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Double or Nothing 2022 - Post Show Thread


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I tell you what: If Kyle keeps putting on matches as good as he’s had against Fenix, Joe, and Darby over the past two weeks, I will gladly accept them and not once question where the booking is going!

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23 minutes ago, Matt D said:

The Rush I know is 2014 Rush. I have no idea what 2022 Rush is like but I'd love to see 2014 Rush vs about 4/5th of the roster. I thought that was how they were going to debut Claudio for a minute but it ended up sort of a best of both worlds as I was happily surprised by Rush and I would have liked something more from Claudio.

RUsh was great as ROH champion, wrestling in front of nobody or hardly anybody.  I hope this means Dragon Lee follows and they feud with Death Triangle and House of Black.

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2 minutes ago, DEAN said:

RUsh was great as ROH champion, wrestling in front of nobody or hardly anybody.  I hope this means Dragon Lee follows and they feud with Death Triangle and House of Black.

I was hoping the same but apparently some of the NJPW guys (probably Omega & Bucks) are still pissed at him for doing that Phoenix Plex in San Francisco approximately 28 years ago. Let it go. You have a bunch of guys doing reckless shit all of the time. Los Ingos need to be a thing in AEW and as much as I love Butcher and the Blade and PP they should probably be tag contenders or feuding over the tag belts in ROH once it gets going.

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10 minutes ago, DEAN said:

RUsh was great as ROH champion, wrestling in front of nobody or hardly anybody. 

Have you gone back and seen his feud with Negro Casas and old man Shocker? I can’t even imagine Rush without a crowd. He was such an amazing heatseeker jerk.

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Guest Stefanie Without Stefanie

They should have put the [tag] belt[s] on Powerhouse Hobbs [and Ricky Starks].

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Me and My Snowflakes (Don’t believe in half stars)

Hookhausen vs Nese/Sterling ***
MJF vs Wardlow ***
Hardys vs Bucks **
Jade vs Jay  **
HoB vs Death Triangle ***
Cole vs Joe **
Britt vs Ruby ***
Darby vs O’Reilly ***
Rose vs Deeb ***
Anarchy in the Arena ****
Tag Team 3-Way **
Punk vs Page ****

It is remarkable how many people either almost or did eat shit on the top rope. Way too many convoluted spots up there. I love Punk, but the way he got frustrated and urgently went for the superplex after Page slipped looked reckless. 
 

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1 hour ago, (BP) said:

I love Punk, but the way he got frustrated and urgently went for the superplex after Page slipped looked reckless. 

 

Yeah I was aghast during this part. On the replay I though it might even been, like, "worked frustration" to make the match more edgy but...jeez. Either way it was scary and looked like it could have gone horribly wrong a bunch of different ways. 

You know what match I absolutely hate? The Naito vs Omega G1 finals with the two "worked botch" spots involving pretending to whiff the piledriver on the table and pretending to accidentally DDT Naito's head onto the top of the ring post. Wrestling is dangerous enough and the immersion of getting psychologically into a match is fragile enough without pretending to blow spots just to make them more dangerous and simultaneously take the audience out of the illusion that this is a fight. Not saying that's what Punk was going for here but it was immediately what I thought of. 

Edited by Belgian_Waffle
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I realize this is purely anecdotal and perhaps completely ignorant of how live streams work, but the way my BR stream worked perfectly the whole show until the basketball game ended and then became a stuttering mess suggests to me that TK may have been onto something about there being a large number of potential viewers who would wait to tune in until after Celtics/Heat was over.

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1 minute ago, EVA said:

I realize this is purely anecdotal and perhaps completely ignorant of how live streams work, but the way my BR stream worked perfectly the whole show until the basketball game ended and then became a stuttering mess suggests to me that TK may have been onto something about there being a large number of potential viewers who would wait to tune in until after Celtics/Heat was over.

I had the same issue for what it's worth.

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15 minutes ago, hammerva said:

Okay we have to say it:  Tony Khan needs to take a drug test.    That media scrum was just an insane rambling that if Tony had his way could have gone another hour or two.   

It’s probably something he’s prescribed. There are pressure cooker jobs that pretty much require uppers. Tony has like three of those kinds of jobs.

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Show was just too long by a bunch.

