So if AEW was starting say...3 1/2 years ago, you guys wouldn't have wanted an AJ Styles because he was 39 years old?

I actually wouldn't mind half the WWE roster being over there because the roster isn't the problem. Vince and creative are. I'd love to see what they could do with more progressive booking.

The only things I'm looking for out of a wrestling show that WWE isn't giving me right now are logical and compelling storylines that make me care about why these people are fighting and a company that pushes the people the fans want to see. How the hell can you tell where a new company is going to land on these things after their first show?

Right. The internet is going crazy but I think it's important to chill out a bit on either extreme positive or negative reactions.

At the end of the day, it was definitely a positive debut and I'm curious to see if WWE reacts in any way (obviously not explicitly, but if they make any changes to the show in the coming weeks).

But speaking of them getting WWE people... just looking at their women's division, it feels like there is a major lack of star power compared to what WWE has built. I have to imagine Sasha Banks is among the top people they could possibly get. And I think Sasha has some leverage over WWE atm after the success of this show, so I'm curious how that plays out.

By the way, I've read some people throw out TNA/Impact as a possible comparison. Really need to check out how far Impact went this week to draw in casual or lapsed fans.

I know I give Bailey and Sasha **** for crying all the time but apparently this was Pikachu girl's first pyro and I thought her getting emotional at it was nice.



I legitimately thought this was a joke but had to google to make sure. Don't think I should be surprised but I am. Also they have Michael Elgin on their roster now which I didn't know. Guess he was never getting a job at AEW anyway.

It's not too bad. They have some good workers and characters. Allie, Britt Baker, Penelope Ford and those Japanese girls. Emma is pretty much a lock to join and there's a bunch of really good free agents as well. TNA has a decent women's division and that place seems to be a revolving door so there's enough around for AEW to build. Sasha would be huge for them though.

I had a blast with the PPV. Loved the overhead camera shots on turnbuckles. Loved the presentation and the matches were great. As a super jaded WWE fan, this was super refreshing and made me excited for wrestling again.


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I could be wrong, but this promo strikes me as unscripted. I desperately hope that AEW allows its wrestlers to do unscripted promos most of the time. That absolutely needs to go back to being the industry norm.

The only reason this may work tbh is that the wwe and the wrestling industry in general has never been more vulnerable. It won’t take much in the way of viewership to actually compete with or surpass wwe and considering wwe is actually losing a lot of ground with kids (gjge on that whole pg era thing) a compelling product with some name recognition could conceivably surpass

Which brings me back to cm punk. Is he a mainstream enough name to draw casual eyes? Absolutely not. But the golden era of wrestling isn’t likely to ever happen again so of what’s left you gotta appeal to what’ll attract them. He’s still going to be a draw among wrestling fans and will take ratings away from WWE to AEW

I was impressed, hope they don’t mess this up.

I guess this will be an unpopular opinion, but I thought Jericho wrestled his best match in a decade. I couldn't believe how good he was. Better than Omega IMO.

Some people get too caught up on his (48-year-old) look. Screw that. He worked his ass off, and he was clearly in pretty good shape. He was near top gear for 30 minutes.

Thread in WrestlingForum saying that DoN reportedly did 200k PPV buys? That seems insane if true.

Meltzer is saying it's around 200K buys. On something like that, he's not going to BS.

I'm probably higher on AEW than anyone on this forum, and even I am quite surprised.

However, as I said once before, it means nothing. Weekly TV will make or break them.

Jericho said he called Vince before he signed with AEW and there were no hard feelings.

WWE made a big production about Ambrose/Moxley leaving and milked it for all it was worth (while still jobbing him out).

Sami mentions AEW on Raw tonight.

Ratings for WWE continue to crater and while a lot of it is on Vince's creative decisions, his hands are really tied as to what kind of risks he can take without freaking out share holders or networks. He's tried to do storylines where he sold the WWE or even killed himself off and everyone lost their minds because apparently share holders don't know it's not real. As much as he shoves guys like Reigns down everyone's throats, this is who the network demands too.

He really is kind of limited to what kinds of things he can do to boost ratings...at least publicly.

This is all obviously fantasy booking and extremely wishful thinking, but what if he was in on this? What if Vince was secretly on board with AEW, helping them grow for a year or two until they can then launch the biggest crossover angle in the history of wrestling. A chance to do the failed WCW Invasion angle the right way?

What if Vince has so much money that he just secretly wants to be challenged again?

Of course it will never happen, but that might be the only thing left that could ever make the WWE great again.

Vince's hands aren't tied regarding creative; he thinks the dumb stuff he puts on air every week is awesome.

At this point he has the sense of humor and storytelling of a 12 year old.

No one is hindering his genius; he has no genius left.

Vince is certainly not "in on it," but I do think AEW succeeding could be good for WWE. Not only would competition possibly bring out more urgency in the talent and product, but maybe AEW brings back some lapsed fans who end up checking out WWE. Or it helps wrestling become more of a mainstream concept again which can only really be good for WWE.

So it might be a case where Vince recognizes that AEW is good for wrestling as a whole, which is good for WWE. Especially since they aren't really competing directly in terms of TV time atm.

Seth and Kofi are holding the belts and they turned Bork into Brodus Clay

The bar is pretty low here

Bloody Rhodes was too much and unnecessary. However, the women were far better than WWE's talent. Overall it was terrible so the upside is there's only one way to go from here. How long before RVD vs Blue Meanie?

I guarantee you Vince thinks he did the Invasion angle the right way the first time out.

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Forgot this:
TYB's match is at least 2 stars too many. Ditto for Jericho/KO. Didn't see the matches prior to Cody/Dustin.

I think those ratings are fair enough but I'd knock the last three down half a star or so. TYB match maybe less as I really liked it.

Meltzers ratings stopped being relevant when he started throwing out 6 and 7 stars for his friends

Yeah, at this point I've just given up on Meltzer's ratings of modern wrestling as being anything I can take seriously. I still like to refer to his past ratings as a reference point, but it's clear that he just sees something else entirely than I do when we watch the same matches today.

Still provides decent conversation fodder though.

98,000 buys is the official number, which is pretty good and LOLMeltzer still more than doubled it in his "estimate"

The 200k referenced earlier itt by Meltzer was how many searches the show got on Google trends. It had nothing to do with the buys.