The Wrestling Thread

[Raging Justice]

Deleted my social media a long time ago so I can't see it. I absolutely hate how some of these sites try to force you to become a member to see their content. Fuck that.

[Reprise]

Yeah, I hate that.

It's just a side by side video comparison of Swerve's beat down of Nick Wayne last year and the one Swerve received recently at the hands of Wayne and the Patriarchy, showing how AEW is using his actions as a heel as part of the storyline.

They basically recreated it moment to moment.

[Raging Justice]

Yeah, I hate that.

It's just a side by side video comparison of Swerve's beat down of Nick Wayne last year and the one Swerve received recently at the hands of Wayne and the Patriarchy, showing how AEW is using his actions as a heel as part of the storyline.

They basically recreated it moment to moment.

That's AWESOME. That's the kind of attention to detail you'd see sometimes in Lucha Underground. Sadly, many people don't pick up on these things. That includes me sometimes too to be fair. I know people regularly used to point out things in AEW that were references to The Young Buck's Being the Elite youtube series. I remember when The Young Bucks faced Hangman and Omega for the tag titles at Revolution, people said there were call backs in the match to their history in New Japan.

I'd like to see how Hangman eventually fits back into Swerve's story line.

On the subject of storytelling, one of my favorite moments in Lucha Underground was a scene with Sexy Star - a babyface, in the office of Dario Cueto - the heel promoter. You probably know already who they are. Anyway, this was after Sexy Star had been kidnapped, tortured, and...who knows what else, by Marty the Moth and his sister Mariposa. Dario - A HEEL, was telling Sexy Star - A FACE, how she needed to overcome her trauma by fighting Mariposa, who she was afraid of now for understandable reasons, and beat the hell out of her until SHE was afraid of Sexy Star. He then booked her in an I Quit (No Mas) match. This set up one of my favorite matches in the show's history, a violent, brutal - and dare I say, "cinematic" match where Sexy reclaimed her power and lost her victimhood. Here was a heel (Dario Cueto) sympathizing with a face who had been abused and trying, in his own way, to help her. THAT'S story telling right there, when stuff happens that just goes beyond the typical face/heel dynamics. A guy empathizing with a victim of abuse. That's the sort of thing you can sympathize with a person over regardless of if you're a heel or a face. I think they even implied that Dario himself had been abused at some point.

There was another great story where Aerostar - a face, enlisted the help of Johnny Mundo - a heel, to rescue his friend Drago. After getting Mundo's help, Aerostar would tell Johnny that he's a good person, to which Johnny said, "No, I'm not". Now depending on your point of view, either guy could be right. Mundo helped a babyface rescue a friend, a good deed. However, he had struck a deal with Aerostar and got something in return, so you could argue that he's not a good person. I love stuff like this. I love blurring the lines of face/heel from time to time and having characters just be HUMAN BEINGS, with all of the complexity that this entails.

[Reprise]

That's AWESOME. That's the kind of attention to detail you'd see sometimes in Lucha Underground. Sadly, many people don't pick up on these things. That includes me sometimes too to be fair.

Ah good, I explained it ok

I was worried I was doing a poor job of explaining what the video showed.

That's something I love about AEW. There's so much to criticise, but they can be really good at doing callbacks and having little touches that really emphasise their commitment to longterm storytelling.

On the subject of storytelling, one of my favorite moments in Lucha Underground was a scene with Sexy Star - a babyface, in the office of Dario Cueto - the heel promoter. You probably know already who they are. Anyway, this was after Sexy Star had been kidnapped, tortured, and...who knows what else, by Marty the Moth and his sister Mariposa. Dario - A HEEL, was telling Sexy Star - A FACE, how she needed to overcome her trauma by fighting Mariposa, who she was afraid of now for understandable reasons, and beat the hell out of her until SHE was afraid of Sexy Star. He then booked her in an I Quit (No Mas) match. This set up one of my favorite matches in the show's history, a violent, brutal - and dare I say, "cinematic" match where Sexy reclaimed her power and lost her victimhood. Here was a heel (Dario Cueto) sympathizing with a face who had been abused and trying, in his own way, to help her. THAT'S story telling right there, when stuff happens that just goes beyond the typical face/heel dynamics. A guy empathizing with a victim of abuse. That's the sort of thing you can sympathize with a person over regardless of if you're a heel or a face. I think they even implied that Dario himself had been abused at some point.

