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AEW R-Evolution II - 3/7/2021


Dolfan in NYC

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2 hours ago, Jimbo_Tsuruta said:

A few Surname on a Pole matches should sort everything out.

No no no, we need an international tournament where different regions battle it out over common surnames with the final sixteen having a battle royal. That's the AEW way.

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The Christian debut is the most TNA thing they’ve done to date, including the same theme music. 

I like Christian a lot and there’s a place for him in AEW, but deciding that this was the way to debut him was a total botch. 

Just off the top of my head, you could have done something like Hardy announces Private Party vs Silver/Reynolds in a ladder match, and since he’s the master of those Dark Order has no chance. Training vignettes, etc for a few weeks. Then debut Christian at the PPV as Silver/Reynolds’s manager and, surprise, he’s been training them all along also. Repeat the TIT final match and try to make some new stars. 

I think the fans are right to start questioning some things. So many of the home grown young talent can barely get on TV, yet they continue to add to the roster. 

Edited by For Great Justice
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They are close to turning into late 1994 WCW where they had a really good roster and decided mostly by Hogan that they needed to bring in WWF guys in order to go to the top nationally.    Although I won't put Christian in the category of Jim Duggan, Honky Tonk Man, and the Brutus Beefcake who had no business in the promotion.  At least they are going with the solid mid carders. 

 

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So I read through all 18 pages and some things I didn't see mentioned unless I missed them

 

Moxley was beaten down for roughly 5 mins by Gallows, Anderson, and Omega. If Eddie was going to come out why wait until seconds before the ring explodes?

 

Why didn't Eddie try to carry Moxley out?  Schiavone saying "carry him out, get him out of there' while Eddie didn't really attempt to made him look just as bad as the explosions.

 

Where does AEW go from here? How do you up the ante of an exploding ring death match? The only thing more severe is a loser leaves AEW match and Eddie, Kenny, and Mox are locked in.   What do you do to get revenge on the dastardly heel who "blew up"  the hero?

 

Bringing in Ethan Page but not Josh Alexander?  I love Ethan, one of the nicest guys in the biz but would have really loved to see them as a package.

Overall  not a bad show really. If I'm a fan buying a ticket I'd be pissed not seeing Sting or Darby live as nowhere was it stated that it would be a cinematic street fight.  

Another thing that went missed is that the ring would "explode" when someone hit it or Moxley's foot touched it.  But it didn't explode when they were doing spots touching it or jumping off the turnbuckle. There were at least 2 occasions where they clearly touched the explosion on the ropes and nothing happened. 

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I don't get why he waited until 4 minutes and 45 seconds that was dumb.  I was more distracted by how Gallows was so over tanned that he could have been considered a new nationality.   But I guess why he didn't pick him up because they were trying to mimic how Onita handled Terry Funk in the same situation.  Although Onita if I remember tried to slap the crap out of him to wake him up and I don't think Eddie did that.  

I thought the slapping the barbed wire to cause the explosion and break up the pin was a great touch.  Does it "waste" an explosion maybe but the idea that there was a 3rd explosion in that would have been dumb.    II don't really remember if the FMW style explosion had multiple on the same ropes.  

Edited by hammerva
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The PPV was pretty good for the most part. I think they could learn to not let so many matches go for so long, but it was still good. Unfortunately, the lasting memory is the ringside area going *poof*. That was really bad. Props to them for trying to very quickly make lemonade out of the lemons they were handed (i.e. saying Kenny can't build a bomb for shit), but it's still going to be hard to not think of Kingston selling the thing like death. I mean, it's probably best just to move on from that match as fast as they can.

The Christian signing is a win in my book. Angle would have been really bad because the dude can't wrestle and he also can't even talk anymore. Seeing him cut promos in WWE wasn't good. There's no way CM Punk, Cena, the Rock, or Brock would come in to work on a multi-year deal. The cooler outside-the-box options like Daniel Cormier also wouldn't work. That leaves Christian or, like, RVD. RVD really sucks. I also thought Christian signed with WWE. So that they got him is great. He can work matches, talk his ass off, etc. Not only that, but I think this signing is pretty big. Christian's stock immediately shot up with the Royal Rumble where you have people asking "where's Christian?" Well, now they can say he's in AEW.

