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AEW - APR 2022


The Natural

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1 hour ago, Stefanie the Human said:

Sorry to snip your reply but I didn't want to multi-quote reply and I did want to at least give you the notification that I replied.

So the current relationships that were in place were sort of hamstrung by Japan's covid restrictions, I think. Japan had one of the stricter re-entry policies, if I remember correctly, where if you came back from anywhere, you had to isolate for (I believe?) 14 days. Now, if you're vaccinated, there is no quarantine as of March 1. So basically, all those relationships that were in place pre-pandemic? They either had to bring people over for significant periods of time to make it worth their while, or be stuck flying over to work a show or two, then be in isolation. For example, Maki Itoh came over to work a week's worth of shows, but it was well-timed because it was during a gap in TJPW's schedule because she only missed one show as a result. TJPW runs so frequently that bringing over the folks they had wasn't really an option on a regular basis, so really... do you scrap that relationship by going "well, it didn't work because of a global pandemic and strict re-entry to your home country" now that those restrictions are lifted? Or do you actually give it a shot now that you can?

I don't mind Maki Itoh at all, but my impression after about 1 or 2 matches wasn't, "Damn, I hope she doesn't have to go back to Japan." To me, that's like a moment that will end up as a footnote in AEW history much like "Borne Again" and Sid beating up the Dudleys in ECW history. She got to be on national TV in America and be herself (minus much of the swearing and other obscenity so like 55% her tbh). Good for her. That's just a company making the best out of a bad situation (limited choices in terms of available talent during a worldwide pandemic). I like Yuka Sakazaki, but I wasn't exactly thrilled the times she has been over stateside (the recent stuff where she had one match on Dynamite and worked some matches on Dark, not the stuff when AEW first started). I didn't come away with TJPW is the company AEW needs to partner with they had more than one choice.

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As far as me saying AEW doesn't care about women's wrestling... I mean, I've been on record stating the problems I've had with the way they promote it. One match per show. Literally in the cooldown slot almost every show. Sometimes it's just a squash match. If you want to disagree with me on that, that's fine, but they have been using the same booking formula for almost two years now. As someone who almost exclusively watches women's wrestling, I'm quite annoyed by that. It almost feels like they have it on the show because they feel it's good for demographics and because one of the EVPs likes it, but given the choice, they'd rather not. There's occasional anomalies, but on a week-to-week basis, the women are an afterthought.

There is nothing there that I disagree with...like at all. However, to me, I don't see it as not caring much about women's wrestling as it is robbing Peter to pay Paul. They have an abundance of male talent. Hell, an overabundance. Unfortunately, outside of maybe a handful of matches, there has yet to be consistently a string of matches with the AEW women where you feel that confident to book them to go longer than 5-7 minutes and it not have weapons or blood. Or both. For whatever reason, I think they most of the women that have signed understand storytelling and psychology if they're allowed to go the unadulterated violence route. Otherwise, it can get sketchy. Personally, I would like to see them test out having women's matches on Rampage that go a good amount of time where they can gain confidence doing stuff without going down the gimmick match route all of the time. Otherwise, you depend on that crutch to help you out. 

IMO, that's exactly why I would like to see some of these women work against some of the premier talent from Stardom (whether it's in Japan or on AEW platforms). If you can't get better working with them, then it's probably on you.

1 hour ago, Stefanie the Human said:

You can dismiss my opinion and say "well that's just how you feel", but seriously, look over the last couple of years of AEW shows and tell me I shouldn't be a little bit miffed at that as someone who watches for the women.

That's the growing pains of having a women's division though. Outside of WWE (or WWE owned entity like NXT) in the last ten years, no one has produced a women's division worth of damn over an extended period of time. Even with WWE though, I can argue that a lot of that is product of not producing a bunch of male stars in that time period. If you got that many hours of programming with less stars than any era of pro wrestling in history, hell yeah, the women will need to carry a significant amount of that weight.  Like I said above, if you're signing that many men over a two month stretch versus signing a top tier female talent (at least name recognition wise) like a Ruby Soho or Jamie Hayter or Toni Storm, I doubt the women are going to be showcased more than they are. Prior to maybe the end of last year, I doubt they had enough firepower to really get people that interested. Moreover, I don't think they have invested that much creatively in getting them over. They haven't done that much character work wise to even justify caring about some of these talents. Hell, you put some of those matches in ANY spot (to begin the show, top of the hour, before the main event) and it's not going get the crowd going like "Cult of Personality" or "Wild Thing" or Jurassic Express' theme starting the show off. IMO that is a much bigger issue than match time. You can get 15 minutes in the ring. If the folks don't care about you, they will sit on their hands.