I missed the Hardys match.  But could have been more a Dynamite match as well. I guess they figure the Bucks need to go over in LA? 

Scorpio Sky, Ethan Page & Paige Vanzant vs. Frankie Kazarian, Sammy Guevara & Tay Conti. I like Tay but she could not carry PVZ enough. And the match from the outset made little sense - Sammy and Tay are more heels than Sky and Page? 

Jade-Anna. I know AEW and everyone is really high on Jade and she has improving; and I like Anna as well but again this is not a PVV match.

Allin-KOR was a really good match but perfect for a Dynamite.  

With entrances there is 60 minutes back. 

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Had a good day at work. (Show was Monday morning here). Managed to avoid spoilers. Watched in two parts, taking a break for a Zoom meeting about two hours in. Four and a half hours is a LOT of pro wrestling. In my world, though, that's a good thing. Time flew by. 

It's almost midnight here now. Let's see how much I can remember:

I found the "Hat of the Night" competition and the Festival of Awkward Sharpshooters to both be wildly entertaining. 

Best Hat is a three-way tie between Martha, Tay, and Rosa.

Smart Mark gets Gear of the Night. I also dug the red, blue, green colour coordination in the tag title match. Reminiscent of Akira Kurosawa's Ran.

Move of the Night and OMG moment of the night (which is really saying something here): That stiff piledriver onto the steps.

Rolling Elbow was pretty sick, too. And that knee on Darby. Actually, both of those knees on Darby. And Darby going full speed head first into the floor then doing another tope immediately afterward.

Jeffers is a human OMG moment. 

Loved that the Bucks put the Hardz over, and loved MJF putting Wardlow all the damned way over even more.

Taunt of the Night goes to Starks on the top rope. Also possibly my biggest laugh of the night.

IHOB vs DT was maybe my MOTN. Like a big, stiff, Toryumon main event trios or something, with a crazy finish.

New Jacking Wild Thing, and directly referencing Owen vs Bret, Piper vs Bret, and in particular the Tupelo Concession Stand Brawl all warmed my heart. I love that kind of stuff. I feel a connection to the wrestlers and agents and bookers in that it shows they are fellow obsessive tape-trading, old-match-studying, fantasy booking nerds somewhere deep in their hearts.

Sublime pro wrestling nostalgia.

Also lol'd at JAS's matching all-white boy band street fight gear,and it somehow failed to occur to me that of course all that white would end up bloodied (until, like, literally seconds into the match when the red red krovvy started to flow).

Hard to pick between Viva Los Superkick Party and that great Rancid performance for Song of the Night.

Sammy and Tay were incredibly funny.

The Owen belts are gorgeous.

Swerve in Our Glory (hope I got that right) is a GREAT name for that team. And I got the big dude showdown I was hoping for.

I bought into Punk's emotional reaction at winning the title. Hangm'n had a great reign and I am excited for all the dream matches and rematches we are going to get with Punk on top. 

I keep remembering stuff, and I know there is a lot more... but I think I'll stop here. 

Enjoyed the hell out of that show.

 

Edited by Gordlow
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Also this is something brought up in the Discord, is that FYI, Tony didn't want to air the main until the end of whatever big basketball game was on last night, so beyond the matches there was just a lot of STUFF last night. Athena, Malcolm, ROOOOOOSH, all that could have probably been on Dynamite and Rampage but it went here. 

...not like I think he wouldn't have put out a 4 hr. 40 min. PPV anyway though

Edited by Curt McGirt
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I thought TK had some pretty smart things to say about the PPV length at the presser.

#1. Adding the extra 45 minutes was intentional and stats driven, and he at least believes that they made an extra six to seven figures off PPV sales because of the extra time. And if that does turn out to be true, I guess it’s kind of hard to argue with the decision. There does seem to be some anecdotal evidence of a surge in viewing after the basketball game ended.

#2. Talked about structuring PPVs like UFC PPVs, with the idea that you pick up viewers as you go along or that viewers just tune in for what interests them, rather than expecting everybody to tune in and watch the whole show beginning to end in one sitting. Different parts of the show serving different audiences, etc.

#3. Despite the added length, the crowd was UP for the final stretch of matches, indicating that they weren’t burnt out at all. Suspects that the show being on PST may have had something to do with that and it might not have played so well with the live crowd in EST or CST.

