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AEW Navel-Gazing Thread Number Two


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6 minutes ago, Matt D said:

Well, John, i don't know where you should do this, but I think we're all more than willing to listen to you if you show your work here. Take a month. Find some examples. Come back and show the class and maybe you'll move the needle around here.

Sounds like an interesting challenge. And now I'm worried about how much lower my bar is for Randy Orton spontaneity that I would be charmed by. The "John gazes at Randy Orton's naval by unpopular demand" thread is going to be hellish...

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Guest Jimbo_Tsuruta

My favourite Orton stuff is against Cena and my favourite description of him (from a review of the I Quit match) is "rubberized Android freak". If Orton came to AEW I'd want him cutting promos about being assembled in a lab by his robot-dad Bionic Bob, before going and no-selling his heart out. Nerve hold/claw finisher. 

Edited by Jimbo_Tsuruta
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I think I've said this before here, but Randy Orton is the wrestler I've enjoyed the most without ever seeking any of his stuff out.

Like, I've never sat down and said, "I'm going to watch this Randy Orton match."  However, when I've had a show on, and he's had a match, I'm surprised at the number of times I've enjoyed it.

 

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  • 3 weeks later...

Thank you to everyone who chimed in on the "Randy Orton in AEW" navel gaze!

My takeaway is that there really aren't a lot of specific match-ups for the ole Viper vs anyone in AEW that would have us as fans champing at the bit, but there is some interest in seeing what he might do outside of the WWE system. I think that's a good take!

 

Boy oh boy did I ever love Full Gear. I'm absolutely convinced it belongs in the conversation for Best Pro Wrestling PPV (or Big-Time Show) of All Time. It might be recency bias and it's possible I enjoyed it more because I'm healthy and in a good mood and watched it while chatting online with a small group of wrestling friends who were all marking out for everything all show long... but for me, at the very least, it ranks right up there with WrestleMania 17, Super J Cup '94, Dominion in Osaka Jo 2018, WK 11, Canadian Stampede, Bash '89, Supercard of Honor '06, Osaka Pro Hurricane 2010, Michinoko Pro These Days... on my list of personal favourites. 

But I come here not to praise AEW but to gaze in my navel about them. For all that they do right, there are still several things that AEW just doesn't seem to get

For example: Why do you have Malakai Black wrestling pro wrestling matches in a pro wrestling ring? The way to make money with that guy is to have him sitting and brooding in a dark room! 

And, it's like AEW doesn't even understand that professional wrestlers and other company employees need to be buried and humiliated in their home towns! What is with having, say, Ruby Soho or Phil from Chicago or Dante Martin come out and address their hometown crowds and look good in front of their hometown fans? What's the purpose here? To pop the crowds and make your audience happy and generate joy and delight? What about pro wrestling tradition, consarn it? 

Speaking of which: It's 2021! Modern pro wrestling fans are mostly body marks who care way more about size and power than about charisma, athleticism, and talent. AEW just refuses to accept that simple fact of life. Here's a hint, Tony Khan: If someone's arms are less than 18" in circumference, keep them the hell away from the title scene and make sure they are constantly doing jobs to the big boys.

Also: Why does AEW refuse to accept that Japanese (or other foreign) pro wrestlers are a mystery to the lion's share of their fan-base? They brought in that one guy, what's his name, Mitusharu Suzuki? with only a little bit of introduction and explanation. I mean, sure, the live crowd responded to him ecstatically, but they were probably just being polite or trying to look smart. Do they really expect people who are pro wrestling fans to have read dirt sheets or wrestling web sites and/or posted on and discussed pro wrestling on websites like, uh, this one, and thereby heard about a guy who is widely considered one of the best in the world and a living legend? It's fine to bring in a wrestler without explanation if they are an English-speaking white person who recently worked in WWE, though.

That's just part of the larger issue: AEW really doesn't seem to get that we as pro wrestling fans need to have our intelligence insulted regularly. That's what the largest, richest, and most powerful pro wrestling organization in the world does to its "Universe" regularly.  For someone who seems to know so much about the history of pro wrestling, Tony Khan sure seems reluctant to learn from it.

Honestly, AEW, if you keep treating your fans with respect, allowing them to figure some things out for themselves, and giving them what they want... you are just going to end up with a bunch of savvy, happy, loyal fans. I mean, if that's what you want, might as well just keep doing what you are doing. 

