AEW 2022: The year of the bloody bunny

I’ve seen the first couple matches. My favourite bit is Sting no selling the super kick party. Don’t think I can finish it until tomorrow.

i have also only seen the buy-in and the first few matches bc i’ve been on vacation in vienna with my mom. on the bright side i’m now aware of how much my fellow ilxors suffer bc of ppv timing

i was immediately won over by the simultaneous english/japanese ring announcing though, i don’t know why but it just made this feel so special and cool

i just watched the all atlantic title match, clark connors had huge shoes to fill and he really brought it

lmao the bullet club/dudes with attitudes match. i've still got two hours left and i'm ready to call this the most delightful wrestling ppv i've ever seen

Orange Cassidy is a great fucking wrestler. Absolute classic with Osprey.

enthusiastically seconded, what a match

i am so obsessed with okada

what a fucking ppv

gopro jones

i am so obsessed with okada

yeah it was v cool seeing him in the context of a major US show. he's been around for so long and done so much now that it's hard to see him with fresh eyes but on both Dynamite and the PPV he has leapt off the screen.

who knows where they take the AEW / NJPW thing from here (they'll probably do less with it than I personally would like because neither company is going to want to trade off their major players for extended runs abroad (and it's very sad to think we might not get Danielson in the G1 or Omega having one last big NJ run as a result)) but if nothing else this show proved you could drop guys like ZSJ, Ospreay, Shingo and Okada (him most of all) into major programs in the States and have it get over huge

always got to account for the ferocious Chicago crowd but they were cheering for fucking Yoshi Hashi lol. loudest Kaze ni Nare ever, too.

if they're not prepared to send main-eventers back and forth i definitely think ZSJ is a guy who has found his ceiling in New Japan who could be a major player for AEW on a talent exchange deal. for all the talk about him and Bryan being the top two technical wrestlers of their generation, they're not actually all that similar. ZSJ is pretty unique.

Swap him for Miro for a year and let the Redeemer go and hurl himself at Cobb and Ishii and Shingo and them

What’s the Japan covid situation? I can see them making a couple big temp trades (like your Miro for zsj suggestion) and there is already talk of FD2 in Japan.

Absolutely no way it’s a 1 off when Kenny at a FD type show will sell a bazillion tickets.

The Japanese covid restrictions have only recently started to loosen, but with the G1 coming up, I can't imagine that they would send anyone there yet when those blocks are set. They might have a few people show up later, and I'm convinced at least FTR will be in World Tag League this year.

As far as I know, the situation with Kenny is still a stinger for NJPW, as they had invested so heavily in him only for him to walk away. They were lucky they had a star in Jay White, but if they didn't, it would have been a pretty dire situation. You can tell that Jay White's initial push post-Omega came from the spot that they had formerly carved for Kenny. Plus, Kenny surely is on Ibushi's side with everything that happened earlier this year with his injury and the conflicts he had with NJPW, even after he (Ibushi) chose to stay with them.

The real money on the Japanese side is all in getting a few more big matches out of Kenny, they’ll make that happen for sure if he’s physically up to it. Wouldn’t be surprised if Omega vs Okada headlines a US show either

i adore wardlow

Yeah he is *the guy*. He can work, he can (more or less) talk, he looks the part in a way none of their other guys do, everyone loves him and he’s very much an AEW original

They’re gonna have to book him well to sustain that love from the audience but he feels like the breakout star from that pack, together with MJF (remember him?)

That is a nuclear title program for those guys a year or two down the line, assuming no disasters in the meantime (where the fuck is MJF?!)

Being in the Blackpool Combat Club #BCC is utter Madness. ⁦@GentlemanRegal⁩ pic.twitter.com/XtrosBU21v

— William Regal (@RealKingRegal) July 14, 2022

obv i'm watching dynamite right now, anyway pretty astonishing the chemistry between claudio and hager... first time i've given a shit about a hager match lol

also.... takeshita is my new favorite wrestler

xxp would buy a shirt of that

Hager was in a pretty good Fox News tag team with Claudio for years. If Vince didn’t hate tag teams, they could have had a second team to fight. Oh I guess the rainbow Usos would have been around.

