AEW 2023: Scissor Me Daddy!

first wrestler i have seen in some time where i've thought "yeah you could charge me money to watch this guy and i'd gladly pay it" and that is the whole deal really ins't it (still not gonna watch the AAA shows which appear on VK.com though because come on, life is short)

I got home too late to catch this, but Vikingo rules. Just when I think I can't be more impressed by him, he proves me wrong. He's still so young, too! He's had some great matches in GCW if you don't want to commit to the AAA shows. If nothing else, it's worth going out of your way to look up his match against Fenix at Triplemania last year.

This Hawaiian is gonna be watching tonight.

Watch the #AEW Road to St. Louis for a breakdown of this week's action, right here!
▶️ https://t.co/QQPzx4ML2R pic.twitter.com/cXVuTsPqbr

— All Elite Wrestling (@AEW) March 28, 2023

ADD! ADD! ADD! ADD!

Fucking Wembley Stadium! I’ve gotta figure out how to get some cash together to get my ass to All In

yeah i'm gonna be at that show come hell or high water. can't wait to see what they pull out to try and fill as many seats as possible

Alright I'll go, but if anyone obscures my view with a sign about a JRPG, a podcast host or Zack Snyder at any point I'm getting arrested

Amen Sgt

i'm so happy for y'all

i was at the show last night and what a dynamite

I’m lukewarm on AEW at the moment. Not feeling the ‘pillars’ angle at all, I don’t buy Jungle Boy and Darby as World Champion material yet. They’re crying out for a midcard title to fight over; meanwhile Ricky Starks is RIGHT THERE. They’ve really hamstrung Hobbs with the QTV thing, he needs to be his own man. God, there’s so much potential in the company and they’ve got a month and a bit till Double or Nothing but where’s the big money? At least Jericho and Cole has some spark. Everyone holding their breath for CM Punk?

Also, I HATE the new ropes. Whose idea was that? They look cheesy and far too busy.

haven't seen this week's dynamite yet but starks already exhausted his title shot (it is what it is) and prob won't come back around to it for another six months. would love to see him take it off mjf regardless. however... i feel like he's about to have a feud with jay white and juice and there's nothing to complain about there

it has been shocking to watch the pillars promos and realize that jungleboy has the strongest promo of any of them, thanks christian

my hope for the pillars is that it becomes a fatal four-way because none of them feels exactly ready for it yet, i.e. they realize they need each other to take down mjf. this plan will inevitably fail when they remember that one of them needs to be champion. sorry i've been watching too much succession

i feel like he’s about to have a feud with jay white and juice and there’s nothing to complain about there

Yeah I’m not worried about Starks, he’s clearly a long-term project for the company. It’s just that I buy him as championship, face-of-the-company material in a way that I simply don’t see with Jungle Boy and Darby (yet). And I’m not personally sold on Jungle Boy as a good promo, either; his delivery needs work, and he can’t keep leaning on yelling “shit” to pop the crowd.

I’m All In… the nosebleeds :)

Dropped an unreasonable amount of money on what I think are decent tickets (I actually have no idea, never done a stadium show before)

Gonna be waiting for this card to drop with my tongue hanging out

I was trying to get seats at the front of the stands and ended up in a tiny little pocket of floor seats near the entrance ramp that were in the same price band. That map was fuckin unreadable wtf

Yeah the map was horrible.

Aw, I hope you guys have fun! I'm doing Double or Nothing and Forbidden Door 2 this year, but one of my friends was trying to get his ticket to All In. I'm sure it's going to be a killer show!

there was hate earlier in this thread but the four pillars storyline is fucking amazing rn

I wouldn’t characterise not being enthused about it as ‘hate’. I do think the Sammy/MJF bits are funny, though.

