All Elite Wrestling - Discussion

[Pharaoh]

Think the slow build pace and less screen time for their big guns does hurt them at times and yes they've botched a lot of things.

The roster is too large but when you think about it half of them are green as grass and shouldn't really be doing much anyway.

I'll reserve judgement until after All Out as I'm expecting that show to be their big sell to fans.

That said they make no apologies for being a wrestling company - not entertainment. Witness Punk's promo for further proof.

As someone who merely follows it and doesn't watch it I'm pretty impressed with what they've done in such a short period of time and building Darby, MJF & Hangman will pay off.

Punk, (Bryan?), Omega, Hangman, Darby, MJF, Jericho, (Bray?), Black is a quality mix at the top of the card.

I'd like them to do better with Andrades, (Cody), Cage and Miro.

That's a lot of names to keep on TV every week and keep interesting though

Sent from my SM-G781B using RealGM Forums mobile app

[tugs]

Half of the roster qualifies for "jobber" status anyway. The company needs those type of soldiers to book strong midcard and main event talents. Everyone can't just be booked competitive, at least not for now. It'll only help them in the long term anyway for effective underdog storytelling, which both WWE and AEW suck at right now.

[bondom34]

Think that building up Jungle Boy into where he's at is pretty cool too, I really think the tag division has some strength to it and seems to be growing, but Jurassic Express has been a tag team that's been really good imo. Add in Best Friends/OC, Starks, Guevarra, Kingston (who was an indies guy but has really become a bit of an AEW star as well) and they've got a solid base of talent.

They've been my wrestling option of choice for a while but tbh quite a few of the guys I've grown to be a fan of are just AEW guys, or wrestlers who came up through indies and now are AEW. To some extent getting in Punk/Jericho/Cody and the like is almost a bridge to invite people more familiar with them in and get them to know the other guys better.

I don't know for sure, and don't want to jinx it but would be very surprised if Punk/Allin is anything but really good as it's pretty rare for Allin to have a match that's not entertaining and selling him to new fans is an extension of that idea and what Punk seemed to be interested in doing a bit of as well by his speech.

[bondom34]

Bit of an aside to that but between Being the Elite which I admit I don't watch and multiple episodes of Dark every week seems they utilize YouTube's growing platform as well. I don't normally but with nothing much on TV this week have been watching Dark and yeah it's lower card guys at least for some matches but its content and gives some experience.

[Scott Hall]

Think the slow build pace and less screen time for their big guns does hurt them at times and yes they've botched a lot of things.

The roster is too large but when you think about it half of them are green as grass and shouldn't really be doing much anyway.

I'll reserve judgement until after All Out as I'm expecting that show to be their big sell to fans.

That said they make no apologies for being a wrestling company - not entertainment. Witness Punk's promo for further proof.

As someone who merely follows it and doesn't watch it I'm pretty impressed with what they've done in such a short period of time and building Darby, MJF & Hangman will pay off.

Punk, (Bryan?), Omega, Hangman, Darby, MJF, Jericho, (Bray?), Black is a quality mix at the top of the card.

I'd like them to do better with Andrades, (Cody), Cage and Miro.

That's a lot of names to keep on TV every week and keep interesting though

Sent from my SM-G781B using RealGM Forums mobile app

What's funny is when they first started up Cody was like we don't need to feature the same guys on TV every week
and I was all for this couldn't be happier to hear that especially when you watch WWE and it's the same Miz TV segment
you've seen for the last 13 years or so? or Randy Orton disrespecting a legend or turning on someone or another boring
Sheamus match or corny New Day promo or now in it's current state 4-5 rematches every week.

But with the Wrestling market completely over saturated with RAW, Smackdown, NXT, Dynamite, Impact etc I find
it hard to keep up with everything. I just have no time to watch ROH, NXT UK, the AEW Youtube show etc. At first I kind
of dreaded more Wrestling on with Rampage but was at least happy it's only a 1 hour show but now with their ever growing
roster I feel like it would be better if it was 2 hours and it was treated as the "B" show and a place to integrate all the
Indy guys and introduce them to the audience before throwing them into high profile Dynamite stuff. But being
bombarded with soooo much Wrestling on you don't have a chance to breath it's hard to keep track of everything
so when I don't see Malaki, Andrade, Miro, Cody etc for 2-3 weeks I completely forget what they're even doing or
who they are feuding with and in the case of Miro he literally hasn't done anything interesting his entire time there.

