The Wrestling Thread

[Reprise]

I agree with all that 100% and I would add just one thing to that.

They need real personal heated feuds, with strong character led storylines.

The biggest issue this year is that the focus has been on the company wide storylines. There hasn't been "main characters", because they have been too busy having these silly faction hostile takeover storylines about fighting over the company itself and "the spirit of AEW".

Arguably, Swerve's world championship reign earlier this year was overshadowed by the Heel Elite storyline, for example. Other than Hangman (which has been admittedly a phenomenal storyline), he didn't really have any memorable feuds, did he?

Heel Elite "taking over" dominated the first half of the year.

Then this second half of the year has essentially retreaded the same storyline with BCC "taking over". It's literally the same thing. The focus isn't on Moxley or Orange Cassidy or any specific wrestler. The focus is again on AEW.

It isn't compelling or even convincing.

The outcome is irrelevant, because there aren't really any stakes and they haven't given people a reason to be invested in the characters in any of these storylines. Does anyone care what the conclusion to the current BCC storyline will be?

[RCBH928]

Internationally in large parts of the world, yes. Not in the United States. In the US only Raw is going to Netflix.

I watch it more than WWE. The weekly shows have been pretty boring recently. It's been all over the place this year. They have had some great stuff going on, but also a lot of very weak inconsistent storylines and feuds. It's been ice cold with dead crowds, heatless feuds and nonsensical storylines the past month or so.

The PPVs have been great. My three top PPVs of the year have been AEW All In, Revolution and Dynasty in that order. Way above what WWE has put on, other than maybe Wrestlemania.

That said, going back to their television shows, they just started the Continental Classic tournament, which was great fun last year. Last week's episodes of Dynamite and Collision had the first initial matches in the tournament and were a solid start. So now might be a good time to give it a try. It will conclude at the World's End PPV later this month.

Maybe I should check AEW All In. One thing I admire WWE for is they have good taste with selecting PPV names. ECW and WCW had nice ones too. TNA and AEW are horrendous .

[Reprise]

One thing I admire WWE for is they have good taste with selecting PPV names. ECW and WCW had nice ones too. TNA and AEW are horrendous .

Great Balls of Fire says hi

Wait, what's wrong with AEW and TNA's PPV names? Slammiversary, Bound For Glory, Lockdown, Sacrifice, All Out, Full Gear, World's End and so on are all fine names.

I do have a problem with TNA and AEW's names themselves though. With AEW, I think naming yourself after The Elite was silly to begin with, but the actual acronyms do not roll off the tongue easily or sound natural to say/chant. And TNA just reeks of tacky 90s silliness. I was surprised they brought the name back, but it seems like there was some nostalgia for the brand and it seems to have worked for them. Impact Wrestling was a bad name too anyways. Too generic.

[RCBH928]

Great Balls of Fire says hi

Wait, what's wrong with AEW and TNA's PPV names? Slammiversary, Bound For Glory, Lockdown, Sacrifice, All Out, Full Gear, World's End and so on are all fine names.

Marketing goes a long way and McMahon is the master of it. These PPV names don't sound as good as : King of The Ring, Royal Rumble, Survivor Series.
Some WCW and ECW had good names like November to Remember, Halloween Havoc, Hardcore Heaven, Starrcade , Bash at the Beach


WCW had good marketing 96-98 probably. Nitro was awesome! But things went extremely downhill from there.

[Reprise]

Sure, I agree they had fantastic names, particularly for their A shows. But a lot of the B level PPVs had pretty bad or generic names. Backlash, Armageddon and Vengeance, for example, don't do much for me. Then you have some of the In Your House era names like Beware of the Dog...

The worst thing WWE did though was start naming PPVs based on particular gimmick matches and forcing those match types into the shows. Hell in a Cell, TLC, Extreme Rules etc...

[Raging Justice]

Ironically, I think the lamest WWE pay per view name is Wrestlemania. "Wrestle" "Mania". Really? That's pretty stupid. It sounds like something a kid would come up with, which I guess makes sense given how kid friendly WWF was back in the 80s.

The best AEW pay per view name is Revolution. It's nice and simple and it's a word with a very strong meaning.

The best WWE pay per view names are by far King of the Ring and War Games. War Games sounds so good that it's mandatory to scream when you say it, "WAAAAAR GAAAAMES!!!!"

TNA best pay per view name is Bound for Glory

I like ECW's One Night Stand

WCW - The Great American Bash just sounds great. I really like Starrcade too

PWG - Battle of Los Angeles

GCW's Bloodsport is definitely their best event name

For Ring of Honor, nothing beats Best in the World for a pay per view name.

