NoFistsJustFlips

Yeah thought that was pretty telegraphed, but should still be good. Okada wins his block. Take wins his block. Take wins the tournament / Unified Title. Or just the Continental Title? Who the fuck knows with the scattershot way AEW books their titles. Take walking out for the main of Wrestle Kingdom (semi main because of Tanahashi?) with 4 belts would be a hell of a visual. Take winning both the G1 & the C2 in the same year, and beating Okada in the finals of the C2 would really cement him as a top act too.

Not sure if it's because I went in with such low expectations, but this show WAY over delivered. One of the best PPVs of the year I thought. Crowd unfortunately got a little tired and didn't give the last few matches 100%. But still a very good show. I did not expect Joe to win. That was a left field win for me. I assume Hook slides in as the Trios Champ now. I do not like The National Title. In concept. In execution. In design. None of it. I also thought that was the worst Casino Gauntlet they've done. A real low point for the show. I do like Ricochet getting rewarded for all of his hard work and character progression tho. But why in the world would the title design just be a straight rip off like that? Essentially makes the belt feel like a replica title for me. A very unserious move for a national wrestling company. I loved the Tag Title & TNT Title Matches. The cage match over delivered for me. Thought Mercedes & Stat had a great match. Million Dollar Trios was fun as hell. Them doing the overlapping match gimmick AGAIN was a little much. But I did like the nuance of Okada not even considering showing up for a pre show and only coming out once on PPV. Although no commentator mentioned that plot point unfortunately.

You cant blame the person doing a shitty thing for that shitty thing because of reason XYZ is a REALLY BAD take. It is 100% their fault for stealing if that's the case. No one held a gun to Gunther or the merch marketing team's heads. Could be an innocent mistake. There's a lot of unintentional overlap in ideas in wrestling. So that's certainly possible. But you advocating for someone to do a shitty thing just because someone didnt pay X amount of dollars to trademark something that shouldn't have to be trademarked is not a stance Id imagine many people agree with.

That's some Richard Arpin energy. And with that you'll be stuck with Richard Arpin draws.

As for this point, short answer yes. Long answer, yes. But not only due to that alone. I can only speak to my experiences here. But I helped out in the office for a few different promotions in my area before running something of my own. The title branding is one microcosm of a bigger coordinated effort to brand and market things a certain way. And just in my anecdotal scenario when you crafted the type of branding and actually put time into it, that stuff matters so so so much. The promotion I was part owner of kicked the shit out of anything that had ran here before. And all of that concerted effort on using terms for specific reasons, vs just doing whatever old school stuff the previous owners wanted, made huge difference. It's lots of stuff tho right. Like maybe an easier analogy. If you just grab the generic indy title of Highspots and slap your logo sticker on it, does that affect how you're seen by he fans? Versus spending the necessary money to have a custom top of the line title created for you from scratch? Like there's a lot of little tiny decisions that snowball into great selling points if you put the thought and effort into the marketing and branding. Its about positioning how you're viewed by the fans and trying to make your company as appealing as possible to as many people as possible.

I have noticed, but because I'm of the same mind as TK on this one. We omitted the word Heavyweight from our title name on purpose as well. Because weight divisions in wrestling are out dated. What happens if you want to put someone smaller over for that title? This Darby Allin sized dude is not a Heavyweight. It looks bad. You're limiting yourself and setting yourself up for failure when your small babyface gets heckled for it. Which is in contrast to the word World, which no one ever heckled or cared about (in my experience). I think it's just a generational thing. It annoys people from a prior generation but the current generation grew up only knowing it this way, so it's not that big of a deal.

Your greater point about the world today isnt lost on me lol. But its not dumbing it down. Its simplifying it. You want to draw from the largest pool of available fans possible? Dont alienate them with stuff they find weird. Telling them that the Omaha Middleweight Championship is the top title would be fine to die hards that go to every show they can big or small. But if you want people that casually know what wrestling is to understand instantly without being a barrier to entry you use the terms the widest amount of people know. Our biggest house was just over 800 paid. Not a super indy by any means. But you worked the scene in this area you know how hard 800 paid is to get.

