Kev

This is interesting because it is quite a quick rise to the top in one respect, but Braun had been around a good 4 years by that point and it felt like they probably pulled the trigger at least a year too late on his title run. There must be a few other examples that beat that also. Rock and Lesnar come to mind, although not sure how much they worked in developmental/pre WWE, but definitely less TV time before they got runs at the top.

Yeah, THE streak was my first thought as well. I suppose it depends on how we define win streak though, you could argue that any lengthy title run is a win streak, in which case there should be plenty of examples which end in a satisfying title switch. But I assume we’re talking more newcomer win streaks, in which case I literally can’t think of any good examples.

Just caught up on this, first time watching a full NXT show since about May last year so this may turn into a bit of an essay. Maybe I’m just an old man but found it literally difficult to watch during entrances, just far too much going on with all the lights. Really liked the women’s tag. Gonzalez looked great, I though Shotzi looked a lot smoother compared to her earlier appearances, seems to have improved. A decent women’s tag division could really help the likes of Moon, who looked good, but otherwise is usually a bit of an afterthought. I liked the early face leg work, nice to see the format mixed up a bit, although there wasn’t much pay off in terms of Kai’s selling later. Gargano/Kushida was typical Gargano, some good stuff but just overkill. Never been impressed by Gargano’s character work but stands out more as a heel. He’s not outright bad, but is just so obviously playing a character, comes off really inauthentic. He suffers from the weird limbo between developmental and third brand that NXT is in, feels like he’s been around far too long without moving ‘up’. I don’t get why I’m supposed to care about Kushida. He’s good at wrestling and that seems to be about as deep as his character goes, but he hasn’t won any big enough matches for that to be his whole thing. Then he has this dorky, gimmicky look that’s never really been explained as far as I know. Just seems to be a disconnect in his whole presentation. Liked the men’s tag but went a couple sequences too long for me. Thought the Swanton-spiral tap looked better than the eventual finish. First time properly seeing MSK and was impressed, some cool stuff. GYV are a great sum-is-greater-than-the-parts team. I like Gibson but don’t think he’d have got beyond NXT UK as a solo act and Drake is solid but lacks charisma, which is well hidden in the team. Triple threat was fine, thought this was a good length for the style of match. Liked the main, don’t think it was a forced epic, some nice limb work and never went into near fall overkill, even the submission ‘near fall’ was well done with Finn basically passing out and just about flopping his foot on the ropes. Really liked the spot where Dunne slipped on the flip out of the corner, thought it was a botch initially but they moved straight into a sequence so I assume it was deliberate, nicely done either way. O’Reilly comes off as a legit singles star from the little I’ve seen (at least at the NXT level), wouldn’t have expected that a year ago.

I feel like the Nightmare Family would go great with an egomaniac Cody heel turn. Vignettes at the NF gym where Cody plays his theme over the speakers. Dustin and QT do all the coaching of the young boys while Cody lifts in the corner, complete with obnoxiously loud grunting, occasionally calls over a young boy to spot him (has to be Comorato as he’s the only one that can come close to Cody’s strength). Cody comes over at the end and demonstrates one of his moves on a young boy and explains how he invented it before leaving. His claims becoming increasingly ludicrous by the week (how his version of the drop down uppercut is more effective because he drops to his back rather than his knees, how his version of the figure 4 is so deadly, etc.).

This is kind of what @MrKothogasaid but I think the issue isn’t the win-loss records themselves but the exposition (or lack of) around them. You can explain away most of the issues fairly reasonably. I’m fine with the Gunns building up a largely meaningless win steak as they’ve beaten nobody of importance, I’m fine with Janela getting a shot as he’s basically handpicked based on personal history. But this stuff isn’t always explained. It’s been a common gripe for ages but they really should be explaining key plot points/character development on Dynamite, they too often assume that the audience has seen Dark/BTE/social media. Along the same lines, I made a comment in this weeks thread about how Excalibur intro’d Kenta and I think that’s part of the same issue. It was a bit too insider-y, mentioning the briefcase/Mox’s title like they were established plot points. As a general rule, I think if something hasn’t happened on Dynamite they should explain it as though the audience doesn’t know about it. The good thing is these are really easy fixes, e.g. Instead of a slightly insider reference on their history, Excalibur says “Darby requested this match due to his old rivalry/friendship with Janela, check out this weeks BTE for more on their history.” And the Gunn example maybe shows that the records should make them more conscious when they’re not doing anything with people. As has been said after all those wins they should be moving onto higher ranked opponents and probably picking up some Ls, if you spread out some losses then it makes sense that they’re not quite ready to move up yet. Even from the perspective of them getting extra ring time, would it not make sense to put them in there with the more seasoned guys and start working different match formats (e.g. working more from underneath), to help with their development.

