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Posted (edited)
43 minutes ago, Craig H said:

You know what…There has to have been at least one match with an Adam vs Adam and I don’t recall these lazy fans with dueling LET’S GO ADAM/LET’S GO ADAM chants. 

when we got Hangman v Cole, the crowd did indeed chant THIS IS ADAM

 

... but you're right, I don't remember any dueling chants.

Edited by Iron Moose
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Posted

Anyway, everyone talks about Jericho being a heat vampire, but fucking Adam Cole saving Swerve has Jericho saying “damn, son.”

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Posted
On 1/3/2025 at 7:15 PM, SovietShooter said:

In a way it reminds me of how The Source just started handing out five-mic reviews like candy, when they had earned the reputation over the years of only giving five-mics to certified classics, or even under-rating classic albums. It killed their credibility, and ultimately led to the downfall of the publication.

They were also pulling shit like not giving 'The Chronic' 5 mics and weird stuff like that. 

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Posted

Something that I think is missing from the current AEW landscape is the presence of alternative media supplementation.  Yes, I’m very proud of how I phrased that.

When AEW started.  Several of their visible acts had YouTube shows that often would support or comment on angles and matches seen in the official narrative.  
 

For example “Being the Elite” really gets overlooked in how much heavy lifting it did in laying the foundation for AEW to not only exist but hit the ground running.  Because what do you book with a start up company?  A bunch of cold matches?  
 

Maybe something that’s on paper a “dream match” but the competitors are probably coming from polar opposite of where they’ve been.  

While I personally resent over branding and commercialization.  I still credit its power and can recognize how much work it got done for WWE over the years.

BTE was the antidote to a cold start up.  Week in and out you were introduced and familiarized with a set of characters that at least a portion of the audience would know from the first show.  Plus it was often very creative and funnier than it had any right to be.

Noobs would have better access to understanding what’s going on when the announcers more to say about the wrestlers than “He’s athletic” or some other vapid attempt adding color.

Even after AEW was chugging along for a while.  Several others in the locker room picked up the ball.  Thunder Rosa, Sammy’s VLOG… all began as small inexpensive ventures that you could see evolve with more production applied (intros, sharper editing) as everything built.  TR would do personal interviews over Tacos and Sammy would hang out with his friends and be goofs.  Sometimes even bleeding over into each other’s stuff.  You know… FUN!

But this stuff has absolutely withered on the vine. It is baffling to me how much of a void it’s left.  Is no one sitting in catering interested?  Has no one noticed?

FFWD to now and AEW is in its awkward adolescent phase where the cool factor is out reach.  Time to grow.
 

 

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Posted
2 hours ago, Brandon Bones said:

But this stuff has absolutely withered on the vine. It is baffling to me how much of a void it’s left.  Is no one sitting in catering interested?  Has no one noticed?

I think the peak of this kind of content was during the pandemic, when the talent was (for lack of a better term) stuck at Dalys Place for hours on end with nothing else to do, so they fucked around with these vlogs. I know BTE was around well before that, but a lot of these other vlogs really found their groove around that time. 

BTE was passed off to Brandon Cutler for the most part, and there was a clear and noticable change to it after Brawl Out. From a legal perspective, I get it, but there is no doubt that whole incident killed the Bucks motivation to do it. 

Sammy's vlog kinda went downhill as more and more of the vlog Crew ended up getting released.  Then there was the huge backlash when he broke up with Pam and started dating Tay.  Then he was suspended a couple times and I think he just lost his motivation to do it.

Thunder Rosa's was more of a straight up travel vlog, with the taco interviews, but for the most part she stopped doing it when she got hurt... and let's not forget she was being accused of faking that injury by other AEW talent. So, I'm sure she lost her motivation. 

So, in general I think a lot of these folks were having fun with it and had a lot of free time in their hands, but when they started facing some professional adversity, it just became less fun and they stopped.  I suppose it is possible (especially after the Brawl Out/Brawl In incidents) that AEW kinda told folks to back off of this stuff a bit, or required approval, too. 

 

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Posted (edited)
3 hours ago, Brandon Bones said:

Something that I think is missing from the current AEW landscape is the presence of alternative media supplementation.  Yes, I’m very proud of how I phrased that.

When AEW started.  Several of their visible acts had YouTube shows that often would support or comment on angles and matches seen in the official narrative.  

 

This, and also, the official AEW social media channels are missing something else. With WWE ones, they use different zooms and pans to focus on what the video is about. It feels like AEW's are more likely to just be straight shots from broadcast, sometimes cropped, meaning that sometimes relevant things are happening outside of what the viewer can see.

