Kev

Yeah, all the wording suggests this isn’t going to be Punk-related, just something to link into the FTR match. So they’re not technically doing a bait and switch as they’ve never actually mentioned Punk (or even said something like ‘footage of the altercation’). But it will definitely feel like a bait and switch (and they’ll only have themselves to blame). I think this would have been a perfectly fine *wink-wink* heel bit for the Bucks if they did the tease during the show, a couple of minutes before showing the footage. But it feels like they’ve backed themselves into a corner doing it like this.

I don’t understand a lot of the American sports references above so I could be mistaken, but are commentators being conflated with pundits here? Because hot take artist/heel pundits definitely do exist in real sports and are largely insufferable. But they kind of make sense in punditry as opinion is the entertainment in that setting, so the heel role creates a conflict to play off. But punditry isn’t the same as commentary. In real sports, commentators are mostly neutral, they’re not the primary entertainment, their role is to serve the action. Which is why I’d argue the heel commentary role mostly doesn’t work, as it’s often a distraction from the actual entertainment and just comes off as the commentator trying to get themselves over. Established heel continuing their heel character on commentary is fine. Commentator being a heel for the sake of being a heel is largely crap. And Nigel is fine-good about 80% of the time. But, yes, his heel shtick with Danielson and Christian sounds completely forced. Maybe it’s just more obvious as a Brit, but that just isn’t how people from London talk. It’s totally learned behaviour from watching too much WWF/E.

I’ve got no particular desire to see Ziggler in AEW, but I think putting him on the same level as Sydal does him a disservice. His first post-WWE run is still fresh enough that it’s mildly interesting to see him in a different setting, and there’s some name value there to wring out of him; there could be some intriguing matches and a win over him could mean something for some younger guys. I like Sydal, but he has zero credibility at this stage. A win over him is meaningless, there’s no intrigue.

I think this is actually a good route to go down and opens up different avenues. Gunther becoming a double champ means you can sneakily merge his greatest IC champ reign into a world title affair, and I’d argue that would elevate the fairly meaningless Seth belt. If Roman wins at Mania then you can potentially build to a big showdown of the dominant double champs. If Cody wins then there’s another still mountain for him climb still.

No idea who came first. Ventura is the other standard though. I think an updated Heenan/Ventura is pretty much what every heel commentator since is aiming for, but they usually miss the key ingredient of already being a well-established character. It’s like the commentator equivalent of dudes doing 90s puro head drop, fighting spirit stuff without the context that really made that meaningful.

Oh I get it all, it’s just incredibly hacky. I think I’ve mentioned here before that part of my issue is that, as a Brit, I’m overly conscious of other Brits doing such overtly Americanised schtick as it feels hugely forced and inauthentic. And I’d stand by the point that heel commentators are generally an outdated concept. Heenan is usually held up as the standard, but that made a lot more sense as it was an extension of his heel manager character. Nigel doesn’t have that wider role to play up to so what purpose is the heeling serving? I think the ideal modern variation is the heel sympathising commentator, like Taz. He can add heel psychology, explain motivations, etc. while still sounding like a real human and not putting too much attention on himself over the actual wrestlers.

This moment was good. But as a counterpoint, Nigel’s heel schtick is awful. It stinks of toxic WWE commentary from 2018-21ish. There’s no need for a commentator without any storyline background in the company to be making himself such a character. He’s so much better just doing straight colour with the occasional dad joke thrown in. (As an aside, heel commentators generally feel like a relic). I’m slightly more sympathetic if this is leading to a Danielson match. But if that is happening, I presume it’d be at Wembley with him as hometown hero, so the aggressive heeling seems counterproductive. Also, why the fuck has he insisted on running with ‘clam digger’ as an insult? (I’m being semi-rhetorical, I think I get it, it’s just terrible).

I think a variation on this could work, if they want to drag out the story while Cole (and maybe MJF) heal up until a payoff might actually be on the cards. Reveal Brit as the devil tonight with the Cole-adjacent goons, but don’t have Cole directly involved. Then you can transition to a ‘Is Cole in on it?’ arc for a bit.

