AEW 2022: The year of the bloody bunny

I’ve had quite a different reaction. I thought the show has been a bit sloppy, lacking a bit of direction. I think the first five minutes of the JAS-BCC should have come with 2 paracetamol, the camera direction was so sloppy and constant that you missed seemingly everything until they kinda reset the whole match. And that Tony said in the start of the main event, to paraphrase, “Hangman said this about Punk but I don’t really know what he’s on about” shows how lacklustre and confusing the build has been. sad that page went from “I’m not gonna have Bret hart masterbation matches” to… directly ripping off Bret hart at wm8

Absolutely adored Thunder Rosa - Serena Deeb and Rosa’s outfit though. My favourite ring gear in years. And I love Wardlow.

I still liked the show. I just think it’s been my least favourite AEW PPV since… idk that one where Sammy-Matt Hardy shoulda been stopped.

I skipped the Sammy match, the Darby match and the TBS title so I could watch it before work.

Death Triangle-HoB was fun. Bucks-Hardys was a bit meandering but still alright. Martha nearly put me back to sleep and the belts seem pointless. The matches were alright but I thought they could have done something more with the winners.

The main event great and hard hitting, a solid ****. Hope it builds some actual story and character coming out of it.

Some stuff that bugged me Jeff Hardy’s boot hanging off all match, making him botching everything.

Why was it 4 million matches? So much should have been left for rampage.

JR seemed to have one of his off nights. You get Rancid to play you out, so why is this guy banging on about you being a farmer?

The JE seem like the least interesting thing in any feud and I think it’s starting to become a problem. ( Ricky Starks and Hobbs need all the gold.)

Lol the medical care MJF received.

I don’t think Martha congratulated either winner by name. They just stood around looking like goons in their merchandise and underwear. I really don’t care for Cole/UE and I hope they don’t drag Baker into that.

the hangman punk build was great! i don’t understand

“Hangman said this about Punk but I don’t really know what he’s on about”

tony said that because no one believes either hangman or eddie when they say they know the real punk. it makes sense!

I don’t think Martha congratulated either winner by name.

this is good actually bc i didn’t want to think about who won at all. besides it wasn’t about them

idk if i can spoiler tag an image so i'm just gonna hope everyone who hasn't seen the ppv is avoiding this thread like the plague

https://i.imgur.com/tgitWUj.jpg

my new favorite wrestler julia hart

the hookhausen match in the buy-in was so good too, prob my motn after house of black, rosa/deeb, and hangman/punk. they should've put it in the actual program

(and removed one of the other matches)

(honestly the tnt belt match was about as good as it could've been and i'm thrilled kazarian threw sammy and tay under the bus bc they're insufferable)

(so maybe the no-build darby/kor even though i'd hate to throw away a match that good) (it's certainly a rampage matchup tho)

Sorry I messed my spoiler tags upthread, it should have been all of my ppv thoughts, not just the first sentece.

Wtf is going on with MJF

Years to run on his contract. Even the threat of no showing such a major event seems like a bizarre thing to do. I guess it’s possible for him to row back from here but it seems as though he may have really torpedoed all the good will there was towards him among fans and you couldn’t blame TK if he doesn’t trust him in important spots from now on

Speaking of TK, that post-show presser….woof

lol i'm still pretty upset with mjf and i'm glad i got to see him get powerbombed ten times :)

just silly diva shit imo. afaict the issue is that he wants to get paid more (fair i guess, he's amazing, though the payscales in wrestling seem super fucked up to me lol) without signing an extension, but there's no reason for aew to invest in him if he's also not investing in them

tk going off on one of the five wrestling journalists left in the industry was idk pretty hilarious to me, i didn't even understand what it was about

Tbf some sources were reporting MJF had no expectation of being able to get a raise without adding time to his deal, hard to think he would expect to have any leverage to do that with 18 months left to run

Per T Khan's OTT tweets, cringey digs at WWE and particularly the Big Swole stuff he is evidently at the very least immature and a terrible communicator, so I wouldn't be surprised if there were multiple strands to the beef

(Doing anything to jeopardise Mickey Wardlow's ascension to megastardom should carry a custodial sentence though, read the room Max jfc)

All of us after MJF shows up and wrestles his match without incident. #AEWDoN pic.twitter.com/nAVMQFHDXl

— JamieOD (@JamieOD) May 29, 2022

maura sent me this tweet before the ppv and it's still accurate

lol

i guess we knew this already (and most of this is fuckin Wade Keller and therefore to be taken with a fistful of salt) but it sounds as though the gist is that all sorts of people are now being paid substantially more than him, the vast majority of whom have nowhere near his value to the company and some of whom aren't even active on the roster.

