NoFistsJustFlips

Yes! If you're not first, you're last. So if you're gonna be last, be the first last. I don't see The Giants winning another game this year. So they are as close to on the clock as you can be. Bring on the draft.

Im not against this statement. But I do want to point out, because a lot of the time it gets lost in the big picture, you can't be an underdog if you always win. There's a happy medium between Rey Mysterio's second world title run where he lost every single match, and being booked like Super Cena. But in theory if you put an underdog character over *too* much they're no longer an underdog And it rings hollow. All of this is assuming you're referring to Darby. If you're meaning Ospreay, then yeah I'm in full agreement. He's not an underdog. So a bunch of losses racked up do harm his value and aura. For awhile now I've kind of thought TK segments the roster too much. Like Darby was his TNT division "main eventer" and Ospreay is his International Title "main eventer" and Okada is his Continental "main eventer". Mox is his world title "main eventer". That it's a conscious decision to spread his tippy top guys out by division to give every division a top of the card ace to hold it down. And if that is how he views the roster, he's doing himself a big disservice. Because Ospreay is now considerably less over than he was 6 months ago. A very common occurrence in AEW. People come in hot or get hot and they piddle around too much without being given anything of substance to work with.

Excuse me. Don't "we" this, you out on that island all alone my man lol. Darby vs Ospreay was so good. That's the exact type of match that is my shit. Well done sequences that look impossible to pull off with lots of counters. I will scream until I am blue in the face that this show is formatted too rigidly and it hurts the flow of the shows. It's literally ALWAYS 6 matches. And they literally ALL go to a commercial break. Makes for easy DVR fast forwarding. Mix up the amount of matches you do. Mix up the match lengths. Make it more spontaneous feeling. It's too samey every single week.

Didn't get a chance to comment but I am in the minority and kinda confused by the layout of SNME. They ran it like a PPV and not like the SNME of old. 5 matches straight through. No promos or angle advancement. The original SNME was big on promos and angle advancement. A bit surprised because in theory you're on NBC and should be playing to a more casual audience. I did enjoy the visual difference of this show vs the normal TV. They did a good job making it seem special and different. Just a missed opportunity to have some good promos and a big angle. (I know they did one off air, not the same).

The Wardlow slander in this thread lol. It's the booking that failed Wardlow, not the performer. Agents have certainly made him downshift from what he's capable of as well. It's like Hogan telling The Giant to stop hitting Missel Dropkicks and kip ups and start doing more nerve holds like Andre. Everyone is entitled to like / dislike whatever performer they want. But if they take the shackles off of Wardlow he can heat up real quick and get over again.

Right. Ospreay & Swerve both should be involved in this. If it's the existential threat to AEW it's supposed to be, why are all of the team AEW guys not giving a shit? That's one big reason it's not hitting for me. It's this big over arching story where there's this evil trying to tear down what the company is. And what they're telling us isn't matching what they're showing us. Sometimes the booking is just way too rigid and compartmentalized to make any sense.

There's not a lot that makes sense to me with the Mox angle if you think about it for more than 5 mins. So you have Me Rah Rah Restore The Feeling I Am The Feeling Ospreay just completely ignoring Death Riders "ruining" AEW? You got Private Party who had an issue with them and they just stop caring once they win the tag titles? You have Kyle ORiely in the same group as OC but not being interested in running in to save him? It feels like the plan TK wanted was Bryan to Darby. But Bryan and Mox are like no wait we have this idea that will make him a bigger star in the long run. A long chase against a heated up heel for him to vanquish. And it's just not working. We'll at least for me, I realize some people are into it. Darby over Bryan in Washington state would have done a hell of a lot more for him than Darby over Mox 6 months down the line maybe in Austrailia. For my tastes I wish they would just scrap Darby's title run here. Let him win the CC and run with that title for a minute and reposition him for a world title later. I'd go with Jay White up. Scrap this Death Rider's shit. Christian cashes in and takes it from Jay. You do Christian vs Jay on top of Austrailia. Jay gets it back. Bang Bang do a beat down. Cope with the save. Bang bang vs FTR & Cope & Christian. Leads to FTR vs Cope & Christian at All In. Jay White hangs on to the title til he drops it to Ospreay at All In. But I'm sure we'll get the Mo death grip to Darby who will drop it quick and it'll all end up being pointless.

The thing is Fenix snapped his arm in half during a TLC match in AEW. It's crazy to me that instead of doing all you can to support someone who had such an intense injury, you tack on injury time to punish him for it. That's counter intuitive to me.

