AEW - MAR 2022

[Technico Support]

Whether you pro- or anti- intergender wrestling, we can all unite behind the fact that Sexy Star sucked.

[supremebve]

1 hour ago, Casey said:

Trying to frame a fuckin’ pro wrestling match as being on the same level as legitimate violence against women is an active disservice to the same issue you just tried to seemingly champion.

I agree with this in principle. I also understand that my agreement with this sentiment would probably be put to the test as soon as I trusted a wrestling company to not do something incredibly misogynistic. 

[NoFistsJustFlips]

4 hours ago, Phil Schneider said:

Addy Starr vs. Chris Dickinson has 235 Million views on YouTube. Chris Dickinson vs. Matt Makowski has 9,000

Okay so India viewers are viewing it for kink reasons. That I'll give you.

But promotions are not booking it because of the views. Even if they were tracking the same as men vs men matches Beyond would still be doing them. There's a big movement from inside the business and women wanting them. Such as AAW who doesn't book intergender matches generally ran Ruby Soho vs Josh Alexander because she asked for it.

ETA: Remember, wrestling has been demonetized by You Tube. Beyond makes $0 off of those 235 million views.

Edited March 8, 2022 by NoFistsJustFlips
Demonitization note

[twiztor]

4 hours ago, (BP) said:

I guess I can’t enjoy any actor who performs in a movie wearing open toed shoes if someone has made a wikifeet page about them. 

i don't know if wikifeet is a real thing and i'm scared to find out.

[AxB]

Mia Yim, domestic abuse survivor, did intergender matches throughout her run on the indies. Including against Keith Lee (nb: her partner at the time, emphatically NOT the partner she was abused by. That was a previous relationship). So if she doesn’t have a problem with it, maybe being offended on her behalf is not the play?

[Technico Support]

I can see both sides of the argument and nobody's really wrong, I guess; it just sort of falls on what you prioritize in it.

People who are for intergender say it's about equality and hey, it's fake wrestling so why shouldn't it be its own fantasy world like Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat?  If we allow for Darby Allin to get offense in on Brian Cage and beat him, we can't say a woman wrestling and beating a guy is unrealistic.  It just becomes part or the myriad ridiculousness we accept when we decide to watch this wonderful, crazy form of entertainment.  I understand and accept that!

At the same time, the specter of domestic violence is always there and it's unseemly as fuck to watch a guy punch a woman in the face or do even worse.  It's when intergender goes down that road that I personally find it gross.  I watched a GCW show where Jimmy Lloyd worked a deathmatch with Elayna Black.  She was the only woman on the card, got very little offense, and I believe she ate a DVD through thumbtacks or something similar for the finish.  That's not a simulated sport.  That's a simulation of a guy just beating the living fuck out of a woman.  I'd be just as outraged if the Brisoces, two hillbilly white chicken farmers, lynched O'Shay Edwards in an angle.  It's tasteless and you can't downplay it just because it's wrestling.

I guess what I'm saying in all this rambling nonsense is that there are pros and cons and that intergender is a spectrum, and what you like may not be what I like, your limit is different from mine, etc., but the people who are pro and con like it for different reasons that can be equally valid.  Vote with your wallet or clicks and watch what you like, I guess. 

I'd really like @NoFistsJustFlipsfeedback on the anti-intergender argument that Lance Storm made.  He said he's against it because he feels like a lot of women who don't want to do it may feel pressured into it because there's no spot on the card for them without it.  I think there's probably some validity to that argument when I've seen shows like the aforementioned GCW show that only booked one woman.

Edited March 8, 2022 by Technico Support

[Nice Guy Eddie]

4 minutes ago, twiztor said:

i don't know if wikifeet is a real thing and i'm scared to find out.

Wikifeet sounds like a Quentin Tarantino project.

[Raziel]

5 minutes ago, AxB said:

Mia Yim, domestic abuse survivor, did intergender matches throughout her run on the indies. Including against Keith Lee (nb: her partner at the time, emphatically NOT the partner she was abused by. That was a previous relationship). So if she doesn’t have a problem with it, maybe being offended on her behalf is not the play?

Correction: Her Partner currently, they just got married.  Still Emphatically NOT the partner she was abused by.

[JLowe]

56 minutes ago, NoFistsJustFlips said:

ETA: Remember, wrestling has been demonetized by You Tube. Beyond makes $0 off of those 235 million views.

This is probably not the right place to ask for an explanation of this, but I am definitely intrigued.

[NoFistsJustFlips]

29 minutes ago, JLowe said:

This is probably not the right place to ask for an explanation of this, but I am definitely intrigued.

You Tube demonitized all wrestling (except the national promotions) with the loose reasoning of, because they said so. They never really gave a full on explanation. It was just a decree handed down and the indies that did make solid money from You Tube lost all that income. I know John Thorne who runs AIW was very public in how hard they were hurt by the lack of income from it. AIW, Beyond, and a couple others made like 4 digits off of it monthly and that helped subsidize the expensive rosters they used.

