2019 Pro Wrestling thread

Miz may not have the move set of an AJ Styles, but he’s good with what he does, and the big difference with him and Corbin is Miz is really good at telling a story in the ring. One of best on either brand when they give him a chance.

 

Shout out to Samoa Joe who is GREAT on commentary. Really shone through these last two nights.

He’s obvs an amazing worker but when he’s done he could be a color guy for life

 

This is absolutely true.

We know Corbin doesn’t have a chance in hell (hi Vince!) of winning this thing (unless with help from a dozen others aside), and it doesn’t even elevate Roman, so why are we even bothering?

With Miz at least, we can say that he was so blinded by anger towards Bray that he fucked up and lost. There’s psychology there. Corbin is drawing heat with dog food.

 

Corbin would've been great as part of an old-school stable or as an enforcer who does the dirty work for the guy with the belt. Kinda like they're playing Hager/Swagger in AEW right now. He needs to be working the mid-card, but they put the crown on him, so they kinda have to put him in feuds against top guys, and he just isn't at a point that we buy him going over the top faces long-term like we would Wyatt, Lesnar or even Samoa Joe pre-injury.

 

Catching up on AEW and had a thought: What if they brought Hardy in and made him the mastermind behind the Dark Order? Could be interesting.

 

So what is everyone's thoughts on AEW at the (roughly) three-month mark?
Has it been everything you expected? Better? Worse? What are they doing good or bad?

From what I've seen, the matches themselves are good. They seem to be doing a decent job of introducing the lesser known wrestlers and giving a lot of them a moment in the spotlight. The company's top stars (Jericho, Cody and the Bucks) have done their part to put guys over.

The bad, IMO, is too much of a reliance on brawls and schmozz finishes. A lot of their shows seem to break down into wild brawls where six different feuds are happening simultaneously.
The mini-feuds are also weird. I get what they're trying to accomplish with them, but guys like Darby Allin and Scorpio Sky getting title matches for next week when we barely know who they are this week, and then they're back to the mid-card the following week, is whiplash-inducing.
It also seems like they don't know what to do with some of their big guns. Kenny Omega and Hangman Page should be two of their biggest acts, but they seem like they're in a holding pattern just having random matches in the upper mid-card. It took them two months to really elevate Moxley, and even now his feud with Jericho is sort of low key.

 

AEW is OK. Jericho is incredible. Everyone else? Meh. I'm not sure anyone's done their best work under the AEW umbrella yet.

The first few weeks I watched AEW first and nxt on delay. I've been nxt first for 5_6 weeks and I don't see it changing. Nxt is a better show.

I dont see myself ever paying for an AEW pay per view as presently constituted.

I'm glad it's on my dvr. It's enjoyable enough but I don't find it to be appointment viewing.

 

AEW has good matches but they aren't putting together good running stories. They should be focusing on Cody-MJF as one of their top storylines, but they're interrupting it with the Butcher and the Blade. They started something good with the Elite and the Inner Circle, but they've had the guys in that jumping into other feuds (Hangman-Pac, Bucks-Lucha Bros., etc.). They're trying to get all these guys over, and they aren't letting the stories develop for more than a couple of weeks. And they're throwing guys into the world title picture because they don't have another title to push them for, so you get Jericho vs. Jungle Boy when that should in no way be a match against the champion.

I think part of it is that they have swung too far away from the WWE method. Wrestlers were pissed about the TV writers coming in and writing the stories, but now you have the wrestlers doing it, and the fact is a lot of wrestlers just aren't good at thinking past this week's show. If they want to do Jungle Boy-Jericho, they should have been building Perry on TV for the last few weeks as a singles wrestler.

And they kept talking about win-loss records would matter (an absurd idea since the results are predetermined), but other than mentioning them in entrances, you never hear them saying, "This team just has one loss. They surely are next in line for a title shot." Or at least do something like take the three singles wrestlers with the best records and put them in a match for a title shot instead of just having them handed out to whoever they want to push this week. Jungle Boy is 0-1 in singles and 0-5 in tag matches, and he gets a match with Jericho? For fuck's sake, that in no way matches what they were selling.

 

Jungle boy being 0-6 fits the story of Jericho wanting an easy opponent, but that builds the 50 year old not the new guy. Could have an on screen authority figure forcing Jericho to face someone with a good record since wins/losses matter but thats a wwe trope they dont want.

Not to make excuses for wwe but its almost like booking wrestling is harder than it looks on the internet and you’re always kind of damned if you do, damned if you don’t

 

I'm fine with Jericho picking a weak opponent for a match the same night. But when it's a week or two later, you're spending time on a story you shouldn't be building up.

And every wrestling federation back since before the '80s even has had some kind of authority figure. Hell, in some cases, they just referred to the as the front office or as "the matchmakers." They could do that without having an on-screen authority figure.

 

Or even just have a bland authority figure appear once a month and then the rest of the time, just be referred to, with the announcers saying, “President Jack Tunney Jr. has ordered Chris Jericho to defend the AEW next week against Kenny Omega.”

 

One thing we have to take into account is that this company is essentially starting from scratch with no real storylines and only a few wrestlers that fans are familiar with. They’ve made some mistakes (production with commercial timing has sucked), but they’re building a company from the ground up.

They need to build up the women’s division majorly, and they need to make Omega and Page into bigger deals. But considering it’s only been a few months, they’re off to a decent start. If they’re spinning their wheels two year from now, then it’s time to worry.