AEW Year 2, Thread One

[King Kamala]

KENTA has been good as a cranky , grizzled heel vet in New Japan outside of a few major misfires.

 

[Big Beard Booty Daddy]

He is for sure looked at as an outsider by the fans. There is still a weird divide in Japan between fans of different promotions thats often starker than it is in the US and NJPW/NOAH have had some super super awesome interpromotional matches and feuds. Highly reccomend looking for Nagata's run with the GHC title or anything involving Liger in NOAH (2004 especially) to see Liger just being a complete fucking prick.

It's interesting to see the difference in how the fans took to Shingo but not KENTA, when Shingo joined LIJ. Maybe because Shingo is from Dragon Gate, and I'm not sure the divide between them and NJPW.

 

[Hoff]

His NXT run sucked and was marred by injuries. He has slowed down a lot because of those injuries from his peak In NOAH but he has had a bunch of really good work in NJPW. He works a style that is different from a lot of the guys there though so it isn't always for everyone.

https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV134411w7VK?from=search&seid=815778736198984806

probably the best match he's had in this run off the top of my head

I saw this match - saw the whole G1 that year, all 6000 matches - and I remember not being impressed; watching it back this morning I was into it. I dunno. Now I'm questioning everything. Maybe the NXT run soured me on him more than I realized. One thing this re-watch did reinforce is my disdain for his face. That sounds mean, but what I mean by it is that regardless of what he's doing, what emotion he's trying to convey, he always seems like his mouth is half-open and he has this dead look in his eyes. I do think we've entered an era where a lot of guys can work, so I need to have that character piece to be invested in, or it all just runs together.

 

[Hoff]

It's interesting to see the difference in how the fans took to Shingo but not KENTA, when Shingo joined LIJ. Maybe because Shingo is from Dragon Gate, and I'm not sure the divide between them and NJPW.

maybe it's because Shingo is better

 

[King Kamala]

I think slack jawed, dead eye disdainful look WORKS for his character as the emotionally dead grizzled heel vet.

 

[King Kamala]

And Shingo is one of the best workers in the world. It'd be dumb for people not to like him. KENTA is just an old vet doing a good job of playing heel

 

[Hoff]

I think slack jawed, dead eye disdainful look WORKS for his character as the emotionally dead grizzled heel vet.

Oof, if that's the character maybe I just don't like the character.

 

[cobainwasmurdered]

It's interesting to see the difference in how the fans took to Shingo but not KENTA, when Shingo joined LIJ. Maybe because Shingo is from Dragon Gate, and I'm not sure the divide between them and NJPW.

njpw borrowed a lot of things from dragon gates playbook which helped lead to the way its audience has shifted IMO. Dragon Gate pushes handsome men and focuses on stables and athletiscm. NJPW started to really push good looking guys and made stuff like Bullet Club and LIJ bigger parts of the show. Their audience has gotten younger and younger and more female. If you look at NOAH or AJPW shows they're much older and more male usually. Its safe to say there is more of an overlap in fanbases which is part of the reason for why SHINGO was so warmly received.

They also had KENTA beat the shit out of Shibata which was just perfect and made sure they'd hate him with a passion.

 

[Laz]

Always funny to have massive amounts of SHINGO love after he was underrated during most of his DG run by so many.

 

[cobainwasmurdered]

TBH Shingo didn't really click in Dragon Gate. He had some great performances but there were a lot of guys who overshadowed him and the fans never accepted him the way they did most of his generation peers let alone CIMA or Mochizuki. It was only when he was working with Mochizuki or YAMATO (who not coincidently work much more similar to NJPW's style than most of DG) that he really shined. It didn't help that DG in that era was changing units and heel/face alignments like dirty shirts.

 

[Baby Shoes]

You talking normal people dirty shirts or wrestling fan dirty shirts? Just asking because even when dirty, the wrestling fan ones aren’t often changed.

 

[Big Beard Booty Daddy]

The bracket for the Women's eliminator tournament

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1359588953804972032

 

[Valeyard]

Nice. I've been a fan of theirs for years and they deserve it. They have the potential to really make something of themselves..

 

[JHawk]

Maki Itoh and Aja Kong are my two favorites and at least one of them won't get past the quarterfinals and that makes me sad.

 

[cobainwasmurdered]

I thought this was better this week but a lot of it still not clicking. Main event was great though.

 

[geniusMoment]

I thought this was better this week but a lot of it still not clicking. Main event was great though.

The shows seem to be better when they are taped. It gives them time to edit out mistakes in matches (with some of their indy guys this really helps), and they do more pre-taped interviews.

 

[Big Beard Booty Daddy]

Had an interesting idea. Remember when Hardy was coming in to AEW, and everyone thought for sure he was going to be The Exalted One, but it ended up Brody Lee? What if the contract Page made Matt sign was to be leader of The Dark Order? This is a roundabout way to get him there, now that there is an opening, to where he was originally supposed to be. Having John Silver drive him crazy might be some fun TV.

