AEW 2022: The year of the bloody bunny

bits of Rampage i've caught have been good (the Mox and Hook matches), catching up with the rest now, just watching the Trent / Nick match. Nick Jackson hitting a superkick and then immediately botching a dive over the top and nearly spiking himself on the outside = a fun encapsulation of things i do and do not like as outlined in those posts above.

Mox killing Page with elbows and knees before choking him out was a tasty finish. Moxley's whole thing doesn't always completely work for me, he's pretty hammy and it can feel way too much like an amateurish actor playing crazy rather than the actual crazy violent dude thing he's shooting for, but a match / feud with AEW Danielson is ofc gonna be excellent.

everything about Hook just works. I cant wait to see him work a proper back-and-forth match with a serious opponent cause if he can sell a bit and he can work with a guy to make it all hang together in a coherent match then like i don't see what can possibly stop the kid. the fact that Taz's meme-over son turned out to be this ridiculous total package wonderkid right out of the gate is one of the best and most surprising things to have happened in a year full of great and exciting things happening in wrestling

sorry to see Lio Rush has picked up his bindle and is back out on the road yet again. he's so striking in the ring, he could have been (and tbh hopefully still could be) such a great part of the AEW roster. some of the stuff him and Dante were doing in their tag matches, that double-team shit built around co-ordinated rope-running, i've never seen anything like it.

maybe some of the Dragon Gate 6 man tags got to that level of speed and smoothness but I've never really dug into that stuff so that could be way wide of the mark.

either way, sorry to see him go, but hopefully he's not gonna retire again any time soon. you'd imagine even if he's done with AEW he'll automatically be a draw for any indy which can book him at this stage

thank u both for kind words on the above rants which tbh I read back the next day and cringed at quite a bit (as I so often do whenever I write much on the internet). i like to think and talk about wrestling very much, I think it's all fascinating, but there is a dearth of spaces in which to do so. I only really know of two types of wrestling messageboard (ignoring Reddit and its ilk here because yuck) and neither of them are ideal. i am now gonna rant some more about this before looking back and cringing.

There are the ones where a bunch of very old, very crusty dudes who have all online-known each other for 25 years argue for the 50th time about whether Jerry Lawler or Volk Han is actually the greatest wrestler of all time and they write each other long essays about sundry topics of interest to the serious wrestling fan. these guys generally think that Shawn Michaels, Chris Jericho, Kenny Omega, Kurt Angle and many other GOAT popular favourites are totally beneath contempt as wrestlers and that the majority of fans who enjoy these wrestlers are total rubes who know less than nothing about what they're watching.

These kinds of forums are very useful places for learning about old wrestling and different wrestling cultures and different ways of watching wrestling and they can have (or sometimes used to have) that wonderful intensity you get when ppl who care far far too much about the niche hobby to which they have devoted their lives and, having honed their ideas by arguing among themselves for years and years, really get the bit between their teeth and start typing. tbh i kinda think god bless these guys and their little world. in certain respects some of them at least are pioneers. no one except Dave Meltzer has ever written or thought about any of this shit because why would you (because it's often fascinating, of course!)

on the other hand there are other places which are more representative of the modern fan, and these are useful for keeping up with news, current promotions, social media shenanigans, whatever latest revolting bile Jim Cornette has spewed out of his failing liver etc. these places can also occasionally be fun / funny for live posting during shows and the people there tend to be a bit more au fait with the niceties of civilised conversation in the 2020s and avoid some of the more problematic "58 year old wrestling fan with opinions on the modern world" bullshit you get in the old man forums.

but these also tend to be the places where Meltzer's word on star ratings is law, where it is completely verboten to suggest that Okada might not actually be the greatest wrestler who has ever lived but simply "very good, with certain limitations", where every Lucha Bros vs Private Party tag match or whatever is a thrilling match of the year contender rather than a brainless sugar rush mess (and don't get me wrong, i like a brainless sugar rush mess - just not all the time, and let's not then pretend that because Meltzer gives it 4 stars it was actually much cop as a wrestling match).

i admire the first kind of forum but it's the second kind which drives the "discourse" and this is the audience more than any other to which AEW plays. I think this might end up being a bad thing in the long-run.

what i am saying is can someone please come up with a new place where I can talk about wrestling which is neither of the those kinds of places described above, and can Tony Khan then book a wrestling show just for the true cognoscenti i.e. me and my friends

thank u

true to form, really wishing i hadn't posted the above, but seeing as i did, i'm gonna add to it, by noting that while thinking about these things i am reminded that Dom Passantino, late of this parish, once did actually start a wrestling blog that went nowhere, taking as its starting premise the following pearl of well-expressed insight

"There’s two types of pro-wres blog: the one written by the autistic and the one written by the manchild"

and while I wouldn't frame it in those terms myself (if only i were so pithy) i think he had a point which holds good.

