NoFistsJustFlips

I know you said this in jest but it's kind of true. AEW lost face as a brand. The stink of handling the situation poorly stayed with people and I do think it was a lot of people's jump off point to get out. They just really haven't gained any momentum since. So it's not like 'Punk bad' and that's why AEW is doing bad. It's more like 'the Punk debacle was soooo bad' people gave up on AEW.

Hangman vs Omega, Hangman vs Ospreay, Hangman vs Jay White, Hangman vs MJF, Hangman vs Swerve, Hangman vs Lashley, Hangman vs Darby, Hangman vs Kyle Fletcher, Hangman vs Okada, Hangman vs Mortos, Hangman vs Ricochet. I could keep going. But literally every match there sounds dope. I'm on board with Hangman as the ace. The world title shouldn't just be 1 of 5 equal divisions. It's should be THE division. Quit segmenting the roster so much. Put the belt on someone the audience loves and let him kick some ass with the best of the best.

Posts like this add what exactly? What is idiotic about it? Just because it's something you don't care about? Then skip over the discussion. The conversation has moved past it.

Arpin's ropes were so god damn crooked and janky it was a 16 that felt like a 14. I'm a small guy and even I felt claustrophobic in his ring. By far the stiffest rings I ever worked in were the Global Force / TNA six sided ones. That hexagon frame locked those beams into place with no movement at all. I did a Danielson style flatback missle dropkick off the top in the GFW ring and wanted to roll out of the ring, walk out the building, and get the fuck out of the business it was so rough lol.

I did notice him holding his ankle but I thought he was just selling. If it does happen to be an injury I await people hand waiving it away because other people have worked in that ring and not hurt their ankles before. So it can't be the ring.

Rocky Reynold's ring was exactly like the top diagram. The frame was wood. The cross beams were the normal metal, but instead of the planks it had 8 plywood boards that got screwed in with a drill. And it had the sping underneath. He bought it from Richard Aprin and the bump in it sucked. It was stiff and literally almost no sound emanated from it because of the wood frame. This ring and Arpin's Tri State ring are the only two I've ever seen that had the spring under and the plywood on top instead of the planks. Arpin's had a metal frame so at least made some noise.

It did tho. Takeshita is a big dude. Him and Kenny's heights combined are about 12 feet. So the mental positioning math you do in your head causes you to mistime your jump. I promise you the reason they botched is because he was second guessing if there was enough space to get over and not hit the ropes. In a 20 he knows there's room going from center. In an 18 he was doing the mental math to make sure and jumped late. Sometimes this place is a real fucking drag. Me & Niners were having a civil discussion, disagreeing but like not name calling or shit talking each other. Then you just get a dickhead drive by calling people smart marks. Fuck out of here with that. If I'm wrong here, I'm wrong. And from what QT has said, I'm wrong. It's not the end of the world. But as Stefani said, there's a bigger picture here than just my obsession with the spacing. It's super low rent. If you're the number two wrestling company in the world, why are you pulling these carny tactics to save a few bucks? And I don't like the sentiment that this is some Twitter troll take. It's really not. From a safety and quality control aspect its really important. If you don't agree with that, fine. But you can't just dismiss every opinion you don't like as a toxic Twitter take. Especially when there's rational and worthwhile discussion surrounding it.

I didn't think there'd be so much push back on this. Just because people have wrestled in other rings before doesn't mean it can't throw them off. An NFL player practices and plays on a field that is 20 yards wide. All their routes, practice, and muscle memory are set to that. If you put them on a 16 yard wide field, it's gonna throw off the rhythm of the routes and the placement of certain things. Take Omega for example. He's worked in all kinds of rings I'm sure. But for at least 6 years now he's exclusively worked in a certain sized ring, 20x20. Because NJPW is also a 20. His movements and amount of steps (yes that's a thing) are muscle memory to a certain amount. It's second nature at this point. Just really cheap of AEW to throw all that off just because. No one got hurt, but there was a bad botch. No. AEW hasnt. Repeating a false statement over and over doesn't make it true.

I dont work there so I can't tell you for a 100% fact, but I was under the assumption they made the cage bigger upon the request of the women. Not the ring being smaller. As someone who worked for 20 years, ring size is something I notice right away. And there's been no show I've ever seen that AEW has used a smaller ring outside of last night. They had their ring for both London All Ins so that's not true. AEW rings are distinct to people familiar with rings because they have a custom highspots style ring they modified in house. Again there was a video about it all back in the day. But All In definitely had their normal ring and normal video board apron they have custom built to their ring specifications.

Two FEET bigger on each side, not inches. Meaning 16 square feet more. 2x2x2x2. And yes. It's a super minor league thing. Fucking dying days WCW could handle getting their equipment to Austrailia in 2000. The smaller ring directly affected things. It was directly responsible for the reverse rana botch. When? They've always had 20x20 and to my knowledge have never used a smaller ring for any televised event. Even way back in the 2019 road to videos the Bucks & Cody explained the decision. Because WCW & ECW were always 18 footers and the talking point was WWE uses 20 we're gonna use 20 because we're just as big time.