Edited by Gordberg
dial it back about 20 percent
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  • 2 weeks later...

In recent weeks, AEW has continued to incorporate sensitive subjects into broadcasts. Eddie Kingston, a foul-mouthed brawler from just outside New York City, noted he takes Zoloft for depression. And in early November, the day after it was announced Moxley had entered an inpatient alcohol treatment program, the famously straight-edge Punk called on the Independence, Mo., crowd to chant Moxley’s name, commending the former champion for seeking help.

Page thinks the values of the company have created an openness that helps performers too. “Ten, 20 years ago, you would never walk away from a top spot, for any reason,” he says about Moxley going into rehab. “You would let your life crumble around you before you walked away from that top spot. Knowing AEW is a different kind of place, a different environment, I think has helped people be more honest with what they need in their lives.”

- a direct quote from here:

https://www.menshealth.com/trending-news/a38225563/adam-page-hangman-aew/

We've been arguing (often obliquely) for quite some time whether the move (in AEW) away from broad caricatures of machismo and masculinity and towards more nuanced, vulnerable, damaged, and otherwise relatable characters is a genuine change for the better. 

The second paragraph above, in particular, sums up a lot of why I quite passionately believe that it is.

I think it also touches quite directly on the value of nurturing and maintaining a positive/supportive/friendly atmosphere in a company.

I certainly don't remember anybody here suggesting that Mox was wrong to go into rehab while building toward a main event program, so maybe those ideas are no longer as controversial as they seemed to be when the company was starting out?

Please feel free to discuss, if you are so inclined.

(Or to lay out any other theories or considerations about AEW). 

Edited by Gordberg
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Along similar lines, I guess, I was watching Dynamite with my girlfriend last night and during the Billy Gunn match, the subject of steroids came up while we were marvelling at a nearly 60 year old man being in such great shape. She's wholeheartedly got into wrestling since meeting me last year, mainly AEW with a bit of NJPW, and has read Jim Smallman's history book, but doesn't have the insane reserves of pointless nerd knowledge I've built up in 30 years of being a fan.

So, I was explaining the Ass: Origins story as far as him being fired from his agent/trainer job in WWE for preparing too enthusiastically for a bodybuilding competition, and had to acknowledge that, as far as I knew, AEW didn't drug test (correct me if I'm wrong, but if they do it'd be the first I'd heard of it). Which is not ideal, and it'd be great if they did, but it got me thinking that what might be more beneficial than testing for steroids etc. is creating an environment where wrestlers aren't pressurised into doing them. They've demonstrated so far that, if you can project as a star, wrestle good matches and get over with the crowd, you can look like Darby Allin or a Young Buck (this is where someone who can spot these things tells me they're juiced to infinity) and still get a major push. And if you have to take time off, for whatever reason, you can rest assured you'll get a huge, featured comeback to a major pop, instead of going in the boss's black book of unreliable talent. That sort of culture seems like a better deal than rigorous wellness testing that still seems to mysteriously miss anyone above a certain level in the hierarchy, although some form of drug testing may obviously still be worthwhile, even at the cost of a slightly less vast Ass Gentleman.

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It's smart of them to hold back Dynamite matches for a Friday night reveal. That's one of the biggest strengths of the promotion right now. It's like Christmas every week when they announce new matches. The roster is so big. The potential match-ups are so plentiful and interesting. Some things are within an existing storyline. Some things open up new storylines. It's that "opening a pack of cards as a kid" feeling when they announce the weekly line-ups, that same feeling I got every day on my commute home 6 years ago when the new NWAonDemand match would drop or a couple of years later on Wednesday afternoon when news of the WWE Hidden Gems release would leak. The closest thing on a weekly basis for new material was when I was following CMLL closely, but that didn't hit nearly as hard because the weekly line-ups had so little effort put into them. With AEW, there's so much effort and care.

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@SturmCRFI totally agree with this. I don't hold Vince personally responsible for Eddie's death BUT I do hold him responsible for creating a toxic environment where you get juiced to get noticed by the boss, get on pain killers to deal with injuries, self medicate to deal with the grind of the road. Hopefully AEW continues to move away from that. 

