When I do watch AEW I do always leave with the thought that it isn't all that good. It just never hits the lows that WWE does. The average and top stuff isn't all that different. If anything WWE highs are much higher (I still think NXT >>>>>>>>>> at it's best it just benefited from meh NXT run).

That's at least funny bad, a lot of WWE is boring bad. I do think with AEW starting to produce a million hours of tv time it is only time until it is mostly bland, isn't too far off that already.

I am starting to feel lukewarm on AEW. I've still seen every show and ordered every PPV but they are in an interesting position right now.

I think they want to delay putting the belt on MJF but I think he's actually their biggest star. Omega may be "the best wrestler in the world" but I bet most people are drawn to the TV when MJF is on. I believe the ratings back this up.

Also their roster is entirely too big to me. They are throwing together trio matches because they can't book everyone on Dark and Dynamite. Also I think they push way too many people.

They have a few complete jobbers but they feel the need to make everyone compete with everyone. Guys like QT Marshall, Lee Johnson, Hollywood Blonds may have some talent but they put them in spots where they compete with some of their top stars. I just wouldn't do this.

I think NXT and MLW (seriously spend 20 minutes giving MLW a shot) have done a better job of balancing a roster and selecting a certain population of wrestlers to truly build and push.

Overall I feel like they just have massive sized stables because they signed so many wrestlers. They just throw Matt Hardy with Private Party and Butcher/Blade. Dark Order has a million people.

Tons of people have a manager. It just seems a mess because they blew their load signing all of these guys.

The funny thing is that they have a million guys but who is really deserving of the belt? Christian Cage is not. Eddie Kingston is not.

They have a guy like Hangman Page hanging out with the Dark Order because they don't know what to do with him but he's got a legitimate big time championship potential. They rushed through his feud with Omega.

Yeah, but think about all the positive they're doing.

They've created an environment where you can bring your friends to work and they can even participate.

What WWE did for the women's wrestling with the women's revolution, they're doing to bring back little person wrestling. Just look at that main even this week!

But yeah, pretty awesome that they made Hangman an alcoholic and then have done nothing with him since.

Another point - is anybody super geeked up to see Sting each week? I get the line of thinking - that if you heard he was now a part of the AEW federation it would bring eyeballs to the AEW Dynamite product and get people hooked on other storylines, etc. But I have a few friends that loved 90s wrestling. I told them about Sting and they still haven't tuned in. They spend time watching Netflix, The Challenge, sports, or doing other things.

I just don't think there is enough people that saw Sting on Twitter, made appointment TV to tune in to Dynamite and now keep tuning in.

They should almost just make this a total niche product and push guys like Ricky Starks, Sammy Guevara, Jungle Boy, etc. and just give up with Sting, Christian Cage, and other former WWE/WCW guys (or Shaq, which was entertaining but I wouldn't make a habit out of it).

Having Sting come out every week to be interviewed by Schiavone, or saving someone from a beatdown just isn't going to cut it these days.

Tony Khan

AEW's biggest long term issue is hangman so far has mostly flopped. They were counting on him to emerge.

A lot of the guys not ready for TV aren't on it anymore much which helped a bit but ratings keep sliding.

MJF is their future star but they definitely don't want to blow him up and risk it ending too soon with nowhere else to go and also nobody knows who he is so Jericho is still their biggest star. Just how it is, people watched wrestling when jericho wrestled, it's just a core base that watches AEW.

This current direction with Omega is fine but man he's a basically a transition champ with nowhere good to go with it atm so he's just gonna have to hold it for awhile I guess. It's a bit rough timeperiod where the clear top guys are ex WWE and other than MJF nobody at least for now looks like they're gonna be a star.

The too many people on the roster is worse when you realize Kahn definitely overpaid for all of them but he's got money to burn so w/e. Just has to hope he doesn't get his money machine cut off like Dixie Carter.

Then again we're talking about a group not smart enough to at least call him the show or the big giant or something similar. Nobody knows who Paul Wight is. If you're gonna pay for a name at least use the one someone knows about.

but star of tonights show was Mike Tyson so this is just some kid living out his dream

Everything is a faction that brawls with another faction. I mean they are now pushing a QT Marshall faction. It's like they try to make every single member happy. The Dark and Elevation shows are just bizarre to me.

They just use them to basically pad people's records that will never be stars. They basically throw Brian Cage, Butcher/Blade, TH2, Scorpio Sky, Ethan Page, Shawn Spears, etc to artificially make them like 12-3 overall record wise but you know they aren't winning a TNT or world championship. And likely won't be at every PPV (maybe half of the annual ones and probably will lose those matches).

You have Bullet Club, Pinnacle, Inner Circle, Death Triangle, Team Taz, Dark Order, Matt Hardy's faction with Private Party, Team Cody, QT Marshall's faction, Orange Cassidy/Best Friends group with Statlander, Jurassic Express, plus weirdo ones like Ryan Nemeth coming out with Peter Avalon and Cezar Bononi. Some of these groups are huge like Bullet Club which is Omega, Young Bucks, Good Brothers with Callis. Dark Order is a million guys.

