Jump to content
DVDVR Message Board

All Out IV - 9/4/2022

Dolfan in NYC

By Dolfan in NYC
in ALL ELITE WRESTLING

 Share

Recommended Posts

Guest Stefanie Without Stefanie

Guest Stefanie Without Stefanie

Posted
Posted
9 hours ago, Gordlow said:

AEW is definitely more for me than for you at the moment. I'm perfectly fine with interesting characters having good matches. Not even particularly the "five star epic" matches.  And not the go-go-go athletic spectacles or the plunder matches - which are less my bag, personally. I'm just straight up delighted to get stuff like Dustin vs Claudio, Emi & Maki vs Shida & Skye, and Lethal vs Dax week in and week out. There was a seven-week period around Forbidden Door, when I was marking out like a madman every single show. That's enough for me. I don't ask for more. The good matches and fun characters are my personal steak, my personal cake, and the belts and storylines and build and so on are - to me - part of the sizzle and the icing.

But. I think I hear you. It's not unreasonable for the build and story to be somebody's steak and cake.

So, w/r/t All Out 2022 in particular: I think it's reasonable to say that about half of the announced matches have some long-term build and story behind them. Is that enough?

Jungle Boy vs Christian being the big one. Teacher vs Student, Mentor vs Mentee, with a story that's been simmering for ages.  Hobbs vs Starks. Classic partner break-up.story. Bad guys in this case, with the manner of break-up garnering sympathy for the smaller partner.

Two classic stories.

Athena vs Jade has the whole "baddies" story behind it. It is likely they were heading for Stat vs Jade but injuries forced a change of plans. I'd argue they've done a fine job in pivoting to Athena here. But then again, the stories aren't my main bag and I just want to see these two wrestlers fight. Is there enough here for you to hang your hat on?

Speaking of injuries changing plans: Interim titles are just fine by me. AEW had to pivot here, but I think there is plenty of story to go around between DMD, Hayter, Storm, and Shida. It doesn't take any imagination to get to "why are they fighting" and eventually "why are these story beats happening in this match?" The groundwork has been done to make for a compelling match beyond just the ring work. I figure they are going to tell quite a story in there.

There's arguably some story behind Mox vs Lethal, but MCMG coming in is pretty much pure "lets watch good fighters fight."

 Danielson has a story, which is he wants to fight everyone. Good enough for me, probably not for you. Sports Entertainment vs Pro Wrestling works as background, but I'll give the "not enough build" crowd this one. 

Swerve in our Glory and The Acclaimed are all interesting characters but this particular title fight doesn't have much build.

If, as seems likely, we get Dark Order with Hangman vs Kenny and the Bucks as the trios final, there is an absolute ton of story and background there.

There has been a fair bit of build toward House of Black vs Miro, Darby, and Sting. We might  get that on PPV. And if we do, people will definitely complain about having three trios matches on one show. I will not be among those people. Give me more trios matches!

Casino Ladder Match is more about the spectacle. It has a built-in answer to "why are these people fighting?" but I don't think that's what you are talking about, S w/o S.

Big thing is the title match. We'll likely find out on Wednesday (Thursday for me) whether it's all story (Mox vs Punk) or just "Let's let two great fighters fight" (Mox vs, for example, Ospreay or someone like that) or ??? (Mox joins the Casino Battle Royal, and/or the winner gets a same-day shot at the title. 

But, yeah, about half the matches have some compelling backstory in my opinion.

I legitimately planned to say, "Ideally, of course, every match would be built to like at WrestleMania III." But then I looked at the WMIII Wikipedia page. I mean, obviously Hogan vs Andre, Savage vs Steamboat, Piper vs Adonis, and Harts & Danny Davis vs Bulldogs and Tito all had memorable backstories. And Race vs JYD had the loser must bow stip. But even that show had some matches that were "just" matches.

Anyway, I am looking forward to learning what the title match will be. And the trios final. And if both of them have backstory, I will be happy. Icing is good. Sizzle is nice. And for some folks, that's the cake. That's the steak. Which makes me more interested in what happens next, looking at it that way.

EDIT: w/r/t Dragon vs Wizard, if we count what happened years ago on the other channel, there is a ton of backstory there as well.

 

You actually bring up two examples where I would have been much more enticed if there had been build.

Dustin vs. Claudio was just a simple "Dustin walks out, says he's never won a World title, wants to fight the champion" match. I have no reason to believe in Dustin; he never wins, so I have no incentive to watch the match. If Dustin was on TV in a few weeks heading up to that, winning matches against contenders, then I would have been more interested in the match because it shows that Dustin is a worthy contender instead of someone Claudio conceivably just wanted to wrestle that week. Was it mechanically a good match? Probably. But did I have a reason to care because the result was 100% not in question? No.

Emi Sakura vs. Hikaru Shida is a match with a ton of backstory (Sakura was the founder of Ice Ribbon and trained Shida, and Shida in spite of years of trying had never beaten Sakura in a singles match). It should have been on mainline TV where as many eyeballs could see it, with weeks and weeks of build because the backstory behind the two is genuinely compelling, and you can easily get footage of Shida's attempts and failures to beat Sakura in the past.

