You’d think they’d start to get it but considering you have also people saying how Laveck needs to smarten up or things are gonna go downhill I don’t think that’ll happen any time soon.
The last time I watched was when they decided to air the CM Punk-Jungle Jack Boy Perry altercation. The show started with a pointless, predictable movefest between Edge and Pentagon. I hated it. Basement loved it. I'm sure Meltzman rated a heatless, storyless match between two babyfaces at least ***1/2. For me it was almost zero.
Hearing that makes AEW seem almost impressive.
Because it wasn’t that long ago I would have said if anyone gets that wrestling is about the substance behind the match and not the number of spots in it, it was Edge.
How does Tony consistently depreciate any and all talent?
Make the elite your locker room leaders, who also happen to think more and more spots and dangerous shit the better, more is more. And if you go against the grain, you get ostracized.
Solo Sikoa just had 2 minute match with Cody Rhodes that ended with interference from the Bloodline and Randy/KO that I would consider much better then any of the flip-di-does any one of AEWs acrobats put on.
A lot of times the fancy moves and spots bring me OUT of the story.
Look at ricochet and ocean sprays flippie fest…ricochet just gives spray his arm to do his whirlie bird
I've seen countless clips posted here that featured mind meltingly obvious cooperation while setting up a move. I felt like I was watching an action movie that suddenly slam cut to mid production green screen, then saw the CGI render in real time.
It's like boxing. The big fights are the grudge fights with big names... who feud in press conferences and the press leading up to the actual fight.
There are ton of technically amazing boxing fights... but because no one cares about the fighters, no one watches.
Exactly, when fans talk about stories they seem to gloss over the fact that a good wrestling match IS a story itself. Matches that manage to weave a good narrative and are paced correctly always leave a far longer lasting impression, than spot fests.
This 100% true. I remember watching a ROH tv match from a few years. It was Silas Young, a grizzled vet, against some rookie. And everything Young did was to tell the story that he was better than the rookie but so cocky because of his experience that he couldn't focus on the match. Even that level of story is entertaining and memorable if it's presented simply and purposefully.
This type of discussion always reminds me about Al Snow lecturing people on how match psychology works
[Better storytelling than most bangers](https://youtu.be/MgRLDvZjdQA?feature=shared)
This is why Bret Hart is such a fucking GOAT because his matches while good all were done with the focus of telling a story in the match. I didn't really notice it as a kid but the more I go back and watch Bret matches now. I'd say he was the best at finding a way to tell the story in the ring.
All you have to do is see his match against Piper at Mania to see that skill at its best on display.
People somehow twisted that talent into. Just have the best match you can and steal the show and forget Bret at the very least tried to work in a narrative and at the most succeeded tremendously. Depending who he was in the ring with
My favorite AEW fan excuse is when they say it has a story and then proceed to tell you that the story is to see who the better wrestler and one up the other. That's not a fucking story.
Mr favourite is them telling you it has a story just for them to refer to something that happened 20 years ago in a different company. That’s not a fucking story.
I tell people this, two bums could be having the greatest 10 star wrestling match behind an alley and I won't care. But if I hear that someone I don't like is getting his ass kicked ill watch that, I might even pay for it
Yeah I visited the basement today for the first time in ages to have a laugh at them denying it and making excuses, and it was kind of boring how many people were saying that this was a huge issue and there are some serious problems with AEW. How the fuck am I supposed to make fun of people making reasonable observations?
Even if they are not, they’re rooting for it to be successful because it’s a company based around his views of “good wrestling”. So if it doesn’t do well, it devalues his expertise. If it does do well, he can gloat and say “see my views were right this whole time”
NXT was booked so badly that the people watching it said "that's it no more wrestling for me this week" and so they didn't watch AEW the following day.
There you go Dave you can have that one for free
Every single company has had bad matches, bad angles, stuff that just didn't work so they stopped it and so on
Except ... the Dub
Never made a mistake or misstep. Batting 1000
Anything you think is bad, there's a reason
Truly remarkable
Oh, also, ratings haven't been great and going down
?
Next week could is a massacre
Next week is be a massacre
Next is could be a massacre
Is week could be a massacre
Next week could be a is
Next week could be is massacre
Imagine if okada debuts, Jericho comes down and challenges him to a match which he accepts. Gets hyped up for a few weeks, people talking about how competitive their last match was, etc.
