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AEW - January 2022


MoeCristyV.1.6

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Lee Johnson is 0-8 because he absolutely sucks. They tried pushing him during that crickets QT/Cody angle. It was crickets for a reason - because it and the talent absolutely sucked. I was the first one on here to call out Hook’s hire as pure nepotism and ‘Team Tazz’ have had plenty of angles that have pure sucked too, but he undeniably gets way more of a reaction than any in that graph and he’s manufactured that almost purely by himself.  The Acclaimed are great but cancel culture getting hysterical over a fictional scripted speech on a fictional live-drama Television program put paid to the push they were enjoying at the time - the tv show merely responded appropriate to its audience feedback.

Edited by A_K
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3 hours ago, Jiji said:

I love HOOK with everything I've got but this made me sick. 

Pathetic. Team Taz guys having fewer wins is criminal. 

My question would be who is the most buzzed about wrestler on that list?  The answer to that question should be the guy that is 4-0.  AEW is developing a lot of great and diverse young talent.  To seriously present this as a fact of injustice is a miserable attempt at click-bait.  

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3 hours ago, Jiji said:

I love HOOK with everything I've got but this made me sick. 

Pathetic. Team Taz guys having fewer wins is criminal. 

Hook is also far more over then all of the black guys on the roster, with only Dante Martin in the same stratopshere of popularity as Hook. Also, the reality is that most of the best/most popular black wrestlers are currently in WWE (though hopefully Ricochet gets out of there ASAP, and eventually the New Day guys come to AEW in a few years). I think that AEW has a good number of the best overall wrestlers in the world (Danielson, Omega, Young Bucks, Hangman, Mox, Malakai Black), and has been done a good of promoting the best talent and putting them in the top spots, and therein lies the whole chicked and egg dilemma (that list is all white). If say Ricochet had been in AEW at its formation, I think that he would have been pushed as a top level star, but unfortunately he was a free agent a year before AEW formed and made the natural move at that time (NXT was super hot, and the path from NXT to the main roster had not been permanently poisoned yet). Now, they should sign Keith Lee and push him hard because he's a top level talent and is a great way to organically diversify the men's main event level scene. And hopefully, Dante Martin continues his ascent towards the top of the card. Also, while he's a bit stick in neutral now, I still think that Ricky Starks has a ton of upside as long as his body holds up. With the combination of a core of its fanbase and just in general in 2022 corporate America, AEW will need to need to keep working at this (and deep down, TK probably knows this). However, it needs to happen as naturally as possible as well, as the overall draw for many of AEW (myself included) is that is really is the best wrestling in the world and most everyone at the top of the card has earned their position.

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2 hours ago, Stefanie the Human said:

Bowens was mostly a singles guy on the indies and Caster was part of the Shook Crew. AEW put them together as part of the Acclaimed.

It came out eventually that Drew @ Beyond Wrestling was intending to put Caster and Bowens together, interestingly enough.

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Anthony Ogogo appeared on the PROGRESS show today which PROGRESS announced as the first time contracted AEW talent appeared in the UK

Can't image that match is gonna end up on the WWE Network version 

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I'd like them to make a conscious effort to push Hobbs at the very least.
I need my Hobbs v Wardlow 10-12 minute main event slam fest ala Goldberg v Steiner or Lesnar.

Dante Martin I think they are already starting to push. It'll be a slower burn but he'll get there.

If/when Keith Lee comes in he will be undefeated and main eventing pretty quickly.

All that aside, I'd like to see more luchas and asian performers pushed as well.
Do we know Nakamura's contract status?
I know he's happy just getting paid and going surfing so I feel like Coach Tony could talk him into working 10-12 matches a year in the Florida area between seasons.

Kushida is another worth looking at.

I'd take both of these guys over Gargano or Thatcher coming in.

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They do have a few too many faceless (sometimes chinless) white dudes especially in the mid and low card. The upper card, as alluded to a few posts above, is merely victim of circumstance; Danielson, Punk, Moxley etc. were the only A-class level talent available at a given time, and they also happen to be white. No doubt had they been able to get Reigns or Rey Mysterio or such they would have, and they would be in that position. Hobbs then in particular becomes a victim to circumstance, because if they are going to put him in a program with someone like Punk (who they have no doubt invested relatively enormous funds into, who also has a ticking-clock on his usefulness as an in-ring talent) then no one should realistically expect him to go over. That would be unnecessary and, at this stage, frankly stupid given the investment. So they are in the bind of needing to maximise the well-established talent they could get their hands on, with until recently very little TV time to juggle all of these acts, and so that yields a slanted W/L ratio. But there is certainly more room for 'characters' in the mid and low card: when WCW had its luchas / Japanese talent in the 90s they generally felt like a pretty big deal who carried themselves with a lot of pride and seriousness. AEW paints too much of its low/mid card with that slapstick paint brush - there is, as above, room for more lucha & asian performers who have a little more seriousness about them and their presentation.

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How different would Hobbs be if he got to straight up mangle opponents every week or every other week? If Dante was able to beat opponents in fun 5-7 minute sprints consistently? 

AEW uses a pretty strict hierarchy with few exceptions. HOOK is one of the very few. Jade another*. That they can point to one Black man on the roster with a winning singles record on TV is pretty deplorable.

*Women's roster has way less proven talent and depth compared to the men's so it's easier to rocket somebody like Jade to the top on the women's side than it is with somebody on the men's side.

Edited by Jiji
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31 minutes ago, Jiji said:

How different would Hobbs be if he got to straight up mangle opponents every week or every other week? If Dante was able to beat opponents in fun 5-7 minute sprints consistently? 

