The All Elite Wrestling Discussion Thread

[Jaysin]

Sting doing OC's shenanigans will forever get a pop from this guy. 

[Matt_Black]

"I am blamed as the reason that everyone hates her" says the woman who is trash-talking Thunder Rosa behind her back.

[Matt_Black]

If the goal of the premiere of AEW All Access was to improve my opinion of Britt, it's failing. BADLY.

[milamber]

- Jungle Boy vs Hardy was solid. HOOK! MJF/Jack segment was good.

- Callis still a snake. JAS wining and dining Billy & the Acclaimed.

- Dalton & The Boys vs BCC was a massacre. Callis busted open hardway 😮

- Cobb vs Omega (c) was my MOTN. Devil's Sky! American Dragon noooooo!

- Solid Gunns promo.

- Butcher vs Cassidy (c) was solid.

- Willow vs Ruby was good. Outcasts finally got an entrance theme. Riho! Blue! Hayter!

- Hobbs promo > QTV.

- Cole vs Garcia was good but a bit short. New Garcia theme. Streamers!

Strong focus on storytelling the last 2 weeks.

All-Access was good. Rosa came out looking bad, though. Can't blame her for choosing not to continue wrestling injured. TK should have stripped her of the belt quicker.

[Matt_Black]

Britt came off as both incredibly petty and entirely hypocritical. When Thunder Rosa doesn't appear on TV, she's being selfish, but when Adam Cole doesn't appear on TV, OH GOSH HE'S SO BRAVE I WUV HIM.

And that line about how, right now, she's trying to lift up the entire women's division? Excuse me a moment...

Ah-ha-ha-ha-haaaa!

*Ahem* Yeah, okay Britt. I can count on one hand the number of wrestlers who've come out of storylines with you looking better, but yeah, you go on and LIFT that division up.

[milamber]

5 hours ago, Matt_Black said:

Britt came off as both incredibly petty and entirely hypocritical. When Thunder Rosa doesn't appear on TV, she's being selfish, but when Adam Cole doesn't appear on TV, OH GOSH HE'S SO BRAVE I WUV HIM.

And that line about how, right now, she's trying to lift up the entire women's division? Excuse me a moment...

Ah-ha-ha-ha-haaaa!

*Ahem* Yeah, okay Britt. I can count on one hand the number of wrestlers who've come out of storylines with you looking better, but yeah, you go on and LIFT that division up.

 

The producers portrayed as her as Jekyll & Hyde... the loving supportive gf on one hand and running down Rosa on the other. Hard to tell what's real and what's Total Divas style fiction.

To be fair on Britt's lifting the division point, that was during the phase where she was putting over Ruby, Toni, Shida and Saraya after rarely losing for a long time.

[Matt_Black]

3 hours ago, milamber said:

 

The producers portrayed as her as Jekyll & Hyde... the loving supportive gf on one hand and running down Rosa on the other. Hard to tell what's real and what's Total Divas style fiction.

To be fair on Britt's lifting the division point, that was during the phase where she was putting over Ruby, Toni, Shida and Saraya after rarely losing for a long time.

Toni and Shida were champs. Saraya was, arguably, the hottest woman's free agent not named Mercedes. None of those 3 should need "lifting". I'll give you Ruby, but that gets a mulligan since losing to Britt a year prior totally sapped her momentum, and then losing AGAIN in The Owen gave her Antarctic levels of heat.

When Britt puts over Willow, Skye, Julia, or Hirsch, THEN I will be impressed.

[milamber]

Another good ROH show. Emi vs Athena and Christian vs Vikingo were great. Enjoyed seeing Yuka, Yamashita and Shibata. Shame the sub is so expensive compared to AEW on FITE.

 

PPV looks stacked. TK said Ospreay was supposed to be on the show before he got injured.

* ROH World Championship Match: Claudio Castagnoli vs. Eddie Kingston

* ROH Women’s World Championship Match: Athena vs. Yuka Sakazaki

* AAA Mega Championship Match: El Hijo del Vikingo vs. Komander

* ROH Pure Championship Match: Wheeler Yuta vs. Katsuyori Shibata

* ROH World Television Championship Match: Samoa Joe vs. Mark Briscoe

* ROH World Six Man Tag Team Championship Match: The Embassy vs. AR Fox, Blake Christian & Metalik

* Reach for the Sky ROH World Tag Team Championship Ladder Match: The Lucha Bros vs. Top Flight vs. The Kingdom vs. Aussie Open vs. Rush & Dralistico

* Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Daniel Garcia

[milamber]

7 minutes ago, Matt_Black said:

Toni and Shida were champs. Saraya was, arguably, the hottest woman's free agent not named Mercedes. None of those 3 should need "lifting". I'll give you Ruby, but that gets a mulligan since losing to Britt a year prior totally sapped her momentum, and then losing AGAIN in The Owen gave her Antarctic levels of heat.

