A_K

The diminutive fake-fighters scuffling & biting each other on the set of their television show was real after all? Is the TV viewership being cut by 40% and the arena attendances being decimated the work then? These things confuse me. I'm very silly. Thanks for keeping me up to date on these things.

Would be a good angle. The winner has aura of invincibility during their next step up; the loser embarks on a mission of self-discovery and redemption.

I think the question then becomes whether that “mission statement” is an appropriate use of 2 of your 5 biggest commercial draws who do not have so many years left on their clock? So for example, would it have made sense for a teased HHH/Austin 2-man program to be cooled so that they can fool around “teaching” a few mid carders? No - you just don’t dilute your veritable top-of-the-carders (which are like hens teeth in this industry), especially before they even have a program together. Nobody has come out of that looking better. Didn’t put Moxley over anymore than he was. Certainly hasn’t put Danielson over. Claudio has been a total non event. Wheeler .. don’t even know where that guy is right now. AEW have rushed through so many things - if Punk is truly gone, it is very hard to see where they go next for the compelling storylines. This looks like major drift in the making. We shall see ..

Now no - but it was possible. They ran the direct Wardlow / MJF conflict way too soon. That program should have been capped with Wardlow defeating Spears as sub-boss, earning his freedom and moving on, then being heated up to taking the TNT Title while MJF in parallel took the World Title. Then you run a Goldberg/Hogan style super-main of champion vs champion. Instead, they heated Wardlow up with zero plan for what to do after, have let him go cold then dropped his title with no where to go. Meanwhile MJF already dropped the fall to Wardlow in comprehensive fashion. What could have been an epic top of card event down the line was fumbled too soon in the mid card. There is no compelling storyline for MJF right now as world champion. As with the Moxley/Danielson fumble after some great promo / character work with Regal, this comes back to Khan being the antithesis of a “long term booker”. All the programs that have the potential to be marquee angles for them are either hot-shotted way too soon with a wholly anticlimactic ending or simply fall by the wayside to be forgotten about and never seen again.

It was always very bizarre. Given the way it started with Danielson coming in with some heel-like qualities, and Regal running the "good child / bad child" schtick when discussing Danielson vs Moxley, the obvious way to run it was as an all-dominating 2 Man Trip putting tag and/or single titles on them both then running the break up and Danielson vs Moxley which should be strong PPV-headline stuff. Instead it devolved into some silly cartoon antics that went nowhere with a schmuck like Yuta Wheeler of all people getting the "shine" and predictably falling flat when the actual names backed off. What a waste for them. RE: the show - caught the first half up to the Baker / Saraya match. Jade/Nyla was fun. Trios match was good if a little over-choreographed at times. As ever the real test is where they actually go with the characters / stories from here on. Saw Wardlow dropped his title .. no idea what on earth that was all about. Wardlow as TNT chasing MJF as World another easy story that writes itself.

The concept of Tony Khan as a "longterm booker" is a remarkable misnomer. Was the "longterm plan" for Wardlow's MJF-led shine to be (predictably) worn off so that he would be fooling around with jobbers and bums within a matter of weeks, with zero direction recaptured since? Or that The Acclaimed were sat on for a very long time (one half of whom was suspended, even, for actually garnering a reaction as a villainous heel performing a piece of performance art on a theatrical television show) before the belts were rushed on to them ad hoc when the self-made momentum they had created could not be ignored? For Thunder Rosa's reign to drift off into inconsequential ignominy? For Page to have been jolted from the saddle? For the TV Title to have bounced around Sammy and Scorpio to the ineffectiveness of both? For "pillars" like Jack Perry and Darby to drift further and further down the card w/ more & more tepid reactions by the week? For the viewership & arena sales to both look like an axe has been taken to them? Exactly who has this "longterm booking" benefitted? Which talent have come out well on the other side? Why, 3 years later, does the debut show remain the most watched and why have approaching 50% of these viewers left the product in the interim? For the poster who notes someway above "Tony doesn't have any problems. Y'all do .. Tony books for Tony" -- this couldn't be more correct. Kudos to Tony. The mugs-game, it would seem, is in consideration that there ever was a "longterm plan" as practically every talent & storyline associated with the promotion falls further into the mire by every metric possible.

It needs Khan to step back at this point. So many bad decisions have been taken it is criminal; he clearly does not have a handle or proper perspective on this. A 40% reduction in viewership within a matter of months is criminal. Putting up 200k more viewers than NXT who televise a bunch of developmental no marks paid buttons (and 30% of Smackdown's audience) is criminal. The destruction of their live audience which was a boon for them is criminal. Every trend is pointing downwards. ROH being used as anything other than an invasionary storyline brand (which will never, and never was going to, receive a network television show of its own in this economic climate lest they destroy one of their 2 existing AEW shows for it). The ham-fisted management of the Japanese influx and complete botch of the PPV set-up and lead in. The egregious roster size -- data for which has been provided on numerous occasions which categorically show how mismanaged it is in relation to all other roster sizes for an equivalent period of television-time in American television history during whichever epoch you choose. The origination of new title belts and holders of those belts at a quite farcical track. General bungling of talent, booking management and HR (unbelievably seemingly including minor petty scuffles and altercations between non-combat performance-artists on a theatrical scripted network television show??). Other than the continually strong production values (kudos to whoever produces those, because without them this really would be looking like bush league mid 00s TNA at this point), they have got wrong every single key decision of the past 12 months. The fetishists may have ogled, but every single big creative & commercial decision they have taken over the past 12 months has taken them backwards and it was very clear at each inflection point that every decision would take them backwards. Oh hey, here's Jeff Jarrett to save the day.