I'm trying to think of my favorite match, but it's the next day and the PPV went on forever. Stop having 4 hour PPVs. 2 1/2 to 3 hours max is what the goal should be. I would have put that tag team battle royal on the pre-show. It just took up so much time. Like I said earlier, every match was anywhere from good to really good. There wasn't a shitty match on this thing. Maybe the most disappointing match was the ladder match. I would leave these big, multi-man ladder matches to WWE. WWE are the masters of this type of match. This seemed like a bunch of guys who are all good to great wrestlers not having any big or crazy ideas to get the ladders over. The last great ladder match was the one in NXT to determine the first NA champion. If that style of match were retired after that then I would have been fine with it. It just feels like it should stay a WWE thing. I think if it's a 1v1 or a 2v2 match then a ladder match is fine, but doing multi-man ladder matches for a contract should remain a WWE thing.

Hmm, best match was probably Shida vs Ryo or Hangman vs Matt. The only reason I lean towards Hangman vs Matt is because Ryo was no-selling everything to ridiculous degrees. I'm obviously fine with fighting spirit type matches, but Ryo had waaaaaay too much fighting spirit. Main event was a great match too and it would have been the best if not for the botched explosion.

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And if the explosions went off like we expected, this would have been up there with some of their best PPVs. As it is, it's merely better than last year's All Out.

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1 hour ago, paintedbynumbers said:

What do you do to get revenge on the dastardly heel who "blew up"  the hero?

Theme-music distraction for the roll-up pin in the next match the heel has with some midcarder? Or wait, was the question somewhat rhetorical in nature?

 

I'll just add a theory on Eddie's selling onto this one. Maybe he was so mortified and embarassed that he "risked his life" to help out Mox of all people, then realized that there was no real explosion/ danger coming, so he actually passed out from the shame he felt for being duped like that? I mean, he's a proud and a stubborn man, who probably likes to think of himself as being smart, wily and cunning. Being made to look like dork by a geek like Kenny, probably ate away at him in such an instantaneous manner, that he couldn't take it and passed out.

Edited by Shartnado
My theory added...
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Cage / Starks vs. Sting / Allin was fucking sweet.   Street fights are 1000% better if they take place in the street.  Who knew?

I totally subscribe to the Kenny Planted Dummy Bombs Just In Case He Was Thrown Onto One conspiracy theory.

I can forgive Eddie Kingston waiting for so long to rescue Mox.  Why rush to save the guy that choked you out in a title match not so long ago?  The hate finally transformed into respect according to the booking.  It's not like we haven't seen the promos and watched it happen.  I can picture Eddie wrestling with his conscience the entire time and finally saying "Fuck it.  I can't let this shit stand.  I gotta go help my dude."

Silver vs. PAC is the match we all never knew we needed to see yesterday.

Edited by J.T.
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49 minutes ago, For Great Justice said:

 

I think the fans are right to start questioning some things. So many of the home grown young talent can barely get on TV, yet they continue to add to the roster. 

Who are we referring to here? Of the "home grown talent", the names that have stood out to me so far are MJF, Darby, Jungle Boy, Guevara and Starks. And John Silver. Perhaps Wardlow and Hobbs in the future. Britt for the women. Pretty much all them are featuring prominently. 

In fact there's a number of names that are probably featuring more prominently than they should be at this point - Sabian, the Acclaimed, most of the Dark Order, Jack Evans, the Best Friends. 

I was just thinking that the roster could do with being trimmed sooner or later and there's really a lot of people that could be cut without anyone really batting an eyelid.

