tbarrie

I'm a bit out of step with the zeitgeist on Page, I guess, as I kind of felt All Out was too soon to put the belt on him anyway. Of course, I expected him to earn the title shot but come up short on his first attempt, only to finally win it some time next year. Him losing the elimination match was a downer to me, but as SKoS points out it works narratively.

Well - that was not a great show. Can't win 'em all, I guess.

You mean when you first encountered The Bunny's current gimmick?

I think being able to interrupt a count by pulling the ref out of the ring without drawing an immediate DQ is one of the Attitude Era's stupidest additions to the wrestling canon. And that's saying something.

Well, the premise set them up that way, but as you note the show didn't really present them as such. They were wacky and irrepressible, not psychotic and dangerous.

I don't recall Dot Warner being a psychopath, though.

Would that I could issue multiple likes.

Fair point, and maybe "Jericho can't win" was too exaggerated. But the point was, if the heel can pick literally any stipulation, they could come up with something a lot more one-sided than "The heel is allowed to do one thing that the face isn't". And given what a contemptible little shit MJF is supposed to be, why wouldn't he?

Yeah, I've been meaning to write a mini-rant about how the booking - or lack of booking - on the women's side is still pretty bad. Maybe I'll post that in the July thread later.

So I was sort of right then.

Lost amongst the general positivity regarding tonight's show is that the "Elite Hunter" is now 0-2 in matches against the Elite. I'm not saying Frankie Kazarian should be a main event player, but I have no idea why they'd job him out to The Elite B Team. The post-match angle would have worked just as well if Kazarian had won. And speaking of the B Team, why did Gallows and Anderson come out wearing title belts? What titles could those goobers possibly hold? The Born To Midcard Championships?

Why would anybody help Matt Cardona?

This thought saddens me to the core, but given how ineffective AEW has made its refs you're probably right. See, I don't like that, because the simpler stip of flat-out banning the face's finisher or favourite move is the sort of mildly clever thing I alluded to. It technically applies to both competitors equally but obviously hampers the face more. (Bonus points if the heel hits the move anyway while the ref is distracted, of course.)

But Tony Khan is okay with something as one-sided as "one guy can use a chair"? I'm pretty sure "Shawn Spears and only Shawn Spears can use a chair" was not a pre-existing match type.

Yeah, that stipulation only works if there's at least an unstated assumption that the rules have to apply equally to both competitors. That would still let the heel stack the deck, but they'd have to be slightly clever about it. Otherwise, why not just make the final labour a "Jericho can't win" match?