Now that's the kind of stuff I love in wrestling - and AEW and WWE in particular just don't provide enough of it. Faces and heels shouldn't be just one-dimensional cookie cutter good guys and bad guys. There should be clear reasons for their characters and motivations. They should be human.

[Raging Justice]

That's AWESOME. That's the kind of attention to detail you'd see sometimes in Lucha Underground. Sadly, many people don't pick up on these things. That includes me sometimes too to be fair.

Ah good, I explained it ok

I was worried I was doing a poor job of explaining what the video showed.

That's something I love about AEW. There's so much to criticise, but they can be really good at doing callbacks and having little touches that really emphasise their commitment to longterm storytelling.

On the subject of storytelling, one of my favorite moments in Lucha Underground was a scene with Sexy Star - a babyface, in the office of Dario Cueto - the heel promoter. You probably know already who they are. Anyway, this was after Sexy Star had been kidnapped, tortured, and...who knows what else, by Marty the Moth and his sister Mariposa. Dario - A HEEL, was telling Sexy Star - A FACE, how she needed to overcome her trauma by fighting Mariposa, who she was afraid of now for understandable reasons, and beat the hell out of her until SHE was afraid of Sexy Star. He then booked her in an I Quit (No Mas) match. This set up one of my favorite matches in the show's history, a violent, brutal - and dare I say, "cinematic" match where Sexy reclaimed her power and lost her victimhood. Here was a heel (Dario Cueto) sympathizing with a face who had been abused and trying, in his own way, to help her. THAT'S story telling right there, when stuff happens that just goes beyond the typical face/heel dynamics. A guy empathizing with a victim of abuse. That's the sort of thing you can sympathize with a person over regardless of if you're a heel or a face. I think they even implied that Dario himself had been abused at some point.

Now that's the kind of stuff I love in wrestling - and AEW and WWE in particular just don't provide enough of it. Faces and heels shouldn't be just one-dimensional cookie cutter good guys and bad guys. There should be clear reasons for their characters and motivations. They should be human.

The great thing too is that Lucha Underground was so new, so a lot of their stipulation matches were being done for the first time as opposed to WWE where you're seeing cage matches, I Quit matches, etc, etc. for the thousandth time. Lucha Underground would have these stipulation matches being presented to their audience for the very first time, and they always set up a really good story to justify the match. Having an "I Quit" match against someone who has tortured you is absolutely brilliant. When Mariposa said, "I Quit" and thus ended the match, a bloody and enraged Sexy Star continued attacking her, which is totally justified.

[Raging Justice]

Swerve was very involved in his creative at Lucha Underground. I wonder if he is having input into his current AEW story line.

[Raging Justice]

It's crazy how much things have changed. We have guys like Meltzer and Bryan Alvarez who were once viewed as authorities being regularly full of shit in 2024 and being called out by everyone from Sean Ross Sapp to Kenny Omega, while Vince Russo of all people is the only person making any sense these days.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wx1YZjLsRBE

Lately I honestly feel Russo has the smartest commentary on pro wrestling that I see online on a regular basis. For all the hate he has gotten FOR YEARS in the pro wrestling community he's the only guy who seems sane right now. I disagree with some things he says, but his overall points are usually true.

[Raging Justice]

What I would do to actually generate some GODDAMN EXCITEMENT in AEW.

Mercedes shows up at Stardom tomorrow. She costs Willow the match, throwing the TBS title match for Double or Nothing completely into flux. She also attacks Tam Nakano. For the next several days this would be ALL OVER social media and youtube for AEW and Stardom.

