The Swanton825
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Posts posted by The Swanton825
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5 hours ago, Makhai said:
All came in, and moved out younger guys who should have had those spots. Look at what has happened to Jungle Boy and Darby, and Brian Pillman Jr. Remember that great few months John Silver had. Poof, gone. It's sad man. It really is. Making all the same mistakes TNA and 98+ WCW did.
While I agree that AEW are making a lot of the same mistakes, I don't get how Pillman Jr. is one of them. The dude is a pale imitation of his father. Yeah, a pale imitation of Brian Pillman is still a good worker and all that, but I don't understand people's hype for this guy. If Cody Rhodes gained 200 lbs. and started talking with a lisp we'd all mock him, yet it's okay that BPJ doesn't even try to be his own man in any way?
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Once again, I am extremely late to the hype train on something. I finally watched Arcane and, speaking as someone who hates League of Legends with a passion and also much prefers 2D animation, this show is quite possibly one of the all-time best animated series! From start to finish I was enthralled by the gorgeous, flowing animation, fantastic worldbuilding and brilliantly written characters. Between this, Castlevania, Invincible and Love, Death & Robots, I finally have hope that serious animation can be successful outside of arthouse cinema and anime circles.
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9 hours ago, Jaysin said:
Ace Steel dropping the F-bomb was a great instance where using a curse/cuss word enhanced a promo. I hope he's one of the coaches helping with the younger talents' promos because in a weird twist of fate, he had a better promo performance than Punk. Punk's promo felt hardcore rehearsed whereas Ace felt like he was speaking from the heart.
I was always a huge Ace Steel fan. The old video sharing wrestling group I was in back in the early 2000s had a lot of his stuff.
I feel bad now that my only exposure to Ace Steel prior to this was that godawful Trump vs Rosie O'Donnell match that is still seared into my brain after all these years. Ace was so awesome in his promo that part of me wanted him to rip the contract out of Punk's hands and sign it himself.
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That would require Tony to give control over to someone else who can focus squarely on the women's division because it's clear that the current people at the top either don't know how to book them or don't care.
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Oh nice! I'm a tightwad, so being able to watch them on YouTube is a big plus!
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I'm super out of touch with the current puro trends so I'm sure I missed something, I read that GLEAT take a lot of UWFi influence but the highlights I've found so far look too choreographed to be shoot style. Is this one of those things like what Big Japan does (once again, out of touch so I have no idea if they've gone downhill) where they split the roster between different styles and GLEAT has a puro side and a shoot side?
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9 hours ago, djskeemask said:
Didn't expect Mox to take the match. Anyone know if that was a real injury or not? It looked real to me.
Also, glad all of you that don't follow New Japan got to see Will Ospreay again. This man is incredible. I've been a fan for a few years now. I don't think he is pushed as far as he should be though in New Japan.
I have to second Derek B on Ospreay being pushed as far as a gaijin wrestler will get pushed in a Japanese company unless they start living in Japan full-time, speak fluent Japanese and marry the daughter of a (probably) yakuza who (definitely) funds New Japan. They're also going to be a bit gun shy on pushing another westerner after Omega jumped ship.
Edit: Totally willing to eat crow on my assumption that Punk would win after that promo last week. That's what growing up on late 2000s TNA does to a man's brain.
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I should have phrased that better. Punk telegraphed that Mox has to win to stop him from looking like crap. Punk will almost definitely win because the guy who quit wrestling because part-timers and old has-beens kept holding him down is thrilled to be the one who gets to hold people down now.
Controversial opinion: MJF doesn't need a rub from Punk to be a megastar, Punk needs MJF so he can feel like a "real" ring veteran "doing right by the younger guys" while hogging up airtime just like Jericho.
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16 hours ago, CactusHack said:
It's definitely a problem with AEW promos - they borderline on cryptic constantly and a lot of it comes off as wanting to sound smart and cool at the same time, but instead comes off as nerdy and/or confusing. Cody was the king of it before, and both Punk and MJF live and breathe that kind of promo. The audience shouldn't have to listen to a promo four times to be able to digest what is said. People don't talk like that. Could you imagine being in a fight with someone and referencing their past that you weren't a part of? You'd just be a creepy stalker!
The real best promo game AEW has is FTR, who just talk about loving Bret, Dax being a family man, and being really good at this whole wrestling thing.
