Since we've listed off our grievances with the company, I thought I would flip the script and highlight a few positives.

1/The Production - The biggest challenge AEW had to face wasn't being able to compete with the WWE bell to bell, it was being able to put together a good looking television show and it easily has the best production of any rival promotion since WCW.

2/Booking - While it's been a little tepid, they haven't done any stunt booking and brought in some reality television star for a match or ignored their fans. AEW fans lap just about everything up, but the one time where they weren't feeling the Dark Order angle, the company took note and they pressed on. There's a push/pull relationship between the company and the fans which is essential to put together a good wrestling show. Because when you start booking for yourself, that's when things go south.

They've also done a good job of distinguishing themselves from the WWE. They don't run anywhere near the same amount of rematches, television matches are announced weeks in advance to build anticipation and they haven't done too many DQ or Count Out finishes.

3/Youth - We always joke about the demos, but I genuinely think it's a smart strategy to push younger talent like Adam Page, MJF, Darby Allin, Sammy Guevara, Jungle Boy, John Silver, Ricky Starks, Dr. Britt Baker, Penelope Ford, Private Party, Anna Jay etc. to help create a hip product. A lot of them are still green which is where having the vets around will help them, but it's good they're putting in the work now, so in 2-3 years time when more young talent is coming through they have these other guys and girls to learn off of.

4/Killer Matches - Credit where it is due, there are matches that have meant something in AEW and still stick out for the right reasons. Matches like Cody/Dustin, Omega/Moxley, Omega & Page/Bucks, MJF/Jungle Boy, PAC/Cassidy, PAC/Omega, Bucks/Lucha Bros etc. are matches that stick out for the right reason and even gave AEW a point of difference over other promotions. Even a match like Stadium Stampede which could have been a train wreck, was generally well received.

As with anything, it's much easier to talk about the negatives of something than the positives. So I'm struggling to come up with a substantial list for AEW's positives. Or perhaps my expectations are just too high.

I agree with you on production and especially on youth. They have a ton of talent with huge potential and it's great that a lot of these guys are getting featured. I'd say the young talent is definitely AEW's strongest point.

Darby Allin, Hangman Page, Orange Cassidy, MJF, Jungle Boy, Wardlow, Anna Jay, Britt Baker, Ricky Starks - all of these guys and gals have huge potential to become stars and lead the company in the future.

Besides the youngsters, there's an excellent crop of slightly older wrestlers who are still in their prime or close to it. I'm talking about the likes of Kenny Omega, Jon Moxley, PAC, Cody, Lance Archer.

The roster is definitely their strongest point. I know they had a huge amount of money invested in the company, but it's still pretty incredible the roster they've put together in such a short amount of time.

Have to disagree on booking. Their booking has been sketchy or outright bad in some places (women's division, tag division), and adequate-to-good in other areas. There have only been flashes of great booking ideas. I'm not convinced they are that different from WWE anymore. They certainly were in their first six months, but since then there's been more and more sports entertainment bullshit and less sports-like wrestling. I fear it's a trend that will only continue.

Find In This Page: Shida

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Honeymoon's over.

Oct 30, 2020 22:33:31 GMT Ness said:

Find In This Page: Shida

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Honeymoon's over.

Shida is doing her best to help unemployment rates since most people who have their first match against her normally get contracts.

Potential.

Production. Television. Money. There hasn't been a company in better shape business wise since potentially WCW in the mid 1990s to launch itself into the stratosphere.

AEW in 2020 is like WCW in 1994, it's awaiting the arrival of a game changer franchise player, and equally as important an angle that transforms the company. Also, the big difference between AEW today, and say NWATNA in 2002 - TNA fed off the WWE, WCW & ECW crumbs and picked up a few of a top independent talents of the day. As an example, they had the NWA Championship for 5 years, and only 2 " home grown " talents won the belt. For a lot of the talent in TNA, they had absolute zero exposure to casual fans. ROH was new, and NJPW was irrelevant at the time. The independent scene today however has much, much, much more exposure than it did near 20 years ago, it is AEW (and WWE's) greatest asset - it's why they were able to launch such a venture with little to now mainstream exposure for the majority of its roster. 

To sum up and tie in the negative thoughts on AEW, they are in their honeymoon stage. Everyone is telling them how great they are for doing such a thing, by launching a national level company to compete with WWE - and all the respect to them. It's a laugh, it's a riot backstage, it's no doubt party central because they've pulled off the impossible. The Elite are probably still on cloud-9 after working Kahn out of millions and because the workers are booking, they probably think they're creative geniuses. 

It's what they do when Jericho hits 50+ (in just a few days), and when Omega hits 40. And when Jon Moxley eventually hurts himself. 