AEW uses a pretty strict hierarchy with few exceptions. HOOK is one of the very few. Jade another*. That they can point to one Black man on the roster with a winning singles record on TV is pretty deplorable.

*Women's roster has way less proven talent and depth compared to the men's so it's easier to rocket somebody like Jade to the top on the women's side than it is with somebody on the men's side.

No reason Hobbs can't be doing what Wardlow is doing.

You then have multiple laths to take:
- Hobbs and Wardlow both building impressive stat lines leading to an eventual confrontation - Should be obvious.
- Taz gets Hobbs and HOOK to team up and go after the tag belts - Again, I think this would benefit both guys.
- Hobbs gets jealous of HOOK's love/attention - Hobbs turns heel
- HOOK talks shit about Hobbs - HOOK turns... tweener? Not sure he could get full heel but he can certainly be a Logan Paul style, punchable dickhead.

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I feel like it’s worth pointing out that, prior to this past November, Wardlow and Hobbs WERE booked similarly—squashing people on Dark and losing to top-tier guys on TV (in Wardlow’s case, the likes of Cody, Jericho, Hangman; he went 50/50 on TV with JAKE HAGER). He didn’t start getting TV squashes until it was time to queue him up for his turn on MJF, which is imminent.

Right now, it’s Wardlow’s turn. Hobbs will get his when it’s his turn.

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Is there any demo information on who watches the Youtube shows? It doesn't seem like anyone is building a following by working those YT matches when they get on the cable shows.

As a kid I watched mostly the syndicated WWF/WCW shows because we didn't have cable so I always had love for the undercard/midcard folks. I can't imagine kids are watching those YT shows like that when they could be watching something else.

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Kids are way more likely to be watching YouTube or TikTok content than cable these days.

Plenty of people have built followings off the YouTube stuff, especially if you count the vlogs. Fuego’s popularity was purely generated in the YT space. Much of the Acclaimed’s early buzz was built on Dark during the pandemic. Etc.

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What Wardlow push? Does someone want to pull up how many matches he's actually had on TV in the past 24 months? Anything being referred to here is literally sentiment accrued over the past 6-8 weeks. Wardlow spent 2 years as a fashion accessary who, as pointed out above, dropped falls in every legitimate match he had. The only vague rub he ever had was that tom-foolery angle w/ Jerich/Hager which absolutely bombed. And for very, very obvious reasons you could not drop Hobbs or a latin talent into that Wardlow role with MJF. They would be crucified. Really they should have looked to put Hobbs into the TV Title program at some point - but that is the Rhodes monopoly.

Edited by A_K
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Guest Stefanie Without Stefanie
10 minutes ago, A_K said:

What Wardlow push? Does someone want to pull up how many matches he's actually had on TV in the past 24 months?

Ask and you shall receive.

- 2/19/20: Cody over Wardlow (cage)
- 4/22/20: Wardlow over Lee Johnson
- 4/29/20: Wardlow over Musa
- 6/24/20: Wardlow over Luchasaurus
- 10/21/20: Wardlow over Jungle Boy (AEW World Title Eliminator Tournament)
- 10/22/20 (airs 10/28/20): Hangman Page over Wardlow (AEW World Title Eliminator Tournament)
- 1/6/21: Wardlow over Jake Hager
- 5/5/21: The Pinnacle over Inner Circle (Blood and Guts)
- 5/30/21: Inner Circle over The Pinnacle (Stadium Stampede)
- 6/6/21: Jake Hager over Wardlow (MMA rules)
- 7/7/21: Wardlow & FTR over Jake Hager, Santana, and Ortiz
- 8/11/21: Chris Jericho over Wardlow
- 11/10/21: Wardlow over Wheeler Yuta
- 12/1/21: Wardlow over AC Adams
- 12/15/21: Wardlow over Matt Sydal
- 12/22/21: Wardlow over Shawn Dean
- 12/29/21: Wardlow over Colin Delaney
- 1/5/22: Wardlow over Antonio Zambrano
- 1/12/22: CM Punk over Wardlow

He was also in a TNT title top contender's battle royal (won by Jungle Boy) and the Dynamite Diamond battle royals in 2020 and 2021, where his purpose was to protect MJF.

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59 minutes ago, TheVileOne said:

Why only the males? 

Because there's only three black females on their women's roster according to their website, if you count Brandi.

But strictly singles wins on TV?

  • Brandi Rhodes (0-1)
  • Jade Cargill (12-0)
  • Red Velvet (2-9)
1 minute ago, EVA said:

Cagematch getting a lot of traffic via DVDVR today.

heisenberg-right.gif

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Shouts out to Cagematch. What a wonderful resource to have. Wrestlingdata is another good one and has some different ways of looking at people's careers too. 

Thanks to Stefanie and everybody else looking up the data. I verified a few, including Scorpio's when I first saw that graphic because I couldn't believe it.

Edited by Jiji
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Honestly, to me, Scorpio is the only guy in that graphic whose singles record seems wildly disproportionate to his presentation/tenure in the company. Everybody else makes sense relative to being mostly tag guys, relatively new, rookies in a place where hierarchy matters, or struggling with injuries. But Scorpio is definitely a guy they’ve wanted people to accept as a legit singles contender at various times without actually doing the work on TV to make it stick.

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21 minutes ago, Casey said:

Because there's only three black females on their women's roster according to their website, if you count Brandi.

But strictly singles wins on TV?

  • Brandi Rhodes (0-1)
  • Jade Cargill (12-0)
  • Red Velvet (2-9)

heisenberg-right.gif

OK but Jade Cargill is undefeated and the TBS champion.

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