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Wrestling is cool

Timeless Toni Storm is on a whole other level. Holy shit.

But, wasn't all this happening while TNA had Gail Kim vs Awesome King main eventing their show? while also having Sarita, ODB, Taylor Wilde, the Beautiful people, etc all working standard television length matches on a regular basis? For all the LOLTNA narrative over the years, they just do not get enough credit for the women's revolution. The Divas in WWE saw what was going on in TNA and it put pressure of the office to do something more with their own women.

I went a little overboard on Danielson vs Satnam:

I’ll never forget the New Year’s episode of BTE where everyone looks at their phones and then you see the phone and see the logo. I got goosebumps. It was probably the most down on wrestling I had ever been, but I loved that they took Meltzer’s bet on doing a 10k show and they did it in Chicago*. And then months later on NYD you get the AEW reveal. I got goosebumps for that. It really did feel like hope. And from that point on AEW has given me way too many good memories, far more than WWE or NJPW has given me, even if WWE gave me the biggest single memories. There are simply too many to rattle off here…but here’s some… - That Cody vs Dustin match. My god. I had tears in my eyes watching the end of that thing. - There are only two promos I remember word for word in wrestling. One of them is the Stone Cold KotR promo, the other is Eddie’s in his first AEW appearance. - Eddie’s promo against Jericho with the bottle of JD. - Eddie winning his first big one and defeating Jericho. - The Best Friends vs Santana and Ortiz Street fight. - The Halloween episode of Dynamite in their first year. - All of the post show videos from the early Dynamites. - Cody going after all of the Inner Circle and going through the crowd to get to them. - I forget the match, but it was a street fight and Santana or Ortiz opens a door and Orange Cassidy is randomly standing there. - Kenny and Page winning the titles. - Kenny and Page retaining the titles against the Bucks in what is still probably my favorite our second favorite AEW match. Certainly the best storytelling in a match AEW has had. - Page winning the title and everything that went into that, like the Bucks nodding towards Page, Page yelling IS THAT ALL YOU GOT MOTHERFUCKER?!, etc. - Stadium Stampede. All of it. - Sammy getting run over with a golf cart. - Zombie Eddie with a gas can. - Archer throwing that little shit into a fucking goal post. - The Ass Boys seemingly being the MVPs of the Covid era “crowds.” Actually, all of that Covid era felt pretty special. - Brodie destroying Cody. - All of Brodie on BTE. - The Brodie memorial show. - STIIIIIIIIING being the surprise for Winter is Coming. Never expected that. - The entire Sting run showing how you book a legend like that and giving Sting a proper send off. - Hangman vs Swerve Texas Death Match. Perfection. - Seeing that Wembley crowd. - First Dance, having tickets for it, but staying home because that was the day my wife was scheduled to go into the hospital at 7 am to try to induce her, watching First Dance on my home on the shitty hotel WiFi and using my AirPods for sound to not wake my wife up, because nothing happened that day and literally nothing happened until almost noon on Sunday. - Punk vs MJF Dog Collar Match and Punk coming out to Miseria Cantare. - The entrance the Lucha Bros. had for their tag title match against the Bucks in a steel cage. - All of that tag title match. - Cody’s promo for the first Covid Dynamite. - “He’s gonna try!” - OC beating PAC and then damn near elevating the International Title to be on the level with the World title. - The Britt vs Rosa matches. - Really, any time Britt bled. - Jamie Hayter wins the big one. - Kenny steals the title with the help of TNA’s Don Callis. - Kenny Omega, belt collector. - The surprise double debut of AmDrag and Adam Cole. - AmDrag vs Hangman 60 min time limit draw. - Ospreay’s first babyface promo. - Ospreay vs AmDrag. - Okada’s surprise appearance to setup the 4 Way at Forbidden Door. - The early days or years of the Dynamite show threads being long, saying PRO WRESTLING MOTHERFUCKERS, and then DEAN~! joining the fun and seeing what we’re all digging on. Like I said, this list could be so freaking long, but in 5 years, AEW has given me a ton to love and remember. It’s not always perfect, it’s rarely bad, it definitely could be better, but it helped make wrestling overall a better place compared to what it was before they came along. I definitely miss those early days where it had a diy feel to it, like it felt very raw, they did the absolute best with what they had, the sound production would go from being utter shit to flawless one show to the next, and so on. Even though those days are long gone, I still like what they’re doing. It’s glossier, more produced, and what not, but it still has enough of a raw feel to it and they somehow keep threading the needle.