Oh and I’m delighted they’ve returned to the black ring ropes! It’s the little things.

lol sorry, i mean i was even a little uncertain whether they'd pull it off! did not see the insane chemistry between mjf and sammy coming

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbaanUjfgv4

dj mix of the year

i hope cm punk slips on a banana peel and lands in a big mud puddle

opening 10 minutes of BCC/Elite was the equivalent of oneida's "sheets of easter"

"What business do you think we're in, Schiavone?!?!" Callis had me cracking up.

i was at the show live last night. total banger

jericho/cole was a little rough, like… idk it should’ve been great and at points it was but it also felt like a v tame unsanctioned match that never quite took off and the impact of the finish felt muted as a result

but i can’t say enough positive things about how they handled jade losing the belt and the final two matches

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXl-HzbuAWs

we love kris statlander

chorus of boos for don callis and takeshita last night was incredible

I’ve not watched much AEW recently, thought I’d catch up on DoN and Dynamite. DoN has been ok, the 4 pillars match was fun, nothing else was that memorable. Wtf is the black face singer? How does that get approved in 2023? If it was just a black mask that might have been ok but it’s got the mistral big red lips too.

it's a black mask

Yeah and when Gucci did a black balaclava with big red lips, it was just a balaclava. Idk it’s not that big of a deal but it still looks stupid and is a bad decision.

you were saying it's not a mask and i'm just telling you it's a mask! not sure why it was necessary either

Oh yeah sorry I worded it badly

i also can't read lol

Brad, you were at DoN? Me too! It was a great show.

Getting hyped for Forbidden Door, which I am also going to, and I've told no one but work to request those days off. Hoping they outdo themselves from last year.

Forbidden Door looks insane. D-Bry v Okada! Ospreay v Omega 2! Possibly Punk’s first match in a year. Sanada v MJF?

Honestly it could be the best wrestling PPV ever.

Get fucking Dr Nash as Adam Cole’s manager, stat. MJF’s on the juice!

This is a great Dynamite.

i just adore orange cassidy's title run. a huge weekly "fuck you" to the idiots who dismiss him

Collision day! With new signing Elton motherfucking John!

that Takeshita/Callis centaur painting is a goddamn masterpiece.

1. collision was excellent
2. tonight’s dynamite is nonstop insanity

“You’ve gotta wear a cond… iment”

Man I love Taz

“Tall dark and sexy” Konosuke Takeshita

Ok this could be the best dynamite ever

Takeshita as a methodical, ornery heel absolutely rules

I really liked Collision, it felt a bit like an NXT PPV with five good, differently worked matches with a lot of in-ring storytelling. It just had a fun house show six man as the main instead of an overwrought title match. I was way higher on the TNT hoss fight than most other people it seemed, concerns about Wardlow being turned into Hoss Sasha Banks by the booking aside

Texting this on my phone from YYZ, but Holy shit what a show!

i was euphoric almost all night

Watching it now, after also watching Collision. Punk-Kojima was great and the 4 way was really fun. The Ace looks like he needs a year to rest but the match was ok. The Collision one with Swerve was a mess.

I fucking loved Miro’s promo where he denounced God and his wife. The 8 man tag was great too, Punk close to getting Christian/Callis heat. When he actually turns heel it’s gonna be LOUD.

well, ok, one last thing, i really do not understand not being excited about will ospreay signing. every singles match that guy did this year is a moty candidate. can u fucking imagine what modern-day ospreay vs. modern-day swerve will be like

I’m not excited about Ospreay because there’s still a whiff of #SpeakingOut about him as far as I’m concerned. I take nothing away from his abilities in the ring at all. I used to really enjoy his stuff, and now I don’t. I guess he’s always had the “bruv” thing going on but since I’ve soured on him, it grates on me more. That’s my entirely subjective opinion on him.

but i’ve said my piece and i will prob not chime in again anytime soon

Ah don’t be like that, your opinions and feelings are just as valid as mine or anyone else’s, even if we (meaning everyone here) disagree on stuff.

I can be a moan about stuff and that’s off-putting, I get that. I suppose I’m just in a trough where I wish I liked what it was seeing more. But I’ve been a fan long enough to know that won’t last forever.

Just to be clear, there were no accusations towards Ospreay regarding #speakingout, right? The worst anyone can pin on him is that he didn't disown britwrestling and by association the people in it who did get called out, which, ok, maybe he should have been a harsher critic to his friends and colleagues in public for their horrible actions, but I can understand why he wasn't. If you didn't like his response, fair enough. How do you feel about every WWE employee not criticising Vince when that last bout of accusations came out? Put you off Roman Reigns?

