[NFL 2021 - WEEK 2]

That early roughing the passer call (while I understand the landing with weight rule) was still pretty ticky tacky.

But I feel no remorse as they immediately gave them a make up no call when Jones took a suplex city german on the last drive and... nothing.

[Dynamite - 9/15/2021]

15 minutes ago, LoneWolf&Subs said:

Speaking of face paint. What happened to that rubbery face paint Sting, and Warrior used? Was it too dangerous to use, so they started using the smuggy one?

Grease paint comes of with a wipe, as seen on TV last night. The acrylic paint needs to be peeled off. So it's probably just for ease of use. 10 seconds in the showers the grease paint is off. Takes 5-10 minutes while looking in a mirror to peel off acrylic. And even still, you're bound to miss a few spots. Acrylic looks way better, but when your main goal is to get the hell out of an arena you can't beat the quickness of the grease paint.

[Dynamite - 9/15/2021]

1 hour ago, Greggulator said:

I just hope that I've been granted permission to watch AEW by my overlords who will look the other way from my ignorance about the history of the usage of the Tiger Driver as a finishing hold since 2013.

You are a real life Vacation Jason lol. I do hope you enjoy the show tonight tho.

But I also hope you dial back your talking down to people like the post above. Condescension will get you nowhere.

[September 2021 Wrestling Discussion]

My guess, Rechsteiner sounds too much like Rex Steiner. They decided to change it so if he leaves he can't sow up somewhere as Rechsteiner (one word) that sounds exactly like Rex Steiner. Of coarse now if he leaves he can be Bron Steiner since Bron is his legal first name. Bron Steiner isn't similar enough to sound like Bron Breakker. But this is them over thinking themselves into a shoot.

[Rampage - 9/10/2021]

1 hour ago, NikoBaltimore said:

I just hope with the move to TBS it allows Rampage to be on at either 8 or 9 instead of 10.  That would selfishly allow us to watch it live without having to wait the next day.  And I think there's been some pretty good matchups but it'd help if they build up feuds on Dark and/or Elevation with the big match being on Rampage.  For example the Swole/Diamante feud that's been going a couple months.  Do a promo reel on Dynamite to hype it up and that would hopefully help build enough interest for their Rampage.

Don't think they are ready or willing to go head to head with Smackdown at this point. So would scale back that hope a bit lol.

[Dynamite - 9/8/2021]

2 hours ago, Stefanie the Human said:

I'm not Burgundy, but I can tell you that for as much as AEW is touted as a progressive company, I get heavily annoyed at their lackluster women's booking. One women's match per show if we're lucky, usually in the same exact segment slot on the show, is not acceptable. (I can't remember if I read that here or not, but I do remember thinking it was strange that the women went on at almost the same exact point every show for weeks at a time). I know part of that was because they were reliant on non-American talent and the pandemic did them no favors, but they've had 18 months to correct that.

The last five Dynamites have had five to six matches, and one of them has been a women's match. With one exception, that women's match is either the shortest or second shortest match of the show. The longest women's match on Dynamite in the last five weeks has been 8:29 (Tay Conti vs Penelope Ford, on 9/1), and that was the exception I mentioned earlier. I have no idea how you can expect your women's division to grow and shine when the most time they're expected to get is 8:29 of match time at most on a two hour show, plus maybe Britt Baker doing her thing.

(I guess on Dark or Elevation? Yay?)

The other thing is that again... for a progressive company, all their top men's singles wrestlers are lily white (or, depending on how sloppily they apply their spray tan, orange). And it's not because there aren't good non-white men's wrestlers out there. They just signed Lee Moriarty. That's great. But why is Powerhouse Hobbs just now starting to get pushed? Why hasn't someone like Arik Royal gotten a look? Why is O'Shay Edwards just now getting a look by Ring of Honor? Why hasn't AJ Gray been given a look?

AEW does a lot of things good, but just off the top of my head, that's two pretty major criticisms that can and should be addressed.