Next Wednesday, Okada has a match against some jobber. During the match, Hangman shows up out of the crowd and attacks Okada with a chair and cleans his clock with a Buckshot lariat. He goes outside of the ring, grabs a beer from a plant in the crowd (I WANT BEER DRINKING HANGMAN BACK GODDAMNIT), takes a drink, then goes back into the ring and pours the rest of it all over Okada, then grabs a microphone, crouches down next to Okada's face and says, "THAT was for Kenny, you *censored* son of a bitch!", then throws the mic into Okada's face. The Young Bucks and Jack Perry rush the ring and Hangman smartly bails out of it and back into the crowd then gives all three of them the "Stone Cold Salute". Hopefully, the crowd would be losing their goddamn minds and doing a cowboy shit chant at this point.

AEW airs footage of what happened at Stardom's pay per view event over the weekend. Schiavone then announces that we'll be getting an update on the TBS title situation later on in the show and as he's talking, we hear Mercedes on a microphone saying, "Tony! Tony! what don't you stop boring the crowd and let the C...E...O give the people what they want?" She gets in the ring and basically cuts a heel promo on both Willow Nightingale and Tam Nakano and says neither one of them is even in her league. Willow comes out during her promo and immediately makes a beeline for the ring and Mercedes hightails it out of there. Willow cuts an angry promo with a few possibly censored obscenities ultimately ending with something along the lines of "Just you wait until I get my hands on you BITCH!"

I'm kind of teasing a triple threat match for the TBS title at Double or Nothing here.

We get some backstage footage of Sereena Deeb laid out in the back, referees and EMTs are attending to her. Excalibur says they'll give us updates on her condition as the night goes on. Toni Storm comes out, cuts one of her usual stupid promos then says something to the effect of, "I had nothing to do with whatever just happened to Sereena Deeb". Later in the show, we hear that Deeb may not be able to make it to Double or Nothing for her title match. So who is going to face Toni Storm?

Yet another mysterious attack on one of the women in AEW, and now Storm's title match actually becomes interesting with an unknown opponent.

Backstage Hangman runs into Swerve Strickland. We get an INTENSE stare down between the two of them. Without changing his expression Hangman says, "Good luck with your title match at Double or Nothing, hope nothing bad happens. Be a shame for you to lose that title so soon" then walks off. Renee shows up to try and get some words from Strickland, and he just walks away

Don Callis comes out...with Orange Cassidy, then talks about what a great business man he is and that he's managed to negotiate a deal with the EVPs to get the International title match to be a triple threat involving Cassidy. Excalibur and the guys on commentary are stunned and the crowd doesn't know how to react. Cassidy looks a bit dejected. Roderick comes out and is pissed off, you can hear him saying stuff like, "What the hell is this bullshit?!" Ospreay comes out and looks at Callis with a confused look and is like, "What are you doing?" and Callis is telling him to just trust him. Ospreay gets a mic and says he respects Cassidy and he'll gladly take on two, three, four, five, however many guys in order to win that title" Roderick cuts him off, "You shut up!". What the hell is this? You guys are trying to screw me out of my title! What the hell is going on!?". Matt and Nick come on the titantron or whatever you call AEW's version of it and tell Strong to settle down. They say something about Callis making a very interesting argument for Cassidy and his incredible runs with the title and they believe that Cassidy deserves a shot at the title...as does Konosuke Takeshita after his incredible match with Ospreay two pay per views ago. Ospreay again looks perplexed. Matt and Nick announce that the International title match is going to be a four way between Cassidy, Takeshita, Ospreay, and Strong. Ospreay looks a bit confused by all this and looks at Cassidy, who just looks deep in thought and is not saying anything.

If you can't tell, I'm establishing a pattern here of heels basically getting what they want from Matt and Nick Jackson, just like Christian did with the title shot against Swerve. Callis similarly gets his way...and also has now made it a LOT harder for Ospreay to win that title, but has still increased the chances of one of his people winning it. I'm also continuing to tease the Cassidy heel turn that AEW has recently been doing.

Back to commentary, Schiavonni is like, "What the hell is going on tonight? The International match is a four way match now? Why is Cassidy with that rat Don Callis?"