I sort of like the concept of the Nightmare Family, but it doesn’t seem to be anything more than a concept and they’ve not really done anything with it on tv. What exactly does anyone get from joining? I presume young guys get to learn under vets like the Rhodes and Arn, but isn’t that what’s happening with Comorato anyway and he hasn’t joined as far as I’m aware. Is it still acknowledged on Dark that the Gunns joined? That doesn’t seem to have had any significance and it happened months ago now.

I think the win-loss records has been played pretty much perfectly, it’s always there as a frame of reference without ever feeling too restrictive. It gives some meaning to every match and I do think it can add credibility when they talk about win streaks, even if it has just been squashes on Dark. This is one of those areas where they’ve set themselves apart from WWE by doing something really basic. The only time I felt it bordered on being counterproductive was when Kingston challenged Mox without really building up an impressive record. But that be easily justified as it was very much sold as a personal feud and Mox basically gave him the shot.

Yeah, you’re right. In terms of how the shows are produced, this stuff is mainly for the cameras (the Rumble with HBK shouting at Khali to pose into the hard cam comes to mind). I’m thinking more in terms of the sort of kayfabe behind it. It makes sense that guys would pose and show off to a live crowd. It also makes sense to pose and show off for the cameras, except in WWE nobody really acknowledges the cameras during entrances or matches (ironically, unless it’s part of their set routine like Cena). So you have this weird situation where guys are posing for cameras without actually acknowledging those cameras.

The set entrance routines stand out as particularly stupid in an empty arena. It’s kind of symbolic of a wider lack of creativity in how little WWE has adapted its presentation for the pandemic era shows. The fact that they thought the answer was to go even louder (visually) with the Thunderdome setup seems ridiculous to me.

Maybe I just ignore the obviously bad takes, but I think the AEW discussion on here is usually fairly balanced. Personally, I really like AEW but I still watch with a critical eye, as I would anything else, and like to think about what could have been done better, I think a lot of AEW ‘criticism’ I see on here is in this vein and is generally good natured. On the sports-centric talk, AEW is very much sports entertainment and that’s absolutely fine by me. I think they mostly fall on the right side of wrestling ridiculousness (OC, the wedding, attempting to take a man’s eye out, etc.) and the bad stuff they’ve generally course corrected on pretty quickly (pretty much anything Brandi related, and I’d also put the early Hardy stuff in this bracket as I think that gimmick was well past its sell by date). For years the talking point has been about a real alternative to WWE, and that’s maybe a bit of a red herring. I think the audience for anything overly sports-centric would be pretty niche, I’d suggest that most of the audience just wanted well done sports entertainment. And by improving on some of WWE’s weak points (meaningful matches, logical structure, not treating the audience with contempt) I think AEW has largely succeeded, but there’s still a lot of room to build, the bar should obviously be higher than “well at least it’s not WWE”.

I’ll start off with an old man shouts at clouds section. Can everyone please fuck of with all the cutter variations. One of the most over moves ever (seriously, there must be an alternative timeline where Orton sticks with the play of the day/overdrive finish and never gets a world title run) and so many guys just have meaningless/shitty versions of it. Why does Kenta have purple hair? Dudes about 40, between that and the weak GTS I don’t think it was a great intro for him. I thought Excalibur’s sell of this was a bit much as well, talking about the briefcase and Mox’s title, none of this is stuff that’s been established in AEW. I don’t think Chaos Project should be on tv but to be fair they’ve got the minimum amount of offense to be taken as a credible threat and been otherwise squashed, which is fine. I’m liking how Page has just been dominant against the various jabronies the last few weeks. Hopefully the stuff with Hardy doesn’t last too long, I know he has some name value but his whole act is cheap and should be beneath Page. Page calling him out on his shit and a decisive victory is all that’s really needed here, maybe throw in a 6 man with PP and DO. They messed up the shot but it was nice to see Jake seemingly with a big smile on his face and patting Angelico on the back after taking him out.

Another point which I think sort of underpins the whole staleness/guys around forever talk is that, despite the various shows and belts, there’s no real logical structure to anything that happens or even any clear hierarchy a lot of the time. The WWE/Universal, IC/US, both sets of tag belts are completely interchangeable (didn’t they just outright swap the tag belts between teams last year?). What motivates a former world champ to go for the IC/US belt? Why can some guys just skip the IC/US level? Why do relative scrubs like Elias or No Way Jose get promoted from NXT? Why was Santana Garrett in the women’s Rumble ahead of multiple NXT women that are featured more regularly? I could go on forever with this, but I think it all contributes to the staleness, there’s just a general sense that nothing really matters and it never feels like guys are facing different challenges. I do think if there was a bit more logic to what was going on then you could create better long term story arcs for people, which would help character development and maybe prevent some of the staleness. This isn’t the thread for it but I think it would be interesting to try plotting out character arcs for some of these guys to see if they actually make any sense (I’d suggest Rollins actually has the dots to plot out a really good character arc since the start of his run, but in execution the story telling has often been a let down).