 

Edited by Tuna Boss
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40 minutes ago, hammerva said:

They are close to turning into late 1994 WCW where they had a really good roster and decided mostly by Hogan that they needed to bring in WWF guys in order to go to the top nationally.    Although I won't put Christian in the category of Jim Duggan, Honky Tonk Man, and the Brutus Beefcake who had no business in the promotion.  At least they are going with the solid mid carders. 

 

Remember when AEW started there was all the talk that they (well, Cody at least) wanted it to be like early 90's WCW and at least some folks were getting really excited about the prospect. Well, I'm sure in their minds, that's EXACTLY the part of the early 90's they were all clamouring for! Holy shit!

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28 minutes ago, paintedbynumbers said:

Overall  not a bad show really. If I'm a fan buying a ticket I'd be pissed not seeing Sting or Darby live as nowhere was it stated that it would be a cinematic street fight. 

Huh. Didn't we all knew it would be a cinematic match? I'm remembering it being said long before.

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Some more thoughts after a night of sleep. I still stand by notion that this pay per view pretty much delivered on it’s promises and you probably had some misguided hopes for this show or haven’t watched AEW before if it left you utterly disappointed (excluding the ending, I will not excuse that). But being a wrestling fan is pretty much like being stuck in an abusive relationship, so I can fault anyone and I still fall victim to myself here from time to time.

The Inner Circle has more or less run its course, but I’m still invested in seeing how things will turn out. To be honest, Jericho should still be a mayor player, but maybe transition to the tag team division, since 20+ minutes singles matches might not be the greatest idea with him at this point. So, in some way I’m sad that Jericho & MJF as a team is probably already over.

The Casino Tag Battle Royale had some great moments although the first ten minutes really could have been cut in some way. QT Marshall turned heel and aren’t we all excited about this one? Really, no one? Fenix, Pac, Silver and Jungle Boy at the end were fantastic and every match up of these four should be too. Jungle Boy is the MVP of every (battle royale type) match he’s having and I’ll always feel bad for Reynolds getting outshined by Silver.

I liked Shida vs Mizunami, I liked Sabian and Miro vs Taylor and Orange and I liked Hangman vs Hardy. Perfectly acceptable pay per view midcard with two straight matches and one angle heavy match. Yeah, everything could have been two minutes shorter, but we’re only getting four pay per views a year, I’m fine with midcard matches to end a feud running a little longer. Miro is a menace and I’m excited for his first real singles program.

It should just be acknowledged that the gimmick of Pentagon is basically that he could be the most successful wrestler on the planet if he’d just stop playing with his fingers all the time. I don’t really know much about Ethan Page and I feel the ladder match didn’t really helped introduce him that much. Explosion and first minutes of the Battle Royale, this was the lowlight of the show for me. Just a disorganized clusterfuck that couldn’t even deliver on memorable spots and that’s pretty much all it can deliver anyway.

I like Christian and maybe he’s still valuable but please stop signing wrestlers. It’s enough. Just stop. There’s so much talent on this roster and AEW just keeps adding and adding and adding. You have some of the best tools in the world, just keep building your damn thing.

I will once again say that a Trios Title would be a great thing to do especially since the roster is that big and they have some old guys who I really don’t want to see in singles action anymore. A trio of Big Show and a lesser-known duo and the whole point of the matches is the other trio trying to keep Big Show from getting in the ring is about the only thing I can think of that I’d like to see with Big Show. Big Money Matt should just buy a Trios Title an inaugurate himself and Private Party as the first champions.

The Street Fight was really entertaining and had some great moments. I like the commentary over these matches because without it cinematic matches always feel like bad b-movie fights overstaying their welcome to mee. Interferences by Hook and Hobbs sucked, especially with Taz not being there against his will somehow - just let Darby & Sting and Cage & Starks fight it out. Sting probably shouldn’t win against Starks in 2021 but I don’t feel like Starks will be hampered much by this and for the moment I can accept this as basically a tribute to a legendary career that ended on a really sour note until yesterday came by.