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I literally don't think it matters who gets brought in from other promotions, working a seven minute match through a PIP commercial after a 12+ hour flight and dealing with the politics of who's putting who over isn't exactly appealing.

Again, I don't think there is much allure to having some of these matches be real matches if the character work isn't there and you haven't shown you can work a good, solid, well worked sound match WITHOUT blood and weapons. 

You bring in a Utami Hayashishita or a Syuri or a Giulia or anyone else in that top tier, they're getting a more than Excalibur pitching to the break after 90 seconds of in ring action. They're getting what Minoru Suzuki (outside of that abbreviated match with Mox obviously) and some of the other outside and newer talent have gotten in terms of showcase. Why? Cause all those girls have shown they can work more than 5 minutes in a regular match and it not fall apart. Hell, Maki Itoh worked what? A minute in a six woman tag match with Britt Baker and I forgot who else (someone can search Cagematch and tell me) and that shit unraveled very quickly. 

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20 minutes ago, John E. Dynamite said:

I don't know if this is sarcasm or whatever but I'll tell the story since a lot of this subforum doesn't follow MMA.

Kayla Harrison is a two-time Olympic Judo Gold Medalist (Rousey only got Bronze!) and undefeated in MMA. She was at the end of her contract with PFL, the #3 MMA promotion in the US. Amanda Nunes, the greatest female fighter of all time, had wiped out the UFC 135 and 145 pound women's divisions. There was a very popular line of thought that said the UFC would sign Kayla to a big money, short term contract in order to have a superfight against Nunes at 145 because they had nothing else to book.

Then Amanda Nunes got finished by a seven-to-one underdog in Julianna Pena. Kayla Harrison's big money free agency went to shit and she re-signed with PFL (the UFC made it known they didn't want to sign her unless they had to). Bear in mind Kayla showed up on AEW programming before, since she's a main player at American Kickboxing Academy and one of Dan Lambert's most prized retainers. I'm not saying she's who Gangrel is talking about, but if betting odds came out today she'd unquestionably be at the top of the list.

I know you mean American Top Team, but now I want DC and Khabib training female wrestlers. 

Hell, DC is a huge wrestling fan. I'm surprised he hasn't convinced someone at AKA to do pro wrestling. Other than Cain obviously.

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13 minutes ago, Elsalvajeloco said:

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So here's where I'm confused. You agree that the women don't get enough reps, you agree that the women don't get enough promotional push behind them. Where exactly do you see that having any kind of relationship with any promotion is going to help here?

For the record, I don't see the AEW women as so helpless that they can't get better without wrestlers from Japan coming over to help. I think their women's division is actually pretty decent. I would very much like to see them get more than one six minute match on a two hour show. And since you asked for match times, here's 2022's match times on Dynamite for the women and their position on the card (cooldown matches bolded): 
- 1/5: Jade Cargill over Ruby Soho (11:13, TBS title tournament final, 4th of 6)
- 1/12: Serena Deeb over Hikaru Shida (1:59, 3rd of 6)
- 1/19: Serena Deeb over Skye Blue (2:51, 5th of 6)
- 1/26: Leyla Hirsch over Red Velvet (8:08, 4th of 5)
- 2/2: Nyla Rose over Ruby Soho (10:48, 3rd of 4)
- 2/9: Jade Cargill over AQA (7:44, 4th of 6), Serena Deeb over Katie Arquette (1:02, 5th of 6)
- 2/16: Thunder Rosa over Mercedes Martinez (9:31, 4th of 5)
- 2/23: Jade Cargill over The Bunny (6:50, 4th of 5)
- 3/2: Thunder Rosa & Mercedes Martinez over Britt Baker & Jamie Hayter (8:32, 3rd of 5th)
- 3/9: Thunder Rosa over Leyla Hirsch (8:51, 5th of 6)
- 3/16: Thunder Rosa over Britt Baker (17:33, 6th of 6)
- 3/23: Leyla Hirsch over Red Velvet (6:30, 5th of 6)
- 3/30: Toni Storm over The Bunny (8:41, 5th of 6)
- 4/6: Hikaru Shida over Julia Hart (7:45, 5th of 6)
- 4/13: Marina Shafir over Skye Blue (2:24, 5th of 7)
- 4/20: Britt Baker over Danielle Kamela (6:16 6th of 7)