Hey, you're witty bro. Working themselves into losing 40% of their TV viewership with an empty arena all within 6 months and a world champion not cognizant to what day of the week it is. That's some successful work, bro. They could use your wit too, bro. Oh wait - you are of the "ignorance is bliss" head-in-the-sand crowd who didn't see this all coming down the pipe already a year ago did you? My bad.

"Crazies". That's right mate. While they're playing to a couple of thousand silent fans in an arena with 200k more viewers than NXT (who they emptied the roster from, with those left over bottom of the barrel development talent being paid buttons) watching at home barely a year after the buzz around Chicago / Arthur Ashe on a lead in to the PPV, which their world title holder cant remember the date of. Yes, we're the "crazies" here.

The micro-management / low level detail stuff is a complete irrelevance and has been for 12 months. They have absolutely zero big picture philosophy planning or organisation to this company, and haven't for 12 months since the highlight of the first Chicago/Arthur Ashe shows. This has just been a slow-burn accident waiting to happen. Unless they spring an enormous angle-surprise at this PPV then they have legitimately ran out of steam and are going to taper further. This is all -- all -- on the guy who fancies himself a "creative" CEO (he's just a middle-management data analytics guy with a rich father). With some of the comments coming out of the camp around 4 months ago I had some faith they had seen the error of their ways and would right the ship, but this gets worse and worse. Their title holder is running around forgetting what day the PPV is on while blowing out during his promo on the go home show ffs. The live show attendances are always the first to fall; they are a leading indicator, and the TV viewership will then follow in the same trajectory.

200k more viewers than NXT for the flagship show leading into a PPV? Jesus. Resume heads in the sand, gentlemen. What a waste of talent and potential storytelling.

If emergency sirens are ringing but there's no one in the stadium to hear them, are they even ringing?

The show and company absolutely sucks. What a criminal waste of momentum and potential. A lot riding on them actually creating a meaningful angle from whatever they do at this PPV.

Morfydd Clark is absolutely awful. Blachett, while having relatively minor screen-time, was one of the defining and most triumphant performances in the original trilogy. Clark has absolutely none of her gravitas and, to be clear, the character she portrays is still intended to be thousands of years old. The show in general will probably come to be seen as symptomatic of the easy-money excesses of the past few years. Very doubtful it retains this kind of production budget for the entirety of its run.

Good stuff. So they're finally ready to start the angle. Don't blow it.

I wish it was. Instead it appears the company has been so terribly mismanaged that they have lost pivotal draws from both ends of the spectrum, are in a creative malaise with zero memorable storylines outside of the self-made Acclaimed (one of whom, lest we forget, was suspended not so long ago and they risked losing) and complete waste of numerous obvious narrative directions, and generally going absolutely nowhere new as a company. The prospect of some innovative booking involving top-bracket stars was, I think, a more enticing alternative.

They lost Cody and seemingly Punk without ever running either as top-of-the-show heels. Most pig-thick, biggest lost opportunity in the modern history of the business.

Maria Kanellis does not look 40. Good for her (& him).

Opposite. He seemed to hesitate on revealing something that may or may not be public knowledge then just said it.

?

This keeps being repeated, so I'll weigh in and say that growth-prospects were better in the pandemic than now. Advertisers were flush with cash. Networks were booming. Live events were closed but everybody had full pockets for when arenas opened again. It was an extremely difficult period, but basically no businesses were going bust such was the level of fiscal support, and they had a ton of momentum to grow out of. Now interest rates are rising and disposable incomes are getting slaughtered. Gas prices eeking back up again already .. its not a pretty big-picture economically .. the down-turn is only in its very infancy and already live attendances are noticeably down. Amidst all that, they've spurned all their momentum. I'll be really interested to see if they keep the TV ratings above 1 mil through the next month (ironically maybe more eyes on TV and not paying to go out)

Khan says he and only he writes the show. Worse .. he only writes an ‘outline’. They ran through their foundation-storylines 12-18 months ago, culminating with Page winning the title. As was apparent at the time, they clearly had no idea what to do next. They got by with the short-term dopamine hits of a host of debuts (Andrade, Punk, Danielson, Lee, Black etc) but there was obviously no foresight in booking here either as the only momentum they even vaguely capitalised on was Punk/MJF. Throw all this disorganised, short-sighted decision making into a pot, sprinkle growth-stagnation then allow to boil for a year and you get a shit show of malcontent. Won’t be a particular Cody/Punk issue .. Rhodes was the worst of them all for wanting what was best for himself. Don’t forget a lot of the founding-roster were probably just deliriously happy to have spots on tv to begin with. With all the off screen comments of “bringing reality” into the product / learning from UFC etc one may think they calculated to go one way .. but that seems to give far too much credit for the thinking. Watching that Helwani vid he looks like a really, really tired kid who still doesn’t want to share the toys or control of “his” show.

Jesus Christ. Looks like I dramatically over-estimated the creative foresight of this fellow if he genuinely just doesn't have a handle on practically anything from the top of the card to the bottom. Described him as an ADHD-Booker before; at this point particularly with this obsession for public adulation it feels like a dopamine-starved crash phase. Save your sanity and pull a writer's room together; trying to carry this all single handedly can't be healthy.

All they needed to do was pivot off the original ECW invasion of WWF in sentiment. Soft homegrown talent who only made it due to whims of billionaire while original ROH grafted for every moment of success they got. Put the AEW originals over the ROH guys in a passing of the torch with high stakes and you’ve got a nice company wide angle that’s probably worth $$$ whatever he paid for ROH.

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