There can be merit to some of the close reading to which some of the old timers described in that previous post subject wrestling matches, under certain circs it can be educational, but in terms of stuff that is actually fun to read, you can p much count the writers on one hand. the guy who did the Rumblemetrics blog and then later reviewed every Fighting Network RINGS show was very good i thought (http://tkscissors.blogspot.com/).

http://tkscissors.blogspot.com/2016/10/kiyoshi-tamura-vs-tsuyoshi-kohsaka_30.html

first post is good. the first thing i ever read that made me consider checking out shoot style (though i watched UWF / newborn UWF stuff rather than RINGS, which I have only ever really dipped my toes into)

i think he had a point which holds good.

to be quite clear on what i meant here, although i hope it was self-explanatory, i meant that he was essentially correct that there was no good writing to be had on the subject of wrestling (excepting always Meltzer of course, who is and always has been a hilarious, delightful avant-garde artist working in prose, besides all of his actual journalistic attributes)

Oooh I didn’t know the rumblemetrics guy started a different blog. Such a shame he doesn’t do that anymore, his one post a year was always something I adored.

y'all

:)

i'm so happy

this could be absolute magic if properly woven into the Punk/MJF storyline

how about those spots in that ladder match? god bless those boys, the whole thing ruled

up until now i had been worrying a bit that Wardlow wasn't gonna be ready and that the long foreshadowed turn was gonna feel a bit rote but man, last night he felt ready (and of course he was getting the hometown babyface bump, but still); ppl are gonna blow up when it happens and i think if they can stick the landing with a big win on PPV in a good match against MJF (and I reckon you can totally trust MJF to deliver that at this stage) then the Wardog is looking pretty well set for a big run now, people love him

Wardlow's purported turn on MJF has been laid on too thick imo. Although it relied on WWE's bullshit do-they-know-the-cameras-are-there backstage shit to stick the landing, Batista's 2005 turn on HHH relied on HHH and Flair wrongly thinking Dave was dumb and trying to manipulate him and keep their disrespect for him on the downlow. MJF berating Wardlow and going out of his way to insult him in ways that aren't even necessary on twitter makes both MJF look dumb for not charming Wardlow to keep him onside instead of respecting the obviously comparatively useless grunt Shawn Spears, and Wardlow look dumb for putting up with such obvious naked contempt for so long

As such it can ONLY BE that this in fact a swerve and Wardlow will realign himself fully with MJF and commit to the heel role

I let's say half believe this

Also: very nice

i aort of kwym but is that maybe a problem with MJF (mighty tho he is in the art of heeling it up) not actually being particularly subtle? it's an interesting thought which hadn't occured to me but i think you've got to give the people what they want, in the end.

right minded folk have always correctly ripped on WWE's big man fetish but the tiny kernel of wisdom to that misguided approach is that even in these enlightened days i think most wrestling fans just love to see a big old muscly brute of a dude ragdolling smaller folk about the ring, provided ofc that the aforementioned brute is also pretty cool (Wardlow imo is extremely cool). AEW have not yet had this type of attraction and although it's not really polite to say it out loud I think tbh that's a failing and it's a thing which has been missing from the pro-wrestling buffet they serve up. i for one am ready to see this gigantic man tear through some of the roster for a bit

also do something with Hobbs and give me Wardlow vs Hobbs and both of them vs Miro ASAP plz. did you see Hobbs's get-up on Dynamite?! the guy couldn't miss if he tried

I guess the logical flashpoint is for Micky Wardz to win the TNT title, show some measure of grudging badass respect to Sami or whoever he murders for it, and then obliterate MJF instead of relinquishing the belt to him - "thanks for the extra salary, you have outlived your usefulness"

Nothing better than a big man running wild. (He was a heel, whereas Wardlow will be a face but) Matanza in Lucha Underground was the greatest feeling. How the hell could any of these luchadores stop him? It made it impossible to turn away while he was rising to the/on top.