Speaking of ending on a sour note… ah, man. I just feel bad for Moxley and Kingston laying in the middle of the ring playing dead for a poof. Other than that, good main event up until the interference by Gallows and Anderson, although not the spectacle we probably all hoped for.

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9 hours ago, jaedmc said:

Matt Hardy vs. Adam Page was match of the night. It's amazing how a simple laid out match can get so much accomplished. 

100% agree on this, told a real nice, tight story throughout. I was grinning ear to ear from the moment Dark Order saved Page till the group hug. Just lovely stuff! 

Man, that last few minutes really let all the air out of the balloon. I enjoyed the show, felt I got my €22 worth, but that ending was such a downer. My heart went out to the incredibly professional Eddie Kingston. 

Thought the battle Royal had some really fun moments, especially with some of the newer teams. Haven't been watching Dark, but I'm gonna want to see a lot more Bear Country! 

Tony sounded like he was having a lot of fun on commentary, my favourite line of the night was while MJF was telling Matt Jackson to suck it, Tony was shouting, "please hit him there right where he's pointing at!"

 

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It got lost in the shuffle, but Bunkhouse Butch and the Blade were out there trying to stop Eddie from getting in the ring at the end.  Stands to reason that there was probably more of the same happening backstage.

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18 minutes ago, Craig H said:

And if the explosions went off like we expected, this would have been up there with some of their best PPVs. As it is, it's merely better than last year's All Out.

I agree that All Out 2020 and Revolution 2021 are the two worst AEW PPVs. Only thing this had going for it was Sting's first match in six years in an example how to do cinematic matches right though I'd prefer no commentary even though Taz did a great job and Kenny Omega vs. Jon Moxley before the interference/that non explosion. All Out 2020 is the worst AEW PPV ever.

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7 minutes ago, MrKothoga said:

Huh. Didn't we all knew it would be a cinematic match? I'm remembering it being said long before.

It was news to me.  I didn't realize it was a cinematic match until that was mentioned in my Twitter feed Friday.

Show was decent on the whole.  Closing "explosion" will be the lasting memory of the show though.  I felt like they really didn't figure out how to do an exploding barb wire deathmatch on tv and fell into the trap of over-promising and under-delivering.  Match lacked the "crazy" factor I was expecting going in.  Onita had nothing to worry about.

Not sure what to think of Wight and Christian.  I dunno that either guy brings a lot to the table aside from the notoriety of signing an ex-WWE guy.  I don't want to be too hard on them because I'd probably sign them too.  I think you have to at least consider it if longtime WWE upppercarders come knocking at your door.  But it still feels like a step in the wrong direction for me.  AEW seems to have a strategy for long-term success in place, and that strategy didn't seem to have room for WWE talent at the end of their careers until now.

Personally, I feel like Angle is on his way in, if he really wants to make a comeback.   Hope I'm wrong.   

 

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I  woke up a few minutes ago and still felt incredibly sad and disappointed. I don't care how they spin this moving forward. How can Tony Khan be so smart and yet so dumb at the same time? 

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23 minutes ago, MrKothoga said:

Some more thoughts after a night of sleep. I still stand by notion that this pay per view pretty much delivered on it’s promises and you probably had some misguided hopes for this show or haven’t watched AEW before if it left you utterly disappointed (excluding the ending, I will not excuse that). But being a wrestling fan is pretty much like being stuck in an abusive relationship, so I can fault anyone and I still fall victim to myself here from time to time.

 

The Inner Circle has more or less run its course, but I’m still invested in seeing how things will turn out. To be honest, Jericho should still be a mayor player, but maybe transition to the tag team division, since 20+ minutes singles matches might not be the greatest idea with him at this point. So, in some way I’m sad that Jericho & MJF as a team is probably already over.

 

The Casino Tag Battle Royale had some great moments although the first ten minutes really could have been cut in some way. QT Marshall turned heel and aren’t we all excited about this one? Really, no one? Fenix, Pac, Silver and Jungle Boy at the end were fantastic and every match up of these four should be too. Jungle Boy is the MVP of every (battle royale type) match he’s having and I’ll always feel bad for Reynolds getting outshined by Silver.