Jericho and Big Bill come out for a tag team match. At some point in the match, Bill turns on Jericho, beats the shit out of him, then grabs the FTW title and holds it up over his head. The crowd might possibly be cheering for him at this point, which is fine by me. We get different backstage shots of Hook and Shibata watching this. Samoa Joe comes up behind Hook. He says, "Now you see that boy? That's how you get shit done around here. HE knows what he's doing", then walks off.

I love the idea of Joe as a potential mentor for Hook, and Bill being in the mix as a potential FTW champion I think is a good thing. Nobody cares about that title being on Jericho.

Mox comes out to cut a promo basically reminding everyone that he's the IWGP World champion and that he's the only wrestler to hold world titles in AEW, NJPW, and a certain other company where crying politicians with goofy catch phrases get title shots now. "Place really went downhill since I left it". He then says anybody who is dumb enough to try and take the IWGP title from him can do so at their own peril. Mox could maybe throw out an open challenge here, and maybe if AEW has some popular NJPW star backstage we could have our main event for the evening.

I don't know what else I'd do, but right there I've made the product a bit more interesting and made the international title match a lot more interesting too.

[Reprise]

You should apply for a job as a writer or booker!

Are we actually witnessing the death of AEW? Or is it just a difficult period that they will eventually get through?

Online, it's pretty difficult to cut through the bullshit and discern what is bad faith attacks from people who have spent nearly 5 years claiming the company is the brink of collapsing and genuine analysis.

Unfortunately, I feel like a lot of wrestling fans online are incredibly immature and fickle and so you get a high school esque environment where fans just love to squabble, hate and mock others. So pissing over AEW seems to be the latest fad, whilst wanking over WWE is the in thing and it's done to get a rise out of fans and annoy them.

But anyways, the ratings are bad for AEW. Arguably spectacularly bad. They have dropped around 25% since last year. Since the start of the year and since signing Okada, Ospreay and Mone, they have lost nearly 200,000 viewers. Recently they have had two episodes of Dynamite that are in the 600,000s, which are their worst numbers in over three years. For comparison, when Collision was getting that on a Saturday night in the CM Punk era, fans were calling those numbers bad and pointing to them as evidence that Punk isn't a draw.

Edit: Also, after Edge debuted, Dynamite was getting around 800,000 viewers, which was presented as "bad" by the usual types of people online, because it hadn't led to any kind of increase. Now Mercedes has debuted and her debut episode which was billed as a special episode drew around 700,000 viewers and they're now dipping below into the 600,000s. That's pretty bad, whichever way you look at it.

Dynasty recently had around 110-120,000 buys. This is also one of those lowest numbers in a while (I haven't checked since when, but even the much criticised World's End in December had 135,000 buys). I think All Out last year might have even had more buys and that was a week after All In, with absolutely no build.

I don't want to be overly negative or also play into the hands of gobshite influencers and clickbait artists who know full well that mocking AEW and using it almost as a wrestling version of a culture war gets them engagement. As a fan and someone who also has got a little bored of the product the last few weeks though, I am a little concerned.

[Raging Justice]

So this is gonna be a bit of a long post, and it's really just my opinions

WWE has the most loyal, delusional, hardcore fanbase in the entire pro wrestling industry. They're like Nintendo fans in the gaming community. I think it really is just down to the hardcores now supporting WWE. Everyone else left. I know this because of how docile and obedient the current fanbase is. It was never like this before. The people who use to boo Roman Reigns, chant "Cena Sucks", and hijack shows in 2014 to support Daniel Bryan are all gone. Honestly, even the real CM Punk fans who loved him as an anti-establishment, anti-authority figure are gone too because that certainly isn't the character that Punk is now. He's a bootlicking, two faced, corporate lapdog now and everyone knows it.

AEW unfortunately has fair weather fans, there's no loyalty to their team. Sure, you see crazy obsessed fans online but they are a minority and it's starting to feel like even some of them have left.