and rather than airing his grievance about this in full MJF might have just given broad indications that he wasn't particularly happy about this state of affairs while quietly taking it extremely personally, stewing and finally exploding. and as biscuits points out, it's quite believable at this stage that Tony Khan wasn't particularly sensitive in his handling of this.

which, now that the dust has settled and the initial outrage about MJF potentially screwing Wardlow out his big moment, tbh I think the guy has a pretty cast-iron case. the no show nonsense was the wrong move cause how is Khan supposed to bow to that kind of pressure and establish the precedent that he can be pushed around by his wrestlers

but the only people hired since day 1 who have offered / can offer more than MJF in the men's division are Punk and Danielson. that feud with Punk alone ought to have been enough to earn him the raise.

i hope they work it out. he's the best they've got and it would be a fucking tragedy to see him wasted in WWE.

finally got round to watching DoN in full (and if anyone wants me to stop bringing negative vibes into the discussion I won't take it all personally as I know I'm like a broken record and I don't wanna shit up the thread), but they're in a real rut atm.

there were a bunch of good matches but that's par for the course. Cole and Britt as cup winners was a tremendously bad idea and the booking of the whole tournament, right down to the choice of participants on the men's side, has been a let down. the Hardys are done. this was a waste of the Young Bucks. Darby / KOR was a fine match but it did not need to be on a 4 hour show. i still can't muster any enthusiasm at all about Sky, Kazarian or Sammy in the TNT title scene given all the talent they've got elsewhere.

it's fine, obv, cause it's now full steam ahead for the NJPW show which is gonna be electric. but they've made a lot of bad choices this year and it's showing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsIwKOafWG8

great coda to the ppv

If MJF bounces for WWE, good for him, but if he thinks he’ll be getting the Cody-level push…. Lol.

one of the best dynamites ever

yeah that was an incredible show

this is maybe my favorite tweet ever

demo of elvis costello's rejected triple H entrance theme pic.twitter.com/GlMrO5hWl1

— bossmoz (@BossMoz) January 7, 2018

A bunch of my friends went to Double or Nothing, and they said that Anarchy in the Arena was great for them in the actual arena, but they couldn't imagine what it looked like for those watching at home.

Best debut, however:

If ever there was a perfect pairing in wrestling this would have to be it...@Jade_Cargill @Malcolmvelli #AEWDoN #AEW @AEW pic.twitter.com/QT57JO4bGj

— Scott Lesh (@ScottLesh724) May 30, 2022

So this MJF stuff - started out real. They reached a compromise position before the ppv (temporary? long term?) and did the match. MJF cuts that promo on Dynamite (real emotions perhaps but would have to be fake for them even to consider letting it air). May have actually landed sufficiently badly with the Warner execs in the audience on the night that it’s now back to being a shoot, in some respects?

How the fuck are you even supposed to keep up with this?

Either way I think MJF is pretty clear the guy. Within whatever narrow scope it’s possible for a wrestler to blow up to superstardom (particularly without the WWE machine behind you), he’s the one

Considering how much Tony Khan loves playing the classics, I’m 100% convinced this is just them playing Pillman & Punk, and they knew it would only work if they really created a mess to begin it. MJF was the golden child like a month ago and acts like a spoiled brat going into the match where he was guaranteed to be power moved 10 times? He has also been known to quote old Punk promos, so I can see him feeling like a kid in a candy shop trying to figure out with TK how to get his own “is this real” pipe Bomb that echoed that one from 11 years ago. I bet he was disappointed he couldn’t spear Cena through a table to start it. I presume the Sasha/Naomi thing really helped them pull the trigger.

Idk or maybe it is real. Work or shoot, he deserves a better pay check.

The one real fucked up thing is Cody’s injury. There is absolutely no way he should have worked that match looking like a 1/3 of a corpse, and I really hope it hasn’t set a precedent to make other people at WWE have to work hurt.

it seems like in this day in age to break out in WWE you need some unexpected violence. Becky Lynch had a rocket strapped to her after that Smackdown invasion from then on out.

And I guess this is the first “breakout” star since then haaaa

more of Stokely Hathaway making 90s r&b-laced promos.

Jeff Hardy. Dammit. They’ve got to fire him.

