For Great Justice

I actually like the new Arn format as a month by month retrospective of his career, but yeah the “Conrad lazily reads the Observer while [SUBJECT] provides anecdotes” format gets very old very fast. It’s all the ESPN First Take of podcasting.

Tony Khan’s big announcements always crack me up in their lack of bigness. I guess it’s because we largely envision TK as “one of us” and maybe “above” carny promoter shit in some way, but dude totally pulls out the carny promoter bullshit from time to time. This isn’t even a criticism - it’s great. He’s a promoter after all.

Strap the rocket to Bron. He needs to go over Ciampa clean as a sheet with the recliner in three weeks.

Well in this particular case the Henry promo is a clear out as “well I guess I’ll win the match” Which reminds me of “he’s gonna TRY!” And man, someone called Best Friends + OC the mascots of AEW a few weeks ago and that’s spot on. If this were 2002 and I was making a Best Of AEW comp they’d be all over it. The heart and soul of the whole thing.

I know the current champ is a heel but Andrade really needs the win in that ladder match next week, and it would be just the thing to help him break through that same early run rut that Miro had. Having him have that title shot in his back pocket for a few weeks, interrupting Elite promos backstage doing his shtick and fixing people’s collars and shit. Though they’ve really backed themselves in a corner now if the Joker ISN’T Hangman, which means it very likely is him / he wins. Like if it’s RVD or whatever ol dude is gonna get Rey Mysterio Rumbled.

OC during the Henry segment and Cutler’s stooge game being particularly on point were my highlights tonight

Bron will be an awesome NA champ

I rewatched Loki over the past few days and it dawned on me that by the end of the series the dude is totally 1995 Ric Flair. Like, he's this classic villain that turned babyface without ever officially turning babyface in a "you love to hate him" kind of way, but you know damn well that when the chips are down and Thor is looking for the hot tag near the end of Phase 4, Loki is going to chop block the shit out of him at Fall Brawl.

This show definitely reminds me of Fringe. Monster of the week to start out, forming a cohesive narrative toward the end. With a supernatural theme, and with The Observer / The Watcher as the lynchpin.

Broke out into belly laughs at 3 or 4 random times yesterday because of Arn and his damn glock AEW continues to bring me joy

That feeling when you realize you are older than 36 year old Paul Heyman was in that picture

How’s it not called “Title Chase”

Yeah man MJF is to promos what Lance Storm and Christopher Daniels are to wrestling moves. In the same way those two guys have 10.0 perfect move execution but nothing connects with the audience, the physical means by which the words come out of MJF’s mouth sound good but his “promos” are absolute hot garbage, cheap and embarrassing for AEW to air. He sounds good though!

MJF, man. Awful. The analogy to me is like a body guy who looks like a million bucks but can’t work, MJF can talk like a million bucks but can’t cut a promo.

Not gonna lie I kind of want Pissed Off God Mode Miro to dominantly win the ladder match next week and then walk to the ring to confront Kenny after the Elite win the tag main event via shenanigans, just for the ‘oh shit’ reaction of it all

Miro is Thanos. Congratulations on the 1/14m win, Sammy, but Miro is inevitable. He’s perma-over as either or heel or face and is going to be the guy that beats Hangman for the world title. How good are they doing with the TNT title? Both Darby and Miro have wound up far greater than they started. Exactly what that title is supposed to do. Hope the same happens for Sammy.

It’s past time we start talking about Sheamus as the best TV match guy of his generation, like Christian and Goldust before him. Months and months of consistent bangers with everyone.

You know after all this time I still think the parking lot brawl might be my personal favorite AEW match. It just captures the joy that is at the heart of the promotion that is so unique and fun to watch.

Was it weird to anyone else that Inner Circle members were in three different segments, two of them beat downs, and there was no save or mention of a save? On a show where good guys always run in to save other good guys like 1983 Mid South, it’s strange to me.

Fordham’s gym holds 3500 and has a classic college basketball vibe that would look very cool on TV, if you wanted something different and likely cheaper in NYC to host a more low key Dynamite But yeah, NYC obviously has a ton of small theatres and several large stadiums, but that 15-20k area has limited options.

6 years!

Update: to put theory into practice, I just created a simple Excel macro to do exactly this (aew_seal_balls.xlsx) and pressed run, which resulted in the following: Danielson / Andrade Punk / MJF Allin / Cole Hangman / Hobbs Mox / Pac Jericho / Page Christian / Miro Jungle Boy / Starks Kingston / Omega OC / Black That rules! It all rules! Everyone is over!

There are so many great matches in the hopper for this company. If you lined up your top babyface and your top heel depth charts 1-10 (and ignored the Codyverse) with something like: Danielson, Punk, Allin, Hangman, Mox, Jericho, Christian, Jungle Boy, Kingston, OC Omega, Miro, Black, Cole, MJF, Andrade, Pac, Starks, Hobbs, E Page That’s 10+9+….= 55 different potential feuds / matches, of which we’ve seen, by my math, about 20 of so far (with many of those being one off’s rather than true feuds) So not only could they not sign anyone, they could not even *turn* anyone and they have 3 years of material in them at their current burn rate. And I see very few potential stinkers in those 55. They aren’t going anywhere and are built to last, is what I guess I’m saying, and maybe why this feels so different than WWE. I suspect the WWE version of this has far more entropy.

Was thinking about something. Kenny Omega is the first guy with zero current or prior WWE connection to draw 20k in a stadium in the US since….Goldberg?