Completely agree with this, having not watched in a while it stood out to me how many guys still felt really stale in the men’s Rumble. A combination of guys having reached their ceiling long ago and having little to no character progression. I think a lot of these are good performers but there’s Sheamus, Miz, Ziggler, Orton. Even relatively new guys like Elias, Corbin and Strowman. Morrison, who was away for years ,came back and regressed to a character he was doing 10+ years ago. Kane who’s been part-time/away for a few years just never feels like he’s been gone for any length of time in 20 years so a surprise comeback feels meaningless. I’d even kind of put someone like Cesaro in this same stale bracket but with him there’s at least that hope that they’ll finally give him a main event run.

I don’t know if I’d describe her as inauthentic, I can kind of buy that she thinks all that stuff is cool. I do think the whole aesthetic is incredibly lame though, but I’m probably not the audience. For me, your description kind of fits better for Toni Storm. She’s good in-ring but she comes off as really annoying and forced. Ever since I first saw her I thought she screamed heel, I see they’ve turned her now but based on the rockstar references they’re still trying to sell her as cool. The rockstar thing (why? Because she wears a leather jacket) should be that she’s a try-hard poser, particularly in contrast to someone like Rhea who really sells her character well.

Haven’t watched the men’s match yet but some initial thoughts, haven’t read the thread yet to avoid spoilers. This is the 1st WWE show I’ve watched since MITB. Really don’t like the Thunderdome setup, just loud and ugly, and still lacks any real atmosphere. It’s been said a million times but what the fuck is with the camera cuts, was really noticeable at points having not watched in a while. Seriously what is the logic of these moments where there’s 4-5 cuts within a matter of seconds? What effect is it meant to achieve? Goldberg/Drew was fine but uninteresting. I like when they mix up the main event formula, but as with suplex city Brock it’s been diminishing returns, you really need to tweak the formula to keep it interesting, they didn’t do anything here, it was just my turn, kick out, your turn, kick out, etc. Bianca felt like the right choice, I wonder whether never pulling the trigger on her in NXT has helped her long term as they’ve been able to build her a bit slower on the main roster. By contrast, Rhea already seems like she’s lost a lot of momentum and I’m less optimistic of how high she can go than last year. The end sequence was nicely done and really felt it could go either way. Some nice eliminations dotted throughout, the Bayley powerbomb, Santana, Nikki. The Billie stuff was good. The Alexa stuff seemed embarrassing but luckily was cut off quickly, is she supposed to be face? And are they trying to get Lana over as a face? Even with the Nia elimination she just looked pathetic and stupid. Nia also looked stupid eliminating her partner with so many still left. Weird choice in recapping the women’s tag after the Rumble despite the angle playing into the match. The 24/7 stuff is embarrassing and the joke is beyond dead at this point. Not a big fan of the style but the LMS was quite well done. Thought they maintained a violent feel between the high spots, could have done with blood though. The handcuff spot was a really good ‘near fall’, I actually bought that despite thinking Owens had no chance.

And after a little more digging (flicking through Rumble wiki entries), Goldust is also up there with 21 (97-18) and was even close to topping it as he was on the 91 card teaming with Dusty but not the match itself.

Yeah, that looks like the top 5 (Taker, JJ, Duggan, Edge, HBK). Thought Kane might be higher but he hasn’t been in a Rumble since 16 so he’s at 20 (96 debut as Yankem).

Sounds right, I didn’t realise he’d appeared as late as that, assumed his last appearance was when he had that short roster run around 07ish. My initial thought was HBK but he’s only at 21 years (89-10).

Just watching the 92 Rumble and it prompted a random thought (I don’t remember this ever being covered in one of those by the numbers videos). What’s the longest timeframe covered by Rumble appearances (not most appearances or biggest gap between appearances, just longest time between first and last appearances)? After some quick checks I’m thinking it’s Taker with 26 years (91-17) and possibly Jarrett in no.2 with 25 (94-19 - I would have completely forgotten him if I hadn’t looked up the 19 match). Am I missing anyone?

I think its supposed to be that Kenny hasn’t wanted to completely turn his back on his best friends so Callis has been manipulating him to get to that point, e.g. antagonising the Bucks and potentially faking their attack on him or at least overplaying it.