As an example, look at this: https://www.instagram.com/aew/reel/DEcpqGAprbC/  particularly how Bryan Keith's ringpost shenanigans in the first few seconds are off-camera.

Edited by Iron Moose
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Posted
57 minutes ago, Iron Moose said:

This, and also, the official AEW social media channels are missing something else. With WWE ones, they use different zooms and pans to focus on what the video is about. It feels like AEW's are more likely to just be straight shots from broadcast, sometimes cropped, meaning that sometimes relevant things are happening outside of what the viewer can see.

As an example, look at this: https://www.instagram.com/aew/reel/DEcpqGAprbC/  particularly how Bryan Keith's ringpost shenanigans in the first few seconds are off-camera.

I think about when AEW socials posted the clip of Mariah taking the shot at Mina and they cropped it so poorly you couldn't see anything.

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Posted

Does anybody know if Grand Slam Australia is still on for mid-February? They seem to be focussed on advertising March's Revolution, which seems odd.

Posted
1 hour ago, EVA said:

Fuck whatever the plans are. Strap up The Cleaner by Revolution.

Given the reaction to Kenny's match with Gabe Kidd, AEW has a chance to bring him back with a somewhat fresh start and make him their top tier, final boss(forgive the term, couldn't think of a better one).  I love so much of the AEW roster, but it's clear whenever a big moment with Omega occurs that he is easily the biggest star/presence on the roster and outside of Ospreay(though now is an argument), it's not even close.

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Posted
56 minutes ago, tbarrie said:

Does anybody know if Grand Slam Australia is still on for mid-February? They seem to be focussed on advertising March's Revolution, which seems odd.

I think after they downsized the building it seems like it lost of some its buzz (and mentions from AEW). So its still 'on' and as it gets closer I'm sure it'll start getting pushed since its the next PPV but I don't think its as big/important as it was when they were overambitious trying to fill a stadium. So Revolution and All In will probably get pushed as the bigger 'must see' events.

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Posted
18 hours ago, Niners Fan in CT said:

They were also pulling shit like not giving 'The Chronic' 5 mics and weird stuff like that. 

That's like Cinefantastique giving The Thing '82 only 2 stars, a lot of bonafide genre classics in the '70s and '80s getting ZERO stars (actually, filled-in circles) from different contributors. They'd have five different people watching and rating and the only time you'd get a full five and four matching rating (there was like never a full five across the board) was for, say, E.T. Snobs up the arse. 

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Posted

I thought Grand Slam Australia was just a Dynamite/Collision taping. I guess that just shows how poorly it's been promoted, though I suppose they're not trying to sell tickets to some guy in Florida

Posted
19 hours ago, JLowe said:

Anyway, everyone talks about Jericho being a heat vampire, but fucking Adam Cole saving Swerve has Jericho saying “damn, son.”

Meanwhile FTR low key starts another unofficial six man team with a bigger star than them as kids in third world countries are hanging out in their CMFTR t shirts.

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Posted
9 hours ago, Brandon Bones said:

Something that I think is missing from the current AEW landscape is the presence of alternative media supplementation.  Yes, I’m very proud of how I phrased that.

When AEW started.  Several of their visible acts had YouTube shows that often would support or comment on angles and matches seen in the official narrative.  
 

For example “Being the Elite” really gets overlooked in how much heavy lifting it did in laying the foundation for AEW to not only exist but hit the ground running.  Because what do you book with a start up company?  A bunch of cold matches?  
 

Maybe something that’s on paper a “dream match” but the competitors are probably coming from polar opposite of where they’ve been.  

While I personally resent over branding and commercialization.  I still credit its power and can recognize how much work it got done for WWE over the years.

BTE was the antidote to a cold start up.  Week in and out you were introduced and familiarized with a set of characters that at least a portion of the audience would know from the first show.  Plus it was often very creative and funnier than it had any right to be.

Noobs would have better access to understanding what’s going on when the announcers more to say about the wrestlers than “He’s athletic” or some other vapid attempt adding color.

Even after AEW was chugging along for a while.  Several others in the locker room picked up the ball.  Thunder Rosa, Sammy’s VLOG… all began as small inexpensive ventures that you could see evolve with more production applied (intros, sharper editing) as everything built.  TR would do personal interviews over Tacos and Sammy would hang out with his friends and be goofs.  Sometimes even bleeding over into each other’s stuff.  You know… FUN!

But this stuff has absolutely withered on the vine. It is baffling to me how much of a void it’s left.  Is no one sitting in catering interested?  Has no one noticed?

FFWD to now and AEW is in its awkward adolescent phase where the cool factor is out reach.  Time to grow.
 