So 16 shows in 2022, and the one women's match on the show is in the cooldown spot 10 times. And the one show where there's actually two women's matches, they still put one of them in the cooldown, so there's 11 shows overall out of 16 where the women's match is your cooldown. In other words, your "go take a bathroom break and come back for the main event match you should actually care about" match. You wonder why the fans wouldn't care as much as they would about Jon Moxley?

Here's the point I was making re: Kenny Omega's connection with TJPW. You have someone who's built a bridge with another company. That bridge hasn't been able to be properly utilized due to a global health issue. Now you risk blowing that bridge up and irritating one of your top guys for... what exactly? For matches that you're not going to push anyway? The only Stardom wrestler with any sort of American following is Syuri because of her UFC tenure. Pretty much any other Stardom wrestler (or any other joshi wrestler for that matter) will need a significant amount of explaining who she is, otherwise you're relying on match quality. Good luck getting that in six to eight minutes in the cooldown when your top tier wrestlers from Japan, no matter what promotion, are used to going 15-20 in mains. (Or if they're from Stardom, 25-40.)

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Are things that bad between TJPW and Stardom that they won't have talent on the same show or promotion? I thought Takagi and Ogawa got along. 

I feel like I fall somewhere between the two sides of this conversation. Many of the women in AEW struggle when put in longer matches and bad to average matches really stand out in AEW. But there is certainly untapped and/or wasted potential and they have half assed their women's division as a whole besides Baker. I've been really disappointed with Rosa's output the last few months. That Nyla match wasn't good.

They have maybe a handful of women on the roster that are talented enough to give you good 10+ minute matches regularly but most struggle with character work or promos. There's no clear ace. Baker has improved but she's not what I'd call consistent or dependable in the ring though she's had some very good matches. 

I also want to see more Maki Ito in AEW as well as Stardom talent. It can't be that bad between the two sides otherwise would Ogawa feature Suruga, who also works for TJPW? AEW has consistently been about opening doors and working with anybody that was willing and had something to offer. Hopefully they can maintain relations with  DDT/Cyberfight  as well as NJPW/stardom. The women's division needs something and they're taking a long duree approach in building up talent very, very slowly. 

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8 minutes ago, Jiji said:

Are things that bad between TJPW and Stardom that they won't have talent on the same show or promotion?

Unless things have changed recently, they're pretty bad. TJPW was the only group that didn't participate in the joshi supershow last week at Korakuen. Stardom has poached a handful of TJPW wrestlers over the last couple of years as well. Also, Mei Sugura's pretty much been wound down in TJPW; she has only been used twice in 2022.

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41 minutes ago, Stefanie the Human said:

So here's where I'm confused. You agree that the women don't get enough reps, you agree that the women don't get enough promotional push behind them. Where exactly do you see that having any kind of relationship with any promotion is going to help here?.)

Part of getting reps is working with people who can actually work. "Blind leading the blind" is not a saying I like to use, but if working with a super capable worker, that worker could actually teach you something as opposed to some who actually be less experienced than you are. If you're new to a job, they don't stick you with someone else who is new or just a little bit more experienced than you are. The entire history of pro wrestling is learning the ropes from veterans who actually know the business. Dustin and Jerry Lynn or whomever can only teach them so much. Part of it is getting in the ring with capable people. 

41 minutes ago, Stefanie the Human said:

And since you asked for match times, here's 2022's match times on Dynamite for the women and their position on the card (cooldown matches bolded): 

No one asked for match times. I'm very well of how long these matches are going. I think you posted them for your own amusement. I think the division is decent, but I would hope in life people would aspire to be more than decent. In addition, why turn the help down? For me, especially just reading the comments, it feels like people (especially when it comes to Stardom and any American involvement) that is like a picky eater not wanting their mash potatoes and green beans touching on their plate. And I can say that as a very picky eater. I don't see it as the end of the world as Stardom talent working in AEW or vice versa. The two can co-exist, and I think many of the women would be super jazzed to see it happen. Hell, screw the fans if it means the actual talent would be excited to get to work with women who can help get them to the next talent. As for the other stuff you mentioned, I think you're having an argument with yourself as I didn't really disagree with much of it.

