AEW 2023: Scissor Me Daddy!

Ummmm wtf to Max Caster celebrating their win with miming opening up and eating ass?

fka bear country did it first tbf

i like everything about the iron savages gimmick except the name. finally, two wrestlers who drink cum and eat ass

I didn’t know that about Bear Country. Tbf it made me laugh my ass off, I was just very thrown off.

I adore Timeless Toni Storm.

Fascinating to see Jay White’s name has been put on the white board where Punk’s has been wiped off. The bang bang gang are one of my favourite things going at the moment, and I’m getting bored of face-mjf already, so I hope they push Jay to the moon.

toni storm is the most brilliant wrestler in the game rn

I have to hand it to AEW - that is the kind of ending to a ratings war episode that would've made Vince proud.

shida!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

shida!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i did not intend that double post but it reflects my enthusiasm

i was super excited to see the next Toni Storm segment and it just played silent in the background over commercials. idk if that happened to anyone else but that sucked.

it was a silent fillum

Looking forward to catching this Dynamite

Watching DBry v Swerve and it’s brutal. Def worth seeing. It’s not ended yet and it’s already one of my favourite TV matches of the year.

Wow collision looking good too, can't believe the most preternaturally gifted wrestler of the last several decades and possibly ever is going to go one on one with the American Dragon Bryan Danielson

yeah this is really something. two absolute masters of the craft

has Dustin Rhodes retired now? i wanna see both of those guys vs Dustin before they collectively hang it up, itd be the peak of tv wrestling

dustin was in a team with keith lee pretty recently but idk. he might be gradually drifting toward more backstage/production stuff

Only this week I’ve picked up where I left off watching all WWE ppvs in order and I’m in 2003. My second show Judgment Day, was god awful but the end of the battle royal had Goldust v Christian go at it for a bit. Feels like it might be a mid card feud from that time I might see a lot of, unless that’s when Dustin got sacked for loving the drugs too much. Will report back if I see them have a banger.

Danielson and Dustin wrestled on Dynamite in 2021 and it was pretty good iirc

Dustin I think said 2023 would be the last year of his in ring career but he hasn't had that many matches, not sure if he's been hurt or just not featured in plans much

I would have liked to see him work in the flesh at Wembley, but I guess he was never getting squeezed onto that card. Will settle for the Stinger

This Ric Flair thing is fucking gross. What an awful decision

Disgusting behaviour. Hilarious that people are sad that the billionaire doesn’t have a moral compass. But also who the fuck wants to see sex criminal 700 year old Ric flair on their tv in 2023?

Honestly might be the worst move Tony has made since starting the company, at a time when people already seem down on the product and they aren’t getting crowds in.

I’m not sure he’ll care that much though while he is busy marking out

and doubling down with whatever Flair's energy drink brand.... absolute braindead decision.

Agreed. I do not want to see the sex pest Mumm-Ra on my screen, ever.

idk why AEW is running Ibushi out there - he's performing worse than the Jay White cardboard cutout.

Holy shit this Hangman v Swerve match is not for the weak of heart.

Ok the spot that happened after I wrote that just made me shout FUUUUCK so loud that i made the dog jump out of his sleep. This is beyond gnarly. I think it’s the most violent match AEW have had so far.

8 stars.

I can’t stop thinking about Hanger Swerve. I have to rewatch it but it’s up there with some of my favourite AEW matches of all time.

I’ve seen some people talk shit about the main event storyline but as someone who has watched 1996-2004 WWE recently, it all seemed like normal sport entertaining. The Attitude era would have been shot to pieces so badly if the internet existed in the same way. It seemed like every other week Austin or Goldberg would do the “go away in an ambulance/police car and cast doubt on whether they would make the main event” spot. Wrestling fans need to chill, states captain obvious.

Quite a good PPV with one perfect match and some more characters elevated. Big Bill continues to impress, they seem to have really turned around the women’s division quickly, Swerve looks like a real contender, they got Ospreay to sign… all good stuff.

As some older stars are obviously look to wind down, it is great to see them building up across the roster. There has been times in the past where they have looked uncertain what to do going forward, but now I’m excited I don’t know. The internet crowd may love arguing about ratings and crowd attendances - which seems an incredibly boring waste of time - while I’m just excited that this roster of mostly u35 stars has many directions to go.

Just wish they had less titles and got Eddie (pre show), Takeshita (not on the card) and Kenny (even more unfortunate, Jericho’d) back into the main event scene.

the tbs title threeway was huge for me. they pushed the hell out of skye and julia and they've both been killing it

Are we watching the same shows? Julia is doing great but Skye is a waste of space. She’s had many, many months to get a handle on the basics of portraying a character on TV (let alone put things together in the ring) but you can practically see the cogs moving in her brain. There’s a wealth of talent far more deserving of her spot.

