AEW - Non-Wrestling (Business, Money, Ratings etc.)

[Prime Time]

AEW this week was 889,000.... A drop of 19%

Guess that didn't take long at all.

[PEN15v2]

AEW fans are claiming that's because the President gave a live speech.

[Team Farrell]

I predict next week will be up for Blood & Guts. We'll see what the following week does.

They've settled into a bit of a format over the past few weeks of opening with a Young Bucks match and closing with Darby Allin. I wonder if they go back to that the following week or not.

[Prime Time]

1,090,000 for a highly promoted show where they gave away a War Games match for free.

The more positive spin is they were number one on cable for the first time ever, so I guess no one did especially well on that night.

[Team Farrell]

But what does "number one on cable" mean? They had the highest rating of the night in 18-49? Congrats, I guess. Still not particularly impressive that they barely cracked a million again giving away their biggest possible match, something that probably would have drawn on PPV, for free in a format where it was impossible to follow.

[Team Farrell]

"Someone is going to break their neck in this company."
"That's the style of wrestling that's cool these days!"

https://wrestlingheadlines.com/aew-w...-recent-match/



And on another note: I sure hope that Tay Conti's future opponents have a good thoracic surgeon on speed dial.

[CoLD]

I don't get the problem. Dumb move? sure. A lot of moves are dumb tho. She has done this several times and nobody has complained. Even did it in her recent title match. All of a sudden one person seen this one @'s Cornette and everyone all of a sudden has an issue with it? This is why i ignore most shit people complain about regarding AEW because they dont seem like actual complaints but people just pilling on to pile on. She has improved wonders the past few months and this is all anyone can talk about when it comes to her? Trash.

[Team Farrell]

I've never seen her do that move, but I don't pay the closest attention to her matches. If I'd seen it a month ago, I'd have posted the same thing. A friend DM'd me that gif last night and it was the first I'd ever seen it.

I'm not piling on, and I'm not saying that she hasn't "improved". I actually thought she was quite good in NXT, and she's just now gained the confidence and presence to be able to show it. But the very first time someone in a position of authority saw her do that move, should have been the last time she ever did it.

It's one thing for Ricky Starks to break his neck trying to backflip out of a german suplex (I would argue that shouldn't have happened either, but that's not really the point), it's another for her to be doing a move to mostly neon green girls that has such a high likelihood of injury between hyperextending their back, at best, or tearing something in their hip or knee.

That move isn't a backflip out of a german where you're taking a calculated risk for the visual. That move is going to injure one of these girls, it's just a matter of time.

AEW is becoming a game of who can do the biggest, most dangerous shit and someone is going to get critically injured. They're 18-months in and they've already had a "minor broken neck". A lot of people want to be The Bucks or Kota Ibushi or any of the other top Juniors in the world, without physically being any of those people.

I have watched this happen. I have watched guys get seriously injured in a training setting because their fucking highspot mark trainer didn't put a governor on them and encouraged them to go wild. Now you've taken it out of a training environment and have the adrenaline of a live crowd pushing you to go event harder.

[CoLD]

I get your side of the argument. If that is what most of those had issue with I'd be fine with it as well. Most of the people piling on for this particular thing are Cornette fans with zero point to be made. The pile on is probably why you were even seeing it to begin with. I'm just saying its hard to take a lot of peoples issues with AEW serious when it comes across as people just gate keeping. Same way they were earlier in the week when a lot of fans were blaming AEW for the Botchamania page being pulled from Youtube. There is so much shit to wade through that its hard to tell which is legit and which isnt at this point.

For the most part i'm not counting on here as part of that group all though 2 or 3 people seem to fit. I'm giving everyone here the benefit of the doubt.

[Team Farrell]

I'm a big Cornette fan admittedly, and I agree with him probably more often than I don't. But my problem, legitimately, is that I don't want to see anyone get seriously injured by a move that is completely unnecessary.

Like I said, it feels like it's starting to become a game of chicken with some of the younger talent, and nobody's putting a stop to it. If Tay does the same move with the person laying the other way, it's a shitty bump but safe at least. I think I've seen similar things done before.

That seems to be what I see the most with AEW. It's either legitimately dangerous stuff with a high chance of injury, and it doesn't even end a match; or safe stuff that could look like it kills someone but is put together in a way that is obviously visibly fake.