When WWE stuck Brodie Lee in catering and wouldn't release him, how many people hated that? When he finally got to AEW and reinvented himself how many people loved that? When he passed too young how many people were angry with WWE wasting a chunk of this man's professional career (and making him restless and unhappy in his personal life for what little time he had left)? Basically it is straight bullshit to ice anyone out. Use them, or if you don't want to use them let them go. That's a standard level of professionalism I expect from WWE, AEW, TNA, New Japan, MLW, fucking whoever. If you don't want someone and they want to go, let them fucking go. Fuck TK on this one. He was beating the drum railing against these kinda practices when it was Vince doing them. How come it's okay for him to do it? Quit adding injury time. That's some shady ass bullshit too. Again that goes for all companies. If major sports can't even pull that off how tf you think a worked sport can? You sign someone for a duration. It's how the cookie crumbles if they get hurt during it. And if I were offered a deal with language like that in it I wouldn't sign it. If AEW wants to start earning fan good will back, being a heartless corporate type dude isn't the way. Be the compassionate guy. Be the one people love and respect for always going above and beyond to treat the talent with the most professionalism possible. I don't see why anyone would sign with AEW these days with the current way you get treated if you get on the outs with him.

Yeah I was gonna say tickets didn't move in as high of quantity after that match was announced as they had been before. But that's not due to the match being announced. That's due to them nearing capacity already by that point and not as many tickets left to be sold. That's some agenda twisting of the facts. It's not like they announced the match in July and people stopped buying tickets. Tickets were nearly gone by the time the match was announced. So not a true data point.

I would just like to tag onto Gordi's post that AEW is very much like 2014 WWE right now. Stale. Going with stories no one wants on top. Not going with the hot hand. Repetitive booking and repetitive tv formula. Despite having a great roster full of talent. AEW was created to be the alternative to that. And now 5 years in, it's become who *they* are.

My guess is Cena wins The Rumble and you run Cena vs Cody for the title. That's a big money match if you aren't doing Cody vs The Rock. Even if The Rock is available, I'd put him with Roman. I kind of don't know who Roman & Cody will work otherwise? I guess one could work Punk. But Punk seems pretty certain to work Rollins this year. Probably with one of them getting the World Title off of Gunther first making it The World Title Match. But yeah, Cena beats Cody and gets that record 17th reign. Defends it all year until Cody is the one selected for his last match and Cidy beats him in the last match to retire him and get the title back in time for next year's Mania season.

In what sense? Selling tv ads are what the network paying them wants to be able to do. 1 million views on social don't keep their primary business partner and the ones funding the gravy train happy. It's a nice bonus. But raising consistant viewership is more important to AEW's overall health than having as many eyeballs on social see clips of a match or a promo. ETA: After re-reading I think I might have misunderstood the context. I thought you were saying they should say screw viewership and lean into getting as many social views as possible instead. Is that a wrong interpretation?

That's their deal. Best Friends always referred to each other that way. On social media and on TV. Dustin & Greg. It's not him trying to name drop shoot names he's just riffing on the deal they already do.

I hope Max & Netflix both report viewership in some way. Not too optimistic about them doing so tho. Probably just sporadic press releases when there's something they want to be known.

I think they've hit a point where the brand has a stink to it. (I know that sounds harsh. I still enjoy a lot of what they're doing but this is the best way to put it). They've done enough things that people don't like for long enough that what AEW is... is just not what a lot of people enjoy. I'd also throw in a little of WWE getting hot hurting them in. In 2019 they were the alternative to a tired Vince run company. In 2024 they're more Vince like than WWE is. WWE production has improved. Their storytelling is better. Their attendance. Everything. And then your top story is annoying people. Your booking style is annoying people. The over saturation is annoying people. It's just inertia. So much negative momentum steam rolling for so long has burned people out. There's no magic bullet to get their mojo back either. Once people check out it's reallllyyyyyy hard to get them back.

Its a title to only be defended on Dynamite because Dynamite is also called TNT? Lol The TBS title is only for people with IBS? Why does ROH, who doesn't have TV, have two TV Titles? The AEW title situation is so sloppy. It drives me OCD nuts. Only gonna get worse because you just knowwww they're gonna add a Max Title once they start streaming.