 

And Brian Cage can do all the Steroids he personally wants if  AEW is willing to put Darby over him

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  • 2 weeks later...

I am not nearly as moved as my friend Gordi by the overall happiness of the performers. While I agree that some of the most enjoyable and earnest entertainment can come from people just trying to make themselves and their friends happy, it's quite obvious that what makes some of these people happy is not the same thing that makes me happy. Granted, the roster has rounded out considerably over the last couple of years and now I'd say it does as much as it does not.

That said, I've been listening to old episodes of AEW Unrestricted. They're a quick listen generally, and you get differing perspectives between Tony and Audrey who have very different backgrounds. Primarily it's been to learn about a number of wrestlers I don't know a lot about (Starks, Rosa, Hobbs, Bowens, Cargill, Ethan Page, etc.) and to hear about how certain ones that I did (Gunn, Sting, Taz, Deeb) got to AEW and how they feel about it. It's interview after interview of people who are obviously happy to be there, who feel supported, who talk up Khan in really genuine and very consistent ways, who seem almost bewildered about how their passion for wrestling has been rekindled. It's downright strange to hear someone like Taz seem so damn happy. And I enjoy when Khan gets into his hyper-mode running down cards. "And we've got this, and we've got this, and we've got this." There's a kid in a candy store element to it, but he's also making the candy and selling the candy. And most of us would be exactly the same way. If we set up a thread right now about everyone's potential Revolution 2022 card, we'd get essays.

And the happiness shows up on screen. And while I am not as moved as I could be by it to the point of ignoring the things I do not like, I am still very glad for it.

AEW is Pro Wrestling Camelot.

And most of us never thought we would live to see its kind again.

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  • 4 weeks later...

I am 56 years old. There are things that kinda suck about that. I have to watch what I eat now, for example.

But, in some ways, I think I was very lucky indeed to be born in 1965.

I can remember a time when, if I wanted to go out with my friends on Friday night we had to start phoning each other on Monday, and if three friends said that Friday at 7 was fine but the fourth one had to work, it would start a long game of "telephone tag" trying to reorganize everything. I can remember when, if the restaurant or bar we were going to was full but one friend hadn't arrived yet, it was a serious dilemma. Do we move on and ditch our friend? How long should we wait before figuring that something happened and they just aren't coming? Is there a working payphone around here? Anyone got a quarter?

So, to me, something as simple and basic as owning a cell phone is a real cause for joy. I have lived long enough that I really appreciate how much more convenient it makes life (though it also messes with our privacy and makes it harder to lie about missing a call... every silver lining has its cloud).

I live in a world where, if I want something but there isn't a store near me that sells the thing I want, I can pretty much always have it brought to my door tomorrow (or at the worst in a couple of weeks if it's a knockoff t-shirt that needs to be shipped from China). 

I can remember when we got, like, half an hour of cartoons after school on weekdays and a full slate on Saturday morning and afternoon (which I missed, because I went to the YMCA for judo and swimming and weightlifting and stuff instead), and like Peanuts specials and Winnie the Pooh on holidays or whatever. I can remember when, if I couldn't see a movie in the one or two weeks it was in one of two local cinemas, I wouldn't see it until a year or so later on TV, with all the swears and blood and sex cut out.

So my cheap Amazon tablet is basically magic to me. My girls can watch pertmuch any cartoon they could ever want to see whenever they want to, as long as papa has Wi-Fi access. And while they enjoy that, they don't really appreciate it. Why would they? Their world has always been like that! 

What I'm saying is, I feel lucky to be old enough to understand how much easier all of this affordable technology makes my life. To be young enough to be able to use it, but old enough to remember what life was like before it existed.

So, what does that have to do with pro wrestling? 

Have you already guessed? If you are my generation of fan, you probably have.

I started watching wrestling (Vancouver All Star, featuring Gene Kiniski and Don Leo Jonathan) when I was four years old. I saw my first Japanese pro wrestling match in the "green room" at a taping of Vancouver All Star Wrestling (which no longer featured Gene or Don Leo) in, I think, 1986. It was the beginning of a life-long obsession. 

I can remember, as can many of us, when there was one, local, pro wrestling show on TV every week. And if you missed it, you never got to see it. Then, when I was old enough to drive, and work, I got a job at a video rental place and saved up and bought a used VCR and then I could actually watch the shows that I missed, which was amazing. The I got a second used VCR and could start making, and trading, compilation tapes with my friends from the New York based wrestling magazine that I wrote for.