 

All I remember from that time is that mostly everyone was complaining that they were doing more story building on BTE than they did through official AEW channels or on television.

Also the Road To shows in the early days, and eventually Control Center and the revival of Road To for a short while, accomplished the same things, looked better and you didn’t have to sit through the Young Bucks sneaker shopping or Peter Avalon trying to court Leva Bates.

BTE was good for pre-AEW and, when formed, pre-Dynamite stuff, but once they got on TV it should’ve stopped having active TV storylines on it probably. Once it moved to just furthering Dark angles, it was better, but for awhile it was the main vehicle for the Dark Order story in 2019 and that was pushed as a threat to the Elite a few months into Dynamite.

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Posted

Sammy Guevara is still doing his vlogs, but now he's an AEW jobber and an ROH tag team champion, so...a jobber. As an AEW wrestler and so-called pillar, he's lost all his momentum. 

I do miss Control Center a lot. That was a good way to keep up with things. 

Posted (edited)
13 hours ago, Casey said:

All I remember from that time is that mostly everyone was complaining that they were doing more story building on BTE than they did through official AEW channels or on television.

Also the Road To shows in the early days, and eventually Control Center and the revival of Road To for a short while, accomplished the same things, looked better and you didn’t have to sit through the Young Bucks sneaker shopping or Peter Avalon trying to court Leva Bates.

I remember that complaining too.  I also zoomed past Peter Avalon stuff as it never seemed to have much weight to it.  Plus, autograph signing interactions with fans is total cringe.
 

BTE was never really intended to be anything other than a travel VLOG by bored dudes in the road entertaining themselves.  But they did start experimenting a lot and did stretch its relevance a lot further than I bet even they expected.

So you don’t think that some supplemental content delivered through an alternative couldn’t have some merit?  Maybe to an underexposed talent that could parley that onto TV?

I mean it’s YouTube.  All-In or that Hangman/Omega vs. The Bucks tag title match had so much more going for it if you’d seen BTE.  For example.

But I wasn’t necessarily suggesting BTE specifically be brought back to prominence.  Just that the work done on the show week to week did a lot of heavy lifting in getting things over.

I also do agree that for the fan watching the TV with a blind spot to whatever shenanigans are happening on the internet won’t exactly get what’s coming.  But many would and that is a start that just isn’t there anymore.

Edit: Maybe it’s ironic.  But I never watched any control center stuff.  They didn’t have to sell me a line-up of matches since my ear was to the ground enough to know what they were.

Edited by Brandon Bones
Just woke up when I wrote this.
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Posted

You can't watch anything on ad-supported Netflix without being bombarded by Raw ads. We see at least 1-2 an episode on whatever we're watching. We've seen a few things on ad-supported MAX this last week and it was the same car commercial and Maggiano's commercial over and over. No mention of AEW.

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Posted (edited)
1 hour ago, Brandon Bones said:

I remember that complaining too.  I also zoomed past Peter Avalon stuff as it never seemed to have much weight to it.  Plus, autograph signing interactions with fans is total cringe.
 

BTE was never really intended to be anything other than a travel VLOG by bored dudes in the road entertaining themselves.  But they did start experimenting a lot and did stretch its relevance a lot further than I bet even they expected.

So you don’t think that some supplemental content delivered through an alternative couldn’t have some merit?  Maybe to an underexposed talent that could parley that onto TV?

I mean it’s YouTube.  All-In or that Hangman/Omega vs. The Bucks tag title match had so much more going for it if you’d seen BTE.  For example.

But I wasn’t necessarily suggesting BTE specifically be brought back to prominence.  Just that the work done on the show week to week did a lot of heavy lifting in getting things over.

I also do agree that for the fan watching the TV with a blind spot to whatever shenanigans are happening on the internet won’t exactly get what’s coming.  But many would and that is a start that just isn’t there anymore.

Edit: Maybe it’s ironic.  But I never watched any control center stuff.  They didn’t have to sell me a line-up of matches since my ear was to the ground enough to know what they were.

I do think AEW would benefit from a weekly (consistent time slot) highlights/recaps show on youchoob\, but not sure they quite hit the mark with the generic Control Center. I'd really like to see something that looks and feels a little more like the syndicated ECW show as opposed to a antiseptic WCW C show. I do agree that they could benefit from more Youtube etc shows, but I don't think wrestler vlogs are the way to go. I suspect for all the successes of BTE it's one of the biggest reasons there's such weird markish hate towards the Bucks. I went out of my way to avoid most AEW era BTE, and maybe in part this is why I still find myself appreciative of the Bucks pretty obvious talents. That said, BTE wasn't nearly as bad as the experience of watching the Guevara or Ethan Page vlogs. I think, again, that Sammy vlog did more harm than good for him. It also seems like a contributing factor to why he can't get over as a babyface. I could be wrong, but I have to think Ethan Page dropping his insanely rotten vlog has helped him greatly in getting on a path towards credibility. Some of these shows sorta work towards humanizing the performers, but in turn ppl act as if they then really know them personally. Although a lot of wrestling fans tend to do that anyway. I'm not a regular viewer, but Renee's youtube shows have been pretty good. RJ City's show is obviously a success. I do miss the Road To's, but I always felt those bits would've benefitted from being presented as a part of a better regular weekly recap/highlight show.