I'd much rather watch Jack Pery vs Luchasaurus than Jack Perry vs Daniel Garcia. As the PPV showed those two didn't gel very well, whereas the big man can toss him around and Perry could pinball for him and get creative comebacks based around sticking and moving. No sneaky arguments. No unpicking (unpacking?). Moving on because we've hit an impasse here, I have always head cannoned my own rational for World Titles. Sure one way to interpret it is that you have to go around the World defending the title to make it a world title. But in another sense isn't it still a World Title if you allow anyone in the world to challenge for it? Just like you could say only people from North America can Challenge for a North American title / only a Cruiserweight can challenge for the Cruiserweight title. I understand it's not the accepted definition. But to me it makes just as much sense if an indy used that as a rationale to call their title a World Title. And as Nikita pointed out above, AEW doesn't even use the Heavyweight qualifier with their title. Because weight classes are outdated in pro wrestling. Boom roasted lol.

AEW is bad at things, so instead of allowing for the fact they can get better at them if they work hard enough you just blow it all up for a new system? An unproven system. That seems really rash. I do agree with being a lesser than WWE isn't going to gain them ground. Being different than is. The only time a promotion has pulled ahead of WWE and become number one, it's because their stories *were better* than WWE's. But their presentation was vastly different than WWE's as well tho. The nWo stuff was miles & miles better than fake sexual assault accusations by Bulldog's wife to HBK. Cruiserweights were miles better than TL Hopper & Aldo Montoya. Etc. A world without HBK vs Undertaker matches was an obvious catch all for that style of match. Plug in whoever and the point is the same. Small pinball man vs giant monster man are some of the most entertaining match styles in wrestling. Taking that away is in no way addition by subtraction. It's subtraction by subtraction. Essentially you're positioning that your idea is better than what's established because it's new and different. Battledome was new and different. That Matrats trampoline wrestling was new and different. New and different doesn't automatically mean good. We'll never know for sure unless someone tries it. But I don't think the mental math adds up for anyone out there being willing to try it because it limits you to a niche of a niche instead of trying to draw from the whole available pool.

Intra-contininetal would mean you only defend it against people inside your own continent. Inter-continental would mean you only defend against people from outside your continent. So not quite synonymous with World, slightly more gimmicky. The champion would defend it only against people from any continent but their own... if you went with the literal definition.

I think secondary titles make sense in the sense that (in kayfabe) you can demand more money at contract time with more accolades. Like when Lamar Jackson is negotiating his contract, sure he hasn't won a Super Bowl, but he has been an MVP. So he's going to be able to ask for more with that accolade to show. He wants to win a Super Bowl but that's really hard. Here's a something you can point to that adds value to the resume that commands you more money. That's all mostly left unsaid with a dash of head canon. It should be said more often on commentary to give purpose to those secondary titles. But essentially it's like a passing title or a rushing title or MVP in football. It's not the ultimate goal but it's a nice step to show progress and worth.

I didn't realized that, thanks for coloring in how they do it. Essentially with the CMLL structure you still have all your storytelling options open for all but title matches. In that case it seems like a lateral move at best. You're just renaming a bunch of titles and limiting who can challenge for them. Is having Takeshita be a Welterweight Champion and only being able to defend against guys the same weight better than him being an International Champion and being able to defend against anyone? I don't really see a benefit. Legitimacy? Does it really add much legitimiacy when you have dudes fighting with their hands in their pockets? Less title matches? That may be a benefit to some I guess. Just don't see any reason why it'd be any better of a system than what's already established. I'm open to hearing arguments to it. Sell me on it. How is it any better? What are the benefits? (To the OP of the idea not directed ar you specifically).

Weight classes wouldn't work in the US. US wrestling is story telling and soap opera. Not simulated sport. UFC exists. Boxing exists. Why do we need a version of that with fake outcomes? It's storytelling using simulated combat. But it's really *just* storytelling at its core. Amd one of the most time honored stories is big man vs little man. You lose all of those. A world with no Shawn Michael's vs Undertaker matches is not a world I want to live in. No more squash matches & size desrepencies is boring. Like you can get away with having a single weight class that's segmented. But you wouldn't get away with keeping them separated entirely. Just seems like you're taking a lot of tools out of the tool box and artificial handcuffing yourself. And to what end? You're not going to get combat sports fan to watch. They don't want story. They want real fights.

I'm still calling shenanigans to get The Rock with the heels. I could end up being totally wrong of course. But Punk has some storyline thread. He makes sense due to the Heyman connection. Bronson Reed makes zero sense and has no story thread to connect him here. Rollins fucks Bronson up and takes him out when he's supposed to enter last. People think it's 5 on 4 now. They let a few minutes pass. Rock's music hits. He's the final entrant and pins Roman.

Spot was supposed to be skin the cat, headscissors Fletcher over, Ospreay in one smooth motion catches him as he comes over and drops to his feet in perfect position to hit a Tombstone on the floor. High degree of difficulty and they slipped and had to do a new setup. But was always going to be a Tombstone while standing on the floor.