Goodear

Bret set that up naming his kid Blade.

To me if you’re going to make AEW Dark your answer to NXT, you might as well just home base it in Dailey’s Place or the Factory and run it out of that area doing a very localized loop. Just use your stars to do special attraction matches and base Dark around guys you need to develop. Let Dark have exclusive storylines and give the show some sort of identity it really needs.

I mean this all fantasy booking.

I think the issue with the Dark Order is that they don't have anything to do other than run in now and again. The group doesn't really have much of a purpose which is why we make one up in terms of getting the TNT title. This is a reasonable goal for them to have considering their history. Miro could offer them the stipulation because he believes his own hype, feels invincible and would take this as an opportunity to crush some peoples' hopes and dreams. He looked ready to fight all of them at once on Friday, I don't see him having a storyline reason to believe that he couldn't wipe them out one at a time. He'd probably also aim to tap them all out as a final slap in the face. You could then tell the story how the Dark Order keep falling but they systematically create a nick in the armor (say a hurt ankle or hand) in Miro. This allows all of them to share in the victory in the end as it was all of them together that take down the monster. It also gives Miro a bit of an out. You could also establish the line up so 10 is going to be the last guy Miro faces but HOLY SMOKES Johnny Hungry upsets him in the second to last match with a counter to the Game Over off the injured body part. Everyone comes together to celebrate but 10 has it in the back of his head that could have done it but never got the chance. That idea festers until the turn. Regarding -1's mental state, I assume the kid is pretty smart to the business and would be willing to let one of his favorite guys get a bigger spotlight even if he turns heel. His dad was a heel most of the time after all. 10 doesn't have to spit on Brodie's picture or anything.

You could actually combine the two. Have Silver win the TNT title and have Vance take it from him to do the heel turn.

Yeah, Nia isn't all that sympathetic an actor and she would need to be in order to work babyface. She's not cast well in that role.

This will sound insane. I trust Eva Marie to get it right.

The obvious progression is Piper does the dirty work for a while but is obviously being manipulated by Eva but then turns babyface and smashes Eva into the ground. While Piper is a heel, she's unlikely to get called fat by babyfaces for obvious reasons. Eva making jabs at her appearance behind Niven's back is likely to form the catalyst for the turn and bad people saying bad things is part of what makes them bad in the first place. That Piper destroys her in response is, of course, obligatory.

It’s interesting that I’m the dick in your head cannon. Did I call one of your posts the worst thing I’ve ever read? No. That was you. So don’t retreat into this being due to my attitude regarding the conversation. Any personal slights here came originally from you and you alone. If you are making the case that I’m being offensive to all the real wrestlers, you’d have to show me the posts where I am being offensive. You are making one claim ‘you should have to take a wrestling class to really talk about wrestling’ while already conceding that it’s an unreasonable request. I will concede immediately that I am only a fan. I do not claim a doctorate in wrestling. You could probably beat me in a trivia contest since I’m bad at dates. But for you to say I cannot comment on certain things because (and let’s be honest) you don’t like my conclusions is a you problem. Regarding your actual on topic argument, I would say that if Fenix is trying to sell exhaustion by throwing a weak forearm, it would behoove him not to follow up with 7 moves in the next 30 seconds all of which look better than that forearm. I find you objection to ‘limp dick’ as a turn of phrase really puzzling since you absolutely understood what it meant.

This is an epic yarn of how a socially awkward/autistic person is trying to make friends and being annoying about it. And let me be clear, if you find him annoying you do not have to be his friend. It may be beneficial for him to pull the dude aside and let him know that he’s coming on strong with the South Park stuff but he’s probably had some success with bridging social divides using South Park as a topic of conversation. That’s not your obligation of course. However, the ‘problem’ in terms of his awkwardness is not that he’s not knowledgeable enough about South Park. If he got the jokes or knew Butters’ real name he’d probably still be annoying. As a point of interest you using that as a gotcha is pretty shit especially if you consider you agreed with his assessment that that’s the character you most resemble. This is like using a wrestler’s real name and calling someone a plebe when they only refer to the wrestler by their more widely known stage name. You are whether you know it or not, trying to assert some sort of wacky dominance over minutiae. Which is really the whole point of this diatribe isn’t it?

I also don’t know anything about the guy but liked what I saw. Obvious Vader comparisons are obvious. Pretty weird to put him against another big guy like Cesar but I think he still did a good job trying to get himself over.

I actually can’t remember the last time he did the deadpan dropkick. Most of his deep thoughts are tied up in the Cody cutter.

Please send me daily updates about what I’m allowed to talk about. I’m lost without your guidance. Help a pal out.

I don't think you can argue it was a good thing considering they lost their crowds for a year which were a key part of their presentation and had to put lots of stuff into holding patterns (most notably anything regarding Adam Page).