Edited by HarryArchieGus
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Posted
1 hour ago, HarryArchieGus said:

I do think AEW would benefit from a weekly (consistent time slot) highlights/recaps show on youchoob\, but not sure they quite hit the mark with the generic Control Center. I'd really like to see something that looks and feels a little more like the syndicated ECW show as opposed to an antiseptic WCW C show. I do agree that they could benefit from more Youtube etc shows, but I don't think wrestler vlogs are the way to go. I suspect for all the successes of BTE it's one of the biggest reasons there's such weird markish hate towards the Bucks. I went out of my way to avoid most AEW era BTE, and maybe in part this is why I still find myself appreciative of the Bucks pretty obvious talents. That said, BTE wasn't nearly as bad as the experience of watching the Guevara or Ethan Page vlogs. I think, again, that Sammy vlog did more harm than good for him. It also seems like a contributing factor to why he can't get over as a babyface. I could be wrong, but I have to think Ethan Page dropping his insanely rotten vlog has helped him greatly in getting on a path towards credibility. Some of these shows sorta work towards humanizing the performers, but in turn ppl act as if they then really know them personally. Although a lot of wrestling fans tend to do that anyway. I'm not a regular viewer, but Renee's youtube shows have been pretty good. RJ City's show is obviously a success. I do miss the Road To's, but I always felt those bits would've benefitted from being presented as a part of a better regular weekly recap/highlight show.

I might have watched Ethan Pages vlog once or twice.  But since I’m really not a merch hound.  I wasn’t too interested in toys.  Seemed like a good guy from what little I saw.  Meh.  Moved on.

I’m thinking more in the direction of some underutilized talent that use the platform to up their profile.  Being that the lane previously occupied by others has been left vacant.  It’s seems like there could be room to exploit there if you’re not on traditional television.

Just not Dark Order.  They can’t do shit with BTE.

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Posted

I never watched more than an episode or two of BTE because I never found them entertaining. This is a me problem and I realize a lot of people do enjoy the content so if wrestlers want to do them then fine, though I think there is a fine line in pulling the curtain back a little too much or coming off the wrong way in some of them. A 30-60 minute youtube reacap show of what happened the previous week on Dynamite and Collision featuring some clipped matches, promos, as well as new interviews with some of the talent that normally don't have air time on the main shows would be a good idea. Maybe even air a dark match or two. RJ City is an entertaining guy and letting he and Rene anchor something like this would probably work well.

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Posted
On 1/5/2025 at 7:15 AM, Brandon Bones said:

Something that I think is missing from the current AEW landscape is the presence of alternative media supplementation.  Yes, I’m very proud of how I phrased that.

When AEW started, several of their visible acts had YouTube shows that often would support or comment on angles and matches seen in the official narrative.  

i know i've mentioned this a couple of times, but All In (2018) was my reintroduction to current wrestling. i knew very few of the performers, and even the ones that i was tangentially aware of, i didn't know much about them. i watched BTE religiously in the run-up to that event. it was something that pro wrestling hadn't been for a long time for me......fun.

And you are absolutely right in that lower/mid card talent could definitely benefit in having that bit of exposure. Does anyone think the Dark Order would have had the success that they did if they weren't consistently the most entertaining thing on that show? I enjoyed the BTE title challenges. And you can't tell me that some performers (to throw out just one example, Anna Jay) didn't find themselves growing more comfortable in presenting a character and being an on-screen personality from the low-stakes opportunity something like that provided. 100% an opportunity that somebody should capitalize on.

4 hours ago, Matt D said:

You can't watch anything on ad-supported Netflix without being bombarded by Raw ads. We see at least 1-2 an episode on whatever we're watching. 

Netflix is going HARD on their advertising for Raw. I see it plastered across basically everything i visit online. Including a good portion of stuff that i've kept completely separate from my pro wrestling interest. And i haven't subscribed to Netflix in a good number of years. If Raw doesn't get ratings, it's absolutely not for a lack of trying/marketing on Netflix's part.

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