TrueEpic08
Dum Shiny
They should really just let Excalibur and someone else be the commentary team (maybe that someone else is Marvez once he gets some more experience under his belt, maybe not), with JR working as coach/producer to help them structure and relay the story of the match to their viewers. Excalibur's been calling matches forever, he's a fine play-by-play guy. He just needs to figure out the showier aspects of the craft, which I'm sure he can do. Point being, JR's done and probably shouldn't be out there save for a few big matches here and there.
I'm stunned looking at the actual time of the matches that every match wasn't 20+ minutes. Even the pre-show match felt so fukking long. It was all pretty solid to good, although the women's four way was a terrible omen for the AEW women's division because it was easily the worst match on the show and was full of botches and generally came off very amateur hour for how much they've hyped themselves up.
Cody/Dustin was, by far, match of the night and easily the best thing Cody's ever been involved in. Which is funny because destroying HHH's throne with a sledgehammer was easily the corniest andthing of his career and every bit as lame and self aggrandizing as HHH's WM entrances. It's not a coincidence that the other best match Cody was involved in also had Goldy in it (Rhodes vs Shield). Haven't seen a bladejob like that outside of deathmatch trash in many, many years. Dustin bleeding like it was 1992
They sealed the deal with a hug and a kith
Chalk it up to a lack of variety. None of the matches were really objectively bad, but most of them were the same kind of match. The reason we're raving about Cody/Dustin (other than Dustin putting on his best bell-to-bell performance in at least 25 years, maybe ever) is because it was completely different from the Indy/Japanese style stuff on the card. They don't need to go full WWE house style or anything, but they really need to figure out how to vary match lengths, styles, etc. on a card. There are still a lot of heavily mat based guys, shooty guys a la Bloodsport, Lucha guys, and the like out on the indies. Not everything has to be NJPW-lite for 15-30 minutes.
Also, the women's match was subpar because they signed the worst woman from the All In women's four way, proceeded to put her against a possibly worse woman than that, then added a worse woman than that to the match. And topped it all off with a past-her-prime Awesome Kong right before the bell. It wasn't terrible, but there was no way it was going to measure up.
at JR saying Jericho was in the best shape he's been in in many years as they cut to a shot of him looking literally the fattest and flabbiest he's ever looked in his life. Match kind of sucked, Jericho is a mess. JR kept pointing out Dustin was 50 and this was his last ride, but he's in significantly better shape than Jericho at 48 who has taken a ton of time off in the past decade, and Goldy also had 10 years as a drug addict AND this is his first match back after knee surgery, yet never pointed out that Jericho is clearly a fat hobbled drunk who is now built like a full sized dwarf and is out of breath 5 minutes into any match. He really looks like garbage. His gear looks like shyt, too. So is his fedora. At least he isn't doing the goth make up in the US
His NJ matches need lots of gimmicks and bullshyt to hide how he can't go anymore, and this didn't have much in that regard besides the table. Why does he keep doing half hour matches
Also since he's busted open everyone he's worked with in NJ and now AEW, I'm positive he's going to kill someone with that elbow. He's so sloppy with his worked punches, there's no way he's going to be able to pull that elbow every time.
. Just Pure, unvarnished truth.
I have no problem with Moxley being a top guy (as long as he actually tries and doesn't mail in 75% of his stint as in WWE), Justin Roberts announcing, or Bret Hart introducing the title (sort of). But there's really no reason for JR to be lead announcer or Earl Hebner to be around period. I'll give them leeway on the rankings and stats because you have to establish the promotion and its title before you can get into how rankings for said title will work (if it's still nebulous when the weekly show starts, then they have a problem). But there's definitely a problem with major American companies having ZERO new ideas for how to present wrestling to a TV audience in the last 20+ years. I don't know if that the company's fault or the channel's fault (because they may equate WWE's production style with how wrestling is supposed to be produced), but if wrestling is really going to change in the future, WWE's hard camera sketch comedy show deal really should be one of the first things to go.
The Elite and the production people at AEW should really start studying the history of fight sport on television (whether that be Boxing, MMA, Kickboxing, Grappling, whatever), the history of wrestling on television, and sport in general to see the influence even minor changes can have on the presentation and promotion of the product (think about the NFL's Skycam, for one. For a wrestling example, think about how the Bati-Bati promotions would use more intimate camerawork for their matches, accentuating the brutality of their matches. There's so much they can pull from, yet no one really does it). I'm willing to give them leeway as a startup, but it's a real issue they should deal with sooner rather than later.
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' on a live broadcast 
Page showed glimpses of stuff last g1 . Speaking of which a tournament to crown the first champ would have been dope, I'm a fan of tournaments in wrasslin' tho.
and he dont even got the following he used to