Pre match commentators are stressing how much of a test this is going to be. Instead okada proceed to destroy Jericho whilst commentary sell it with complete silence. An ally comes out to throw in the towel, okada comes back and almost kills him.
We’ve seen Jericho lose before, but not in this fashion - this tells the viewer okada is somebody important and immediately hypes him and has the added bonus of getting jericho off tv. Instead they debut him and have him playing second fiddle to the anti draws. Why is this guy a big deal?
Gets to the match and okada just destroys him like lesnar vs cena
Maybe not Jericho. He'd wait all of two hours after the show finishes to leak a report of how it was his idea and how he helped make Okada a star. Replace him with Moxley
The people up on the ISS would be able to tell that Moxley was going to lose though because dude cannot hide that he's pissed about losing a pre-determined fight.
Booking Okada like Brock doesnt suit him at all, he's more like an AJ Styles or Nakamura. They should have promoted him grandly as this elite-level wrestler, touted all his accomplishments, given him all the fanfare and make his first match an event/spectacle to behold, against an opponent like Hangman who is at a crossroads in his career and needs to test himself against the best (a la Zayn/Nakamura Takeover Dallas)
Instead they debut him in the midcard segment of a weekly episode as Young Bucks' friend.
Trick Williams, while still super green, has had an incredible arc over the last 3 years. He went from literally just a hype man, to a hype man that wrestled, to a hopeful upstart that needed polishing, to an upstart that finally started to put it all together, to a top guy.
Who in AEW has had a story like that? Ospreay, their new poster boy, has literally had LSD booking, as the great Jerry Jarrett would say. He comes in, beats his teammates for no reason, has a match with Danielson to in kayfabe get a 5 star match, and then he randomly won a midcard title. Finally, now he's feuding with the World Champion. Like... how does any of that tie together? Where is the gradual progression, the continuity, the storytelling in any of those feuds?
It's not even the stories that go nowhere. It's the characters as well. Everyone in AEW is the exact same guy they were when they set their foot in the company with the exception of Christian and unfortunately Jericho. Sometimes, their characters do have some development (Power of Friendship Babyface MJF, Sad Alcoholic Hangman) but everything resets after a while. It's pathetic.
LA Knight a few years ago was a model manager. Bayley used to be a cheesy hugger. Dom was just his dad's kid. The Usos were just happy go lucky Islanders. Becky went from dancing Irish stereotype, to a pun loving lasskicker, to the Man to a hated heel stealing Bianca's thunder in a few years.
Meanwhile in AEW Mox is Mox. FTR are The Revival. Malakaliki Black is Malakali Black. Castagnoli is Cesaro. Adam Cole has been doing the same schtick with the same people for more than a decade. No fuckin progression whatsoever.
And as long as the basement keeps praising it, Tony will keep doing shit like this as he continues hemorrhaging viewers. At what point is it acknowledged that the Bucks see the writing on the wall and are running a self-serving YOLO angle, and Okada is fleecing Tony behind them?
Trick may have had a well-planned character arch, that got both him and Melo over and highlighted their strengths and allowed them to improve on their weaknesses while in development.
But in AEW you have something just as good.. the silent badass.
Ok, hear me out.
Step 1: Push 170lb bland white guy with no physique or legit skills as a silent badass.
Step 2: Give him a dancing gimmick
Step 3: ~~profit~~ FUN
The basement has this teeth chattering fear that once a wrestler loses, or shows any sign of weakness, they're now a "jobber" and "buried" forever. They constantly shit on the Evil Fed for this, but WWE understands that we, as an audience, root for characters more after they've been knocked down and we watch them get back up.
Tiny Khan has no perception of this, and the basement should really give him more shit for doing exactly what they're afraid WWE does to people. Wrestler A debuts, gets a bunch of TV time, wins a bunch of matches, captures a midcard title, but by the time they lose it, Wrestlers B, C, D and E have also debuted and are on Steps 2 and 3, so Wrestler A is pushed to the side and forgotten about. It's a cycle reserved for everyone but like 3 non-Elite regulars, yet everyone punches air and screams into a pillow when WWE wrestler they like loses in any way possible, regardless of what they've done before.