I think there's a point where remarking on someone's past or real life in a promo can work, but it has to work in the context of the story being told at that moment like (the original, not his Wish.com son) Pillman's loose cannon gimmick or the Miz example Levinux gave. Otherwise you wind up with weird lines like Bischoff's infamous "What's the matter, Sid? Can't find your scissors?" and then even half the hardcore fans are sitting there wondering what that meant.
Also, with the way Punk phrased it he's basically telegraphed that Mox will win. That's literally the only way out of a heel saying his opponent is worthless. I've been enjoying the in-ring product with AEW, but I'll echo the others that many of the promos are dire. Mox, Kingston, Matt Menard (the only saving grace of the Jericho Appreciation Society dweebs) and Sonjay Dutt are the only ones who have consistently impressed for me. The rest often have me covering my face in embarrassment like I'm watching 2009 TNA again.
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Julia's new song is a banger and her new ring gear is unique.
The metal snob in me is disappointed that her theme doesn't keep with the black metal style of the rest of the House of Black but it's still a solid song. The guitar solo part reminds me of Entombed's To Ride, Shoot Straight and Speak the Truth for some reason.
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When did Sonjay Dutt go from painfully bland cruiserweight to one of the most entertaining promo guys in wrestling?
Around the time he did his pacifist gimmick back in TNA. As goofy as it was, him and Jay Lethal in his Black Machismo gimmick feuding over SoCal Val was genuinely entertaining. At least until the obligatory Russo swerve heel turn by Val that killed the momentum.
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Showdown in Little Tokyo- I've seen this before, but not for 20+ years. Lundgren and Brandon Lee had some real fun chemistry together. It's a shame we didn't get to see a reunion movie later on.
Love this movie! Between it and The Crow, it just makes me sad thinking about how great of a potential action megastar we lost in Brandon Lee.
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Those have to be the same people writing wrestling promos these days where everyone is cussing to be edgy and cool.
Saying shit or p***y doesn't make a promo good Jungle Boy.
Swearing, just like gore and nudity, is an art form in creative mediums. Do it all the time and it loses its impact but if you avoid it entirely some dialogue/promos can come off toothless. Unless you're, say, Terry Funk and you can make calling someone a Florida cracker sound intimidating. The problem IMO is that everyone wants their own version of Austin 3:16 or, for a film example "Yippee-ki-yay motherf-" without bothering to learn about how those moments were built up to for maximum impact.
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Also wanted to throw in my praise for Prey. I thought it started a little slow, but definitely had me glued once the Predator was introduced. I know I may get some flack for this, but I really love the AVP movies. I love the storyline idea. They "train" in Antarctica in an underground pyramid and have hunting 'games'. Also, one of the few crossovers that work bringing 2 sci-fi realms together.
I thought the first AvP was good, but could have been better. I definitely liked the concept of the Predators breeding Xenomorphs as training prey to be a cool idea. AvP 2 on the other hand was a massive overcorrection on the lack of gore in the first movie and felt like it was made by a bunch of edgy teens who think mindless splatter is how you make a "serious" horror movie.
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I'd also like to add to the praise for Prey. I absolutely loved the movie and honestly wish I'd pulled the trigger on watching it in Comanche. This is the first Predator movie since the second one to get to the heart of what I love about the series: a standard premise from another genre gets upended into a desperate fight for survival against a lone alien hunter.
Predator - Standard Arnie action flick
Predator 2 - Standard 90s crime thriller
Prey - Standard coming of age Oscar bait
This is why I think Predators and The Predator didn't hit right. Predators is just The Most Dangerous Game, but with alien hunters and The Predator is your run-of-the-mill government screws up containing an alien movie. In all the good Predator movies, the Predator almost feels like it's invading the plot of a different film.
Those aforementioned white folks were pretty vile though, but fairly accurate to the era.Having grown up in the general area Prey is set, I can confirm that it's far more accurate than most films. Particularly the killing of bison and leaving them to rot save for the fur.
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A match ending in a no-contest after a bunch of people run in and interfere? What a bold, new vision for Monday Night RAW from Triple H!
Oh crap, I'm getting late 06 and 07 TNA flashbacks. Somebody make sure Russo didn't worm his way into a spot with creative!
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Really? Because the first episode of NXT I ever watched (not counting the USA special from Christmas 2017, I think it was) featured the Street Profits fighting the Mighty... over a plastic cup. That's practically Russo-esque.