Evelyn Waugh was a prick but “a blow falling on a bruise, no shock, just a dull and sickening pain” pretty well captured the particular blend of sadness and revulsion that the unsalvageable addict inspires in ppl who care about them

Do what you can to help and support him, pay for treatment if he wants it, but they can’t continue to promote him. He shouldn’t have been on the show anyway for obvious aesthetic and health-related reasons but this isn’t that. He’s done

Fuckin sucks

hear hear

pretty much every take i've seen on this has been utterly infuriating, from smug "WWE was right all along" to complacent "i don't get it, he couldn't possibly have had a cushier job, why self-destruct like this now" to self-righteous "fuck him and all drunk drivers, i hope he burns in hell". wrestling fans really are the worst. he's not a well man and it's a heart-breakingly sad story. always hoped he'd find a peaceful place but it's looking less and less likely

not that the wrestling side of things matters at all in the bigger picture but he truly was special. for such a terrible talker and mediocre wrestler he inspired a level of devotion in his fans that very few wrestlers of any level and in any period or context have ever achieved. and not only because he threw himself down from absurdly high places. that intangible quality that just makes people love you, that. shit can't be learned or faked, you either have it or you don't and he had it in extraordinary quantities.

Amen to all of that.

I’m sick of all the bad takes.

we all knew will ospreay vs. dax hardood would be match of the year, and it was

all of the forbidden door microfeuds are unfolding in a way that seems drawn from the pages of someone's au wrestling fanfic, and i love it

I’ve not seen it yet but Wardlow v 20 was my pick for potential MOTY

finishing up dynamite right now. the ladder match is incredible. feel like you could put together a pretty long youtube comp of "the most insane aew ladder matches" at this point

yeah that was yet again one of the best episodes of dynamite ever, real bounce back from last week's (understandable, given the storyline cleanup you gotta do when both punk and danielson are injured) confusion

yeah i really enjoyed that. Will Ospreay has never really been my guy, either as a wrestler or a human being, but in certain respects he is absolutely amazing. certainly his matches are lots of fun.

Jay White very much is my guy and I would happily watch this douchebag wrestle against practically anyone (except Adam Cole)

a lot of my criticisms of AEW this year have revolved around Tony Khan's new toy syndrome and how the hell you end up in a place where the detestable Adam Cole, Jeff Hardy, John Morrison, Big Cass, Killian Dain, Jay Lethal, reDRagon (I like Kyle O'Reilly but it's still been too much) etc. etc., whoever, how these guys have been getting featured to a greater or lesser extent on AEW shows ahead of more talented established AEW wrestlers that already have that crowd connection. i stand by those criticisms. i think it's done more harm than good.

but i'm a total hypocrite because i don't extend those criticisms to guys like Switchblade, Ospreay (warts and all), Takeshita, Shooter (back for the PPV on the Moxley team!)

that's all really exciting to me, and the idea that a guy like idk, maybe Zack Sabre Jr. for example, might run out of things to do on NJPW shows and could be traded across to AEW for a few months in exchange for an AEW guy who is also looking to freshen up - what a great idea. can't wait for the PPV, can't wait for the freshness that talent trades could (should) be bringing to both companies.

p.s. breathe with the Switchblade

John Morrison, Big Cass, Killian Dain

again you’re focusing too hard on the negatives bc to me these all elicit a big “who?”

(except for cass who i knew from wwe and who was on 1 episode of dynamite)

cass was also a sub for someone else, can’t remember who

yes you're right, those were all more or less one-and-done guys and that's not the end of the world. the good stuff outweighs the bad by orders of magnitude. shouldn't be nitpicking when there's stuff happening like MJF vs Punk, 2022 FTR, the rise of Wardlow, Hookhausen, everything Eddie Kingston does, the Blackpool Combat Club etc. etc. still the best wrestling show ever

wardlow's star power is amazing to me. he barely spoke before a few months ago

yeah it's one of the most exhilarating things in wrestling when someone catches fire like this. you think you've got a handle on someone's ceiling and then they smash through that and just keep on going. he could be a really big deal for them. will be really interested to see where he goes from here

Ospreys-FTR bald was a clinic. Liked Ortiz’s intense head shaving too.

Only problem I’ve had with dynamite so far is the worst nickname I’ve heard in years, Inhuman Dante Martin. That guy has lost a hell of a lot of momentum. Take him away from jobber Evan Bourne and give him a couple months holiday to come up with a better gimmick. He doesn’t need to be saying “I’m good now, honestly guys” and losing to bigger names every week.

“Catalyst of pro wrestling” also a wack name but I’ll let it go cos Jay White is obviously awesome

pretty good

opener was probably match of the night (Eddie Kingston doesn't miss, ever) but everything about that show ruled. best bit was either the Danielson replacement or maybe all of the NJPW guys visibly revelling in how much the crowd loved them after years of clapping-only crowds in Japan

the swerve/lee match in the buy-in was incredible