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AEW in Summer 2022: This was supposed to be the Summer of Punk.

King Kamala

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I know Jerry Lynn and William Regal have also been mentioned as influential figures behind the scenes but I feel like Tony K takes the lions share of credit for AEW's creative direction. Everyone else just seems like road agents.
 

Big Beard Booty Daddy

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Big Beard Booty Daddy

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Honestly, though, this is pretty huge for them. You don't have this promotion with a company that's on it's last legs with your network. This shows that, as of right now, fans shouldn't worry about AEW not being renewed by WBD.
 

cobainwasmurdered

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Not liking the last season of something does not change how insanely popular the show was or how much the network is investing in the new show.
 

909

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Just wanna say that just because TK books something someone doesn't like doesn't mean he's burned out. There's gotta be 20 years worth of ideas kicking around in that head and there have been tons of injured wrestlers this summer. There are some minor details and quality control kind of things but once you start fixing that, that's when burning out starts to kick in because you're effectively wasting a ton of your time doing nothing.
 

King Kamala

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And let's face it, even this down stretch of AEW has been better than the vast majority of WWE programming for the past twenty years. That's why I said Tony Khan shouldn't panic. Not every show can be a home run and when you're aiming to hit dingers every time you step up to the plate, you end up like '98-'99 WCW. I think that's essentially point Meltzer was trying to make. Not that Tony Khan is messing up but it seems like he has potential to mess up in near future.
 

909

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And let's face it, even this down stretch of AEW has been better than the vast majority of WWE programming for the past twenty years. That's why I said Tony Khan shouldn't panic. Not every show can be a home run and when you're aiming to hit dingers every time you step up to the plate, you end up like '98-'99 WCW. I think that's essentially point Meltzer was trying to make. Not that Tony Khan is messing up but it seems like he has potential to mess up in near future.

I think Dave has also been showing signs lately of realizing he was serving as a PR arm for them when their show wasn't as good and has changed course to be extremely negative in an attempt to balance that out.

I also don't think this has been a down stretch at all. Yes Jay Lethal is featured way too much but there's been a massive pile of injuries to key talent and they fucked up one main event (Jericho/Eddie). And based on my posts here over the last two decades I think everyone knows that when it comes to wrestling I can be extremely negative so like, it can't be that bad can it?
 

909

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example of Dave swinging towards reactionary negativity:

Streaming claims more than one-third of total TV time in June and hits fourth straight monthly viewing record​

On a year-over-year basis, cable viewing minutes fell 11.9%, resulting in a drop of 5 full share points.

These numbers are actually fuckin amazing. They have been decline proof and their ratings should have been going down for a while. Nothing is normal about Dynamite's ratings. Rampage otoh is in a death slot. but there's nothing normal about drawing that many viewers when the FBI just raided the ex-President's house.
 

tekcop

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I have no idea if AEW is in a down-swing or not creatively. It's... fine? But they're the only major wrestling company giving me stuff like last night's Darby/Brody match, so they get a lot of leeway from me.
 

Tino Standard

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That really sucks. Hopefully this ends up being something less serious than the last one, but that didn’t look good.
 

Broward83

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Apparently from an interview with Jimmy Hart, Turner still owns like all of the old WCW themes since they weren't included in the sale to Vince. Could of had Jericho come out to his old WCW theme..
 

cobainwasmurdered

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I have no idea if AEW is in a down-swing or not creatively. It's... fine? But they're the only major wrestling company giving me stuff like last night's Darby/Brody match, so they get a lot of leeway from me.
I can't think of a lot of stuff right now that is actively bad, whereas there was a bunch of stuff in the past that really stood out as bad. There are things that aren't hitting as strong or could be better and maybe there isn't a super hot angle (although I'd argue they just ended a couple a few weeks ago basically) but the overall is solid. And now we've got Punk/Mox starting up and Garcia/Bryan etc.
 
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