These are all criticisms I agree with. I have been annoyed in previous threads about how rigid they have been with the structure. They have done either 5 or 6 matches on every Dynamite for the whole year. Of those 5 matches a week one is a women's match. And 80% of the time that women's segment happens at the 9:30 "cool down before the main event" slot. That's something they can do better on. Especial when a bunch of the women are so over. Britt, Statlander, Ruby, Jade may be green but she's way over, Rosa, Anna & Tay. The strict no more than 6 match structure is also a hindrance. Switch it up sometimes. Go light on pre tapes and throw in an extra match or two. Would help to get more women on.

Also agree on the lack of diversity. They have some good Latino representation hoovering around the top (Lucha Bros & Andrade). But they need to get some more people of color into the mix. Hobbs is a good start, a program with Punk will raise his stock. But again they can do better.

[Dynamite - 9/8/2021]

3 hours ago, Greggulator said:

But, in all honesty, the number one thing that's going to sour me on the programming are Comic Shop Guys about all of this who can't believe that I -- a person who did not watch All Out and who does not follow Japanese wrestling -- would want to see about 15 seconds worth of screen time to show me why this guy was a big deal, and why it was a big deal for Jon Moxley (who I do know) to face him.

Is it weird that we essentially see each other as the same thing? From my perspective you're the comic book guy from the Simpsons ragging on us all because we're reading something obscure thing that doesn't fit the literary structure you get from the mainstream big name comics.

I'm going to scale back my engagement in this because I think we can all agree that the argument has been warped into weird new stuff on all sides. I will leave my final thoughts as this : I don't think it's preposterous to show a 30 second promo or video to show who a new guy is. There is a happy medium between showing nothing and over explaining. But it does strike a note with me when someone says it would have been better if they had done "this" on a show where they literally did "this". And then to turn it from a constructive disagreement about the show we watched to toxic fandom and stuff because people disagree with you.
 

4 hours ago, Burgundy LaRue said:

My opinion doesn't exactly correspond with the majority, and I don't need to be told how stupid I am for that. I've done the constant arguments on the board before, and I'm pretty sure I took several years off my life for it.

But--in my opinion--they stink on other things. Pretty much like every other wrestling or sports entertainment company.

I can understand if you don't want to go into specifics. But I'm curious to hear the things that they stink at from your perspective. Our tastes don't always line up but you're a poster I enjoy seeing the opinion of. Even if we don't agree I generally understand your points. So it would be nice to see what you think they can improve on. But again I get it if you don't wanna get into specifics.

[Dynamite - 9/8/2021]

3 minutes ago, John from Cincinnati said:

This kind of response to a small minority criticism of AEW's presentation seems disproportionate. I wonder why some people have been reticent in engaging with this product. 

Total strawman argument here. His "small minority criticism" morphed into shit talking about insufferable fans when his view point was disagreed with. He likes a bunch of exposition and narrative. That's fine. He can like what he likes. But calling people insufferable because we don't agree with him is not the same as just stating his opinion and wanting more exposition.

[Dynamite - 9/8/2021]

15 minutes ago, Greggulator said:

Show don’t tell us the adage in good storytelling. A 15-second clip at any point in the show of him choking someone out or the like is all you need to do. Something that makes him look impressive and hooks in the person tuning in for the first time after hearing about how good the PPV was. That is literally all you need to do just at some point.

They LITERALLY started the show ith an All Out recap wherein, Suzuki literally choked out then Piledrove Moxley.

 

16 minutes ago, Greggulator said:

I will add this — a major reason why I have not checked out AEW yet is because of the insufferable nature of many of its fans who believe AEW is the ultimate in human entertainment and a flawless enterprise.

That's a you thing, not an anyone else in here thing. Even the staunchest of AEW supporters on the forum will admit when they mess things up. And at the very least have constructive criticisms of what they think could be done better. So you might want to get off that high horse and mingle with us peons. You might find out that we're pretty rational and it's you that has the insufferable outlook.

 

19 minutes ago, Greggulator said:

But, hey, that’s cool. Insufferable fans limit an artist to nothing more than a cult status. I guess that is the intent? A show for people who know all of the times Kawada has fought Misawa? Because if it is — have fun with that.

