Ryback Hates Bullies Posted March 5, 2022 Posted March 5, 2022 (edited) Will be interesting to see if Redbeard (I don't love that name) is All-Elite or a irregular special attraction. I think Tone is starting to get into the big men slapping meat thing. People will shout this down but I would be all for a super heavyweight belt (similar to the Atlas Title Progress had for a while, probably a 225-240 minimum weight though). I would be fine with a tournament too but might be crowded out by the Owen. Would be a good way to push Wardlow. Edited March 5, 2022 by RunningFromAmerica Autocorrect whilst bleary eyed
zendragon Posted March 5, 2022 Posted March 5, 2022 I've been saying for a while they should have a Brody Lee Memorial Bigg Rigg tournament 250lbs minimum 5
SirFozzie Posted March 5, 2022 Posted March 5, 2022 The surprising thing isn't that they brought in Redbeard, that they didn't bring him in as a House of Black member, not facing them. 1
DEAN Posted March 5, 2022 Posted March 5, 2022 2 hours ago, SirFozzie said: The surprising thing isn't that they brought in Redbeard, that they didn't bring him in as a House of Black member, not facing them. Oh, I like that the Death Triangle is trying to match the House of Black evil for evil. 1
just drew Posted March 5, 2022 Posted March 5, 2022 I fully expect Redbeard to turn on the other two and join House of Black. 1
Octopus Posted March 5, 2022 Posted March 5, 2022 50 minutes ago, just drew said: I fully expect Redbeard to turn on the other two and join House of Black. Then dye his beard and become Blackbeard. 1 2
NoFistsJustFlips Posted March 5, 2022 Posted March 5, 2022 9 hours ago, RunningFromAmerica said: People will shout this down but I would be all for a super heavyweight belt (similar to the Atlas Title Progress had for a while, probably a 225-240 minimum weight though). I would be fine with a tournament too but might be crowded out by the Owen. Would be a good way to push Wardlow. Admittedly this is just my opinion, and I'm not trying to pass it off as a fact or anything. But man, weight classes in wrestling are so out dated. Segmenting the roster and adding titles for all of those segments don't make all the champions look more important, they make the top champions less important. If you do a super heavyweight title and you got Wardlow, & Keith Lee, & Hobbs, & Miro, & Archer in there... you're subtracting them from the World Title picture. I'd rather Wardlow & Lee get involved in the world title mix without this whole side division muddying the waters. You can still do a bunch of super heavyweight matches and make a staple of the formula you use. But all the fragmenting of the roster based on weights just lowers the whole presentation. Especially when you have guys like Sammy, Darby, Garcia, and Bryan Danielson who would, by weight, be considered cruiserweights. AEW is doing it right. They don't have any weight classes. Their top title is a world title and not a heavyweight title. Anyone is eligible to challenge for it so everyone has the same goal. It's just easier to follow. The Super Bowl in The NFL wouldn't mean as much if there was also a west coast Super Bowl for only teams in the Pacific time zone, and a Super Bowl for east coast time zones / ect. THE Super Bowl winner would be less important if there were also other lower tier Super Bowl winners muddying the waters. 4
(BP) Posted March 5, 2022 Posted March 5, 2022 AEW should do their own version of the WWECW Monster Mash Battle Royal that the SyFy channel made them do for Halloween that one year. 1
Fartsauce Posted March 5, 2022 Posted March 5, 2022 Spoiler According to Dave on the tweeter thing, Cody's status has changed and WWE creative has been informed. Does Cody show up and attack Hangman after the match tomorrow and then claim that he had to play hardball with Tony to get rid of the stipulation that he would never get another world title shot? Does he become the leader of the ROH invasion? My bowels are tingling with excitement. 4 1 2
Ryback Hates Bullies Posted March 5, 2022 Posted March 5, 2022 1 hour ago, NoFistsJustFlips said: Admittedly this is just my opinion, and I'm not trying to pass it off as a fact or anything. But man, weight classes in wrestling are so out dated. Segmenting the roster and adding titles for all of those segments don't make all the champions look more important, they make the top champions less important. If you do a super heavyweight title and you got Wardlow, & Keith Lee, & Hobbs, & Miro, & Archer in there... you're subtracting them from the World Title picture. I'd rather Wardlow & Lee get involved in the world title mix without this whole side division muddying the waters. You can still do a bunch of super heavyweight matches and make a staple of the formula you use. But all the fragmenting of the roster based on weights just lowers the whole presentation. Especially when you have guys like Sammy, Darby, Garcia, and Bryan Danielson who would, by weight, be considered cruiserweights. AEW is doing it right. They don't have any weight classes. Their top title is a world title and not a heavyweight title. Anyone is eligible to challenge for it so everyone has the same goal. It's just easier to follow. The Super Bowl in The NFL wouldn't mean as much if there was also a west coast Super Bowl for only teams in the Pacific time zone, and a Super Bowl for east coast time zones / ect. THE Super Bowl winner would be less important if there were also other lower tier Super Bowl winners muddying the waters. Admittedly this is just my opinion as well, but I completely disagree. 