Holy fuck that Dynamite main event! My girlfriend watched it with me who usually doesn’t care and even she was losing her marbles at it. They all looked so good! There was so many great spots that it reminded me of the wm17 TLC match.

def couldn’t believe that match. so wonderful

rampage was also great this week. feel like a broken record

I am very intrigued by Stokes trying to recruit more clients. I would be very into him managing Lee Moriarty, which is a pairing I never even thought about until Stokely walked into frame last night.

Both nights of Fyter Fest look great. Excited to see Wheeler and his 3 dads wrestle on Wednesday.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_8jMBtB4dQ

one of the things i love about aew is the degree to which they draw on wrestling history instead of y'know largely pretending it doesn't exist *cough cough* and this 30-minute preview of saturday's roh ppv is the best example of that yet. the lethal/joe relationship is so richly illustrated, deep archival footage spliced with absolutely banging present day promos

almost done with dynamite. I FUCKING LOVE FTR

willow nightingale is a star imo

She's one of the most naturally charismatic people they regularly put on TV imo

ftr vs briscoes 2 was breathtaking

hook taking the ftw title was an incredible microdrama

not enough dancing Ryan Nemeth in this week's BTE

otm

"Why weren't you Willy Gecko or the British Iguana?"

absolute trooper William Regal performance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98aEqKqfyBQ

Jim Ross: Matt Hardy looks like a young Bruce Dern in "The Cowboys."

punk is so hot

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpi8uDSZRpY

kenny's coming back

I think I speak for all of us when saying how happy I was to see Don Callis back

otm

LMAO.

God knows what the hell they are doing. All Out seems like a chaotic mess.

Love Scissor Me Daddy Ass.

lmao

I genuinely don't know wtf is going on, and I kinda love it. I also kinda hate it.

Is Punk injured still? Is he being punished for backstage shit? Or neither of these things? Whats happening with the Cabana rumours? Is MJF alive? Who does Mox face at All Out? Hangman still needs something too, they've shit the bed with him since he feuded with Punk and lost the title.

Generally AEW is very good, so I'm pretty happy to give them the benefit of the doubt. And I don't really gaf about internet rumours, backstage dealings etc. But I feel if they get this wrong, it could leave quite a sour taste with fans. And they don't seem to get away with shit anywhere as easily as WWE, who regularly book shows this badly.

Perhaps the most truly baffling outcome coming out of AEW this week is that the video game looks...fun?

I like AEW but I do think Tony's lost the plot a bit, I want a weekly wrestling programme not an erratic machine that randomly shits out indie dream matches, blood-drenched garbage brawls and New Japan crossovers, its like eating the resultant paste of several different desserts all the time, just let some of the guys who know how to work have some three star matches for ten minutes on the undercard til things settle down, grab a damn hold

Bring back 2015-17 NXT basically

i find the backstage drama intolerable to read about, much prefer when the locker room was all good vibes

mjf’s disappearance from this layer of reality is maybe the only thing i’ve sort of enjoyed, like, he’s been gone for months and no one’s said anything, it’s like he’s poochie

the video game was always going to be good imo, omega was drawing from the right inspirations

still so glad kenny is back, the trios match with ospreay is gonna whip

i think punk jobbing to mox is like directly addressing the rumor mill but who knows. like everything it seems like a work/shoot ouroboros, reality influencing fiction influencing reality

Hangman still needs something too, they've shit the bed with him since he feuded with Punk and lost the title.

my feeling is that the trios tournament is gonna bring him back toward the elite’s orbit but admittedly this is wishful thinking

i also think despite mox unifying the title…. it isn’t over

i’m actually into this twist in the storyline tbh, mox’s promo after getting the win (“oh, was that not how it was supposed to go???”) was all-time great

just let some of the guys who know how to work have some three star matches for ten minutes on the undercard til things settle down, grab a damn hold

Gotta give the belated nod that they in fact sent Uncle Dax out to do exactly this last night

Re: MJF, I am not into the lazy cheap heat edgelord end of his promos but I became a total convert of his in-ring after that great PPV match with Darby Allin; I guess with him and Punk being off TV for a while the slowed-down maximum-heat storytelling style I enjoy most got de-emphasised for the hurriedly booked dream matches