I noticed that. I think Nigel was actually trying to rein him in. He’s quite good at actually engaging with JR’s grumpiness and forcing some storytelling explanation from it. And it would have made perfect sense here as MJF lost the advantage as he took too long playing to the crowd. But JR just refused to take the bait and quietly seethed instead. Speaking of Nigel, he’s a massive hit and miss for me. Doing straight colour, I think he’s excellent at adding to the in-ring narrative. But I hate his heel commentator schtick, it feels extremely dated and very WWE. As a Brit, I think I’m extra conscious of other Brits doing what feels like very Americanised character work, it comes off completely inauthentic.

I think Solo’s breath spray bit might be some of the worst shtick ever. Is it some sort of reference that I’m not getting? Commentary even did a whole bit on it here and got nothing out of it. It’s pretty much his only character trait and I’ve got no idea what it’s supposed to be. Is he a dude who’s overly self-conscious about his bad breath? That could kind of work if he was doing it sneakily, but the stupid laugh is nonsensical. He should at least have the good grace to spray it in opponent’s eyes to get some use out of it. It just doesn’t work on any level, and he was in there with the king of schtick, whose stuff works on multiple levels. Match itself was fine, I liked Cameron basically calling out the stupidity of the manager distraction trope, in the midst of pulling a manager distraction trope. I think the closing stretch of escalating near falls was the wrong choice though. Solo has zero credibility so there was no tension as a Solo victory was never a realistic proposition.

Not particularly relevant, but this reminds me of a line in Friends where Joey’s feedback from a failed audition is “not believable as a human being”, which is what I think every time I watch Seth Rollins doing character work.

I liked the show, but big agree on the WTF-ness of the Fox turn. They squeezed in 3 story beats (turn, Darby forgiveness, new partner reveal) when they only needed 1 (new partner). I actually like the Christian sub; it was both surprising in the moment yet completely logical, but I feel like this kind of kills any momentum or character arc for Fox. He’s always just been another flashy dude you can randomly throw out for a good match, the heel run was the first sense of him having an actual character and story, but this seems to slot him right back to ‘another dude’ status. Even if he has to take time out, I think they’d have been better off leaving this a bit more open ended. Have Swerve sub him out to his surprise, but without the full turn. Then you can either resume the heel run, with Swerve encouraging him to have more killer instinct, or you use that as the starting point to what we got here with him slipping up consistently, building to the full turn. As it was, it felt completely unearned. There’s easily a couple months worth of story they could have squeezed out of this. I’m by no means a Cole fan, but are we in agreement that him getting the belt and a massive heel turn is the way to go? In terms of building intrigue is this the best angle AEW has done yet? There’s so many directions they could take it and I really don’t know how they’re going to play it.

I’m really more lurker than poster here so not expecting this to generate much interest, but throwing out a shameless plug for my new music blog. Check it out at NoFrillsReviews.com. Links for the various socials on there as well to follow along. Apologies if this isn’t allowed. Cheers.

Just to circle back to the Bryan booking post WM30 chat. Kane as perfectly logical feud and the title run being doomed due to injury anyway are both completely fair points, but I’d still point to the Kane feud as a big backward step at that time. That Mania kind of felt like a potential new dawn - Bryan’s big win, the streak ending, Cesaro (seemingly) breaking out as a singles star and face Shield squashing the old guys (complete with a ‘there goes the Attitude era’ call on commentary). To go from that into a Kane title feud was such a ‘same old shit’ move. Kane is one of those guys that epitomises WWE’s post-WCW staleness for me. Someone who stuck around forever being consistently uninteresting. By 2014 he was at least 10 years past the point of being a credible main event threat (yeah, I know he had title runs between then, but they weren’t on the a-show), And, the ‘Uh-oh Kane is a monster again’ push was beyond played out. In short, Kane sucked and should have been nowhere near the title scene in 2014.

Totally agree on that. Although this talking point tends to get a weird amount of push back on here (for DVDVR I feel like the real Suzuki incident was suggesting they should do a video montage for him). When they’re bringing in YouTube regulars off the bench it just seems like a no-brainer to do a quick highlight reel of them winning, help establish what their finishers are/what is dangerous about them. Doing them as little character pieces with guys like The Gunns obnoxiously commentating over it would be a great touch as well. I really like the win-loss records as a tool to establish credibility BTW. I think the concept has been established enough now that you can start to play off it a bit more, like they did the little trophy thing for Shida’s wins. I like the idea of them playing off the ‘padding records’ thing with a heel taking obviously easy matches to build up a big win streak.