For fuck's sake dude. Pro wrestling is about telling stories. Not only telling the stories the exact way you think they should do it. You're in here telling us this R rated movie a bunch of us are enjoying are doing it wrong because the narrative needs to be more like Blue's Clues. I've never once seen a Suzuki match myself. But I've heard his name. I saw him choke out Moxley and Piledrive him. I don't need 40 paragraphs of exposition to be invested. It's pretty simple. oh this shit kicker dude from Japan just punked out Moxley then they're gonna fight. Pretty simple. And going a step further, doing 40 paragraphs of exposition is what's ruining WWE's story telling ability. They treat the viewers like idiots.

 

12 minutes ago, Burgundy LaRue said:

The assumption of diehard wrestling fans that everyone watching is a walking encyclopedia for it is arrogant AF.

That's not the assumption I'm angling for. All I'm saying is that you don't have to dumb down the storytelling to the dumbest degree. You can assume people are smart enough to understand the very simple story of this angry old man showed up and punked out Jon Moxley. Now Moxley wants to kick his ass. It's a one off match on one episode of Dynamite. Not the world title match at the PPV. Why in the world do they need to dumb it down and hold everyone's hand for a one off?

[September 2021 Wrestling Discussion]

100% speculation on coming...

The way it's played out, him getting fired then rehired, not being cleared to wrestle but still wrestling, then having to vacate the title due to not being cleared... it reads to me like he never got cleared for the Kross match in the first place. Triple H just had the power to make the call to let him wrestle anyways. Because everything NXT was under his authority (contracts, creative, liabilities, ect). So this is just one more example of how Triple H may still run the day to day at NXT but he isn't in charge anymore. The corporate team (Vince, Prichard, Kahn, Laurinitus, & Dunn) are in complete control. And the NXT team (Triple H, Road Dogg, Shawn Michaels, Matt Bloom, ect) are just a creative team that have to listen to the rules set forth from above.

Corporate team finds out Joe was never cleared and they put the kibosh on that. Too much of a liability if he does get hurt. That's why they didn't do a short angle / match around whatever the issue is. They don't do that with talent that isn't cleared on the main roster. Medical calls are medical calls.

But again, this is just me speculating after seeing how it played out.

[September 2021 Wrestling Discussion]

Like I said in the NXT thread... can't have the developmental title on a guy with previous experience

[NFL 2021 - WEEK 1]

I'm bummed The Giants lost. But credit where credit is due, Teddy Bridgewater looked like an elite top tier quarterback today. It's just one game so I'm not full on joining his fan club or anything. But New York played solid defense. Teddy just out played them on pretty much every snap. There were some real questionable calls in the game tho. Teddy's helmet fell of about 30 times so because it falls off when he was sliding a roughing call? Ugh. Same exact thing happened to Jones but his helmet stayed on so no penalty. (Although nothing was worse than that Jamis Winston roughing call on a Packers interception tho. All time bad call there). The Giants weren't terrible today. Jones did fumble once, ugh. But even he played better than last year. They just couldn't keep up with ole Teddy two Gloves.

Now they play Washington on Thursday and the loser will be all alone in the race for the number one draft pick for a few days. Fun. I hate football.

[NXT - 2021]

Can't have the developmental title on someone with previous experience

[Rasslin' Video Games]

Fair enough then I can see why people are guessing this time next year then. I would have thought it would taken longer than that.

Either way updated No Mercy or GTFO lol.

[Rampage - 9/10/2021]

52 minutes ago, Casey said:

The approval of indie bookings is specifically related to COVID, not because of anything else.

What are you basing that on?

There are guys who have freedom to take any bookings. Like Andrade & Mox & Jericho. But your Evil Unos or Orange Cassidy or whoever can't just show up wherever they want without getting it approved. And that's not a Covid thing. I mean why would the contracts even exist if that were the case? AEW would just pay per appearance. They have contracts to lock dudes in place. TK is cool with pretty much everyone doing outside events tho and making extra money. But like Uno or OC showing up at PWG without getting it okayed isn't a thing. The standard contract guys need approvals for outside bookings.

I speak as someone with first hand knowledge of trying to book an AEW contracted talent by the way, no just throwing shit at the wall here lol.

[Rampage - 9/10/2021]

34 minutes ago, alstein said:

The thing is why would you need to be released?  If you're not being used, you're free to do indies, even big-name indies, and you get more money as an AEW talent.