When Britt puts over Willow, Skye, Julia, or Hirsch, THEN I will be impressed.

TK booked Britt like Mox (rarely losing) since she turned heel but she's closer to a Jericho role since losing the title to Rosa (Owen Cup aside).

Edited March 31, 2023 by milamber

[Matt_Black]

17 minutes ago, milamber said:

TK booked Britt like Mox (rarely losing) since she turned heel but she's closer to a Jericho role since losing the title to Rosa (Owen Cup aside).

What, you mean all her feuds go on far longer than needed? D'oh-ho-ho-hooo!

[The Blonde Bomber]

I’ve only heard bad things about Rosa from the locker room. Don’t think it’s just a Britt thing. With that said I still haven’t like Britts personality recently. There’s no woman in the division who feels like an Ace to me. Hayter is talented but still feels like second banana to Britt. They should’ve turned Hayter face on Britt that would’ve been a big feud. Now it’s just the NWO parody act trying to run the division.

[Jaysin]

Shibata winning the Pure title is amazing. I am so hyped to see what he does in ROH. When I first started getting into New Japan, he, Okada, Naito, and Nakamura were who I really gravitated to. 

I wish Eddie had won the ROH title though, but it was a good match nonetheless. 

[Mootinie]

Dante Martin getting injured doing that spot on Supercard of Honor is everything that is wrong in modern day wrestling. Wrestlers these days no longer keep up the pretence that wrestling is fake but is supposed to look real. They're either pissing all over wrestling with stupidly contrived and overly cheorographed spots or they're taking dumbass stunts to nearly kill themselves. I've never seen a company full of injured guys as regularly as AEW, it's crazy, these guys be killing themselves for 800,000 viewers whilst fans be talking about CM Punk's lastest Instagram story. 😭

It was a ridiculous bump and I hate to kick a guy when he's down but if he's out for a year, it's his own fault for agreeing to take something so goddamn stupid in the first place. A Canadian Destroyer off a ladder through tables, on an ROH show that about 15,000 people will have been watching... what an absolute idiot. 

[The Blonde Bomber]

OMG that Dante Martin injury looked almost as bad as Sid's leg in his notorious injury. Hope the best for the guy. Agree with you Mottinie, these wrestlers don't know how to milk anything. They just do everything all the time without any meaning. Amazing spots that will have people in awe in the moment will be forgotten about the next day. Meanwhile someone like Punk, MJF, etc will make people feel things and they'll be talked about for months and years.

[milamber]

15 hours ago, The Blonde Bomber said:

OMG that Dante Martin injury looked almost as bad as Sid's leg in his notorious injury. Hope the best for the guy. Agree with you Mottinie, these wrestlers don't know how to milk anything. They just do everything all the time without any meaning. Amazing spots that will have people in awe in the moment will be forgotten about the next day. Meanwhile someone like Punk, MJF, etc will make people feel things and they'll be talked about for months and years.

Shouldn't include Punk in that list. He was doing suicide dives, buckshot lariats and jumping into the crowd and got injured twice in quick succession. He should have stuck to safe mat wrestling.

Edited April 2, 2023 by milamber

[milamber]

- Williams vs Cobb - ***
- Nigel McGuiness! ROH commentary just got even better.
- Mack vs Takeshita - *** 3/4
- Alize vs Willow - *** 1/2
- Slim J vs Stu - ***

- Kommander vs Vikingo (c) - **** 1/4
- Fox, Christian & Metalik vs The Embassy (c) - *** 1/2
- Yuka vs Athena (c) - **** - Athena is a great champ but I wanted Yuka to win.
- Briscoe vs Joe (c) - **** - I expected Briscoe to win.
- Garcia vs Tanahashi - *** 3/4
- Tag Team Ladder Match - **** - Lucha Bros were a good choice. Nasty injury for Dante
- Shibata vs Yuta (c) - **** - Surprise result!
- Kingston vs Claudio (c) - **** 1/2 - My MOTN. I really wanted Eddie to win. Hope it's Mark who beats Claudio now.

Good well-paced PPV.