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Here's the point I was making re: Kenny Omega's connection with TJPW. You have someone who's built a bridge with another company. That bridge hasn't been able to be properly utilized due to a global health issue. 

It's TJPW. It ain't late 90s Battlarts or FMW during their heyday with ECW. 

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 Now you risk blowing that bridge up and irritating one of your top guys for... what exactly?

Here is the thing about bridges...you can build other ones. They didn't stop making bridges after they built the Golden Gate Bridge, thank god.  

And god forbid, they irritate Kenny Omega. He might jump to WWE where they would screw up using him....so he would end up back in AEW. Quite a risk.

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The only Stardom wrestler with any sort of American following is Syuri because of her UFC tenure. 

Syuri had a decent UFC run all things considered, but I doubt anyone in the US remembers her run besides like Meltzer (who literally reminded people she was a wrestler before every UFC fight she had) and some hardcores like myself. 

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Pretty much any other Stardom wrestler (or any other joshi wrestler for that matter) will need a significant amount of explaining who she is, otherwise you're relying on match quality. 

Well shit, the opposite of that is what you been getting. LOL. I'll take a ****+ 20 minute match if it means that they have to cut a Wardlow squash or Dan Lambert arguing with someone. Plus, I mean the AEW fanbase is pretty damn smart so it's not like they're living in 1991. If Giulia or some of the other women can't get over by just being them, then ain't nobody getting over.

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Good luck getting that in six to eight minutes in the cooldown when your top tier wrestlers from Japan, no matter what promotion, are used to going 15-20 in mains. (Or if they're from Stardom, 25-40.)

That's my whole point though. They're not getting sub 10 minutes on Dynamite for big matches unless they're bringing someone in to squash like one of the Renegade Twins or AQA or Diamante or somebody. As much as I am behind supporting Jade, she ain't ready to have a ten minutes match that isn't smoke and mirrors. Hell, Britt who was champion for a long time can barely have a good match that isn't smoke and mirrors. We've seen some of these PPV matches. Some are good and some look like they're contested between people who just left wrestling school (lol which is true in the case of Jade, but the point remains). They have been some rough moments. Not enough to bum me out of the division as a whole, however, it does make me desire some wholesale changes. That's why I don't disagree with many of your points. I think it's the avenue or avenues we kinda disagree on. I'm just in favor of working with Stardom to get there. That's doesn't sound like a crazy request.

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20 minutes ago, Jiji said:

Are things that bad between TJPW and Stardom that they won't have talent on the same show or promotion? I thought Takagi and Ogawa got along. 

I feel like I fall somewhere between the two sides of this conversation. Many of the women in AEW struggle when put in longer matches and bad to average matches really stand out in AEW. But there is certainly untapped and/or wasted potential and they have half assed their women's division as a whole besides Baker. I've been really disappointed with Rosa's output the last few months. That Nyla match wasn't good.

They have maybe a handful of women on the roster that are talented enough to give you good 10+ minute matches regularly but most struggle with character work or promos. There's no clear ace. Baker has improved but she's not what I'd call consistent or dependable in the ring though she's had some very good matches. 

I also want to see more Maki Ito in AEW as well as Stardom talent. It can't be that bad between the two sides otherwise would Ogawa feature Suruga, who also works for TJPW? AEW has consistently been about opening doors and working with anybody that was willing and had something to offer. Hopefully they can maintain relations with  DDT/Cyberfight  as well as NJPW/stardom. The women's division needs something and they're taking a long duree approach in building up talent very, very slowly. 

I think there might be a larger issue with how some of these matches are laid out. One thing I've noticed is many of the women just don't feel all that comfortable working with each other.

One example I saw was Hayter vs. Mercedes Martinez right around the last PPV. You would think that those two of any of the roster would just show out, but they didn't seem to have much chemistry. I could have sworn Mercedes threw a stiff forearm shot and Jamie just kinda winced like, "yeah, that shit hurt" and didn't do much afterwards. It felt like the match never got out of first gear. I've noticed that about a lot of the matches. I felt that same way about Britt vs. Rosa on the PPV before the title switch. They need someone else to put these matches together because whoever is doing it now isn't getting the best out of these women. 

