Zakk_Sabbath
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Posts posted by Zakk_Sabbath
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4 minutes ago, AxB said:
Tell me you didn’t watch NXT UK without telling me you didn’t watch NXT UK. Because he was bad there. Everything he said sounded forced.
I tried it for three episodes way back, and agree fully - he was oddly looser on 205 I thought (and is better today).
I admit it's some kind of weird anti-bias on my part but I legit can't stay mad at Nigel for having a less-than-great instinct or two from time to time, when he's out here dropping Scott Norton and Fascination Street by The Cure and shit
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6 minutes ago, Curt McGirt said:
I'm just saying, regardless of feud, it feels like Nigel should be giving some grudging respect to Bryan for being an asshole. People don't have years of Heenan hating Hogan to go on here.
This is me thinking under the presumption that fans don't know everything about everybody, I know, but it still irks me.
I mean, the other side of the coin is the presumption that everyone knows everything, which is what I would argue seems to be the standard procedure on AEW TV when it comes to basically anything ROH-related (both the current incarnation, and the classics). It's like A bubble within THE bubble.
FWIW, I still think there's a non-zero chance of a final Nigel/Danielson bout at Wembley next year - my thinking is that without Punk and Sting, they're gonna need something both left field and big for the English
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35 minutes ago, Technico Support said:
Honestly, I wouldn't call Cole injury prone. In AEW, he suffered a bad concussion, then later rolled his ankle jumping off the entrance ramp while doing a run-in. To me, "injury prone" denotes something like tearing a muscle while just doing regular-ass wrestling, like tearing your quad while walking across the ring, or a guy like Punk who tears his triceps just putting on his gear.
Fully agree - I guess what I meant by that was, I didn't think it was that crazy of an impression for Godfrey or anyone to have based on the crappy back to back timing (I also thought when I wrote that, that it was two concussions fairly close together, like around Forbidden Door time - a bunch of guys got hurt around then so it's entirely possible I'm blending stuff together in my head)
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15 hours ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:
I don't know if anything holds up as poorly as the Attitude Era, JR & Lawler included. The Invasion was a big, steamy pile of shit, but Paul Heyman did his best to put the Alliance over. Lawler never would have done that, aside from Stacey Keibler and Torrie Wilson.
15 hours ago, RazorbladeKiss87 said:That's a good point. Until I went back and rewatched a lot of Attitude Era stuff, my memories of Lawler and JR were much rosier than the reality.
Agreed on both points - the J.R./Heyman booth during the Invasion is actually one of my favorites of all time. It was super interesting to revisit their WCW stuff after that too
2 minutes ago, For Great Justice said:Agreed. I got Brain, Terry Funk, Eddie Guerrero and Bryan Danielson on that list, and I think if we had more extensive footage of Heenan as a worker there would be a lot of concensus of him as the GOAT.
I've unfortunately never gotten around to seeing a single Bobby Heenan match in its entirety but based on PWI covers alone I'd certainly buy it
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2 minutes ago, Godfrey said:
He's one of those wrestlers, if he works for you he works. I have zero memory of his feud with Page though so if he was doing good stuff there then I may have missed it
Well said - with that idea in mind, I'll say I personally enjoyed the Cole/Page feud and it worked for me big, BUT I'll also admit that with it being one of the rare immediate rematches AEW's ever done, it felt like it was going on a bit too long at the time.
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8 minutes ago, RazorbladeKiss87 said:
I don't think I dislike heel commentary but I think both are heavy handed with it. But then I love Heenan on commentary and he was over the top so maybe it's just those two. Michael Cole was annoying as a heel too. Honestly, as I'm typing this I'm thinking that you may be right and Heenan was an exception, along with Ventura.
One of the other differences is the overall configuration of 2 voices in the booth vs. 3. What Nigel (and I guess Graves, but I haven't heard any of his recent output) has to do to be effective is more of a balancing act than straight heel commentary IMO, because he's also there to be the 'ex-player' voice, which to me is more of a de-facto babyface role (think Taz now, Big Show/Mark Henry on Dark, or going back a ways, Larry Z on Nitro or Randy Savage on those early RAW episodes) - it's gotta be tough for Nigel when he's working a booth which, at its core, is essentially two PBP guys in KK and TS, as opposed to the Vince/Jesse, Gorilla/Brain two-man situation. I think what Nigel does is probably closer to something resembling Heenan's role in the second hour of Nitro where he had to navigate having both TS and Mike Tenay in there, as opposed to anything from his WWF tenure.