I bloody hope they let Wardlow go crazy with it. One thing AEW lacks is unpredictability. I mean I absolutely love the show and I love Tony’s respect for long term booking, but I just couldn’t conceive Sgt B’s idea of a swerve happening. I also think they’ll go the predictable “be a monster (potential tnt champo)” rout they’ve done for all the other big men they were on sure of, like miro archer and brodie. But I wish they would go nutzo. Hangman will need some motherfuckers to prove himself against too.

Nick Jackson hitting a superkick and then immediately botching a dive over the top and nearly spiking himself on the outside = a fun encapsulation of things i do and do not like as outlined in those posts above.

I know he's not nearly the only one, but the weird Nick botches are always the ones that stay with me the most. I believe it was at All Out 2019, with their match against the Lucha Bros, where Nick went for a dive, clipped his leg on the top rope, and crashed half wrong onto the tables underneath. Sometimes I wonder how intentional some of them are, since they always look so terrible.

And they had me with that Wardlow tease! I really thought that it was time, but I guess they wouldn't do it on a Dynamite, no matter how special the Dynamite was supposed to be. I imagine they save it for Revolution, or wait until MJF goes for the gold.

Watching Dynamite after the Rumble and it’s really night and day. The RR seemed so stale and predictable and old. Dynamite is exciting and fresh and unpredictable. The ladder match was beautiful, Sammy’s cutter will be on highlight reels for the next 20 years.

jungleboy and luchasaurus are just unbelievable

so fucking excited for thunder rosa vs. mercedes martinez on the next rampage

Jungle Boy is the future. He had it before they changed his entrance theme, but Tarzan Boy really bumped him up another level. I'm waiting for him to finally chase a singles title. The influence of Christian has helped him grow even more.

I'm so happy to see Mercedes Martinez more on TV. She's so good, and was totally slept on by WWE. I'm hyped to get to see her have some great TV matches.

I’m glad Christian stayed as a mentor and they didn’t do the obvious quick WWE break up backstabbing. JB is slowly getting better on the mic and their matches keep getting better, you have to imagine riding around with a tag team specialist known for his charisma has to be worth it’s weight in gold for him.

watching on a half hour delay, Danhausen is over and Danielson is the master of all he surveys. in matches, on promos, this is gonna be an all timer of a run

hot show so far

Brandi having such severe go-away heat that Dan Lambert is the de facto face in a standoff is quite a thing. Lambert walking that line again, tbh a bit uncomfortable with how much this crowd are enjoying him here. definitely uncomfortable with this crowd chanting "shut the fuck up" at the black woman who hasn't actually been presented as a heel at any point. fucking hell Lambert talking about slapping the shit out of Brandi, I enjoy Lambert as a talker but this is baaaaad and really not good.

Paige VanZant really could be a star for them if she can work a bit but i'm not sure a Brandi feud is the right way to kick things off if that's what they're going for here and anyway fuckin hell someone needs to rein in Lambert a bit if they're gonna push on with this.

ugh sorry i totally fucked those spoiler tags, it's late where i am

no thanks to anytime lambert ventures into outright misogyny. it’s not entertaining. it sucks

rest of this show has been fucking on tho

wrestling fans’ hostility to brandi makes me want to like her but she isn’t good, it’s a great conundrum

every aspect of the Pac/Penta - Black/King tag match ruled imo, from the entrances onwards. the blindfold, the strikes, the rowdy Mexican dudes in the front row, the sit down for the finish. all so good. Brody King is I think the least of these four (not seen much of his work so that's gut instinct rather than an informed opinion) but even he had a role in there as the big hoss guy of the four of them.

not exactly redeemed themselves following the gross / ill-judged bits of the previous segment because that all still sucked and the shitty bits should be binned off ASAP but this is still a hell of a rebound from that low point. a bunch of very nice, very evil wrestlers having a baller tv match, what more can you realistically ask for

oh wtf can you just not do separate paras in spoiler tags?! i checked that time! never really used them so apologies in advance to anyone who reads anything they don't want to before they've had a chance to watch the show, won't do it again

yeah Brandi is not great and her angles have always been pretty bad, hence the hostility, but all the fucking same. you'd have thought that fans of a medium which deals entirely in metaphor and semiotics would be able to see the bigger picture. otoh of course this is wrestling and old habits die hard