Just from studying their ratings every time there is some buzz and ex WWE guy comes they get a nice spike in ratings
and then it starts going down again (right now Dynamite is on a 4 week decline) and then they bring in someone new
and it goes up again. What that seems to tell me is there is interest in the former WWE star but a lot of people
aren't buying into the AEW young stars as of right now. To be honest Darby Allin, MJF, Adam Page, Jungle Boy even
the Young Bucks I think all have limited upside and I don't see them interesting the fickle/casual/lapsed fan. The
good news is though I think AEW does good with kids and CM Punk said if he was a teenager Darby Allin would be his
favorite wrestler.

I had never had the chance to take a deep delve into the WWE Network before until the pandemic started and I
started off in 1993 with the RAWs I missed back then and started watching each episode. When I got into late 1995
I started watching Nitro as well along with RAW. Right now I'm just in December 1996 and WCW does such a great job
of integrating ex WWE stars jumping over, plus building young new talent and bringing them along slowly and having
good free flowing storylines from week to week. They also don't have some guy fresh out of the power plant facing
Hogan or Sting or Savage or The Giant and going 20-30 minutes with 5 false finishes trying to have a 5 star match
and get "this is awesome chants" . But each Nitro was loaded almost top to bottom it was like a PPV each week
on Cable you could tell they were really trying and not half assing anything and there was a distinct difference
between the 2 hours you were investing into it then the 2 hours you would invest into WCW Saturday Night.

[Pharaoh]

Think the slow build pace and less screen time for their big guns does hurt them at times and yes they've botched a lot of things.

The roster is too large but when you think about it half of them are green as grass and shouldn't really be doing much anyway.

I'll reserve judgement until after All Out as I'm expecting that show to be their big sell to fans.

That said they make no apologies for being a wrestling company - not entertainment. Witness Punk's promo for further proof.

As someone who merely follows it and doesn't watch it I'm pretty impressed with what they've done in such a short period of time and building Darby, MJF & Hangman will pay off.

Punk, (Bryan?), Omega, Hangman, Darby, MJF, Jericho, (Bray?), Black is a quality mix at the top of the card.

I'd like them to do better with Andrades, (Cody), Cage and Miro.

That's a lot of names to keep on TV every week and keep interesting though

Sent from my SM-G781B using RealGM Forums mobile app

What's funny is when they first started up Cody was like we don't need to feature the same guys on TV every week
and I was all for this couldn't be happier to hear that especially when you watch WWE and it's the same Miz TV segment
you've seen for the last 13 years or so? or Randy Orton disrespecting a legend or turning on someone or another boring
Sheamus match or corny New Day promo or now in it's current state 4-5 rematches every week.

But with the Wrestling market completely over saturated with RAW, Smackdown, NXT, Dynamite, Impact etc I find
it hard to keep up with everything. I just have no time to watch ROH, NXT UK, the AEW Youtube show etc. At first I kind
of dreaded more Wrestling on with Rampage but was at least happy it's only a 1 hour show but now with their ever growing
roster I feel like it would be better if it was 2 hours and it was treated as the "B" show and a place to integrate all the
Indy guys and introduce them to the audience before throwing them into high profile Dynamite stuff. But being
bombarded with soooo much Wrestling on you don't have a chance to breath it's hard to keep track of everything
so when I don't see Malaki, Andrade, Miro, Cody etc for 2-3 weeks I completely forget what they're even doing or
who they are feuding with and in the case of Miro he literally hasn't done anything interesting his entire time there.

Just from studying their ratings every time there is some buzz and ex WWE guy comes they get a nice spike in ratings
and then it starts going down again (right now Dynamite is on a 4 week decline) and then they bring in someone new
and it goes up again. What that seems to tell me is there is interest in the former WWE star but a lot of people
aren't buying into the AEW young stars as of right now. To be honest Darby Allin, MJF, Adam Page, Jungle Boy even
the Young Bucks I think all have limited upside and I don't see them interesting the fickle/casual/lapsed fan. The
good news is though I think AEW does good with kids and CM Punk said if he was a teenager Darby Allin would be his
favorite wrestler.