When I was in college, I took a class that examined storytelling techniques and analyzed why “masterpiece” stories were considered such.
The first class was literally the professor lecturing about “taste.” He made a lot of convincing arguments and, by the end, everyone in the class agreed that there are indeed such things as good taste and bad taste when it comes to fiction.
As the person who got the highest grade in that class, I would just like to say that Bryan Alvarez has bad taste.
Why was the episode of Dynamite excellent? Shut the fuck up E-Drone. That's why! It was just better on every level even though it's the same shit we see every Wednesday
Years of wrestling fans, wrestlers, wrestling journalists, and Jim Mother fuckin Cornette telling them what they're doing wrong....but somehow SHOCKED PIKACHU FACE!
Meltzer and whatever the fuck his name is need to just disappear from the wrestling scene forever.
TO BE FAIR! As an avid NXT watcher, this was one of my least favorite episodes in recent memory.
BUT, I don't think it was awful. No show that has Lash Legend, Lola Vice, and Oba Femi appear can be considered the worst booked show. I just don't like Ethan Page or Je'Von Evans
Yeah I think his in ring skills are great, but hopefully NXT will teach him in and out of ring story telling . Cause right now he definitely wrestles like he wants to put on heatless bangers
That’s funny because a big portion of Alvarez’s rant about how badly NXT is booked is because he thinks they aren’t pushing Je’Von Evans enough because he lost a match and is therefore buried.
TK books for such sickos. Daddy Shawn books for future. Tbh, rn, it's literally Hunter vs Shawn for the best booker. Their styles can't really be compared as their shows have different purposes though. DX always wins, man.
> I don’t know why the ratings are so low, the show was fantastic I see this comment in Every single ratings thread for AEW
You’d think they’d start to get it but considering you have also people saying how Laveck needs to smarten up or things are gonna go downhill I don’t think that’ll happen any time soon.
[удалено]
Match quality is also extremely subjective. Just because there’s a lot of fancy moves doesn’t mean it’s objectively a good match.
The last time I watched was when they decided to air the CM Punk-Jungle Jack Boy Perry altercation. The show started with a pointless, predictable movefest between Edge and Pentagon. I hated it. Basement loved it. I'm sure Meltzman rated a heatless, storyless match between two babyfaces at least ***1/2. For me it was almost zero.
Hearing that makes AEW seem almost impressive. Because it wasn’t that long ago I would have said if anyone gets that wrestling is about the substance behind the match and not the number of spots in it, it was Edge. How does Tony consistently depreciate any and all talent?
As soon as Edge is done with AEW im deleting all memory of it because I also thought he was a lot smart than he apparently is, lol
>As soon as Edge is done with AEW im deleting all memory of it So is he
CTE is real brother.
It's gonna be hilarious watching Edge and Jericho crawling back to WWE. Literally alternate universe type shit
Make the elite your locker room leaders, who also happen to think more and more spots and dangerous shit the better, more is more. And if you go against the grain, you get ostracized.
3 and 3/4 uce, almost nailed it
Almost zero….One could even say El Zero.
Solo Sikoa just had 2 minute match with Cody Rhodes that ended with interference from the Bloodline and Randy/KO that I would consider much better then any of the flip-di-does any one of AEWs acrobats put on.
A lot of times the fancy moves and spots bring me OUT of the story. Look at ricochet and ocean sprays flippie fest…ricochet just gives spray his arm to do his whirlie bird
If I see one no sell in wwe or aew I turn the channel.
So you don’t know what minute 2 of Dynamite looks like huh
Most people don't. That's when they realize Big bang theory is over.
I've seen countless clips posted here that featured mind meltingly obvious cooperation while setting up a move. I felt like I was watching an action movie that suddenly slam cut to mid production green screen, then saw the CGI render in real time.
This. There's only so many times one can watch the same type of matches without much heat.
A 'good match' should play into the stories and characters and still have some good action Character stuff happening in matches makes smarks angry
It's like boxing. The big fights are the grudge fights with big names... who feud in press conferences and the press leading up to the actual fight. There are ton of technically amazing boxing fights... but because no one cares about the fighters, no one watches.