[The Blonde Bomber]

10 hours ago, milamber said:

Shouldn't include Punk in that list. He was doing suicide dives, buckshot lariats and jumping into the crowd and got injured twice in quick succession. He should have stuck to safe mat wrestling.

He was able to get people to remember things he did based his personality. A lot of the wrestlers now just do random dangerous moves to get a pop and then people don’t remember what they did in a few days.

[Self]

I remember not too long ago when one of the women (Julia Hart? Anna Jay?) went through a table and came really close to a bad head injury. Some wrestlers on social media defended her for the dumb, needless spot by saying she did it "for the fans". I hope that was a lie, because if they truly think the fans are bloodthirsty monsters who crave bloodbaths and furniture multiple times every show... Why would you want those fans? 

 

More likely, wrestlers do these things because they want to look cool/be tough. I get the impulse. I worked indies. I argued for the chance to do a dive on some shows, but I'm under no illusions that it was purely an ego thing, and looking back I can't think of a single dive I did that will be remembered or really mattered... except for the one that damaged ligaments in my ankle. In front of 300 people. Still hurts sometimes.

 

For some reason no one is teaching these kids that not every night is WrestleMania. 

[The Swanton825]

On 4/2/2023 at 3:11 PM, Self said:

I remember not too long ago when one of the women (Julia Hart? Anna Jay?) went through a table and came really close to a bad head injury. Some wrestlers on social media defended her for the dumb, needless spot by saying she did it "for the fans". I hope that was a lie, because if they truly think the fans are bloodthirsty monsters who crave bloodbaths and furniture multiple times every show... Why would you want those fans? 

 

More likely, wrestlers do these things because they want to look cool/be tough. I get the impulse. I worked indies. I argued for the chance to do a dive on some shows, but I'm under no illusions that it was purely an ego thing, and looking back I can't think of a single dive I did that will be remembered or really mattered... except for the one that damaged ligaments in my ankle. In front of 300 people. Still hurts sometimes.

 

For some reason no one is teaching these kids that not every night is WrestleMania. 

The way I was taught it was that fans often only remember the beginning and end of most matches. Particularly if they didn't pay to see you. Just keep them engaged until the end and then get your cool stuff in. That goes a long way to explaining how nobody ever remembers someone like Jason Kincaid despite the fact that the guy can do a coast-to-coast suicide dive! He and a lot of others put most of their best work in the middle of the match.

[St. Templar]

On 4/2/2023 at 10:26 AM, The Blonde Bomber said:

He was able to get people to remember things he did based his personality. A lot of the wrestlers now just do random dangerous moves to get a pop and then people don’t remember what they did in a few days.

They don't seem to realize that it's a show about the characters in the ring and not just the moves those characters can do.

When Jeff Hardy did an elevated Spear to Edge from a ladder, it was a cool spot that everyone remembered because we cared about (and liked) Jeff and cared about (and hated) Edge because of their character work.

When Blade Phillips did the same move to Gonzo Peters at the Hometown Wrestling Show down at the Civic Center in front of 42 people with no storyline that accompanied the match (which wasn't even a ladder match to begin with), everybody went oooohh...and then went back to talking about what the librarian was wearing at the town picnic last Sunday. Because we didn't care about the characters involved.

There's a key difference there.

St.T

 

[Matt_Black]

It reminds of the common criticism that the Young Bucks don't know anything about ring psychology or building a story. They absolutely do- just look at the Revolution match against Hangman & Omega. Now, they often don't USE those skills and just do stuff that looks cool, but that's a different issue. Just like how not every match needs to be a spotfest, not every match needs to be narrative driven, full of pathos and characterization.

[aXminster]

Tonight's show has the potential to be one of the best Dynamites ever. A bunch of great matches and on top of that, it's in the Bizarro Land of Long Island, where MJF is always the babyface.

[Matt_Black]

My main issue with tonight's show is that they have four title matches scheduled. Normally, that would be cool, but maybe they could have saved something for the TV special this week that's supposed to be literally all title matches!

[aXminster]

51 minutes ago, Matt_Black said:

My main issue with tonight's show is that they have four title matches scheduled. Normally, that would be cool, but maybe they could have saved something for the TV special this week that's supposed to be literally all title matches!

They made BOTB pointless. One title change in five shows that are supposed to showcase titles is beyond ridiculous. I didn't even know it was this week until you mentioned 😆

[Jaysin]

From a wrestling history nerd point of view, announcing Wembley Stadium for All In is huge. I'm sure it won't satisfy a chunk of the fanbase though and that's fair.