Man to add to my AEW not being hot point, I just saw the current All In ticket sales. You're in a 45k seat baseball stadium and you've sold 11,500 tickets. Sure we're 4 months away. But tickets have been on sale for 3 months now. All that TV money to make them profitable doesn't matter if no one wants to come see your shows. (No one is an exaggeration. 11k is still a lot of people. But they're in a damn stadium. Will they have to move this like Grand Slam??)

I'm really curious to thr logistical reasons they had to use an 18 foot ring for this one vs the 20 foot ring they normally use. Takeshita & Omega botched that reverse rana purely because of spacing issues. The smaller ting might not be a thing that every fan recognizes immediately, but for those that do it's pretty jarring. Odd to see a major national promotion using someone else's ring. It was a solid episode of TV. But man I'd be mad I paid epic stadium ppv prices for tickets to get switched over into just a Collision episode. That crowd was great for the event. But man those videos of them booing TK have got to sting lol. Thought Harley was able to hang with Mercedes pretty well. She's certainly gained respect in my book for putting the work in and rising above what I thought her ceiling was going to be. Can we get Mercedes vs Athena already please? Mariah May was over as a baby face. This heel run kinda turned into the shits. She wasn't over. Her matches weren't great. She was an after thought as champion. Just a swing and a miss all around. Maybe a baby face turn and mixing it up with Athena (who takes the TBS off of Mercedes) would be a good direction for her. Move Mercedes up already. I don't understand these RVD TV Title reigns TK does. The world title is for your top stars. Not slumming it with the secondary titles. (Mercedes, Athena, Ospreay, Okada, etc). Enjoyable show. But AEW still feels so far away from something hot that it doesn't matter how good the show was. The vibes are off and we need to shift gears and try new people on top and try new tv & booking formulas out in my opinion.

Season finale... Very much looking forward to Resurrection. Think that comes out in June or July.

I still hate the tush push and think it should be rule an illegal play.

And the bullshit calls have begunnnnnnn

You don't book a stadium show for an episode of Collision. They used Grand Slam as a name because I believe the original building was also a tennis stadium. So that's the connection. It was always called Grand Slam Australia. Whereas the tv show has always been called Dynamite Grand Slam / Rampage Grand Slam / Collision Grand Slam. If it was always envisioned as a TV show, why wouldn't they use the TV show name in there as they always have? Grand Slam Collision: Australia or something like that is more in line with their normal naming conventions. I think the building change pivot caused a pivot on the style of show they planned on presenting. Let me tell you those ticket prices sure were PPV prices. With Warner being flexible they probably just said instead of being pre-empted can we do this taped show and put it on after.

Eli not making the HOF is a bummer. I understand the specialness of getting in your first year of eligibility and how he doesn't really fit in that tippy top elite category. But it still bums me out. He deserves to be in tho. And I hope it comes next year. There's literally only 6 players ever that have been Super Bowl MVP more than once. And he's one of them. (Maholmes, Montana, Brady, Eli, Terry Bradshaw, Bart Star). That alone should be enough. But he also had a ton of passing yards. The iron man award for starts for the longest time. Beating the unbeatable Patriots in their undefeated year. And doing it all with bad OL play and a rotation of middle of the road receivers. You have to factor in the totality of his high end output even if the numbers alone don't scream best of the best.

Episode 9...

He already has. Usos vs Sami & KO closed out Night 1 for 39. But I get what you mean and I agree. No way does Jey vs Gunther end a night. I expect them to be on whatever night is headlined by Punk vs Roman. Roman gets to 10 WM main events, and Punk can have that one he's been longing for. I thought the men's Rumble was pretty solid. But agree with everyone saying the musics are too generic and you couldn't see the entrance screens. Speaking of production stuff, I don't mind the ticker at the bottom of the screen but it was way too big. There was a bottom border that took up 30% of the graphic that showed nothing and was entirely pointless. Shift it down and shrink the font a bit and wouldn't have been so obtrusive.

Episode 8 thoughts (and what it means for Season 1 of the OG show)...

Official Rumble Match predictions: Men's winner Cena. Ironman Logan Paul. Most eliminations Jacob Fatu. Surprise entrants: Oba Femi, Matt Cardona, Papa Shango. Women's winner Jordynn Grace. Ironman Jordynn Grace. Most eliminations Jordynn Grace. Surprise entrants: Jordynn Grace, Gulia, Stephanie Vanquer.

Eh, I kind of understand it. Promotion works. The more time you have to promote something, the more people know about it. Promoting normal Toni vs Mariah probably doesn't carry as much weight as promoting Timeless Toni getting her revenge on Mariah. So they wanted a few weeks of getting the word out for the more appealing story. It makes sense and may get a few more people interested in checking out the show.

So anyone have any idea why that controversial 4th down spot wasn't measured? They didn't measure originally, they didn't measure after the call stood. Isn't the normal procedure to measure when its close to make sure? Not just decide we don't think he got there. Its very odd the 3rd down play that was close wasn't measure then kind of outrageous that the 4th down wasn't measured either.

I so don't remember FTR & Garcia vs HOB at all lol. Missing Malakai vs Cope where Cope broke the leg

I dont want another Eagles Chiefs Super Bowl. I don't even wanna hate watch that shit. I'll hope for a Barkley win but fuck both of them.