I had never had the chance to take a deep delve into the WWE Network before until the pandemic started and I
started off in 1993 with the RAWs I missed back then and started watching each episode. When I got into late 1995
I started watching Nitro as well along with RAW. Right now I'm just in December 1996 and WCW does such a great job
of integrating ex WWE stars jumping over, plus building young new talent and bringing them along slowly and having
good free flowing storylines from week to week. They also don't have some guy fresh out of the power plant facing
Hogan or Sting or Savage or The Giant and going 20-30 minutes with 5 false finishes trying to have a 5 star match
and get "this is awesome chants" . But each Nitro was loaded almost top to bottom it was like a PPV each week
on Cable you could tell they were really trying and not half assing anything and there was a distinct difference
between the 2 hours you were investing into it then the 2 hours you would invest into WCW Saturday Night.

Yeah but Nitro was up against Raw, Bischoff wanted to win that "war", they had essentially unlimited funds (from 94-97) and it was ON!

Now? The market is saturated, not just with wrestling but with entertainment options whenever you choose.

There's a million streaming services, a dozen wrestling shows, social media that most people seem to live on.

I don't think we can compare how a 2 year old company structures their product to anything else tbh

They have made a load of mistakes in presentation, in who they feature and how they've used those guys BUT:

IF they only featured the "known" names each week it comes off as WWE lite, the minor league.

You'd also end up burning through fueds quickly in between PPVs and none of that stuff would resonate or really matter long term.

I believe they're extremely conscious of not coming off like a wanna be WWE and it's why the show has been what it's been.

All that said: I know ratings are used as a really important thing, the thing to gauge how they're doing as a company.

It's not 1996 anymore

AEW atm has more buzz and more momentum in the wrestling landscape than I ever thought possible.

And if people think Vince isn't paying attention explain why Brock & Becky just crashed Summerslam

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[Marcus]

this Punk guy is pretty good on the mic. did you guys know anything about him?

[Dominator83]

Think the slow build pace and less screen time for their big guns does hurt them at times and yes they've botched a lot of things.

The roster is too large but when you think about it half of them are green as grass and shouldn't really be doing much anyway.

I'll reserve judgement until after All Out as I'm expecting that show to be their big sell to fans.

That said they make no apologies for being a wrestling company - not entertainment. Witness Punk's promo for further proof.

As someone who merely follows it and doesn't watch it I'm pretty impressed with what they've done in such a short period of time and building Darby, MJF & Hangman will pay off.

Punk, (Bryan?), Omega, Hangman, Darby, MJF, Jericho, (Bray?), Black is a quality mix at the top of the card.

I'd like them to do better with Andrades, (Cody), Cage and Miro.

That's a lot of names to keep on TV every week and keep interesting though

Sent from my SM-G781B using RealGM Forums mobile app

What's funny is when they first started up Cody was like we don't need to feature the same guys on TV every week
and I was all for this couldn't be happier to hear that especially when you watch WWE and it's the same Miz TV segment
you've seen for the last 13 years or so? or Randy Orton disrespecting a legend or turning on someone or another boring
Sheamus match or corny New Day promo or now in it's current state 4-5 rematches every week.

But with the Wrestling market completely over saturated with RAW, Smackdown, NXT, Dynamite, Impact etc I find
it hard to keep up with everything. I just have no time to watch ROH, NXT UK, the AEW Youtube show etc. At first I kind
of dreaded more Wrestling on with Rampage but was at least happy it's only a 1 hour show but now with their ever growing
roster I feel like it would be better if it was 2 hours and it was treated as the "B" show and a place to integrate all the
Indy guys and introduce them to the audience before throwing them into high profile Dynamite stuff. But being
bombarded with soooo much Wrestling on you don't have a chance to breath it's hard to keep track of everything
so when I don't see Malaki, Andrade, Miro, Cody etc for 2-3 weeks I completely forget what they're even doing or
who they are feuding with and in the case of Miro he literally hasn't done anything interesting his entire time there.