We're still seeing most of the Vince-isms- DQs, jobbing people out in their hometowns, not letting people enjoy a babyface win. The only big change is that you can tell Vince isn't hollering at Michael Cole over the headset anymore, because Cole has gone from awful to... well, still not "good" but mediocre?
Having a good mind for the business doesn't mean you don't make weird or dumb booking decisions. Just off the top of my head: Cornette okaying Storm & Jericho to use the double dropkick as a normal move in Smoky Mountain thus giving them heat with the RnR Express, Heyman letting Justin Credible hold the ECW Championship for half a year and Eric Bischoff genuinely letting Pillman out of his contract to sell the loose cannon gimmick.
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I can't speak for anyone else, but I just kept drawing a blank on other match ideas. Finally thought up a few more though:
James Storm vs Stan Hansen
New Day (Kofi & Xavier) vs The Lucha Bros
Jon Moxley (Current Day) in a deathmatch promoted by literally anyone but AEW
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Jericho vs. Kingston: not big on these sorts of matches as the barbed wire is obviously gimmicked, it should be a gritty hardcore match but it instead looks hokey and fake. Jericho looks silly as The Painmaker. It was bang average walking and brawling and then it went full Vince Russo. Tay Conti jobbed to a padlock. I have no idea what the fallout from this will be but I hope they had a shouting match backstage because I thought the second half was really poorly planned and shoddily executed. I think they tried to do too much here. The post-match felt like one of those deals where somebody agrees to lose provided they get their heat back after the match. If Kingston was standing tall, he should have just won the match. -**
I blame Jericho in addition to the booking. Even in his prime, Jericho was never capable of the masochism required for a memorable barbed wire match. It's like he wants to be the new Terry Funk but doesn't get that Funk didn't so much change his style in the 90s as it was just an evolution of what he'd already been doing for years.
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With a logo like that, there is definitely a wrestler on that roster who enters to Blue Monday by New Order. Great stuff!
Don't forget the heel group of up-and-comers that all use retrowave stuff like Carpenter Brut and Scandroid.
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I finally gave Love, Death & Robots a chance recently and instantly fell in love! It's got so many things I adore in one package: gorgeous animation, bloody violence, memorable sci-fi settings, cosmic horror and a pitch black sense of humor. I read it started as an adaptation of the magazine Heavy Metal and that influence is crystal clear. It's like a TV version of the 80s movie except not horrifically overrated.
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I'll second (or, I guess third) the praise for the chains. I love the old All Asia Tag titles and they're the first thing I think of when I see chains on a belt.
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I think Jade just needs to wrestle more. 35 matches in the 16 months of her career so far doesn't sound like nearly enough, especially when you factor in the match times. She's okay at what they ask of her but she's been pretty exposed in the longer match format because she has no experience in that environment. I have no idea what goes on behind the scenes but I think she needs to get out of the AEW bubble, go to Mission Pro, go to CCW, see if Beyond will book her, try and get some bookings from Zelo Pro. Get some reps, work with some different styles, get under the learning tree and come back to global television with a more diverse skillset.
I second this. There was a trainer at a seminar who explained it really well to me that you need to measure your experience in the number of matches you've worked, not years in the business. Back in the day you could, but back then most people worked somewhere around 200-300 matches a year. Jade could easily become as good as the booking treats her, but she needs to work so many more matches.
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Hayabusa vs anyone from Dragon Gate
Steve Williams vs WALTER
Nigel McGuinness vs Davey Boy Smith
Jeff Hardy circa 2001 vs Darby Allin
And just for laughs:
Tony Khan vs Nick Khan in a battle to decide the true Khan of Wrestling! Will Tony's dad be forced to pack it in and move the Jacksonville Jaguars to London? Will Vince ever learn that just having the name Khan doesn't make Tony and Nick related? Will I be able to think of a third question!? Find out next time on Wrestle Ball Z!
The All Elite Wrestling Discussion Thread
in The Dog Pound
Posted
I don't know why bookers keep trying this strategy. Worked shoots function on the law of diminishing returns. Not to mention it's frustrating watching something and having to question whether or not you'll see a conclusion to this story or if this time someone stormed out for real. Imagine watching a TV show where the actor's real life contract dispute played out in the middle of a normal episode. It'd kill your suspension of disbelief.