The Wrestling Thread: AEW Dynasty

I wouldn’t put it past them to do a DQ in a Hell in a Cell match at this point, but I’m thinking there will be some sort of non finish if Bray isn’t winning. The ring is swamped by a hoard of locusts or something.

They can't pull anything close to the shenanigans they pulled with Bray V1 though or it will more than likely bring all that back and kill the best character they've got.

In my eyes the only way to succeed is for Fiend to win the title. And having him as champ creates a lot of new problems to deal with.

Kane hasn’t had his revenge yet. :datass:

They’ve got their Saudi show coming up at the end of the month and Bray is being promoted for that show they’re either going to do Rollins again or set up something new.

Funny how when Lacey Evans bends over to get into the ring the camera is now ALWAYS somewhere else. They filmed her arse once and then never again. No way is that just coincidence. I bet there’s now a directive in the company not to film her arse under any circumstances, as ridiculous as that seems.

Vic Joseph doesn’t seem to have much time for Lawler’s jokes.

Now they’ve added Lacey Evans vs. Natalya again for tomorrow’s RAW, this time in a Last Woman Standing match.

This may be a nothing PPV but no denying the match quality itself has been really good tonight, even if they have been all thrown together last minute. And this middle section is just another 2 hours of RAW (right down to DQ finishes). Probably acceptable however for those who only watch WWE on the Network rather than follow their weekly stuff.

You HAVE to watch this main event. The GOLD STANDARD of bad booking. An ending so terrible the show went off the air 45 minutes early and with the crowd booing everyone right out of the building.

Well the fiend had a good run. Wyatt gonna Wyatt.

The ending doesn't even make their champion look strong. Rollins get zero out of that finish. He's been selling the fear and getting laid out for weeks and now it's all been for nothing. Guy is getting booed out of the building tonight.

The concept of HIAC is now dead. It's not hell if the referee can make a judgement call.

AEW reminded people of the things they missed about WCW and now WWE are bringing back the parts of WCW you don't. WCW is back baby.

Only way to fix the absolute mess they made last night is for Seth to come out tonight and declare it bullshit and there should have been a finish to the match. You could even have him say he's scared that because it wasn't definitive the Fiend will keep coming for him. Then have Vince come out and say he told the ref to go against the rules and call the finish because he doesn't want The Fiend having the title. A monster like that shouldn't be the face of WWE etc etc. Seth says screw that he's a fighting champion and says Fiend has a rematch tonight let's end this. Then the fiend beats him in 30 seconds to end raw as the champion.

Reading the Wrestling Observer recap:

The fans loudly booed and chanted "bullsh*t" at the lame finish.

Medical staff ran down to check on Wyatt and the cage raised up. The fans continued to boo and broke into an “AEW” chant.

Rollins tried to get Wyatt up, but Wyatt sat up and applied the mandible claw. Wyatt gave Rollins Sister Abigail on the floor. The fans broke into a loud “Restart the match” chant.

The fans broke into another “AEW” chant as Wyatt gave Rollins another Sister Abigail. Wyatt locked in the mandible claw and blood started spurting out of Rollins' mouth. The fans loudly booed and were clearly unhappy as the pay-per-view ended.

Love it.

KK wrote:You HAVE to watch this main event. The GOLD STANDARD of bad booking. An ending so terrible the show went off the air 45 minutes early and with the crowd booing everyone right out of the building.

Just reading what happened sounds insane from a booking point of view. I'd love to know if that was a pure Vince decision. How the heck do you get a DQ finish in HIAC. :lol:

Well you had s good run Bray. Now go sit down.

The psychology and flow was all off in that main event (even though I can kind of see what they were going for- wanting to present the Fiend as an unstoppable and unbeatable monster).

It went downhill after the Stomp and the kickout at one. Seth, desperate, hits several other stomps which fail to keep him down: this waters down the stomp, previously one of the coolest looking finishers, and essentially Seth’s best offence, making Seth look useless.

Then, panicked, he gets a chair and hits him in the face only for him to kick out, then he grabs the ladder and again he kicks out, so he moves into the next thing, but this time, hits him with the tool box but doesn’t go for the pin, instead, pouts around the ring, searching and searching for something else, which, logically, he would only have needed to do if the toolbox hadn’t worked.

meanwhile, the Fiend, the unstoppable monster, is laid out for several minutes, before popping back up and destroying Seth. If Seth has gone for the pin in between each attempt with a new weapon, only to have the fiend continually kick out, until he gets to the desperate point, only then to get back up and hit the mandible claw, it would have looked way cooler, Bray would have looked like a monster and would have been a hell of a visual. This however, wouldn’t have got them out of the mess they got themselves into by booking the match in the first place.

You can’t have an unstoppable monster in the title picture, because, for a title match to work they need to be vulnerable which ruins the unstoppable nature of the character in the first place.

They would have been better off having the match never start, maybe have Bray destroy the ref once the door was locked, with no one else being able to get in to the cell (maybe even have them scrambling to open it while Bray was destroying Seth, and when they finally get in, Seth is in no condition to compete after 20 minutes of brutality: they could have even tried a similar thing with the Seth offence this way without everyone looking like a chump.

terrible execution in a match they didn’t need to get themselves into in the first place.

They booked themselves into a corner. Fiend doesn't need to be anywhere near a title just now.

Only time will tell, but I do wonder if this week will turn out to be WWE's WCW 1999 moment (huge ratings, big crowds, only to then keep royally screwing them over). On Friday night they sent a sold out crowd in LA home unhappy after giving them an 8 second main event, a 2 hour show, and falsely advertising Steve Austin and Undertaker, though they did at least get The Rock which is a rarity.

And then last night they shortchanged the crowd by 45 minutes, gave them a load of (albeit decent) thrown together RAW matches, stuck a match on when the building was half empty (why?!), and 2 DQ or No Contest finishes.

Talking of psychology, what also stood out to me was how Rollins has been practically shitting himself for the past month, and yet here he was absolutely fine getting in the cage with Wyatt. The storytelling is terrible.

Dave Meltzer & Bryan Alvarez recap Hell in a Cell:

Looks like that's been taken down. Subscribe for only a tenner a month. It's worth it... if only to hear them lose their minds at some of this gooseberry fool.

I'd go for Post Wrestling personally. John Pollock is as good as Meltzer and doesn't get so invested in the rumours and tends to report more neutrally. Meltzer always feels a bit too invested, but I guess that comes with being the only recognised wrestling journalist for so long.

I actually do like Meltzer though, even if he gets played and get worked too easily.

Get on Voices of Wrestling too, although their more regular content is Patreon only. But, if it's WWE rants you want, the Flagship podcast can't be beat.

First PPV in a while I’ve avoided the spoilers all day for. Well worth it. :simper:

I used to listen to Post Wrestling but Wai always sounds bored as strawberry float.

The Wrestling Thread: AEW Dynasty

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