Just from studying their ratings every time there is some buzz and ex WWE guy comes they get a nice spike in ratings
and then it starts going down again (right now Dynamite is on a 4 week decline) and then they bring in someone new
and it goes up again. What that seems to tell me is there is interest in the former WWE star but a lot of people
aren't buying into the AEW young stars as of right now. To be honest Darby Allin, MJF, Adam Page, Jungle Boy even
the Young Bucks I think all have limited upside and I don't see them interesting the fickle/casual/lapsed fan. The
good news is though I think AEW does good with kids and CM Punk said if he was a teenager Darby Allin would be his
favorite wrestler.

I had never had the chance to take a deep delve into the WWE Network before until the pandemic started and I
started off in 1993 with the RAWs I missed back then and started watching each episode. When I got into late 1995
I started watching Nitro as well along with RAW. Right now I'm just in December 1996 and WCW does such a great job
of integrating ex WWE stars jumping over, plus building young new talent and bringing them along slowly and having
good free flowing storylines from week to week. They also don't have some guy fresh out of the power plant facing
Hogan or Sting or Savage or The Giant and going 20-30 minutes with 5 false finishes trying to have a 5 star match
and get "this is awesome chants" . But each Nitro was loaded almost top to bottom it was like a PPV each week
on Cable you could tell they were really trying and not half assing anything and there was a distinct difference
between the 2 hours you were investing into it then the 2 hours you would invest into WCW Saturday Night.

Yeah but Nitro was up against Raw, Bischoff wanted to win that "war", they had essentially unlimited funds (from 94-97) and it was ON!

Now? The market is saturated, not just with wrestling but with entertainment options whenever you choose.

There's a million streaming services, a dozen wrestling shows, social media that most people seem to live on.

I don't think we can compare how a 2 year old company structures their product to anything else tbh

They have made a load of mistakes in presentation, in who they feature and how they've used those guys BUT:

IF they only featured the "known" names each week it comes off as WWE lite, the minor league.

You'd also end up burning through fueds quickly in between PPVs and none of that stuff would resonate or really matter long term.

I believe they're extremely conscious of not coming off like a wanna be WWE and it's why the show has been what it's been.

All that said: I know ratings are used as a really important thing, the thing to gauge how they're doing as a company.

It's not 1996 anymore

AEW atm has more buzz and more momentum in the wrestling landscape than I ever thought possible.

And if people think Vince isn't paying attention explain why Brock & Becky just crashed Summerslam

Sent from my SM-G781B using RealGM Forums mobile app

Yea to steal what somebody said on the GB:

WWE = Knicks

AEW= Nets

[Amare_1_Knicks]

Man, they are shoving Daniel Garcia down our throats. In the past 3 weeks I’ve seen more of him than guys like Andrade and Malakai. The guy doesn’t have a discernible look — he’s all of 5’10, 165 lbs, looks like a regular Joe and isn’t anything special in the ring or on the mic, but he’s been featured heavily. Don’t get it.

[tugs]

Swerve: AEW gonna put Daniel Garcia in a storyline where a scientific procedure to enhance his skills and physique will be conducted ala Captain America and he comes out that pod as...

Danielson

Bryan

[Pharaoh]

Isn't Garcia the boxer/MMA guy?

Maybe they're positioning him for something down the line?

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[Dominator83]

Man, they are shoving Daniel Garcia down our throats. In the past 3 weeks I’ve seen more of him than guys like Andrade and Malakai. The guy doesn’t have a discernible look — he’s all of 5’10, 165 lbs, looks like a regular Joe and isn’t anything special in the ring or on the mic, but he’s been featured heavily. Don’t get it.

Maybe with all these new WWE guys coming in, they're trying to build up another homegrown to balance things.

But I agree not sure about him being that guy

[bondom34]

Well guess that sort of confirms Danielson lol.

[tugs]

Lol, Punk's unfiltered

[Amare_1_Knicks]

Last nights episode was all over the place, and with Punk coming in they should’ve put on a much, much better show. Punks debut night and you have Cesar Benoni, Ryan Nemeth, JD Drake in a 3 man tag? And then another tag with the Factory vs Gunn Club? And the opener’s a lengthy Hardy v OC match? .. ugh.