That is why for years at shows while filming and vending I wore a Ultimo Guerrero mask. Kids would want to come by the table to see the tall guy in a mask. And usually want to buy something.

It could have been Baba!

Wayne is like Billie Starks in that he'd started really young and was already a regular on the indy circuit before signing with AEW at 18. Though if he spends the next several years in AEW and gets significantly better I'd say there's some argument there.

And the women’s pushing was largely due to Dutch. Gail was just on his show and they discussed some of the stuff mentioned above.

Gail Kim's career is very instructive in terms of how WWE treated the women, as compared to TNA. She started in WWE, having 3 minute matches and being just a pretty face. Went to TNA, was able to have 20 minute matches and main event PPVs. Went back to WWE with all of this momentum and buzz, and was immediately put back in those three minute matches. Eliminated from a Battle Royal in 5 seconds. Went back to TNA, and was straight back into the longer, better matches. So anyone who's been following her whole career, they'll tell you she's a really good wrestler who WWE wasted. Anyone who is a "WWE ONLY" lifer, they'll tell you she never had a good match in her whole career.

Sold the car and we shockingly got more than we owe on it. Suck it, Kia. That’ll be enough to put a downpayment on the next car once the deposit goes through. Short work week so the carpooling won’t be bad. I was nervous thinking we’d lose money on this and be in a tough spot again for a while. Woooo.

TNA and the independents after years of Japanese influence. WWE made it mainstream, though, but thinking they started it is like thinking Green Day started punk music.

Little kids love any wrestler that has facepaint or wears a mask. When my son was under 10, if I tried to watch any wrestling with him, he'd just get bored and zone out, unless someone in the ring was masked or painted. Then he'd be glued to it.

Co-signing the folks saying the Bellas deserve more credit. Total Divas was part of it, but as AxB said, if it wasn't for their fans getting utterly furious about the short amount of time they were getting, then they wouldn't have started #GiveDivasAChance. Also, Nikki Bella is a spectacularly underrated worker. Considering like 90% of her work is in sub-3 minute matches where you go out, hit your spots, and leave, she's got some tremendous matches. Her carrying Ronda Rousey like a suitcase is the most clear example that she's a lot better than people give her credit for, but her 2015 series against Charlotte and her 2016 series against Natalya (especially the falls count anywhere match) should be your first points to revisit if you want to see how good she actually was in the ring. If Nikki came along now instead of 15 years ago, she'd fit in perfectly. Brie, on the other hand, is at best mediocre.

She debuted in 2017, right out of high school (or maybe still in high school). So 4 years of indie experience before her AEW debut. That said, there is no doubt that her time in AEW has really helped her grow as a character and a wrestler. I think she’s had something like 100 matches since she debuted. She also benefited more than anyone from the brief house show circuit they ran, where she was working with Toni Storm. There was fancam of at least one of their matches and they were really clicking.

How much experience did Skye Blue have prior to AEW? She's really come along, in my opinion.

Having Tony Khan ostensibly bring in Tananashi, the current ace of NJPW, on Team AEW when the former ace, Okada, is on Team Elite is a great tease towards Forbidden Door.

*Gives MoeCristyV.1.6 a different hand gesture*.

For a moment I thought it would end, "... and you're watching Botchamania."

Not quite the same, but remember Andre being the Giant Machine, as if there was anyone else in the world of wrestling built like that.

The Saga of Eddie Kingston is a HUGE element for me.

I concur with Natural that Ospreay is probably winning. The only reason I can see for Roddy to escape with his title would be because Ospreay is on a rocket ship to the top, and they don't want to waste time putting a midcard title on him. The story they seem to be going with is that Black made a mistake messing with Copeland and has unleashed something he can't handle. So I doubt he's winning the match, though I suppose there are ways to make it work.

The FTW match is the only one I have zero desire to see. Gonna be a good night! Yay no work is 'Murica tomorrow!

Didn’t Anna Jay come straight from wrestling school to AEW? Hook is another I can think of. I’d say Gunns and then Julia.

When I first saw one of his videos, I genuinely thought Peck was wearing a lucha mask. Love him.

Determining "home grown" for AEW is tough since they don't have a developmental and the vast majority the wrestlers they use wrestled *somewhere* at least a time or two before joining the promotion and trained elsewhere. I'd agree the Gunns count as home grown since they had very little experience before joining AEW but the list is so small I don't know how much of a feather in their cap it is. Jade of course is the most successful but I assume you mean those still in the promotion.

