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

[Prime Time]

I don't think that can be blamed on a style of wrestling, it's an errant kick.

For me, this is one of those 'yes and no' answers. On the one hand, errant kicks happen everywhere, that's true enough. You hear enough stories about legends knocking each other silly back in the 1970s. But there's also a numbers game involved. I don't care who you are, you're going to fuck up a percentage of everything that has a risk factor. So, if you have a wrestling style that eliminates everything that is very low risk and has a huge pace with a plethora of strikes and bumps.... the sheer number of kicks and moves you get wrong is going to be increased.

To be crude about it, if you mess up one kick out of 100 but you don't throw head kicks that often it's going to be a minor concern. But if you throw 20 in a match, every match, all of a sudden you're likely to knock someone out once a week. Now the maths won't work as neatly as that but it's an important point about the contemporary style, I think. A bit of a variant on the 'you only have so many big bumps you can take' argument, I guess.

Anyway - AEW Dynamite's rating was 936,000, down 14.12% on Blood and Guts.

[Team Farrell]

I mean, that's fair to say, but watching it back a couple time it looks like it's just a confluence of bad luck. A stiff kick rocks him a bit and he doesn't quite have hit wits about him enough on the powerbomb to take the bump safely. On any other night, that combination of moves is safe, but on this one it wasn't.

I'm torn, because I'd rather take a stiff strike that accidentally rocks me a bit than a bump on my neck every day of the week. That's probably not good for my brain, but neither is pro wrestling in general. I'm also of the mind, though, that I'd rather one chair shot to the head that I can try to protect myself on from someone also trying to protect me, rather than five dozen kendo stick shots that are going to leave me cut up and welted for a week like we see in WWE today. I'd rather a single well timed spot to blade on as opposed to taking multiple dangerous bumps.

I took a superkick from a guy once that was the same thing. I'd taken the same move from the same person dozens of times, but on that one night one of us was a step closer to the other than usual and it hit me so hard I literally had a bruise on my jaw in shape of his shoe tread the next day. Accidents happen. Eliminating obviously dangerous things, and reducing less obviously dangerous things can mitigate them, but it's still a contact sport.

EDIT: That said, I hope for the best for OC and a quick recovery. I hate to see that kind of thing happen.

EDITII: Funny story this reminded me of: I worked a show one time where a legit seven foot giant got his teeth kicked out on a superkick. The guy giving the kick warned him in the back that it would be coming in hot, so to please get his hand up and protect himself. When he asked him afterward what the fuck happened, the big man looked at him, laughed and said "I didn't think you'd be able to kick that high."

[Prime Time]

Haha, that's a good answer.

I didn't see it, of course. It does sound like the kind of thing where you could do it most nights and be fine. But I guess that's my point. The more you push it, the more often the one night it doesn't go to plan is going to come around. It doesn't sound like you can blame these guys (unless you wanted to say they are complicit in wrestling being the way it is nowadays). Just that, if you want to watch wrestling with a frenetic pace and a high volume of strikes, unless they are going to miss by a mile you've got to be prepared for the consequences of that.

And if you'll allow me a 'yelling at clouds' moment for a sec, I think I'd rather people ate up a bit of time with a chinlock here and there.

[Powder]

From Lance Archer:

Says he would be game for AEW to introduce a super-heavyweight title:

As one of those big hosses, I’d be all game for it. You never know, obviously the show is expanding, we get a second show starting in August called Rampage, and everything’s going to be moving forward in a good way, especially if the world continues to get better and move forward.

They’re gonna see more chances and opportunities for big hosses like myself, Will Hobbs, Brian Cage, and all the guys I mentioned before to possibly throw down. I think it’d be a cool thing, to have a Hoss Title. Make it a giant huge belt of some sort, or just jokingly make it a really tiny belt.

This is such a great idea. One that a bunch of us have talked about for years. Putting weight limits on titles similar to boxing and MMA.

[PEN15v2]

It's a good idea in theory. But even MMA organizations don't have this because there aren't enough super heavies to keep the division going.

[Team Farrell]

Yeah, technically the UFC has a superheavyweight division, they've just never had anyone fight in it.

AEW doesn't enforce a weight limit on their current World Heavyweight Championship, so it doesn't seem necessary to me.

I am pro weight divisions. On a micro scale, I've had pretty good luck in positioning our Cruiserweight Championship as close to on par with our Heavyweight Championship as possible. Both can main event without it seeming odd. It's treated, as in UFC, as the top title, just of a different weight class. I would, however, like to do a little better job dividing that line more strictly, but the concept of our company having a Cruiserweight Title as opposed to a "secondary" title came in a number of years ago when we had about a 50/50 split of guys 200-lbs and below, and 240-lbs+.

If any company's going to do it, MLW would be the better one.

[Prime Time]

I wouldn't have thought the better version of it was to add a super-heavyweight division, but to go the other way. Let anyone over, say, 220 compete for the heavyweight amongst themselves but you can play around with the variety of divisions below that. Light-heavy, Cruiser, Middleweight, just to name a few.

That would leave the big guys fighting for the traditional big guy title while opening up the floor to the smaller guys in a weight class that is at least somewhat believable. A Jack Perry, for instance, would fit in at the lightweight division in UFC for example - and that just happens to be the most competitive, most talked about division in recent years. A division that just happens to where Conor McGregor, Khabib, Dustin Poirier, Michael Chandler, Tony Ferguson etc. all play their trade. if you don't want to call it that, fine - how about welterweight, where you'd have George St. Pierre, Kamaru Usman, Tyron Woodley, Robbie Lawler, Jorge Masvidal....

I guess the point is, there's no reason to avoid going lighter if you're serious about this because it's been proven in the UFC plenty of times over by now that you don't have to be a heavyweight to command attention. In fact, heavyweight has rarely been the most prominent division. You can go lighter, and credibly open the floor to some (if not all) of the guys that these companies use nowadays. It's just - as said above - you have to treat it like a world title in it's own right, rather than as an afterthought or stepping stone. But if you do that - well then, people will go along with it.


EDIT: Bringing the ratings up to date

May 12th: 936,000 (-14.12%)
May 19h: 821,000 (-12.28%)

Down roughly a similar amount each week since Blood and Guts.

[PEN15v2]

Was the Tony Khan promo about NJPW/WWE as bad as the transcript makes it seem?

[Team Farrell]

Yes. 1000% yes.

[Prime Time]

I looked it up. It was a bit 'Dixie Khan-ter'. Pretty cringeworthy.

[Benjamin Button]

Why does he keep talking? Reminds me of schizophrenic Paul Fifer when I see him.

[Oliver]

At what point does Tony Khan become an actual issue for AEW? That's two, maybe even three (I seem to recall another one, but can't place my finger on it) times he's had a live microphone in his face over the past couple of weeks and what has come out of it has seemed like rambling nonsense.

[PEN15v2]

Not anytime soon. Whether true or not, his word is that New Japan was happy with his promo, and there's still a significant amount of AEW fans that defended this promo.

[Prime Time]

The exact rating for Dynamite this week has been delayed due to the Memorial Day weekend, but the news out there suggests that the bump to Friday 10pm has hurt them to the tune of around 35% and they'll be coming in around the 510,000 mark. I hear they are in the same slot for most of the month of June?

On the Tony Khan thing, I suppose it comes back to the thing we've spoken about time and again. A lot of things won't be a problem for them if they just want to keep the crowd they've got, whereas it'd be a problem if they decided they wanted to have a serious play at growing the audience. But with no evidence of that, it probably doesn't matter in the least.

[Powder]

AEW is now on Friday's at 10? Wow, that is an awful time slot.