 

I liked Shida vs Mizunami, I liked Sabian and Miro vs Taylor and Orange and I liked Hangman vs Hardy. Perfectly acceptable pay per view midcard with two straight matches and one angle heavy match. Yeah, everything could have been two minutes shorter, but we’re only getting four pay per views a year, I’m fine with midcard matches to end a feud running a little longer. Miro is a menace and I’m excited for his first real singles program.

 

It should just be acknowledged that the gimmick of Pentagon is basically that he could be the most successful wrestler on the planet if he’d just stop playing with his fingers all the time. I don’t really know much about Ethan Page and I feel the ladder match didn’t really helped introduce him that much. Explosion and first minutes of the Battle Royale, this was the lowlight of the show for me. Just a disorganized clusterfuck that couldn’t even deliver on memorable spots and that’s pretty much all it can deliver anyway.

 

I like Christian and maybe he’s still valuable but please stop signing wrestlers. It’s enough. Just stop. There’s so much talent on this roster and AEW just keeps adding and adding and adding. You have some of the best tools in the world, just keep building your damn thing.

 

I will once again say that a Trios Title would be a great thing to do especially since the roster is that big and they have some old guys who I really don’t want to see in singles action anymore. A trio of Big Show and a lesser-known duo and the whole point of the matches is the other trio trying to keep Big Show from getting in the ring is about the only thing I can think of that I’d like to see with Big Show. Big Money Matt should just buy a Trios Title an inaugurate himself and Private Party as the first champions.

 

The Street Fight was really entertaining and had some great moments. I like the commentary over these matches because without it cinematic matches always feel like bad b-movie fights overstaying their welcome to mee. Interferences by Hook and Hobbs sucked, especially with Taz not being there against his will somehow - just let Darby & Sting and Cage & Starks fight it out. Sting probably shouldn’t win against Starks in 2021 but I don’t feel like Starks will be hampered much by this and for the moment I can accept this as basically a tribute to a legendary career that ended on a really sour note until yesterday came by.

 

Speaking of ending on a sour note… ah, man. I just feel bad for Moxley and Kingston laying in the middle of the ring playing dead for a poof. Other than that, good main event up until the interference by Gallows and Anderson, although not the spectacle we probably all hoped for.

 

Man, Pentagon gets on my nerves with that. I wanted to reach through my TV and slap him when I watched him for the first time (him and Fenix vs. The Young Bucks Ladder match at AEW All Out 2019). Nearly stopped giving it ***** because of it.

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11 hours ago, just drew said:

Listen, I'm not trying to justify what happened as being what was supposed to happen. All I'm saying is there are ways out of this. You just have to be super "on point" for the next week or so. Everyone in that company has to have their story straight. Treat it like someone was found murdered in Kenny's backseat. "This is what happened, this is what we're saying. Do not deviate from this."

This and the point about AEW desperately needing to tighten up their whole operation in general are spot on.  The last time something this stupid and unpopular happened, it was the Dark Order beatdown at the end of 2019.  AEW pivoted from that immediately that and has been damn good since.  They need to do the same here.  I'm pretty confident they will.  But in general, it's time for the company to mature a little, get past the growing pains, and clearly figure out who's in charge and move in one direction.  Their highs are very high, but there's a good deal of shit where you're left scratching your head wondering whose idea something was and why they got leeway.

 

Also, LOL @ Bryce Remsburg looking like he's going to cook up a batch of Blue Sky with Mr. White after the show.

Edited by Technico Support
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14 minutes ago, Jiji said:

I don't care how they spin this moving forward. How can Tony Khan be so smart and yet so dumb at the same time? 

That's a great way to phrase it. So many own goals on this show. Choosing to hype and debut Christian the way they did. Choosing to box themselves in with the exploding ring gimmick. The Sonic the Hedgehog ring. 

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