Finally caught the Walter-Dragunov match. Haven’t seen any pandemic era NXT UK as I gave up the network but it’s on the free version. Firstly the arena setup looks shit, the mini thunder dome thing which went off halfway through and the logos/belt pics everywhere are ugly. Not sure how limited they were based on UK restrictions but I wish they’d just spread 20 or so of the roster around ringside to add a bit atmosphere. The match lived up to the hype and was as brutal as talked up. Only thing I disliked was Dragunov’s 619 rebound clothesline as it just doesn’t look like it generates any extra momentum. Loved the desperation of the sloppy running knee towards the end when he realised he couldn’t hit the headbutt again. This was how you do an epic where the near falls really feel earned (plus they weren’t overdone). Also really like going from one last big near fall straight to Walter just choking him out.

You’re right it is being played pretty straight, as you describe, but given the histories of those involved and the fact that they are aligned (albeit tenuously), I think there is a level of ambiguity there that leaves it open for a swerve. Even it plays out as expected, it’s that ambiguity which is helps make it shocking/satisfying when the Bucks get truly fucked over/have enough of their shit. This is probably wishful thinking and me reading too much into things (I think Bucks going heel is the more interesting direction character-wise and because of the power dynamic it creates) but the fact that the Bucks have played it pretty straight as faces is what makes me think a swerve may be coming. Plus stuff like the off-camera Callis attack and the Good Brothers replacing them in the 6 man could easily be retconned as the Bucks being in on some sort of long con.

Yeah, I agree to an extent, although the Bucks role here makes a lot more sense than it did in the FTR feud. I think this is part of why I’d have Bucks go heel as well, they’ve teased it enough now that they should really pull the trigger. I wonder whether the Cody-Shaq stuff is part of why this is getting dragged out, they’re maybe waiting on Cody being freed up to insert him into this angle. Having the Bucks go heel and the majority of the EVPs being aligned with Callis would be an escalation with the balance of power really shifting to them, and a fairly logical step for Cody to get involved. I’d agree they need to define some stakes at some point but I’m happy to give AEW the benefit of doubt on this and let it play out. I’m seeing this part of the story as Moxley’s attempted revenge, potentially with him getting written out soon, then you start to bring in Cody and Hangman stories down the line. I don’t mind the slower place of the angles and they’re doing a decent job of weaving the likes of Death Triangle and even Private Party into the wider story so there’s different strands to it. Also, particularly in the pandemic era it’s understandable that they’re maybe hoping to save some big matches/moments for live crowds.

Oh and I generally like grumpy JR when it’s in the context of the match, pointing out mistakes, etc., I think it makes his praise feel more earned. But he’s becoming increasingly annoying to me. The sarcastic comment after the Red Velvet promo, the angle is shit but he still shouldn’t be undermining it and it came at the expense of the new face who actually cut a decent promo. Plus some of the digs/dismissals of Excalibur come across as mean-spirited. It stinks of the shit you get in WWE with commentators constantly sniping at each other. At least the Mike Bailey reference was kind of relevant to a decent part of AEW’s audience, I’m not sure who JR is appealing to with some of the weird references he pulls out.

Pretty much exactly what you’d want from Kingston/Archer, and I think the booking was right, Kingston hasn’t really picked up enough wins and Archer wasn’t hurt given how dominant he was. Liked the reference to Archer maybe indulging himself dishing out more punishment without Jake’s guidance, that little comment gets across the nature of his character, the importance of the manager and adds a little vulnerability to his game. Was probably just the lighting but I was thinking Sting had dyed his hair. Been enjoying Garrison’s hot tag over recent weeks, great Stinger splash. I feel like Pillman looks too sleazy for the slightly characterless, up and coming babyface role, should get rid of the mullet and/or beard. Nemeth looked really low-rent and doing a number of his brother’s spots was a bad choice if he wanted to stand out as anything other than Dolph’s brother randomly getting a shot. Liking the build up of Page though and adding another layer to the story. As everyone has said the Tarzan boy theme is a great touch and should be great with full crowds. Nice match, I was just thinking the finish looked a bit weak on the thicker dude, but then the variation made it look a lot better. Nice visual of Luchasuarus hanging in the ropes after the beat down. I like the whole build around the Bullet Club stuff, they’ve built tension so you can logically have the Bucks split off again but I could still see there being a swerve. Personally, I’d have the Bucks go full heel, I don’t think their characters have ever really come across as likeable and it always felt like that was part of the Hangman story (e.g. he was right not to trust them) but that kind of feels like it got dropped during the build to FTR/Page & Omega. Nice chaotic feel to the aftermath as well, that’s been done well the last few weeks.