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CI Wrestling Thread #56

If "Thanks guys" refers to Jericho, then yes, SB is likely correct. A lot of the hardcores online have already said the last couple weeks that his segments are so cringe that it's become enjoyable. Also remember, Jericho got "YOU JUST MADE THE LIST!" over. It's pure sports entertainment trash tv from a time when WWE was bad which you'd think every AEW fan would despise, but some are beginning to like it. I guess Jericho took "Thanks guys" from TK since that's Tony's awkward go-to which has been getting mocked online the last year or so.
The List was funny though
 


AEW is paying a 50% discounted rate of $232,000 to the Arlington Expo Center and Esports Venues, LLC to use the Esports Stadium for the “Path to All In” series of events in July and August, according to records obtained by Wrestlenomics via public records request.

A term sheet seems to suggest the local tourism organization might grant AEW money or incentives to offset those costs.

The residence in Arlington will consist of five Collision tapings (four of which will be live broadcasts) and the ROH Death Before Dishonor pay-per-view, as previously announced.

AEW’s press release last month also mentioned that “[a]dditional Ring of Honor dates will be announced in the near future”.

A schedule AEW personnel sent to city staff in an email on Apr. 29 includes two unannounced Ring of Honor TV taping days, on Jul. 28 (a Sunday) and Aug. 16 (a Friday). Given they weren’t included in the announcement, it seems possible those dates could change.

City records show the venue will be scaled for 1,290 seats, with an average on-sale price of $45.02, meaning the maximum gate for one event would be $58,080.

AEW could cover the $232,000 venue costs by selling just over 5,000 tickets at an average ticket price of $45. Assuming that average ticket price, AEW could make the venue cost back by averaging about 650 ticket sales across the eight events.

Seems this was a no brainer deal for AEW. Only having to sell an average of 650 tickets at $45 per to cover the $232K venue costs (that might end up being covered anyway) should be a layup given Texas is normally a good market for them.
 
I think the only aspect that might get over is Bounty Hunter Brian Keith constantly screaming about everything being disrespectful.
I will admit Bryan Keith was funny. Him telling Angelo his baby - who hasn't even been born yet! - needs to respect Jericho was fantastic.

Jericho's part of it though is cringe.
 
I think Jericho is self aware and trying to lean into the hate but it’s not working for me

Sasha I don’t think is self aware enough to realize how awful and annoying her dance is
Jericho learning tree = boring. Thank goodness for fast forwarding on the dvr.
Sasha = She doesn't care. Looks like she is going through the motions until she can get back to WWE.
 
Lol, knowing there just might be an overrun, why not adjust your DVR after it happens the first time? Assuming you want to watch the whole show, I mean.
Why not format your television show to avoid running over every single week?
 
I will admit Bryan Keith was funny. Him telling Angelo his baby - who hasn't even been born yet! - needs to respect Jericho was fantastic.

Jericho's part of it though is cringe.

Agree. I laughed when Bryan Keith said the camera was disrespectful as well.

My wife is more of a casual fan than me, and while we were watching Dynamite she rolled her eyes repeatedly at Jericho’s cringe.
 
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Why not format your television show to avoid running over every single week?
When you're television distributor grants you the opportunity to roll with more content then you do that, especially during TV rights negotiation season. You don't go "no sorry WBD, we don't want to provide you with more high ranking TV content."
 
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This sums it up pretty well

I’d also add that the matches we get on weekly tv aren’t as high quality on average as what we used to get. That’s not to say we don’t still get good wrestling, just on average it’s of lower quality than before.

 
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This sums it up pretty well

I’d also add that the matches we get on weekly tv aren’t as high quality on average as what we used to get. That’s not to say we don’t still get good wrestling, just on average it’s of lower quality than before.


That, and I will add AEW has a few people given microphones who should not be given microphones. Jack Perry is one of them. Guevara is another. Wrestling is AEW’s thing. Talking is a weakness. They should focus more on in ring.

Does AEW offer promo classes? Some of their talents have a hard time finding the camera and will be looking off to the side or up or down. It was worse early in the promotion’s tenure when they had a lot of guys who’d not worked on TV much and you could tell because they’d be talking and turn their backs to the hard cam.
 
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That, and I will add AEW has a few people given microphones who should not be given microphones. Jack Perry is one of them. Guevara is another. Wrestling is AEW’s thing. Talking is a weakness. They should focus more on in ring.