'World Title picture' isn't really a thing, and to the extent that it is...there's only two people in the AEW Title Picture right now. None of the wrestlers you mention are anywhere near that picture, and even if they were they would mostly be out of that picture again soon enough. And the existence of a Hoss Title wouldn't affect their ability to be in the World Title picture necessarily anyway. Wardlow and Lee are unlikely to be getting involved in the World Title picture anytime soon, regardless of what you might like to see happen. You're a pretty level-headed poster, and I appreciate you recognising the subjective nature of your opinion, but it does seem to be predicated on some pretty questionable assumptions As implied earlier, I thought there would be someone who would say something like this and thus I'd considered it before forming my own opinion. I actually wouldn't have a problem with AEW slowly transitioning to weight classes, UFC seem to make a buck or two, and I've never really bought this idea that fans need simplicity - actual sports usually have some pretty complex rules and some fairly dumb people seem to cope. But it wasn't what I was advocating here. 1
COLETTI Posted March 5, 2022 Posted March 5, 2022 Less new championship belts, more annual tournaments plz. 10
Go2Sleep Posted March 5, 2022 Posted March 5, 2022 Agreed, trophies are a great way to give wrestlers "accomplishments" without having to bend over backwards with the writing and hurting other guys in the process. I loved it when they gave Jungle Boy the "first to 50 wins" trophy. 4
supremebve Posted March 5, 2022 Posted March 5, 2022 Yeah, if I ran a wrestling company, I'd probably have a quarterly tournament. There can be one for the more established stars, one for tag teams, one for younger wrestlers, and another for women. It gives everyone on the roster something meaningful to do, even if they aren't in a feud, and you see who is getting over with the crowd, who they have in-ring chemistry with. Whoever wins feels like a bigger deal, and everyone in the tournament gets a showcase match that feels important. 1
A_K Posted March 5, 2022 Posted March 5, 2022 (edited) Jericho does look a lot, lot better: his physique was an absolute disgrace for a paid-performer as those photos on the previous page showed. In line with AEW generally making great strides in upping professionalism over the past 6 months. He probably saw Cody get bounced from the company as well as the other top talent coming in and got a bit of a wake up call. Jericho is nothing if not a talent who understands how to advocate for the betterment of his own career, and when to twist/when to stick. Playing into the smugness with those pursed lips & more restrained speech is the right move. Edited March 5, 2022 by A_K 1
NoFistsJustFlips Posted March 5, 2022 Posted March 5, 2022 4 hours ago, RunningFromAmerica said: I actually wouldn't have a problem with AEW slowly transitioning to weight classes, UFC seem to make a buck or two, and I've never really bought this idea that fans need simplicity - actual sports usually have some pretty complex rules and some fairly dumb people seem to cope. But it wasn't what I was advocating here. Your first paragraph is your opinion so I won't fight too hard to sway any of that. But I will say getting closer to UFC weight classes is a bad idea. So we all know MMA is a shoot and pro wrestling is a work. That's not a negative in the pro wrestling column, that's a positive. The purpose of wrestling is entertainment. The medium to do that is storytelling. Where as UFC (MMA as a whole) is for sport. People get entertainment out of watching it, but that's not it's purpose. It's real competition vs artistic storytelling. Putting more and more restrictions on your art makes it suffer. It can't be this. It can't be that. Ect. Going further with the weight classes essentially takes a bunch of tools out of your bag. No more David vs Goliath stories. No more big man squashes two smaller guys to look dominant. If you lean pseudo MMA too heard you take the heart out of what pro wrestling is. It's not for the sake of simplicity that I saw weight classes are outdated. It's for the sake of boredom. Wrestling would be too same-y if you broke it down into 10 different weight classes like MMA. Thematically what is different between a match of UFC welterweights (155 lbs to 170 lbs) and a match of UFC middleweights (170 lbs to 185 lbs)?? In MMA the fight difference is negligible because it's mostly because of safety and fairness they breakdown into weight classes. But in pro wrestling there would be zero difference between a middleweight match and a welterweight match stylistically. So it's essentially a waste of time to do. I sense we won't be agreeing on this lol. But in a world where Buddy Murphy was a "cruiserweight" champion simultaneously as AJ Styles was a "heavyweight" champion, weight classes sure aren't adding any more realism to the art form. 3
Ryback Hates Bullies Posted March 5, 2022 Posted March 5, 2022 Ultimately AEW has the Dynamite Diamond Ring, the Face of the Revolution and will soon have the men and women Owen tournaments. They've also ran No. 1 contender's tournaments, albeit not that recently as I recall. If they were going to run another, I'd make it for Trios. There is a problem with elimination tournaments, which is you actually have to job everybody in the tournament save one person. Infact, you have a 16 person tournament and half the competitors are going out first round. You don't want to be doing that to people all the time. The Dynamite Diamond Ring gets around that by using a Battle Royale, the Face of the Revolution has fairly throwaway qualifiers with JTTS guys and then a ladder match where noone really loses per se. Only so many tricks you can pull like that really.