I do get your points though. That TDM was gratuitous. Even Tazz sounded grossed out, and he used to work with New Jack. I just personally loved every second of it. It was insane, carnal violence, with an incredible storytelling and starmaking. And I'm somewhere in the middle of you both when it comes to Skye Blue. She's definitely still green, but I think she has a talented future ahead of her. Kind of reminds me of Bayley before the NXT Sasha matches.

Also fascinated that what you think that the MJF storyline you dont care for needs is a fingerpoke of doom.

One thing I do agree on is Mox seems a bit stale atm. With Bryan winding down, it might be time to end the BCC and give Mox/CC/Yuta all individual refreshes.

over in the WWE thread our very own ahoyhoy has been documenting his own Quixotic attempt to. chronologically watch every WWE PPV (and possibly even some of the TV shows to but that's too masochistic for contemplation) from the legendarily fallow years of the mid 00s (i mean seriously how is he doing it?! that shit is the *PITS*) and he's apparently making excellent progress and even seems to be enjoying himself while doing it!

at the same time he has posted bewilderedly about how mid 80s Jim Crockett / NWA seems to him to be the worst shit ever (paraphrasing slightly) and how did anyone ever enjoy this crap? which is funny because received wrestling-nerd wisdom says that mid 80s Jim Crockett / NWA is some of the greatest stuff ever (discounting Japan) (this is correct) and while mid 00s WWE is the nadir of the art form (also basically correct).

obviously the internet is polluted with Cornette's shitheads and tedious WWE fans but i don't think that's true of any of the small handful of posters that reply to these threads and i don't it's fair to impute bad faith in any given direction when posters express criticisms of AEW itt. people like what they like. no matter how wrong they are

xp yeah Ospreay got called out for some stuff although I am too tired to dredge up the details. not that he was accused of assault or anything but that he used his flex to punish a woman that spoke out against one of one his friends, or something? idk it wasn't great. but you're in murky waters when you start writing off wrestlers for being shitty people. you are also of course in murky waters when you start giving shitty people a pass on the basis that all wrestlers are shitty people.

in conclusion, these are murky waters.

I gave up on my network subscription for a bit but I was actually starting to enjoy nwa after 86. Bunkhouse stampede 88 was a real highlight (if you can let the kayfabe of being eliminated from a battle royal over a freaking cage) along with the return of steamboat. Those Flair-Dragon matches still really hold up.

But yeah I think Starrcade 83/84 are like Wrestlemanias 1-5; in which I would only consider rewatching for a couple matches, now I’ve seen them for historical reasons.

Shame to hear that about Ospreay but yeah, it’s murky waters.

Those Flair-Dragon matches still really hold up.

that series absolutely tanked their business. one of those fun times that wrestling fans got to argue out "art vs business, which one is more important". thankfully a definitive answer was reached and everyone felt thoroughly ashamed of themselves. we had learned our lesson and wrestling fans never had to put up with such things again

also did you do the Flair vs Funk 89 feud? that's the pinnacle of the 80s NWA scene.

Ospreay is interesting because for years he represented the "worst excesses" of modern wrestling and was for a time an absolute pariah in certain circles as a result. he reined it in a bit and got quite a lot better but I must confess i'm kinda bemused that he has gained this rep as the undisputed best wrestler in the world. Omega went through a v. similar arc a few years earlier

Danielson would (and god willing will, before he calls it quits) wrestle rings round them both

i assume they know we’ll all need omega/danielson 2 before the latter retires

i mean if he is for really for real about hanging it up next year (and it feels like he probably is) and the Okada match is already pencilled in for the fourth of Jan (which is basically THE MATCH at this stage looking at it from the artistic POV) then yeah we can only hope that they've prepared a short list for the other big PPVs, Omega and Ospreay at the top of that list

Also fascinated that what you think that the MJF storyline you dont care for needs is a fingerpoke of doom.