And, eventually, 15 or 20 years down the road, there was a whole network of tape traders and then DVD makers, and message boards where you could meet other obsessive nerds, people who actually watched and wanted to talk about Japanese wrestling and Mexican wrestling and stuff from the territories... and it was amazing

And now we can pretty much watch anything we want, even shows from across the world live as they are happening. It's magic. It's legitimately a dream come true. In fact, it's incredibly far beyond anything I could have possibly dreamed of in 1986. I've got hours and hours of wrestling in perfect video quality on a tiny chip in my cheap Amazon tablet. I can watch wrestling on the train to work. I can watch Danielson vs Page today, even though I live in Japan, and discuss it immediately with other obsessive nerds from all over the world.

I feel really lucky that I'm old enough to appreciate how amazing that is. I am happy that I don't take it for granted, and hope that I never will. 

Edited by Gordlow
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You nailed everything I feel about my dad having probably the first laptop ever (which was orange and black onscreen), one of the first car cellphones, and me being literally one of the last of the (music) tape-traders before the Internet really hit. We're dinosaurs but we can take comfort in immediacy having known the struggles of the past. And I was born in 1983. 

Edited by Curt McGirt
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  • 2 months later...

Here's the joke I thought of last night as I was drifting off to sleep:

Idea for Cody's WrestleMania entrance: There's a Jacksonville Jaguar's jersey, a Fulham kit, and an automobile bumper on a.small platform near the entranceway. Cody comes out holding a sledgehammer...

And then I came here to post that joke, and found that @For Great Justice (and others) had beaten me to the punch (no pun intended). And I got a huge smile on my face thinking that I am part of a community where I am not the only person who thinks about pro wrestling that way. 

*****

Skip-able side-ramble about social media

I am of two minds about the posters here who paste up tweet after tweet after tweet. On the one hand, I strongly agree with the "we do not need to see every tweet from every wrestler" point of view; and often I cannot see any reason for a particular tweet to have been re-posted here other than "Hey! pro wrestling!" 

 On the other hand, almost every single day there are a handful of genuinely amusing tweets or very cool gifs posted here that I would otherwise miss, since I have never ever been on Twitter myself.

I follow a very small number of people on Insta, mostly people I know in real life. Mostly from a single extended social circle here in Japan. 

But my Insta feed is choked up with dad jokes (one in five of which are even mildly amusing, one in ten actually funny), food porn, obviously  manipulated photos of male and female fitness influencers, fitness advice that alternates between terrible and obvious, and worst of all nostalgia posts where there's a picture of, let's say, a bicycle and a caption reading "If you rode one of these as a kid, like this post." 

 Those nostalgia posts make me weep for the human race. Presumably people are that desperate for any sense of connection whatsoever these days. 

I can only assume Twitter is like that, but worse, and with way more negativity.

I occasionally follow a wrestler on Insta that I like but haven't met. But generally only one at a time. At least their muscle/sexy pictures don't appear to have been manipulated! Minoru Suzuki posts lots of pictures of socks!

So: What is wrestling twitter like? Is it possible to manipulate/curate a feed that isn't a maddening stream of vitriol and bullshit? Are there (worthwhile) discussions that go on there that don't make their way over here?

 

*****

Second topic:

Speaking of Cody, (and of Twitter):

Now that he's apparently officially moving to "the other channel" I think it's a good time to gaze into our navels and ask:

 Is AEW actually better off without Cody (and Brandy) (and Pharoah) Rhodes?

I don't think this has been discussed much here, yet. Is it a thing on wrestling Twitter?

(Sincere apologies if it has been debated and I somehow missed/forgot it).

Anyway, maybe the answer seems too glaringly obvious (on one side of the debate or the other) for most people?

I mean, Cody is handsome, talented, has star power... Cody vs Dustin is undoubtedly one of the all-time great AEW matches... He and Brandy have cross-over celebrity appeal... People were always talking about Cody and what he was up to... AEW (probably) wouldn't exist without him..