Does AEW offer promo classes? Some of their talents have a hard time finding the camera and will be looking off to the side or up or down. It was worse early in the promotion’s tenure when they had a lot of guys who’d not worked on TV much and you could tell because they’d be talking and turn their backs to the hard cam.
AEW’s ever so gradual move away from being more in-ring focused to less in-ring focused has been disappointing. It’s like they learned nothing from last year and it’s exactly why their TV numbers are going to keep trending down.

If you can’t consistently tell good stories throughout the show then doing more of it isn’t going to make anyone want to watch the product more. You’re going to turn off the people who are watching for the in-ring and you’re going to turn off or not even attract the people who want good storytelling.

I can count on one hand the # of people in all of AEW’s history that are must-watch promos: CM Punk, Christian Cage, Will Ospreay, and Timeless Toni Storm (only the Timeless gimmick).

MJF sort of is but his quality tailed off last year, it’s still worth watching every time though because he is legit on the mic when he is giving his best effort. But he’s no longer must-watch.

Anyone else? Not something that’s going to consistently move the needle for me.

I have all 20 fingers and toes and that’s not enough to count the # of people in AEW right now who for me are must watch talents bell to bell.

I don’t know what they do in terms of developing people on promos but some are getting better while others obviously aren’t. Like Willow and Stat are two I really want to single out as having improved significantly on the mic.
 
AEW’s ever so gradual move away from being more in-ring focused to less in-ring focused has been disappointing. It’s like they learned nothing from last year and it’s exactly why their TV numbers are going to keep trending down.

If you can’t consistently tell good stories throughout the show then doing more of it isn’t going to make anyone want to watch the product more. You’re going to turn off the people who are watching for the in-ring and you’re going to turn off or not even attract the people who want good storytelling.

I can count on one hand the # of people in all of AEW’s history that are must-watch promos: CM Punk, Christian Cage, Will Ospreay, and Timeless Toni Storm (only the Timeless gimmick).

MJF sort of is but his quality tailed off last year, it’s still worth watching every time though because he is legit on the mic when he is giving his best effort. But he’s no longer must-watch.

Anyone else? Not something that’s going to consistently move the needle for me.

I have all 20 fingers and toes and that’s not enough to count the # of people in AEW right now who for me are must watch talents bell to bell.

I don’t know what they do in terms of developing people on promos but some are getting better while others obviously aren’t. Like Willow and Stat are two I really want to single out as having improved significantly on the mic.
I think Swerve has evolved into a really good promo as well. All of his are kinda similar, but I like the style.
 
I think Swerve has evolved into a really good promo as well. All of his are kinda similar, but I like the style.
Sure, I agree, but he’s not must watch. There’s quite a few other people there that are good to solid promos but they aren’t must watch.

If you’re going to go away from your strengths and what you built your company on, then you better be going towards something that’s also a strength instead of a weakness.

As Ron Swanson would say, never half as$ two things, whole as$ one thing

Does AEW’s tv ratings grow if they would have stuck with what they were doing earlier? Doubtful with WWE getting hot. Some people were just watching because WWE was complete shit and they just wanted WWE to get better.

But does it decline as much if they would have stuck with it instead of becoming more like WWE? I seriously doubt it.
 
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It’s like when you see restaurants introduce new menu items that are a whole lot different than what people go to them for because it’s similar to what another restaurant specializes in.

If you want to do what another company specializes in, you need to do at least one of the three things: do it better, market it better, or sell it at a hefty discount compared to the competition

Can’t do at least one of those? Then it’s not going to work.

See Panera Bread’s pizza and spicy chicken filet sandwiches.

Or McDonald’s pizza, hot dogs, spaghetti, lobster sandwich, roast beef sandwich, and crab sandwich
 
With this NXT-TNA crossover TNA has the chance to do the funniest thing and send over a bunch of talent WWE fired/refused to re-sign in Top Dolla/AJ Francis, Mustafa Ali, Nick Nemeth/Ziggler, Ryan Nemeth, Brian Myers, Eric Young, Trent Seven, etc.
 
With this NXT-TNA crossover TNA has the chance to do the funniest thing and send over a bunch of talent WWE fired/refused to re-sign in Top Dolla/AJ Francis, Mustafa Ali, Nick Nemeth/Ziggler, Ryan Nemeth, Brian Myers, Eric Young, Trent Seven, etc.
That’s a bit of a stretch all things considered
And he’s right probably the best it’s been since they had drew/joe/nakamura

Dave Meltzer believes NXT is the "hottest it's been in years" following strong TV viewership numbers over the past two weeks:

"The brand is strong, its picking up. Not the wrestling… they’re very good with the stories and everything like that.