This doesn't erase your point here, but you can't just show up at an indy on a standard AEW contract. It has to be approved. AEW generally has approved all requests so far I think. And there are special circumstances like Andrade & Moxley where they are free to take any date that doesn't conflict with AEW by the nature of the deals they signed. But the standard contracts, you need permission. So it's not like Brian Cage could show up at GCW because he's mad at his spot on the card right now in AEW as a FU to Tony Kahn.

Your point still stands, but there's just the extra step. And in the case of dudes no being used, I can't see why they would turn down a request. From what I gather TK is very pro workers and wants to do as much as he can to make as many of them happy. And if working indy shots makes a dude happy, he seems cool with that.

[Rasslin' Video Games]

No Mercy game play or bust for me lol.

At this point they haven't said anything about even a target release date right? So people in here speculating or being doom & gloom on certain aspects because they think it will be out by All Out next year is a bitttttttt premature. I'm going in to this not expecting it to be released before 2024. To me 5 years to build an engine from the ground up seems about right if you're not rushing it. If it ends up coming out before that (and is actually ready and not rushed) I will be pleasantly surprised. But I'd reserve judgement on pretty much all of it at this point. It's far from a finished or polished product yet.

I agree with the jerky motion on the rope bounce arm drag by the way. I just don't think all of the ring and rope physics / weighting of the character models have been implemented yet. They're just like hey guys look how dope these models look. Remember this move? Cool right? And not actually showing in game footage of the engine running yet.

[AEW - SEP 2021]

3 hours ago, LoneWolf&Subs said:

Who owns the rights to Wild Cat Willy anyway? I’m sure the WWE not using it after the sale, pretty much negates the ownership of that character. Time for TK to make him All Elite. But… With a Furry twist for the modern kink era. I’m thinking this Willy will show more flesh than ever before.

Why would AEW want a mascot named W.C.W. ?

Alfred E. Willy is right there.

[SDL is MSG - 9/10/2021]

I think the difference in quality between Raw and Smackdown is easily explained it two steps. One, 2 hour shows are always better than 3 hour shows. Two, Roman & The Bloodline take up a majority of the run time each week, and Roman & Heyman get a big say in how they are used.

Beyond that I just want to take a second to mention how weird it is to see people denying there is legitimate competition by talking about shareholders' happiness. I don't watch any TV show or movie caring about the happiness of the shareholders of the content. To me that's a weird way to defend something. Not based on the merit of what you're seeing, but based on the financial stability of those pulling the strings. Just odd man. But you do you.

[Dynamite - 9/8/2021]

48 minutes ago, AxB said:

But basically ever since then, she's been under the impression the Scott Steiner is the biggest star in Wrestling.

So basically she is more up to date with wrestling than a good chunk of the board lol

[Dynamite - 9/8/2021]

1 hour ago, twiztor said:

I know Minoru Suzuki by reputation. I've seen a couple of his matches (also his MMA bout with Jushin Liger), but feel like he wasn't explained enough to the audience. This is a man who, to my knowledge, has never been on US TV. Has he ever had a match in the US? or for an American wrestling company? Some more introduction would've been welcome.  And i don't even disagree with the "discover him on your own" mindset, but generally that comes AFTER the fact. like in a "Wow, that dude was awesome. who was he?" kind of way, not in a "who is this guy in tonight's main event" kind of way?  the comparison to a tv show, with "seasons", doesn't really jibe for me.

Respectfully I'm just asking what would have been good enough for you? How much of this show should have been dedicated to the history of him? He was shown in the opening recap. Every time the graphic was shown he was verbally put over. Punk took time out of his promo to put him over. His name plate had a written explanation of his history. Would a 30 second promo of Suzuki talking to the camera been a good enough introduction of him? I'm asking these questions because I don't understand the point of view and want to understand it. Suzuki is the simplest of all characters. A legitimate old man shooter badass. I don't know how much more of that could have even been conveyed. Like are you looking for a 3-4 minute mini documentary on his career or clips of previous matches?