Just gonna have to assume their reasoning is along the lines of, wrestling is niche and can of worms not worth opening.

[NoFistsJustFlips]

50 minutes ago, Technico Support said:

I'd really like @NoFistsJustFlipsfeedback on the anti-intergender argument that Lance Storm made.  He said he's against it because he feels like a lot of women who don't want to do it may feel pressured into it because there's no spot on the card for them without it.  I think there's probably some validity to that argument when I've seen shows like the aforementioned GCW show that only booked one woman.

This is a very valid perspective and probably one I am not the best equipped to answer. I work with female performers but I can only go off those interactions. If Lance's point is taken at face value even if I get the sense they enjoy it & are behind it, they might just be saying that to not ruffle feathers. I have worked against women before and have never ran into any issues. But again if it's an internal feeling they have, I wouldn't be privy to their real feelings on it. Outwardly, I have never heard of a woman in my area being anti-intergender wrestling.

Wrestling is getting better and better with respect to how performers are treated on the indies. Just like inclusiveness and safe environments (re: speaking out) have become bigger priorities, I would have to imagine any qualm a female performer had with being booked in an intergender match would be met with understanding. As we've seen we aren't all the way there to where we should be. But it's getting better. If a woman didn't want to work men, any respectable promotion would be okay with that and get them in a spot they were comfortable with. The problem is there are a lot of promotions that aren't respectable still.

It's a fair POV on the subject. But when there are amazing performers that are asking for more matches against men like Soho & Grace, should we tell them no to protect the theoretical women who don't want to work men? Probably not a yes or no answer question and more a sliding spectrum of what does or doesn't feel right in the moment.

[Jenalysis]

23 hours ago, HarryArchieGus said:

I'm a fan of Adam Cole and Adam Page.  And I liked the match.  With that said, those entrance costumes, especially Cole's, would surely rank pretty high on a list of 'most embarrassing entrances costumes' in the rich history of pro wrestling. 

I'd like to have a look at that list.

Hangman's was supposedly to support queer kids, who are being attacked by a don't say gay bill in Florida.

 

[Guest Stefanie Without Stefanie]

1 hour ago, Technico Support said:

I'd really like @NoFistsJustFlipsfeedback on the anti-intergender argument that Lance Storm made.  He said he's against it because he feels like a lot of women who don't want to do it may feel pressured into it because there's no spot on the card for them without it.  I think there's probably some validity to that argument when I've seen shows like the aforementioned GCW show that only booked one woman.

I always thought Lance's argument was performative. He wasn't arguing for more spots for women, he was arguing to eliminate the spots that the women were being used in based on fear, uncertainty, and doubt.

[AxB]

The other issue is, most women who came up outside of Japan will have trained at either a mixed Wrestling school, or a Wrestling school where literally everyone else in the class was a man. So early in their career, working with men rather than women is what they're familiar and comfortable with. To suddenly find themselves in the ring with someone who isn't big enough to base for their tilt-a-whirl flying headscissors, but is small enough for them to do power spots they've never previously been able to attempt, that's not best practice.

Edited March 9, 2022 by AxB

[zendragon]

I wonder if Turner media might have a problem with man on woman violence aspect of intergender wrestling? Personally I find to many of those matches a bridge too far in believability. Also I'd rather see a well booked women's division than random intergender matches (one of my issues with Lucha Underground is that they never seemed to book the women against each other). I'd be open to say a squash with Nyla Rose or Abaddon going over Peter Avalon or something

[Gordi the recovering AEW f]

2 hours ago, NoFistsJustFlips said:

You Tube demonitized all wrestling (except the national promotions) with the loose reasoning of, because they said so. They never really gave a full on explanation. It was just a decree handed down and the indies that did make solid money from You Tube lost all that income. I know John Thorne who runs AIW was very public in how hard they were hurt by the lack of income from it. AIW, Beyond, and a couple others made like 4 digits off of it monthly and that helped subsidize the expensive rosters they used.

Just gonna have to assume their reasoning is along the lines of, wrestling is niche and can of worms not worth opening.

My understanding (which may not be correct, and is mainly based on conversations with friends who were affected by it) is that YouTube demonetized several wrestling channels BECAUSE certain intergender matches (like, say, John Silver vs Jordynne Grace) were getting a hundred million plus views. Furthermore, they were getting so many views because they serve as a kind of ersatz fetish porn in certain highly-populated areas of the world where access to actual internet porn is tightly controlled by the government. 

A quick internet search confirms that a ton of smaller wrestling channels (and several gaming, music, and animation channels of various sizes) were sweepingly demonetized in 2017. The impetus for that was several important YouTube advertisers being very unhappy indeed that their ads were showing up on channels devoted to hate speech, which led to sweeping changes in YouTubes ad revenue policies.

The conspiracy theory is that YouTube used that crisis as an opportunity to de-fund smaller sites that were making too much money, by marking the channels for "objectionable" or "re-used" content. 