zendragon Posted March 5, 2022 Posted March 5, 2022 Yhea the only way I see weight classes work is if you had strict UFC/boxing style weight divisions, and someone moving upn or down would be a big deal. But that would take a massive reducation of the fans
Ryback Hates Bullies Posted March 5, 2022 Posted March 5, 2022 @NoFistsJustFlips MMA's purpose is absolutely to entertain people and make money, and the weight classes are driven by that primarily. The Women's Flyweight Title wasn't created 'mostly because of safety and fairness'. This is just an ahistorical claim. WoS had catchweight contests whilst utilising weight classes. I wouldn't exactly call that style pseudo-MMA tbh, though I think this is a red herring. The point is that I don't think there needs to be 1 person who is 'the champ' - and in AEW there isn't anyway, there's at least 2 - Hangman and Britt (the women's champ always appears last in the Dynamite opening titles). There are plenty of people in artistic fields who would disagree that putting restrictions on your art makes it suffer. What 'pro wrestling' is isn't some immutable thing, but it did originate in realism and whilst I'm not advocating AEW become Battlarts or anything, you are treading a bit too close to a Russoist view of pro wrestling.
A_K Posted March 5, 2022 Posted March 5, 2022 They had more discernibly defined weight classes during the most successful commercial period in the history of the industry. It really doesn't take much of a leap of faith, nor does it mean dividing weight classes down to the nth degree of the 17 weight classes in boxing, or even the 9 weight classes in UFC. 1
MoeCristyV.1.6 Posted March 6, 2022 Posted March 6, 2022 The All Elite Wendy "Where's the BEEF" title. 1
AxB Posted March 6, 2022 Posted March 6, 2022 The main argument for weight classes is if you regularly have intergender matches. So you could have a title with an upper weight limit of, like 160 lb for most of the women and some of the smaller men to contend for.
A_K Posted March 6, 2022 Posted March 6, 2022 (edited) Having an inter-gender singles division denoted by weight certainly does nothing for any notion that adding weight classes increases 'realism' of the product. That is the more fantasy oriented element, and there is no need to muddy that with something like weight classes. It would simply be confusing. Edited March 6, 2022 by A_K
NoFistsJustFlips Posted March 6, 2022 Posted March 6, 2022 1 hour ago, A_K said: They had more discernibly defined weight classes during the most successful commercial period in the history of the industry. It really doesn't take much of a leap of faith, nor does it mean dividing weight classes down to the nth degree of the 17 weight classes in boxing, or even the 9 weight classes in UFC. Por que? The 80s WWF expansion with Hogan had zero weight classes. The world title was a heavyweight title but any male in the company could compete for it essentially. The Monday Night Wars era only had one weight class exception, Cruiserweight / Light Heavyweight. And the most profitable era in the history of pro wrestling is the current era of WWE. And there are officially zero now. I'm not sure if I misunderstood your statement or what. But pretttyyy far off base with this claim. So what are you referring to? 1 hour ago, RunningFromAmerica said: What 'pro wrestling' is isn't some immutable thing, but it did originate in realism and whilst I'm not advocating AEW become Battlarts or anything, you are treading a bit too close to a Russoist view of pro wrestling. You take that back right now! I am certainly no Russo-ist. I enjoy my wrestling with structure and rules. Rankings are a good storytelling tool. Having a pseudo sports like presentation of your rules I am on board with. I think weight classes just segment things too much. In your instance of a super heavyweight title consider this, to justify the existence of the title it needs to have a certain amount of people active in the division. So while you said having it wouldn't preclude Wardlow or Keith Lee from challenging for the world title, the practicality of needing bodies for it would. If you have 8 hosses and you take two away to be in a world title feud, you're risking the super heavyweight title division getting pretty bare. If that's hard to follow liken it to current day WWE. They kept moving cruiserweights from NXT to the main roster. Buddy Murphy. Gulak. Lucha House Party. At certain point if you keep elevating people without restocking then the segmented weight class becomes stale and repetitive. And it's easy to say well just restock it. Well it's not that easy to juggle. It's just too limiting of a thing in practicality with no upside. Run a hoss tournament. Do a hoss specialty match once a year. There's a lot more creative ideas to showcase the idea you're in favor of than just throwing another title onto the pile. This will get me heat with the majority of the AEW posters here, but I am also against trios titles for much the same reason. But that's a discussion for a different day lol. 3
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