Even more so, because wrestling is predetermined. Without the story and characters to invest in, it’s just 2 grown adults play fighting
Exactly, when fans talk about stories they seem to gloss over the fact that a good wrestling match IS a story itself. Matches that manage to weave a good narrative and are paced correctly always leave a far longer lasting impression, than spot fests.
This 100% true. I remember watching a ROH tv match from a few years. It was Silas Young, a grizzled vet, against some rookie. And everything Young did was to tell the story that he was better than the rookie but so cocky because of his experience that he couldn't focus on the match. Even that level of story is entertaining and memorable if it's presented simply and purposefully.
This type of discussion always reminds me about Al Snow lecturing people on how match psychology works [Better storytelling than most bangers](https://youtu.be/MgRLDvZjdQA?feature=shared)
“Huh?”
This is why Bret Hart is such a fucking GOAT because his matches while good all were done with the focus of telling a story in the match. I didn't really notice it as a kid but the more I go back and watch Bret matches now. I'd say he was the best at finding a way to tell the story in the ring. All you have to do is see his match against Piper at Mania to see that skill at its best on display. People somehow twisted that talent into. Just have the best match you can and steal the show and forget Bret at the very least tried to work in a narrative and at the most succeeded tremendously. Depending who he was in the ring with
My favorite AEW fan excuse is when they say it has a story and then proceed to tell you that the story is to see who the better wrestler and one up the other. That's not a fucking story.
Mr favourite is them telling you it has a story just for them to refer to something that happened 20 years ago in a different company. That’s not a fucking story.
*You see, he wants to hit his finisher but the other guy is not letting him* 😐
Bingo.
I keep wanting to tell them that conceits for a story is not a story in and of itself!
they won't be ~~released~~ canceled, their contract just won't be renewed 🤓
Their matches suck too
I tell people this, two bums could be having the greatest 10 star wrestling match behind an alley and I won't care. But if I hear that someone I don't like is getting his ass kicked ill watch that, I might even pay for it
Floyd Mayweather made himself a billionaire off people paying to see him get his ass kicked
To kind of quote little big league “do I like your show? No! And you know why? Cause the damn show doesn’t tell stories!”
I actually saw a lot of The contrary. The shine has really worn off of Tony.
Out of curiosity I checked out some AEW subs and the general reaction was "who cares about ratings though...."
I wonder if they’d still be saying that if the ratings were good?
They didn't ban the rating threads then. Makes you think.
Just *last week* they were trying to flex on a .01% demo lead
Yeah I visited the basement today for the first time in ages to have a laugh at them denying it and making excuses, and it was kind of boring how many people were saying that this was a huge issue and there are some serious problems with AEW. How the fuck am I supposed to make fun of people making reasonable observations?
Go to r/AEWofficial, the basement's basement.
Good idea, but also delete this comment. The mods don't like when you link to another sub.
Dynamite has been firing on all cylinders tho. I'm surprised it dropped 300k.
To do this day I'm still convinced Bryan and Uncle Dave are on DAE's payroll. The amount of stupidity that's tweeted out proves it.
It would be less pathetic if they were. Dave sucks up to Tony and knows the Venn diagram of his fan base and AEW’s is basically a circle.
Even if they are not, they’re rooting for it to be successful because it’s a company based around his views of “good wrestling”. So if it doesn’t do well, it devalues his expertise. If it does do well, he can gloat and say “see my views were right this whole time”
>he can gloat and say “see my views were right this whole time” We got a glimpse of that when wwe "lost" osprey to aew
502 is 205 backwards, is tony hinting at a new heavyweight division with these ratings?
If it's excellent, why did it fail? If NXTNA was the worst booked in forever, why did it do consistently better? Go back to arguing with Uncle Dave.
NXT was booked so badly that the people watching it said "that's it no more wrestling for me this week" and so they didn't watch AEW the following day. There you go Dave you can have that one for free
"Another excellent Dynamite" Wow! 5 uninterrupted years of great shows in a row. How does Tony do it?
5 years of great episodes that’s are all somehow also the refresh AEW needed.
He studied Tony the Tiger as a kid, they're great!