& what was up with closing the show with Lee Johnson coming out? You don’t close your show by having a job guy come out to chase off your new star heel. It’d be different if it was Cody or Hangman coming out to chase him off, but not Lee Johnson.

Edit: two final points about last nights show:
They have guys come in, and they’re perceived as game changers and difference makers, but in all actuality, they just become another part of the show. Punk has face of the franchise potential, but his spot on the show, and his type of segment made him feel kind of regular.

And I saw they had Giannis at the show last night when it went off the air (or before it went on)… why wouldn’t you put that on TV? You have this huge, mainstream, mega star NBA champion who plays in Milwaukee (the city they were in last night) and you don’t put that on TV? You could’ve cut out 5-6 minutes of filler from the show — and there was plenty and have him come out and do whatever the ****.

The whole show was puzzling and lackluster, all things considered.

[iMoreland]

Why is Malakai retreating from Lee Johnson?

[Scott Hall]

Think the slow build pace and less screen time for their big guns does hurt them at times and yes they've botched a lot of things.

The roster is too large but when you think about it half of them are green as grass and shouldn't really be doing much anyway.

I'll reserve judgement until after All Out as I'm expecting that show to be their big sell to fans.

That said they make no apologies for being a wrestling company - not entertainment. Witness Punk's promo for further proof.

As someone who merely follows it and doesn't watch it I'm pretty impressed with what they've done in such a short period of time and building Darby, MJF & Hangman will pay off.

Punk, (Bryan?), Omega, Hangman, Darby, MJF, Jericho, (Bray?), Black is a quality mix at the top of the card.

I'd like them to do better with Andrades, (Cody), Cage and Miro.

That's a lot of names to keep on TV every week and keep interesting though

Sent from my SM-G781B using RealGM Forums mobile app

What's funny is when they first started up Cody was like we don't need to feature the same guys on TV every week
and I was all for this couldn't be happier to hear that especially when you watch WWE and it's the same Miz TV segment
you've seen for the last 13 years or so? or Randy Orton disrespecting a legend or turning on someone or another boring
Sheamus match or corny New Day promo or now in it's current state 4-5 rematches every week.

But with the Wrestling market completely over saturated with RAW, Smackdown, NXT, Dynamite, Impact etc I find
it hard to keep up with everything. I just have no time to watch ROH, NXT UK, the AEW Youtube show etc. At first I kind
of dreaded more Wrestling on with Rampage but was at least happy it's only a 1 hour show but now with their ever growing
roster I feel like it would be better if it was 2 hours and it was treated as the "B" show and a place to integrate all the
Indy guys and introduce them to the audience before throwing them into high profile Dynamite stuff. But being
bombarded with soooo much Wrestling on you don't have a chance to breath it's hard to keep track of everything
so when I don't see Malaki, Andrade, Miro, Cody etc for 2-3 weeks I completely forget what they're even doing or
who they are feuding with and in the case of Miro he literally hasn't done anything interesting his entire time there.

Just from studying their ratings every time there is some buzz and ex WWE guy comes they get a nice spike in ratings
and then it starts going down again (right now Dynamite is on a 4 week decline) and then they bring in someone new
and it goes up again. What that seems to tell me is there is interest in the former WWE star but a lot of people
aren't buying into the AEW young stars as of right now. To be honest Darby Allin, MJF, Adam Page, Jungle Boy even
the Young Bucks I think all have limited upside and I don't see them interesting the fickle/casual/lapsed fan. The
good news is though I think AEW does good with kids and CM Punk said if he was a teenager Darby Allin would be his
favorite wrestler.

I had never had the chance to take a deep delve into the WWE Network before until the pandemic started and I
started off in 1993 with the RAWs I missed back then and started watching each episode. When I got into late 1995
I started watching Nitro as well along with RAW. Right now I'm just in December 1996 and WCW does such a great job
of integrating ex WWE stars jumping over, plus building young new talent and bringing them along slowly and having
good free flowing storylines from week to week. They also don't have some guy fresh out of the power plant facing
Hogan or Sting or Savage or The Giant and going 20-30 minutes with 5 false finishes trying to have a 5 star match
and get "this is awesome chants" . But each Nitro was loaded almost top to bottom it was like a PPV each week
on Cable you could tell they were really trying and not half assing anything and there was a distinct difference
between the 2 hours you were investing into it then the 2 hours you would invest into WCW Saturday Night.