But that would require AEW to give the women more than one match per non-YouTube show, and Jim Ross to learn how to say Japanese names, and we can't have THAT, so instead they're shuffled off to Dark and Shida finally beats Sakura for the first time in what I'm sure was a great match, but it was... *checks Cagematch*... five minutes and forty seconds. I'm all for folks not staying forever in the ring but... come on.

You have a good point about Jungle Boy and Christian, and Starks and Hobbs. But those are also stories that AEW has been building for over a year. What are they doing now that will pay off in a year? What do Will Ospreay matches that go for a half-hour do to help their roster now? What did their last pay-per-view, Forbidden Door, do to help move their stories along aside from give Moxley the interim title?

Time is at a premium on their weekly TV and instead of investing in their future, they're star-chasing by putting on matches that won't have investment in their future. Which again, if you're watching for quality wrestling for wrestling's sake, is great. But will you have a story you can be invested in when these guests that are coming in are gone?

AEW banks on their viewers being invested in being hardcore wrestling fans. Which is fine, that's a market that really isn't going to leave you. The problem is, that's also a market that has very little growth because hardcore wrestling fans are already watching. People need other reasons to become invested in your show, and if you don't give them a reason to care aside from "here are a bunch of great matches", then you're going to have an artificial ceiling on how many will watch.

And the thing is... it's not something that would be a hard thing to adjust! That Dustin example... would people be THAT upset if Dustin wrestled every week and beat contenders to build to a match with Claudio instead of just throwing it out there because Claudio put out an open challenge that Dustin accepted without conceivably earning the show? You can have good matches, just have them mean something and you can cast a much wider net.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Dolfan in NYC

Dolfan in NYC

Posted
  • Author
Posted
4 minutes ago, EVA said:

Skimming people’s likes on Twitter is so lame.

Agreed, but in the screenshot above, it's a case where Twitter pushes you a tweet that someone you follow Liked.  

It's a good feature, like when you follow that hot guy who you had a good interaction with, but then suddenly find out he's liking "questioning the narrative" content, and pro-incel stuff,  and anti-trans stuff, and it's like.... oh nooooooope. 

Anyway what were we talking about...

  • Like 7
  • Sad 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Jiji

Jiji

Posted
Posted
13 minutes ago, Blue Dragon said:

Where's the Riho push? How dare ye Tony. Book Riho to pin Jon Moxley and she wins the AEW World title. 

New boom period.

AEW was more fun when Riho was champ. 

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Craig H

Craig H

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, Dolfan in NYC said:

Agreed, but in the screenshot above, it's a case where Twitter pushes you a tweet that someone you follow Liked.  

It's a good feature, like when you follow that hot guy who you had a good interaction with, but then suddenly find out he's liking "questioning the narrative" content, and pro-incel stuff,  and anti-trans stuff, and it's like.... oh nooooooope. 

Anyway what were we talking about...

Well, that got dark.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Casey

Casey

Posted
Posted
2 hours ago, Blue Dragon said:

Where's the Riho push? How dare ye Tony. Book Riho to pin Jon Moxley and she wins the AEW World title. 

New boom period.

Isn't she having visa issues supposedly?

Link to comment
Share on other sites
zendragon

zendragon

Posted
Posted
On 8/28/2022 at 8:37 AM, matt925 said:

Yes, there is still no officially advertised main event although Dave says mox vs punk is locked in. Super weird build man. 

I hope the work it like a 1975 NWA title match where Mox spends 45 minutes working a spinning toe hold also looking forward to the Meteor vs Manatee match!

  • Like 1
  • Haha 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Guest Stefanie Without Stefanie

Guest Stefanie Without Stefanie

Posted
Posted
3 hours ago, zendragon said:

I hope the work it like a 1975 NWA title match where Mox spends 45 minutes working a spinning toe hold also looking forward to the Meteor vs Manatee match!

... I wonder what Super Delfin is doing right now.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Gordlow

Gordlow

Posted
Posted (edited)
11 minutes ago, Infinit said:

 

Do you think people are going to be mad or disappointed that there hasn't been enough story to build this one up? Lucky for me, I am.somehow managing to get excited about Eddie Kingston vs Tomohiro Ishii anyway.

I wonder if they'll go full-on Kingston's Road Style again.

Edited by Gordlow
  • Like 3
  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites
(BP)

(BP)

Posted
Posted

I’m not as against Eddie going apeshit with King’s Road when he’s working with Japanese talent as some, but I think his best AEW work has been against former WWE talent where there’s a theoretical contrast in styles and card positioning that often makes magic. The AJPW stuff seems to make him happy, so if he has to get it out of his system to some extent to incorporate it in a more restrained way in other matches that’s fine. 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Guest Stefanie Without Stefanie

Guest Stefanie Without Stefanie

Posted
Posted
10 hours ago, Dolfan in NYC said:

I mean, there's also 11 matches and no main event.

Excuse me, I was led to believe that every match was a main event in any arena in the country!

Further, that they'd sell me the seat but I only need the edge!

Which sounds very uncomfortable, really, I do like the entirety of the seat. Though I guess it explains why so many people facing the hard cam side at AEW shows stand up all the time. Lots of people sitting on the edge of their seats breathing down their necks. Sheesh. Talk about invasive!

... I have no end for this bit, so I take a small curtsy.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
 Share
Go to topic listing
×
×
  • Create New...