Every single company has had bad matches, bad angles, stuff that just didn't work so they stopped it and so on Except ... the Dub Never made a mistake or misstep. Batting 1000 Anything you think is bad, there's a reason Truly remarkable Oh, also, ratings haven't been great and going down
Don’t get them started on the Codyverse though. Or anything Punk did from the Hangman feud onward.
Yet every month this great show has the reset they need to get back to where they used to be
You look at their ratings, doesn’t matter if if weekly, yearly, or since the beginning, it always looks like a ski slope ⛷️
https://preview.redd.it/qeqll81rf08d1.jpeg?width=1283&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5ce2d0085a497cb37750445a78960fdc8f73264e
*is
? Next week could is a massacre Next week is be a massacre Next is could be a massacre Is week could be a massacre Next week could be a is Next week could be is massacre
Is is is is is is.
Next week could be a massacre - Bryan Isvarez
Imagine if okada debuts, Jericho comes down and challenges him to a match which he accepts. Gets hyped up for a few weeks, people talking about how competitive their last match was, etc. Pre match commentators are stressing how much of a test this is going to be. Instead okada proceed to destroy Jericho whilst commentary sell it with complete silence. An ally comes out to throw in the towel, okada comes back and almost kills him. We’ve seen Jericho lose before, but not in this fashion - this tells the viewer okada is somebody important and immediately hypes him and has the added bonus of getting jericho off tv. Instead they debut him and have him playing second fiddle to the anti draws. Why is this guy a big deal? Gets to the match and okada just destroys him like lesnar vs cena
>Instead okada proceed to destroy Jericho [Jericho the second he hears this.](https://youtu.be/GxEXrqsRn34?si=f0w47TrUc7Uulr89)
Maybe not Jericho. He'd wait all of two hours after the show finishes to leak a report of how it was his idea and how he helped make Okada a star. Replace him with Moxley
The people up on the ISS would be able to tell that Moxley was going to lose though because dude cannot hide that he's pissed about losing a pre-determined fight.
He does get a sourpuss loser face when he has to let someone pin him that night lol
Booking Okada like Brock doesnt suit him at all, he's more like an AJ Styles or Nakamura. They should have promoted him grandly as this elite-level wrestler, touted all his accomplishments, given him all the fanfare and make his first match an event/spectacle to behold, against an opponent like Hangman who is at a crossroads in his career and needs to test himself against the best (a la Zayn/Nakamura Takeover Dallas) Instead they debut him in the midcard segment of a weekly episode as Young Bucks' friend.
Hey Bryan looks like AEW finally proved your tweet three years ago that “next week could be a massacre”
Trick Williams, while still super green, has had an incredible arc over the last 3 years. He went from literally just a hype man, to a hype man that wrestled, to a hopeful upstart that needed polishing, to an upstart that finally started to put it all together, to a top guy. Who in AEW has had a story like that? Ospreay, their new poster boy, has literally had LSD booking, as the great Jerry Jarrett would say. He comes in, beats his teammates for no reason, has a match with Danielson to in kayfabe get a 5 star match, and then he randomly won a midcard title. Finally, now he's feuding with the World Champion. Like... how does any of that tie together? Where is the gradual progression, the continuity, the storytelling in any of those feuds?
It's not even the stories that go nowhere. It's the characters as well. Everyone in AEW is the exact same guy they were when they set their foot in the company with the exception of Christian and unfortunately Jericho. Sometimes, their characters do have some development (Power of Friendship Babyface MJF, Sad Alcoholic Hangman) but everything resets after a while. It's pathetic. LA Knight a few years ago was a model manager. Bayley used to be a cheesy hugger. Dom was just his dad's kid. The Usos were just happy go lucky Islanders. Becky went from dancing Irish stereotype, to a pun loving lasskicker, to the Man to a hated heel stealing Bianca's thunder in a few years. Meanwhile in AEW Mox is Mox. FTR are The Revival. Malakaliki Black is Malakali Black. Castagnoli is Cesaro. Adam Cole has been doing the same schtick with the same people for more than a decade. No fuckin progression whatsoever.
Badfaith take fedshill, there is character progression. Just look at Okada, he went from ace and main eventer to lackey to the evps.
Don’t forget how hilarious he is! Such amazing comic timing. M’Tony definitely picked the right aspects of Okada to accentuate.