"One of the keys to this thing is that they’ve got a lot of young characters which is the thing that nobody else really has. "This is a very young show and there is something to be said for having a lot of young people on television and it’s made a difference. NXT’s really the hottest it’s been in years."
 
I really want Jordynne Grace to win the NXT title. Even with a new regime, it still won't happen. She's not under contract, she was only supposed to make three appearances (per SRS) and the third is the actual match, and a company in WWE's position doesn't have the balls to do it. It would be an incredible moment though that would help TNA, elevate Grace, and NXT would be the talk of the wrestling world for a couple weeks.
 
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I really want Jordynne Grace to win the NXT title. Even with a new regime, it still won't happen. She's not under contract, she was only supposed to make three appearances (per SRS) and the third is the actual match, and a company in WWE's position doesn't have the balls to do it. It would be an incredible moment though that would help TNA, elevate Grace, and NXT would be the talk of the wrestling world for a couple weeks.
TNA is stuck on a network that would commit ritual sacrifice of a horde of infants, puppies, kittens, and baby goats to get record-low Rampage type viewership numbers because hardly anyone actually gets AXS.

The only other way to legally watch TNA is to pay $10 a month to subscribe to TNA+.

I mean nearly 50K more people pay $50 to watch an AEW PPV than watch TNA on AXS the rare time we actually get to see their viewership since nearly every week they fail to appear in the top 150 on Thursdays.

I don’t really see TNA getting much of any long-term benefit out of this unless they find a way to significantly improve their distribution and get off AXS. But TNA is owned by their cable network so I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for that to happen.

Or perhaps WWE is pouring money into TNA to prop them up like they did ECW, but then what would be the point in that?
 
TNA is stuck on a network that would commit ritual sacrifice of a horde of infants, puppies , kittens, and baby goats to get record-low Rampage type viewership numbers because hardly anyone actually gets AXS.

The only other way to legally watch TNA is to pay $10 a month to subscribe to TNA+.

I don’t really see TNA getting much of any long-term benefit out of this unless they find a way to significantly improve their distribution and get off AXS. But TNA is owned by their cable network so I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for that to happen.

Or perhaps WWE is pouring money into TNA to prop them up like they did ECW, but then what would be the point in that?
Is new Japan still on axs? I know they were for a while.
 
Ratings can be weird sometimes.

NXT was up 60+K in total viewership this week compared to last week but went down two points (.24 to .22) in the demo

AEW was only up 3K in total viewership compared to last week but went up three points (.25 to .28) in the demo

Fully expecting NXT to win next week as they avoid the NBA Finals while AEW goes h2h with the Finals.
 
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I saw on Facebook that the yum center will have special ‘Louisville nightmare’ shirts. Is that something WWE is doing everywhere or is it just because he used to work in Louisville?
 
TNA is stuck on a network that would commit ritual sacrifice of a horde of infants, puppies, kittens, and baby goats to get record-low Rampage type viewership numbers because hardly anyone actually gets AXS.

The only other way to legally watch TNA is to pay $10 a month to subscribe to TNA+.

I mean nearly 50K more people pay $50 to watch an AEW PPV than watch TNA on AXS the rare time we actually get to see their viewership since nearly every week they fail to appear in the top 150 on Thursdays.

I don’t really see TNA getting much of any long-term benefit out of this unless they find a way to significantly improve their distribution and get off AXS. But TNA is owned by their cable network so I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for that to happen.

Or perhaps WWE is pouring money into TNA to prop them up like they did ECW, but then what would be the point in that?



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Grace’s appearance in the Rumble did nothing for TNA. Her appearance last week in NXT did nothing for TNA.

I guess one of these days people will learn that WWE fans largely don’t give a shit about anything in wrestling without the name WWE attached to it. They aren’t wrestling fans, they’re WWE fans.
 
I mean it’s well established than Alfred Konuwa, aka cheeseboard (because he’s been a shill for WWE ever since they sent him a charcuterie board of cheese), and others get the fast nationals from WWE and only posts them when it’s good for WWE or bad for AEW because WWE won’t give it to him otherwise.

SRS says they use to give him the fast nationals too but he stopped reporting it when he realized what WWE was trying to do with it.
 
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