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14 minutes ago, Elsalvajeloco said:

Well shit, the opposite of that is what you been getting. LOL. I'll take a ****+ 20 minute match if it means that they have to cut a Wardlow squash or Dan Lambert arguing with someone. Plus, I mean the AEW fanbase is pretty damn smart so it's not like they're living in 1991. If Giulia or some of the other women can't get over by just being them, then ain't nobody getting over.

That's my whole point though. They're not getting sub 10 minutes on Dynamite for big matches unless they're bringing someone in to squash like one of the Renegade Twins or AQA or Diamante or somebody. As much as I am behind supporting Jade, she ain't ready to have a ten minutes match that isn't smoke and mirrors. Hell, Britt who was champion for a long time can barely have a good match isn't smoke and mirrors. We've seen some of these PPV matches. Some are good and some look like they're contested between people who just left wrestling school (lol which is true in the case of Jade, but the point remains). They have been some rough moments. Not enough to bum me out of the division as a whole, however, it does make me desire some wholesale changes. That's why I don't disagree with many of your points. I think it's the avenue or avenues we kinda disagree on. I'm just in favor of working with Stardom to get there. That's doesn't sound like a crazy request.

LOL.

Here's what you'll get with a Stardom relationship, for real.

You won't get Giulia. You won't get Utami. You won't get Syuri.

You'll get Natsuko Tora or someone of her stature since Natsuko's hurt right now in a six to eight minute cooldown because that's who Rossy will send over since that's what TK will give the women. He'll give them the six to eight minute cooldown slot, and Rossy's not sending over his stars to work the six to eight minute cooldown while he's got shows to run at the same time, and you yourself said they've got men to worry about on the more important roles.

If we want to live in a fantasy world where the women are going to get 20 minute matches on Dynamite, we can fantasy book whatever we want but until AEW changes their mind about how they want to present the women, it's not going to change a thing.

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13 minutes ago, Stefanie the Human said:

LOL.

Here's what you'll get with a Stardom relationship, for real.

You won't get Giulia. You won't get Utami. You won't get Syuri.

You'll get Natsuko Tora or someone of her stature since Natsuko's hurt right now in a six to eight minute cooldown because that's who Rossy will send over since that's what TK will give the women. He'll give them the six to eight minute cooldown slot, and Rossy's not sending over his stars to work the six to eight minute cooldown while he's got shows to run at the same time, and you yourself said they've got men to worry about on the more important roles.

If we want to live in a fantasy world where the women are going to get 20 minute matches on Dynamite and we can fantasy book whatever we want because until AEW changes their mind about how they want to present the women, it's not going to change a thing.

That's just all opinion though. Hell, you just brought up Syuri and now based on your feelings and opinions on what Rossy Ogawa might or might not do, she ain't coming over what. Based of what exactly? I get you're pissed, but I doubt a working relationship in reality is based on purely fan conjecture. 

Also, what have people been doing the last two days regarding NJPW? Fantasy booking. There ain't been a match announced. That's all you can do. I ain't reinventing the wheel. 

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they've got men to worry about on the more important roles.

The big thing is reliability. If Britt and someone else could be in a *** or **** match without color or thumbtacks, then a lot of this other shit might not be on AEW TV right now. And again, a lot of it IMO is the fault of AEW creative as a whole. There are a lot of factors in play as to why the AEW women's division hasn't fully bloomed yet.

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Who in AEW's women's division can give us a good 20 minute match at this point? Hikaru Shida and Serena Deeb? Shida usually has one brainfart per long match where she loses her spot. Martinez hasn't had one match I'd consider good in AEW yet. I am Hayt Club all day but I don't think even Jamie is at that point yet though she's close. Riho with the right opponent, maybe. To some extent, the women in AEW are not being put in consistent long matches because they just aren't capable of them. There is clear potential in quite a few members of the roster but I don't think sending them out there to drown is a recipe for success either.