Jesus H. Christ there is a lot of fucking wrestling this weekend. I was chatting on the Discord about the show as it happened, but the standout match for me was Orton vs Gunther. I know this will sound crazy, but this felt like a 90s AJPW match, minus the head dropping. Just a lot of struggling to pull off what were essentially simple moves, like a vertical suplex. What made that struggle even better was Randy’s selling. This was one of those matches where Randy was fucking on and you can see what the whole roster says about him when he’s motivated. 110% from Randy and it would have been fucking rad if late stage career Randy was what he was doing his whole career. Like, this match was damn near a 5 star match if not for Randy’s shoulder being a foot up off of the mat right in front of the ref. I get that it was the planned finish and all, but they could have just audibled to, and this was Dolfan’s suggestion, just powerbomb the shit out of Randy or half crab him, or my suggestion, stretch muffler Randy if Randy’s knee and back could take it. As it was, I’m ultimately fine with it given how great the match was. It was also another example of what Punk was doing in AEW, with doing more with less. I mean, this match was making simple suplexes and body slams, the most vanilla of moves in 2024, look devastating. Just excellent work and pacing. I also dug the shit out of Cody vs Logan. It’s worth repeating what so many others have said, but man, can you imagine how fucking good Logan would be if he did this full time? Like, Will Ospreay good probably. And Cody…the ultimate how can you not be romantic about wrestling guy. Everyone everywhere loves him. Even with the super jingoistic attire, he’s loved everywhere. There is something super cool with having this brand split where on the one hand you have a top title run that is similar to Hogan’s 80s run and another top title that is similar to modern day WWE. And to turn this into a review of WWE in general, they have similar issues, but different strengths to AEW. I think there is just way too much wrestling programming for both companies. It’s just too much to watch. The other weakness is that on the whole, I just don’t think the wrestling is consistently that good in WWE. People show out on PLEs, and that’s fine, but there’s so much that is that vanilla WWE style. Thankfully they’re building a really great roster with wrestlers like Gunther that can even break someone like Randy Orton out of his mold. And the storytelling, at least at the upper mid card and top of the card, is quite good. I was thinking about Drew’s story and how he’s being positioned to almost be the top babyface in the middle of a heel run and he’s likely going to win the title and then be a Stone Cold esque face where if it was anyone else they’d get booed but he’s so magnetic that he’s going to get massively cheered…until Punk is healthy. And then who knows what happens then. Maybe you get something like Austin and Taker’s feud heading into Summerslam where they were both faces…I think they are both faces because that was pre Ministry. And what do you even do with Gunther on the horizon for Summerslam? Like in baseball where you have so many excellent players for the same position, these are good problems to have.

Are the Gunns low key AEW’s best “homegrown” talents?

Nobody can do it like Davey Boy did ...

Toni's promo was so damn good, it completely overshadowed that Ospreay promo, which was also amazing.

Toni's promo was straight fire, holy shit. Serena's beatdown on Wednesday was good too, specifically using the shoe. Quite the double turn they pulled off over the last couple of weeks. Both women's matches have the best build for DoN.

As I said in my review of IF, they missed out. They could have a CGI young Malcolm McDowell just stare at Ryan Reynolds. What young kid wouldn't want a young Malcolm McDowell as their imaginary friend?

Toni is truly the star of the division and Willow is a great secondary champ. Tanahashi as random surprise tag partner just goes back to what I shared in my reflections on five years of AEW. House of Blood sounds pretty gnarly, actually...

More like the ghost of Starrcade 85 if you will.

So is it possible that Dominik Mysterio will be involved in a second Summerslam custody ladder match. Only this time being Rhea vs Liv

Will he be DER KAISER? Or dare I say

Card is stacked. I haven't loved the TV leading up to this but some of these feuds have had a better buildup than the last couple PPVs. AEW always delivers on PPV and with a stacked card like this it's an easy BUY for me.. I think I will go with YouTube again for the purchase.

Blood in all three matches or not?

Not exactly the topic of the thread, but I was a depressed 20-something and wrote a LiveJournal post back in 2008 about how much I could relate to the Age of the Fall in Ring of Honor at the time being outcasts and love not saving and blah blah... Well I sent it to Seth Rollins at the time, and he was cool enough to respond to my e-mail with encouraging words. Hope everyone here is doing well this weekend.

finally watched Dynamite this morning. i have a serious affinity for flamethrowers, so i marked out for Darby. that was awesome. 100% on board.