You guys are way over thinking it. Its not about credibility. Its about ease of story telling. I ran an independent promotion. Our title was called the world title. Its as simple as anyone in the world is eligible to come to this promotion and challenge for it. Not a single fan questioned it or got pedantic that it was never defended internationally. Its an in the bubble semantics thing. By your logic the United States Title should never be defended off of US soil. But it is. World equals top. Specific region means below the top.

The truth is World being the term for the top tier title is ingrained in fans. It doesnt matter if your champion travels the world or not. You say so & so is their world champion everyone knows what you mean instantly. Getting cutesy with different branding of your top title may be more logically correct but it's gonna turn off your fan base. So why is this guy just called National champion. Why is this guy th PA Heavyweight champ. Theres no world champion in this company? Its just the easiest way to get your point across with the least amount of air time being munched up.

Was Raw live last night? I thought US events always aired live. But this one had to be filmed on a 1-hour tape delay or something. Cena's IC Title win was trending on Twitter at 630pm Easten time, an hour and a half before the show even started.

They're not banned. The NFL banned teams from distributing them to players. Players are allowed to use them if they provide them for themselves.

Yeah the Andrade situation is really weird how it played out. He got fired for wellness violations. Now with a firing there never used to be a no compete. Youre free to show up where ever because they stop paying you. I think WWE thought AEW wouldn't touch him. But AEW did. And when they did, WWE legal came calling saying not so fast. Now if you get fired for cause you sit for one year. Apparently its been in all the crantracts since a bit before the TKO merger. Totally illegal if challenged in court. Because thats not how independent contractor positions work. If I hire a plumber to fix my plumbing but fire him, he's not barred from plumbing again for one year. But I could rant on the illegal nature of workers getting fucked over in this business for daysss but I will pause it there for now lol.

You mean like all the other belts in AEW? Its a parody at this point. There are too many belts and it actively turns me off to the promotion. Titles add stakes to matches and make them feel important. Unless there's 30 belts and title matches happen all the time and it all just blurs together.

No there's a stand alone live Collision taping following B&G. Which is a weird routing call if you ask me. Should have done a double taping and stuck the Men's B&G on Collision. Could have even done a Men's Royal Rampage on Dynamite and a Women's Royal Rampage on Collision. Have they completely scrapped that concept? I mean I guess probably because there's no Rampage anymore.

Im a little surprised to see zero posts on the Ridge Holland situation. WWE & TKO are such fucking scum bags. The rule of thumb has always been if a contracted guy gets hurt you keep paying him through the recovery. They decided to let his contract expire and not pay him while he's out with a broken leg. That's scummy enough. But the latest development is Ridge posted on social media venting and not knowing how he was going to pay his mortgage, saying he felt screwed over by WWE. Those scum bags then fired him for breach of contract (there was another week or two left until the contract officially expired). Due to that he's out two more paychecks. But now is also subject to the Andrade ONE YEAR NO COMPETE because he was fired for breach. Im fucking appaled. That is a petty as fuck business decision that SHOULD be causing a ton more backlash than it has. This and Saudi and the raised prices and Triple H habitually having Trump's junk in his mouth. WWE & TKO are just big fucking scum bags.

The pop will always be louder for Sammy getting thrown off the cage through a table than anything Sammy could have done in the cage. It needs to be the agents that set those guidelines because the boys are always gonna go for whatever will get the loudest reactions. Not saying I disagree with you, I agree it would be wise to keep them in the cage at least like 75% of the time they do B&G matches. It would make that other 25% stand out that much more when they do get out and do some crazy stunt.

Blood & Guts isnt getting split up between Dynamite & Collision. They have a stand alone Colission taping the Saturday following B&G in a building far too small for the cage setup. I cant see them taping a second hour long cage match Wednesday night after Dynamite ends and inserting it into Collision either, because the you're short changing that stand alone Collision taping. It sure seems like they shifted away from the womens B&G match and if so that's a terrible decision. Death Riders / BCC have been a part of 3 B&G matches in a row now. Beyond tedious. Women's B&G would have been a lot more intriguing. Maybe they do two B&G matches. But man that's overkill on one night. Even if one only goes a half hour and you squeeze a regular match or two between the one that goes long. Just not a way to structure it well (in my opinion).