The lack of character development for pretty much anybody not named Britt Baker and more recently Jade Cargill is atrocious though. If the women aren't ready for 15-20 minute great matches, the least you can do is invest in their characters and make them interesting. And I agree that match structure and spots being planned in these matches are a problem. Wrestlers should not be doing spots they can't do at full speed and hit 99% of the time. Execution matters and the roster has quite a few main event men whose technical execution is pretty poor but they're so good at character wrestling and the big picture stuff that it doesn't ruin the match or really even hurt it that much. Moxley and Punk are two guys whose execution often leaves a lot to be desired but it doesn't really matter because they're smart and all time characters. You don't have to be Moxley or Punk but if your stuff doesn't look good you gotta compensate with character work, good psychology, and timing.

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Sorry for double post but going back to bad chemistry, I remember in a handful of Rosa's first matches in the company, she would visibly get pissed off at her opponent for miscommunication. I remember the Shida PPV match, you could hear Rosa asking Shida (I am almost positive it was Shida) "are you going to work with me or what?" or something along those lines. Strange now that Rosa has fallen off noticeably.

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2 hours ago, Stefanie the Human said:

Sorry to snip your reply but I didn't want to multi-quote reply and I did want to at least give you the notification that I replied.

So the current relationships that were in place were sort of hamstrung by Japan's covid restrictions, I think. Japan had one of the stricter re-entry policies, if I remember correctly, where if you came back from anywhere, you had to isolate for (I believe?) 14 days. Now, if you're vaccinated, there is no quarantine as of March 1. So basically, all those relationships that were in place pre-pandemic? They either had to bring people over for significant periods of time to make it worth their while, or be stuck flying over to work a show or two, then be in isolation. For example, Maki Itoh came over to work a week's worth of shows, but it was well-timed because it was during a gap in TJPW's schedule because she only missed one show as a result. TJPW runs so frequently that bringing over the folks they had wasn't really an option on a regular basis, so really... do you scrap that relationship by going "well, it didn't work because of a global pandemic and strict re-entry to your home country" now that those restrictions are lifted? Or do you actually give it a shot now that you can?

As far as me saying AEW doesn't care about women's wrestling... I mean, I've been on record stating the problems I've had with the way they promote it. One match per show. Literally in the cooldown slot almost every show. Sometimes it's just a squash match. If you want to disagree with me on that, that's fine, but they have been using the same booking formula for almost two years now. As someone who almost exclusively watches women's wrestling, I'm quite annoyed by that. It almost feels like they have it on the show because they feel it's good for demographics and because one of the EVPs likes it, but given the choice, they'd rather not. There's occasional anomalies, but on a week-to-week basis, the women are an afterthought.

You can dismiss my opinion and say "well that's just how you feel", but seriously, look over the last couple of years of AEW shows and tell me I shouldn't be a little bit miffed at that as someone who watches for the women.

I literally don't think it matters who gets brought in from other promotions, working a seven minute match through a PIP commercial after a 12+ hour flight and dealing with the politics of who's putting who over isn't exactly appealing.

 

The thing I've heard is the one match per show was a network request not to have too much women's wrestling.  This is why I'm very intrerested in ROH-AEW and what they do with women, as they won't have that limitation there.  It definitely is annoying and does make the women feel like an afterthought.  

 

Maki also did some US indies I believe while she was over there.  Really want to see a rumored teamup that's supposed to happen next time she comes over here.

 

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1 minute ago, Jiji said:

Who in AEW's women's division can give us a good 20 minute match at this point? Hikaru Shida and Serena Deeb? Shida usually has one brainfart per long match where she loses her spot in the match. Martinez hasn't had one match I'd consider good in AEW yet. I am Hayt Club all day but I don't think even Jamie is at that point yet though she's close. Riho with the right opponent, maybe. To some extent, the women in AEW are not being put in consistent long matches because they just aren't capable of them. There is clear potential in quite a few members of the roster but I don't think sending them out there to drown is a recipe for success either.

The lack of character development for pretty much anybody not named Britt Baker and more recently Jade Cargill is atrocious though. If the women aren't ready for 15-20 minute great matches, the least you can do is invest in their characters and make them interesting. And I agree that match structure and spots being planned in these matches are a problem. Wrestlers should not be doing spots they can't do at full speed and hit 99% of the time. Execution matters and the roster has quite a few main event men whose technical execution is pretty poor but they're so good at character wrestling and the big picture stuff that it doesn't matter. Moxley and Punk are two guys whose execution often leaves a lot to be desired but it doesn't really matter because they're smart and all time characters. You don't have to be Moxley or Punk but if your stuff doesn't look good you gotta compensate with character work, good psychology, and timing.