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On 2/10/2024 at 11:29 AM, Matt D said:
like Sydal. He's sort of the only Sydal that they need (Sorry, brother Mike). In as I don't think they need to hire guys like Ziggler because they already have him. He's crisp in execution, pretty good at building and layering matches, always overdelivers, and isn't as bland and mechanical as Daniels (who I like better now than fifteen years ago because he has a bit more old grit to him, but...). He's a great lower mid card babyface to make people look bette
I'm super late to this post, but I'll second this. He's had a run of really, really good TV matches starting with the Rampage match vs Jericho a month or two ago. If he's not going to be in the International or TNT title conversation in any meaningful way, since his brother is gone and Jack Evans is gone, they should just team him with Angelico IMO
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3 minutes ago, Godfrey said:
I think his matches with OC and Jericho are some of the worst in the company's history. I was already not a fan but I could buy Cole in NXT, everything since he came to AEW seems like a pale imitation. Kind of like Keith Lee, in fact
Ah ok, thanks for clarifying. I forgot the OC match! I don't know if I 100% agree, but you make a compelling argument. I'd say the one thing Cole has going for him over Lee is at least he had the Hangman program from jump to make him feel like a big deal before eventually getting another title program with MJF, whereas Lee's most notable TV output (the Swerve team/feud) suffered from a lot of stop/starts and pivots before it could really get off the ground in the same way. I mean, as recently as this past fall they were *still* planning on circling back to it (I'm realizing now, I think it was actually Swerve/Lee that was cancelled, not Taylor/Lee as I wrote earlier)
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9 minutes ago, Curt McGirt said:
Gotcha, and we are in agreement.
Keith Lee needs a new body, apparently. You gotta feel for the guy.
Oh yeah, dude, hugely. FWIW, when Lee's last PPV match against Shane Taylor was called off, he mentioned it wasn't anything related to the rumors of post-COVID issues and was actually some other injury (which I guess one could call 'positive' news/maybe just a bit of bad luck, as opposed to a more serious lingering illness or the body 'telling him it's time,' hopefully).
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1 hour ago, Godfrey said:
he's been underperforming and injury prone since he debuted.
Injury-prone I'll give you as a fair criticism (though I was in the building for this last one and it really was a total freak accident that basically could've happened to anyone) but do you mind expanding on 'underperforming?' Not trying to start a disagreement, but IMO, I can really only think of one Cole match in AEW that outright stunk (vs Jericho on PPV) so I'm jw if there is some other metric you might be referring to
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1 hour ago, Curt McGirt said:
I could do with a two hour Rampage.
MJF is the real question mark here: where he fits in, when is he returning, etc.
I enjoy MJF and look forward to his return, but candidly, there's a part of me that almost doesn't want to see him back until Adam Cole is healed up too, just so we can get right into blowing that thing off.
So much of the last ~2 months of his title reign was wrapped in treading water due to Cole's ankle - I'd hate to see MJF get the big comeback pop and immediately get dropped right into the same situation again and end up having to mess with Bennett/Taven over the ROH tag titles for a few months or whatever it is, with some midcard babyface 'reluctantly' trusting him (or worse, they derail Joe by dragging him back into this shit).
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9 minutes ago, SovietShooter said:
I honestly think one of those Benoit vs Sullivan brawls might've started in the back before it was scheduled, and maybe interrupted a Mike Enos vs Wayne Bloom match?
It's certainly possible they did that but I'm like 99% sure Enos/Bloom was the match in the ring when Scott Hall came out of the crowd on Memorial Day to kick off the NWO
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22 minutes ago, The Natural said:
The throw by Konosuke Takeshita/Powerhouse Hobbs across the ring with Darby Allin's neck hitting the ring ropes gets my vote. So dangerous.
Oh shit yeah that was pretty recent, I forgot about that. I thought of Perro Aguayo right away, that one freaked me out
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2 hours ago, Curt McGirt said:
I keep saying that someone needs to steal the Blackjack/Sullivan "brawl out and brawl in" idea. Just have two guys in a feud fighting every show in the back, end up in the ring, fight out, show up at the next one doing the same thing. Make it look like they didn't even change clothes.
Someone did this in WCW im almost certain. It might've been some combination of that DDP/Raven/Saturn/Benoit/Kanyon stretch of the US title scene. It could've easily just as well been some dying days Norman Smiley HC title stuff, but I am near certain it was done.
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8 minutes ago, SturmCRF said:
Yeah, I've gone from hoping he survives climbing Mount Everest because it's dangerous to climb Mount Everest, to hoping he survives whatever things he might be planning to do there. Absolute loon, and also one of the best wrestlers in the world who looks totally credible against basically anyone, even when they're twice his size.
Watch it turn out that the whole time the guides were supposed to be training him to climb, he spent training them to wrestle instead, and they do a quick 7 min summit street fight. I certainly wouldn't put it past him.
Re: your second point, I agree - it's that Rey Mysterio Jr. underdog intangible. It goes beyond just being just a cruiser or below 6'0 otherwise every undersized guy ever would be that level of star. In AEW, I think Danielson, Fenix, PAC, and OC are all guys with similar qualities.
I know a lot of folks are probably gonna disagree on this, but the Bucks flirt with having that quality much of the time too - they just undermine it (for lack of a better term) with something way too outside the box (e.g. Matt suplexing two much bigger dudes at once).
