The Man in Blak

Yeah, I'm generally in the same ballpark. Sure, I thought it was better than Rhea/Becky, but that's not saying much. Sami/Gunther was my pick for match of the weekend.

I would say this is a great lesson for AEW and its fans to take moving forward, actually. I don't know about "consistently" here, but I will agree that it's a promotion for ride-or-die wrestling fans and it's great that the talent that's working there is being paid. If there is anything that they are inarguably consistent at, it's putting together solid (or better) PPVs. It's been their calling card from the very beginning and, no matter how things play out in the long run, I think AEW will always have a legacy of being one of the all-time best supercard promotions to their credit. I will also say that there have been glimpses of AEW becoming more than this -- moments where it seemed like AEW could be more successful and even more of a viable alternative to WWE -- and I can't lie and say that watching those moments largely be squandered hasn't been disappointing for someone like me that would like to see a healthier wrestling industry as a whole. But I also think that, in a funny twist of fate, none of that really matters anymore because the scandals with Vince have completely changed the context. For a certain segment of the audience, AEW will always be immune from criticism because They Aren't Vince but, ironically, the stakes aren't as high for AEW anymore because Vince is gone. With his departure, the imminent threat of late-2010s WWE poisoning the industry as a whole and salting the earth on Vince's watch as the company seemed poised to crumble into irrelevance is gone as well. (And, credit to AEW, they absolutely had a hand in stabilizing things by capitalizing upon the increasingly disappointed fanbase that had been driven away by that period of WWE.) So now, both WWE and AEW have an opportunity to just Move Forward; all that baggage is gone. And that leaves AEW to survive on its own merits, so we'll see what happens. I have tickets for Dynasty in St. Louis - I'm sure the matches there are going to be great because they always are. Hopefully, great matches are enough for the company to keep all that talent employed and well paid.

I’m really curious to see how the crowd will play at that Collision - that arena is a college basketball arena on campus at Missouri State, which isn’t a huge school. (My oldest daughter is studying there.) I could see it being a small but active crowd for a Springfield market that doesn’t get wrestling much…but I can also see a mostly college kid crowd that isn’t going to give a shit about Jun Akiyama.

It's not a question of what they know, it's a question of what can be proven. As far as the wrestlers go, I'm not holding my breath expecting anybody -- other than maybe Brock, who's singled out by the WSJ in their reporting -- to do more than say that they "I heard stories (but never imagined)" and offer some thin condemnation of what's alleged.

Setting aside the broader implications of rape culture outside of wrestling (which has already been mentioned), it's also momentarily terrifying for some wrestling fans (and people in the industry itself) to consider that their time, money and attention has contributed to an industry where these atrocities can take place. It's the same way that people become reflexively defensive toward criticism of things that they like - there's a self-identification that's taking place with content in people who aren't consuming that content critically. People take it personally and are rarely willing to simply reckon with the moral implications, even if that reckoning is simply acknowledging that There's No Ethical Consumption Under Capitalism (tm); it's easier to square the circle and cynically assume the worst from a victim, rather than actually hearing them and believing them.

I'm not really expecting anything from the wrestlers or the announcers because all of them, even Brock, can simply say that they never had or can't remember a situation where Vince showed them pics - there's not going to be a way to prove an in-person conversation like that. Any response other than that basically concedes that they've been complicit in covering this up for a long time and nobody's going to sign up for that -- I'm expecting a lot of "no ideas" and "can't believes" from these people. The people in power, however, have some answering to do because it's hard to believe that Vince could have done this at this scale and for this long without anyone knowing. John Laurinaitus is already called out in the suit, but Bruce Prichard, Kevin Dunn, and Paul Levesque (at a minimum) need to do more than simply say that "they haven't read the lawsuit yet."

It was very noticeable all night and, unfortunately, it's going to be that way for a while - it's going to take some time for the talent to relearn how to lay their shots in. Yeah, I'm guessing it's the arm - he immediately crawled over to the corner and started talking to refs on the outside after the double-arm DDT from Drew.

Finally caught up on DVR for Collision and that was the best episode they've put together since everything blew up with Punk. I don't know if it was the hot crowd or a sense that people might be a little more willing to check out AEW with the recent Vince revelations or what, but everybody brought it up and down the card. (Okay, maybe Willie Mack brought it a little *too* much on that botched standing moonsault, but it ended up working out well within the story of the match.)