Yeah but Nitro was up against Raw, Bischoff wanted to win that "war", they had essentially unlimited funds (from 94-97) and it was ON!

Now? The market is saturated, not just with wrestling but with entertainment options whenever you choose.

There's a million streaming services, a dozen wrestling shows, social media that most people seem to live on.

I don't think we can compare how a 2 year old company structures their product to anything else tbh

They have made a load of mistakes in presentation, in who they feature and how they've used those guys BUT:

IF they only featured the "known" names each week it comes off as WWE lite, the minor league.

You'd also end up burning through fueds quickly in between PPVs and none of that stuff would resonate or really matter long term.

I believe they're extremely conscious of not coming off like a wanna be WWE and it's why the show has been what it's been.

All that said: I know ratings are used as a really important thing, the thing to gauge how they're doing as a company.

It's not 1996 anymore

AEW atm has more buzz and more momentum in the wrestling landscape than I ever thought possible.

And if people think Vince isn't paying attention explain why Brock & Becky just crashed Summerslam

Sent from my SM-G781B using RealGM Forums mobile app

I guess my point is you shouldn't have to be in a "war" to try to put on a loaded show. All I'm saying is there is a time
and place to put the foot on the gas and times to just fill out a couple of hours on TV moving things along. AEW
started off during one of the biggest talent droughts in history and then most of the top players around the world
were under contract to other promotions so it was gonna take some time to start building up the roster. Then the
pandemic hit. I just feel like for a new company trying to make it's mark with crowds back and signing big names
and a lot of buzz you shouldn't be actually declining in viewers. Now this week was up a bit with Punk going up
from 975,000 to a 1.1 despite kind of a half assed booked show again. I will reserve judgement for the PPV to see
if we actually get a top loaded best of the best show but at this point I'm already coming to grips that Tony Khan
loves no name Indy guys with no back stories as much as Vince loves juiced up steroid monsters.

I agree about ratings and although sometimes the ratings don't seem that good to what we are conditioned on in
the past it's important to keep in mind the amount of millions of people that have cut cable in the last 5 years
me included. Also I do notice AEW always trends well on Twitter if that means anything.

When we talk about the "no name" guys we're not talking about the MJF, Darby Allin, Jungle Boy, Luchasauras,
Young Bucks, Britt Bakers of the world they actually have done a good job building up that core of people that
aren't WWE people it's the complete obscure people even hardcore fans have no idea who they are.

Speaking of 1996 there's a lot of parallels right now to that year with AEW signing so many guys jumping ship
and creating a buzz and many lapsed fans that left after the steroid scandal curious to what's going on and WCW
was probably perceived as the minor leagues to non Southern fans back then. Maybe that's what everybody
wants to see is a war? I think a lot of people stopped watching WWE over the last 15 years or so because it
was clear WWE became complacent and was half assesing it and learned to make money by not trying and
the fans don't wanna get behind a product that's not trying. I don't know if Vince is taking AEW seriously or not
by sending them top talent but hopefully bringing back Brock and Becky is a sign he does people want to see
both companies try like in 1996. And speaking of the 90's whether it's early 90's or late 90's there's so many things
well they used to do with production, or features on the show, booking philosophies etc that fans loved that
they've gone away from that worked it boggles my mind why they don't bring some of it back.

[Pharaoh]

Was disappointed with the last episode of Dynamite tbh

That's the flagship show and too much filler and weird finish (although I'm sure it'll be Black v Johnson at the PPV)

I did say I'll reserve judgement until after the PPV.

I'm hoping they load up and hit home runs all night long but the TV show booking was, is and has been a issue their entire existence

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[jakecronus8]

I was at the Milwaukee show. You’ll see plenty of Giannis on Rampage tonight I’m guessing.

Also, the tag match that airs tonight is maybe the best match I’ve ever seen in person. Don’t miss it.

ETA: Punk came out for a promo in a dark segment after they taped Rampage wearing a Misfits ‘Fiend Club’ shirt. Take that for what you will.

[WRau1]

Omega getting in Christian's face and screaming "you think you know me, you think you know me!?' was **** brilliant. I lol'd so hard.