Arena goes dark. Tony: "WHAT'S THIS?!" I braced myself for, "WE'RE OUTTA TIME!"

Lights go out. The come back on and the two heels in the ring are celebrating like nobody's in the ring with them. Have they never watched a wrestling show before?

Thought the same. That's pretty bad.

First time Tony's ever seen a skateboard in wresting...somewhere Shane Douglas & Johnny Ace are crying.

AEW was awesome for the first half-hour. Petered out from there. I still see more potential overall in the company than I did before the evening started.

Enjoyed that a lot. Skipped KUSHIDA vs. WALTER for it.

First time in my life I marked for Cody and the MJF stuff was great. So far they're pretty good at telling stories. Already looking forward to next week

Ugh at that kickout.

I'm not a regular NXT watcher, but Walter is ****ing great.

Okay, at least the correct guy won.

Both shows booked matches in advance of the next show rather than an hour before the show. I approve.

Those 2 hours of AEW were so refreshing for me. They flew by. I love the factions and having something to actually look forward to next week. Giving me a continuous story will keep me entertained. Also, Darby is so good.


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d/l'ed and watched KUSHIDA vs. WALTER. So good. Everything that you could ever ask for from a David vs. Goliath match. Little dude got offense because of mistakes from big dude, big dude beat the **** out of little dude, big dude annihilates little dude to win despite a valiant effort. Not hard.

Spot of the match: WALTER just kicking KUSHIDA in the chest after KUSHIDA botches his springboard jump. Brutal.



and next Wednesday's my b-day for the Jericho/Darby title match and Riho defending against Brit Baker. Might be busy but I'm gonna try not to be and get blasted while watching both shows

Same for all of this. Darby's been booked very well and plays his role extremely well.

AEW definitely has some good things going on. Jericho is great on the mic and I think that faction works. The Young Bucks continue to baffle me, since they're obviously such smug jackasses and worked well as total heels in the opener, but then are babyfaces at the end. MJF also being a babyface is weird and I don't get it.

The crowd is hot but it's getting to the point where I find it annoying, since they're just cheering for everyone including heels and no one is suspending their disbelief for any of the action. Jericho heel promo gets cheered because "he's being such a good heel right now" etc. NXT has this issue a lot also so maybe it's just a reality of catering to a smarky audience.

The draw of Moxley in AEW is seeing him cut some unhinged promos and do violent stuff he couldn't do in WWE. So it's weird to book him in a 10-minute TV match with Tye Dillinger -- we've seen that and it's not exciting.

The women's division is problematically bad imo. There's no one who seems worth going out of your way to see and I don't think any of them have cut a promo.

The "lights out" thing for Cody didn't make sense unless he's supposed to have super powers. They should avoid any of the WWE stuff that draws attention to how fake and staged everything is.

Those are my mostly minor complaints but overall the TV is better than I expected based on the shows they did leading up to it. The atmosphere of the shows is where they blow out NXT, the huge hot crowds make everything feel like a big deal.

I have a lot of minor nitpicks with AEW but I’m the kind of guy who just lets minor nitpicks go.

That said, dropping the lights for a Cody appearance was really bad. For one, that’s the Dark Order’s gimmick. For another, when they went out, being (almost) 100 percent sure the DO wasn’t making a save against another heel group, I thought we were about to get another surprise debut. So when it was just Cody, it A) made no sense, and B) was a pretty big letdown.

Then you'll enjoy the next AEW Dark

I believe there were just as many announced matches for the next NXT (three) as there were for Hell in a Cell after the go-home Smackdown last week.

Ratings are out.

AEW: 1.14m
NXT: 790k

Steep drop for AEW from their 1.4m last week, but that's alright.

First episode of NWA Powerrr > AEW > NXT.

Don't @ me.

That's what Bryan and Dave said too. I'm probably gonna give it a shot tomorrow

I mean it definitely isnt and thats a ridiculous statement.

Lol nah, NWA was definitely better. AEW and NXT just panders to smarks and it’s pretty lame. AEW talked all this **** about their wrestling style but they just turned out to be TNA with a budget and NXT hasn’t been good in a long time. Both crowds are also extremely off putting.

I had no idea that I was going to leave a week of wrestling that had Raw, SD, NXT, and AEW thinking that NWA was the best show but here we are. This week I'd go NWA > AEW > NXT > Raw with Smackdown pending.

AEW already has that NXT obnoxious fan base going on but hopefully that'll die down as people start getting more tv time to become favorites and the cheering shifts to the talent instead of the concept of the company. Hopefully more Inner Circle shirts than AEW shirts in a few weeks.

LKJ, I think you especially will enjoy NWA Power if you haven't checked it out yet.

I guess I'm gonna have to give it a go. Maybe that's what I should be watching instead of this SD.

Didn't realize Justin Roberts was AEW.

Somebody choke him with a tie.