I generally like names that convey a simple idea and don't sound overly gimmicky.

I also love Lucha Underground's Aztec Warfare. It's technically a match name, but every time they did one it felt like a special event. Aztec Warfare was the Royal Rumble on steroids.

Speaking of LU match names, I also loved Six...to Survive. You have to say it with the pause after six for dramatic effect LOL

[Reprise]

Riddle me this: If Tony is such an asshole who holds talent hostage, tacks on injury time to stop them going to WWE and refuses to use them if they are leaving (Rey Fenix... Ricky Starks...), how come Ethan Page managed to go to WWE fine without any drama? How come Andrade went to WWE without any drama? How come Jade Cargill went to WWW without any drama?

Not defending AEW or Tony as such, but I just find it interesting that fans online immediately believe the narratives talent spin, which are undoubtedly one sided/biased accounts.

[Raging Justice]

AEW's product right now is on par with the dark days of TNA.

[Reprise]

AEW is in a hole and I can't see it climbing out of it. I have no idea what will happen to it in 2025 or how much lower ratings and attendance will tank. The biggest issue I see is that the big names they had have either left or aren't being featured anymore (Bryan Danielson, CM Punk, Cody, Sting, Omega) or they just aren't interesting or over anymore (Moxley, Jericho, Adam Cole, Bucks, Mone). Then the other issue is they haven't built homegrown stars or made established names. The one guy who could have been named is MJF, but he is undoubtedly not as over as he was in 2022 or 2023. They shat on his character development and have failed to pivot in the new arc in his story with Adam Cole, despite audiences clearly turning their back on it. There have been hints of a pivot, but we will see.

I wouldn't go that far though. At all. What do we call that dark days anyways? Because even in the 'light' days TNA was pretty bad

The darkest days, in terms of popularity were probably 2019-2023, long after all their big names had left and after AEW had formed (and was at its hottest), when most people forgot they even existed. But arguably their product was way better than it had been in years and years.

Or we could call the Bischoff and Hogan years the dark days, but I mean they were probably at their biggest between late 2009 and late 2012 (side note, 2012 was a great year for TNA).

The bipolar and fickle nature of wrestling fans, not to mention the hyperfocus on things that nobody cared about before 2019, has been interesting to observe to be honest. People go from "oh my god, I can't believe Hangman burnt down Swerve's family home. That was so well done. This is one of the best storylines and feuds they have ever crafted" to "lol AEW has no stories and sucks so bad" in the space of like two weeks. Having watched wrestling for 30 odd years, I'd struggle to make the same comparisons lots of wrestling fans do ("oh it's like WCW in the early 2000s", "it's like 2019 WWE"). Are there things I think are bad? Of course. But overall, at worst, I find AEW passable and sometimes boring. I appreciate that it's not high praise, but it's a miles apart from what I would describe the worst periods of WWE, WCW, TNA, ECW or any other promotion. But everyone looks at these promotions with rose-tinted glasses on, whilst AEW is current so haa microscope placed over it. And just last week I thought Dynamite, Rampage and Collision were all great *shrug*. Haven't watched last night's Dynamite yet.

Even their PPV buys have done fine. Everyone expected the last 3 to tank, especially Full Gear as the build and the television shows leading to it were poor, but All Out and Wrestledream both actually increased from the previous year and Full Gear was down slightly with around 115,000 buys.

That's not to say though that I don't have concerns. Either they will find their ceiling, their decline will settle and they will do "fine" for years to come, but never again fine the level of success they had when they were shiny and new. Or they will continue to lose fans, they will continue to decline and they will then struggle to get another TV deal in 3 years time and will either become cancelled and disbanded or they will continue as some little indie promotion.

I do not see them reversing their current decline though.

[Reprise]

And this is why I collect wrestling dvds...

"Netflix will have "very little" WWE archive content.

"The answer is ‘not much’. There’ll be all the current shows... All the pay-per-views, everything is going to be on Netflix. As far as your archives, there will be some, but very little.

"When everything starts on January 1st, they’re going to have roughly forty pay-per-views, will be the only thing up. Just intermittent, some recent, some from years ago.

"There’ll be no WCW, it’s all WWE. No Mid-Atlantic, no Mid-South Wrestling, no World Class. None of that tape library stuff. People didn’t really watch a lot of it [on the WWE Network] so that’s what happened."

(Source: Wrestling Observer Radio)