1 hour ago, Timbo Slice said:

AEW’s house style is entirely predicated on the idea that folks are tape hounds and will go back to look for Easter Eggs while peppering high spots in to wow the live audience.

This is true and really goes to the nth, corniest extreme with the Elite, where every tag, every second glance and furtive look are sometimes treated by their biggest fans as clever layered storytelling. It's an idea that probably really started becoming prevalent with the RoH DVD era, as pointed out. 

I don't think you look at art or literary or movie criticism that people only look at art or movies or books from the 1950s with the 1950s audiences in mind. It's something to factor in as context is important, but I wouldn't say even the primary factor. 

On 11/3/2021 at 9:02 AM, Timbo Slice said:

AEW’s house style is entirely predicated on the idea that folks are tape hounds and will go back to look for Easter Eggs while peppering high spots in to wow the live audience.

This is the best summary of AEW's house style I've seen. I've always found it incredibly annoying.

On the flip side, those "Easter Eggs" used to be call backs to prior matches that played into the psychology of the current one. Now that AEW does it, somehow it's seen as as negative.

Callbacks in the form of guys trying moves or spots from a big match that worked for them (like Austin pulling out the Million Dollar Dream against Rock at WM 17) in the past, or a counter to a spot that happened in a previous match is good. I don't think Punk just straight up lifting whole sequences from Bret Hart matches as a tribute is not so much to me. I like character references like Omega going for Ibushi moves when he's desperate, or FTR hitting finishers from their big rivals from NXT is cool. Doing whole sequences verbatim is lame and lazy, imo.

I dunno. For the longest time I was annoyed at what I used to call the Eddielenko aka the infamous Guerrero/Malenko sequence from ECW that they basically lifted from Tiger Mask vs Dynamite anyway, which evolved into RVD vs Jerry Lynn sequence which spawned hundreds imitations/tribute on the indies in the 00's and beyond, but now I see it more like part of the wrestling folk culture, where you're just using some traditional chords and build from there or sing an old folk song in the middle of a set adding your own little twist or style to it, or do a variation on a theme stuff.

I think the Easter Egg house style description is a bit of an over-generalization and really only applies to a handful of matches if that, even. It may just be some folks looking more deeply than others and looking for things that might not even really be there.

I would say it mostly applies to the Young Bucks and really mostly Matt Jackson, and Matt Jackson has no concept of subtlety whatsoever so it's always right in your face and all but him screaming REMEMBER THIS SPOT FROM 2014 PWG or some shit.

 

I hate indie respect stand offs and that sequence to open Darby/MJF was so out of place for both guys and their angle but that's something you have to do for "classics". I also hate the main event variant where guys will both narrowly counter each others finish in the opening exchange. However the respect stand off goes back to at least the 1950s so what can ya do?

7 minutes ago, strobogo said:

I hate indie respect stand offs and that sequence to open Darby/MJF was so out of place for both guys and their angle

Actually it was not, because Darby was all about "I'm just going to out-wrestle you" because MJF said he would beat him with a headlock. So them testing their pro-wrestling technique and doing a classic lucha mirror exchange at the beginning of the match was exactly in tone with what they were going for.

It sucked and was the most cooperative, clearly planned out move for move shit I've seen on an AEW show, even the Bucks at their worst.

The entire "I was so depressed this week" bit from the last WOR was classic deadpan Meltz. I actually thought about the exact same joke watching Danielson vs #5. Dead on point.

Oh, Dave

The Bryan Danielson interview is absolutely fantastic. 

Yes, it's a really good interview, although half of it is Dave trying to frame the questions.

Danielson's ideas are really weird sometimes, he's obviously a smart guy for wrestling standards, but I think he lacks like a solid ideology to filter all the ideas he gets after reading the books he reads. Hangman Page says a lot more and seems smarter just supporting Bernie Sanders than him talking about all those theories in every interview he has.

Wrestling related, sometimes I wish interviewers would ask him more about the wrestling he likes, his favorite matches, wrestlers, and if he reads some forums like this or some wrestling blogs (which seems to be true) to check what wrestling fans think of him and get some recommendations. Listening the interview I felt that he has been answering the same questions since he left WWE.

It was interesting to hear Bryan, who normally goes out of his way to not say anything bad about his time n WWE, mention that when the Giants won the World Series and did the Yes stuff in the parade that was the one time he felt WWE didn't have his back. He rightly mentioned if they were doing like the You Can't See Me stuff it would have been all over WWE TV but when it was his deal it was largely ignored. 

The best parts were Bryan expressing how much he loves wrestling. I loved him talking about asking Daniel Garcia and Lee Moriarity about what they wanted to do in their matches with him and both of them after suggesting some ideas were like "I just wanna wrestle" and that excited him more than anything. I think that is the main reason he's the GOAT more than anything, he just loves it more than anyone I've ever seen and just devours any tape he can find whether it's pro wrestling or amateur wrestling, just to see what new stuff people come up with that he can use. 

16 hours ago, Gramsci said:

Wrestling related, sometimes I wish interviewers would ask him more about the wrestling he likes, his favorite matches, wrestlers, and if he reads some forums like this or some wrestling blogs (which seems to be true) to check what wrestling fans think of him and get some recommendations. Listening the interview I felt that he has been answering the same questions since he left WWE.

When I had a podcast and we got to talk to wrestlers, this was exactly what we focused on (especially about the wrestling they like). I feel like there's a lot of interesting stuff to be gleaned from hearing professionals talk about what they love in their profession. We had a fascinating conversation with the Beer City Bruiser of all people talking about why he uses the Mind Games match to teach his students about movement within a match. (http://theatlantictransmission.com/podcast_episode/one-off-match-shawn-michaels-v-mankind-in-your-house-10-mind-games-with-beer-city-bruiser/)

Yeah, I definitely thought that interview could have been tighter, and only Danielson had the self awareness to note that ‘growing up in my day’ talk was not what we wanted here…

The interview was good because Danielson is always gonna give an honest answer and will give you some new info about something. 

But I 100% agree that we still haven't heard him nerd out about wrestling. Would love to hear him talk with @Phil Schneider in Way of the Blad talking about a random bloody war, that shit could be 4 hours long, lol.

Listening to tonight's show with Dave and Garrett, and laughing at Dave's response to being asked about MJF praising Roman and Heyman. Basically he said there's a reason he's never had MJF on Observer Radio since Max told him he's always 100% in character and Dave wouldn't be able to stand that. 

 

(also a clear message to the WWE stans who think MJF is unironically praising WWE when he does stuff like that)

1 hour ago, sek69 said:

(also a clear message to the WWE stans who think MJF is unironically praising WWE when he does stuff like that)

The NJPW line was a dead giveaway though. I mean "I watch everything except NJPW because it's shit. I think Great O-Khan is kinda cool though." 

Considering all the psychos out there who try to create scandals by twisting his words or quoting him out of context, I don't blame him for taking a victory lap when it's warranted.

Yeah the "Meltzer makes things up" crowd took some pretty big L's  this weekend.

This is my favorite Dave tweet in forever:

 

Using Dave to get WWE to try to make Bandido a counter offer is some A+ carny-ing. Konnan's still got it, boys!

 

https://www.f4wonline.com/news/aew/bandido-has-not-signed-aew-contract-confirms-wwe-offer

Dave's reporting on Japanese wrestling has been iffy for as long as I've been paying attention (15 years or so).

But I didn't know there was a whole thing with Dragon Gate and now Bix wrote this:

Prominent Wrestling Journalist Dave Meltzer Accused Of Publishing Stories Based On False Information