I didn't want to start an argument with anyone on Twitter about the AEW/Botchamania stuff, but I also don't feel like that was an entirely warrantless conclusion to draw. They seem really happy to have any of their footage used in a positive light, but the moment it's critical of the company they don't hesitate to file copyright complaints. Isn't that what happened with another girl on YouTube a month or two ago when she was critiquing an AEW show?

However, it's the nature of social media that when it turned out not to be true, nobody gave the company credit for actually helping to get Botchamania back online.

I really, really want to like AEW. Especially in the last six or eight months. I see things that give me so much hope, but it's like I said after the obviously fake Jericho bump: it feels like there's always so much promise, and it's something that I should like but they break their legs at the finish line and it falls apart.

[Oliver]

I saw that gif yesterday and thought that pretty much everything about it was stupid. If it's not the opponent that gets injured, it will be Conti smacking her head on the turnbuckle.

Orange Cassidy got knocked out during the eliminator last night - either from a thrust kick PAC delivered or the powerbomb right after. And I don't think that's due to any dangerous move, just an unfortunate series of events where Cassidy took the kick flush and then was loopy (if not out) for the powerbomb which whiplashed his head.

[Prime Time]

That illustrates quite a lot for me. The style is such now that even run of the mill things happen so often that the chances of injury are so much higher than they used to be. With that in mind, why do any dumb moves? Like, ever?

It's an interesting conversation above. One of the things I've found from talking to people is that plenty don't generally agree with Cornette in general, but find themselves pretty much agreeing with him on everything to do with the modern debate on wrestling. Someone put it well - there's only really one side here, because Cornette is the only one trying to be right about how things work (whether he always succeeds or not would be another debate entirely). But the other side aren't even trying to be right - not really - they are looking for excuses for why it's fine for them to do whatever they want to do in the first place. They'd love to be right, of course, but it's more important that they get to do what they wanna do (and everyone else can piss off if you're not in with their crowd).

So I think a lot of people who wouldn't normally be in that camp get forced into it by the nature of what the two sides are. It makes it a much broader church than some people realise, and includes plenty of people who - until the last couple of years - would have been quite content to talk about wrestling as 'performance', etc. It's not just a bunch of old-timers and Southern good ol' boys lusting after the 1970s and 1980s.

[PEN15v2]

It's also not an AEW specific issue. It's most of modern wrestling. NXT has too many similar dangers, I've seen it on WWE, Impact, ROH, MLW... Just think how quickly the ring apron bump has become commonplace. It feels like less than 10 years ago, I saw the first back bump on the apron, with announcers repeating how it's the hardest part of the ring. Now, it happens weekly on TV. I don't remember anytime that sort of bump ended a match.

I come back to something I feel I'm been saying for years since I've returned here, but I'm just too old for today's wrestling. All mediums move forward and evolve, and wrestling is no different. Just like today's heavy metal is not the same as what introduced me to the genre almost 30 years ago, and comedy, and blockbuster movies...

I think my issue is I get how these other examples evolve but still have value. Music, movies, comedy, TV.... they all evolve, and they might not be to my taste anymore, but I recognize the value they offer. But wrestling has evolved differently. To me, the story and characters were what made it interesting back in the day. Yes, I liked great matches, but Owen vs Bret wasn't just a great match, but a great story as well. And it was about staging a competition.

Today, it's more of a stunt show than ever. There's no meaning to these higher risk moves, and no one sells them legitimately enough for the impact to properly register. "Oh, it looks cool" is the only defense fans of this style can give. They point to what Jeff Hardy did 20 years ago as an example of how it was once accepted to push the limits of high risk, but forgetting that Hardy would do one of these stunts per match, generally to end the match. Jeff sold them, as did the people who were laid out on tables. They treated it with enough desperation to really get the idea to the home viewer that he put his body on the line to the highest degree possible, leaving Matt to get the pin on the other partner, or something.

These are now treated like nothing. So if they are treated like they aren't a big deal, why should I care about them?