I was lukewarm on the PPV overall. I never really bought into the MJF/Adam Cole thing so the main event didn’t have anything for me (it maybe would have if they turned Bay Bay heel and did a Fingerpoke of Doom angle, but that’s just me fantasy booking a more exciting show for me).

I loved Swerve/Hangman 1 but 2 was not my thing. It’s not 1997 anymore, I don’t pop for real-life gore, especially at those extremes, sorry not sorry.

Can’t stand Will Ospreay, “bruv”, but I suppose I’d rather see him there than Ric Flair.

I’m tired of Orange Cassidy right now. Ditto Jon Moxley. That doesn’t have to be the case. Give me more of a reason to care. I mean, they finally turned MJF around from his weak-champion status a couple of months ago (even if I don’t care for the shtick).

As for the attendance issue, I don’t think it’s a boring waste of time to point out how desperate it looks on TV. Especially the weekly ROH shows, which arguably are stronger than the main roster week to week but there’s clearly fuck-all people there, and it’s frankly embarrassing.

no i don't think we are watching the same shows, and all of these lines of criticism are why i don't talk about wrestling on the internet very much anymore. "i don't pop for real-life gore" ok cornette

"can't stand will ospreay" you can't stand the best wrestler alive? i'm so tired, stop watching the product

skye had the best spot in the three way match! she is weak on the mic but has been radically improving since julia misted her! idk try to enjoy things

i feel like such a child when i respond to stuff like this but it's really like... i love wrestling and i think aew puts on the best shows for people who love wrestling in all its different formations, and every match in full gear showcased a different type of wrestling at its peak. this is exactly what i want! whereas the wider international wrestling community only seemed really enthusiastic about aew when collision was being run by punk and was fucking boring as hell

As for the attendance issue, I don’t think it’s a boring waste of time to point out how desperate it looks on TV. Especially the weekly ROH shows, which arguably are stronger than the main roster week to week but there’s clearly fuck-all people there, and it’s frankly embarrassing.

ROH airs on the fucking internet! caring about this is fucking embarrasing

wrestlenomics poisoning wrestling discourse wherever i go!

and this goes beyond macdara's post but i have been astonished that ppl do not like the mjf/cole/strong/kingdom arc, a storyline that has made two new wrestling fans out of people i know who never really cared about it before! except i am not astonished because it seems wrestling fans have an incredibly narrow, practically invisble-to-the-naked-eye definition of what is good wrestling, and i can't help but think this is why wwe sucked so hard for so long, because they had a very narrow definition of what was "good," and also what they think is "good" is so very very very bad

also obv i don't engage with wwe discourse if i can help it but does anyone talk about raw or nxt crowd attendance? i assume it doesn't matter bc of the dominance of wwe? so conversely i think ppl only talk about aew crowds out of anxiety or a weird hostility toward the product that they feel is confirmed by crowd presence, but also these criticisms are never ever ever levied in good faith, cf. saying roh attendance is pitiful when they tape it after another show. it's along the lines of "damn this aew dark episode they filmed at orlando has such a small crowd, they must be failing because they suck at what they're doing." needless to say los angeles was fucking losing it during the entirety of full gear

god. even typing out this paragraph has made me TIRED. wrestling fans aspire to be the record store clerks i've always hated

I don’t need to go into a detailed repudiation of the characterisation you’ve presented above, other than to say: I don’t like what you like, it comes from an honest place, and that’s the response? Fuck me for having feelings about this stuff, jesus fucking christ.

sorry! obv i got really emotional in response bc you called one of my favorite wrestlers on the program rn a waste of space!

That wasn’t a personal attack, so please don’t take it as such. We’re not going to agree on the merits of Skye Blue and I’m not about to needle you about it either, I’ve made my opinion clear.

You can take back the Cornette jab, too. The last thing I want is to be compared to that dickhead. My feelings on the gore stand; I loved Bret/Austin at Mania 13 so much I made poster for it in art class at school! But that match at the weekend grossed me out. It’s too fucking much and if you don’t appreciate how anyone can feel that way, I don’t know what to say.

it grossed me out too! and i am a bigger fan of death matches than most! but it was the kind of escalation that was completely earned by the storyline, and it made both wrestlers look like insane beautiful bloody titans clashing for the entirety of the match

nothing i said was a personal attack either, it is just a side-effect of enduring a lot of the same "ho-hum" takes about a show that was full of great wrestling, and i'm sorry about the cornette jab, it's just he drives a lot of the discourse about aew i try really hard to remain ignorant about but still manage to see, and i see various permutations of it here pretty often too. but i've said my piece and i will prob not chime in again anytime soon

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