '84 Olympic trials, urged Blazers GM Stu Inman (an old pal) to take Jordan. Inman said, "But we need a center." Knight yelled back, "So play him at center!" Inman didn't listen, and the result is a jaw-dropping scene.

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. 

[The Natural]

The late, great Jon Huber bringing promotions together. So much love for him. Happy Birthday. We love and miss you xxx.

[Octopus]

As a Timberwolves fan, not taking Curry was painful. I can understand the earlier pick of Ricky Rubio, but David Kahn’s reasoning was he felt Steph couldn’t play Point….regardless, I’m sure Rambis’ coaching would have hurt Curry’s development. Everything sucks always.

 

[The Green Meanie]

Really happy to see my boys Donati and FABOO ANDRE back on the show, sad they didn't get more then they did.

Also really happy to see Singh get his first win, was a fan of his past appearances.

Both YT shows had some great commentary banter, specifically Tony talking about how evil Mei is and Eddie defending Lulu's honor, and SING ALONG WITH TAZZ continuing along with him constantly talking about his uncle in the audience.

[Matt D]

A word on the tendency to move on quickly from matches in AEW.

In the short term, it's somewhat problematic. It leaves hot things on the table.

If AEW fans were looked at the way WWE ones were looked at by the respective company (namely with goldfish memory), it'd be problematic.

As it is, I think it's ultimately an opportunity. Look at last night. It ends with Punk coming out for Sting and Darby. The Punk/Darby match was one match. Darby didn't talk about it afterwards; he just moved on. Punk didn't look back either. Now, though, months later, there's a natural connection there. There are a ton of strands that can be built upon later if need be all across the promotion. Kingston used to be with the Lucha Bros so it's one more data point to help make sense that they might be part of that Rampage 10-man tag. Not all of it has to be carefully planned out but everything can and should be made use of when it makes sense. Two years from now they can call back to Punk vs Moriarty or Danielson vs Kingston or the Sydal and Dante connection and it could mean something.

Edited December 17, 2021 by Matt D

[AxB]

 

[The Natural]

More details on the Owen Hart Cup tournament have been revealed.

On tonight’s Rampage, it was announced that the men’s and women’s Owen Hart Cup tournaments will take place in May. The finals will take place at Double or Nothing. Hart’s widow, Dr. Martha Hart, will be at Double or Nothing to award the cups to the two tournament winners. Further details will be announced on next Wednesday’s Dynamite.

Tony Khan announced on Busted Open Radio on Friday that more information would be announced on tonight’s show.  Both will be singles tournaments. It was announced in September that AEW was partnering with the Owen Hart Foundation for the tournaments.

“This collaboration includes launching the annual Owen Hart Cup Tournament within AEW, which will see the winner receive a Cup known as 'The Owen,' as well as the production and distribution of unique and original Owen Hart merchandise, including specified retail goods as well as the upcoming AEW console video game," the company announced at the time.

[MoeCristyV.1.6]

The Owen will be awesome. 

[The Natural]

 

[HarryArchieGus]

On 12/14/2021 at 11:32 AM, supremebve said:

Do,  I've been catching up on AEW, and the biggest observation I've made is how much Adam Cole outclasses the Young Bucks every time they're on screen together. Cole has the ability to play the cowardly hell,  except unlike the Bucks,  there is a level of seriousness that adds legitimate menace to his character. He is the guy you could probably beat up in a fair fight, but he knows that as well as you do, so all his cheap shots feel like he's going for a kill shot. The Bucks never really turn off the silliness and it undermines them in my eyes. Cole is a douchebag who acts like an ass with his douchebag buddies,  but once is time to go serious he is deadly serious. He's a fantastic pro wrestler. He needs to get away from The Elite ASAP, he doesn't fit the group and makes them look inferior with his very presence. 

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'.

Edited December 18, 2021 by HarryArchieGus

[Matt D]

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

Edited December 18, 2021 by Matt D