Ruby vs Nyla better than expected. Jake the Snake still rules on the mic. Hangman is good but maybe getting a bit cold. can we at least quarantine Lambert to one segment per show? (nb he probably still would be my vote for the best heel promo out there in spite of his bullshit, it's on TK imo to adopt an editorial stance at ths point). 45 mins or so for Punk vs MJF?! wtf i have no idea what im about to watch, are they actually gonna go super long? i guess they have to! anyway here ends this painful live-tweet thread until we hit the angle that is clearly (hopefully?!) coming up here, at which point i will undoubtedly live-tweet again

mjf/punk was a wall-to-wall classic afaict

feels weird to call myself a mjf fan but his in-ring work is special

Excited to watch this at the weekend. The Brandi thing sounds horrible. She has been bad time and time again so i understand the X PAC heat; throwing her in there with someone very skilled on the mic who seems quite misogynistic and entitled is a really bad call.

Very strong in-ring show all around capped off by a tremendous main with genuine intrigue

That Brandi-Lambert segment was as horrific as yous have said though my god, grim misogyny, awful focus-grouped work-shoot edgy zings leading to a pull-apart for no reason and an angle nobody wants to see, the worst of all worlds

The Lambert stuff is bad, yeah (we know it’s a work, we get that you’re really a fan, let’s try something else please?) but there’s a really mean-spirited slant to the reactions Brandi gets. It’s not strictly go-away heat; it’s something more like ‘it’s cool to pile on here, for some reason’ heat. And as much as Brandi might deserve valid criticism for this or that, I feel really iffy about it.

i also feel iffy about it, it feels gross for sure

the women's division angles are crisscrossing so much rn it's a spiderweb and i love it

who's walking through the forbidden door wednesday

I have no idea. Excited to see who though.

Fuck me this Brandi segment is brutal. Did they intentionally send out there to get the town wrong? What a horrible way to start it, of course this was gonna be a mess. I havent seen this kind of x-pac heat in a while.

This is a car crash. This is horrific.

Danhausen is watching to see if you are watching #AEWDynamite tonight on TBS at 8pm EST of some sort

(if you do not, you will be cursed etc etc yada yada yada) pic.twitter.com/JPs1V5IOr3

— Danhausen (@DanhausenAD) February 9, 2022

not looking forward to the continuation of the brandi/pvz beef (hope brandy gets jobbed and has to recover through a series of hopefully increasingly less horrible matches on dark elevation) but otherwise so so so stoked for atlantic city dynamite

ugh i think the TK promotional push has sold me on staying up late for this - if he burns me here I'll be fuming but he's selling tonight so hard I think I have to check it out. not entirely sure what he can possibly be selling to justify this level of hype (Jeff Hardy? Keith Lee? enh) but for tonight at least I'm buying

the hype is outrageous lol

Idk if there's anybody left they can sign that actually warrants this level of hype

Would pop p big for Kairi who I miss being on TV

it's Shane McMahon obv

goldberg

what's Bautista up to atm?

sometimes the picture in picture commentary slips into the youtube uploads, i’ll have to check it out

but yes really excellent dynamite, and i’m so happy for ricky

I thought both Full Gear and Dynamite were excellent. It did seem like a transitional PPV though, as opposed to their usual blow outs. Jungle Boy v Luchasaurus was my favourite match of the night.

Picture in Picture was great. I love goofy Taz. I also loved the clip on Mox on Renee’s show talking about doing cheap speed and cocaine and getting inspired to go to the library.

Mox talking about going to the library high is one of my favorite mox-isms, so to speak. Glad he's clean now, but I still love those stories.

Also, this is gonna, as the kids say, slap. Probably literally.

#FTR’s @DaxFTR vs. the #AmericanDragon @bryandanielson TONIGHT on #AEWDynamite LIVE from Indianapolis, at 8pm ET / 7pm CT on @TBSNetwork!

🪓 or 🐉? pic.twitter.com/rphfflIaRi

— All Elite Wrestling (@AEW) November 30, 2022

oh my god

That's surely a motyc if it goes anything north of like eight minutes

Update: it should go EXACTLY eight minutes

They can do it

RICKY STARKS SPITTIN.

(via @AEW) pic.twitter.com/hzSPgYByEl

— B/R Wrestling (@BRWrestling) December 8, 2022

Ricky Starks has really won me over this year. I liked him before, but man, he got over HUGE with me this year. My friends were at Dynamite this week and they were losing their minds, since Ricky is the hometown hero in Austin. It'll probably be a great showing for him.