I question how great of a sequence this really is and would like to put it under a microscope as to why. Before I go into that however, let's throw in some caveats. First, I don't remember when this happened in the body of the match up so I'm going to assume that this happened later in the matchup and wasn't like the first thing they did. Both guys are selling a bit like they are tired at this point so I think that's a fair place to put the sequence. I think everyone would agree that this absolutely wouldn't work as the first thing they did in a match. Secondly, this is absolutely preferable to some parity spots where guys do a bunch of stuff, nothing connects, nothing gets accomplished and the two wrestlers end up looking at each other in the stand off stance. This is a different sort of parity spot where both guys hit stuff and they end up projecting a level of equality without no one being able to touch the other person. With that out of the way, we open with Fenix slapping Omega's hands off him and hitting a quick spin kick to the stomach. He follows with a limp dick forearm and a chop. Neither of the two hand strikes are particularly good and don't add a lot to get us to the next point. So Kenny, being hit in the stomach, the side of the head and his chest grabs his chest and then face before Fenix sets up a suplex. Kenny gets put in a weird position with the series of strikes to different places in that he can't possibly sell all of them. As the spin kick should have doubled him over somewhat, it would have been more natural to go right to the suplex from there rather than throw in two things that didn't help. Fenix then hooks for the suplex but Kenny immediately counters by lifting Fenix only to get kneed on the way up, Kenny then falls backward into the ropes and gets superkicked for the first time. This all happens in 4-5 seconds which would lead me to believe that most people watching aren't going to catch all of that and just focus on the superkick that punctuated the mini-sequence. Omega ends up selling on his heels, wobbling as though he might fall backward if nothing were to happen to him. Instead Fenix grabs him and goes for a head palm shoot off only to have Kenny reverse. I'm not as diametrically opposed to the head palm shoot off as some but reversing one with one of your own seems really odd. Compared to the standard shoot off where guys go wrist-to-wrist, you could see someone holding on easily and reversing the momentum. Just pivoting and grabbing the other guy by the head doesn't work as well in my opinion. This is where we start to lose execution as Fenix goes into his rope kick spot. The problem with this spot is always that people have to stand there and wait for him to revolve around in the ropes before reacting to the kick. Kenny is forced to stand in place while the maneuvering is happening and while it's fair to say that he's going to duck this kick anyway, it could have been more organic looking if they did a standard shoot off and Kenny had to regather himself from the effort of the whip and then stand up to see the kick coming. This could technically be seen as Kenny baiting the kick since he ducked after all but his body language said he was groggy rather than waiting and he wouldn't do that for any reason to full Fenix who cannot see him as he's moving through the ropes. After Fenix finishes the kick, Kenny hits the V Trigger and the problem here is that rather than starting the motion as Fenix is resetting from the kick, he waits until Fenix is looking back at him in a neutral position before starting the motions leading up to the knee. So now Fenix has to wait to be hit. Fenix hits the ground, immediately kips up and kicks Kenny with his second superkick before falling back down again. Kenny flops to the mat face first. Kenny's delayed sell is fine and appropriate to someone crumbling after getting hit. Fenix's kip up is the issue here as one would think the pain from a strike would be at its greatest immediately after the strike. It's one thing to take a punch, swing wildly by instinct while falling down. It seems quite another to take a punch, fall down, do an acrobatic flourish to get back up, hit the other guy hard enough to knock him down and then fall. I think this is a sequence that tries to pull off almost a fighting game type of vibe where you can fight at peak effectiveness until you're dead. I think wrestling works better as the characters become more desperate as damage occurs and that damage restricts future actions. All in all, I continue to believe this was a parity spot in order to show that Fenix can run with Omega and I think it was somewhat effective in that purpose. I think some of the execution choices left something to be desired where some parts were quicker than they should have been (the suplex section) and some required the performers to be flat footed when they should have been moving (the rope kick and the V Trigger).

