Embrodak

Same match the Bucks and Lucha Brothers always have. Not super impressed by the gymnastics and extreme choreography like I was when I was younger, but it’s still pleasing to watch in its own way. Good heel heat right at the end there. Nick is so much better than Matt, it’s kinda ridiculous. My boys Starks and Hobbs next! Wish they’d get rid of the stupid FTW title, though, this company does not need any more titles.

Lol if Punk has to drop the title, Hangman gonna be pissed.

So it seems like the timeline is MJF went into business for himself no-showing the meet and greet, generated a little buzz for the PPV, and wooed Tony onto his side either at the arena or at their meeting on Wednesday? They’re going whole hog on the worked shoot aspect, but as many on here and elsewhere have pointed it, it seems like it only works if Tony, sitting behind his Tony Montana pile of Adderall, didn’t know in advance, because he couldn’t help himself.

I mean for me, the fact that this is what he’s doing is proof that being a veteran doesn’t keep you from having bad and counterproductive ideas. I don’t want people just doing whatever they want, I want a Booker with some actual experience and a more thorough follow through than Tony typically comes with.

Was Wardlow starting from a 0-0 or 1-0 record when he came out last night? Would be interesting if his wins prior to escaping the contract didn’t count, since he wasn’t technically ALL ELITE.

The shoot stuff with Punk was fantastic. But the heel doing a pipe bomb worked shoot promo on the betrayal of Tony Khan (who should never ever ever be in front of a camera) makes zero sense to me, unless they wanna shoot for the moon and turn him into an antihero babyface somehow. Which would be *very* interesting if they somehow turn Punk her and have MJF as the one to dethrone him, from the opposite direction to what was expected, but I can’t imagine Tony having that kind of creative foresight or presenting it correctly. MJF rocks (this board is crazy in its dismissal of him), but this feels like a misstep at first blush.

Did you notice the post was saying that Tony should have told Danielson that it was a bad idea and they’re not doing that

Wonder if it was his idea, or Tony’s.

Punk is making a killing on merch sales and just had one of the best feuds in the history of the company with MJF, so I think he’s mostly been doing the right thing. Agreed that he didn’t need to have so many matches against jobbers, but seven years of ring rust is probably intimidating. *Completely* agreed on BD running around with Mox, though, that shit is such a misuse, especially coming off the heels of BD ascending to becoming basically the greatest World of Sport heel of all time and a perpetually credible title contender.

I think I would be more enthusiastic about something like that Anarchy match if AEW didn’t do an absolute ton of furniture wrestling and gimmick matches. Tupelo is not Tupelo if you have multiple Tupelos in the last three years, not to mention your champ having wrested two ice cold yet insanely gratuitous death matches in his six month reign.

Never gonna watch some contextless bloodfest, but rather poor reception for the show this far it seems.

Cole looks like shit. He at least looked like an athlete in NXT, even if small, but now he’s legit one of the smaller people on the roster, male or female.

Conversely, MJF might have realized that the buy rate for this rather cold PPV was gonna be the shits compared to the last few, and figured he could inject a little juice into it by stirring up some drama just beforehand.

Idk, Wardlow being able to say that he was such a kickass badass that he scared MJF away from even showing up to the PPV may be great marketing.

If his gripe is that he’s being paid as much as Luchasaurus or some other midcarder despite being basically the top heel in the company, or that Christian Cage or Mark Henry are making more than him despite them barely having to be there, I think that’s valid.

If I knew clearly that this was a contract dispute, I’d be 100% on MJF’s side. If this is just MJF doing some weird work, eh.

I mean Page had a ridiculously and unnecessarily brutal match with Archer and two okay matches with Cole, let’s not pretend he’s some wizard. He’s a guaranteed decent to good match, but he needs someone with a bigger vision, a Danielson or Omega, to have something more special.

Well I hate to say it, but I also think Corny is right that him palling around with the Dark Order as a problem drinker both made him feel like less of a big deal and ill-prepared him, experientially speaking, to be *the* guy leading the company.

I’m midway on AEW, I was hot on it until the last PPV, but outside of FTR having the run of their career for a few weeks and MJF/Wardlow, the last two months or so have just been the shits. Totally wasting the final Hardyz run, Danielson and Regal palling around with Moxley, Keith Lee becoming a non-entity within a few weeks of a mega-hype debut (I chalk this up to his health, though, it seems like he just can’t go like he used to), an anemic tournament, TNT title caught up in Sammy’s weirdness, Jericho being Jericho, Jungle Boy and Luchasaurus being Jungle Boy and Luchasaurus. Bad vibes!

Even AEW diehards don’t seem excited for this PPV. Khan is crazy if he doesn’t put the title on Punk, though. I think we can all agree heel Punk is best Punk, but diluted face Punk doing Bret Hart homages is still miles better than Page.

Is it really so spicy? I think there’s growing agreement, at least on the edges, that Page has been kind of a bust as champion. He had those fantastic matches with Danielson, whose heel work outshone him, then an unmemorable match with Archer that both wasn’t a Texas death match and went 11/10 on the brutality despite being a relatively cold feud that Lambert was involved in for no reason, then a nothing feud with Cole, who was fresh off losing to a comedy midcarder at the time. He doesn’t really carry himself like a champ (kinda subjective, but Omega, who I’m not even a fan of, always had a champion’s swagger), struggled to get out of the shadow of the MJF-Punk feud for most of his reign, hasn’t had a promo as good as his “cowboy shit” one since winning the title, and just overall has not done much to make the belt look prestigious. Re: BCC, I love Danielson, I love Regal, I’m sure they’re having fun, but I don’t associate either of them with Moxley’s lame “death match guy” schtick and don’t think it gels especially well. And JAS got tiring after like three weeks, like most Jericho stuff nowadays, and AEW has had so many big multi-man clusterfucks that I don’t really care to see another.

I have a vague memory that they did a Daniel Bryan copycat story with EY when DB was getting big, and did it in a less asinine and convoluted way.

I don’t think you can separate some of the goofiness in KOR’s performance from the fact he’s been booked kind of like a stooge since he’s been in AEW. That affects perception a lot. I know people here weren’t looking forward to Undisputed Era being back together, but at this point, can it really even be argued that things would have been much better if they’d been presented more akin to how they were presented in NXT? Nothing can smoke and mirrors away how much Cole has let himself go (he looks like less of an ass kicking athlete than anybody on the program), but having to calibrate themselves to the Bucks’ bad comedy and Orange Cassidy’s bad comedy doesn’t exactly give them a lot to work with, either. On another note, if you told me in August of last year that by May, I’d be totally uninterested in Bryan Danielson and glued to the screen when Punk is on, I’d call you crazy. I do not see the logic or appeal of Blackpool Combat Club at all (and it’s amazing how Moxley somehow got even less appealing than his late-stage WWE run, but sometimes Vince accidentally saves people from themselves), whereas Punk somehow took his demonstrably lesser babyface persona and became the most compelling performer in the company doing scoop slams. I guess it helps when the top babyface whose reign you built up to for two years becomes a nonentity within a month of gaining the title, but still, wild stuff.

One of these outlets said that HHH is back to most of his non-performance duties, so it could be that they’ve decided it’s actually good to have one of them home with the kids while the other works. The cat’s in the cradle with the golden shovel and sledgehammer, that sort of thing.

MJF is much superior to Miz in the ring, whatever else one might feel about him. I can't remember an MJF vs. Darby or MJF vs. Punk caliber match in Miz's past.