Edited by EVA
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@Matt D, totally agree with you on the crowd of the main. It was refreshing to hear momentary boos at actions without it being full on hate of the characters or angst boredom. This was a match where both entities forced the ugly out of each other. Both in what they were willing to do/contemplate AND their performances as the chipped away at their bodies. I thought the Punkshot lariat fails were planned because of how Punk turned it into good storytelling by grabbing his leg and selling throughout. It was likely quick thinking on his part.

I’m opposite of you on the Hangman opinions, at least only seeing his AEW work. Everything you have said before I agree with in that he generally has one speed, but for where he is at and how he is used, I like that. He comes across as a main event freight train that will go full gear (pun) at his opponents and it will succeed or fail in attempt. When connecting and on a roll he’s a video game combo fighter that will critically chip away at his opponents health. Having more mid level offense sprinkled in for pacing reasons could very well add to arguably better and more traditional matches, outside of context of story. But being a big league chew slugger mixed with his visibly self-conscious character filled theatrics creates a nuanced tale that often is meant to continue this swing big and miss narrative that I don’t think anyone accomplishes other than Eddie Kingston (which is similar but different as the Mad King leans towards defiance and Adam leaves towards over coming angst. Camus vs Kierkegaard, maybe? At least poetically very loose. Kingston as Sisyphus to his own self destructive decisions but continues pushing the boulder forward in the absurdity of wrestling and Hangman as a Abraham becoming a Knight of Faith, riddled with doubt but doing what is right at his own expense.).

In this match we see both Haymaker Hangman and his operatic character work mixed with wise ol’ Punk’s psychology in both Kayfabe and match theory. The match starts out with louder CM Punk chants. When they strike, Page clearly is the stronger and louder striker of the two and it becomes a more evenly divided crowd. Hangman is the superior athlete but his desire to be the gate keeper and self esteem driven need to be loved plays right into Punk’s crafty moments to take advantage of Page mockingly taking his time. Derp down, good guy Punk is still a dick and also shoots himself in the foot by trying to mimic Hangman. But late match against a constantly harder hitting Page takes a bigger toll on his body than it did against Silver (I think?). The match psychology is both men are being boners and too in their own head to actually do what’s needed to win the match. This beautifully creates the type of Roman crowd that was both feverishly praising Caesar in Triumph parades and yet feel comfortable enough to boo him for contemplating to publicly execute Cleopatra’s beautiful sister, Arsinoe IV. The audience was tired but fully invested. They wanted a clean fight between their two heroes and would cheer and jeer as both performers stayed and strayed from the line. The ending fit both Punk and Page. Punk gets to play a wounded Hitman waiting to be cheapshoted by a conflicted Piper, only to be victorious due to their mercy. Hangman continues his journey of letting his mind take him off course towards embarrassing failure and self hatred so he can once again overcome his demons, himself. Beautiful and sloppy, like coleslaw on wet slow cooked pork, sliding out of a floppy bun, drizzling onto the pile of beans you hoped would keep separate from the rest of your paper plate. You wanted a differently composed meal at the start of the bbq, but were pleasantly happy scooping that dripping mess with your plastic spork. I love wrestling. I love character driven drama. I love art. I love physical action. I love larger than life characters. I love riveting storytelling. I love BBQ.

I should prologue by saying this ramble isn’t an argument FOR Hangman. He shouldn’t be for everyone. No one worth artistic self respect should. This is more-so a dreamy tribute to a man I’ve enjoyed as champion and why he tickles my specific fancy.

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Not much to add, except I'm sad Team Taz didn't win, enjoyed the show otherwise in three easily digestible, spoiler free 90 minute chunks, and had no problem with the length. In any given week, my main complaint with at least half of every AEW show is that potentially great matches get rushed and crammed into 12 minutes. Here's hoping they make Forbidden Door 9-10 hours so they have room for everything I want to see there.

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I don’t know how intentional it was, but the main event benefitted from it being on this card as opposed to one where several of the Anarchy participants were in conventional matches and Joe wasn’t  sandbagged with Cole. There would usually be several mens singles slobber knockers to compare it against. There’s just the Darby/O’Reilly sprint here. 

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