I know there’s no point in arguing this with you (and probably better suited for the AEW folder anyway) but this is exactly backwards. Cody had already developed the American Nightmare persona (with theme music!) before AEW - he made the All In bet with Meltzer. There’s no AEW without Cody. Yeah, whether Drew improvised that line for the closeup or it was scripted, this wasn’t great. Probably the only stain on an otherwise great Rumble performance. Bron had four eliminations, but you wouldn’t know it by how the Rumble was booked and produced. As someone said earlier, it felt like there was constantly 8+ people in the ring, so Bron never really got to clean house and shine.

Punk vs. Cody was the only bit of drama to the entire Rumble and everybody — the wrestlers, the crowd, the announcers — was already spent by the time they got there. Given all of the intrigue they had coming in, this definitely feels like one of the most disappointing Rumbles in a while. It was one of the sloppiest Rumbles I’ve ever seen, other than Drew bringing some heat for the final minutes. Even McAfee’s “moment”, which didn’t really require much out of anybody, felt like somebody missed a cue. (And a bonus of screwing up Bron’s big highlight by throwing off the timing of Omos’s elimination after that.)

I'll be the wet blanket and say that this didn't quite land for me. As much as I like Hook, the story of the match is Joe giving him way, way too much here as an underdog challenger. If you squint, you can see this match as a PG callback to the famous (if somewhat overrated) match that Joe had with Necro Butcher, with both encounters hinging on two big moments at the midway point that throw the whole contest into jeopardy. For Hook, it's an absolutely gnarly uranage into the announcer's desk and then a considerably less gnarly power bomb on to the ring apron, which nonetheless got milked into a countout tease from referee Bryce Remsburg (hilariously, the same ref in Joe/Butcher). The Butcher match succeeded by using those two big moments as immediate and, more importantly, lasting game changers; Necro Butcher mounted his own comebacks for Joe to cutoff, but there was a desperation and a raggedness to Butcher's offense that still managed to put over the idea that he had been hit by a truck. And then by a second truck. (Yes, bleeding profusely did help to build the illusion there.) Meanwhile, in the Hook match, Joe nonchalantly follows up the counter tease with a powerslam (another Butcher match callback?) for two, a Death Valley Driver for two and then takes Hook into a Muscle Buster...where Hook immediately kicks out at one and turns into Hulk Hogan. With Joe/Butcher, Joe responded to Butcher's final comeback by escalating, furiously fighting back with his own slaps, knees and then one final kick to the head to finally put the zombie down. It's an exclamation mark that puts both guys over: you leave that match thinking that nobody could have delivered that beating like Joe and nobody could have taken that beating like Butcher and still fought as long and as hard as he did. When we come back to AEW in 2024, we settle for shortcuts instead. We have Samoa Joe, legendary bully who's wrestled for over two decades, acting stunned after a one count kickout and cowering like he's seen a ghost. Rather than escalating, he frantically feeds Hook's superman comeback for a while until he abruptly counters out of Redrum out of nowhere into a Kokina Clutch that finishes the match with no drama whatsoever. And then, just to drive home the fact that Hook's last comeback didn't mean anything, he gets his heat back by beating up Hook after the match. Plot twist, plot twist, then an abrupt -- and flat -- end to the book. Sure, you can charitably frame this as 2024 Samoa Joe being a little older and a little more nonchalant with underdog challengers than 2005 Samoa Joe and let that contrast tell the tale of the match. But where do both guys go from here? Joe's a newly minted champ that seems to have barely escaped the first upstart challenger that he faced, less than a month into his title reign? Hook almost had the champ beat and then I guess he didn't? The match, as a whole, felt fresh because it was the first no-bullshit AEW World Title match in months and they played it straight, but tell me if this feels like a four-star asskicking if you watch it six months from now.

He’s signed but, allegedly, it’s a “flexible” deal with a limited number of North American dates: https://www.cagesideseats.com/platform/amp/aew/2023/11/15/23963389/aew-signs-kota-ibushi-official-announcement-all-elite

I don't remember the details of Ibushi's AEW deal, but I'd say that maybe it's worth it for someone at AEW to make a phone call to whoever it was in NOAH that decided it would be a good idea to book Ibushi for a 35 minute match when it was reported that one of his ankles was already injured before the show. I agree that Kota might as well be wrestling with a fork in his back at this point -- to be frank, his AEW appearances have been so bad that they've been hard to watch -- but NOAH should have done better here.

If you go by TV ratings, MJF as the World Champion is the only thing that's consistently made a noticeable positive impact in the post-Punk era of AEW. I guess we'll find out over the next few weeks exactly how much of that was MJF and how much of that was the belt.

They’ve got to give Garcia something because he’s been killing it throughout the tournament in an utterly thankless assignment as cannon fodder. If Danielson and Kingston are the 1A and 1B guys who have carried the CC, Garcia is right behind them in the number two slot.