I’ve been on the Ricky Starks train since I first saw him on NWA Powerrr so I’m delighted to see him get the push he deserves. TK needs to keep it going.

twitter tells me that TK has apparently acknowledged that (1) the ROH stuff on AEW TV has to stop, soon and (2) that you can't keep devoting c.50% of your airtime each week to the latest new signing(s) (who promptly disappear after a week never to be heard from again).

in the quote i read he sounded pretty fucking miffed about item (2) in particular, because yknow WCW used to bring all these lucha and Japan guys in back in'96 and it was the coolest shit. but "apparently" that doesn't fly anymore

well yeah guess what Tony AEW 2022 is not WCW 96 and that actually doesn't fly anymore. please god let him be getting the message here.

hilariously i end my latest whinge by noting how much I enjoyed that episode and yeah, Starks has got the lot if they give him a chance. i fully expect him to lose to MJF and then disappear back off into oblivion (which fucking sucks, i have loved (and still in theory do love) AEW so much, but they have now conditioned me to expect the hot new star to get beaten and immediately benched which is a shitty place to be because that's what shitty wrestling companies do. i kinda need them not to fuck this one up

[well yeah guess what Tony AEW 2022 is not WCW 96 and that actually doesn't fly anymore. please god let him be getting the message here.

reading that back it's a bit ambiguous. should probably clarify that imo there is a way to do guest stars from other regions and companies. there is a qualitative difference between Jun Akiyama, Minoru Suzuki, Bandido and Takeshita vs idk Juice Robinson, Jay Lethal, Jeff fucking Jarrett, Anthony Henry etc. etc. etc. call me a snob if you like

dynamite has been outrageously good. once again

I'm selfishly hoping that they'll do some build towards some Wrestle Kingdom matches in the coming weeks (namely next week, since I'll be going to the San Antonio show). I'm interested to see how the card fills out and when Ospreay is going to show up to cost Kenny and the Bucks in the best of seven. Also, one of our guys from here is wrestling on the Dark recordings, so I'm hyped to go over there and cheer for him.

Re: what Windsor said - I agree, but am sad about it. It's a shame that for several of the people they have brought in (like Jay Lethal and Juice Robinson), the timing was off, and they hadn't heated up again in quite some time. I get why they brought these people in, but man, crowds were dead for most of them. At the end of ROH, Jay wasn't as hot of a commodity as he was a few years back with his feud with Colt Cabana. I also had a time where I thought Juice was doing great, but his Bullet Club run hasn't done anyone any good. FinJuice had run their course, but I feel like an amicable split (like RPG VICE) would have felt better, since they haven't done much with the split between Juice and Finlay. I'll stop before it turns into a post that should be in the NJPW thread instead.

Maybe it's also a testament to how the atmosphere and the interests of the average "indie" fan have shifted during these pandemic years.

Hell of a strong run of TV to close out the year, I loved Hayter vs Shida and the Acclaimed diss track in particular

Not really that much bloody bunny to speak of in the final reckoning for 2022, but a very strong year for Orange Cassidy and the Acclaimed

Also I guess some other stuff happened idk

lol yeah I guess some stuff did happen.

as I’m newly sober (started going to AA, it’s actually a hoot) I’m gonna binge the past couple Dynamites on nye instead of going to a house party. Excited about the new set and maybe sasha.

Any good new thread title ideas?

bunny was injured for like nine months so i really blew the thread title lol

She was unlucky!

Good luck with sober NYE AHH, you should be in for a good time with those recent eps. The Rampages have been fairly good lately too IIRC

Thanks man. I’ve kinda forgotten about Rampage, I’ll make sure to take the time.

AEW 2023: Scissor me daddy
AEW 2023: The return of slapnuts
AEW 2023: Where’s Miro?
AEW 2023: We miss you, Larry the dog

Holy fuck the Acclaimed diss of Jarrett and Lethal had me rooooollin. Absolutely love those guys.

Watching 3 weeks of tv and I’m back in love with aew

AEW 2023: R-A-S-S-L-E-R

Lol Wardlow should be a killer and he just had a great match, please don’t try to make me care that he had his “man bun” cut off

I'm into "We miss you, Larry the dog" but I did get scissored by Bowens when I went to Dynamite tapings, so I gotta go with Scissor me daddy.