Balor heel turn was refreshing

For sure. Loved it. The show even leaves on a semi-cliffhanger with Balor and Undisputed Era. Now I'm actually looking forward to NXT next week

This happened after Dynamite went off the air:

https://streamable.com/pw50t

This is an important fact that can't be emphasized enough.

Thought NXT was better this week, especially the ending.

Nothing about AEW is really grabbing me. In fact, I think Cody's creating a problem. A couple of weeks ago, the lights went out for him. Now his entrance is so over-blown and so much better than anyone else gets. Not to mention it doesn't even fit his character. I can see him ending up as the new HHH...and I don't mean that in a good way.

I do get kind of annoyed how Cody always gets the special entrance from the floor after the chandelier ascends off the stage. He should save that for ppvs or just give it to other guys too.

I didn't pay much attention to NXT because I loved this episode of AEW. My only real complaint about Dynamite this week was they did three matches in a row to start and they were all really good to great but I was so ready for a break by the end of match 3. Luckily after that was the Cody/Jericho stuff. Need to work on their pacing a bit.

I hate watching old guys wrestle. It's a pet peeve of mine. I hated watching Ric Flair in the late 90s. He was in his 40s. Still, DDP is in way better shape than Ric Flair circa 1997 and most importantly, I don't see him wrestling.

I actually loved them bringing in DDP for the segment because he looked the part. A couple years back I was sick of watching Jericho because he didn't look the part at all. He was old and flabby and was wearing his little wrestling trunks. They say you can't put lipstick on a pig but apparently all you gotta do is put long pants on Jericho, and maybe a jacket and a few touches to give him that old rocker look and suddenly I want to watch this guy even if he is over the hill.

Speaking of not having the look, Cain Velasquez please keep your shirt on. His appearance on the first Smackdown show on Fox has got to be one of the worst first impressions ever. First off, he has no style sense whatsoever, and then I guess he wanted to show everyone his racist tattoo so he rips off his shirt exposing his flabby body and untoned arms. And if that wasn't bad enough he was wearing a knee brace while his buddy Rey Mysterio had his arm in the sling. Oh no, Brock Lesnar should be trembling in his boots! (btw, I hope Brock is back on the sauce because USADA testing destroyed his body).

I'm suddenly reminded of when Bautista came back in 2014 and he looked like a complete jackass with his stupid white jacket and jeans on. That first impression killed any chance the fans were going to take him seriously.

I feel kind of bad for having this opinion, but this was the week where I realized I wasn't even excited to watch AEW anymore. The curiosity is gone and what's left is a show that doesn't really appeal to me. It's just too many Meltzer-bait spotfest matches and ironic comedy stuff with no sense of developing characters or making people emotionally invested in the outcomes of matches.

Meanwhile, I've been really enjoying the two-hour NXTs, especially the women's division which is absolutely stacked (and that's not even accounting for Kairi and Asuka coming in next week). I get why people don't like her title reign but the intrigue over who will face Shayna and who can beat her is the kind of thing I really enjoy.

How I see AEW: At least it's different and better than RAW/SD! Now if only I could break the Stockholm Syndrome and quit watching those.

I do disagree on the not making stars part. Putting PP over TYBs two weeks ago. Darby Allin's something. Janela's getting a reasonable push. Pac's doing great. Same for Lucha Bros. Inner Circle's interesting.

My thoughts when watching Finn turn: imagine this happening in a big building.

They may have guys getting upset wins, but that doesn't develop characters. In fact, have they done anything outside of actual matches to tell us who any of these guys are or are supposed to be? It's been a month and I still don't really care about any of them.

I prefer less actual wrestling as well but if you think they are going to develop the entire rosters' characters in four 2 hour shows I think you have unrealistic expectations. They've been primarily focused on developing Cody Rhodes, Chris Jericho, and the Inner Circle. If you haven't noticed this then you should probably stop watching all WWE content because it's cluttering your mind and you are clearly having trouble focusing on what is actually important.

I don't understand how it is so hard to quit in 2019 with the incredible amount of content being created today. Companies are literally losing money just to create even more content for us to enjoy. It's a ridiculous time. I can watch 10+ hrs of programming a day, so like 70hrs of programming a week and I still don't have time to watch Raw/Smackdown.