Have to disagree on booking. Their booking has been sketchy or outright bad in some places (women's division, tag division), and adequate-to-good in other areas. There have only been flashes of great booking ideas. I'm not convinced they are that different from WWE anymore. They certainly were in their first six months, but since then there's been more and more sports entertainment bullshit and less sports-like wrestling. I fear it's a trend that will only continue.

For a brand new company that's trying to establish itself from scratch they've done pretty well to avoid all the pitfalls that plagued WCW and NWATNA. When they've announced a match, they haven't tried to worm out of it with a DQ finish or anything else, they've just let them go at it.

It's not perfect by any means but for a weekly television show they have the right idea.

Find In This Page: Shida

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Honeymoon's over.

Shida is still fantastic, but AEW is so slow on the ball that they deserve no credit for her brilliance. On top of being easily one of the best wrestler on the roster, she's also the best auteur and she's releasing masterpieces on YouTube.

Let's give this thread a little more traction. Jon Moxley was recently interviewed and had some interesting things to say about the positives of AEW. Full interview in the link. I will share some snippets here:

www.sportingnews.com/us/wwe/news/aew-jon-moxley-authenticity-adaptivity-accessibility/pdasymu2tzv11mpdq6cqy8ku6

Authenticity:

For me, it's very easy, and Eddie would be the same way. Because guys like me and him, we don't put on the pro wrestling uniform in the morning and take it off at night. What you see on TV is basically who me and him are in real life.

Depending on the situation and what kind of story you're trying to tell, and where you're at, you go through different phases and different characters and different iterations and results from your career. And in this particular scenario over the last year, you know, I ended up being a good guy. When I first came to AEW I was just murdering people and it was all about that violence and aggression and taking people out. And once I kinda became the standard-bearer good guy in the company, then it became like real easy for me to just treat every situation the same way I would treat it if it was real life. If somebody really did this to me or said this to me in this situation, this is how I'd react. You take little inspirations, or you might steal a line from a John Wayne movie or a Jack Reacher book or something that sounds cool.

Generally, I just talk the way I talk in real life, I act the way I act in real life, I take every situation as if it was real, and how I would really act. It's pretty easy for me. Other people have real, actual characters, getting into a role like an Orange Cassidy or something like that. When you see Eddie on TV and he's talking, that's literally him. If you gave him a parking ticket that he felt was undeserved, he would yell at the cop in the exact fashion that he would yell at me, or Cody Rhodes or whoever was wrestling with him on a wrestling show. If you got his pizza delivery order wrong, he would yell at you and slap you around in the same manner that he would yell at me if I was wrestling him. It's really no difference between what you would see in real life.

AEW's fanbase:

To me, wrestling in 2020, the fans are smarter and more educated. I don't like when I'm in the locker room and some guy's going, "Oh the marks on Twitter are saying this, bunch of stupid marks" or whatever and treating fans like they're idiots. That pisses me off. The old-school wrestling mentality was that this is a work, and we're carnies and we're trying to cheat people out of money — we're trying to present this thing, tricking them into thinking it's real, and taking their money from them. That's the origins of carny wrestling a century ago. That's not what it is today.

Wrestling fans, to me, are the most passionate, educated, some of the smartest fans in the world. And they really appreciate, not only the effort, they appreciate the passion of the wrestlers for their craft, they appreciate the effort, they appreciate how we're putting our bodies on the line. Especially AEW fans, appreciate little details and storytelling and long-term storytelling. The Young Bucks and Kenny Omega are very big into small, little details in their work — they'll drop little thing on BTE that won't come into play for months and months later, but at the end it all ties together and makes sense.

I think we have some of the sharpest, most studious fans in the game, and actually pushes us up to where we have to put on better stories and more authentic stories and add more detail. It's a much more discerning audience than it's ever been before. And it's great for us.

I think we're kind of on the cusp of where wrestling is in 2020. We're at the forefront of how to engage with our fans, how to tell stories, even the matches in the ring. And we try a lot of different stuff out there, different types of matches. I don't know if we'll stay in a smorgasbord kind of variety forever. Maybe over time we'll evolve into more of a singular identity. I don't know. But I think we're right on the forefront of where pro wrestling is in 2020 and beyond, whereas other companies might be stuck in their own little world.

AEW is not sports entertainment:

The whole buildup to me and Eddie Kingston has been a lot of talking, but we haven't had any crazy segments. I hate when dudes are just like, in the ring, and two dudes have a mic and they're just out there talking for 10 minutes. And nobody's throwing a punch, and they're trying to get their insults and their lines back and forth. But for me it's like, if you said that to me, and I was a foot in front of you, I would just slap the s— out of you. Why am I just standing here with a microphone? We look like f—in' jackasses. I try to avoid that at all costs.

Moxley brings up some great points, but these positives of AEW are not felt across the whole company. The Moxley vs Kingston program is very authentic, and I love that. Darby Allin is authentic. PAC is authentic.
But I'd say that currently there is plenty more inauthentic content, Jericho vs MJF to name a recent example.