I mean I’m only half serious about it, but… It’s weird that Adam Cole is the only guy with an injury who’s still on TV every week. Even for a main eventer. Him stepping in for MJF with a gammy ankle (if it’s really that gammy) would have been the perfect set-up: imagine if he had laid down in the ring for Jay White! And I don’t mean it merely from a ‘rile everybody up’ perspective; there’s storyline substance there too. If you’re an MJF guy, don’t you want to see him up against his toughest challenge yet? But nah, they kept the friends-till-the-end thing going and I have no interest in that (nor Bullet Club Gold as they are now, for that matter). Meanwhile, ROH tag teams have no championship to fight for.

ROH should always have been kept separate and run as its own thing. i remember I posted on here around the time that the buyout occurred that it would be a good thing thing that would benefit everyone, cause i really thought it would

a proper developmental brand that only the geeks would actually watch weekly and that would therefore provide the necessary space for people to work on their act in front of ok-sized and reasonably invested crowds, working longer matches higher up the card than they would] be able to on the main AEW shows, good mix of veteran (but not superstar) talent and ppl from the indys looking to get a shot in AEW maybe.

They've gestured towards this iwith guys like Samoa Joe and Eddie Kingston but fundamentally it has all felt a bit pointless. the new AEW Dark. where have the big standalone non-AEW ROH angles been since TK took over?

I did not get to Funk Flair, but i've seen it before.

The ROH botch job is basically key to all of the mess at AEW, isnt it? Too many shows, too many titles, too many wrestlers, creative spread too thin etc.

I'm kinda fascinated by the backlash to the MJF stuff. "People" have called for more sports entertainment type storylines, for "the casuals" etc. and now it is happening, toys are being from out of the pram. I think the reality seems to just be that wrestling fans just don't like wrestling (not MacDara, thinking the more general internet backlash.) I presume it can be broken down by someone much smarter than me as to why.

Like I don't generally watch WWE because I don't care for the style (Seth Rollins brings me out in hives), but I can appreciate what's happening over there. The weird internet ever changing hatred for AEW seems like a whole different kettle of fish though. Like the recent "they only care about Japanese wrestling and obscure indie guys and never sign anyone!" turnaround post signing Edge to "eurgh they are just old wwe guys". I've never listened to Cornette's podcast but he is the ringleader, right? He must be raking it in advertising dick pills. I just had a look on spotify and his weekly podcasts are over 3 hours long! That's longer than Raw! Imagine listening to the 80s nonce with a tennis bat in sparkly trousers for half a work day, that's insane.

where have the big standalone non-AEW ROH angles been since TK took over?

there are a few on the show right now. the big one being athena mentoring billie starkz (prob the best storyline in wrestling rn just imo)

idk i think it’s basically become the developmental brand you described. was dark not developmental? the only missing element is a real tv deal

of course i mention athena and ppl will inevitably complain that she’s not on aew tv or ppvs

the cards for roh have been straight up amazing for months now. it just needs to not be locked behind a paywall that only marks like me subscribe to

i do think mjf and cole not giving up the tag titles when cole got injured was a mistake, and now it’s like the belts are a gimmick just for mjf to wrestle twice per ppv (not something i’m exactly complaining about bc i *liked* the ambulance angle, but it does like completely sideline the title)

I don't watch ROH but FTR-Briscoes seemed like a massive deal that wasn't really shown on AEW tv and is seen as possibly ROHs best tag team feud.

ROH isn’t promoted on the TBS or TNT shows. Maybe they’ve done an onscreen graphic for Final Battle once or twice, but that’s about it. There’s no 60-second recap to boost interest in the show, which I think would help a lot. Maybe that’s a weird contractual thing, like WBD doesn’t want them promoting their own thing, save for PPVs (which are on an WBD-owned app in North America anyway)? So they put the ROH belts on Dynamite and Rampage and Collision but that doesn’t translate to eyes on the show, it only reinforces the idea that the champs are AEW guys you’ll see on the shows you’re already watching so why bother? It sucks because they’re people on the show are trying to give it its own personality beyond a mere Dark replacement (and the women there are killing it, especially).

there are a few on the show right now. the big one being athena mentoring billie starkz (prob the best storyline in wrestling rn just imo)

This much we agree on! I mean, maybe it’s not my absolute favourite thing, but it’s up there.

it’s really amazing character work all around, elevating a young talent, etc. it should always be like this