Did Edge’s debut match feel weird to anyone else? Aside from his win, it almost felt like Jericho’s near-squash loss to Hobbs earlier that night. I suppose I’m impressed they took an adventurous route toward Edge vs. Christian storytelling—I did like the “ultimate opportunist” belt finish—but I would think they’d want their new new biggest face to look as strong as possible. I felt pretty underwhelmed waiting for it only to see him get beat up.
Tony just lets guys like that pretty much book themselves, so given the fact he wants to be a face (wasn't that why the judgement day thing didn't work out? He wanted to be face and no spooky stuff?) I guess he was going for the struggling underdog dynamic but it definitely came off a little flat. I imagine it was supposed to be because they're still trying to build Luchasaurus, but I agree they kinda made Edge look like a weakling at points which is dumb since he's like the one dude who's almost as big and athletic. The finish was pretty tired too..I feel like that exact thing happens at least once a week between the two shows. Then the run in parade to close the show was a dumb cherry on a shitty sundae.
Unfortunately a recurring theme I've noticed in AEW is that the older guys who aren't dicks can be a little too giving and bring themselves down to their opponent instead of elevating them. Danielson is the worst about it but Moxley and Jericho do it too. You don't need 50-50 booking and a bunch of false finishes to make a guy look good... especially a guy like Luchasaurus who already looks great and can work. I absolutely love that Christian went from the guy who would "outwork everyone" to barely ever wrestling and purposely looking like shit when he did though, so I'll wait and see how it plays out before passing too much judgement.
Khan really needs to hire a booker and stop just letting everyone do what they want though. The show has this really scattershot feel to it nowadays and even if Tony might have an idea of the big picture he wants, he's obviously pretty clueless about the best route to take to get there. Also needs to get the fuck off Twitter, I think getting pummeled in the ratings h2h with supernxt may have broken him. Stop worrying about what HBK is doing and fix your own fucking shows dude.
@Mr. Kamikazi Did you enjoy it? SMW is a weird one for me because in theory I should love it, but it doesn't really do much for me for the most part. Cornette wanted a serious territory like mid South or Florida but Rick Rubin wanted some goofy Memphis inspired stuff like Prince Kharis and Ninjas and since he was paying the bills there was no overruling him. Some of the shows and angles are great (New Jack in SMW was money) and some are almost comically bad. Unfortunately a lot of it is just boring though. He somehow always managed to have announcers who felt like they were way too big for a promotion that was mostly running armory and high school gym shows - Caudle, JR, Dutch, and Lance Russell.
It is impressive that Cornette managed to get that promotion up and running in a matter of months and I believe Rubin only put like 60k up which he got a lot of mileage out of. I know modern fans who don't even listen to Cornette (but still think they know everything about both him and the business) love to bring SMW going out of business like it's some kind of dunk on him but most promoters would have gone under in a year or less. Hell even the WWF was losing money at that point.
Topic: The Official Professional Wrestling Thread (Read 45057 times)