Quote:
Originally Posted by MMSS
I honestly didn't think he looked that bad, but in my head he's looked like crap for a few years now. I looked up him at mania in like 2016 which is when I got back into wrestling and at the time thought he looked awful (it had been 10+ years) and he does look worse than that but I have no doubt he could lose it if he wanted to. I genuinely think he thinks it's a good thing for his character, the same for lots of other weird little things he's going to do and has been doing (i.e. face paint).
I think this forum is interesting in that it's seemingly (and I could be way off mark here) reasonably ITK older school fans of wrestling. I think it's interesting because I imagine you're the kind of people who AEW should be attempting to get on side if they want to take off and you all seem very luke warm about what was a good show and you have the same reaction to a lot of very good NXT PPVs.
This forum as a whole does a really good job imo of looking at things without preconceived notions bringing bias into their views. It's why it was able to pick up on Jerichos last WWE run being entertaining while most other places were still in their "jericho is stuck in the past, is old, and has worn out his welcome" mentality. On the other end of the spectrum, it enables the forum to call PPVs from things we want to like bad such as some of the more recent NXT ppvs where it's just a bunch of high spots and kickouts with no real drama to any of the matches. We just ... kind of view things as they are instead of what we expect or want them to be.
As for AEW itself, they were always going to have the Meltzer lovers and WWE haters. Last night was their wet dream. Cody Rhodes beating up a HHH throne! Dean Ambrose being crazy! Kickouts! High spots! Blood everywhere! Chanting along to SCU calling your city bad!
To succeed long term - remember, TNA had a lot of hype initially too - you're gonna need the other 85% of the wrestling fandom. With the way they promoted their product it sounded like they were aware of that fact and so I was intrigued. They talked about a more realistic feel (which I took to mean less spamming high spots with no drama and more in ring storytelling). They talked about wins and losses mattering (which we've already seen Kenny Omega lose a title shot and thank his opponent and the run in participant for raising the stakes while zero people seemed to care about losing). They talked about better production values (which I took to mean less crowd shots during matches and less quick cuts that make me mildly nauseous). None of those things came to fruition. It was, as I said last night, like watching an ROH show. Which is
fine. There's nothing wrong with just being an indy fed backed by a wealthy wrestling fan. It just wasn't what I was hoping for long term - a true competitor to Vince.