Some thoughts from Elevation. Tony S. for all of his enthusiasm still comes off like he's never watched wrestling before miscalling Spears' finish a Canadian Destroyer and a Michinoku Driver a powerbomb. I don't think we talk about Lee Johnson enough. He's got good babyface fire and some solid fundamental storytelling items down. He has nice hot tag offence and has pretty good timing and selling. Only issue he had in the tag match with Dustin is getting out of position during one of their double teams where Lee set up Dustin for a running kick to the head. He needed to move forward after the blow but ended up turning into Dustin's path instead. Still a good outing. I love his chest beating and kip up during his fire sequences. Eddie Kingston and Penta had zero chemistry as a team and that was pretty surprising. The match felt very awkward on their end. Arik Cannon looked pretty good. Orange Cassidy squash was pretty good when the other guy was on offense. I think they went overboard on Cassidy rolling around during his comeback with too many passes around his opponent rather than actually doing anything productive. Wardlow looks smaller to me. Maybe I just haven't seen him a lot lately but it looks like he may have lost some muscle mass? If I were giving him notes, I would tell him to keep his tongue in his mouth and work more stoically. Finish was red hot fiery death, what a sell job by the other guy. Nyla has become fast forward material for me. Hart is obviously and understandably green. She's got good parts to build with though and her standing moonsault hits perfectly and that's not easy to do. Spears had a nice squash match. He's pretty good at taking things up a notch and doing little well like stomps and knees on the floor. The last thing he needs is another gimmick thing so the Canadian God shirt should go right in the burn pile. EDIT: Finished watching show. Solow is the most "Just Another Guy" since Alan Angels, the dude seriously needs to figure out who he is so he can figure out what he's supposed to be doing. Be the weasel of the unit, the smart one something. I was struck that if you put the Factory team against the enhancement team and showed it to a wrestling neophyte, no one would be able to say which ones the stars were. Scorpio Sky versus Reynolds is like Poor Man's Bret Hart against Poor Man's Christian and I'm totally there for it. Scorpio is finding his groove in this enhancement matches as a technically, not physically dominant heel. Loved Reynolds kicking him in the stomach when Sky had his hands behind his back because that's obviously what you'd do. Now if Sky put his hands in his pockets? Totally different story. I think the finish had one two many steps between the missed moonsault and getting to the leglock finish (with Alex going for a rolling elbow) but that's a minor quibble.

Henry took a long time to develop into what he did around 2008 after debuting in 1996. He figured it out finally and developed into a good super heavyweight who figured out what he could and couldn't do. He was good at projecting an aura of impending violence and intimidation. His run faltered when his body broke down. These are the first two people that have been mentioned with Mark Henry since his tenure with AEW started. If this comes as a shock to his new employer, they made a bad hire. They'd have to be absolutely stupid to hire a guy as a talent scout and not ask who he thinks is any good before doing that. Secondly, do you think that complete unknown Bryan Danielson just slipped under the AEW radar and that they need Mark Henry to advocate for him? Come on man.

Leyla joining Team Taz has been bandied about since her debut in AEW. Still a good idea.

I found this compelling entirely for Miro who is the only one on the show tangibly building momentum during this terrible Friday run. Uno left very little impression on me and was unable to pull off the emotional "I'm doing this for my friend!" vibe. Miro on the other hand comes off like a monster staring down seven guys with the presence that he could probably take all of them and still make it to dinner on time. I think there could be something there with Dark Order vs. Miro and there could be some good television if they didn't just do a one and done. Dark Order could reasonably have their entire motivation be to get the TNT title back into the fold (which would give them something to do for the first time post Brodie). Miro could challenge all of them that each of them get a title shot but if he beats them all, they disband. You then have an escalation of stakes as Miro knocks them off one by one and the tension mounts as they become more desperate to stay together. You could either then end with Miro crushing them all and maybe having Hangman Page for revenge or have one of the Dark Order who has some potential (like Silver) get a super mammoth win at the end.

Unless Wardlow can snatch him into the air and F10 him in which case, fucking go for it.

Rawley would be one of those guys who needs to completely repackage himself to the point where he's barely recognizable. That's a dude that needs a complete makeover to get the WWE run out of people's brains.

I personally enjoyed NXT the most when it felt experimental and guys could get a chance to work on gimmicks and presentation while you maybe had a few polished guys on top who weren't super big names yet. Now it feels like a reflection of ROH and I just am not invested in whatever sub-220 pound, super cut, probably has a beard guy they have that week. This is when they lost me. I sometimes poke my head in to see what Cameron Grimes is doing or where we are with Dexter Lumis and Indy but I don't think I've actually watched a full match of even theirs in months.

I assume all of this attachment to Fuego Del Sol comes from the Sammy Vlog? His performances in ring have been pretty generic undersized wrestler stuff from what I've ever seen from him.

I understand the concept in theory but in practice it seems as though they wasted six months doing things that outsiders identified immediately as non starters. The association with Kip (outside of the Best Man moniker) and the video games ultimately didn’t catch on at all and have been almost completely forgotten. They could have slow burned a heel run by having him go through the undercard baby faces systematically and decisively like they are doing now. Clearly that works. He would have just been building momentum against Uno and Dante Martin to get to Darby rather than doing it after.

OHHHH RADIOOOO TELL ME EVERYTHING YOU KNOW! (7) Zack Ryder 5th WWE Theme Song "Radio" (V2) (With Quote) [High Quality+Download Link] - YouTube