The largest positive to me is Kingston. With the right dance partner his work is truly amazing. Not sure Moxley is that partner, but the I Quit stipulation will showcase King's selling and wear down work, both of which are very strong. Moxley is great usually with this stip as well, but AEW Mox is not really well suited for it. Sick Man Moxley though has some really fun submission stuff in the past. Hope they steal the show tonight.

The largest overall plus to AEW is right now they are a true variety fed. We get this super real story with Kingston, we get a more classic best man win fight with Cody and Allen, we get sports entertainment with Jericho vs MJF, we will get some womens stuff, some tag stuff, some more comedy style stuff, ect. It is a little bit of everything right now that should give most people at least one segment they like each show.

Variety can be seen as a positive for sure, but for me personally I prefer they do one thing really great instead of a jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none type deal.

Even if it doesn't work, I like how ambitious they are and how they really try and go for it. Some of it blows up in their face but either way it makes for compelling telly. I appreciate that they try to do stuff WWE doesn't dare dream to do.

I also laugh at stuff like Orange Cassidy and Marko Stunt so I appreciate them for what they are : Carny acts that always keeps me glued to the TV show.

The tag team division has so much depth to it. I like AEW's character development & the fact they make 1 on 1 interviews a common thing.

I do enjoy the fact, they are bridging the divide between companies. It's probably the one untapped potential that the WWE has never capitalised on. Impact may be a shell of TNA, but there's a host of great talent on their roster, who are all established beyond a majority of AEW's roster ie; Motor City Machine Guns, Good Brothers, Tennille Dashwood, Sami Callihan, EriC Young, James Storm, etc.

ROH is a write-off in 2020, so the holy-grail (once Covid is gone, and crowds are back, and travel is back.. and we no longer live in this nightmarish world) is a cross-over with NJPW. Both benefit from this relationship. Easy booking, Mox cheats to win the IWGP Belt, gives Japan the finger and tells NJPW if they want it back, come and fucking get it. Done.

Jericho is so fun to watch. He doesn't need to be great in the ring that often anymore but when a big match rolls around, he is still capable of a solid outing.

Watching Britt own the mic last show reminded me how good she is. Baker can make anything enjoyable. Her improvement from the early days is simply remarkable.

Over a year between posts, surely there did something right.

Same with the AEW Problems thread. When I bumped that it had been inactive for over a year. People just forgot about it.

I've been catching up on the last few Dynamites and I noticed that the booking has improved tremendously. Recently AEW has seen a huge influx of new talent, among them several big names, and when this happened they were struggling to book consistently compelling shows.

At that time I was only watching maybe 60% of AEW's content because not everything grabbed me, but now everything does grab me. In the last four weeks of AEW's programming I've only skipped one segment: that being the 10 man tag featuring the Undisputed Elite beating some jobbers. And that wasn't a long segment. Dynamite has been booked extremely well: every match and interviews feels important and must-watch. And there's always a hook (sometimes Hook himself) to get you to watch Rampage or the next Dynamite.

Rampage is the same: it's not quite as exciting as Dynamite but the last few weeks have been great too. Rampage even had a World Championship Match a couple of weeks ago. Tremendous! I haven't seen yesterday's Rampage yet but once again the card is very exciting.

Another thing I like is the variety of main events. Recently we had Jade Cargill and the even greener Marina Shafir fight in the main event of Rampage. Then on the following Dynamite, Mercedes Martinez and Deonna Purrazzo main evented. I'm not just saying that AEW is giving the ladies more spotlight, but they're giving the main event slot to relatively unproven talent and, in the case of the latter match, women who have barely featured on AEW. Or in Purrazzo's case, not at all.

All of this is happening while they build towards two exciting tournaments and a fantastic PPV in Double or Nothing.

Great job AEW. Keep it up.

WWE had every opportunity to do Samoa Joe vs Adam Cole and didn’t bother. Not only is AEW correcting this mistake, they made it the Owen Hart Tournament finals.

Although I was cold on it for a while, I've enjoyed MJF's face turn. I love how everybody doubts Max's sincerity & his efforts to change. The heels are telling everyone, yeah we're assholes but at least we're not liars like MJF.

Nov 20, 2023 23:51:37 GMT Ed said:

Although I was cold on it for a while, I've enjoyed MJF's face turn. I love how everybody doubts Max's sincerity & his efforts to change. The heels are telling everyone, yeah we're assholes but at least we're not liars like MJF.

To be fair with the amount of times he stabbed people in the back it was hard to believe him.

I cannot wait for Cole to turn on him. It is going to be glorious.

A lot of these have become a weekly positive. Today's episode was a Strong episode.

Dec 3, 2023 17:11:02 GMT X-zero said:

A lot of these have become a weekly positive. Today's episode was a Strong episode.

This is the best run of Roderick Strong's career.