Give me that kind of absurdity any day. I have strong opinions about former WWF/WCW/WWE Champion Terry Bollea which you should PM me about. But I wanted to express them here too because I can't help myself forever, but the whole Mr. America thing was legitimately great. Edit: wonderful framistan!

Hey, if Koko can get away with being a masked Killer Bee ....

Congrats to United. They wanted it, we clearly didn't. What a wet fart to end the season. It's going to be super harsh on Ten Hag when he gets sacked.

MoeCristy just made the entire Japan board posting population do one of those rising Chunk-from-Goonies screams

GOOBLE GOBBLE ONE OF US GOOBLE GOBBLE ONE OF US WE ACCEPT YOU WE ACCEPT YOU

There is an elephant in this thread that I think we're overlooking, and that's that Tony used to post here and we knows he knows his shit and he's gonna book accordingly. That is an attraction that I think is almost subliminal in a way with us.

The Bellas did start it. Hashtag Give Divas a Chance was started by Nikki Bella and her superfans. WWE is trying to change the narrative and retroactively make the Bellas themselves the faces of the era that they fought against. Now obviously in the early 2010s, when they were green as hell but on TV every week, those three minute matches where the ring entrances took longer, that was about the limit of what the Bellas could do. But Nikki especially put in a huge amount of hard work, for year after year, to get herself in better shape and get better in the ring. And WWE kept keeping her in those 3 minute matches, even once she was good enough to carry a green opponent to a good 12 minute match. Now the NXT generation that came up after the Bellas, some of them had experience on the indies, and all of them had much stronger foundational training than the Bellas had had when they were brand new. But the idea that Paige was some super talented superworker who showed up and put Nikki to shame is nonsense. It's bizarre how Trish Stratus, who was also put on TV when she was too green to have a good TV match gets all of this credit for improving to the point that she became a really good worker, but the Bellas aren't given the same respect. Especially when the WWE in particular isn't short of having Women wrestlers out there who don't make that effort to improve (or if they do, it doesn't work). Eva Marie would probably be an obvious example. And people love to bring up Nia Jax being an unsafe worker, who would injure opponents and not seem bothered about changing up to a safer style. There's another example of a big star who isn't too safe, but mentioning her name with anything other than the most glowing praise would drive a certain overattached DVDVR poster to get all furious and indignant about it, so let's not do that. But, y'know, if you watch the Alundra Blayze vs Bull Nakano matches from 95, those were good matches that the fans were into. They weren't at the level of most of Bull's AJW matches from years earlier, but the mainstream American fans didn't know that at the time (we did; They didn't). The WWF could have had a strong women's division from that point onwards, if they'd wanted. It's not like there weren't any talented women's wrestlers in the world in 1998. But someone in the company took Medusa jumping to WCW so personally, they devalued a whole division for an entire generation. If the Sunny and Sable era had had a few good women's wrestlers mixed in, and that had driven the Attitude Era girls to become decent workers too, the perception of women's wrestling might never have needed to be corrected. But then the Attitude Era was the home of shit wrestling, so whatever.

One of my favorite things about AEW this whole time has been their willingness to bring it outsiders for fun appearances. After years of only WWE and their presentation as "no other company even exists in our timeline," it was incredibly refreshing. We got one or more random appearances from: Minoru Suzuki, Nick Gage, Matt Cardona, Maki Itoh, Jun Akiyama, Herchicero, Volador, Jeff Cobb, Tomohiro Ishii, Mistico, Juventud Guerrera, Yuji Nagata, DDP (in his last match since then!), KENTA, Warhorse, Allysin Kay, AZM, Satoshi Kojima, Gangrel, Sabu, Glacier, Haku, Eric Biscoff, Madusa, Awesome Kong, RnR Express, Jazz, Tommy Dreamer, Hurricane Helms, Big Damo, Trent Seven, Samuray del Sol, Aero Star, Kushida, MCMG, Homicide... Shit, there's more and I had to look at lot of those up... ...and fucking BRET HART introduced the World Title.

Used to be $19.99 but now that's only with the AEDub sub. I'll still take it though

I FULLY recommend getting a VPN (I use Proton VPN, which is like $50 for a year) and Triller (like $7 per month I think). Connect to UK, join Triller, and Bob's Your Uncle as my fellow Britons say. No commercials, witty commentator banter, and $20 PPVs.