They wanna fashion Serena as the female Dean Malenko, but the problem is she doesn't have an Eddie Guerrero or a Rey Mysterio. I like Shida, but like she ain't ever going to get confused with mid 90s Eddie Guerrero who perhaps may have been been wrestling mullet'd Jesus in 1995-1997. And again, based on the blowoff for the feud being a street fight (which does make sense), they don't have super confidence they can work a straight match. You bill a woman as The Professor, but in what likely will be her best match (besides the Riho match on that one Buy In show) will be a straight up donnybrook garbage match. Since Shida has gotten color before in her career, she will probably get color and it will follow a string of the best women's matches in AEW being gimmick matches. Nothing wrong with that, but you can see that pattern now. 

With Jamie, I think she can perhaps be the division's biggest (English speaking) star. However, based on what I saw the in the Skye Blue match that just happened, I think right now Jamie works best as a base or fulcrum for smaller wrestlers. Hell, speaking of Malenko, that was basically his whole routine throughout his WCW tenure other than hitting that top rope gutbuster and some nifty looking suplexes and powerbombs. (Eddie) Guerrero was that also that especially when he was working with Rey. I've noticed that the fans only pop for those type of spots in the women's matches anyway. When Jamie was throwing Skye Blue around, the fans were with it.

Too many times I've seen two capable workers in the women's division be working in slow motion when they should be picking it up. I think that was the case when Ruby had some of her matches on Dynamite. You've been working for how long? Why are you completely out of position on certain key spots?

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1 hour ago, Jiji said:

Are things that bad between TJPW and Stardom that they won't have talent on the same show or promotion? I thought Takagi and Ogawa got along. 

Yeah things seem to be ok between Takagi/Ogawa and Bushiroad/CyberAgent. From what I can gather this is mostly theory based on some sort of issues between Natsupoi/TJPW and Stardom taking in a few former TJPW talent. Its a similar theory to fans suspecting Stardom and Sendai have bad blood over Miyagi. They assume Stardom stole them. In reality, no one really knows, and there isn't a strong hint one way or the other.

1 hour ago, Jiji said:

Martinez hasn't had one match I'd consider good in AEW yet.

This is disappointing to hear. Martinez as doing well during her initial run in NXT. Her cage match with Rhea was good stuff. I figured she would get more chances in AEW.

 

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I’m kind of fascinated by the idea of their being “death slots” or “bathroom break” matches on TV. That doesn’t make sense to me. In the arena, sure, going to the bathroom is an ordeal, you gotta pick your moment, and a lot of people choose to hit the can before the main so they don’t have go when everybody is leaving. At home, you have a bathroom right there. You have commercial breaks. Most people can pause their live feed now, if nature offers no other recourse. Nobody is waiting for the 7th quarter hour to go take a piss before the main.

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1 hour ago, EVA said:

I’m kind of fascinated by the idea of their being “death slots” or “bathroom break” matches on TV. That doesn’t make sense to me. In the arena, sure, going to the bathroom is an ordeal, you gotta pick your moment, and a lot of people choose to hit the can before the main so they don’t have go when everybody is leaving. At home, you have a bathroom right there. You have commercial breaks. Most people can pause their live feed now, if nature offers no other recourse. Nobody is waiting for the 7th quarter hour to go take a piss before the main.

The "piss break" match still effects crowd noise, and therefore the perceived importance of a match by a home audience. Although I think Quarter 7 being the supposed Death Slot doesn't hold up. I think the problem is a lot deeper, older, and sadder - audience members, particularly casuals and "lapsed fans", have been conditioned to think that a women's match is a bathroom-worthy afterthought because that's how women's matches were booked by the WWF/E until around five years ago. Then you've got the percentage of fans who are just openly misogynist and will tune out regardless of anything.

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12 minutes ago, John E. Dynamite said:

The "piss break" match still effects crowd noise, and therefore the perceived importance of a match by a home audience. Although I think Quarter 7 being the supposed Death Slot doesn't hold up. I think the problem is a lot deeper, older, and sadder - audience members, particularly casuals and "lapsed fans", have been conditioned to think that a women's match is a bathroom-worthy afterthought because that's how women's matches were booked by the WWF/E until around five years ago. Then you've got the percentage of fans who are just openly misogynist and will tune out regardless of anything.