On the other hand, his stuff really didn't seem to fit in any more, even given the extremely broad range of stuff (from Orange Cassidy through Eddie Kingston, from Abadon through Juventud) that somehow does manage to fit in on AEW's shows. He seemed, at times, pretty tone deaf. He made some baffling creative decisions. And so on. 

Certainly there are a lot of arguments to be made on both sides. I am only scratching the surface here.

There might also be arguments to be made (kindly and unkindly) that Cody will be better off without AEW.

Personally, it feels weird to say it, but I think I have been enjoying AEW's shows a bit more since he left. They have certainly had zero difficulty putting on banger after banger even with Cody gone, Kenny and Miro on the shelf, and so on. Its kind of amazing. And it speaks well of the breadth and depth of AEW's roster and their style of booking lots of wrestlers to look strong rather than having a.tiny handful of top wrestlers who dominate the main event and championship scenes.

I feel like Bryan, Punk, Kingston, Wardlow, Keith Lee, Thunder Rosa, and others are a better fit on 2022 AEW's (very spacious) upper card/TV main event scene than 2022 Cody Rhodes is.

Quite curious if everyone generally feels the same, or not.

Also, while we are navel-gazing here: Is there ANY chance whatsoever that this is all (still) part of some massive post-modem Brian Pillman style swerve?

 

Edited by Gordlow
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I personally couldn't stand Cody and his batshit, rambling nonsense promos. Ever since his weird America promo in May 2021, Cody has just he started overstaying his welcome. It got to a point where he was totally oblivious that he had gone from being Captain America to Captain Cringe/US Agent. His storylines and angles, ie Aleister Black, started feeling like big jokes without a punchline.

Case in point, you had that whole conflict with Arn Anderson, where Arn was gradually turning on Cody and proclaiming that Cody had gone too Hollywood. That basically went nowhere. Then you had him and Brandy feuding with Men of the Year, and that went nowhere as well. Cody's promos had gotten so cringe that fans started cheering Dan Lambert and Men of the Year over Cody and Brandy.

At the same time, I think there's enough evidence to show he was a draw and fairly over for the most part. Just in terms of pure numbers, I don't think AEW is better off without Cody and Brandi. In terms of on-air product...I mean...yeah kind of. Cody building up to a heel turn that was never happening was tiresome.

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I was thinking on Wednesday that I hadn’t missed him at all, and that the quality of the shows not only hasn’t declined at all, but has improved in my opinion. He had that great match with Sammy to unite the belts to go out on and that’s perfect.

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2 hours ago, John from Cincinnati said:

Guy who got some of the most engaging crowd reactions going and just had a match that got five snowflakes from the biggest AEW tastemaker possibly didn't fit in anymore?

Feel free to break that gaze with your navel ASAP.

Getting 5-stars in an AEW match from Dave Meltzer is not a high bar to clear these days. 

I said from a business standpoint, AEW is not better off without Cody. He is a draw. 

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To kinda tie this in  which the other thread about "its fun to watch people have fun with their friends"  there's a story about Alfred Hitchcock that may or may not be apocryphal. a young screen writer bring him a script where after reading it Alfred says "this is pretty good I'd like to buy this" and the screenwriter says "But I want to direct it as we'', and Alfred says 'Don't expect me to pay you for your artistic masturbation" . That's kinda where I felt we where with Cody (and a lesser extent his wife) If people want to be payed to ass off on television I'd rather they do it some where else

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19 hours ago, zendragon said:

To kinda tie this in  which the other thread about "its fun to watch people have fun with their friends"  there's a story about Alfred Hitchcock that may or may not be apocryphal. a young screen writer bring him a script where after reading it Alfred says "this is pretty good I'd like to buy this" and the screenwriter says "But I want to direct it as we'', and Alfred says 'Don't expect me to pay you for your artistic masturbation" . That's kinda where I felt we where with Cody (and a lesser extent his wife) If people want to be payed to ass off on television I'd rather they do it some where else

Very blunt, but there is something to this that I agree with. He was being a pompous ass. Fans got tired of Cody acting like this pure vanilla Captain America babyface, when he was really being a pompous schmuck. Captain America might wear a flag as his costume, but he's not a pompous schmuck.