Oh, great. They're developing the two guys everybody already knows.

And we can't quit watching WWE after all these years because of FOMO. It would probably be easier if they were never good in the first place. Then we never feel like we're going to miss the next Attitude Era launch, but for some reason we just know that the minute we tune out, the next awesome thing is going to happen.

I've watched literally < 10 hours of anything on a screen this year outside of wrestling. tv and movies just aren't my thing.

Ratings for AEW are still strong. AEW ended up 4th last night in cable ratings only trailing 2 NBA regular season game openers and American Horror Story. NXT clocked in at #21. In terms of overall viewers the gap between AEW and NXT is shrinking each week. However, NXT is getting trounced in the target demo.

************** AEW vs NXT**************
Viewers----------- 963k vs 698k
Male 18-34------- 0.52 vs 0.12
Male 18-49------- 0.62 vs 0.23
--All 18-49------- 0.45 vs 0.21


Numbers overall were down slightly for both shows but not bad IMO considering they were going against the World Series as well as the NBA.

Seems pretty good for both shows considering the WS. AEW lost 53k and NXT ~40k.

Even if you don't watch movies or tv shows there is virtually an infinite supply of content online whether videos or streaming. But supposing you have no interests other than pro wrestling there is more new wrestling content available now than ever before.

I believe in addition to Raw and Smackdown the following are all producing content that is easily accessible:

AEW
NWA
NXT
NJPW
ROH
Major League Wrestling
WOW

I don't know what OneOut is talking about, I think AEW is killing it with character development. A month ago no one (or almost no one) knew who Private Party, Darby Allin or Riho were. Now they are all significant players.

I also thought yesterday's episode was the best by a substantial margin.

Things AEW has done wrt story lines because even if you know the players, you need to create heel/face dynamics and story lines. In 4 weeks we got:

Inner Circle created as a faction
Cody vs. Jericho build-up
TYBs vs. LAX build-up
Omega vs. Moxley build-up
MJF solidly on Cody's side
Lucha Bros. attacking SCU leading to the finals showdown next week
Pac being setup for a world title match eventually while doing commentary
Private Party solidly defeating TYBs giving them instant credibility.

This isn't mentioning the building up of lower people as Dan mentioned, Riho crowned as first women's champ, and a few awesome matches. Also building up Janela and Lucha Bros. also not known to a WWE audience curious about AEW.

Character development is about more than winning matches and building people up to me. Who are these people? Why should I care? A good example is in NWA. They have this 54-year-old dude, Tim Storm, who can only put on what could generously be described as 3-star matches on Meltzer's scale. But because of the packages they've done on him and his promos, I care about the dude and want to see him WIN his matches. There is nothing like that in AEW to me, which is my biggest issue with the show. It's just match after match, getting high spots to pop the crowd, and even the few promos they've done have been more about Jericho hitting some comedic zingers and being a goof than creating any sense of emotional stakes.

The Cody stuff has been better on this front but that one video package was so over the top that it became corny, and the inconsistent characterization of Brandi and MJF hasn't helped either.

I absolutely agree. Check our this promo vid that was Brandi’s idea. Home run IMO in getting us to care about their characters.


https://twitter.com/aewontnt/status/...496864768?s=21

Oh, also for the record, I LOVE what AEW is doing with MJF. Total dick heel EXCEPT he has (real?) loyalty to Cody, who's become the face of the company. I have never seen that before and it leads to so many possibilities. I think it's brilliant.

I guess I don't really get it. He's such an obvious piece of garbage and comes across as so disingenuous (to the point that his character isn't even believable to me) that I think Cody just looks dumb for trusting him.

This is exactly what I'm talking about though. It's not on the show. I don't want to have to search through social media and you tube clips to figure out who I want to root for or against. Everything I need should just be on the show.

I co-sign this. I've never seen an episode of Being the Elite and I'm not gonna watch Twitter clips for my wrestling consumption.

You guys really should watch BTE. It's not always a home run, but more often than not it's pretty good.