I think part of the issue is if you're sandwiched between a bunch of guys doing their Cirque du Soleil act in one match and then possibly that again or established superstars like Mox, Danielson, Punk, and other guys on that tier, you don't have much of a chance in terms of crowd response regardless of where you're positioned on the card. You would either have to be the opener or like I said, doing basically a violent gimmick match. I think the downside to the latter is now the fans (male or female) have been conditioned that the match probably won't be that interesting unless they're just beating the everloving crap out of each or taking insane bumps. Even with Britt, they pop when she comes out but it dies the moment the bell rings. Then, they might pop at the finish. That's it.

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But generally speaking I haven’t found lack of crowd noise to be an issue for the women’s matches? Obviously there are exceptions, like the Marina match from last week, but most of the time I think crowd response is about what it should be. In fact, I can think of a lot more matches where I could feel the Dynamite crowd wiling themselves to give sub-par matches better reactions than they merited out of a sense of obligation to support the women, honestly.

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1 minute ago, EVA said:

But generally speaking I haven’t found lack of crowd noise to be an issue for the women’s matches? Obviously there are exceptions, like the Marina match from last week, but most of the time I think crowd response is about what it should be. In fact, I can think of a lot more matches where I could feel the Dynamite crowd wiling themselves to give sub-par matches better reactions than they merited out of a sense of obligation to support the women, honestly.

I mean, the Deeb 5-minute challenge was so dead you could hear people breathing in the audience, but other than that I don't think it's been too bad. The Marina match was similar, for sure. At the Austin show I attended, the crowd was super hot for all of the women's matches for the Youtube show (and super hot all night). 

 

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10 hours ago, alstein said:

The thing I've heard is the one match per show was a network request not to have too much women's wrestling.  This is why I'm very intrerested in ROH-AEW and what they do with women, as they won't have that limitation there.  It definitely is annoying and does make the women feel like an afterthought.

Have some bad news for you my friend. That same network is where ROH is going to land. By network I assume you mean Warner Media (and not TNT or TBS specifically). TK already revealed he's bound by the terms of the TV contracts to only work with Warner Media for any and all wrestling ventures. So ROH is going to land on Tru TV or HBO Max or something else along those lines. Which will have the same specifications as the rest of AEW's shows.

Now that's assuming what you said is true. We don't know for sure because that's not something they would confirm to the public. But it seems plausible that the lack of women's matches could be stipulated by the network. And if so, expect ROH to have those same guidelines.

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7 minutes ago, EVA said:

But generally speaking I haven’t found lack of crowd noise to be an issue for the women’s matches? Obviously there are exceptions, like the Marina match from last week, but most of the time I think crowd response is about what it should be. In fact, I can think of a lot more matches where I could feel the Dynamite crowd wiling themselves to give sub-par matches better reactions than they merited out of a sense of obligation to support the women, honestly.

2 minutes ago, JLowe said:

I mean, the Deeb 5-minute challenge was so dead you could hear people breathing in the audience, but other than that I don't think it's been too bad. The Marina match was similar, for sure. At the Austin show I attended, the crowd was super hot for all of the women's matches for the Youtube show (and super hot all night). 

 

On that bolded point, yeah, I definitely agree with that in the sense that I don't expect the crowd to really get behind something unless a real response is warranted. That said, for many matches, I've noticed some crowds have been basically just sitting down and patiently waiting the match out so they can pop for the finish. That might be creative's fault though because if we're talking about Britt or Jade, you know what the finish is because they hardly lose or don't lose at all in the case of Jade. There isn't real suspense as to what might happen. 

However, if you have a super hot crowd, then all bets are off. I mean you obviously get major crowd fatigue late on the PPVs and probably on some Rampage tapings, but usually, those crowds tend to be more responsive to the women. With some of these markets they keep going back to over and over again, I'm surprised that there hasn't been more terrible crowds. I'm not saying bring back the territories or anything, but some of the markets are very receptive to the idea of AEW running there every 6-8 weeks.

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Apparently according to Wrestling Observer, Bret Hart has signed a new deal with WWE that would ban him from appearing on AEW TV....

I'm not even sure what to say if that's indeed legit.

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