For instance thinking back to any new additions that have debuted during battle royals / casino ladder matches none of them got any extra explanation. Brian Cage just showed up and they verbally conveyed his character. Ethan Page just showed up and they verbally conveyed his character. Lio Rush just showed up and they just verbally conveyed his character. Ruby Soho just showed up and they just verbally conveyed her character. Suzuki just showed up and they verbally conveyed his character. I just fail to see what's different about him versus everyone else. Because I don't remember anyone saying they needed more explanation on Lio Rush or Brian Cage.

 

1 hour ago, twiztor said:

on that note, the match itself was fine. i wasn't so impressed that i'm going to look up Suzuki matches, or research him in any way after the show. he was cannon fodder for Moxley. 

On this point I agree. The match was a miss for me. Didn't think it was either guy's best work. But I don't think doing more of an explanation on Suzuki's past or motivations would have changed that. Which is kind of my whole point on this talking point. Gregg insinuated he would have been better vested if he knew more about Suzuki. And I don't think any of what was given to us would have been elevated by more dialogue or backstory.

[AEW - SEP 2021]

3 hours ago, zendragon said:

Good luck passing a wellness test though.

He has openly joked that he could never pass a wellness test and his piss would melt through a styrofoam cup... so I don't see WWE being an option lol. He's also on record as hating his time in WWE developmental. He's also older than 30 and has previous wrestling experience (which is now frowned upon ).

[Dynamite - 9/8/2021]

4 hours ago, Greggulator said:

Oh, I know that wasn't their mindset. That's my dig at @NoFistsJustFlips-- hopefully it isn't too condescending.

But thinking that the viewer at home should "do the work" is just beyond stupid, since I'm going to do the work during the commercials. Make it fucking as easy as possible for me to watch your show and know what I should expect. 

No, that's a pretty fair shot I'll allow it lol.

All I'm saying is this is a wrestling bubble talking point that doesn't exist in regular episodic TV. Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, The Wire, Sons Of Anarchy, Dexter... whatever the episodic TV show is they reward viewers that pay attention. They don't hold anyone's hand and explain why you need to pay attention to whoever. Like Game of Thrones didn't role a clip show to people tuning into the last season to explain who Gendry is while Arya is trying to bang him. They did a recap before the show. If that isn't enough, it's on you to figure it out. And I'm in that boat as well. Sometimes there are things I don't remember and I look it up.

AEW already did that opening video. They did a recap of All Out. They did show Suzuki. They talked about him being a multi time world champion. Punk put over he was trained by Karl Gotch. JR put over how surly he is. His name plate had 4 time world champion and New Japan legend. If you need more than that then this isn't the product for you. They aren't gonna slow down to the slowest person's cognitive function (that's not you, I'm meaning in general) and make everyone go at that pace. If that's what you enjoy you won't find it in AEW.

[Dynamite - 9/8/2021]

45 minutes ago, Greggulator said:

Yeah, this. I'm down to see new dudes like Suzuki but you have to show me why I need to see him take on a guy I do know any like.

Or maybe AEW just isn't for you? I don't mean that to sound as condescending as it does. But me personally, I can not stand how WWE beats their viewers over the head about every single thing as if we're all first time viewers. So I love AEW not doing constant replays and doing things in hopes of keeping someone new that just clicked the wrong number on the remote. Plus we're in the digital age now. If you wanted to know more about Suzuki, take 10 seconds and type his name into a google search on your phone. At this point you not knowing about him is due to your own laziness, not AEW's presentation. The TV industry does a quick episode recap at the beginning episode. AEW did that. They did the quick recap of what happened at All Out. Beyond that if you have a question it's not out of the realm of possibility to assume you're smart enough to do a google search. Just like if I tuned into Breaking Bad season 4 episode 1 for the first time and wanted to know who Gale Boetticher was (like I just had to do to get the correct spelling).

[Dynamite - 9/8/2021]

So clearly Hobbs got a gnarly concussion on that dive, yeah? His head bounced badly on the floor. Took forever to get back in the ring. Was out of place and falling about. Ref & Dante talking to him to call what was left. He forgot to cover on the spinebuster because he was so loopy. Trust me dude, I've been there a bunch. All things considered they kept it from going off the rails. That's a big plus for two guys as inexperienced as they are.