Didnt comment in last week's thread. Just so bummed about Skatt's injury. I was watching live an unfortunately focused in on him and saw the whole thing happen. It was gnarly and I almost threw up. Hopefully he's able to come back. This season is over for The Giants. Hopefully they unload some useless dead weight before the trade deadline. Slayton / Hyatt / Singletary (well probably not now that we're down an RB). Im not sure if Daboll and Schoen survive. I like both and would like to see them return. But they just dont have the right pieces in place yet and it's been 4 years now. Not sure how much more rope Mara is going to allow them.

Idk I feel a little uneasy dunking on Tua. Like AB getting hit by Burfict clearly changing his brain chemistry, feels like maybe Tua's cognitive abilities are diminished now after so many concussions. Why else would he being saying all these things you know you shouldn't be saying?

The fact he wasn't the kicker to begin with is a little baffling. I know Koo hit a rough spot and got released from The Falcons. But surely going with a proven vet, even in a slump, is a better call than an unknown that isn't any good right?

If they tuned into Collision (which aired Wednesday night from 10pm to 11pm last week) they would not have seen that match. Ohhhh burn lol. Again, not behind a paywall. Twitter is free. Facebook is free. Instagram is free. The internet is free. If you wanted to know how it ended, didnt take much effort. Anymore effort on this debate is a waste for both of us tho. Its all good. I can keep shrugging because its not a big deal to me, and you can keep clutching your pearls because it is to you. Wait whoops you said you didn't care that much. So I guess you can find Username and clutch his pearls? Sorry I dont know the procedure for second hand outrage lol.

I dont think I dismissed his option at all. I empathized with him because that happens to me a lot. The red white and blue ropes, too many belts, Elton John. I've had a lot of things that annoy the shit out of me that everyone else has no issue with. So it is what it is and it sucks he feels that way. But it's bizarre anyone is acting like a throw away tag match from a bonus ppv pre show that was announced two days out is being touted as this need to see match that had so much hype behind it. No. It didnt. It was not a "not delivering what you advertised" situation. You got to see them wrestle. If you needed to see the conclussion they showed clips on the socials. It didnt go dark with no acces to a result. I get that its annoying to people who didnt buy the ppv. But let's not act like this was some kind of dream match that had been hyped for a month or whatever. Its a random tag match thrown together two days out with little to no bearing on anything. Empathize that it annoyed him. But on the scale of importance anyone saying this is more than 1 out of 10 is deluding themselves.

I just *knew* when they missed that final extra point they were gonna lose. Will Lutz is automatic. And that defense was beyond gassed. I hate football. I guess I should be thankful they were able to score in the last two minutes. Thats a new development for The Giants. The Giants of old never would have been able to make it down the field. The core pieces are in place for a good team. But they wont progress without getting the kicker shit figured out and a better secondary / better WRs. But hey Jaxson Dart appears to be legit. Skattebo too. So its not all bad. That Dart / Skat / Leek combo next year gonna hopefully be in the mix.

I get it. Theres tons of things that grind my gears that no one else seems to care about. This is one of those things for you. Its a smart booking decision. It adds a touch of realism. The bell rang with under 3 minutes til the pre show ended. Had it ended on time, youre really short changing one of those teams. Wrestling needs less formula, and more unpredictability. No one cares that a random tag match thrown together for the pre show two days out didnt end on free TV. And doing it the other way around with a PPV match starting early really messes up the replay / VOD of the event. They cant stitch together the beginning of the PPV with the end of Tailgate Brawl. Theres contracts and language preventing all that. At that point youre stealing away from paying customers too, vs trying to convince free customers into paying customers. Makes good business sense. Makes good realism sense. I think everyone is on board with what happened but you. And I know thats a frustrating feeling, but it is what it is.

I mean its not like they woke up un a random city and just had to do the ppv there. If the commission is so strict, maybe dont run an I Quit match on this one? Or like maybe don't use a lot of props in the build up that you have no chance of using during the payoff? Seems like common sense right? Hey we cant bleed in city XYV, okay let's not do that first blood match there then. So thank you AxB thats a good explination for why it was the way it was. I just dont give them a pass for it. Self inflicted mistake. Still loved the show tho. Overall give it probably an 8 out of 10. Just ended weaker than I was hoping for.