AEW might be the biggest criminal of this style, but NXT is a close second. And I suspect it's only going to continue to escalate from there. I get so much more joy out of watching 1990 WWF these days than I do any modern wrestling. Maybe I can't evolve along with the sport, but it feels like things that were once in a bluw moon 10-15 years ago are now common place. But what made them special 10-15 years ago was how they were rare. Young Bucks wrestling the Taker vs HBK match from Mania 25 on a weekly basis isn't captivating after seeing it on repeat. So they amp up the stakes, and others like Tay Conti follow suit with bigger bumps.


Never ending circle, and I think we have to accept it and decide when to cut ourselves off. I'm getting closer and closer by the day.

[Team Farrell]

Someone said to me last night that made a lot of sense: it seems like a lot of the AEW guys are trying to one-up each other. "You can do this, well I can do this plus that."

The super kick on OC was unfortunate, but it happens. I don't think that can be blamed on a style of wrestling, it's an errant kick.

I, too, would love to see a return to the days when the story mattered more than the quality of the match on TV that week. Where guys weren't chasing stars on free TV. Because, as people have said for the past 15 years and it proving out now, the stunt is only exciting for so long and you have to up the ante to get the same reaction. It's got to get more legitimately dangerous, or hurt more.

Cesaro got the reaction of the week at WrestleMania for the UFO and it'll probably be a highlight reel moment for one of the safest bumps you could take. Will anyone on the planet remember the move that broke Ricky Starks' neck six months from now? The next time someone pulls off that reversal, will everyone be holding their breath to see if it works? Will Adam Page's german suplex become a killer?

This is where Jericho could be of so much help to these guys, teaching them to pick their spots and that they don't have to be going for five stars from Dave every week on TV.

PAC is a prime example. He's so good, and has so much control over his body that every second move could be a flying backflip. But The Black Arrow stands out so much and looks as incredible as it is, because it's the biggest move he does, at the end of his match. It's the part of the match you leave remembering.

Someone on a national TV show is going to die in the ring, or directly as a result of an injury suffered in the ring, in the next five years. That's not me being boisterous, it's a genuine prediction.

[Oliver]

I mean, it's like an announce table bump, right? Bret/Diesel in 1995 was the first in WWE, if I'm right, and nowadays hardly a week goes past without someone at least going over, if not through, the announce table on TV. It's no longer a 'big spot', and while it still gets a reaction it no longer takes your breath away unless someone's coming off a 20 foot ladder or something.

RE: Jericho, I can't help feeling that he (and a lot of others in the AEW locker room) are such marks for themselves that they wouldn't listen to someone sitting down and saying 'no, don't do that, save it for another day'.

Also, someone needs to tell Khan to use his brain and book some stuff more sensibly - which I think goes into the point you made about Ogogo/Cody in the Dynamite thread, COACH. Another example is SCU vs Bucks. SCU only won their number one contender spot a week ago, and if they lose ta match they have to split up as a team. That's a reasonably big story to tell, but we as fans don't get to breath or watch it develop because one week they win the shot and the next week they take the shot, lose, and disband on free TV. It's not like we're months out from the next PPV, it's only a couple of weeks until Double Or Nothing. Why not give that a couple of weeks of actual build until they have the match itself on the big show, and make people want to pay for it? We as fans know that the Bucks have stroke in AEW because they started the promotion, so where's a week or two of them forcing SCU into matches which seemingly have insurmountable odds so that they're forced to split up before they get that title shot? Why not have them be booked - at order of the Bucks - against Hobbs and Cage one week, a match where they're at a clear size disadvantage and have outside interference to deal with too, so that the Bucks can avoid their title shot? Where's a promo from Daniels/Kazarian highlighting that they've been tagging together for a decade and it could all end but that they'll give it everything and bleed in the ring if needs be or something?

But instead they cannonball through that story in a week without any drama being built - unless it was on Dark or Dark Uncensored or whatever the many shows they throw out there are all called that I don't bother with - for what, a midcard match on a TV show that will be pretty much forgotten about in a month.

It's the same with Blood & Guts. Why did that happen last week as a forerunner of them doing a Stadium Stampede match? Surely B&G is the big feud ender between two factions in AEW, but instead they do B&G on free TV to build to some set piece nonsense on the PPV.

I think the people in the back making these booking decisions believe they are still in some phoney war with WWE/NXT, so need to pull out all the stops week after week.