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13 minutes ago, Zimbra said:
don't remember the match but there was one time he smoked himself doing a tope and I was pretty sure he died.
On that note: I'm calling it now that their match with the Bucks will have a spot where Darby is slammed hard into that new barricade and the screen turns off or sparks on em a bit to put it over the top
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1 hour ago, The Great ML said:
I remember in World Class, there was a scheduled match with Mike Von Erich and Wild Bill Irwin. As they were being announced/introduced in the ring, David Manning runs in and says “we have to get Terry Gordy and Killer Khan out here NOW. They’ve started their match, fighting in the dressing room. Sorry guys, your match will have to wait later.”
That rules, im gonna track that down today. I would love to see a redux on that at some point on a modern show. You could even do it in such a way that you incorporate elements of @Cobra Commanders original idea and have the two guys in the ring for the scheduled match end up teaming up against the other two teams, have that end in a NC (or with the new third team giving one the tainted victory) and build to a big three-way-tag or even a TLC type affair depending on the situation
Edit: @Ziggyi haven't watched but FWIW I saw a tweet implying Dave lagana was involved in writing for whatever the Rock is doing
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4 minutes ago, Coletti said:
Doing a Coffin Drop onto a casket more than once has to be TERRIBLE for the body. Christian Cage body slamming him off the apron onto the ring steps is up there, too.
Anything like that with something solid, is one that he makes look like death (and probably doesn't feel excellent to take) - I was thinking of those casket bumps too, especially whichever one had the tacks or spikes on the lid. (Edit : Swerve??) Even back on the first show, he had that ridiculous bump with THE Cracker Barrel
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2 minutes ago, Zimbra said:
Since it came up in the TV thread: what do y'all think Darby's dumbest bump is?
I vote for when he let Ethan Page throw him down a flight of concrete steps and ended up being out for a couple of months.
That would have been my choice too. Also: unless I got newzed at the time, I thought he was hurt already and *that* was his idea to write himself off (which makes it even more fucking insane). I know Samoa Joe jacked up his back on some concrete stairs during a TNA title match with Sting way back when, and it bothered him for like a literal decade after, I can't imagine the stones it takes to go for something like that when you're already hurt.
Another nasty one coming to mind: I forget what match it was but Lance Archer planted him on the ring steps, with the steps on their side so they were tall as opposed to long, and it was pretttay, pretttay gross.
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Obviously everyone knows from the Punk-era that I am vociferously anti-formal roster/brand/etc. split of any kind, but in an informal way, I think it might be kind of a cool experiment to have Dynamite/Rampage tapings be more "AEW+Puro"-focused, and ROH/Collision tapings to be more "AEW+Lucha"-focused.
Recent shows are selling better, thank goodness (and especially Big Business, holy shit - @Niners Fan in CTon the money dude, no pun) but I think this idea might help draw even more people because AEW could look at NJPW or AAA and CMLL numbers in certain areas (be it NJPWorld, Honor Club when guys are on that, NJPW on AXS, ratings for the lucha stuff on local affiliates, how recent indy appearances by dudes on excursion drew) as sort of a back door metric, and book the shows/route to certain areas accordingly
Edit: To clarify this thought was kinda kicked off by @Go2Sleeps comment about the Collision-only RUSH feud (which I support as well)
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2 hours ago, Cobra Commander said:
Good to hear that AEW Big Business won’t be followed by AEW Recession
I wonder if they'd subtitle it "Once in a lifetime!" then run the same card three times in 15 years
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1 hour ago, Curt McGirt said:
That's under the impression that Vince hasn't abused members of the same sex, which I believe is not only possible but likely, considering the people he's had work for him. According to Sabu the entire early '80s ring crew were young boys hired specifically for that reason.
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2 hours ago, hammerva said:
In unfortunately not surprising news, Billy Jack Haynes wife was found murdered and Billy is a suspect. Actually much more than suspect
8 minutes ago, Dolfan in NYC said:#BobbyHeenanIsAlwaysRight
Local news story for the morbidly curious among us:
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2 minutes ago, Just Dave said:
m predicting, because I'd find it entertaining, that that's how Santana & Ortiz get back together and finally win their long overdue AEW Championships.
Yo, I SO hope that you're right on this. Id pop huuuuge. In lieu of that, I'd even take a Santana/Ortiz/Kingston power-trio
AEW TV - 2/7 - 2/13/2024 - First Come, First Swerved
in ALL ELITE WRESTLING
Posted · Edited by Zakk_Sabbath
Huge agree - I think with a few tweaks, Dan Lambert could have been that guy early on. I could also totally see Stokely excelling at doing a Stephen A kind of thing
Edit: this is going to be a very, very weird choice, but you know who would actually do really well at that kind of thing I bet?? Ruby Soho. That Outcasts stuff largely wasn't my cup of tea, but one good thing about it is that it showed how well she plays sarcastic