 

[geniusMoment]

Okada is coming to AEW:

Big Name To Be Part Of NJPW Partnerships

At the end of Impact Wrestling's No Surrender event, The team of Juice Robinson and David Finlay Jr., FinJuice, were announced to appear on Impact Wrestling this…

www.wrestlinginc.com

 

[Baby Shoes]

Per PWI

Sammy Guevara was slated to work this past week's Impact Wrestling TV tapings but was pulled from the tapings, SlamWrestling.net reported. PWInsider.com has confirmed with Impact sources that the story is accurate.

The original plan was Guevara to work a short storyline at the tapings that began this past Tuesday through Thursday playing off Guevara quitting the Inner Circle. Multiple sources indicate that AEW and Impact worked out the plans but that Guevara did not fly to Nashville the day before the tapings scheduled and rescheduled himself to arrive in Nashville just a few hours before the tapings would begin.

Impact sources also indicated that although everyone had agreed to the planned ideas, Guevara began texting Impact officials about alternative ideas and "not wanting to do what was agreed to." At that point, Impact officials canceled Guevara off the tapings.

We are told that the majority of what had been planned for Guevara saw Decay's Black Taurus utilized in that role instead.

Impact sources reiterated there was no issue with AEW at all and the relations between the two sides are "golden."

 

[King Kamala]

First piece of drama since THE FORBIDDEN DOOR HAS BEEN OPEN!

I wonder if this is where the "AEW is giving their wrestlers too much creative control" debate starts. Lord knows, I don't blame Sammy for turning this ish down given Impact's terrible almost 20 year history of mediocre to poor booking/treatment of young talent but it's surprising that they'd let someone relatively new to the business pull something like this.

 

[Big Beard Booty Daddy]

A better spot for his skillset would have been the X-Division, but maybe it was smarter to put him on a winning team (Decay won their match) than losing in a gauntlet match for his first appearance (Josh Alexander won the gauntlet).

I wouldn't read anything into this since talent gets upset at booking in their own companies at times. That's the thing with working with multiple companies, some booking will work better than others, but it's not like they were going to have Sammy come in and job to Suicide in 5 minutes. And Black Taurus works better with Decay anyway.

 

[King Kamala]

Now that I think about it though, it would have been hilarious as hell to see Sammy do his smug Gen Z mugging and selfie taking while Crazzy Steve & Rosemary made scary faces.

 

[Big Beard Booty Daddy]

If anything, he would have been a better fit with Tanille and Kaleb (with a K).

 

[Laz]

I wonder if this is where the "AEW is giving their wrestlers too much creative control" debate starts.

That debate was happening right away when we all realized that the Elite were all booking their own things and the only stuff that was actively working was Cody's. Regardless, though, an established AEW talent ALLEGEDLY refused to work a gimmick in a "partner" promotion that went against his established schtick. That, in the territory days, was called "protecting yourself."

 

[tekcop]

Yeah. I don't recognize any of Impact names in that news story, so I don't fully understand. But Sammy, like MJF, Jungle Boy, and Darby should be heavily protected.

Losing a big feud to hobbled Matt Hardy? Good.
Changing gimmicks with no explanation? Bad.

 

[Laz]

Matt Hardy literally got me to stop watching two companies with his involvement.

 

[tekcop]

I didn't mind Matt winning the blowoff at the time, but with the hindsight of knowing Matt was going to change gimmicks and turn heel less than a month later, I don't really see the point now.

 

[Valeyard]

Matt's another one of the guys that has so much to offer in almost any capacity that he's well worth picking up. When it comes to vets AEW has been stellar at getting guys who can do anything needed at any time.

 

[Laz]

I didn't mind Matt winning the blowoff at the time, but with the hindsight of knowing Matt was going to change gimmicks and turn heel less than a month later, I don't really see the point now.

A spry, in-his-prime 20something athlete shouldn't be losing to a hobbling, bow legged 40something that has been prone to injury for a decade. Not without some fiercely intelligent booking and great, psychology-driven matches...neither of which we got.

 

[Baby Shoes]

A spry, in-his-prime 20something athlete shouldn't be losing to a hobbling, bow legged 40something that has been prone to injury for a decade. Not without some fiercely intelligent booking and great, psychology-driven matches...neither of which we got.

I felt they were at least going to elevate Private Party through this but the Matt heel turn has put Private Party in this weird limbo where people know he’s taking advantage of them but they know he’s taking advantage of them...

I think Matt could bring a lot to somewhere behind the scenes but his putting over younger talent isn’t having the same effect that Jericho’s version of the same is doing. Then again, Jericho was always at least a level above Matt so that may have something to do with it too.