Both products suck right now, WWE being the worst of the two by far, but WWE is still doing well in spite of that because they will never lose that hardcore percentage of pro wrestling fans who live, breathe, and sleep WWE. Also, as I've said before, there has been a MASSIVE gaslighting campaign going on against AEW. I firmly believe this because the stuff people have been saying about WWE in recent months is pure bullshit and completely delusional. They're describing an alternate reality where it's like the 90s again and Cody is as cool as Steve Austin, WWE is super mainstream like in the Attitude Era, and AEW is this silly little indie company that has had no more success than Ring of Honor. I don't know who Triple H or the people at TKO have been paying off but it's pure gaslighting bullshit. The fact that Triple H got so offended at that question at the recent press event and the fact that someone muttered something along the lines of, "What an idiot" when the reporter asked it shows you how controlled and biased reporting and perception towards WWE is right now. That reporter has been bending over backwards apologizing ever since. It's like when gaming news sites don't want to criticize certain companies because they know they will lose those exclusive access perks like early review copies, exclusive interviews, etc, etc, etc.

Media everywhere is biased these days and it's not exactly a secret anymore

On the positive side of things, enthusiasm for WWE's product does seem to be lessening a bit since Wrestlemania. I just don't know if it's enough to really impact their numbers in any way. People are starting to realize that Triple H is as boring a booker as Vince was and possibly worse because that crazy old man Vince could at least be unpredictable at times while Triple H makes up his mind about what he wants to do and that's that. I don't know if you read those comments I posted recently from Sami Zayn. I think Sami is starting to realize that he's Daniel Bryan circa 2014, and he doesn't have that rebellious fanbase to push him higher like they did for Daniel Bryan. He's also realizing that Triple H is more stubborn than Vince.

That video from Russo I posted points out how crappy the product has been since Mania, and he also talks about how the current fanbase are just loyal, obedient, simps who would cheer even if CM Punk just went to the ring and took a big dump in the middle of it.

It is what it is, the state of pro wrestling in 2024 is sad. I won't completely absolve Tony Kahn of responsibility for AEW's problems though. He has EVERYTHING he needs to put out an exciting and buzzworthy product right now, but much like Triple H he is clueless, stubborn, and out of touch. Unfortunately for Tony, he doesn't have a super hardcore fanbase and a completely biased reporting structure to allow him to be like that. He also doesn't have decades of brand loyalty and a big business advantage in the form of TKO propping him up. Tony is coasting as a booker and it's biting him in the ass in a major way. He's a good business guy I think, but someone else needs to handle the booking and creative. Tony is just not good at that. He also is ABSOLUTELY FUCKING TERRIBLE at public relations.

The people running pro wrestling are very stubborn and set in their ways. It took me just a few minutes to easily come up with ways to make AEW more exciting, but Tony is just gonna keep doing what he always does just like Triple H. Bland, boring, and predictable pro wrestling.

I really miss Lucha Underground. Bland, boring, and predictable they absolutely were not and many people hated Lucha Underground because of that, claiming that they were bastardizing pro wrestling by breaking many pro wrestling rules. That's what happens when you go against the status quo. It triggers some people. The people who were tired of the status quo absolutely adored Lucha Underground, even though Lucha Underground sometimes made big mistakes. At least they were shaking things up and trying. For whatever reason, the industry seems to favor conformity. Supposedly one of the things that led to the breakdown between Stardom and Rossy Ogawa was that Bushiroad kept vetoing his booking and creative. And we also saw what happened to Scott D'Amore when his ambitions went above what the corporation owning TNA wanted.

I think complacency can be a problem with bookers too. Vince put out some of his best work in the 90s when WCW made him fear for his livelihood. AEW seemed to be a better product early on when they HAD to be great. Once it achieved a certain level of success Tony started coasting. Pro wrestling bookers will go outside of their comfort zones when they are forced to. Maybe things haven't gotten bad enough for AEW for Tony to start doing that.

Also, maybe I'm wrong on this, but I feel like OTHER people had more imput into AEW's booking and creative early on. I've said before that Tony taking over complete control of AEW might not have been a good thing.