MoS

Some of the crowd noise definitely sounds piped in. It's especially obvious when contrasted to the times fans are actually being loud

I love how even this really hot crowd had no idea how to react to the Alexa supernatural shit lol except some of them cheering for her skipping lol. That shit was embarrassing. Asuka is by herself elevating this match into something watchable though. And Liv is definitely over

It's remarkable how Naomi is always more over than her push

If they need a face win to send the fans home happy, I would rather they do it with Lashley-Kofi. Kofi can have another transitional reign before Lashley takes it back. When Roman finally loses, it needs to be to a fresh singles face like Big E, not a relic from the past

I'll do it. Giannis really elevated his game in a way I was not expecting and reached indelible greatness. Speaking of undisputedly great performers, Becky is trolling fans again It's always the hope that dies that hurts the most, as Bane told Batman. Last time she did this, the poor Bellas got booed cuz they were in the wrong place at the wrong time

Even without the injury, that match was laid out terribly imo. It was perhaps the first big-time WWE main event match that consisted almost entirely of finishers and kicking out of finishers

He had a bad habit of deciding to sit in chinlocks randomly out of nowhere in his TV matches in 99-00, which would suck the heat from his matches. Of course, he didn't exactly have an issue with getting the crowd to get popping again when he wanted to. His general work would always be very loose, but he was excellent at feeding off crowd reactions and his comebacks would be usually hot. Seven years ago in this thread, I wrote that he would be in the lower sections of my top 100. I think that's still where I stand on him, although he will drop like 10-15 places. What do people think of his comeback run? For me his first promo back was an all-time classic segment and it basically went downhill since. The first Cena match is fine, and I like the Punk matches, but the 2nd Cena match is pretty bad. More tellingly, he just did not seem to really fit in the 2010s WWE landscape. Of course a part of it is that his character was outdated, but I think it's more than just that. Someone on this board said back then that they never thought they were watching The Rock in this run but instead were watching Dwayne Johnson play The Rock, and that seems a perfect way to describe my issue with it. He was getting destroyed in promo battles with Cena and Punk, terrible and lame zingers on Vickie Guerrero, it was just a mess. The best thing to come out of it was a random promo where he was clearly high out of his mind and was talking about how there's a lot of great weed in the city. That was genuinely entertaining

The fact that it's NYC is what makes the apologists mad. NYC is WWF territory. It has belonged to the McMahons since before there was a WWF. Couple that with WWF's history in MSG and it makes for an embarrassing situation. It is strictly symbolic, but symbols do matter. Plus, Vince Sr. used to say "The way the Garden goes, so goes the business" and it was a dictum that Vince honoured till the attitude era at least.

God the What chants are the worst

More than the rating itself, the fact that AEW consistently sees viewership increase through the two hours is the best news. Ratings pattern for the last 5-6 years for wrestling TV has been the exact opposite

It's incredible to me that they push Goldberg more now than they did in 2003, when they should have pushed him to the moon but were suffering from MNW PTSD and instead booked him to be yet another guy who fell victim to the almighty sledgehammer and pedigree

MSG has much higher ticket prices, but high ticket prices have traditionally helped wrestling ticket sales, not hurt it. Plus MSG is at Penn Station in Manhattan, the heart of NYC, while Arthur Ashe is in Flushing in Queens, which is definitely not nearly as famous or accessible. It takes a lot more effort to reach and plan for Arthur Ashe than it does for MSG There are multiple things we can say to excuse WWE's weak MSG sales, but if Vince is anything like the Vince of old, none of that would matter and he would be absolutely furious.

The peak demo viewership was for the Elite-Hangman segment. That angle is definitely drumming interest

I hope to God that coffin was completely gimmicked

Incredible match. Incredible Dynamite. This really seems like a hot promotion right now

And the faces came out to save Hangman!

The local boys were massively over tonight. Both Sammy and Starks looked great

This is Britt's world

Nice, a bathroom break match right as NBA starts

Omega is a total dork but that deliberately terrible belt collector chant got a pop out of me

This angle is molten hot

Malakai Black is clearly a terrible promo. AEW has like a million managers, put him with one and get him to shut up

Cody getting booed a bit. The time is ripe for a heel turn

Starks getting the adopted hometown pop

Karl Anderson, otoh, sucks ass