AEW - All Elite Wrestling (*Spoilers for Latest Show*)

I am not the only person to make this point, but NXT is presenting the alternative product to Raw & Smackdown, whereas AEW uses a lot of the Raw/SD tropes. I think that's why a couple hundred thousand people have given up or gone back to NXT.

The biggest surprise to me has been the absence of hierarchy in their booking. I really thought we would have top tier stars who rarely if ever lost rather than the 50-50 stuff that WWE does. Instead, Omega has lost half his big matches, so has Pac, so has Page. The Bucks & Lucha's have done a number of meaningless jobs. The women all just beat each other. Last night the number one contender did a job. Why!? And within seconds it was forgotten because they had 5 angles to run.

The other thing is between Dark Order & Nightmare Collective they have two cult acts, and when you add in Havoc, Allin, Butcher, Blade & Bunny it feels like 25% of the roster is doing a dark/horror/goth gimmick.

Slim win for AEW in ratings this week

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alfredkonuwa/2019/12/05/aew-dynamite-barely-edges-wwe-nxt-by-6000-viewers/

Monokne wrote: »

You are conflating the issues, and adding your own spin.

There is a case to be made, which others have argued, that the show is too wrestling heavy and there is not enough character development.

There is also a case to be made, separately, which I would make, that the character development they are doing is derivative and hard to take seriously - a top heel group doing heavy comedy, mutliple acts doing the spooky stuff.

Cody tends to hit the right notes. He can wrestle well, and does, but he also cuts good promos, and his angles tend to have a realism & simplicity to them. Simplistic and realistic is what they should go for.

Adding my own spin :rolleyes:
The one consistency they've had is you moaning anyway. Most people would have turned off 3 weeks in but you seem to always look for negatives.
Although fair play to Omega & the Bucks on this weeks rating, since they were apparently the ones at fault for the drop last week they'll need to get the praise for this week.

ERG89 wrote: »

Adding my own spin :rolleyes:
The one consistency they've had is you moaning anyway. Most people would have turned off 3 weeks in but you seem to always look for negatives.

Attacking the person rather than the point is a sure fire way of showing you know there's truth in what I'm saying & you don't want to discuss that.

I specifically noted the spin you were putting on it & debunked it directly. Have you any retort to the points I made, or do you just want to deflect and have a petty argument? How about we just move on?

The show had largely been good and the issues have come over the past few weeks. The last 3 shows have had the influx of new and similar acts, the establishment of the fact that guys are going to trade meaningless wins & losses a lot, and that's coincided with the novelty of the show wearing off, and the crowds being quieter & less reactive.

If you can't hear reasoned & rational criticism without roundly dismissing it, take a page out of Cody's book, he gets it:

There's a sort of a strange logic with some people and AEW. Thinking that because it's an alternative to WWE or because it's the polar opposite that it is immune from criticism. It's possible to both want it to succeed, watch it and still give it complaints.

I think the complaint that it's too wrestling heavy is totally valid. I remember when 205 Live started and it became a case of wrestling for wrestlings sake and it was hard to get invested in. No one is saying AEW is bad but it's hard to stay invested in. It doesn't mean we need some cucking story or something stupid but some character development or story would really add to it. Hell a lot of people haven't even cut promos yet. Thinking back to the highlights from the last few weeks have been promos. Cody, Jericho, Moxley, MJF all give amazing non-wrestling segments and they're some of the most over guys there. The show needs variety. They have some of the best talent in the world, we know that but on a show where every nearly wrestler is amazing, that's not enough. AEW is aiming for the smarks who know these people from the indies, which is why they've put less development into a few of them. That'll only get you so far though. Criticise WWE for a lot of things but they often do character stuff well even if the stories can be dogsh1te. Right now from AEW, what do we have to distinguish Jimmy Havoc from The Bunny, The Butcher and the Blade? They're both leather clad goths. Sure Havoc is hardcore but have we gotten anything else from him that you wouldn't have picked up from watching one of his matches, is he that shallow a character. Half the roster seems to have nothing to do until they get a random title match and suddenly develop a personality outside of, I'm a great wrestler.

Let me be clear, I like AEW but the last few weeks with no particular end goal in mind except put on some great matches they're aimless. We're in a massive wrestling boom where we can find amazing wrestling in a lot of places, story and character matter. People can love AEW and still have some issues with it and hope for it to improve. There are problems with certain aspects of AEW. They were easier to hide in the beginning and when there was a PPV in sight. I don't get why we're meant to just be happy it exists and can't give it some reasonsable criticism.

Neil3030 wrote: »

Is/was "The Elite" even a thing on the TV side of things though? Like did they ever do a promo to establish themselves, or even a vignette? I reckon it's really more canon for the Internet fans, while on the TV side of things they seem to be fairly consistently booking Page and Cody as singles guys, and even Kenny had his thing with Moxley that was largely independent of all things Elite.

Commentary referenced Page leaving the Elite so I'm pretty sure it is TV Canon.

Plus the Bucks and Page were there during the Mox Omega spot into the table of barbed wire at Full Gear.

It's definitely an established thing but they seem to be slowly disbanding them. Even Cody said in his promo this week that his friends seemed to be busy doing their own thing now.

Hopefully they put the kibosh on the Elite stuff on YT.

2ndcoming wrote: »

I wonder have they copyrighted Monday Night Dynamite?

Not long left in the football season and the one show that WWE can't move is RAW, it is the biggest show but also consistently the worst show they put on all week.

I wonder how many NXT viewers they would pull in if they did. There are about 1.8m viewers for both on Wednesday night, if even 50% of those NXT viewers picked AEW over Raw it could make things interesting...

Tony Khan has stated he would never run Mondays because of his fathers ownership of the Jags in the NFL, which plays Mondays. They'd have two properties running opposite one another.

sirmanga wrote: »

If he cared that much about his father he wouldn't be running a self indulgent wrestling show that has bled viewers since its first episode.
Also, not every NFL team play on a Monday night. I think each might only play one Monday per season.

Genuine question - if you won 5 million euro on the lotto, the first thing you'd do is complain you didn't win 10, isn't it? Your capacity to be negative about quite literally everything is astonishing, fair play for the consistency.

I agree though. F*ck Tony Khan for trying to capitalise on the live sports rights boom by creating an alternative product in an industry DESPERATELY in need of competition.

What he has done with his self indulgent actions is bring not one but two interesting and entertaining live 2 hour wrestling shows to Wednesday nights, creating hours of entertainment for audiences, leverage and opportunity for performers, and beaten industry projections for ratings giving himself & his Dad the opportunity to have a successful business and make money.

It boils my blood. I'm with you.

Now go on, spin all the above negatively :cool:

sirmanga wrote: »

I don't know where to begin. I'll simply point you towards the sinking ratings and the vast amounts of empty seats every week on TV.
Great for the business. It's truly another golden age of wrestling.

WWE books 20,000 seat buildings. They average 4800 people in the building. They lost $3.5 million last quarter on house shows. They are also going to make about $200 million in profit this year. You know why? Because it's a TV industry, that's where the money is made in 2019.

The industry projections were 500-600k. They were always going to start high with the novelty and drop, the key is holding where they are now, maybe growing a little. If someone had told me a year ago that a start up promotion would be putting 5,000 people in the building for TV every week, I wouldn't have believed it. TNA never came close. ROH neither. AEW has greatly overachieved thus far.

No-one said it's a golden age of wrestling. You are making an argument against a point I didn't make because you know you don't have any counters to what I did say.

But look, it's all terrible and negative, I get it.

Hahahahaah, I knew you would!!!