I don't know if SCU is still a faction but Ethan Page is with Scorpio Sky. I'm now even mentioning other tag teams like Bear Country,

It's almost awkward to follow. You can't take every faction seriously.

MJF's pinnacle is all well and good but it in a way buries FTR to me. They should be standalone great. Time will tell but I don't think they will be getting what they deserve.

lol. wait. um, lol, you do know this is PRO RASSLIN, right?!

anyway, AEW>wwe.

can someone tell me what kenny omega is yapping about every time he comes to a match?

What does "pro rasslin mean?" You think its normal their roster is like 350 guys and they try to ram all of them down our throats with 20 people brawling at once?

"pro rasslin" is at worst a soap opera for men, and at best soft-core porn for men. the more foolish it is, the more im entertained. you sound like you might be a true die-hard pro wrestling guy. for me its mostly just fun entertainment. i dont try to think too hard about it; thats for the people with jobs in the industry, which incidentally might fit you well! i guess i take your point some. regardless, since the glory days of impact, its my belief that the wrestling universe has been starving for an alternative to wwe. i think overall aew is doing a pretty good job, especially considering covid.

i really dislike cody rhodes, but that promo this week was epic, imo.

enjoying the mjf stuff, the jericho stuff, and the don callis heels. they need to cut the dark order loose, except for 1 or 2 of them.

dubb or nothin was pretty good overall. didnt like stadium stampede at all. i think lance archer sometimes forgets where he is, and thinks he is in a superhero movie or something.

Two of the best recent NXT champions are now in AEW.

aew is still entertaining me week after week. thats all i can ask.

I recently got into wrestling in the last few months and love AEW. The first PPV I ever bought in my life was Double or Nothing.

Malakai (fta Alestier) Black debuted on AEW last week and I had no idea who he was. People were saying he started a new feud with someone on WWE and then he got fired right after that so I wanted to check out the match. I pulled up the match on youtube and it is literally impossible to follow what is going on.

SO. MANY. CUTS. How does anyone follow what's going on? Who is directing these matches? Someone even made a video showing how absurd the editing of WWE matches are:

https://player.vimeo.com/video/531032969

The main thing I don't like is how little screen time the women's division gets. I love the joshi wrestlers (looking forward to Yuka Sakazaki tonight) but I've heard people say that there is a network mandate of only 1 women's match per show on Dynamite. Because it's literally been 1 match per show since I can remember. There are no stories or feuds in the women's division, other than whoever they have lined up to lose to Britt Baker and then Jade Cargill shows up and does a "I'm that *****" promo.

I wonder why they don't do factions for the women's division. I read in an interview that one of the reasons they have so many factions is that it lets more wrestlers participate in stories and have TV time. So they should do that for the women's division too. Like Britt Baker talks about how she is the face of the division and blah blah. So why doesn't she have a faction of heels that support her? Then they can do a faction of faces that oppose her. And you can do betrayals and people joining and leaving as the story dictates. Stuff like that. Instead the era of DMD so far has been zzzzzzzzzz...

I've actually been noticing AEW is getting worse with the camera cuts. Still not in WWEs league though

Yeah watching tonight's episode after making that post made me pay more attention to the editing of the matches and I agree that the editing actually isn't that great.

If Punk and Bryan do end up coming to AEW, will that cause more people to watch?

The only question is how many more will watch with them. It's possible the debut Dynamite episodes with each will draw more fans than RAW on those two weeks. I think they will because WWE will likely be around 1.4 million w/MNF on and Dynamite did ~1.150 million this past Wednesday.

So I’m torn . I wanna see Punk and obviously he has to debut at All Out.

But I’m going to grand slam and Punks debuts means Bryan won’t debut at Arthur Ashe

I only got into wresting recently and the only thing I know about Bryan and CM Punk is that they are popular former WWE wrestlers. So if they show up and have good matches and good stories then great.

Malakai Black has been interesting so far, though he hasn't wrestled a match so I'll see if he lives up to the hype. Andrade has been lame. He shows up in promos and they're building him up to be this great wrestler and the one match he wrestled in was pretty mediocre. Supposedly Miro was lame at first too and now he has a good gimmick and good matches. So hopefully Andrade will improve.

It feels like the roster is getting a bit bloated. But soon they will have an extra hour of TV time to fill up so it makes sense. Has there been any indication as to what Rampage will be? Just a 3rd hour of Dynamite? Will it be more focused on matches? Will it have more hardcore and violent matches? More mature storylines? Hopefully there will be more focus on the women's division at least.

I'm worried about this as well. The great thing about AEW so far is that even though they have a lot of veteran talent who have earned the spotlight, they've gone out of their way to make sure to feature new talent and make sure they get over. MJF, Jungle Boy, Hangman, Sammy, Darby, The Acclaimed, Orange Cassidy, etc. I don't want to see any of those guys lost in the shuffle. I guess, for now, I trust that since they've figured it so far, they'll keep figuring it out.

Does it get more people to watch in the US?

In the uk all my friends don't know who Bryan is and Punk is that WWE guy who got battered in UFC twice and looked awful.