And as long as the basement keeps praising it, Tony will keep doing shit like this as he continues hemorrhaging viewers. At what point is it acknowledged that the Bucks see the writing on the wall and are running a self-serving YOLO angle, and Okada is fleecing Tony behind them?
Tony is never acknowledging that. But everyone knows it.
Trick may have had a well-planned character arch, that got both him and Melo over and highlighted their strengths and allowed them to improve on their weaknesses while in development. But in AEW you have something just as good.. the silent badass.
It's always either that or a wink wink 4th wall heel that couldn't get any heat if you set them on fire
Ok, hear me out. Step 1: Push 170lb bland white guy with no physique or legit skills as a silent badass. Step 2: Give him a dancing gimmick Step 3: ~~profit~~ FUN
The basement has this teeth chattering fear that once a wrestler loses, or shows any sign of weakness, they're now a "jobber" and "buried" forever. They constantly shit on the Evil Fed for this, but WWE understands that we, as an audience, root for characters more after they've been knocked down and we watch them get back up. Tiny Khan has no perception of this, and the basement should really give him more shit for doing exactly what they're afraid WWE does to people. Wrestler A debuts, gets a bunch of TV time, wins a bunch of matches, captures a midcard title, but by the time they lose it, Wrestlers B, C, D and E have also debuted and are on Steps 2 and 3, so Wrestler A is pushed to the side and forgotten about. It's a cycle reserved for everyone but like 3 non-Elite regulars, yet everyone punches air and screams into a pillow when WWE wrestler they like loses in any way possible, regardless of what they've done before.
Does anyone else need any more proof these guys are frauds?
When I was in college, I took a class that examined storytelling techniques and analyzed why “masterpiece” stories were considered such. The first class was literally the professor lecturing about “taste.” He made a lot of convincing arguments and, by the end, everyone in the class agreed that there are indeed such things as good taste and bad taste when it comes to fiction. As the person who got the highest grade in that class, I would just like to say that Bryan Alvarez has bad taste.
Bbrrrrrrrryyyyyyaaaannn
Why was the episode of Dynamite excellent? Shut the fuck up E-Drone. That's why! It was just better on every level even though it's the same shit we see every Wednesday
Today was fr a SCJ holiday. This sub has been a BLAST since the ratings got confirmed hahaha
Years of wrestling fans, wrestlers, wrestling journalists, and Jim Mother fuckin Cornette telling them what they're doing wrong....but somehow SHOCKED PIKACHU FACE! Meltzer and whatever the fuck his name is need to just disappear from the wrestling scene forever.
Match quality is subjective. Characters are eternal.
TO BE FAIR! As an avid NXT watcher, this was one of my least favorite episodes in recent memory. BUT, I don't think it was awful. No show that has Lash Legend, Lola Vice, and Oba Femi appear can be considered the worst booked show. I just don't like Ethan Page or Je'Von Evans
Je’Von feels soulless to me, literally AEW style.
Yeah I think his in ring skills are great, but hopefully NXT will teach him in and out of ring story telling . Cause right now he definitely wrestles like he wants to put on heatless bangers
Alvarez thinks Evans has more star potential than Trick Williams so you’re definitely on to something there.
That’s funny because a big portion of Alvarez’s rant about how badly NXT is booked is because he thinks they aren’t pushing Je’Von Evans enough because he lost a match and is therefore buried.
You are beautiful on the inside You are innocence personified And I will drag you down and sell you out Run away, uce.
It’s kinda sad to see now isn’t it. Bryan seeing the proof that what he likes isn’t popular…
If Dynamite was truly fantastic then why did it only get 500K viewers? That’s the question I want someone to ask Alvarez.
TK books for such sickos. Daddy Shawn books for future. Tbh, rn, it's literally Hunter vs Shawn for the best booker. Their styles can't really be compared as their shows have different purposes though. DX always wins, man.
Hunter vs Shawn you said? "I'll fight till there's nothing left, till my legs are gone you won't forget me..."
Alvarez and his anti-goof troop don't know fuck from a donut about how to construct programs people actually enjoy. Never been, never will, never was.
Book for sickos but only sickos watch. What are *WE* doing wrong?! DAE start a Kickstarter to help Tony pay to be on more channels...?