Also, as far back as the summer of 2017, some smaller wrestling sites were reportedly able to get their monetization restored by YouTube. 

Pretty interesting rabbit hole you sent me down, there!

Almost 26.5 million views!

Over 115 million views!!

Perhaps worth pointing out, perhaps not: A further conspiracy theory is that certain less than fully scrupulous promoters maaaay have killed the golden goose by using view bots to crank numbers even higher once they realised that certain videos were getting absurd numbers of hits. I am 100 percent certainly not trying to implicate Beyond Wrestling or any other promotion, specifically. It's just something else I have heard related to this bizarre corner of pro wrestling discourse.

And, since we are debating the merits of intergender pro wrestling:

Kana booked a series of harrowingly violent intergender matches in her own promotion. I'll post a link instead of a video because this is definitely not for the squeamish. Nobody holds back in this one, at all, and it might actually make some people HATE Fujiwara. 

KANA and Suzuki vs Syuri and Fujiwara:

https://dai.ly/x2yae5t

 

 

 

 

[NoFistsJustFlips]

I mean that makes a ton of sense. My only counter was going to be that AIW wasn't that heavy into intergender but then I realized they had a clip of Cedric Alexander hitting the Lumbar Check on Candice Larae that went viral. I had always though that was because it looked so fucking cool. But the more I think about it, maybe it got mixed up in the India porn ban intergender loophole deal and that juiced it's numbers. Certainly possible.

Beyond still does them now. So even if that factored into their initial reasoning, they continue to do them because it's what their performers want & what their fans want.

Also @Stefanie the Human I was not aware of the backstory of Lance possibly being disingenuous with all that. Taking that POV in good faith I would stick by how I answered it. Just take Lance specifically out of the equation.

[Guest Stefanie Without Stefanie]

3 minutes ago, NoFistsJustFlips said:

Also @Stefanie the Human I was not aware of the backstory of Lance possibly being disingenuous with all that. Taking that POV in good faith I would stick by how I answered it. Just take Lance specifically out of the equation.

I'm instantly suspicious of "well someone may be getting forced into it, so we have to eliminate it". Especially since Lance never really advocated for more time for women, he just said "get rid of intergender matches". It's using language to seem as though you're on the side of the people you're advocating for to actually eliminate them from the shows.

I've seen it happen far too often in other avenues of my life to not take it with the entire shaker of salt.

[John E. Dynamite]

1 hour ago, Gordlow said:

And, since we are debating the merits of intergender pro wrestling:

Kana booked a series of harrowingly violent intergender matches in her own promotion. I'll post a link instead of a video because this is definitely not for the squeamish. Nobody holds back in this one, at all, and it might actually make some people HATE Fujiwara. 

KANA and Suzuki vs Syuri and Fujiwara:

https://dai.ly/x2yae5t

I watched this the other day. Randomly felt like going on a Fujiwara binge and I didn't even know he was gonna rule booty the next day @ the NJPW Anniversary show. Kana/Fujiwara vs. Carlos Amano/Yuki Ishikawa. Fuckin' brilliant match, don't know if it ever enters squeamish territory. Certain nothing on the level of that viral "Minoru Suzuki Murders Asuka" clip (that she booked & payed Suzuki to do, ffs).

 

 

Edited March 9, 2022 by John E. Dynamite

[Shartnado]

When exactly was the Dynamite Diamond? I've seen MJF walking around with the ring for a quite a while now, but whenever that happened I must not have been paying attention to the show threads.

[John from Cincinnati]

35 minutes ago, Shartnado said:

When exactly was the Dynamite Diamond? 

December 15th. It's an annual deal and MJF's won all three so far. Don't expect anything on that front till toward the end of the year. 

[Shartnado]

1 minute ago, John from Cincinnati said:

December 15th. It's an annual deal and MJF's won all three so far. Don't expect anything on that front till toward the end of the year. 

Won all 3 of them?!? Holy shit! So that's like his speciality, then! Like Dusty winning those Stampedes in the lateish 80's!

[John from Cincinnati]

The format has been a battle royal where the two finalists have a singles match for the ring the next week. Gotta assume MJF makes it through the BR this year because whoever takes it off him you'll probably want to see get the win straight-up.

Your three:

• 2019: MJF over Hangman Page
• 2020: MJF over Orange Cassidy
• 2021: MJF over Dante Martin

[Elsalvajeloco]

6 hours ago, John E. Dynamite said:

(that she booked & payed Suzuki to do, ffs).

Between that and letting Arisa Nakajima hit her with several dozen live rounds (which included but certainly not limited to legit field goal style and fronts kicks, elbows, knees to her temple and jaw, and headbutts to the front and back of her skull) for 29 STRAIGHT minutes and throwing her down the bleachers at Korakuen Hall, can we safely conclude she is a masochist? It either's masochism or she has/had a 1994 Mick Foley die-in-the-ring (or concrete floor) type death wish.

[MoeCristyV.1.6]

You say that like it's a bad thing