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19 hours ago, zendragon said:

To kinda tie this in  which the other thread about "its fun to watch people have fun with their friends"  there's a story about Alfred Hitchcock that may or may not be apocryphal. a young screen writer bring him a script where after reading it Alfred says "this is pretty good I'd like to buy this" and the screenwriter says "But I want to direct it as we'', and Alfred says 'Don't expect me to pay you for your artistic masturbation" . That's kinda where I felt we where with Cody (and a lesser extent his wife) If people want to be payed to ass off on television I'd rather they do it some where else

*quickly re-reads the AEW roster list and checks who recently got extended*

Pretty sure you're wrong about him. 

Edited by John from Cincinnati
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Given the nature of this thread I use it to gaze my navel for a bit. So, early this year I got FITE.tv's AEW+ service for a year. I also got the last two PPV's. With so many Dynamite's and Rampage's in the back-catalogue, it has been wonderful, but also taking up all my wrestling viewing time.

I tried to keep up with NXT 2.0, since I still enjoyed it quite a bit and there was still plenty of watchable stuff on The Network. I fall a couple of weeks behind on that and get an irritated message from my friend regarding Pete Dunne. He keeps referring to the movie Snatch for some reason. All I can think of is that he didn't like the cricket bat gimmick? It's been forever since I've seen Snatch, I don't really recall if the Brad Pitt character was called Butch, or not. So I'm puzzled.

A couple of weeks later I get around to watching what ended up being Pete Dunne's swansong (for now) on NXT. I mention it to my friend and he's still going on about "Butch", so I change the subject. I get around to seeing Ziggler winning the NXT title and complain about that a little bit. Later in the evening, I accidentally turn on SmackDown on Finnish tv, and see Dunne in a weird getup interfering in a Sheamus match along with Ridge Holland. THIS is what the fuck he was talking about.

The next morning, I cancelled the Network. You do NOT do this to my only ride or die left in the WWE. How is someone called "Butch" is supposed to beat Roman Reings and retire Brock Lesnar on the same night to unify ALL of the titles at the main event night 2 of some Wrestlemania a few years from now? I mean the odds of someone called Pete Dunne doing that aren't exactly stellar either, but Butch won't get beyond a tag title match or the Andre battle royal, ever.

In a normal situation, I probably would have let this one slide, but now that I have something considerably better to watch, the move to cancel the subscription, (while done in a burst of irrational anger and hatred towards a provider of shitty product), was made much easier.

With a couple of months of subscription money saved, I can purchase more AEW PPV's from the past to get more up to speed. The AEW roster right now is so stellar, almost including all of my biggest favorites from NXT as well. I don't even have enough time to watch all the AEW I want, since I haven't watched a single whole episode of Dark or Elevation and still have a mountain of Dynamites and Rampages to pick and choose from.

I never thought there would become a time when I would decide that the Network isn't worth the money, but why would I pay for it now, if I don't really have the time to watch it?

It took me a week or two to get some emotional attachment to AEW product and characters but now I'm definitely all in and promoting this to all of my friends that have even a passing interest to professional wrestling. So far, it's been rather easy sell.

Naval status: Gazed

Edited by Shartnado
Typo
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To tie together Shartnado's post and the recent ones about Cody, my closest wrestling friend has been fully on board with AEW since last summer after Punk's return, and last bridge for him will be to shell out for the pay per views. He also watched the first Dynamite and periodically saw some episodes between then and Punk's debut, but now likes AEW as much as I do. Anyway, when we were texting about Cody leaving, he was basically non-plussed about it since he only saw the worst of the Codyverse in action and thought that was the one kind of messed up thing in AEW. He could not believe my argument/belief that Cody was one of the MVP's of AEW during the first year or so of the company (he also followed most of his WWE run, so he would have some of the Stardust stink on his mind also). This is one of those cases where a fresh start elsewhere may be healthy for all parties (though Cody will likely be miserable again there in due time and I do not expect him to be a WWE lifer this time around either).

Edited by Big Z
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  • 2 weeks later...

Well, I was right about Tony and Cody Rhodes. Cody returning to WWE at WrestleMania broke Tony, and he already can't handle it. He's lost his shit on social media again.

I have a feeling if Twitter was around during the Monday Night Wars, this is much like what Eric Bischoff would be doing because this feels like a dopey Eric Bischoff reactionary move move.

Tony Khan's fragile ego has been shattered by Cody leaving.

Edited by TheVileOne
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